This painting of Van Gogh has been in the hands of a French family for more than 100 years. It will be auctioned in March and is expected to fetch between € 5 million and € 8 million.
Auction of an unknown Van Gogh. Paris A painting of Vincent Van Gogh (1853- 1890) that has been in the possession of a French family for more than a 100 years, never exhibited in public, will be auctioned in Paris on March 25 by Sotheby’s and Mirabaud Mercier. Van Gogh painted this canvas in the spring of 1887 in Paris, called Scène de rue à Montmartre. (Van Gogh lived there at the time, at 54 Rue Lepic, with his brother Theo). It depicts a street scene with the Moulin de la Galette, a windmill and businesses near the top of the district of Montmartre in Paris. It is believed to be one of the last paintings of Van Gogh’s Montmartre works in private ownership. The painting is oil on canvas, size 46 x 63 cm (18 x 25 in). The auctioneers hope to sell it for € 5 million to € 8 million.
Late today, the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) granted emergency use authorization to Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose coronavirus vaccine.
The vaccine works a little different than the messenger-RNA vaccines of Pfizer-Biontech and Moderna. It uses a modified adenovirus as a wrapper for DNA material.
There are three approved vaccines in the US now. I added my notes to a slide that the Today Show from NBC showed on Friday.
There is a lot of snow on the slopes of Washington State’s mountains this year, in some places already 10% above normal.
These pictures of the Paradise visitor center at Mt Rainier were posted on the Twitter account from the National Weather Service (Seattle) @NWSSeattle.
JULY This picture is dated Jul 17, 2017. It’s high summer, but late in the day with the long shadows, which is probably why there are not many cars in the parking lot.FEBRUARY This snapshot was recorded this morning, Feb 26, 2021. The US Dept. of Agriculture snow telemetry report says there is 16 feet (4.9 m) of snow on the ground there as of today, and that the air temp. has averaged 25°F (-4°C) the last few days.
My phone got the test alert this morning. I expected it, but the sound still startled me.
On Sunday, it will be 20 years since the magnitude 6.8 Nisqually earthquake that occurred here in the Puget Sound basin, on Feb. 28, 2001.
We’re soon getting a smartphone ‘shake alert’ system that will produce as much as a 30-sec. heads-up, that earthquake tremors are on the way (see diagram below). Thirty seconds or less — so this is not the time to panic and freeze.
My plan is to duck under my dining room table — or to run into the smallest room (the guest bathroom). The upstairs bathroom would be the plan for the second floor.
And if you’re driving?
US Geological Survey (USGS) recommends :
– Move your car as far out of traffic as possible.
– Do not stop on/ under a bridge or overpass or under trees, light posts, power lines, or signs.
– Stay inside your car until the shaking stops.
– When you resume driving, watch for breaks in the pavement, fallen rocks, and bumps in the road at bridge approaches.
Earthquake early warning systems like ShakeAlert® work because an alert can be transmitted almost instantaneously, whereas the shaking waves from the earthquake travel through the shallow layers of Earth at speeds of one to a few km/ sec (0.5 to 3 mi/ sec). When an earthquake occurs, both compressional (P) waves and transverse (S) waves radiate outward from the epicenter. The P wave, which travels fastest, trips sensors placed in the landscape, transmitting data to a ShakeAlert® processing center where the location, size, and estimated shaking of the earthquake are determined. If the earthquake fits the right profile a ShakeAlert® message is issued by the USGS. The message is picked up by ShakeAlert® partners (cell phone service providers) which could be used to produce an alert to notify people to take a protective action such as Drop, Cover, and Hold On and/or trigger an automated action. [Image created by Erin Burkett (USGS) and Jeff Goertzen (Orange County Register) and updated by Robert de Groot (USGS)].
I’m still adding animals to my collection.
These came with the poodle that I posted about on Friday.
