Category: Seattle

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Friday/ grays and yellows

Looking south from Galer St & 19th Ave, tonight at 4.17 pm. Sunset was at 4.26 pm.

P.S. In the town of Utqiaġvik (UUT-kee-AH-vik, formerly known as Barrow) north of the Arctic circle, and near the northernmost point of Alaska, the sun came up on Thursday at 12.54 pm, and disappeared 34 mins later. The sun will not appear again for two months; the polar night has started there. There will still be a number of hours of so-called civil twilight, every day, though.

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Thursday/ lots of rainy weather

There’s going to be rain every day the next week. It is November, our wettest month, after all. Rainy, breezy, showers. Low 43/ high 50 °F on Friday.. that’s 6 °C/ 10 °C! Not very warm, but not freezing. [Graphic from King5 Weather].

The pictures below are from Wednesday when it was still dry.
I walked down to the Capitol Hill public library — looking like a bank robber with my mask and woolen skull cap.
Only the lobby of the library is open right now, but that’s OK. It’s a hot spot for downloading electronic newspapers with the Pressreader app onto my iPad.

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Thursday/ the Keystone State is the key

It’s 1 am on the East Coast, where the Pennsylvania* mail-in votes are still being counted.
*nickname The Keystone State.

Joe Biden is about to overtake Trump on the way to claim the 20 electoral votes from Pennsylvania that he needs for the win. (The mail-in votes overwhelmingly favor Biden).

Yes, Biden can still win Arizona and Nevada (17 total electoral votes), which will also get him to 270 for the win.

There was rain the last few days, with beautiful fall colors still around. It’s good to get out of the house and go for a walk, rain or not. This is a street corner on Capitol Hill here in Seattle.
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Monday/ is our future red, or blue?

In The Matrix (1999 film), the main character Neo is offered the choice between a red pill and a blue pill by rebel leader Morpheus.
The red pill represents an uncertain future — it would free him from the enslaving control of the machine-generated dream world and allow him to escape into the real world, but living the ‘truth of reality’ is harsher, and more difficult.
On the other hand, the blue pill represents a beautiful prison — it would lead him back to ignorance, living in confined comfort, without want or fear, within the simulated reality of the Matrix.
As described by Morpheus: ‘You take the blue pill … the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill … you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.’ (Neo chooses the red pill and joins the rebellion).
– [From Wikipedia].

The voting ends tomorrow, and then the counting starts.
My fervent hope is that the early results be reassuring — and not terrifying.
Georgia, Florida and North Carolina sit on the East coast, and have experience will mail-in voting. They will also provide breakdowns of in-person and mail-in voting.
If Biden wins even just one of them, it will confirm his status as solid favorite to win.
If Trump wins all three, both candidates still have a path to victory.

A very detailed map of the 2016 election results. It is remarkable how the densely populated cities are Democratic islands in a sea of Republican counties. [Graphic by the New York Times].
I live in the bluest of the blue districts. (More than 9 out 10 people vote Democratic where I live). But yes, there are districts in King County that vote Republican.
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Sunday/ catch me the sun

Kyk of jy vir my die son kan vang
Daar’s ‘n kamer in die huis waar ons die son kan hang
Dis donker by die venster in die middel van die dag
Onthou jy nog hoe helder die kamer kon lag

(See if you can catch me the sun
There’s a room in the house where it can be hung
It’s dark by the window in the middle of the day
Remember how brightly the room would play)

– from Sonvanger (‘Sun Catcher’), written in 2002 by South African singer-songwriter Valiant Swart, with my rough translation added.
Sun catcher refers to a pendant that reflects and spreads sunlight around a room, in the form of rainbows and flecks of light.

We’re back on standard time here in the United States.  We turned back our clocks by one hour last night.

Some 32 states have now engaged in legislation to establish Daylight Saving Time (DST) as the official time year-round. For this to become a reality though, Congress has to approve an amendment to the Uniform Time Act of 1966.

The end of a beautiful day. This is 13th Ave & Harrison St on Capitol Hill, looking towards the Space Needle (tiny, in the distance). Sunset is 11 mins away, at 4.51 pm. 
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Friday/ it’s scarf time

It’s time to get out the woolen hats and scarves here in Western Washington. It was 48 °F (9 °C) as I headed out the door, while there was still a little gray daylight left.

