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Another Monday/ tick tock ⏰

I’m just going to play Wordle and Scrabble and Duolingo and ignore the news until the debt-ceiling hostage situation at the Capitol is resolved.
(The Republicans with their fake outrage over spending seem determined to crash the world economy).

Here’s my Wordle attempt for today. I lucked out by guessing MIAOU for the second word (to try all the vowels after finding out there is no E). It took me a long time to guess IGLOO, though: I thought of IDIOT IDIOM INBOX INGOT, all of which have letters already known not to be in the solution, and then had to take a break and come back.
As for IGLOO, here’s Wikipedia—
An igloo (Inuit languages: iglu) is a type of shelter built of suitable snow. Although igloos are often associated with all Inuit, they were traditionally used only by the people of Canada’s Central Arctic and the Qaanaaq area of Greenland. Other Inuit tended to use snow to insulate their houses, which were constructed from whalebone and hides. Snow is used because the air pockets trapped in it make it an insulator. On the outside, temperatures may be as low as −45 °C (−49 °F), but on the inside, the temperature may range from −7 to 16 °C (19 to 61 °F) when warmed by body heat alone.
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Sunday/ gray skies ☁️

It was cool here in Seattle today, with gray skies (high 63°F / 17 °C).
In the late afternoon, I walked down to the REI outdoor store, and on the way back, there was a little bit of drizzle.

There is not a lot of color in this picture! The top of the Space Needle’s ‘Galaxy Gold’ is a bright spot. Those two towers obscuring the Needle are the new Onni South Lake Union apartments. On the left of the picture is a 45-story tower of the 1200 Stewart Street apartments, still a work in progress— construction seems to have paused or stalled, actually.
Here’s color: camping mattresses on sale at the REI store.
REI stands for Recreational Equipment, Inc. The company was founded in Seattle in 1938 by Lloyd and Mary Anderson.
Checking out the giant see-through floor compass on the first floor.
Suunto is a Finnish company that manufactures and markets sports watches, dive computers, compasses and precision instruments.
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Friday/ a Rivian truck⚡️

I spotted this Rivian R1T in the Amazon Fresh parking garage in Central District.
Only about 21,000 of these electric trucks have been delivered, so it’s still very rare to see one out and about. Rivian’s sole production factory is in Normal, Illinois.
Starting price: US$74,800.
Car and Driver’s verdict: ‘The R1T is the electric pickup truck of the moment, and its engineering is as impressive as its performance’.

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Thursday/ photos and art 🤹

WASHINGTON— A celebrity photographer won a copyright case over Andy Warhol’s use of a picture she shot of Prince for a magazine, in a Thursday Supreme Court decision narrowing the “fair use” rights of artists and writers to build upon existing works to create something new.
– Jess Bravin reporting for the Wall Street Journal

The US Supreme Court ruled today by 7-2 that Andy Warhol’s 1981 artwork of Prince (using a photo) infringed on the photographer’s copyright.  The majority argued that Warhol’s print was merely a derivative of the photo and not transformative. Oh.

Pictures from today’s Wall Street Journal, with an excerpt of Jess Bravin’s reporting.
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Wednesday/ wildfire smoke, already 😕

We’re coming out of a few warm days— the warmest 89 °F (32 °C), on Monday.
Today the sunlight was a little more brown/orange than usual.
The reason: wildfire smoke from Alberta, Canada, has been drifting down into the skies over Washington State.

Downtown Calgary from Crescent Rd and 5 St. NW, obscured by wildfire smoke, on Tuesday morning.
[Text & picture posted by Andrew McIntyre @andrewmcintyre on Twitter]
Wildfire smoke from Canada moved over the Puget Sound region early this morning. It’s still well above the ground, so air quality has not been impacted. We do not expect much reach the surface. The winds should shift by Thurs and push the smoke out.
[Text & picture posted by PS Clean Air Agency @pscleanair on Twitter]

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Tuesday/ flying artwork ✈️

‘This might have been the white and blue Alaska Air plane that I saw overhead in the sky today’, I thought as I saw this picture in the Seattle Times.

This Alaska Airlines Boeing 737-800 is named Xáat Kwáani— an Alaska Native language that calls out the ancestral importance of salmon.
The artwork style is a Northwest Coast formline art that dates back thousands of years.
The artist is Crystal Kaakeeyáa Rose Demientieff Worl from Juneau, Alaska.
[Photo by Ingrid Barrentine / Alaska Airlines, published in the Seattle Times]
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Monday/ scenes from Hood Canal 🦅

Here are scenes from my visit to Hood Canal on Kitsap Peninsula with friends. We drove out there on Sunday via Gig Harbor and the Tacoma-Narrows Bridge, and took the Kingston-Edmonds ferry back on Monday morning.

