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Monday/ MIT Museum 🧬

The MIT Museum, founded in 1971, is part of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. It hosts collections of holography, technology-related artworks, artificial intelligence, architecture, robotics, maritime history, and the history of MIT.  [Source: Wikipedia]

The MIT Museum at the Gambrill Center (completed 2022) occupies the first three floors of the multipurpose building at 314 Main Street. The museum is designed to “turn MIT inside out” (according to MIT Museum Director John Durant), inviting the community at large to join the conversation and participate in the creation of research projects and solutions.
Kismet, an early social robot (built in 1997) from the MIT Artificial Intelligence. It had movable ears, eyebrows, eyelids and lips.
Endgame, a chess machine invented in 1950 by Claude Shannon after he published a groundbreaking paper called “Programming a Computer for Playing Chess”.
Atom model kit, circa 1943.
Medusa (1985), a computer-generated holographic stereogram by the MIT Spatial Imaging Group and the MIT Media Laboratory.
The famous Milk Drop Coronet (1957) photograph, made with pioneering high-speed flash photography.
Black Panther comic Jungle Action #12 featured the first Black superhero, and featured an MIT alumnus as fictional supervillain Erik Killmonger (bottom right).
A genetically engineered pink chicken. The real chicken has pinkish bones and pinkish muscles as well.
3D Models that explain hoe CRISPR technology works (used for gene splicing and editing).
A journal book from the museum store.
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Sunday/ Boston architecture 🏙

Here are a few pictures of buildings and artifacts that caught my eye.

Here is a beautiful flatiron building at the junction of Pleasant Street and River Street in Cambridge with lots of copper on the outside (the green). It was built in 1899, and its most recent renovation was done in 2020 with the repair and replacement of some of the doors and windows, and updates to the wiring and plumbing inside.
This firehouse is just a few blocks down on River Street in Cambridge.
Engine Company No. 6 was established in 1852 as Pioneer Engine Company No. 6 and was located in a building on Pioneer Street in Ward 2, Kendall Square.
They moved into this building at 176 River Street in 1891 and has been there ever since.
I love old-fashioned hardware like this.
The First Baptist Church on River Street is undergoing a few renovations.
The church is a tall single-story brick structure, with sandstone trim and decorative detailing in terra cotta, and has Gothic Revival styling. It was constructed in 1881.
The Old State House, also known as the Old Provincial State House, was built in 1713. It was the seat of the Massachusetts General Court until 1798. It is the oldest surviving public building in the city.
The Park Street Congregational Church is on the corner of the Boston Common. The Boston Common is the oldest public park in the US.
The Massachusetts State House (built 1795-1798), also known as the New State House (to distinguish it from the Old Statehouse), as seen from the Boston Common. The building is the state capitol and seat of government for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. 
That is gold foil on the dome, put on in 1997 at a cost of $300,000 (and previously done in 1969 for $36,000). Another $20.3 million renovation project has gotten underway just this year.
This is the tombstone of John Hancock in the Granary Burying Ground near the Boston Common.
Hancock was the first and third Governor of Massachusetts; in office between May 1787 and October 1793.
Central Station on the Red Line has benches decorated with colorful tiles.
I took pictures of all the little decorative tile inlays on the pillars across the tracks. I posted them all. 🤗
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Macy’s department store in downtown Boston takes up the entire city block, the same way as the one in New York City does.
Unable to pay its bills after decades at the heart of Boston’s cultural life, the Boston Opera House closed its doors in 1991 and began physically deteriorating at an alarming rate. Now, however, after a lavish restoration in the early 2000s, the Opera House has a new vitality.
The Boston Opera House was completed in 1928 as a tribute to Benjamin Franklin Keith, a leading figure in vaudeville, so popular in the United States in the years before.
And here we are today— a collage of modern glass and steel facades, caught in the zoom lens of my phone’s camera.
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Friday/ arrival into Boston 🛬

It was a direct flight to Boston, just over 5 hours of flying.

At Boston Logan airport, the Silver Line bus took me to South Station on the MTBA’s* Red Line. I went four stops to Central Station, close enough to walk to my hotel.

*Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority

Departing for Boston from Seattle-Tacoma airport’s North Terminal.
A little bit of New England coastline— a minute or two before touchdown at Boston’s Logan international airport. That’s a water tower in the middle of the picture, and in the far right in the shallow waters are five barriers called The Five Sisters.
On the Sliver Line bus now (using Google Maps to make sure I go more or less in the right direction!). We are 1. on Interstate 90, the interstate highway that runs across the northern United States and into Seattle, 2. in a tunnel running under the waterway called Boston Main Channel in Boston harbor.
Inside the Sliver Line bus, in the tunnel under Boston Harbor.
At South Station. Here comes the Red Line train. These trains have been running a long, long time. The downtown portions of what are now the Green, Orange, Blue, and Red line tunnels and rails were all in service by 1912.
The sun sets early, as it does in Seattle: at 4.20 pm here. There was just enough light left for me to walk to the hotel from Central station. This cute hole-in-the-wall place is on River Street in Cambridge.
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Thursday/ my bags are packed 💼

I’m leaving for Boston in the morning to visit for a few days.
I have been there before, a lifetime ago.

