November 2010 Archives

In the beginning, if you wanted to record what something looked like, from woolly mammoth to soaring cathedral, you used the stub of a burning log and the side of your cave, or a pencil and a sketch pad. Then along came dgital cameras, along came the internet, and pretty soon there were a million photo blogs. But the old-fashioned way of seeing things, eye to hand to pen or brush or pencil to paper, never went away.

Drawing and sketching are back in vogue. (The New York Times has had great success lately with a series on drawing human forms, not to mention the Pulitzer-prize quality sketch-blogs by Maira Kalman.) The goal of the new wave of sketchers, whose epicenter is here in Seattle, is to render the world, one drawing at a time.

The Seattle Times's popular feature, Seattle Sketcher, features the work of one Gabriel ("Gabi") Campanario. In addition to his newspaper illustrations, the Spanish-born Campanario also has a blog where he discusses his work. A year ago he founded a group called UrbanSketchers, which quickly went global. There was a world-wide meetup of urban-sketching bloggers in Portland this summer.

So just as Salon's Julie/Julia Project launched ten thosuand food blogs, Campanario's success and initiative have triggered a cascade of sketchers. The international blog, UrbanSketchers.com, highlights contributions by an parade of virtuoso artists. The Seattle group meets monthly to train eye and pencil on a specific subject (Sunday it was that old chestnut, the Pike Place Market), then gathers after two hours to share and discuss.

The dean of the local group is Frank Ching, a prof at the University of Washington. He quietly mentors newbies, comparing lines and perspectives on cellphone images and paper sketches. The group's monthly meetup is managed by the talented Gail Wong, an architect and UW professor. Stars emerge: Jane Wingfield, for example, lives in Olympia and came to Sunday's event with her sister. No question that her sketches belong in a category that could be deemed "commercial" without being condemned as "sell-out."

Here's the group's "manifesto" (perhaps "mission statement" would sound less dogmatic):

1. We draw on location, indoors or out, capturing what we see from direct observation. 2. Our drawings tell the story of our surroundings, the places we live and where we travel. 3. Our drawings are a record of time and place. 4. We are truthful to the scenes we witness. 5. We use any kind of media and cherish our individual styles. 6. We support each other and draw together. 7. We share our drawings online. 8. We show the world, one drawing at a time.

One comes away from with this meetup with a profound sense of hope.

It's not just that nothing escapes the notice of these artists (who have the inestimable talent to record it); it's the reassurance that evanescent electrons may fade and fail, but --be it on the wall of a cave, on a papyrus, a canvas or a Moleskine notebook--a human being's memory of what we created here will endure.

Above: early arrivals at Pike Place Market for this weekend's meetup of Seattle Urban Sketchers. Top: Jane Wingfield (left) and Gail Wong with the sketches they completed in a couple of hours.

Were you downtown for Black Friday? Light rain, relatively light crowds mid-afternoon. Did you see the "protestors"? The ones in suits holding black & white signs? Wait, they're not protesting at all. The signs read "BUY MORE STUFF." If you ask what's going on, dude hands you a postcard that says Buy More Stuff on one side, and Hurry on the other.

Not your conventional anti-capitalist rant. Most passers-by don't quite get it, can't figure it out. The bicycle cops look on, bored. It's the fifth year they've done this, the BuyMoreStuff.org folks, recruiting new participants and raising money for fresh signs on Facebook. It's inspired street theater, of course, performance art. The interactions with shoppers are dead serious, all in character. "Hurry, or they'll run out of stuff."

Last year, there was even a piece on Huffington Post that quoted the event's co-founder: "It's interesting: Americans in particular are hyper-attuned to advertising and marketing, which all comes down to Buy More Stuff, and when you reduce it down to its primary thing it becomes very weird. When the message is pared down to its essence is when it confuses people the most."

On the subject of consumerism, at its height this weekend, when even the staid New York Times is running blog posts about "Skipping the Stores," would it confuse matters more if I disclose that the author of the HuffPo piece, Ming Holden, is my niece, and that the event's co-founder, Michael Holden is my son?

