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Saturday/ the last days of summer

It felt like fall this morning (high for the day only 71 °F /22 °C), with a spritz of rain on the ground.
This year’s summer brought stretches of hot weather, but no smoky skies from wild fires.

Gladiolus (sword lilies) making their last stand here on Capitol Hill. The gardens are dry and lawns are yellowed, but they will come back, of course.
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Friday/ the Fed spooks the markets 👻

We will keep at it until we are confident the job is done.
– Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, at the end of his speech in Jackson Hole, WY today.

It had to happen, of course: Fed Chair Powell reminding investors that there are several interest rate rises and probably some pain ahead, before the Federal Reserve Bank will be sure that inflation is under control.

Hopefully the selling today was mostly done by fund managers— not individual investors. The best advice on down days like today: do nothing.

Investors had a nice run off the low of Jun. 16. It is easy to look back now and realize that was a low point. As Jeff Sommer writes in the New York Times: ‘The very best advice would have required a crystal ball: You should have sold precisely on Jan. 3, when the S&P 500 stock index was at its peak, and bought on June 16, when it hit bottom. (Then, quite possibly, you should have sold again on Aug. 16, before the market turned rocky. The verdict is still out on that one.)’
[Graph from the Wall Street Journal]
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Thursday/ stamps from 1954 💌

I bought this beautiful set of 1954 Union of South Africa stamps on Ebay because I have very fond memories of them.

My mom had a stack of letters⁠ with the rhinoceros on— correspondence between her and my dad from before they got married.

I had the half-penny, one-penny and two-penny in my collection at the time. The higher denomination stamps were spectacularly out of reach for a young collector:  very expensive to buy. The 10-shilling stamp depicts postage 240 times that of the half-penny stamp with the warthog. (Twelve pennies to the shilling).

In 1961, South Africa became a Republic, switched to a decimal currency (the South African Rand), and a new set of stamps was issued. I have that set as well, and will post it soon.

The stamps below depict a warthog, a black wildebeest, a leopard, a zebra, a white rhinoceros, an African elephant, a hippopotamus, a lion, a kudu, a springbok, a gemsbok, a njala, a giraffe and a roan antelope.
It was the first set of stamps depicting South Africa’s wild life heritage, and many, many more stamps depicting wild life would follow.

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Wednesday/ the last of the heat? 🔥

We had 87 °F (31 °C) today and it may get to 90 °F (32 °C) tomorrow .. but the days are getting shorter and the weather will start turning soon.

P.S. ‘Heat’ is a relative term, of course. I read on Twitter of the Chinese city of Chongqing that recently had 113 °F (45 °C) for two days, with the night temperature at 93 °F (34 °C).

The air outside is around 60°F  (15 °C) early in the morning, and I like to open the front &  back door to get some cross-flow of cool air. Soon the morning sunlight blazes in as well, though⁠— and bounces off the kitchen floor onto the wall. Time to close the door!
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Tuesday/ Jupiter’s auroras

Now that she’s back in the atmosphere
With drops of Jupiter in her hair
She acts like summer and walks like rain
Reminds me that there’s a time to change, hey
Since the return of her stay on the moon
She listens like spring and she talks like June, hey
Hey, hey-yeah

[Chorus]
But tell me, did you sail across the sun?
Did you make it to the Milky Way
To see the lights all faded
And that heaven is overrated?
And tell me, did you fall from a shooting star?
One without a permanent scar
And did you miss me while you were
Looking for yourself out there?

-Lyrics from ‘Drops of Jupiter'(2001) by Train

I am trying out the new James Webb telescope of Jupiter and its auroras as wallpaper for my phone.

Webb NIRCam composite image of Jupiter from two filters – F212N (orange) and F335M (cyan).
[Photo Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Jupiter ERS Team; image processing by Ricardo Hueso (UPV/EHU) and Judy Schmidt].
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Monday/ back to Seattle 🛬

My short stay in San Diego was over on Monday morning, and Alaska Airlines brought me back to Seattle.

