This is Mount Rainier from the south, with the town of Longview in the foreground. I had just crossed the bridge, done some crawling through the town in the company of many truckers, most of whom had business in town, and am now pulled over on the road out of town to take some of the very few photos I did take on the trip. I was very impressed with Longview. It is almost entirely industrial, but makes the cleanest impression. I’m used to Oakland-California industrial, as seen from the BART train, looking decidedly polluted.
This is a more westerly view from the same spot, and sunnier. The river is nice and blue. The emissions look so cumulus, not carcinogenic at all. And in the foreground is one of the several tree farms in the area, that grow the weirdest trees I every saw, likely genetically engineered to grow in nice orderly rows … and straight up. I really wanted to know just what the diameter of these growing fence posts was at the base. A foot? … eighteen inches? Didn’t look like much more, and 30, 40 feet tall, probably a twig at the tip.
Hybrid Poplars. Cultivated cellulose. Google told me they can get to 30 feet in five years. That’s very efficient. I’ve pirated an image of the trees in their autumn foliage. To grow such beauties for toilet paper doesn’t seem quite right, but we can’t do without the TP.
Actually, while Longview is in Washington, back on the south side of the river I’m in Oregon again, heading off to the coast, and Astoria. I did take photos in Astoria. It is full of cute little houses and churches and such. I seem to have lost them. They aren’t on the phone. I remember filing them off, but they aren’t where I was supposed to put them, and as I like to keep a tidy phone … hey !
Our Google Overlords do not permit deletion. I had removed them from the phone, but not long ago. And even after they are “permanently” deleted in 60 days, five years from now some Samsung/Google subsidiary hybrid will ask me if I want them back … for a price. One’s life is no longer one’s own. But, to get back to the story, this is not my favorite of the Astoria house photos.
The photo does not really capture its effect. I was attracted by the back end of the upstairs. It looks like the back end of a pirate boat, and I got the idea the house was built by a ship’s captain. Which it was, I heard from the guy who came out of the house, attracted by my picture taking, to tell me the house was for sale. He said they had more work to do before they put it on the market, but some of the original Victorian interior had survived. He spent some time pitching the place to me, and I spent some time wondering if I indeed looked like somebody who might be in the market for an expensive house. I was sort of pleased by the idea. I told him I’d been a teenager in an Italianate Victorian in San Francisco … and doesn’t that sound expensive? Ah, well ….
An Old Knitty Lady 