Meet the Editorial Committee

[Clockwise from lower left are August Mallory, Wes Browning, Jihad Salaam, Joe Howard, Teresa Reeves, Mary T Andrews, and Anitra Freeman.]

Well, meet some of it anyway. People wonder how Real Change newspapers are put together. There's an editorial department, run by our editorial manager Amy Roe, and including two reporters and a production assistant. Many volunteer writers accept assignments and some submit unsolicited work, which we consider. In addition to all that there's the editorial committee, or the "EC."

The idea of the EC is to provide grassroots input to the paper's content. All interested readers of the paper may apply. The principal activity of the committee is to brainstorm story ideas for future issues. So the main qualification to be accepted as a member is an ability to work well with others while bringing ideas to the table.

Currently the EC has 13 members, of which 8 are fully active vendors, 2 are semi-active vendors, and one (me!) is a highly inactive ex-vendor. (I was highly inactive when I was a vendor, too.) In this particular meeting 7 of us were on hand.

Besides brainstorming, the EC also spends a little time in each meeting looking through the most recent paper for errors that might need correcting, or stories that suggest follow-up.

Then, every month or so, we go over those unsolicited submissions I mentioned above. These are confidential sessions. A volunteer has previously blanked out the author's names on the submissions, so that we can vote to accept or reject blindly. Our acceptance is provisional -- the editorial manager makes the final decision.

This particular meeting was almost all brainstorming. Ideas batted around the table involved an upcoming anniversary of the Frye Hotel, a future guide to being homeless for the first time, a death on the street in Ballard, the relationships between panhandlers and vendors, an upcoming "carve-in," activities of neo-Nazi and similar organizations in the area, and the effects of budget cuts on ex-offender services.

Meetings are currently 2:30 to 4pm Thursdays in the Real Change vendor room, 96 S Main St. Guests and applicants are welcome the last Thursday of every month. Real Change vendors have preference and may apply at any meeting.

Serious Work at Real Change

Here at Real Change we take everything we do seriously. One of the things we do is have All Staff Meetings every two weeks. Those are meetings in which all the staff sit around a table and meet. In our seriousness about these meetings, we decided to dedicate one of our recent meetings to the question "What are All Staff Meetings for?"

Our Vendor Staff Director, Tara Moss agreed to facilitate that meeting. To prepare us all for the discussion she sent around a link to a video talking about research into the "marshmallow problem," " -- a simple team-building exercise that involves dry spaghetti, one yard of tape and a marshmallow. Who can build the tallest tower with these ingredients? And why does a surprising group always beat the average?"

The marshmallow problem is explained in the video accompanying the link. As a mathematician, I couldn't resist seeing not only whether I could build a reasonably sturdy tall tower of dry spaghetti, but whether I could build one entirely based upon the three Platonic solids having triangular faces. Would that support a marshmallow?

Yes. The picture, taken just before a tragic accident involving the tower and a coworker sitting upon it, proves it. That's Tara Moss herself in the background.

No Blue Angel

I spent a lot of time today at the Real Change office running in and out trying to position myself to take a video of Blue Angels flying over. I never got a good shot. So I gave up and consoled myself by taking these pictures of Sid Vicious. No Blue Angel, no angel period, but we love him anyway. As usual, click on them for larger versions.

Suspicions Justified

In this one below, it looks like the flash bounced off his retinas. Cool.

Ghost-Kitty.

Gloria

Video Find of the Day

We got a submission this month at Real Change that suggested that there is so much violence in our streets because we all aren't Christian enough. Well, I'm not Christian enough by any measure, and I'm not shooting or beating anyone.

Yet. Maybe I'm violent in potentia.

Anyway, when people go on about how Christian I'm not, I think of the Greater Glory of God, and one thought leads to another, and...

Vivaldi - Gloria - 1 - Gloria in excelsis Deo

Your Child Abuse Score

People often tell me Sid Vicious, the Real Change office cat, is too fat. Occasionally I hear the opposite. My answer is, "I'm the guy who takes him screaming clawing and crying to the vet, and each time I do I ask the vet if he's too fat, and the vet says 'No. He's within normal range. He's a 6 on a scale of 0 to 10' -- and he refers to a chart on the wall." The chart is just like this one below from the Purina company (click on it for a larger version or go here for the original webpage.)

