Faith Restored

I figured he'd be miserable. It was election night and his guy lost.

I came to the election night party late. After the results had come in. I knew. We all knew. It was one of the races that was decided early. I arrived around ten, bought a drink, gave my friend a hug and asked him how he was doing.  And he surprised me. He said he was doing great.

My friend, B__, he's been doing political work for a long time. He's run a lot of campaigns. Some great, some disappointing. You win some, you lose some. It's a job. Even though he's young (younger than me), sometimes I see him as a grizzled old veteran of the political wars. He just does the job for whoever hires him. And that's where I was wrong.

B__ told me how proud he was to have worked on this campaign. He told me about the thousands of hours of volunteer service that the campaign had gotten. How he was the only paid staffer on a citywide campaign (!)  and yet, he was never the first person in the office. There was always some bright-eyed volunteer who got into the office before him because they just couldn't wait to get started.

And B__ told me about his candidate. Told me how proud he was to have worked for the candidate. He wasn't perfect, but he was dedicated to public service. He made decisions and he stuck with them, damn the consequences. And he was sincere. Too sincere, in fact, to make it as a politician.

But he had made an impression. Even in losing, he had made B__ proud to know him and work for him. And I think that this campaign, this losing quixotic campaign, renewed his faith in politics.

I believe in politics because I believe in people. I started in politics as a community organizer, and you have to believe in people to organize. You need to have a hard-wired belief that people are essentially good and that they will, given the choice, decide to do the best thing for the most people. That's politics, at its essence. That's what it's all about.

Politicians don't get into the job because they want to destroy people, or wield unrelenting  power. They do it because they care -  about their communities, about their neighbors, the kids on their block, the homeless people in their alleys. And political campaigners like B__ are seduced into the job. They fall in love with a candidate, and they devote themselves to a candidate. And win or lose, it's that love for the first candidate that they always hold onto. Sometimes it can just turn into a job. But at its heart, politics - and even political campaigns - come down to love.

I was proud that night to see that my friend wasn't mourning. There was fire in his eyes. He had rekindled his love for a public servant, someone who would rather be wrong than be victorious. He saw the goodness in his candidate and in the pursuit of victory for him. And he saw, for a brief few weeks, that that was the reason he'd gotten into politics in the field place.

Mushrooms

It was so gross, I'm not even going to post a picture.

I live in Seattle. You've probably been told that Seattle isn't really as rainy as the rumors are. Forget that nonsense. Seattle is moist. It's damp. It's a place where lawns either flourish (because of the epic rain) or they die (because the soil drains water so quickly). An old term for long-term Seattleites is "mossbacks." See, because they grow moss on their back! Because ... well, you get it.

I had mushrooms growing in my backyard.

I'm not talking about small cute little mushrooms. These mf'ers were HUGE. Four damn inches in diameter. They were ridiculous.

I didn't see a caterpillar anywhere,

but that wouldn't have surprised me at all.

How long do they have to grow to get to be four inches wide?! Good lord! (And what does this mean about my yardwork skills?)

Now, here's the gross part. I cleaned them up yesterday. The mushrooms were not only huge, but they were DISGUSTING. Some of them were whole and intact and could be removed by the stem. But some of them ...

had rotted. They had liquified. The mushrooms had turned into nasty black tar that stuck to the grass when I picked them up.

You know what happens when you forget about a bag of lettuce in your vegetable drawer, and when you pull it out, it's black liquid. THAT was what I found.

There are now black puddles of ex-mushrooms in my backyard. I'm praying for some of that Seattle rain to wash them away, because it is the GROSSEST THING EVER.

My theory is that these were actually the zombie mushrooms. I found the ones that had died and then reanimated to zombify their fungal brethren. Except, they're mushrooms, so they're plugged into the ground. And that's why they liquified where they stood, like an incredibly gross version of what happens to vampires in Buffy.

Come to think of it, that would have been better. Why couldn't they have just exploded and turned into powder?

9-11-01 - The Aftermath

It seemed to take the entire day on September 11 before we understood everything that had happened. Wild rumors filled the air. There was a car bomb at the Department of State, a fire at the Pentagon (that was the third plane), attacks on the White House. There was no Twitter, no Facebook, no instant news alerts via email. CNN's website crashed multiple times on 9-11 until they stripped it down to an all-text bulletin page. I kept trying to get the correct details. I wanted to know exactly where the plane hit the Pentagon, how many people were on board the planes, where they flew from, how they had been taken. What had happened in Pennsylvania.

