March 2009 Archives

The P-I died today. The death was noted in the obituaries. The P-I will still be online; but most of the reporters and staff are gone. Who is going to research, investigate and write the news? They've added to the list of citizen bloggers, but blogging isn't journalism. Bloggers aren't accountable to anyone. We write what we want to write, and correct it if someone calls us out on it, maybe. You can do that with a blog. But can we do without professional journalism, the fourth estate of the democracy?

The P-I will probably become something more along the lines of a big blog, pointing to and repeating information from other news sources. Blogs can't replace what the P-I did, with a huge team of people, professional staff who spent days, weeks, months investigating a story, writing a series, an expose. They had professional fact checkers, editors, all those people to keep you on your toes and in line, story subjects who would sue if you got it wrong - and then there were those deadlines.

Here are just two examples of many from the P-I work of recent years, series that took a lot of time and effort by professional journalists which resulted in something memorable and powerful enough to make things happen - or at least get the wave of interest and momentum that can set a process in motion. There was the series about the orcas, "The Sound of Broken Promises", which followed their history from the imagined point of view of a real orca known as Granny. Then there was the series about the Duwamish River, "A River Lost?". The P-I took responsibility for being the voice of those without a public voice; there were many human stories besides these.

The P-I is dead. Perhaps I helped to kill it. I stopped reading print news years ago, instead reading several "papers" online everyday. Please forgive me. I delivered print papers for years and came to hate the smudgy ink, the very smell of the paper. I like clean digital news. I would have paid for an online subscription, honest, but newspapers are failing not so much because of subscriptions as that the business model based on advertising was not working. It doesn't work online either, so the online P I will be something different from what it was.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer, in memoriam March 17, 2009. You will be missed.

Found in this Streetsblog post (original post on The Thoreau You Don't Know here) in response to this wonderful article on biking etiquette by Robert Sullivan in the New York Times, which drew some predictable responses. This even encourages me to try bike commuting again, to see if I can get the technique down. Otherwise, I'm afraid of the street on some stretches, but uncomfortable riding amongst pedestrians on the sidewalk. Here's to the schluffle.

Pecha Kucha (pcha-kcha) presentation, 20x20



Vancouver, British Columbia is blessed in so many ways, surrounded by water, mountains, the best of the natural environment and recreational choices, with Gold Coast sun and mild temperatures to boot. English Bay is the mouth of False Creek and you should start there, just because it is beautiful. If you are staying in Vancouver I recommend the Sylvia, a historic old hotel on the bay.



Walking along the sandy beachfront you will encounter the Inukshuk statue, a version of the anthropomorphic pile of stones the Inuit used to leave as trail markers. The Inukshuk is the symbol for the 2010 Winter Olympics to be held here. Other art installations come and go, so you may be pleasantly surprised. Solar panels for path lighting look like blooming artworks.



Walking east along the water you will see the Burrard Bridge, which is one of several choices for walking across False Creek. This beautiful Art Deco bridge was opened in 1932, and is considered the top endangered historic structure in Vancouver, as there have been threats to expand the width to add capacity. For years the city has been trying to close two car lanes to use for bicycles but it hasn't happened yet, so be mindful of cyclists on the sidewalk when you cross. They are talking again about experimenting with lane closures this year, though.



The bridge ornaments include lions heads, but this is not the Lions Gate Bridge - that's a different walk. There are depictions of Sir Harry Burrard-Neale and Captain George Vancouver in ships, along with other imagery. The central span was designed to visually frame the "sea gateway", which it does, beautifully. Cargo ships moor in the bay, but mostly large numbers of pleasure craft enter False Creek under the bridge.



Here is the walkway through the portal of the south bridge tower at the end of a lovely day. The city does a nice job with these street banners, which are used to identify neighborhoods, districts, and special events, and are updated often. The bridge slopes steeply down to Kitsilano, which is not very pedestrian friendly at the bridge end. For that reason I haven't walked far there and usually just come back across the bridge, which is a crossing worth the journey for its own sake.



The view west of the bridge, with the Aquabus landing at lower right. The towers and the setting give the look of a luxury resort, but the experience on the street is quite different. You very much get the sense of a two-tiered society of those on top and those on the bottom. It makes for a very interesting, very diverse city, though, and everyone likes to get out and enjoy the open air. Vancouver knows how to do a waterfront right, and has plenty of shoreline to experiment with, so getting out is easy and a great pleasure.



