Back to the Corners

 

Went down to Lake Forest Park today, to check out the demonstration. Given that there were No Kings rallies today, it was pretty well attended. And, of course, there was someone in an inflatable costume. Given the proximity to Halloween, I would have expected to see more, but it seems that they were more popular back in the summer.

Dashing

 

This is Dash, the mascot cart of the local Costco where I tend to shop. While the current Costco carts are gray, the older ones were white, and when they were replaced, the employees of the store kept one, and they decorate it at intervals, depending on the time of year. It's currently in fall livery, but as football season really gets going, it will next likely show up in Seahawks colors.

Breezy, With a Chance of Blackouts

It being late September here in the Seattle area, the Rainy Season has started up again. So from now until about next July, the skies will be gray off and on, and every so often, a relatively small amount of water will fall from the sky. (And by small, I mean between one-tenth and one-quarter of an inch over the course of a day. Seattle may be famously rainy, but a tropical storm or a hurricane drops more water over several hours to a day than we commonly see up here in a year.)

Sometimes, there's a little bit of wind, to go with all of that rain. And that's when things become hairy. Today, for instance, the winds were forecast to be southerly, at about 10 miles per hour or so, with gusts peaking at a little more than twice that.

The winds struck me as calm today. I went out to the grocery store, and while I was gone, a squall or two brought down some branches and a bunch of leaves, but nothing particularly strong was in evidence.

But, as I type this, some fifty thousand people in the greater Puget Sound area are without power, mostly just south of the state capitol, Olympia, which is some ways south of here. On a day that was admittedly wet, but barely windy enough to really be noticeable.

And that seems par for the course around here. Power outages seem to be a regular occurrence whenever the weather is the slightest bit ornery. Are the winds strong enough to actually fly a kite? Have the kite surfers called in from work to rush down to the shores of the Sound? Then you can pretty much bet that the power is out somewhere.

A lot has been made of the fact that China, and likely other state actors, have been putting in a lot of work to infiltrate utility networks across the United States, to cut off the power or wreck energy supplies in the case of a war. Here, they don't need to put in the effort, just looking at a power line funny seem to be all it takes. Part of the problem is, I suspect, that I don't live in Seattle proper, which appears to have much more durable infrastructure (and a different power company) than the suburbs. Still, this is a major metropolitan area, and electricity isn't a new technology.

This lack of reliability in the power grid is the source of a certain amount of friction, as state and local governments work to wean the area from fossil fuels, through regulations such as not allowing natural gas to be used in newly-constructed homes for heating and cooking. Which is fine, but if the power goes down somewhere every time Mother Nature so much as twitches, an exclusive reliance on electricity leaves people in the cold and dark, rather than just the dark. And this drives opposition to climate initiatives.

I have no idea how power companies are run, so maybe PSE is doing their best, and this is just a difficult place to keep the lights on. But it seems to me that other places have solved this.

Sign Off

The sign reads: "If you were to die tonight, are you sure you're going to heaven? Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved - you and your household. Acts 16:31."

At first, I thought that the woman on the far corner was a panhandler. It's somewhat common for them to put a fair amount of detail into their signs, explaining their plight. Or, perhaps, a protester... this particular corner in the next suburb over seems to be a somewhat popular one for people with axes to grind against something or another.

As it turned out, she was something of a missionary, holding up her neatly-lettered white sign with a message of salvation on it. Despite the fact that western Washington has a reputation for being a secular place, there are a fair number of churches out this way, including a local megachurch on the other side of town that seems to change its name (and controlling pastor) every couple of years or so. So, I find it somewhat surprising when people are out stumping for Christianity in general, rather than seeking attendees for their church in particular.

But the other thing that I found interesting about this is something that I hadn't really thought about previously. The bottom of the woman's sign references a particular passage from the Bible that it (partially) quotes: "Acts 16:31." For someone who was unfamiliar with Christianity, that citation wouldn't mean anything. Although I suppose the Internet would help with that, it still strikes me that this is the sort of thing that's aimed more at lapsed Christians (who would be more likely to understand the notation) than non-Christians.

