About Me

- René Fabre
- Welcome to the Blackberry Chronicles. It's a personal blog and metaphorically speaking we called blackberry bushes, sticker bushes as kids. As a practicing philosophical eclectic of the arts, education and technology, this is a simple journal about life, growing up in the Pacific Northwest, and pretty much everything else.
Saturday, January 29, 2022
Reflections: January 29, 2022
Saturday, January 8, 2022
Any Time You Give Fully
Any time you give fully of yourself - there are elements of your old self that are dying because a new self is in the process of emerging. - Van Neistat
Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time
Speaking of Kurt... He said on a few occasions that life after 60 (or was that 65?) was an epilogue. Geez I hope not, yet realize the truth of it. I feel in some way (almost 72) I’m just getting started. Mom always said I was a late bloomer. I wish I could talk to Mom and ask, “Just how late were you thinking?”
I love the fact that Van Neistat is such a DIY (self made) kinda guy. Though he’s much younger than I, he seems like an old soul and more akin to someone my age. My oldest daughter is a few years older than he.
A survey marker downtown Renton, WA. 1/8/2022 |
I enjoy Van’s way of doing things. When I was a kid and a young man, it was never about the money or the equipment. If you had an idea you carried it out with whatever you had on hand at the time.
Make it yourself!
Thursday, August 26, 2021
For the Love of Maps: We were Bound to Mete
I’ve always had a passion for maps. It started when I was a kid. We grew up in a small neighborhood on the west edge of Renton that was right out of the movie American Graffiti. We were a little isolated because Sunset Highway cut us off from the rest of Earlington Hill on the north and the railroad tracks were a border to the south.
The rules were quite simple. We were free to roam just stay on our side of the highway. Across the street from our house was what we kids called the "Little Woods" and to the west a couple of blocks and down to the end of the alley past Taylor’s pasture was the "Big Woods.”
Mom could yell for us from the front porch when we were playing in the little woods, but when it was time to come home from the big woods, Dad would send our cocker spaniel Daisy to fetch us. We spent many a Saturday playing cowboys, explorers and Tarzan, but our favorite was playing Army. There were about a dozen of us guys that were close in age. We’d divide up into opposing platoons and head into the bush on patrol to find and hide from each other. We had tree houses and secret camps. We built rafts at the pond and swung on rope swings that were tied high up on large strategically located trees.
We communicated with mirrors flashing light signals, imitated bird calls, and left encrypted messages along the trails so our allies would know our whereabouts. Heading out in different directions we’d synchronize our watches to meet up at the big willow, the cave, or the secret sticker bush camp for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Planning was important and we spent a lot of time drawing elaborate maps of our missions.
Twenty five years later (1984) I’d find myself working at a title company and one of the cool things about it was the maps. My favorites were the Kroll Maps. These huge atlases were leatherette bound lithographed maps by section township range. The original cartography was done by hand and they were beautifully detailed with some details in color. We used them everyday all day long to locate property. On a busy day your arms got tired from hoisting them on and off the customer service counter. A Kroll Map set upright on the floor would almost come up to my shoulders and they were about 3 feet wide weighing anywhere from 10 to 30 pounds, depending on the volume.
An open atlas displays a section or one square mile. We got so good at it you could give us an address almost anywhere in the county and we'd call out the volume, page number and the quarter section. We took great pride in that and enjoyed the shock value it had with customers.
One thing I really liked about the Kroll Maps was you got a good indication as to how the property was created. We had that question a lot. "How was this lot created and what parcel did it originate from?" A lot of things 'run with the land' as we say in the biz and what you can ultimately do with your piece of the American Dream dirt is determined by agreements that were made and recorded at the county in the past. By comparing the older Kroll Maps with the updated assessor’s maps, we knew where to look next.
The Kroll Maps were truly a work of art and many skilled and talented cartographers collaborated to create them. They were not only beautiful, but they lasted for years and years even with heavy daily use and abuse. In the 1980’s a full set of Kroll Maps was our Google search engine.
I love the digital maps and technology we have for property search today, but nothing replaces the wonderful tactile experience you have when tracking down a parcel on a hardcopy map.
* Parcels of land created out of acreage, not formal county recorded subdivisions, have legal descriptions using Metes and Bounds. In simple terms this is the surveyor starting at a given known point and/or defining a specific location then describing the boundary like a detailed walk with step by step directions using a compass around the perimeter.
