No Credible Threat

There were recent threats to our local schools posted on social media. Parents receive emails from the school principals stating threats of violence are taken seriously and handled by law enforcement.

We know from our history that school shootings often start with these early signs from troubled teens. The recent Apalachee High School shooting had the same early signs of gun violence posted online. School officials and law enforcement investigated at the time and concluded the student had no access to guns.

A year later, four innocent people are dead.

Not to say that Seattle Schools and law enforcement are doing the same thing, but, as parents, we don’t know. In America, mass shootings are like apple pie, so “No credible threat” does little to allay fears. Instead, students stay home, and parents oblige.

Today, my kids stay home. I feel helpless; keeping them home is my only sense of false security. Perhaps young people will refuse to go to school; then gun violence and legislation will be addressed.

***

I enjoyed the welcome rain this weekend, which soaked the dirt, earth’s forgotten natural sewers. The weather is still a divine act; humans can try to control, predict, and influence the sky with policy and drive-time weather magicians with blue screens and meteorologists' degrees, but the earth heals when we get out of the way.

Watching the country Cougs beat the downtown Dawgs at Lumen Field was refreshing.

An estate sale on our block creates unwanted traffic on the slim Seattle Streets. Young couples scoop up Silent Generation antiques that were supposed to be heirlooms, but their children didn’t want them. When leases end, those same antiques will be on corners -FREE-and as disposable as chipboard Allen wrench furniture.

I text STOP to endless political campaigns asking for my hard-earned money. You are on every political text list for years if you sign one petition or donate to one candidate.

STOP

UNSUBSCRIBE

BLOCK

REPORT AS SPAM

GET A DUMB PHONE

42,208.22USD

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Thimble Comeback

At Levi's outlet in University Village, a local tailor can alter your newly purchased denim or any jeans you bring for repair—🎵ooh lala Sasson.🎵 Since the pandemic, there has been a surge in people sewing again.

My mom used to sew patches on my knee holes, replace buttons, and mend tears in my clothing. The life of clothing was stretched to save money. Let’s hope this trend continues instead of the seasonal disregard of fast fashion. Interestingly, the iconic thimble in the game of Monopoly was retired in 2017 only to return in 2022.

Mean Machine is open Tuesdays through Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Sunday Marrow

The late August temps are surprisingly mild compared to recent summers of heat domes and wildfires. This summer, I’ve noticed “We Have AC” signs on businesses that solicit schvitzy passersby.

Back-to-school time always brings excitement and renewal for me at any age. It’s an instinctive refocusing on hearth and home, ancestrally, vestigially preparing for the harvest and long cold winter.

My parents provided safety and comfort for my sister and me. My fondest memories are walking through the front door from a day of untethered play to a steamy kitchen with warm food bubbling, the purpling dusk silhouetting the bare November trees. My mother chopped, and my dad sipped a cold beer after a New York City commute to the suburbs every day for 20 years. I noticed his quiet satisfaction, not desperation, in being home. He told me to put on socks because it was getting colder.

I lounge supine on the roof deck under a sun sail, reading John William’s Stoner. It’s a novel I picked up randomly at Barnes & Noble because the cover was intriguing: an introspective man looking down, “STONER,” beguilingly minimalist across the cover. The title reminded me of the Grateful Dead and a childhood friend named John, a “stoner” with a collection of live Dead concerts he flipped onto his tape deck and smoked a bowl. He lived in the present.

Sometimes, judge a book by its cover. It is a riveting novel about an existential man, William Stoner, who plays the long game unwittingly in a search for elusive happiness. As I’ve aged, happiness has always been elusive, with ebbs and flows. Happiness is accepting that there are vicissitudes.

In John Williams's novel Butcher’s Crossing, a young Harvard student named William Andrews takes some time off from his urbane East Coast surroundings to explore the wilderness. He ends up in Butcher’s Crossing, Kansas, to meet an acquaintance of his father’s, J.D. McDonald, who runs a buffalo hide business.

