Thoughts of warmer days. These were taken on Lake Washington on July 29, 2009, when the official temperature reached 103, making it the hottest day on record. For more hot/warm weather windows, please go here. For more photos like this, please visit my online gallery. Photos by MS(R)M
Hi again and yep, from the ramparts of the Bastion on the Puget Sound, it’s been another interesting week.
We join the rest of the world in mourning the passing, at age 100, of Miep Gies, the brave woman from the Netherlands who helped Anne Frank and her family hide from the Germans during World War II and, after the Gestapo finally discovered them, made sure Ms Frank’s diaries were returned to the only one of them to survive the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, Anne’s father Otto. Anne died there at age 15 of typhus. For a moving tribute to a quiet, humble and incredibly brave human being, please go here. For more on Miep’s life and times, please go here.
And our heart certainly goes out to those hundreds of thousands in Haiti victimized by the worst earthquake in 200 years. For more on this one, please go here. And to learn how you can help, please check this link.
SURVIVING HARD TIMES
Workers at Portland, Oregon’s Daimler Truck plant received good news when it was announced that the struggling operation was awarded $40-million in federal funds to develop more fuel efficient technologies. Daimler was one of nine companies to receive such an award. For more on this one and a list of the others involved, please go here.
And under the category of breaking stereotype, Detroit takes best read in this category. As Susan Salny of the New York Times reports:
“With $6,000 and some Hollywood-style spunk, four friends opened this city’s only independent foreign movie house three months ago in an abandoned school auditorium on an unlighted stretch of the Cass Corridor near downtown.”
Yep, this is one of those, if they can do it there, maybe we can do it here stories so for more on this, please go here.
MORE GOOD NEWS
Congratulations to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada for winning the Sightline Institute’s Cascadia’s Greenest City award. I’m also pleased that Seattle came in second and Portland, for whose major daily newspaper I once worked, third.
For those of you unfamiliar with Cascadia, it basically extends south from the Alaska Peninsula to San Francisco and east across British Columbia to western Alberta, then south through parts of Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, Nevada and Northern California.
In my experience, there’s nothing quite so empowering and inspiring as a good example. So to find out what criteria the Institute used and how each city ranked by category, please go here.
A small Washington state community has found a unique way to recycle Christmas trees by letting the goats at a local animal rescue eat them. I love it and yep, only in Washington and remember where you read it first. Yep, go here.
Maybe not so good news but if anyone still doubts global warming, they might want to take a hike up Mt. Rainier. According to Seattle Times science reporter Sandi Doughton:
“The fallout from Mount Rainier's shrinking glaciers is beginning to roll downhill, and nowhere is the impact more striking than on the volcano's west side.”
I can see Mt. Rainer from the ramparts of the Bastion on the Puget Sound and I was on the Canadian border when her sister, Mt. St. Helens, erupted. A lot of us count on those glaciers to keep Lady Rainer cool, calm and unriled. Understandably, then, we’ll be keeping a close eye on this one. You can too, by going here.
CRITTER STUFF
We’ve got three totally beautiful stories to share with you this week and the first is about this absolutely darling dolphin who had the misfortune, as a baby, to get her tail caught in a crab pot rope. Despite every effort possible, Winter lost her fluke and it was decided she’d be safer in the Clearwater Marine Aquarium in Florida, where she could also be rehabilitated. She became an instant hit, of course, and attracted the attention of a small company which has been making prosthetic flukes for her. This is one of the most moving and inspirational I’ve read in a long time. For an interview with Winter’s trainer, Abby Stone, on The Bonnie Hunt Show, please go here. To see where Winter lives, yep, please go here.
Closer to home, our local orca pot increased its number by one on New Years Day. A twelve-year-old killer whale had a calf, which was spotted as J Pod moved south of Vancouver Island and into the Puget Sound. Yep, he/she’s a cutie and for a pix of mother and child and more on this one, please go here. Our thanks to Dave and Marilee from Victoria, British Columbia, Canada and to the Victoria Times Colonist for this one.
I loved this one because I love it when animals keep humans guessing. And according to Tom Stienstra, San Francisco Chronicle Outdoors Writer. Some are.
“The question on everyone's mind lately has been: Where have San Francisco's famous sea lions gone? The answer might lie about 500 miles north of the Golden Gate, where an estimated 2,000 sea lions have recently arrived off the central Oregon coast.”
I’ve been to Florence this time of year and it’s a real nice break from the pandemonium of urban society. San Francisco’s been going through a lot of changes lately and they’ve never been known for doing anything on the hush and nod.
