Abandoned Pages, part VI: Libraries

Dear Diary,

Of the pages in you that aren't about parks - even glancingly, as in "The Biblically Heroic Sweep of Cowen Park" - a solid majority are about libraries.  So why am I calling them "incomplete"?

Because libraries still exist, still post hours, and I haven't looked at those hours for years.

Why?

I'd kept library hours important to me on an index card the whole time I'd been homeless.  But when the libraries started re-opening during the pandemic, those hours wouldn't fit on one or even two cards any more.

This led me to write a popular page in October 2021.  Six months later, I knew a lot more about libraries, and started to share it. 

Also, library hours could be tracked at my desk, without much hiking.  Library hours became my bad weather go-to, the way topography, in part III of this page, and the counties, in part X upcoming, shouldn't have been.

What?

To start with, I just translated the Washington Secretary of State's Directory of Washington Libraries.  Embarrassingly, it took me a long time to notice the existence of the Ocean Shores Public Library, which at that time wasn't in that directory.

I think I did a good job in and, um, after, April 2022, explaining public libraries' card eligibility and rules as well as hours, and covering, with varying degrees of geographic completeness, other categories in the directory.

In October 2022 I finally began academic libraries, the main category thus far omitted, and updated public libraries' hours and rules.

Finally, in October 2023, I extended public library coverage to all of western Washington, and added a category of "institutional libraries" because a Skagit County librarian with whom I'd talked suggested I learn which schools still had librarians.

Why not?

Well, I never figured out how to deal with the schools, and found myself blocked.

By October 2024, I was in school myself, and not only too busy to think about you much, dear Diary, but also too pre-occupied with real accounting to want to do the pseudo-accounting that tracking library hours basically is.

What made me busy in October 2025 and will make me busy next month differ, but the soonest I could try is anyway next year.

What now?

Some of what I did was, I think, a sort of public service, and I'm open in principle to resuming it, but to the extent that I work as an accountant, the uncanny valley element of hours tracking will remain.

I tend to think of the library hours pages as among my most confident, so I was surprised, re-reading today, to find how much I allowed my sources to steer my writing, and how much I flailed around.  It would be very nice to know how to do it and just get it done.  Notably, public and academic libraries.

One of the things I was trying to do was convince librarians to improve their websites.  I thought I'd actually made a difference in a few cases, tribal libraries covered in October 2022, and community college libraries never actually covered (as best I can tell now), but of whose librarians I'd asked some questions.

We'll see. 

Abandoned Pages, part V: Other Cities

Dear Diary,

This next project is one I'm really not sure about resuming.  So let's take it through the format and see if that sheds any light on the decision.

Why?

On impulse, I hiked across Tacoma in July 2021, and discovered that such impulses could be surprisingly dangerous, because although I passed many major parks, none had water fountains available.

What?

I was going to apply my methods to accessible cities of over 100,000 people, so as not to punch down too much.  Just go there and see what I found.

Cities that large in Washington, other than Seattle:

• Spokane, very unlikely to be accessible
• Tacoma, accessible
• Vancouver, unlikely to be accessible
• Bellevue, accessible
• Kent, accessible
• Everett, accessible
• Renton, accessible
• Spokane Valley, very unlikely to be accessible
• Federal Way, accessible

Why not?

I'll let my slightly younger self answer that.  As hinted in part II of this page, I took two project management classes earlier this year, and early in one we were supposed to pick a project gone wrong and explain how it had done so.

Insufficient Research and Data:  "The Grass Isn't Always Greener", My Seattle Parks Diary, July 2021

... I hiked North Seattle parks three times in 2020-2021, before I got housed, mostly pushing a shopping cart ... to hold all my food and bedding, with the help of a battery ... to recharge my phone. ...  But then I did get housed, and ... felt pretty cocky.  That summer, following an unbelievably parched hike across Tacoma, I decided to go visit other large cities in the area and see how they handled running water accessible to homeless people during the still-raging pandemic.  On my first visit to Tacoma for this planned thread ... I visited a bunch of parks, took lots of photos, actually found a few running water fountains.  And missed the last bus to Seattle.  Which meant I got to spend the night in a park without any bedding, and also without a battery to recharge my phone.  Oh, but it doesn't end there.  In the morning I found that I was miles from the nearest grocery, and once I finally got breakfast, I gave up.  See, I'd never actually grasped the lesson of that unbelievably parched hike.  When I later ran the numbers, it turned out all the large cities in the vicinity have much lower population densities than Seattle.  They're more spread out, and so are their grocery stores and water fountains, and for that matter their parks.  They are, in other words, intrinsically less amenable to my methods, which really amounted to just hiking; they're places made for drivers, and I've never learnt to drive. [1]

What now?

