Busy Bees

YOU ARE HERE: Check out this gorgeous photo. It's one of the first images from GOES-16,  the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's latest in a new age of weather satellites. As you can see, this snap shows North and South America and the surrounding oceans. GOES-16, formerly known as GOES-R, launched on Nov. 19, 2016. More about GOES here: http://go.nasa.gov/2jUvOZd

A LITTLE PROJECT: Our blogging has been a bit spotty lately. Apologies for that, but it's not due to us doing nothing, to be sure. We've had a number of big projects and are in the midst of a busy week, helping host a reading celebration.

I wanted to have an author's/reader's chair for the event, and searched out ideas for fun chairs on Pinterest. And then I turned to my local Buy Nothing group to try to find a chair. A neighbor gifted me a pair, like this. Super sturdy and a great style for painting - perfect!

A couple/three weeks, 9-plus different colors of paint later, here was the final product ... 

It was fun creating it. CJ and Annabelle each helped with the paint and design. Christian was kind enough to figure out the diamond/harlequin pattern. Drawing that on a curved surface was not easy! That's my favorite part of the chair.

DEMONSTRATIVE: Saturday we, and a couple hundred thousand other people in the greater Seattle area, decided to hit the streets. 

Initially billed as a 'women's march,' the event's official name morphed to "Seattle Womxn's March," to be more inclusive. It was set to start at Judkins Park at 10 with speeches, with the walk from there to begin at 11. We decided to catch the march en route, as logistically getting to Judkins and back after walking would have turned into a mega hours long thing. 

So, we drive toward Seattle Center, the march's finish line, and parked a car there. We hopped on the monorail, heading south, to Westlake Center.  

From there, we went to the transit tunnel and caught a bus further south. We were lucky to be able to get a bus there, because we were passed by multiple buses and trains, all packed to the gills. We decided to shoehorn our way onto one at the last second, and felt lucky to be standing in a spot on the platform where the doors opened. Had we not been there, we would not have caught that ride. 

We decided to wait near the main branch of Seattle Public Libraries for the march to approach.

Pink hats were a sign of solidarity at the march. One woman who walked past us was passing them out.

We knew the march start was near when the helicopters started hovering overhead.

 Indigenous Sisters led the march.

Signs of the times were everywhere. I took dozens of photos. Here are a few.

As we were nearing the march's finish line, Seattle Center, I couldn't help but notice an elderly woman trudging uphill, gripping a walker. She progressed about 4-6 inches at a time. Seemingly undaunted, she kept putting one foot in front of the other. 

The event set the record for the largest demonstration ever in the city of Seattle. Crowd estimates were put at 200,000.

Here are CJ and Annabelle's impressions. Annabelle's up first ...

The Womxn’s March on Seattle took place on January 21^st, as a protest against the recent election of Donald Trump as the President of the United States. The march started at Judkins Park and ended at Seattle Center. We joined in the march at the Seattle Central Library, one of the official joining spots. We walked about a mile and a half during the march. It was very fun and I loved seeing the positive messages on the signs around us. There were a variety of people there, old and young, male and female. It was actually pretty heartwarming to see the variety of people all united. It was definitely a great experience and, if it were to happen again (and it most likely won’t), I would urge you to go.

Grab him by the presidency!"-A sign at the Womxn's March in Seattle, a play on words of one of Donald Trump's obscene remarks.
On 11/9/2016, Donald John Trump, a hyper-bigoted conman and sexual assault suspect with no prior political or military experience, was unexpectedly elected as the President of the U.S. Shortly thereafter, people across the United States began organizing a major protest in Washington D.C. for January 21, the day after Trump was inaugurated.
Across the world, several "sister marches" were organized, one of which was the Womxn's (spelled that way) March in Seattle. While the name of the march in D.C. was the Women's March, several protesters supporting the rights of other groups that Trump (likely) sees as second-class citizens (such as Muslims, Hispanics, Native Americans, and African-Americans) also protested at the marches.
My family protested at the Womxn's March in Seattle. To the march, I wore one of my dad's Oregon for Obama (if I remember correctly) t-shirt and my homemade sparkly rainbow fedora. I carried a home-printed sign reading "Love, not hate, makes America great", a play on the notorious Trump 2016 campaign slogan, Make America Great Again.
While we did not walk the whole march route from the beginning, we walked about a mile and a half to Seattle Center (the ending spot for the march). Before we entered the march ourselves, we decided to look at some of the signs carried by protesters. A sign that I saw several variations of was "This (cat drawing) grabs back!", referencing an aforementioned obscene remark by Trump.
Assuming that you do not believe in Sean Spicer's "alternative facts" (read: Lies), I was amazed that even the Women's March in D.C. alone attracted hundreds of thousands more people than Trump's inauguration, held the day before.
Protesting at the Womxn's March was an important experience, and I cannot wait any longer for 1/20/2021 to arrive.