The giant anteater (Myrmecophaga tridactyla), also known as the ant bear, is an insectivorous mammal native to Central and South America. It belongs to the same order as sloths, actually. [Schleich Anteater, Catalog No 14844, New for 2020]The llama (Lama glama) is a domesticated South American camelid, widely used as a meat and pack animal by Andean cultures for more than five centuries. [Schleich Llama, Catalog No 13920, New for 2020]The fennec fox (Vulpes zerda) is a small crepuscular (active primarily during the twilight period) fox, native to the Sahara Desert and the Sinai Peninsula. Its enormous ears serve to dissipate heat. [Schleich Desert Fox, Catalog No 14845, New for 2020]
I knew the house in this picture from long ago was in Hermanus, South Africa .. but what would it look like today? I wondered.
I did not have the address, but that outline of the mountain in the background was all I needed to track it down. Here is what I found.
1964. That’s my brother and me (on the right), on the lawn of a rented beach house in Hermanus (a 90 min. drive from Cape Town, to the east). And what magnificent machine would that be in the garage? It’s my dad’s 1959 Ford Fairlane (it had a V8 engine). The name is derived from Henry Ford’s estate, Fair Lane, near Dearborn, Michigan.
2021. So, some 57 years later. New roof & new paint on the house (of course), The brick chimney is still there. The hydrangea, ivy and big tree are all gone, but at least there is another tree or two. [Google Street View, Sept. 2010].And here’s a Google Earth view of the area, looking northwest. I added some annotation. The house was just about three blocks from the beach. The ocean water is frigid, though. The shores here catch some of the cold Benguela Current from the depths of the Atlantic Ocean. The main road that runs through Hermanus is Route 43 (R43). On the right of the picture is a vlei (a shallow, minor lake, mostly of a seasonal or intermittent nature) that is now part of a nature reserve. [Picture generated with Google Earth].
Here’s the apartment building called 1005 East Roy, here on Capitol Hill.
It was designed by Fred Anhalt (1896-1996), officially a developer and never an ‘architect’. Anhalt moved to Seattle from the Midwest in the early 1920s.
This apartment building was completed in 1930 (one of about 40 by him), and the first one in Seattle to feature an underground parking garage.
One of the ground floor residents has two Sphynx cats (the hairless ones). They sit in the window and check you out as you walk by.
1005 East Roy has 25 unique apartments. Apartments.com lists an open one at $2,995 p.m. for 2 beds, 1 bath, 1,195 sq ft (yes, that’s expensive, on a par with similar-sized brand new apartments in the city).A view of the building from 10th Avenue. Anhalt’s buildings have been referred to as ‘Castles in Seattle’. They incorporate Tudor and Norman elements, such as turrets, stained-glass windows, and spiral staircases.
The number of daily Covid-19 infections in America — and hospitalizations — are going down (again), but losing 500,000 souls was unimaginable a short year ago. Six hundred thousand now seems inevitable.
An estimated 750,000 Americans lost their lives in the four years of the American Civil War (Apr. 1861- May 1865).
There was a spectacle at 807 Franklin Street in San Francisco this morning: an entire house that was moved to its new location 6 blocks away. (The basement of the house was left behind).
The move cost a whopping $400k ($200k for multiple city agency fees to facilitate the move, and $200k for the move itself). The house was built in 1882 in the Victorian style, reportedly with wooden beams from 800-year old trees. (Sounds like California redwood. Sadly, only 5% of the original California redwood forests remain today— protected, of course).
Anyway, I checked its Franklin Street valuation on Redfin: in the order of $5 million. One wonders how much the valuation will change with the slight change in the location of the house. Probably not much. Where the house was, an eight-story 48-unit apartment building will rise.
Workers pass a Victorian home as a truck pulls it through San Francisco on Sunday, Feb. 21, 2021. The house, built in 1882, was moved to a new location about six blocks away to make room for a condominium development. According to the consultant overseeing the project, the move cost approximately $200,000 and involved removing street lights, parking meters, and utility lines. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)
One of the latest animal figures I had ordered from Schleich happens to be a poodle. I am naming the white pooch ‘Snowflake’ .. and no, not because of the recent snow here in Seattle.
Texas Senator Ted Cruz took his family to sunny Cancun in Mexico on Wednesday night (to the Ritz Carlton Hotel, no less), leaving behind millions of his constituents in freezing homes with no electricity and no water.