By 5 PM, Westlake was jammed for the lighting of the tree and the fireworks from the Macy's star and KING 5's live TV shot. At least we didn't have this bomb plot. Could have been a lot worse.

Family reunions over The Holidays--that six-week stretch between Thanksgiving and New Year's--bring the promise of festive dinners prepared, should we be so fortunate, by our infintely talented, infinitely wise grandmothers. So it's appropriate that Jessica Theroux's admirable book, Cooking With Italian Grandmothers, arrives just in time.

Theroux spent a year traveling through Italy, meeting and cooking with an even dozen women who shared their kitchens, their recipes and their personal wisdom. The result is a a 296-page work, subtitled "Recipes and Stories from Tuscany to Sicily," that's part travel diary, part photo reportage and part cookbook. (It recently won the Publisher's Weekly award for best Italian cookbok of the year, beating Mario Batali.)

Theroux's travels begin in Milano, where Maria teaches her how to make osso buco (she only uses first names) to Lake Como for pumpkin tortelloni, to Piedmont , where Irene introduces her to handmade gnocchetti. At two agriturismos in Tuscany, she learns about rabbits. In Liguria, where they grow lots of basil, she learns how to make pesto genovese.

Driving south, she realizes that the country villages get more crumbled and romantic. There's underwear hanging on the line, something you'd never see in the cities up north. Wild greens and hand-rolled filej pasta with Carluccia in Calabria; her neighbor Raffaela makes bread for the entire town.

When she reaches Sicily, she stays in a village on the slopes of Mount Etna where Maddalena teaches her about caponata, sarde beccafico and panelle. (But who puts orange juice in caponata? Troppo strano.) Finally, feeling trapped in Sicily's "self-protective and guarded" culture, Theroux flees to Ustica, a tiny Mediterranean island an hour's ferry ride from Palermo, where the book's second Maria makes ricotta.

There are 100 recipes in the book, many of them illustrated with mouthwaering photographs. Lots of travel shots as well, low-contrast pictures that look like foggy-day landscapes. and posed shots of each grandmother, seated at the table in her immaculate tiled kitchen.

They don't look particularly "grandmotherly," whatever that might be. Some look like secretaries or school teachers, not like cartoon crones. For that matter, most of them don't even t look particularly old. (Of course, you can be a grandma at 35.) But, writes Theroux, "Grandmothers are the guardians of our collective culture, and their secret and techniques are as relevant now as they were a hundred years ago."

In the end, Theroux comes away with a rich store of images, notes, stories, recipes and memories. She has learned how to listen. You read this book as you would a memoir, for its sense of time and place.

Theroux will be in Seattle early in December for a couple of promotional events:

The second is at The Corson Building in Georgetown (5609 Corson Ave. S.) where Matt Dillon and his crew will prepare a Sunday supper, December 5th, at 6 PM, along the lines of the restaurant's regular family-style dinners. Price is $100, which includes wine with dinner and a copy of the book. Reservations by email or by calling 206 762 3330.

We wrote earlier this month that McGuire would be spared, then ran a correction: the lawyers for all the parties had reached a settlement on who was going to pay for the demolition, but demolished it will be. So Belltown's 9-year-old, 25-story McGuire is coming down after all. The building was evacuated earlier this year after the city belatedly determined that there were intractable safety issues due to corroded "post-tensioning" cables in the floors.

So here's what's going to happen, according to Lease Crutcher Lewis, the general contractor for the jinxed building's demolition. Ironic note: Lease Crutcher's website is "LewisBuilds.com," but this marks the first time the company has demolished a building that wasn't part of a new construction project.

First off, they'll take down the garage. Piece of cake. It's a classic, four-level concrete spiral atop the offices of the building's owner, the Carpenters Union. Next, they'll take out the elevators, so that the shafts become giant garbage chutes. Then, by hand, they'll start taking the building apart, starting (duh) at the top, and shoving the debris down through the elevator shafts.

