Category: Seattle

We still have blue skies here and dry weather here in Seattle’s late-summer, with mild day temperatures (68°F/ 20°C).  In fact, it is clear that August 2012 will the driest in Seattle history with less than .01 inch of rain to show.  (Information from http://cliffmass.blogspot.com).

 

This is an old house close to 15th Avenue and Republican Street that is now all covered up in embroidered and knitted cloth.  It used to be a second-hand and antiquarian book store.  If the house is meant as a public work of art, no mention of it is made on the fencing around the house.   And it’s about to start raining every day here in Seattle – better take the cloth down before it becomes bedraggled with rain water, no?

 

This is the back of my house, on a beautiful late-summer Saturday evening in Seattle. The happy faces in the picture have not had their burgers, apple pie and ice cream yet .. but they will soon. (We are all happy because I made it up into the picture without knocking the camera over, or falling onto my face as I ran around the table).   Nothing like having guests over to motivate one to clean your house and fill up your fridge with some beer and food, and so that’s what I did !

 

 

I was running late for a meeting downtown and had to park near the Seattle library.  With no time left to search for parking,  I turned into a downtown parking garage; thought the parking would be similar to that for Pacific Place a few blocks away – $6 for 1½ hrs.  But no-o-o : 1½ hrs cost 17 big bucks.  Ouch – and oh well.   (Yes, I saw the rates on the board going in, but I couldn’t back out!).

 

I was just leaving the Half Price Books store on Capitol Hill on Sunday night when the sun was setting, etching out the Space Needle in the distance.  I tried to get a good picture with my phone camera, but the contrast between the bright sky and the dimly lit foreground was too great to get it all in one shot.  So here’s what you do: you take TWO pictures, and then use Photoshop to combine them.  Yes, it’s a little work, but didn’t the combined picture come out great?

 

I guess that’s like saying glass half empty, or glass half full?  The USA today says the terms are synonymous, weather wise.  But Seattle is right up there with the most cloudy days per year in the country : 226.

Here is a current picture of the Bullitt Center*, Seattle’s ultra-green building. Denis Hayes, the center’s owner, says it’s like the first Prius that was built, so it’s appropriate that a Prius scampered by just as I took the picture.  Note that there is no parking in the building for cars, though. Yikes.  Not even for Priuses; only for bicycles.    *There is another blog post about it on June 28, 2012.

 

I open all my junk mail – and there was a lot piled up this time – to make sure there are no personal information printed inside by the overzealous marketers that get one’s address from .. where? Facebook? Google? Amazon? Some shared address list?  Most of the offers are completely off the mark.  So forgive my ranting that is about to follow.

How about a new Mickey Mouse credit card ‘for my family’ from JP Morgan Chase? – a bank with $2.3 trillion in assets that wants to lend me money at credit card rates.  Money it gets from the US Government almost at 0%.  Or should I fill out the 2012 Presidential Platform Survey from the Republican National Committee?  I am very sure they will flinch and quickly crumple up the form I send them.   Maybe I can attend the Seattle rally for 2012 independent Presidential Candidate Dick McCormick?  To tell him : it’s just not going to happen for you, man.  The Democrats and Republicans are collectively spending $1 billion dollars – that’s with a B – on campaigning in this most-moneyed-EVER election.  How much money do you have, to spend?  Finally, got to love the environmental non-profits (‘Environmental Defense Fund’) that send whole brochures, or almanacs for 2013 printed on glossy paper.  How many trees were used for that?

Happy Mother’s Day to all moms!
It was a perfect weather day here in Seattle.  The blossoms are from close to my house.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I found these very very blue trees today in downtown Seattle, across from Westlake Center.  The blue was applied by Australian artist Konstantin Dimopoulos and is a mixture of powdered azurite (a vibrant blue copper mineral rock) and water.  The big chess game took place close by.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When the sun shines in Seattle, I feel I have to get out of the house.   And so I did on Sunday, went out the Space Needle, walked around it and thought I could take a few pictures of its orange-golden painted dome (it is 50 years old this year).  But I was too close and so I will go back another day, and go up Queen Anne hill so that I look down onto it.

 

Since it was May 1 and International Workers Day (which is not officially observed in the USA) there were peaceful protesters marching in Seattle yesterday.  They protested against broken immigration policies and income inequality.  There was also a mob of anarchists (that actually sounds too philosophical, l think vandals and criminals describe them better), out to do property destruction and lash out at people on the street and reporters.  Some were arrested but I have seen no reports of serious injuries.

 

This poster on 15th Ave here on Capitol Hill in my neighborhood is for a recording project (a music CD) of Seattle songwriter Scott Roots.

 

From the New York Times : ‘The Seattle Mariners rode a wave of Ichiromania in Tokyo to beat the Oakland Athletics in extra innings Wednesday in the opening game of the Major League Baseball season’. 

Attendance at the Tokyo Dome was an overflowing 44,227 (officially 126% full), so it was great that Ichiro Suzuki gave his fans in Japan a performance to cheer about. He had four hits, Dustin Ackley a home run and a single in the go-ahead run in the 11th inning, which had the Seattle Mariners beat the Oakland Athletics 3-1 on Wednesday night’s season opener.

There is a second game Thursday night in Tokyo.  Major League Baseball and the players’ association are using the series to assist rebuilding in Japan following last year’s earthquake and tsunami. On Tuesday some players and coaches traveled to the disaster area to conduct a baseball clinic.