Tag: Seattle

I was born on a snowy Christmas eve. Perhaps because of this, as a child I always embraced the Christmas season with unfettered enthusiasm. Lights, cameras, presents! And my birthday!

It was many years before I realized that not many people had any interest in my birth. But the enchantment of Christmas traditions remained with me into adulthood, and gained a booster rocket of momentum after I had children of my own. However, it was that shift in perspective, from being the recipient of Christmas glee to the provider of same, that let the air out of my festive mood.

It’s easy to be a good Santa when the kids are young. A teddy bear, a doll, a set of blocks elicit happy shrieks of surprise. But expectations grow with each passing year, even as the wide-eyed willingness of children to believe outlandish tales of elves and chimneys and stockings diminishes, and the scale of the gifts seems to reflect the doomed desire of every parent to protect children from the inevitable truth that lasting happiness never comes gift-wrapped.

Once the kids get to the age where they want cars and computers, it’s safe to say that Santa is out of the picture. But even after he’s slipped back into the pages of a children’s book, the Santa inside every parent lives on, hoping to bring a moment of joy to someone.

And that’s about where I am now. Kind of fed up with the whole marketing of Christmas, but still believing in the essential product. It’s not as easy as buying diamond earrings or iPods or whatever the trendy toy of the moment may be. But, if the true goal of the holiday is for us all to lay down our arms and live in harmony for one day, well, I can still sing along with that.

And to all a good night. Pa-rom-pa-pom-pom.

We are accustomed to gray skies. We can take the rain, the dreary cold. But when the temperatures fall below the twenties and stay there for days, we fight back with coffee, dark as night, strong as true love, and not near as hard to find.

Blue skies grow rare in Seattle come November. We measure clouds, gauge their lights and shadows, mirrored in the lakes and our liquid lives.

In this New Year I can see Mount Rainier from my window on a clear day. Perhaps for this reason I appreciate clear days more than I did when I lived on the Right Coast. Most of my family and friends still live on the Right Coast. Their emails and phone calls always include weather updates, as if it’s understood that the main difference between the old East and the new West is the climate. And, it’s true, the climate here doesn’t seem as prone to the wild mood swings of Virginia.But I find the differences that resonate after a year of living here are more subtle than sunshine, more complex than plain vanilla patriotism. And lately I’ve been thinking it might have a lot to do with point of view.

Back in Virginia, the distant past seems closer, more imbedded in the mindset. Colonial days still cast a long architectural shadow, and in places like Williamsburg, Leesburg, and Old Town Alexandria it’s still possible to imagine a simpler time. The scars of the Civil War remain vivid in parts of rural Virginia, and many families stubbornly revere more than one American flag.All this looking-back is natural, but as a child growing up in that climate of nostalgia, I was impatient with the burden of the past. I wanted the future.

Well, as it happens, I was lucky enough to have one, and to grow old enough to appreciate the price paid by our ancestors to wrest this country from its original inhabitants. Here in the Northwest, the few reminders of the once thriving Native American tribes who lived here for ten thousand years before the first fur trappers set in motion the engine that would completely alter the landscape are the names on the maps: Snohomish, Puyallup, Yakima. The Native Americans, like the salmon on whom they depended for their survival, are struggling to avoid extinction in the face of continual pressure from development and the  relentless degradation of the environment.

The guilt gene is firmly embedded in my DNA. But even so, I am disinclined to dwell on past. I think the only way to work through problems is to go forward. However, I have come to realize that not everyone shares this view.One of the most curious unintended consequences of the Internet Age is the proliferation of borrowed communication. While a handwritten letter still holds a power that no amount of electronically expedited information can match, these days anyone who can master the act of clicking the “forward” and “send” buttons on a computer can flood the inboxes of thousands of relatives and relative strangers in the blink of an eye.My husband tells me I should simply tighten up my spam filter. But some of the people who seem driven to share every joke, every cute photo, every “amazing” fact or dubious political “truth,” are old friends or relatives with whom I have no wish to sever all ties. I have a delete key, and I know how to use it.

However, among all the drek that gets forwarded ad nauseam, there is a particular kind of “letter” which must hit a nerve with a lot of people, since I seem to get some version of it regularly. And the curious thing is that it comes from every direction of the political spectrum. Some versions are sent by distant relatives on the far right political extreme – people who dispute evolution and global warming – and from old friends on the far left – war protesting hippies. And what’s the common ground on which these disparate spammers come together? Nostalgia.

