Perhaps the art world’s most iconic blue wave: ‘The Great Wave off Kanagawa’, Katsushika Hokusai’s most famous print (early 1830s); the first in the series ’36 Views of Mount Fuji’.
So .. 90 days now, until the 2018 midterm elections. Political pundits point to all kinds of special elections the past 18 months, as evidence that a lot of Republicans will be run out of office (enough to make the Democrats the majority in the House of Representatives). In many cases where Republicans had a 10 or 15% advantage before Trump’s election, that is now all gone. In places that used to be a toss-up – well, those will go blue (Democratic).
Time is running out for Special Investigator Mueller to make some radical moves ahead of the election. If he had not issued a report or more indictments by Labor Day (Sept. 3), he will have to wait until the election is over (Nov. 6).
In the meantime, the Trump Administration scandals never stop. Today: early Trump 2016 endorser, New York Republican Congressman Chris Collins. He was indicted for brazen insider trading crimes. (Got confidential news of a failed drug trial, developed by a company he had shares in, and was a board member of*. Frantically dialed up his family and told them to sell their shares).
*Just an aside: why are members of Congress allowed to sit on boards of publicly traded companies?
The Ohio 12th District is a closely watched special election that was held on Tue Aug 7. Republican Troy Balderson is barely in the lead against his Democratic opponent. No matter: Trump tweeted that Balderson had won, and that his (Trump’s) uninvited visit there to stump for Balderson, made a huge difference (it did not). This is a special election for a vacated seat, and these two contenders, Balderson and O’Conner, will be running against each other again in November. [Graphic from the New York Times].
I catch the spiders in my house and throw them into the garden .. but this one was out of reach, sitting UNDER the transparent cover of the LCD on my big air conditioner in the bedroom. It was gone in the morning.
One can get a fly in one’s ointment (or soup) .. or apparently, a spider in one’s liquid crystal display screen.
I wanted to know where the phrase ‘the dog days of summer’ comes from – and if there is a date range associated with it. Well, it is a reference to the star system Sirius, and yes, there is a date range related to it.
Explanation from accuweather.com. So we’re in the ‘Dog Days of Summer’ right now here in the Northern Hemisphere. Hopefully, the warm weather will start to wane after this week. We’re going to get to 89°F/ 32°C this week in Seattle. The average high for August is 75°F/ 24°C.I found this beautiful pink sword lily (Gladiolus) here on 17th Avenue on my walk tonight.
Bryan and I hopped on the monorail today, at the Space Needle. It’s all of a two minute, one mile ride (for $2.50) .. but it’s a fun ride, floating above the street traffic in mid-air!
The sign at the entrance of the monorail. What does Alweg refer to? I wondered. This from Wikipedia: Alweg-Forschung, GmbH (Alweg Research Corporation) was founded by Swedish industrial magnate Dr. Axel Lennart Wenner-Gren in January 1953, based in Cologne, Germany. Alweg built the original Disneyland Monorail System of Disneyland (opened 1959), and the Seattle Center Monorail (opened 1962 for the Century 21 Expo). In 1963, Alweg put forward a proposal to the city of Los Angeles for a monorail system to be designed, built, operated and maintained by Alweg – but it was rejected.We’re about to board the Alweg train, at the Space Needle station. We got those red seats right at the big fly-eye window in the front (so at the rear as we departed).Taking a turn through the kooky Frank Gehry-designed structures of the MoPOP, the Museum of Pop Culture, at the base of the Space Needle .... running along 5th Ave North, with the Ride the Duck operator on the right, and the Gates Foundation buildings behind it .... finally, arriving at Westlake Center. The Space Needle is a mile away in the distance. The round buildings is the Westin Hotel, with an Amazon Tower to its right, and an orange speck in the low right corner that is the South Lake Union streetcar on Westlake Avenue.
We had great Mexican food at Poquito’s here on Pike Street on Capitol Hill. The restaurant opened in 2011. The neon sign outside is much older and from the 1980’s. It was salvaged in South Seattle and given a second life after it had been taken down from a restaurant in Seattle’s Greenwood district.
