seattle – Cat's Paw Images

Fremont Zombie Walk

On July 2nd, 2011, the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle set a world record and marked an important civil rights milestone: for the first time ever, over four and a half thousand Zombie-Americans marched openly and proudly through the streets of a major city. There was no widespread violence, and most onlookers were either openly supportive or covertly terrified.

The zombie rights movement, long an underground sub-current of the broader civil rights movement, has in recent years seen a groundswell of popular support. The movement has three main premises: that zombies should be proud of their undead identity, that being a zombie is a gift, not a curse, and that a zombie’s hunger for brains is natural and should not be suppressed or intentionally altered.

After the infamous Living Dead riots of 1969, which originated (oddly) at a gay bar in Greenwich Village, many cities across the United States enacted anti-zombie statutes. While many of these were struck down in the 1990s, this legalized form of discrimination has continued in some of the more conservative areas across the Bible Belt. In order to establish a public presence in these locations, some zombies have been forced to identify and behave as orthodox dybbuks, which most evangelical Christians struggle to distinguish from human orthodox Jews. This kind of closeted life is a leading cause of depression and suicide among the undead.

As is often the case with zombie pride parades, anti-zombie squads such as the Umbrella Corporation were also represented in the Fremont zombie walk. While their security presence made itself felt at times, the Umbrella Corporation’s personnel remained on best behavior during the walk and took pains to avoid overt intimidation. Only one minor incident involving a cerebellum and a machete was reported.

Although some participants attributed a minor virus outbreak to the Umbrella Corporation, its effects were quickly contained and no zombie transformations were reported. The Umbrella Corporation would not comment for this article, other than the following cryptic statement from their spokesperson: “we’re battening down the hatches for the zombie apocalypse here”.

Much has been made of the presence of celebrity undead at the Zombie Walk. Both John Lennon and (Sweet) Zombie Jesus made an appearance, each expressing support in their unique way for the zombie cause.

While these celebrities provided luster to an already spectacular event, the story of the zombie walk was really that of the anonymous, everyday zombie; the zombie on the street. The one that even today has immense difficulty obtaining even basic forms of healthcare to address her numerous lesions, cannot visit family members in the hospital, and is often forced to scrounge for brains in garbage cans.

One heartwarming aspect of the zombie walk was the unmistakable presence of humans, fraternizing and in some cases even dressing as zombies – presumably to signal their solidarity with the undead. While it would be an exaggeration to say that days of fear and misunderstanding between humans and zombies are over, one cannot avoid feeling parallels with other famous acts of solidarity and defiance: JFK in Berlin, Gandhi on the Salt Satyagraha, or the anonymous civilian in front of the line of tank at Tiananmen. And who among us has never woken up and said to ourselves “my god, I feel like a zombie.”

Another encouraging sign of integration was the presence of American flags and other signs of mainstream cultural integration among the undead. After all, nothing says American small town patriotism like Uncle Sam and clowns.

Because of this, the Fremont zombie walk should be understood as a powerful statement that humans can coexist peacefully with the undead. In addition to finding alternative sources of neuronal protein, it should be stated plainly that most humans hardly use their brains at all. They would never even notice if their cerebral cortices were delicately removed and lightly sautéed with onions. Add some chili pepper and fish sauce and… But I digress.

When asked about the message they intended to send to the world, many participants spoke less about integration and more about celebrating the diversity that exists inside the zombie community itself. In contrast to common societal misconceptions and portrayals in popular culture, Zombie-Americans are a diverse set of undead creatures with highly varied characteristics, interests, and injuries. Seen among the participants in the walk were brides, geishas, nurses, knitters… even photographers. In a time of great financial crisis and economic upheaval, can our society afford to exclude such productive citizens from realizing their full potential?

Despite the fantastic turnout for the Fremont zombie walk, zombies continue to face significant challenges in their daily lives, including discrimination in the work place, hunger, homelessness, pencils, and screwdrivers.

So if this reporter can leave you, living reader, with a thought to supplement this image gallery of vibrant zombies enjoying the best moment of their lives, it is that while they may be flesh eating undead creatures, their appetites and predilection for random destruction are not entirely dissimilar to our own. Indeed, humans have been responsible for far greater environmental destruction and warfare than any of the various zombie apocalypses recorded to date. If they are monsters, even fictional monsters, then they pale in comparison to our own reality.

Indeed, perhaps we humans have something to learn from our zombie cousins. If we could only establish a common ground for dialog, we might find creative ways to put our brains to good use. The Fremont walk has left me convinced that the zombies can help us with that.

Lakeview Cemetery

At the crest of Capitol Hill, next to the beautiful Volunteer Park, we find historic Lakeview Cemetery. Founded in 1872 as the Seattle Masonic Cemetery, it quickly became the preferred place of interment for Seattle’s most prestigious pioneering families.

