Library Hours Six Months Later, part VI: Other local governmental libraries

Dear Diary,

This page goes in this order:  municipality libraries, school district libraries, tribal libraries, county libraries.

I have different criteria for inclusion in this part and subsequent ones.  In this part and the next, I'm listing all libraries known to me, primarily from the Washington State Library's library database, that are owned by units of government.  I'm covering in more detail those that were, before the pandemic, open to the general public without a fee.  I take for granted that all are within buildings that have restrooms and water fountains.  Library cards, let alone ones that are free for Seattleites, aren't a criterion anywhere but public libraries in this page; going forward, "open to the public" is the replacement criterion.

But I also demand that the library have at least basic documentation online.  Its address, its hours, and whether it is, in fact, open to the public.  (I'm willing to infer that last from a few indicators:  Does the library invite people to visit?  Does it emphasise that library cards aren't available to all visitors?)  Libraries without their own Web pages (and this part notes many such) are highly unlikely to meet these criteria.

Libraries owned by municipalities

I remember reading that Seattle had a municipal law library, but closed it because there were so many others in town, and specifically the UW's.  Google now professes to know nothing of this; ditto, near as I can tell, The Seattle Times.  In any event, that means the heading of this section is a cheat, because the libraries database, the main tool I'm using for lists of governmental libraries, currently knows of only one municipal library other than public libraries in western Washington, and I don't know of any others myself.

The Seattle Municipal Archives

The Seattle Municipal Archives, before the pandemic, were open to the public, 8 A.M. to 4:45 P.M. Mondays through Fridays, but preferred that one make an appointment first.   They're now "open by appointment only with limited capacity".  They're in Seattle's City Hall, which definitely does have restrooms and water fountains open to the public, but the public area of the Archives is limited to one "research room", to enter which one must sign in, and in which "food and drink" aren't allowed.

Libraries owned by school districts

No, dear Diary, I'm not going there, encouraging homeless people to go to grade schools to use the restrooms.  I doubt most public schools in western Washington are open to the public - certainly the Seattle ones aren't.  So while I certainly hope most of them have libraries (which can't be taken for granted), those libraries aren't on-topic for you.

Jefferson County, in particular, may be an exception:  the Jefferson County Library explicitly says:  "Through a consortium agreement, Jefferson County Library cardholders have access to materials from the ... Port Townsend, Quilcene, and Brinnon School libraries."  But since I've never had a JCL card, I can't know that it really is an exception.  Maybe materials from the school libraries are only available by placing holds, as with materials in KCLS's administrative building.

For all I know, school districts in western Washington may have district libraries open to the public, as opposed to individual school libraries not open to the public, but if they exist at all, they aren't known to the libraries database that's my source.

Anyway, let's go on.

Libraries owned by Indian tribes

Because I'm not myself Indian by most definitions (although family legend, as is true of many white people in America, claims a 19th century Cherokee ancestress), I'm treating this section as something of an ethical minefield.  Sorry for some stilted wording, dear Diary.

The first question here is to define an American "Indian tribe".

There are twenty-five organisations, and a lot of individuals, mostly members of those organisations, in western Washington, that and who would very much like everyone to define "American Indian tribe" as "federally recognized American Indian tribe".  By which standard, only those twenty-five organisations, in western Washington, meet the definition.

Some states recognise tribes the federal government doesn't, but Washington appears not to be one of those states.  The American Library Association, however, "would also like to recognize Duwamish, Wanapum, and Chinook, these tribes are not recognized by the U.S. federal government but have had a long history in present-day Washington".  Given the topic of this page, I should respect the ALA even when it's being ungrammatical.  Now, since I live in Seattle, I know that several of the twenty-five are fiercely opposed to any government recognising, in particular, the organisation that calls itself Duwamish.  The Muckleshoot even maintain (and heavily advertise) a website arguing their case.  I strongly suspect similar situations obtain concerning the other two, but since I'm not a member of any of the twenty-five organisations, and certainly not a government, I'm not obliged to oblige them.  That said, the Wanapum are in eastern Washington anyway.

Next, how do I define "library" ?  The Washington State Library lists 21 libraries of "Type" "Special Library", "Category" "Native American Library", in western Washington.  (Plus six more in eastern Washington.)  Some belong to other categories - public libraries, academic; these I mention in the second list, but don't discuss in detail.  I also incorporate into both lists, as appropriate, whatever I can learn about libraries related to the other four federally recognised tribes, and the Duwamish and Chinook.  Each set is in order by distance from my house.

Many of the places referred to are on land which appears, on the maps available to me, to be part of the relevant reservation.  When I say "on the reservation" this is what I mean, without expressing any opinion on the legal ownership of the land.

The Jamestown S'Klallam Tribal Library

The Jamestown-S'Klallam Tribal Library is 39.33 miles from my house, on the reservation, in unincorporated Blyn.  It doesn't have library cards (PDF, page 6 of 38), but checks its materials out only to people who've registered with it.  It has a service area, which consists (if I'm analysing the ZIP codes listed correctly) of Clallam and Jefferson counties; people who live outside that service area may register to borrow materials, but only at the librarian's discretion.  Registration requires picture ID.  However, according to the website, the library currently only offers "curbside" service [1], and only Mondays through Thursdays, hours not specified; it says it's closed Saturdays and Sundays, and it doesn't account for Fridays.  As of February 20, 2020 it was open 9 A.M. to 5 P.M. Mondays through Fridays.

[1] The Seattle Public Library's "curbside" service required everyone to get out of their cars and basically end up near the library doors, so was in no meaningful sense "curbside".  It was outside, which was undoubtedly better for public health, but it wasn't curbside.   I don't know how others did it, but am suspicious of all.  This is just the first library still "curbside"-only to come up in this page.

The Nisqually Tribal Library

The Nisqually Tribal Library is 50.94 miles from my house, on the reservation, with an Olympia address.  It is open to the public, but only people within six degrees of tribal membership (it's actually a pretty well thought out policy; PDF, page 8 of 14) can get library cards.  The Internet Archive doesn't preserve pre-pandemic hours, but the cited PDF says it should be open 9 A.M. to 5 P.M. Mondays through Fridays.  According to the website, however, it hasn't re-opened yet - "curbside" again.

The Samish Indian Nation Library

The Samish Indian Nation Library is 55.25 miles from my house, in Anacortes.  It appears to be open to the general public, but it looks like only tribal members and people from the area can get library cards.  It's open Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 9 A.M. to 1 P.M., and no, in this case that doesn't seem to mean "curbside", but actually open.