“Oh, wasn’t it great back in the days when nobody wore seat belts or helmets? When you could lick the bowl without worrying about food poisoning? When Elvis was skinny and candy bars cost a nickel and a tankful of gas was a dollar? Blah, blah, blah…”Sure. I remember some good old days. I also remember some bad old days before the Civil Rights movement. I know that only in the last century did women in this country win the right to vote. I remember when people built bomb shelters in their basements to prepare for the nuclear attacks we all thought were coming. I remember when Pat Boone was played regularly on the radio. Dark Ages indeed.

The wish to return to simpler, seemingly happier times is a natural desire, like wanting to return to the innocence of childhood, before you found out that terrible things can happen to nice people, when the world seemed bigger, more filled with possibilities. Now, thanks to all this information and disinformation we have at our fingertips 24/7, there is no way to avoid the uneasy feeling that we have made a mess of this world, and, unless my far-right-wing relatives are righter than I think, it’s up to us to clean it up.Unfortunately, this will require the full participation of the class, and from where I’m sitting, it looks like not everyone read the assignment. Global warming? Coming soon to a city near you.  Terrorism? A drag and a nightmare and a foolish waste of time and resources. The terrorists don’t care, I imagine, because in their view they are destined for paradise in the next world after they torch this one.Sigh. What a species.

Anyway. I think it’s way past time to stop looking backward. Enough with the nostalgia already. We need to focus on the future if we hope to have one, for us and our children. And this is what I have come to respect about the Left Coast.Everyone here recycles, as if it’s as natural as breathing. True, you do see too many SUVs. But there are more hybrid cars and bikes on the road, and buses. There’s an effort being made, and a consensus that conservation is patriotic.

To a child looking at a map of the United States it’s obvious that there’s a right side and a left side. Here, in the Left Coast Washington, there are many similarities with the one on the Right Coast – there’s a Capitol Hill, a Union Station, a Cherry Blossom Festival. But people here seem to have a different perspective on what’s important politically. They tend to a more global view. They’re not looking back to the way it’s always been. They’re imagining the way it could be, and should be.And that seems right to me.

Okay, technically I didn’t have a vacation. But, some might argue, mine is a vacation lifestyle, what with the working at home and choosing my own hours and not making any money. However, as this was my first complete summer in Seattle, the vacation mindset fit like a baggy pair of shorts, with room to breathe, eat hearty, and enjoy the breeze.

When I first told friends in Virginia that I was moving to Seattle, everyone remarked on the weather, noting the city’s famous rain. Most spoke with a touch of sympathy, as if I were being sentenced to a soggy fate. At the time, Seattle was undergoing a monsoonish December. The outlook appeared dim. But I was confident that the sun also rose in Seattle. I dismissed my friends’ concerns and waved goodbye to the East Coast with nary a backward glance. It was drizzling when we arrived here. And, to be honest, the first three or four months were about as balmy as a meat locker. Accustomed as I was to the blistering pace of spring in Virginia and the searing temperatures of the long hot summers there, I found my faith tested by the way the chill lingered in Seattle. Locals kept telling me, “Oh, you’ll see. It gets hot here.” And I would mutter, Yeah? When? One neighbor tried to explain it by assuring me that summer doesn’t really begin in Seattle until after July 4. So, when the daytime highs were still in the 60s in June, I gritted my teeth and kept my sweater handy.

But then, just when I was beginning to think of giving away my shorts, the rains stopped, the sun came out, and the slow bake began. It wasn’t until about a month into it that I noticed that it wasn’t just the lack of humidity that was different. It was the complete lack of any kind of rain or dew. They don’t talk about the dew point out here. There’s no point, so to speak. The gardens here don’t seem to mind. And, as a maniacal gardener, I have been totally seduced by the city’s marvelous array of plants, but surprised by the shortage of some staple features of summers in rural Virginia. I miss the fireflies, the spring peepers, the butterflies and bluebirds, the hummingbirds who patrolled my garden with dazzling frequency. Heck, I even kind of miss the cicadas. Still, such creatures are less likely to frequent urban landscapes on either coast. However, for me, the most dramatic difference between summer in Virginia and summer in Seattle is the lack of thunderstorms.

