Stick a fork in it, its done.

 Another picture from the University Street Fair (May 21)

This pair of cats entertained passersby with their music yesterday (May 21) morning at University Street Fair. Like any street musicians they had placed their hat on the pavement in front of their stage. It just occurred to me as I wrote that, to wonder about how that hat would fit over their kitty ears, I guess the musicians must have worked that out before getting to the fair.

This morning's magazine insert in the Seattle Times include a nostalgia piece about accordions, and a Seattle store that has been making and selling accordions for 100 years.

But I wonder about the instrument played by the second musician. Will it ever gain a following that might raise it to the level of nostalgia at future street fairs?

Further down the Ave, another musical group was entertaining. Their sound was ever so much louder and the accumulated crowd standing in the street listening was ever so much larger.

 

Pileated woodpecker in Beaver Pond Natural Area.  I watched as this bird first came into my field of view with a flash of wings landing on the opposite side of a tall snag beyond the range of my photo lens.  He reappeared after a few minutes just before I was about to give up, thinking that I had been mistaken in initially thinking that the flash of wings was real and had stopped at the tree.  He did reappear and flew down to forage on short stubs and logs on the ground, before he came to this rotting log, and commenced poking and probing and prying and tossing off bits of the rotted wood.  All the while I was silently urging the bird to keep moving along the log to get to the more photogenic spot of sunlight at the end of the log.  He finally obliged and spent several minutes in the sun as shown, before flying off, and out of my sight.

Note: the water below and behind the bird is Thornton Creek backed up by a beaver dam.

 

Thimbleberry (Rubus parviflorus).  Thimbleberry is a native shrub, related to the imported Himalayan blackberry (Rubus discolor) but lacking the sharp thorns.  Thimbleberry berries are not satisfactory for picking to make into jam or to bake in a pie.  They are not so sweet and succulent; some would suggest that the taste tends toward bitter; nor are they very prolific.  But the flowers are delicately pretty, if caught at the right time and in the best light.

 Two views of the same big leaf maple branch against the red siding and a dark window.First is from April 5, second came 42 days later.

Photo taken April 5, note hanging flower clusters.

Photo taken May 17, note heavy, hanging seed pods.  Maple seed pods are, using scientific jargon, called samara, to kids who gather and toss them in the air to watch as they float down call them helicopters and a variety of other local terms.  

Newly installed street tree shown with orange tulips; a masked pedestrian passing the tree, wearing an orange dress and carrying cell phone.

 

 

The pond, the sign wants to keep dogs out of, is on the northeast corner of the North Seattle College campus, north of the newly constructed John L. Lewis pedestrian bridge.  The text on the sign beside message about dogs, identifies the pond as the breeding pond for our local Pacific Chorus frogs.  The frogs are the mascot of the college.  Also seen in the back of the photo though, not clearly are mallard ducks, shoveler duck and Bufflehead.

As I stood to get the photograph and watch the ducks, at least three chorus frogs began calling, from points quite close and from the opposite side of the pond.  A welcome sound of early spring and cause to celebrate the persistence of a bit of nature in the city. 

Charlie and I will check back periodically to see when egg masses appear, and later when tad poles emerge.  We will submit periodic reports on Tree Frogs and other comings and goings around the pond, to this page.

 

I was at Gas Works Park this afternoon with Lisa and several others of the 350 Seattle Artful Team preparing a banner for the MLK Rally and March next Monday January 17.  The two in the foreground of the first photo are filling in the large letters with red ink; The two in the back of the photo are paused to look up at the two bald eagles on the tower of the second photo.

A blue and an orange photo for January 14. 

 

Persistence of memory. (With apologies to Salvadore Dali for infringing into his memory.)

 

 

Can't be certain but this must be the same male hummingbird who has been hanging around our balcony since late October. More recently we have hung a feeder on the balcony and this fellow has taken up this position on the railing for most of the daylight hours. He sits there as a sentry keeping track of the comings and goings around the feeder. If another hummer approaches, as if to get a sip of sugar water from "his" supply, he rises up and chases the intruder away.

Neighbors here at Aljoya with feeders hanging on their balconies, report regularly seeing multiple hummers sipping from their feeder. "Our" male is not of a sharing nature.

Yesterday, early morning there were two females at the feeder, they had moved on before the guard arrived for duty.

I'll wait to see how he works out relations with females wanting to sip from his sugar water supply, over the next several weeks.

 

 

HERE COMES THE SUN

I know we haven’t yet passed the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere and it may be months before we see daffodils again but still I think it is ok to start humming:

“Here comes the sun, do, dun, do, do

Here comes the sun, and I say

It's all right”

     You do remember The Beattles don't you?  Google "Here comes the sun" if you need help with remembering the tune:

     If for whatever reason; "Its not all right", try the more seasonal Gene Autry story:   

    “Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus, right down Santa Claus Lane.

 

 

 

The short story is The Ghost Town Collectives; it was written by Britney Corrigan; and it is available to read at:  https://www.terrain.org/2020/fiction/the-ghost-town-collectives/.  It is the story of 51 year old Liam McDaniel.  That was the year he bought a ghost town in Colorado and spent most of the year among ghosts, in the ghost town he bought.

“Liam’s circumstances were unusual for their raw improbability. Perhaps you understand this from within circumstances of your own. You know Liam, sympathize with his loss. Perhaps you lost someone, too.”