The chart shows 1-4 as being too thin, 6-9 as being too fat, but the vet says to ignore that. He says actually 4-6 is normal range and 6 should not be considered obese. He compared the scale to a human's Body Mass Index (kgs/m-squared = lbs*703/ins-squared), which also has a range of scores regarded as normal (18.5 to 24.5). 4-6 would correspond to the normal range, 7 would be definitely overweight, 3 underweight, and so on.

In the interest of full disclosure, like Sid, I am also in the upper part of the normal range, with a BMI of 23.9.

Notice that the Purina chart doesn't indicate the extremes of 0 and 10. Here's how you tell if your cat is at those extremes. If your cat is dead, and you can count his ribs without feeling them, he's a 0. If your cat is dead, and you can't see or feel his ribs without dissecting him, he's a 10.

All of this is just to warn you where I'm going with the title of this post. I speak a lot, and when appropriate I talk about the child abuse I survived, and I get told "that's the worse child abuse I ever heard of" a lot. Well, it's not the worst I've ever heard of. For one thing I read the papers. For another, I've personally met people who had worse stories. On the other hand, I've also met people who have said, "Oh yeah, I was abused as a kid too, but I got over it," and invariably their stories of child abuse are mild.

So, it seems to me, what we need here is something I would like to modestly call The Copyright Dr. Wes Browning Child Abuse Index. These guidelines are only tentative, but I hope they might already help settle the inevitable arguments that arise.

0 Spoiled beyond belief. Still expects someone to peel his or her hot dogs. Has never cleaned a room. No evidence of ever being told No. Pampered to the point of being unbearable. Often, these people are killed, and no one misses them.

1 Extremely Severe Non-Abuse. Thinks people who speak of being abuse survivors are complaining of being spanked.

2 Severe Non-Abuse. Thinks people who speak of being abuse survivors are complaining of being spanked too hard.

3 Strongly Insufficient Abuse. Thinks people who speak of being abuse survivors were refused alcohol, drugs, or pot by their parents or caretakers.

4 Mildly Insufficient Abuse. Parents beat but never simultaneously made fun of him or her or it, so there was very little emotional impact.

5 Normal Abuse. The ideal. Anyone who can say "Over it," without either bursting into tears or giggling or displaying the Thousand-Yard Stare.

6 Mildly Excessive Abuse. Signs of neurosis stemming from abuse, but a professional may be required to spot them.

7 Strongly Excessive Abuse. Visible physical or emotional scarring, plain to anyone after a few minutes with the victim.

8 Severe Child Abuse. Permanent physical disability, or long-lasting mental illness, or highly inappropriate piety.

9 Extremely Severe Abuse. That resulting in ongoing coma, stupor, or vegetative state.

10 Dead.

I would classify as about midway between a 7 and an 8. I'm a 7.5. Not too bad, really.

Freedom

Video Find of the Day

Recommended by Rachael M., outgoing Real Change Associative Director. How dare she go out? We wants her forever!

Children of the Revolution - Eleftheria [Greek for freedom]

Retreating Thoughts

We had that retreat we were talking about last post. According to Tim Harris we were 8 Real Change vendors plus 8 other participants such as myself of the Real Change Organizing Project, plus Tim and our facilitator, exploring class, class identities (our own and others), and cross-class organizing. Tim discusses the serious need for this kind of work in building an effective movement. As usual my own participation alternated between the serious and the frivolous and passed through every point in between and some points on Mars.

Before the memories dissipate I want to record some moments of the retreat that were special to me, in a purely Wes-centric account that in no way violates anyone's confidentiality.

We were car-pooled by the middle-class among us from the Real Change office to Dumas Bay Centre and Knutzen Family Theatre, at the end of freak-all nowhere off the coast of Federal Way, in a land that never learned to spell "center" or "theater."

We quickly found our new home for the next 28 hours, Banquet Room 2, maximum occupancy 49, next to Banquet Room 1, maximum occupancy 49 (already occupied by a convention of quilters who brought their own sewing machines.)