My guess most of these new arrivals to Sea Lion Caves were probably light sleepers who just needed to catch up on their zzzzzs. As large as they are, those are probably ZZZZZZZZZZZZs. I expect they’ll be up there some while. San Francisco doesn’t show any signs of keeping it down past ten p.m. Yep, for more on this one, please go here.
FROM YOU GUYS FOR YOU GUYS
ty mick. i liked hearing about the coyote. my dad had a coyote for a pet when he was a teenager and evidentally both adapted well until my grandfather sold the coyote. i have always thought that was mean spirited of him. warmest regards, fay
Fay, as always, a pleasure, lass. We kind of tripped out on it too.
Hi again and yep, from the ramparts of the Bastion on the Puget Sound, it’s been another interesting week.
We join the rest of the world in mourning the passing, at age 100, of Miep Gies, the brave woman from the Netherlands who helped Anne Frank and her family hide from the Germans during World War II and, after the Gestapo finally discovered them, made sure Ms Frank’s diaries were returned to the only one of them to survive the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, Anne’s father Otto. Anne died there at age 15 of typhus. For a moving tribute to a quiet, humble and incredibly brave human being, please go here. For more on Miep’s life and times, please go here.
And our heart certainly goes out to those hundreds of thousands in Haiti victimized by the worst earthquake in 200 years. For more on this one, please go here. And to learn how you can help, please check this link.
SURVIVING HARD TIMES
Workers at Portland, Oregon’s Daimler Truck plant received good news when it was announced that the struggling operation was awarded $40-million in federal funds to develop more fuel efficient technologies. Daimler was one of nine companies to receive such an award. For more on this one and a list of the others involved, please go here.
And under the category of breaking stereotype, Detroit takes best read in this category. As Susan Salny of the New York Times reports:
“With $6,000 and some Hollywood-style spunk, four friends opened this city’s only independent foreign movie house three months ago in an abandoned school auditorium on an unlighted stretch of the Cass Corridor near downtown.”
Yep, this is one of those, if they can do it there, maybe we can do it here stories so for more on this, please go here.
MORE GOOD NEWS
Congratulations to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada for winning the Sightline Institute’s Cascadia’s Greenest City award. I’m also pleased that Seattle came in second and Portland, for whose major daily newspaper I once worked, third.
For those of you unfamiliar with Cascadia, it basically extends south from the Alaska Peninsula to San Francisco and east across British Columbia to western Alberta, then south through parts of Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, Nevada and Northern California.
In my experience, there’s nothing quite so empowering and inspiring as a good example. So to find out what criteria the Institute used and how each city ranked by category, please go here.
A small Washington state community has found a unique way to recycle Christmas trees by letting the goats at a local animal rescue eat them. I love it and yep, only in Washington and remember where you read it first. Yep, go here.
Maybe not so good news but if anyone still doubts global warming, they might want to take a hike up Mt. Rainier. According to Seattle Times science reporter Sandi Doughton:
“The fallout from Mount Rainier's shrinking glaciers is beginning to roll downhill, and nowhere is the impact more striking than on the volcano's west side.”
I can see Mt. Rainer from the ramparts of the Bastion on the Puget Sound and I was on the Canadian border when her sister, Mt. St. Helens, erupted. A lot of us count on those glaciers to keep Lady Rainer cool, calm and unriled. Understandably, then, we’ll be keeping a close eye on this one. You can too, by going here.
CRITTER STUFF
We’ve got three totally beautiful stories to share with you this week and the first is about this absolutely darling dolphin who had the misfortune, as a baby, to get her tail caught in a crab pot rope. Despite every effort possible, Winter lost her fluke and it was decided she’d be safer in the Clearwater Marine Aquarium in Florida, where she could also be rehabilitated. She became an instant hit, of course, and attracted the attention of a small company which has been making prosthetic flukes for her. This is one of the most moving and inspirational I’ve read in a long time. For an interview with Winter’s trainer, Abby Stone, on The Bonnie Hunt Show, please go here. To see where Winter lives, yep, please go here.
Closer to home, our local orca pot increased its number by one on New Years Day. A twelve-year-old killer whale had a calf, which was spotted as J Pod moved south of Vancouver Island and into the Puget Sound. Yep, he/she’s a cutie and for a pix of mother and child and more on this one, please go here. Our thanks to Dave and Marilee from Victoria, British Columbia, Canada and to the Victoria Times Colonist for this one.
I loved this one because I love it when animals keep humans guessing. And according to Tom Stienstra, San Francisco Chronicle Outdoors Writer. Some are.
“The question on everyone's mind lately has been: Where have San Francisco's famous sea lions gone? The answer might lie about 500 miles north of the Golden Gate, where an estimated 2,000 sea lions have recently arrived off the central Oregon coast.”
