Category Archives: Seattle

Jobulator

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Pike Place Market Crabs

Pike Place Market Crabs

Anne’s substitute teacher assignment app, Jobulator, has become frustrating. It frequently dings, announcing a new job opportunity, but either when she first opens the app or slightly later, when after she has accepted the assignment, the app responds with “Sorry, there are no jobs available.” Last year, because of Obamacare and the fact that the school district was unwilling to cover the sub’s healthcare, all substitutes were limited to just thirty hours a week and frequently there weren’t enough subs available. This year the district subcontracted out substitute teaching to the temp service, Kelly. Anne will someday get healthcare through them and in the meantime is eligible to work five days a week. Problem solved, except that this year all of the subs from Kelly-covered school districts are able to compete for the plum jobs in our school district. Bottom line, Anne is still only working about as many hours as she was last year. She could always branch out into say, the food services industry, like the crabby subcontractors pictured above, it’s never fun being treated as a resource, instead of as a person, even if your employer says it values its people as its most important resource.

The World In Your Cup

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Raw Coffee Beans

Raw Coffee Beans

Today’s original plan involved taking in the Botanical Garden’s Best of Missouri festival and the adjoining Shaw Art Fair, but the weather today was cold, grey and blustery. We thought that we had dressed appropriately for the day, but it soon became apparent that we hadn’t. We were cycling past the Grand Basin, site of last night’s Forest Park Forever’s fundraising gala, where all sorts of neat new plans for enhancing the park had been announced, when I had an epiphany and suggested that we do something inside instead of out. So, we headed over to the Missouri History Museum to take in the opening today exhibit on coffee.

Step Aside, Seattle

Step Aside, Seattle

This new exhibit originally hailed from Seattle’s Burke Museum and was sponsored by such Northwest notables as Microsoft, Boeing and of course Starbucks. It was originally called “The World in Your Cup”, but its title and really most of the show had morphed to become very Saint Louis centric. The show’s original title had been appended with, “… and Saint Louis in Your Cup.” Long known as a beer town, apparently Saint Louis has sported some real chops and was once known as this nation’s coffee capital. Who knew? With its French origin, almost from its founding, Saint Louis has been a center for coffee roasting, brewing and drinking. As the rather in your face magazine cover to the left implies, this exhibit and coffee in general is not and has never been the exclusive domain of the Northwest. Chief sponsor for this instance of the exhibit is the Dana Brown trust. After the museum, we headed back, with the hope of snagging some coffee and a wee bit of lunch at Kaldi’s, but it was not to be, because every table had been camped on by students who were studying, but not supporting the coffeehouse. We ended up at Katie’s Pizza, which was fine.

Burlap Coffee Bean Bags

Burlap Coffee Bean Bags

Crinoids

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Crinoids

Crinoids

Crinoids were common seafloor animals during the Paleozoic era. They waved with the currents, like meadow grasses in a breeze. Starfish relatives, crinoids used their “arms” to filter food from the water. This fossil was at the Burke Museum, on the University of Washington’s campus, in Seattle. We saw it last year. I had business then in Seattle and Anne joined me afterwards for spring break. We were royally hosted by Jay and Carl. This spring break we are headed east to the other Washington, the District of Columbia. We plan on seeing all of the monuments or at least as many as we can. We will do the museums, but try not to overdo them. Weather permitting, we will do some bicycling. DC has a kiosk based bike rental system that looks similar to the one that we experienced in Montreal. We have an appointment at the capital, where one of our senator’s aids will tour us through the building. We’re flying and when we arrive plan to use Metro to get around, but also expect to do a lot of walking. We are well stocked with tour books, so we should be able to find a decent meal or two. And of course we will be taking lots and lots of pictures. It should be a lot of fun for a pair of old fossils like us.