We sat in a circle (on chairs, thank you St. Giles, patron saint of the lame) and briefly introduced ourselves, ate lunch, introduced ourselves some more, checked in to our rooms, and introduced ourselves some more. I think we read a poem by Sherman Alexie, which made us think. It made us think we were all, underneath our underwear, basically the same. Then some of us thought exactly the opposite, just to show we aren't going to be clones of Sherman Alexie. Alexie says he and his girlfriend share 99% of their genes. I said, to Anitra, viva la 1 per cent.

[Above: A portrait of 99% of me. Especially the hands. Note how the left-hand is waving so hard it's blurred. Part of the 1 per cent difference: He has lots and lots of money.]

When we were to check-in I learned the place has no elevators so I limped as fast as I could to the main desk to beat everyone else there so I could get a room on the first floor and not have to go up and down stairs.

The very next thing we did after we rejoined in Banquet Room 2 was march DOWNSTAIRS to a BASEMENT room to select two photographs, one representing ourselves as we think others see us, one as we see ourselves internally. Then we climbed back UPSTAIRS, in agonizing arthritic pain. But I'm not complaining.

The picture I selected to represent myself as others see me was a shot of a crusty old fossil. It was a fossil of a fish. The picture I thought best represented my internal self was one of Machu Picchu just like this one.

The thought was that my real self is wheelchair-inaccessible, and even if you got there, there'd be no one there who could explain it to you, because no one knows how or why it got there, or what purpose it serves.

The next thing I remember that our facilitator, I'll call him "Alan", did to us was an exercise called [Class] Stepping Stones. You did this by wasting index cards putting notes about turning points of your life that related to your Adventures in Class and Class Identity and Perceptions, or things like that, then trying to assemble 5 or 6 of those in a nice presentation on 11"x17" sheets of construction paper.

I made about 15 cards, threw 9 away, tried to arrange them on paper and gave up in favor of little crude graphic representations instead. Then, we broke up into groups of three and each three shared their histories of careening through the class landscape. This was pretty cool. It was my favorite part of the whole retreat, and I don't just mean my fifteen minutes. Alan was one of my three.

Somewhere in the midst of this we ate dinner and Alan saw how much cayenne pepper I put on all my food. When I told him it wasn't the ordinary 35,000 Scoville-rated cayenne pepper you get prepackaged, but the bulk purchasable 90,000 Unit stuff, he asked to try it. I said I wouldn't stop him but urged him to be careful. In seconds he was at the other end of the room looking for milk or other fire-quencher. That was fun.

There was a social time. I didn't last long for that because I'm old and need to sleep 20 hours a day, and had already been up twice as long as normal. But before I turned in I got out some ginseng & ginger flavored rice wine I'd brought from home, heated it in a microwave and wound down with some of the rest of the gang.

One of the great things about drinking home-made rice wine is, soon as anyone smells it, they allow that you shouldn't share.

The rooms were all small rooms with single beds so Anitra and I had to sleep in separate rooms across from each other, which felt weird. On the other hand, it was very quiet, initially, what with the retreat center being located on the outer boundary of space. I set the alarm for 6:15 AM because our caterer had said there would be coffee ready at 6:30. I fell asleep quickly.

I woke up at 3:30 AM to loud snoring from the next room. Later, another participant who was two rooms away told me she heard loud snores, too. We compared notes and triangulated, and figured out it came from the room between us. That room was inhabited by one of our vendors. In the future I am going to ask that he get a room at the end of a hall, and no one have to stay in neighboring rooms, or we get to hog-tie him and duct-tape him to a wall at night so he can't sleep on his back.

Waking up at 3:30 AM had an up-side though. I was able to reflect on the fact that I had set the alarm for 6:15. Here I had only spent some 10 hours at a retreat with a bunch of other people, and all because of that I was all set to wake myself up a God-o-clock 6 fucking 15 in the A fucking M.

Only 10 hours at this retreat and I was already fucked up. This group-think stuff really works.

So I reset the alarm for 7:15 thinking that was plenty early enough for breakfast. Naturally, Anitra was banging on my door before that, wondering why I wasn't up yet. I expressed my great fucking joy that she would show such fucking concern for me in my hour of need to get the fuck up for a hot beverage, when I still had hooch to heat if I was desperate. Then we laughed. Ha, ha. We related all this to the group and gave Alan permission to use my sentiments expressed in the preceding paragraph as an endorsement.