That was bad enough, and Cruz returned the very next morning after a media firestorm erupted. It got even worse. It turned out that their family poodle, named Snowflake, was left behind in the freezing house.
Here is ‘Snowflake’. (Schleich® Poodle, part of their Farm World collection, Catalog Number 13917, new for 2020).Snowflake got left behind in Houston in the Cruz’s freezing house. A security guard at the house assured the photographer that he is taking care of Snowflake. [Photo Credit: Michael Hardy @mkerrhardy on Twitter]
Congratulations to the hundreds of collaborators at NASA, for the successful landing of the Perseverance rover on Mars. The mission was eight years in the making.
[From CNN online] The path Perseverance will traverse on Mars is about 15 miles long, an ‘epic journey’ that will take years. What scientists could discover about Mars, though, is worth the journey. To accomplish its goals, Perseverance will drive a little less than 0.1 mile per hour, three times faster than previous rovers.
A rendering of the Perseverance rover on Mars, NASA’s fifth. The rover landed in Jezero* crater, thought to have once been flooded with water. The crater contains a fan-delta deposit rich in clays, and the rover will look for evidence of life that might have existed on Mars. The rover will collect information about Mars’ climate and geology, and collect soil and rock samples that will make it back to Earth by the 2030s. *Jezero means ‘lake’ in many Slavic languages. [Source of picture: NASA]
It was back to the dentist for me this morning, to have him replace a filling in one of my teeth (n.o.t. fun).
It’s still very quiet downtown, and I just parked on the street close the Amazon biospheres — only $1 for two hours.
The cute Hotel 5 on 5th Avenue used to be an office building.The biospheres seen from 6th Avenue. I’m sure the greenery inside are flourishing in its controlled climate. On the very left edge of the picture is the Amazon Day 1 building, and on the left is the new Amazon re: Invent office tower. In the distance behind the spheres is the Cirrus apartment tower.I like the giant artwork displayed in the public walkway inside the Day 1 building. I did not get the name of the artist.Looking northwest along 6th Avenue, towards the Space Needle in the distance.This is the corner of 7th Ave & Bell St. A little bit of the new Amazon Nitro North building is visible towards the top right. Good to have that LOOK left and right sign for the new bicycle lane. (Look everywhere, for that matter. That cyclist straight ahead was heading towards me).The new 24-storey Amazon tower called Nitro North. The walkway at the bottom right goes to Nitro South (8 storeys). Hey, should have named them Nitro and Glycerin instead, joked someone on a discussion forum.
It was dry and warm enough (49 °F/ 9°C) this afternoon, for a nice walk down to Denny Way, to take my customary pictures from the Interstate 5 overpass.
Looking west along the Denny Way overpass. The 1200 Stewart St apartment tower in front, just left of Denny Way, still has some 30 floors to go (of the 45). Behind it, the 2014 Fairview Ave apartment tower seems to be complete (42 floors). The twin towers (on the right) of the 1120 Denny Way apartments have topped out, and are just about complete on the outside. (Will these apartment towers be filled with work-from-home renters, that never go to a corporate office?) The blue & white bus is the Community Transit bus from Snohomish county to the north, and the red & yellow one is a Rapid Ride bus from King County.Now I’m walking up, east, along Denny Way. There’s the Space Needle between the two apartment towers of 1120 Denny Way. The No 8 bus is approaching, just barely visible in the distance. Normally I would hop on, but not today — and not for a while. No public transport for me, for now.Approaching the Denny Way & Olive Way intersection. No 8 bus turning onto Denny Way. A little snow on the sidewalk, still. The blue sky is a welcome sight.Here’s the Broadway & John St intersection with the new apartments at the Capitol Hill light rail station. Hey, I see ‘Oranje Blanje Blou’ I thought: Orange, white and blue, the colors of the old South African flag (in use from 1928 to 1994).Here is the No 10 bus on Olive Way. Starbucks is open, but sadly quiet. It would normally be packed with people just camping out there for the day, until it closed at midnight. Behind Starbucks is the 1924 Biltmore apartments.
