Abandoned Pages, part X: Counties

Dear Diary,

We're almost done here.  This is the last of these from your youth, in this case December 2022; next comes one from late 2024, then updates on the two current pages.

Why?

I'm really not sure.

This was definitely conceived as a desk project, like library hours, and in fact with the library hours remit of western Washington.

It was much my most vainglorious idea, but at least I had the sense to start small, with Skamania County.

What?

The only post was an introduction, claiming that I could find all the public restrooms in each county using online sources.

It turned out that the job grew substantially in the doing, even with the first, simplest county, in which, for example, I tallied but didn't name fifteen settlements:

1. Stevenson, county seat, incorporated, in my terms a "city"
2. North Bonneville, incorporated, "city"
3. Carson, census-designated place, "city"
4. North Washougal River, "suburb"
5. Underwood, "suburb"
6. Prindle, "hamlet"
7. a "hamlet" around Volcanic Manufacturing
8. Cook, a "hamlet"
9. Northwoods, a "village"
10. Skamania, a "village"
11. Stabler, a "village"
12. Home Valley, a "village"
13. Mill A, a "village"
14. Mount Pleasant, a "rural centre"
15. Hood, a conglomeration adding up to a "rural centre"

It's characteristic of Skamania County that both its suburbs are suburban to cities in other counties:  Underwood to White Salmon in Klickitat County, and North Washougal River to Washougal in Clark County.

Why not?

Because I got a very demanding job and spent what little free time I had on a restroom hike of North Seattle, which I didn't quite complete.

And because, when that job ended, I looked wearily at the mountain of material I'd accumulated on Skamania County and thought "How I work is to go places and take pictures.  Why should this be an exception?"

What now?

Why indeed?

There's something repulsive to me about passing judgement from afar.

And there is public transport to eighteen of the counties of western Washington, though to do San Juan County properly, I'd need a private boat to the smaller islands.

But I turn 59 in two days.  Let's say I get a good job, and it's an accounting job.  Then vacation is mandatory, to catch any fraud.  I could study each county for a year, then visit it for two weeks.

Until I was 78?

And restroom availability doesn't just change in winter in Seattle.

Also, recent hikes have shown me I'm a lot more scared of heights than I used to be, and there are lots of mountains in western Washington, and specifically in Skamania County.

This task would obviously be impossible homeless, but just as obviously if I got a good job, especially if that meant sharing my life with others with their own views on how best to vacation.

Maybe funding could get it done, but maybe not.  I think this project was too vainglorious from the start.

It is true, though, that I'd like to see those Skamania County settlements I studied.  Though not with the aim of telling you, dear Diary, whatever the county does wrong. 

Good night, dear Diary. 

Abandoned Pages, part IX: Public access

Dear Diary,

This is one I'm not sure about.

Why?

In October 2022, I was working on a regional hike for the region most of UW is in, and I thought, this is silly.  Yes, there are parks in UW, but none of those in that region have outdoor water fountains, let alone restrooms whose doors open to the outside.  It's actually worth comparing UW's land to Seattle Center's, which also originated in a World's Fair, and which has both those things.

So I went where the money is, where, that is, UW's actual plumbing is, and public access to public buildings turned out to be much less than it had been, or ought to be.  So I wrote about it.

What?

I was making maps with a mildly complex colour scheme to symbolise ownership as well as status (open/operating), for the regional hikes in general.  I made that much more complex for the buildings of UW.  I doubt I have the software to do that now.

Also, it turned out that many of the buildings in West Campus have perfectly good reasons to keep the public out.  They're dorms, medical places (although one of those did offer public restrooms), research labs...  If I'd started with Central Campus, although it has dorms too, the point would've been much sharper.  (South and East campuses are, in this respect, rather more like West.)

Mind, about as many West Campus buildings are closed to the public for no obvious good reason.  The point was certainly made:  out of about 60 buildings, only five offered public restrooms, fewer on weekends.  Climatologists hunkered down behind locks in fear of the deniers so famously numerous in Seattle.  Fenced playgrounds.  Posters advising fear of every stranger.  UW was no longer the friendly campus on which I'd spent my days a few years earlier.  I documented part of that, had a good talk with one of UW's security leaders, and went on to a very demanding job.

Why not?

To a certain extent, I'd already met my goal.  Since, that winter, I wasn't even able to complete a restroom hike, I had no business picking on UW any more.

Fall quarter had ended, and since one of my targets had been unclear hours signs (I'd called one West Campus building a "trap" for that), I certainly hoped the signs had changed.  So I'd have to photograph them all again.  Since the doors were, in fact, closed, that was a physically arduous task.

And as 2023 wore on, the same lack of psychic strength that afflicted the downtown page kept me from returning to this one.

What now?

