Date: 10/06/2013
Day: 10
Location: Seattle, WA
Miles Today: 41
Total Miles: 1605
A Quiet Day in Seattle
A Culture Vulture Attacks the Museums of Seattle; the Burke Museum, the Seattle Museum of Art, On the Streets of Seattle, Mrs. Colonel Boot, The Big Right Turn
The Burke Museum
That Seattle is a wonderful city is universally acknowledged. It is beautiful, there is the Opera, salmon three times a day if you let them do it to you and very good coffee. The museums, frankly, not so much. The Colonel is spoiled.
The Burke Museum is located on the U of W campus. It has a pretty good paleontology section and a good but very small selection of north coast Indian artifacts. Accordingly, pictures were taken. The Colonel apologizes universally for not being able to better manage reflections where the image was made of an object necessarily kept under Plexiglas.
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| There has probably never been a more beautiful killing tool than the Clovis spear point. The Burke has half a dozen nice ones, all dated about 11500 BCE. It is a secret desire of ours to some day hold one of these points in hand. About 80% of the way through One Lap we hope to be in Clovis New Mexico where the type objects were found. |
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| The thing mounted horizontally in this case is a very fine example of an atlatl, a spear throwing stick used by ancient folks around the world, still used, it is said in Australia under the name Woomera. Modem practitioners can propel a spear at 98 MPH and as far as 800 yards. Tough on the mega fauna. In a world where Ultimate Frisbee exists, there are, of course, college teams and competitions. I suspect you are all up to speed atlatl-wise. What the Colonel did not know about is the stone illustrated above and shown more clearly below. |
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| This elegant stone was bound to the atlatl for either of two reasons, or perhaps for both. The stick apparently makes a distinctive sound when it is passes at high speed through the air. With the stone bound to the stick just above where it is gripped, the sound changes pitch considerably. The stone functions as a paleolithic silencer.! It is also possible that changing the weight distribution on the stick could add kinetic energy to the spear. Either way (or both) very cool. |
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| This illustration from Wikipedia shows the notch in an atlatl into which the spear butt fit and the longitudinal groove where it lay. |
The Seattle Museum of Art (SAM)
It is the Colonels experience that museums always have more than they can show and always show more than they can display properly. Oddly, and it is very odd, this museum seems to have lots of available room. I have the feeling that what is on display here is what happened to be of interest to a deceased local collector and available; no unified controlling interest seems to guide the collection. This is not to say that there are not some very interesting and beautiful objects to see. They have an apparently excellent collection of porcelain (of no interest at all to the Colonel) and a really quite wonderful and un-photographable collection of ancient glass, some dating back to pre Common Era.
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This golden bowl is perhaps 5" in diameter. It is dated to Mycenaean times, so it was perhaps 1000 years old when Socrates was a pup. How something like this can last for all those thousands of years without disappearing into a gold bar somewhere along the line is a mystery. There was no supporting information offered with this interesting object beyond date, provenance and donor. There is, necessarily, a story. |
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The SAM does have a nice collection of North Coast objects, many of larger scale than the Burke. |
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| The colonel apologizes for butchering this image -- it is really quite wonderful. |
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| The mouth of this bowl, intended for potlatch ceremonies, is about three feet across. |
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| The object on the left is CA 500 BCE. The object on the right was made by Josiah Wedgewood in the late 1700's The colonel is very grateful to the SAM for displaying them together and inviting some compare and contrast. |
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| The Colonel thinks the ancient object is more esthetically pleasing. The depiction of the figures is more fluid and the not quite symmetry of the object also appeals. The Modern object seems more technically perfect (and is certainly also wonderful.) There is a place for both on the Colonels bookshelf. The Colonel would very much like to know which object you prefer, and why. |
On the Streets of Seattle:
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| Not clear on the Japano-Mexican thing here |
Mrs. Colonel Boot
Was at the A's game last night and this is where she was sitting. Thank you Mr., and Mrs. Dickson! The Colonel wishes he had been there.
Tomorrow: the Big Right Turn
It appears that the weather will be good enough to begin the eastward leg on Monday. Prudence suggests that we at least begin the expedition on Interstate 90 rather than on the two lane Highway 2. In this case, prudence trumps prior planning, that and deep seated fear of snow.
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