There's a darkness on the edge of town

Almost forgot to mention: Days seem very short in Seattle, and the mornings very dark, even taking into account the overcast skies. It turns out this is real, not perceived. Sunrise today in Seattle is at 7:56am, a full 41 minutes later relative to the clock than in Champaign. The sun there sets at 4:38pm, eight minutes before here, too. That's 49 minutes less daytime, which is pretty significant.

By the way, just so everyone's clear, the length of the day is determined by your latitude and the date. Seattle is at 47.6 N, Champaign at 40.1 N, or about 15% of the way toward the equator from them. Have no fear, though, these things always even out. In this case, they'll get longer days in the summer by the same margin as they come up short in winter. The big difference between sunrise times in the morning and smaller margin in sunsets just reflects where the cities are in relation to the time zone boundaries. We're in the eastern part of the time zone, which tends to make timed events occur earlier, whereas they're more centrally located.

If the Sun Refused to Shine, I don't mind, I don't mind

Seattle was about as cool as a city can be when it's 40 degrees, rainy, and frequently gusty for an entire weekend. On the good side, the city can be easily walked from the North Side:

to the South:


I have to say, I was surprisingly impressed by the Pike Place Market (it's the one where they throw the fish). Besides the aerial albacore, it's actually a cool place to wander around, kind of like a year round version of the farmer's markets/crafts fairs around here, only with better, substantially larger produce. One thing about the midwest that no one realizes: the produce stinks. Back in Rochester, Wegmans Grocery Stores have seven good varieties, in at least three colors, of every type of fruit or vegetable that sits in the produce section here looking a bit past its prime. Let's put it this way, every square mile surrounding us as far as the eye can see (it's flat here, you can see for miles) grows corn, and we still have to import the edible kind from Colorado.


Anyway, the Pike Place Market has a number of breakfast options, ranging from the Ubiquitous Coffeeshop that dare not speak it's name, to a really nice Russian bakery named Piroshky, Piroshky that will ship you pastries by mail.

I missed the funky new library, as well as the aquarium and the boat tour of Elliott Bay (my wife was able to take some pictures), but did get to see the newest and most Microsofty museum ever constructed, the Frank Gehry-designed Experience Music Project and associated Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame (it's the blue thing on the left).



On the good side, the museum has a really thorough Jimi Hendrix exhibit, and an exhibit of guitars through the past century that will take your breath away. Honestly, seeing them all together will really impress on you just how aesthetically pleasing a Strat, Les Paul, or even National Steel can be (nothing can make a Flying V aesthetically pleasing, however). For those with some musical talent (a group that sadly doesn't include me), the interactive jam room must be heaven. We were a little too embarassed to keep plucking away on a bass trying to figure out at which fret we should place our fingers while some guy in the next booth over was totally shredding a guitar, but he was certainly having a great time. The only negative was the constant need to make every exhibit vastly too interactive, full of useless computers with impossible-to-navigate menus that really had nothing to do with music anyway (it will come as no shock whatsoever that Paul Allen funded the thing). Just next door, the Science Fiction museum has got to be his personal baby; the museum has the stamp of a single, eclectic, very rich, somewhat demented souveneir collector. It's got a great collection of sci-fi movie mementos, e.g., Captain Kirk's chair, along with a seemingly random collection of American pulp sci-fi novels from the 60's to the 80's. It does a good job elucidating some of the general themes of sci-fi (especially the ways in which it challenges societal notions of race and gender through an exaggerated version of "the other"), but comes up a little short in describing the full breadth of the field (almost no non-English books or movies; the picture of Solaris has George Clooney in it and you can just forget about any of Lem's other work). Even the bookshop could use a few more books (like anything by Asminov, Clarke, Heinlein, etc.), but still, it is by far the best museum I've ever seen devoted to a fictional genre.

Next time I'm in town, I'll have to check out the Museum of Flight (to see if it compares to the Air and Space in Washington and their amazing Udvar-Hazy Center, which just blew me away), and maybe even make the trip to Mount St. Helens if I go in summer and the road are open (I've been staring at the volcanocam for long enough, certainly). Still, Seattle is a fun place to visit, and the vacation was well-caffeinated. More later on the Symposium I went to, and some of the cool new trends in Physics education.