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Thursday/ John Lewis laid to rest

Though I may not be here with you, I urge you to answer the highest calling of your heart and stand up for what you truly believe. In my life I have done all I can to demonstrate that the way of peace, the way of love and nonviolence is the more excellent way. Now it is your turn to let freedom ring.
– John Lewis (80), in an essay he wrote shortly before his death on July 17.

Civil rights icon and former congressman John Lewis was laid to rest today after three former presidents (Clinton, Bush, Obama) had delivered eulogies for him at a service in Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.

Sunday March 7, 1965: Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Chairman John Lewis (far right) and Hosea Williams of Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) lead peaceful voting rights demonstrators across the Edmund Pettus Bridge from Selma to Montgomery, Ala. | © Alabama Department of Archives and History.  Photo by Tom Lankford, Birmingham News.
Minutes later, with white onlookers cheering them on, Alabama State troopers in riot gear brutalized and trampled unarmed men, women and children, beating them with clubs and unleashing tear gas. Lewis was hit on the head and fell to the ground and when he tried to get up, was struck again, leaving him unconscious.
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Wednesday/ a slice of Irish

My Tintin book in Irish landed on my porch today.
Irish (written Gaeilge in Ireland and pronounced ‘gail-gyuh’) is spoken by some 2 million* people in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.
It has been the dominant language of the Irish people for most of their recorded history, with inscriptions in primitive Irish of the names of people going back to at least the 4th century.

*These are level 2 speakers with some knowledge of the language. There are fewer than 100,000 daily speakers (outside the education system).

Here’s my little collection of objects in the house with an Irish connection: Kerrygold pure Irish butter, McCann’s Irish oatmeal, the Waterford crystal paperweight that I had bought in Dublin in 2013; the Tintin adventure ‘King Ottokar’s Sceptre’, translated into Irish as ‘Slat ríoga Ottokar‘ (2019), from the original 1939 version in French.
Here is the panel again with the English words. Tintin has detectives Thomson & Thompson on the back of the bike in a hot pursuit, one of them holding his dog Snowy.
This time around, the English reader will find it impossible to decipher the meaning of the Irish words (compared to the Scots translation, which can be made out, for the most part).
The clumsy detectives Thomson & Thompson are called Mac Grianma & O’Grianma in the Irish translation. (Mac means ‘son of’ and so does O’).
Tintin’s dog Snowy is Báinín, which is the Irish word for a collarless reverseless unlined man’s jacket made of white close-woven wool.
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Tuesday/ the frenzy of the VP sweepstakes

Who will Joe Biden pick as 2020 Vice-Presidential running mate?
Well, we know it’s going to be a woman: Biden said it will be, some time ago.
Some political experts say that he has taken care of the ‘heavy lifting’ already, in terms of commiting to picking a woman. That would build on the success of female Democratic candidates in the 2018 midterm elections, and be a nod to  empowering women in politics (and a thorn in Trump’s side). So it does not matter too much which woman he chooses.

Here’s the political betting site PredictIt giving California Senator Kamala Harris a 58% shot, and former national security advisor Susan Rice 27%. Senator Elizabeth Warren is a distant third. The wonderful thing is that a Biden win, will have him replace all the incompetent nincompoops in the Trump cabinet with talented and experienced people.
So how does this site work? Well, you can buy shares at the price listed, and if the event turns out in your favor, you get $1 per share (minus a fee). If your candidate loses, you lose all your money!
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Monday/ toasty

There was nary a cloud in the blue sky today, and at Seattle-Tacoma Airport a high of 94°F (34.5 °C) was recorded.

My asters (genus: Kalimeris) don’t seem to mind the heat.
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Sunday/ waiting for a little rain

The white stuff on my garage roof will kill the moss that had taken hold on it, but it needs a little rain to dissolve in.
The crew that had put it on (it’s environmentally friendly, they assured me), will be back in 4 to 6 weeks to brush off the moss and clean out the gutters.
I will have to be patient: July and August are the driest months in Seattle, each with about 1 in. of total rainfall, on average.

This picture is from Wednesday. We have had clear blue skies the last few days, and that will continue for a few more. Monday’s high will reach 86°F (30 °C) here in the city.
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Saturday/ more rioting & vandalism

Some 45 people were arrested here in Seattle today, and several police officers were injured in scuffles with the protestors.
We could hear the helicopters hovering, sirens that were wailing at times, and loud flash-bang explosions, a dozen times or so.

