Memorial Day and the First Days of Summer

My three flags out for Memorial Day.

As I write this, it's a bright sunny morning, and it's 18C out (around 65F or so). It looks like Summer is already here -- the next few days it's supposed to reach 90 degrees F, which is hot for Seattle. Today it is supposed to be in the 70's F.

I decided to put a small flag on my mailbox this holiday.

Two weekends ago was the holiday that kicks off summer here in the U.S.: Memorial Day. Memorial Day is a three day weekend when many Americans go on short vacations.

Others have cookouts where they grill hamburgers or hot dogs. Here in Seattle people either go to the ocean, or they head east to Eastern Washington's drier, desert areas where sunshine is usually guaranteed.

What's a summer holiday without roasted hot dogs? I don't eat them all at once... I put them in the refrigerator and have them during the week. Good protein -- and they taste better than protein powder. :-)

The Memorial Day holiday started during our Civil War in the 1860's, when families of Union soldiers honored the Union dead by visiting their graves and placing flowers and flags on them. They called it Decoration Day.

The sun came out brightly when I took a ride on my bike early Memorial Day.

Years later the holiday became "Memorial Day", and when I was younger it was used to place flowers on the graves of the dead, whether veteran or not. Over the past few years it has become more veteran oriented, and although most Americans do not visit a cemetery during the holiday there are programs on TV and radio about the country's fallen soldiers.

The local river was clear and green the week after Memorial Day. During the weekend there were some brave swimmers -- the water is still a little on the cool side...

Here in Seattle the Memorial Day weekend weather is variable. Sometimes it's sunny, other years it's cloudy. Most Memorial Days are partly sunny at least.

Bright, bright morning sun a few days after Memorial Day, 2016.

FLOWERS OF THE FOREST

This Memorial Day I put out my flags, including some smaller flags on my mailbox and the nearby street sign. During Memorial Day afternoon I did some weed-whacking with my gas powered weed whacker.

I grilled some hot dogs the night before Memorial Day, and I played the tunes "Amazing Grace" and "Flowers Of The Forest" for the neighbors on the bagpipes.

What happens when nylon weed whacker blades hit enough Himalayan blackberry canes: the tips break. Luckily, the blades are easy to replace.

Flowers Of The Forest is probably the most beautiful bagpipe tune out there, and it is generally reserved for military funerals and such special occasions.

When I fired up the 'pipes to play, my chanter reed (the chanter is the pipe with finger-holes, the pipe that actually plays the tune) sputtered and wouldn't sound. I figured it had gotten loose. Instead, it was coated with bagpipe bag seasoning. Bagpipe seasoning is a thick liquid that makes the leather bag pliable, more airtight, and it also has antiseptic qualities. I had 'seasoned' the leather bag with seasoning I made up myself from various ingredients... And I had thought I'd drained it all out of the bag before playing. But I guess not.

A photo of me playing Flowers Of The Forest at a funeral in 2011 for an uncle who was a veteran. I was about 15-20 pounds heavier than I am now.

Luckily I play with a synthetic, plastic chanter reed, so the reed was easily cleaned off and I could go out to the neighbors' and play the tunes. If I had used a traditional cane reed, it would have been wrecked.

A few days after Memorial Day the clouds rolled in for a few days -- typical June weather here in Seattle can be variable. It usually clears up after the 4th of July.

RADIO SHACK POCKET RADIO FIXED -- HOPEFULLY

I seem to get a lot of readers who are MW DXers (Long Distance AM Radio listeners), who read my articles on various radios. As some may be aware, I have a Radio Shack Pocket Radio -- a radio which surprised me in its MW performance. It began to act up a bit, taking a long time to fire up -- the chip that makes it work is a software chip that needs a second to initialise. My radio was taking 15-20 seconds or so. I finally found the problem -- the battery holder was a little loose. Software DSP chips apparently need a steady source of power or they will either take a long, long time to initialise, or they won't initialise at all.

I tightened the battery clasp a bit, and will figure out a way to short it up, either with glue or soldered wire, or perhaps an extra spring added to the negative terminal.

My second Pocket Radio is on the left. Slight difference in the case and logo. I haven't take the back off to see if the insides are any different -- my guess is that they are the same. It works well. The old one still needs the battery clip worked on.

I also bought a second Pocket Radio at one of the few Radio Shack stores still remaining locally -- it was still just $14. It works excellently. It has a few cosmetic changes, but performs the same. I have it as a backup, because I take a Pocket Radio to work, and they store easily in my briefcase.

