I joined the USAF in 1964 and retired from the military 28 years later.
I’ve always considered my country to be a cut above and was proud to serve. This pride in my country is now gone. I no longer even root for my country’s athletes in the Olympics or other international tournaments.
The reason is simple enough. I’m ashamed of a country whose citizens elected Donald Trump.
The man is, and is proud to be, a draft dodger, a liar, a bully, a racist and a despot. The man’s two primary pleasures are money and humiliating people, not necessarily in that order. He has no respect for the rule of law, science or fairness, and as a result, individuals who are convinced that recovering from what he is doing and has done to the country will not be difficult are kidding themselves.
How anybody who believes in democracy and decency feels any respect for the current administration is beyond me. I would never volunteer to serve and protect the country in its current form.
Frank T. Globokar, Cottonwood Heights
Posted inEssays|Comments Off on Letter: I’m a veteran. I would never volunteer to serve and protect America as it is now.
The image of National Guard troops, some of them from as far away as Louisiana and Mississippi, in Washington, D.C., spreading mulch around the cherry trees at the Tidal Basin and picking up trash, illustrates that President Donald J. Trump’s insistence that he needed troops to crack down on violent crime in the nation’s capital was always a cover for an authoritarian takeover.
As Kate Riga and Emine Yücel noted in Talking Points Memo today, earlier this spring Trump and congressional Republicans did all they could to weaken Washington, D.C. In March, Congress passed a resolution to fund the government temporarily while also freezing all federal spending. That included the District of Columbia, whose budget has to be approved by Congress although the monies involved come from local taxes, not federal funds.
Because those budget monies are local and not federal, according to Campbell Robertson of the New York Times, the Washington, D.C., budget is routinely exempted from federal spending freezes. But the House did not carve it out this time, leaving the city with a shortfall of $1.1 billion. The Senate unanimously approved a bill to fix the error, letting the city continue to operate under its current budget, but the House never took it up. Washington, D.C., mayor Muriel Bowser and local officials found a workaround to restore some funding but have had to freeze hiring and cut contracts, grants, and expenditures across the city’s agencies.
Cuts to city services have made it easier for Trump and his loyalists to insist the city is being poorly taken care of, although violent crime is dropping there, not rising, and the Department of Justice’s own numbers show it is at a 30-year low. Now, with troops stationed in the city, Trump and his MAGA loyalists are demonstrating that they control the federal capital.
Today, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced that the administration will also take over Union Station in Washington, D.C., from which Amtrak and the city’s commuter rail lines run, saying such a takeover was part of Trump’s “beautification” program.
Amtrak took control of the station in July 2024, and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law of the Biden era provided $22 billion to Amtrak to modernize trains and stations. The administration cut a $120 million federal grant to Amtrak in April. Taking control of Union Station will put the administration in charge of key transportation lines into and out of the city. It also will create a federal presence in an area where veterans have been protesting.
The freezing of D.C.’s budget is a different process from the dramatic cuts the Trump administration has made across the federal government, although the effects of the two are similar. As Tara Copp of the Washington Post noted today, custodial work like that being done by the National Guard troops normally would have been performed by National Park Service employees. But that service was already short staffed when the administration slashed through the federal workforce. The park service used to have 200 people assigned to the thousands of acres of gardens and trees in the capital. Now it has 20.
A park service official told Copp: “It’s everybody—the masons, the maintenance workers, the groundskeepers, the plumbers. Every shop is short.”
The Trump administration inherited decades of Republican rhetoric insisting the federal government was bloated and inefficient. It set out immediately to gut the civil service through hiring freezes, reductions in force, and impoundment of funds.
In an interview with Eileen Sullivan of the New York Times on Thursday, August 21, Office of Personnel Management director Scott Kupor said that by the end of December 2025 there will be 300,000 fewer federal workers than there were in January. Sullivan notes that this is the largest single-year reduction in civilian federal employment since World War II.
