Stumps

On Sunday, Vava, Manuel and I visited a nearby lake that has beautiful old tree stumps on its banks.

Leafs and Glaciers.

Today, Manuel and I hit the road for the North Cascades to hit a day hike above Marblemount. Gorgeous country. Beautiful day. Big Peaks that still have glaciers. We had a bit of a surprise learning last three miles of road to trailhead was closed. (C'mon NPS, update your website.) But, we'll revisit more of this area another time.

Sigur Rós

Luke Mathis and Cyra Hobson walk into Benaroya Hall for the Sigur Rós show.


Sigur Rós vocalist and guitar player Jónsi Birgisson



Sigur Rós guitarist Georg (Goggi) Holm


Sigur Rós drummer Orri Páll Dyrason

Southwestern Nicaragua

GRANADA

Purísimas procession travels outside of the Cathedral of Granada. Floats and fireworks travel through the city several times a day during the end of November and early December tributing Granada's patron saint, the Virgen Concepión de Maria.

The streets of Granada, Nicaragua. The city was founded in 1524 by Francisco Fernández de Córdoba.


Virginia Barrera Reyes, in red, sells fruit with family members at the municipal market in Granada. Their family have been fruit vendors for around 40 years.



The Granada cemetery, used in the late 1800s and 1900s, is the resting place of six Nicaraguan presidents.


Granada cemetery.


A young girl prepares to leave her spot on a float during an evening Purísimas procession in Granada.


Orlando Pena Vargas, right, talks with friends outside his home in Nicaragua. Vargas lives in both Granada and Miami.


(From right) Daniel Lerrera Cisnero, 35, Ruddy Enrique Molina Garay, 22, Christian Martines, 25, and Oscar Alberto Chavarria, 17, talk and laugh one evening in Granada’s Parque Colón. They say there is not a great amount of acceptance for open homosexuality in Nicaragua, a fiercely Catholic country. However, they said, it seems to be getting better.



Cathedral de Granada from the belltower of Iglesia de La Merced.


Iglesia de la Merced in Granada looking the opposite direction.


Juana and son Bernardo walk past the Granada marketplace.


A woman on the streets of Granada.


Light hits the eyes of Jenny Angeles Morales, 23, a meat vendor in the Granada marketplace.


Streets of Granada.


Manuel.


Nicaraguan flag flaps on a boat traveling through Las Isletas, a set of islands on Like Nicaragua. Volcan Mombacho is in the distance. Some of the islands are home to monkeys and birds. Some are homes to the wealthy.


Volcan Mombacho from Las Isletas.




LOS PUEBLOS BLANCOS

After a few days in Granada, Manuel and I jumped on a bus and toured Los Pueblos Blancos. Many of rural communities are located on Meseta Central and around Laguna de Apoyo— a huge crater lake encased in jungle.

The towns are said to have their own special artesians or folklore. Catarina, a small Spanish-colonial town, is known for its tropical plants and views of Apoyo.

My guidebook said the town of Diriomo hails to be the “Witch Capital of the Meseta.” So, Manuel and I decided to take a look around, and see if we could meet one of its folk healers. And, we did.

Andrea Peña Aguirre, a folk healer, is pictured inside of her home in Diriomo. Aguirre, a great-great grandmother, works out of her home. She practices natural medicine, purifies homes, reads cards and creates potions.


Laguna de Apoyo, Catarina.


Diriomo, Los Pueblos Blancos.


Jose Flores, 50, weaves baskets in Catarina, Los Pueblos Blancos.


Three-wheeled taxis (motorized and peddle-powered) ride past a memorial dedicated to fallen soldiers. I am not certain, but think the memorial tributes the dead of the Nicaraguan civil war between the Contras and the Sandinista-led government.


RIVAS



A bicycle taxi rides through Rivas, a rustic town and regional travel hub on the Pan-American highway in southwestern Nicaragua.


Genesis Veronica Alvarado Jimenez,10, swings for the piñata during her first communion celebration at a fire station in Rivas, Nicaragua.



Raquel Lanza Espinoza, 11, rides the bus with her brothers and mother on route to their home in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua.


Man in poolhall, Rivas, Nicaragua.


First communion procession in Rivas, Nicaragua

PACIFIC


Playa Coco at sunset.


Baby turtle headed for the ocean.


A group of Nicas our age showing off their flips. The beaches were nearly deserted, except for a few locals farmers, ecotourists and a few camps of turtle poachers. One of the boys we met, said he risks breaking the law (and risks being being shot at) to sell the eggs (for consumption) in the cities. Refugio de Vida Silvestre La Flor is nearby, and is a laying ground for turtles.


Mama turtle having a difficult time returning to the water after laying eggs.


A section of trees on the beach.


Horse on Playa Coco after sunset.

Point of the Arches, Olympic Peninsula

This photo was taken at the Ksitigarbha Temple, one of the larger Buddhist Temples in the greater Seattle area. The temple recently celebrated the opening of a new hall and the revealing of a new statue. More than 1,000 people attended the ceremonies. Three monks, visiting from Taiwan, blessed the temple and statue, and conducted the ceremonies. Thich Thanh Man, the head officiating monk from Taiwan, is between the two umbrellas before the unveiling of the statue.


Beacon Hill Playground



Grace Crunican, Seattle Director of Transportation, walks through the King Street Station clock tower.


(from left) Becky Benton and Brittany talk before walking in the finale of Friday’s fashion show at the 19th annual Esprit transgender conference in Port Angeles. If you've ever wondered about the transgendered spectrum, please give a look to Marc Ramirez's article, "Logging town welcomes Transgendered Group."


“Kinderkarate” class at the Filipino Community Center.


Edith Woods, right, walks with her sister, Vida Lidge, after attending Sunday service at the New Hope Missionary Baptist Church.

A Pacific Northwest Portrait, written by Tyrone Beason

Edith Woods has attended services at New Hope Missionary Baptist Church in Seattle's Central District since she moved to the city in 1962 — and her sister, Vida Lidge, has been going even longer than that, since the congregation was founded nearly 60 years ago.

Woods is 74 now and Lidge is 92. They are church ladies, tried and true, pillars of stability, portals to history and wearers of fantastic headgear.

Woods has assembled quite a church-hat collection, "about 20 or 30" by her count.

Her big sister, Vida, buys them for her from vendors at Baptist Church conventions around the country.

Not that Woods is vain. She insists she doesn't need anything fancy, "just one that fits my head."

But the hats and the churchgoers who wear them represent something more to the rest of us.

Woods, who now lives on Beacon Hill, has seen crime go up in the Central District and watched it go down. She's seen blacks flock to the neighborhood, back when it was Seattle's de facto African-American enclave, and watched their exodus when the cost of living there grew too high.

The church's congregation is morphing, too.

"New people are coming in, but a lot are dying out," Woods says.

But at least now, when Woods walks through those honey-colored church doors, she can gaze out on racially mixed 21st Avenue and see a "Barack Obama for President" sign tacked to a house across the way.


The more things change, amen, the more things change — except when they don't, except when we wander past church on a Sunday afternoon and glimpse grand ladies in bright dresses and big-brimmed hats and thank goodness that some things in this city on the move, in these historic times, stay the same.

Continuity may be one of our lesser appreciated civic virtues, but Woods and Lidge remind us of its place.

They are the last surviving siblings among five sisters. "She's the oldest, and I'm the baby," says Woods.

She has raised eight of her own children in Seattle, all of whom live within their mother's venerable field of vision on Beacon Hill.

"I can point a finger, and they could all see it and be right here," she says with a giggle and pride.

Summoned by family, our Sunday best and a long view of time, community finds a way to endure.