A handful of people vandalized a Starbucks on 12th Ave and set fire to construction trailers at the site of the new juvenile detention center nearby. It seems to me that the vandals are doing serious damage to the Black Lives Matter message of the peaceful protestors, as well.

Major damage at the 12th Ave & Columbia Street Starbucks. Starbucks does not deserve this and I’m not sure why they were targeted. When there was an incident at ONE of the thousands of Starbuckses a year or two ago (two African-American customers asked to leave unless they buy something), the entire company shut was down for a half-day to train baristas and managers to be more aware of their biases, and to treat everyone with respect.
One of the construction trailers at the new juvenile detention center site were still smoldering as we walked by tonight. Someone there told us that the fire brigade was on the way to come and squelch it. King County Executive Dow Constantine has committed to get all incarcerated youth out of the city’s youth jails by 2025.
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Friday/ Tintin, in Scots

Some of the Adventures of Tintin tales have now been translated into Scots*.
So of course, I had to add one of these books to my collection.
I ordered it on AbeBooks.com.

*Scots is spoken in Scotland and parts of Ulster in Ireland. It is sometimes called Lowland Scots to distinguish it from Scottish Gaelic, the Goidelic Celtic language that was historically restricted to most of the Highlands, the Hebrides and Galloway after the 16th century. [Source: Wikipedia]

The 2019 translation into Scots is titled ‘Auld King Ottokar’s Sceptre‘ (Old King Ottokar’s Sceptre), just to distinguish the title of the book from the English translation, I suspect.
The King Ottokar’s Sceptre adventure is the 8th in the series. It was published in French in 1939, and first translated into English in 1958.
Alright, here’s a panel from ‘King Ottokar’s Sceptre’ (English). Tintin has the bungling detectives Thomson & Thompson on the back of the bike, one of them holding his dog Snowy. (The text is in Herge’s handwritten font, now digitized and called Remi).
Now look at the 2019 Scots translation: still quite understandable, right? It helps that it is written only, so the English reader does not ‘hear’ the Scottish accent. It is also an illustration that even in languages as close as English & Scots, differences and nuances emerge in the the two translated versions. The detectives are called Nesbit & Nisbet in the Scottish translation, and Snowy is Tarry.
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Thursday/ it’s the Seattle Kraken

It’s offical: the name for Seattle’s National Hockey League team is The Kraken (rumors had been swirling for months). The kraken is a legendary cephalopod-like sea monster of gigantic proportions in Scandinavian folklore (per Wikipedia).

The official Seattle Kraken sweater looks great (it’s not for sale just yet). The website says there is deep sea blue, boundless blue, shadow blue and ice blue in it, with ‘red alert’ for the accent lines and angry Kraken eye.

Fans will have to wait until next year’s NHL season to cheer for the team in the remade Key Arena, which will be called the Climate Pledge Arena (the world’s first certified net-zero carbon arena).

An artist’s rendering of the completed new Climate Pledge Arena (Amazon secured the naming rights to the stadium). The roof structure and supporting pillars from the old Key Arena will be kept intact.
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Wednesday/ squaring off over squares

There is a case before the Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Court of Justice) in Karlsruhe in Germany, over the right to exclusively use a 4×4 square design for chocolate slabs. German chocolatier Ritter Sport introduced it way back in 1932. In 2010 Swiss company Milka started using it as well.

Now Ritter Sport alleges that Milka violates its patent that had been registered in 1993.

Update Thu 7/23: A ruling in favor of Ritter Sport came down from the Bundesgerichtshof. Milka will no longer be allowed to copy the square design of the Ritter chocolate slabs.

The square form of Ritter Sport was designed in 1932. Since then, chocolate maker Milka has also used it. Is that OK? I buy Ritter Sport now and then and I like the square design. It’s impossible to eat only one of the little blocks at a time, of course.
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Tuesday/ my primary vote is in

I added my avatar, and a few annotations to the digital sticker from King County Elections that says ‘I voted’.

I mailed in my ballot for the Washington State primary election today. Washington uses a top-two primary system, in which all candidates appear on the same ballot, for congressional and state-level elections.

So the top two vote-getters move on to the general election in November, regardless of their party affiliation.