But even before these cuts, the federal workforce had not kept pace with the growth of the nation. The workforce when Trump took office in 2025 was about 2.4 million people, roughly the same number of government workers the nation had in 1969. As Bill Chappell of NPR reported in March, in 1969 the U.S. population was about 202.5 million. Now it is about 341.1 million. (continued on Page 2 or here)
WHAT: ClickFix is a scam that tricks people into copying and pasting malicious commands into their computer. It usually starts with a fake website, pop-up, or email saying: “Fix this error,” “Verify you’re human,” or “Speed up your PC.” The site asks you to copy a command and paste it into Run (Win+R), PowerShell, or Terminal. Once you do this, the attacker takes control of your computer. For more information view the article here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/2025/08/21/think-before-you-clickfix-analyzing-the-clickfix-social-engineering-technique/
IMPACT: Malware is installed on your computer. Hackers can steal your passwords, files, and financial information. They can spy on your activity or even lock your device for ransom.
What DO I DO? Never copy and paste commands from websites or pop-ups. Ignore “Fix It” messages that ask you to open Run, PowerShell, or Terminal. If you’re unsure, STOP and contact the Help Desk immediately. Report any suspicious emails to phishing@dwt.com REMEMBER: Legitimate companies will never ask you to copy commands to fix an issue.
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on ClickFix – a scam
On Labor Day, Monday, Sept 1, there will be two Seattle events to support “Workers Over Billionaires.” In solidarity with these larger rallies, Horizon House has agreed to meet residents of Skyline from 10am-11am on 8th and Madison for our third expression supporting democracy. Those inclined can leave for the larger gatherings from the Madison location. (Information about the larger events is below.)
Bring your old signs or print a short message on computer paper. Hopefully, we will have some cardboard backing for affixing the messages. Let Diana know if you need cardboard for your sign (dianacaplow@gmail.com).
A heads up….
There are a number of Seattle retirement facilities with members interested in giving an “Hour for Democracy” twice a month. Horizon House and Mirabella residents have agreed to do this and have invited us to join them. We would continue to meet on 8th and Madison with Horizon House residents while Mirabella residents will meet close to their facility. More information regarding this endeavor in a few days.
Posted inAdvocacy|Comments Off on “Workers Over Billionaires”
I do three things every morning: I start a pot of coffee, I feed the cat, and then I fire up my laptop. The first two are calming routines. The third is a moment of high anxiety, because I’m about to see the latest developments in The Crazy.
No, I haven’t developed a Trumpian habit of Random Capitalizations. “The Crazy” is my personal term for the escalating barrage of destructive actions and statements coming from the madman-in-chief and his minions. During Trump’s first term we got a couple of these each month. Now they come multiple times a week, sometimes several times in a single day.
At this point The Crazy is running at such a rapid pace that hugely important stories all too often get buried because some other terrible thing pops up and demands immediate attention. So I ended up writing about Trump’s attempt to fire Lisa Cook before I could manage to write about how his hatred for wind power has metastasized into an effort to shut down 10 percent of U.S. electricity production — even as electricity prices are soaring.
Before I get to Trump’s ill wind, let’s talk about the economics of renewable energy.
Whenever I write about energy, I get many comments from people insisting that renewables are too costly to compete with fossil fuels unless they receive huge subsidies, and anyway that they can’t meet a large fraction of our energy needs because of intermittency — the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow. Gosh, I never thought of that.
The most charitable interpretation of such comments is that the people making them formed their ideas about energy economics a long time ago, probably before 2010, and haven’t kept up with the extraordinary technological progress we’ve made in renewables since then. Between 2010 and 2023 the real cost of solar photovoltaic power fell 90 percent, while the cost of offshore wind fell 63 percent. Intermittency is still an issue, one that utilities to some extent deal with by using gas turbines to fill the gaps. But coal, much as some on the right love it, simply isn’t competitive anymore.
Since if I am not for myself, who will be for me, I might point out that I wrote about the coming solar revolution in 2011, in a column titled “Here comes the sun.”
