Category: Seattle

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Saturday/ foggy & forty-four

ACT I SCENE I  A desert place.
[Thunder and lightning. Enter three Witches]
First Witch: When shall we three meet again
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?
Second Witch: When the hurly-burly’s done,
When the battle’s lost and won.
Third Witch: That will be ere the set of sun.
First Witch: Where the place?
Second Witch: Upon the heath.
Third Witch: There to meet with Macbeth.
First Witch: I come, graymalkin*!
Second Witch: Paddock* calls.
Third Witch: Anon!
All: Fair is foul, and foul is fair:
Hover through the fog and filthy air.
[Exeunt]
From ‘Macbeth’ (1606) by William Shakespeare

*Graymalkin is an affectionate name for a gray cat. During the Renaissance it was believed that Satan sent witches malicious spirits to help them carry out their evil deeds. These ‘familiars’ or ‘imps’ would appear in animal form. The familiar of the First Witch takes the form of a cat and the familiar of the Second Witch takes the form of a paddock, a toad. The familiar of the Third Witch is not mentioned in the first act but later in the play, it takes the form of a harpy, a nasty creature in Greek mythology with the head and body of a woman and the talons of a bird.   -information from Shakespeare Online.

For those in warmer climes, let me tell you: 44 °F (7 °C) feels positively balmy when you’ve recently felt the bite of  19 °F (minus 7 °C).

There was fog this morning, and again tonight. This is 19th Avenue on Capitol Hill at 8 pm.
Fog is made of tiny condensed water droplets suspended in humid air that had been cooled to its dewpoint: the temperature at which it can no longer hold all of the water vapor it contains.
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Tuesday/ Engine House No 3, then and now

There was scaffolding all along the front of Engine House No 3 last April, as I walked by on the way to my first Covid shot next door.
The building now shows off a fresh coat of paint, and restored red lettering on the front as well.

Engine House No 3 on Terry Avenue is an official historic landmark.
The building served as a home for the local fire brigade until 1921. Over the years, Harborview Medical Center gradually grew up around it. The hospital continues to use the old station building to this day.
‘Foot Note’: I thought those red crosses are Maltese crosses, but they are not. They are cross pattée (‘footed crosses’), a type of Christian cross with arms that are narrow at the center, and often flared in a curve or straight line shape, to be broader at the perimeter. The form appeared first in very early medieval art.
From 1890 to 1904, the Seattle Fire Department’s Engine House No. 3 stood in what is now the Chinatown/ International District.
In 1904, it was replaced by a new Engine House No. 3 (this one), at the intersection of Terry Avenue and Alder Street, in what is now Yesler Terrace.
This 1911 photo shows Engine House No. 3 in its heyday. Three fire wagons, with their crews and horses, stand in the station’s doorways on a rainy day.
Handwritten on photograph: 5-11-1911.
[Photo and text from Wikimedia Commons]
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Sunday/ a soaking rain

We are out of the freezing temperatures, and it started to rain steadily this afternoon.
That should take care of the remaining snow & ice on the streets and on the sidewalks.

Here’s Jackson St and 23rd Avenue at 9.15 pm tonight. 
I am making my Sunday night grocery run, and there ‘s the Amazon Fresh store, on the left. I will make a left turn, park in the empty parking garage, and shop in the empty store. (All right, not completely empty. There will be 5 or 6 other people, besides me).
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Saturday/ Happy New Year

Here is a series of stills from the ‘augmented reality’ streaming video called T-Mobile New Year’s at the Needle. (T-Mobile is the second-largest wireless carrier in the United States, with 106.9 million subscribers as of the end of Q3 last year. They are headquartered in Bellevue WA and Overland Park KS.)

Look for Sasquatch, the Pike Place Market neon signs, Jimi Hendrix, an orca, drink coffee and stay strong, Kraken hockey players and The Kraken itself.

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Tuesday/ venturing out

I had to go to a doctor’s appointment this morning.
I told myself ‘You can do it, don’t be a scaredy-cat’ (driving on the snowy, icy roads).
My car does not have snow tires, but the electric motor on the rear axle, plus another on the front axle, makes it an all-wheel drive. The wheels also have traction control (electronics that limit how much the wheels can spin, making it easier to drive on slippery surfaces).