I haven't been DXing the MW band much -- conditions have been fair to blah this past year. I heard CKDO in Oshawa, Ontario a few nights back. I was tuning around on my Panasonic RF-B45 digital portable radio and there it was, playing oldies, audible underneath a radio station from Oregon (news-talk KGAL, Lebanon). Aside from that new catch, I have been hearing the same 300 stations every night. The RF-B45 is an excellent performer on MW. It was the last Panasonic radio made in Japan, and the last one actually made by Panasonic. There aren't many MW DX'ers who seem to use them.

As I post this, it's a couple weeks after I first put together this blog post.

Right now it's a bit cold out, maybe 7 degrees C. Our weather is supposed to warm up over the next few days, and hopefully so. 

Last night I heard of another tragedy that occurred in Orlando, Florida -- a family was vacationing at Disney World and their 2 year old boy was a victim of an alligator attack. My thoughts and prayers go out to that poor family.

Here's hoping everyone has a better end of June.

CC 6-15-2016

A Solstice Sundial

Cirrus clouds high in the sunset sky.

It's June, which means the start of summer here in the Northern Hemisphere, and it also means the sun is reaching its highest point in the sky.

Here in the Seattle area -- as we are located near 47 degrees North -- the sun stays out late during solstice time. Around June 21st (St. John's Eve -- which is never celebrated over here) the sky remains light as late as 10:30 at night. Over the years you can track the points where the sun sets over the months, and it is setting farther and farther to the north right now.

My own shadow on a sunlit section of a local trail.

Every neighborhood probably has a type of 'sundial' -- a street or area which is aligned with the sun's setting or rising. Apparently New York City is aligned in such a way that on one particular day every year the sun sets in alignment with its East-West streets, and when the sun sets, it creates a spectacular glow down the corridors between the tall buildings.

Near the area where I live there is a section of a local trail that receives the sunshine much later than any other part of the surrounding area. It is located at just the right position that it is still sunny when all the surrounding areas are in the shade.

Here you can see a small area lit up by sunlight while the surrounding area is mostly in shadows.

A few days ago I took a spin on my bike and took my camera, and snapped a couple pictures of a bridge bathed in sunlight, while surrounding areas are in the shade.

June is my favorite time of the year, following October and Christmas. It's because the sun is so bright and cheery during this time of year. It has a special energy about it that is hard to describe, but the mornings are awesome and the evenings are usually bright and often balmy.

The sunset was spectacular. By solstice it will set a few degrees to the right, closer to the two trees you can just see on the distant ridge.

We are just entering Cottonwood season here, which seems to be hitting us late this year for some reason. There was a short period where the 'cotton' was creating drifts beside the Trail, but then it stopped.

The sunset using a slightly different setting on my camera, and taken from a slightly different angle.

The Swainson's Thrush, a faithful harbinger of late Spring, has just started its piccolo like song that can be heard echoing through the woods. There is one that nests near the beaver's pond that sings away every morning and afternoon during June.

Soon after the sun set over the hill, a pair of kayakers floated past on the river. The river used to carry small coal barges in the early 1900's -- now it is used by recreational floaters during summer season.

SOME THOUGHTS ON THE ORLANDO TRAGEDY

As most of you are probably aware, last Saturday night (the early morning of June 13th) there was a mass shooting at a popular night club in Orlando, Florida. It was a definite shock to hear about it on the radio, and the following day there was extensive coverage of the terrorist act on radio as well as other media.

It's hard to fathom the pain and suffering the families of the victims are going through. No one goes to a club expecting a shooting to happen.

Spring flowers near a frog pond.

MY FRIEND IS SAFE, THANK GOD

I have a friend who lives in Orlando: very thankfully, she wasn't there at that nightclub when the mass shooting occurred.

My thoughts and prayers go out to the families and friends of the victims.

CC 6-15-2016

Spring Blahs

The first daffodil of Spring 2016, taken March 12th near the Cedar River Trail.

As I wrote in my last post, it's Spring here in the PNW. Temperatures are moderate -- around 8-12C during the daytime (45-52F), and it has sometimes been a little chilly at night, but we've only had one bit of frost and that was a week ago.


A week or so ago we had a bit of summer, the local temperature was 85F. And Monday last week it was also 80+F during the afternoon. This Monday it was over 75F.

A local area house with St. Patrick's Day lights!

So we have had some summer-like weather this Spring so far.

Overall life has been the same, but the in-between nature of the weather and other things in life have given me a case of the Spring blahs. Work has improved. I work in the legal field and have been doing a lot of legal research to help my boss who's in the middle of a complex court case.

Legal research takes a lot of reading time. It's not all tedious because some of the cases have these very interesting stories. All of them seem to -- sooner or later -- revolve around money. It seems that where there is any money involved, families split, friendships deteriorate, business partnerships dissolve, etc. You can see it in a lot of the legal decisions.