And gas is becoming less important too, because there has also been huge progress in another energy technology — batteries:
Batteries, in turn, work synergistically with solar power, making it possible to generate power when the sun shines and use it after dark. Here, for example, is what happened last February in California:
In a way the most remarkable thing about the number of people insisting that large-scale reliance on renewables is impossible is that such reliance is already happening in many places around the world, including large parts of the United States. Britain gets 30 percent of its electricity from wind and another 5 percent from solar; Denmark gets 70 percent from renewables, mostly wind. Here in America, Iowa gets 65 percent of its electricity from renewables, mostly wind; California, whose economy is larger than that of most countries, gets 38 percent, mainly from solar.
The renewables revolution is, in short, well under way, and it’s one of the great technological success stories of modern times.
And the Trump administration is trying to kill it.
We knew, coming into the second Trump administration, that Republicans in general and Trump in particular like fossil fuels and dislike renewables. Some of this is about money: In the last election cycle the oil and gas industry gave 88 percent of its contributions to Republicans. And as I wrote last month, energy policy has been caught up in the culture wars. Solar and wind power have, in the MAGA mind, become identified with wokeness, while burning fossil fuels is considered masculine. Hence the hostility to green energy.
We also know that Trump has a special animus against wind power, dating back to Scotland’s refusal to cancel a wind project he thought ruined the view from his golf course.
While it was predictable, however, that Trump and his party would try to eliminate Biden-era subsidies for renewable energy, and even throw up obstacles to new green energy projects, even I didn’t think Trump would try to destroy already existing renewable generation capacity. Yet here we are:
If you think this is empty posturing, look at what just happened to Revolution Wind, a wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island. Revolution Wind is a largely completed project, already connected to the grid, which was scheduled to start delivering power next year. But the Trump administration has just ordered work on the project to stop.
Think about it. We’re talking about gratuitously trashing billions of dollars’ worth of investment. We’re also talking about significantly reducing the supply of electricity — not in the long run, but next year — at a moment when electricity prices are soaring thanks to the demand from data centers. And there’s every reason to believe that Revolution Wind is only the beginning of a real attempt to roll back wind and, possibly to a lesser extent, solar, even though both are now crucial parts of America’s energy system.
If this sounds crazy, that’s because it is. But so was the way Covid vaccines became a partisan issue, which didn’t prevent anti-vax sentiment from killing thousands in right-leaning counties.
Never underestimate the power of irrational prejudice.
Everything hurts, Our hearts shadowed and strange, Minds made muddied and mute. We carry tragedy, terrifying and true. And yet none of it is new; We knew it as home, As horror, As heritage. Even our children Cannot be children, Cannot be. Everything hurts. It’s a hard time to be alive, And even harder to stay that way. We’re burdened to live out these days, While at the same time, blessed to outlive them. This alarm is how we know We must be altered — That we must differ or die, That we must triumph or try. Thus while hate cannot be terminated, It can be transformed Into a love that lets us live. May we not just grieve, but give: May we not just ache, but act; May our signed right to bear arms Never blind our sight from shared harm; May we choose our children over chaos. May another innocent never be lost. Maybe everything hurts, Our hearts shadowed & strange. But only when everything hurts May everything change.
Posted inAdvocacy, Grief|Comments Off on Hymn for the Hurting
As right-wing Christian nationalists supported by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth are calling for an end to women’s right to vote, it seems crucial to remember the history of the drive for women’s suffrage in the United States of America. (from Heather Cox Richardson).
“On this day in 1920 the 19th Amendment was formally incorporated into the U.S. Constitution.
At first, it looked like the amendment was not going to make it. It needed the approval of one more state. And then, a 24-year-old legislator from Tennessee, Harry Burn, decided to vote for the amendment at the last minute because his mother wanted him to. And Tennessee became the 36th state to approve suffrage for women.
After more than 70 years of struggle by the suffrage movement, women finally had the right to vote.” (from Pearl McE.)
I live in Shenandoah County, Virginia. I’m a factory worker, a farmer, and a father of two girls, one still in diapers. I get up before the sun, and most days I don’t sit down until after it’s gone.