The Shoalwater Bay Tribal Community Library and Heritage Museum

The Shoalwater Bay Tribal Community Library's Web page doesn't talk about access, hours, or cards; the museum seems not even to have a Web page.  But because of the library's deal with Timberland Regional Library (covered in part II), its hours are documented:  they were 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. Monday through Friday before the pandemic, and are now 9 A.M. to 5 P.M.  And surely if it's a TRL location, in part, it's open to the public, and yes, Seattleites can get cards - but they're probably only good for the TRL materials there, not the library's own, and I don't know whether the library's staff can supply TRL cards onsite.  NB:  The libraries database has an incorrect address for this one, though it's just across the street.  Speaking of which, the distance calculator I've been using threw a hissy fit on both addresses, insisting they're much closer than they actually are.  So it's about 103 miles from my house.

Other tribal libraries, and lacks thereof

• The Duwamish Tribe, which is not federally recognised, has recently opened a  Longhouse & Cultural Center, but I see no evidence that it includes a library or that the tribe has one elsewhere.  It's open 10 A.M. to 5 P.M., Tuesdays through Saturdays, I'm not sure it has an admission fee, and it presumably has restrooms and water fountains in an area pretty lacking in public ones; it's 7.98 miles from my house.  Nothing of the Duwamish is listed in the libraries database.
  
• The Suquamish Tribe has, on their Port Madison Reservation, a Suquamish Tribal Library.  It's referred to as being on the second floor of a school, but both of the tribe's schools have different addresses about a mile away.  That said, it's meant to provide help to students and "Tribal Members", so I don't know that it's open to the non-tribal public.  Its hours were and are noon to 3:30 P.M., Monday through Friday, and it's 12.03 miles from my house.  The tribal archives, the library tells us, aren't there but at the Suquamish Museum, which is open 10 A.M. to 5 P.M., Monday through Friday, requiring masks, and whose web page is so close-lipped that it doesn't state the admission fee I assume the museum has.  Nothing of the Suquamish is listed in the libraries database.
  
• The Port Gamble S'Klallam Tribe is represented in the Washington State Library database by the Little Boston branch of the Kitsap Regional Library, already covered, 16.66 miles.  A search of the tribal website for "library" turned up one reference to KRL and two to Little Boston, which is on the reservation.
• The Snoqualmie Tribe doesn't seem to have a library of its own, and most of its members don't live on its reservations.  But the more prominent reservation has parts of the City of Snoqualmie in all four directions, and King County Library System's Snoqualmie branch, already covered in part II, is pretty certainly the nearest public library, 23.46 miles.  Nothing of the Snoqualmie is listed in the libraries database.
  
• The Tulalip Tribes operate the Hibulb Cultural Center, 26.79 miles, on the reservation though the address is sometimes treated as being in Marysville.  It holds a library with materials on Tulalip matters.  HCC charges admission, except to tribe members, HCC members and children 5 and under.  HCC opens at 10 A.M. Tuesdays through Fridays, noon weekends, and closes at 5 P.M.; it's closed Mondays.  If there's a separate Tulalip tribal library, it isn't much documented.  A Tulalip homeless shelter is better documented, so at least they have good priorities.
• Google tells me the word "library" isn't at the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe's website, but KCLS's Muckleshoot branch, 31.48 miles, already covered in part II, is on the reservation.  The Muckleshoot Tribal Schools also appear to have a library.  Nothing of the Muckleshoot is listed in the libraries database.
  
• The Puyallup Tribe of Indians operates the Chief Leschi Schools, school building 32.17 miles, in Puyallup.  The database lists the secondary school library as having Puyallup tribal materials.  There's also a Culture Department (Facebook page), whose hours are listed as 9 A.M. to 5 P.M. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and noon to 7 P.M. Tuesdays and Thursdays, and which may be open to the public.  There are occasional references (PDFs, the second 211 pages, both towards the end) to a "Puyallup tribal library", but I don't know whether either of these, or something else, is meant.
• The Stillaguamish Tribe of Indians is listed in the database as having a library under the Education Department.  The department is there, but I didn't find any sign of a library, not that that actually proves anything.  The database's address, 38.33 miles, is on the reservation, Arlington address, and Google Earth makes it look a halfway plausible place for a library.
  
• The Skokomish Indian Tribe appears to have a library, the maintenance of which is the work of the Cultural Resources Department, but also definitely has a "learning center", run by the Education Department, the latter being what the libraries database lists.  Both departments, if not both actual resources, are in the same building, 45.35 miles, on the reservation, Shelton address.
• The Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, according to the libraries database, has a library run by the person who also handles child care and toddlers.  All I got when I searched for that library at their website was a whole lot of evidence that they're in the La Conner Regional Library's district.  The database's address, 51.46 miles, is on the reservation, La Conner address; that building could definitely hold a library.
  
• The Squaxin Island Tribe has both a Cultural Resources Department and an Education one, but the only library referred to on their website is also the one listed in the libraries database, 52.09 miles, owned by a private non-profit, so it belongs in the part or parts after the governmental libraries.
  
• The Sauk-Suiattle Indian Tribe is currently advertising for an education director (PDF), one of whose duties would be "Develops, updates, monitors library for checkouts, adequacy of materials and related matters."  So there must be a library.  The address in the database, 57.22 miles, is on the reservation, which is in Skagit County, but is given as in Darrington, Snohomish County.
• The Upper Skagit Indian Tribe, like the Swinomish and the Stillaguamish nearby, is listed in the libraries database as having an Education Department library, but doesn't mention it at its website.  The address in the database, on the reservation though stated as Sedro-Woolley, 60.18 miles; I don't see a building there.
  
• The Lower Elhwa Klallam Tribe appears to operate or to have operated a library, as attested by a page that doesn't discuss hours or access and an expired catalogue.  The address given in the database is the main tribal address (65.18 miles, on the reservation, Port Angeles address), and the librarian named is still listed on the website as education director, so my guess is that the books really are there.
• The Chehalis Tribe, aka The Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation, are headquartered 71.49 miles from my house.  I find no evidence that there's a library on the reservation.  TRL's Oakville branch is probably closest.  Nothing of the Confederated Tribes or of the Chehalis is listed in the libraries database.
  