An excerpt:

Young people," McDonald said contemptuously. "You always think there's something to find out."

"Yes, sir," Andrews said.

"Well, there's nothing," McDonald said. "You get born, and you nurse on lies, and you get weaned on lies, and you learn fancier lies in school. You live all your life on lies, and then maybe when you're ready to die, it comes to you — that there's nothing, nothing but yourself and what you could have done. Only you ain't done it, because the lies told you there was something else. Then you know you could of had the world, because you're the only one that knows the secret; only then it's too late. You're too old."

"No," Andrews said. A vague terror crept from the darkness that surrounded them, and tightened his voice. "That's not the way it is."

"You ain't learned, then," McDonald said. "You ain't learned yet. . . .

Today’s lesson: How to suck the marrow out of Sunday?

41,335.05USD

+243.63(0.59%) ⬆️

Bigfoot TikTok

Indian Head Test Pattern

The rain darkens dirt and asphalt. The petrichor triggers the eternal rain of all my memories into a singular manifestation. It is a subtle and fleeting comfort I don't get with any other experience.

The storm's pattering rush comes and goes quickly, leaving curb rivers and trickling water of different timbres from different surfaces. The air is fresh, the birds cacophonous.

The call of blue herons near the Locks sounds prehistoric—cinematic velociraptors. The screeching sound is disconcerting, but it reminds me of a Bigfoot TikTok in which a man hears a similar animal sound and suggests it's the hairy myth. I know it's not Bigfoot because there is a busy 7-11 near the herons. Bigfoots hate 24-hour security cameras.

I work at the end of the 44 Metro Line, where bus drivers eat 10-minute lunches and then use the 7-11 restroom before releasing the pneumatic brakes to start another run - it's behind-the-scenes, a thumbed Dean Koontz paperback, a TV test pattern, taped breasts, the glitch in the matrix.

Xclusion Zones

Our youngest wanted to spend her birthday money at UNIQLO. She turned 13, and clothing is now her purchase of choice. Baggy muted colors are in; think the nineties acid wash GAP with chunky chains.

Downtown Seattle post-pandemic is not a pleasurable visit, but we drive down and park in a garage on 2nd and Union. UNIQLO is on 4th and Pine.

We walk to 4th up Union. A man uses a buzzer to cut another man's hair. It's plugged into an electrical outlet in a parking garage, and the man getting the buzz sits on a milk crate. Curly hair falls around his worn sneakers, and a light breeze off Elliot Bay blows a gray coil down Union.

#RetailScars

Drug behavior is open and disturbing. People slouch, arms hanging, precariously standing, bent into painful and uncanny contortions. Tranq, a mix of fentanyl and the animal tranquilizer Xylazine, is killing swiftly through the country. The zombified countenances cluster along the walls of empty storefronts as tourists holding children's hands scurry toward Pike Market with Mariner’s gear on.

The Public Market sign appears over the street horizon line, the only destination that seems to defy the blight surrounding it. Even when we entered the tinted doors of UNIQLO and passed security guards, the dichotomy of the consumer sheen was striking: bright lights, aisles of merch, tourists looking to buy anything that will make their trip worthwhile even though they can buy the same item in any city.

Rummaged clothing is refolded by hovering sales associates, then rummaged by new customers and refolded. A nostalgic, heavily-researched music mix of late seventies punk rock hits jingles from speakers in the industrial heights of the store. That revolution hits shoppers like Buddy Holly hit me in the early eighties.

I respect Warhol 🥫 and Basquiat 💀and their contributions to art, but today, their estates license their works as bubblegum. Any discourse of their work has been subsumed by time and ™️, and their images connote safe cool, like a millennial wearing a Motorhead tee. It's accessorizing, not authentic fandom.

The City Council has proposed exclusion zones to curb dangerous drug and prostitution activity in high-prevalence areas. This plan would push people to other places without addressing the root causes, and law enforcement is already understaffed. But I understand that without a concerted multi-pronged plan, downtown Seattle will continue to suffer civically and economically.

