Another Seattle urban vignette…with pictures
Didn’t shoot any fotos this particular day, but shot this of new development along Thomas Street from another sunny day from the 27th of February 2025 was much like today’s happy blue skies. A passenger jet heads south towards SeaTac.
Saturday the First of March was a glorious, sunny day towards the end of a strange, whiplashed Winter. Even texted my wife, Faithlyn, I was “Off the bus & walking to work. It’s gorgeous outside!”
“Enjoy!” She replied.
Strode east down and up Thomas Street thru the South Lake Union neighborhoods. Used to be called the Cascade area until wealthy developers changed everything up again before the Great Recession and the Covid Pandemic further disrupted and perturbed this part of Seattle. The distance from where I hop off the notorious E-Line down from Shoreline on 7th just off Aurora/99 to where I work at the Downtown Seattle REI store is about 3/4s or 4/5s of a mile long.
Passed Kati Vegan Thai restaurant and approached the local Cascades Pea Patch gardens and city park. A obviously homeless White man sat on a park bench in the sunshine. He’s twisted off to the side like a pretzel. Sigh. It occurs when an drug addict bent over in the “fentanyl fold” sits down. His buttocks were exposed. They glowed a bright clown red more from cold and chafing than from any sunburn. Seems so many “folded people” can’t keep their pants up. That’s why they often walk with their legs bowed out like a crab scuttling sideways to keep their britches partway up over their thighs. He’s loving the sunshine, tho. He’s sprawled crooked across the park bench sunning himself like a sea lion atop a rocky beach.
Oh gosh. Go get a rope or electric cord or something, a piece of string to tie around them britches, man! Oh, for goodness sakes! Oh! Has what looks like a very large Bible open in his lap. He’s wearing thick, black-rimmed glasses and reading with a magnifying lens in hand. Maybe it’s not a Bible, but, hey, sure looks like the Holy Book. The gilded edges of the pages reinforces my view it’s actually the Holy Bible.
The proud, old, storm battered steeple of Immanuel Lutheran Church about 13:00 on 5 February 2025.
Wow…I feel sad and impressed, but am starting to run late so I hurry on towards work. Incongruity is Human nature. Staying connected to God even at rock bottom. Sometimes, for some people, no, for many, it’s the only way back up.
I pass beneath the battered spire of Immanuel Lutheran Church. The old building was built over a hundred years ago in 1907. In 1982, the church was added to the National Register of Historic Places. In recent years used to be a magnet for homeless encampments who left garbage, trash, drug paraphernalia, and worse along its edges. Much of that has been cleaned up and planters installed to prevent tent camping, but many of those planters have been bashed in by angry, mad, frustrated homeless people. The planters still stand there alongside the old church on Thomas Street. The once beautiful church has seen more prosperous days. Its steeple is peppered with dark squares of untreated wood where painted shingles have been torn away by storms and disrepair.
Old Immanuel Lutheran Church on a Tuesday night, 25 February 2025.
One final glance back and Fentanyl Sunshine Bible Man was still bent crookedly over the Bible in his lap, still holding up his magnifying glass in one hand. He stared back at me thru thick eyeglasses over a shaggy mustache. He kept eyeballing me, this folded over man with his head cranked up, a sea lion sprawled upon a throne of rock like a mighty king.
William Dudley Bass
Tuesday 4 March 2025
Thursday 13 March 2025
Shoreline/Seattle, Washington
USA
Cascadia
Earth
Sol
Copyright © 2025 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved by the Author & his Descendants until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship over and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.