Author: Willem

Posted on

Tuesday/ washed out 😢

Blue diamonds, strike ’em anywhere
First we caffeinate then incinerate
We’ll get you
And sparks will fly in the summer air
Did you pull out of your stall
Maybe I’ll see you after all

[Chorus: Stephan Jenkins]
Hold me down, I want to find out
We say no ’cause I live my life like a burning man
Like a burning man, a burning man
Like a burning man
And I won’t get enough until my legs are broken
– Lyrics from ‘Burning Man’ by Third Eye Blind, 1997

It’s nice to see the stranded— stranded in mud, in the desert!— festivalgoers to this year’s Burning Man are able to finally make an exodus from the muddy grounds there.

‘Burning Man attendees say learning to live with the unexpected is part of the program’ – headline from an NPR report.
Torrential rains disrupted this year’s event. It appears to me from this picture as if the wood pyre (a ‘burning man’ effigy) was not set alight this year. 
[Picture from official Burning Man website]
Posted on

Monday/ ferries 🚢

Happy Labor Day.

My friends and I made a round trip across Puget Sound today:
crossing with the Seattle-Bainbridge Island ferry, driving to Silverdale REI* to pick up a tent, and returning on the Bremerton-Seattle ferry.

*Outdoor recreation gear and equipment store

There’s the Space Needle and the Seattle skyline in the distance, seen from MV Walla Walla ferry that departed out of Bremerton. We made the 1.30 pm ferry— early enough and not too crowded with holiday weekend traffic returning to Seattle.
Posted on

Saturday/ gearing up 🧗‍♀️

My friends are gearing up for hiking on Mount Rainier’s Wonderland Trail— and so a visit the the flagship REI store in Seattle’s South Lake Union was in order for today.

Some of the purchases: water bag and microfilter system, powdered eggs, shredded beef with beef broth in a pouch, energy bars, Mount Rainier Wonderland Trail map, waterproof compression bag (keeps clothes dry), pressure-regulated pocket-sized gas stove, isobutane fuel cartridges.

Posted on

Friday/ last gasp for summer travel 🛬

Happy Friday.
This weekend is the last hurrah of summer travel for many families.
Kids in California are back in school already, and kids in Washington State go back next Wednesday.

Here’s my vantage point from a filled-to-capacity Cell Phone Parking Lot at Seattle-Tacoma International airport this afternoon. (There goes the Light Rail train, departing from the airport station).
I am wedged in between a big old Dodge Ram Off Road truck and another truck to my right, waiting for my two friends from South Africa to call from the airport.
It took longer than an hour for their luggage to appear on the baggage claim carousel, and it was TWO hours after they had landed, when I finally picked them up at the curb outside the arrivals hall.
Posted on

Thursday/ the tragedy in Johannesburg🔥

A fire that had started in the early hours of Thursday morning in an illegally occupied apartment building in the inner city of Johannesburg, South Africa, led to the death of 74 people.
The building had long been ‘hijacked’ from the city by a crime syndicate, and illegally rented out to vulnerable people.

As far as historians can tell, it’s the worst mass casualty in the storied history of Johannesburg. The metropolis of 5.6 million was founded in 1886 with the Witwatersrand Gold Rush.

The front page of Die Burger (The Citizen): 74 die in inferno. The building is located in a gritty industrial area of the city, in a suburb called Marshalltown.
[Photo credit: Reuters]
Posted on

Wednesday/ behold the whirlpool galaxy 🌌

In 2011, scientists imaging M51 with Hubble hoped to capture the galaxy with the James Webb Space Telescope one day. That day has arrived.
– Monisha Ravisetti writing for space.com

Messier 51 (M51), the ‘Whirlpool Galaxy’ — also known as NGC 5194 — lies about 27 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Canes Venatici, and is trapped in a tumultuous relationship with its near neighbor, the dwarf galaxy NGC 5195.
This description of the image from the European Space Agency: A large spiral galaxy takes up the entirety of the image. The core is mostly bright white, but there are also swirling, detailed structures that resemble water circling a drain. There is white and pale blue light that emanates from stars and dust at the core’s centre, but it is tightly limited to the core. The rings feature colors of deep red and orange and highlight filaments of dust around cavernous black bubbles.
[Image credit: NASA/ James Webb Space Telescope]
Posted on

Tuesday/ Idalia is here 🌪

Hurricane Idalia is about to make landfall in the the Big Bend area of Florida as a Category 3 or 4 hurricane.