Photos: Tacoma-Narrows Bridge; Hood Canal kayakers; meadow buttercups; Sunday’s sunset over the very north-end of Hood Canal; the Olympic Mountains on the Olympic Peninsula, seen across a low tide level in Hood Canal; brown squirrel; bald eagle taking flight; on the Marine Vessel (ferry) Puyallup after leaving the Kingston ferry terminal; spotting the Kitsap Fast Ferry— with downtown Seattle towers and antennas in the distance, and against the backdrop of Mount Rainier capped with a lenticular cloud.

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Saturday/ tennis, in Rome 🎾

The ATP* tour action is in Rome this week and next, at the ATP Masters 1000 called the Internazionali BNL d’Italia, on the red clay courts of the Foro Italico grounds.

As the players walk onto the court, the speakers play rousing music from Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. The stadium around center court reminds one a little of the Colosseum. (The Colosseum was built in the years between CE 70 and 72 at the height of the Roman Empire).

*Association of Tennis Professionals

Superstar Carlos ‘Carlitos’ Alcaraz (Spain, 20) on the far side, won his second-round match against countryman Albert Ramos Viñolas (35) in two straight sets. As of today, Alcaraz is back at the top of the ATP world rankings, in the No 1 position.
These weeks are the final run-up to the climax of the clay court season: the French Open at Roland Garros in Paris. The Really Big Question on every tennis fan’s mind: Will Rafa (Nadal, 36, 14-time French Open champion) play in Paris? He was to play in Rome but announced beforehand that he decided to withdraw, still hampered by a nagging hip injury.
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Friday 🐦

Happy Friday.
I had my big camera with me on my walk tonight, and got these pictures of a pine siskin (Spinus pinus).
The little bird started singing just as I was snapping it (a rapid che-che-che chew zzzhreeee to ta chew).
These are North American birds, belonging to the finch family.

 

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Thursday/ hello, little face 😘

I found this pansy flower in the Thomas Street Gardens today.
In South Africa they are called gesiggies in Afrikaans (‘little faces’).

The garden pansy (genus Viola) is a type of large-flowered hybrid plant cultivated as a garden flower. It is a hybrid derived of several species in the section Melanium of the genus Viola, particularly V. tricolor, a wildflower of Europe and western Asia known as heartsease.
[Source: Wikipedia]
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Wednesday/ cheers! 🍻

Three of the amigos had beers at the Elysian Capitol Hill Brewery.
On the way there, on 14th Avenue, I saw this vintage poster in a shop window.

Vintage Seattle Travel Poster by Porchlight Design Company, available for $18 at porchlightdesignco.com.
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Monday/ it’s a jungle out there 🐛

My lawn is the shaggiest it has been— maybe ever (gasp)— since I have moved into my house.
Our street block’s lawn services guy was off to a late start this spring, and he was scheduled to swing by last Friday, but it rained all day on Friday. He then left word with my neighbor that he would come by today, but it turned out his mower was in need of a quick repair and that he hopes to come out on Tuesday.
I think it’s time for me to dust off the electric mower in my garage and get out there tomorrow.

‘Your Perfect Lawn Is A Buzz Kill’ is the title of a recent article that I read, that advocates for eco-friendly front yards. And there is a ‘No-Mow May’ movement that encourages lawn owners to just leave the greens to their own devices for the month of May .. but then comes June and July and it’s back to mowing again, I guess.
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Sunday/ a few new words 🤔

Ready to learn a few new words in the English language?
Take a quick look at the Scrabble board and see if you know all the words!

Zoey is the Grandmaster level of the Scrabble program I play against. I win about 1 out of 3 or 4 games, but I was soundly beaten this time.

ULU all-purpose knife traditionally used by Inuit, Iñupiat, Yupik, and Aleut women.
NIXY a misaddressed or illegibly addressed piece of mail, therefore undeliverable.
FLINT hard, dark quartz that produces a spark when struck by steel
TALAR an ankle-length robe
ZERO the arithmetical symbol 0, nil
KEEF (Arabic) a state of dreamy intoxication, induced by cannabis for example
KI alternate spelling for qi: the vital energy that is held to animate the body internally and is of central importance in some Eastern systems of medical treatment (such as acupuncture) and of exercise or self-defense (such as tai chi)
EX one that formerly held a specified position or place, especially : a former spouse or former partner in an intimate relationship
MADAME a title equivalent to Mrs. for a married woman not of English-speaking nationality
QUINT one of five offspring produced in the same pregnancy
QUEY (British) cow, heifer
GALAGO a small primate (a bush baby)
LIPAS a monetary subunit of the Croatian kuna (plural)
RID to make free of
BREECH (verb) to dress in short pants (covering the hips and thighs and fitting snugly at the lower edges at or just below the knee)
BI short form of bisexual
PATERNITY the quality or state of being a father
YINCE (Scottish) once
LAM sudden or hurried flight especially from the law, as in ‘on the lam’
RETS to soak (something, such as flax or hemp) to loosen the fiber from the woody tissue
OTIOSE producing no useful result, futile
JINKED make a quick, evasive turn (past tense)
VISIVE (archaic) of, relating to, or serving for visionand
OBOE a double-reed woodwind instrument having a conical tube
HO interjection, used especially to attract attention to something specified
DONATORS donor, one that gives, donates, or presents something (plural)
OPA grandfather
AR the letter R
GAPER one that gapes, also: any of several large sluggish burrowing clams
ODAH (Turkish) a room in a harem
DAW (Scottish) dawn