Well, it’s August. The warmest part of summer is probably behind us here in Seattle. It’s been a bad week for Paul Manafort, ex-Trump campaign manager. His trial started and the prosecutor showed his lavish taste in clothing and decorating, and today, that he cheated with his tax returns to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Trump defended Manafort in tweets, and still tries to rally his base supporters with claims of the ‘Russian Hoax’. This week, the press was called ‘the enemy of the people’ by the President of the United States. Jim Acosta from CNN engaged White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee-Sanders about it, wanting her to disavow what Trump said; gave her a second chance. Nope. She could not do it.
Someone noted that the media should simply stop covering Trump’s rallies, and not even show clips on television. Send a pool reporter and report the idiotic things and lies spouted by Trump in print. Done.
Apple Inc. has a market cap of $1 trillion .. wow. Once, there was Exxon, General Electric, IBM and Microsoft, at the top of the heap, but Apple made it to $1 trillion first. (PetroChina briefly hit $1 trillion in 2007 on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, only to plummet to less than $260 billion by the end of 2008. According to Bloomberg, this represents the largest destruction of shareholder wealth in world history).
So we will see what happens. China is a huge market for iPhones, but a risky one. And will Americans be willing to shell out ever more for a new iPhone? Another thought: Maybe – 30 years from now – a company that builds fusion reactors (that produce 100% clean & cheap energy), will be the world’s most valuable.
A vintage-LEGO-set-for-cash deal went down in a Tacoma parking lot today. (I made a run down there to buy a LEGO set advertised on Craigslist. Will show what I got, later).
On the way back, I stopped on Pacific Avenue in the old downtown of the city of Tacoma, and took a few pictures.
The Old City Hall with its 10-story clocktower and Italian Villa style is on Pacific Avenue and South 7th Street. Construction was completed in 1893, and it was used as city hall until 1957. The city paid $4 million for it in 2015, and is again looking for a developer to buy and renovate it – possibly into offices and conference rooms.I like the look of the Rialto Apartments building (1918). I’m sure the rent is 20-50% less than in Seattle. The Art Deco styled building behind it is the Tacoma Municipal Building, completed in 1931.The Pantages Theater on Broadway was built as a vaudeville theater (variety entertainment) in 1915, and now hosts musicals, live music & comedy.The Rialto Theatre right across the street from the Pantages is a movie theater built in 1918 to showcase movies. (It still shows movies).This artwork must be very new, calling out and criticizing the Trump Administration’s policy of separating kids from their parents at the border, and deporting ‘our neighbors’.This is the Thea Foss Waterway, a dead-end canal with marinas and waterfronts, coming out of Puget Sound.The Murray Morgan Bridge is a vertical-lift drawbridge over the waterway. Constructed in 1911 ( ! ), it was closed for repairs in 2007 – and finally reopened in 2013. (Psst! Look for Mt Rainier in the background).This Wells Fargo Bank window display on Pacific Ave of old Tacoma features a stylish passenger, and Mt Rainier in the background. The building with the green dome is that of Union Station, which opened in 1911.And here comes a streetcar. I think it’s the exact same model that we have in Seattle.
This picture from the Sacramento Bee looks like an Apocalypse Now poster (the 1979 Vietnam War movie).
2017 was a bad wildfire year in California, and 2018 is probably going to be worse. One of the state’s worst wildfires ever, rage near Redding, home to 92,000 people. More than 1,000 homes have now been burnt to the ground, and 6 people (including two firefighters) have lost their lives.
The Carr Fire has scorched 176 square miles (455 sq km), and burned down more than 1,000 homes as of Tuesday. It is only 30% contained. Sparks from a misfiring vehicle ignited the blaze in the absolutely tinder-dry vegetation eight days ago. It was 113 °F (45 °C) there last Thursday, and above 100°F (38 °C) on most days.
Yoda from Star Wars was a legendary Jedi Master and stronger than most in his connection with the Force. (I needed a picture for my post, and Yoda rhymes with FODA. Be Yoda when fighting your FODA?).
FOBO is Fear of Better Options. FODA is Fear of Doing Anything. Both are quandaries a decision-maker may find himself or herself in, when faced with lots of options. These states of mind definitely apply to me sometimes!