There it is: the Alaska Airlines Boeing 737-900 with its little winglets on the tips of the wings, at Gate 34 of Terminal 2 at San Diego airport.
Here’s beautiful blue Lake Tahoe, straddling the border of (northern) California and Nevada.
There would be snow on the ground in winter time. On the bottom left are the runways of Minden-Tahoe Airport, and on the bottom right is Carson City in Nevada.
Almost home now, over Tacoma, Washington State. That would be the Tacoma-Narrows Bridge linking Tacoma & the Kitsap Peninsula. The runways at top left are those of Tacoma Narrows Airport (not served by any commercial carriers).
Seattle-Tacoma Airport’s North Terminal has undergone a renovation for several years now, and the work is almost complete. The large art installation on the wall is called Boundary (2021) by artist John Grade. The wood that he used is Alaskan yellow cedar and the dimensions are 40’ x 85’ x 25’.
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Sunday/ Torrey Pines State Park

Today my brothers and I did a short hike up to the buff in Torrey Pines State Park, and then made our way down to the beach and back to the parking lot.

We parked below at the Torrey Pines State Park South Beach, and walked along the road to the top.
The Torrey pine (Pinus torreyana) is a rare pine species in California, United States. It is a critically endangered species growing only in coastal San Diego County, and on Santa Rosa Island, offshore from Santa Barbara in Santa Barbara County.
Prickly pear or pear cactus are around the trail to be seen as well.
Looking north from a viewpoint on the trail, along Camino Del Mar Road, and the parking lot for Torrey Pines State Beach. The greenery with waters at the top and to the right of the road are those of Los Penasquitos Lagoon. 
Now making our way along the sandy trail between the sandstone outcroppings to the beach.
One of us is holding the iPhone at arm’s length, another is pushing the picture button, and we are all trying not to fall down the cliff behind us.
Down on the beach, an hour or two after low tide. There are signs on the trail that warn there is no beach access at high tide (the sea sloshes against the sandy cliffs).

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Saturday/ Balboa Park

Balboa Park is a 1,200-acre historic and urban, cultural park in San Diego.
The park was originally called ‘City Park’, but was renamed after Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa, in honor of the 1915 Panama-California Exposition, held in the park that year.

The architecture of the buildings in Balboa Park are a mix of Mediterranean and Spanish Colonial Revival style.

My brother and I have been to the San Diego Zoo (next to Balboa Park) many, many times, and we decided it was time to take a look inside the Natural History Museum instead. This is the main entrance.
The original ‘Jaws’ .. a megalodon model on display in the main exhibition hall. The model is very accurate, and shows the electroreceptors on the shark’s nose between the nostrils. These receptors are filled with a jelly-like substance which help the shark to pick up electrical fields in the surrounding water. They can detect even the slightest of electrical pulses from the muscle movement of potential prey. Megalodons lived approximately 23 to 3.6 million years ago, and are relatives of today’s great white sharks.
Another view of the main exhibition hall, with a Steller’s sea cow (Hydrodamalis gigas) top left. These slow-moving sea creatures grew to 9 m (30 ft) and 8-10 tons and had relatively few predators, but were easy prey for humans. Within 27 years of its discovery by Europeans in the Bering Sea between Alaska and Russia, the slow-moving and easily-caught mammal was hunted into extinction for its meat, fat, and hide. The year was 1768.
The California condor (Gymnogyps californianus) is a New World vulture and the largest North American land bird. They became extinct in the wild in 1987, at which point only 22 birds in captivity remained. Breeding programs at San Diego Zoo and Los Angeles Zoo were launched, and as of December 2020 there were 504 California condors living wild or in captivity.
The Balboa Park Botanical Building. Built for the 1915-16 Panama-California Exposition, along with the adjacent Lily Pond and Lagoon, the historic building is one of the largest lath structures in the world.
The beautiful façade at the entrance of the San Diego Museum of Art has detailed full-body sculptures of artists Velázquez, Murillo, and Zurbarán.
The nearly 200-foot-tall Tower and Dome of the California Building are covered with intricate carvings, colorful tile, and glass beads.
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Friday/ gentle surf, onshore wind 🌊

This morning’s surf report for Cardiff State Beach near Encinitas, at 8.35 am : gentle (1-2 feet) with onshore wind, 9 mph.
There are a few surfers in the water already (to the far left).
The little marine layer of cloud will soon be gone, but the highs were to get to oh, a pleasant 78 °F (26 °C).
The little low wall is to keep the high tide from reaching to bottom of the stairs to the lifeguard shack.

