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Publicly, the zoo industry was claiming – and continues to claim today – that “elephants are thriving inside zoos.” It’s a message that AZA officials have delivered repeatedly to lawmakers and regulators, trumpeted in news releases, and highlighted in a recent national marketing campaign. But they know it’s not true. And it never has been. Rather, the decades-long effort by zoos to preserve and protect elephants is failing, exacerbated by substandard conditions and denial of mounting scientific evidence that most elephants do not thrive in captivity.

-Michael J. Berens, Seattle Times

Not ten minutes into the second meeting of the Woodland Park Zoo’s Elephant Task Force on May 28th and it was becoming sadly clear what direction things were heading, and what that meant in regards to saving the zoo’s three elephants, Bamboo, Watoto, and Chai.

To recap, the zoo – bowing to the pressure of a growing public outcry about its elephant exhibit and, in particular, its attempts to unsuccessfully artificially inseminate Chai over 100 times, which the Seattle Times covered in its excellent expose “Glamour Beasts (The Dark Side of Elephant Captivity)” – formed a task force at the request of the Seattle City Council to conduct “an objective and transparent review of WPZ elephants’ health and care, and the value of the elephant program and exhibit to the zoo’s education and conservation objectives.” WPZ handpicked the fifteen-member board, four of whom currently serve on the zoo’s Board of Directors. A fifth, Task Force co-chair Jan Hendrickson, is the zoo’s former chair and director emeritus. The remaining board members, as In Defense of Animals wrote in their recap of the first meeting in April, “include several attorneys, a public affairs officer, a museum employee, a YWCA board member, and a University of Washington director. None of the panel members have any recognized expertise in captive or wild elephant issues and welfare, or on the subject of public education about elephants and related conservation. In introducing themselves, numerous panel members noted they were ‘brand new to the issue.’”

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“I would say that volunteering and seeing the world can be so eye opening and life changing if you allow it to be. You need to always keep an open mind and put in the time and effort to meet new people and become close with them because that is how your views change and you start to see things in a different way.”
-Emma Yuh Coleman

[This is part of an ongoing, semi-regular series of profiles of people we've met along the way whose devotion to social, environmental, or animal issues we admire, who've fallen in love with some of the same far-flung corners of the world we have, or whose passion and adventures have simply inspired us. There may be no rhyme or reason in who we choose to profile, or their stories, but there is an abundance of heart and spirit in each.]

A little over a year ago I was nervously waiting in the lobby of the Seattle Academy of Arts and Sciences Arts Center before going into the theater to make a presentation with Miller Hull’s founding partner, Dave Miller, to the entire SAAS faculty and staff. For the past several months we’d been working on a study for SAAS to help them identify future opportunities, priorities, and logistical challenges of consolidating  their campus. Assistant CFO and Director of Operations Doug Ambach and I were casually chatting, which was a welcome distraction for me. We talked about upcoming summer vacation plans and I mentioned that my husband and I were going to be traveling to Zambia to do volunteer work. Doug asked me if I knew about the school’s Zambia Club and their annual trip to work with partner schools there. I didn’t and it was one of those unique moments when disparate parts of your world collide.

Having fallen deeply in love with Africa after our first trip in 2011, it’s always a pleasure to meet others who understand the pull the continent has on your heart, mind, and soul. So when Doug offered to introduce me to some of the teachers involved in the program, I was thrilled; but with summer break on the horizon, making contact in the immediate future would prove to be challenging. In the meantime, I did some of my own research by following the Zambia Club’s adventures through their blog and I knew right away I had to meet these students and ask if I could write a profile on them.

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If you’ve seen the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi and you live in Seattle, then you probably know Shiro’s Sushi Restaurant. If you haven’t seen it, then you would probably wonder why there is a line of people waiting outside an hour before opening at this non-descript sushi restaurant in Belltown. First of all, if you haven’t seen the film you absolutely should. It doesn’t matter if you like sushi or not because, as Craig stated, it’s about “love and life, beauty and discipline. Sushi just happens to be the vehicle through which we share our Jiro’s journey.” Jiro is an eighty-five year old master sushi chef, perhaps the best in the world. He owns Sukiyabashi Jiro, a Michelin three-star restaurant that is located in a Tokyo subway station and has only ten highly coveted seats that are nearly impossible to get.

Shiro Kashiba trained with Jiro and is himself considered a master sushi chef and one of the best. He’s been a Seattle resident for well over forty years and has had a variety of dining ventures, but he opened his current namesake restaurant in 1994. I don’t know if there were lines to get in before the documentary, but it is certainly a destination now. At seventy-one years old, Shiro works just three nights a week. One of those was a recent Friday when, for my birthday dinner, Craig and I dutifully lined up forty-five minutes prior to opening and breathed a sigh of relief when we realized we’d get two of the eleven seats at the sushi bar.

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It’s difficult to watch, I’ll admit that. But it’s also necessary. People need to understand in the starkest terms what is taking place day in and day out in the name of greed. On average two rhinos are poached on a daily basis just in South Africa alone to feed a greed that is worth, ounce-for-ounce, more than gold but has zero medicinal value. Z-E-R-O. The IUCN estimates that there are approximately 25,000 wild rhinos left in Africa (5,000 Black Rhinoceros, 20,000 White). In South Africa, 333 rhinos were poached in 2010, 448 in 2011, 668 in 2012, and 273 as of April 30th, 2013. At this rate, over 800 rhinos will be killed for their horns this year just in South Africa.