In any event, by the time I made it to the store and back, she was gone, as is common. I wonder if she prompted anyone to change. Or, other than myself, to even take specific notice of her. 

Out and About

In a corner of the Expo hall at PAX West, sandwiched between a local vendor that sells video games and anime merchandise and another vendor selling customizable lightsabers, the Washington Secretary of State's office set up a booth.

Secretary Hobbs himself as there yesterday. There's also a cardboard cutout of him, that, to be honest, shows him appearing somewhat stiff and uncomfortable, with a Captain America shield and Thor's hammer.

Curious, I asked the employees staffing the booth what had prompted them to put in an appearance at a video gaming convention. "This is where the people are," was the answer. It also seems that Secretary Hobbs is something of a geek himself. He certainly seemed to be in his element when I saw him.

The booth had a prize wheel that people could spin to win one of several small prizes that were on the table, like a candy bar, or a cloisonné pin of the department's mascot, Mark the Ballot. (Not the worst pun I've ever heard, but it's in contention...) When I swung by today, I asked if the booth was managing good engagement, and they said that they were. Which is good. While I understand that politicians aren't the most popular people on the face of the Earth, I do appreciate it, and applaud them, for getting out and being seen. I couldn't have told you who the current Secretary of State was, before this weekend. So I'm glad that I came across him.

And if it gets more young people out to vote, they should chalk up a win for that, too.
 

Still Going

Went down to Lake Forest Park to chat with the demonstrators again. I remain struck by the fact that it's almost always older people there; the only younger people were campaigning for a candidate for the legislature.

To be sure, I'm not a big one on political protest myself... I don't find it as useful as simply voting for people who are more likely to share one's policy ideas. But I remember the Occupy Seattle protests, which were dominated by younger people, and am curious where that particular energy is now.
 

Location, Location, Location

So I was in Seattle's Ballard neighborhood the other day, and encountered this:

The cycle repeats itself...

I've been to Ballard often enough, and seen enough homeless encampments there, to understand that something about the area draws in homeless people. I presume that there are services nearby.

But the whole thing seems to work on an irregular, but repeating, cycle. Homeless people come to the neighborhood, and put up large tents in the parkways. After they've been there for a while, more people, in tents and/or vehicles, set up camp near them. Eventually, they start blocking the sidewalks and the local residents and businesses start petitioning the city to have them removed. The city then shows up, sweeps the encampments, and the campers go elsewhere. For a time. Then someone finds a nice stretch of parkway in the neighborhood, and puts up a tent... Wash, rinse, repeat.

If this goes on, the end will be fairly predictable... there will be another sweep by the city, and the campers will be pushed to another part of Seattle, or maybe just outside the city limits for a time.

While it's become popular to lay the blame at the feet of whatever Progressive (or simply Democratic) mayor has been elected to office this time around, I suspect that some of the responsibility belongs to the weather. Unlike Chicago, the Summer and the Winter don't roll into town looking for a body count. Climate change is a real thing, but the Seattle area still has pretty clement weather, when compared to some places I've been. And this makes involuntarily being out of doors unpleasant, but almost never life-threatening.

Of course, as is often the case, the homeless themselves are, as a group, a part of their own problem. There are enough people with mental health problems, addictions and both that it's going to be difficult to impossible for the community to police itself well enough to be good neighbors. And that means the locals are only going to have so much patience with their presence. 

The Colorful Season

 

Now that it's mid-Spring, the rhododendrons are starting to bloom, and adding a lot of color to the vicinity. One can generally find rhododendrons in bloom during the Spring, Summer and Autumn, but they're pretty much absent in the Winter.

Given that they're very common plants around here, finding some to photograph isn't difficult, and given their often vibrant colors, sometimes it seems that one has to go out of one's way to not find a giant bush of them, calling attention to themselves. 

Cornered

To be sure, I was somewhat surprised to find that people were still out protesting on behalf of the Palestinians. At least out here... given that the war with Israel has quieted down, I would have expected, if protests were still going to happen, that they'd be taking place closer to "the Other Washington." But I suppose that this just shows what I know; I can't really think of a good reason for people to allow their concerns to fade from the public's consciousness.
 

