E. C. (Gene) Ayres Blogspot

There were three extremely disturbing stories in the news this morning, and none had anything to do with Libya, or Obama, or deficits (at least fiscal ones) or our disfunctional Congress. What they had a lot more to do with was the End of Civilization as we know it. To wit: the Philadelphia Orchestra is bankrupt. That is huge, and utterly inexcusable to be allowed to happen in any society that still imagines itself to be advanced. On a lesser scale, but equally significant, here in Seattle two similar cultural decisions have been reached: to close down the Intiman Theater, arguably the finest repertory company on the West Coast; and on a smaller, but perhaps even more significant scale, Nordstroms is firing all its piano players. No, not because they are too costly, or not gifted enough, or destract shoppers from their mission. No, it's because today's shoppers, it turns out, pefer canned pop music to live piano. So I think it wouldn't be too much of a reach to say that to...

Pet Peeve: Hollywood producers have long had the habit of shooting location footage in their back yard and calling it Rome. Or Alaska. Or Seattle. Or New Jersey, where I happened to grow up. What these people seem obliviously, vaingloriously, utterly incapable of grasping, or even imagining, is that the rest of the world, or for that matter the rest of the country, does not in the slightest resemble those brown, burned out hills and valleys that surround Los Angeles, and resemble nothing so much as, well, Los Angeles. This past week I was watching two of my favorite shows, and they are favorites no more, because I have become so weary of having burnt brown stains smeared across my screen and being asked to believe it is Seattle, or Princeton, or Niagara Falls. Do these people in Hollywood actually imagine that nobody outside of Los Angeles County (or for that matter, inside of Los Angeles County) ever goes outside, opens their eyes, and looks around? That we won't notice the Hollyw...

A friend of mine works at NOAA, at their main research facility in Seattle. Or at least she will until Friday. Seattle happens to be the closest American city to Asia, as well as the devastating turmoil in Japan, where radioactive water continues to flow into the Pacific, and radiation into the air, all of which, sooner or later, will circumnavigate the globe. Already, low levels (so we are told) of radiation are turning up in both air and water in such unlikely places as Boise, Idaho, and Boston, Massachusetts. But no matter. Nothing to worry about, right? Except, well, maybe a little something called 'nuclear winter.' Which we may be having already in the Northwest, actually, since we have hardly seen the sun in six months, and then only on the cold days. Oh, and NOAA is also charged with trying to figure out whether the Gulf of Mexico is still alive, given most of its creatures are not; or, like the dolphins off Florida, are in the process of dying horrible deaths. But no ma...