To any candidate that dares having ‘Prefers Republican Party’ behind his or her your name on my ballot: You are automatically disqualified.
Your party is a disgrace — as is that ‘President’ that you had foisted on us in 2016.

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Monday/ three is just right

‘Een in die was, een aan die bas, en een in die kas!’
– Afrikaans for ‘One to wash, one to wear, and one to spare!’

I picked up my new tennis racquet from the tennis shop today. My social club has started playing super-safe and social-distanced tennis*, and I needed one more, as a spare.

*We play on outside courts only. Each player has his/ her own set of numbered tennis balls (to handle, and to serve with). Other players pick up & pass the server’s balls to him/ her with the racquet only, so without touching them.

My weapons of mass destruction: the Wilson Clash 98. I’m still experimenting with different strings. The top racquet has a Wilson Durability string that is thicker and supposed to last longer than the black string in the racquet below it. I’ve settled on a string tension of 54 lbs for now.
Higher string tension gives more control (for volleys at the net, say), but less power.
Lower string tension gives more power, but less control.
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Sunday/ a flower, aflame

It’s going to be warm (for Seattle, that is) this week — 87 °F (30.5 °C) on Monday, and slightly cooler on Tuesday.

Whoa .. is it a flameball? Is it a flower? A dahlia, that I found here on 18th Ave.
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Saturday/ a glimpse of the comet

I went out after sunset tonight to find a spot here in my neighborhood that would enable me to look over the trees for Comet C/2020 F3 (Neowise*).
I found it with the help of my binoculars, and got a somewhat decent look at it.  The sky is definitely not an inky black here in the city!

*Neowise stands for Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, the space telescope from NASA that had discovered it in March.

The comet is on its way back to 715 astronomical units, or AU, from the Sun. (For comparison, Earth orbits at 1 AU, Jupiter at 5 AU, and Neptune at 30 AU.) The comet takes about 6,800 years to make one lap around its long, stretched-out orbit .. so it won’t visit our inner solar system again for many thousands of years.

Arcturus is a giant red star and among the brightest stars that can be seen from Earth. Polaris is also called the North Star. The Big Dipper (middle of the diagram) is very helpful to locate the comet. The Big Dipper is a large asterism (star pattern) consisting of seven bright stars of the constellation Ursa Major. Comet Neowise is visible below it, and its position will be slightly higher every day for the next few nights. 
[Source: NASA Skywatching tips ]
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Friday night stroll

I walked down 19th Ave after dinner.
A few people were lined up, socially distant, for ice cream at Hello Robin.
Zeeks Pizza had a smattering of diners inside, as did Monsoon, the Vietnamese restaurant.
No Friday night music and dance at the Russian Community Center; its doors were shut.
The No 12 bus rolled by. Its scrolling letters now say ‘Masks Required’— an upgrade from ‘Essential Trips Only’, I guess.

The gladiolus (sometimes called ‘sword lily’) by the little preschool on 19th & Republican. The pandemic is roiling the ability of school districts to open their doors to students. Everyone agrees kids need to go back to school for all the benefits it will bring them and their parents. That will not be possible in many school districts in states such as Florida, Texas, California, Alabama and Georgia with spiking infection numbers.
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Thursday/ the Trump White House: dishonest, disgusting, deranged

Dr Anthony Fauci, via blurry webcam, on the White House’s efforts to undermine him: ‘You know, it is a little bizarre; I don’t fully understand it’.

Jake Tapper (CNN): ‘That’s Dr Fauci characteristically being diplomatic.
Let me not be diplomatic.
The White House campaign to undermine Dr. Fauci is dishonest, it’s disgusting, it’s deranged, and at a time of a deadly pandemic, it is the ultimate in irresponsibility.
Literally more than 136,000 Americans are dead because of this virus and instead of an aggressive national testing and contact-tracing program, the White House is instead launching a smear campaign against the guy trying to save our lives’.

Dan Scavino is White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications and Director of Social Media. (Jake Tapper did not call out this tweet specifically, but I would say it qualifies as dishonest, disgusting and deranged). 
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Wednesday/ Rancho Mirage, 30 yrs ago

I discovered this bird’s eye view picture of the Pete Dye Challenge golf course (north of Rancho Mirage, in the greater Palm Springs area), in my scanned archives.
I took it from my seat in a propeller plane, during my very first visit to the United States, in March 1990.
My brother lived in nearby Palm Desert at the time. ‘Just so you know‘, he said, ‘Palm Springs and its golf courses are not what the real America looks like’.