• The Lummi Nation is represented in the libraries database by the library of Northwest Indian College, 78.47 miles, which was already on my list of academic libraries to cover in later parts.  The college is on the reservation, with a Bellingham address.  The tribal website's search function found no references to "library" or "Libraries", and the organisation chart (tiny PDF) doesn't mention either a library or librarians.
• The Nooksack Indian Tribe [2] has a library, 79.52 miles, near the reservation in unincorporated Deming.  That library is attested not only by a librarian listed as a staffer in the education department, but by a 2020 reading challenge page that includes an actual photo of shelves with books on them.  However, it isn't attested by an actual website.
  
• The Quinault Indian Nation has a Department of Cultural Resources which doesn't have a website.  Its manager is listed in the libraries database as the manager of the Quinault library, address (94.44 miles, not the main government address) in Taholah, on the reservation, also said to include a museum; Open Street Map shows a large building there.
  
• The Hoh Tribe operates a Hoh Tribal Library (Facebook page) on the reservation, 97.29 miles (not near Forks though the address has that for city); access and hours don't seem to be documented online.  It seems to be heavily focused on kids, and the Hoh Tribe website lists the librarian under family services.
• The Chinook Indian Nation, which is not federally recognised but was recognised for a year and a half two decades ago, has an education committee to administer a scholarship, and a culture committee to carry on lifeways, but Google claims its website nowhere uses the word "library".  Its headquarters is about 105 miles from my house.  Nothing of the Chinook is listed in the libraries database.
  
• The Quileute Nation operates the Quileute Tribal School, 108.34 miles, on the reservation, not close to Forks either but has a La Push address, whose library is the one in the libraries database.
  
• The Cowlitz Indian Tribe has its headquarters at 1055 9th Ave, Suite B, Longview.  The database says its library is in Suite D; that's 110.38 miles.  The listed staffer runs or ran a child care program based a block away.  However, the only library I find on searching the website is a St. Mary's Library, where various tribal events happen; turns out the tribe owns and uses for housing the buildings of an old mission in Toledo, only 86.57 miles.  I have no meaningful information about either possible library.  The reservation is reputedly in Ridgefield, even farther from me than Longview; these places are in three counties, which can't be all that convenient for Cowlitz Indian Tribe members.
• The Makah Tribe operates the Makah Cultural & Research Center, 115.36 miles, in Neah Bay, on the reservation.  It charges admission except to MCRC members and children under 5.  Its Archives and Library Department is open weekdays 10 A.M. to 4 P.M.
  

[2] Yes, this is the Nooksack Indian Tribe of disenrollment fame, but that doesn't make their library an un-library.

Libraries owned by counties

According to the libraries database, there are two kinds of libraries owned by counties in western Washington:  county law libraries, which each county in western Washington is required by RCW 27.24 to have, except Wahkiakum County which has one anyway; and libraries established by two departments of King County.

County Law Libraries

Not all have websites, and not all are required to be open to the public, although most were, before the pandemic.  They are not allowed to give actual legal advice, but can assist visitors in some ways.  I doubt many lend their books to non-lawyers, but haven't focused on that, so could be wrong.

Here's a directory.

And here's a list of those with websites, currently open to the public.

The Internet Archive rarely has the same URL pre-pandemic, and I haven't belaboured the possibilities here as I did with the public libraries, so I can only occasionally compare pre-pandemic hours.  All hours are Mondays through Fridays unless otherwise indicated.  If a library is not in the county seat, I so indicate.  Few put rules of conduct online; I think visitors, including homeless ones, should assume that all reasonably possible rules must be followed.

• The King County Law Library has two branches, in Seattle and Kent, both currently closing at 4:30 P.M.; the Seattle one opens at 8 A.M., Kent at 8:30.  Before the pandemic, Kent also closed from 2 to 3 P.M., so it's actually increased its hours.
• The Kitsap County Law Library is open 8:30 A.M. to 4:30 P.M., unchanged according to the Internet Archive's copious record.
• The Pierce County Law Library has three branches, in Tacoma, Gig Harbor and Lakewood.  My best guess is that the 8:30 A.M. to 4:30 P.M. schedule seen on the home page is for the Tacoma branch.  The other two are in the Pierce County Library System branches of the same names, and Gig Harbor explicitly keeps the same hours, so the Lakewood branch (whose page is a mess) probably does too.  So anyone who really needs to do legal research in the evening should seriously consider visiting western Pierce County.  That said, I've visited both PCLS branches more than once without noticing law books in them.
  
• The Island County Law Library is currently open to the public 9 A.M. to 2 P.M. Mondays through Wednesdays.
  
• The Skagit County Law Library is currently open to the public 8:30 A.M. to noon, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, with limited capacity, so they encourage appointments.
• The Grays Harbor County Law Library is currently open to the public 8 A.M. to 5 P.M.
• The Cowlitz County Law Library is currently open to the public 8:30 A.M. to 4:30 P.M.  Entry requires ID.  They say they've jettisoned their law books in favour of Lexis/Nexis.
• The Clark County Law Library is currently open to the public 9 A.M. to 2 P.M. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.  It is set to re-open Tuesdays and Thursdays, same hours, on May 2.
  

Three counties you may, dear Diary, have expected to see in the previous list:

• The Snohomish County Law Library "is currently closed for the month of May."
  
• The Thurston County Law Library, like eight others in substantially less populous counties, appears to lack a web page.  One page suggests that there's an extra location, or branch, at the Family and Juvenile Court, which is in Tumwater, while the main Superior Court location is in Olympia.  Maybe that's why they haven't gotten around to a web page yet.
  
• The Whatcom County Law Library "is temporarily closed to the public due to current rise of COVID illness.  This status will be revisited on February 15, 2022." 
  

Well, I knew many lawyers were rich, but I sure didn't know they'd mastered time travel.  (And come to think of it, I have a friend from college who became a law librarian, and as far as I know she's neither rich nor a time traveller.  Hmm.)

Other King County libraries

The Department of Natural Resources and Parks Technical Document and Research Center is open by appointment only, same as in 2017, so is off-topic for you, dear Diary:  nobody makes an appointment to use running water.  The Local Hazardous Waste Management Program had a Library in 2018 before the pandemic, and in 2020 during the pandemic, but now appears to have only an online document library.  So this heading is a cheat too; instead of King County having two extra libraries where a homeless person might hope to find hygiene, it has zero.

So that's a bad note to end on, but anyway, those are all the libraries known to me owned by local governmental units in western Washington.  Next part, the state and federal ones, plus one odder example, after Easter.  I hope you have fun, dear Diary, looking for Easter eggs.  Until we meet again, happy nights and days.