My partner Hannah and I raise our girls on a small farm in the Valley. She works full-time too—though nobody calls it that. She’s a caregiver, a homemaker, a livestock handler, and a mother. She doesn’t get a paycheck. She doesn’t get a break. She doesn’t get counted.
We’ve relied on a cistern for water for over three years. I’m trying to save up to dig a well before it runs dry. We heat with firewood I cut myself. We raise animals for milk, eggs, and meat, because the grocery bill outpaces my paycheck.
We’ve stayed unmarried—not because we don’t love each other, but because getting married would kick my partner and our daughters off the Medicaid that keeps them healthy.
My employer offers insurance, sure—but only if I pay nearly as much as our mortgage. I can’t, so we stay as we are: in love but locked out.
I’m not ashamed of our life. It’s honest work, and it’s full of love. However, I am ashamed that in a country as wealthy as ours, people like us are left out in the cold.
When the so-called “Big, Beautiful Bill” passed, it was marketed as a win for working Americans. From where I stand, it looks like the opposite: cuts to Medicaid, reduced support for struggling families, and a ballooning deficit that somehow still leaves us more exposed than before.
You can dress it up however you want, but if it leaves working families behind, it’s not serving the people.
This bill, like so many before it, rewards the already powerful while punishing the people who hold up the economy in invisible ways. It gives to those who lobby and takes from those who labor. It reinforces a message I’ve felt in my bones for years: You’re on your own.
I’m not writing this as a Democrat or a Republican. I’m writing this as a man watching families like mine wear themselves thin—working hard, doing the right things, and still falling behind.
This isn’t about Red or Blue. It’s about the fact that we’re being divided against each other while both sides forget that real Americans bleed the same when the cost of insulin triples or the cost of groceries goes up again.
You shouldn’t be able to carry a hundred dollars’ worth of groceries in two hands. But these days, you can—and that’s not just wrong, it’s dangerous.
I’m writing to ask one simple thing: Who is this country really for?
Because if it’s not for parents doing their best to raise good kids in a broken system; if it’s not for factory workers and farmers who show up every day, no matter how little is left in the tank; if it’s not for families trying to make a life from the land and a paycheck. . . then maybe the flag doesn’t wave for all of us after all.
I don’t want handouts; I want fairness. I don’t want politics; I want policy that works.
I don’t want a revolution of violence. I want a revolution of responsibility—one where we take care of each other, where people can raise a family without choosing between groceries and medicine, and where love doesn’t have to take a back seat to red tape.
So, if you’re in power, hear me: We are not okay. We are drowning quietly.
And if you’re not in power, but you’re reading this and nodding along, then know this: You’re not alone either.
We’re not enemies. We’re neighbors. We’re parents, workers, and caretakers. And it’s time we start acting like it.
Should you be interested, my new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made money from his anti-vaccine advocacy through several channels tied directly to his public stance on vaccines:
Children’s Health Defense Nonprofit: Kennedy founded and chaired Children’s Health Defense (CHD), an organization known for spreading vaccine skepticism. Tax filings revealed he received more than $20,000 per week as chairman before stepping down in 2023. For just three and a half months of work at the nonprofit in that year, he made $326,056. Records also show his total earnings from CHD for 2022 were $836,571, contradicting earlier claims that he was not paid for this work.
Legal Referral Fees in Vaccine Litigation: Kennedy earned millions in referral and contingency fees from law firms, most notably Wisner Baum. This firm is involved in lawsuits against Merck, alleging harm from the HPV vaccine Gardasil. Kennedy is entitled to 10% of any contingency fees in such cases, a stake that has made him around $2.5 million since 2022, including $850,000 in 2024 alone. His financial disclosure documents note that even if confirmed as a public official, he would continue to collect fees from some vaccine injury lawsuits as long as the U.S. is not a direct party to the case.
Other Legal and Brand-Related Income: Kennedy’s financial disclosures include $481,732 from another law firm, JW Howard, which represented groups challenging vaccine mandates, and $100,000 in licensing fees for a health branding venture associated with his anti-vaccine movement.