This is June of 1995.
The MIT Press Bookstore is still there, at 314 Main Street in Cambridge, and right by the exit of the Kendall/ MIT stop on the Red Line train line.
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Wednesday/ mushrooms 🍄

Herewith the 2024 fall edition of the mushrooms in my yard.

These are in the grass in the front yard: the Scotch bonnet (Marasmius oreades), also known as the fairy ring mushroom or fairy ring champignon.
The bright red fly agarics (Amanita muscaria) are not so plentiful this year. About six inches across, this one.
The squirrels like to nibble on the cap, but not much more than that.
I believe these are brown fly agarics (Amanita regalis).

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Tuesday/ written in 1895 🖋

I don’t collect whole pieces of mail (such as envelopes, first day covers and post cards), but I found this post card that was for sale on Ebay impossible to resist.

This post card (‘Briefkaart’) is Afrikaans only and doesn’t bother to offer English wording (later ones were bilingual, and did). Check out the gorgeous cursive writing, an art form lost in the century that followed.
The card was mailed in 1895, in Johannesburg, City of Gold, ‘El Dorado’ for real— founded only nine years prior, in 1886. (In that year the Witwatersrand Gold Rush started, which led to the establishment of Johannesburg). 
Just a few years earlier still, the outcome of the First Boer War (1880-81) had led to the temporary independence of the South African Republic (‘Zuid-Afrikaanse Republiek’) from the British Empire.

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Monday/ Veterans Day 🎖️

Happy Veterans Day to all military veterans of the United States Armed Forces.

U.S. #2513   1990 25¢ Dwight D. Eisenhower
Issue Date: October 13, 1990
City: Abilene, KS
Quantity: 142,692,000
Printed By: American Bank Note Company
Printing Method: Photogravure
Perforations: 11
Color: Multicolored
Dwight D. Eisenhower’s official presidential portrait is featured on this stamp honoring the 100th anniversary of his birth.
The background pictures him overseeing his troops in his capacity as five-star general.
A circlet of five stars distinguishes that title.
[Source: mysticstamp.com]
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Sunday/ a little architecture 🏙

I took the No 8 bus to Westlake Avenue and walked from there to the Amazon Spheres, and back up to Capitol Hill.

It’s cold and gray outside, but summery and light inside the Spheres. I am on Lenora Street, looking towards the northeast.
This art installation off Westlake Avenue is called Kilroy Star and was put up by commercial real estate agency Kilroy Realty in June. (The colors in the star cycle continuously through reds, greens and blues).
If my research on the mathematics of polyhedrons is accurate, this is a Kepler-Poinsot polyhedron. This one is called a small stellated dodecahedron. It consists of twelve pyramids with pentagonal bases that are mounted on the faces of a regular dodecahedron.
The Seattle architect Louis Svarz (1886-1976) designed this building on Lenora Street for the Puget Sound Notion Company, a wholesaler of notions (sewing accessories).
Its construction was completed in 1930. Today the building belongs to Cornish College of the Arts. (The 1914 date in the window is the founding year of the Cornish College).
The Omni South Lake Union (also known as 1120 Denny Way) with its two 41-story towers boasts 827 apartments and 272 hotel rooms. It opened in May 2022. s
The balconies on the Denny Way side offers a list of historical events and their dates.
I’ve made my way up Denny Way to the junction with Stewart Street. In the distance is REN Seattle, a high-rise apartment tower at 1400 Fairview Avenue.
To my right is the 1200 Stewart Street apartment towers that are still under construction after six whole years (construction started in 2018).
Here is the 1200 Stewart Street apartment complex. The construction of the towers is complete but it seems that there is still a lot of finishing work on the inside and outside that remains. If I can believe what I read on Redditt, there are plans afoot to suspend a repurposed Boeing 747 fuselage above the residential project’s galleria as a centerpiece and a symbol of industrial innovation— on view as a sensational artifact for both pedestrians at street level and for residents in their dwellings overhead. Hmm.
Here’s a closer look at one of the posters in the window.
On May 10, 1968 The Jimi Hendrix Experience performed two shows at the Fillmore East in New York City, with support from Sly & the Family Stone and the Joshua Light Show.
(Jimi Hendrix is James Marshall “Jimi” Hendrix, an American guitarist, songwriter and singer. He is widely regarded as the greatest guitarist in the history of popular music and one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. He was born in Seattle on Nov. 27, 1942 and died tragically young at the age of 27 in September 1970 – from Wikipedia).
I’ve now made my way across I-5 on the Denny Way overpass, and I always turn around on Melrose Avenue, to take a picture of the Space Needle wedged between the towers of 1120 Denny Way.
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Saturday/ squares ⬜

Here’s a sneak preview of the public art installation at the junction of 14th Avenue and Madison Street on Capitol Hill.
(Is it a time machine? Can I enter the big square and emerge four years into the future at the far end?).

