Tradition

Less than two weeks from Election Day (but who’s counting), so find a poll that meets your expectations. Google your way out of feeling like shit about the state of the world. Search term your way to someone who agrees with you. Content for content’s sake. Data like landfills and hoarded attics.

I suffer from political apathy. I don’t care who wins the election (righteous apathy talking). I voted by mail and will have my popcorn ready on Election Night for a thriller. Half the country will be miserable and angry either way. Then, I go to work the next day, pay bills, and put food on the table for my family. All I can give right now is to my immediate life.

Myopia is a defense mechanism. I nest by buying stuff online to make the house cozier. The holiday season triggers loss and nostalgia. The L.L. Bean catalog has returned to a less trendy experience -duck shoes, flannel PJs, and custom monograms- but with BIPOC models.

Shop therapy keeps things present and selfish for now. Foresight and unselfishness have little payoff in a binary world.

My kids want some Thanksgiving tradition—turkey and all the fixings like grandma did (or Whole Foods). Not some Tofurkey performative semantics clusterfuck. They/I want analog family time like it’s 1979: Scrabble, football, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, tryptophan. In psychology, it's called regression. In the real world, it's tradition.

***

The temps are seasonal—low 40s in the morning. On the walk to work, I pass a young, hirsute, REI-apparelled man using his phone via earbuds. He laughs and says, “It’s chilly time, not Mike’s Chili.”

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Hence The Cabbage

The Ballard Bridge is closed for construction again this weekend, which quiets down the neighborhood and Brewery District. Today, I passed the same unhoused man three times: once at Fred Meyer, once on the corner of Market and 15th, and once near Gemenskap Park.

El and I go to Obec for a beer and grub from a Salvadoran food truck. She notices a slaw dish, curtido, served with pupusas and wonders if it originates from Europe.

The conversation turned to Adolph Eichmann, a nazi who was responsible for the deportation and death of over 400,000 Hungarian Jews. After the war, he escaped to Argentina, so that is why we thought, perhaps, escaping Jews and nazis may have settled in El Salvador -hence the cabbage.

Curtido’s origins date to the Indigenous Pipil and Lenca tribes, who made curtido to ferment vegetables and preserve foods before refrigeration. Various vegetables are used, some influenced by Spanish colonizers over the centuries. Cabbage is a modern ingredient influenced by European settlers in the last century.

In 1960, Eichmann was captured outside his San Fernando home, a town outside Buenos Aires, and brought to justice, his SS tattoo surgically erased from his body. A Nazi scar remained.

For God’s Sake

I have a terrifying vision of the future of stadium names:

Musk Stadium

AOC Fieldhouse

Marjorie Taylor-Green Arena.

The grift is mundane.

***

“Sedona is just beautiful,” a man said to an older man. “You should go.”

“Oh, those days are over,” said the older man.

***

We eat breakfast at a Seattle diner. I use the clarifier “Seattle” because it’s a poor substitute for a New York diner, which is simply a diner. In New York, all diners are baseline decent.

Most Chinese food sucks in Seattle too. Panda Express is tastier. Corporations know how to fabricate the genetically modified sweet (and sour) spot.

I ordered California Benedict with bacon on the side. The hollandaise sauce was soupy and a vapid mustard color, not yolky yellow. The salty bacon carried the slop.

I should eat twigs and berries to reduce my carbon footprint and help combat climate change, but I recycle and compost like a lock-step Seattleite, where hungry humans rummage my bins.

With three teens, I see the mental health of young people as more important, even as hurricanes turn Florida into a water world. The choice now is to concede coastal land or build cities on stilts like an upside-down Atlantis.

Nothing is stranger than Anderson Cooper reporting on the hurricane as wind and rain battered his pomade coiffure under a bendy palm tree.

For God’s sake, Cooper, go inside.

Back to you, Wolf.

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Gwyneth Paltrow’s Naturopath

A friend parks his vintage Jaguar in an apartment garage around the corner. The management company rents out spaces to maximize profits - sandwich boards and grommet banners advertise vacancies.