Pause for a moment to consider what’s in that number.

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Listen to the drums
Between each beat, each beat of the drum

I‘m talking over coffee with Killing Joke frontman Jaz Coleman and guitarist Geordie Walker about the fourth person who’s joined us, drummer Jason Bowld. “We could have gone in a different direction,” Coleman is telling me, using both hands to create a V illustrating two separate paths. “Who knows where things would’ve taken us.” Jase, an old friend and an all-around brilliant drummer, who’s played with the likes of Pitchshifter, This Is Menace, Bullet For My Valentine, Pop Will Eat Itself, and Axewound (to name but a few off a varied and illustrious CV), has been drumming for Killing Joke off and on for a few years now and has taken up his position behind the kit for various dates on the band’s recent tour in lieu of founding drummer “Big” Paul Ferguson.

Jason thought he had the opportunity to join the band some years back but they instead decided to go with Ted Parsons, best known for his work with Prong. It’s a decision that Coleman seems to now regret, hence our discussion about where Killing Joke might have gone had Jason been asked to come onboard much earlier. It’s no wonder. Jason is an accomplished musician and a consummate professional who at times doesn’t get the credit he deserves for being the glue in so many different artistic endeavors. So it’s a high compliment and one that doesn’t go unnoticed to hear Coleman – one of post-punk’s originals, whose band’s influence has inspired a multitude of other artists both big and small – speak so fondly of him.

Then, in typical fashion, Coleman follows up his praise for Jase by saying, “There was some other band similar to Pitchshifter that I sang vocals on a song for a few years back. Can’t for the life of me remember who it was, though.” “That was my band, This Is Menace,” Jason retorts. “You sang vocals on ‘Great Migration’ for my band.” Geordie interjects, “That was a great song! I remember listening to it. Jaz’s vocals sounded really gruff and menacing.” Jaz laughs his signature madman’s howl and, typifying the mad beauty that has been thirty-five years of Killing Joke, says, “Ha, ha, ha! Honestly, I don’t remember! I was really cunted at the time!”

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When I first moved to Seattle over ten years ago one of the things that I was most excited about was that I would be close to Vancouver, British Columbia, and its stellar food, shopping, and natural and man-made beauty. But getting to Vancouver has been proven to be a rare treat, so I was excited for multiple reasons when we decided to go up there last month to see my favorite band, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, perform live. The show was on a Saturday night, so that meant Friday night was going to be our one free evening to enjoy one of Vancouver’s fine dining establishments. I started doing my research and quickly narrowed down the selection to Japanese, which seemed an obvious choice with the city’s large Asian population and access to seafood.

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Cause people often talk about being scared of change,
but for me I’m more afraid of things staying the same.
‘Cause the game is never won
by standing in any one place for too long.

-Nick Cave, “Jesus of the Moon”

It’s been one month and I’m just beginning to come down from seeing Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds perform live two nights in a row. I’ve been feeling emotionally wrecked, even a little depressed. Don’t get me wrong, the shows we’re outstanding; but the band doesn’t tour that often and not knowing when I’ll see them perform next leaves me feeling a bit uneasy. Scared, actually, that there may not be another time. The only thing that has distracted me from my emotional low are all-consuming work deadlines that, at least, have provided me with many late nights listening to the band to fill the deafening silence of an empty, dark office.

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You are lucky if, not too late in life, you discover a second city other than your place of birth which becomes a true home town.

-Robert Hughes, “Barcelona: The Great Enchantress”

I‘m standing at the entrance to Park Güell, eyes closed, awash in a sea of voices speaking different languages. It’s one of the things I love most about traveling: losing yourself in the sounds of another culture, forced to be an outsider and at the mercy of the kindness of strangers. It reinforces that, no matter how much you prepare, inevitably you’ll fall short; and with that knowledge in hand, how you act towards yourselves and those around you will determine how much you will or won’t enjoy the adventure.

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We spent our final day in Barcelona visiting Park Güell. The property was originally conceived as a residential suburban development intended for sixty single-family homes in a park-like setting by wealthy businessman Eusebi Güell, a friend and patron of Gaudi’s. Construction took place from 1900-1914, but it was an unsuccessful venture and only one house was built, designed by Francesc Berenguer i Mestres, which Gaudi later lived in. After the failure of the plots to sell, the city took ownership and the property was opened to the public as a park in 1923. Set on a hill at the northern edge of Barcelona in the Gràcia district, it boasts amazing views of the city all the way out to the Mediterranean Sea.

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An earlier project by Gaudi, Casa Batlló is  completed in 1906. Even though it’s just a few blocks down the street from Casa Mila, somehow I missed this building during my previous visit to Barcelona, but that just meant I got the delight of experiencing this building for the first time. Casa Batlló was a renovation project for Gaudi, which included re-building the main street-facing façade. It’s a bold, exuberant composition of natural organic forms, symbolism, and brilliant color, with a generous and playful use of mosaic glass and ceramics. The top of the façade is famously known as the dragon’s back because the curving shape looks like a spine and the colored masonry tiles are its iridescent scales.

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