My main concern, to be honest, is that UW's Seattle Campus is by far the most extensive collection of public buildings in Seattle.  Much larger than downtown's (and City Hall is actually a reliable place to find public restrooms).  Only Green Lake/Woodland, Washington and Discovery parks, and Boeing Field, are about the same size, and none is mostly buildings. 

So I'd have to go out of town to find a comparable case, to be fair to UW, and even then it would probably be another school, and I'd be anti-intellectual.

I can get to Olympia's Capitol Campus, but I doubt I can stay long enough to do the job. 

Even in North Seattle, the only alternatives are North Seattle College, or Northwest Hospital (owned by UW, and medical).

The difficulty of photographing the hours signs remains, especially while I'm in school myself and have more important things to do at the quarters' starts.

Dear Diary, I think your readers' comments would be the only reason I'd tackle this before fall 2029.

Building a Baseline, part VII: Around the University District Food Bank

Dear Diary,

I first heard of Elif Shafak in the mid-2010s.  I'd been making a list, for a friend, of women writers of speculative fiction who had female protagonists.  I'd detoured into nationality-based appendices about women writers in general, and one appendix, based on the presence in the original list of Persian writer Shahrnush Parsipur, covered the Near East.  Well, it was easy to cover the Turkish writers, because there was a society of speculative writers, with a website that, at that time, pictured all the members.  I don't remember whether Shafak was a member, but everyone named her and Orhan Pamuk as writers of spec-fic.

Only I shouldn't have included her in that appendix at all, because turns out she was born in France.

Anyway, although she writes magical realism, she seems to be a pretty serious person, and is the current president of the Royal Society of Literature.

The first book of hers I've come across is her 2024 novel There Are Rivers in the Sky, which I found in a Little Free Library earlier this year, and soon after read.  In this novel various people of the faith called in English "Yezidi" are important characters, and this is how Shafak begins her account of the 2014 Yezidi genocide:

They kill the water first.  In this land where rivers are sacred and every drop of rain is a blessing, they creep in at dead of night and poison all the wells, shafts and fountains in the village.

I am sickened to have to compare people my sales taxes and my landlord's property taxes support to the Islamic State, but they've willingly weaponised water, so what else can I do?

Let me show you, dear Diary, what I found in the northwest  University District yesterday.  This is not in hiking order.  All the photos are from yesterday.  (Edit 9/19:)  Here's the main map:

Let's take the charities, which I don't blame at all, first.

Blessed Sacrament (A on map)

On page 50 of The Emerald City Resource Guide, in the chapter "Food Assistance", it reads:

Sunday meal has limited indoor seating or pick-up and take to go.  All are welcome to the Friday Food Pantry (modified in-person shopping).  No proof of ID required and no fees.  Grocery delivery is available for residents that are physically unable to visit the Food Pantry and must reside within our Parish boundaries.  Visit in-person or call for delivery requirements.

The page lists a "Helpline" but not what that's about:  Both times I've gotten rent help from St. Vincent de Paul, Blessed Sacrament volunteers have been the local-to-me agents.  Most of my preoccupations 2023 to present have been driven by SVdP case managers, one of whom suggested I might be disabled, and the other of whom urged me to return to school.

For either purpose, food or larger help, the address is 5050 8th Ave NE. 

Blessed Sacrament is also by far the most photogenic of these three charities.

The University District Food Bank (B on map)

On page 60 in the same chapter of The Emerald City Resource Guide, 8th edition not the 9th coming in a few weeks, we read:

Food pantry, baby cupboard and home delivery.  Offers fresh fruits and vegetables, dairy, frozen meat, canned and dry goods, toiletries, baby formula, diapers, and pet food plus connections to important community resources.  Visit once a week.  Serves primarily the unhoused and any residents and ZIP codes 98102, 98103, 98105, 98112, 98115 and 98125.  Visit in person.  Call for home delivery.  Documents required:  photo ID and proof of address.  No fees.

They're at 5017 Roosevelt Way NE, and again the book leaves something important out.  They get the University branch Library's cast-offs.  I visited most weeks for books alone, before the pandemic.

Planned Parenthood (C on map)

On page 41 of The Emerald City Resource Guide, 8th ed., in the chapter "Family and Parental Services", we read:

High-quality, affordable health care with or without insurance.  Services include men's health care, pregnancy testing and services, sexually transmitted Disease (STD) testing, treatment and vaccines, women's health care, HIV services, and LGBTQ+ services.  Language interpretation by telephone available by request.

They're at 5020 Roosevelt Way NE, and I don't have a history with them.  Again, two photos:

OK, that's the charities.  There's no news about two of my stops, and I took no photos:  Fire Station 17 (D on map) still puts out fires, and University Child Development School (E on map) is still completely fenced in, as in "Four or More Hikes in University Heights" from my previous everything hike in this area.

This isn't the case for the remaining six locations.