 

 

Library Hours Six Months Later, part V: Public libraries - errata, analysis, comments

Dear Diary,

First of all, I have to make some corrections and updates.  I've now heard back from Jeannie Allen, Kitsap Regional Library's PR person, about the things I left uncertain in part II.  She indicates that homeless people can get the same kind of card as anyone else, and that KRL (which offers cards to residents of areas in Washington that support public libraries) does not offer cards to non-residents of those areas for fees.  She also notes that using the computers at KRL branches doesn't require a card.

I glossed over Tacoma Public Library's Eastside Microlibrary, at the Eastside Community Center, in part II because I still don't know its pre-pandemic hours, and am decreasingly hopeful that they're documented online.

I hope this is the last error, but it's a doozy.  While doing the calculations underlying this part, I found a bunch of errors in my calculations for the previous parts, mainly for the Timberland Regional Library.  In particular, Amanda Park, the TRL library at the Quinault Reservation, did not have the uniquely least pre-pandemic hours at TRL; it shared that honour with Oakville, at 26 hours per week.  And six locations, not five, are now at the same number of hours as before the pandemic.  I've put the spreadsheet I've worked from in my Google Drive folder, so anyone who really wants can find any more mistakes.  In the meantime I've edited the paragraphs about TRL in part II, but for those who've already read it, those are the errata.

OK, now that's over with, dear Diary, let's play a game.  Can you call four coin flips?

My public school days generally ended sometime around 3 P.M.  Seattle Public Schools' bell schedules indicate that forty years later, things are more or less similar.

So I divided the hours of all the public libraries where Seattleites are, or might be, able to get free library cards, into three buckets.  Morning hours are from opening to 3 P.M., Monday through Friday.  Evening hours are from 3 P.M. to closing, Monday through Thursday.  And weekend hours are from 3 P.M. Friday to opening Monday.  In all cases, I'm using the hours on my spreadsheet; I'm not tracking all these libraries' hours going forward, so if anything's already changed, too late.

Then the four coin flips are these:  1) Which libraries have increased total hours?  I'm counting only locations which (I assume) have desks, librarians, reference books, and computers, i.e. places where students can work on reports.  In practice, this means mostly regular branch libraries.  2) Which have increased morning hours?  3) How about evening hours?  4) And weekend hours?

Increased Total Hours

Increased Morning Hours

There are four cases here:  these libraries may have increased or decreased evening hours, and may have increased or decreased weekend hours.  Similarly for the other sections like this.

Timberland Regional Library has increased its total hours, counting only its regular branches and its partnerships with the North River School District (apparently not currently operating) and with the Shoalwater Bay Tribal Community Library (still going), and counting the two new branches and the schedule the Shelton branch was keeping before it closed for maintenance, from 1,074 to 1,180, nearly 10%.  It has also increased its morning hours, from 529 to 618.

The Puyallup Public Library has increased its total hours from 51 to 53, nearly 4%.  It has also increased its morning hours, from 25 to 27.

Whatcom County Library System has increased its total hours from 439 to 444, or just over 1%, if one counts the schedule the Sumas branch was keeping before it closed due to flooding.  It's also increased its morning hours, from 184 to 199.

Curiously, these three all fall under the same case.  All three have decreased evening hours and increased weekend hours.  TRL went from 305 evening hours to 271, and from 240 weekend hours to 291.  PPL went from 17 to 16 evening hours, and from 9 to 10 weekend hours.  And WCLS went from 156 to 144 evening hours, and from 99 to 101 weekend hours.

What's more, I don't have to do the next section at all.  No public library, of the group of concern here, increased its total hours without increasing its morning hours.

Isn't all this clumping strange, dear Diary?  I mean, we're flipping these coins fifteen times.  What are the odds?

Decreased Total Hours

Increased Morning Hours

Kitsap Regional Library has gone from 436 to 360 total hours, but from 198 to 225 morning hours, counting the schedule the Manchester branch was keeping before it recently closed for remodeling.  (The morning hour change represents opening at 10 A.M. instead of 1 P.M. on Thursdays at each of the nine branches, as discussed in part II.)

Pierce County Library System, not counting its Administrative Center (which has librarians and books but not study space), has gone from 986 to 851 total hours, but from 403 to 428 morning hours.

North Olympic Library System has gone from 200 to 190 total hours, but from 97 to 100 morning hours.

Again, these all fit in the same bucket:  All three of these library systems have decreased both evening and weekend hours.  At KRL, evening hours have gone from 140 to 72, and weekend ones from 100 to 63.  At PCLS, evening hours have dropped from 377 to 218, and weekend ones from 206 to 205.  And at NOLS, there used to be 70 evening hours, now 59, and 33 weekend ones, now 31.

This isn't much like flipping coins at all, is it, dear Diary?

Decreased Morning Hours

There are five libraries in this group, and one of them is actually not like the others.  Let's watch.

The Seattle Public Library has gone from 1,403 to 1,298 total hours, and from 522 to 483 morning hours.

King County Library System has gone from 2,884 to 1,827 total hours, and from 1,151 to 791 morning hours.  This includes the Kent branch which has re-opened (from a fire) while I've worked on this page, but not the Renton branch, which hasn't, and whose last hours captured at the Internet Archive clearly represent an earlier stage of KCLS's re-opening.  It also excludes the administrative building and Redmond Ridge, neither of which appears to have study space or reference books.  Finally, although the Kent Panther Lake branch opened before the pandemic, I don't know its schedule then, so it's only counted after the pandemic.

Sno-Isle Libraries have gone from 1,295 to 1,184 total hours, and from 583 to 556 morning hours.

The Port Townsend Public Library has gone from 55 to 45 total hours, and from 25 to 20 morning hours.

And Central Skagit Library District has gone from 54 to 46 total hours, and from 25 to 24 morning hours.  This is the distinctive one.  All of these libraries have fewer evening hours than before the pandemic, too, but CSLD has gone from 9 to 10 weekend hours; the other four are down weekend hours too.

So let's look at those.  SPL has gone from 488 to 449 evening hours, and from 393 to 366 weekend hours.  KCLS had 1,110 evening hours, now 629, and 617 weekend hours, now 407.  SIL was open 395 evening hours, now 315, and 317 weekend hours, now 313.  And PTPL offered 16 evening hours, now 12, and 14 weekend hours, now 13.  Finally, CSLD's evening hours fell from 20 to 12.

