Let’s begin AM with my November 9 Odyssey. After teaching a night class at Cornish College of the Arts, a film class that concerned the Soviet Montage school (we discussed Man With a Movie Camera by Dziga Vertov), I walked down to the corner of Westlake Avenue and Denny Avenue and waited for the locally famous (and infamous) 8 bus to transport me up to Capitol Hill. The time: 6:10 p.m. But the bus, which now has a dedicated lane, was a whopping 13 minutes behind time. And the bus behind it was also growing late. Because the same thing happened to me the week before, and the week before that, I had to repress my doubts about Mayor Katie Wilson’s new lane.
Now, here’s the funny part, cars heading up Denny Avenue enjoyed a freedom of movement that never existed at this hour when the extra lane was all theirs and not devoted to the 8 bus. But all of this can only amount to a hill of beans because it’s a personal impression of the current situation. I will attempt in the near future to determine if my experience has any value in traffic data collected by the Seattle Department of Transportation or King County Metro.
Part two of Monday’s Odyssey. After a quick drink at my pitstop in Post Pike Bar and Cafe, I entered Capitol Hill Station to board the light rail for the last part of my trip, which concluded at Columbia City Station. But what I found down there, down at the station’s platform, was a system in disarray. Trains going to Federal Way were way behind schedule; and those heading to Lynnwood had bizarre gaps between them. What happened? Why this mess? A driver had done it again: gone up the elevated tracks. But this time it was on Martin Luther King Jr. Way South close to Rainier Beach Station and not, as before, the tracks leading up to the Mount Baker Station. KING5 reports: “Investigators said the woman told deputies she was unfamiliar with the area and accidentally drove onto the tracks while following GPS directions in rainy conditions.” She drove on these “bumpy” tracks for an astonishing half a mile. I can’t even…
Bluesky pic: https://bsky.app/profile/olraca.bsky.social/post/3mzz3af2cz22e
My walk home that night was almost forgettable. A little rainy, a little windy, and leaves falling as the bare bounce of a dub-tech tune (“Music Hit You” by Berlin’s Rhythm & Sound) filled my ears. But at the corner of 33rd Avenue South and South Alaska Street, I saw a huge and fast rat crossing the wet street. It saw/sensed me and stopped and, with the watery reflection of a streetlight beneath its impressive bulk, looked in my direction. The rat did some second guessing. Said fuck it, and continued its mad dash to whereever it had to be at 9:00 p.m. The weather of that brief encounter was repeated the following day and will be repeated today, Veterans Day: some rain, some wind, the remaining dead leaves of autumn falling. Expect a high of 65.
What’s this? Mayor Katie Wilson gave, in the appropriately blunt words of Stranger reporter Cedar Attanasio, “an emphatic ‘yes’ to the immediate expansion of police surveillance in Seattle on Tuesday, with no immediate policies to reduce the risk of abuse by local and federal law enforcement…” Damn! Say it ain’t so. Is Wilson becoming the Fetterman of socialists? I don’t know. But Attanasio has this to say: “If Wilson was trying to strike a balance between police investigative power and individual liberty, she fell on her face.”
Car culture, the Yakima edition: As we go on and on about the high price of gas (which should never be low), cars continue their state-sanctioned carnage. In this example, presented by the Yakima Herald-Republic, a driver accused of injuring Yakima’s former mayor, Dave Edler, and ending the life of his wife while driving drunk on Sunday, appeared in court on Monday and was told by the judge he could continue driving if he coughed up $75,000, installed an ignition interlock device “[in a vehicle] he might drive,” and enrolled “in a full-time sobriety program.” Dear alien in the Andromeda Galaxy, this is indeed the world I, an Earthling, have to wake up to every bloody morning.
Today in car culture, the Los Angeles edition: Three people lost their lives forever (there is no afterlife) at a Los Angeles Metro station when a minivan hit them. Three other people were injured. The victims included food vendors and pedestrians. According to the LAPD, the driver, a sexagenarian, was examined at the hospital to determine if he was or was not “under the influence of anything.”
Today in an American party that’s determined to go nowhere. House Republicans elected a staunch Trump ally, Rep. Jim Jordan, to be minority leader for the Congress that, come January, will be super-dominated by Dems. Senate Republicans decided to “stick with Senate Majority Leader John Thune.”
Democrat Scott Colom’s lead in the close Mississippi Senate race has now grown to 3,000. His opponent, the MAGA monster Cindy Hyde-Smith, looks like toast at this point.
For not supporting Angie Nixon in what turned out to be a very close Senate race in Florida. For this fuck up chete, if I may use an excellent Shona word that means “only” in English, not to mention the lack of support for Scott Colom, Sen. Chuck Schumer must step down. Don’t take it personally. You simply and obviously failed the party.
Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/annelibby.bsky.social/post/3mzobwdn2es25
Every time I read this Emily Dickson poem, “I died for beauty, but was scarce,” it’s the moss on the lips that moves me like the dead dear to my heart and soul dissolving in a dream:
I died for beauty, but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room.
He questioned softly why I failed?
"For beauty," I replied.
"And I for truth - the two are one;
We brethren are," he said.
And so, as kinsmen met a-night,
We talked between the rooms,
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names. Emily Dickinson
Let’s end AM with a truly magical and low-tech shanking tune, “Your Love” by Larry Marshall. If you can’t feel this, then you have no feelings.
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