Land east of I-5

There are four substantial areas of vacant land created by paired entrances to and exits from I-5, at 7th Ave NE and respectively NE 50th St and NE 45th St.  The Washington Department of Transportation has had plenty of time to repair and/or strengthen its fences since those areas were inhabited during the pandemic.

Last time (same enormous page as above) I tried to write about the potential of each area as a whole.  Evidently WSDOT didn't listen to me.  So this time, surprised to find that each fence leaves a fair amount of land at the corner unfenced, I've tried to confine my photos and comments to those corners. 

Past the 50th St entrance (F on map)

This corner is very hilly, and WSDOT has discouraged use of it by planting thorny plants pretty much all over it.  It's possible to ascend the hill more or less painlessly, but I sure wouldn't want to try to do that every day.  I see that in 2022 (where this is area L) I found that the slope leads to a nice, flat, habitable hill, and if Seattle homelessness gets much worse, I expect the brambles will be removed and the hilltop rediscovered.  Until then, though, WSDOT is probably doing the only practical thing doable with this corner, except that if Seattle ever gets serious snow again, this corner could be great for sledding.

(Yes, dear Diary, I'm now seeing encampments begin to sprawl, including in parts of Ravenna Boulevard that were swept yesterday.) 

Past the 50th St exit (G on map)

The corner here is flat, as is much of the land beyond as seen through the fence; this was area H in 2022.  The corner is also paved, and WSDOT should really rent that corner out for small events, such as minor press conferences.

Past the 45th St entrance (H on smaller map)

These two don't appear on the map above.  Here's another map on the same scale:

 The corner here is only paved at its edges.  It probably isn't very useful.  It leads to region K of 2022.

Past the 45th St Exit (I on smaller map)

This corner leads to area C in "Six Hikes in Brooklyn, part I: Northwest".  I see I was too interested in the fences to say anything useful about area C; sorry, dear Diary.  This time the corner is paved, as at the parallel spot at 50th, except where a rather attractive small tree suggests use for press conferences about the arts, or use by an actual art class.

And now, dear Diary, I'm sorry to make you the bearer of bad news.  Because I'm pretty sure I know why University Playground's restrooms, officially open 24 hours, are actually locked.

The reason is this:

"The University Branch is closed until late 2026 for major renovations".  (Source) The University branch Library is at 5009 Roosevelt Way NE, and is L on the main map.

So make careful plans for the solution to University Playground's homeless problem.  There'd been a "sanican" there, behind the restroom building, for years (remember, dear Diary, I slept around the corner, but only until 2017).  Cancel the contract.

The library's behind a fence already; once we lock the restroom doors, the homeless will have nowhere to go, and will be gone!  Victory!

Well, no.  The parks maintenance guy who was friendliest with me and with homeless people in general once told me why camping in University Playground was such a problem.  Apparently a whole bunch of small schools in that area liked to use the park as their actual playground, but were discouraged by campers.  Well, if I were in charge of thirty kids, I'd be about as discouraged by no restrooms.

So I think, dear Diary, with regret, that the open women's room door on Saturday, September 12, probably attests a trial run, and it didn't go well.  And not some park employee who read my sad story and felt bad about it.

In other words, Parks advertises these restrooms as not only open but 24 hours to boot, and then keeps them locked (as they soon will be by winter anyway) for no other reason than to punish the homeless for existing, and too bad for any innocent bystander who trusts what they say.

Not only all that, but once the University branch Library re-opens, even if not in 2026, what's to stop the homeless from coming back?  People do adapt. 

People in Parks have weaponised water, and in doing so are like ISIS.  That can't be good company to be in, and I feel sorry for them.

Abandoned Pages, part VIII: RV parking

Dear Diary,

This is kind of a frustrating abandoned page.  But let's get to it, shall we?

Why?

I'm sure, dear Diary, you've long since read the good article by Vivian McCall, who's now interim editor-in-chief of The Stranger, in which the article appeared, about the fully evolved, and now rapidly devolving, security measures adopted by the giant grocery chains after several years of complaining that they were losing trillions of dollars every minute to theft.  (No, I admit, that could be an exaggeration, because they never quantified the damage.  They just made it clear that they considered it worse than, say, an upsurge in ritual murder.)

Anyway, though, in fall 2021, their experiments on the way to what McCall described really came home to me, because I made the mistake of buying, at the Ballard Fred Meyer, a pair of socks that insisted it had been stolen, and screamed bloody murder about this all night.  For years after that, I annoyed any number of Fred Meyer employees by demanding that they remove security tags before I left the building.

Something about effectively stealing from me the things I'd paid for [1], while at the same time putting the notorious "eco-blocks" illegally into the streets, congealed in me into something nasty.

And then I had a simply brilliant idea.

What?

I don't fully remember.

