Ed note: My own experience was having a totally dead electrical system (blown big fuse) in my car on B2. AAA arrived and couldn’t get the problem fixed and, of course, a tow truck can’t fit into the garage. So I, having to “drive,” was cable towed by the AAA pickup, sans power steering and brakes, up and around and up and out onto Columbia. Then it was up to 9th where the platform truck was waiting. I survived as did my car, much more fortunate than the two videos below.
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on Did you get the best tow truck driver?
Supporters and opponents of adding caste discrimination to the city’s list of prohibited forms of discrimination stand at a Seattle City Council meeting Tuesday. The ordinance was introduced by Kshama Sawant and passed. (Ellen M. Banner / The Seattle Times)
It seems whenever I write about structural power and privilege, people who benefit most from those systems respond that they are now victims of an unfairly stacked deck.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the pushback against what some dub “critical race theory,” or what I would call a more accurate portrayal of our country’s history. The following week, I wrote about the hidden stories of Dalit oppression behind Seattle’s recently passed caste discrimination ordinance.
In both cases, people who have benefited from the unearned advantages of white supremacy or caste privilege have complained they are the ones who are really suffering.
Like this reader, who started his email about my column on teaching history by decrying the “lies” he said that are unfairly lifting up children of color and lowering white children. He wrote, “What you really want is for the State to control children and white children specifically, to groom and condition them into believing they are evil and inferior to blacks/browns. … Why do you hate white children? Why do you [hate] white people in general? Why do you hate heterosexuals? Why do you hate this country so badly?”
The following week, when writing about caste discrimination, I got a lot of feedback — mostly on Twitter and Reddit — following similar lines. One reader tweeted the issue of caste discrimination was, “Searching for a solution to a problem that does not exist so you can jump on the lucrative victimhood business and carve out a good career and money out of opinions without evidence.”
Another tweeted about the Dalit woman I interviewed for my column, “If Maya were persecuted in India with no oppty wonder how she landed in US for her masters. This is just a cheap trick to get some reservation over there as well who can’t perform or want to have stuff handed out to them like in India without doing anything.”
In India, “reservation” means programs to remedy thousands of years of systemic oppression and open up educational and professional opportunities to Dalit and other oppressed-caste people. The system is akin in some ways to affirmative action in the U.S., and the backlash to it is very similar.
The reaction reminded me of something the anti-caste discrimination organization Ambedkar International Center wrote in an email to the Seattle City Council last week. The organization was advocating for a “yes” vote on the ordinance: “When the oppressor is accustomed to dominance and impunity, the idea of equity seems like oppression to the oppressor. The oppressor cloaks themselves in victimhood, cries foul and spins facts to justify the systems of oppression.”
But even more than that, the belief that when one group is free of oppression it necessarily means someone else loses, speaks to the pervasive idea of a zero-sum society.
Heather McGhee, the former president of progressive think tank Demos, wrote about this phenomenon in her book “The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together.”
Using the metaphor of a swimming pool, McGhee argues the U.S. is struggling with “drained-pool politics,” where beginning in the 1950s, white families opted for public pools to be paved over rather than face the horror of integrated swimming pools that everyone could use.
“When the people with power in a society see a portion of the populace as inferior and undeserving, their definition of ‘the public’ becomes conditional,” she writes. “It’s often unconscious, but their perception of the Other as undeserving is so important to their perception of themselves as deserving that they’ll tear apart the web that supports everyone, including them. Public goods, in other words, are only for the public we perceive to be good.”
Consequently, McGhee said, the U.S. has divested from the idea of public good, willing to abide crumbling infrastructure, inequitable schools and inadequate health care in order to ensure that the “undeserving” don’t get a piece of the opportunity pie. This willingness to cut off our collective nose to spite our face has been decades in the making.
“With the exception of about forty years from the New Deal to the 1970s, the United States has had a weaker commitment to public goods, and to the public good, than every country that possesses anywhere near our wealth,” she writes.
This trend will only increase if we can’t find ways to see our interdependence and shared humanity. But that will not happen if learning about our country’s true history or rejecting the cruelties of caste are changes to be feared, not opportunities for us all to grow and evolve.