So I hope you're beginning to see a pattern here, dear Diary, but you'll also have noticed we're still short four libraries.  This is because I neglected the case where libraries have neither increased nor decreased one of the numbers.

Same Morning Hours

Two libraries - well, all right, five libraries in two systems - have kept the same morning hours.  As you might expect by now, dear Diary, both have decreased both evening and weekend hours, and as a result their total hours have decreased.

The Everett Public Library has gone from 114 total hours to 108.  This represents four fewer evening hours (36 to 32) and two fewer weekend (28 to 26).  Morning hours have re-opened to 50.

The Bellingham Public Library has gone from 112 total hours to 96.  This results from four fewer evening hours (28 to 24) and twelve fewer weekend (37 to 25).  Morning hours are again 47.

Same Total Hours and Morning Hours

Two libraries are back to their pre-pandemic schedules in full, without trading evening hours for morning and weekend ones.

The Tacoma Public Library, excluding the Eastside kiosk (which I doubt has study space or reference books), but counting the Main Library (which doesn't currently have study space or reference books), had and has 128 morning hours, 104 evening hours, and 88 weekend hours, for total hours 320.

The Camas Public Library was and is open 54 hours per week, of which 25 are morning, 18 evening, and 11 weekend.

Rage, Rage, against the Dying of the Light

So what does it mean, dear Diary?  It means that by and large, libraries near Seattle and scattered through the rest of western Washington are not open evenings much yet.  It means that the sense I got as I watched the reductions in evening hours at one pillar after another of the library systems familiar to me - Seattle Central, KCLS Bellevue, PCLS's major branches - and of those not familiar to me - SIL Lynnwood, TRL Olympia - was not mistaken:  closing times have gotten earlier almost everywhere.

Not in Tacoma, and not in Camas.  I wish their examples were being more widely followed.

But among the rest, SPL actually looks exceptionally good.  It has re-opened 93% of its morning hours, 92% of its evening hours, and 93% of its weekend hours.  In contrast, the numbers for KCLS are respectively 69%, 57% and 66%.  For SIL, 95%, 80% and 99%.  For KRL, 114%, 51% and 63%.  For TRL, 117%, 89% and 121%.  For PCLS, 106%, 58% and 100%.  For WCLS, 108%, 92% and 102%.  My point here is not these numbers' absolute values, but the fact that SPL, alone of the nearby big systems (again, except TPL), has evidently tried to balance them.  Everywhere else the pre-existing evening hours have taken more than their fair share of the cuts, or have even helped pay for increases at other times.

Susan Hempstead of SIL warned me that post-pandemic hours needn't actually be the same as pre-pandemic hours.  After all, the goal is to get the hours right for the community, and not to preserve a particular configuration in amber.  But I find it hard to believe that what's right for every community in western Washington except Seattle (and Tacoma and Camas) is to get rid of evening hours.

Who benefits from the morning hours that now dominate many western Washington public libraries' schedules?  Homeless people, for one.  The unemployed generally.  People who work third shift, and some of those who work second shift.  Non-working parents of small children.  School groups.  People who visit libraries on work hours, or for lunch.

Who benefits from weekend hours?  Almost everyone who doesn't work in retail.

Who benefits from evening hours?  The homeless.  People who work first shift (the great majority of employed people, as witness rush hour).  And above all, students.

I think what's happening is that most libraries are finding it hard to fill all their pre-pandemic hours with enough staff, because of the labour shortage, because being a librarian, especially in a public library, is a high-contact job and there's still a pandemic, and because of budget issues (but, um, when are there not budget issues?).  And I think evening hours are the first to be cut because librarians themselves may not wish to work evenings, and workers have more power right now.  So the libraries are trying to make up for the lights going out at night by opening more in the daytime, both weekdays and weekends.  In essence, betting that enough adults and little children will be glad of longer Saturday hours or unexpectedly open Sundays to drown out the older children and teenagers who needed those evening hours.

Other comments

The Wrong Side of the Tracks

We've seen that public libraries near or on Indian reservations tend to have the shortest hours - KRL's Little Boston (Jamestown Port Gamble S'Klallam), TRL's Amanda Park (Quinault), PCLS's Fife (Puyallup), WCLS's Island (Lummi) - but there are exceptions - KCLS's Muckleshoot, WCLS's Deming (Nooksack), arguably SIL's Darrington (Sauk-Suiattle, but some distance away, and mostly across the Skagit County line).  [Correction April 16.]

We've also seen that the Shoalwater Bay Tribal Community Library had, before the pandemic, the longest hours in Pacific County.  (Now it's tied with TRL's Ocean Park branch.)  Tribal libraries seem to require more work from me than I can give them in this part of this page; I now intend, before going on to the academic libraries, to write a part about them and about county law libraries.  But my point here is that the library systems we non-Indians call "public" don't consistently treat reservations' residents all that well.

It may seem that I'm trying to compliment SPL for not treating badly the Indian reservations Seattle doesn't include, but actually I'm after something else entirely.  Among SPL's libraries, surely the NewHolly branch is as wrong side of the tracks as they get.  And I don't think it's any kind of coincidence that NewHolly not only had the shortest schedule (in common with a bunch of other branches) before the pandemic, but has been the slowest to re-open - the last to physically open its doors, and now the one with the shortest hours, the only one open just four days per week.

(Instead, I'll give KCLS a half-compliment.  Its Greenbridge branch had, before the pandemic, a schedule way too similar to NewHolly's now, though with more hours.  But its White Center and Skyway branches kept the regular schedule, albeit without Sunday hours, just like Muckleshoot.)

I doubt very much this is actual overt racism, at SPL or at any of the other libraries I'm pointing to here.  I instead suspect that this, too, gets back to labour supply.  Probably NewHolly, Little Boston, and so forth aren't as attractive places to work as others in their respective systems.  No doubt one reason evening hours are currently hard to fill is the well-publicised violent crime wave; well, the wrong side of the tracks is classically the most violent place.  But this is an excellent example of what people younger than myself call "structural racism".  And as long as librarians are scared of the wrong side of the tracks, so serve it less quantity and less quality than other places, it'll stay the wrong side.

Sunday, Bloody Sunday

Quite a few libraries that were normally open on Sundays are currently closed those days.  This is no surprise.  But a small number are now open on Sundays that didn't used to be, and another small number are open longer hours on Sundays than they used to be.

