November 1-3 - Bellingham

Granted I arrived in the dark, Bellingham is beautiful.  Darby's parents live about fifteen miles outside the town, where it looks like this:

You hit an inflection point in their driveway where you sigh and realize where you are:

It's rural, in the sense of these mailboxes

but also worldy the way Williamstown is, for instance in ideas around the family breakfast table. That next morning, having retired the Museum Legs costume, I donned hiking clothes, and Dana and I headed up a mountain with their dog -- novel for me, a near daily routine for her.  She taught me to use walking sticks for the first time.  And in the course of a walk introduced me to roughly five big new ideas, seven books to read, and a meaningful and genuine philosophical context for a problem I had been having in my personal life.

I headed into town midday to prepare for my reading at Village Books that afternoon.  Fairhaven is the historic district of Bellingham.  Just across the town green, itself near the water

there is a boardwalk down to, and out over, the water itself.

The boardwalk winds down to the nestled Woods coffee shop, which would win best coffee shop location of the tour. The view on the way down, inching closer:

The view from Woods:

Village books is an institution, and a beautiful shop:

I received a warm introduction from Dave, of Village Books.  Nan Macy had kindly coordinated the event and made it happen.

Dana, Darby's grandmother Dorothy, and Lisa, a friend through friends from college, held the front row.

I was really lucky in turnout of the rest of the audience -- thank you, Dana!  The Whatcom County Museum was slated to reopen two weeks after I was there, and many of the docents attended.  One in particular said to me just before I read, "I've read your whole book and I have lots of questions!" which was somehow vaguely terrifying.  She couldn't have been nicer.

A man followed along from his own copy the whole time I was reading a chapter (On Boredom, my current favorite chapter of Museum Legs).  

He turned out to be the museum director.  He did not, he said, notice places where I misread a word and smoothed over by changing others.  Here we are together:

And here I am with Darby's grandmother (greatgrandmother of Galen, the Hol Button man from post no. 1):

In the course of the tour, I have come across a number of admirably longstanding book clubs.  Rosie's in Dallas had met for a couple of decades.  That night, Dana had a women's group of similar tenure that was meeting, and I headed out with Lisa, of the front row.  Sometimes after speaking it's nice to stare at a wall, or similar, and I was dying to see a film, but also really wanted to get to know Lisa, with whom I have many common friends and almost no history.  I ended up having an extremely enjoyable evening with Lisa and her boyfriend Ben.  Regionally speaking, we ate pizza that was half crispy pepperoni, half salmon.  Ben shared pictures from his Alaska fishing and sports tour boat.  

I appreciate how many interesting and full and different ways people spend their days, and how many professional skills exist that I do not have, or know.  

Ben gave me permission to blow this one up and put it on my wall:

It reminds me of a picture from last year's Summer Show at the Royal Academy of a kitchen with bright yellow cabinets and enormous (blown up, two foot tall) eggs on the counter.

Darby's dad returned the next day from a trip to New York to hang out with Darby and grandson and take in the New York Marathon.  I spent a day in the writer's retreat that is their cabin and then headed back to Seattle.

As a postscript, here is a Harry Potter animal, also from Ben's Alaska photographs.

I vaguely remember taking a picture of Ben and Lisa, but can't seem to find it.  Perhaps I will make an addendum.  

Both of Darby's parents are exceptionally interesting people.  Dana is a distinguished writer, whose books are worth checking out.