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Wednesday/ new citizens 🇺🇸

Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell posted this picture on X today, of new US citizens and Seattle officials who attended the 40th annual Independence Day (July 4) Naturalization Ceremony held at Seattle Center.
Over 500 new US citizens were sworn in.

The officials in the picture are:
–David G. Estudillo (fourth from the left), Chief US District Judge for the Western District of Washington: Judge Estudillo presided over the ceremony and administered the oath of allegiance to the new citizens.
–Maria Cantwell, US Senator for Washington State (to his right): Senator Cantwell gave the congratulatory address to the new citizens.
–Miss Washington is Hermona Girmay, who was crowned in July 2024. She is also a University of Washington School of Public Health alumna and is using her platform as Miss Washington to champion health equity.
–Bruce Harrell, Mayor of Seattle: Bruce Harrell delivered welcome remarks at the ceremony.

Alma Franulović Plancich, the ceremony’s long-time coordinator, was recognized for her 40 years of dedication to the event.

Posted on X by Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell—
“While the other Washington challenges basic principles, we forge a different path. It was an honor to celebrate Independence Day at the Naturalization Ceremony, welcoming 501 new U.S. citizens and honoring Alma Franulovic Plancich for her decades of leadership”.
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Tuesday/ a successful cruise season in Cape Town 🛳️

South African newspaper Die Burger (‘The Citizen’) reports that Cape Town has had a very successful 2024/25 cruise season. A total of 83 cruise ships visited the cruise terminal at the V&A Waterfront , of which 11 were there for the first time.

The cruise terminal saw an increase of 16% in terms of passengers and crew numbers over last year. (The 2023/24 season generated US$ 67.4 million for the regional economy and supported 2,000 jobs. The numbers for 2024/25 are still being compiled).

A sign at the cruise terminal at the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town.
[Picture from Facebook/Wesgro]
The 2024/25 cruise season in Cape Town concluded with the departure of the Crown Princess from the cruise terminal at the V&A Waterfront on June 29.
The Crown Princess is currently on a 60-day world cruise that began on May 31, 2025, in Auckland, New Zealand. She is scheduled to arrive in Dover, England, on July 30, 2025.
The ship’s itinerary was adjusted last week due to stormy weather conditions around Cape Town and Walvis Bay.
As a result, her arrival in Walvis Bay, Namibia, was delayed until July 1, and she subsequently bypassed Mindelo, Cape Verde (Cabo Verde).
[Picture from Facebook/ Wesgro]

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Monday/ hydrangea time 🟣

My hydrangea is blooming.

Hydrangea is derived from Greek and means ‘water vessel’ (from ὕδωρ húdōr “water” + ἄγγος ángos or ἀγγεῖον angeîon “vessel”), a reference to the shape of its seed capsules.
[From Wikipedia]
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Sunday/ shot of the day 🎾

Day 7 at Wimbledon is done.
Defending champion Carlos Alcaraz (22, 🇪🇸) is still on track, with a great win today over Andrey Rublev (27): 6-7 (5-7), 6-3, 6-4, 6-4.

Alcaraz will play Cameron Norrie in the quarterfinals on Tuesday.
Norrie (29, 🇬🇧) is British, and was born in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Rublev must have thought he had the point in the bag, but no— Alcaraz not only gets to it by sliding on the grass (the way he does on clay)— he hits a passing shot from there.
[‘Shot of the day’ by The Athletic from the New York Times]
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Saturday/ stamps from Bophuthatswana ✉️

My set of Bophuthatswana stamps are in the stamp album.
Below are the first two pages of stamps, including the colorful set of first definitives that feature stylized African animals as totems for Bophuthatswana clans.

Bophuthatswana was a homeland in South Africa that gained nominal independence in 1977.
Its citizens suffered a number of political crises during its existence (see below).
By 1994 the homelands experiment was over, and Bophuthatswana was reincorporated into South Africa along with all the other homelands.

