Inaccuracy Is No Friend

In case any of you missed it, what with stocking up for St. Patrick's Day and what-not, Albert Einstein would have turned 125 last Sunday. It brought back some memories for me. As often happens when I am experiencing memories they bump up against current thoughts, and I feel the need to talk.

What brings back memories is the fact that 25 years ago I happened to be loafing at the Swiss Polytechnic, Albie's old grad school, and I witnessed the Polytechnic's celebration of his centennial. Boy the fireworks and the huge dance party were terrific.

I just lied for the fun of it. There were no fireworks and huge dance party for Einstein's 100th birthday. Einstein was the Poly's most famous graduate by far, but they didn't seem to care very much. One of the Poly's Jewish professors told me it was because Einstein had been Jewish. He insisted that it was not a sign of rabid Anti-Semitism; it was merely a lack of enthusiasm for Jewish-ness that was involved. "Besides," he said, "Einstein was German, not Swiss." Ah, labels.

One of the things we "editors" of Real Change do to prove our editorship is to read over these things the week after they come out and discuss them. We call it "issue review." We feel as though the papers are our babies, but when we see our newborns we are often shocked at the sight of her chin or the number of her toes.

Sometimes the shock is ongoing. Like when I see each new StreetWatch for the first time. It always makes me wince.

It isn't Emma Quinn's fault. Emma draws the material from police reports and can't and shouldn't edit them much. I wouldn't want her to; it's valuable to see how the police write these things up. It gives us all an important view into that world. But I never get used to it.

It's the roll call of the cast that mostly bothers me. Last issue we had: a transient Native American male, a homeless White female, a transient White male, a transient Black male, a White female, a transient Black male, and a transient Asian male, in that order. Run for your lives! We're surrounded by transients!

No wait, it's not that bad. My dictionary says that transients are people who are only staying for a short time, like an itinerant laborer or a temporary guest. It comes from the Latin for "one passing through." So presumably 5 of the 7 of our StreetWatch subjects are passing through Seattle. Maybe they're from Cleveland.

Run for your lives! We're surrounded by Clevelandites!

Or not. Turns out that by "transient" the police just mean "homeless." So the three times I was homeless in Seattle I would have been called transient, even though I'm from here.

But is the mislabeling right, even if it is consistent? And when it happens to be accurate, is it called for?

In the mid-eighties one of the dailies surveyed their readers and found that more than 50 percent came to this area within the previous 15 years. If that's the case with the general population, why stigmatize the homeless for their geographic mobility?

And what do they mean, transient Asian male? Am I to believe he was born there -- like Einstein was born in Germany, to be forever German, regardless of citizenship –- or am I to think he has Asian ancestry but is as American as I am, like most of the so-called "Asians" in this city?

My best friend in high school was Japanese-American. His father fought for his country, this one, in WWII, with the famous 442nd Combat Regiment. If my friend or his children were now homeless they would be "Asians" in our police reports. Such inaccuracy can't do any good in the long run.

Seattle's Not From Here

The Last Demonstration Zone

© Dr. Wes Browning

Welcome to the Last Demonstration Zone,

Step right up, take your megaphone, set permanently on mute.

The American Protest Theme Park greets you,

bring your quaint belief in what’s true, they take it for cute.

Remember, don’t mention Mickey Mouse.

You’ll get thrown out of the house, you’ll pay a fine.

Anyone in America can speak out.

Take a number, don’t shout, wait in line.

Welcome to the Last Free Speech hole in the ground.

You may now speak freely to whoever’s around, nobody cares here.

Step behind the rope, dope, nobody cares here.

Is anyone besides me aware that all inauguration ceremonies are propaganda? And that propaganda is government speech? And that therefore if Pennsylvania Ave. is a designated Demonstration Free Zone, then there can’t be an inauguration there either? Is it just me who thinks Demonstration Zones are the worst things that have happened to this country since war rations? What next? Talking Zones? Thinking Zones?

They can’t even hide behind state’s rights on this. We’re talking about the District of Columbia, where all the law is Congressional law. That bit about “Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech” has full force in D. C.

Meanwhile our own mayor Schell wants to define Tent City as a political act, apparently because in the past he’s had some success forcing political acts to go away. In connection with the trials of Tent City a word has cropped up often: transient.

transient adj. 1. not lasting, enduring, or permanent; transitory 2. lasting only a short time; existing briefly; temporary -- n. a person or thing that is transient.

Mayor Schell would clearly like to see to it that Tent City is transient. But more importantly, there is the notion that the people who make up Tent City are not deserving of Seattle’s concern, because they are transient, they are only here in Seattle for a while, they are no natives.