Over time the cemetery has grown organically to combine the heritage of different faiths and ethnicities.

Alongside traditional Christian crosses, we find the rigid symmetry of the Chinese.

Simple stone monoliths are accompanied by ornate offerings laden with hidden meaning.

Classic formal designs offset graves with decidedly more iconoclastic representations of the departed.

Even a hoary chestnut of an epitaph finds at least one buyer.

One grave appears to have replicated the deceased’s favorite bathtub. Another represents the great man in his best gardener’s jacket with his favorite tool and best friend.

In a cemetery this old, the vegetation has had time to grow and add distinction to its surroundings. The Phinneys chose a Camperdown Elm to provide a shapely cover over their family plot.

They also appear to have hung a grave for a family member with feathers.

An elegant Japanese maple adds its gnarled feng shui. A Mason sculpts an entire tree trunk and uses its to hang lodge symbols.

A well-placed azalea bush puts Sunday bouquets and plastic flowers to shame.

The statue is an ever-popular element. Some uses them to express religious devotion, however peculiar its manifestation.

As the years pass, erosion and oblivion take hold. The lines blur between celestial madonnas, grieving mothers, and children buried by their parents. Perhaps that line was never actually clear.

Others make simpler statements. This person liked birds.

Two large mausoleums stand as paeans to conformity, thriftiness, or perhaps run of the mill lives ending in 9-5 deaths. Flower receptacles distinguish the remembered from the forgotten. The fountain brings us back to life.

Among the commoners lies buried nobility. A menhir marks the resting place of Princess Angeline, née Kick-is-om-lo. There are many stories here: the daughter of Chief Sealth, friendship with several of the original pioneer families, a devout convert to Christianity, a Seattle resident even after her people were exiled to the reservation, a life in relative poverty, a laundrywoman and weaver of baskets sold on the city streets and eventually in another Seattle landmark, Ye Olde Curiosity Shop. Eventually a death in her seventies, a funeral with some public fanfare and a last burial near the family plot of Yeslers.

Lakeview Cemetery’s most famous resident, however, can only be found through Jeet Kune Do: flowing like water, plus a bit of luck.

Bruce and his son Brandon are buried side by side, both victims of untimely deaths.

We were surprised to learn that Bruce finished high school in Seattle, and also attended the University of Washington and met his future wife there. It was in Seattle where he opened his first martial arts school and where he famously took down a black-belt karateka in eleven seconds. So while not exactly a native son, he’s more of a Seattleite than most of us.

The complete Flickr set.

South Orchard Street

If South Park were the deep African wilderness, then South Orchard Street would be its heart of darkness.

We reach this unlikely intersection by following 2nd Ave until its bitter end at the Duwamish shoreline. Nearby, the highway 509 that brought us here traverses what was once a wetland. Acres of pavement and fill proudly announce the reclamation, utilization and civilization of land from wilderness.

We fly on asphalt friction until gravel grinds and rainwater splashes. Unpaved roads and pothole swarms are no obstacle to our momentum. Containers smile and point the way. Abandoned cars gesture caution to temper our exuberance.

South Orchard Street begins here and ends a few hundred feet down the road. No more is needed.

The heart of darkness is a vacant lot across from a blackberry thicket. Behind the thicket, a riparian inlet where salmon spawned before the world began.

The vacant lot is river mud softened by rain and scored with large-tread tire tracks. A barrel pyramid looms in the distance. Cement blocks imply potential architecture as yet unborn. This place is not yet what it will become.

The rusted container signals its mysterious command to trespassers. The abandoned lunar probe sits forever awaiting rescue. The earth wonders why nothing will grow.

Beside the alien container ten thousand cannons lie silent, a machine gun nest of retired metal. These are the pipes that carried the flow, the links that connected the graph, the launch tubes that fired the torpedoes that won the forgotten war. Here retired they must rust.

The barrel pyramid is formidable archeology, more colorful than Cheops and more useful than Chichen Itza. But its moment too has come and gone.

This is the eastern side of the Industrial Container Services site, where the firm’s most battle-scarred and least attractive barrels are stacked. Veterans of toxic waste spills meet containers used at nuclear accidents. They are stained beyond repair, rusted beyond hope. And yet still beautiful.

An engine’s roar returns our attention to South Orchard Street. A pickup truck laden with debris appears, and pauses at the sight of us. In this no-man’s land, no mission could possibly be legal.

A nervous energy fills every opening. Snipers take aim. The innocent hide behind containers. Hammers cock behind trembling fingers. The pickup truck advances, its cargo carefully balanced by slender ropes. The air is dense, unbreathable. A decision is being made.

Then the truck turns around and departs. Mission not accomplished. Perhaps a more legitimate destination awaits, or another moment when the tourists have gone.