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Thursday/ hello San Diego ✈️

I was at Seattle-Tacoma airport today for the first time in almost three years⁠— to fly out to visit my brother in San Diego.
It seemed to me that 1 in 10 travelers at the airport was wearing a mask. (I was one. Yes, I have had COVID, but I am trying hard not to get it again). My seat was all the way in front, and I could board in the first group, but I waited for almost everyone to board before I stepped on board.

We took off from the longest of the three parallel runways at Sea-Tac airport (16R/34L), in a northerly direction, and then our Boeing 737-900 bird made a sweeping turn over West Seattle to fly down south along the Pacific Coast.

The flight went without incident, but at our arrival at San Diego at 1.15 p.m. or so, we were held at the gate for 30 minutes before we could enter the terminal just as it was being cleared out completely. (Lots of people— thousands of people).
It was later reported that around 12:25 p.m. a traveler had taken a carry-on that had been identified for additional screening and walked away with it. When TSA officers couldn’t find him they decided to clear passengers out of Terminal 2 West & East.

Luckily, I could still get my checked bag from the carousel, and vamoose.
I am sure many hundreds of people missed their connections.
As I left the airport building, the line of people waiting to get back in, and of those that had just arrived to go somewhere, stretched as far as the eye could see, and then even further.

The view from inside the Alaska Airlines lounge near the main terminal. On the left are the C gates.
We’re approaching San Diego, and below is Marine Corps Air Station Miramar. Miramar was the site of the real TOPGUN flight school made famous by the movie Top Gun (1986).
The Pacific Ocean below, of course, with Dana Point Harbor to the right of center on the coast (some distance south of greater Los Angeles).
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Tuesday/ four courts of doubles tennis 🥎

I hosted the Seattle Tennis Alliance social doubles tennis at Lower Woodland Park tonight.
The host welcomes everyone at 7 pm, and then dispatch the 16 players to the 4 courts which we had reserved for 2 hours from the City.

To figure out which four groups (of four players each) would work best, I divvied up the 16 players into four imaginary skill levels of four players each.  It’s not an exact science, but I know most of the players and assigned the best four to Level 1, the next four to Level 2, and then to Level 3 and Level 4.

The hard work done, the rest comes easy:
Court 5: L1 player & L2 player vs. L1 player & L2 player
Court 6: L3 & L4 vs. L3 & L4
Court 7: L1 & L2 vs. L1 & L2
Court 8: L3 & L4 vs. L3 & L4

Social tennis players are notoriously intolerant of players far below their own skill level, so it’s best to avoid having say, Level 1 and Level 4 players on the same court. The worst of all is to have three Level 1 players and one Level 4 player on the same court, or the other way around.

Here’s the action on Court 5 at Lower Woodland Park, with Court 6 on the far side. The flood lights are OK, but not the best (they need to sit at a higher elevation). 
We are about to wrap it up— approaching 9.00 pm. The sun had set some 30 minutes ago.
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Monday/ twilight

Here’s Seattle photographer Tim Durkin’s picture as night falls on the Emerald City.
Yes, The Mountain is out —and had been out for most of the day.

The high today was 83°F (28°C).
We’re on our way to another 90 °F (32 °C) high, on Thursday.
That might be the last one for this summer.

Picture Credit: Tim Durkan @timdurkan on Twitter
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Sunday/ Pioneer Square 🧱

Here are pictures from my (self-directed) architecture appreciation tour today, around Pioneer Square.