Promotion and Outreach: Kennedy promoted lawsuits and anti-vaccine messaging directly linked to the prospect of profit. For example, he invited people to join litigation against vaccine makers like Merck using public social media posts invoking his initials and offering referral services, thus fueling more cases that would generate legal fees for him. (continued on Page 2 or here)
A bride and and groom couldn’t say “I do” without their “200 grandparents” present.
Taylor Orlando met her husband, Jason, when they were both working at Baywinde Senior Living Center in Webster, N.Y., according to RochesterFirst. The bride explained to the local news outlet that she affectionately calls the residents her “200 grandparents,” and couldn’t imagine celebrating her wedding without them.
“I’m excited to celebrate this big chapter of my life with them,” Taylor said on her wedding day.
The couple got married on Saturday, Aug. 9, and had a second ceremony that evening at the senior living center to honor the residents who watched the pair grow up and now tie the knot.
“My senior year of high school, I met my husband here. I was a server, he was working maintenance,” Taylor explained. “We just kinda crossed paths, connected there, and then the rest is history.”
Bride Taylor Orlando with residents of the Baywinde Senior Living Center.News 8 WROC/YouTube
Taylor started as a server at age 15 and worked her way up to being the dining services director.
“Being a dining director, I don’t look like this most of the time at work, so I think it’s going to throw them off a little bit seeing me done up,” Taylor joked while wearing her wedding attire.
For the big day, the bride styled her hair in an updo with a few wispy curled pieces of hair hanging out to frame her face. She wore a sleeveless wedding dress, simple jewelry and soft makeup.
In the news footage, Taylor could be seen hugging several of the senior residents.
Posted inhappiness|Comments Off on Bride and Groom, Who Met While Working at a Senior Living Center, Invited Their ‘200 Grandparents’ to Their Wedding
The Double Delight rose’s history is tied to California rose breeding in the 1970s, and it quickly became a legend because it achieved the rare balance of beauty and strong fragrance—a “double delight” for gardeners and rose lovers who explore Skyline’s 4th floor patio.
Introduced: 1977 in the United States
Parentage: A cross between ‘Granada’ (a red-and-yellow hybrid tea) and ‘Garden Party’ (a creamy-white hybrid tea).
This combination produced a rose that carried Garden Party’s creamy base color but added Granada’s red overlays and fragrance.
All-America Rose Selections (AARS) Winner – 1977
Consistently ranks as one of the world’s most beloved roses, often included in “top 10” fragrance lists.
Popular in both gardens and as a cut flower because of its long stems, elegant form, and striking coloration.
Vietnam has developed a strong reputation for high-quality ceramic pots, especially for gardening and decorative use. A few reasons explain why some of the best ones come from there:
1. Long tradition and skilled artisanship
Vietnam has produced ceramics for over 1,000 years, with famous centers like Bát Tràng village (near Hanoi) dating back to the 11th century.
Generations of artisans have refined techniques in hand-throwing, glazing, and firing, which produces durable, aesthetically pleasing wares.
2. Natural resources
The country has abundant high-quality clay, often rich in kaolin and other minerals that give strength and fine texture.
Local clays fire well at high temperatures, which helps create pots that are both strong and weather-resistant.
3. High-temperature kilns
Vietnamese potters traditionally fire at very high temperatures (often >1200°C), creating vitrified ceramics that resist cracking in freeze–thaw cycles — important for garden pots exported to North America and Europe.
4. Balance of strength and artistry
The pots are thick-walled and heavy (resisting tipping in wind), yet finely finished with glazes that withstand sun and water.
Decorative styles often combine Asian motifs with contemporary designs for export markets.
5. Competitive production and export scale
Vietnam is one of the world’s largest exporters of ceramics and garden pottery. The combination of skilled labor, lower production costs, and access to shipping ports (like Hải Phòng and Hồ Chí Minh City) allows high-quality pots to be sold internationally at competitive prices.
6. Regional competition
While other countries like China, Thailand, and Mexico also produce ceramics, Vietnam carved out a niche by consistently making frost-proof, durable, and artistically finished garden pots in large volumes — highly valued in Europe and the U.S.