I have heard the following statistic quoted: half of all Seattle’s homeless are not from here.

I’ve got news for you all: as of the last twenty years at least, anyone who is from Seattle isn’t a normal Seattleite.

I don’t have to go back to the pioneer days to establish the fact, but I will, just because I can’t resist mentioning that Chief Noah Seattle was born on Kitsap. Or that Denny came from Indiana, or that Doc Maynard came all the way from Vermont.

Do I have to tell anyone that John W. Nordstrom was born in Sweden? That William Boeing grew up in Detroit and didn’t move to this city until he was thirty?

I don’t have to go back that far. I can look at... I don’t know, let’s see now... the Mayor! Paul Schell, born in Fort Dodge, Iowa? So Schell once really did get out of Dodge?

City Council-person Margaret Pageler was born in CHINA for crying out loud. Jim Compton came here by way of Portland Oregon. Jan Drago and Heidi Wills are from another planet.

The Stranger was born in Chicago. More than nine-tenth’s of the Burke Museum was born in British Columbia or the Great Plains. The Pike Place Market got its start in Morocco. The Space Needle was shipped here in a box from the set of the Jetsons.

Surveys have been done that have shown that considerably more than fifty percent of us aren’t from here.

Does that make the majority of Seattle transient? Sounds fair to me.

Cheesed Five-O

Well here we are again trying to make sense out of a world spinning into new-millenium madness, riding the grand ever-surprising baby boom crest on its way to that big Jimi Hendrix theme park in the sky that Paul Allen can only approximate here on Earth, in spite of all his riches.

That’s right. I hit the big Five-O this summer. I’m bummed. And that’s not a word I use lightly.

You want to know why I’m bummed? You want to know what’s really got me cheesed? Whatever that means? No? Well I’ll tell you then.

The library has got me down. The new librarian has a Vision of a homeless-free library. It seems that the homeless folks using the library are bad for the donation business, according to the new management, who just discovered that pretty people sell.

Now I could rant and rail about how unjust this is. I could point out that homeless people are citizens too, and have as much right to use the library as anyone else. I could note the absurdity of people saying all the time that homeless folks should apply themselves to improve themselves and their situations, and then try to discourage them from one of the best ways to do so.

But I won’t do that this time. Because what I’m bummed about is that I know that when they say they want to get rid of the homeless people, what they really mean is, they want to get rid of the people who look homeless, and that’s this old codger.

All those years of being homeless in the past have taken their toll.

We’ve already established the fact that the Seattle police cannot tell the difference between me, an old, currently housed, eccentric, impoverished nerd with a jones for old math books, from an actual homeless threat to the otherwise thriving, viable, Seattle downtown boom economy.

So what will happen to me when the Library Police start making their sweeps through the library rounding up the “transients” for deposit at the proposed Seattle Library Drop-in Center? What will happen to me is I’ll be swept into that bin with all the other housed and unhoused poor people who don’t look pretty enough to attract donations.

So maybe you’re thinking, how bad could that be? A nice newly built clean dry indoor day shelter, isn’t that what all you poor people want? A nice clean dry place to get in out of the rain, be with your own kind, maybe get to watch some TV, drink some coffee?

NO! If I wanted that I’d go to a damn day shelter! I want to be able to use the library!

OK, I didn’t want to be that recalcitrant without actually checking out a drop-in center. Maybe they’re great places. Maybe they have better math books than the Seattle Library. Sure, that’s possible, the Seattle Library sucks, almost anybody could have better math books than the Seattle Library.

So I looked around for an appropriate drop-in center to sample, and naturally picked the one closest to home. I checked out the Lazarus Center. Close and so appropriate, because it’s restricted to old geezers just like me. The age of eligibility is exactly Five-O.

Getting myself through the entrance was the hard part. I am, as I have tried repeatedly to convey here, depressed about being fifty. However, I am not depressed about being dead. Lazarus was dead. I am not dead. I do not feel the need to be revived from a state of dead-dom. I am not a Lazarus. I feel very strongly about that.

But I worked through those feelings, and achieved a level of resignation that permitted me to enter the place. Once inside I was pleasantly surprised. It was clean, dry, and out of the rain, of course.

There were not one but two TVs set to different channels. There were laundry facilities, coffee, a smoking room, a couple of computers that some guys were playing games on. I was surrounded by people who looked just like me.

And there was a “library” consisting of what looked like about a hundred Reader’s Digest Condensed Books.

Can’t anyone out there feel my pain?