Monthly Archives: October 2023

President Biden’s Inflection Point

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Pay attention to what the American President … and the Chair of the Fed declared

Inflection Point with what’s next. On a rare, hand drawn graph…

“Good evening, my fellow Americans.  We’re facing an inflection point in history — one of those moments where the decisions we make today are going to determine the future for decades to come.” ~ from President Joe Biden’s Address to the Nation Thursday night on the 19th of October 2023.

“We’re facing an inflection point in history…”

Those words are significant. He’s preparing the world for war.

“That’s what I’d like to talk with you about tonight. “ Except he really did not further address the inflection point. Continue reading →

Drunks in the Parking Lot

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~ an urban vignette ~

Old Black man sat bundled up in the sun with a ragged, cardboard sign propped up on his knees begging for help. He sat on the sidewalk with his back to the brick building of the Walgreens drugstore. The sidewalk was stained with gum. Torn candy wrappers and cigarette packs and bottle tops and wadded up tissues littered the area next to the store and out in the parking lot next to a line of trees and bushes. A dusty Subaru Crosstrek with a mud-encrusted mountain bike locked on top sat in the back of the lot. Some traveler looking for a place to pull over and nap before pushing on to the next adventure. The old gentleman sitting on the sidewalk wore a large, helmet-like hat with big, fuzzy earflaps. The outside of the hat was a dark-grey, and the fuzzy fur on the inside was an orangey yellow. He never spoke. Nor did I. All kinds of humans ambled by, either lost in their own worlds or staring all around on the look out for crazed, desperate folks lacking emotional self-control but possessing guns, knives, syringes, and drugs. 

My prescriptions were ready for pick-up. As I walked across the parking lot to enter the store, the Walgreens in Shoreline immediately north of the Seattle border, a car almost ran over the sidewalk and into the old guy sitting silently with his big, Elmer Fudd hat on. A sedan with WA plates lurched in from Aurora Avenue, slammed into the high curb of the Walgreens sidewalk, bounced with a jolt, and stop. Was a hard park. The beggar man on the sidewalk didn’t even seem to flinch. Maybe he wasn’t all aware. Or maybe he was astutely aware. Continue reading →

Fone Guy & Eye Patch Man

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Stories from the Streets and Buses of Seattle

First noticed Fone Guy at a bus stop sitting inside the shelter on a wet, wintry day speaking passionately into his old-style flip fone while I waited for the bus. His voice was as crisp and clear as a lawyer arguing in court and as fiery as a street activist bellowing into a bullhorn. Most of the time, however, he could’ve been one of those YouTubers pontificating like Joe Rogan on the state of everything from wars to boxing matches. We were up in the north end of the City of Seattle where the neighborhoods of Greenwood, Bitter Lake, Carkeek Park/Broadview, and Crown Hill come together in one of Seattle’s somewhat chaotic, funky, octopus intersections. There I stamped around waiting for the southbound # 5 to head south down thru Greenwood and up along Phinney Ridge. Fone Guy was dressed like a laborer but without any particular jobsite uniform. His heavy coats hung open around his burly, middle-aged frame. Dawned on me he was probably homeless and the bus stop shelter was his office. In those moments, however, he was King of the Shelter and Emperor of the Flip-Fone. Continue reading →

Tears for Years over Eons of Blood

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Cry. Suffer. Violence. Cry all time. People suffer. No one cares. Just make money & go go go like a UFO!

Violence carves up the news. Violence renders history. Mutilates art. Destroys life. New wars break out as yet more bloody reruns of neverending dramas. Tears flow for years and years then dry up as deserts fill with sand and dust. Years of tears. The biggest desert, however, is the ocean, and it is full of salt.

Recently watched HBO dramas The Pacific and Band of Brothers on Netflix about American units in the Second World War. Was appalled by the savagery of high intensity combat. These shows captured the ultimate essence of violence, it’s banality and senseless destruction as well as how those contradict with the necessity for violence and survival. Grim. I felt the same watching the horrors of melee combat in films set in Ancient times such as The Gladiator and The Eagle. Felt the same grimness watching the Medieval combat within The Last Kingdom series, Braveheart, and shows set in the Crusades. First World War movies such as every version of All Quiet on the Western Front and 1917. There are amazing war films and shows set in Ancient and Medieval East Asia, in Africa, in the Americas, and many others whose titles jumble together in a carnage of memories set free with tears. The glory and the heroism itself brings tears as well as the horror of heroism.

Oh, the vastness of wars stretched out over time and place. Who remembers those where many hundreds and many thousands died in longago wars and battles so remote in the mind even history buffs must look them up? There are wars lost to history where not even the names and places are remembered. Often the tribes, cities, and civilizations of everyone and anyone who could and would are extinct. Continue reading →