Ireland Part IV

National Museum of Ireland. As you enter and look up, this is what you will see. We went just after opening and it became fairly crowded soon thereafter. This was the only photo I took.

Packing our rental vehicle was a planned out operation. All of the luggage could only fit in one way to allow space in the third seat for our granddaughter to hide out. Good that she is double jointed and fairly thin. I don’t know how she survived two weeks surrounded by luggage. Months earlier, when planning the trip, we had requested a 6 passenger van, which they actually had on the lot the day we picked this up, but we couldn’t use it and had to settle for this VW SUV.

Coastal town of Kinsale. Really picturesque village. The fellow in the white shorts is our grandson, Adam. We stayed in a three story Airbnb that had some interesting quirks about it, like a door to a lanai that closes and locks behind you. We had to put our washed clothes outside on racks to dry and in going out, this door closed behind us.

The harbor of Kinsale.

Strolling about town.

It’s good to know where the end of the world is.

On to Dublin

Grafton Street, Dublin

St. Andrews Church, Dublin.

River Liffey, Dublin. One of the many bridges that cross the Liffey River in Dublin.

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Ha’Penny Bridge, Dublin.

St. Andrews Church.

Trinity College, Dublin.

Trinity College, Dublin.

Signage in two languages. Pretty common throughout Ireland. There is and has been for some time, a concerted effort to save their native language, Gaelic.

Trinity College Library. They are in the process of restoring most of the volumes so I would say about half are offsite, in some sort of cleaning and restoration. Still a pretty cool place and a very popular one.

Friday View

On my walk a few minutes ago. A cloudless sky in Seattle- who would’ve thought?

Note: health update coming next week. I’ve seen one of three doctors, after my last CT on the 8th. Two more still need to weigh in. Based on what the first oncologist said, I have a sense of where things are going. It’s a mixed blessing/bag. All good.

This journey started in 2018, with the first CT scan. It’s just the nature of ‘c’.

Blessings 🙏🏻

Flood Mitigation 2022/23: South Park, Seattle.

One of the locations that I have been shooting for the past decade is the South Park neighborhood in SW Seattle. Part of the reason for photo documenting this neighborhood is that I actually lived in the area for a short time before starting school. Also, it has been a neighborhood in transition for decades; it’s part residential, part light manufacturing and part indigenous heritage. This makes for an interesting mix.

This past winter we had both a very high tide and exceptional rainfall event. The result was that the Duwamish River overflowed its bank by two feet, which caused residential flooding. The city came in with a Laundry Trailer, which is still there, months later. Also, not pictured, is all of the POD units the city brought in for residents to store their non-flooded items. Basements were severely flooded in those houses closest to the river. The sandbags you see ( orange and green) were used to build a three foot wall, unfortunately this was done after the flooding event. The city has left most of the sandbags in place. I’m not sure what the overall plan is, going forward. In all of my years of spending time in this neighborhood I have never seen flood mitigation done on this scale. ( just as an aside- The Duwamish River was the very first EPA Superfund Site. Most of the offending industries have left this area, moving away from the river. However, after 50+ years, it is safe to say the federal government is slow-walking the cleanup. It would take a monumental dredging operation to clean up all of the heavy metals and toxins that have long settled on the river bottom).

I’ve been sitting on these photos and more for months as I just wasn’t sure how to present the after effects of an unusual flood event.