There's no basement, so they'll use the garage footprint as the staging area for a parade of dump trucks. Seattle's Department of Planning and Development (DPD) will issue the permit, but Seattle's Department of Transportation (SDOT) will mandate the traffic patterns: where the trucks will wait until it's their turn, how many trips per day, what route they'll follow out of Belltown. All "to be determined."

When does it all start? Lease Crutcher wants to get going by the first of February. That may be optimistic, since there's no Master Use Permit yet, without which there can be no Demolition Permit, no State Enviornmental Policy Act impact statement (any downtown residential building with more than 80 units is subject to the SEPA). And when will it all end? Lease Crutcher's permitting consultant for the project, Larry Allen, says that the actual tear-down (once the permitting process is complete) could take nine months.

With the handwriting literally on the wall, the FedEx office at the corner of Second & Wall has finally decamped, to Fourth & Cedar, where it occupies the old Alphagraphics site. All that's left in the building now is a gym; its days are numbered.

Ironically, while the McGuire is coming down, sink by sink, shower by shower, ">a 19-story project is going up just a block away (on the Musicians Union site at 3rd and Cedar), and there's a request in the hopper to allow a 25-story project across the street (on the Washington Lung Association property). Won't be long until a developer puts together something for the Rite-Aid site at 3rd and Vine, by which time the McGuire site will be all graded and pristine, ready for its own second chance at high-rise glory.

William Cumming, the last lion of a pride of artists who formed what critics called the "Northwest School," died this morning of congestive heart failure. He was 93.

Cumming, whose contemporaries included Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, Kenneth Callahan, and Guy Anderson, was best known for his paintings of children or childlike figures, almost always in motion, almost always seen from the back or side. Faces were not Cumming's strong suit; vivid colors and a bold line were.

A native of Kalispell, Mont., Cumming grew up in Portland and Tukwila. Largely self-taught, he caught the attention of Dr. Richard Fuller at the Seattle Art Museum, who gave him his first one-man show. He also worked on the WPA's Federal Art Project in Seattle in the late 1930s.

His last retrospecitve, four years ago, was at the Woodside Braseth Gallery, which describes his work in these terms: "The figurative paintings by renowned Northwest Master William Cumming are a fantastic celebration of color and life here in the great Northwest. He continues to capture people and animals in motion. His loose brush strokes of vibrant color define forms in light and shadow, coaxing the viewer into a conversation of invigorating life."

His biographer, Deloris Tarzan Ament, quotes Cumming as resolutely populist. "I hate fine art with all its fuss and crap," Cumming wrote in his autobiography, "Sketchbook." "Fine art students are brought up in a spirit of contempt for people. Of course I paint for the market. So did Rembrandt. So did Titian"

"Hidden faces in his paintings through the years have carried the suggestion of something sinister to the most innocently employed figures," Ament writes in her profile of Cumming on HistoryLink.org.."As a child jumps rope or a basketball player leaps for the hoop, one could almost be seeing the angel of death in curious disguise. A red-helmeted girl helping a blind man cross a street, a hand firmly around his arm, could be guiding him to the underworld."

Image of William Cumming's "Girl Walking Dog" courtesy of Woodside Braseth Gallery. All rights reserved.

Aww, too cute. Half a dozen gingerbread houses, fancy concotions designed by architects and assembled by real chefs in white toques, were unveiled this afternoon in the lobby of the Sheraton Hotel. Outside, snow was falling lightly outside (at the time); in the lobby, sugarless cookies were served.

It's the 18th year for this crunchy holiday promotion, which benefits the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. The sponsors expect 100,000 visitors; you can either drop a suggested tive-spot in the hopper or text DONATE to 20222 on your mobile phone, a gesture that'll set you back ten cookies.

The last tenant has left the doomed McGuire Apartments (except for FedEx, which has an ironclad lease). Two months ago, KOMO reported that the parties to a multimillion dollar suit had reached a settlement.on the outstanding issues, but the building is coming down at any rate. At issue was a constriction technique known as "post-tensioning," and who was responsible for making sure it was performed properly. There was a lot of fingerpointing going on, between the owners of the building (the Carpenters Union and its real-estate investment arm), the builders, the city and the inspector who certified--incorrectly, it turned out--that certain necessary anti-corrosion work had been correctly performed.

