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Clark Humphrey's
MISC
I'd known he was going in for a second round of cancer surgery, after having lost his larynx in February. He suffered a massive stroke while recovering from that latest operation. Despite already being in Virginia Mason Medical Center at the time of the stroke, physicians could do nothing for him. The last time I'd seen him was three or four weeks before that. He'd shown up at the Two Bells with some longtime friends. He conversed with me by writing on an Etch-A-Sketch-like children's erasable screen he carried on a necklace. I'd first met Crowley in the late 1980s, around the time he was serving as a dueling commentator on KIRO-TV with another former acquaintance, John Carlson. Around this time, Crowley boasted of having personally saved the Bill of Rights in his Belltown apartment, by forming a committee to stop the Washington State Legislature from going along with a Reagan-era right-wing drive for a new Constitutional convention. I'd also been to some of Crowley's legendary Christmas Eve house parties. I remember at one of them insistantly telling a woman Crowley's age that no, people like myself who were too young to be "From The Late Sixties" were people too. Crowley himself, bless him, had no problem with that novel concept. Walt first gained attention as a hippie-era activist and journalist. He later worked in various capacities for various local Democrats, and once lost his own race for a City Council seat. He served on countless boards and committees. He was big in the drives to save the Paramount and Moore theaters, the Eagles Auditorium (now A Contemporary Theater), and the Blue Moon Tavern. But like many of his and subsequent "rebel" generations, his past antagonisms against conservatives never quite extended to that quintessential conservative business, the tobacco business. In recent years his powerful, fun-loving voice became a raspy whisper, before it disappeared altogether. Let me simply remember him as one of Seattle's most important keepers of history, as well as an historic figure himself. ---
Particularly since the acronym's just so darned appropriate for a mini-transit system "railroaded" into existence by Paul Allen's lobbying, whilst plans that would move more people thru more populous places (can you say Monorail?) get slowly hacked to death? ---
With lush HD videography and few commercial interruptions, we saw shrinking glaciers, prematurely melting mountain snowpacks, tinder-dry forests, declining salmon runs, more. It was narrated by a low-key Steve Raible. (How'd he grow up so smart, when his fellow early Seahawks star Steve Largent went wingnutty?) Raible calmly took us through the evidence and the arguments about our current warming trend. He explained the background science, with the help of UW scientists and experts. Raible stayed away from casting blame, and rightly so. If global warming really is influenced by human activity, and I believe it is, it's taken the entirety of human civilization to get us there. Anti-SUV sanctimony won't save the planet. That can only occur with a lot of big and small steps by a lot of people, including people whose lifestyles are different from yours. Kudos to Cold Facts' writer-director Ben Saboonchian and videographer Peter Frerichs. --- MUSIC TIP: My ol' emo/folkie musician pals Gary Heffern and Chris Eckman (the latter from the Walkabouts), many of whose recordings have only been issued by Glitterhouse Records in Germany, have released their first domestically-distributed music in years. Appropriately enough, it's a track (called "Wave") on Song of America, a three-CD box set compiling new versions of classic American tunes. The mastermind behind this master mix? America's last law-abiding chief lawyer, Janet Reno. (Unlike her immediate successor John Ashcroft, she doesn't pretend to sing.) --- FIXING THE NEWS: Attended the Washington News Council's panel discussion at the downtown library in mid-September, "Today's News: A 'Webolution' in Progress." The six panelists came from different corners of journalism/commentary (Cory Bergman of KING-TV, Robert Hernandez of the Seattle Times, Josh Feit of the Stranger, Alex Johnson of MSNBC, Chuck Taylor of Crosscut, and Joan "McJoan" McCarter from Daily Kos). Moderator Merrill Brown used to work for MSNBC and is now with a Vancouver "citizen journalism" site, NowPublic. But all seven now competing for the online reader. I didn't learn much I didn't already know, and didn't hear many arguments I hadn't already heard. Buzzwords included: "Aggregation" (i.e., links to stories on other sites), "user generated content" (i.e., unpaid bloggers and videographers), "the end of the news cycle" (i.e., posting new content all the time), the