I flew a month afterward. I had to go to Chicago for a conference. They had ratcheted down security so tightly that the lines to board planes went all the way out of O'Hare Airport and back around through another door. I remember seeing National Guardsmen patrolling the airport in camouflage, rifles strapped to their chests, at the ready.

September 11 really threw me out of my orbit. I couldn't stop listening to the news. Something about the way I had found out about the attacks after they were in progress got to me. I wanted to know when the next attacks were happening. Especially if they were going to be happening on the west coast. (Years later, it was revealed that the plan was to attack targets on both coasts, and that one of the potential targets was the tallest building in Seattle.)

I couldn't turn off the news. I watched the national news every night - something that I never did before. I became depressed, haunted, fearful. I worked in downtown Seattle, and we have an airport ten miles away, so planes fly over the city constantly. For months, every time I saw a plane flying near one of the tall buildings, I would watch it until I saw that it passed the building and didn't fly into it.

I ended up going into therapy, and I was taking medications for a while until I was able to regain control. But I still look periodically when a plane is flying low over the Seattle skyline.

About my girlfriend? Well, in September 2001, I had started saving up for an engagement ring. In November, at our favorite Brazilian restaurant, I fell to one knee and asked her to marry me. We've been married nine years. We're happy.

I'm not going to talk about the war on terror, or about homeland security, or about politics. I wanted to take a few minutes to talk about the effect of this on me, because this was an attack on us. This affected all of us, as a people, as a society, as a generation. We have survived, but we are not the same, and we may never be. The world into which my son was born is different than the one I used to live in, in so many ways. I hope his world learns to move past fear, past anger, past hatred. I want him to grow up full of hope, not full of fear. That's the world I'm trying to create for him.

9-11-01 - That Day

My brother, who was kind enough to let me stay in his apartment, woke up shortly after the tv went on. He heard me pacing back and forth. "What's going on?" I think I gave him a brief synopsis, or maybe I just pointed at the screen, at the Towers on fire.

At some point, the towers collapsed. I didn't realize that this was going on. It seemed impossible, despite the flames and the impact of a fully loaded commercial airplane. How could one of the World Trade Centers just collapse to the ground? I thought it was part of one floor, or a facade or something. But not the whole building. My brain refused to process it until later, when I saw the collapse over and over and over again.

I went to my doctor's appointment. It was shockingly quiet. We all felt like we wanted to be elsewhere, with families, with loved ones. The radio was on in the background.

Then I went to work. The office, full of social justice activists, was a mix of shock, fear, and rage. A co-worker told me, resignedly, "This is going to be bad, man. There's gonna be a war." I knew she was right.

I worked with people who knocked on doors and called people and asked them to contribute to the fight for social justice. There was no canvassing to be done on that day. No one would answer the phone, we knew, and no one would dare answer their door, especially if it meant stepping away from the television. The office was closed for the day.

I went to find my girlfriend, who was also home from work. We watched tv for hours and hours. Peter Jennings manned the ABC front desk for an eternity, showing impressive dedication and only occasionally letting his own churning emotions show through. I grew to love Peter Jennings for what he did that day. We sat and soaked in the overwhelming news of the day, unable to move, unable to believe what had happened.

But I kept seeing the parade of Bush-appointed officials across the screen - Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft. I remember thinking that if this was going to be war, if we were truly under attack, these were not people that I trusted. I didn't trust them with our country. I didn't have faith that they would watch our best interests. I was right, I'm sad to say.

We lived in Seattle, which was now considered a possible secondary target. We were a major city on the west coast, with a critical port and major technology companies in our area. Strikes on the East Coast and the West Coast seemed a distinct possibility. This idea haunted me for weeks - months - afterward, the idea that I lived in a city that could be described as "potential target of terrorism." We had already had our brush with terrorism in 1999 when Ahmed Ressam was arrested, claiming he was part of a plot to blow up Los Angeles' airport.

We went out to dinner that night at a pizza place in the University District, one of the few restaurants that was open. The owner was from the Middle East - Lebanese? I can't remember. But I remember he said that we would now understand what the rest of the world felt. I was surprised at his blunt statement. He was right, of course. For much of the world - England, Europe, Africa, Russia, South America - terrorism had happened in their country and was expected to happen again. They understood that they were vulnerable. Americans had always believe that they were untouchable. Our sense of safety had been obliterated.

