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Wednesday/ tennis, on the grass 🎾

The short lawn tennis season is in full swing with the ATP tournaments in Eastbourne and Mallorca this week⁠— and then there is Roehampton, the qualifying tournament for Wimbledon (that starts on Monday).

Wimbledon has banned Russian and Belarussian players from the tournament this year. The ATP and WTA (representing the players) have retaliated by announcing that no ranking points will be awarded for those that are allowed to play.

Seven-time Wimbledon champ Serena Williams (40), has been given a wildcard to play. Rafael Nadal (36) has announced he is good to go as well (he has had a lingering foot injury).

An undated picture of the Wimbledon qualifying competition at Roehampton, just 10 miles away from the famed All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club grounds where Wimbledon is played.
It looks lovely, with the sun casting shadows on the grass courts, spectators on the knoll, but it really is a bare-bones venue, loathed by the players. The lawns are uneven, with too few practice and warm-up courts. No water and extra towels on the courts, no technology to help with line calls, no stands for the spectators and no parking anywhere. ‘Take the bus or a taxi from the nearest train station, and bring a lawn chair’, advises the website.
Still: do you want to have a shot at Wimbledon or not? Win three matches and you are in. Even if you lose in the final round at Roehampton, you could still get invited as a ‘lucky loser’ to fill a last-minute opening in Wimbledon’s main draw.
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Tuesday/ hello summer ☀

It’s summer solstice here in the North, with the North pole at its maximum tilt towards the sun for the year.

It was a lovely day outside. We had 75°F (24°C) which makes it the warmest day of the year for Seattle, so far.

These lovely cosmos plants (Cosmos bipinnatus) and their flowers are from City People’s Garden Store on Madison Avenue.
The Imperfect Foods truck swing by on Tuesdays in my neighborhood; their mission is reduce food waste by saving (selling) ‘ugly’ produce and surplus items from local farmers, and delivering it to buyers.
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Monday/ commemorating Juneteenth ⓳

This year’s Juneteenth* (June 19th) is the first one as a designated federal holiday. Since June 19th fell on a Sunday this year, today was a public holiday.

*Juneteenth commemorates the emancipation of enslaved African Americans.

From blackpast.org:
Following the Union Army victory at Antietam, Maryland on September 17, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln issued a preliminary emancipation proclamation. This document gave the states of the Confederacy until January 1, 1863 to lay down their arms and peaceably reenter the Union; if these states continued their rebellion all slaves in those seceding states were declared free.

Fearing the secession of neutral border slaveholding states such as Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation excluded those states, which left almost one fifth of the four million slaves in bondage. Their freedom would come with the 13th Amendment, ratified in 1865.

An embellished version of the Emancipation Proclamation (the original handwritten version of the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, is in the National Archives in Washington, DC).
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Saturday/ the crypto party is over🎈

“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.
“Two ways,” Mike said.
“Gradually, then suddenly.”
-from Ernest Hemingway’s novel The Sun Also Rises (1926)

A headline in the Wall Street Journal says ‘The Crypto Party Is Over’.
It certainly seems to be.
As of Saturday night (cryptocurrencies trade 24/7), Bitcoin was at $18,450, down 30% for the week, and some 72% down from its $68,789 all-time high in Nov. 2021.
(Still up 7-fold from 5 years ago, though).

It was a bad weeks for stocks, but a worse one for all things crypto.
I see a melting Bitcoin ice sculpture and a Shiba Inu doggie, mascot of Dogecoin, in the WSJ picture.
As for the guy on the unicorn floatie in the pool— in business, unicorn has come to be the moniker given to a privately held startup company valued at over US$1 billion.

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Friday/ a candle larkspur

We’ve had gray skies all day, so it was nice to run into this beautiful blue candle larkspur by Miller Community Center on 19th Avenue.

The ‘Lookup- Plant’ function on my iPhone found for me the name of the flower, from the picture that I had taken. Very helpful.

Larkspur (genus Delphinium) come in red, blue, yellow, and pink. They date back several millennia, where they were used to decorate ancient Egyptian mummies.

