Dear Diary,
Three weeks ago I walked to the Seattle Public Library's Northeast branch to borrow some Korean TV dramas, and tonight I walked back to return them. Helpfully, the library was closed tonight when I got there - no, I don't memorise all these hours I tell you about, dear Diary, any more than anyone else does. Last time I tried to find the parks nearby, but got confused, and by the time I'd vaguely remembered where they were, I was too tired to visit them. Tonight, though, with no distractions in the library, it was earlier, and I had the sense to consult a map.
So.
Bryant Playground's water fountain is running. A man was playing basketball with, I assume, his daughter when I got there, which led me to entertain speculations about social distancing, but they were on the far end of the court by the time I made it down the hill to the fountain. The water tasted slightly off.
View Ridge Playfield's water fountain that was removed, in the words of one of its visitors, "to not spread germs", has not been returned.
Its other water fountain, which is down a grassy slope, is running, and tastes more than slightly off.
View Ridge Playfield's restrooms were, I was told when you were a few months old and parks employees were speaking with me fairly often, open 24 hours for years without any publicity. I was worried that by giving them publicity through you, dear Diary, I would give the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation an excuse to start closing them. But at least tonight at 8:04 P.M. they were open:
So that's good.
I've emphasised the downhills for a reason. Unless the Dahl Playfield water fountain, out of order so long the parks department page for that park doesn't list it as an amenity, has been fixed, the only park in that general area with a street-level water fountain working is Ravenna-Eckstein, way at the southwest corner of a pretty large stretch of land. View Ridge's removed water fountain was street level, relatively accessible to people with mobility difficulties; the one currently working, surrounded by grass, isn't accessible at all, and the one at Bryant, down and then up a steep hill, isn't well accessible. What does the parks department have against providing water to people with mobility difficulties in the middle of northeast Seattle?
(I assume some fountains are currently working in Magnuson Park, but none of Magnuson Park is street-level to much of anywhere other than Sand Point Way. Maybe I should count Burke-Gilman Playground Park, though, in which case the objection is similar to that against Ravenna-Eckstein: it's way far south.)
The Seattle Times reports tonight that what has been described as the last major encampment in a Seattle park, at Woodland Park, has been cleared. What with the things I do to deal with their paywalls, I haven't read the article yet, but I suspect that however pretty a face the city puts on this, there will be woe and sorrow for some of my former peers tonight. But you know, dear Diary, if homeless people aren't miserable, mayors can't sleep well. So we'll see what our new mayor, supposedly sympathetic to the homeless people he grew up alongside, comes up with next to spread doom and gloom among the poor, now that clearing the parks is at least temporarily off his agenda.
All the photos are at the Google Drive folders, View Ridge and Bryant.
Good night, dear Diary. I'm still focused on things Korean, but today wrote about a private library, and hope to finish with those sometime within the next week or two. I'll actually probably be writing more about parks sooner than that. Until then, happy nights and happy days.
