Sunny days and strange nights.

February dawned exquisitely in West Seattle. 3000 miles east in Puxatawney, PA, a gang of middle-aged white male business owners hauled a groundhog out of a stump and hoisted it into the air,

then announced we were going to have six more weeks of winter.
Meanwhile, temperatures in Seattle came floating steadily up out of the 30s. Thick grey fogbanks burned off by late morning, and the sun fell across our hilly neighborhood like a soft blanket. Honeysuckle started blooming alongside our house, attracting swarms of softly humming bees.

A local goat wandered off from home, and was taken into protective custody by the Seattle Police Department until its owner came to claim it.

The sun, the goat, the honeybees.... its all been a little surreal. Walking Assata down the hill to Lowman beach on Monday, I had to shed my hat, gloves, sweater, scarf, and hoodie, until I was following her across the driftwood and beachrocks bareheaded in shirtsleeves. She poked her way across the beach to visit some gulls, who all rose up into the air at once, backflapped a dozen yards, and settled back into the water. She stood ankle-deep in the small waves, watching the gulls with her head cocked. I saw a seal slipping through the waves, and a giant freighter slowly chugged past out in the shipping channel, with two giant cranes (the ones that look like massive, angular dinosaurs) bound for the port of Seattle around Alki point.

(Assata watching a less water-phobic dog-friend at Lowman Beach)

Walked home in the glowing sunshine. Noticed birdsong as we walked the sidewalk up the hill through the ravine. Got ready for my five-oclock waitressing shift.

Set out on my customary walk-to-the-junction, a gentle uphill mile trek to the business district of our neighboorhood. My mother, who grew up in Seattle, says our neighborhood reminds her of hers in the 1950s and 60s. Lots of small family-owned businesses, largely non-corporate, old signs, familiar faces. As I neared the restaurant I work at, I saw a news van parked nearby. Walking closer, a spotted a pile of flowers on a table in front of the bar next door to ours. One of my co-workers came out and stood next to me in front of the table.

"someone got shot out front last night, after you left work," he told me. "He ran into the bar next door and collapsed, and he died in the hospital this morning."



(images thanks to WS Blog).

"Look," he said, gesturing behind him. "You can see the bullet holes in the wall."



That night, the restaurant was quiet. My only real tip income was from a large table of journalists and staff who'd been laid off from a local news network that day, and had decided to rendevous one last time for beers before going their separate ways in search of work.

Every now and then, Seattle PD officers walked by out front, "foot patrolling" to make the neighborhood feel safer. A news crew camped out on the sidewalk and accosted passerby to see if they were grieving for the man who'd died.

Walking to yoga the next morning, breathing deep and glorying once again in the crisp sun-lit air, I trailed my fingers across the filled- in bullet holes in the wall of the restaurant next to mine, a wall I walk past 2 dozen times a week, walking to the vitamin store or the used clothing store or the yoga studio or the farmers market.

I thought about how strange it was, how quickly it had happened and how quickly all evidence of the event had been erased from the sidewalk. We expect children in far-away countries to die in ugly and senseless wars. We expect strangers and people we scarcely know to succumb to cancer and die in car wrecks. But we never expect that death will draw near to the people we love, or to us, or to our daily routines.

I didn't know this young man. My heart goes out to his family. But I can't help but think the event was lost on the rest of us: as a society, we fill the bullet holes with putty and paint them the same color as the rest of our lives.

I feel safe as ever in my neighborhood. I keep on glorying in the sunshine, taking my dog to the beach, walking to work and yoga, and saving tip money for our wedding. Reading the West Seattle blog, my heart ached at the sight of the young man's picture, holding his niece. Sunny days and strange nights, as the economy teeters and the wars continue and the country waits for "Change."

Winter blooms

As we were gathering our things to head home the day after Thanksgiving, my mother handed us a small ceramic pot with a narrow green shoot.
Paperwhites, she said,
they're lovely when they bloom.

She's always started winter bulbs, as long as I can remember... sitting on the sunniest windowsill of the house, growing with incredible audacity in the warm room during the cold months. We brought it home, and set it on the kitchen windowsill.

Sure enough, it grew visibly, and daily
and this week it burst into bloom...
Daring to blossom in the coldest of Seattle weather,
since it doesn't know any better,
having lived all its days indoors.

Dog-Child.

I never thought I'd be one of those people who told a dog to go "get Daddy" or "say hi to Grandma and Grandpa."

It took about 3 minutes. We found her on a family farm in northern Oklahoma, precisely ten miles south of Kansas and five miles down a dirt road. The locusts were humming like power lines, and there was standing water in the fields from summer flash flooding. She was one of two Bernese Mountain Dog puppies left from a litter. They chased each other through the tall grass and quickly disappeared, only to be located under the barbeque, eagerly licking out the greasetrap. I despaired of ever choosing between them. Ryan didn't hesitate. "Look at her eyes," he said. "That's our girl."

(Assata and Ryan, ten miles south of Kansas)

We named her for Assata Shakur, a Black Panther and Civil Rights activist who was wrongfully accused of several crimes in the 1970s, and who escaped to Cuba, where she was granted political asylum. (Assata: The Autobiography of Assata Shakur). Not sure what Ms. Shakur would think about having a dog named after her, but its given us plenty of opportunities to tell folks about a woman of extraordinary eloquence and dedication to the American people. Once we've corrected them. "No. not like Carne Asada. Assata, like the Black Panther."

(post swim in the Sierra Nevadas, on the road trip home, July 2007)

The name means "She who struggles." Our girl doesn't, much.

(Washington state ferry headed into Seattle)

Mostly, we call her The Bean. It morphed out of Assata, honeybee. Which became Assata B, and then, somehow, Bean.
Yes, I am that dog-mom.
And Ryan is that dog-father.

(At Ghost Ranch, one of Georgia O'Keefe's favorite places in northern New Mexico)

And, while they may never have thought of themselves as those kind of people either,
our friends and family are those dog-aunts, and dog-uncles, and dog-grandparents.

The Bean is mighty hard to resist.(in west seattle)



(rallying for elephant rights at the Woodland Park Zoo)