This weekend, someone tried to hotwire the car but failed. Still, the steering column is significantly damaged. Metal interior finishings, such as seat belt buckles, handles, and the rearview mirror, were stolen, like Seattle was from the Duwamish.

A new proposed policy would require homeowners to give their homes to the original landowner without a profit from the lake to the sound. 😉

There may be Indigenous bones under your Craftsman.

***

El is visiting her parents this week. She has Sandwich Gen responsibilities in Florida. Her plane, a Boeing 737-9 Max, flew over the destruction left by Helene just days ago and landed in Fort Lauderdale. The aircraft did not lose a door.

She sends a photo of a distant sunset over Boca Raton from the wing window seat. When she lands, she will spend the week saying goodbye to her mom, who seems to have taken a turn for the worse. We sense she is close and talks about going on a trip. Before my father passed, he focused on train tickets and having enough money in his wallet for an upcoming trip. He clutched his travel bag with his life.

***

What can I make with hot dogs and almost spoiled vegetables in the frig? I Google “hot dogs and peas recipe.”

I am seeing a trend of cooking shows moving away from haute cuisine to focus on budget-conscious viewers. Shows are filmed in the chef’s domestic kitchen (not a studio), where they use canned goods, frozen vegetables, plebeian supermarket utensils, and half-bags of pasta from the pantry. Jamie Oliver’s Cooking For Less and Alison Roman’s Home Movies are examples. DIY production value has replaced the Emeril Lagasse tasting table, live studio audiences, and Martha Stewart’s farm-to-table ethos.

***

On 14th Ave NW, a city crew uses gas-powered industrial scythes to weed-wack the matted and prickly brush on the median. Workers wear goggles and face masks and look like lefty rioters, a fashionable fad these days.

The streets are temporarily free of parked cars, and the feeling is palpable. I walked to Ballard Market (Rebranded name: Town & Country) for the basics—butter, milk, cheese, Japanese rice, chilled green tea, bananas, and grain-free cat food to prevent crystals in their bladders. Cat healthcare is more of a priority than human healthcare in this country.

When you go to the vet, they shame you for all that you are not doing for your pet: recommendations for fancy diets, tinctures, mood scents for anxiety, and enriching stimulation like Gweneth Paltrow’s naturopath.

Moscow, Idaho

The drive from Pullman to Moscow, Idaho, is 8 miles. When you first cross the border into Idaho, the Appaloosa Museum and Heritage Center is next to Walmart and La Quinta. The museum documents the history of the Appaloosa horse breed in the region.

The Nimíipuu (Nez Perce), an Indigenous people, bred horses on the Columbia River Plateau. European settlers called them “Nez Perce,” which means “pierced nose,” but they were mistaken for the Chinook tribe. Today, the Nez Pierce has a population of 3,500, and many live on the reservation in Idaho, a tiny fraction of their land systematically taken treaty by treaty from the United States. As valuable resources like gold and timber were discovered on their land, the United States reneged.

There is little, if any, proof “Moscow” was named after the Russian Capital, but Russian comedian Yakov Smirnoff, nonetheless, opened his Moscow-to-Moscow world tour in Idaho in 1991.

The Palouse Mall and the University of Idaho, another land grant University, are on West Pullman Road, across from each other. It is “Anywhere, USA,” with box and chain stores. We eat at Jack Jack’s Diner because it reminds us of an East Coast diner with neon and a mirrored stainless steel facade. The friendly waiter directed us to “the next street over” for tourist shopping.

South Main is in historic Downtown Moscow. It has coffee shops, bookstores, vintage clothing boutiques, restaurants, bars, ice cream, antique and kitsch stores, and feels like a college town.

Photo: University of Idaho

A giant grain elevator is a reminder of the agricultural history of Latah County and the Palouse. Hummel Architects conceptualized the structure for modern use to draw visitors.

I pick up a rusty license plate, a book on “cool” from the late seventies at Hello Everything, and a rugby shirt on a sale rack outside Revolver. I am intrigued by a recipe stand, so I flip through someone's antique recipes and find “Mayonaise Cake.” It's a Depression-era recipe without milk, butter, or eggs.