I’ve been to Florence this time of year and it’s a real nice break from the pandemonium of urban society. San Francisco’s been going through a lot of changes lately and they’ve never been known for doing anything on the hush and nod.
My guess most of these new arrivals to Sea Lion Caves were probably light sleepers who just needed to catch up on their zzzzzs. As large as they are, those are probably ZZZZZZZZZZZZs. I expect they’ll be up there some while. San Francisco doesn’t show any signs of keeping it down past ten p.m. Yep, for more on this one, please go here.
FROM YOU GUYS FOR YOU GUYS
ty mick. i liked hearing about the coyote. my dad had a coyote for a pet when he was a teenager and evidentally both adapted well until my grandfather sold the coyote. i have always thought that was mean spirited of him. warmest regards, fay
Fay, as always, a pleasure, lass. We kind of tripped out on it too.
Well, when I first heard about this one, I didn’t believe it so I don’t expect you guys to either. Yep, into the YOU GUYS THINK I MAKE THIS STUFF UP category for this one. To make a point recently, some passengers on Seattle’s newly initiated light rail line boarded the train in downtown’s Westlake Center and then took their pants off. On the scene were television crews, astounded passengers and more pundits than vultures on the Great Serengeti after a lion feast.
The Chamber of Commerce is not going to like this but Seattleites have a reputation for doing things sans clothing. Nudity is legal in all our public parks (I’ve never seen anybody in their birthday suit in the 20 years I’ve lived here but then I don’t go looking for stuff like that with gun or camera.)
I guess my objection to it is primarily aesthetic. I’ve staged special events and if I was going to get a bunch of semi-nude people together to draw attention to a cause or complaint, I’d hire models of both sexes and all gender persuasions. If we’re going to appeal to the libido here, for crying out loud, let’s get them ogling good before they turn away in mock outrage and impersonate the fine, upstanding and straitlaced citizens that give a town a good reputation.
That’s it for this week. We’ve got some cool stuff down below you might want to check out. Stay the course, gang. We’re getting there and we’re going to make it. And thanks once again for the ear. And stuff.
Rusty
NORTHSTAR RECOMMENDS
FUN STUFF
Virtual Experiences
How about a trip to Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo to watch a couple of grizzly bears in their Northwest setting? Yep, click here and thanks to our friends at Puget Sound NBC affiliate KING 5.
If you’re into a real interesting and visual escape, we certainly recommend The Art In LA website. It’s a virtual art gallery created by a real gentle, occasionally obnoxious but totally good-hearted soul with standards as fine as those of any engineer I’ve ever met. It’s also a good place for healthy meditation. If you’re lucky, you might just run into the artist herself. Her name is Colleen and she’s a trip, trust me. Yep, she was born under the fourth flag on our masthead.
REVIEWS
Music CDs
Over the holidays, I had a chance to experience Susan Boyle’s “I Dream A Dream” CD. And if ever there was a good time for this one, it is surely now, when it seems as though the whole world could use some hope, some inspiration and an example of how a complicated soul simply expressed can make a difference. I was a professional dance and show combo leader with time in grade at 18 and I know what it takes to move an audience.
It’s a lot more than just being able to sing well. To sing for working class people, who don’t really believe anybody who hasn’t been where they have, it takes being able to get inside the song and become that song.
Check out the selections on her CD. They include: Wild Horses; I Dreamed A Dream; Cry Me A River; How Great Thou Art; You’ll See; Daydream Believer; Up To The Mountain; Amazing Grace; Who I Was Born To Be; Proud; The End of the World; and Silent Night.
Susan does that with each and every one of them. Getting into the song and becoming the song. Like most folks, I suspect, I wanted to hear I Dream A Dream first. That was the same stellar experience the first time I watched her totally wow a panel of British judges and then do it all over again in the Colonies as it were.
As I listened, though, to the other songs, I totally forgot about Susan, the one who did that one. Like she did, I became the soul of those for whom these songs are written and for whom she sings them. It wasn’t hard because I am one of those.
And as haunted as hard times make all of us, including me, she took me to a place where people experience it about as deep as it cuts and yet survive to grow and find a better life. She made me feel a little less lonely and a lot more connected.
I was brought up to believe that whatever a person did in this life, they should never forget who they are as a person. Ms. Boyle has done that both by personal example and in her art. I expect me and mine will be in her debt for some while.
Thank you, Susan, Lass. We are honoured by your society.
To purchase this online, we invite you to go here.