The view east of the bridge shows the marina and Granville Island to the south, and a forest of towers on the north bank, with the Granville Bridge connecting them. Vancouver has done well with this tower and podium typology. It looks incredibly dense, but most of these "pin" towers have small floorplates and are spaced for light and views, with low-rise development along the street that prevents the feel of massive canyons. The towers sparkle, the street is sometimes gritty and unkempt - but always interesting, with much to offer.



I've gone to the Granville Bridge next, to get to Granville Island, of course. It is actually easier and more convenient to get there by Aquabus or False Creek Ferry, which counts as walking - walk on, walk off. This is a former industrial area that was redeveloped, reusing the original buildings, as a market, artists studios, shopping, dining and recreational area, very popular with both tourists and residents. Unfortunately there is still much space wasted on surface parking lots.



These fish are part of the sign for a restaurant under the bridge. It really is easier to swim here, or take the water transit, than to walk. However you get here, it is worth the trip. The buildings in their new lives have been given vibrant color schemes and whimsical accoutrements. The island draws about 10 million visitors a year, much like my favorite Pike Place Market.



Some of the original corrugated metal buildings have hardly been altered. There are still the tracks of the rail spurs in the streets, industrial cranes, and an operating cement plant on the site. Some of the artists studios are equally industrial, with welding, glass-blowing and other dangerous seeming activities, side by side with childrens play areas and an endless program of music and festivals.



If you do cross the bridge, you will land in South Granville, a charming district of much different character from the city of towers to the north, and with as many things to see and do, or at least as many shops to walk to (and it is walkable). From here you can go back into downtown, or walk east to Cambie Street and the False Creek terminus. I've not actually gone that way, but I believe there is a waterfront path, which is being extended and enhanced as part of the work for the Olympics.



I like to walk back across the bridge, always drawn back to the city of towers. The Northshore Mountains are a striking backdrop, an irresistible image. Plus, you get such splendid views from the bridge. Bridges are very special in many ways, almost mythical in crossing over and connecting different worlds. Downtown Vancouver has something of that mythical quality, the fairy tale image. All the cars and vehicular pavements detract from that, somehow.



What a fairy tale life. Mountains, towers, water, the Sea Gateway, Granville Island, a flotilla of pleasure boats. Yet plenty of working stiffs and even down-and-outs live here too, hard to believe from this scene. Some fishing trawlers dock here, though, a remnant and reminder, like the cement plant. All of False Creek was once an industrial area, actually very polluted. Looking at it now, that industrial history seems to be the fairy tale.



There are plenty of expensive yachts and waterfront condos at the Yaletown Marina, but Yaletown is quite accessible. You can get to this spot by water transit and go on into the Yaletown warehouse district, which has something for everyone. There is a good bit of affordable housing here, and the Roundhouse community center, complete with turntable and steam locomotive, is just a few yards from this waterfront. So is the Urban Fare, a delectable and popular grocery and cafe. There's an electric bike shop here, too.



It's not far from the Yaletown Marina to Cambie Street, with another bridge crossing over False Creek. There is recent new development at this end, with open space preserved along the shoreline. There are so many wonderful amenities like this around the city. The new towers fronting the water here have a large children's playground, as in Vancouver families with children find high-rise urban living to be a feasible and even desirable lifestyle choice.



The geodesic dome is Science World, left over from the 1986 Exposition on Transportation and Communication. Behind it is the guideway for the Skytrain, a very popular, very successful automated light rail transit system. This is the appropriately named Expo Line; there is also a Millennium Line, and the Evergreen Line expansion has just been approved. The small island in the foreground is some sort of native habitat demonstration site. The towers in the background are on Main Street, in an area that showcases the cheek-by-jowl togetherness and dichotomy of the haves and the have-nots.



The Millennium Water is shown here under construction, and will serve as the athlete's village for the Olympics. This is part of a large planned redevelopment of the remaining industrial lands called South East False Creek, for obvious reasons. For some reason they amended the plan for lower heights and larger floorplates, so that instead of the pin tower and podium typology, you get the blockier buildings shown. Maybe there were too many towers and they were becoming overwhelming; or perhaps they wanted to keep the majority on the downtown peninsula for emphasis, and step down the heights in the surrounding districts. It also gives the different areas a distinctly different character.



Looking back at the downtown towers with their dramatic mountain backdrop; I suppose it would be possible to have too much of a good thing. This east end is still redeveloping, as can be seen from the construction cranes. An elevated highway ramp and the Skytain guideway are also in the background. Even with the wonderful transit options there is severe road congestion. The Aquabus in the foreground is such a pleasant and convenient way to get around, and the Skytrain is very efficient.