Hurricane Idalia brushed by the west of Cuba and strengthened over the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
Category 4 hurricanes are monsters: they spawn tornadoes wrapped in rain, and winds of 130-156 mph. Water and power services could be out for months, with the hardest-hit places uninhabitable for weeks.
Hurricane Ian made landfall in September 2022 along the southwest Florida coast as a Category 4 storm. It killed 150 people and became the costliest storm on record in Florida.
[Graphic from the New York Times; information from TV news website KCRA].
Posted on

Monday/ the US Open starts 🎾

The US Open tennis tournament is under way, at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens, New York City.

It is— amazingly— the 50th anniversary of the US Open becoming the first sporting event to offer equal prize money to female and male competitors, promising never to stop fighting to maintain that hard-won progress. (It would take 34 years before all the other Grand Slam events followed suit. This year, the US Open winners will each receive $3 million, with total player compensation rising to $65 million).
– James Martinez reporting for the Associated Press

The competition is ferocious, and No 4 seed Holger Rune (age 20, Denmark) is out.
He lost in four sets against Roberto Carballés Baena (30, Spain)— serving, and about to close out the third set.
This is an outside court, Court No 5. Rune complained about the court before the match, posting a map on X of the court’s location for his fans, saying he thought he deserved to play on a stadium court. He did admit after the match that he was outplayed and cannot blame Court No 5 for his loss.
[Still frame from video on US Open website]
Posted on

Friday/ summer’s winding down ⛵️

Happy Friday.
The weather forecasters say this weekend will be the last of this summer’s warm weather—  88 °F/ 31 °C in Seattle on Sunday.

Sailboaters participate in the weekly Duck Dodge on Lake Union in Seattle on Tuesday.
The Duck Dodge is a loosely organized regatta (held on Tuesdays in summer) where sailboats of every size, speed, and soundness gather to raise their sails, and a few adult beverages too. [Photo by Luke Johnson / The Seattle Times]
Posted on

Wednesday/ at the museum ⚔️

The National Nordic Museum is a museum in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, dedicated to the Nordic history, art, culture, and the heritage of the area’s Nordic immigrants.

Here are a few pictures that I had taken inside of the museum, and of items on display.

Posted on

Monday/ clear enough 🌝

The surface smoke from the wildfires in Canada and the Pacific Northwest that hung over the city on Sunday, had cleared enough by Monday morning so that the amigos could go out and play a little pickle ball.

Posted on

Sunday/ at the zoo 🐻

These creatures are all from Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo.
The zoo opened 124 years ago, in 1899.

Top to bottom: Grizzly bears, Langur, Gray wolf, Canadian lynx, Kookaburra, Asian small-clawed otter, Western Low-land gorilla, Jaguar, Toco toucan, White-naped crane, Reticulated giraffe, Hippopotamus, African lion, River otter.

Posted on

Saturday/ Seattle Center ✨

Here is a smattering of pictures that I took at Seattle Center: from the Space Needle, from inside the Chihuly Garden and Glass and from inside the Museum of Pop Culture.

Posted on

Happy Friday ☀️

Happy Friday.
Cool marine air pushed in from the Pacific Ocean this morning, and made for a beautiful day (78 °F/ 26 °C).

Picture posted by Chris Daniels@ChrisDaniels_TV on X.
Posted on

Thursday/ shopping for electronics 📺

I ran out to Best Buy today to pick up one more Google Chromecast*, for the TV in my guest room.

*A device that plugs into the HDMI port of a TV and then creates an on-screen user interface with a range of TV services, for watching shows or movies (such as Netflix, Hulu, or YouTube TV), listening to music (like Spotify or YouTube Music), and more.

Here’s a Jurassic World indoraptor on the shelf, that I made to pose with my Google Chromecast before I walked over to the cash register.
(A metaphor for me? A dinosaur that can still install a little bit of technology in his house 🤗 . )
And here is the mythical, unicorn of a compact camera, the FujiFilm X100V.
It has gotten rave reviews and gold star ratings from camera experts, but has forever been sold out in stores, and online. (Forever= for more than three years).
I never did get to see one on the shelf in any of the camera stores in Tokyo.
Best Buy does not have any in stock either (of course not), but hey, at least one can hold it and fiddle with the buttons and settings.
Posted on

Wednesday/ Stan the Man 👨

There is tennis in Cincinnati, Ohio this week: the Cincinnati Open (also going by its sponsor’s name, the Western & Southern Open).

The hardcourt season is in full swing, in the run-up to the year’s last Grand Slam tournament that starts on August 28— the US Open in New York City.

The Cincinnati Open was first held in Sept. 1899, and is the oldest tennis tournament in the United States that is still played in its original city.
Action from last night: Stan ‘The Man’ Wawrinka (Switserland, 38 yrs old) rolls back time by ten years with this incredible pickup way, wa-ay out wide.
He outplayed Francis ‘Big Foe’ Tiafoe (USA, 25) in straight sets, 6-3, 6-4.
[Screenshot from TennisTV streaming service]