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Wednesday 🌇

Sunset is now at 4.21 pm.

Looking out west from my usual perch on the corner of 14th Avenue East and Thomas Street. This is 4 pm, on the nose. The sun made a brief appearance before the clouds obscured it again. Its setting appears further to the south on the horizon this time of year (to the left, outside of the picture frame). 
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Tuesday/ a lot of gray 🌥

The rainy weather has stopped, and the forecast for the next week or so can be described as ‘morning fog, and partly sunny the rest of the day’.
The lows will be mid- to high 30s (3 °C) and the highs 46°F (8 °C) or so.

Looking south along 19th Avenue East by Stevens Elementary School, just as the light was fading today.
(Stevens Elementary School was on a list of schools to be closed, but Seattle Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Brent Jones announced just yesterday that he and the school board will no longer pursue school closures and consolidations to solve the Seattle school district’s multi-million dollar budget shortfall.)
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Monday/ †Breyten Breytenbach (1939-2024) 🖋

I need to die before I’m dead
when my heart is still fertile and red
before I eat the darkened soil of doubt

give me two lips
and bright ink for tongue
to write the earth
one vast love letter
swollen with the milk of mercy
– From the poem ‘Rebel Song’ by Breyten Breytenbach

Breytenbach in 1995
‘Breytenbach was a political dissenter against the ruling National Party and its white supremacist policy of apartheid in the early 1960s. He was a founding member of the dissident literary movement of Afrikaner writers, the Sestigers in 1961, and participated in protests against the exclusion of black youth from educational pathways’.
[Picture and text from Wikipedia]
The iconic South African writer and activist Breyten Breytenbach passed away in Paris, France, yesterday (he was 85). His wife Yolande was by his side.
Breytenbach wrote mostly in Afrikaans, but also in English. He was a fierce critic of apartheid as he embarked on his long and illustrious career, as a writer that would redefine the Afrikaans literary landscape.

In 1960, Breytenbach left South Africa under a self-imposed exile.
After a two-year tour of Europe, he settled in France (he later became a French citizen).

In 1962 he married a French woman of Vietnamese ancestry, Yolande: a criminal act under South African law at the time.
The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act of 1949 and Immorality Act (1950) made it a criminal offence for a person to have any sexual relations with a person of a different race.

In 1975, Breytenbach was arrested in South Africa after travelling there on a false passport. His intention was to help black Africans organize trade unions, and to recruit members for a branch of the African National Congress (ANC) for white people. He sentenced to nine years’ imprisonment for high treason, the first two in solitary confinement in in Pretoria Central Prison’s maximum security wing. He was released after seven years, thanks to a campaign led by former French President Francois Mitterand.

In 1984, his memoir The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist was published, describing aspects of his imprisonment.

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Saturday/ The Netherlands 🇳🇱 vs. Italy 🇮🇹

The 2024 Davis Cup* final is tomorrow.
The Netherlands is playing in the final for the first time ever, and have their work cut out for them against Italy.
Italy won the Davis Cup in 1976 and 2023, and was the runner-up on six other occasions.
This year they have the world No 1 on their team: Jannik Sinner.

The Dutch team: Tallon Griekspoor (singles), Botic van de Zandschulp (singles), Jesper de Jong (singles), Wesley Koolhof (doubles), Robin Haase (doubles)

The Italian team: Jannik Sinner (singles), Lorenzo Musetti (singles), Matteo Berrettini (singles), Andrea Vavassori (doubles), Simone Bolelli (doubles)

Update Sun 11/24: Congrats to Italy for winning the Davis Cup. They retained their title, defeating the Netherlands 2–0 in the final.

*The Davis Cup (founded in 1900) is the premier international team event in men’s tennis. It is organized by the International Tennis Federation and contested annually between teams from over 150 competing countries, making it the world’s largest annual team sporting competition. [From Wikipedia]

On Friday in Malaga, Tallon Griekspoor (pictures below; stills from the tennischannel.com streaming service) battled back to defeat Jan-Lennard Struff, 6-7 (4), 7-5, 6-4, in a fast-paced showdown to send his nation through against Germany in the semi-final.