I put a ‘scheduled departure’ into my Tesla app, a good practice in icy weather. That way the car is nicely warmed up inside, with the battery pre-conditioned (warmed up) as you get behind the wheel to drive out.
I was good to go.

The City of Seattle provides this handy map of the roads that had been plowed. The reds are streets with steep grades— big trouble if they have snow and ice on.
Here’s the Eastlake Ave & Stewart St intersection. ‘NO TURN ON RED’ .. but is it red? The traffic light scones are all clogged with snow, and one can barely make them out. This could be trouble for Tesla’s ‘Full Self-driving’ mode: an edge case, as it is called. I would think the car would come to a stop, when the cameras cannot make out the color of the signal (assuming they would recognize the boom & light fixtures as a traffic light).
This is 18th Avenue. Not a problem to drive on, as long as one goes nice and slow. The brakes can do only so much to stop the vehicle on a slippery surface. (Yes, my Model 3 has anti-lock brakes, but I have no intention of testing them out, if I can help it).
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Monday/ it’s very chilly

Seattle had 6 in. (15.2 cm) of snow as the sun came up this morning, and that was it, for now.
The sun was out in full force this morning for an hour or so.
The snow on my roof melted and was quickly made into icicles.
The high for the day was only 25 °F (-4 °C).

Looking east towards the Space Needle from 14th Avenue & Thomas, just as it was getting dark.
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Sunday/ a White Christmas– a day late

I measured 3.5 in (9 cm) of snow on the rail along the deck in my backyard at about 1 pm today.
We might get another 3 inches the next day or two, I think.

There were snow flurries all morning. Mr Squirrel came down from the tree, and ran in the snow along the top of the fence, even though it was just 25 °F (−4 °C) outside.
Here’s 15th Avenue and Republican.
Nice to have a Jeep to drive in the snow. Uncle Ike’s pot shop is open, as is the Hopvine bar, which is where the two guys on the right were headed. I guess they wanted to get out of the house.
This is 16th Avenue at Republican.
I spotted a snow plow truck last night, spewing salt onto some of the arterial roads to keep them clear as long as possible. I suspect that no longer works with 3+ inches of snow and freezing temperatures.
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Sunday/ Olympic Sculpture Park

The skies were a beautiful blue today, and I went out to Olympic Sculpture Park to take a few pictures.

I parked by the pedestrian bridge on 3rd Ave West. This is a look back at the Queen Anne Beer Hall and the Space Needle from the bridge. I have not been to this Beer Hall; so I am putting it on my post-pandemic to-do list. Quaff a few beers at Queen Anne Beer Hall.
Looking north after crossing the pedestrian bridge.
A closer look at the artwork called Adjacent, Against, Upon (1976) by Michael Heizer. The granite slabs were quarried in the North Cascades. (This is Myrtle Edwards Park, on the way to Olympic Sculpture Park).
The north entrance and ramp to Olympic Sculpture Park, with a long slanted pedestrian bridge that straddles the railway on the left.
The Eagle (1971) by Alexander Calder.
This bench is called Mary’s Invitation: A Place to Regard Beauty by Ginny Ruffner (2014), in honor of Mary Shirley, a benefactor of Olympic Sculpture Park.
Wake (2004) by Richard Serra has five gently S-curved iron structures.
The cafeteria and indoor space called Paccar Pavilion is closed. The steps in front of it is called the Bill & Melinda Gates Amphitheater.
What is nature, and what is art?
Split (2003) by Roxy Paine, a tree made of stainless steel tubes of 20 different diameters.
Making my way back around the south end of the Park, with the south of the staircase going to the slanted bridge across the railway. SAM stands for Seattle Art Museum.
Echo by Jaume Plensa (2011), a Barcelona-based artist. The sculpture’s title refers to a mountain nymph in Greek mythology that had offended the goddess Hera. As punishment the nymph was deprived of speech, except for the ability to echo the last word of another, spoken to her.
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Saturday/ tourists at the Space Needle

My brother, visiting from California, made for the perfect reason to go and check out the Space Needle again.
The Needle had undergone a refurbishment inside and out, during 2017 and 2018, and I had not been up to the observation deck since that time.