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Saturday/ long live the King 👑

“I’m not particularly bothered. I’m not out here raging, angry about it, protesting. But I’m not the biggest fan.”
– Nicholas Sowemimo, 36, who spent part of his Saturday afternoon at The Hawley Arms, a well-known pub in North London, but he did not watch the coronation (reported by Derrick Bryson Taylor in the NYT).

The coronation depicted in a new set of stamps issued today by the Royal Mail.
(1st on the stamp means First Class Mail. And why the ‘Royal Mail’? The postal service was created in 1516 when Henry VIII knighted the first Master of the Posts, Sir Brian Tuke.
At first, the postal system was exclusively for use by the king and the royal court. Ordinary people were only allowed to use it more than a century later).

LONDON — Britain’s Charles III was crowned king on Saturday, during an eighth-century ritual in a 21st-century metropolis with a handful of concessions to the modern age but the unabashed pageantry of a fairy tale, unseen since the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, his mother, in 1953.

“I come not to be served, but to serve,” Charles said in his first remarks of the ceremony, setting the theme for the intimate yet grand proceedings. The king, 74, was anointed with holy oil, symbolizing the sacred nature of his rule. He was vested with an imperial mantle, and the archbishop of Canterbury placed the ancient crown of St. Edward onto his head.
– As reported by Mark Landler in the New York Times

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Friday/ rain ☔

Happy Friday, the first one in May.
It was a very wet day for May, but maybe Mother Nature is just getting us caught up with the rain.
Sea-Tac Airport had recorded slightly less than 12 in. of rain in the first four months of 2023, which is about 5 inches below average.

It’s May, so the rhododendron bushes are blooming. This is the prettiest one that I found tonight.  
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Thursday/ be afraid, be very afraid 😵‍💫

If you’re not afraid yet, you should be.
-Catherine Rampell, writing in the Washington Post about the latest debt-ceiling increase showdown in Washington (Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen raised the alarm earlier this week, saying the U.S. government could be out of options to pay its bills by June 1)

Apparently it was not enough that the Republican Party had pushed t****  and his now-convicted seditionist supporters on us for four years.

Now the House Republicans and Speaker Kevin McCarthy want military veterans, social security recipients— and really every American in some way— to pay for the previous Republican administration’s tax cuts.

Here are some scenarios that that will likely play out if the United States indeed defaults on its debt (as reported by Catherine Rampell in the Washington Post):
1. U.S. Treasurys get downgraded — as does virtually every other asset on earth.
2. Interest rates rise further for U.S. consumers, businesses and the government.
3. Global investors likely would sell U.S. dollar-denominated assets as confidence in them evaporates; the dollar might lose value in foreign-exchange markets.
4. Stock markets plummet.
5. Companies holding Treasurys suffer hits to both revenue and balance sheets.
6. There might be a scramble to close out trades that people would otherwise hold.
7. Some of the infrastructure underpinning large parts of the financial system (called “central counterparty clearinghouses”) could essentially get overwhelmed and go down.

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Wednesday/ fed-funds now 5.0-5.25% 💸

“We feel like we’re getting closer or maybe even there.”
-Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Jerome Powell today, on whether more federal-fund rate increases are in the offing

The Federal Reserve Bank increased the federal-funds rate by another 0.25% today.
(So another message to the consumer to stop borrowing money, and to stop buying stuff that is not really needed.
The average credit card interest rate is now 24.25%, according to Forbes Advisor’s weekly credit card rates report. Inflation here in the States is now at about 5%.)

From the Wall Street Journal:
With the latest increase, the Fed has raised its benchmark federal-funds rate by a cumulative 5 percentage points from near zero in March 2022, the most rapid series of increases since the 1980s. The rate influences other rates throughout the economy, such as on mortgages, credit cards and business loans.