•  Self-government 1 June 1972
• Nominal Independence 6 December 1977
• Coup d’état 10 February 1988
• Coup attempt 1990
• 1994 Bophuthatswana crisis
• Dissolution 27 April 1994

Also see a previous post for Ciskei.

Bophuthatswana (lit. ’gathering of the Tswana people’), officially the Republic of Bophuthatswana (Tswana: Repaboleki ya Bophuthatswana; Afrikaans: Republiek van Bophuthatswana), and colloquially referred to as ‘Bop’ was a Bantustan (also known as “Homeland”, an area set aside for members of a specific ethnicity) that was declared (nominally) independent by the apartheid regime of South Africa in 1977.
However, like the other Bantustans of Ciskei, Transkei and Venda, its independence was not recognized by any country other than South Africa.
[Source: Wikipedia]

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Friday/ Independence Day

U.S. commemorative stamp from the “Special Occasions” definitive series
Issued Apr. 20, 1987
Perf. 10 on 1, 2, or 3 sides |Booklet panes of 10 |Quantity Issued: 76,303,125 |Design: Corita Kent |Photogravure |Engraving: Bureau of Engraving and Printing |No Watermark
U.S. #2267 |22c First-class rate |Yellow, deep blue, light blue, white and pink |Fireworks and ‘Congratulations!’
Postmark from Buffalo, NY, July 2024.
[Source: mysticstamp.com]
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Thursday/ Republicans to America: drop dead 💀

I feel so downcast about this bill passing, and yet I’m not someone who is likely to suffer directly from it. The tax cuts benefit my family. Oh well. Rural Americans have only themselves and their Congressional representatives to blame.
– ‘Dean from USA’ commenting in the New York Times about Trump’s ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ with its tax cuts and cuts to health care

If the headline says ‘Victory for Trump’, you just know it is bad.

America’s national debt is 36,200,000,000,000 (36.2 trillion) US dollars.
That’s 123% of the US Gross Domestic Product.
Our Congress is adding another 4 trillion to it.
Where does the 4 trillion that we cannot afford come from?
Tax cuts for the rich and the mega-rich, and shredding healthcare and social safety net programs for poor people.

From the New York Times:
The House on Thursday narrowly passed a sweeping bill to extend tax cuts and slash social safety net programs, capping Republicans’ chaotic monthslong slog to overcome deep rifts within their party and deliver President Trump’s domestic agenda.
The final vote, 218 to 214, was mostly along party lines and came after Speaker Mike Johnson spent a frenzied day and night toiling to quell resistance in his ranks that threatened until the very end to derail the president’s marquee legislation. With all but two Republicans in favor and Democrats uniformly opposed, the action cleared the bill for Mr. Trump’s signature, meeting the July 4 deadline he had demanded.

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Wednesday/ an interstellar comet ☄

There is an interstellar comet in our solar system, only the third known time it has happened.

Kenneth Chang writes for the New York Times:
For only the third time, astronomers have found something passing through our solar system that came from outside the solar system.

This interstellar object, known as 3I/ATLAS, is still pretty far from the sun, currently located between the orbits of the asteroid belt and Jupiter but heading toward the inner solar system.

“This thing is traveling pretty fast” said Paul Chodas, director of the Center for Near Earth Object Studies at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

Relative to the sun, it is currently moving at about 130,000 miles per hour and it will continue to accelerate as the sun’s gravity pulls on it.
The first known interstellar object was Oumuamua, which traveled through the solar system in 2017. In 2019, Borisov, a comet of interstellar origin, passed by.

A diagram shows the projected trajectory of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS, labeled C/2025 N1 here, as it travels through our solar system.
It is not yet known how big it is, but it will pass well clear of Earth. Its closest approach to Earth will occur in December, at a distance of 160 million miles.
[From an article in the New York Times. Diagram by NASA/JPL-Caltech]
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Tuesday/ it was a dry June ☀️

From Google Search Labs | AI Overview:
Rainfall in Seattle during June 2025 was 0.40 inches, which is significantly below average.
This amount is 73% less than the 30-year average for June, which is 1.49 inches.
For comparison, here is a summary of June rainfall in recent years:
2024: 2.02 inches
2023: 1.42 inches
2022: 4.98 inches
Historically, June is one of the drier months in Seattle, with the average rainfall being around 1.6 inches. The wettest June on record saw 3.90 inches of rain in 1946.

