Can anyone possibly know about Mr. Stickland, a little lame man, a beautiful man, a graceous man, a cartoonist, who lived under the west end of that bridge over the Duwamish (sp?) to W. Seattle in a hand carved one room house with a “Dutch” front door but reminding one of Scandinavia? I have wondered for forty years what was to become of that beautiful double-ender he was building (entirely of teak? – I can’t remember) a copper clad sculpture of Norse influence, with trusses for deck beams, with no more head room than needed for a lame man that would have difficulty standing up at sea anyway. It breaks one’s heart thinking of what might have happened to such a solitary labor of love. A museum should have been built for it as a monument to Mr. St(r?)ickman.

And then, of course, there was Fred Leber aboard the MARY HILYER, growing up working for his uncle out of Half Moon Bay during prohibition in the fastest boats on the West Coast (but which couldn’t outrun the shells from the 3 inch guns the Coast Guard started mounting on their cutters) and who amply supplied the Chinese community of Seattle with their medicinal supplies ala the Cascades. It was amazing how a man as large as Fred could navigate in and out of the Chinese byways and know the important places behind small doorways where important transactions took place. Fred was a great and loyal friend. He was exceedingly generous, kind and a gentleman who was respected by those who knew him and considered an obscure, enigmatic character by those who knew only of him.

Regardless of the ineptness of the planners and politicians and developers, people like these, along with Doc Henry and Hewitt Jackson, BAM Morse and others, made the Seattle I knew worth knowing.

Cheers.

I just had nice trip to Seattle’s new Central Library this morning with my daughter and I recalled a quotation Mike Gastineau (a sports radio personality here in town) used to frequently recite at the time when the city was debating whether to fund the building a new ballpark for the Mariners. In a frustrated yet reverent tone, Gastineau quoted a colleague as saying about Seattle, “a city that values its museums and libraries more than its sports stadiums can’t be all bad.” Indeed.

I wrote the ‘tell-all’ an hour or two after the show on a computer that wasn’t mine. Worse – no, torturously worse – it had a standard keyboard instead of my MS ‘Natural’ with the curved and split-down-the-middle ‘qwerty’. Which meant that not only was the act of typing a second-by-second exemplar of frustration and misery, but every so often my right pinkie or another stray, crowded finger would accidentally hit a key I think is called ‘ScrLk’ – or something else up there by ‘Pause Break’.

This key, should I ever lose my mind and find Jesus, will undoubtedly be the reason.

When activated, anytime you go back to edit a previously typed line, the new, correct-as-you-go line of type eats all the stuff you’ve already drafted.
A ‘word-limit’, I surmise.

Now then, the inventor of this unambiguous evidence of Satanism deserves the following:
To be made to smoke a pack of Greek cigarettes – ESPECIALLY if he or she hates smoking.
To be dressed in French Foreign Legion garb.
And then:
To be shoved at dawn before a bullet-pocked and blood-spattered concrete wall, and summarily executed.

Now, just in case the inventor is reading this:
DO YOU HAVE ANY FRICKIN’ IDEA HOW ANNOYING YOUR INVENTION IS?

Deep, deep, out-breath.
Ah.
That’s better.

Soooo…
…the ‘tell-all’ would have been a bit longer and more detailed but for the torture of its writing.
For example, I’d have mentioned the guests’ malfunctioning headphones to better illustrate Chris’s improvisational ease, but it wasn’t worth the temptation to find a hammer and wreak havoc on my brother’s boss’s computer.

Therefore: I’m delighted to have provided descriptive pleasure to one and all, and in this rare instance, am willing to admit it openly.

Which is a long way of saying: ‘You’re Welcome!’

To my surprise, one thing that was never discussed, and which could never have been omitted from a show on Vancouver, was the, impact, heritage and present role of the First North Westerners–no, not the Scandinavians. What about all those place names, including the name of the city itself?
In 1854, Chief Seattle spoke: “A few more moons, a few more winters, and not one of the descendants of the mighty hosts that once moved over this broad land or lived in happy homes, protected by the Great Spirit, will remain to mourn over the graves of a people once more powerful and hopeful than yours.”
And now we even erase them from memory.

>The computer guy has been here for three years — he can he even know anything?

I’ve visited 13 cities in just the past 2.5 months. How many have you visited?

And, I lived near San Francisco for more than 30 years. I kept hearing yesterday that it’s Seattle’s “big brother” that you all are jealous of. So, maybe that makes me a little knowledgeable on what makes Seattle special.