Here’s the Pioneer Square light rail entrance and exit hall, on Yesler Way.
Looking up at one of Seattle’s most famous landmarks: Smith Tower, constructed in 1914 and named after its builder, the firearm and typewriter magnate Lyman Cornelius Smith (not related to Horace Smith of Smith & Wesson).
Detail of the white terra-cotta cladding on the walls and the overhang of the pyramid top of the Tower.
The Collins Building right next door, in the Richardsonian Romanesque style, was built much earlier, in 1894. The construction was paid for and supervised by Irish-American businessman John Collins, who had also served as Seattle’s fourth elected mayor.
Across the street is the Corona Lofts apartment building, which is also a historic landmark building, built in 1903.
Walking along Yesler Way towards the waterfront, and here is the canopy at the old Travelers Hotel building (constructed 1913) that says Barney McCoy’s Buffet Lunch, Cigars, on the side that is facing the street. (Present day there is a cozy eatery called 84 Yesler inside).
The CitizenM hotel at Yesler and Alaskan Way is a brand-new boutique hotel (it’s a Dutch brand). The large tiled graphic mural is called ‘Schema’: an abstract map depicting layers of Seattle’s early history and idiosyncrasies.
The Pioneer Square Hotel was designed by architect Albert Wickersham and built in 1914. By the 1930s it was a flophouse (a cheap hotel & rooming house). Restored in the 1990s, and now run by the Best Western franchise, it had long been the only hotel in Pioneer Square. (The new CitizenM hotel is kitty corner from it).
Here’s the corner of Yesler and First Avenue. This building started out as the National Bank of Commerce building, constructed in 1890-91. (So right after the Great Fire of Seattle in 1899, which had destroyed 25 city blocks, including some in Pioneer Square).
‘Constructed in 1890 and known as the Squire-Latimer Building for many years, this ornate brick building was the home of Seattle’s Grand Central Hotel (1897-1933). Like many luxury hotels, the Grand Central did not outlast the lean years of the Great Depression’. -from theclio.com
A peek of the hallway inside the boarded-up Grand Central Hotel building with my phone camera’s wide-angle lens.
The four-story State Building on South Washington Street, built in the Queen Anne – Richardsonian Romanesque style, is another that was constructed in 1891, right after the Great Seattle Fire of 1889.
The Broderick Building (constructed in 1892), is a six-story building with brick walls and large blocks of rusticated Tenino sandstone on its main facades.
The Mutual Life Building of 1897, built in a modified Romanesque Revival style, is on First Avenue. It had suffered minor earthquake damage on two or three occasions, and was in need of some repair work by the 1970s. In 1983, the totally empty Mutual Life Building was purchased by Historic Seattle, and they spearheaded a complete architectural rehabilitation the following year.
A closer look at the detail at the base of the arch at the building’s entrance.
This is the public space called Occidental Square, and the totem artwork is of Tsonoqua, a mythological giantess and ‘nightmare bringer’ invoked by exasperated North Coast mothers to frighten their children into obedience.
Another view of Occidental Square. The Seattle Fallen Firefighters Memorial statue by Hai Ying Wu (1995) honors generations of heroes. On the right are the glass windows of the Occidental Street offices of the timberland and wood products company Weyerhauser (completed 2016).
All right .. time to go home, and here comes the southbound train rolling into Pioneer Square station. I took the northbound train three stops up to Capitol Hill, and hey! just as I walked out of the Capitol Hill station, the No 8 bus rolled up to take me another seven blocks closer to home.
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Caturday

[Picture from Instagram: wildcatcentre]
Here is Kato the caracal from the Wild Cat Conservation Centre in Wilber, New South Wales, Australia.

The caracal is a medium-sized wild cat (weight is 30-40 lbs) native to Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and arid areas of Pakistan and northwestern India.

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Friday/ medicine for inflation

The House passed the massive piece of legislation called the Inflation Reduction Act today (the Senate had already passed it). There are lots of really good stuff in it.

John Cassidy writes for The New Yorker magazine: The Inflation Reduction Act contains the biggest effort to tackle climate change that the U.S. government has taken. Right now, thanks largely to the retirement of coal-fired electricity plants, the country is on track to reduce its carbon emissions by about thirty per cent by 2030, compared to 2005. By providing about $370 billion in tax credits over ten years for solar and wind producers, as well as for the purchase of electric vehicles, the new bill will increase the emissions reduction to about forty per cent, according to several expert analyses. The House gave final congressional approval on Friday to a spending bill which would attempt to tackle climate change, the high cost of prescription drugs and lower the deficit by roughly $300 billion. It was passed without any Republican support and now goes to President Biden for his signature.

Uncle Joe the Magician (President Biden) will sign the Inflation Reduction Act into law next week.  Yes, nothing in life is guaranteed, but this bill is not inflationary (spending money that is not gained elsewhere). It aims to reduce the deficit by raising corporate taxes, and will save the federal government and citizens money on prescription medicines and medical bills. And it fights carbon emissions in a big way. [Cartoon by Tom Stiglich]
Graphic by the NYT showing the spending and savings/ new revenue for the Inflation Reduction Act.
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Thursday/ throwing down the gauntlet 🤺

gaunt·let
/ˈɡôntlət,ˈɡäntlət/
noun

a medieval glove, made of leather or metal plates, worn by a knight in armor to protect the hand.

throw down the gauntlet
idiom 
issue a challenge to an opponent

Attorney-general Merrick Garland is calling Trump’s bluff. It turns out Trump was subpoenaed in June for classified documents and that he handed over some documents. More documents— that Trump had also stolen and had held onto after the subpoena— are related to nuclear secrets and could be a violation of the Espionage Act of 1917.