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Friday/ we’re all mad here 🤪

The Cheshire Cat to Alice: “Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”
Alice: “How do you know I’m mad?”
The Cheshire Cat: “You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”
– From Lewis Carroll’s book ‘Alice in Wonderland’ ( 1865)

Happy Friday.
It’s time for another 1,000-piece puzzle for me, and I ordered one from Amazon, called ‘Most Everyone is Mad*’ by the puzzle maker Ravensburger.

*Mad: completely unrestrained by reason and judgment; unable to think in a clear or sensible way (definition by Merriam-Webster).

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Thursday/ Oh Canada 🍁

These stamps from Canada were on an envelope that had arrived from an Ebay seller.

Provincial Emblems
Issued Apr. 28, 1965
Perf. 12 | Recess printing | No watermark
981 441 5c Red-brown, deep bluish-green and mauve | Prairie Crocus and Arms of Manitoba
[Source: 1997 Stanley Gibbons Stamp Catalogue, Part 1 British Commonwealth, stampworld.com]
Rehabilitation
Issued May 29, 1980
Perf. 12½ | Litho printing by Ashton Potter | No watermark
979 440 17c Gold and ultramarine | “Helping hand”
[Source: 1997 Stanley Gibbons Stamp Catalogue, Part 1 British Commonwealth, stampworld.com]
Centenary of “Oh Canada” (national song)
Issued Jun. 6, 1980
Perf. 12½ | Litho printing by Ashton Potter | No watermark
981 441 17c Multicolored | Calixa Lavallee (Composer), Adolphe-Basile Routhier (Original Writer) and Robert Stanley Weir (writer of English Version)
[Source: 1997 Stanley Gibbons Stamp Catalogue, Part 1 British Commonwealth, stampworld.com]
Canada Day (Maps showing Evolution of Canada from Confederation to Present Day) Issued Jun. 30, 1981
Perf. 13×12½ | Se-tenant pair, part of a strip of four | Raymond Bellemare Engraving: British American Bank Note Company, Ottawa | No watermark
1015 454 17c Multicolored | Canada in 1905
1015 454 17c Multicolored | Canada since 1949
[Source: 1997 Stanley Gibbons Stamp Catalogue, Part 1 British Commonwealth, stampworld.com]
Beneficial Insects
Issued Oct. 19, 2010
Perf. 13×13¼ | Issued in souvenir sheet of 5 |Keith Martin Engraving: Cie canadienne des billets de banque | No watermark
2623 7c Multicolored | Large Milkweed bug (Oncopeltus fasciatus)
2625 9c Multicolored | Dogbane Beetle (Chrysocus auratus)
[Source: stampworld.com]

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Wednesday/ Rafa retires 🎾

Rafael Nadal’s storied tennis career ended Tuesday with Spain’s quarterfinal exit from the Davis Cup. The 38-year-old is walking away after winning 22 Grand Slam titles and two Olympic gold medals and posting 1,080 wins in tour-level singles matches.

“You never want to get to this point,” Nadal said in Spanish following Tuesday’s matches vs. the Netherlands in Málaga, Spain. “I’m not tired of playing tennis. The body has reached a point where it doesn’t want to go on, and I have to accept the situation. I feel privileged to have extended my career longer than I expected.”
—Cindy Boren and Glynn A. Hill reporting for the Washington Post

Headline and picture from the Washington Post. The doodles are mine. 🤗
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Tuesday/ going home 🛫

The time came to bid Beantown goodbye on Tuesday afternoon, and fly back to the Pacific Northwest.
There was a rainstorm with strong winds as we made our final approach into SeaTac Airport, which made for a rough landing, but once we started taxiing on the runway, everything was OK.