Says a source close to the negotiations, the settlement between the parties "did not impact the decision by the owners to take the building down." The irony! A 25 story building coming down, while neighbors are up in arms about a possible variance that would allow another 25 story building a block away. Who says that life in Belltown is all about raucous nightlife?

Oh, Oprah, your boundless enthusiasm for all things Seattle has turned downright dangerous. First, Groupon offered its first-ever coupon for Nordstrom. Well, Nordstrom Rack, actually, but it was a big deal nonetheless, and then you made it even bigger by talking about it on your program. Crash! went the Nordy Rack site. Crashed the Groupon site, too. Then you added the mac & cheese from Beecher's Handmade Cheese to your list of ulimate favorite things. Crash! went the Beecher's site. (And crash went Oprah's site, too, briefly!)

The Beecher's store at the Market was mobbed. But Beecher's got its revenge: Free mac & cheese at the Pasta & Co stores all afternoon.

The funniest part of all this: KING TV's breathless descriptions of Beecher's owner Kurt Dammeier as "Chef Kurt."

With some fanfare, the Seattle Times announces this afternoon that groundbreaking is imminent for a 17-story, 284-unit apartment building at 3rd & Cedar in Belltown, noteworthy because it's the first new residential construction project downtown in three years. (Igor Keller took the daylight photo for his blog, Hideous Belltown, a couple of days ago. Thanks!)

But the good news, such as it may be, is short-lived. Directly across Third Avenue sits a quarter-block parcel occupied by the Washington Lung Association's one-story headquarters, with several parking spaces in back leased by Zipcar. The property owner would normally be authorized a 125-foot, 13-story buidling, but obtained a waiver from Seattle's Department of Planning and Development for a 240-foot, 25-story building.

The Belltown Housing & Land Use Subcommittee, a respected group of residents that follows these matters, says it will appeal the 3rd & Cedar proposal. Their grounds: that the city's Design Review Board "did not have authority to allow an increase in the height of the building."

This is similar to the sentiment in one of the neighborhood's oldest highrises, the 1996-vintage, 25-story Seattle Heights, where condominium owners are on the warpath. (One slight wrinkle: the chairman of the condo board was an employee of the architecture firm that designed the proposed new building. I should also disclose that I've rented--though not owned--various units in the building for the past ten years.) The Seattle Heights position is that the height limit for the quarter-block site cannot be waived. The building's attorneys, Buck Law Group, pointed out that another underused parcel at 3rd & Vine, currently occupied by a Rite-Aid drugstore, could in theory also receive the same waiver, resulting in a forest of 25-story high rises on a single block. "It is not within the authority of the Design Review Board to recommend waivers on building height," Buck Law Group stated on behalf if its client.

This may turn out to be the first volley in a series of downtown NIMBY battles: not so much "in my back yard" but "in my front window."

Meantime, one bit of apparently good news. The McGuire, the 25-story apartment building that was declared unsafe and evacuated earlier this year, has been spared from demolition. An enigmatic press release said simply that differences between the building's owner and the copntractor who built it had been resolved. The owner had determined it would be cheaper to tear down the building than to fix it, but within six months all outstanding legal issues related to the tower had been resolved.

"We are pleased to have reached a mutually agreeable settlement on all issues," said the builder, McCarthy Companies. Terms of the settlement were not released, and requests for further details from the concerned parties met with silence. The building, however, remains swathed in scaffolding. Most commercial ground-floor tenants were simply evicted, though Fed Ex Office,. at the corner of Second & Wall, never budged. "We have better lawyers, in Houston," the Fed Ex manager said with a smile.

Amy Gulick is a nationally known conservation writer and nature photographer who lives in the Cascade foothills but journeys far to capture astonishing images. Her most recent book, "Salmon in the Trees: Life in Alaska's Tongass Rain Forest" (Braided River, $29.95), shows millions of wild fish under the dense canopy of an unimaginably lush wilderness. As the salmon spawn and die, they feed a steady parade of wildlife (bears, wolves) and, as the fish decompose, their bodies are absorbed by the vegetation. Hence the notion that the salmon really are "in the trees."