1.For everyday things, I do what I call “Ask the Watch.” I whittle something down to two options and then assign each item to a side of my watch. Then I look down and see where the second hand is at that moment. Decision made. It sounds silly, but if you try it — asking the universe — you will thank me.
2. For the big things, I try to think like a venture capitalist. I write everything down on the topic — pros, cons, and so on — and I read it out loud. That process is basically like writing an investment memo for a V.C. investment, but in this case the investment is of your time, your money, your energy.
I made like the tourists in the city today, and walked around 2nd Avenue and the Seattle Waterfront.
It’s about 6 pm, but the sun is still blazing down from the west. The Alaskan Viaduct along the waterfront has been around since 1953, but its days are really numbered now. There is a replacement tunnel running underneath it with two decks of completed roadways that is undergoing a few months of testing. Towards the end of the year, the destruction of this viaduct will start.
Here’s the 2+U (or 2&U) tower taking shape at 2nd Avenue and University Street. On the right is an artist’s impression of the completed tower complex with its V-shaped columns. There will be 38 floors of office space, with some retail, and with public spaces at the ground level. The venerable 4-story Diller Hotel on the corner, is holding its own. It has a cozy bar inside. As a luxury hotel constructed in 1890, it was one of the first new buildings in the city after the destruction of the Great Seattle Fire of 1889.
I went to the SODO (SOuth of DOwntown) industrial district today, to the Toyota service center there. While they worked on my car, I walked around a bit, and spotted two trains.
Here’s the Amtrak Cascades passenger train, heading south. It runs all the way from Vancouver BC down to Eugene, Oregon. It’s going at a good clip here, maybe 60 mph. The stadium roof with the arches in the background, is that of Safeco Field, home of the Seattle Mariners baseball team.
And the Link Light Rail passenger train, also heading south. It is currently running only from the University of Washington, down to Angle Lake south of Seattle-Tacoma airport. There is a northbound and an eastbound extension in progress, though, and more extensions on the drawing board that are part of the $53.8 billion Sound Transit 3 plan.
We had 90°F (32°C) here in the city today, and we will reach 93°F (34°C) on Sunday before it will finally start to cool down.
The blue leadwood (Ceratostigma plumbaginoides) on my back deck has started to flower. There is no true blue pigment in flowers, but the anthocyanins (water-soluble flavonoid pigments) in this flower makes it come very close to looking blue.
(The plot thickens). Just tonight, it was reported by CNN and NBC that President ‘No Collusion’ Trump knew ahead of time (and presumably approved) the meeting that Don Trump Jr had had with the Russians, in June 2016 in Trump Tower. This was the infamous meeting to get ‘dirt’ from Hillary Clinton’s e-mails. The meeting first became public knowledge in the spring of 2017. Trump Sr repeatedly denied he knew about the meeting beforehand. Don Jr told Congress under oath, that his dad did not know.
Did Presidential Candidate Trump know that the Russians had hacked Clinton’s e-mail?Or tried to hack it, or planned to hack it? – and secretly sent his son to meet with them? If so – boom! that would surely be conspiring with the Russians against the United States, as well as seal the case for obstruction of justice.
Michael Cohen is Trump’s ex-fixer. Cohen’s office was raided and the FBI now has millions of records and about 100 voice recordings (from Cohen) to pore over. Here is Michael Cohen’s attorney saying that the Cohen camp did not leak the information that President Trump knew about the Clinton ‘Dirt’ meeting. So who leaked it? Someone on the Trump side? The plot thickens.
The African crested porcupine that I mentioned in a post in May, has been caught, in the Spanaway area (south of the city of Tacoma).
His new home will be the Oregon Zoo in Portland, Oregon.
Here is the Spanaway porcupine enjoying a banana shortly after being caught. The African crested porcupine is the largest species of porcupine in the world and one of the largest rodents in the world.
Here’s an article from Discover magazine, with the latest research about the Neanderthals: an extinct species of humans, that roamed around in ice-age Europe from 120,000 years, up to 35,000 years ago.
Will Homo sapiens still be around even a 1,000 years from now? Homo sapiens means ‘wise human’ .. a misnomer, it seems. Can modern-day humans should stop their wars, and stop destroying Earth?