Pictures:
Looking up while waiting for my Uber driver on Main Street across from the MIT campus in Cambridge; in Uber car in the Ted Williams Tunnel again; at the gate at Boston Logan airport (dry and calm); arriving at the gate at Seattle-Tacoma airport (wet and stormy); restaurant PF Chang’s dragon at Seattle-Tacoma airport’s North Terminal.

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Monday/ the MIT Museum 🧬

The MIT Museum, founded in 1971, is part of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. It hosts collections of holography, technology-related artworks, artificial intelligence, architecture, robotics, maritime history, and the history of MIT.  [Source: Wikipedia]

The MIT Museum at the Gambrill Center (completed 2022) occupies the first three floors of the multipurpose building at 314 Main Street. The museum is designed to “turn MIT inside out” (according to MIT Museum Director John Durant), inviting the community at large to join the conversation and participate in the creation of research projects and solutions.
Kismet, an early social robot (built in 1997) from the MIT Artificial Intelligence. It had movable ears, eyebrows, eyelids and lips.
Endgame, a chess machine invented in 1950 by Claude Shannon after he published a groundbreaking paper called “Programming a Computer for Playing Chess”.
Atom model kit, circa 1943.
Medusa (1985), a computer-generated holographic stereogram by the MIT Spatial Imaging Group and the MIT Media Laboratory.
The famous Milk Drop Coronet (1957) photograph, made with pioneering high-speed flash photography.
Black Panther comic Jungle Action #12 featured the first Black superhero, and featured an MIT alumnus as fictional supervillain Erik Killmonger (bottom right).
A genetically engineered pink chicken. The real chicken has pinkish bones and pinkish muscles as well.
3D Models that explain hoe CRISPR technology works (used for gene splicing and editing).
A journal book from the museum store.
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Sunday/ Boston architecture 🏙

Here are a few pictures of buildings and artifacts that caught my eye.

Here is a beautiful flatiron building at the junction of Pleasant Street and River Street in Cambridge with lots of copper on the outside (the green). It was built in 1899, and its most recent renovation was done in 2020 with the repair and replacement of some of the doors and windows, and updates to the wiring and plumbing inside.
This firehouse is just a few blocks down on River Street in Cambridge.
Engine Company No. 6 was established in 1852 as Pioneer Engine Company No. 6 and was located in a building on Pioneer Street in Ward 2, Kendall Square.
They moved into this building at 176 River Street in 1891 and has been there ever since.
I love old-fashioned hardware such as this walk signal push-button.
The First Baptist Church on River Street is undergoing a few renovations.
The church is a tall single-story brick structure, with sandstone trim and decorative detailing in terra cotta, and has Gothic Revival styling. It was constructed in 1881.
The Old State House, also known as the Old Provincial State House, was built in 1713. It was the seat of the Massachusetts General Court until 1798. It is the oldest surviving public building in the city.
The Park Street Congregational Church is on the corner of the Boston Common. The Boston Common is the oldest public park in the US.
The Massachusetts State House (built 1795-1798), also known as the New State House (to distinguish it from the Old Statehouse), as seen from the Boston Common. The building is the state capitol and seat of government for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. 
That is gold foil on the dome, put on in 1997 at a cost of $300,000 (and previously done in 1969 for $36,000). Another $20.3 million renovation project has gotten underway just this year.
This is the tombstone of John Hancock in the Granary Burying Ground near the Boston Common.
Hancock was the first and third Governor of Massachusetts; in office between May 1787 and October 1793.
Central Station on the Red Line has benches decorated with colorful tiles.
I took pictures of all the little decorative tile inlays on the pillars across the tracks. I posted them all. 🤗
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Macy’s department store in downtown Boston takes up the entire city block, the same way as the one in New York City does.
Unable to pay its bills after decades at the heart of Boston’s cultural life, the Boston Opera House closed its doors in 1991 and began physically deteriorating at an alarming rate. Now, however, after a lavish restoration in the early 2000s, the Opera House has a new vitality.
The Boston Opera House was completed in 1928 as a tribute to Benjamin Franklin Keith, a leading figure in vaudeville, so popular in the United States in the years before.
And here we are today— a collage of modern glass and steel facades, caught in the zoom lens of my phone’s camera.
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Saturday/ on the Harvard campus 🎓

Here are a few pictures from in and around Harvard Square and Harvard’s campus.