I don’t know the name of this tree, but the yellows and oranges of its leaves are spectacular.
New construction on 15th Avenue. Looks like there are three condominium homes, judging from the three mailboxes on the sidewalk. Interesting rusty metal finish (iron oxide?). They would go for oh, $1 million or so, each. Great general location, BUT 15th Ave is busy and noisy in daytime.
Here’s the Walgreen pharmacy on the corner of 15th & Republican saying ‘COVID-19 VACCINE NOT YET AVAILABLE‘ on the door. (Wow. Can it be that people are beating the doors down, so to speak, inquiring about the vaccine every day?). We do need a vaccine. We’re hitting new daily record high numbers of cases here in the United States.
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Friday/ my vote is in

18 days until Nov 3.
I walked down to the ballot drop box on Broadway this afternoon to drop in my ballot.

There it goes! Yay! There was a lot more than just Joe Biden for president, to vote for on the ballot. We vote for Washington State governor (Jay Inslee), for our House of Representatives member (Pramila Jayapal is mine), and for a number of local ballot initiatives as well. The two US senators for Washington State are not on the ballot. US senators serve 6 years, and Patty Murray was re-elected in 2016, and Maria Cantwell in 2018.
Here comes the Seattle streetcar. This is on Broadway, right where the ballot box is. The new apartment buildings across the street are coming together nicely. They might take a little longer to fill up with renters, with the pandemic hit that the economy has taken under the Trump Disaster Administration.
A little further down is the Broadway Performance Hall, part of Seattle Central College. The building is on the National Register of Historic Places. It was built in 1911 and renovated in 1979. The performers (singers, speakers, poets, musicians, dancers) will be back, but not any time soon.
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Saturday/ foggy and mild

It’s been foggy in the morning here in the city all week.
The air quality has been decent, in spite of a number of fires still burning in Washington State and on the West Coast.

Tiny droplets stick to the spider webs in the morning and make them stand out sharply. Later, as the sun comes out, the drops will disappear, and Mr Spider will regain the stealthiness of his trap.
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Sunday/ South Lake Union construction

It’s been awhile since I went down to South Lake Union to check out the construction there, and off I went today.

Here is the $1.8 bn expansion to the Washington State Convention Center, in a deep hole in the soil, and now in a financial hole as well. It seems as if construction is proceeding, but in May it was reported that the project was seeking a $300 million federal funds bailout to make up for lost tax revenue, due to the pandemic. Critics still say the city’s money for the project should have been used to built homes, schools and parks.
The Re-bar Seattle (bar, indie theatre & night club) is temporarily closed. It’s become an institution of sorts, so I’m rooting for it. ‘Stay Weird Seattle’ is similar to ‘Keep Austin Weird’ (Austin, Texas).
Now let’s talk about that sleek machine parked in front: a 1976 Cadillac Coup de Ville painted in a color called Calumet Cream, and with fur on the steering wheel and all. It’s 19 ft (5.8m) long. I am very sure she will refuse to be squeezed into a single parking bay anywhere in the city!
This is by the Hilton Garden Inn around the corner from the Re-bar. The shiny panels, reflecting window panes & lighting will brighten up the gray winter days that are approaching.
Yeah – that’s not going to happen, enough people deleting Facebook (market cap $719bn), or Twitter (market cap $31bn). Are Facebook and Twitter doing enough to fight lies and propaganda that may help Trump win again? Of course not. But Twitter is trying a little harder than Facebook, it seems .. now marking up Trump’s tweets that are outright lies or misleading about voting by mail, for example.
Here’s the 1200 Stewart St construction along Denny Way across from the Seattle City Light substation. These are two base buildings with 3 stories that will each get 45-story apartment towers built on top of them. In the middle is the 40-story Nexus condominium tower (completed 2019).
This 2014 Fairview Ave, another apartment tower further down Denny Way, that will have 42 stories. Check out the slight S-curve that the rounded corners of the floor slabs are making.
A little further down Fairview Avenue is the El Grito Taqueria (El Grito = The Scream). I love the turquoise-ish color that complements the red bricks.
Yes, open the windows, let some fresh air in! The Cascade apartments on Minor Avenue.
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Thursday/ cleaner skies

The air quality around Seattle had improved enough by this afternoon for us to at least venture out for a walk around the block.

I watered my plants at the back and front of the house, and then went back inside. We have really had no rain in the city for September– 0.06 in (1.5 mm) at the National Weather Service’s gauge at the airport.