There is a nice gallery of photos lining the walkway up to the elevator that goes to the observation deck. If 1962 was the future (during the 1962 World Fair in Seattle), we are definitely now in the future, as well.
The construction of the Space Needle.
A Space Needle in the Space Needle. (It’s made of LEGO bricks). We did our vaccination check outside and are now on our way to the ticket check and the free Space Needle photo with the fake background.
Here’s the picture with the fake background. My hair is a little windswept but that’s OK. That cityscape behind us needs a little updating, though. Multiple new skyscrapers to the city skyline had been added over the last 10 years.
Going up in the elevator. 100% fresh air says the sign; we have our masks on and we are also in the NO TALKING ZONE (!) says the sticker on the frame on the right.
Beautiful blue skies. I’m looking almost north, through a thick glass pane on the observation deck, out over Elliot Bay in Puget Sound. That’s the square roof of Climate Pledge Arena in the foreground. There is a reflection of the spire of the Space Needle in the middle of the picture, with the Christmas light bulb strands.
There is a staircase down to the rotating glass floor of the Needle. Eek. 
One more picture of the observation deck. It was cold outside, but great to get a break from wearing a mask.
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Tuesday/ a recall vote

Yay! Vote canvassers will stop knocking on my door for a while, and stop harassing me when I walk along 15th Avenue.
The recall vote for controversial socialist Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant finally drew to a close today. The vote counting started tonight. (We vote by mail, so people in Seattle’s District 3 have been voting ever since they got their ballots in the mail more than two weeks ago).

The votes in favor of recalling Sawant is leading with a significant margin. The last-day votes (those that came in today) are said to typically be from younger people, that would vote against the recall, so there is still a little hope for Sawant to prevail. I am not a fervent Sawant supporter, but it will be a step back the progressive movement if she is recalled. It’s just that things got out of hand last year with the Black Lives Matter protests, on top of the pandemic, all against a backdrop of a swelling homeless population in the city. The challenges to the City Council and law enforcement are substantial, and the solutions are not obvious.
Update Wed 12/8: Another batch of vote counts was released, and the YES and NO votes are now essentially even (separated by a few hundred votes).
{Tweets by Brandi Kruse @BrandiKruse on Twitter]
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Monday/ a late night grocery run

There was a flyer in the mail today from Amazon, offering $20 off on $50 of groceries —but with a Thanksgiving expiration date.
It’s worth a try, I thought, and ran out to the Amazon Fresh store for stuff I needed anyway. But no, there was a red error message on my smart shopping cart: the coupon had expired.

Nary a soul in sight in the parking garage by the Amazon Fresh store on 23rd and Jackson. There are people in the store, of course. A human checked my ID for the beer I had bought (why? Amazon must know my age; the credit card company certainly does). The smart carts are not allowed out of the store, so I put my two heavy bags in a regular little cart to get it to the car.
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Sunday/ sunny and ‘cold’

It was sunny and ‘cold’ (I guess one could say ‘brisk’) today with a high of only 42°F (5.5°C).

Here’s a few minutes after sunset (4.18 pm), looking towards the Space Needle from the corner of 14th Avenue & Thomas St. Those are the Olympic mountains in the distance (on the Olympic Peninsula). The two peaks towards the right are The Brothers*, with the south peak at 6,842 ft (2,085 m) a little higher (by 192 ft/ 59 m) than the north peak. There are no official trails to these summits, but the south peak is considered a non-technical climb (meaning no equipment such as body harness, rope, crampons, or ice tools are needed). Good to know, but no thank you!
*Not the highest peaks in the Olympic Mountains; Mount Olympus peak is at 7,963′ (2,430 m) elevation.
[Information from Wikipedia]
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Wednesday/ it’s December

Hey, it’s December.
The sands of time for 2021 are running out rapidly.
Seattleites have to hang in there a few more weeks before the black nights that come so quickly, ease up and become shorter again.

I find it hard to resist taking a picture of a neon sign. I love this 3-D one by Broadcast apartments on Madison Avenue, with all its circles.
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Tuesday/ quick trip to U District

It was already dark when I walked down to the Capitol Hill light rail station tonight.
From there I took the train to the U District stop to the Neptune Company record store, just a hundred steps away from the train station exit.

Top to bottom:
Northbound train at Capitol Hill station.
Southbound platform, U District Station.
Southbound train, U District station.
Capitol Hill station plaza.

