3.14.15 The Ultimate Day of Pi

My family has an unnatural love of Pi Day. We have special Pi Day decorations, Pi Day jokes, and when we were younger our homeschooling mother had about a million math picture books that she would get from the library every year. Even now I can recite pi to the 23rd place, “3.14159265358979323846264..”

And so of course, it was with great sadness that I realized I would be away from home on the ultimate day of pi. (For those of you who don’t know – March 14th is always Pi Day because it is 03.14, today is the ultimate day of pi because the date is 03.14.15) And it was with even greater sadness that I remembered my friends and I gave up sweets for Lent so I couldn’t even eat a slice of pie.

Lacking a epic party or even a slice of pie, I decided to celebrate with the next best thing: Taking pictures!

I present to you my latest collection of work which I call “An Artistic Rendering of Western Washington University through the Depictive Use of Circular Objects.” Or alternatively, a bunch of circles I found on campus.

The campus of Western is actually an outdoor sculpture garden which means we have a whole bunch of really random objects scattered everywhere. Anyone who has spent time on campus will recognize this first one.

This is one of the more famous. I’m not sure what it is actually called, we just refer to it as “You know, that wired one in the middle of Red Square.”  If you can picture a hollow cube missing two sides and stood on it’s corners like a tent with circles cut out of the four remaining sides then congratulations! If you can’t picture that then I’m sorry because that’s the only way I know how to describe it.

It made a convenient circular frame of the campus with created a perfect picture for my collection. (the over use of c words in that sentence was accidental, sorry)

While we’re on the subject of weird circular art, here’s another. I don’t know what this is call either, but I do know that it’s broken. It’s supposed to be filled up with water, but whenever they try all the water leaks out. No one is sure where the leak is and we don’t have the money to find out, so it just sits there and collects leafs.

It kind of looks like a cement crop circle. Or the map of a futuristic city on a far off planet. Or maybe I’m just really bad a appreciating art.

It’s probably the last option, but the other two are way cooler.

And of course, no artistic depiction of Western would be complete without a tree. Although, I am risking expulsion or a witch hunt by posting a picture of a downed tree. But I’ll take that risk.

I live on a part of campus known as “The Ridge”. Which, like it sounds, is up on a ridge completely enclosed by a forest. It’s fun. Whenever I walk to class I feel like a rendition of Little Red Riding Hood. There are several feral cats who run around up there as well as a herd of deer which don’t move out of the way even if you run at them screaming and flapping your arms, a tactic which I will neither confirm nor deny that I have used on occasion.

As I’m sure you know, trees themselves don’t count in my collection of circular objects because they are cylindrical. However, the circle made by the cut off tree branches, while gruesome and R rated for most hippie students, make perfect circles.

Bikes. Bikes are also an integral part of the Western culture. There are bike racks outside of every dorm, every class room, every bus stop. Bikes are everywhere.

You know how cool college students are supposed to roar up to campus in a fancy sports car? Well around here the cool students are the ones who can perfectly steer their bike into the racks with no hands, unclip their waterproof bag, and waltz into class swinging their perfectly groomed dreadlocks.

And so any proper Pi Day collection must include pictures of circular bike tires.

You know what else is everywhere? Bricks.

I’m not kidding, I have never seen so many bricks in all my life. The buildings are made out of bricks. The pathways are made out of bricks. Which by they way, is a dumb idea in the Northwest. When the rain comes down for nine months out of the year it has nowhere to sink into. It just stays there on top of the bricks forever. Walking to class I wish that I had the super powers of Jesus. Or rain boots, but let’s face it, the super powers of Jesus would be a way better long term investment.

However, bricks, as I’m sure you know, are NOT circular. But sometimes their arrangement is.

There’s a part of campus known as Red Square, because it is square and made out of red bricks. Creative right? Well to make up for that lack of creativity the architect decided be ironic. The bricks are arranged in circles as much as possible. All bricks around trees are circular, all bricks in front of building doors are circular, and the bricks around the gigantic circular fountain are circular.

I’m not sure exactly what went wrong here, but these two trees were planted too close together for them to both have the proper five brick layer ring around their bases.  So instead of individual circles they have this brick figure eight binding them together for all eternity. Slightly outside of the rules for a Pi Day collection but cool enough to be included anyway.

I’m also bending the rules a little for this one. The lampposts on campus are technically spherical, but in a 2D form they become circles and therefore count.

They line the brick paths and cast a yellow light on the sides of the brick buildings. We have our own personal one right outside of our dorm window. Every morning when I wake up for my 8:30 class the first thing I see is it’s gloomy halfhearted light and I am reminded that no college student should be waking up that early.

The main entrance to our campus library is an explosion of circles which I had never noticed before.

First there are those yellow and black mosaic circles at the top of the wall. Then, there’s the four different semicircles on the tops of the arched doorways. All four walls terminate in a semicircle, which means that the ceiling is made out of four different segments of a sphere. And, if you want to get really technical, the lamp is hanging from a circular fixture. It made my Pi Day photo hunting heart very happy.

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And there you have it! “An Artistic Rendering of Western Washington University through the Deceptive Use of Circular Objects” by yours truly. It certainly didn’t make up for an epic party, and I am still craving a slice of pie, but you work with what you’ve got.