Talkative

I had just gotten out of the car when I heard it: "Hello. Hello." The voice sounded strange, like that of an elderly person, but more high pitched than one would expect.

I looked around for the source, and then heard it again; "Hello. Hello." Now I realized that it was coming from above me. I looked up, and, there in a tree overlooking the walkway was a crow. "Hello. Hello."

"Hello, hello, little crow," I said back to it, cheerfully. It really didn't seem to take notice of me. It simply repeated "Hello. Hello." every ten seconds or so.

I had shopping to do, and a time limit on top of that, so I left the talking bird to converse with my car and went into the store. While I was wandering the aisles, it occurred to me that I'd heard that crows could do this; they were one of any number of bird species that could mimic sounds from their environment. But this was the first time that I'd actually encountered a crow actually mimicking a sound, let alone a human voice.

So now I'm curious as to why it seems to be so rare an occurrence. After all, there's no shortage of the birds in this area; I see and/or hear them pretty much every day. And when it comes to grocery store parking lots, and other places where one might encounter dropped or discarded food, they're effectively a constant presence. And while Seattle and the Eastside are much quieter (at least as it seems to me) than my native Chicagoland, there are still plenty of sounds to repeat.

It's possible that I simply haven't been paying close enough attention, so I'll have to be more alert in the future, to determine if there are more talking birds in the area. 

Remembrance

A pair of firefighters cleaning up the remnants of a van fire, down in Kent last Sunday. I would say that it's unusual events like this that prompt me to carry a camera with me pretty much whenever I leave the house, but in looking at this picture to evaluate whether I was going to post it, I noticed the fact that the firefighter's names are on the bottoms of their coats, which had completely gotten by me when I was actually at the scene.

And that brings me to another of the reasons that I carry a camera; I'm not as observant as I would like to be. Perhaps, if I hadn't been viewing the world through the small screen on the back of the camera body, I would have noticed the names, but I wouldn't place any money on that. And I'd forgotten about the Starbucks across the street until I looked at the photographs again.

I wonder how much of the world around me has slipped through my fingers, due to inattention or a memory that, sometimes, seems barely worthy of the name. And in that sense, the camera is a net, that backstops my fallible senses.

A Modest Request

I saw a panhandler today whose sign read: "At least give me the finger." It was both comedic and heartbreaking. The young man appeared to be in the process of giving up for the day, he was walking away from the corner. It's a popular place for panhandlers; there is a Jack-in-the-Box there, which I suppose increases the likelihood that any given car might have someone with cash in it.

It occurs to me that I don't know whether the greater Seattle area has a relatively high number of panhandlers or not. I live in the suburbs, so while there are certain spots where panhandlers and buskers tend to set up, I've never encountered them in numbers. And even the usual spots don't always have someone there. (This doesn't stop the more conservative/fearful among the population from seeing them as symptomatic of apocalyptic levels of social disorder It's somewhat surprising how many people apparently cannot tell the difference between panhandlers and supervillains.)

Now, while there are some panhandlers who don't strike me as being on the up-and-up, for many of them, it seems that what you see is what you get; a down-on-their-luck person who has been reduced to begging funds and/or food from passers-by in order to survive. Often it's just one person. Sometimes, there will be a mother with her child(ren) or a family. Childless couples, however, are vanishingly rare; perhaps they tend to split up to work different places.

Today was sunny and warm, especially considering it's only mid-February, so it wasn't a terrible day to have to be out of doors. But neither Winter nor the rainy season are over yet, so we'll see how things work out.

Of course, the real problem isn't the weather; Seattle's climate is fairly mild, when compared to some of the alternatives. It's the fact that Seattle, like pretty much every other place in the United States, understands itself to be too poor to devote enough resources to the problem to actually solve it. This is, in part, due to a lack of coordination, and a willingness to defect... While Texas and Florida made headlines for putting migrants on busses and sending them to large cities in more liberal-minded states, the practice of shipping homeless people off to become somebody else's problem goes back a lot farther than that. So any city that actual starts to make a dent in their own homeless problem risks becoming a target for elected officials elsewhere looking to find someone else to foot the bill for their own homeless population.

