Candle in the wind

Image source: http://www.johnhendow.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/lucy.jpg

From the blog post here.

The New York Times is reporting that the Lucy exhibition was a bust.

I'm sorry that is true. Among other factors, the days of snowfall that brought a large part of the region to a halt, and the expense--almost $21.00 for an adult ticket--at a time when the economy was crashing are two things that are blamed. There may be other things as well; I don't know.

It is a shame, though. It was absolutely amazing; I had tears streaming down my face as I saw her bones, and I'm not normally a particularly sentimental person. The concept of our shared humanity reaching across almost 3.5 million years was much more moving than I had intellectually expected it to be.

I did have an idea for encouraging people in the local massage community to go see her in the final weeks. Having worked with Ethiopian clients at the Refugee Clinic years ago, I developed a continuing education class--I prepared a couple of massage case reports, and supplemented them with information on Ethiopian medicinal plants, comparative anatomy and its import for conditions such as low back pain, foot pain, and sciatica in modern humans.

I agreed to waive the CE class fee if participants could show their ticket stubs from Lucy, and we met at a local Ethiopian restaurant near Seattle University, Kokeb. We had a delicious dinner, the owner was extremely attentive and shared facts about Ethiopian culture with us, and all in all, it was a very nice time. We had the doro tibs (chicken sauteed with homemade awaze [spice paste, including peppers, garlic, ginger], peppers, and onions), bueg alecha (mild lamb stew), timatim firfir (injera [Ethiopian flatbread, very soft, light, and spongy] chopped with tomato and onions), and yetekemem ergo (yogurt), and lots of injera on the side. We ate Ethiopian-style, scooping up the food onto the injera with our fingers, although logistically, that made taking notes just a little bit harder.

I would whole-heartedly recommend Kokeb to anyone in the Seattle area looking for tasty Ethiopian food. We had a very nice time, we learned from each other, and four more people saw Lucy while she was here.