The obvious solution is transportation.

The question is whether it'd be worth it.  Recall, dear Diary, that we're unlikely to see any more water fountains encased in garbage bags.  We already know that, five years ago, Tacoma had way too few water fountains.  What else would justify these hikes?

Transportation is also problematic.  I don't expect to have money for taxis until I'm out of school.  I'm picky about bicycles, and electrical transport relies on charging.  And nothing is as safe as a car.  This will come up again later, re "The Counties of Western Washington".

If any of your readers, dear Diary, actually want this project revived, they'd best say so, and make good arguments for it.

[1] My mother wouldn't let me take driver's education in high school, because having a male teenaged driver in the house would drive up her insurance rates.  I never put together money and time to pay for adult driver's education until she died and the inheritance started coming, in 2004.  And before I did that, I noticed my reaction times were already much slower than they had been, and gave up.

 

Abandoned Pages, part IV: Everything Hikes A

Dear Diary,

An "everything hike" for me, in relation to you, is actually at minimum what I'm trying to do right now, visiting all the properties known to me of the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation in North Seattle.  The contrast is with "restroom" or "water fountain" hikes, not with "Parks-specific" hikes.  The hikes of 2020 were mostly Parks-specific, but were everything hikes.

Why?

I'd gotten housed, and had found that this limited my ability to hike as I had while homeless.  I thought dividing North Seattle into regions was a good solution.  And I'd decided I'd looked at the real property reports too narrowly.

What?

I formulated eleven regions divided by major streets.  These regions turned out not to be doable all at once, but I stuck with them for three regions.  At that time I classified locations in North Seattle as "NE", "N" or "NW".  I tackled "N" south of 50th, "NW" south of 50th and/or Market, and "NE" between I-5 and Lake City Way.

Later, I tackled "NE" south of 65th and west of 25th, and finished 5/6ths of it. 

Why not?

I'd noticed that the only water fountains running were in parks without restrooms.  By telling the homeless to rely on Parks plumbing, mayor Jenny Durkan had invited encampments in parks.  This was meant to get rid of those encampments, as if the sweeps then running constantly weren't enough.  So I gave up on everything hiking for a while, and did water fountain hikes twice that summer - first documenting the second "Durkan Drought", then, after citizens became outraged by not getting drinking water in the parks, documenting the mayor backing down. 

What now?

I don't know about any of your readers at the time, dear Diary, but I found "snippets" tiresome and pointless to try to locate.

Also, the effects of OpenStreetMap on my hikes had grown, and it hadn't occurred to me to winnow them with the King County Parcel Viewer.

Those are the two biggest differences between the regional hikes and "Building a Baseline", which I still hope to complete, and in fact plan to put out another part of tomorrow.  Well, OK, one more big difference is the Emerald City Resource Guide.  Back then, I considered adding landmarks, but found reasons not to.

I know I made a priority of photographing everything in the regional hikes, so I'm photographing less when I'm in an area those hikes covered.

Finally, when I started "Building a Baseline", I tried using the eleven regions to organise things, but the only place they really came in handy was dealing with OpenStreetMap.

Good night, dear Diary.  Tomorrow, besides the next two abandoned pages, another part of "Building a Baseline". 

Abandoned Pages, part III: Topography

Dear Diary,

Let's get started, shall we?

I think a format is best, so I don't get carried away and leave stuff out.

So:

Why?

I was looking for something I could write without venturing out into the rain, in December 2020.  (This is the only one of these abandoned pages which I started while still homeless, but that's still a recurring pattern in this page.)  And as I said at the time, I really wanted a useful topography, to plan hikes better.  I'd downloaded some topographic maps, and noticed a pattern that clearly meant valleys.

What?

Basically, I was trying to render the 2020 U.S. Geological Survey topographical map of Seattle North into words.

Why not?

I knew the parts were badly written even at the time.  And the numbers reported by Blogspot, as compared with the numbers for, say, "North Seattle Street Ends", showed my then-readers agreed.