It seems odd, in a way, because Seattle, in itself, is such a dramatic place, with breathtaking mountain views in every direction and stunning seascapes at every turn. But, for all its sensational scenery, it’s amazingly quiet. I mean, there is the ordinary roar of traffic and the bustle of daily life, the purr of espresso machines and the patter of thousands of joggers. But, despite all this hum of energy, the only time the sky explodes is during the Fourth of July celebrations. Whereas in Virginia, heart-stopping thunderstorms are common in the months of June, July and August. True, they can be scary, deafening, and sometimes deadly. But damn! They pull the plug on your complacency and remind you that there’s a greater power out there. And when they knock the electricity out, they humble you and force you to examine your own dependencies. Or invest in a generator.

Anyway. That’s how I spent my summer vacation. Drinking coffee, eating Top Pot doughnuts, and waiting to hear that distant rumble of thunder. To sense that sudden lift in the breeze and drop in the temperature. To feel the thrill of that drum roll on the roof that signals the storm’s arrival. I’m no longer expecting it to happen. But, after this long, sunny, dry summer, I’m beginning to understand that around here the end won’t come with a bang. I expect it will be more of a long, cold drizzle. And I’ll be the one whimpering. Thank God for those doughnuts.

You have to admire the Seattle spirit. Gifted with weather patterns that would drive other communities into a state of permanent funk, the residents of this city manifest a water-resistant resilience that refuses to bow to the elements.

I’m thinking of the weather today because it’s Memorial Day, a day to honor our heroes and open our swimming pools. At least that’s how they do it back in Virginia. Before the last echoes of the military bands fade in the air you hear the happy squeals of children cannonballing into the deep end. They have different traditions here in the great Northwest. One of them is the Folklife Festival which fills the Seattle Center with the sounds of  music and the scent of fried food every Memorial Day weekend. But, as we discovered last weekend, you don’t have to wait for the Folklife Festival to get your pig on a stick. Or chocolate covered strawberries sandwiched with whipped cream on a stick. Or, if you really must, fried tofu on a stick.

The stick is what matters. So long as whatever you are dripping onto your shirt is stuck on a stick, you can hold your head high among the throng of festival goers. Just watch where you point the stick.Why is it that anything on a stick seems more festive than ordinary food? I imagine it harkens back to that campfire mystique, where  we all huddled at one time or another, roasting hot dogs or marshmallows on a stick and singing songs off key. It’s a short shimmy across time from that primitive bonding experience to the group hug of a street festival. We shuffle along the pavement, eyeing the trinkets, the crockery, the crocks. It’s all good.

The great thing about a freeform street festival is that most of us approach it without any agenda. We don’t go there to accomplish objectives, to meet goals, to make quotas. It’s all about diversion, gentle goodwill, merriment. And, of course, things on sticks. Despite its inherent versatility as a food delivery device, however, not all edibles can be stick shifted. If they did you would see mac and cheese on a stick. Maybe someone has already tried this. I imagine there would be technical difficulties to overcome. And not all foods gain appeal through stickdom. A hard boiled egg on a stick, for instance, would be too austere. But, cover it with melted cheese, roll it in toasted cracker crumbs and give it a catchy name – perhaps a Chegger – and you could be on to something.

The festival state of mind allows such creative cross breeding of tastes. Maybe it’s something about being on the street, without the damn cars in the mix. We see things differently. When the street is closed, our minds are open.And not just in terms of food. We festival goers sometimes indulge ourselves by purchasing items which fall outside the categories of the useful or necessary. At the festival, this is okay. We don’t care. Sometimes you just have to buy a small stuffed red dragon. Or a balloon hat. People at a festival seem so open to trying new things that I’m considering getting a booth for next year’s event. I’m working on my product now. It’s a book actually, which I’m self-publishing this summer, a fantasy romance with an environmental edge that I think could have some appeal for gardeners looking for a little light reading after a day of digging. I haven’t had any luck persuading the conventional publishers to take a chance on my little novel. But, I’ve got high hopes for my own marketing strategy.

Coming soon to a festival near you: Stick Lit.You know you’ll want one.