The Sky on Fire: an early March sunrise. Photo taken with my Nikon L32 snapshot camera.

I've still been working out with weights, and reached 215 lbs on the bench press (somewhere around 90 kg).  My goal, of course, is to go much higher, and improve the technique to get more from it. But I'm making progress, and that's fine with me. I've been eating a lot of eggs / egg whites, taking protein powder, etc. etc.

Diet is a very big thing if one wants to gain muscle. When I was younger I worked out nearly every day and got nowhere -- because I hadn't yet discovered protein powder and other diet factors.

A rainbow in South Renton, March 10th, 2016.

THE DUMPS, BLAHS, ETC. AND HARRY POTTER

Overall this past month or so I've been fighting a case of the dumps, as they sometime call it. I suppose once the weather improves and the sun shines more often it will help. I'm still working on an action novel, and then once I finish it, it will be time to re-edit it and smooth it out a bit. But for the time being, it's still a work in progress. I wrote a short story eBook based on rediscovering the bagpipes, which needs editing and a cover before I publish that on Amazon.

A lone snail crosses the Cedar River Trail on a rainy March morning, 2016.

I haven't been reading much lately -- although I did start the first Harry Potter book, to see what all the fuss was about. I got about 1/4 through, and set it aside... I'll finish it. It's a very charming book, much better than I thought it would be. I tend to read books in shifts.... I start reading one, and then take a break from it. It's pretty rare I read a book from start to finish in a few days or so... And lately I've been doing more writing than reading.

The photo near the top of this post is an example of cheeriness in otherwise grey weather: a local house -- the same house which had Valentine's Day lights a couple months ago -- had St. Patrick's Day lights up. It's hard to see in the photograph, but the owner of the house also put up a few small leprechauns in the front garden.

ST. PATRICK'S DAY

St. Patrick's Day here is a fairly popular drinking holiday, and those of Irish descent -- especially those Irish Americans of any means -- often celebrate it with large dinners. The rest of them just wear something green and think about shamrocks and leprechauns and green beer.

I myself am about a third Irish, depending on how you look at it. My father's mother was from a full-on Irish American family. My father's father came from Scotland. My mom's side is mostly Canadian, with some Ulster Irish in there somewhere -- she's about a quarter Ulster Irish -- at least the ones we know about. Which makes me about a third Irish -- an eighth and a quarter is darned close to a third in my book. :-)

My genealogy includes a Confederate deserter, a Canadian preacher, an Wisconsin miner/cowboy, and a Scottish house painter.

Yet another fiery sunrise, February 21st, 2016. Here in an area famous for its damp Winter and Spring climate, we do enjoy some nice sunrises.

I once told a guy (at a Scottish gathering -- this was back when I played in a bagpipe band) that I was one third Irish, and he was alarmed. "You can't be a third anything," he said, being a stickler for the numbers. Everything in genealogy is in quarters, eighths, sixteenths, etc. The man explained this thoroughly. It was almost as if he were insulted by my proposition that I am a third Irish. I found it a bit amusing.

I myself am not so anal-retentive about genealogy. I mean, I love reading about the old country, and the history of it. And I suppose some of what your ancestors went through sticks with you. But I wasn't born in Scotland or Ireland: I was born in Renton.

So a third Irish it is.

Me playing the bagpipes at a neighbor's birthday party several years ago.

BAGPIPES

This St. Patrick's Day I stayed home, but the following Saturday night I played the bagpipes at a local pub. I hadn't pulled my bagpipes out of the case in years. I used to play in a band, but when I quit, I stopped playing them. It always was a hassle to get the main reed -- the one that plays the tune (the "chanter" reed) -- working without squealing or cutting off.

With a new synthetic reed the bagpipes worked fine.

But then the instrument dredged up the past... I started remembering a lot of old tunes and old friends... People who played in the band, that I've lost contact with; days when my father was still around, etc.. That's what got me to writing a story loosely based on rediscovering it through the music (with extra stuff thrown in, of course).

My cat sure doesn't like me playing the bagpipes, though. When I play them she runs up to me and starts clawing at my pants leg, like "Dad, turn off that noise!" The dog, of course, howls. I don't punish my neighbors with the instrument very often. Although my neighbor across the street loves to hear them.

And with that, dear readers, I shall close this entry, and hope all of you worldwide had a great St. Patrick's Day, and a great Easter also.
CC 3-29-2016 & 5-31-2016

105.7 THE BEAR -- Real Rock Radio on 1660 Khz

I have always loved hard rock and heavy rock music.