The former Expo site is the base for sports stadiums; BC Place is shown here. It's inflated fabric roof famously collapsed in 2007, and will be replaced with a retractable roof after the Olympics. GM Place is behind there somewhere and will be renamed to something non-commercial for the duration of the Olympics. Development here on the southeast shore involves a tremendous amount of fabulous waterfront enhancement, including the Seaside trail which is already very popular with cyclists and everyone else.



You can hop on the False Creek Ferry to return to your starting point, walk along the beach at sunset, and retire to the Sylvia if that was your choice. If you're still in the mood to explore, walk over to the Main Street station to catch the Skytrain. The Millennium Line makes a loop east through the region and back to downtown. Sit and enjoy the views along the way, or get out and explore at whichever station strikes your fancy. It's very easy to get back when you're ready.

I went walking through the neighborhood Saturday with the Mayor, business owners, other interested residents and several police officers. I'm always out walking in the neighborhood anyway, and I was interested in hearing what people had to say. The business owners in particular are becoming desperate over the activity associated with the drug trade. It's been getting much worse lately and having a negative effect on business, even beyond the down economy, which is bad enough.

The tour ended at a local restaurant, where everyone gathered at a table by the window facing the street, and each gave their horror stories of what occurs around their businesses every day, at all hours. They were talking about their interactions with the drug dealers when one person pointed out the window to say "and there's the worst of them, right there". I turned and looked, with everyone else, and he was looking right back, fully aware that something was going on that concerned him. One woman with a store on that corner said she's talked to him, asked him why he's out there, and he's told her straight out that there's a lot of money to be made and he's not going away.

The business owners see it all the time, but I'm out there walking through it all the time. One of the officers asked me what I thought about all of it, as someone who lives here. I replied that I don't antagonize the drug dealers, for safety's sake. I'm always there, they accept me as a fixture of the neighborhood and we pretty much mind our separate business. I may have lost my protective neutral status, unfortunately.

The next night, Sunday, I was wandering through the area trying to decide where to eat. I could hear someone keeping in step several paces behind me, with the shuffling sound of denim scraping the pavement. This continued on around the corner and down the block, while I went on with business as usual, looking at a neon sign I wanted a photo of, although I didn't care to take my camera out just then. Before reaching the end of the block I stepped over to the curb and paused as if to consider the restaurants across the street, actually to let the follower pass. Then I fell in behind him, and he turned to see what I was doing, the same person who had been identified as the "worst" on Saturday. I was deliberately not looking straight at him.

He turned the corner, sticking to the territory of his block, and I crossed to the next block to go to a taco place, which had just closed and locked the door. I retraced my steps, took the photo I wanted, and went back through the heart of this territory to go to my favorite Mexican restaurant. The mood on the streets was very militant, with groups of men in hooded sweatshirts walking together, animated, loud, swinging fisted arms for emphasis - not at all like the normal business of a night, when they space themselves out along the sidewalks as sentries and to direct buyers.

The only other time I've come close to having a problem on the streets, it was not with a dealer, but an addict. He was on the streets for a long time and I had unpleasant encounters with him daily, sometimes several times a day. He was a young man, toothless, hair lank and dirty, overall filthy, aggressively approaching with the same whining plaint each time, asking for money for food, for hygiene, obviously desperate, but it was also obvious that he was more desperate for drugs than for anything else. He would never remember that he had already been in my face once, twice or three times that day, ten times that week, and I finally lost tolerance for him. One night fire flashed from my eyes and I didn't bother with any of the usual courtesies, just walked on. I guess that made him angry in turn, because he followed me. I wasn't worried and wouldn't have gone anywhere where there weren't people about, but some other street habitue, someone who knew him, saw what was afoot and stopped him to talk, defusing whatever the situation might have been. The addicted young man disappeared from the streets for a while but then I saw him again last year, all cleaned up. He still didn't remember me and politely asked for a bible donation or something like that. I haven't seen him since and think maybe he finally got off the streets for good.

That was an addict, but the dealers are something else entirely. That wasn't a brain addled addict following me the other night, it was someone with a large financial interest at stake, someone who remembered me from one glance through a window. I prefer being invisible, a neutral, non-threatening presence, and although I'm usually pretty good at it I certainly went into the spotlight this time. It seems certain there will be a war on my streets. There will be increased police activity, which normally hopscotches from one area to the next, moving the drug activity about and giving the current neighborhood, and businesses, a breather for a time - but this time may be different. The economy of the drug trade is shaken up along with everything else, the drug cartels are at war with each other, and that violence is spreading. I fear that this neighborhood is where the dealers will hold their ground; they consider it "their" neighborhood and the rest of us as newcomers, upstarts. For now, I maintain an uneasy neutrality and cross the borders at will, but wonder if I will have to choose sides and find a barricade in the near future.