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on Where do those beautiful rose pots come from?
If you’ve ever savored a refreshing root beer soda topped with a generous scoop of vanilla ice cream, you have the innovative entrepreneur Frank J. Wisner to thank. On August 19, 1893, Wisner invented the very first “Root Beer Float,” a drink he regarded as the ultimate sweet beverage.
How It Happened
The story goes that Frank. J. Wisner was working at a mining camp in Colorado, operating a soda fountain for his company, Cripple Creek Brewing. While gazing off into the distance, dreaming about ways to drum up business, his eyes fell upon Cow Mountain, a snow-capped peak off in the distance. He dreamily thought about how the mountain and the snow looked like ice cream on top of a cold glass of soda.
Wisner had an idea- and that mountain peak in the distance was the inspiration. After a bit of trial and error, and, of course, some taste testing, Wisner proudly started advertising the “Root Beer Float” at his soda stand —an ice-cold glass of Cripple Creek’s root beer topped with vanilla ice cream, a nod to that snowy peak.
The Root Beer Float was an instant success, and crowds would form at Wisner’s soda stand for a “Black Cow”- a nickname given to the float due to its inspiration.
The Legacy
Although there is some speculation regarding the factual accuracy of this story, Frank J. Wisner is still widely recognized as the inventor of the Root Beer Float. Many people celebrate National Root Beer Float Day on August 6 and honor its inventor on August 19, 1893. So today, raise an ice-cold Root Beer Float, or “Black Cow,” in honor of this legacy.
Posted inFood, History|Comments Off on August 19, 1893 – The Invention of the Root Beer Float
Here’s a document I’ve [Robert Reich] just signed. You may want to add your name, and share.
We, the People of the United States, declare a vote of no confidence in our current federal government.
We do so out of love for our country and our liberties and to defend our democracy from an autocratic regime that aims to destroy it. Our goal is to help speed the winds of democratic change.
Exercising our constitutional right to peaceful protest, we offer this petition as an online march on Washington.
DECLARATION OF GRIEVANCES
The President of the United States:
Has shredded the Rule of Law and violated his solemn oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States;
Has attacked First Amendment freedoms of speech, press, and assembly by intimidating those who oppose him;
Has misused the military and federal law enforcement to create a climate of fear;
Has abused his power by pardoning those who attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021 and by dangling future pardons to encourage criminal conduct on his behalf;
Has violated the principle of no taxation without representation by imposing tariffs through executive orders alone and by threatening tariffs to advance his personal agenda;
Has violated the constitutional principles of due process and the equal protection of the laws by using masked agents to kidnap law-abiding refugees for expedited deportation without judicial hearings and by detaining them in unspeakable conditions;
Has fueled racism and white supremacy by scapegoating communities of color;
Has endangered lives and our planet by disregarding science;
Has sought to manipulate the results of the midterm elections by using the FBI and the Department of Justice to facilitate gerrymandering by States his party controls;
Has violated the Constitution by soliciting and accepting bribes;
Has undermined the judiciary by attacking judges who rule against him and by failing to comply with court orders; and
Has denied justice to those he disfavors by exercising unwarranted control over the Department of Justice.
The abuse-enabling members of the Congress of the United States:
Have abdicated their constitutional duty to be check on presidential excesses;
Have gutted essential federal functions by accepting budget cuts Congress has not approved, rescinding monies appropriated for public services, and permitting the demolition of agencies and departments established by law;
Have willfully ignored challenges in healthcare, education, employment, housing, climate change, public safety, campaign finance and the preservation of democracy;
Have reinforced income inequality by enacting legislation that redistributes wealth from the poor to the rich; and
In the case of the United States Senate, have repeatedly confirmed unfit presidential nominees.
A majority of the Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States:
Has placed the President and his acolytes above the law;
Has evaded ethical accountability by tolerating conflicts of interest by its justices
Has demonstrated subservience to the President by using the so-called shadow docket to overturn without explanation well-reasoned lower court orders; and
Has squandered centuries of respect for the Court by rendering decisions that undermine legislation protecting civil and voting rights and other laws enacted by Congress.
