More details of yesterday's hike

Dear Diary,

Now that I can write in you from my laptop again, it turns out I already told you everything that mattered from Saturday's hike in "NE" and elsewhere.

My plan for yesterday's hike was actually more ambitious than just for "NW", but, well, I haven't hiked for you in summer before, dear Diary, and as I should've remembered from long summer hikes in years past, I don't move as fast when it's hot out.

Anyway, there are some things worth mentioning from the parks of southern "NW".

I'm sure you remember, dear Diary, but perhaps people who read you need to know that all the photos of running (or not) water fountains and open (or closed) restroom doors are in a public Google Drive folder.  All these photos are dated partly by including the relevant day's newspaper, and photos of those newspapers' front pages, for comparison, are in a sub-folder titled, um, "Front pages".

Golden Gardens Park

The park's hours are being cut, lumped in with Alki as a violent beach (apparently for good reason).  Before the pandemic, the park was open the usual schedule, 4 A.M. to 11:30 P.M.  During the lockdowns, it was one of the parks whose closing time changed every few months.  And now that that's apparently over, it isn't going back to normal, but to the less common standard schedule, 6 A.M. to 10 P.M.:

In more pleasant news, the external water supply that enables showering has definitely been turned on.  I saw the lower spigot used, and the amount of wet pavement, plus an actual puddle (not shown in this photo), near the spigots makes it plain:

The only water fountain I found that I couldn't elicit water from yesterday was here.  I'm pretty sure it wasn't running, and it had a hole in it that suggests it was disabled, but based on a previous photo, it has an unusual control:

Yesterday I didn't notice that control:

Okay, looks like I didn't ignore that dial, but rather it was actually missing.  The thing intruding into the lower photo's bottom is one of the earpieces on my glasses.

Loyal Heights Community Center and Playfield

At the Community Center, child care is still the main thing going on.  As a result, during summer at least, the entire upper half of the Playfield, which was a construction site when I last visited, has replaced construction's metal fences with orange plastic fences.  Nobody showed hostility to my photographing the water fountain.  But remember, children are still ineligible to get vaccinated, so for them, the pandemic is still in full swing.  I saw a sign urging that park visitors mask up and keep distant, and couldn't justify photographing it as an oddity.  Anyone who visits upper Loyal Heights Playfield anytime soon should mask up and keep distant.

On the other hand, this sign still stuck to the fence of the playfield proper, lower down, is surely past its time:

Is anyone really going to try to close a park in Seattle this summer because it's busy?

The water fountain attached to the Community Center, but in the lower half of the Playfield, is running, but its drain seems to be clogged.  The bowl was full the entire time I was there:

Webster Park

The water fountain which only supplied a trickle of water all last year is now actually running properly:

Seattle Public Library, Ballard branch

This time, the door to the restrooms appeared to be locked, as on a previous visit, but the security guy was right next to the door, ready to let people in.  On the other hand, that won't last much longer:

Now, naively, this looks like bad news.  But the restrooms at Ballard Community Center are open, if not too reliably on Sundays.  Or if one specifically wants library restrooms, the Green Lake branch is open Mondays, and the Northeast and University branches are open Sundays.  And,y'know, the libraries have been expanding their hours every couple of weeks; it's possible, if somewhat unlikely, that by July 21st, the Ballard branch will actually be open seven days per week.

Or, of course, people could just discipline themselves not to need restrooms on Sundays and Mondays.  Isn't self-discipline what homeless people need most anyway?

Speaking of downtown Ballard and homeless self-discipline, during my visit to Ballard Commons yesterday, I didn't hear any yelling or arguments.  How unusual.

The Burke-Gilman Trail

In Seattle Public Utilities's pseudo-map of street water fountains, one is listed with an address of "6049 Seaview Ave."  Now, assuming this to mean Seaview Ave NW, it turns out 6049 is a real address, quite a few yards north of the NW 60th St Viewpoint:

It's private property.  I didn't see any water fountains, street-style or no, in any of the areas more or less publicly accessible, nor on the verge.  There is a street fountain on Seaview, but it's half a mile south, near the NW 57th St Street End, and also on the Burke-Gilman Trail, which in the relevant block is the sidewalk on the south side of Seaview.

Mind, SPU has done something rather impressive here.  That fountain had been knocked over and eviscerated by metal thieves.  It takes some guts to put another in the exact same place.  But I don't understand why they're advertising the wrong location for it.  Metal thieves are very unlikely to consult SPU press releases to find targets.

 

Anyway, the new fountain's water is good.

OK, that seems to be it for yesterday's hike.  Something different soon, dear Diary.  Until then, happy days and good nights.

On Release

Dear Diary,

Now that I'm fully vaccinated, in principle it's simple.

People still in masks might be vaccine-hesitant, for which they might have good reasons; or they might be vaccinated but scared anyway, for which they might have good reasons.  I worry about how long those people will feel the need to mask up, but in any event, it's common courtesy to continue to stay away from these people.

People unmasked like me might be fully vaccinated like me, or might be Trumpian never-maskers, never-vaxxers.  The former are unlikely to catch COVID-19 from me and the latter deserve to.  So I shouldn't need any of what's now called social distancing (I used to call it hygiene discipline as I practised it at UW when homeless and smelly) with these people.