Let’s put it this way: I’m not moving back.

(let’s see if I got that bold thing)

or…

bold italics?

I enjoy reading and listening to Mr. Raban, but I’m not sure I’m in agreement that this area has the *most* liberal/progressive point-of-view in the country. But, since I’m learning my Seattle chi, I’ll not split hairs over what is ultimately an extremely uninteresting question…would it be instructive to articulate indices for progressive-ism and conservativism? Problematically that activity would amount to an appeal to reductionism, which has taken us in wrong directions and gotten us into enough trouble.

As to what makes a city great? Many things. One item that is helpful Herb Caen figure. Keeps you grounded on the importance all things trivial. Being a newbie here, I’ve probably not bumped into this yet. A few of many memorable quotes: http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Herb_Caen/

A wiki entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herb_Caen

As for the panelists, my hypothesis is that ROS had to rely on the KUOW staff for suggestions and booking – staff, mind you, already preoccupied with their normal daily grind. The panelists you found so lacking offered much to me – and perhaps to many others.
I’m glad I’m not yet a jaded and disgruntled resident, and I’m hoping to make that state of innocence last for a few years more.
Now, since I don’t want to think your attitude characteristic of the whole of the city of Seattle: Peace?
See you round the ferries.

I’m from Michigan!

Moved out here a year and a half ago. Yesterday was my first chance to actually walk in Seattle instead of having to drive through it to somwhere else.
I do hope you find a venue to do your own show and correct us all, Seattle man.
Guess I’m just an unsophisticated bumpkin. But I’d rather be that than rude!
Thanks for making my morning.

“…regional diversity at work.” Nonsense. There was no diversity on the show. You had the same self-congratulatory types like Balter, Rice and that uninformed Raban who is not even aware that the suburbs are changing politically. Utterly conventional, unimaginative.

Make me embarassed for Seattle that my home was shown to be such a shallow place. As if Balter and Rice have anything to say.

“Petulant ingrates?” – Because someone does a show here which isn’t very good? What a yuck. At the personal I hope that Lydon and all other visitors have a good time but I am so tired of the local smugness and narrowness and this show did not represent Seattle well. Who chose the guests? Very poor selection Rice had NOTHING to say when he was Mayor and even less now. Balter is a bore. As I said, the Englishman is pompous. The computer guy has been here for three years — he can he even know anything?

Overall a terrible show.

I’ll say it again: they did just fine.
Quit cher gripin’ and try saying ‘thanks’ fer cryin’ out loud.
Don’t forget that this page is international — we don’t want to seem like petulant ingrates, do we?

As far as the ’survey’-like lack of focus, perhaps that’s more our regional diversity at work, and not the result of a poor plan.
i.e., in the run-up to the show, perhaps the ROS staff were surprised at the quantity of their KUOW listeners and the diversity of our interests, and tried to accomodate this — and us — as best they could in 48 minutes — while at the same time trying to hold the interest of a national audience.
Which a show on the Seattle school system, for example, just wouldn’t do. (Hell, it wouldn’t even hold MY interest much out here in OlyPen land.)
In other words, shining a parochial spotlight just wouldn’t work: they instead knew to shine a floodlight and hope to cover enough topics to make us all happy.
Parochial, regional topics are the proper domain of Weekday, the Conversation, the Works, etc.

I think they did just fine.
Because hopefully Boston and other ROS stongholds will have a better idea of Seattle at least — although not Washington State in general — unless they listened closely to Raban (especially) and Balter (and Horsey too.)

Let it go, folks: this show was a favor to us, not a flop.

Seattle-Bainbridge Island route takes 35 minutes each way. Yes, given security concerns, everyone must disembark upon reaching the island and then reboard to sail back to Seattle. But it’s wise to stretch legs, shift thinking, shuffle positions anyway. Take in the scenery and salt air. Website for ferrry schedule and other info: http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/ferries. For a longer roundtrip ferry ride (same price?), vote for Seattle-Bremerton: ~50 minutes each way.

