a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
I could see my breath today (low 40s, about 5 °C outside)— a tad too cold for a long walk.
Happy winter solstice.
(Happy summer solstice to those in the southern hemisphere).
Pictures:
The Space Needle at sunset, seen from Capitol Hill.
Antennas on Queen Anne hill, from the Melrose Avenue overlook.
The EV charging station off Madison Avenue. (Looks like a Mercedes EQB SUV, a Rivian truck and a Chevy Bolt is getting a charge. Nice.)
The string of little LED lights I had ordered for my table-top tree arrived today.
Sunset is now at 4.20 pm here in Seattle, with the winter solstice upon us.
‘The first 10 days of December saw a series of atmospheric rivers flow into Washington and western Oregon, bringing record-breaking rainfall and above-freezing temperatures which further reduced what little snowpack there was’.
– Mark Knowlin writing in the Seattle Times.
The invasive beetle first arrived on the U.S. East Coast in 1940, and has moved as far west as Michigan. It was spotted in British Columbia in the early 2000s — presumably transported along with freight — and is now spreading rapidly in Washington.
– Sandi Doughton reporting in The Seattle Times of Jan. 10, 2021
My neighbor and I are pretty sure it was an invasion of European chafer beetles (Amphimallon majale) that had attracted the crows to come and tear up the lawns here.
There are no easy solutions to the problem, but most invasive insects enjoy a boom period when they move into new areas, but eventually, ecosystems adjust and natural predators and other factors combine to impose a type of equilibrium, says Todd Murray, director of Washington State University’s Puyallup Research and Extension Center.
There were blue skies, but not too much sun, here in the city today.
The high was 49°F (9°C).
I fancy myself to be a hard-core philatelist— at least when it comes to the stamps from South Africa in my collection.
To identify variants of a particular stamp that had been issued, I would say one needs at least a detailed stamp catalogue, a magnifying glass, and a stamp perforation gauge. Let’s also throw in an ultra-violet (UV) light, for stamps tagged with special inks.
Happy Friday.
My little Christmas tree— that has gone bare for a week or so— finally has a few decorations on.
Now it just needs a string of lights for night time.
Wednesday was clear and quiet, but there was rain on Thursday morning in Seaside as we packed up and headed home to Seattle.
Pictures:
Seaside beach around noon on Wednesday | The historic Seaside Promenade is 1½ miles long and was dedicated in 1921 | Monument for Lewis and Clark, whose expedition had started in St Louis, MO, in May 1804, and ended at Fort Clatsop in Sept. 1806, nearby Seaside, to its north | A marker for an evacuation route (Seaside is only at 23′ elevation and vulnerable to tsunamis) | Approaching the drawbridge on US-101 going over Youngs River
These art deco buildings are around the corner of Broadway and South Columbia Street in Seaside.
In 2018 Sisu Brewing Co. was established in the Times Theatre & Public House building that originally opened in the 1940s. There is still a screen that can be lowered in front of the stainless steel brew kettles on the inside, though, to show televised sporting events.
Three amigos drove down to Seaside, Oregon today, to join two amigos that were there already.
Pictures:
There were plenty of trucks, and fog until noon on I-5 South | At the supercharger in Kelso, Washington | Weyerhaeuser Company’s sawmill at Longview on the Columbia River has been in operation since 1929 | Crossing the Lewis and Clark Bridge and the Washington-Oregon state line on the Columbia River | The marshlands near Kerry Island, Oregon | The beautiful beach at Seaside
Two weeks ago, Judge Chutkan rejected Trump’s sweeping claims that he enjoyed “absolute immunity” from the election interference indictment because it was based on actions he took while in office.
Trump appealed the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
He also asked Judge Chutkan to freeze the election interference case in its entirety until the appeal was resolved.
Meanwhile, the months are rolling by and March 2024 (the trial’s originally scheduled start) will be here before we know it. The primary elections will be in full swing, and if the trial’s start date is pushed out just a few months, that could have a very big impact on the primary elections. (Voters will not be reminded of the Jan. 6 coup plotters and the role that Trump played in fomenting violence).
So Special Counsel Jack Smith is working tirelessly to get the March 2024 trial to start on time.
Adam Liptak and Alan Feuer writes for the New York Times:
Jack Smith, the special counsel prosecuting former President Donald J. Trump on charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election, asked the Supreme Court on Monday to rule on Mr. Trump’s argument that he is immune from prosecution. The justices quickly agreed to fast-track the first phase of the case.
Mr. Smith’s request was unusual in two ways: He asked the justices to rule before an appeals court acted, and he urged them to move with exceptional speed.
“This case presents a fundamental question at the heart of our democracy: whether a former president is absolutely immune from federal prosecution for crimes committed while in office or is constitutionally protected from federal prosecution when he has been impeached but not convicted before the criminal proceedings begin,” Mr. Smith wrote.
Sunday is a good day to make a run up to U-district to check out the used book-stores and music stores (yes, they still sell CDs there).
The amigos went out for beers and fried chicken at Maro Polo saloon in Georgetown tonight.
After that, we checked out the goings-on at the Equinox Studios and the Georgetown Atelier art school nearby.
It was the once-a-month open day for the public.
The classic example of a soft landing is the monetary tightening conducted under Alan Greenspan in the mid-1990s. In early 1994, the economy was approaching its third year of recovery following the 1990-91 recession. By February 1994, the unemployment rate was falling rapidly, down from 7.8% to 6.6%. CPI inflation sat at 2.8%, and the federal funds rate sat at around 3%. With the economy growing and unemployment shrinking rapidly, the Fed was concerned about a potential pick-up of inflation and decided to raise rates preemptively. During 1994, the Fed raised rates seven times, doubling the federal funds rate from 3% to 6%. It then cut its key interest rate, the federal funds rate, three times in 1995 when it saw the economy softening more than required to keep inflation from rising.
– Sam Boocker and David Wessel writing for Brookings.edu, Sept. 14, 2023
They all turned out to be wrong— those economists and money managers that opined a year ago that we would have a recession here in the United States by now.
The year is almost out, and jobs are still being added to the economy.
It was still raining on and off today.
(We’re getting a break from the rain tomorrow.)
I had an errand downtown and took these pictures.
The soil is now very soft everywhere, after all the rain.
Who or what could it be, turning up whole pieces of grass sod, from my lawn and the grassy edge by the street? .. I had thought for several days.
Today my neighbor and I caught the culprits red-handed: crows digging for worms.
Reported in the Seattle Times:
Continuous rainfall in Western Washington has caused landslides, train and traffic delays, and flood warnings and emergencies throughout the region Tuesday.
Rainfall at the National Weather Service’s office in Seattle set a record on Monday, at 1.51 inches, “and we’ve had at least three-quarters of an inch of rain since midnight,” said Dana Felton, a meteorologist with the weather service in Seattle, shortly before 7 a.m. Tuesday.
Just before daybreak Tuesday, rain was falling at a rate of up to a half an inch per hour across the lowlands and the mountains, where snow elevations remain as high as 10,000 feet.
It continued throughout the day, reaching 1.61 inches by 5 p.m. Tuesday.
If I read the stream flow data right (from the USGS website for river measuring stations below), some 13 times the long-term median volume of water in the Snoqualmie River is tumbling down over the falls right now.
[Erika Schultz / The Seattle Times]
Long-term median flow, cubic ft/s: 445
Discharge, cubic ft/s: 5,740
Gage height, ft: 8.52
[Source: USGS web site waterdata.usgs.gov]