We got breakfast. More cayenne pepper flowed. Then we explored class, using clumping. We clumped at different ends of the room according to different measures of class.

This led to the most frustrating experience I had at the retreat. Part of the goal of clumping was to figure out who came from the poor or working classes, and who from the middle and owner classes. I couldn't do it. I kept finding myself on the line of different measures. I ended up joining with the middle class just because that was the name of the state of my indecision at the moment of the final cut. Had the final cut been delayed just two minutes I would have landed in the working class group.

The two groups, the poor & working class group and the middle & owner class group, collected at opposite ends of the room and explored themselves. In a publicly appropriate way. Then the groups faced each other and revealed the results of our explorations. For instance we middle classers said how much we value education. Then each group got to list 5 or 6 questions we'd like the other group to answer. My fave was when the lower classes asked us upper classes if in all our efforts to "help" the poor, did we ever think the poor might resent any of the "help"? We had a long session where we all took turns answering the questions for our respective groups. Not being sure which group I was really supposed to be in made this awkward.

Finally we had a talk about defining leadership. As part of this we split into pairs and shared our stories of times we acted as leaders in our pasts. I told my partner about my experience trying to achieve peace on Fort Devens between the Anglos and the Puerto Ricans, and getting beat up, and my experience as a one of the leaders of the StreetLife Art Gallery. The two experiences convinced me of the need to always seek consensus and to work at making sure that the people working with you share your understanding of the undertaking. Don't lead people to negotiate peace if they think negotiating peace means beating up anyone who negotiates wrong, for example.

We finished by taking turns saying how we each would commit to be leaders of RCOP, and what goals we would take up. I committed to hanging in, "keeping in touch" as I put it. I spoke of my commitment to being humble, by admitting that I want to learn humility, but I am incapable.

All in all, the retreat was fantastic, and I am now a convert to this kind of shit, and will prove my commitment to it by coming to every other retreat we put together in the future. I got religion, baby.

Michael Howell, Part VI

The first issue of Real Change appeared in August 1994. The second issue came out October 1, 1994, and featured a two page article on the art of Michael Howell. It crammed a full 25 of Michael's drawings in together with a half page article describing Michael Howell's art and Michael Howell -- by Michael Howell. He didn't want anybody else interpreting him.

Meanwhile, the other gallery members were meeting regularly with Barbara Brownstein to prepare for a rededication of the gallery under a new name, StreetLife Art gallery, as a genuine cooperative art studio/gallery. Michael Howell was invited to all the meetings, but refused to attend, because his position was that he was in charge of the gallery, therefore decisions made without him had no force. Our meetings were just an opportunity, he thought, for us to exchange so much hot air. The gallery was what he made it. What we said it was meant nothing. If we wanted to change it, WE had to meet with HIM, not HIM with US.

The Archdiocesan Housing Authority, the Dominican Sisters, and A Territory Resource saw it differently. They were funding a cooperative gallery, not a Michael Howell gallery.

Without input from Michael, the other members voted to change the name, reorganize the gallery, put out a book featuring art and biographies of all the artists, and hold a public reopening. The date was set for December 8. Michael didn't make it.

[Above: The StreetLife opening, as pictured in the next month's Real Change.]

About the same time, though, Michael found a reason to get back on speaking terms with me. He wanted to apply for a bus shelter project. He didn't think he could get one on his own. So his idea was to repeat the success of the gallery idea: make a joint application with 2 other artists. The idea was the 3 of us would represent homelessness better than one could. We would offer 3 different kinds of art combined on the same bus shelter.

For the 3rd artist, Michael wanted our poet friend, Stan Burriss. It was the sort of sly choice I'd come to expect from Michael. He knew Stan would only get a small plaque for a poem or two, leaving the rest of the shelter to Michael and I. He got me to agree to do only the bottom third of the shelter, around the bench, while he did the upper two thirds. My incentive was that my share of the money Metro paid us would not be reduced by more than a third of a dollar. Stan and I would each get $333, Michael would get $334.

Getting a design approved was a nightmare. The man in charge of the shelter art program was Dale Cummings, who always seem to me to be on the verge of pulling his hair out in response to talking to us. I didn't blame him.

