a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
Do we have sharks
in Puget Sound? I wondered, when I saw a shark ‘floatie’ at a store here in Kingston on the Kitsap Peninsula. Answer: yes, some 11 species, shown on the handy guide produced by the Seattle Times. These are mostly docile sharks (no Great White), and only three are seen regularly and called ‘resident’ sharks.
I went out to Seattle’s Green Lake on Sunday night to catch a little bit of the annual ‘From Hiroshima to Hope‘ gathering there. It’s been 72 years since the world’s first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. A banner at Green Lake pointed out that barely 20 miles west of Seattle, at the Kitsap-Bangor Naval Base, one finds the largest concentration of deployed nuclear weapons in the United States. Last month, the United Nations reached its first agreement to ban nuclear weapons. But it’s complicated : Japan, alongside the nine nuclear-armed nations*, including the United States, refused to take part in the negotiations and the vote.
*United States, United Kingdom, Russia, France, China, Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea (!). The entire Southern Hemisphere is free of nuclear weapons.
It’s Seafair weekend here in the city, a tradition since 1950 : air shows over Lake Washington, a hydroplane race, and warships at the waterfront that are open to visitors. So we went on down to the waterfront to check out the USS Michael Murphy there.
Well, we got up to 94°F (34°C) today, a new same-day record high.
There is lot of smoke is drifting down from wildfires in Canada, and the air is noticeably hazy, even at short distances.
With the haze, it’s possible to see sunspots on the sun as it rises and sets, using a telescope. (Sunspots are regions of reduced surface temperature caused by concentrations of magnetic field flux. They may last a few days or a few weeks or months, but eventually decay).
We ducked into the cool inside of a restaurant called ‘Smiths’ here on 15th Avenue tonight, for our regular Wednesday-night-beer-and-bite.
My favorite beer is a pilsener, and so I had a König Pilsener – brewed in Duisburg, Germany.
I thought the beer’s name might mean ‘the king’s beer’, but no, it’s named after brewmaster Theodor König who started brewing the beer in 1858.
Today the brewery belongs to Bitburger Braugruppe GmbH.
Their tagline is ‘Bitte ein Bit’.
It’s high summer here in Seattle, and the meteorologists say we will hit 98°F (37°C) by Thursday, before it cools down a bit. Still no rain in sight. So after a record 44″ of rain this past winter (average is 30″), we’re now headed for a record number of dry days of no rain (measured at Seattle-Tacoma airport; there was just a smidge of rain in the city last Thursday).
There is an artificial turf lawn on the outside. I could also see misters and lights on the inside of the sphere, but there is still work to be done to bring furnishing for humans into the spheres!
It’s been a great summer so far here in Seattle, with temperatures in the 70’s to low 80’s (20 to 28°C). It’s been drier than usual though, with the blue skies now closing in on a record stretch of days with no measurable rain.
King 5 (local TV station here in Seattle) is running a campaign to make residents aware of the need to be prepared for a disaster. It could be .. a Meteor | a Missile from North Korea | a Magnitude 9.0 earthquake & tsunami. I think the quake is most likely, given that we are way overdue, now 317 years into an estimated 243-year cycle (gulp) for the region’s recorded 9.0 earthquakes over the last 10,000 years. (The last 9.0 quake was in 1700 and there should have been another one by 1943!).
Below is King 5’s suggested check list. I highlighted the main topics in bold for myself. It’s very important for the supply kit to contain critical medicines, some bills of money, some food, and identification! Presumably it would be difficult or impossible to use one’s car to drive somewhere (traffic jams, road blocks). Some people would say what about needing guns or knives for self-defense? Oh my. That kind of thinking is very survivalist/ apocalyptic, not so? I don’t have a gun in the house. Maybe grab a sharp kitchen knife on the way out?
Here’s the Seattle skyline as seen from the Bainbridge ferry on Friday afternoon. I stitched together three photos, and marked it up with some of the tallest and most iconic buildings.
Here’s a basket with a ‘Take a treasure, leave a treasure sign’, that I saw on the steps to a house during my neighborhood walk last night. I wanted to contribute something, but had nothing in my pockets (other than my house key and phone). I love the idea behind the basket: that small and serendipitous items can be very interesting.
Seattle’s Yesler Way bridge was built in 1910, making it one of the oldest permanent steel roadway bridges in the city. Its new rehabilitation project is well underway and scheduled for completion in fall of this year. The $20 million project was funded by a ‘Bridging the Gap’ transportation levy (a property tax increase) passed by voters in 2006, together with a grant from the Federal Highway Bridge Program.
It was a beautiful day with a high of 74°F/23°C here in the city.
Here’s a view from the waterfront just north of Seattle downtown, out over Elliott Bay. That’s a special kind of cruise ship anchored out in the water.
I’ve been wanting to do this for a long, long time, and now I finally did it: installed an old tennis ball on a string, dangling from a rafter in my garage.
My ‘new’ (used) Camry is bigger than the one I had, and now I do not have to wonder if I left enough room at the back for the garage door to close!
It was LGBTQ Pride weekend in Seattle (as was the case in many other cities in North America).
June is recognized each year as LGBTQ Pride Month in the USA, not because the weather is nice! .. but to commemorate the Stonewall Inn event on the morning of June 28, 1969 in New York City’s Greenwich Village. Police raided the popular bar, not notable in itself for the late ’60s, but this time the patrons of the bar and on-lookers outside, fought back. There were riots for several nights after that in the Village, as well. The following year, on June 28, 1970, saw the first gay pride marches in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago.
Fast forward to 2017, and here are a few colorful pictures from today’s march in Seattle. We have all come a long, long way. Happy Pride!
Well, summer has arrived here in Seattle.
Saturday saw temperatures of 89 °F (32 °C) in the city – and Sunday even warmer at 96°F (36°C). On Tuesday, a giant ficus tree (transported all the way from California) was hoisted into one of the Amazon biospheres. I see the tree is also called the rusty fig or Port Jackson fig, and it is really native to eastern Australia.
The annual Fremont Summer Solstice Parade took place today, in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood. Summer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere will be at 9:24 PM Pacific Time on Tuesday, June 20.
It was overcast for most of the day and so the sun wasn’t really out in full force, but hey! we know it’s there, right? Here are pictures that I took today, of the parade.
My rose plant that was there when I moved into my house, was moved to an open spot where it can better show off its spectacular red roses. It was cut back all the way for spring, and this is the first flower that bloomed.
My brother and I went out to Whidbey Island today, to go on an easy 3.5 mi hike on the western side of the island, on the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
I walked by the Federal Office building on 1st Avenue in downtown Seattle today.
Whoah! I thought .. I love all the Art Deco lines and motifs at the main entrance.
I learned later that the Great Seattle Fire of June 6, 1889 actually started right there, in the basement of what was a woodworking shop.