Libraries open Sundays that weren't so before the pandemic:  KCLS's Black Diamond, Duvall, Federal Way 320th, Kenmore, Skyway, Snoqualmie and White Center branches; none from any other system.

Libraries open longer on Sundays than they were before the pandemic:  KCLS's Auburn, Des Moines, Fairwood, Kirkland, Lake Hills (in Bellevue), Mercer Island, Newport Way (in Bellevue), Renton Highlands, Sammamish; again, none from any other system.

As an artifact of the way KCLS is dealing with the labour shortage - primarily, full-day closures, with shorter (evening) hours only secondary - one third of its branches are now open a full eight-hour day each Sunday, which didn't have that before.

Now, suburbanites are famously less prone to rioting than city-dwellers, so maybe I'm being excessively concerned here, but I think KCLS is going to find it really difficult to put this genie back into its bottle.  How many of those sixteen communities are going to be happy to give up those Sunday hours?  We've seen that libraries throughout western Washington appear to be using weekend hours to console for the loss of evening hours.  That implies that weekend hours are valued by the public, and no wonder.  So what does KCLS expect will happen, assuming it eventually tries to go back to weekends as they were before?

Money Changes Everything

Tacoma Public Library has restored its full (if mingy) hours, Puyallup Public Library has actually increased its hours, but Pierce County Library System, while at or above full morning and weekend hours, is way down on evening hours, so it's at 86% over all.

Seattle Public Library is 93% back; King County Library System is 63% back.

Everett Public Library is 95% back; Sno-Isle Libraries, 91%.

Bellingham Public Library is 86% back; Whatcom County Library System, 101%.

Apparently, in some counties city budgets have recovered faster than suburban or rural property taxes, while in others, not so much.  I don't know why, but I sure hope each relevant library has at least one employee who does know.

Different Is Not Dead

SPL and PCLS have made their schedules substantially more diverse.  I started this section thinking that quite a lot of other library systems have reduced their schedule diversity, but actually, that's not true.

I noted above that the "pillars" of various library systems - the ones with the largest collections and longest hours - were closing earlier.  I thought many library systems had also reduced diversity at the low end, kept the shortest-hours libraries at their existing schedules, or even increased their hours.  But this isn't true of SPL NewHolly, or to a lesser extent the other "little" SPL branches, and although KCLS Skykomish gained one hour, it's still open half as much as many KCLS branches.  Similarly for TPL's Eastside and PCLS's Anderson Island community center kiosks.  BPL has maintained the gap between its Central Library and its branches; EPL has created one that didn't exist before.  WCLS actually has several branches open only a third as many hours as its flagship ones, a difference even more severe now than it was before the pandemic.

TPL stands out because it actually conformed its Main Library to its branches' schedule just before the pandemic; so yes, now I do have documentation of most of TPL's locations pre-pandemic schedules, and not just a photograph of a sign (a sign which I didn't see on my most recent visit anyway).  KRL has reduced schedule diversity to just a few hours.  But these are the exceptions, not the rules.

Another kind of different has died more, though.  KRL used to open at 1 P.M. Thursdays, but now opens at 10 A.M. every day.  (On the other hand, PPL now opens at noon on Wednesdays.)  Many SIL locations used to open at 9 A.M. some weekdays; now they all open at 10 A.M.  (On the other hand, lots of TRL locations that used to open at 10 now open at 9 A.M., so as to close at 6 P.M. instead of 7 P.M.)

So I seem to be running out of comments on public library hours, dear Diary, and obviously should just shut up instead.  Next part, county law libraries, Indian tribal libraries, and anything else even more exotic.  Then the academic libraries.  No predictions as to when, but I need to get out of the house each day this weekend, so nothing too soon.  Happy days and nights until we meet again, dear Diary.

Another Hike in Lake City

Dear Diary,

On Wednesday, May 12, I started by going back to Lake City for several reasons.  First, to see whether anything had changed with regard to Little Brook Park's closed restroom and shut-off water fountain.  Second, because I'd forgotten to check whether Albert Davis Park's water fountain was running while I was there.  And third...

See, I'd started using Open Street Map the day before.  This wasn't really practical on my phone, I had thought, while hiking, because Open Street Map doesn't have a phone app.  (It worked OK when I tried it Wednesday, though, although the auto-locator feature of Google Maps is often important, and OSM lacks that too.)  Also, and more importantly, I dreaded trying to edit images on my phone, so I couldn't really do anything with maps except use them to guide my hikes.  Hence maps showing up in you, dear Diary, a few weeks after I bought a laptop.

Well, one important difference between Open Street Map and Google Maps is that Open Street Map maps woods.  Because I still haven't figured out where one six-acre park property is, as mentioned in the previous page, I was looking for woods.  Now, the only unaccounted-for woods on the North Fork of Thornton Creek, which the property's name indicates, are outside the region I was hiking, between I-5 and Lake City Way, but I figured I should get some practise in looking for Open Street Map's woods so as to be prepared.

So on May 11 and 12 I went carefully through this region and the two I'd already done, looking for green, unaccounted-for, on Open Street Map when I magnified the map such that, usually, five north-south blocks (for example 35th to 40th Streets) filled the screen.  I only found three such places in the second region, southern "NW".  There were eight in the first region, southern "N" and southwestern "NE", all but one in Fremont, and most of those adjacent to Aurora Ave N.  And there were eleven in the region I was going back to, including some vast areas.  So that would be my test.

Here's the unaltered Open Street Map presentation of most of the part of Lake City I was hiking, at the same scale as the maps I've been showing you, dear Diary.  Can you spot the four places I wanted to investigate?

Here's the same map, marked with the places I looked at.  Note that Albert Davis Park is actually off the map to the south.

Finally, here's the front page of the day's newspaper, for recognising it better in the photos from the entire Wednesday hike:

Now let's get started.

Little Brook Park

The only change in the restroom and water fountain is that this time I photographed them with the newspaper I'd brought along.  I've already shown you, dear Diary, the first photo.

Here's the other:

(And isn't it wonderful to see in that headline that a local government actually cares about Seattle's homeless?)

That's all I did in Little Brook Park that day.

Private Yards and Schoolyards

Open Street Map doesn't show, at any level of magnification, people's private front, side, or back yards.  Except when it does.  Northern Lake City includes some very large housing developments.  Some of these have very large yards.  And for some reason Open Street Map thinks two of these are worth singling out in green.  It even names one of them.  If someone goes to "Sherwood dog area" as shown on Open Street Map, one block from Little Brook Park, this is what greets her:

The other, considerably larger, property Open Street Map greens is way off to the west.  I found one of similar size also near Little Brook, but OSM doesn't bother with that one.  The one they do green has this sign:

To be fair, OSM did warn me about the third place, that it was adjacent to a school, I just ignored that.  I didn't bother photographing their sign.