But it's all kinds of more complicated than that in practise.

I never seriously considered staying masked on my hikes.  (Except when walking into the restrooms, or running hike-unrelated errands.)  I currently own three pairs of glasses.  I think I had two pairs when I came to Seattle in 2006.  One was broken sometime beyond memory, one lens split into two, so although I still have it, it really can't be worn.  The other, also broken but only in the frame, was stolen in mid-2014, as narrated in  "Stealing from the Homeless".  As also narrated there, this resulted in Sound Eye and Laser giving me a pair, the second pair I now own.  In late 2016, I went to one of the giant United Way-sponsored medical events at Seattle Center, and got a pair of bifocals, which came in a wonderfully sturdy glasses case.  The bifocals encountered an angry drunk fairly early in 2017, and can only hold together with tape.  So the 2012 pair went into the sturdy glasses case, and became my default glasses, until in late 2020 they encountered an angry mask.  By this point I'd forgotten that glasses have to be taped, so when Superglue failed, I just stuck them into the sturdy glasses case only to be removed on special occasions.

Anyway, though, in February I was in a carpeted motel room, and I experimented.  Both of my broken but whole pairs fogged up when worn with masks.  On top of that, one was broken by a mask, so I really don't trust masks with my glasses.  But I did re-learn how to tape glasses.

Since I value eyesight, then, I was never going to stay masked outside once the vaccine released me.

But it turns out I often have to get my glasses out of the way when taking photos on my phone.

And I have to mask up when going into restrooms, let alone when running errands, or taking buses at the beginning or end of the hike.  Which means handling the mask every freaking time.  And I also need to eat and drink while on those hikes.  I'm just choosing to ignore it, to assume that the outside of my current mask is not actually a foetid midden but an ordinary piece of cloth.  But what if I'm wrong?

And then there's the whole social distancing thing.  Avoid the masked, but not the unmasked?  But what if a masked woman stands three feet from the path I must take at Golden Gardens Park, as happened last night?  Should I have felt differently, as I in fact did, when I noticed that she is pregnant?  Unmasked people like me can block the masked in the same exact way, be it noted; this is an equal-opportunity way for people to inconvenience each other.

Also, while my principles may say I shouldn't socially distance myself from the unmasked, years of enforcing hygiene discipline on myself makes that a notion not much honoured in the breach.  It will take me a lot longer to get over this than to get over masks.  I find myself stepping into the street to avoid not only the masked but also the unmasked, much more than I did when I was masked.

There's a kick to this.  It turns out my vaccine, the Johnson and Johnson one, is only 2/3 effective at preventing COVID-19 infection.  Should I in fact not only continue social distancing, but resume masking?  Should I, at a time when India needs something like twenty billion vaccine doses, try to do better with a more efficacious vaccine?

This is not entirely off-topic, dear Diary, and not just on-topic in the sense that you are, after all, a Primary Source of the COVID Era.  Four days ago, I wrote:

| I've been comfortable, over the years, attributing a lot of 

| damage to water fountains to "vandalism".  Something 

| striking I've noticed today is that many of the "fountains" 

| I've mapped are really fountain locations, with two or as 

| many as four actual fountains either attached to one pillar, 

| in the majority case of free-standing fountains, or to one 

| building, in the minority case of attached fountains.  I 

| would think that both "vandalism" and wear and tear would 

| differentially affect these multiple fountains, but in reality, 

| the entire time I've been hiking for you, dear Diary, I've 

| never found one fountain working at a location, another not, 

| except to the minimal extent that flow differences might 

| make one harder to use than the other.  This makes it hard 

| for me to attribute the red list even primarily to user 

| misbehaviour. 

Well, there's a first time for everything, or to put it another way, in Bitter Lake Playfield yesterday I encountered the exception that proves the rule.  This is what it looks like when "vandalism" - actually, in this case, I'm pretty sure, metal thievery - differentially affects multiple fountains:

 

Not only is the spout missing, but so are the pipes one would expect to see through the hole it left.  Metal thievery is the most economical hypothesis.

But this is actually fairly uncommon, damage in this way to the spout, which allows access to the pipes.  I've much more often seen damage to the controls, so often that, considering the controls don't easily offer access to the pipes, I've come to doubt that it's really vandalism I'm seeing, as against deliberate disabling of the fountains by staffers of the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation.  Few examples are as extreme as the fountain at Green Lake Park that I noticed for my first time yesterday:

But even this could be a staffer's work, and I like to look on the bright side when I can; it's a help against depression.

So what will release mean to the parks department?  Will they bring the fountains back all at once, as they did last year when demanded by Public Health?  That seems a lot of work.  And remember, all those controls-damaged fountains in Woodland Park didn't come back last year.  Almost every fountain in Green Lake ran, but only two in all of Woodland.

The parks department has two maintenance crews in North Seattle, Northeast and Northwest.  Northeast is responsible for the parks from Gas Works Park to Woodland Park; Northwest is responsible for the parks from Green Lake Park north, including Northacres Park.

