There are two great bookstores withing walking distance of the University of Washington train station : the University book store and the Amazon bookstore. There are smaller second-hand bookstores in the University District as well.
Today, I walked to the Capitol Hill station, and Bryan (friend) and I took the new light rail extension to the University of Washington. It’s a bit of a walk (a mile) to the Amazon bookstore from there, but hey, walking is good exercise, right?
This is at the Capitol Hill station, checking out the south-bound train from the University of Washington that had just arrived. ‘Don’t hang by the door’ says the monkey on the door. It really means ‘don’t be in the way, when people need to get in and out’. When the train is full, you sometimes have no choice but to stand by the door!Cool books in the Science section at the Amazon bookstore. If you scan the barcode with the Amazon app on your smartphone, the book comes right up in your Amazon cart, and then you can choose to buy the paper book or the e-book. (It’s nice to be able to paw through the paper book first with one’s grubby hands, and see what you will be getting when you buy the e-book!).
On Monday mornings, I have to leave the house just a little too early to be able to take the train to the airport (so I take a taxi or Uber car instead) .. but when I come in to the airport on Thursdays, I can take the train all the way up to Capitol Hill.
The main-stream media spent most of Saturday tracking the fallout from the (latest) Trump firestorm, and from real storm Matthew. By the time Matthew made land in South Carolina, it had been downgraded to a Category 1 hurricane. It left a lot of flooding all along the coast in its wake. Some 10 people in the USA were killed during the storm. The devastation of Matthew a few days earlier in Haiti was very extensive, with 300 or more deaths there attributed to the storm. Haiti is to the south and east of the Florida panhandle.
Matthew made its first US landfall Saturday morning in South Carolina.
I was a little shocked to see a convoy of military vehicles make their way along the Embarcadero in San Francisco during lunch time today, but then learned that it’s Fleet Week in San Francisco, and there will be fighter jets flying over the Bay and all that (the same Blue Angels that come to Seattle for Seafair in August every year). The fighter jets have been a sore subject with peace protesters in San Francisco since the mid-80s.
Hurricane Matthew was projected to make landfall at West Palm Beach in Florida just as I arrived at my home in Seattle, so I immediately turned the TV on. It seems now that the storm’s eye will stay out in the sea – but the storm surge from the ocean will still cause a lot of flooding in the low-lying areas and outer banks all along the coast.
A police-escorted military convoy that made its way along the Embarcadero today.Hurricane Matthew is going to move up along the east side of the Florida panhandle through Friday and Saturday, and will bring 100 mph winds and 7-11 feet storm surges from the ocean. At least it now looks as if the eye of the storm might stay some 10 or 20 miles out in the ocean, which will make for lower wind speeds on land.
I am car-less this week and so I summoned an Uber driver to get me to San Ramon for a meeting this morning, and then another to get me to the eastern end-point of BART’s blue line in Dublin. (Yes, there is a Dublin in California).
On the way back one of my train’s stops was Fruitvale station, the scene of tragic events on New Year’s Day in 2009 when 22-yr old Oscar Grant was fatally shot in the back while pinned down on the ground, by a BART policeman. (There is a shocking YouTube cell phone video on-line that actually shows what happened; a movie about the events was made in 2013). The officer testified at his 2010 trial that he intended to draw and fire his Taser rather than his gun.
Fruitvale Station is on the blue line on the east side of the Bay.He was sentenced to two years in prison after his involuntary manslaughter conviction – but was released after serving only 11 months. This was 2009 .. and here we are in 2016, now looking back at a trail of numerous similar incidents. Young black men interacting with police, with similar tragic outcomes. Is it due to racism? or due to the way the police operates? or due to ‘bad’ individual police officers? asks this article from website .
He was sentenced to two years in prison after his involuntary manslaughter conviction – but was released after serving only 11 months.
This was 2009 .. and here we are in 2016, now looking back at a trailof numerous similar incidents. Young black men interacting with police, with similar tragic outcomes. Is it due to racism? or due to the way the police operates? or due to ‘bad’ individual police officers? asks this article from website fivethirtyeight.
It was a beautiful 63°F/ 17°C outside today when I took a walk at lunch time around the north end of Market Street here in downtown San Francisco.
This is the corner of the Palace Hotel on Market Street. There is a Ghirardelli Chocolate store inside.The date on the Patrick & Co building on Sansome St says 1906: the year of the San Francisco Earthquake. A fire destroyed the building after the earthquake, but in 1920 the building was remodeled, and the stationary store was in business once again.Here the Muni train arriving at Embarcadero station. If you’re just going a few stops, the Muni train is much nicer than the BART.
Man! I think I deserve a public transportation gold star for my extensive use of it today. To wit: early morning, I took the bus downtown to go to the dentist; took the light rail and bus back home; an hour later ran out to the airport by bus and light rail, took Alaska Airlines to San Francisco; stopped at the office for two hours at the Embarcadero station, and then went back and took the BART train out to Walnut Creek. (There is another convention or something going on in the city, and all the hotel rooms are double their normal expensive rates).
Twelve fashion faux pas offered by the Men’s Health magazine in the dentist’s office. (Hey, I don’t have any of those items in my closet. But now I know to steer clear).Our Alaska Airlines plane to San Francisco was at the far end of the North Terminal. There is no jet way there; the passengers walk down a set of stairs, out onto the tarmac and onto the plane. (It’s actually nice, in a way, to go outside, feel the cool air, and step into the plane).
The Alaska Way viaduct tunnel is making progress .. but still has some way to go. The tunnel dig is scheduled for completion in ‘summer 2017’ says the Wash-DOT website (I guess that means July).
Bertha has completed about half of the digging of the tunnel, but with more than 6 months of digging still ahead.Here’s the inside of the tunnel. The yellow tube brings in fresh air to the boring machine. The red and black structure on the roof is a conveyor belt that takes the dirt out. The inside of the tunnel is made of concrete ring segments that get put in place as the machine chews its way through the earth. Eventually an upper deck (for south bound traffic) and a lower deck (north bound) will be constructed in the tunnel.Here’s a picture I took today. The ugly Alaskan Way Viaduct will be demolished, but it will probably take two more years for the completion of the tunnel. The activity below is work that had been done to reconstruct a ‘seawall’ to protect the waterfront edge from erosion by the Puget Sound water, and to enable shore-like marine life to take hold (seaweed, crabs, mussels).
‘We are back in an era of robber barons and wealth concentration’ comments one of the readers on the New York Times expose article about Donald Trump’s 1995 tax return snippet that they had obtained. (Trump still refuses to release his tax returns, a tradition that had held since the Nixon years for all presidential candidates). The New York Times writes that Trumps loss of $915 million is ‘so substantial it could have allowed him to legally avoid paying any federal income taxes for up to 18 years’. (Income in later years can be offset against the loss in 1995). Mr. Trump declined to comment on the documents.
Whoah .. that’s a big number. A loss of 915 million dollars in one year. (From the New York Times).
I ran out to the doctor’s office on Friday morning to get my flu shot. Is it not too early in the season to get the shot? I inquired. (If one gets it too early, its protection may wear off before the flu season is over). No, no – cases of the flu have already started to show up here in Seattle, said the doc.
‘Taking one for the team’ .. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Director Tom Frieden getting his flu vaccine on Thursday.