The snipers relax. Lungs refill. Oxygen tastes strangely sweet. But South Orchard Street remains. Beside the river, debris was dumped yesterday and debris will be dumped tomorrow.

No place becomes worthless on its own. No place becomes worthless overnight. Perhaps no place is ever worthless at all, except to the unworthy. But day after day, year after year, neglect accumulates into scar tissue upon the landscape. The unwanted becomes unwelcoming.

And eventually, it is no longer the debris that does not belong; it is us.

The complete Flickr set.

Barrels on West Marginal Way S, revisited

Terminal 115 Viewpoint taught us to feel a certain trepidation when revisiting a favorite location. But as our route took us down to West Marginal Way, we had no choice but to pay another visit to the land of the barrel pyramids.

Unlike the fisherman’s shack, the barrel pyramids still stood proudly in place. While noticeably smaller than a few months ago, their essentially artistic nature remained unchanged.

A pattern that emerged was the highly dynamic nature of the pyramidal composition. While the yellow pyramid had merely lost a few barrels off the top – from erosion, theft, or perhaps even business – the multi-color pyramid had seen its coloration patterns significantly altered.

There were more blacks and silver barrels, fewer blues and reds, but all the oranges were gone. Clearly orange barrels are a hot item on today’s barrel market.

A little investigation reveals that the barrels are the property of Industrial Container Services, the self-described largest provider of reusable container solutions in the United States.

Their mission statement? An industrial container in every home. (Or perhaps not, but this writer wishes it were.)

One of the values ICS provides its customers is freedom from environmental concerns. This perk is provided thanks to regular system flow analysis and a giant insurance policy.

As we pondered the environmental impact of reusable industrial containers, we found ourselves in a surprisingly appreciative mood. After all, somebody should have a standard process for handling the containers that transport toxic waste. Best to leave it to the professionals, to the guys who eat cyanide with their breakfast cereals instead of almonds. This was like returning our used milk bottles to the supermarket – although only if washing out milk bottles were illegal and required a hazmat suit to perform safely.

Then we noticed the water carrier truck parked in front of the ICS offices. Not content to contemplate the barrel pyramids, it was busy flooding its contents into the street. A small river filled the deep potholes along West Marginal Way, splashing high into the air as bemused traffic swerved and dodged the flood.

We avoided the spray, took our pictures and left the area. We hoped we hadn’t become first-responders at a toxic waste spill. We wondered whether the insurance policy would cover us. And we began to question the utility of system flow analysis.

All told, we were glad the barrels were still there. To serve a higher purpose, perhaps, but mainly to look pretty.

The complete Flickr set.

Seattle Gear Works, emergency exit

Some days the soul requests not botanical gardens but industrial grit. Not perfection but broken things.

On those days, a drive down the Duwamish into South Park brings satisfaction like no other local road trip.

Our route extends along barely paved roads. We splash through puddles that are small lakes. We dodge potholes deep enough to drown a cyclist. We drive by mountains of barrels, piles of crates, and idle machinery left to rust by the side of the road. We breathe in the chaos of an unregulated economy.

The Duwamish waterfront is a land of enterprise. It has the vibrancy of a third world city. It is the American dream waking up on a Superfund site and stretching its legs.

And while bolts and gaskets may be a nice change from cultivating the land, the broken pallets whisper that sacrifice isn’t always sufficient for success.

Across the street, another brotherly endeavor is doing quite a bit better.

In the black and white South Park landscape, even a spot of color and taste catches the eye. In the back alleys of S Portland St, we turned away from Cain and were surprised by something beautiful.

The emergency back door with the fantastic landscaping belongs to Seattle Gear Works. A family-owned gear manufacturing and repair company, the Gear Works was founded in 1946 by Ingwald Ramberg. It is currently owned and managed by his two sons Roland and Sterling.

What began as a small garage business has grown into an international enterprise with over $20M in annual revenue and over a hundred employees. Gear Works gears are used in virtually every kind of industrial endeavor on the planet, from wind energy to military machinery. The South Park location facing us is actually one of the largest gear manufacturing facilities in the country.

Seattle Gear works, we salute your attention to detail and your taste in landscaping. We’d love to see the inside of your plant.

The complete Flickr set.

Terminal 115 Viewpoint, revisited

Consider the balance between the already seen and the unforeseen.

A place, once visited and photographed, is committed to memory; saved on disk; gently processed for public consumption; and ultimately presented to the internet for the entire planet to view, discuss, perhaps reference. It is caught in amber, stale data already seen and now forever misleading.

Naturally, reality moves on while the virtual stands still. Electrons move fast, but atoms faster still. As the ancients might have said, things change.