I also remember thinking - and maybe I said this out loud to him - that he should be careful saying things like this out loud. Emotions were running high, and statements like that could be interpreted as support for the attack. Of course that's not what he was saying. He was just expressing a statement of fact. But people don't always react well when their sense of reality has been shattered. People who feel under attack can lash out in the worst and most unAmerican ways. We all found that out, as a nation, as the aftermath of Sept. 11 unfolded.

McFeces

Looks like they've got some new shit on the menu at McDs.

Nisqually Earthquake - 10 Years Later

Ten years ago, there was this little earthquake that happened in the Puget Sound. Here's how I remembered it.

I was driving to work. I had one of those jobs where I showed up in the late morning and worked until about 9 or 10 at night. I worked in Pioneer Square in a sixth floor office.

So I was in Lake Forest Park, driving south. I was driving down the street when two things happened simultaneously.

The first thing was that my tires rumbled strangely on the road. I thought for a second that I had a flat, but changed my mind quickly. I figured there were tracks on the asphalt. Have you ever driven on a part of a road where someone drove when the asphalt was still wet, and there's tire impressions baked into the road? It felt like that - like I was driving in a groove.

The second thing that happened was that Steve Sher and his guest stopped in the middle of a conversation and said things like "whoa!" and "oh, this is just like California." If you skip to the 1.00 mark in this video, you'll hear exactly what it sounded like.

So I knew two things: there was an earthquake, and nobody knew how bad it was. Sher said something like "I hope everyone is safe. We'll let you know once we know more."

So I had a forty-minute drive downtown still, and I didn't have a cell phone. All I had was KUOW, and I kept waiting and waiting to hear reports of damage, destruction, fatalities. I had no idea what I was driving into. For all I knew, everyone at my office had been pulverized.

As I got near downtown, I saw the strangest sights. Entire crowds of people were standing outside of their skyscraper offices. Huge mobs of people, standing on the sidewalk or even on the street. It was a little surreal.

I pulled off the highway, drove toward Pioneer Square. As I went down Jackson Street, I saw this scene.

That was just four blocks from my office.

I got to my office, and I saw all of my co-workers standing on the sidewalk. Nobody was hurt. The worst damage that happened was a potted plant had tipped over and spilled some dirt onto the carpet. A restaurant in the first floor of our building had a nasty crack in one of its walls, but the building was still sound. We called off work for the day. I called this girl that had been seeing for a few months - who later became my fiance, who later became my wife. She was fine. It could have been much worse. But for a few minutes, I was convinced that I was going to drive downtown to see the smoking ruins of buildings. It was a weird feeling.

Seven months later, the World Trade Center collapsed, and it really started to feel like the world was spinning out of control.

Runner

My wife has a sister who used to run marathons. Years ago, I asked Mrs. B if she ever ran, and she looked at me as if the question was "so, have you ever done any Satanic rituals?"

"No," she said with disdain. No, I'm not one of those people. One of those runner people.

My wife is now one of those runner people. Three days a week, she straps on her fancy runner shoes and goes running five or six miles along Alki Beach. She went for a run this morning, when it was 28 degrees outside. She said she ran an extra mile, just because it was so clear and beautiful outside.

Yep, she's definitely one of those people.

Part of her motivation is restlessness. Specifically, the elliptical machine we have in our office drives her crazy. The idea of running for 30 minutes indoors, staring at the wall, is unbearable to her. So much so that, sometime around April, she announced she was going to start running outdoors.

And she's done it, bless her heart. She started out slow - there was a training program she picked up for non-runners that she followed. So at the beginning, it was like 2 minutes of running, 8 minutes of walking. She's now doing 11 minutes of running with a one-minute walking break. Some days, she just runs the whole distance.

She's run a few 5Ks. She recently ran the Jingle Bell run in Seattle, when it was pouring rain and the wind was howling. She crossed the finish line soaked from head to toe, but jubilant. We were waiting at the finish line for her. (I wish I could say we stood outside the whole time, but we spent most of the time in a coffee shop, watching people's umbrellas blow inside out.)