So at this point Open Street Map was 0 for 3, but then...

NE 133rd St trail

This one is in fact parklike and open to the public.  It's the block between 27th and 28th Avenues NE, which are the avenues on either side of the library, Albert Davis Park, and so on, and I can imagine reasons for cutting 133rd off there, but in any event, Lake City is under-parked, so every bit helps, even one as small as a single block of unimproved street.

 

It even has parklike signage, threatening all manner of evildoers but especially negligent dog walkers:

Albert Davis Park

I found a copy of the notice that was given of the sweep:

I did what I came for, and no, of course the water fountain wasn't running.

I observed that the boundaries of the notionally closed park remained unclear even with keep-out tape:

It only occurs to me as I write this that I visited this closed park twice during the week it was closed, a week that was supposed to serve the purpose of getting the park back into shape, both visits were during the day, and I didn't observe a single employee of the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation actually present, or at least not - it's not like I've memorised the faces of every parks department staffer - doing anything to improve the park's state.

Near the spot shown in the last photo is one piece of genuinely neat stuff, a "shrine" to Will Rogers at what it claims was the site of his last rodeo:

One thing that does bring to mind, though.  Both Will Rogers and Albert Davis were white men.  But I don't have a clue what Virgil Flaim looked like.  Hmmm.

Anyway, my errands in Lake City done, I took a bus to my next stop, Hubbard Homestead.  Which is the subject of your next page, dear Diary.

A Hike in Downtown Lake City, part I

Dear Diary,

From Licorice Fern Natural Area on NE 130th St, I went south to NE 125th St, and then east.  My first stop was the only Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation park in North Seattle that I knew about but didn't visit last year.

Map:

Thornton Creek Addition

Google Maps is quite sure where this park's address - 2318 NE 125th St - is, and who's there:  the Food Distribution Center of Greater Seattle Cares.  Actually, as Google Search knows, that center's address is 2212 NE 125th St.  Google Maps doesn't have a clue who's at 2212, but knows it's the address of, well, this park.  Whatever.

Google Search is right, and Google Maps is wrong.

Although if the food distribution people were never here, I don't know why I found three abandoned shopping carts on the premises.

Regardless, the parks department didn't want this property for its building, which according to Redfin is a 3-bedroom house prone to flooding.  Rather, for its frontage on the North Fork of Thornton Creek:

Of course, it also comes with a lawn.

I hope they don't just tear down the building - if nothing else, it contains three restrooms - and kind of hope, given that Lake City is pretty under-parked, they don't turn this nearly-an-acre site into Yet Another Thornton Creek Natural Area.  But they only bought it in 2019; time will tell.

Virgil Flaim Park

The parks department website comes through again.  Virgil Flaim was a Lake City resident who ran the Lake City Community Center for twenty years.  I don't know when the community centers became parks department properties, so don't know whether he was a department employee, but anyway, good for them for naming this park for him.

Since I've shown you pictures of this park before, dear Diary, I didn't worry too much about taking more this time; also, it was fairly crowded.  It has a water fountain, which is running:

and I took a couple of pictures of the greensward to show that there isn't a restroom being built there yet:

Albert Davis Park

The parks department website gives Davis, who definitely wasn't an employee, a long paragraph as a Lake City civic leader.

This park was the site of an encampment from before I first saw it last May (when the campers appeared to me mostly black), on through January (when they were considerably more mixed in race), to Thursday, May 6, one week ago, when it was swept largely in response to incidents the previous Thursday (and Friday).  Two people were shot (but survived), one of them in his RV adjacent to the camp, the other at an unrevealed location; if the identity or identities of the shooter or shooters is or are known, it's news to me.  But the Friday incident was a fire sparked by propane use at the park itself, which makes associating it with the park rather more obvious.

Seattle has a pattern that I doubt is unique to it, but that I've observed more here than elsewhere perhaps because I've been homeless so long here.  That is, some location gets associated with a lot of issues - violence, fires, drug dealers, prostitution, loud arguments, litter, you name it.  The city responds by, essentially, blaming the location.  What I don't understand is why city leaders, who ought to be wiser than I am, can't grasp that some poor people have a lot of issues.  If they don't want such people's places to become problematic, they shouldn't concentrate those people in one place; but because nobody wants poor neighbours, for precisely this reason, and also because they can't pay for one-acre lots, poor people get concentrated.  And so in location after location, Something Must Be Done, or at least Shoved Off To Somewhere Else.  The problem of sweeps is by no means limited to the homeless.  The SRO I lived in for nearly six years is closed to this day because faulty wiring caused a fire over five years ago.  (Though an employee told me it was because an alcoholic fell asleep while smoking.)  The building appears to be fine (the fire was after I was evicted, so I'm only going by what I see from outside), but nearly forty housing units are lost.  And then there's the Everspring Inn, to coverage of whose closure (initiated by the Seattle Police Department) I've put links into you before, dear Diary, but here are some more:  Crosscut, The Seattle Times.  Even if all the homeless were shot down tomorrow, this pattern would persist, and because of it, there would be more homeless soon enough.

Anyway, there are two important differences between park sweeps conducted by the Navigation Team and those conducted by the parks department.  The parks department has consistently been giving notice, and it gets the places it sweeps clean.  These are not unconnected:  if notice is given, the sweeps have fewer campers to deal with, and less difficulty making the distinction between valuable property and trash, a distinction homeless people are always going to make differently from how housed city employees do.

But that cleanliness meant that for the first time, I could take pictures in Albert Davis Park, so that's what I did.  Only not in the park, because after I'd walked across it, I found this sign:

It took a deal of work to photograph the fine print there at the lower right corner, but I did it:

So I only took pictures from the sidewalk outside the park.

In all the excitement, I completely forgot this park's water fountain, so I came back Wednesday, and hope to tell you, dear Diary, about that tomorrow.  Today I still have a lot to tell and show you, starting with the rest of the block Albert Davis Park is in.