Rowers on the Charles River running through Cambridge.
Saint Paul’s Parish church, with its distinctive bell tower, is a Catholic church on Mt Auburn St in Cambridge.
A closer look at the bell tower of Saint Paul’s Parish.
Adams House, one of twelve undergraduate residential Houses at Harvard University.
The Harvard Lampoon Building (sometimes referred to as the Lampoon Castle), designed by Edmund M. Wheelwright and built in 1909 in the Mock Flemish style.
Inside the Harvard Coop store, a bookshop founded in 1882, offering textbooks plus branded Harvard and MIT clothing.
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Friday/ arrival into Boston 🛬

It was a direct flight to Boston, just over 5 hours of flying.

At Boston Logan airport, the Silver Line bus took me to South Station on the MTBA’s* Red Line. I went four stops to Central Station, close enough to walk to my hotel.

*Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority

Departing for Boston from Seattle-Tacoma airport’s North Terminal.
A little bit of New England coastline— a minute or two before touchdown at Boston’s Logan international airport. That’s a water tower in the middle of the picture, and in the far right in the shallow waters are five barriers called The Five Sisters.
On the Sliver Line bus now (using Google Maps to make sure I go more or less in the right direction!). We are 1. on Interstate 90, the interstate highway that runs across the northern United States and into Seattle, 2. in the Ted Williams Tunnel running under the waterway called Boston Main Channel in Boston harbor.
The Ted Williams Tunnel (TWT) was the first major link constructed as part of Boston’s Big Dig. When the TWT opened in 1995 it was only available to authorized commercial traffic. Later, non-commercial traffic was allowed to access the tunnel on weekends and holidays. In 2003, with the substantial completion of the I-90 portion of the Big Dig, the tunnel was opened to all traffic at all times.
[Source: Wikipedia]
Inside the Sliver Line bus, in the Ted Williams Tunnel under Boston Harbor.
At South Station. Here comes the Red Line train. These trains have been running a long, long time. The downtown portions of what are now the Green, Orange, Blue, and Red line tunnels and rails were all in service by 1912.
The sun sets early, as it does in Seattle: at 4.20 pm here. There was just enough light left for me to walk to the hotel from Central station. This cute hole-in-the-wall place is on River Street in Cambridge.
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Thursday/ my bags are packed 💼

I’m leaving for Boston in the morning to visit for a few days.
I have been there before, a lifetime ago.

This is June of 1995.
The MIT Press Bookstore is still there, at 314 Main Street in Cambridge, and right by the exit of the Kendall/ MIT stop on the Red Line train line.
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Wednesday/ mushrooms 🍄

Herewith the 2024 fall edition of the mushrooms in my yard.

These are in the grass in the front yard: the Scotch bonnet (Marasmius oreades), also known as the fairy ring mushroom or fairy ring champignon.
The bright red fly agarics (Amanita muscaria) are not so plentiful this year. About six inches across, this one.
The squirrels like to nibble on the cap, but not much more than that.
I believe these are brown fly agarics (Amanita regalis).

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Tuesday/ written in 1895 🖋

I don’t collect whole pieces of mail (such as envelopes, first day covers and post cards), but I found this post card that was for sale on Ebay impossible to resist.

This post card (‘Briefkaart’) is Afrikaans only and doesn’t bother to offer English wording (later ones were bilingual, and did). Check out the gorgeous cursive writing, an art form lost in the century that followed.
The card was mailed in 1895, in Johannesburg, City of Gold, ‘El Dorado’ for real— founded only nine years prior, in 1886. (In that year the Witwatersrand Gold Rush started, which led to the establishment of Johannesburg). 
Just a few years earlier still, the outcome of the First Boer War (1880-81) had led to the temporary independence of the South African Republic (‘Zuid-Afrikaanse Republiek’) from the British Empire.