There are opportunities to rethink downtown to be more resilient like more mixed-income housing, multi-use real estate, and urban redesign to improve safety and foster human connections.

We leave UNIQLO and walk directly to our car to get outta Dodge, but first, we stop at a bubble tea shop called Tiger Sugar. It’s a railroad-style space on 2nd Avenue with floors of unused vertical commercial space. To me, it symbolizes the hollowed-out feeling of Downtown Seattle - empty buildings with shiny glass facades.

Beyond Wonderland

On our second trip to Pullman, I continued on I-90 instead of State Route 26 as we crossed the Columbia River. I wanted to try another route and have options for future trips to visit my eldest at Wazzu.

Route 26 is a one-lane driving experience, whereas the I-90 always has one or two passing lanes. It’s a more leisurely drive.

We climb the eastern side of the Columbia’s canyon walls towards George, home to The Gorge Amphitheater. Last summer, two women were shot and killed during the Beyond Wonderland music festival at a nearby campground. A 26-year-old man said he had taken psychedelics that made him feel like he was going to die. Without a gun, he would have just had a bad trip.

We took a lunch break at Schree’s Truck Stop. Since Fat Burger was closed, we ate at Subway. The George Sandoval Market and a food truck outside looked delicious but crowded. Many Spanish-speaking men and women were sitting out front and socializing. Some were drinking, others were bloodshot and wobbly.

I’ve noticed agricultural workers in cornfields as pickup trucks haul water and Porta Potties along the edges of the corn rows. I learned that the number of domestic workers in Washington State has decreased due to the H-2A Temporary Agricultural Workers Program. Temp workers generally have fewer attachments than domestic workers, so they are preferred for economic reasons. Domestic workers have roots and rights.

Although the law now requires hourly wages, many workers prefer piecemeal work because it incentivizes them to work faster and make more money. Hourly wages can be a pay cut.

Inadequate housing, racism, mental health issues like anxiety and depression, limited healthcare, and addiction are common concerns for workers.

The Subway is inside the truck stop, a standard convenience store with restrooms. Some foods cater to agricultural workers. The restroom is disgusting, with puddles around urinals, wet toilet paper mixed in, and missing tiles with rust-colored drips. Traffic is busy with a mix of travelers passing through, sun-leathered locals, the Latino worker community, and, on occasion, Gorge concertgoers from cities and suburbs grabbing munchies, alcohol, and smokes. I fall in the city folk passing-through bucket.

Mulleted young men in work gear buy giant energy drinks and jump in their trucks. A glassy-eyed man holds a 12-pack of Coors Light by the cardboard handle and walks furtively around the building, out of sight. At Subway, though, we all know the rules.

Near Sprague, we head south on State Route 23. It's a winding single-lane road through miles of remote dry farmland. Harvester tracks leave attractive designs in the waves. No one is driving south with me for 70 miles until I get closer to Colfax. Sometimes, a vehicle passes going North. Otherwise, humanity is absent.

I drive through a quaint Main Street with old buildings and storefronts in St. John, but many look closed, and I don't see a single person. It looked like a Hollywood set and felt unsettling. Growing up in a populated New York suburb, I can easily be terrified by folk horror. Fed a steady diet of seventies and eighties horror, I know a flat tire could reveal a town's secret.

I'm relieved when I see a sign for Pullman 🪧.

Zombie Pharmacy

The retail space on Market Street, which the former Bartells occupied for years, will become a Planet Fitness. The area around the former drugstore was deactivated as fewer people used the parking garage and connecting walkthrough to shopping. A vacancy signals that dead security cams will monitor the space. Corporate is not watching when the merch is gone.

It seems this pharmacy will not zombify with its giant, unrentable space for small businesses. The Target space across 15th is still vacant but protected from zombification because it's in a lobby office building. CVS across the Market would zombify if it closed. The old FedEx space, which is a few blocks up, has turned.

