Your Sunday Squirrel

OK, so this perfectly respectable-looking squirrel was skittering around Denny Park yesterday.  He was very photogenic, as you can see.  I gave him a peanut and this is what he did:

I mean, I've seen squirrels hang upside down on tree trunks before lots of times.  But I've never seen a squirrel do that - just kind of hang there.  I'd get woozy, but apparently he wasn't bothered.  Notice that his back feet are almost turned backwards.  Squirrels can do that.

The Torchlight Parade

Well, it happened again.  This year, it seemed that attendance was down quite a bit over previous years.  I dunno, it's probably millennials or some such.  Anyhow, here are some highlights:

Motorcycle cops at the beginning. 

This is the police pipe band...

The firefighters pipe band (they were better)...

An airplane balloon...

A strawberry wearing headphones...

Cool Mexican trick horses...

The Army band was small, but these guys followed them.  Nobody looked happy about carrying a state flag.

Here's the Marine band.  They were really good.

The dragon finally showed up.  This year's version had lights!  Once they went by, we headed home.  Sure, there was a lot more parade, but when the dragon's done, so am I.

The New Mural!

And what a mural it is!

This is what it looked like at the end of the week.  I thought it was done, but I was wrong.  I went out the back this morning and this is the finished version:

It's on the side of the Army-Navy Store on 1st between Blanchard and Lenora.  I like it a lot.

Speaking of murals, they're painting one across the street on the front of Jupiter.  It's taking quite a while.  So far, it looks like a lot of tubes and such.  They're just starting to add color, so things are looking up.  I'll have pictures by next week, but I'm pretty sure they won't be done by then.

Your Sunday Squirrel

This guy's from just today.  Sweet Becko were out looking for hungry squirrels and this guy showed up.  Every Sunday, the hugging Christians have a service in the park and squirrels can be found in the areas farthest away from all that worshipping.  This fellow was very nice.  I have many other good shots of him. 

...And Gone!

You know, I thought they were just going to renovate that nondescript building on the other side of Blanchard.  But no!  They tore the whole thing down.  It's now an ex-building:

This is the front view.  See?  No building.  My guess is that the new place is gonna be taller than just paltry stories and will probably house more than a dentist's office.  But that's just a guess.

Somebody Drew This in front of the Rivoli Last Week

It's Rick and Morty!  I just got finished with the third season.  Only 10 episodes!  Boo!  But I tell you, it was really mind-bending.  Great stuff!

Your Sunday Squirrel

I've gotten some very good pictures lately, and this is one of them.  In general, the squirrels have been less cooperative.  I've just gotten lucky; the lighting's been really good and the squirrels seem to know their good sides.  Just like this guy.

De-Construction!

Well, I was just walking by the building on the other side of 2nd & Blanchard and I saw actual daylight coming through the back, which is unusual. 

I went around to the alley and this is what's going on.  Yeah, real-live heavy equipment and everything. 

This is the place that once had Wally's (now in my building), which then, after a fashion, became the Bear and Bee.  The upstairs became The Upstairs and Pintxo was the other storefront.  Well, everything's gone now, and rumor has it that it's going to be a dentist's office.  I'm finding that a little hard to believe.  The whole building?  Something else has to be going on.  It would be really nice to put in a pair of capable restaurants in the storefront spaces.  The Bear and Bee made very nice sandwiches and was a much-needed lunch spot in this crummy neighborhood.  Pintxo was a bit more of a hard-sell, because it had a very small kitchen.  They're in a much better spot now on 4th.  I've been there and it was good.  Anyhow, I'm looking forward to this building not being entirely a dentist's office. 

Your Sunday Squirrel

It was a very good week for squirrel photography, and this was one of the better shots.  It's definitely worth considering for the calendar.  Oh, and there was a food truck festival going on in South Lake Union.  I ended up having a Pecos Pit sandwich.  It was yummy, but the sauce wasn't hot enough.  Anyhow, there was an ice cream and catering company called this:

Yes, I would definitely like for rodents to prepare my food! 

The Fourth

Here are some of the highlights, so to speak:

 Not named for Sweet Becko, but rather the funeral home it leads to.  Sorry!

It's the *heavy sigh* children's parade.  More decorated bikes and stroller than you can possibly imagine.

The regular parade!  Yay!  This is a junior pipe band.  They sounded pretty good.  I'm sure that upholding proud Scottish tradition is worth all the beatings you get from normal kids.

Ah yes, the Star Wars nerds.  It's always great to see them.  This is their rather portly Darth Vader.

It's the pro-gay contingent!  Edmonds is definitely not Trump country.  And it's nice to see some inclusiveness.  But, like I've said in the past, we might not be seeing expressions of support like this in the future, owing to those who would really like to pull us backwards to an age that never existed.

There was also a superhero contingent.  Here's Batman.  He was pretty cool.

 It's the Edmonds School District Summer Detention Band!  I marched once.  It was cool.

We're getting to the very end.  Here's the "float" they have every year.  It's supposed to be the Edmonds Historical Museum.  It always wins some award even though it's the same every year.  Every.  Year.

Later, we went to my aunt's boat on Lake Union to watch the fireworks.  Here is Sweet Becko trying her hand at rowing a dinghy.

Sweet Becko on board.

And here's the lake right before the fireworks.  I didn't take pictures of the display.  I completely forgot.  But it was really good.  And then we went home.

Your Sunday Squirrel

 

Fresh squirrels, all.

Prade Paride

Well, last Sunday was the Pride Parade.  Sweet Becko and I watched for a pretty long time (and this is the only photo I took; it's the SPD's vintage motor brigade).  I went back to our place, did a bunch of stuff, took a short nap, thought about various things, then ventured out to the hardware store and...the parade was still going on.  Swear to God, it lasted close to four hours.  That's a lot of proudness, people.  But hey, be as proud as you can for as long as you can.  Seriously.  It seems that there are people on the other side who want to negate all the gains of the last 50 years, not just for gay rights, but rights for unions, minorities and women, too.  Why?  They seem to have a warped notion that this great country was much better before those issues were prominent, when people knew their place and didn't get in the way of the ruling powers.  Yeah, the good old days.  Little do they realize that this country was founded by upstarts who fought the power and redefined how a government should relate to its people.  It wasn't perfect; it still isn't.  But we are constantly reassessing ourselves.  That's why events from recent history, especially from the last two or three weeks have me on alert.  I have no idea how to combat forces that are absolutely unconcerned with my existence.  I don't matter.  It's only slightly comforting that at least these same forces are not actively out to destroy me.  At this point, I don't know whether the amount of resistance people have been putting up so far has been enough. 

Once Bush was gone, the consensus opinion was that we were past all this stuff.  The people who wanted to haul us backwards were aging and dying.  It turns out that they were just honing their grievances and burnishing their feelings of victimhood.  And through a freak accident of the electoral process, their mouthpiece is in charge.  And he's got his own set of gripes that we have to endure every single friggin' day.  I've always characterized this administration as one that does the maximum amount of damage with a minimum of effort.  And it doesn't really care who it hurts, just as long as it's always hurting someone.  The ironic thing is that they seem to be targeting their own supporters a lot of the time.  That's just a chance byproduct of their recklessness.  But if they're really looking to negate you and everything you stand for, look out. 

I'm wondering what next year's parade will look like.  If the Supreme Court sets aside same-sex marriage, what will it be like?  If it suddenly becomes legal to fire someone for being gay, will all this seem like frivolity?  For a lot of people, winning means depriving other people of hard-won rights.  It turns out we haven't gotten beyond it.  In fact, we're right in the middle of the fight and we didn't even know it.