There are two movie theaters: the Nuart and Kenworthy. The Kenworthy shows classic movies, and the Nuart, a former first-run theater, is now a Christian Ministry like the Cordova Theater in Pullman.

A lone RFK Jr. sign is on the side of the four-lane road. I noticed his book The Wuhan Cover-Up in a local bookstore.

1956

The district is quiet and clean. I don't see unhoused shelters against buildings or down alleys. Drug use behavior is unseen. Bike riders are asked to walk their wheels on sidewalks.

We plan to go to the McConnell Mansion Museum, but its website hours and a sign on the old house contradict each other, so it's closed. We get snacks and drinks at the Moscow Food Co-Op, an upscale grocery with a deli and coffee shop. Fake revolution is in the air.

Outside Oasis

We are driving to the village of Magnolia for only the second time since moving to Seattle 8 years ago. At times, Magnolia feels like you are not in Seattle. To get to the village, you ascend Dravus, a steep neighborhood road that should never have been a road. The topography secludes Magnolia, so I can imagine residents staying put when they can and only leaving as needed.

The village feels like a small suburban town. West McGraw Street defies the trends of other Seattle shopping thoroughfares. Long-standing businesses like Gim Wah mix with coffee shops, gift shops, pubs, pizzerias, obligatory Starbucks, and Albertson’s in buildings with mid-century masonry.

Residents eat lunch or drink iced coffee under mature trees to avoid the midday heat. I noticed a bus stop sign with a zig-zag pole, a thoughtful resident-initiated project.

Camp kids play sports at the Magnolia Playfield. We stop at the Magnolia Garden Center for some florals. The staff member talks about the Mariners playing the Astros this weekend. He expects “like every year” for the M’s, currently clinging to a one-game lead in the West, to fade by October.

He talks about the historic 2000 team that almost beat the Yankees to go to their first World Series.

***

We drop one of our kids off at the Bon Odori Festival at the Seattle Betsuin Buddhist Church, park in the C-ID, and walk around. I fondly remember painting noodles in Maynard Alley. I stopped to view a six-story mural I helped design for Uncle Bob’s Place. The mural faces South Jackson and is visible from the I-5.

The streets are quiet. People in Sounders and Mariners jerseys kill time before evening games at T-Mobile and Lumen. Since the pandemic, many storefronts have remained boarded up. We shop at Kobo, a Japanese gift shop on South Jackson Street. I purchased a clay necklace and Ellie a lacquer-style display shelf.

Some businesses have not removed the plywood to protect against break-ins and vandalism. A cut-out in the plywood with a flashing “Open” sign is sometimes the only indication that the business is still operating.

We walk towards Hing Hay Park. Open drug use and behavior are conspicuous. Outside Oasis, a woman with open sores on her legs asks for money. Asian kids in fashionable street clothing -The Godfather logo across baggy shorts- order bubble tea. I get a brown sugar milk tea with boba, and we walk to Uwajimaya.

Older people sit on walkers outside International House, an affordable apartment building built in 1979 and renovated in 2018. It might be cooler outside than in apartments without A.C.

The atrium lobby and central glass facade were design features of their time, often seen in office buildings, industrial parks, and malls to elevate otherwise utilitarian architecture.

Growing up on Long Island, glass followed suburban sprawl into strip malls and shopping centers with an anchor store and neon trim.

I purchased Tokyo Style by Kyoichi Tsuzuki in Kinokuniya. First published in 1993, the photographs documented the city’s residents as they lived. The book continues to challenge the minimalist monastic aesthetic that Westerners fetishize.

Uwajimaya is always busy with locals and visitors eating in the food court or shopping for Asian ingredients. Ellie loves the household section that features beauty products, cooking utensils, Daruma, Kokeshi, Noren, rice bowls, chopsticks, and kawaii gifts.

***

The M’s and Astros are tied for first place on Monday morning, losing two out of three games.