I've already looked, this month, at most of the water fountain locations for which Northwest has responsibility - 25 out of 32, at least assuming Northwest handles Sunset Place.  That and five others, six out of 25, are running.  Northwest has a head start on the end of the Durkan Drought.

I've looked at fewer than half of the locations Northeast is responsible for - 19 out of 44.  Only two of those 19 are running.  Also, Northeast has a lot of disabled controls in Woodland Park and elsewhere; Northwest has considerably fewer; so if I'm right that that's something the parks department will have to fix, Northeast has much more work ahead than Northwest.  Although all the people I've had friendly conversations with work for Northeast, their management seems to expect the Durkan Drought to continue.

And why shouldn't it?  The mayor has already shown willing to turn the fountains off; why shouldn't she keep them off until she's out of office?  It's not like she plans to answer to the voters.  Presumably once the governor releases us from the state of emergency, she'll feel free to sweep all the campers foolish enough to remain in the parks.  Maybe then she'll turn the fountains back on, or maybe, for fear that some homeless person somewhere might get free water, she'll keep them off right up to the end of her term.  I just don't know.

It's been striking how, after initial fumbles, the restrooms have mostly been open, and "sanican"s sprouted up not only at the beginning of the pandemic, but continue to appear - I saw a bunch in Green Lake Park, near the Small Craft Center, last time I went there.  Our mayor doesn't want cholera, which isn't much of a respecter of persons.

But it's also striking how she's been happy to limit access to clean drinking water.  Hepatitis, giardia, shigella, cryptosporidium, the list goes on.  As long as the majority of victims are homeless, the more the merrier, it seems, the housed victims just collateral damage from the hatred.

Dear Diary, I don't use with you the words that can most economically express the image that comes to mind:  We, the homeless, have been allowed to excrete during the epidemic, but not to drink.  Or maybe just not water.  "Let them drink brandy" - is it that, dear Mayor?

So Seattle, like me, isn't as ready for release as we like to think.

Escaping Carkeek Park

Dear Diary,

As I told you in the last page, I was pushing a brand-new cart to Carkeek Park in the late afternoon of January 10, hoping to wait out several days of forecast rain at that park's shelter 2.

There are several ways to approach Carkeek Park.  For example, the trail I mentioned, in "The Ballard Seacoast", part II, July 1, from which I'd hoped to see where the beach ends, well, that trail itself ends in what seems to be someone's back yard.  But there are three more reasonable ways to get there, which can be summarised as NW 117th St, NW 110th St, and the Eddie McAbee Entrance, which starts from NW 100th Place.  That day, I took 110th.  Now, I should explain that 110th St, which turns into Carkeek Park Drive along the way, has a shoulder on its sometimes southern side.  This shoulder normally is separated from the street by a bump, and is normally enough inches wide that a small person like me could walk safely on it if a) it weren't sloped and covered in wet leaves, and b) that small person weren't pushing a wheeled cart.  So I walked in the street.

117th St, by the way, as I found Wednesday (February 10) when I went to take this page's photos, offers much wider shoulders, usually over a foot wide, which however are usually grassy, making them nearly as useless for anyone with a baby carriage, wheelchair or cart.  Walkers without wheels should certainly prefer it.

(There are buses that go to "Carkeek Park".  This turns out to mean that the 28 goes to the Eddie McAbee Entrance, more or less, while the 5 goes to Greenwood Ave N at N 110th or 117th Streets.  No buses actually reach the park's main entrance, let alone enter.)

They say the position of women in early Islam was much, much better than in Arab societies prior to Muhammad.  Similarly, the position of pedestrians in Carkeek Park is much better than our position in the surrounding neighbourhood, and similarly, that's damning with faint praise.

I've referred to Carkeek Park, besides "The Ballard Seacoast", November 2 in "Blue Ridge, Land of Mystery", and November 24 in "Standing Room Only", part V, which in particular introduced shelter 2.  But I don't think I've explained about its roads before.  Carkeek Park Drive continues into the park a ways, and then splits.  The westbound northern lane goes up a hill and down again to reach the part of the park with the restrooms, shelters, water fountain, playground, and stairway to the beach.  Then there's a turnaround, and it loops back, passing north of the vast greenswards I've mentioned and finally turning into the eastbound southern lane.

Anyway, up to the split, Carkeek Park cares enough about pedestrians to offer a real sidewalk:

Even after the split, there's a gravel path, south of the westbound lane just as the sidewalk is south of the combined road:

This gravel path ends within sight of shelter 2, crossing north of the westbound lane and acquiring pavement in the process.  Now, you understand, dear Diary, that on the evening of January 10 I didn't actually push my cart along the gravel path, but in the road.  I don't remember whether I took the direct, paved, route or stuck to the road until things were clearer.

Anyway, I spent the night there in shelter 2, safe from the rain, using the lantern I'd recently been given (as mentioned two pages ago in "Escaping Green Lake Park", part I) to read until bedtime.  Comfortingly, the restrooms were open all night, just as they had been in October when I'd last visited.  