Naomi Ishisaka: nishisaka@seattletimes.com; on Twitter: @naomiishisaka. Naomi Ishisaka is The Seattle Times’ assistant managing editor for diversity, inclusion and staff development. Her column on race, culture, equity and social justice appears weekly on Mondays.
Posted inAdvocacy, Essays, Justice, Kindness, Race|Comments Off on When do the privileged feel like victims? When others seek equality
Here’s a note from a resident who utilized the services of dispatchhealth: https://www.dispatchhealth.com/. This is not an endorsement but there now have been three positive comments on the urgent health care they can offer in your home 8 AM to 10 PM seven days a week.
“I believe it was you who mentioned dispatchhealth urgent care. I put it on my home page and yesterday had an occasion to use it. The people were great – very professional and caring. So thank you for introducing this organization to me.”
Posted inHealth|Comments Off on Need a home visit for urgent care?
On Feb. 22nd there were 4 COVID infected Terraces’ residents on the 8th floor and one on floor 12th. Updates will be posted when available. Masks remain required there. Suggest a N-95 if you visit.
Ed note: I asked ChatGPT to write a poem about masks and COVID. Here it is (bad poetry, good message)!
There are some folks who just won’t see The value of a mask, oh me! They’ll spout conspiracy and such, And say it’s just a little much.
“But I don’t like the way it feels,” They’ll moan and groan, then appeal, “It fogs my glasses, makes me itch, I’d rather just avoid the pitch.”
But little do they seem to know, The mask’s a way to help us go About our days with greater ease, And keep the spread of germs at ease.
So if you see them walking by, Without a mask to cover their eye, Just shake your head and give a smile, And hope they’ll come around in awhile.
May God bless and keep you always May your wishes all come true May you always do for others And let others do for you May you build a ladder to the stars And climb on every rung And may you stay Forever young Forever young Forever young May you stay Forever young May you stay Forever young
May your hands always be busy May your feet always be swift May you have a strong foundation When the winds of changes shift May your heart always be joyful May your song always be sung And may you stay Forever young Forever young Forever young May you stay Forever young
May you grow up to be righteous May you grow up to be true May you always know the truth And see the lights surrounding you May you always be courageous Stand upright and be strong And may you stay Forever young Forever young Forever young
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Ed note: At Skyline we remember Leonard for his gentle manner and inquisitive mind. He dealt with his failing health with quiet acceptance and kept his smile and sense of humor until the end. We sorely miss this man who gave many the gift of survival following cardiac arrest.
It’s difficult to pinpoint how Dr. Leonard Cobb came up with the idea to train firefighters in emergency medical care, but friends and family believe one particular afternoon more than 60 years ago played a role.
Cobb and his wife, Else, had stopped at a market in Seattle’s Madrona neighborhood for a frozen snack when they noticed a man slumped over in a nearby car.
When Cobb opened the car door to check on him, the man sagged to the ground.
Cobb stayed with the man while his wife rushed to a nearby fire station for help. A firefighter hurried over to bring oxygen, but there wasn’t much else he could do until the man was taken to the hospital, Else Cobb, 88, remembers.
“It was an incident where Leonard felt the fireman could have done more if he had known what to do,” his wife said this week.
In the following decades, Cobb devoted his career to researching cardiac care and developing Medic One, one of the country’s first efforts to deliver emergency medical care to patients before they arrived at the hospital. He was 96 when he died in his home at the Terraces of Skyline last week, surrounded by family.
The former Harborview Medical Center doctor was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1926, eventually earning undergraduate and medical degrees at the University of Minnesota.
In the late 1950s, Cobb moved to Seattle to practice cardiology at the University of Washington — where he eventually met his future wife, Else Snoep at the time.
Their first date, a UW football game, was the first time she had seen the sport.
“I’m a Dutch girl, and I grew up with soccer,” she said. “I told him that maybe he should take someone else because I wouldn’t know what was going on. He said, ‘I’ll explain it all to you.’”
Cobb was already passionate about improving areas of cardiology in the 1960s, but was particularly determined to find faster ways to get care to patients outside the hospital, said Dr. Michael Sayre, current medical director of the Seattle Fire Department and its Medic One program, which now responds to about 550 calls a year.
