Month: June 2019

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Monday/ warm weather on the way

We have warm weather on the way for the city: we will touch 90 (32 °C) on Wednesday.
Time to let cool air in at night and in the morning, and keep the shades on the windows down in the day! (I don’t have central air-conditioning in the house).

These beautiful red poppies are on the north end of 18th Ave here on Capitol Hill. They made me look up Monet’s famous painting with the poppies! See the next picture.
Claude Monet (1840-1926) | Poppies | 1873 | Oil on canvas
From the Musée d’Orsay website: When he returned from England in 1871, Monet settled in Argenteuil and lived there until 1878. These years were a time of fulfilment for him. Supported by his dealer, Paul Durand-Ruel, Monet found in the region around his home, the bright landscapes which enabled him to explore the potential of plein-air painting. He showed Poppy Field to the public at the first Impressionist exhibition held in the photographer Nadar’s disused studio in 1874. Now one of the world’s most famous paintings, it conjures up the vibrant atmosphere of a stroll through the fields on a summer’s day. Monet diluted the contours and constructed a colourful rhythm with blobs of paint starting from a sprinkling of poppies; the disproportionately large patches in the foreground indicate the primacy he put on visual impression. A step towards abstraction had been taken. In the landscape, a mother and child pair in the foreground and another in the background are merely a pretext for drawing the diagonal line that structures the painting. Two separate colour zones are established, one dominated by red, the other by a bluish green. The young woman with the sunshade and the child in the foreground are probably the artist’s wife, Camille, and their son Jean.
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Sunday/ 2020 Democrats swamp Iowa

There was a carnival of politics in the state of Iowa today, with 19 of the Democratic 2020 presidential candidates taking the stage at the Iowa Democratic Party’s 2019 Hall of Fame event in Cedar Rapids.

Each candidate had only 5 minutes to speak, though. Sigh. I just hope that the Democrats will pull out all the stops, hit up all their rich donors, and deploy social media campaigns and whatever else they can, to get Trump out of the White House.

My breakfast this morning. On the left, on Friday’s TIME magazine cover, is Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders (77) who was also in Iowa. I realized after I had taken the picture that I had quite a worldwide ensemble on the table: melamine tray from China, coffee mug from South Africa, with coffee from Colombia, bone china cereal bowl from Japan, oatmeal from Ireland, with blueberries from Canada, and walnuts from California.
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Saturday/ no tariffs on Mexican goods (yay?)

Leave my Mexican avocados alone! I put them on my toast, almost every day.

If we are to believe Trump (I am not), his threat to slap a 5% tariff on all goods from Mexico, unless they do better at stopping migrants trying to reach the US border, had the desired effect.  (Trump tweeted Friday night that tariffs are now off the table, and that a last minute agreement with Mexico was reached).

Well, it turns out that much, or all of the terms of the ‘agreement’, were actually reached months ago between Mexican officials and the White House, says the New York Times (see below).

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Friday/ rent control: yes or no

Should a city such as Seattle with really expensive housing costs, adopt rent control* measures? Maybe, but probably not.

It usually turns out that rent control creates a whole new set of problems. Renowned economist Paul Krugman writes that rent control inhibits construction of new housing, creates bitter tenant–landlord relations, and in markets with not all apartments under rent control, causes an increase in rents for uncontrolled units.
A better approach for city councils could be to provide housing subsidies or tax credits to renters.

*Rent control or rent regulation is a system of laws, administered by a court or a public authority, which aim to ensure the affordability of housing and tenancies on the rental market for dwellings. [Source: Wikipedia]

Could I sign her petition for rent control? asked the lady at the grocery store entrance today. ‘Hmm- I don’t know enough about it’, was my honest reply. So she gave me this brochure, but all it said was ‘We need rent control’. Well, in a free market and in order to be fair to everyone, even rich people – those that own entire apartment buildings – it’s just not that straightforward.
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Thursday/ 75 years on: we shall never forget their sacrifice

Time marches on, and here we are, 75 years from the day in World War II, on which the Allied Forces had landed on the beaches in Normandy.

After sunset on June 5th, an enormous fleet of some 6,900 Allied vessels made their way to the French coastline. The first Allied soldiers set foot on the five beaches at about 6.30 am.  (The five beach-heads would only be connected by June 12th, much later than planned, though). An estimated 4,400 Allied soldiers died on D-day, and an equal number or more German soldiers.

By the end of June 1944, some one million Allied soldiers were on the ground on French soil. The casualties for both sides during Operation Overlord that lasted until Aug. 30, 1944, would come to some 450,000 dead.

D-Day: This is How the Invasion Went  The boxes at the top are the code names for the landing beaches. The orange shows the areas that the Allied forces occupied on the first day after the D-day landings. (Their goal was to reach the dotted lines). The port city of Caen (lower right), a key target, was only completely liberated by July 21. [Graphic by Theunis Kruger, Grafika24, from Die Burger newspaper].
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Wednesday/ ditching the whitening

I read once that Americans have somewhat of an obsession with super white teeth – so that must be why so many toothpastes are ‘whitening’ or ‘extra whitening’.

Well, says my dentist:
1. if you are using toothpaste for sensitive teeth, whitening ingredients detract from the effect of the potassium nitrate (which helps with tooth sensitivity); and
2. the amount of whitening actually achieved with toothpaste is minimal.
So I’m ditching my Sensodyne Extra Whitening toothpaste, and will go with one that only has the potassium nitrate.

I got this toothpaste sample from my dentist, and I like it, but I have not been able to find it in a store yet. I guess I could order it online from You-Know-Who, but I will try another store or two first. The dentist says to smear a little toothpaste over the tooth and gums where the heat & cold sensitivity is, before brushing, to amplify the effect of the potassium nitrate.
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Tuesday/ at the carwash

I learned not to park my car under the trees when I go play tennis at the Woodland Park tennis courts. Little spots of pine gum end up all over the car. Luckily, there is Uncle Ike’s Car Wash to take care of that.

The car wash used to be the ‘Brown Bear’ Car Wash, but it was bought out and taken over by Uncle Ike’s, the local marijuana products franchise.
Business must be booming for Uncle Ike’s!

My car wash routine is very simple. STEP 1: Rinse the car with the high-pressure rinser. STEP 2: Use the soapy broom with the soft bristles to go over the whole car & all windows. GO FOR IT and be THOROUGH but QUICK! You pay for every minute that you use the equipment! STEP 3: Final rinse with the high-pressure rinser (shown in picture), to get the soap off. All of this takes 5 or 6 minutes, and costs $6. And voila! you have a clean car.
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Monday/ the rainbow flags are up

I stopped for a moment on the way to the dentist this morning, to take a picture of the colorful rainbow flag at the entrance of the new Hyatt Regency. (June is Gay Pride month).

The Hyatt Regency has been open for business since November. I’m not sure if they are already able to fill their enormous hotel to its full capacity, with guests. They may have to be patient and wait for the extensions to the nearby Washington State Convention Center, to be completed. That date is still more than 18 months away though, some time in early 2021.
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Saturday/ a rabbit invasion?

I found this wabbit* right here on 17th Avenue on Capitol Hill tonight. He was not too skittish. In fact, he rolled around for a bit in the flower bed dirt after he had spotted me.
*It’s an eastern cottontail rabbit (Sylvilagus floridanus).

I see on the message boards that long-time residents think there is a bit of a rabbit invasion going on – an influx into Capitol Hill from other large green spaces such as the one around Husky Stadium.

Says one commenter: ‘Rabbits are a pest and an invasive species’. I think that is correct; they are prolific breeders.
‘People are an invasive species’ retorted another. I think that is a true statement as well.