Consider Terminal 115 viewpoint, already seen. Its gritty post-war beauty came not from the stagnant river or the military overpass, but from the old fisherman’s shack with its sunken barrels and boarded windows. A surprise, a touch of the handmade in a manufactured world. Unforeseen.

Eight months later, the shack is gone. Taken by the river, or a victim of the messy, unpredictable real world? Perhaps both.

So a second visit converts a place that was, in a way, special into yet another rock pile next to the Duwamish.

To be sure, the 1st Ave S bridge still has its East Berlin chic. It’s mostly the sniper towers.

There are still random things lying on the banks of the Duwamish, particularly at low tide. The river is a liquid steampunk landfill, and you never know what it’ll decide to wash up. This time it was somebody’s metal pipe.

On closer inspection, more things had changed. As it turns out, the previous occupants of 100 SW Peninsula Pl weren’t a marine diving company, as the previous note might have suggested. Instead, behind the fence was an eponymous outfit called Commercial Fence. They demonstrated their business acumen through an inordinate fondness for razor wire.

According to a sign onsite, Commercial Fence has now moved to greener pastures on W Marginal Way S. The vacant lot has presumably been purchased by the Port of Seattle. The Port of Seattle, of course, remains its usual charming self.

Not only that, their first act upon taking over the property was to take down the fisherman’s shack. No doubt the space will be used for something eminently practical.

Alas. Perhaps better to remember the already seen and avoid the location forever more, unless the unforeseen invalidate the memory.

Fisherman’s shack, you’ll be remembered. That is, if we can get ourselves disentangled from the razor wire.

The complete Flickr set.

Elliott Bay Marina

Heading north from where the Port of Seattle ends at Smith Cove, you find yourself among humans again. The sound of conversation echoes over the water. There is laughter, and there are flower beds and the scent of freshly mowed grass. There are children on leashes and parents holding the hands of pet dogs. There are ships, and the waves lap ever so softly against the dock.

This is the Elliott Bay marina. It is a place of opulence, Manhattan to the South Park marina’s Bronx. Located beneath the beautiful Magnolia bluffs, it enjoys a fantastic view of Seattle’s downtown. It’s the high rent district.

And it is in every way perfect.

From the landlubber’s perspective, a marina is a symmetric jumble of impractical vessels. From small pleasure boats to larger liveaboards, they lack the blue-collar ethic of the fishing boat, or the single-minded purpose of the cargo ship. They are entirely optional, an indication of perhaps entirely too much wealth, or perhaps of a set of priorities and lifestyle choices that befuddle and confuse the poor landlubber.

In that light, you would be justified in asking ask why these ships are here. Who pays the rent, and why?

Interesting though these questions might be, this story is not about the luxury tax, the call of the waves, or the jet-setting lifestyle of the modern yacht mariner.

Nor is this story about the attempted poisoning of pesky but adorable otters, which prompted an indulgent but stern rebuke from the marina’s manager. This is a different story entirely.

As it turns out, the story of the Elliott Bay Marina is about fishing rights.

Like most stories, it’s but a simplification of a simplification. The complexities of life evade simple description. Everything but the bare essence is lost in the telling.

The story begins with the Treaty of Medicine Creek. It’s December of 1854 in the remote territory of Washington.

Territorial Governor Isaac Stevens is a former military man, hell-bent on a land grab of historic proportions. His title includes the honorific "Superintendent of Indian Affairs" and he is clearly living the dream. When the tribes don’t respond to intimidation, he calls in the military. When white citizens oppose him, he arrests or discredits them. He is on a mission to civilize this heathen part of the god-given earth.

At Medicine Creek he gathers the leaders of the Nisqually, the Puyallup and the rest of the tribes of Western Washington. For the princely sum of $32,500 and some reservation land, over two million acres of land are signed off to the United States government. With a native population of just 6,000, resistance is futile and they know it. It’s an offer they simply cannot refuse.

It’s a moment that will leave long scars on their future. In their minds eye, the shining cities to come have already begun to cast a shadow. Not theirs anymore, never again.

As an afterthought, the treaty grants the natives the right to fish.

The right of taking fish, at all usual and accustomed grounds and stations, is further secured to said Indians in common with all citizens of the Territory.

For those of us who buy never-frozen wild salmon from behind the counters of large industrial organic establishments, the dirty business of catching the damn things is forever hidden. Nevertheless, this is a generous grant indeed. Perhaps Governor Stevens is after all a humanitarian.

It is worth recalling that in 1854, the Nisqually could throw a rock at water, and a grilled salmon would float to the bank. Fish and game were effectively limitless at the time, in a way that neither we nor our descendants will ever understand. The treaty could have granted the natives the right to breathe, and it would have been no more surprising. The only surprise is that it was included at all.