Too much of a good thing? 🤗
I marveled at the lushness of this lawn– for a newly remodeled house here on Seattle’s Capitol Hill. The lawn started out as tiles of green sod, and there must have been a sprinkler system watering it every day for the last few weeks.
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Monday/ a sweltering day as Wimbledon starts 🥵

Strawberryheads in the stands— a nod to the traditional treat of strawberries and cream that is served up every year around the grounds. (Nice to keep the sunlight at bay, but man! I hope those berries offer a little ventilation as well.)
[Image from the official Wimbledon website]
June is done, the year 2025 is at its midpoint, and the Wimbledon tennis tournament at the All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet* Club in London SW19 got underway today.
*Yes, there is still croquet, played on three dedicated lawns, but they are converted into practice tennis courts during the championships.

Here are a few random notes for today:
– The hottest day ever recorded at the Wimbledon tennis tournament was July 1, 2015, with a temperature of 35.7 °C (96.3°F). This record was matched today on the first day of the 2025 tournament, Monday, June 30;
– Frenchman Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard (21, 🇫🇷) hit a serve that clocked in at 153 mph (246 km/h), the fastest ever recorded, anywhere;
– World No 733 Oliver Tarvet (21, 🇬🇧) won his first round match as a qualifier in the main draw. He must now spend most of his £99,000 winnings to retain his amateur status on the NCAA Tennis circuit (he plays college tennis at the University of San Diego and wants to continue doing that for another year or two);
– Tarvet will play Carlos Alcaraz on Wednesday in the second round.
Alcaraz needed five sets today to eliminate Fabio Fognini (38, 🇮🇹) 7-5, 6-7 (5), 7-5, 2-6, 6-1. Fognini is retiring after this season and asked Alcaraz for his shirt after the match to give to his son Frederico (he got it; they are good friends);
– On No. 1 Court, Jiao Fonseca (18, 🇧🇷) became the first 18-year-old to reach the second round since a certain Carlos Alcaraz did it in 2021. Fonseca needed only three sets to get past Jacob Fearnley (23, 🇬🇧);
– Line judges have been a part of Wimbledon since the very first Championships in 1877, but this year the humans have been replaced with Hawk-Eye Live (a system of up to 18 cameras equipped with AI that analyzes footage from the cameras to determine if a ball is in or out).

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Sunday/ Seattle’s 51st annual Pride Parade 🏳️‍🌈

On a gorgeous sunny Sunday afternoon, thousands upon thousands of people flocked to downtown Seattle for the 51st annual Pride Parade, arrayed in all the colors of the rainbow.

Over the past five decades, the parade has grown into the city’s biggest annual event. Organizers expected 300,000 attendees this year, though Seattle police did not have specific turnout figures Sunday.
– Caitlyn Freeman writing for the Seattle Times

From the Seattle Times:
Thousands of people crowd their way onto Fourth Avenue as they make their way to the start of the 2025 Pride Parade on Sunday in Seattle.
Seattle Pride announced in April that it faced a $350,000 budget shortfall due to lost corporate sponsorships. Companies like Boeing and the Expedia Group, which were Bronze-level sponsors last year, did not return as sponsors in 2025.
The pullback mirrors a national trend where companies pledged to support marginalized communities under former President Joe Biden, but reversed course under Trump.
[Photo by Jennifer Buchanan / The Seattle Times]
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Saturday/ cars, old and new 🚘

Five amigos went out to the Greenwood Car Show today.
The informal car show is organized by a local non-profit organization and raises money for local organizations and automotive scholarships.

The show is made up of vintage cars, with newer ones thrown into the mix— all parked along twenty-or-so street blocks along Greenwood Ave N in Seattle’s Greenwood neighborhood.