You may remember, dear Diary, that the official explanation for such unannounced 24-hour restrooms is that when a road is closed, it's both difficult and unnecessary to lock and unlock the restrooms it leads to.  I think Carkeek Park Drive was still closed January 10, but it definitely wasn't on Wednesday, so maybe those restrooms are no longer 24 hours.

Well, in the morning I ran low on food and water.  Conveniently, a break came in the rain; inconveniently, that brought company.  A couple, rather older than me, came in and sat at another of the shelter's picnic tables.  The man used this rest to unmask and smoke, except that he spent most of the time coughing rather than smoking.  This made staying even less appetizing, so after they left, I packed up and did the same.

The paved path past the shelter runs past shelter 1, part of the playground, and the restrooms, and becomes a sidewalk.  It's paved right up to the path to the beach stairs, on the other side of which it turns into gravel again:

So there's a paved sidewalk south of the combined road, a gravel path south of the westbound lane, a paved sidewalk west of the turnaround, and now a gravel path south of the eastbound lane.  Makes perfect sense, right?  For some reason, though, I actually decided to take that gravel path instead of sticking to the street as I normally would.

Then I reached the first greensward:

Yes, that's right, the path separates from the street.  That enables a long series of small parking lots to be strung along between the eastbound lane and the greenswards.  Necessarily, then, given the blockish way this park is designed, the path has to go all the way south of the greenswards, on the opposite side from the parking lots and the road:

Somewhere along here, the rain resumed.  And that's when I made the critical decision, the decision that shaped the next few days of my life but also that showed me thinking like a housed, rather than a homeless, person:  I kept going.  I needed water (that I could've gotten from the restroom sink) and food (was I really that low?).

This was a cruel thing to do to brand-new cart wheels, although I should clarify that the path I was on was really more a dirt path stiffened by fine gravel than the kind of thing one thinks of as a gravel path:

Those wheels would get revenge soon enough.

My decision became firmer when I looked up and to the right at a spectacularly bad time:

I'd had no idea I'd been so deep in a valley, and resolved not to return to it.

At the time I was in no position to appreciate the excellent views of Piper's Creek on offer:

Toward the end of the trip, I saw something astonishing, that my month-later photo probably hasn't well captured, an illustration of why I wrote of Blue Ridge that it's "not actually vertical":

And you've probably now figured it out, dear Diary, as had I.  Yes, I'd taken the Eddie McAbee Exit.

Once I realised that this story was worth telling, I also concluded that this whole mess is designed to get pedestrians to leave via 100th, regardless of our wishes in the matter.  This is not quite fair.  Once one is on the pseudo-sidewalk / Eddie McAbee whatever, one gets at least three opportunities to return to Carkeek Park Drive.  One just has to know the park well enough to recognise them.  (And, yes, get over the foolish tendency to trust sidewalks.)

There's one real consolation:  Sooner than later, there'll be a do-over.  Much of Carkeek Park Drive, within the park, is in terrible shape:

If people who think parks should not require visitors to arrive in cars are awake when Carkeek Park Drive needs resurfacing, perhaps something will improve.

Good night, dear Diary.

The Water Fountains of Ballard, mid-October 2020

Dear Diary,

As mentioned in some earlier pages, and in a bit more detail in "Two Last Strays" yesterday, on October 16 I returned to Ballard.  My first trip to the parks of Ballard, in June, was reported in the pages "History and Parks, part I" and "part II" on June 25, pages that to this day hardly anyone has read, apparently inferring from the title that each page ends with a test.  Actually those pages are about the strong impression some of Ballard's parks gave me, that they were about history, indeed that Ballard is obsessed with certain parts of its history.  In part II I got to parks that at least concerned other parts of Ballard history.

This page also deals with the water fountains of areas sometimes seen as parts of Ballard, but which I think of as north of it, to wit the water fountains first mentioned in "A Lazy Day on Loyal Heights" June 28, and "What Can a Hill Do with a Crown?", July 1.

It was on this June trip that I finally allowed myself to take landscape and other such photos, so I took relatively few this time.  Therefore this page also has room to report on water fountains in Golden Gardens Park and on the Burke-Gilman Trail, which I first told you about, dear Diary, in "The Ballard Seacoast:  Parks Not Parks', part I" and "part II", June 30 and July 1, even though I didn't reach these until October 17 this time.

Enough introduction; let's get started.

In Gas Works Park the water fountain still wasn't running, as I already reported October 8 in "South of North Once More, Part I".

Ross Park

On June 22, as reported in "History and Parks" I, I found the restroom open and the water fountain not running.  On October 16, this was flipped.  As at Bitter Lake Playfield ("Top of the City, part III" November 12 and "Hygiene Is a Luxury I Can't Afford" November 18), the restroom was locked but the water fountain (free-standing, near the restrooms) was ON.

I was particularly annoyed by this situation because I'd wanted to take a picture of a mosaic between the restrooms.  I did anyway.

So you can see why I was annoyed.

I asked Rachel Schulkin, communications manager for the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation, about the locking, and she said the unlocker goofed.  Well, he must have, but we'll get to that.

Ross Park's restrooms are not year-round, so I won't be able to take that picture until next spring.