The Burke Museum has an exhibit of 15 photographs from the book (through February 13th) and, this Tuesday (November 16th), is the site of a sold out dinner to honor Gulick.

The event's organizers are a who's who of Seattle seafood: local "Food Hero" Jon Rowley, catch-and-release enthusiast Kevin Davis (chef and co-owner of Steelhead Diner and Blueacre Seafood), and longline fisherman Bruce Gore. Davis will team up with his chef de cuisine at Steelhead Diner, Anthony Polizzi for the feast: oysters, wild salmon, Dungeness crab, spot prawns and more.

Rowley's invitation says, "For anyone who appreciates the iconic taste of wild salmon, Amy Gulick's photos capture the mystery and fragility of the astonishing connection of salmon with trees and trees with salmon. Her images are so beautiful, I had to brush a tear when I first saw them."

The dinner, at 6 PM on November 16th, costs $75, which includes the meal itself (beverages, tax & tip included) as well as a signed copy of Gulick's book. Dinner reservations on Brown Paper Tickets, by midnight tonight.

The Burke Museum is on the University of Washington campus at 17th Avenue NE and NE 45th Street; telephone 206-543-5590. The museum is open daily from 10 to 5; admission is free.

Cornichons of the world, unite! It's National Pickle Day!

That said, the good folks who "created" this "holiday" did so, I fear, out of a misguided allegiance to a condiment, which they claim is a traditional American accompaniment to that most American of foods, the burger.

Well, phooey on that. Every day is National Something Day, if you check out the calendar. November 14th is also National Guacamole Day, Friday was National Pizza Day, (also National Chicken Soup for the Soul Day), and tomorrow's National Raisin Bran Day. A lady who runs a Bed & Breakfast site claimed November 12th as National Indian Pudding Day (whatever that is, Indian Pudding, I mean).

A pickle for a burger, folks, is a cucumber dill pickle, sometimes called an icebox pickle or a bread-and-butter pickle. A real pickle is a cornichon, a gherkin, and its history is far more glorious than immersing a small cuke in a brine of salt, vinegar and sugar. First of all, you have to pick the little suckers while they're still babies. I recall doing this once with Jean-Paul Kissel, who ran a restaurant on Second Avenue is what wasn't yet called Belltown, La Rive Gauche, now Tula's Jazz Club. (Jean-Paul's older brother, François, owned the iconic Brasserie Pittsbourg.) We spent a day stooped over young cucumber plants in the Skagit Valley, snapping fruit the size of your pinkiy from the tiny bushes. I was crippled for weeks and left with undying admiration for the brown-skinned people who do this for a living. As a French chef, Jean-Paul knew exactly what to do with the crop we'd harvested: he brined them with white vinegar and tarragon, then served them with his housemade pâté. If he'd been the type to serve sandwiches like a jambon-beurre on a crusty baguette, your basic French ham sandwich, he would have brought out some pungent French mustard and a jar of cornichons. Or a pot-au-feu, the French version of a New England boiled dinner, mustard and cornichons as well, one of my favorite meals.

Those are the traditional uses of a French cornichon. But where does that secondary meaning come from? The one that causes French people to smirk when they read the title of this blog?

If you know a bit of French slang, you recognize the term "con." It's a vulgarity, roughly equivalent to "asshole," and unfit for public utterance (in mixed company, at any rate). Yet it's an indispensable epithet. Faire le con means to act like a dick, a term you'll need to use sooner or later. But you don't have to be a complete dick about it; you can say "faire le cornichon" instead.

Upper class mamans teaching their children good manners instruct them, as mothers do everywhere, "Now, now, Marie-Claire, shake hands and say 'bonjour monsieur' to our visitor, don't be rude." Ne fais pas le cornichon.