Re: discussion topics, as a three-decades Seattlelite, I don’t think striving for world-class status is in the forefront of anyone’s mind except a few politicians and their cronies. As long we achieve incremental improvements like more bike paths and pea patches, more salmon-friendly estuaries and new One Percent For Art projects, livelier neighborhood farmers’ markets and plenty of quirky street events such as the Fremont Solstice Parade, plus successful removal of invasive ivy that chokes native trees, water fountains for all ages to play in, an annual Indian Pow-Wow at Daybreak Star, stimulating film fests, author readings, speakers at Town Hall, summer outdoor concerts, and beaches like Golden Gardens where we can gather around a fire on a beach, right in the city, as well as decent ferry service to quickly escape the city whenever, then who cares about labels like World Class? Let’s enjoy Seattle Class. Oh, and what about Seattle Open Space 2100? Looking 100 years ahead to create a green infrastructure that will serve Seattle and the region, in a new era of sustainability, rather than go to a paved-over hell in a fossil-fuelled handbasket … see http://www.open2100.org/

Not much of that shone through in the Seattle episode. I’d been looking forward to it, to hearing the considerable intelligence inherent in the show brought to bear on this strange city where I live. I was disappointed for the most part. Part of that happened because of the overall weakness of the line-up, part because of the kitchen sink approach to programming, way too many guests for 50 minutes of radio.

Joni Balter and Norm Rice are the sort of guests that one can hear regularly on KUOW, and they had little insight to offer about this city. Molly Wizenberg had some good stuff to say, but was ill-served by the truncated time she had available. I would have loved to hear more of her take on the diverse aspects of the role that food plays here. Robert Scoble is a great blogger, but his focus is the software business. He would make a wonderful guest talking about that, but does not appear to have thought about Seattle as a city at all.

Jonathan Raban is an excellent writer and a fine raconteur, and I think that a Raban episode of ROS would be a good idea. Here, however, he also had little time and much of what he did say left a lot to be desired. For example, he described a model where the region gets more conservative the further one goes from the city limits, into the suburbs and the country. That’s a good sound bite, but it’s a gross and generally erroneous simplification of the place. With the suburbs generally cheaper than the city center, they have become magnets for immigrant communities, so that the edges of the metropolitan area are in some ways more cosmopolitan than the city. The trouble is that what’s interesting is hidden in backwater neighborhoods. I think about the interesting irony that the region’s most diverse and politically progressive radio station is not in Seattle, but is based at a community college in the suburbs.

I liked Raban a lot and having admired Horsey’s cartoons for years I liked hearing his comments.

I was expecting to hear more from Scooble.

I thought that most of the conversation was cant, cliche and forced…I got the feeling that the guests were trying to make up something to say. It was boring, even annoying, especially that gratingly pompous Englishman.

Basically you haven’t really gotten into whatever the spirt of Seattle, whatever that is.

Of course Lydon’s interview style is anything but sure-footed.

First, KUOW is a nice facility, even though it’s hidden by a nondescript entry on a busy U-district avenue like an undercover CIA post.
Once in past the buzzer and up the stairs/elevator, it’s just ducky.

Chris is a treat to meet — more friendly and less Herculean than this long-time CONNECTION & ROS listener imagined. (And what a relief, too! It’s nice to feel okay with being a mere human in the presence of your favorite nightly radio voice.)

A few minutes before the show, Chris and David ask a few details about the guests and arrange the order of appearance.
The pre-newscast ‘tease’ is pre-recorded — we don’t hear it or the news.
Chris susses through a couple of sheets of possible questions (no doubt influenced by blogger contributions, but just as doubtlessly articulated by his own curiosity), and informs each of the two-guest panels what he’ll ask and in what order — not in detail but simply by topic.

Through the glass seperating Chris, the panelsists, and the rest of us from the engineer, David gives a hand siganl countdown…

…and Chris recapitulates the tease from his sheets.
He reads with marked deliberation, providing that unmistakable diction of his, not as a theatricism but for clear enunciation.
And how cool to watch him in action rather than having to rely on imaginistic guesswork.
Absolutely worth the trip to Seattle from the Olympic Peninsula hinterlands.

Despite working from his list of questions, he seems to improvise his moderator role like a polished jazz band leader.

A digital clock over his shoulder provides him the timing for his pre-break mini-wrap and tease for the next segment. (Another mystery revealed.)

His panelists, who before tonight he’d never met, seem to flourish: never nervous or tongue-tied.

Now I know why ROS the on-air show is so consistently excellent — its voice is a real pro — and a sweet guy to boot.

Thanks guys, it was awesome.
Taught me a lot about my new home region, too.

Extra thanks to Arvid H., whose demonstration of HD radio convinced me that we’ll all be buying one within a year or two.
And to the ‘Freindly Norwegian’ John Moe.
And a special thanks to the gracious Sarah Lerner, who live presence is even more impressive than her already riveting radio voice.

THANK YOU!