It's also a side effect of the individualistic culture that has grown up in the United States. It's not hard to find someone who will claim that living-wage jobs are freely available for the asking, even when unemployment was significantly higher than it is now. (Of course, asking them just where said jobs were located rarely resulted in answers.) And when the impoverished are viewed as intentional freeloaders, who could get back on their feet whenever they wanted to, people who give are seen as chumps; a perception that many are keen to avoid.

I doubt that I'll ever see the young man again. Panhandlers tend to be a transient population. I'd like to say that as long as he maintains his sense of humor, he'll be okay. But that places the onus back on him, and I know he needs more than that. 

Demonstrated

 

There was another protest today, and it was a good day for it. I'm still of the opinion that deep-Blue Washington state is not the most effective place for it, but it's really not about that.

Thaw

So there's a local company that uses their street-facing sign mainly for political messaging. In the entire time I've noticed what it's said, it's pretty much never been about business. Usually, the signs have small government or simply anti-Democratic Party messages... whoever runs the place seemed to have really had it in for Governor Gregoire, back in the day. But the last couple of messages have been different, and the most recent one really stood out.

Not that there has ever been any explicitly Trumpist messaging on the sign in the past, but the obviously Republican leaning of the previous signs had given me the impression that this was someone who, if not a staunch supporter of the current administration, could likely always be counted on to direct their fire elsewhere. The fact that even this person, whoever they are, felt the need to take a stand against Immigration and Customs Enforcement speaks to the difficulty that the Republicans may have in the upcoming mid-term elections.

Of course, the chances of a Republican carrying the 1st District of Washington are don't even make it to slim. Zero seems like a much more accurate number, to be honest. But that's never stopped the owner of Chain Saws Plus from railing against the generally Left-of-Center political consensus of the area. And, given that they're still in business, there are people who don't hold that against them. So I'm fairly certain that this isn't a business decision; made as a peace offering to the more Liberal elements of the Eastside.

Instead, this seems like someone who's actually willing to come out and be critical of "their" side in all of this. And while I doubt that would translate into a vote to re-elect Representative DelBene, it does seem like one fewer vote for any GOP challenger(s). (Not that I'd expect any Republican candidates to make it out of the primary, absent a large, and fractured, group of Democratic candidates.)

Reliance on low-propensity voters has shifted from the Democrats to the Republicans, even if President Trump doesn't seem to be aware of the fact. If the Republicans can't count on people who have defined themselves in terms of negative partisanship against the Democrats to turn out, the President's concern that another impeachment is headed his way may turn out to be correct.

Weather-Wise

While everyone talks about how much it rains in Seattle, being a native of Chicago, I find that is mostly drizzles. I miss the heavy, audible, rain and the rumble of distant thunder that used to be a fairly common occurrence, and so when it happens here, it is something to be savored.

(Unless, of course, I'm on the road. Because for someplace where it allegedly rains 14 months out of the year, a number of people seem to have remarkable difficulty with wet pavement.)

That said, drizzly and dry are not the same, even if they both are something other than genuinely raining. While Winters in the Seattle area don't have the same homicidal instinct that that Midwestern cold can often exhibit, they're still a poor time to not have a home to be inside. I wonder how many people find themselves here in (admittedly short) Summers, and think they've found a clement place to get back on their feet, only to realize that a good nine to ten months of off-and-on precipitation has been awaiting them. Recently two whole weeks passed between rains, and nearly set a new record for January being dry. But the wet is back, and while it doesn't require an umbrella, it's much more pleasant with a roof.

Petitioning

Conservative Political Action Committee "Let's Go Washington" is attempting to get a pair of initiatives on the ballot that I suspect that many people would describe as anti-transgender. So today, they were at my usual grocery store (which doesn't allow for initiative petitions on the premises) looking for signers. Apparently, they'd telegraphed this move (or word simply got out), as "Washington Families for Freedom" (which sounds like a Conservative group itself) was there urging people to "Decline to Sign."