NOW THEREFORE, we, the citizens of the United States of America at least 18 years of age, cast a Vote of No Confidence in the current federal government of the United States. We call for the redress of the grievances declared here and oppose the current regime’s assault on the rule of law, just as the signers of the Declaration of Independence rejected the tyranny of “The Mad King,” George III.
VOTING LINK HERE. Signatories’ names will not be released until at least 250,000 have signed, and information obtained in connection with signing this ballot will not be used for fundraising or solicitation.
SEATTLE — In a ceremony before the Seattle Storm hosted the Phoenix Mercury on Sunday, legendary former guard Sue Bird became the first WNBA player honored by her franchise with a statue outside of Climate Pledge Arena.
“People keep asking me what it feels like to be the first,” Bird said during her speech. “The truth is that I never set out to be the first at anything, but if being the first means I won’t be the last, if this statue means that 20 years from now there will be statues of other WNBA greats — some who are in the audience and players whose names you don’t even know yet — than I’m proud to be the first.”
Few players if any in league history have done more to merit recognition than Bird, who spent her entire two-decade WNBA career with the Storm, playing the bulk of it at KeyArena before the building was rebuilt and reopened as Climate Pledge Arena for Bird’s final campaign in 2022.
Over that span, Bird led Seattle to four WNBA championships, tying the most by any franchise. She also retired as the league’s all-time leader in games and minutes played as well as assists, making a record 13 All-Star appearances. Yet as other speakers (including three-time MVP and longtime teammate Lauren Jackson) highlighted, Bird’s career can’t be reduced to stats or titles alone.
“We can have that basketball conversation,” said Hall of Famer Swin Cash, who teamed with Bird to win two national titles at UConn and the 2010 championship with Seattle. “Greatness changes the game. Greatness evolves. Greatness stays and has longevity. And that’s what Sue has.”
Certainly, nothing has longevity like a statue. And that’s why for all the honors Bird has received since her career concluded, including the Storm retiring her No. 10 jersey in 2023 and the street outside Climate Pledge being renamed “Sue Bird Court” last summer — with induction in the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame set for later this year — Bird said this moment stands apart.
“I don’t know if ‘honor’ even really covers it,” she told reporters, “because it’s a bronze statue that will be there forever. It feels different when you think of it that way.”
The statue, created by Rotblatt Amrany Studio sculptor Julie Rotblatt Amrany, features Bird making a layup in a pose similar to the silhouette that appears on the Climate Pledge court. After considering the options of featuring a pass or one of her trademark pull-up jumpers, Bird found symbolism in the layup.
“Some fun little fact about my career that maybe some of you know, maybe not,” Bird said. “My very first points in the WNBA at KeyArena as a rookie were on a layup. My very final points in the WNBA were at Climate Pledge on a layup.”
Bird helped oversee details of the statue, which depicts her wearing Nike Air Zoom Huarache sneakers. Bird wore those shoes while winning her first Olympic gold medal and the Storm’s first championship, both in 2004.
“The process was interesting and really fun,” she said. “It was so incredible, every time I went to the studio to walk in — it’s weird to see yourself in clay form — but it was like every little tweak, it just became more and more me until finally I was underneath it and I was like, ‘Oh, that’s my nose. Oh, that’s definitely my hair.'”
Talk of a statue began in earnest after the Storm’s third championship in 2018 before increasing in volume when Climate Pledge opened ahead of her final season. After retirement, Bird began to believe it would become reality.
Other WNBA players, most notably A’ja Wilson of the Las Vegas Aces, have been immortalized with statues at their college homes. Bird is the first outside a WNBA arena, as well as the first female athlete in the city of Seattle.
The Seattle Mariners of Major League Baseball have statues of Hall of Famers Ken Griffey, Jr. and Edgar Martinez and recently announced plans to add a third statue for Ichiro Suzuki after his recent induction. And Bird joins longtime Seattle SuperSonics player, coach and executive Lenny Wilkens, whose nearby statue outside Climate Pledge was revealed in June.