At the time, the idea of firefighters providing serious medical care was “pretty radical,” Sayre said.
Paramedics didn’t exist then, and extensive medical training wasn’t required for many ambulance crews. Ambulances were stocked with bandages and oxygen, but little else, he said.
The Graystone tower crane is coming down currently.
That 17,300-pound weight to the left is to counterbalance the usual concrete weights on the back side of the transverse beam, so there will be no tilt when they remove a section on the vertical.After the crane lowers the counterweight, it comes back up to fetch the removed section, lowering it to the street and picking up the counterweight again. They rebalance so the cage can be slowly lowered to fit around the next section and then locked in place.
You might recall the crane that fell across Mercer Street in 2019. The winds became gusty while they were doing such a takedown; in a hurry, workers bypassed some stability safety measures. The lawsuits were settled for $150 million.
A version of this story appeared in Science, Vol 379, Issue 6633. Download PDF
IN THE SHADE of a mango tree, Mamadou Ngulo Konaré recounted the legendary event of his childhood. In 1987, well diggers had come to his village of Bourakébougou, Mali, to drill for water, but had given up on one dry borehole at a depth of 108 meters. “Meanwhile, wind was coming out of the hole,” Konaré told Denis Brière, a petrophysicist and vice president at Chapman Petroleum Engineering, in 2012. When one driller peered into the hole while smoking a cigarette, the wind exploded in his face.
“He didn’t die, but he was burned,” Konaré continued. “And now we had a huge fire. The color of the fire in daytime was like blue sparkling water and did not have black smoke pollution. The color of the fire at night was like shining gold, and all over the fields we could see each other in the light. … We were very afraid that our village would be destroyed.”
It took the crew weeks to snuff out the fire and cap the well. And there it sat, shunned by the villagers, until 2007. That was when Aliou Diallo, a wealthy Malian businessman, politician, and chair of Petroma, an oil and gas company, acquired the rights to prospect in the region surrounding Bourakébougou. “We have a saying that human beings are made of dirt, but the devil is made of fire,” Diallo says. “It was a cursed place. I said, ‘Well, cursed places, I like to turn them into places of blessing.’”
In 2012, he recruited Chapman Petroleum to determine what was coming out of the borehole. Sheltered from the 50°C heat in a mobile lab, Brière and his technicians discovered that the gas was 98% hydrogen. That was extraordinary: Hydrogen almost never turns up in oil operations, and it wasn’t thought to exist within the Earth much at all. “We had celebrations with large mangos that day,” Brière says.
Within a few months, Brière’s team had installed a Ford engine tuned to burn hydrogen. Its exhaust was water. The engine was hooked up to a 300-kilowatt generator that gave Bourakébougou its first electrical benefits: freezers to make ice, lights for evening prayers at the mosque, and a flat-screen TV so the village chief could watch soccer games. Children’s test scores also improved. “They had the lighting to learn their lessons before going to class in the morning,” Diallo says. He soon gave up on oil, changed the name of his company to Hydroma, and began drilling new wells to ascertain the size of the underground supply.
The Malian discovery was vivid evidence for what a small group of scientists, studying hints from seeps, mines, and abandoned wells, had been saying for years: Contrary to conventional wisdom, large stores of natural hydrogen may exist all over the world, like oil and gas—but not in the same places. These researchers say water-rock reactions deep within the Earth continuously generate hydrogen, which percolates up through the crust and sometimes accumulates in underground traps. There might be enough natural hydrogen to meet burgeoning global demand for thousands of years, according to a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) model that was presented in October 2022 at a meeting of the Geological Society of America.
“When I first heard about it, I thought it was crazy,” says Emily Yedinak, a materials scientist who devoted a fellowship at the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) to drumming up interest in natural hydrogen. “The more that I read, the more I started to realize, wow, the science behind how hydrogen is produced is sound … I was kind of like, ‘Why is no one talking about this?’”
