Hole in the Clouds

Tag: Seattle

Omar Little

Jun 24, 2012

John and Bonnie in Seattle have a new dog, a year-old Boston terrier they call Omar Little, in memory of the best of the bad guys on The Wire. If the dog is really like the character, then he'll only rob or kill other bad guys, and once a month he'll take his mother to church.

dog   Bonnie   Seattle   JJ   The Wire  

Paint Job

Nov 29, 2012

The landlord told the tenants in this little house in Seattle that the place needed painting, and that he and his guys would be taking care of it. And it was true, apparently, that it needed painting, and also true that the landlord and his guys came over recently to do the work.

The job took two weeks. They painted a sunrise on this side of the house, and a sunset on the other side. Before then, both sides had been plain and gray.

The tenants say they like the house and they like the landlord, and it will take a lot more than this to get them to leave.

Washington   house   mural   Seattle   paint   (Image credit: John Stein)  

That Dirty Cheetah

Feb 6, 2013

John "JJ" Stein goes up for what we assume has got to be a basket in league play with Seattle's Jet City Hoops in the gym at the Asian Resource Center.

It's hard to know for sure, but the row of spectators sitting on stage might just be dazzled by the play of JJ and the other Cheetahs. Or their presence may reflect their interest in one of the Asian Resource Center's other resources.

sports   family   Seattle   JJ Stein   Jet City Hoops   Asian Resource Center   basketball  

Toast

Jul 28, 2013

One year ago today, Bonnie and John, aka JJ, were married in Seattle. After the ceremony, we all enjoyed the toasts.

Now that the clutches of time have put in a claim on the newlyweds, we would like to mark the anniversary with words that are sweet yet also a little bit edgy; nothing appropriate comes to mind, but surely it was all said back then during those toasts.

family   wedding   Bonnie   Seattle   JJ  

Traffic Jam

Aug 14, 2014

Water traffic is all backed up at Seattle's Ballard Locks on a sunny summer afternoon. Fortunately, there are a pair of locks straddling this dam, and even the smaller of the two–the lock shown here–can handle a couple of dozen small craft at a time.

The larger of the Ballard Locks was designed to allow passage by the largest ocean liner in existence, which at that time (1911) was the Lusitania. However, by the time the locks opened to traffic in 1917, the Lusitania had been sunk.

The boats in the photo above are all headed away from the City of Seattle and out toward saltwater; Puget Sound is just beyond the downstream end of the lock. Back upstream are numerous wharves and marinas and a couple of lakes. Although the Port of Seattle that handles today's largest tankers and container ships is accessed directly from the Sound, pleasure craft and smaller ships carrying more than a million tons of cargo still pass through these locks each year, utilizing smaller ports along the Ship Canal, including the homeport of much of the Bering Sea fishing fleet.

Depending on the tides and the water level of the lakes inland, the locks here raise or lower boats about 15 to 30 feet.

seascape   Puget Sound   Seattle   ships   Ballard Locks   boats   Ship Canal   (Image credit: Fuji T)  

Shape Shifter

May 18, 2016

A Giant Pacific Octopus at the Seattle Aquarium posed recently for my mother to take a picture with her phone.

These varmints can weigh up to 150 pounds and spread their arms to wrap up a house. The 200 suckers on each arm are used to trap and hold prey, especially crabs and other crustaceans, which the octopus may paralyze with toxic saliva before tearing apart with its parrot-like beak.

To ambush its prey, the octopus hides amongst the rocks and seaweed, blending in with its surroundings by changing color at will. It can even change its texture, mimicking its surroundings by raising lumps or knobs of muscle.

The entire animal is so squishy and transformable that only its beaklike mouth sets a limit to its shape-shifting. If it wants to, a Giant Pacific Octopus can squeeze itself through a hole the size of a lemon.

water   Seattle   underwater   aquarium   octopus   (Image credit: S. Horowitz)  

The Good Winter

Jan 18, 2017

There was a leetle, teeny bit of snow in Seattle, and then a taste of sun. Fine winter days.

But that was then; now, the snow has melted and it's raining hard, and predictions are that it will rain forever. It's easy to see why Lewis and Clark, after they spent a long, wet winter in the Pacific Northwest, judged their entire expedition a failure; this part of the world that they'd struggled so hard to "discover" was chilly and gray and mildewy and just plain unliveable.

cityscape   winter   Seattle   wires   Maple Leaf   across the street   (Image credit: the phone)  

Trolling

Feb 11, 2017

These papier-maché troll masks on display in Seattle's Nordic Heritage Museum were created by Norwegian-born Seattleite August Hansen Werner (1893–1980).