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Friday/ a reckoning with what was once impossible 🌈

Happy Friday.
It’s Pride weekend in Seattle, with the annual Pride parade scheduled for Sunday along 4th Avenue, downtown. Time flies, and it’s been ten years since same-sex marriage became legal nationwide in the United States (on June 26, 2015).

The artwork below is from an art exhibition— one of the main events of Tokyo Pride 2025— on the third floor of Tokyu Plaza Harajuku shopping mall’s Harakado space.

“Ordinary” by moriuo | ©TOKYO PRIDE 2025
Erik Augustin Palm writes in The Japan Times about it: Among the more resonant pieces is “Ordinary” by moriuo, a painting drawing lightly on comic-book style, depicting a young male couple hand-in-hand by the ocean as a train passes in the background — perhaps in Kamakura. The image is seen through the eyes of an older gay man, who never had the freedom to express love so openly. “I wish you could see this view … this time that has finally come,” reads the artist’s quietly devastating caption. It’s a moment of tenderness across generations — a reckoning with what was once impossible.
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Thursday/ a little rain ☔

It was another cool and overcast day here in Seattle with 66°F (19°C) and a little rain this afternoon.
The garden dahlia, peony and borage (starflower) are from the P-Patch community garden at Republican St and 20th Ave E.

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Wednesday/ stamps from Ciskei ✉️

I have expanded my South African stamp collection to include the four Bantustans (homelands) that had issued postage stamps from 1976 to 1994. Technically these are not stamps from South Africa.
Although these stamps were denominated in South African Rand, they were not valid for mail that was sent from outside the homelands.

Below is a sampler of pages from my collection for Ciskei.

First, a little history. This is what South Africa looked like before the first democratic election of 1994. The four main provinces were established in 1910, and the Bantustans (homelands) were established by the South African apartheid government.
After the 1994 election, the Bantustans ceased to exist, and were reincorporated into South Africa.
Nine new provinces were established: Eastern Cape, Free State, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo, Mpumalanga, Northern Cape, North West, and Western Cape.

[More from Wikipedia: Bantustan]- 
A Bantustan (also known as a Bantu homeland, a black homeland, a black state or simply known as a homeland) was a territory that the National Party administration of the Union of South Africa (1910–1961) and later the Republic of South Africa (1961–1994) set aside for black inhabitants of South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia), as a part of its policy of apartheid.
The government of South Africa declared that four of the South African Bantustans were independent—Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda, and Ciskei (the so-called “TBVC States”), but this declaration was never recognized by anti-apartheid forces in South Africa or by any international government. Other Bantustans (like KwaZulu, Lebowa, and QwaQwa) were assigned “autonomy” but never granted “independence”.

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Tuesday/ time for ice cream🍦

A deadly, record-setting heat wave was continuing to blast most of the eastern U.S. on Tuesday, June 24, forecasters said, with temperatures soaring to near 100 degrees for tens of millions of people.
– USA Today

We’re still escaping the heat here in Seattle, with a relatively mild high of 79°F (26°C) here today.
Here is a mathematics-and-ice-cream cartoon from today’s Seattle Times, from cartoonist Bob Thaves.

Euclid is generally considered with Archimedes and Apollonius of Perga to be among the greatest mathematicians of antiquity.
Euclid’s book ‘The Elements’ was a comprehensive compilation and explanation of all the known mathematics of his time, and the earliest known discussion of geometry. The Elements is often considered after the Bible as the most frequently translated, published, and studied book in the history of the Western World.
[From Wikipedia]
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Monday/ looking at the stars 🔭

The first images of the brand new Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile have come in.
The completion of the telescope’s construction has been two decades in the making. It was built on a mountain in northern Chile, in the foothills of the Andes, and on the edge of the Atacama Desert. The altitude and dry atmosphere around it provide clear skies for observing the cosmos.

