Washington State

Oil trains picking up steam in Seattle
Seattle’s pass through rail traffic includes petroleum and chemical products shipped through the BNSF rail hubs in the city. Photo taken April 26, 2014.
Petroleum cars can hold up to 30,000 gallons each (2014).

The expansion of oil production in North Dakota’s Bakken oil fields is also pushing petroleum to Northwest refineries and planned refineries, including in Anacortes and further north in Whatcom County at Cherry Point. Seattle, a major rail hub of the BNSF Railway Co., already has long lines of trains carrying petroleum and other products like ethanol. Some Washington state politicians and activists have expressed concern, in light of oil train derailments and fatal explosions in  the last two years in Lac Megantic, Quebec, and Casselton, N.D. BNSF reports that about 1.5 trains carrying more than 90 cars, each capable of carrying 30,000 gallons of unrefined, light crude oil, pass through the Pacific Northwest every day. I have seen them in a rail yard about 1.5 miles from my house, in a spot called Interbay. One thing I also know, this country and this region’s appetite for petroleum shows no sign of slowing down, and the state is looking to expand its refining capacity. Expect big fights in the months and years ahead among the competing interest groups. (Click on the images for a larger picture on a separate picture page.)

Ash Grove Cement, a Seattle landmark
This shot was taken in April 2014.

Every work day I pass by the enormous cement factory and kilns of the Ash Grove Cement Co., just west of Highway 99. You can’t miss the factory and its two enormous kilns. The facility, owned by a Kansas-based firm of the same name, is as much a Seattle landmark in my eyes as the more famous Space Needle. I finally took a bike trip there this weekend and snapped a few pictures. I love the designs of industrial facilities and how function dictates form.

Port of Seattle shipping, it never, ever stops

 

About 70 percent of the U.S. economy is driven by consumer spending. That really means, because we shop, our economic boat stays afloat. But what does that mean outside of the discount and electronics goods shopping stores? It means large ports processing containers filled with goods manufactured in Asia for the North American and U.S. market. This particular Maersk Line cargo ship, the Axel Maersk, stacks containers eight high, and its control room stands even higher. Here are different angles on the Axel Maersk, unloading its cargo today at the Port of Seattle (April 26, 2014). The ship can reportedly carry up to 9,000 containers at one time. (Click on each photo to be taken to a separate photo page with a larger image.)

Kent, one of Washington’s most diverse communities
I captured these Turkish-American students at the second annual Kent International Festival, held on the first weekend of summer (2013).
Benson Pizza offers many varieties of pizza I have not tasted, but they do look quite tasty (2012).
Kent’s hilltop has a lot of culinary diversity, including an Indian-American pizza restaurant (2012).

Kent is one of several mid-sized cities in King County. It’s entirely dependent on the automobile, and it is where many cheaper apartments are found, attracting many lower-income residents and immigrants. Today, more than 130 languages—from Afrikaans to Yoruba—are spoken in the Kent School District, the fourth largest in Washington State. Kent has become a prototypical “melting pot suburb.” (Nationally, minorities now represent 35% of all U.S. suburban residents.) And many new suburbanites come from abroad. Today, one in five King County residents identify as “foreign born,” and many are choosing to locate in South King County communities like Kent. Here are a few  samplers of how diverse Kent is.

Raindrops keep falling, and falling, and falling
Droplets collect on a smoke tree’s leaves in Seattle (2012).
Droplets collect on a smoke tree’s leaves in Seattle (2012).

We have had a lot of rain lately in Seattle. Nothing unusual, but just about everyday now for a couple of weeks. So water is on my mind, and how water responds to surfaces, from metal to plants to the body. So, naturally, I dug up a couple of water and rain photos I shot about a year and a half ago. I particularly love the effect of surface tension when water droplets form on surfaces when it rains. (Click on each photo for a larger image on a separate picture page.)

Happy 450th birthday, Bard … we love you
Seattle’s amazing GreenStage company perform William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 2013 in Seattle’s Discovery Park.

As I get older, I think I fall more deeply in love with the works of William Shakespeare. It is his 450th birthday today. Happy birthday, oh great master of the human condition. I took this picture at a wonderful production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in Seattle’s Discovery Park. The play was performed by Seattle’s inimitable GreenStage theatre company, who perform the Bard’s plays every summer at many amazing outdoor venues throughout Seattle and beyond. These plays are one of my favorite things about living in Seattle. (Click on the photo for a larger image on a separate picture page.)

Not necessarily a post-card Seattle picture
Mt. Rainier looms like a giant in the distance above the Duwamish River, in south Seattle (2014).

This happens to be a “picture” I see often, at least when the clouds let me see Rainier behind the industrial facade. Maybe I just like the Duwamish River because it is the one I see most often, and feel some deep pity for. It was once a living thing. Now it is just a place where we built a city, a port, an economy. Seeing the Duwamish every day some times reminds me of what I felt when I saw the Mississippi in Louisiana, where the river is subverted to human desires and the many industries that thrive there. Maybe I just have a thing for rivers?

The industrial Duwamish in south Seattle
This photograph of the lower Duwamish, in the Port of Seattle, was taken in January 2014.

The Duwamish River, in south Seattle, is a U.S. federal Superfund cleanup site and one of the most developed industrial landscapes in the Pacific Northwest. The area is dotted with cargo container barges, cement factories, shipping and receiving warehouses, and other industrial facilities. Believe it or not, fish swim up this river to spawn, and people fish on this waterway every summer.

Oh, those succulent, sensuous tulip petals

Tulips are, by all definitions, the baba-boom of flowers many gardeners plant here in the United States, and in Canada and Europe too. We have fields of them now exploding in the Skagit Valley. In my part of Seattle, I see dozens in full, glorious bloom. Their colors can almost drive a person wild. I love how the colors mix and accentuate each other in some petals. Me, I just do vegetables. I prefer to eat what I plant. I let others plant what I feast with my eyes.