“There’s just not a lot of women that are honored in this way, and we have tons of men,” Bird said. “I’m actually really proud and honored, especially in the city of Seattle, to be with those other male athletes. Those are elite, elite athletes, and I’m really proud to be in the same breath as some of the greats that have come through here but even more proud to be the first WNBA player.”
To conclude her speech, Bird said she never would have imagined this honor when she arrived in Seattle as the No. 1 pick in the 2002 WNBA draft at age 21.
“I came to Seattle as Sue Bird the basketball player while leaving as Sue Bird the Seattleite,” she said. “This statue will make sure a piece of me stays in this city forever, just like this city will always be a part of me. And when you inevitably see a little bird poop on the shoulder, don’t worry about it. Just consider it family checking in and reminding me where home is.”
Posted inSport|Comments Off on Sue Bird honored with Seattle statue, first at WNBA arena
That bright speck isn’t a star – it’s Earth! And the dot above it is the Moon.
#MissionToPsyche captured this image from 180 million miles away while calibrating its cameras. The spacecraft is en route to a metal-rich asteroid between Mars and Jupiter. go.nasa.gov/4oOb03k
Thanks to Mike C. (who shares our concern of RFK Jr.’s attack on vaccine research and proven usefulness in so many illnesses).
Results from early-stage trial show that 80% of participants who received one of two HIV vaccine candidates produced antibodies against viral proteins.
HIV particles (red dots) enter cells using proteins that bind to the cell membrane.Credit: Steve Gschmeissner/Science Photo Library
Two vaccine candidates using mRNA technology elicit a potent immune response against HIV, according to an early-stage clinical trial1.
The trial is only the third to test mRNA vaccines against HIV. “These are the first studies, so they’re very, very important,” says infectious-disease physician Sharon Lewin, who heads the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity in Melbourne, Australia.
Around 41 million people globally live with HIV, for which there is currently no vaccine.
To design vaccines against a virus, researchers often study how the body clears the pathogen from its system, says Lewin. But HIV attacks the immune system, and the body rarely manages to clear it out. As a result, candidates for vaccines against the virus must undergo lots of testing through trial and error.
That makes HIV vaccines a good place to use mRNA technology. The first mRNA vaccine was approved in 2020, for COVID-19. Compared with other modes of delivery, mRNA vaccines can be modified at low cost quickly — in months, not years — which enables researchers to test out different strategies. The vaccines work by delivering instructions to cells, in the form of mRNA, to produce specific proteins typically found on the surface of viruses. This induces an immune response, which helps the body to recognize and clear out a virus, should it be exposed to the real thing.
Bound or free
HIV uses an ‘envelope’ protein on its outer membrane to bind to and infect cells. In the latest study, published in Science Translational Medicine, a team including William Schief at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California, who works on protein design, conducted a small trial, comparing two vaccine approaches. In one, the standard method for HIV vaccine candidates, the cell is directed to produce envelope proteins that float freely. In the other, the mRNA vaccine instructs the cell to make envelope proteins that are attached to the cell membrane — similar to how they are found in the live virus. The authors describe animal tests of this method in a companion paper2.
The trial involved 108 healthy adults aged between 18 and 55 across ten study sites in the United States. It tested two membrane-bound vaccine candidates and one unbound candidate.
Participants each received three doses of a single vaccine, at a low or high dose, several weeks apart; which vaccine they received was selected randomly. The vaccines were provided by pharmaceutical company Moderna in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Schief is vice-president for protein design.
Some 80% of the participants who received either of the vaccines that made membrane-bound proteins went on to produce antibodies that could block that protein from entering cells. By contrast, only 4% of the participants who received the unbound-protein vaccine produced corresponding antibodies.
“The difference is pretty striking,” says Lewin. She expects the findings to inform the development of future vaccine candidates.
Posted inHealth, Science and Technology|Comments Off on mRNA vaccines for HIV trigger strong immune response in people