Michael wanted to use his wall projector to duplicate twelve of his small paintings on the fronts and backs of the six panels he would have. Stan, who, ever since his homeless days has always written his poems on napkins and paper cups he picks up at cafés and meetings, wanted Metro to create plexiglass cases to house cups and napkins so people could see them as they were written. I wanted to create a semi-abstract linear piece that would illustrate the words of one of the poems that Stan submitted.

Mr. Cummings objected, first of all, to the lack of cohesion these plans had. We had very tense meetings in which he basically said, "You guys get together and integrate your design plans, or we'll cancel this project." He objected to Stan's proposal on grounds of cost and practicality. The cases would be one-of-kind, so if they were damaged the cost of replacement would be too high. Stan was told he'd get the same kind of case that holds bus schedules, for copies of his peoms. Those would be easily replaced and cheap.

The biggest objection came when Michael presented the 12 paintings he wanted to use. Dale Cummings wanted women, minorities, and youth. Michael painted older White males, almost exclusively.

Cummings finally gave up on the cohesion issue, but never gave an inch on the demand for diversity of images. He kept reminding Michael that he understood that Michael has to have his own personal vision as an artist, but Metro is paying for this shelter, so Metro has a right to demand that the content be something that reflects well on it.

Michael became defensive. he felt he was being charged with racism. He made the point that he painted old White men because their wrinkles stood out. That was really what his art was about.

He was a landscape artist in effect, not a portrait artist. But he couldn't say it that way because he had spent years promoting his art as portraiture art. His whole rap was that he was depicting the "real" homeless. So Dale Cummings said, by only showing old White men and saying that you're depicting the real homeless you're implying that only old White men are real homeless. That homeless women and homeless Blacks and homeless youths and homeless Native Americans, for examples, aren't real homeless.

I thought it was great. For the first time someone speaking to Michael Howell about Michael's art was really taking it seriously. He was talking to Michael about what his art really was about.

Michael hated it. But after one long tense meeting after another he finally realized that Cummings wasn't going to budge. Michael caved and we went ahead.

[Below: The shelter was originally placed at 7th & Olive. From a photo accompanying a June '95 article about the shelter project taken by Karla Manus.]

Funerary Reflections

I just got back from Beth's (Bethe's) funeral. I am very thankful that I could go. I have to thank my friends at Real Change for helping me pay for the plane fare, hotel for one night, and incidental expenses, and Anitra for helping me make the initial arrangements, and Kate, Beth's Mother, for helping me with the hotel for a second night when that turned out to be necessary, and helping me get home.

I have to say how painful it is that we couldn't get help to come together like this before Beth died. I have to say it, not to be critical, but to be truthful. The world is not completely right. I'm not blaming any individual. I'm just pointing out the flies in the soup. I'm not saying anyone purposely put the flies there.

For now, I only want to reflect on the trip briefly. I left early Wednesday morning by plane from SeaTac Airport. I had a wearisome ride to Denver and then on to Dulles airport near Washington DC. The flight had clear skies all the way and the Rockies were spectacular. I observed the way the mountains are shaped by the wind. The wind is channeled by valleys between the outcroppings and diverted upwards creating sharpened crests. And I thought, "Not worn down, but worn beautiful."

Before I left Seattle I thought I ought to bring flowers. But I had no way to get them on short notice. What I did have were a couple of plants that I've been growing in my room. One of them is a big luscious successful spearmint plant, which I have christened Spear-It ("The Spear-It of The Union Hotel.") I'd told Beth I was growing plants in my room and she said it was wonderful, so I thought she'd appreciate it if I brought some prunings of Spear-It.

I took several foot-long cuttings, bundled them and tied them in a knot, and brought them with me.

I was afraid no one would understand. But everyone did. The mint was added to Beth's casket.

Another thing I am thankful for is the earth we were provided with at the end of the burial service, the next day. It was an orangish-ochre clay soil.

Clay is the material from which, it is said, humans were first formed. Clay stands for possibility. It can be anything you can imagine.

That's the essence of humanity. We have infinite possibility. We are the children of clay -- in that sense -- whether the creation stories of Hawaii or Ur are literally true or not. We show our humanity by surprising.