Since 2018, however, when Diallo and his colleagues described the Malian field in the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, the number of papers on natural hydrogen has exploded. “It’s absolutely incredible and really exponential,” says geologist Alain Prinzhofer, lead author on the Mali paper and scientific director of GEO4U, a Brazil-based oil and gas services company that is doing more and more hydrogen work. Dozens of startups, many in Australia, are snatching up the rights to explore for hydrogen. Last year, the American Association of Petroleum Geologists formed its first natural hydrogen committee, and USGS began its first effort to identify promising hydrogen production zones in the United States. “We’re in the very beginning, but it will go fast,” says Viacheslav Zgonnik, CEO of Natural Hydrogen Energy. In 2019, the startup completed the first hydrogen borehole in the United States, in Nebraska.
Malian businessman and former presidential candidate Aliou Diallo casts his vote in 2018 (first image). Now, his company is preparing to extract hydrogen from underground deposits near the village of Bourakébougou (second image). (FIRST IMAGE) MICHELE CATTANI/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES; (SECOND IMAGE) PAUL CHOUINARD/VERSATILE ENERGY SERVICES
HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania — Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro said Thursday he will not allow Pennsylvania to execute any inmates while he is in office and called for the state’s lawmakers to repeal the death penalty.
Shapiro, inaugurated last month, said he will refuse to sign execution warrants and will use his power as governor to grant reprieves to any inmate whose execution is scheduled.
In doing so, he is exercising an authority used for eight years by his predecessor, Gov. Tom Wolf, to effectively impose a moratorium on the death penalty in a state where it has been sparsely used.
Shapiro went further, asking lawmakers to repeal the death penalty and calling it fallible and irreversible.
“Today, I am respectfully calling on the General Assembly to work with me to abolish the death penalty once and for all here in Pennsylvania,” Shapiro said in a news conference at Mosaic Community Church in Philadelphia.
The state, he said, “should not be in the business of putting people to death.”
Pennsylvania Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro speaks during a news conference in Philadelphia, Thursday, Feb. 16, 2023.AP Photo/Matt Rourke
The first execution warrant came to his desk last week, Shapiro said.
Twenty-seven states allow the death penalty, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
On the campaign trail last year for governor, Shapiro had said he was morally opposed to the death penalty, even though he had run for attorney general in 2016 as a supporter of the death penalty for the most heinous cases.
Shapiro is shifting his stance amid shrinking support nationally for the death penalty.
While Wolf was governor from 2015 until last month, judges delivered eight more death sentences. In the meantime, Wolf issued eight reprieves to inmates who had been scheduled to be put to death.
Wolf had said he would continue the reprieves until lawmakers addressed inequities in the use of the death penalty, but lawmakers never did and Wolf’s reprieves remain in effect.
Wolf’s use of reprieves was upheld by the state Supreme Court in a legal challenge brought by county prosecutors, who argued that Wolf was unconstitutionally turning what had been intended to be a temporary tool into a permanent one.
Pennsylvania has 101 men and women on its shrinking death row, according to statistics from the Department of Corrections. The state has executed three people since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, as courts and now governors have blocked every other death sentence thus far.
All three men who were executed gave up on their appeals voluntarily. The state’s most recent execution took place in 1999.
Posted inAdvocacy, Crime, Government, Law|Comments Off on Pennsylvania Governor Shapiro blocks death penalty, calls for repeal
Ed note: If you have some moments listen to wonderful music, please listen – and consider finding the movie to stream on demand. It stars Robert De Niro, Jeremy Irons and Liam Neeson. The photography of Iguazu Falls is fantastic. The story is about the brutal colonization of the area.
From Wikipedia: “The Mission is the soundtrack from the film of the same name (directed by Roland Joffé), composed, orchestrated, conducted and produced by Ennio Morricone. The work combines liturgical chorales, native drumming, and Spanish-influenced guitars, often in the same track, in an attempt to capture the varying cultures depicted in the film.[3] The main theme, “Falls”, remains one of Morricone’s most memorable pieces, and has been used in numerous commercials since its original release. The Italian song “Nella Fantasia” (“In My Fantasy”) is based on the theme “Gabriel’s Oboe” and has been recorded by multiple artists including, Sarah Brightman, Amici Forever, Il Divo, Russell Watson, Hayley Westenra, Jackie Evancho, Katherine Jenkins, Amira Willighagen and Yasuto Tanaka.
