Seattle Light

One of the delights of travel, besides getting out of a midwest heat wave and summer humidity, is the fun of being with friends and family in a new location, seeing sparks of light, life and imagination. Our first night in Seattle, David and Sarah took us down to the locks near David's apartment in Ballard, to watch the salmon. We weren't the only ones watching.

The energy of life -- salmon swimming upstream and over fish ladders, herons watching for their next meal or nesting in a nearby clump of trees, green leaves finding their way to the sunlight in the midst of all the concrete.

The next night the O'Leary family took us out for a picnic supper and a performance of Midsummer Night's Dream -- in the perfect location of a tree-filled park. We were early enough to set up in a nearly front row location. There were a few heads between us and the "stage" but it is amazing how your mind crops that out and you focus on the magic of the play -- the magic of Shakespeare's poetry brought to life in a fun-filled interpretation, of scenes of court and forest made vivid with a minimum of props, of a small cast of actors playing multiple roles and becoming completely different characters.

Three sets of lovers -- Lysander and Hermia, Theseus and Hippolyta, Demetrius and Helena

Bottom, Titania and attendant fairies

Puck putting the antidote on Lysander's eyes

Bottom as Pyramis, dying and dying and dying, under the light of the Moon

Titania, fairy, Oberon, lit by the portable lights as the evening moved into twilight and the play came to a close