Anyone who dies, dies unfinished. A finished life is a falsehood. It's a comforting myth, but it's a false myth. The true myth is the one that says God created us from clay in His Image. Because clay is inchoate, as God is inchoate. We are meant to be unfinished, as God knows He Himself is unfinished. That is how we resemble Him. When we stop being unfinished we stop being human.

Dynamic Scalp

Here I am in the Real Change weekly newspaper editorial office during production crunch Tuesday to film production assistant Rosette Royale's dynamic scalp movement. True fact: His name means Little Rose Quarter Pounder in English. Behind him is red-shirted editorial manager Adam Hyla, whose name is a fabrication.

Balanced Investigative Reporting

The Huan Hsu piece about Real Change was in the Seattle Weekly this morning. I read it on SW's website around 11AM, about two hours after this week's Real Change started being sold. I wanted to talk about Hsu's article a little bit this afternoon after I got home from feeding the kitty, but it wasn't on the website anymore. What's up with that? Oh well, I guess I can remember it well enough.

So let's see. What do I need to do here? I need to write a short article of my own. I will write a fair and balanced piece about Huan Hsu, to show how appreciative I am of the fair and balanced way he approached writing about RC. I'll call it:

Is Huan Hsu a Moron?

There's been a well-publicized shortage of writers at the Seattle Weekly, and Huan Hsu is one of the writers that's been recently hired to make up that shortage. It's been rumored that Mr. Hsu is a moron. We decided to do some investigating of our own, and see what we could determine regarding his brain power.

We didn't want to have to actually learn who Huan Hsu is, or research any of his accomplishments. We just wanted to raise our ignorant question about him and pretend to research it by asking people the answer to it. So we made our way downtown and asked some random interested parties.

The first person we talked to was Timothy H, a director of a local street paper. Timothy had strong words to say about Mr. Hsu. "Hsu? Oh yeah, he's a fucking moron alright. He's the fuckingest fucking moron this fucking city's ever fucking had."

Around the corner from Timothy was a hairy-faced man feeding a cat. The cat-feeding man insisted on remaining anonymous. He pretended to be somebody we've never heard of, Gabby Hayes, and said, "I sure do know Hsu, I named this here cat after him, yessireebob. What was the question, Sonny? Oh no, he's no moron, he's a writer. All them writer fellas is a little tetched in the head, but that don't mean they're stupid."

Since "Gabby" hadn't given us the answer we were fishing for at this stage in the story, we asked him to justify his answer. He said, "I guess what I'm saying is, if the man is getting paid to write, he can't be a total moron. Now if you want to see a total moron... " We moved on.

A short way down the street we found a vendor named Joey hawking some street papers. At first the vendor didn't know who we were talking about. Then we told him it was the guy who wrote in the Seattle Weekly about how some vendors make so much money they can afford apartments and asked if that was right or not.

Joey said, "He has to be a moron if he had to ask people if it was right. Anybody who's been a vendor can tell you it's not right. Look at me, I've been a vendor for Real Change for 3 months and I can't afford an apartment. If they'd just fire the ones that can, I could take over their business and I'd rake in the green too. Of course when I do they should fire me too."

So the consensus by then was 2 to 1 that Huan Hsu is a moron. We couldn't leave it at that and still say how balanced we were, so we picked on one other guy with a saintly disposition to ask the question again. The guy said "No." By the way, that last guy we asked just got out of prison last year, but don't let that make you discount his opinion.

Mexican Lunch -- Tahitian Music

I get a chance to video myself and 9 of the other usual suspects of Real Change, at a lunch party held at Mama's Mexican down the street. The party is in honor of the man in the blue knit hat, vendor Robert Hansen. We won't be paying him to be a Vendor Rep anymore, so to make nice we're buying him lunch while subjecting him to our company. The others, as the camera sweeps right are reporter Cydney G, vendor and editorial committee member August M, editorial manager Adam H, crack intern Danina G, Director of Ops Craig K, Office Manager and Volunteer Coordinator Brooke K, Glorious Leader Timothy H, and fellow ed committee sweetie Anitra F.

Had it not been for Robert and Cydney making faces at the camera, I was planning to call this "Still Life With Mexican Food Eaters." Then, when they all left while I insisted on finishing without asking for a doggy bag, I thought I would call it "People Who Leave Me At A Restaurant So I Can Clean Off Their Plates And Drink What's Left Of Anitra's Beer In Refreshing Solitude." But that was too long.