So there we are, advice for getting through the coming week: National Fast Food Day, National Homemade Bread Day, even National Vichyssoise Day. (And note that it's vichy-swahz, not vichy-swah. Pronounce the zee, you dick.)

Alarm bells are going off in family-owned restaurants around the state as word spreads of a proposed rule change that would allow wine distributors to charge more per bottle for so-called "split-case" orders. It's actually a logical policy; it costs a distributor money to break open a case of wine and deliver only half the bottles. But, under existing rules, distributors cannot charge more (or less, for that matter) than the price "posted" with the Washington State Liquor Board. Small restaurants (and their customers) benefit from this policy; since Washington is a COD state (purchases have to be paid on delivery), it's a way for smaller restaurants to keep a few high-end wines on the list without breaking the bank.

Surprisingly, however, the rule change was requested by the distributors back in October, a month before the vote on Initiative I-1100, which would have ended the Liquor Board's monopoly on the sale and distribution of alcoholic beverages in Washington and its stranglehold on pricing regulations. The Liquor Board's longstanding "no discounts" policy was precisely the reason that Costco bankrolled the initiative. Rather than support I-1100, however, the Washington Wine & Beer Wholesalers Association (WWBWA) cranked out its own version, I-1105. Both met with opposition from the beer industry, which used millions of dollars in campaign contributions to sow confusion and distrust. In its behalf, on the "split case" issue, the WWBWA acknowledges that individual bottle pricies will go up slightly, but claims that the price of full cases could come down somewhat. "In a COD market like this, a high percentage of the wine is sold in less than full cases," says Bob Stevens of Evergreen Beverage Group, a consulting firm, "but the wholesalers and wineries have never been able to price in that added cost associated with storing and picking those split cases."

Still, the result may simply be fewer less-than-full-case orders by retailers and restaurants, resulting in fewer choices for wine drinkers.

On the issue of privatizing liquor sales, and moving spirits into distribution channels similar to wine and beer, the interested parties (as opposed to the ideologues who wrote the initiatives defeated at the polls earlier this month) are surveying the scorched battlefield ruefully. They see the damage done by disunity, they know who the real enemies are, and they know it's going to take politics--not just ideology--to craft a winning strategy. The I-1100 and I-1105 campaigns drew $7 million worth of out-of-state contributions to defeat the local $3 million privatization campaign.

Trying to privatize and deregulate in the same initiative was a mistake, an expensive lesson because it attracted the big beer money, Stevens says. "Keep it simple and we can win."Alarm bells are going off in family-owned restaurants around the state as word spreads of a proposed rule change that would allow wine distributors to charge more per bottle for so-called "split-case" orders. It's actually a logical policy; it costs a distributor money to break open a case of wine and deliver only half the bottles. But, under existing rules, distributors cannot charge more (or less, for that matter) than the price "posted" with the Washington State Liquor Board. Small restaurants (and their customers) benefit from this policy; since Washington is a COD state (purchases have to be paid on delivery), it's a way for smaller restaurants to keep a few high-end wines on the list without breaking the bank.

Surprisingly, however, the rule change was requested by the distributors back in October, a month before the election that Initiative I-1100, which would have ended the Liquor Board's monopoly on the sale and distribution of alcoholic beverages in Washington and its stranglehold on pricing regulations. The Liquor Board's longstanding "no discounts" policy was precisely the reason that Costco bankrolled the initiative. Rather than support I-1100, however, the Washington Wine & Beer Wholesalers Association (WWBWA) cranked out its own version, I-1105. Both met with opposition from the beer industry, which used millions of dollars in campaign contributions to sow confusion and distrust. In its behalf, on the "split case" issue, the WWBWA acknowledges that individual bottle pricies will go up slightly, but claims that the price of full cases could come down somewhat. "In a COD market like this, a high percentage of the wine is sold in less than full cases," says Bob Stevens of Evergreen Beverage Group, a consulting firm, "but the wholesalers and wineries have never been able to price in that added cost associated with storing and picking those split cases."

Still, the result may simply be fewer less-than-full-case orders by retailers and restaurants, resulting in fewer choices for wine drinkers.