March 1990: The Pete Dye Challenge golf course at Mission Hills Country Club north of Rancho Mirage, was completed in 1988.
The curved road at the bottom of picture is Dinah Shore Drive.
At the very top edge of the picture runs highway Interstate 10, going to Phoenix, AZ, and all the way east across the country to Jacksonville, FL.
The tracks of real estate in between the greens of the golf course would be developed soon enough ..

July 2020: Fast forward 30 years later to today, and we find the Pete Dye Challenge golf course temporarily closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Mission Hills North/ Gary Player Signature golf course was added in 1992.
The tracks of land have been filled up with houses/ golf course condominiums.
Rancho Mirage High School at the top left of the picture was founded in 2013.

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Tuesday/ landed: CD from North Carolina

My CD from a warehouse in North Carolina landed in the mailbox today (from a bare-bones website called MovieMars).

None of the CD was available on Amazon, none on Discogs.com, none on Ebay. Amazon Netherlands does not ship to the United States, and I could order one from Amazon UK, but that would have cost $36 with the shipping cost. Yikes.

The CD is a 2018 compilation of 1980s songs from the BZN/ Band Zonder Naam (‘Band Without a Name’) band from the Netherlands. Very ‘meta’ (self-referential), that band name — I like it. I import my CDs into iTunes, old school. One of these days Apple will surely kill iTunes, and then I will have to find another solution for my music collection.
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Sunday/ a billion dollar criminal enterprise

The Lincoln Project is holding accountable those who would violate their oaths to the Constitution and would put others before Americans.
– The Lincoln Project

Trump used his pardon power corruptly on Friday, to commute the prison sentence of his personal advisor Roger Stone. Here is the transcript, and stills from The Lincoln Project’s political ad, made in response to it.

It’s not a campaign.
It’s a billion dollar criminal enterprise.
Donald Trump says he’s running on law and order.
Who’s he kidding?
Trump’s campaign manager is a felon.
His deputy campaign manager is a felon.
His national security advisor? A felon.
His foreign policy advisor is a felon.
His personal lawyer is a felon.
His longtime personal advisor? A felon.
Nixon was BAD.
Trump is WORSE.
Now, Trump saves Roger Stone.
Stone lied to cover up Russian involvement in Trump’s campaign, to protect Donald Trump.
Seven felony convictions.
Trump: ‘I am the law and order candidate’.
Trump is the most corrupt president in U.S. history.
There is only one way to end the Trump crime spree.
Throw him and his crooks out of office.
On November 3rd, vote for justice.

It’s not a campaign.
It’s a billion dollar criminal enterprise.
Donald Trump says he’s running on law and order. Who’s he kidding?
Trump’s campaign manager is a felon.
His deputy campaign manager is a felon.
His national security advisor (Michael Flynn)? A felon.
His foreign policy advisor is a felon.
His personal lawyer is a felon.
His longtime personal advisor? A felon.
Nixon was BAD.
Trump is WORSE.
Now, Trump saves Roger Stone.
Stone lied to cover up Russian involvement in Trump’s campaign, to protect Donald Trump.
Stone lied to cover up Russian involvement in Trump’s campaign, to protect Donald Trump.
Seven felony convictions.
Trump: ‘I am the law and order candidate’.
Trump is the most corrupt president in U.S. history.
There is only one way to end the Trump crime spree. Throw him and his crooks out of office.
On November 3rd, vote for justice.
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Saturday/ summer days

We have had a mild, average summer so far, with temperatures in the high 60s or 70s (18 to 24 °C). The sun still sets after 9 pm .. so even after dinner, there is still lots of time to go for a walk or to water the garden.

In the South and Southwest of the United States a phenomenon called a ‘heat dome*‘ has developed, which will lead to historic high temperatures the next few weeks. It is possible for Phoenix, AZ, to see 120 °F (48 °C).
*A heat dome occurs when strong, high-pressure atmospheric conditions trap hot ocean air like a lid or cap.

‘Garden Party in Wonderland’ .. postcard from Germany, circa 1930. I found it on a website called AbeBooks. 
P.S. That would be .. apple juice, that the jovial guy in the apron is serving up?