States of ethical and moral parity, and other musings...
This essay takes a look at some similarities
between certain states and draws some parallels from the history and experience
and vision of the citizens of those states. It's another in my series of
sociological-anthropological-demographical-psychological assessments of life on
Earth. I have some further thoughts about where I live - that is, specifically
where I live in the city. And probably more by the time I post
this.
I've lived in enough states or spent
cumulative-enough time in enough states to be able, now, to see some striking
similarities in what might seem to be disparately distant states - in distance,
in time, and in historical perspective. What I'm about to say is from personal
experience, observations of nearly everything (total ADD junkie!), and from my
own method of arriving at a surmise - or hypothesis. I'm strong in the
Briggs-Meyers areas for intuition. To me intuition always meant adding up every
possible number to come up with a better answer. What I mean is, if you observe
from a variety of perspectives and include the minutia in your observations, the
total input from those observations can produce a "rhythm" or "pattern" or
"mosaic" or "flow." Reading the rhythm - pattern - mosaic - or flow is
intuition. Taking all the possible considerations into the equation and
producing what falls out naturally. To me, enough data was usually all it took
to find a solution to something. Data, when accrued over time and from various
perspectives, always adds up to more than any single observation or tally
measure and usually provides significant additional knowledge in the form of
trends or zeitgeists.
So, just traveling and living around I've come to gather an enormous amount of "data." As one who intuits things, I use the word "feel" a lot - something "feels" right or it doesn't. An answer "feels" right or it doesn't. This street "feels" like the way out of town or it doesn't. The same kinds of observations come about in any number of situations or everyday events. As an example, the citizens of Seattle practice courteous driving (no, not all of them, just a significant-enough number to notice). The citizens of Houston and Washington, DC do not. The citizens of those two other cities practice selfish driving - they believe they own the road and the right to exclude others from its use. These are some of the ways different places are alike or not.
In the realm of states I really like, have respect for, could easily live in (or did or do), and have strong parallels - let me introduce the States of North Carolina and Washington and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. All three of these states have a striking natural environment and setting for both recreation and commerce. All three of these states have built strong provisions into their constitutions to ensure the educational advantage of their citizens and the equanimity with which these educational advantages are distributed. All three have strong state university systems with statewide campus arrangements, all also have a secondary level of statewide universities under which is a strong statewide program of vocational and community college programs. All of these states have made responsibility a requirement of their citizens and support Good Samaritan laws and actions.
These states have significant regional and local transportation infrastructures. All three are in the national flow for the transport of goods and services via all means of transportation and therefore are all in the forefront of national transportation trends and implementations. These three states are among the few whose citizens tax themselves to provide funds to the state so that local, regional and national Amtrak service will continue at a surprisingly high number of these states' cities and towns.
These states all have faced the economic issues of former Colonial (or in the case of Washington, Expansionist) industries which have been used up or surpassed. All three have made significant advances locally and regionally to go beyond their former economic power to emerge as steady-state players in the economics of today and tomorrow. The former steel mills in Pittsburgh now make robots and what was once a gritty industrial town is now a "gritty" intellectual town. The NC Research Triangle Park area - Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Cary - are home to the same kinds of folks as work at Carnegie-Mellon or the high-tech areas of Philly or the software geeks of Seattle.
These states share a past driven by a vision. In the case of North Carolina it was a Scotsman. In the case of Pennsylvania it was a Quaker. In the case of Washington it was raving utopians who wanted a better state. In the history of these places are stories of self-reliance and growing expressions of tolerance all originating from a belief that the "state" was a collective - a commonwealth - to be shared by all but to be tended and minded by all. Citizenship brought certain freedoms but also brought certain responsibilities. We needed to look out for each other so there was a social support structure for citizens to be good to each other, to pick up after each other, and to "rat" on those who didn't. There's essentially nothing wrong with pointing out someone who isn't pulling their weight. How you manage that person after the knowledge is public is probably what defines a tolerant group from a lynch party. Irrespective, the Charter which William Penn used to create Pennsylvania carried with it a certain ethic and moral which drew from the Quaker approach and which treated nearly everyone equally and well. The Scots in North Carolina tried early in that colony's history to bend the laws to include the same things. The Finns, Swedes, Norwegians and Danes who settled in the Northwest, and became Washington residents when the state was carved from the Oregon Territory in the early 1850's, also brought with them their home-country ways of sharing and providing commonwealth support. These three states have in common a mutually inclusive form of citizenry which bestows upon its members great personal freedoms but which extracts from them a reasonable level of commonwealth support. If nothing else in the form of taxes. And, yet, these states are also in the list of states which are growing and which are contributing to the Gross Domestic Product.