On the issue of privatizing liquor sales, and moving spirits into distribution channels similar to wine and beer, the interested parties (as opposed to the ideologues who wrote the initiatives defeated at the polls earlier this month) are surveying the scorched battlefield ruefully. They see the damage done by disunity, they know who the real enemies are, and they know it's going to take politics--not just ideology--to craft a winning strategy. The I-1100 and I-1105 campaigns drew $7 million worth of out-of-state contributions to defeat the local $3 million privatization campaign.

Trying to privatize and deregulate in the same initiative was a mistake, an expensive lesson because it attracted the big beer money, Stevens says. "Keep it simple and we can win."

Seattle's Gordon Woodside/John Braseth Gallery has opened a new exhibit by George and Gerard Tsutakawa, father and son, "Reflection and Abstration," that serves two purposes. First, it brings Gerard Tsutakawa into the Woodside/Braseth stable (he'd been with Foster White) and unites him with his father, whose work the gallery has long represented. And it inaugurates a year of historical exhibitions by major Northwest artists to celebrate the gallery's 50-year anniversary.

George Tsutakawa, who died in 1997, was an iconic figure in the history of Seattle art. A sculptor and painter, he is particularly remembered for his public fountains, in which water itself becomes an artistic and scultpural element.

Until he was 7, Tsutakawa lived on Capitol Hill (his parents owned an import business in the International District that became Uwajimaya after World War II). He was sent to Japan to live with his grandparents for ten years; upon his return from he had trouble relearning English. Instead, aspiring to become an artist and live in Paris, he taught himself French.

George Tsutakawa spent most of his professional life on the faculty of the University of Washington; Tsutakawa's subtle, grey-black sumi-wash drawings seem particularly suited to Northwest subjects like forests, salmon and shellfish. Not until 1958 did he move from traditional sculpture and painting to the art form for which he is best known today: public fountains. In the end, he designed dozens of pieces for sites in Japan, North America, and, of course, Seattle. His "Fountain of Wisdom" stands In the shallow plaza outside the central branch of the Seattle Public Library.

Tsutakawa had four children, the oldest, Gerard, is also an accomplished sculptor. His best-known pieces are probably "The Mitt," which stands outside Safeco Field, and a bronze "Thunderbolt" in the driveway of the Four Seasons Hotel downtown. But his loveliest, most serene works are a series Gerard Tsutakawa calls Uzamaki. They are spirals, loops of bronze that look simple and effortless, a coiled piece of metal in repose, inspired by "imagery, order and mathematical geometry," the artist says. The largest, perhaps 10 feet across, is on sale for $65,000.

While we're at it, Gerard's brothers are both accomplished musicians. Marcus conducts the Garfield High School orchestra, and Deems is a bandleader and keyboard performer.

"Reflection & Abstraction:" George Tsutakawa centennial and new works by Gerard Tsutakawa at the Woodside/Braseth Gallery, 2101 Ninth Ave., Seattle, 206-622-7243. Tuesdays-Saturdays, 11 a.m.-6 p.m. through Dec. 23; admission is free. Additional details online at woodsidebrasethgallery.com

PARIS--I'm in the Marais, and there's a Boucherie Chevaline just down the street. It's no big deal, really. Eating horsemeat rather than beef is a preference, like monkfish rather than salmon. But you'd think the sky had fallen and the waters of Elliott Bay had turned to blood if all you did was stay home and read the papers.

The Seattle Times, impotent at the polls, sent reporter Lynn Thompson out to write a no-lose story couple of days ago about saving race horses from slaughter. "I guess I was naive," says one woman, "I had no idea what happened to race horses when they retire." Well, duh, lady. Same thing that happens to any other farm animal past its prime.

Reaction came swiftly from Bruce King, a local entrepreneur who's now into farming and writes a blog called "Meat, Raising Animals for Food in Western Washington." His answer: repeal the ban on the slaughter of horses in the US, a law that forces horses to Mexico and Canada.

"What does horse taste like?" King asks. "That's a question that you, as an American Citizen, probably can't answer. We just don't eat them. They're edible, and other countries do, but we don't."