She's going to be running a half-marathon in June. I'm so proud of her for keeping it up, three days a week, week after week after week. She didn't start running until this year, in her forties. We were in Oregon recently, visiting in-laws, and she asked me to drive her to a nearby town so she could do her Sunday run. It's what she does now. She has her running playlists, her little runner's cap, her armband for her iPod, a group of other women who run with her. My wife is a runner now.

Sunrise in Seattle

It's freaking cold outside.

Hard to complain when it looks like this, though.

One of the most breathtaking sunrises I've seen in Seattle. I used to think that the best sunrises and sunsets happened in Colorado, where I lived for several years. But Seattle's had some beautiful ones, this year especially.

I should add that it's also hard to complain when I'm inside a warm toasty house. Mrs. B is out running in the 28-degree weather. More on that later.

Shootings and Questions

A man was shot and killed last night in downtown Seattle. It happened on 2nd and Pike, a block away from the Pike Place Market.

Why?

Was it a drug deal gone bad? We think of episodes of the Wire. Was alcohol involved? Was it a gang thing?

Why did this happen in our peaceful city?

Was it some kind of fight? Did they know each other? Was it an argument over a girl, a car, a football game?

How can this be not about me, but about the victim and the shooter? We don't want to believe we live in a city where random shootings just happen. Random violence is terrifying. The universe must have a plan. Things must happen for a reason.

Why did he get shot? Was he in the wrong place at the wrong time? 2nd and Pike isn't the most savory part of town. There are lots of shady characters hanging around there. Maybe he deserved it.

Maybe it was his fault.

Maybe this has nothing to do with me, with our city, with our society. Maybe this was all about him.

I know I'm not the only one who has these thoughts flooding into his head. It's ugly, but that's the way we think, in a civil society. We want to have a reason for violence that makes it about The Other, about something else. Because the alternative - that violence happens suddenly, inexplicably, unpredictably - is too terrifying to bear.

Revenge of the Lawn

I just looked at my lawn and said to myself, "I wonder why it doesn't look better."

I live in a rental home. I have never planted grass seed on my lawn. I have never fertilized it. I have clover growing wild in my lawn. Moss. Patches of thistle. Plants that I can't even recognize. It looks like a well-trimmed vacant lot.

I'm also mowing my lawn with dull blades. My lawnmower desperately needs to have the blades resharpened. Right now, it's not mowing so much as blunt force trauma. The grass grows long and crazy and points in four different directions, and there are some stretches where the mower didn't have any effect at all and the grass is just laying down, five inches long and silently mocking me.

I wonder why it doesn't look better, I thought to myself. And then I burst out laughing.

Ten Years Ago...

Ten years ago...

I had just declared bankruptcy. Moved in with my brother because I had nowhere else to go. I had just gotten a new job which was going really well - my first year in the nonprofit world.

I can't remember exactly what I was doing, but I think my brother and I just stayed in and watched the fireworks on tv. Or else I had gone somewhere to sing karaoke with a bunch of drunken strangers for New Year's, hoping to get lucky.

The WTO protests had just happened in Seattle, and everyone was feeling a little edgy. Seattle's New Year's celebrations were scaled dramatically. The fireworks went off as planned, but Seattle Center was shut down to the public. Some guy named Ahmed Ressam had been caught smuggling explosives on a ferry into Washington State, and he said he was planning to blow up LAX.

What a difference a decade makes. Happy New Year to all of my beloved readers.  

A Manly Day

If you saw some crazy guy walking a push lawnmower down the street yesterday, that was me.

I had a very manly day yesterday. In the morning, I took my lawnmower to get the blades sharpened. There's a guy in the neighborhood who does lawnmower repair out of his backyard. (And it was easier to walk the mower six blocks to his house than to load it into my car.)

So I got to hang out in his very swanky shed while he banged on my mower with a hammer (it needed a bit of an adjustment) and then sharpened the blades with a power sander. Somehow, I thought there would be some kind of sophisticated tool to sharpen them, but he just leaned over the mower and carefully touched up each blade while sparks went flying off.

(The mower is now awesome, a grass-cutting juggernaut. I might take it out today, but I'd better do it early since it's going to get up to 90 degrees today.)

I thought a lot about my days as a machinist, back before I discovered the nonprofit world. I worked for two years making machined parts - screws, bolts, bearings - for a shop that mostly supplied to Boeing. I had my own toolbox - two of them, actually. I perpetually came home with grease on my hands, not to mention nicks and cuts that I usually didn't remember getting. I had to shake the metal shavings out of my shirts before I put them in the wash.