Good Reads
For those into words that resonate, there are fewer finer contemporary craftsman I know than a man named Mike Browne, professionally known as Tomatoman Mike and the publisher of The Tomato Man Times. He’s as Northern Californian as John Steinbeck, albeit with a dash of Sam Clemmons, Bret Harte and Robert W. Service in him. He’s a romp to read, trust me.
FOR YOUR ONLINE SHOPPING CONVENIENCE
We invite you to do all your amazon.com through by tapping the photo of Susan or the ad. The Northstar Journal receives a 15% commission on whatever you purchase through this link.
SURVIVING HARD TIMES
I made chowder, you made pickles. Let’s trade
I so love it when my “home and native land” proves yet again that they have something to teach the International Community about surviving hard times. You’ll love this one, gang. With thanks to the Toronto Globe & Mail.
And lest we think this is limited to country folk, consider this one, headlined, Bootstrapping taken to new extremes in tech industry
Or how about a seasonable application regarding Christmas trees? (This will be a real stretch for those of you in Toronto, New York, Dublin, London and Paris) Ever imagine having one delivered to your home by bicycle? Real close to the category of You Guys Think I Make This Stuff Up so by all means, go here ye yahoos of little faith
HEALTH
Ten foods that really do help prevent cancer.
If you’d like to know whether your eating habits are either adding years to your life or taking them off, take this RealAge quiz. It will not only score your real age against your health age but give you a program for improvement. I’ve been working this one for about a month now and yep, I feel a lot better.
Want to know how to live to be 100? Try this one.
Ever had trouble getting behind eating a lot of fruits and vegetables despite how good they are for you? Ever had trouble selling that one to your kids and grandkids? Ever been totally sold on the idea then gone to the market and been totally tasered by the price of good health in some places? If your answer is yes to any or all of the above, you really need to check this site out. Fruits and veggies: more matters.
ONLINE TOOLS FOR THE KIT
WorldStart.com - The best source of computer information, tips, education, entertainment, industry news, graphics and useful websites.
PC World – This is the best source we’ve found yet for totally free, useful, reliable and secure (no viruses) downloads ranging from games through utilities and with a nice selection of screen savers, etc. What I particularly appreciate about it is how easy the site is to navigate. They also have a daily letter featuring two “daily downloads.”
CCleaner - Free software downloads and software reviews - CNET Download.com
The home of Spybot-S&D! “For the past few years I've been using two free programs to remove the tracking cookies we accumulate every time we visit a site. Both have proven safe and reliable. Try them. You'll be surprised at the amount of binary barnacles your pore little hard accumulates as it sails the cyber seas. Sorry, but neither program eliminates alliterative purple patch prose. Like mine.”
Mike Browne, Sacramento, CA
Free People Search – This is an American online White Pages that I found really simple, quick and user friendly. I looked for myself under the several versions of my name and it found them all. It’s also free and doesn’t involve anything to download.
Know Thy Elected Officials - Just type in your zip code and this site will supply you with the names and contact information for your legislators from the state level up. This is a two click site with a host of other relevant features.
MEDIA
Overview
For those interested in what’s going on in the world of magazines and newspapers in general, we highly recommend Woodenhorsepub.com. They publish a weekly online newsletter for media professionals and for readers simply interested in the future of the publications they enjoy and an advance on new ones they might. Their website is located here.
Entertainment
U Got Style is a monthly ezine dedicated to independent films. Fully illustrated, it features hard news, interviews, reviews and a wide variety of other information. It’s also fun to read.
Vinyl Cafe with Stuart McLean – Live from the smallest record store in North America. Canadian humor, entertainment and commentary at its maple leaf best. Popular on National Public Radio in the States.
BBC Knowledge Magazine – designed to give the American magazine National Geographic the proverbial run for its money,
News
BBC – Best source of international news.
The New York Times – Best source of American news.
The Vancouver Sun -- outstanding source for Canadian national, provincial, and world news.
Reuters – Best source of an international perspective on American headlines.
Sightline Daily (formerly Tidepool) – Best source of Pacific Northwest regional news. Delivered daily by email, it covers Alaska, British Columbia, California, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington. They also put out an excellent weekly environmental edition.
KING 5 News – Best source of video news of Seattle and the Greater Puget Sound.
Talent For Hire
Rusty Miller, Freelance Photojournalist – Whether it’s a one time press release, book or product review, difficult business correspondence, resume or classified ad composition you need, take a look at the services offered menu on my writer-for-hire homepage and we’ll get together on it.
Are you a travel editor looking for color shots of Seattle? Are you an art dealer looking for new work to carry on consignment? You might enjoy checking out a gallery of my work for sale
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