Eat a horse? That's like eating Fido. Equine slaughterhouses were outlawed in 2007, with the result that Canada and Mexico picked up the slack. Canada's okay, but in Mexico a horse is worth less than a Happy Meal. King's post is here; it's well worth reading, and it has links to half a dozen sites with further information.

The photo? Not horse meat. Just a butcher in Palermo, Sicily. Nighttime here and too rainy to take picture of the Boucherie Chevaline, sorry.

It's called a courge in French, this giant, orange-fleshed squash. A potiron, or pumpkin, is the same thing, but courge is what they call it here in Provence, at the Mas des Gres outside the town of l'Isle sur la Sorgue, a farmhouse B&B owned by Thierry Crovaro and his wife, Nina.

Thierry, now 50, has been teaching cooking classes to his guests since he bought the place 15 years ago. He trained as a chef at the hotel school in Lausanne, Switzerland, and spent the first half of his career in managing kitchens and hotels. Today he's going to show a group of eight or nine tour operators how to make soupe de courge, pumpkin soup. Turns out, it's not complicated at all.

Chop some aromatic vegetales (celery root, carrots and onions); put them into a stockpot with a stick of butter and sweat them over low heat to soften. Meanwhile, peel, seed and chop a small pumpkin (or buy pre-sliced wedges at the market). Add the pumpkin chunks to the stock pot, moisten with a couple of liters of water or stock, and cook until the pumpkin is soft, about 30 minutes. Purée the soup in a blender (in batches) and return it to the stockpot. Add milk or cream, salt, pepper and nutmeg; when the flavors and consistency are to your liking, stir in a big handful of chopped parseley and you're done. If you're just serving four or five people, you can even serve the soup out of a pumpkin.

There were almosst 50 of us on the bus, visiting a series of hotels, restaurants and tourist attractions--obscure as well as famous--around Provence. This time of year, right after the first frost, pumpkins are sold in every village market; you get pumpkin soup twice a day...with croutons, with cheese, with crème fraîche. Provence in summer is all greens, but now, as the lavender fades to grey and the vineyards turn yellow, it's always a reassuring orange color, full of nutritients, tasting like the good earth.

Cornichon's trip to France was sponsored by PACA, the Regional Tourism Committee for Provence.

Provence, sunny Provence, is dotted with picturesque hilltop villages, many dating from Roman times. One of the most famous is Roussillon, site of the largest outcropping of ochre, iron oxide, on the planet.

There was a time that this accident of geology made Roussillon wealthy; the pigment was in high demand as a coloring agent for textiles. It was exported by the ton to give a familiar color of home to buildings in the French colonies. And iron oxide was a crucial ingredient in transforming latex from the forests of southeast Asia into rubber.

But then petroleum replaced latex, the French colonies became sovereign, and pigment could be extracted more cheaply elsewhere. The red hills of Roussillon lost their allure.Today the quarries are abandoned, the old machinery and the complex channels that separated sand and iron are overgrown. Rousillon's 1,200 residents live on tourism.

Yes, Roussillon still counts as one of the most beautiful villages in France. Yes, Samuel Becket hid out here to escape notice by the Nazis. Yes, there's a nature walk to see what's left of the yellow, pink and purple cliffs, an earnest museum and conservatory, an annual pottery market, art galleries, rooms for rent. But Roussillon's historic economic engine is gone for good.

Sixty years ago, the Harvard sociologist Lawrence Wylie wrote a charming book, "A Village in the Vaucluse," about the year he spent in Roussillon with his family. He saw enormous changes in subsequent visits. What he didn't see, alas, was the demise of the village's raison d'être. Not that there's anything wrong with tourism; it's the largest generator of foreign currency in France, and France is the most-visited country in the world. But it gets you thinking. Whaling, cod-fishing, silk weaving, they've all gone by the boards. What next? Software?

Cornichon is in France this week as a guest of the Marseille Chamber of Commerce and the Provence Tourism Convention. Many thanks for your generous hospitality!