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Thursday/ a pig’s ear

I found this arum lily (genus: Zantedeschia) on 16th Ave, at twilight (time stamp on the photo is 9.16 pm).

These lilies are native to southern Africa and South Africa. We call them varkore in Afrikaans (Eng. pig’s ears). The flower comes in pink hues as well, but all the ones I had ever seen in South Africa were white, like this one.

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Wednesday/ Seattle downtown 🏢

I made a run into downtown today with the No 10 bus to pick up an item at Walgreens.
The one here on 15th Avenue closer to me is has lots of empty spaces on the shelves!

The Walgreens that I went to is in Melbourne Tower on 3rd Avenue. It is a 10-floor, reinforced-concrete office tower that was completed in 1927. It is not fully occupied right now, with available office space on the 5th and 6th floors.
Third Avenue in downtown had been in bad shape at times the last few years, but is finally looking much cleaner. New public art has been installed, adding a little color to the beiges and grays all around. This is one of five such pieces, called The Five Creations (2022) by artist Angie Hiojos. The motifs depict traditional Aztec beliefs.
Nordstrom’s flagship store and headquarters across from Westlake Center still looks nice and clean after the renovation of its exterior, some years ago.
A sign of the times? Look up! and Look right! from texting on your phone! A scooter rider or cyclist might be careening towards you in the new bike lane.
The Washington State Convention Center is now called Arch | Seattle Convention Center.
Is the coin and stamp store still there? I wondered. Yes, but with only one employee, instead of the 4 or 5 that used to sit inside. You have to knock on the glass door to get in.
I thought for a moment to buy this First Day of Issue envelope featuring Seattle’s 1962 World’s Fair (just $5) but didn’t. Maybe I’ll go back tomorrow and get it. 🙂
Here’s the Summit | Seattle Convention Center, nearing its final exterior form. This is the extension of what was called Washington State Convention Center, and what in now called Arch | Seattle Convention Center.
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Tuesday/ the bears are out 🐻

The press is full of bear market reports with the recent declines in the stock market indices.

Wed 6/15, 2.00 pm EDT: Fed Chairman Jerome Powell announced that the Federal Reserve will indeed raise the federal funds rate by 75 basis points (0.75%), bringing it to the range 1.5%- 1.75%. Right now they project a rate of about 3.5% by year-end.

Here’s the New York Post. ‘Bear market has economy running scared’ .. is that really true?
The economy is running too hot, if anything, and as the picture shows: it is Uncle Sam (the government, White House) that is scared.
Investors are scared as well, of course.
There’s a bear in the Tintin adventure by cartoonist Hergé called Le Temple du Soleil (Temple of the Sun). The outcome was that Captain Haddock ran away from the bear, and came to no harm.
Originally published in Tintin Magazine in 1946-48, the cartoon strips were later collected in albums or bande dessinée in French— literally ‘drawn strips’.
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Monday/ lots of red ink

Grr .. another rough day in the stock market.
Dow Jones -2.8%
S&P 500 -3.9%
Nasdaq -4.7%
Russell 2000 -4.8%
DJ Total Mkt -4.1%

The Fed may raise rates by 0.75% after all, on Wednesday.

Infographics below are from the
New York Times,
the Washington Post, and
the front page of tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal.

 

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Sunday/ at the bookstore 📙

I needed a bookstore ‘fix’ and so off I went to U District today.
I got a little wet while walking back in the rain from the Capitol Hill train station, but it was all well worth it.

A postcard in Magus Books in U District with two characters from the famous Sherlock Holmes stories written by Arthur Conan Doyle. Inspector Lestrade is a determined but conventional Scotland Yard detective who consults Sherlock Holmes on many cases. Professor Moriarty is an evil mastermind, providing criminals with strategies for their exploits and sometimes even protection from the law, all in exchange for a fee or a cut of profit. That must be detective Sherlock Holmes himself, and Dr. Watson, in the main picture. 
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Saturday/ finding the Wortel 🥕

I don’t know why I took so long to check again if there is an Afrikaans version of Wordle.
There has been one since February, actually⁠— created by South African software developer Francois Botha.
It is called Wortel.
(Eng. carrot;
originally from Dutch wortel,
from Middle Dutch wortele,
from Old Dutch *wurtala,
from Proto-Germanic *wurt– “root” + *waluz “stick”).