I added the Tahitian Dance of the Children cause it seemed to fit the mood. Or I should say, it fit my mood. As usual I'm the one doing all the giggling.

A Spoonful of Gallimaufry

[The subsidized apartment building I live in is called The Union Hotel. It's run by DESC, Seattle's Downtown Emergency Service Center. All the residents have been homeless. I write a column for the monthly building newsletter. The column is called Out of My Mind. I'm posting them here, properly dated, because I can. -- wes]

Joe Martin is a cool guy. He embodies the Pike Market Medical Clinic, he’s a real live Leprechaun, he’s in fact so Irish he should be kissed continually all year round, he’s the nicest conspiracy theorist you ever met, and he frequently writes for and to Real Change. When he writes he likes to use arcane words that I would never use, but that’s always been OK, it’s part of his charm.

Until last week. That was when Joe used the word “ugsome” in a letter to the editor. That drove me over the edge.

Of course I thought I knew what it meant. “Ug-some” as in “ugly - (and then) some.” But I didn’t trust my guess so I looked it up. It doesn’t quite mean ugly-ish, it means “disgusting, loathsome.” But what really got me is that it’s not a word he made up, it’s Medieval.
He’s gotten so arcane he’s gone Medieval on us!

It’s time for an intervention. The whole thing has gotten out of control. I should have stepped in back when he used the word “parlous” to mean “perilous.” I should have realized the man was troubled then, because “parlous” is exactly synonymous with “perilous” -- it’s just a variation dating from (you guessed it) the Middle Ages! The only reason to use it is get all arcane up in people!

I should also have known Joe needed help when he wrote about a “tocsin call to awareness and action.” A tocsin is a warning bell. Of course it calls to awareness and action! That’s what warnings do! But besides that, show me more than twenty people in all of Seattle who will say they know the difference between a toxin and a tocsin, and I’ll see if I can’t pick out the 17 or 18 liars from among them.

Perhaps it’s pervicacious -- oh no -- of me to ask that Joe be quotidian, to drop the farrago -- what’s happening to me -- of medieval vocabulary; my tendentiousness is my turpitudinosity, of Sodom, of --

-- oh no, it’s CATCHING!

-- now I’M doing it! I’M MAKING MYSELF VERTIGINOUS -- SAVE ME, I’VE FALLEN INTO A GALLIMAUFRY OF LANGUAGE AND I CAN”T GET OUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Caligula Was Exceptional, Too

[The subsidized apartment building I live in is called The Union Hotel. It's run by DESC, Seattle's Downtown Emergency Service Center. All the residents have been homeless. I write a column for the monthly building newsletter. The column is called Out of My Mind. I'm posting them here, properly dated, because I can. -- wes]

[This was the first one.]

Hello. My name is Wes, I live on the third floor and sometimes I get ticked off.

For nine years, from 1990 to 1999, I had a Green Singing Finch named Zino keep me company in the various places I lived. I was even able to keep him when I was homeless because Tim Harris, the founder of Real Change, let me keep him at the Real Change office. Green Singing Finches, in case you don't know, are 3 and 1/2 inches long from beak to tail, originate from Africa, around Mozambique, sing, and belong to one of the subspecies of faux-finches that were used to breed canaries.

So did anyone ever complain about Zino in all that time? Of course someone did. Tim Harris complained. His desk was ten feet from Zino's perch and from time to time he was heard mumbling something like, "Chirp, chirp, @#$%-ing chirp."

But Tim Harris is the exception, and, let's face it, so are or were Charles Manson, Fabio, Pee Wee Herman, Howard Hunt, and Caligula. Are we going to live our lives according to the views of exceptions like these? Of course not.

I want a bird and the Union and DESC won't let me have one unless I get a psychiatrist to say I need a 3 and 1/2 inch companion animal.

Because I am honest, and because I won't say that I need a companion animal when I have an Anitra Freeman, who also lives here, to keep me company, weird exceptions like Tim Harris, Pee Wee Herman, and DESC's [Director] Bill Hobson get their way, and normal honest people like me and like you, the reader, never get what we want.

That's the way things are, and that's why sometimes I have to let
things out.