From the New York Times:
Speaking from a podium at the Justice Department, the attorney general said he had personally approved the request for a search warrant. He denounced the “unfounded attacks on the professionalism” and integrity of the F.B.I. and prosecutors.
And — most importantly — he announced that the Justice Department had filed a motion to unseal the warrant used in the search, as well as the inventory of what the F.B.I. took away, so that the government could make them public.

Update, Fri 8/12: The FBI found 11 sets of classified documents, several of them top secret (‘Sensitive Compartmented Information’) at Mar-a-Lago. Trump’s lawyer was given receipts. Will Trump pay a price for his crimes?—that is the perennial question.

‘Dark Merrick Garland’, tweeted out today by the The Lincoln Project*.  It is a play on the meme of Joe Biden called Dark Brandon.
*The Lincoln Project is an American political action committee (PAC) formed in late 2019 by former and current Republicans.
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Wednesday/ July’s inflation 🎈

July’s 0% inflation and last week’s booming jobs report underscore the kind of economy we’re building – an economy that works for everyone.
– President Biden @POTUS on Twitter

Well. Technically there was month-over-month deflation in July (going from 9.1% in June to 8.5% in July). Also, this has happened before: March 8.5%, April 8.3%.
The July number means that year-over-year, consumer prices are still up a whopping 8.5%, and the Federal Reserve Bank still has its work cut out. It’s a long way down to the 2% long-term target for inflation.

 

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Tuesday/ the Mar-a-Lago raid 🚨

On Monday morning at 10 a.m. EST, two dozen FBI agents and technicians executed a raid at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence (with a search warrant signed off by a federal judge for probable cause)— a first for an ex-President.
There is an opinion piece in today’s Wall Street Journal, titled ‘The FBI’s Dangerous Trump Search: Merrick Garland is taking the U.S. down a perilous path’.

Here is Prof. Yascha Mounk from Johns Hopkins University (@Yascha_Mounk on Twitter):

A few thoughts and principles about the FBI raid in Miami:
1 The rule of law applies to everyone. If Trump committed a crime, he should be punished for it.
2 Prosecutions against possible political candidates always deserve special scrutiny to ensure they are above the board.
3 The best way to beat an authoritarian populist is at the ballot box, not by disqualifying him from running.
4 If Trump is to be prosecuted, it would ideally be for a morally highly significant crime (like 1/6), not a procedural one (like mishandling classified documents).
5 One overlooked political risk is Trump getting acquitted, allowing him to claim he was exonerated.
6 We know very little about the FBI’s case against Trump so far. Anyone declaring with certainty that it is either appropriate or inappropriate is getting ahead of themselves.

Law enforcement officials stationed at the entrance to Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., on Monday.
[Photo Credit: Josh Ritchie for The New York Times]
Trump supporter (extra large-ridiculous hat), saying ‘The Democrats are weaponizing the FBI, and it has to stop’.
1. You confuse the Department of Justice with the Democrats.
2. Did your lawless President not say ‘Law and Order’?
[Still from a video by Blair Guild/The Washington Post]

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Monday/ Olivia Newton-John (1948-2022)

I got good Kentucky whiskey on the counter
And my friends around to help me ease the pain
‘Til some button-pushing cowboy plays that love song
And here I am just missing you again
Lyrics from the song Please Mr Please, from the album Have You Never Been Mellow (1975)

Olivia Newton-John’s Greatest Hits (1977) was the very first vinyl record that I had bought.
I no longer have the vinyl record, but I do have the songs in my digital collection of .mp4 songs.

ONJ’s Greatest Hits— the vinyl record pressed for the South African market.
The selection of songs was a little different from the Greatest Hits sold elsewhere in the world. It had ONJ’s rendition of John Denver’s ‘Take Me Home Country Roads’,  as well as her recording of the 19th century American murder ballad ‘Banks of the Ohio’.