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The Seafair Torchlight Parade is more than a relic of “a simpler time,” or an opportunity for Seattle merchants and restaurants to make money from visiting suburbanites and exurbanites.
It’s an opportunity for all of us to get back in touch with the values and aesthetics that helped make this city great.
At a time and place where these values are often scoffed at, Seafair proclaims there’s still plenty to admire in squareness.
Squares gave us the Space Needle. Squares gave us Boeing (and, hence, the “international jet set”). Squares gave us computers and software.
Towns at at least a little removed from the metro core still understand the positive aspects of squareness, and revel in them. I come from one of these.
Remember: Square DOES NOT necessarily equal boring or white. Values of family, tradition, and togetherness cut across all ethnic and subcultural lines.
There are three special things to mention about this year’s parade. The first is the Seafair Clowns’ heartfelt tribute to Chris Wedes/J.P. Patches.
The second thing was something I’d previously noticed last month at the gay parade—spectators using cam-equipped iPads to get a better-than-the-naked eye view of the proceedings.
And finally, what was Grand Marshal (and Fastbacks drummer #2) Duff McKagan doing in a horse and buggy? Wouldn’t a bitchin’ vintage muscle car be more his flavor?
ford 'seattle-ite xxi' car display at the world's fair; uw special collections via edmonds beacon
My pals at HistoryLink.org have put together a weighty historical coffee table tome called The Future Remembered.
It’s all about the Century 21 Exposition, the Seattle world’s fair that began 50 years ago this April.
It’s 300 pages of insightful prose and luscious pictures concerning what is still probably the single most important event that ever happened here in Software City.
It’s proof of what a physical book can still be—an object of desire. (And a handy blunt instrument, should you need one.)
It gives you most of the individual subplots of the fair’s story, from the miraculously perfect design of the Space Needle to the erotic puppet show (by the future producers of Land of the Lost!).
These sub-stories are woven around a main narrative line, about a cabal of squarer-than-square civic boosters who pulled off a staggering feat of a spectacle, something that melded both high art and mass entertainment into one vision of a sleek modern tomorrow (that mostly still hasn’t shown up).
And it even turned a small profit, and left a 74-acre arts-and-recreation campus in the middle of town.
You should all look it up, check it out, even get one for your very own.
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Indeed, there’s only only one small mini-gripe I’ve got with the document.
There’s a two page spread saluting “Women At Century 21.”
It honors Gracie Hansen (the brassy small-town hostess who ran one of the fair’s burlesque revues), Laurene Gandy (wife of fair exec Joe Gandy and a tireless worker for both the fair and the subsequent Seattle Center), and the other male execs’ wives (billed collectively as “Our Fair Ladies”).
But one prominent woman is not mentioned in the spread. Or in the entire book.
Dr. Dixy Lee Ray (1914-1994) was a marine biologist, a UW prof, and a science-ed host on KCTS.
Ray worked as a “science advisor” to the United States Science Pavilion at the fair. In this role, she was the pavilion’s chief spokesperson to the local media.
She then became the first head of the pavilion’s post-fair entity, the Pacific Science Center.
From there she became the highest ranking woman in Richard Nixon’s Executive Branch (running the Atomic Energy Commission).
From there she successfully ran for governor in 1976 as a “flag of convenience” Democrat.
Then she proceeded on an anti-environmentalist agenda, alienated just about the entire state Democratic Party, and lost her re-election bid in the 1980 primary.
Ray left behind a lot of political opponents.
And, admittedly, her later role with the Science Center held more authority than her role with the Science Pavilion.
But she should not be written out of the fair’s history.
myonepreciouslife.wordpress.com
As an entire region continues to impatiently await the promised, wondrous Snowtopia hinted at on Sunday but only teased about in the two days since, here’s some beautiful flakes of randomness for ya.
And finally, I will have a new product announcement in this space tomorrow. It’s something all loyal MISCphiles will want to have for their very own.