Ed Note: There are now 169 subscribers to our Skyline725 blog. You can see some interesting blips in usage (note the COVID onset increase in 2020). Also, there’s an astounding increase in “hits” over the last few months. Recently, individuals outside of Skyline have subscribed — so please remember the postings on the blog are not confidential unless included in a password protected page. We’d like to keep the blog eclectic in service to the interests of residents of our lovely community. The resident portal (CareMerge) does not post activities outside of Skyline, so if you would like to have something posted or have suggestions for the blog please send it to the editor, Jim deMaine (email is listed in CareMerge).
Months and Years – numbers of monthly “visits” to blog postings
Rendering by Perkins and Will [enlarge]This perspective looks northwest at the planned medical building, with SHA’s planned new Sawara apartments at left.
As planned, Kaiser Permanente has paid a little over $36.2 million for the site of a new Yesler Terrace medical tower at 755 Alder St. The deal and planned building were announced almost exactly a year ago by the health care provider and Seattle Housing Authority. The land price was then estimated to be about $1 million higher.
King County recorded the sale last week; it was worth about $511 per square foot. SHA’s brokers were Frank Bosl, Jon Hallgrimson, Eli Hanacek and Kyle Yamamoto of CBRE. Kaiser Permanente’s broker was JLL.
The sloping corner site, at Ninth Avenue and just south of Harborview Medical Center, totals slightly over 1.6 acres. Perkins and Will is designing the nine-story building, which will have about 260,000 square feet of clinics, offices and labs. Kaiser says Mortenson will build the unnamed project, which it values at over $500 million.
Kaiser Permanente Washington COO Janet O’Hollaren said in a statement, “This strategic development furthers our mission of integrated care and meaningful partnership in our communities. Seattle Housing Authority has a thoughtful plan to invest in the Yesler neighborhood, and we’re pleased to contribute to the health of this evolving community.”
Regarding the Block 7.2 sale, SHA executive director Andrew Lofton said in a statement, “The presence of Kaiser Permanente as a health care provider, employer and Yesler community member is significant. They are exactly the type of partner SHA and the Citizen Review Committee envisioned when creating a master plan for a new Yesler that will enhance the lives of our residents and attract others to the community.”
Also notable in the ongoing, over $1.7 billion redevelopment of the 30-acre campus is that Kaiser represents the first non-apartment project. About 1,500 affordable and 2,500 market-rate units are in varying phases of development by Sustainable Living Innovations, Mack Real Estate Group, Vulcan Real Estate, Su Development, Lowe, Mill Creek Residential Trust and SHA itself. Soon there won’t be any more land left to sell and redevelop. The effort began in 2013, when the mostly 1940s-era complex had around 1,200 residents.
Coughlin Porter Lundeen, Mazzetti and Site Workshop are also working on the Kaiser project. It’ll also have about 810 parking stalls on six mostly underground levels.
Kaiser includes the Yesler Terrace project in what it calls a $1 billion initiative, announced four years ago, to expand its presence and deliver better health care in our state. As part of that same effort, Kaiser is also planning a new medical building in Everett, also announced a year ago, and expanding another next door.
The new four-story building, at 2929 Pine St. in the Riverside neighborhood, will have about 165,000 square feet. ZGF is the architect there. A new structured parking garage on the opposite side of the block, on Maple Street, will have about 750 stalls. The old Denny’s on Pacific Avenue and other old buildings will be removed. Last summer, the entire expansion/addition project received its SEPA determination of non-significance from the city. No start date has been announced, though Kaiser said 2022 was the goal for opening the facility.
Posted inHealth, In the Neighborhood|Comments Off on Kaiser Permanente pays over $36M for Yesler Terrace site
Leonard Cobb, MD speaks about Step 10 – Work Toward a Culture of Excellence, a section from the book: ‘Ten Steps for Improving Survival from Sudden Cardiac Arrest’ by Mickey Eisenberg and the Resuscitation Academy Faculty.
It was documented by this 60 minutes episode. Leonard will never be forgotten, a true pioneer in saving lives.
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