It’s tempting to imagine an enterprising chief slipping this clause past the white man’s careless lawyers, with another seconding the motion and a third moving to commit. We’ll never know. The minutes of the meeting are lost, and the establishment of such rules of order were twenty two years in the future. All there was at Medicine Creek was the order of the gun.

So the Nisqually tribe packs up and leaves for the reservation. It’s on rocky ground, and there’s no good way to grow food. It’s also cut off from the river, so there’s no good way to fish. The long starvation begins.

The next year, chief Leschi goes to Olympia to protest the terms of the treaty. He claims his signature was forged and he had refused to sign. The powers that be react violently and Leschi has no choice: it’s time to think the unthinkable, and rebel against the state of Washington.

One thing leads to another, and we get the Puget Sound war of 1855-1856. Unsurprisingly, the full force of the US military and local militias are brought to bear, and the revolt is suppressed. While few actual deaths result from the war, the native uprising is a shock to the settlers. One might argue that at this point, the natives were lucky they weren’t exterminated.

Meanwhile, chief Leschi is on the run and Governor Stevens is having paranoid fits. He suspects some settlers of helping Leschi, and he goes to the length of declaring martial law in Pierce County. Eventually he catches up with Leschi and tries him in various kangaroo court until it sticks. His half-brother and co-conspirator Quiemuth comes forward to try to save his brother, and he’s murdered in Steven’s own office while in custody of the state. Leschi’s conviction takes him to the gallows, and he’s hanged for murder he probably wasn’t present to commit.

By 1880, the Nisqually tribe has shrunk to 700 people, down from over 2,000 at the beginning of the century. Their access to the salmon runs has became illegal banditry. The state government is of the white extractive industries, for the white extractive industries. Rivers are haphazardly closed, and various forms of fishing are banned, conveniently those used by the natives.

Meanwhile, civilization grows. Rivers are dammed, forests are logged, and industrial-scale fishing is making a dent in limitless but fragile resources. The salmon runs dwindle, and of course native poaching is blamed.

Two subsequent court cases illustrate the themes of the time.

In 1905, a federal court decides the US vs. Winans case in favor of the natives, reaffirming the rights of the Yakama tribe to fish in local rivers. However, it allows the state of Washington to reasonably regulate this fishing in the interests of conversation. The State of Washington, never one to miss a trick, makes a river of lemonade and interprets the ruling as carte blanche to continue to enforce its laws regarding licenses, fishing methodology restrictions, and river closures.

In 1916, in the State vs. Towessnute case, State Supreme Court Justice Bausman effectively reverses Winans, writing the following words for the record:

The premise of Indian sovereignty we reject. The treaty is not to be interpreted in that light. At no time did our ancestors in getting title to this continent ever regard the aborigines as other than mere occupants, and incompetent occupants, of the soil. Any title that could be had from them was always disdained… Only that title was esteemed which came from white men… The Indian was a child, and dangerous child of nature, to be both protected and restrained. In his nomadic life, he was to be left , as long as civilization did not demand his region. When it did demand that region, he was to be allotted a more confined area with permanent subsistence… These arrangements were but the announcement of our benevolence which, notwithstanding our frequent frailties, has been continuously displayed. Neither Rome nor sagacious Britain ever dealt more liberally with their subject races than we with these savage tribes, whom it permitted to squander vast areas of fertile land before our eyes.

Two other state court cases that year went along the same lines. Presumably demoralized, none of the tribes appeal to the US Supreme Court. Native fishermen continue to ply their trade, but are increasingly subject to the whims of local law enforcement. Most traditional means of fish harvesting are now illegal, including spearing and gaffing.

In effect, life and tradition itself is now illegal.

By the 1960s, native access to the salmon runs has become a civil rights issue, and a cause célèbre of Marlon Brando and others. Civil disobedience is in the air, as is violence. The state continues to enforce its laws. In September 1970, Tacoma police arrest and beat 59 protestors on the Puyallup river, using tear gas, clubs and live ammunition to restore law and order. Finally, the feds step in. That same month, the US government files United States vs. Washington.

The honorable George Boldt presides. He’s a conservative Eisenhower appointee in his late sixties, and a sports fisherman himself. The smart money shorts the natives.

The case lasts three and a half years. Boldt listens. He hears state officials and tribal elders. He reads the treaty. Signed in haste and under duress, it’s the only thing that can protect the natives now. Boldt consults his copy of the 1828 Webster’s American Dictionary. He writes 203 pages worth of decision.

The Boldt decision is a miracle or infamous, depending on your point of view. It gives the tribes 50% of the harvestable salmon from their traditional waters, because that’s what that in common with would have meant in 1854. In an instant, the natives are no longer bandits and thieves, but co-managers of the salmon industry.