supposed last days of print newspapers (I say we're likely to see some suburban and JOA papers fade out, but local monopoly papers in major markets would decline far more slowly). The one real disagreement came when an audience member asked how these organizations would reach under-40 readers. The Times guy mentioned recruiting teen volunteer bloggers from the Vera Project to cover rock shows at Bumbershoot. Crosscut's Taylor, the ever-dutiful David Brewster acolyte, scoffed at needing anything to do with them pesky kids. The Stranger's Feit gave the loveably cocky reply that his outfit already owns the young demographic. MSNBC.com's Johnson had the best answer: He's got a genuine 26-year-old single woman running the afternoon editor's desk. --- IT'S THE SAME OLD SONG: Yeah, Bush still refuses to admit he was wrong. Yeah, he plans to keep the war going forever; he'll leave our sons and daughters in harm's way, and set things up so it'll be darned difficult for the next leader to get 'em out. This moment in the national zeitgeist feels like a moment in one of those multi-band benefit rock concerts-that point where the worst band on the bill, the sluggish jam band that tries too hard to be the next Phish only without the skills or the songs or the energy or the talent, ignores the 20-minute set limit and plays out its entire repertoire, complete with extended egotistical noodling passages. Everybody's waiting for the band to shut up and get off the stage already, except the band itself. The band's members, in the role of a mutual admiration/masturbation society, are so in love with their own imagined fabulousness that they can't even imagine the whole room not adoring them. Now, imagine you can't leave the arena. You've carpooled with a couple members of the next scheduled band. You can only (1) ignore the jam band from heck as best you can, (2) repeat a silent mantra to yourself of "This too shall pass," or (3) take action-start a hearty booing section in the audience, toss empty plastic beer cups stageward, bribe the PA operator to cut off the band's juice. Like the jam band from heck, the neocon machine refuses to concede anything-not its control of the stage, not its incompetence, not its delusions of godhood. And, like the jam band from heck, the con-game operators in DC fully Believe the world will love their music (or history will avenge them) if they keep playing long and loudly enough. The analogy's limit is the jam band from hell can't cause hundreds or thousands of brutal, needless deaths and maimings for no practical cause except the enriching of its friends' bank accounts. And the jam band from heck doesn't have 480-some days to continue its reign of error. --- KAREN MARCHIORO, 1933-2007: The longtime state Democratic leader was more than your proverbial "pioneer woman in a hitherto male dominated field." Under her watch, Washington became one of the most progressive, Dem-dominant states in the union. Remember when "moderate" Republicans could get elected governor and senator from here? When an overt wingnut pol like Jack Cunningham could get elected to Congress from south Seattle and Renton? Those days haven't been with us in a while, and Marchioro's long service is one reason why. --- JENNIFER DUNN, 1941-2007: The longtime state Republican party chief, later an 8th District Congress member for six terms, passed away five days after the passing of her former Democratic counterpart Marchioro. They can now eternally argue policy in Heaven's most tastefully appointed wine bar. --- THE REAL SODO MOJO: Mayor Nickels now wants to ensure that Seattle "industrial" areas remain preserved for industry, after previously appearing to support condo/offices/retail development on every tract of land not reserved for single-family homes. We could use living-wage jobs. And as a community we need the connection to physical-level reality we get when more of us are involved in making physical, tangible things. This is especially vital as more and more of America's stuff-making capacity is transferred to low-wage countries. Let's just stay vigilant about the definition of zoning-official "industrial" activity. Software offices are not industrial. Biotech offices are not industrial. (And for that matter, architectural offices are not "artist spaces.") |
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A HISTORIAN BECOMES HISTORY: As you might have heard, longtime Seattle historian/activist/political operative Walt Crowley passed away in September at age 60.
DID YOU THAW WHAT I SAW?: Without making a big PR fuss, KIRO-TV's quietly moved into high-definition production. The recent documentary Cold Facts About Our Warm Planet was particularly notable.
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© 2007 Belltown Messenger