There is a wonderful coffee house in the building where I work. The proprietors are Mario and Maria, from Italy. Friday morning I was presented with a chocolate, and told that it was in honor of Women's Day, which is today, Sunday. I had not heard of such a celebration before but they informed me that it is celebrated in Italy and several other countries. I wondered why we don't celebrate it here, then realized that it would be considered gender discrimination, that you can't have womens day without mens day, and why not just have peoples day, every day. Even the bars got in trouble for having Ladies Nights and had to do Mens Nights as well. Hopefully no men were offended that Mario didn't give them chocolate. I was quite charmed by it and pleased with the chocolate and the sentiment, which is the intent of the celebration, I suppose.

Women's Day actually began in this country, observed by our very own Wobblies as International Women Workers Day. It then became associated with the Russian Revolution, fell out of favor, and came back as something milder, along the lines of Mothers Day or Valentines Day, when women get flowers or chocolates from those that care about them. The United Nations would like to see it celebrated as a way to bring to light womens rights issues.

Yesterday I tagged along with our Mayor and a group of people on a walking tour of Belltown, while he visited with business owners regarding the extreme situation with drug activity and associated criminal and anti-social behavior. We visited a womens shelter as well, which is vacated during the day. The mattresses were 18 years old, but they have a grant to get new beds, and are building a new, larger facility with more shelter space and privacy cubicles. There still won't be enough space to meet the need.

This condo tower is across from the YWCA facility that provides services and shelter for homeless women. There is a greater need for shelter than there are spaces available through the Y, and sometimes women are lined up around the block. Some are well dressed with roller bags; others are more obviously down and out, and many have their belongings in large quantities of plastic grocery bags. There are no more rooms, but they can get meals, showers, and do laundry so they just sort of hang out around the building.



The condo tower and office building across the street have all these very serious signs, security cameras, and speakers blaring annoyingly loud music to discourage anyone from trying to sleep there. I don't know if it's to keep the women away, or if they had some more serious problem before they put these precautions in place.

 

I find this private park space to be particularly galling. I think it was the code at the time, that they had to trade open space for more floors on their office building (it's called the Darth Vader building, locally). I suppose code didn't require that it be open to the public.



This is the only woman allowed here, and something seems very wrong about her, even humiliating.

Moving into the third month, I suddenly realized that this is a decade year. I turn fifty at the end of the year and so far all of my adult decade years have marked major life changes. For instance, when I turned forty, I left my job of 10 years and traveled for a year before going to graduate school and starting a new career (I have a book in my head called Crossing the Millennium, although that title has already been used). I had actually been on the path to that place for 20 years, though. Now everything is different, and I'm not sure what I'll do.

Sometime in my fourth decade (meaning 30-something) I was in a Toastmasters meeting, where the Table Topic was something about "What you want to be when you grow up". I said that I wanted to be a post-menopausal woman, which drew a laugh, until I made clear that I wasn't just talking about the cessation of menses, but about certain freedoms I associated with age, freedom from certain expectations placed upon young women in their fertile years. My inspiration was Ann Richards, then governor of Texas (before the Bush disaster), that silver-haired, silver-tongued conqueror of biting one-line colloquialisms.

I'm much closer to that goal now, thinking more than ever about what it really means. One of the things I think I can see now is that the powerful sense of freedom I admired in female role models is more likely if you've reached a position of power before achieving crone status. That means using the power of the fertile young woman, power usually acquired from men in a world that is largely still run by men, although that is changing. I was always too fiercely, stubbornly independent to be content with that, and have as a result not gotten very far.

So I stand on the threshold of a change of life, and can't see clearly to the other side. I sometimes think I have an aspiration to be homeless. That is not meant lightly; I in no way mean to make light of people caught in the vicissitudes of life against their will. Nor am I seriously considering giving up my comfortable life, although that choice could be made for me, as it is for so many. Yet I wish for those freedoms I once imagined, and more. I wish to be freed from all societal expectations, freed from my puritan work ethic, where everything I do, even in my "free" time, has to be towards some purpose, some productive end. I long for the freedom of the leisured class of another era, the 19th century flaneur (there was no such thing as "flaneuse") who was free to be a detached observer. I wish freedom from possessions of which I have accumulated so many, which then need to be sheltered and stored. I even wish to be free of the need for shelter for myself.