It was a bone-chilling President’s Day holiday in the Midwest. Texas has ice and snow, all the way down to Galveston on the Gulf of Mexico.
Here in Seattle, the snow is melting steadily. It went up to 43 °F (6 °C) today.
Look at Dallas: 1 °F (-17 °C), a 100-year low. Texas has had widespread power outages today as well, so not a good situation to have this kind of cold, with no heating in the house. I suspect only some homes in Texas have central heating (say, a gas furnace), just as only some homes here in Seattle have central air-conditioning.
There was more snow this morning, and into early afternoon (maybe an inch), but that was it.
The official tally for the city, for Saturday, is 8.9 in.
Temperatures will now stay above freezing, even tonight, and slowly rise every day. The snow on the ground has already started to melt.
Sunday, 1.20 pm. Still a little snow sifting down. Look for the snowman in the picture. My neighbors across the back alley cleared the snow around, and from their little blue car. Mine is still kind of stuck in the garage, with a lot of snow outside. That’s my out-of-use phone landline to the house, across the garage. For a brief time, it touched the thick blanket of snow on the roof.Sunday, 4.15 pm. I had just run out with my regular-issue shovel (got to get a snow shovel, those wide plastic ones), to clear the walkway to my house, and the sidewalk in front of the house (not visible in the picture), as best I could. Not that I expect any visitors! .. but now the mailman can put junk mail in my mailbox, and Amazon can drop packages on my porch.
Hellooo .. snow, and lots of it, by my back door on the deck. We almost never get this much snow in the city.Let’s see how much we have (this is Sat. 2 pm): 11 in., just about. This does include the little bit of snow from Thursday which was no more than 1 inch. So we’re well over the 4-8 inches that Seattle was projected to get, and we may very well end up with a foot of snow in the city. That would be a top three value recorded, ever. There were 10″ and 20″ events on two separate days in Jan. 1950, and 14.9″ on Jan. 27, 1969. However, these are dwarfed by the legendary Big Snow of Jan. 1880, which lasted a whole week, and had snowfall that measured several feet (there is no official record of the exact amount).The snow is soft and powdery. The footwear I have on here, is woefully inadequate. Help! I need snow shoes, or Wellington boots!This is 16th Avenue at 10 am this morning.15th Avenue (at 10 am) looked a little more solid, just because a few more intrepid drivers negotiated it this morning. The city does not have many snow plows, but hopefully they will get to the arterials such as 15th Ave. at some point.
Happy Lunar New Year! The Year of the Ox* starts today.
In Asian cultures people wear red to celebrate the arrival of the lunar new year, the color that symbolizes luck and prosperity.
Married couples hand out red packets with cash inside to children and unmarried adults.
*Read: bovine creature. The zodiacal ox could be construed as male, female, neutered, hermaphroditic, and either singular or plural.
From my porcelain display case: a child holding the ‘newly born’ Ox, symbolizing the start of The Year of the Ox. I bought the item at a souvenir shop at Hong Kong International Airport in 2010 or 2011. At this point, I am really not sure when I will make it out to Hong Kong again.
A very enthusiastic player in my tennis text group inquired this morning if anyone was up for tennis, outside (for the record, it was 32 °F/ 0 °C at the time). ‘It’s snowing dude’ texted someone back, as a few snow flurries started to appear. I believe they settled for playing indoors: warmer inside, sans snow, but you have to play with a mask on.
The view of my street at about 5 pm today. Not much more came down, and none sticking to the street surface. There is a second system due in on Friday night, though, that will bring many more inches of snow with it.
There was a little sun this morning, before a blanket of clouds moved in. (There is going to be snow in the city on Thursday night and into Saturday, say the weather forecasters).
By now the hummingbirds have ‘consumed’ most of the little bell flowers on my mahonia, but there are still a few left.
Anna’s hummingbird (Calypte anna), a female. They beat their wings about 50 times per second.I got a little too close with my camera. The little bird whipped up from the flowers, gave me a long, dirty, why-are-you-bothering-me? look, as I snapped this picture, and then buzzed off into the sky.