There's a part of me that romanticizes that period, my hard work phase, the blue collar phase. But it wasn't romantic. It was hard work, detailed work. High demand, high pressure, long hours, less-than-thrilling pay. Because I had to program the CNC lathes, I usually had to use my brain as much as my hands. It was a great learning experience, but I didn't see it then as a learning experience. I saw it as the only job I could hold down, even though deep down I always knew that it wasn't going to be a career for me.

In the afternoon, I had to go to Home Depot to replace the propane for my grill. It's amazing the effect that walking into Home Depot has on most men. You become less verbal, start answering questions with one-word answers or grunts. You start looking at tools that you'd never use in a million years, just because they look cool. You begin speculating what you could get done if you just had a radial saw and a router.

When I got back, I hooked up the propane tank and tested the connections carefully, making sure that I didn't blow up the yard accidentally. Then I grilled dinner, making sure I had all the essential tools of grilling wth me - tongs, heatproof mitts, and a bottle of beer. I made chicken and veggies grilled in a shaker basket. Pretty tasty stuff.

Earth Day Fail

I have to go drive around and do a bunch of errands on Earth Day. I will be driving by myself in a gasoline-powered car to several stores. I know that's not good, but that's what's happening.

I was considering going to the local Thriftway to buy my groceries. The groceries are a bit more expensive, but they're giving away free canvas bags to every shopper today in commemoration of Earth Day. So I thought, hey, I could use some free bags, maybe I'll make up a reason to go there.

As I look around our living room, I see three big reusable shopping bags. There are at least six Chico bags, the small, foldable kind that you can throw in your pocket or in your purse. And we've got four or five other canvas bags from random stores and giveaways. We have reusable bags all over the place.

So going to a store to get more of something that I don't really need - I think that counts as wasteful. So I won't be going there. However, now I've reminded myself to take some of those Chico bags so I don't have to use plastic bags when I go grocery shopping. So yay for me.

P.S. Oh, by the way, if you live in West Seattle, go to the local Thriftway. I used to live blocks away from them and was able to walk there easily. They give great stickers to the kids, the food is great, their coffee bar rocks, and everyone there is friendly. They are the epitome of the perfect local grocery store.

Snowbound

"This isn't New York. We generally have mild winters. It doesn't make sense to invest in infrastructure and equipment we rarely need. We are monitoring every source of information we have." - Greg Nickels, Mayor of Seattle

You got to love this snow. It is soooo beautiful! - from King County Executive Ron Sims' Twitter feed, sent 6:57 PM Dec 20th

Our leaders have no idea what's going on in this city.

We have had snow on the ground for at least ten days, and it feels like an eternity. We have been experiencing a cold snap like Seattle hasn't seen for decades, so the snow's not melting. (To all you people in Chicago and Detroit and Boston and Minnesota - I know you cats are used to freezing temperatures. We're not. Snow usually falls and then melts the next day around here.)

People are sledding down main streets in downtown Seattle. The bus system has been running half of their usual buses, and several have gotten stuck in the snow and ice. Stores are sold out of chains and road salt, and now grocery stores are starting to run out of staples like milk and eggs. Gas stations, waiting for their tanker trucks to arrive, are running out of gasoline.

I drove to work last Tuesday, Dec. 16. And that is the last time I drove my car outside of my neighborhood. We haven't been to drive out of West Seattle for a week now. Our cars been parked a block away for over a week, because our own street is on a hill and has not been plowed since the first snow fell.

Seattle is not a town in the middle of nowhere. We are one of the largest cities on the West Coast, a major port and business center. We have 600,000 residents. And we do get snow, regardless of how often we get it. We own a "fleet" of 27 snowplows, sander and de-icers. There are probably small towns in Massachusetts that own more snow equipment than we do.

We don't own more snowplows because we never get snow like this - except when we do. We get a good snowstorm about once every three years. In 1996, we got tons of snow and a cold snap, and the city shut down. 1990 apparently also had a pretty memorable snowstorm. This is not a once-in-a-hundred-years occurrence.

Many people have started to attack the city and the county for their response to the snow. There's a debate breaking out about whether the city should be using salt. (They don't because of the environmental impact, opting instead for stuff called Geomelt C.) But it's more than that. Their entire response to snow is to assume that it will melt away in a day or two. They plow the main streets - not the smaller side streets liked ours - but don't remove the ice deliberately.