Sometimes a hint of these thoughts comes out in conversations with my son. He tells me not to worry, that he and his wife wouldn't leave me on the street. It's kind of him, but he misses my meaning. I don't wish to become dependent; I wish to be completely independent, or as nearly so as possible. There are some homeless people I see almost every day, and I find that I have a certain admiration for them, almost envy. One person, who I think is a woman but am not sure, has occupied tiny McGraw park for months, sleeping outside by choice every night of the winter, in every sort of weather. I don't know this persons story, but have never seen this person ask for anything, or exhibit other than a calm sense of fortitude. Then there is the elderly man whose face always looks pink, fresh scrubbed and shaven, who sleeps in the same doorway almost every night, even when it is bitter cold and the emergency shelters are open. I also think of the young woman I met in Norway who had run short of travel funds. She thought she could share with me the rental of a rorbu, a fisherman's dorm, for one price, but when the owner wanted to charge by person she decided to stay outdoors, even though the nights were quite cold. I saw her again a few days later after she had risen from her bed of moss, looking free, confident, and empowered.

I think of these things and of how thoroughly I have entrapped myself, what it would take to break free, and what is my willingness to do so. I go to work, participate in community involvements, prepare for family visits, and consider a trip my mother wants me to take with her, either to Australia or the Mediterranean. I don't know what this year will bring, but the closest I come to making an extreme leap on my own is to wonder where I would recharge my camera and laptop. I fear that this time the transition, which will certainly arrive in some form, may be much more extreme than that.

On Friday I went to the talk on bicycling and sustainability given by Niels Tørsløv, Director of the Traffic Department in the Technical and Environmental Administration for Copenhagen. While it was a remarkable presentation in many aspects, I was struck by one in particular: It was delivered in perfect English. We sometimes take that for granted here, that people from other parts of the world are willing to speak to us in our own language.

Only about 20% of our citizens are passport holders, and perhaps twice that number think it would be useful to learn another language. Most of those probably live in border regions. I lived near the Mexican border as a child and was taught Spanish in grade school; living near the Canadian border I sometimes encounter or even work with French speakers, whose language is far different from that of my Cajun grandmother. My global illiteracy affects my travel choices as I tend to go only to countries that use the roman alphabet, where I can reasonably expect to at least decipher the signage. Language in a different script, or god help me, a syllabary, is completely beyond me.

I've been fortunate in my travels to be afforded the kindness of strangers who are happy to speak to me in wonderful varieties of accented English. One should keep in mind that this is a very special privilege. I have gotten a reminder of that, on occasion. In Dublin, Ireland, I had a conversation with a man from Cork, who was trying to pick me up and seemed assured that it was a done deal, as he began to say rude things about Americans, such as how stupid we are because we only speak English. To prove his point, he spoke to me in five languages in rapid succession. I could recognize the languages - besides English there were French, German, Italian and Gaelic phrases - but not what he was saying. To be fair, he thought I was an Irish expat, as I have the look of the Black Celt and we shared a certain familial resemblance. My ancestry actually represents many different lineages, but when I told him that my father believes we're Scots, he literally growled at me. I left him with a scowl on his face, thinking to myself that, yes, I'm a stupid American, and you need help with your technique. By the way, I'm a completely nerdy researcher, only interested in information, for which I never offer the hint or promise of any reward, of any kind. If someone chooses to believe otherwise, I can't help that.

Although men, for certain reasons, are often more willing to talk to a strange woman, I sometimes have the opportunity to speak with other women as well. While traveling in Germany I ended up sharing a train compartment with a woman from Frankfurt, by accident. I went to the car and compartment number on my ticket, which she was already occupying, and which she insisted was a privately reserved compartment. I was so obviously at a complete loss as to where to go from there that she relented, and said I could stay. The trains were so frightfully efficient there, coming every two or three minutes, it seemed, and I am so bad with schedules, that it was quite likely that I was on the wrong train. She talked to me about how important it was that the trains be on time, on schedule, and how the word was similar in English and in Deutsch, "punctual" and "punktlich" (which I have probably misspelled), and how many other words sound similar. Yet words do not a language make; I get lost in syntax and grammar, the contextual environments of the individual words. Translation is seldom simple or straightforward; much meaning and intent gets lost. There is so much literature I would like to read in the original language - but, alas, I'm an American, lacking in an important area of education.

I sat through this remarkable presentation, in a packed room, and wondered how many people realized how privileged they were. Most were bicycle advocates, as the event was hosted by Cascade Bicycle Club, and the information presented was fully engrossing, without worrying about what language it was presented in. Presenting in English was not just a courtesy; there are issues of commerce and trade, as Seattle has been providing business to the Danish architecture firm of Jan Gehl, to the rue of some local firms - but how many of us are prepared to go to Copenhagen and give a presentation in Dansk?