truth be told, i didn’t get as much seafood as i would have liked but, still, thanks for all the fish! i truly wish i had more time to hang out with the many, many fine folks in the entire pacific northwest who i’ve come to know over the years. next time!
and yes, at this moment i am still obsessing about getting a shot of rainier AT SUNSET! FROM THE AIR! IT’LL BE PERFECT!
except i’m on the wrong side of plane. the view of the sunset over the cascades is a nice consolation prize.
it’s a cool and gorgeous morning in seattle while running around looking at sets and that means “the mountain is out” which is a regional euphemism that translates roughly to, “it’s sunny and clear enough to see mount rainier.” this is a relatively rare occurrence and having lived in the pacific northwest i can attest that it’s legit topic of conversation amongst locals. i’m not surprised to see there’s a “is the mountain out” twitter account, but i am surprised that it’s not more frequently updated.
i was quasi-obsessed with getting a great shot of the mountain being out, but alas, and it wasn’t the, ahem, focus of my very minimal time in seattle and i had to take what i could get. i missed several awesome chances while i was driving 🙁
i moved on with this guy from olympia to seattle to check out retail sets. a low level cold is starting to get less low level and it’s messing with my sleep. BUT. I. WILL. LOOK. AT. SETS! in case you were wondering, this is a great set.
seattle has been very good to organic valley over the years and sets like this are one reason why. and, of course, you get a great looking set like this when you have lots of consumers who love coop and the milk 🙂
i’ve been working with this guy, jack lee, at organic valley for almost 10 years and at some point we realized we were in close orbit with each other 20 years ago in olympia, washington when i was attending the evergreen state college and he was a food broker. we’ve been joking for years that someday we’d have beer at the spar and today was that day.
just down the street from the spar is the bayview thriftway. 20 years ago, i’d run into the store while waiting for the city bus back to evergreen. jack would visit the store as a food broker. it’s entirely possible we visited the store on the store on the same day, if not the same week back then. but tonight, we were there at the same time!
20 years ago, neither of us worked for organic valley but what’s amusing is that around that time the cooperative was growing and the first farmers from the pacific northwest joined the cooperative and we started packaging local milk. soon thereafter jack would start working for the cooperative and his team was instrumental in getting milk on shelves in stores in the area. and now there’s a nice ov set in the the bayview thriftway!
we also got a chance to visit the olympia food coop which was the first food coop i ever joined. i was starting to think about where my food came from and i’m pretty sure the first time i bought organic valley milk was at the oly food coop. so it was extra fun to check out the range of ov products they now carry and talk with some of the folks working the store. i think they were amused that a “greener” was now the milk marketing person for ov.
to add to the “it’s a small world vibe” one of employees was from madison, wisconsin and worked at the venerable willy street coop. as i bought an oly food coop t-shirt she said, “it’s interesting how many people from wisconsin there are in the area,” which is amusing because there are good number of evergreen and oly alumni at organic valley.
time is truly a flat circle.