Attorney General Slade Gorton appeals all the way up to the US Supreme Court, but to no avail. His family’s fish stick fortune is no conflict of interest, and he later spends his golden years in the company of an even greater band of thieves, the US Senate. Washington’s tribes and its fishing industry reach an uneasy equilibrium, which lasts to this day.

But what of our fair marina?

As it turns out, the Elliott Bay marina was built in the accustomed fishing grounds of the Muckleshoot and Suquamish tribes. When the initial development plans became public, the tribes sued. Using Boldt as precedent, a US District Court granted a quick preliminary injunction against the marina’s development.

Furious settlement activities followed, and an agreement was reached that allowed the marina’s development to proceed while compensating for the lost fishing. A percentage of the marina’s gross revenues are now paid directly to the tribes, which by my rough calculations might amount to over a quarter million dollars every year – a bit more than what the court document say was coming in from fishing. This arrangement will last for 99 years, and everyone seems happy about it, including the salmon.

The marina itself opened in 1991, and it’s reasonably environmentally friendly as marinas go. It doesn’t use creosote pilings, and its rock breakwater channels allow kelp to grow and juvenile salmon to migrate. If salmon runs are threatened in this area and all around the Puget Sound, it’s probably not because of this marina. While it may be because of countless shoreline developments just like it, you can’t blame the knife for the thousand cuts.

And if a century later the tribes will be down one more natural resource, well, that’s not a problem for the present. Maybe investing the money will pay off more than the fishing ever did.

One last detail: every time a yacht pulls into the Elliott Bay marina, there’s a line item in its mooring charges named the "Indian Surcharge" – called out explicitly out of pique, out of honesty, or perhaps out of legal requirement. It’s a living tribute to a vivid history that would otherwise have gone completely unnoticed by this storyteller.

The complete Flickr set.

Smith Cove Park

North of the working-class bustle of Pier 90/91 and the hyperactivity of the Pier 86 grain terminal, we find Smith Cove Park. A quiet park belonging to the Port of Seattle, it overlooks the high-end Elliott Bay Marina.

The anchor marks a small but important piece of history. The cove is named for Dr. Henry Smith of Wooster, Ohio, one of the first whites to settle in the Seattle area in 1853.

HistoryLink tells his story:

"Dr. Smith traveled in a wagon train to the Oregon Territory from Wooster, Ohio, with his wife, his mother and his sister. He picked the cove for his claim and built a cabin there in the spring of 1853. He thought the spot was a good location for docks and that the flat area was a natural for a transcontinental railroad terminus. He and his family planted potatoes. His mother, Abigail Teaff Smith (b. 1792) staked out the next claim north. Smith cut a trail through the woods, three miles to Seattle as an alternative to the canoe route. Another settler, Edmund Carr, laid claim to the south side of Salmon Bay, having explored the north side of Queen Anne Hill and The Outlet, the creek connecting Lake Union and the salt water.

Many newcomers felt that Smith’s Cove was the logical site for a city on Elliott Bay. The ground there was level and the hills to each side were ideal as residential districts. More settlers arrived and filed claims. They made their livings farming and logging.

During the Indian War of 1855-1856, the settlers fled their claims for the safety of block houses in Seattle. When they returned after hostilities, they found their homes burned and their stock gone. Dr. Smith’s first cabin was spared, apparently a tribute to his good relations with his Native American neighbors. Smith would later be the source for a widely circulated account of the speech of Chief Seattle during an 1854 visit of Washington Territorial Governor Isaac Stevens (1818-1862)."

We came for the history, but we ended up staying for the sunset.

As we searched the shoreline fruitlessly for a rumored otter family, the sun lit up the clouds behind the Magnolia Bridge. We stood and watched as blue gave way to pinks, then purples, then reds. And we thought about Dr. Smith.

As it turns out, the Smith Cove plaque doesn’t mention the war of 1855 at all. You don’t hear a lot about the Pacific Northwest Indian Wars, even though just about everything in the area still bears some form of the native name.

A brief glance at Wikipedia reminds you. First the explorers, a fascinating novelty. Then the settlers arriving from the east, first in trickles, then in multitudes. Claiming the land, like explorers on a distant planet. Building fences, introducing strange new plants and animals, changing everything. At first, uneasy coexistence and informal agreements. Then, the burdens of formality, and treaties signed in the face of overwhelming force. Might makes right. Ink that imposes harsh restrictions, flowing in only one direction. An ever-expanding settler population overflowing each boundary, invalidating each covenant. Nobody wants war, but the treaties exist only to occupy and enclose. And the gold lust is berserker fury, recognizing no authority but the gun.

The great father in Washington is powerful. The US Army is always out there somewhere , ready to engage when white interests are threatened. Citizen militias are well-armed, and suffer no restrictions. Merciless, they defend their own. There is no justice, because justice is a concept for the enfranchised. The red are outside the circle, another tribe entirely. Now they are aliens on their own soil, no more worthy of respect or survival then the bison, the wolves or the bears. They are simply the other, the enemy. Submit or die.