Here’s my first attempt. I can post the solution since it’s now past midnight in South Africa.

The 26 characters are not quite sufficient for all Afrikaans words. Some regular words have vowels with carets or diaereses (ë ê î ï ô û) and maybe these should be shown as character keys on the keyboard below. I have seen a version of German Wordle that does that. For now this Wortel game accepts GEEET, GEETS as a valid guesses, for GEËET,  GEËTS (Eng. past participles of eat and etch).

 

TREIN – train
ASIEL – asylum
GELEI – conduct (electricity)
GLOEI – glow

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Friday/ inflation: still over 8% 😲

Welp. Year-over-year inflation for May was 8.6%, up a smidge from March (8.5% ) and April (8.3%).
So while the headlines again screamed ‘Inflation soars to 40-year high’ today, it’s been there for three months running now.

The Federal Reserve Board is widely expected to raise the fed funds rate by a half point next Wednesday, but some economists say it should be 0.75% or even 1.00%. I agree with 0.75% or 1.00% —but what do I know?

Food is expensive. We’re all going to have to subsist on hot dogs and ice cream if it goes on like this.
How come ice cream is up 4.5% with milk up 14.5%? A lot of milk goes into making ice cream, not? 🤔
[Graphic by Wall Street Journal from data by US Labor Dept.]
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Thursday/ ‘your dishonor will remain’

The Jan. 6 committee of Congress held its first prime-time (televised) hearing tonight, about the attack on the Capitol and the events leading up to it.
There were clips of pre-taped testimony from Bill Barr (Trump’s former Attorney General that had interfered with the first impeachment trial), and even from Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.
Viewers were also shown new footage of the attack from the blood-thirsty mob that had been egged on by President Trump.

The Jan 6. insurrection at the U.S. Capitol now lies 18 months behind us, and more than 800 people across the U.S. have been charged.
Of these, 189 had been sentenced, with sentences ranging from probation to five years in jail. High-profile trials involving the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys are expected to start in the fall.
Several of their members are charged with seditious conspiracy (a serious but lesser counterpart to treason).

Will any of the really big fish, or the Mob Boss himself, pay a serious price? Nobody knows— and ultimately that will be up to US Attorney General Merrick Garland and his Dept. of Justice, not the Jan. 6 committee.

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Wednesday/ still going up⛽

Gas prices in Seattle still sit just below $5/ gallon, but around the rest of the country it has gone up steadily.
The national average is now $4.95.
Analysts say $6 gas by August is not out of the question.

A big constraint is refining capacity .. and now that hurricane season has started, it would be really bad if a hurricane disables the output of a large refinery for some time.

Refineries turn crude oil into a variety of petroleum products such as gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, propane and butane. The largest refineries in the US sit on the Gulf of Mexico, smack bang in hurricane territory.
We have refineries in Washington State as well (two in Anacortes, and in Blaine, Ferndale and Tacoma) but they have 1/10 to 1/5 of the capacity of the largest ones on the Gulf Coast.
[Infographic from visualcapitalist.com]
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Tuesday/ more of the stalk

My new trick in the kitchen helps me keep a little more of the asparagus stalks that I like to steam in the pressure cooker.

I use a knife to cut off just an inch or so of the dry bottom of the stalk. (It’s a little hit-and-miss to break off the bottom by hand.)
Then I peel off one or two inches at the bottom with a vegetable peeler.

Now I can eat the whole stalk, without chewing on any tough fibrous skin.

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Monday/ happy Pride month 🌈

There is a nice new Pride flag on the Uncle Ike’s building on 15th Ave. here on Capitol Hill.