So when Jenny Durkan's Seattle government gave us the gift of a map pretending to tell the homeless where they could find restrooms, but pervaded in oh, so many ways by lies, I ventured out into the rain anyway, in January 2021, and that was that.

What now?

Well, I still wanted a topography of North Seattle, but it gradually dawned on me that I didn't know enough to write it yet.  When I found a good book about the Ship Canal, and added a modicum of research to it, that became one of your most popular pages, dear Diary.

But there is, near as I can tell, no good book about the topography of North Seattle.  So I'd allowed those parts to devolve into lists of valleys.  They were supposed to be about "Land and Water" but I'd let the water win, and made neither the land nor the water worth reading about.

This summer, I finally downloaded a free physical geography textbook and started reading; I'll finish pretty soon.  It's not a very good book - no equations, few chemical symbols, and no attempt to present a coherent field.  But it isn't worthless, and I decided to give physical geography another try.  I probably won't finish that, which I was able to download for free at Suzzallo Library, very soon.  It still doesn't have equations, and not many more chemical symbols, but it does begin with a chapter about physical geography as a discipline.

Anyway, the University of Minnesota's Open Textbook Library has introductions to geology and to pedology ("Soil Science").  I haven't found any for hydrology yet.  But once I'm fully introduced, I'll have to apply all this knowledge to a lot more kinds of maps, and then use those maps to, yes, venture out in the rain and take photos.

(And I'm taking an introduction to digital photography class this fall, so maybe by then, I'll know how to photograph creeks.)

Given school and work, of these abandoned pages, this first one is likely to be nearly the last of those I try to revive, but it isn't forgotten, dear Diary, and because I'm so interested, it's pretty sure to be revived.

Abandoned Pages, part II: Time

Dear Diary,

I've neglected you for a long time.  Already in March 2024, before I returned to school, I posted about "silence".  It's true that I haven't wholly abandoned you, but I'm unlikely ever to match the totals of 112 pages in 2020 or 149 in 2021.

What else do I know about my recent past and future?

Let's do a list!

• Summer 2024 - Three classes at North Seattle College
• "A Requiem for Seventy-Seven Bus Stops" during fall break 
• Fall 2024 - Four NSC classes plus a Work-Study job
• Winter 2025 - Same
• Spring 2025 - Three NSC classes plus a Work-Study job
• Summer 2025 - Same
• Fall 2025 - Two NSC classes
• Winter 2026 - Four NSC classes plus an internship.  Associate's degree in accounting
• Spring 2026 - Three NSC classes, one Bellevue College class, plus an internship.  Bookkeeping certificate
• Summer 2026 - One Everett Community College class.  This revival

From here is stuff that's only come clear since Monday morning, the 14th. 

• Fall 2026 - Four EvCC classes
• Winter 2027 - Two EvCC classes
• Spring 2027 - Same
• Summer 2027 - One EvCC class
• Fall 2027 - Two EvCC classes
• Winter 2028 - Same
• Spring 2028 - Same.  Bachelor's degree in accounting
• Fall 2028 - One Bellevue College class
• Winter 2029 - One NSC class.  Project Management certificate, probably.  Plus one BC class, maybe
• Spring 2029 - One BC class, maybe

How much can I do, then?  The prognosis for this fall is not good.  I think following every trail is out, and I'm unlikely to want to write much in you in November, regardless of my success or failure in September and October.

After that, well, much depends on what else I do besides one or two classes.  I predict one of five futures will happen, and which one greatly affects the odds of the projects in this page being revived or completed.

A good job

In this scenario, I can afford to spend money, but am constantly short of time.  Hiking boots, at long last, but not many hikes.

This scenario is also the one in which I'm likeliest to find a wife, or other partner, and maybe even father children.  Which would limit my freedom to hike still more.

At least I could get my prescriptions back.

I might move out of North Seattle in this scenario. 

A bad job

I haven't spent much of my life in this kind of job; uncertain schedules for me have resulted from temp work, not from capricious bosses.  I'd probably see hiking as a refuge, although it would take a while to get boots.

A family in this scenario would be a disaster to all non-work and non-home activities.

A part-time job

Well, it would take longer for both the boots and the prescriptions.  But this is by far the most optimistic scenario for you, dear Diary.  It also makes marriage pretty unlikely.

