Cookies go crumble

So, looks like I was wrong about the Oscars. Another beautiful theory shattered on the rocks of fact.

But I note that, because Crash's director, Paul Haggis, was also a producer of the movie, he got an Oscar of his own when Crash won Best Picture. Ang Lee, of course, won Best Director for Brokeback Mountain. Clooney picked up Best Supporting Actor, albeit for Syriana.

My point? My point is, that means 3 of the 5 people nominated for an Oscar for Best Director actually walked home with one, somehow or other. That seems remarkably Solomonic -- and I'm reasonably sure it's a first (I wish there was a Mike Glyer-esque fount of Oscar wisdom readily availble, the way Mike knows the Hugos inside and out).

Local news source

Over in my right hand column, you'll see a link to Northwest Environment Watch. They're a worthy organization, and their director, Alan Durning, has a good book called This Place on Earth.

Anyway, I was poking about their site, and saw they're now sponsoring something very interesting: http://www.tidepool.org/ It bills itself as "News for the Salmon Nation", which is to say the Pacific Northwest. They have their own features, and also aggregate stories about the region. Already I've read a story they point to in the Christian Science Monitor, "Lean Times for Salmon Fishermen".

Recommended.

The Hills Are Alive...

Back about a year ago, we were driving up in the vicinity of Mt. Rainier. We tend to take drives around the region on the weekends, as there's still so much beautiful country around here we've never seen, being newcomers.

As we headed up Hwy 706, just beyond the small town of Elbe, we passed... well, I'm not quite sure what it looked like out of the corner of our eyes. Not quite a tourist trap, but something. Something eye catching enough that when we were looking for a driveway to do a U-turn in, the first one we hit was posted, "No U-Turns Here."

It was a sculpture garden, by Dan Klennert. Klennert takes found materials -- wood, stone, metal -- and makes them into shapes that almost but not quite fill of the volume of what he's portraying. The garden is quite large -- I'm not sure how many acres, but more than a few.

As we were wandering around, I noticed a large barn. It looked quite a bit like something from Midland -- corrugated steel roof, gables, big open door. Dan uses it as his studio, and it needs to be big, given the size of some of his works.

Out of the door, the music of the angels sounded forth.

Well, no, not really, but very close. It was an a cappella piece by Lais, off their album Dorothea. I know this because I got to talking with Dan, about living in the shadow of Rainier, and his sculpture, and the music... Ulrika caught up with us as we talked. I asked Dan about the music, and he showed me the album, and I asked, "Where did you get this?" It was from Virgin Records, but their Belgian subsidiary. Dan shrugged and said, "Friend of mine. I have no idea where he got it."

Uh-oh.

So, as I say, it's been about a year. A few weeks ago, I finally ordered the album, off of http://www.gemm.com/ GEMM is something like ABEBooks, that is, it's a listing service for a consortium of dealers around the world. The folks I ordered from were in Delft, in the Netherlands... Better known as the home of Vermeer, but hey. When the CD arrived, it turned out it had come by way of Switzerland. I have no idea why it took that path, but the customs stickers are fun to read.

Silly old world, eh?

But I mention all this because I've been listening to Dorothea a lot since it arrived. I know athenais likes it a lot, too. The main thing is, of course, that hardly anyone in the US knows about them.

But now you do.

An amusing side note about the trip by Mr. Klennert's. Along the way, we'd stopped by McDonald's (I think in Graham, he said, peeking at a map). In the middle of the greenery at McD's, there was this 20 ft. high Tyrannosaurus, all made out of junk metal -- forks, railroad spikes, hubcaps. Turns out Dan made that, as we found out going through his displays at his gallery. So we'd met the advance guard on the road to Dan's castle, we just hadn't known it.