Although troll-themed masks were common articles of Norwegian folk art, these were different. Werner was a professional musician, an instructor at the University of Washington, and longtime conductor of the Norwegian Male Chorus of Seattle. He was also a painter and sculptor, and it is believed that he made these masks for operatic performances.

Seattle   trolls   Ballard neighborhood   August Hansen Werner   masks   Nordic Heritage Museum   Bergen, Norway   (Image credit: the phone)  

Been Through the Wringer

Feb 12, 2017

A sample of lint from the trap in our clothes dryer yielded this strand of something: a hair, maybe, or some kind of fiber that is fixing to fail.

We examined the lint with a scanning electron microscope, which magnified it about 927 times by shooting electrons at it and noting how they bounced back. If we'd had a regular old optical microscope, we might have been able to reach this same level of magnification, though we'd be approaching the upper limits of that technology.

Electron microscopes can detect details hundreds of times smaller than optical scopes because electrons travel in more or less straight paths while visible light undulates in waves. The downside is that electrons can't see in color and can't travel much beneath the surface of things, no matter how transparent or translucent that surface might be.

All in all, however, if lint is what you're wanting to look at, then a scanning electron microscope might be just the tool for the job. 

With its help, we calculated the width of this strand of whatever it is at about 20 microns–about one fiftieth of a millimeter. The hairs on our heads are usually more like 50 microns in diameter, so this probably isn't that.

This strand of whatever it is has obviously been through the wringer, even though our current washing machine doesn't have a wringer. The strand has been stressed, and were it not for a couple of microns of badly fraying inner strength at its core, it would have snapped completely.

Which does lead to speculation that what we're looking at here is My Last Nerve. . . .

But there are some other possibilities. Such as dog hair: dog hairs average about 25 microns in diameter, more or less in the same ballpark as this strand. Dog hairs often show a scaly pattern on their outer cuticles that looks kinda like the faint pattern we can sorta make out on what's left of the outer surface of this thing. And of course, finding a dog hair in the lint trap at our house, or pretty much anywhere else in our house, isn't completely freakish.

But really: could a dog hair get this mangled and shredded just from normal laundry processes? We want to beg off from a definitive answer; although we've worn many different hats over the years, we have never, ever presented ourselves as expert in the forensic analysis of dog hairs.

We've not yet, however, run out of options. Couldn't this thing be a fabric fiber from some item of clothing?

That electron microscope sure did come in handy.

laundry   hair   photography   Seattle   micrography   forensics   North Seattle College   scanning electron miscroscope   fiber   lint   (Image credit: North Seattle College Nanotechnology Lab)  

Power Couple

Feb 27, 2017

Andy "Brunso" Paves and Michel "Jean Claude Van Damsel" Anais, married since 2015, have parlayed professional sports into advanced degrees and non-sports professions.

Andy's professional MMA cage-fighting record is 5–1, with two of his wins by submission. He recently completed his PhD in clinical psychology at the University of Washington and is currently interning in Honolulu.

Skating for Seattle's Sugar Skulls roller derby team, Michel won all-star acclaim on the banked track and earned her MSW at the University of Washington.

Seattle   Honolulu   Andy Paves   mixed martial arts   MSW   PhD   roller derby   Jean Claude Van Damsel   Bunco   Michel Anais  

Great Grandparents Take to the Streets

Mar 25, 2018

Our friends and neighbors who live in University House Wallingford joined the nationwide anti-gun/anti-Trump protest Saturday, braving the cold and the traffic to make sure their voices were heard.

Most University House residents are in their eighties or nineties. At least one of the protesters is a centenarian. Some of them rarely leave home on foot, wary of the neighborhood's uneven sidewalks. But this was important. 

They held up handmade posters calling for gun control and school safety, taking up positions at a major intersection where Saturday shoppers would have to take notice.

Cars honked in their honor. Pedestrians thanked them. One storekeeper distributed gifts–well, gag gifts, since that was the store's specialty: little plastic fingers they could use for pointing at their signs.

Another neighbor, who'd ventured out to the grocery store for a gallon of milk, bought candy bars for all the protesters.

Time will tell how the politicians will respond. 

politics   street scene   Seattle   demonstration   University House   Wallingford   (Image credits: Fuji T)