I had not been to Mt Rainier ever since I had made Seattle my home, and so Bryan and I made a day trip out there today. We first stopped at the Sunrise Viewpoint to the northeast, and then drove around to the Paradise Viewpoint to the south. From there we hiked up the mountainside for an hour or so, to take a closer look at the mountain.
Mount Rainier is the highest mountain of the Cascade Range of the Pacific Northwest, and the highest mountain in the state of Washington. Elevation: 14,411′ (4,393 m). Last eruption: 1894.
Glaciers are slowly moving masses or rivers of ice formed by the accumulation and compaction of snow on mountains (or near the poles). The Sunrise Viewpoint is northeast of the mountain, and Paradise Viewpoint to the south.
This is the view of Mt Rainier and its summit, after walking up just a few hundred feet from one of the trails starting at the Sunrise Visitor Center. This is at 6,400 ft (1,950 m) elevation, the highest point that can be reached by vehicle at Mt Rainier National Park.
The Alpine style day lodge at Sunrise Visitor Center.
Here is the view of the mountain from the south, from the new Henry M. Jackson Visitor Center (at the Paradise Viewpoint). Elevation here is about 5,400 ft (1,645 m). The trail on the right goes up, up, up to where the brilliant green ends. The trail is very, very steep at its start, even though it does not look like it is. Further up, we found large patches of snow to step onto. With a lot of summer weather remaining, maybe a lot of it will still melt.
A waterfall of melting snow on the rock face on the south side of the mountain. To the north face of the mountain, the Whitewater river springs from Emmons glacier – a milky white river, running very low at this time of year.
This ‘paint by numbers’ view is found looking south, after we had walked up for an hour or so from Paradise Viewpoint. Look for the faint outline of Mount Adams in the distance, top right.
A yellow sub-alpine flower that I don’t know the name of, with a happy bug on it.
Mr Chipmunk saying hello. Chipmunks are small, striped rodents of the family Sciuridae, same as the one that tree squirrels and ground squirrels belong to. They hibernate in winter, but wake up every few days to feed on stored food (rather than fat reserves).
Another wildflower from the Paradise Viewpoint. I will have to look for its name online!
Here is the scary part of beautiful Mt Rainier, stratovolcano mountain that it is. A large eruption will result in debris flows (the red), and destructive mudflows called lahar further down (the yellow). It is amazing how far away from the mountain, communities alongside the rivers, and in the valleys, are at risk. The city of Seattle at the very top of the picture will come out OK, it seems (but Seattle has tectonic plates in the Pacific, and the economic fortunes of Amazon to contend with).
There’s a heat wave in Tokyo (102°F/ 39°C); it’s hot and dry in Northern Europe, and in the southern United States as well. Even here in Seattle the forecast says we are in for a seven-day stretch of day temperatures exceeding 88°F (31°C).
These black-eyed Susans (genus Rudbeckia) in a Seattle University’s garden seem to thrive in the hot weather. I’m sure they are getting watered regularly, though.
Hey – I could complete two of three little LEGO classic models with my bricks from Germany: the 60th Anniversary Limited Edition Windmill and the Limited Edition House. The Truck will have to wait a little while!
Little kits for each of these three models went for about $20 at Walmart (pricey), and are now sold out.
This little windmill and a little house celebrate the 60th anniversary of the first kits sold by the LEGO company. Collectors and opportunists alike, buy sets like these up and hoard them, and then try to sell them for a profit some years later.
The €3.70 stamp on my package honors Elisabeth Mann Borgese, marine ecologist and tireless advocate for the world’s oceans. ‘We have to save the oceans, if we want to save ourselves’.
If you need some really specific LEGO bricks, neither Amazon nor LEGO.com, will be of much help. Go to bricklink.com, the vast international marketplace for bricks, from very old to brand new ones, all that had ever been produced by LEGO.
My order from a bricklink seller in Baden-Württemberg, Germany arrived today: 184 bricks neatly tucked into a small Deutsche Post box.
Bricks from my package. LEGO have long stopped making those windows with the lips at the bottom, and the yellow and red doors, and I wanted some. Those little suckers by the yellow doors are double convex-double concave 45° slope bricks (roof tiles), and also no longer in production. I am going to try to build some fancy roof shapes with them.