You read Chief Seattle‘s apocryphal speech and you wonder about the undercurrents. Henry Smith of Wooster, Ohio, imbuing his poet’s voice, with god knows what intent, into a mistranslated paraphrase of words spoken by a defeated Indian chief in occupied Seattle. Words that romanticize and absolve. Words that resonate with meaning, but which may never have been spoken at all.

The speech is a heartbreaking suicide note, an embodiment of genocidal depression, an utter denial of the possibility of co-existence. It is a handing-over-the-torch letter, a lie-down-and-die message, a resignation so pitiful it defies belief. The speech is like a white settler’s guilty dream; that great historical cycles explain what they did, instead of greed and manifest destiny; that the blood be washed from their hands by their victims themselves; that the populated land they came to conquer be somehow emptied before them; that the green valleys and fisheries be deemed virginal, not taken by force; that the history be a glorious account of heroes, not the victory of the more powerful and less scrupulous.

Chief Seattle’s people live on to this day. What began as an uneasy truce may have evolved into defeatist resignation, but it has now become a triumph of capitalism through selective deregulation: i.e. the Suquamish Clearwater Casino Resort.

And yet, the speech remains. Or rather, the account of it.

One civilization conquered another. A great nation was forged over the ashes of the old. A beautiful city was built, a natural paradise destroyed. This is war, as it always was, as it is today, as it will always be.

Ultimately, the past leaves us nothing but ideas, etched in stone and paper by someone with an axe to grind. And so for the defeated, what greater humiliation than the words of the great chief, twisted and rewritten as forked tongue apology? Thus is history ever written and rewritten. The house always wins, even in Suquamish.

The complete Flickr set.

Elliott Bay Park

There are many ways to get to Elliott Bay Park. My favorite is the Helix Pedestrian Bridge.

On the other side of the bridge lies Amgen’s Research and Technology Center, next to pleasant Puget Sound vistas.

Built by Amgen after its acquisition of local Seattle biotech darling Immunex, the Helix Bridge provides safe passage over a highly active train line.

The train line is a commercial artery into the heart of Elliott Bay Park: the massive grain terminal operated by Louis Dreyfus Corp.

Located on the Port of Seattle’s Pier 86, the terminal was built in 1970 to efficiently move grain from incoming trains to outgoing ships. The terminal boasts 68 massive silos, each 130 feet high.

If Terminal 18 is a perpetual motion machine, Pier 86 is a robotized line dance.

BNSF and Union Pacific trains run day and night through this corridor, loaded with soybeans and corn from the American heartland – the Dakotas, Minnesota, Montana and Nebraska. Some token wheat from Washington and Oregon also passes through Pier 86.

Most of the grain leaving Seattle will be used as feed for livestock in the far East, with Taiwan, China and Japan as primary destinations. Central and South America also receive some portion of the grain.

All told, over 6 million tons of grain move through Pier 86 every year.

While most of the grain is buffered in the terminal’s 4 million bushels of storage capacity, some is transferred directly from train to ship. This is apparently preferable, as it allows the grain to be loaded onto the ship in somewhat better condition. It’s a rough life being a cereal.

The terminal is able to load 3,000 tons of grain per hour into a giant cargo ship. It is also able to unload trucks at a rate of 250 tons per hour. This throughput is only possible thanks to the facility being completely automated, with sophisticated mechanical devices and electronic controls. Who needs humans when you have such infrastructure?

During the day, the grain terminal is a spectacular sight. At night, the facility expands and fills all other senses.

Freed from ambient noise, trains click and clack with wild abandon, advancing one car at a time to feed the grain elevator’s endless hunger. Electric conveyor belts drone and hum. The enormous ship sloshes and clanks. In the distance, the city looks on proudly.

Grain dust rises from the ships as seeds roll into the ship’s hold. The smell is pervasive and intoxicating. It is earth and sunlight, the deep smell of the harvest, the taste of late summer. It is carbohydrate and omega-6, the deep imbalance of our bodies. It is, above all, commodity.

The flour settles on the bay. Algae blooms and metabolizes in the shallows, chaining together an entire ecosystem of micro-organisms, fish, and seagulls. The breadbasket of the world also creates local food chains.

A nearby fishing pier invites the adventuresome, the foolhardy and the merely hungry to taste the results.

While probably not the world’s most unhealthy fish, Elliott Bay’s catch is surely somewhere high on the leaderboards. This is why catch and release was invented.

Nearby, the Amgen facility works until late into the light, glowing with science and artificial light. Biotechnology meets corn. Reason sleeps and spawns monsters.