"We're trying to create a hard-packed surface," said Alex Wiggins, chief of staff for the Seattle Department of Transportation. "It doesn't look like anything you'd find in Chicago or New York."

And of course, they don't plow the side streets at all, because they don't own enough plows. And they don't own enough plows because they never get snow like this.

Except when they do.

You will recall that I was furious two years ago, when the city couldn't restore our apartment's power for nearly four days after a powerful windstorm. I'm not any happier about their response to the current situation. This just isn't about not being able to get to the mall to buy Christmas presents, although I'm sure there's been a huge economic impact because of the city being immobilized. People are going to be losing their jobs because they can't get into their workplace. I'm certain there are people whose lives have been endangered because they can't get to the hospital, or their doctor, or their dialysis treatment. We'll start hearing about them in the next few weeks. We are suffering, and our elected leaders either don't realize it or don't want to admit that they've failed this test.

The problem is that they're responding as if we're getting the same old weather that we always (read: usually) get. You can't use the old responses when the weather isn't following the old pattern. I would think at least that Greg Nickels, a firm believer in climate change, would realize that. They should have had a plan in place for snow that didn't fit the usual pattern. Now, I don't know what that response should have been and it's not my job to make that decision. Maybe we need a few hundred tons of salt on hand, for just such an emergency like this. Maybe we need to invest in a hundred snowplows that can easily be mounted on city trucks on short notice. Or maybe we need to triple the use of GeoMelt C.

All I know is that right now, their strategy for responding to this snow has been an absolute failure. And a lot of us are starting to get angry about it.

Lights

I'm brewing a morning pot of coffee. I can't believe we still have power.

Last night, we were battening down the hatches and preparing for the worst. The Weather Service was warning of hurricane-force winds (not exactly in Seattle, but it was supposed to get pretty gusty.) The city started opening emergency shelters for victims of power outages and they opened up their Emergency Response center.

And I was having flashbacks to the windstorm two years ago. I remembered how, outside our window, the wind was blowing like we were on the deck of a ship that had sailed into a hurricane. Transformers were exploding outside. Trees were crashing to the ground. It looked vaguely like that Stephen King story, the Mist, what with the apocalypse happening outside our windows. We lost our power around 1 in the morning and didn't get it back for nearly four days.

So this time, we gathered up our flashlights and our blankets. We stocked up on food and bought emergency water for drinking. We wrote down emergency phone numbers and brought up the cooler from downstairs in case our refrigerator went out. And we mentally prepared for a cold, bitter night.

And when the wind started picking up last night, I started getting a knot in the pit of my stomach. And then ... it never happened. The wind never got worse than a stiff breeze. The dangerous winds never materialized for us. The coffee pot's still brewing, the lights are on, the heat is on. Thank goodness.

The Weather Outside is Frightful. The end.

So it snowed on Saturday.

At first we were all excited. Yay snow! We watched it fall, we went outside to take pictures.


Oliver woke up in the morning and wanted to go run around in the snow! And throw snowballs! And make snowmen!

I decided to drive to the store to get coffee and provisions. I was in the car for fifteen minutes, and my front tires went about three inches. My back tires slid six feet, jutting the car right out into the road.

Then I spent twenty minutes trying to maneuver the car back over to the side of the road so it wouldn't get hit. Once it was safely on the curb, I walked to the store while Mrs. B and Oliver played in the snow.

This is what the entrance to the local supermarket looked like on Sunday.

Here's what happened. It snowed, it melted a bit, and then everything froze. Now, this is Seattle, so what usually happens is that it snows and then everything melts. Or it snows, and then it rains. Or it snows and then stops fifteen minutes later. This time, it seriously froze. It is 28º outside right now, and they're predicting freezing temperatures for the next two weeks.

So all the snow has turned into ice, and all of the side streets are frozen over. And that's where we get into trouble. You see, Seattle doesn't get snow so we're not exactly stocked up for it. Seattle has 44 trucks with snowplows and sanders for a city of nearly 600,000. So they've plowed and sanded the main roads, and they're trying to get to the side streets when they can. But right now, most of the side streets are beautiful glistening sheets of deadly ice.