I have always loved hearing California stations on the MW-AM band (their FM stations, of course, don't reach Seattle -- except online). It may be due to the fact that hearing the California stations fade and flutter over the distances during the cold Winters here reminds me of sunshine and women in bikinis, or perhaps it reminds me of my various trips down the I-5 corridor to California where I was always impressed by the weather and people there.

Anyway -- imagine my surprise when I tuned my Sangean to 1660 Khz one night a month ago and -- instead of the usual Spanish ranchero music -- I heard heavy rock instead: Shinedown's "Cut The Cord", the Deftones, Halestorm's "I Miss The Misery", Pink Floyd, Offspring, Limp Bizkit's "Break Stuff", Pantera, Papa Roach, Days Of The New, Ozzy Osbourne's "Flying High Again", Pop Evil's "Footsteps", and even Judas Priest -- a lot of heavy rock tracks a lot of rock stations seemed to stop playing a few years ago, when a lot of them went classic-rock heavy.

My PR-D5 pulls in KBRE 105.7 The Bear on 1660 AM with listenable levels most nights. Some nights, when atmospheric conditions are great to California, it comes in quite loud.

I was hearing rock music on 1660 because the Spanish ranchero station from Utah was no longer on the air, and the Spanish religious station from Merced, California had gone rock.

Apparently KBRE in Merced bought the Merced Spanish station on 1660, to supplement their FM transmitter on 105.7. They apparently cover that area of Central California (Merced, Atwater, and Los Banos) with two FM transmitters and the 1660 AM station.

KBRE play a great mix of new rock along with a lot of heavy rock from the 00's and heavier stuff from the 90's, and just a few snippets of classic rock (Ozzy, etc.) from earlier rock eras.

They are available online, at www.radiomerced.com/images/bearstream

They don't geo-fence, at least as of this writing, which is well appreciated.

Or just bring up 1057 The Bear on your favorite search engine.

Or, better yet: here is their website, with a "Listen Live" button.:

Merced's Rock Station – 1660AM | The Bear 105.7 FM (1057thebear.com)

If you like Rock Music, they are well worth a listen. Give them a 'like' on Facebook, perhaps they won't start geo-fencing soon, like a lot of other radio stations have started doing.

KISW 99.9 FM

Locally, KISW 99.9 (check them out on www.kisw.com) has been the local rock mainstay. Their playlist varies from year to year, but usually they play a good rock mix. They often push the envelope, for example in 2006 they added Army Of Anyone's great track "It Doesn't Seem To Matter" when other rockers around the country didn't play it.

There used to be a local station here (based out of Tacoma) on 104.9, The Funky Monkey, that played nothing but Active Rock -- heavy rock, rap rock and nu-metal. But they went under around 2010.

I often plug my Kindle tablet into my PR-D5 mini boombox and listen to online radio. Usually they are stations from overseas, like the NRK's P3 (Norway has some excellent pop bands) and Sveriges Radio's Sami channel (excellent Sami folk, rock and pop music on that channel) - but I also listen frequently to 105.7 The Bear when the MW band conditions are mediocre towards California.

Most nights, KBRE's signal on 1660 AM comes in well, at listenable levels, but like most AM signals from long distances (Merced is 800 miles / roughly 1000 km away) it varies. Many nights it's fair to poor listening. Other nights it can come in well, even on my Radio Shack Pocket Radio. On nights when it's grainy conditions on the MW band, I just plug the tablet into the AUX on my PR-D5 and listen to The Bear that way.

Check out 105.7 The Bear, rock fans. You'll like it.

And if you are located within earshot of the Western United States, tune your Sangean or Sony or GE to 1660 khz and see if you hear the Bear's rock music phasing in over the airways!

UPDATE:
KBRE 105.7 The Bear started geo-fencing their stream about a month after I wrote this post. But I've just discovered that they are on TuneIn, the streaming radio site. And as of this writing (Feb. 2017) their TuneIn stream works well, even for those who are out of the Merced area.

So if you're not in California, or you are overseas, and want to check out The Bear, get the TuneIn app and you should be able to hear them that way.
Rock on, everybody.
CC 2-5-2017

Update, 7-5-2018:
KBRE's web stream is once again audible here in the NW. They apparently turned off the geo-fencing. Just go their website and their stream can be found under 'Music'. Or use TuneIn.
CC 7-5-2018

Update: 1-9-2023:

Stupid me -- I never added a link to KBRE's website! What was I thinking? I wasn't.

Here it is, complete with a "Listen Live" button, that works even here in the NW US, 900 miles away from Merced. I've also inserted this link into the article, which I wrote a few years ago.:

Merced's Rock Station – 1660AM | The Bear 105.7 FM (1057thebear.com)