Problem is, it might not be stable.  I might be promoted to full-time, or might be laid off without much nest egg. 

Homelessness

In this scenario, I'm much poorer than when I was last homeless, because all the people who paid for my storage in the past have since retired.  All tech I now own, including this phone and the laptop I make maps on, would be highly vulnerable to theft.

On the other hand, I'd have huge amounts of time, and no prospect of a woman wanting any of it.

This as my job

I'm not normally an optimist, but I believe enough in the education I've been getting that I think the above possibilities are in probability order.

I certainly won't apply for grants on your behalf, dear Diary, but it's more likely that you have a rich reader who'd pay me to write you, than that I'll be struck by lightning exactly at noon tomorrow.

I take for granted that such a reader would want me to work citywide.  Beyond that, I can't predict, but can speculate.

I doubt this scenario leads to either health insurance or marriage.

Well, dear Diary, enough about my future.  Tomorrow, back to yours. 

Abandoned Pages, part I: Overview

Dear Diary,

I think I now know more of my near-term future than I have for months, and so it's time to talk about your near-term future.

I currently have two projects going on in you, dear Diary, about which I'm writing slowly.  Nine past ones that aren't finished are worth remembering here.  So that's eleven, all told.

This part, in particular, is the third in a succession of lists of links relevant to you.  The first is a publication history that I wrote, outside you, in 2021, or at latest 2022, and then put into Microsoft Word format, with internal and direct external links, in 2025; I've kept each version up to date.  This publication history currently lists the following materials from you, dear Diary:

• "My Book of Hours"
• "Standing Room Only"
• "North Seattle Street Ends"
• The January 2021 hikes
• The library hours pages of October 2021, April 2022, October 2022, and October 2023, plus other dates mainly about Seattle Public Library
• "Magnuson Park Restrooms:  A Relative Chronology"
• "The Parks of Seattle's Downtown"
• A series for Christmas 2021
• "A Requiem for Seventy-Seven Bus Stops"

The second link list is another page in you, dear Diary:  "Past Hikes of North Seattle in These Pages".  (Awkwardly, "Publication History" and "Past Hikes" have the same acronym.)  This page, which I've revised once so far, lists my main hikes for you as follows:

• Finding plumbing, 2020, everything hikes.  This omits "Standing Room Only" and "North Seattle Street Ends" because the publication history already covered those.
• It slots the January 2021 hikes in next, and calls them restroom hikes, but doesn't list them, because the publication history already did.
• Regional hikes, everything hikes in spring 2021.
• Water fountain hikes, summer 2021.
• Regional hikes, everything hikes in autumn 2022.
• Restroom hikes in winter 2023.
• Water fountain hikes in summer 2024.

The publication history covers pages with at least some degree of completeness.  Similarly, "Past Hikes" covers attempts to deal with all of North Seattle.  This list, and this page, cover pages with at least some degree of incompleteness, and at least partly failed attempts to deal with all of North Seattle, or some other topic.  They are:

1. "Land and Water in North Seattle", December 2020.  Topography.
2. The regional hikes (mostly "A Hike"), May 2021 and later.  Everything hikes.
3. "The Grass Isn't Always Greener", July 2021.  Other cities.
4.  "Library Hours", October 2021 and later.  Libraries.
5. "The Parks of Seattle's Downtown", November 2021.  Downtown Seattle, and meant, later, to expand to parks up to one mile away, for the contrast.
6. "Ecology in Southern Ballard", November 2021.  RV parking.  Dear Diary, this is the only one of these I never before told you about.
7. "Buildings of the UW's Seattle Campus", October 2022.  Public access to public buildings.
8. "Counties of Western Washington", December 2022.  County-level work.
9. "A Requiem for Seventy-Seven Bus Stops", September 2025.  Transit.
10. "Under Construction", July 2026.  Park construction. 
11.  "Building a Baseline", August 2026.  Everything hikes.

Of these, 4, 5 and 9 are listed in the publication history, 2 is listed in "Past Hikes", and 6 doesn't have anything to list.  The rest of this part lists what's available for 1, 3, 7 and 8.  Time will tell which of the currently incomplete series 10 and 11will end up listed where.

The next part will explain elements of my near-term future and past relevant to these projects.  Then each project gets its own part.  I've been thinking about this page for months, so it should roll out pretty quickly, and not become recursive.  ("Abandoned page #43 is "Abandoned Pages"??")