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Monday/ Veterans Day 🎖️

Happy Veterans Day to all military veterans of the United States Armed Forces.

U.S. #2513   1990 25¢ Dwight D. Eisenhower
Issue Date: October 13, 1990
City: Abilene, KS
Quantity: 142,692,000
Printed By: American Bank Note Company
Printing Method: Photogravure
Perforations: 11
Color: Multicolored
Dwight D. Eisenhower’s official presidential portrait is featured on this stamp honoring the 100th anniversary of his birth.
The background pictures him overseeing his troops in his capacity as five-star general.
A circlet of five stars distinguishes that title.
[Source: mysticstamp.com]
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Sunday/ a little architecture 🏙

I took the No 8 bus to Westlake Avenue and walked from there to the Amazon Spheres, and back up to Capitol Hill.

It’s cold and gray outside, but summery and light inside the Spheres. I am on Lenora Street, looking towards the northeast.
This art installation off Westlake Avenue is called Kilroy Star and was put up by commercial real estate agency Kilroy Realty in June. (The colors in the star cycle continuously through reds, greens and blues).
If my research on the mathematics of polyhedrons is accurate, this is a Kepler-Poinsot polyhedron. This one is called a small stellated dodecahedron. It consists of twelve pyramids with pentagonal bases that are mounted on the faces of a regular dodecahedron.
The Seattle architect Louis Svarz (1886-1976) designed this building on Lenora Street for the Puget Sound Notion Company, a wholesaler of notions (sewing accessories).
Its construction was completed in 1930. Today the building belongs to Cornish College of the Arts. (The 1914 date in the window is the founding year of the Cornish College).
The Omni South Lake Union (also known as 1120 Denny Way) with its two 41-story towers boasts 827 apartments and 272 hotel rooms. It opened in May 2022. s
The balconies on the Denny Way side offers a list of historical events and their dates.
I’ve made my way up Denny Way to the junction with Stewart Street. In the distance is REN Seattle, a high-rise apartment tower at 1400 Fairview Avenue.
To my right is the 1200 Stewart Street apartment towers that are still under construction after six whole years (construction started in 2018).
Here is the 1200 Stewart Street apartment complex. The construction of the towers is complete but it seems that there is still a lot of finishing work on the inside and outside that remains. If I can believe what I read on Redditt, there are plans afoot to suspend a repurposed Boeing 747 fuselage above the residential project’s galleria as a centerpiece and a symbol of industrial innovation— on view as a sensational artifact for both pedestrians at street level and for residents in their dwellings overhead. Hmm.
Here’s a closer look at one of the posters in the window.
On May 10, 1968 The Jimi Hendrix Experience performed two shows at the Fillmore East in New York City, with support from Sly & the Family Stone and the Joshua Light Show.
(Jimi Hendrix is James Marshall “Jimi” Hendrix, an American guitarist, songwriter and singer. He is widely regarded as the greatest guitarist in the history of popular music and one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. He was born in Seattle on Nov. 27, 1942 and died tragically young at the age of 27 in September 1970 – from Wikipedia).
I’ve now made my way across I-5 on the Denny Way overpass, and I always turn around on Melrose Avenue, to take a picture of the Space Needle wedged between the towers of 1120 Denny Way.
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Saturday/ squares ⬜

Here’s a sneak preview of the public art installation at the junction of 14th Avenue and Madison Street on Capitol Hill.
(Is it a time machine? Can I enter the big square and emerge four years into the future at the far end?).

Even though it’s only 5:20 pm in the picture, night has already cast its inky blacks.

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Friday/ indoor pickleball 🥒

Five amigos played a little pickle ball at the Sandman’s Courts in Columbia City.
It was 52 °F (11 °C) outside when we started— not too frigid for playing outside, but we have come to like the indoor courts with their clean lines and bathrooms right by the courts.