Even though it’s only 5:20 pm in the picture, night has already cast its inky blacks.

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Friday/ indoor pickleball 🥒

Five amigos played a little pickle ball at the Sandman’s Courts in Columbia City.
It was 52 °F (11 °C) outside when we started— not too frigid for playing outside, but we have come to like the indoor courts with their clean lines and bathrooms right by the courts.

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Thursday/ stamp therapy ✉️

I still have shoeboxes full of South African stamps on paper cutouts, and I dunk them batch by batch into water to separate the stamp from the paper.
Those that have nice postmarks on (place name and date), I keep on the paper, though.
Below is such a page.
Some of these postmarks belong completely to history.
The cities and towns that they denote have been renamed in recent years.

Fourth Definitive Issue (1982-87)— South African Buildings
Issued Jul. 15, 1982
Perf. 14½x14, 14×14½ | Litho. and Recess Printing | No watermark
564 A229 1c Brown (’84) | Old Provost, Grahamstown
566 A229 2c Green | Tuynhuys, Cape Town
574 A229 8c Intense Blue (’83) | Leeuwenhof, Cape Town
576 A229 10c Light red-brown | City Hall, Pietermaritzburg
578 A229 11c Cerise (’84) | City Hall, Kimberley
579 A229 12c Deep Ultramarine (’85) | City Hall, Port Elizabeth
580 A229 14c Rose brown (’86) | Johannesburg City Hall
(Note- Only the stamps in the picture are listed here; several others were issued as part of the fourth definitive series).
[Source: 2021 Scott Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue, Vol. 6A]

Postmarks:
ADELAIDE, HEIDELBERG, BEAUFORT WEST, WESTONARIA, BRANDFORT (Winnie Mandela since 2021), BENONI, ESTCOURT, BOKSBURG, FOCHVILLE, GRAHAMSTOWN (now also known as Makhanda), ALBERTON, KROONSTAD, KING WILLIAM’S TOWN (Qonce since 2021), NIGEL, PIETERMATIZBURG, PORT SHEPSTONE, POTCHEFSTROOM, QUEENSTOWN (Komani since 2016), SASOLBURG, STRAND, SPRINGS (now part of the City of Ekurhuleni), SOMERSET WEST, THBAZIMBI, VANDERBIJLPARK, LICHTENBURG, WORCESTER.

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Wednesday/ the morning after 🤯

Without question, the outcome of the 2024 U.S. presidential election brought a devastating sense of loss to all of us who had hoped reason would prevail.
I cannot fathom how anyone could believe that this vile, repugnant man— the sore loser of the 2020 election— is fit to once again serve as President of the United States.

I’ve also promised myself that this will be the last post I make about politics for a very long time.

Headlines from the online New York Times. Will a woman ever be United States president?
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Monday/ voter turnout is key ❎

Happy Monday. So here we are, with Election Day tomorrow.
About 50% of likely American voters have already cast their ballots. The rest will all vote tomorrow.
(New Hampshire, Alabama and Mississippi do not allow general early voting—an eligible reason is required to vote early, by mail).

Only about 2/3 of eligible American voters vote in presidential election years, and only about 1/2 in mid-term elections.
The turnout percentages have gotten bigger in recent cycles, though.

From pewresearch.org under a page heading ‘1. Voter turnout, 2018-2022’:
The elections of 2018, 2020 and 2022 were three of the highest-turnout U.S. elections of their respective types in decades.
About two-thirds (66%) of the voting-eligible population turned out for the 2020 presidential election – the highest rate for any national election since 1900. The 2018 election (49% turnout) had the highest rate for a midterm since 1914.
Even the 2022 election’s turnout, with a slightly lower rate of 46%, exceeded that of all midterm elections since 1970.

While sizable shares of the public vote either consistently or not at all, many people vote intermittently. Given how closely divided the U.S. is politically, these intermittent voters often determine the outcome of elections and how the balance of support for the two major political parties swings between elections.

Overall, 70% of U.S. adult citizens who were eligible to participate in all three elections between 2018 and 2022 voted in at least one of them, with about half that share (37%) voting in all three.

Public Service Announcement
Make sure you drop your ballot in an official ballot box. 😆
(Garbage can on Capitol Hill’s 15th Avenue East relabeled by graffiti sticker prankster).
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Sunday/ back to Standard Time 🌇

We set our clocks back one hour last night. Daylight Saving Time that had started in March, ended.
So all of the United States is now back on Standard Time, and the sun sets a whole hour earlier than it did on Saturday.