Look into the short story by Brittney Corrigan to learn all manner of collective nouns and read her wonderful if melancholy story of Liam who lost wife daughter and son to the Covid virus.  Reading the short story you will learn that: “A group of patients is called a virtue. A group of doctors is called a doctrine. There is no definitive collective noun for corpses. There are many names for a group of trees. A clump, a forest, a coupe. A grove. A thicket. A stillness. A stand.”  “There is no agreed upon name for a collective of tears.”

When you finish reading the story you can decide for yourself which if any of the collective nouns are real or if they were all invented in the story.

I can look out my window to watch progress on the soon to be completed Light Rail line to Northgate.  It is scheduled to open in 2021.

As I watch and when Charlie and I make our regular walks, I’ve been seeing this railroad car running back and forth along the elevated tracks approaching the Northgate Light Rail station.

I don’t imagine it is a prototype for a new design for rail cars to use on the new stretch of track, but…! It would make a good open-air observation car; it has seats for passengers; and is that a conductor learning and testing the new car and new tracks. Looks like it can be raised and lowered for moving between tunnel and open tracks.

Something to keep track of and watch as the scheduled opening opening approaches. No date has been published as yet for opening celebration when the new station will be opened and passengers can ride the new rails.

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I spent an hour or so Tuesday (10-27) morning and into early afternoon at Fishermen's Terminal today. It is a wonderful place to escape into enjoying the shapes and lines and colors of fishing boats big and small, new and old, tied up at the wharf. The new sleek pleasure yachts are not so interesting as objects to photograph.

Several examples of what I found today.

 

Our house is a very, very, very fine house with two cats in the yard

Life used to be so hard

Now everything is easy 'cause of you

And our la, la, la, la, la, la, la,

I have nothing to add to the content of this photo.  Except having written that I proceeded to comment on the making of the photo.  It is a picture of the backside of a garden shed, taken from the alley running along the back yards of a block of homes.  It is one of those places that I, with Charlie, have passed by frequently on our wanderings into nearby neighborhoods.  More than once I stopped to look more seriously, to consider it as a subject for making a photograph.  This day I did pay it more attention with the result being this photograph.  

At the very least it works as a garden picture.  This photo was captured on October 22, I have fussed over it these several days since; being ambivalent about whether it is interesting or is it not so very interesting.  At the moment I come down on the side of interesting enough to share here.  

 Please allow me to indulge myself with a selection of pictures from a visit to Pioneer Square in downtown Seattle yesterday (10-10-20) afternoon.  

The consensus; of myself and two other photographers I happened to meet who were also also carrying a camera around and aiming to shoot in various directions and at sundry subjects, was that it is an interesting and different place without the usual crowd of people.  No baseball games or football or American football in the stadium, to attract fans into the streets.  I did meet a couple of women carrying a cut out silhouette of a person they identified as brother wearing a Mariners shirt; I think they were headed to some sort of event off in the direction of the stadium.  

Not so many people wandering the sidewalks as would have been if this were the old normal pre pandemic.  And distressing to note the number of storefronts that were boarded over or with for lease signs in the windows.  Some of galleries were open and welcoming to visitors; a few with open doors on the warm sunny afternoon some others with doors closed but openwith invitation to ring bell for admittance.  All had signs at the entrance announcing; no entry without face covering.

In no particular order and without any intention or purpose or message other than that they are pictures that looked interesting as I was wandering around the uncrowded, sunny streets of Pioneer square.  

 

The Halloween Season is Upon Us

There be all manner of spooky and scary creatures abiding in the neighborhood these days. Beware of what you may meet around the next corner or behind the hedge. Some may even go bump in the night.

I don't know what to make of this dragon as he tries to make sense of the sign on fence(the sign reads backyard wildlife sanctuary). 

Is he studying it, trying to figure out how it might apply to him as an occupant of this backyard; or might he be considering a wildlife sanctuary as a likely place to seek after tasty prey for dinner or a snack.

Either way, he could be thinking that he belongs, after all he can adopt a "wild" demeanor as circumstances warrant.

On the other hand his pose and body language make a lie of the dragon stereotype as fire breathing dangerous creature.  No need in this case to seek out a knight in shining armor.

            

 LOUISE GLUCK, (Pronounced Glick My keyboard doesn't have an umlaut to put over the U), has been awarded the Nobel Prize for literature.

Louise Gluck has been awarded the Nobel Prize for literature.  In making the announcement, the committee: “praised her minimalist voice and especially poems that get to the heart of family life”.  I add in my own voice that she often times get just a little too close to the heart, many of the poems are not easy to read; it is not easy to admit the reality that she speaks of.  The word melancholy comes to my mind in so much of her poetry.  I first met Louise Gluck on the bookshelves of Eliott Bay bookstore in the mid 1990’s.  I have come to appreciate her words more, 30 years later and 20 years into a new century

This piece is from her collection of poetry Ararat published in 1990

CHILDREN COMING HOME FROM SCHOOL

1.        

If you live in a city, It’s different: someone has to meet

the child at the bus stop.  There’s a reason.  A child all alone

can disappear, get lost, maybe forever.

 

My sister’s daughter wants to walk home alone; she thinks she’s

                 old enough.

My sister thinks its too soon for such a big change;

the best her daughter gets

is the option to walk without holding hands.

 

That’s what they do; compromise, which anyone

can manage for a few blocks.  My niece gets one hand

totally free; my sister says

if she’s old enough to walk this way, she’s old enough

to hold her own violin.