Sunset Place

This is a small park on one slope of a hill, where I managed to miss a water fountain on my first visit, so had to go back for it.  The advantage of nobody having read "History and Parks" I right away is that any future hypothetical readers will get the revised version.

The drama continued this time.  As I prepared to climb up to the bottom of the park, I had to adjust my mask.  Now, I told you, dear Diary, about my masks from Target that did such a good job of covering my eyes, in "Six Parks in Search of Another" November 30.  As I said there, on the long hike October 8 to 14, I wore a different sort of mask.  But for this shorter hike I reverted to a Target one; those were, after all, the majority of my masks.  

Well, two blocks from the top of Sunset Place, I stopped to adjust that mask, when at last it achieved the goal it and its five siblings had sought since June:  by snapping away from my hand, it managed to flip my glasses off my ears and nose, I didn't manage to catch them, and, well, I haven't been able to wear my glasses much since.

So now I have fifteen masks.  Six from Target, waiting in my storage until I figure out what to do with them, and nine from Naturepedic.  All of those are gifts.  I tried to buy a pack, but they only ship Fed Ex, which my address can't accept.  So I called them, and they decided the best solution was to send me a free pack.  Anyway, those have never fought my glasses as assiduously as the Target ones did, but I'm still not planning to get new glasses until mask time is over, at least if it does end.

ANYWAY.  At Sunset Place, the water fountain was ON, as it had been in June.  I decided it was time, at a park so obviously created for its view, to photograph that view:

Gilman Playfield

The official names of the parks named for Ross and Gilman, per the parks department website, are both "Playground".  My theory is that they aren't allowed to outshine Ballard Playground.  In my opinion Ross is obviously a Park, Gilman a Playfield, and I'll go by that until and unless someone gives me a good reason not to.

Anyway, as I reported euphorically in "History and Parks" I, Gilman's free-standing water fountain near its restrooms was ON.  It still was in October.  On the other hand, those restrooms were open in June, but not in October.  I asked Rachel Schulkin about this too, but she never got back to me.

Now, the obvious assumption is that the same unlocker screwed up twice, but it isn't that simple.  You see, in June I observed a bunch of homeless people's tents at Gilman Playfield.  I considered their occupants well-behaved.  Those tents were gone this time.  Some trash, however, remained:

So, dear Diary, doesn't this remind you of Licton Springs Park?  ("Bad Apples in the Bonny Green Wood", October 29.)  A park whose campers were induced to leave by the locking of the restrooms?  Except that those campers were abominable neighbours, while, from my admittedly brief observation, it looked like Gilman's were good neighbours.  It sends a very bad message to us unsheltered homeless if our behaviour has no effect on the treatment we get.

So I hope it was just an unlocker's screwup, but I don't know whether we'll ever know.  Of course, those doors would be locked now anyway, since Gilman Playfield's restrooms are not year-round.

Ballard Commons

Of course people were still camped here.  I still couldn't find the restrooms, the only ones in Ballard proper listed on the 2019 list of year-round restrooms.  Rachel Schulkin finally ended my suspense; it turns out the parks department sees fit to claim the "Portland Loo" as a restroom.

Triple free-standing water fountain ON both in June and in October.

As a precaution, I went to the Ballard branch library to use its restroom before proceeding, but I needn't have.

Ballard Playground and Community Center

The single-user restrooms at the Community Center both have dryers, and that afternoon both still had toilet cleaner in their bowls.  The only explanation I can think of for why these restrooms, built into a heated building, are not open year-round is that neighbours are afraid we homeless will use them, when the other park restrooms are closed.  Well, October 16 was a kind of experiment in that regard, and on its showing such fears would be overblown.  Dear Diary, if anyone in Ballard reads this page, I hope they'll be kind enough to check whether those restrooms are really locked, and report back in a comment.

The free-standing water fountain nearby but technically in the Playground had not been running in June, but was ON in October.

Webster Park

Free-standing water fountain mid-park:  TRICKLE, as in June.

Salmon Bay Park

The restrooms were open.  The men's room has a dryer but no stall door.  These are not year-round restrooms.

Attached water fountain, men's side:  ON (it had been off in June).

Loyal Heights Community Center and Playfield

The restrooms were open.  Weirdly, these have stall doors but no dryer.  They're also the first year-round restrooms mentioned in this page, unless there really is a mistake about the Ballard Community Center ones.  The attached water fountain, off in June, was ON in October.

Free-standing water fountain in the Playfield's southwest, near the baseball diamond:  ON (previously off)

Free-standing water fountain upstairs:  ON BUT VISIBLY DAMAGED (previously off)

Baker Park on Crown Hill

The parks department website offers a set of symbols under the heading 'Amenities' on most parks' individual pages.  A symbol I've interpreted as meaning "water fountain" has indeed pointed to a water fountain very reliably - this is how, for example, I found out about the one at Sunset Place.

But that symbol is on the page for this park to this day, and I still couldn't find the water fountain.  Nobody I asked at the park knew anything about one, but they all said they hadn't been visiting it long.  The page talks about an expansion opened in 2020; maybe a water fountain was removed due to that, or as at View Ridge Playfield for fear of COVID-19.  Or maybe the page is wrong, or I've misunderstood the symbol.  I asked Rachel Schulkin, but she never got back to me.