Dear Diary, please tell any human readers that I very much want comments from anyone particularly interested in any of these projects, whether here or on the parts devoted to those projects. 

Topography

"Land and Water in North Seattle, part I: Introduction"

"Land and Water in North Seattle, part II: The Lake City Coast"

"Land and Water in North Seattle, part III: Thornton Creek's North Fork"

"Water and Water: The Lake Washington Ship Canal"

Other Cities

"The Grass Isn't Always Greener: Introduction"

"The Grass Isn't Always Greener: Tacoma, part I"

Public Access

"Buildings of the UW's Seattle Campus, part I: Preface"

"Buildings of the UW's Seattle Campus, part IIA: North of West Campus"

"Buildings of UW's Seattle Campus, part IIB: Northern West Campus"

"Buildings of the UW's Seattle Campus, part IIC: Southern West Campus"

"Buildings of the UW's Seattle Campus, part IID: West Campus, summary and prospects"

Counties

"Counties of Western Washington, part I: Introduction"

 

All Night Long, Questions Edition, part III: Some Answers

Dear Diary,

I have access to two 24-hour restrooms simply by virtue of being housed at present.

So who needs 24-hour restrooms in public places?  People who are in public places, obviously.  But only a subset of those, who are outside when most others are inside.  Such as:

• Drunk partiers.
• Truckers and other travellers.
• Shift workers. 
• Homeless people.

And, in fact, Google Scholar believes only homeless people use them.  I guess scholars whose work shows up there don't party or travel much, let alone work weird shifts.

Or wait...

Actually, Google Scholar believes something very specific about 24-hour restrooms.  It only finds seven results, and of those, the first four are about this state, and the first three are about Seattle.  Three different studies discussing Seattle's lack of 24-hour restrooms as a really efficient way of criminalising homelessness, Seattle as a place that could give Burien lessons in cruelty.

But the thing is, homeless people aren't an efficiently serveable market.  I don't think one can map where 24-hour restrooms could best help the homeless, although a bunch downtown would sure help.

One can map how to serve those other markets, though.

For drunks, you want restrooms where the party is.  Belltown (and why does Parks have responsibility for providing 24-hour restrooms, but Seattle Center escape that task?).  Pioneer Square.  Capitol Hill.  The Ave.  Southern Fremont.  The obvious solution is for SPU to set things up there.  University Playground was always a poor substitute, and will probably never get an actual useable restroom pair back until its 24-hour heritage is forgotten.

For truckers and such, you want rest stops.  Not being a driver, I don't actually know where the nearest ones are, but having been homeless for eight years, I do know they aren't close.  This is, then, the proper responsibility for Parks in this area. Without snarky lies.  The most obvious examples are up north.  Bitter Lake Playfield and Northacres Park and Playfield are both close to major routes.  Problem is, none of their restrooms, not even Northacres Playfield's that usually stays open year-round, are really set up for cold weather.  If Parks is serious about weatherising its restrooms, those three should be high on the list.  I also observed many, many drivers on Sand Point Way stopping at the park I used to call BGPP, now Pathways Park; a good use for a security contract might be longer hours for that park, if Sand Point stays busy late.

I would expect any park positioned as a sort of rest stop to try to monetise this with nearby businesses.

Finally, for shift workers, transit agencies should take the lead.  Unfortunately, the tradition around Seattle is for transit agencies to pretend that we're all bodiless energy beings, and build restrooms but allow nobody to use them.  (And no, Northgate Station is not, after all, an exception.)  I don't know how many centuries it'll take those agencies to get over this - I've seen physical evidence of it as long ago as the 1970s if not earlier.  A governor or U.S. president might be able to hurry it along, though.

I wanted to put, somewhere early in this part, the about-face "The Parks department has no business running 24-hour restrooms", but I don't think that's quite true.  Seattle Center would probably be better at the park/commerce mix ideal for a rest stop, but I suspect Parks already has the real estate all over town, and I certainly wouldn't want to see Freeway Park Center-ised.

But there's another issue with regard to Parks and 24-hour restrooms.  It would probably be expensive to hire attendants for a public restroom at Broadway and Pine, but as long as a Seattle that takes the need for public restrooms seriously tries to rely on Parks, it'll have to hire people just to check whether Parks is lying about them.  Attendants could get tips, so they'd probably be stabler employees.