We're a city of hills, which is also compounding the problem. We live on a small hill ourselves, and right now that hill is a death trap. Mrs. B and I both drove into work, but it was an ordeal getting both cars out of our driveway and onto the roads. I tried to drive up the hill, toward the main road, and it was almost laughable - I spun my tires, slid, skidded, and finally turned around and careened down the icy hill toward the paved cross street, hoping that I hit pavement instead of a patch of ice when I made my turn. Then I did the same thing for Mrs. B's car. It was a bit of a frightening ordeal.

Don't get me wrong - I've driven in snow before. I used to live and drive in Colorado and western Massachusetts. So snow doesn't scare me. But it's the combination of a) the hills, b) the lack of plows and sanders, and c) the crazy Seattle drivers that have me spooked. Driving on flat plowed roads is a whole different experience than driving on hilly icy streets.

It's going to snow again tonight. It might snow again next week. One local station said that we might see temperatures below freezing through the end of the year! For Seattle, this is culture shock. We're barely used to snow. Freezing temperatures are absolutely stunning. The news stations had to tell people to do things like unplug their garden hoses and cover their outside faucets so their pipes wouldn't freeze. It's fair to say that our city is in shock right now. And it's not going to get better anytime soon.

Human Spam?

Dan Savage has never offended me with any of his columns describing all manner of lewd, perverse, weird, kinky, and occasionally extralegal behavior. But today he went and did it.

Dan Savage called street canvassers "human spam" on the Stranger's blog today.

Human Spam. Spam, as in the annoying and often fraudulent crap that fills your email inbox. He thinks that canvassers are no better than spammers.

It's an insult to everyone who's ever been held a clipboard and asked for money. I should know. I was a field canvasser for a month, going door-to-door and raising money for a local nonprofit. It was one of the hardest jobs I've ever done, and I don't think I'd have the guts to do it again. But I have enormous respect for anyone who does this job - and clearly I'm ahead of Savage in this way.

I still raise money today, and I learned a tremendous amount in my time as a canvasser. If you don't like them, don't respond to them. But they deserve respect, whether or not you agree with them.

He apparently said the same thing a couple of years ago. This was from his column back in 2007.

So I watched as the WashPIRG workers hit the office workers up for donations. And I thought, man, I hate those WashPIRG people. I know, I know—all for a good cause, blah blah blah. But I still fucking hate it when one of a WashPIRGer collars me on the street. According to their website, WashPIRG is a "non-profit, non-partisan watchdog group working on behalf of consumers, the environment, and good government," and the subtext to any interaction with a WashPIRGer is, basically, "Give me some money—unless you don't care about product safety, the environment, good government, and all that other stuff."

I don't want to pretend that Dan Savage's opinion is more influential than someone like Joel Connelly or Paul Krugman or Maureen Dowd. He's a professional loudmouth, a middle-aged curmudgeon. He's Andy Rooney for the hip Seattle set.

What's more discouraging is the number of people who agree with him, or who offer their own nasty comments about canvassers. Here's one response:

i view this as social terrorism. it's one of my biggest pet peeves. i'm serious. if i was interested in your damn cause, i'd seek you out. if it only happened occasionally, i'd mind less but it's a never-ending stream of someone needing something from me. i'm just trying to go about my business. it's no different from panhandling as far as i'm concerned. and if i have my headphones on or AM on a phone call, please don't interrupt me -- it's rude!

Like it's not bad enough to have Sarah Palin talking smack about community organizers. It's not bad enough to have everyone from Rush Limbaugh to John McCain talking smack about voter registration drives by groups like ACORN. Now we've got to deal with Dan Savage acting all offended and righteous about canvassers.

I've had it. This act of aggression will not stand, man. I'm going to put my two cents on the blog. And I'll encourage you all to do the same, if you've ever been a field canvasser. Or if you've ever known anyone who did the job. We need to add some balance to the blog's comments. Someone has to point out that, no matter how much they may not like it, canvassing is a legal activity. It's an important activity. It's not panhandling. It's still the way many nonprofits pay their bills and find new members. If it didn't work, no one would be doing it.

(A friendly reminder - if you do respond to Savage, remember to be civil. Any profanity, name-calling, insults, etc. will just be taken as evidence of our less-than-worthiness. Speak truth to Power, don't just call Power an asshole and think you did something great.)

A Musical Weekend

Sunday was the 10th Anniversary of the opening of Benaroya Hall. To celebrate, they had an entire day of musical performances all over downtown Seattle. We went down for a few hours.