Crown Hill Park

Free-standing double water fountain ON, both bowls' flow low but probably useable

You'll remember, dear Diary, that one of the first parks I visited at the beginning of my October hikes showed the official re-opening of the playgrounds.  But the one adjoining this park, not parks department property, was still locked in the evening of October 16.

Soundview Playfield

The restrooms were closed, but it was 7:20 P.M. and I didn't expect any different.

Free-standing water fountain near the water play area:  OFF, as in June

Water play areas didn't open this year.  It seems likely that this water fountain is on the same pipe as the water play area, and there may not be separate shutoffs.  Rachel Schulkin has told me that all the working water fountains were turned on this year, but I'd find it quite plausible if this one were an exception.

Golden Gardens Park

That night, rain was expected, and so tempting though the benches at Soundview were, I knew I had to reach a shelter.  You already know, dear Diary, from "Standing Room Only" V, that the shelters at this park are very, well, un-sheltering, but I didn't know that as I careened fearfully down Golden Gardens Drive, where no sign survived of its time as a "Stay Healthy" street.  It was full dark, so I didn't turn aside to look for water fountains near the upper restrooms, which I hadn't found in June.

There was a ton of traffic at the bottom.  Most seemed to be for the 24-hour Eddie Vine Boat Ramp, but there were more than a handful in the park as I clambered along looking for the shelters.

Rain had already begun too, occasioning the remarks I used as an epigraph for "Standing Room Only" I from a loud young woman in a party of young people who eventually coalesced at the south end of the beach around a fire.  As I understand it, the city plans to evict all the homeless from Cal Anderson Park because, among other things, of two illegal fires.  Will the city eject half the young people from Golden Gardens because of one?

Anyway, I spent a miserable night in that shelter, and in the morning apparently I was careless.  I had reported, in "The Ballard Seacoast" II, a water fountain near the restrooms and another at the south end of the beach, both off.  This time I only noted

Double free-standing water fountain near the restrooms:  ON, both bowls a bit low flow

The restrooms were opened between 7:49 and 8:30 A.M.

The Burke-Gilman Trail

In my October hikes, I walked all but about two miles of the trail, but largely without my glasses.  I think it's unlikely, but not quite impossible, that there's another water fountain on the trail besides the one on 30th Ave NE and this one at 37th Ave NW.

Well, that's a sad photo, but "NW" actually did considerably better, this year, water fountain-wise, than "N".

Tomorrow, starting the street ends.  None have restrooms or water fountains, and none of those we can visit have lockable doors, so the photos, much more numerous, may also be more interesting.  Good night, dear Diary.

Six Parks in Search of Another

Dear Diary,

It's embarrassing to be so far behind with you that I'm still narrating to you hikes from mid-October, practically summer.  But if it's any consolation, this page and another I plan to write in you today feature photographs taken today.  There was a park mystery, and last night I had to visit the 24-hour restroom at View Ridge Playfield, spent the night in that park's shelter shiveringly trying to sleep, and finally this morning set out to resolve that mystery, plus some smaller mysteries, and take some pictures.  So this page, and the one I intend to write Wednesday, won't all be summer hikes.

On October 12, then, I took 15th Ave from Sacajawea Playground, where I left off in the last page, to Northgate Way.  I'd noticed Patty's Eggnest at its Holman Road location, and that morning I felt rich enough to get breakfast at the Northgate one, an omelet I ate in a bus shelter.  Then I went and splurged some more, at Target, whose elevators had been fixed, getting umbrellas, and a cap to replace one that had fallen off my cart once there were masks under it, boosting it too high.

Which brings me to something important.  I had, both on June 27 while visiting the 'last seven' parks, and on October 12, nine masks.  Three were gifts, and six I bought myself, at Target.  These six are very well designed, because they not only cover my mouth and nose, but for even better protection, my eyes as well.  Unfortunately, my glasses objected to this, and the rainy day June 27, when I first visited the 'last seven' parks, the mask, which I was then wearing for the first time, fought back, in particular by serving as a slide down which the glasses could fall off my nose.

I admit, for the hike that was finally, on October 12, nearing its end, I wimped out and chose one of the three masks I'd been given, instead.

Anyway, fortified by food, I set off again.  This hike had a number of objectives:  First, to check on water fountains in North Seattle.  Second, to replace the photographs of some parks that I'd lost when my phone was stolen in July.  By October 12, that meant mostly what I'd thought, on June 27, were the last seven North Seattle parks I hadn't visited.  Third, to visit parks I'd learnt of since.  And fourth, to settle various questions about parks along the way, and photograph some of those I hadn't photographed before.

Northgate Park

Introduced May 29 in "South to and from Northgate".

Free-standing water fountain more or less mid-park:  NOT RUNNING.

Northgate Park turns out to be oddly bifurcated, its north side full of concrete and, well, weird stuff:

the south, well, not:

I stayed by the Northgate branch of the Seattle Public Library there for a while, catching up on Wi-Fi stuff, but not writing in you, dear Diary.

