Street Mayhem in Seattle/Madness in the City
Gaza flags waving
Motorcycles racing
Prostitutes waving
Cruiser cars with explosive mufflers cruising…
It’s 80° outside on Aurora Avenue!
It’s Saturday in the city! In the Emerald City of Seattle! Seattle, the City of Cranes! The old Jet City! Once the City of Dirt! And in Shoreline, too, one of Seattle’s satellite cities, this one on its northeastern border. Used to be wilderness here stewarded by Indigenous Native American tribes. We pulled out of our garage in our hot new red car, a 2025 Subaru Crosstrek Wilderness painted “Pearl Lithium Red with Gold accents and Black cladding.” Pearl lithium red. Who thinks up such names for these colors? My wife is driving as I’m still recovering from health challenges. When I first met my wife in person, after she picked me up from the airport in Richmond, Virginia, she zoomed down the freeways like a gleeful madwoman. “I drive like I’m in Jamaica, mon!” She shouted and laughed. Indeed, she is originally from the island nation of Jamaica.
As we approached the intersection, demonstrators rally and shout, hoisting up signs condemning the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza without any condemnation of the Hamas Palestinian genocide of Jewish Israelis (and a number of Thai immigrants). Blood demands blood, and gravity does not care from whom blood flows. Humans keep piling more and more stones, stones of rage, hate, and grief, upon the Scales of Justice, and yet more stones they pile, more stones of grief, hate, and rage, until the Scales of Justice breaks and Justice herself topples over upon the Earth.
“Oh my goodness,” my wife says,”is it a Full Moon or what?”
A homeless man hobbles along Aurora Avenue by Burgermaster with a big, orangey-red chicken-feathered costume hat pulled down over his cranium. Wearing layers of dirty red, orange, and brown coats. Isn’t he hot? Won’t he burn up? He trudges so slowly. He trudges oh so slowly in the summer heat.
Then we passed a car wreck with half-naked people gathered around the wreckage talking together as if wrecking cars on Aurora is the most normal thing in the world. A White woman in flowing, messy, dark-brown hair walks by in skimpy lingerie with amazing tattoos all over her fanny and legs. A hooker? Aurora Avenue between Green Lake and Shoreline was a seedy paradise rich with prostitutes and their pimps with guns. Prostitution should be legalized, taxed, and regulated and all the pimps sent up the river to prison, yet what politician is gonna have the guts to even suggest such a motion? Politics is too busy being shredded by extreme polarization and the corruption by big money interests.
There were scandals in progress on every block as we motored along Aurora Avenue aka Highway 99. Twas both exciting and sad to behold, and even scary when we saw the bullet holes near the computer repair business, or what we thought were bullet holes. They were from a gun battle between pimps over prostitutes and drugs.
“Oh my goodness,” Faithlyn says again as she looks around town. ”Is it a Full Moon or what?”
So I pulled out my iPhone and tapped open my Safari browser with Duck Duck Go. Had to look it up. Had to, but without Google. For now.
Yes, indeed! Today, tonight is the Full Moon. The Sturgeon’s Moon!
William Dudley Bass
Saturday 9 August 2025
Sunday 5 October 2025
Shoreline/Seattle, Washington
USA
Cascadia
Earth
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.