These guys were the first performance we saw, and I think they were the highlight for Oliver. This video captures some of the energy of the group, but if you live in Seattle, go to a Seahawks game or find somewhere to see them live.

They had demonstrations of various instruments, so he got to play a violin and a cello. He was scared of the horns, though, so he watched his daddy try to play a trumpet and a trombone.

We also saw the Cascade Symphony perform in Benaroya Hall and caught a few other small performances. There was a band (the Raggedy Anns) playing inside the Seattle Art Museumn that got Oliver all revved up. He started running around and jumping around like a maniac. Clearly the boy knows good music when he hears it.

Flamingos!

We have a membership to the Woodland Park Zoo, and so we got to see the members' preview
of the new flamingos today. Oliver has been excited for weeks to see them, so we were in line as soon as the zoo opened.

They're amazingly odd creatures. Sure, we all see the lawn ornaments and we know they're pink. But it's one thing to know it and another to see that odd cotton-candy pinkness on actual real feathers. Their feet are Miami Vice pink. Their ankles (which look like they should be knees) are red. They are truly odd creatures.



Unfortunately, the flamingos seemed a bit bewildered at their new surroundings, and didn't do much at all except this. That is, they stood around in a big huddle for hours. Occasionally, one would stretch its luxurious wings and everyone would furiously try to snap a picture. Or a couple would peck and honk at each other.

But aside from that, they just stood around, looking vaguely embarrassed. Their bathing pond sat before them, unused.

So we watched them for all of fifteen minutes before Oliver got bored. We ended up stumbling into their fantastic display of protected birds, and saw some truly amazing creatures, including these Asian cranes.


We stopped by the flamingos on the way out and saw that they had attracted neighbors. A couple of neighborhood ducks decided that if the flamingos wouldn't use their pond, they'd make themselves comfortable. (The flamingo display is open-air, so other birds are welcome to drop in. I asked one of the docents how the flamingos could be trusted not to fly away, and he explained with a wince that their wings had been clipped by the collector who donated them to the zoo. "If we acquired our own flamingos, we probably wouldn't clip them.")


The ducks seemed to be the stimulus that the flamingos needed: they finally started acting lively, flapping their wings and honking agitatedly. The tight formation started breaking up, although by the time we left, none of them had dared to try and take the pond back from the ducks.

Despite the lackluster opening day, Oliver seemed excited to have flamingos in his home town. We're looking forward to seeing them once they've made themselves at home in their new surroundings.

Ice Cream Puddles, Anyone?

I think we may have accidentally killed our refrigerator last night.

What we know is this: last night, the fridge was running. Last night, one of us stuffed some things in the top shelf of the freezer compartment - behind which lives a fan that apparently runs the whole dadblasted thing.

Great big refrigerator. Leetle tiny fan.

Well, something happened and the little cheap plastic wall separating the fan from damage got caved in, and the fan was blocked or stopped or damaged.

We woke up this morning to a dead fridge, and puddles of water and black oil on the floor. We did the appropriate thing - we flipped out. I ran out to get a cooler and some ice. We saved everything we could - which was mostly condiments and cheese. (This USDA fact sheet proved to be a great asset.) I assumed the fridge had just croaked overnight and called the landlord to let him know that it was a dead parrot.

While I was unpacking the freezer, I noticed the caved-in panel. I moved the broken plastic panel away from the fan and whirrr! It started working again! Miracle of miracles! Saints be praised! We let it get down to temp again and jubilantly went out to buy some foodstuffs.

When we returned home, I unloaded the cooler and our brand new foodstuffs back into the fridge.

And then ... I noticed how warm the fridge was. And I noticed more oil leaking out onto the floor.

And then, Oliver said to me, "what daddy doing?"

"Daddy's going downstairs to curse."

Apparently, when the fan's running, it works fine. When the fan's off, it's not retaining cold. Fuckity.

So tonight, all of our cold stuff is sitting in a cooler on our back porch. The landlord's been called again. Hopefully, 1) we'll have a fresh refrigerator by Monday, and 2) the landlord doesn't see fit to charge us for breaking the fridge.

I don't really think that second part is either likely or legal. My guess is that it was damaged already, and that it was a matter of time before it died. It's just a little weird that moving a few frozen foods around would kill a perfectly healthy fridge, don'cha think? Anyway, I've got the Tenants' Union on speed dial just in case.