From Kenneth Chang and Katrina Miller’s reporting in the New York Times:
Rubin is far from the largest telescope in the world, but it is a technological marvel. The main structure of the telescope, with a 28-foot-wide primary mirror, an 11-foot-wide secondary mirror and the world’s largest digital camera, floats on a thin layer of oil. Magnetic motors twirl the 300-ton structure around — at full speed, it could complete one full rotation in a little more than half a minute.
Its unique design means Rubin can gaze deep, wide and fast, allowing the telescope to quickly pan across the sky, taking some 1,000 photos per night.
By scanning the entire sky every three to four days for 10 years, it will discover millions of exploding stars, space rocks flying past and patches of warped space-time that produce distorted, fun-house views of distant galaxies.

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, Cerro Pachón, Chile.
[Marcos Zegers for The New York Times]
A view of the observatory’s telescope mount assembly. The white disk is used for calibration of the camera.
[Marcos Zegers for The New York Times]
With its 3.2 billion-pixel camera, the Rubin Observatory captures extremely detailed photographs such as this small piece of a much larger image of the Virgo Cluster, a group of galaxies some 55 million light-years away.
[Image from Vera C. Rubin Observatory/NSF/DOE]

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Sunday/ robotaxis debut— in Austin, TX 🤖

I watched videos of several Tesla’s robotaxi rides in Austin today, posted by YouTubers that had been invited by Tesla to give it a try.  
The robotaxi really a standard Tesla Model Y.
The displays on the main console and the backseat console have just been tailored to offer the robotaxi experience.

YouTuber Farzad’s view from the backseat. (Just as a precaution, there is a Tesla monitor in the passenger seat.)
The passenger hails the robotaxi on the robotaxi app (that works similar to Uber, I’m sure), hops in, is instructed on the small backseat console to fasten their seatbelt.
Then a Start Ride button appears on the touchscreen, and off the robotaxi goes.
At any time, a button on the touchscreen can be used to instruct the taxi to pull over (presumably for an emergency, so that the passenger can get out).
I think there is a support button on the screen as well, to place a call with.

P.S. Here comes a Cybertruck (on the left), and the white car behind it in the distance, is a Waymo self-driving car. Waymo is Google’s offering of fully autonomous driving technology and ‘robotaxi’ services.
We don’t have Waymo in Seattle yet (scheduled for 2026). If all goes well, we may see Tesla robotaxis operate here in some time 2026, as well.

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Saturday/ U.S. warplanes strike Iran 💥

U.S. warplanes strike three Iranian nuclear sites in sweeping attack
The bombing is a major escalation by President Donald Trump, tethering the United States to a conflict with no clear end in sight.

While the U.S. and Iran have fought deadly proxy battles for nearly a half-century in Lebanon, Yemen, the Strait of Hormuz and elsewhere, Trump’s action was the first significant U.S. military strike on Iranian soil since the 1979 overthrow of the U.S.-backed Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

Trump’s decision to enter the conflict raises immediate questions about how Iran or its proxies may react, even as scores of Israeli strikes have left Iranian military capabilities diminished. Iran has threatened to retaliate against U.S. troops, tens of thousands of whom are deployed throughout the Middle East in countries such as Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

-An extract from Dan Lamothe, Warren P. Strobel and Karen DeYoung’s reporting for the Washington Post

Tens of thousands of U.S. troops are stationed in the Middle East.
Al-Asad Air Base, an Iraqi installation 150 miles west of Baghdad that is operated jointly by the Iraqi and U.S. air forces, houses thousands of American troops, the largest U.S. deployment in the country.
Iran and its proxies have in recent years attacked it repeatedly.
[Map and reporting from the Washington Post]
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Friday/ summer solstice 🌞

Happy Friday.
Happy Summer Solstice (here in the northern hemisphere).

The arrival of summer weather has been delayed by a few days here in Seattle, with cool and rainy weather expected this weekend.
The high today was only 62°F (17°C).

The amigos had better luck this morning, finding an open court for pickleball at the Mount Baker Pickleball and Tennis Courts.
On the near side it’s a tennis court, officially, with no pickleball nets. We brought our own net, and it is set up and ready for play.
Over on the far side there is a pickleball lesson is in progress. I am marveling at the number of plastic baskets that the coach had brought to the court.
As far as I can tell there are 57.