The roar of fighter jets above the clouds is practice for Seafair, or one of our many enemies attacking us. I walk with Ellie to the FedEx in Ballard Blocks. We take 11th Ave NW and cross at Market Street instead of 14th because we don't want to walk by people shooting up in their legs or wherever they have a usable vein.

Primary Day is Tuesday, and many moderate candidates are running on public safety and homelessness issues. Near the Blocks, posters on poles say, “Violence happened here,” in response to sweeps along 14th. Requiring people to move while providing resources and emergency housing is not “violence.” It’s an imperfect choice, but one that is working to support people towards long-term safety and stability, one slow case at a time.

The King County Coroner’s office has a public daily decedent list. Each day, it is noticeable how many deaths are drug-related. The fentanyl and drug epidemic is part of the problem. Addiction recovery takes many starts and stops and ongoing support, not one-off grants and interventions. You could make the argument that doing nothing is “violence” or more accurately “civic neglect.”

After FedEx, we eat lunch at Trail Bend, a local taproom and eatery. August days seem to keep people inside, and the industrial zone has fewer trees, so walking here is uncomfortable. We walk full-block stretches of cement buildings and razor wire perimeters protecting heavy equipment and stacks of wood pallets.

As we pass Urban Family and Stoup, more people are ordering from food trucks and sitting under pandemic-era outdoor seating.

We notice new parents trying to fit their newborn into a lifestyle that has passed but don't know it yet. Ellie and I talk about our kids growing older and the grief we feel. It took some time and denial, but we are starting to accept the transition of our family dynamic.

When our oldest is at college, our younger kids will also feel the change.

On an empty side street, a drug-addled man folds in half and clambers without a destination. Another man sleeps on a strip of grass roasting in the sun. His belongings scattered around him: crinkled dollar bills, a lighter, loose change, an Arizona iced tea can, an unknown piece of greasy machinery, and 7-11 nachos.

Crows hover and snatch nachos on the periphery of the wheezing, sun-burned human.

Behind Ballard Market, a couch cushion is next to a halved watermelon. A security guard walks around the store, locked and loaded, but talks to someone familiar on his cell phone with domesticated nonchalance.

38,703.27USD

-1,033.99(2.60%)🔽

Stop And Smell The Artichokes

A man sleeps on a mattress on the median of 14th Ave NW between parked cars. Later that day, he is seen bottomless, unaware that he is in his birthday suit. “Happy Birthday.”

The little library constantly gets refilled with books. These little wooden boxes are places for people to downsize their belongings, sometimes with books that should have been recycled.

I always peruse, but it's not often that the stars align. A few weeks ago, Swimming to Antarctica by Lynne Cox intrigued me. The book is stacked on top of a Jenga-like pile on my nightstand.

The impulse to read the book fulfilled a mood and an aspirational journey at the time I am not committed to just yet. Perhaps the impulse knows more than I do about my future self. There will come a time when I will pick up that book to read because it's simply time.

I have a new interest in watching bees pollinate. The neighborhood has plenty of wildflowers, so I stop. The longer I stay, the more bees I notice moving from flower to flower.

Growing up, I was allergic to bee stings, and my parents had EpiPens when medical access was limited, like vacations to cabins and country inns. We often vacationed in New England - Cape Cod, Vermont, and Maine. Whenever I saw a Yellowjacket, I would panic like Jerry Lewis.

Several crows caw as I walk by, then fly from wire to roof to tree branch along my path. They lose interest and fly away after seeing that I am not a threat. I enjoy this daily interaction as long as they don't dive-bomb me, which they occasionally do during mating season when I get too close to a nest.

An artist is installing a new exhibit in the Das Shaufenster gallery window. There is no inside gallery, just the window, which is always on view -24/7. It is a unique neighborhood feature, but I wonder if residents appreciate the art.

A young man with AirPods on seem to ignore everything and everyone around him. It's a nuisance for him to remove his AirPods when someone talks to him. “What was that?” he say, pulling one AirPod out.

“Good morning.”

“Oh, good morning,” slightly perturbed that his podcast was interrupted.

Stop and smell the artichokes.