 

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Sunday/ the tree is up, on the Needle

It rained most of the day, but it cleared up as night fell.
I made a run down to the Space Needle to take a few pictures of the ‘Christmas tree’ on it.
I went up Queen Anne hill for a few pictures, as well.

Here’s the monorail train at 5th Ave and John St, streaking towards Westlake Center. This is one of its last runs for the day. It stops running at 9 pm, I believe.
The ‘Christmas Tree’ with its red aviation beacon is up on the Needle.
A look from from below through the bare trees (grabbing at it with long bony fingers?) at Seattle Center. The golden elevator cage is all the way up, at the top.
The arches at Pacific Science Center, nicely lit up in white.
The trees on Thomas Street alongside Climate Pledge Arena are nicely dressed up in holiday lights. Many inside Seattle Center have been decorated as well.
Climate Pledge Arena, of course. That radio tower in the distance with the colored lights and beacon on, is on Queen Anne hill. ‘Well, I will have to go and take a closer look at it’, I thought, and I did. (Picture is below).
Making my way back to where I had parked my car. This 24-hour McDonalds is right by the Space Needle.
Posters on the fence by the McDonalds. A blue gloved hand is about to grab the mortified monkey. National Primate Research Centers are a network of seven research programs in the United States funded by the National Institutes of Health to conduct biomedical research on primates. One of them is affiliated with the University of Washington here in Seattle.
So should humans torture monkeys in the name of research? No, we should not, but we do. We should also not make weapons to kill each other with. We should also not destroy Earth.
All right. Now I have navigated up Queen Anne hill, to the KING-TV Tower (decorated with its Christmas lights) that I had seen from Seattle Center. The first television broadcast in Pacific Northwest history was transmitted from this location on Nov. 25, 1948 as Channel 5 KRSC-TV (becoming KING-TV 8 months later). The station went on the air with a live high school football game on Thanksgiving Day between West Seattle High and Wenatchee at Memorial Stadium.
This tower was constructed a few years later, in 1952, and stands 570 ft (174m) tall. The site itself is 430 ft (131 m) above sea level.
My final stop was at Kerry Park in Queen Anne, a popular view point for taking in vistas of downtown Seattle and the ferries that come in from across the Sound. The green roof of Climate Pledge Arena is new, of course, and to its right is half of the Ferris wheel at the waterfront with the pink of T-Mobile Park, home of the Seattle Mariners baseball team. I’m using my Canon EOS 7D Mk II digital camera and zoom lens, and it’s doing OK. I would love a medium format DSLR to catch just a little more detail !
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Tuesday/ Snoqualmie Falls

I drove out to Snoqualmie Falls today.
The falls are only some 30 miles east from Seattle as the crow flies, but a 40-minute drive.
Snoqualmie Falls has a 268-foot (82 m) drop, and is by far the most famous waterfall in Washington State. It draws a million visitors a year.

The Snoqualmie River is a 45-mile/72 km-long river in King County and Snohomish County in Washington State. The Snoqualmie River is part of the Snohomish Watershed, on the  west side of the Cascades. The Snoqualmie runs into the Snohomish River, which empties into Puget Sound at Everett. [Map from Wikipedia, made using USGS National Map data]
Snoqualmie Falls seen from the high view point farthest from the lodge. (There is a trail to the bank of the river down below for a different view, but a sign said that the trail is closed). That’s the Salish Lodge & Spa on the left, and parts of the Snoqualmie Falls Hydroelectric Plant are visible on the opposite bank (middle of the picture).
[iPhone 13 Pro picture, standard lens]
 

A closer look at the power plant. It consists of two power houses. Plant 1 is underground (installed capacity 13.7 MW) and was completed in 1899, and the picture shows Plant 2 (40.2 MW) which was completed in 1910, for a total installed capacity of 53.9 MW.
[Canon EOS 7D Mk II, telephoto lens]
Most of the pictures that I took were spoiled by the persistent mist and water droplets from the thundering falls down below. The large lens of my big digital camera kept getting fogged up and downright wet. My iPhone with its tiny lens openings worked better under these conditions. At this time of day (early afternoon) the sun sits in the wrong place for an evenly-lit picture, but hey, you work with what you have. The lens flares even have little rainbows in them.
[iPhone 13 Pro, Wide-angle lens]