Awkwardly On-Topic

Dear Diary,

I wanted to dismiss this as off-topic to you, but I can't.  True, it has nothing to do with parks, or hygiene, or (except as a dark mirror) homelessness in general.  But I've always made my own homelessness prominent in my writing on that topic, and perhaps nowhere more than in you.  Not just as a random example, either.  I'm well aware that by being middle-class in origin (and standards, albeit Bohemian middle class for those), college-educated, and non-trivially white, I seek sort of a "there but for the grace of God" effect among those likeliest to read me.  This is probably part of why you have few faithful readers, dear Diary, but more who read what they can stand and then leave.

Well, as it happens, I'm trying to leave myself, which is the point all that verbiage is trying to hide.  I think most homeless people keep a desultory lookout for chances to improve their lives, but without much imagination for wholesale change.  But the Seattle Times profile that recently brought new readers to you, dear Diary, also brought about an attempt at just such wholesale change, to return me to the housed workforce.  As I write this, it's anyway raised enough to get me out of COVID winter.

I'll be narrating, as I continue with the January hikes, events that make me readier to leave homelessness, and maybe to return to housedness.  Some of these events make it harder to finish the series, and I'll probably pop into and out of a motel soon to be named if only for that reason.  In February, which it'll probably be before I can return to boring few readers with "Land and Water" and working on your last series, dear Diary, I expect to be in a hotel, motel, or if I'm lucky SRO the whole month.  With the hope that by March I might, really for the first time since I came to Seattle, be stably housed.

Or to abbreviate:  To apply the purity standards of 1980s alt-rock to homelessness, I'm selling out, and cursing the rest of you, dear Diary, with the dread shade of inauthenticity.

This is, of course, a dark mirror of another path.  The government could have paid for the hotel (though probably not the blog-enabling motel, although its stimulus money will in fact pay for that), could have eased the transition out of the hotel.  But I've already lived through two entire presidential terms homeless, and would expect the current one to pass too before the government noticed me, shouting as I've been since 2014.  Some might argue that things are different now, but I dismissed insta-change in the first Times article to quote me (and publicise you, dear Diary), and the recent hikes have only driven home how right I was.

So I should get on with narrating them, but first, dear Diary, my thanks.  You're where all these events started, and I won't forget that.

Christie Park, Expanded, at Sunset

Dear Diary,

As I mentioned two pages ago, I've finally gotten in to Christie Park.  This is because, a few days after I speculated that the park's re-opening was delayed until our excellent mayor could preside over a big ceremony, it was re-opened, presumably without any such thing.  In other words, no, I didn't pull any strings.  Actually, Rachel Schulkin, communications manager for the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation, has had me on her e-mail list at least since August, but she didn't send the official announcement, someone else did.  So I was as surprised to find it open on October 1, three weeks after that announcement, as you, dear Diary, no doubt were to read about its water fountain yesterday.

ANYWAY, as long as I was there, I figured I should take some pictures.  So here they are.

There is a ping-pong table, obviously; the orange thing in the background behind it is a fancy fitness machine.

And yes, that's a fence around the central lawn.  Probably to protect recently planted grass.

Most of the planting is, as here, spare, rather than the lush crowding usual in parks' planted areas.  Between this and the ping-pong, it's easy to imagine an Oriental connection, and a structure at the entrance thanks the government of Taiwan.  However, most of the people who got in the way of my photos were white.

Little did I know, when on my last visit I speculated that the park was still waiting for wooden benches, that in fact all the furniture would be metal.

Between this and the fence, I get the distinct sense that this park is the exact opposite of Ballard Commons, is a park designed to repel homeless people, an impression a 2014 UW Daily article seems to support.  We'll see.

The boats, said to be modelled on those used by a Taiwanese native culture, are by Paul Sorey.  I thought the lines under them were survivals from the pre-expansion park, but apparently not, so maybe they're by Sorey too.  I know nothing about the decorations on the concrete walls, which I think unlikely to be the same artist's work.

Probably the park's biggest attraction for homeless people is something I only noticed because I saw students already using it.  It's lit at night by six fixtures such as the one shown above.  Each of those fixtures has near its base an outlet, possibly suitable (depending on the shape of your charger's transformer) for cell phone charging.  And the use I saw was before the fixture lit, so yes, those outlets have power by day.

The fixtures light up at night one by one, at unpredictable intervals, a bit of art with time.

Two Yet Anothers

Hello, dear Diary,

I've missed you so much!  Have you missed me?  Let me explain my silence:

Yet Another Thief

Last Thursday, I lay down on the bench I've mentioned to you, dear Diary, before, and fell asleep, unfortunately having first decided that my new trousers' pockets were too small to fit my charging phone into.  As a result, I now have a much smaller phone, which will certainly fit in my pocket while charging.  Isn't it wonderful how that sort of thing works out?

As a side effect, I'm having to write in you from the Northeast branch of the Seattle Public Library, instead of from campus.  I saw a sign en route that I liked:

Sorry about the flash burn, but part of the reason I'm writing this page in you, dear Diary, is to test the new phone's camera.  Anyway, I should know fairly soon whether the hike to Northeast will become an ongoing change.

Yet Another Park Not Parks'

Even before the theft I'd gotten lazy about visiting parks, as I've previously mentioned to you, dear Diary.  So my dishes were piling up, and today I finally went to Laurelhurst Community Center to wash them.  This trip for the first time I noticed something funny about the north side of 45th St, especially from 43rd to 45th Avenues:

So on my way back, I crossed the street and investigated.

I once, briefly, was a geography major, but you wouldn't know it from how long I spent wondering whose this park was.  It is, of course, actually the main campus of Seattle Children's Hospital.  But this campus's southern edge really does, for several blocks, do a pretty good imitation of a park.

Starting from 45th Ave, the least parklike bit is where tall trees and such are planted to hide parking lots and a bus stop.  But west of that, we get this:

Huh.  The flowers' colours came through better than I'd expected.

The part of the Trueman Katz Sculpture Garden that isn't behind a currently locked fence is two sculptures, neither of which really worked for me, but the walk is pleasant and there are wooden benches to rest on.  I don't know, only hope, that there are more sculptures behind the fence.

Beyond 43rd Ave, another locked fence blocks access to a playground, but by that point the hospital buildings are easily visible despite the trees, and this park not Parks' is pretty much over.  I saw no water fountains or restrooms.

Dear Diary, I lost all photos I'd taken, a handful of personal ones and dozens meant for you.  I'm probably going to redo some of the long hike to replace them; you'll remember, of course, that I needed to revisit one of the remaining parks anyway.  But we'll see.  Until we meet again!