LGBT Pride is celebrated in June every year to coincide with the month in which the Stonewall Riots occurred (Jun 28, 1969 – Jul 3, 1969 in Greenwich Village, a neighborhood in New York City).

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Sunday/ it’s good to be king ♚

Well, I got up at 6 am Pacific Time to watch the Nadal-Ruud French Open Men’s Final, but the match was very one-sided.

Nadal was never in trouble and won easily: 6-3, 6-3, 6-0. A ‘bagel’ for Casper Ruud (Norway, age 23) in that last set, as we say in tennis.

Rafael Nadal ⁠—the King of Clay⁠— turned 36 on Friday.
Will the king reign for one more year? We shall see, of course.

I love this collage on the front page of Monday’s Beeld. 
(Newspaper from South Africa; Beeld translates to ‘Image’).
Each picture was taken moments after Nadal had won the French Open Men’s Final that year. Rafa does a great job demonstrating all the different ways to collapse onto the red clay! 😂
Nadal was emotional today as well (far right), but did not fall down onto the clay.
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Saturday/ the Platinum Jubilee 👑

2022: Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II on Thursday, appearing with family members on the balcony of Buckingham Palace as part of the Platinum Jubilee celebrations. She is flanked, from far left, by Princess Anne; Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall; and Prince Charles. From far right, Prince William; Price George; Princess Charlotte; Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge; and Prince Louis.
1953: The Queen on the balcony after her coronation, with Prince Charles, Princess Anne and husband Prince Philip (Duke of Edinburgh) to her left.
Photos: Top- Hannah McKay/ Reuters, Bottom- Associated Press.

There has never before been a Platinum Jubilee in the United Kingdom. No king or queen before Elizabeth II had ever reigned for 70 years— but ‘the power concentrated in the British crown began diminishing in the 19th century, and it has continued to shrink during Elizabeth II’s time as queen’, writes Hayes Brown for MSNBC.

After Elizabeth had ascended the throne in 1952, the British Empire dissolved as colonial states, dominions and protectorates gained their independence, one by one.
(The Union of South Africa gained its independence from Britain in May 1961 and became the Republic of South Africa. Northern Rhodesia became Zambia in 1964, Botswana gained independence in 1966, and Rhodesia became Zimbabwe in 1979.)

The Fixed-term Parliaments Act of 2011 took away her ability to dissolve parliaments at her whim.
In practice, is the UK Parliament, and not the Queen’s Privy Council, that sets laws and carries them out.

The Queen is very popular, especially among older Britons (the rest of the royal family, not so much).
Will the monarchy survive? Time will tell, but there may not be another another Jubilee for several decades to come, given how old the heirs nearest to the throne are.

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Friday/ 100 days of death and destruction

Ukrainians crowded under a destroyed bridge on the outskirts of Kyiv over a week after the invasion.
PHOTO: EMILIO MORENATTI/ASSOCIATED PRESS

It’s been 100 days since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24. There is no end in sight, say observers of the war.

The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said on Wednesday that since the day of the invasion,
4,149 civilians had been confirmed killed and
4,945 civilians had been injured.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says up to 100 Ukrainian soldiers might be dying each day on the front lines in the east of the country.
As of April 16, between 2,500 and 3,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed, with up to 10,000 injured.

Russia’s Defense Ministry had said in late March that 1,351 Russian soldiers had died – a lie. Western governments estimate that as many as 15,000 Russian soldiers have died.
(That’s already more than the total casualties over the course of the Soviet Union’s disastrous 1979-89 war in Afghanistan. This war contributed significantly to the collapse of the USSR in 1991).

The UN estimates that more than 14 million Ukrainians have fled their homes.
Some 7 million more are displaced in Ukraine.
Ukraine’s economic output is expected to fall 50% this year.
Rebuilding the country could amount to as much as 500 billion euros (US $537 billion).
Last month the U.N. lowered its forecast for global economic growth in 2022 to 3.1% from 4%, and its forecast for U.S. economic growth to 2.6% from 3.5%.
– Figures from a report by Ann M. Simmons and Courtney McBride in the Wall Street Journal