Elliott Bay Park continues down to Pier 90 and 91, where moorage is provided for commercial workboats and fishing vessels.

This is as far as the Port of Seattle reaches. It is the end of the port, the northernmost tentacle of the monster.

Farther east, Smith Cove becomes the Elliott Bay Marina, an oasis of liveaboards and recreational vessels. Children play on the piers and well-tended lawns. Once again, the humans are unmistakably in control.

The complete Flickr set.

Port of Seattle

At first glance, the Port of Seattle is a hostile, inhuman place. It is a police state on an artificial island, defended by barbed wire and an infinite number of checkpoints and security guards.

It is also a Superfund site, thanks to upstanding corporate citizens such as Shell Oil and their magnificent petroleum storage tanks.

The port’s primary purpose is to transfer an oceanful of containers from enormous cargo ships to endless trains. With over two million containers processed per year, it’s an unimaginably large operation.

The port’s most striking feature are its massive cranes. Were we to encounter them in nature, we would say that like the hummingbird’s tongue, the crane is a fantastic adaptation – in this case, to a natural abundance of standard-sized containers.

Seen at this scale, the port is more Star Wars than Pacific Northwest. In this version the droids took over and dedicated the energies of the universe to replication.

All this hardware is a throwback to an earlier time, before the lures of plastics, when men were men and every American delighted in designing enormous metal machines. When everyone had a hammer, and the the sky burned red from the ore, the smelters, and the sheer joy of manufacturing.

But the cranes are but a means to an end, and that end is containers.

Inside the containers lie dormant the very seeds of the globalized economy. Embodied ideas from every part of the globe, made real by the plastic alchemists of the far East. Protected in their steel shells from wind and water, they float across the Pacific like coconuts on an ironclad tide.

Once unloaded, the mother ship but a memory, all individuality lost, the containers gather in droves on the shores of the promised land. One by one, they are opened and inspected by the paranoia of Seattle’s finest in homeland security. Papers cleared, passports stamped, Geiger counters in silence, the containers await the crab-like vehicles that gather them up in their pincers and deposit them on train lines etched silver on the asphalt docks.

From there onwards, lifelines diverge. Paths fork. Train tracks curve and wind. Cars rust and creak. Steam rises at dawn. In the distance are mountains, shining cities, dust bowls. Transfer stations and miles of highway. Midnight truck stops, fragrance of gasoline and bad coffee. An entire continent awaits.

Eventually, entropy wins. Everything is unloaded. Outside its steel shell, uncertainty entangles and takes dramatic form. Born into the world anew, now remembering only the limbo of the manufacturing floor, countless objects of consumption take flight. Used briefly, most will spend the next millennia underground. A lucky few will find their way back to the gyres of the Pacific, like salmon searching forever for the waters of their birth.

Our creations, like ourselves. Objects whose lives are a brief interlude between eternities of waiting. We are what we make, and we make what we are.

Back at the port, the machines tower over the frail human landscape. Lines are drawn, but priorities are clear.

This is monumental architecture, operating as intended. Bereft of design, formless in the face of function, no frame of reference remains to humanize the grand automation of commerce.

The surrounding highways and bridges offer no respite. They carry streams of motorized containers on wheels, protecting economically precious assets. At sunset, the evening commute melts into the industrial landscape. Until the weekend, we are but cargo.

Alas, there is no such thing as a perpetual motion machine. Left to its own devices, the port will eventually halt. We can prove it. Energy pools will exhaust themselves, iron will rust, and engines will run down. The prime mover is elsewhere, outside the system. It is something more ancient, something native.

Behind every industrial act lie scores of unscratched itches, pools of fermented need, desires never satisfied, multiplication with no divisor. Unspeakably unjust, and yet utterly indistinguishable from legitimacy, from hungry mouths, unshod feet, unclothed limbs.

Naked we emerge from the womb, here to eat, drink and breathe the world, one twenty-foot equivalent unit at a time. A fine line separates our appetites from our combustion engines, our bodies from the machines that do our bidding. Flesh becomes steel and glass, neurons electrons. We increase efficiency, and do more with less.

To gaze at the port is to gaze into the abyss. We may see a monster, but we cannot deny its essential humanity. It is a mirror we hold up to ourselves, a conjoined twin grown to obscene size, sprawled in its own effluence. It is beautiful, and so are we. It is frightening, and so we fear ourselves. More so than humans themselves, the splendid machines are the quintessence of humanity, writ large on the smokestack sky, the polluted water, and the endless freighters.

The complete Flickr set.

	timeless68 on Jack Perry Memorial Shore…
	W Marina Place ~ Wri… on Elliott Bay Marina
	mfeingol on Walker Rock Garden
	Meg on Walker Rock Garden
	Daniel Arnold on Jack Perry Memorial Shore…