The delicate little flowers on my blue leadwood (Ceratostigma) are the last splotches of color that I have on my back deck, before fall sets in. The color of the leaves are already turning.
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Wednesday/ still hiding away

Mr. Blue Sky please tell us why
You had to hide away for so long (so long)
Where did we go wrong?
– lyrics from Mr Blue Sky, by Electric Light Orchestra (1977)

Here’s a flock of pigeons – and yes, I’m looking directly at the sun – at 6.00 pm today.
The air quality here in Seattle has improved from ‘Hazardous’ to ‘Unhealthy’. There is a weather system moving in on Friday that should finally bring back blue skies.

Amazing satellite photo tweeted by Puget Sound Clean Air Agency (@pscleanair) on Wed. morning. All of Washington State is covered. I believe the white ridges are clouds and the flat gray lower down must be smoke.
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Monday/ the smoke blanket stays

There was no good news in the weather forecast tonight.
A low-pressure system in the Pacific will continue to bring in smoke from the south, and the little bit of rain tonight is not going to clear the the foul air that is blanketing the city, either.
It’s going to be a few more days, at least.

Mr Squirrel, chewing on a little pine cone that had dropped from a Douglas fir in my yard. He didn’t seem to be bothered by the smoky air.
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Saturday/ the air is orange – and poison

It’s 1.15 pm here in Seattle, and there is an eerie orange haze outside.
The sun has yet to break through the combination of marine layer fog and thick smoke from the west coast’s man-made fires. (Calling them wildfires seems like a cop-out, as if humans had no part in it).

Don’t go outside, they tell us – it’s hazardous for your health. Large swaths of Oregon have an air quality index reading of 500+ .. off the charts and beyond what is called ‘Hazardous’. [Map from airnow.gov].
Whoa .. hopefully some of this is marine layer fog. Picture from Saturday morning, I believe. [Picture Credit: Reuters/ Karen Ducey]

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Tuesday/ the hellscapes of summer

There was a place in the greater Los Angeles area that hit 121°F last week. That’s 49.5 °C. And so many fires— the fires that get worse every summer— in California, in Oregon and in Washington State.

Mostly sunny & smoke haze (87 °F/ 30.5 °C) for the city of Seattle tomorrow.

476 027 acres is 743 sq miles. I asked Google how many acres get scorched by wildfires every year, in Washington State. It seems the average is around 1 million acres (1,500 sq miles). That’s 2% of Washington State (71,000 sq miles).
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Friday/ school starts .. sort of

The 2020/21 school year has started here in the Seattle school district, all online.  It was a ‘soft start’, so as to allow for connectivity issues to be resolved, and for everyone to get settled in with the technology that will be used.

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Friday/ new tires & old neon

My car needed new tires, so I went down to the Les Schwab tire center in Georgetown this morning.
They needed some time before they could get to my car, so I went for a walk.
By the time I got back at 11 am, there was already a line of people at the St. Vincent de Paul food bank across the street.
There was also a King County mobile medical clinic (big van) right next to the food bank building that provide a lifeline to homeless people.

The Marco Polo Bar & Grill with its 50’s neon sign is hanging in there. It’s a family-owned bar serving roasted chicken & pub grub.
A little further north I found this sign for the New La Hacienda Motel. (La Hacienda: ‘The Ranch’). The sign at the Vac Shop in the back says BLACK LIVES MATTER. Just last Sunday, there was another horrible police shooting of an unarmed black man (Jacob Blake) in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Then during the protests there on Tuesday, there was a white domestic terror attack (perpetrator: 17 yrs old with AR-15-style rifle) that left 2 people dead and one wounded. Pictures of the attacker sitting in the front row at a Trump rally surfaced soon thereafter. 
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Tuesday/ a hospital in Art Deco

I made a quick stop at a clinic in Harborview Medical Center this morning. (All is well).
The hospital was founded in 1877 as King County Hospital, a six-bed welfare hospital in a two-story south Seattle building.
By 1906, it had moved into a new building in Georgetown, with room for 225 patients. Another move occurred in 1931, when the center wing of the present hospital on First Hill was completed, and the hospital’s name was changed to Harborview.

The 2005 ABC medical drama Grey’s Anatomy ‘Seattle Grace’ Hospital was based on Harborview Medical Center.

Harborview Medical Center’s Art Deco entrance on 8th Ave in Seattle’s First Hill neighborhood.
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Wednesday/ a party in a pandemic

My friends were here to celebrate my birthday tonight.
We sat a social distance apart from each other for beers, and pizzas from Olympic Pizza around the corner.
I really hope by this time next year, we can let our hair down a bit when we socialize and not worry too much about the SARS-CoV-2 virus.