But the core issue involving homeless people who buy run-down old Recreational Vehicles to live in - seems to me the core issue is a Seattle law that says vehicles wider than 80 inches can only be parked in places zoned industrial.

My brilliant idea somehow applied actual ecological concepts, such as niches and succession, to the conflict between RV dwellers and businesses, not all industrial in character, but located in places zoned industrial, which in North Seattle mostly means southern Ballard.  Hence "Ecology in Southern Ballard".

Why not?

Because I couldn't get legal help.

The now finally partner, yay! who organised the GoFundMe that got me housed earlier in 2021, was of course the first lawyer I thought of.  I wanted to know when the 80 inch Seattle law had been passed, so I could find out why it had been passed.  But online records didn't go back far enough, and I'm not sure what excuse I had for not going to the King County Law Library, but anyway, I asked her, she said she'd look it up, and there it ended.  So I must have forgotten my brilliant idea pretty quickly, what with downtown parks and library hours to focus on, not to have asked her again.

I also have a feeling that the opacity of Seattle zoning, which strongly discouraged me from using "urban villages" to structure my hikes this year, may have made an appearance then too.  Giving me trouble identifying just which zones allowed RVs.

On an entirely different front, November 2021 isn't that far from January 2022, when I came down with omicron COVID. 

Finally, I'm quite sure that, not being a driver, I had too little sympathy for the RV dwellers, whose main problem, parking, is viscerally important to most Americans, but not to me. 

What now?

I'm not sure.

I'm unlikely to recover the brilliant idea, but its outlines are fairly obvious.  And my esteemed city council representative is currently trying hard to revive all the key components of the issue - RV parking, eco-blocks, and trouble for the homeless.

More importantly, either I have to get to the King County Law Library, or I have to find a lawyer who'll do it for me.

Again, dear Diary, we'll see.

[1] Sort of happened again this year.  I bought two pairs of shoes there only to find that the left shoe of each pair was unwearable thanks to a security tag.  They fixed the problem, and I'm currently wearing out the first of those pairs hiking for you, dear Diary. 

Abandoned Pages, part VII: Downtown

Dear Diary,

I apologise for not getting you part of "Building a Baseline" last night.  I was too tired.  Not much hiking today, so it should happen.

Why?

I was working near downtown, and because my problems with mornings are magnified by where I live, I was working pretty late.  It irked me not to have anything to write in you five days a week.

Separately, The Seattle Times had invited me to ask a question in a mayoral debate on homelessness they were sponsoring.  Based on my belief then that Magnuson Park had once had seven restroom pairs, and on my knowledge of restrooms in downtown parks, I asked how we could stop throwing away restrooms. [1]  For months afterward, I tried to back up my claims.  Hence "Magnuson Park Restrooms:  A Relative Chronology", and hence "The Parks of Seattle's Downtown".

What?

I wasn't, at that time, the happiest of people, and I didn't want just to barrel into the depressing story I had to tell.

So I asserted, correctly enough, that I couldn't count on anyone else writing about the downtown parks as I would have, so I'd do park appreciation first, then the plumbing.  And this was November 2021, when I was still at maximum OpenStreetMap, so my list of parks kept growing.

It grew considerably more once I realised that the parks near downtown, many of which had restrooms that hadn't been thrown away, were part of the story.

Downtown:  waterfront to I-5, Mercer to Dearborn.  Near downtown:  within one mile of those boundaries. 

Why not?

Well, for one thing, I haven't worked downtown since.

But also, I've always preferred to credit artists whose work I show you, dear Diary, and I'd gotten massively behind, because every downtown official park has art, and it's often impossible to photograph the park without including the art.

And most importantly, I still didn't feel strong enough to write about downtown Seattle's public restrooms. 

Well, I may be strong enough now, but can't do that now.

What now?

I'm pretty sure I've told you, dear Diary, during this revival, that I'm leaning toward giving downtown (and, you now see, near downtown) parity with North Seattle.  This is, obviously, not quite true.  When I faced the reality that I couldn't do both regions this year, I unhesitatingly chose the larger one.

Still, I figure I've admitted not only Freeway Park but also Dr. Jose Rizal Park, and even whatever Amazon still has, to our remit, and sooner or later I'll get back to those.  This isn't an abandoned page your readers need to comment on to get me to revive it.

[1] The debate was between Bruce Harrell and Lorena Gonzalez.  Harrell tried to answer the question, although he must have known that "we'll just have to try harder not to throw restrooms away" isn't much of an answer.  In fact, there are more park restrooms in downtown Seattle than there were when his term began; I didn't vote for him either time, but he actually did that right, and that makes the psychic burden of telling the story lighter, so thanks!  Gonzalez didn't even try to answer the question, instead mouthing pieties.  All this from memory, as the debate now seems to be paywalled.

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.