Hey! I made it to the Seattle waterfront this afternoon. I took the G Line bus down to 1st Avenue, and the light rail back, from Westlake to Capitol Hill station. 
This is 3.46 pm, and there is just an hour of sunlight left (sunset is now at 4.47 pm).
Here comes Marine Vessel Puyallup, arriving at the Seattle Ferry Terminal, in from Bainbridge Island.
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Saturday/ unity makes strength 🪙

It was November of 1899 in colonial Africa— in what is called South Africa today.
The Second Boer War had already started, on October 11.

The British government had rejected an ultimatum issued by the Boer republics of the Transvaal and Orange Free State.
The republics had demanded the withdrawal of British troops from their borders, primarily due to growing tensions caused by the discovery of gold in the Transvaal (Johannesburg today) and the influx of British “Uitlander” (foreigner) miners who were denied political rights by the Boer government.

The mint, where the republics produced gold coins for 1899, soon learned that the Kruger Pound dies for the 1899 coins were intercepted by the British in then-Lourenzo Marques in Mozambique (Maputo, today).

On the 2nd day of November 1899 at 10.30am, a single figure 9 was stamped at the bottom of the President’s bust on an 1898 coin, slightly overlapping the design. The coin is known today as ‘the single nine counterstamp’ or simply the ‘Single 9’, and is South Africa’s only one-of-a-kind coin.

This description from Heritage Auctions.com (the coin goes up for auction on Jan 13, 2025 in New York City):
Republic gold “9” Pond 1898 MS63 Prooflike NGC, Pretoria mint, KM-Unl., Hern-ZP6.
The indisputable ‘unicorn coin’ in the entire South African series, the “Single 9 Overstamp” 1898 Pond remains unchallenged in its exclusive solitude. A distinct variant of the 130-piece “99” Pond issue, the “Single 9” Pond reportedly changed hands in a private sale in 2010, for a value documented as “multi-million Rand” by Hern. Other industry sources detail a more precise figure of ZAR 20,000,000, which was the equivalent of US$ 2,700,000 at the average 2010 exchange rate. Possibly selected as the candidate for the overstamping for its gleaming ‘Prooflike’ appearance, this rarified treasure has been the prime target of South African experts for over a century.
Translation: ‘Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek’ is ‘South African Republic’ (an area north of the Vaal River and south of the Limpopo River and not to be confused with ‘Republic of South Africa’, which is all of modern-day South Africa and which came about only in May 1961, after the Union of South Africa gained its independence from Great Britain).
The figure on the coin is President Paul Kruger, the leading figure in the movement to restore the South African Republic’s independence, culminating in the Boers’ victory in the First Boer War of 1880–1881. Kruger served until 1883 as a member of an executive triumvirate, then was elected President of the South African Republic.
The gold price as of November 01, 2024 is $2,736.42 per ounce, a record high*.
*In absolute dollar terms. When adjusted for inflation, the early 1980s is still the peak for gold, at some $3,200 per ounce in inflation-adjusted dollars.
Translation: ‘Eendragt Maakt Mag’ means ‘Unity makes strength’.
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Friday/ look ma, no hands 👐

November is here. Happy Friday.

I have another 30 days+ of complimentary Full Self Driving (Supervised) switched on for my Tesla Model 3, courtesy of Tesla.
One of my favorite functions is the self-parking function. (Tesla calls it Autopark). I pick one of the parking spaces that my car ‘sees’ (it shows it on the console), and then let go of the steering wheel so that the car can park itself.
The parking function only works for perpendicular or parallel parking and not for angled parking. For parallel parking, there must be a vehicle in front of or behind the space you want to park in.
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Wednesday/ a sinking ship 🛳️

Some 50 million voters have already cast their ballots for the 2024 US Elections (one third of the electorate).
I came across this stamp in my shoebox with on-paper stamps today.

1994 Modern Shipwrecks
Issued Mar. 18, 1994 by Transkei, from the final set of stamps issued by Transkei*
Perf. 14½ x14 | Litho. | No watermark
301 A62 85c |Multicolored | Oceanos**, 1991
*Transkei was a self-governing tribal homeland in South Africa from 1976 to 1994 in the Eastern Cape province. Transkei ceased to exist on Apr. 27, 1994. It was reincorporated into the Republic of South Africa after the 1994 national election.
**MTS Oceanos was a French-built and Greek-owned cruise ship that sank in 1991 off the coast of South Africa when she suffered uncontrolled flooding.
Friends of my parents were on the ship as she was going under 😱, and came away on a lifeboat with nothing other than the clothes that they had been wearing.
[Sources: Scott Standard Postage Stamp Catalog, Vol. 6A, Wikipedia]