Maple Leaf Community Garden

This was one of the 'last seven'; in fact, three of those are introduced in this page, and since I covered three in "Lake City Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us!", that leaves only one for the pages ahead.  This one is near 5th Ave on 103rd St, actually across that street from Beaver Pond Natural Area, which, however, I didn't visit this time.

In June when I first visited, I found men working to build it, but by October it was a fully functioning ...

P-patch?

Actually the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation lists in its part of the Seattle real property report (which is where the list of the 'last seven' came from) several P-patches, including two of the 'last seven'.  It isn't usual, and it's worth asking why each time, but it isn't extraordinary.

In this case, my guess is that the Department of Neighborhoods, the usual custodian of P-patches, maybe doesn't have as much experience taking care of gorgeous old buildings, like the tower that dominates this 'park', as the parks department has.

But that's only a guess.

Victory Creek Confluence Natural Area

This next 'last seven' park is where Victory Creek, as in Victory Creek Park a few blocks north, meets the south branch of Thornton Creek.  Or maybe it's just somewhere near the actual confluence.  It's hard to tell, because its size as reported, a quarter acre, is nowhere near the size of the woods around the confluence, and of course there's no signage:

(12/15 edit) There's a video embedded there, but near as I can tell, Blogspot is not currently allowing me to write pages that show readers of you, dear Diary, embedded videos.  (This may be a general thing, or may be specific to me; dunno.)  The other recent page for which this is an issue is "A Problem", which is all about problems with videos and includes a pointer to its video at YouTube.  Here's a pointer to this video at YouTube.  What the video shows is lots of woods, with no sign singling out one quarter-acre as a public park.

So in this page's title, "Six Parks in Search of Another" (with apologies to Pirandello, who wrote a play whose English title I like, but I still haven't read or seen the play), Victory Creek Confluence Natural Areais the "Another".

In case you want to look for yourself, the official address is 1039 NE 108th St, although my Rand McNally map claims the actual confluence is between 11th and 12th Avenues.  The relevant instance of 108th St can be reached from Roosevelt Way.

Victory Creek Park

Introduced in the same page as Northgate Park.  I didn't go back to this frustrating park on this hike, so no, it isn't one of the title's "six parks".  Rather, I found out while writing this page that the frustrating thing about it - the absence of the picnic tables and playground its sign claims it has - was planned (PDF) as far back as 2018, and presumably happened by the time of my first visit in May.

Victory Heights Playground

Introduced in the same page as Northgate and Victory Creek Parks.

Two water fountains attached to the Victory Heights Co-op Preschool - NOT RUNNING

Note that this makes eleven, not ten, water fountain sites in North Seattle attached to heated buildings, and five, not four, of those not running this year.  (See the digression in the recent page "To a Land of Water and Honey".)

This time I took a picture of the translucent playground equipment I thought was neat in May.  Unfortunately the weather wasn't cooperative in allowing me also to photograph the coloured shadows they cast.

I actually didn't take any notes about the water fountains on October 12.  So when I was done with Meadowbrook, as narrated below, I came back to Victory Heights.  Well, no, that isn't quite true.  On my October visit, I'd found an entire fantasy trilogy I'd enjoyed, in hardcover at a nearby Little Free Library, but was in no position to carry them away.  I talked myself into coming back to see if they were still there, today, and since I didn't find the book bin before reaching the park ...  The books weren't there when I did find it.  I have two reasons for thinking the water fountains weren't running in October:  1) I remember my relief at finally finding a working fountain at Meadowbrook later that day, and 2) the fountains didn't have much tree litter in them today, but they had too much to have been shut off a week or two ago.

Lavilla Meadows Natural Area

This is the third and last of this page's 'last seven' parks.  It's well hidden, but actually findable.

First, find Fischer Place, a diagonal connecting the Victory Heights neighbourhood with the Meadowbrook one.  Exit Victory Heights; on foot, one can do this at 102nd St.  Cross Lake City Way somewhere that seems safe.  Fischer Place starts opposite 102nd, and goes up to 105th west of 27th Ave.

On Fischer, look for Lavilla Dairy.  Go in back to the parking lot.  Behind the parking lot you should find this:

and this:

It's over four acres, so it's probably all the woods behind Fischer Place.

Meadowbrook Playfield

Introduced May 6 in "Go North, Aging Man!".

Free-standing water fountain near the picnic shelter shown two pages ago - ON, and overflowing enough that I couldn't use it.  (Today, however, it was of course NOT RUNNING.)

Water fountain attached to the restroom building west of there - NOT RUNNING October 12; I don't think I bothered today

Free-standing water fountain near the tennis courts, furthest west - ON, and my first chance that day to fill my water bottles; I didn't pass near it today.

The relief a working water fountain gave me that day left me feeling kinda guilty when I left the park without having found a single thing I wanted to photograph.  So when I got there today, I was determined to fix it.

See, the problem is general.  Playfields, in Seattle's hierarchy of parks, are mainly for big grassy areas for sports (specifically baseball), and even though I played in Little League, I don't find these photogenic.  So I always have to more or less do an end run around the park's whole reason for being, find some angle, and Meadowbrook had always seemed angle-free to me.