Saturday, July 3, 2021
KEEP THE LIGHTS ON
Saturday, February 20, 2021
The Blackberry Chronicles
I’m picking up the pen to blog again. I’m working on a memoir of my old neighborhood Earlington, in Renton, Washington. The first rough draft I’ve worked on over several months is mostly about when we moved here in 1956 through 1962 and the Seattle World’s Fair.
These rough sketches are mostly about being a kid 7 to 12 years old. I’m having issues with it, several false starts, and I’m way too self conscious. There’s no flow to the stories yet, but I’m determined to keep it going. My motivation to complete it has a lot to do with documenting it for my kids. Like, there was a time before the digital age, the information age, the globally connected age, and here’s a few stories.
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Our home in Earlington, Renton WA. (circa 1958) |
I’m going to be 71 in a few weeks, so I’m likely facing (MAI) mortality awareness issues. I’ve thought a lot about Family history this last year and continue to feel the pangs of not having asked them the many questions I wish I would have before they passed from our physical plane to the ethereal cosmos.
This blog's title, The Blackberry Chronicles, denotes a deep reflection back to those days of innocence, though I’ve been very inconsistent about maintaining its themes and direction. And, very much like me, it’s totally eclectic and scattered with randomness and rabbit hole adventures.
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Building our clubhouse in the back yard. (circa 1958) |
It has nothing to do with Blackberry phones! Though my first smartphone was one of them. Across the street from our home was the Little Woods and to the West a few blocks or so was The Big Woods. Many adventures would take place here and the blackberry bushes (or as we kids referred to them back then) ‘the sticker bushes’ prevailed. Great places for secret camps!
Now I’m plotting a new (old) course and at least for a while I plan to use it to work through some ideas, memories and stories of these early days so my kids have a record.
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Mom and her sisters, Auntie's Marjorie and Mildred. (circa 1957) |
Our neighborhood was only a mile and a nice walk to downtown. It was rural in nature and feel. It was an old neighborhood on the west side of town. No sidewalks, open drainage ditches, a few street light bulbs on telephone poles here and there and no cul-de-sacs. It was a simple old grid and most every home had an alley with a garage out back. Our little niche was the area below Sunset Highway, also known as Dunlap Canyon Road, then later Martin Luther King Jr. Way.
I live on the East Hill now, heading up past City Hall on Benson Road. |
Sunday, October 27, 2019
Lake Washington Boulevard, Seattle
Lake Washington Boulevard, Seattle
October 10, 2019
Lake Washington Blvd at Mt Baker Park |
The autumn yellows and reds are just beginning. My CD player is freshly loaded with music and my iPhone with podcasts. Let's do this day!
Stan Sayres Memorial Park |
It's mostly clear and sunny this morning and the fog is lifting over Lake Washington.
Leschi North Moorage |
I'm enjoying the views over Lake Washington from the Leschi North Marina with the Bellevue Skyline and Cascade Mountains as a backdrop.
Old Town, Arlington, WA.
Instagram Class in Old Town, Arlington, WA.
October 1, 2019
I drove up to Arlington this Tuesday morning to teach an Instagram marketing class to local real estate brokers. It was a lovely drive up from Renton. Just north of Everett on Interstate 5 I'm passing by Smith Island.
We started our class at Moe's Coffee Bar on Olympic Avenue. It's a beautiful October 1st.
We stopped out front of Arlington Velo Sport Bicycle Shop on Olympic Avenue. There are so many wonderful locally owned small businesses here in town.
We didn't have time to stop here, but I just loved this inviting scene at Playa Bonita Mexican Restaurant!
I'm talking to the group about the three axioms of hyper-local marketing... location, lifestyle, and community as we're walking down the street to Arlington Hardware taking lots of photos.
We crossed the street to gather in Legion Memorial Park to chat about marketing strategies, edit our content and posting to Instagram.
In the parking lot I just had to stop and chat a few minutes with this guy and his beautiful 1955 Ford Thunderbird.
It was my kind of day and a great group of local real estate pros that made for a really fun class. We were so fortunate to have such a perfect early autumn day to play outside in lovely downtown Arlington.
Shout out to Moe's for hosting our get together! Great treats, super friendly crew and a fine cup of coffee! Thank You!!