Dear Diary,
I have a notion that being an inveterate liar is kind of like other moral failings, and so although lying has never been an important sin to me, I can figure out what it's like by analogy. I think there are two ways to try to stop sinning in general, and so lying in particular. One is the folk wisdom that a sinner has to "hit bottom", get to where confessing and giving up the sin is the only way forward. But the other is to work on one's personality and one's reality until giving up the sin won't hurt so much. In this particular case, until lying is no longer needed. That path, which is if anything harder than hitting bottom and making other people responsible for dealing with it, is the path it seems to me the City of Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation has chosen.
I pointed out a number of ludicrous details in the department's new "dashboard" (a word I kind of wish had died of COVID-19 toward the end of the pandemic, but still, that's what it's called). It said Cowen Park's restrooms, which had been damaged by early opening in March 2022 and hadn't re-opened since, were open. It said Ravenna Park's lower pair of restrooms, which have been perennial targets of vandals, and where the men's room hadn't opened at all in 2022, were both open. And to top this series of obvious whoppers off, it said University Playground's restrooms, which hadn't been opened by parks department employees at any time since before the pandemic started, were both open.
I recently learnt that I wasn't quite as poor as I thought I was, because my bank hadn't charged a fee I'd expected them to charge. So today I splurged on a newspaper and went hiking, prepared to mock yet another parks department lying map afterward.
I found both of Cowen Park's restrooms open today.
I found all four of Ravenna Park's restrooms open today.
I didn't find either of University Playground's restrooms open today, but a small group of homeless people there told me that was because they'd been locked half an hour earlier. Considering that it was 5:41 P.M. when I was told this, that's testimony to way too early closing, but still, sadly, believable. Supporting this preposterous turn of events actually having happened, the restroom doors both had new handles (dear Diary, your readers can, if they wish, compare the handle shown here to those in previous photos via the tags at the bottom of the page, or directly here if reading on cell phones, which didn't offer those tags the last time I looked.)
Notice, dear Diary, that these handles are set into circular supports; the previous handles, which were blocky rather than delicate themselves, weren't set into anything like that. I think the evidence is good that University Playground's restrooms have finally re-opened.
So the parks department has done the hard work to justify its claims regarding all the restrooms I visited today. Including those at Burke-Gilman Playground Park. Now, this is where Google Maps lied to me today; it claims the whole park is temporarily closed.
But actually, well, let's see if I can do this:
(I was trying to just paste a print-screen from OpenStreetMap into the page. No, I couldn't. Darn.) Only part of the park is closed, the northeastern part. The parks department also tells the truth about this:
And someone carefully removed the sign adjacent to the Burke-Gilman Trail there pointing the way to the restrooms.
Yes, dear Diary, they're building new restrooms there. I hope this time they're winter-proof, but I sure hope, if I become homeless again before winter and there's another pandemic, they finish quickly.
I remembered from long ago that the neatest thing I thought Burke-Gilman Playground Park had to offer was a play fortress thingy sort of at the northwestern corner of the northeastern part of the park. So I looked in its direction from the street, but couldn't tell whether it'd been protected or not. (I'm more pessimistic that the actually neater sundial, also mentioned in that page, could've stayed in situ and been safe, so I hope it was moved.) The building all that landscape destruction is in aid of is still standing, but perhaps so far all they've had time to do is pull the plumbing out. (In the photo I uploaded to Google Drive, at full size a viewer can see the holes where the water fountain was attached.)
Anyway, my point is, that this morning when I checked the dashboard again hoping they'd have stopped, as I thought, lying and I could do other stuff today, they showed a bunch of restrooms as closed due to "Capital Project"s, and this was one of them.
Their water fountain map is still way too optimistic, I suspect; it's now up to 5 off, 206 on. I found three off today, but one isn't theirs; it's the one where University Methodist Temple used to be, the stone edifice of the water fountain (not the church) still standing, but with no plumbing left inside. I've reported the "lower" Ravenna Park fountain using "Find It - Fix It", which is how they say they want updates to those maps. I haven't reported yet the weird stone water fountain pretty far southwest in Laurelhurst Playfield. I guess I'll see what happens to the water fountain map tomorrow, when I plan to hide from the rain, having already lost my umbrella this year.
The Seattle Times, whose weather forecaster likes to go to extremes, is currently predicting lows for the weekend of 33º Friday night, 32º Saturday night, and 34º Sunday night. Usually the parks department has been able to shrug off October freezes, but if the Times's extremism comes true (as it does depressingly often), that may be a too long-lasting example for the same reaction. No official word yet, but my point, dear Diary, is that as usual, I've left it too late to get every park visited before it all changes. The questions is whether it matters. Is the parks department really turning over a new leaf? Will it, for example, admit what's happening when it closes the majority of its restrooms for the winter? Or is this just another episode in a longer battle?
One reason I've been paying so much attention to libraries lately, dear Diary, is to have another string to your bow as well as my own. I think the last thing I expected was to have the parks department remove your raison d'être, but if it happens, it happens. I will admit, I found myself getting both reminiscent and bored today as I took all these photos; I really didn't want, in particular, to get the only newspaper I can probably afford soon wet by photographing water fountains. (And Jenny Durkan is no longer in office, so need I really worry about another Durkan Drought? Well, only if there's another pandemic...)
Anyway, photos other than the above (most of those above are actually not at these links):
Burke-Gilman Trail, 30th Ave fountain
Burke-Gilman Playground Park (including none of the photos above, only the photo that sort of shows where the water fountain was)
Laurelhurst Community Center (restrooms) and Playfield (water fountains)
Burke-Gilman Trail, 47th St fountain
Former University Methodist Church, former street fountain
University Playground (including the photo above)
Time marches on, dear Diary; there's a reason I ditched "months" in the titles of the library pages. I'm working on three fronts:
For part VI of public library hours, I've finished work on Wahkiakum County and started on revising the actual page and on San Juan County. Cowlitz County, however, is nearly three times as big a job as those two put together, and Skagit County nearly four times. So we'll see.
For part II of institutional libraries, I now have my list and just need to get through it; as I said in part I, it's a long list.
And I'm also dipping my toes into part I of academic libraries.
Whatever, though, you should hear from me again reasonably soon, dear Diary. Happy nights and days until then.
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