But the October visit was the first on which (because of Fischer Place) I'd approached along 105th, and noticed a lot of rather un-playfield-like land, greenswards and woods and just disorganised compared to the square playfield norm.

So first of all, yes, there's a brook at Meadowbrook.

It creates something of a view from a well-placed picnic bench:

But a square enough reader might prefer the picture I took first, cynically, figuring playgrounds are always safe, even though I find this one as bland as the rest of the playfield:

(Seattle Public Utilities) Meadowbrook Pond Nature Refuge

This was the mystery I set out to solve this morning.  At Matthews Beach there's a map of the Thornton Creek watershed, and it shows a park right across the street from Meadowbrook Playfield.  I needed another park to make up the six, not wanting to use Hubbard Homestead, which I still haven't photographed and in which I'd most recently done Number One.  So I thought I'd go solve it.

Well, there isn't much mystery.  This park not Parks' of course doesn't have usual parks department signage; it also doesn't actually have much frontage on 35th Ave.  So for someone as unobservant as me to miss it made sense, but it was there all along.

It doesn't have any restrooms or water fountains, but I fell in love with it and took scads of pictures anyway, too many for this page.  In fact, although I'd planned to put one here as a teaser, Blogspot won't let me.  So that's why, dear Diary, I plan to write two pages in you today.

Going to the Masque of the Dull Death

Dear Diary,

You may have noticed that I'm not writing in you from the usual place this weekend.  This takes some explaining.

You see, I recently broke the one rule homeless people must never break at the University:  I slept on campus.  This is what I was doing when my backpack was stolen, in fact, so I've already been punished.  But also, this has led the University's police to settle a disagreement against me.

See, some people think any time I empty my cart, I'm setting up a camp.  Now a University police officer has explained to me that this is true, and therefore I may not remove my satchels from the cart on campus.

This situation has inconvenienced me, and has also posed some peculiar questions for me:  Does a campsite require an empty cart, or was I automatically camping every time I brought my satchels onto campus without a cart, for years?  If I used a different kind of cart, would that make a difference?

But it's mainly good news.  See, if all it takes to set up a camp is to empty my cart, then obviously when at night I also empty the satchels, and build my bed, I must be doing something much grander:  setting up an ENCAMPMENT.  And that in turn qualifies me to be swept.

Now, in your pages, dear Diary, I've already explained how sweeps can entertain or even ennoble us, so I'm sure you see how this could be good news.  But it's much bigger than that.

Everyone knows that the only way to get housing help in Seattle is to have your grandparents sign you up for it when your parents are born, but this is not actually quite true.  Five categories of homeless people can skip the line.

Two because it's proper:  Veterans can jump ahead, as can parents of small children, and nobody should gainsay them that.

Two because it's practical:  It may not be much comfort for the rest of us, but it does society some good when petty criminals or troublemaking addicts get housed out of turn.

But for most of us, the only serious chance for help is to be swept.  No, really, dear Diary, I know this sounds crazy, but I read it in the newspaper, so it must be true:  Get the attention of a Navigation Team member, and you can get housed.  And since my own encampment is just me, surely I could get their attention if I were to be swept.

So just think of it, dear Diary.  Any time now, I could become just like a normal person, complaining about having to stay inside all the time, instead of complaining, as I do now, about having to stay outside all the time.

This kind of reversal seems characteristic of my life recently, and the case of masks - no, dear Diary, this page's title isn't "bait and switch" - is obviously related.  Many homeless people - many of the sheltered, and most of those unsheltered who sleep in neither tent nor vehicle, like me - Many of us are effectively "in public" all the time.  What does a recommendation to wear masks whenever "in public" mean to us?

I told you some time ago I hadn't worn a mask once.  But I bought one from a profiteer weeks ago, just in case I caught the virus and needed to go to a hospital.  So when the directive came down to wear masks in certain indoor contexts, of course I did as I was told.  But this has made me even more aware of how others see me, when I'm masked, when I'm not.  I got a few days off from the quandary since all my masks were in my backpack, but now I have more, and have started, experimentally, wearing them a bit more.

Friday, the day I got the new masks, I went downtown (Freeway Park's restrooms still closed, water fountains running in Pioneer Square but not in Occidental Square), among other purposes to get the charger that allows me to write in you, dear Diary.  And somewhere downtown I came across a letter blowing in the wind, a letter written by one of my peers.  I got his next of kin's permission to present it in you.

To my friends:

Like most of you, I used to think all these face masks were just the latest craze among the housed, not something we homeless could or should concern ourselves with.  But then I saw an article in The Seattle Times that explained how and why we homeless people should wear them too.

I had to think about it a bit, but finally I concluded that in times that turn grocery workers and pizza delivery guys into heroes, this is our own chance at heroism.  Sure, I'll miss eating and drinking, but it'll only be for a few days, right?

Tell ____ ________ about this, please.  ___ is my next of kin, but hasn't been proud of me for years; now I can finally hold my head high in front of ___ again, at least in spirit.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Something to think about, dear Diary.  I'm going back downtown tomorrow, and then putting new wheels on the cart.  Then I expect to spend a few days visiting parks and telling you all about them.