If I were a betting man, my money would be on WFF to win this one, either now, or once the initiatives make it to the ballot. Washington state is pretty Blue, and Trumpist candidates don't do well in statewide elections. Granted, Let's Go Washington is a PAC, and not a person, but something tells me that they're Trump-aligned enough that it's going to take more than ignoring the wishes of property owners for them to pull this one off.

Autumn Fruit

Today I learned that there are apple varieties that mature in mid to late November. It hadn't occurred to me that apples grew to this late in the season, but I walked past a house that had a tree in the front yard. (The apple tree that overhangs my yard tends to have dropped all of its fruit by mid-September.) I presume that it has something to do with the local climate; the general lack of frost makes for a longer growing season.

Blanketed

A single data point in a massive problem.

The Seattle area has, all things considered, fairly pleasant weather. While there are exceptions (the heat dome a few years back being one), the summer and the winter don't come across as homicidal, the way they do in some other places that I've lived in or visited.

Be that as it may, being homeless still sucks; especially now that the rainy season is settling in. This can make it difficult to be homeless, simply due to the difficulty in staying dry. A moving pad may be better than nothing, but it's not a proper blanket (let alone a sleeping bag), which, as it turns out, can be hard to find in this particular area of the Seattle suburbs. The drug store the man was resting near didn't have any, neither did the pet store nearby. The grocery store a bit down the block was a longshot that didn't pay off, either. One thing that I've noticed recently is that buildings being remodeled are losing there awnings and overhangs. I'd like to think that it's not for the express purpose of making those locations less useful for the homeless, but I'm too cynical to actually believe it.

I don't know if there are any shelters nearby, but knowing how the stereotypical suburbanite tends too regard the homeless, I would have been very surprised to learn their was. So I settled for checking to make sure that the man was okay, and giving him a bit of cash with which to buy some food, and going on my way. I don't know if that actually did anything for him... I can't image what.

And maybe that's the problem with homelessness. Even when the problem is as small as the one person looking to sleep on the sidewalk, it can come across as insurmountable in the moment.
 

Bubbly

This is, according to the parking lot attendant, an "indoor amusement park" named Bubble Planet. It's what's taken over what used to be Toys'R'Us in Bellevue. From what I've gathered, the place seems to be a bunch of different ball pits, but I didn't go inside, so I don't know for sure. (They also seem to have a side hustle in parking... it's not free to use the lot.)

What's interesting about this place is that it appears to be the first permanent resident of the building since Toys'R'Us folded back in 2018, I wouldn't have thought that the place would have remained vacant (other than Spirit Halloween showing up for a few months a year) for so long. Although maybe it's a sign of the times... there aren't much in the way of large retail tenants that could use so large a space.

Given that they've painted the building's facade, I presume that Bubble Planet is intending to be around for quite some time. We'll see... I haven't seen much in the way of indoor amusement parks; maybe they're on to something that will blow up. 

 

Clean Living

Even before the final bankruptcy of Rite-Aid, which resulted in the closure of all of the Rite-Aid and Bartell's Drugs locations that weren't converted into CVS pharmacies, there were neighborhoods in the Seattle area where drugstores were thin on the ground.

Like here, for instance.

The Northwest Kidney Centers is in a former Rite Aid location that shut down some years ago. After that, a Walgreens moved into the now-empty store seen the right, just beyond the Taco Bell. (That side of the intersection is Seattle proper.) The Walgreens was there for a few years before it too closed, perhaps a year or two ago. Where people in this area go for their prescriptions now, I don't know. There had been a Fred Meyer store a few blocks further south into Seattle that people could have used, but it's also closed. I think that there is a shopping center with a supermarket, and perhaps a pharmacy to the west of this location, but it's a mile or two down the road.

There are still a few independent drugstores here and there, but CVS and Walgreens have most of the local market that isn't served by supermarket pharmacies. CVS didn't keep all of the Rite-Aid and Bartell's locations open, and, as seen here, Walgreens has also had some contraction in the local area. We'll see if the new acquisition stabilizes things, and people who need medications continue to have nearby places to get them.