These three, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Washington, also share an interesting place in the country's economic and social strata. All three are places where both hard goods, soft goods, industrial and electronic items, and food are created and livings are made. All three are places where the value-added of intellectual activity and education are also a major economic and social driver. All three have thriving arts communities - many communities devoted to all manner of arts in many cities in all three of these states. The citizens of these states have pride in what they have done, where they have come from, and where they are going and what they are going to do. This is not to say that other states are not like this or don't have these elements. I'm saying that North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Washington states all three "feel" pretty much like they're cut from the same basic cloth. It's a cloth of proletarian support, infrastructure and services which are there to provide a baseline foundation for a tolerant, art-and-culture oriented society which values hard work, honesty, and ingenuity and creativity.
These three states also share an internal divide between citizens of the state in the form of conservative social approaches and fundamental religious sects. Each of these three states has its share (the preponderance) of progressive and liberal-minded citizens who are usually willing to tax themselves for the common good and who generally abide in laws passed for the common good. Each of these three states has a powerful and un-shy minority group with more conservative or fundamental approaches to the common good and the interpretation of laws. Not surprisingly, the split in all the states is usually along urban-non urban lines but in Pennsylvania and Washington several of the large but not dominant cities also have powerful conservative and sometimes fundamental roles and positions. This makes for an interesting dynamic within the state and each of these states has a set of very defined and well-recognized "areas" or "regions" where one or the other political and economic flavor is the dominant flavor.
The fact that all three of these states have weathered some serious recent social, political and economic events and changes suggests perhaps that the overall and underlying approach of the citizens is that of commonwealth - the social imperative - and that when push comes to shove the citizens of these three states can knuckle down and agree to work toward a common good.
I know - far fetched and based purely on years of living and traveling throughout the country and particularly in these three states - but still, there's meat on these bones and some of those older and pre-Columbian approaches to community seem to be working in the New World quite well and have been for a number of centuries for two of the states an over a century for one. This is a different approach to viewing the question "does tolerance make a difference" or an ancillary question "what makes a creative society." In this approach I look at the long-term histories of three states which I feel are similar in their views on the world and of citizens. In each of these three places one has an opportunity to excel - in fact one is encouraged to excel and one is never discouraged to try something else or something new. There's a reasonably widespread and natively-accepted level of tolerance to different approaches and different styles - so long as things like "good fences" remain in place - which is to say that everyone generally obeys the existing law.
It's a form of "treat me right and I'll treat you right; treat me wrong and I'll still treat you right, but, you'll have to change or leave."
Of course it doesn't hurt that these three states are outrageously well stationed with respect to natural resources, natural beauty, forests and mountain ranges, and, if not natural oceansides and beaches, then abundant rivers and streams. All three of these states have acted early and with precision to protect and guarantee these natural resources for a very long time (eternity is way too long and "in perpetuity" is way too oblique).
That doesn't necessarily mean these are my three favorite states or anything like that. Again, this is simply an exploration of three of the 49 states and Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia which I have knowledge of. Haven't been to Hawaii, yet. In my way of thinking, these three have a similar ethic, a similar moral, and when I'm in these states I feel I'm in a place where my sensibilities are reasonably understood by strangers and reasonably accepted by strangers. I don't think ill of most authority in these places. I dearly love the District of Columbia but that is one place where a loathing of authority is sure to produce a profound problem since the authority figures in DC are everywhere and everywhere omnipotent. I believe the Pennsylvania State Troopers will nab me if I'm going pretty much anything over 4 miles an hour faster than the posted limit. But, I don't think they'll be nasty and sneering at me when they stop me. I do think they'll be like that in New York or Missouri or Illinois or Texas.
I also don't think my taxes are hugely misappropriated in these three states, whereas, living in the District of Columbia I was not only sure but saw daily evidence of the waste of my tax dollar.
So this isn't a top-ten states list, or a "best of breed" list. It's a characteristic analysis of three states which seem to have had slightly different beginnings but beginnings which might have held the same promise. These states feel "right" for reasons explained here and for other reasons which have to do with the presence of their citizens. Being proud of one's place - one's home - means that one is not beholden to someone else. Not being beholden to someone means that one can give assistance freely, give advice freely, give of oneself freely. I get that feeling whenever I'm in North Carolina, in Pennsylvania, or here in Washington. And, perhaps not surprisingly because of its history, and, to some degree because of its natural resources, Iowa feels the same. Iowa is also in a crossroads situation and has made transportation and education powerful elements of their society. They also practice a very Pennsylvanian form of tolerance and have a charter which describes much the same as the other three. I'm not much of an inland person; nor am I much of a level-plained environment person. This isn't to say that the wonderful, verdant, rolling hills and endless mighty rivers and coursing streams of Iowa aren't beautiful nor that the landscape there isn't breath-taking at times or awe inspiring. It's more that I'm driven to see vast landscapes from atop high mountains and like to see distant or near seas in my view. So, Iowa's geography doesn't quite fit me. But it's social and economic and political "self" does suit me. Make this an essay of four states of equal ethical and moral parity. Perhaps this is, then, no surprise - Des Moines is an incredibly pleasant, open, and intellectually and culturally rich little urban enclave. All the more so considering that it's a thousand miles from nowhere. The rest of Iowa is filled with a seemingly unusual number of little cities - real cities but in a much scaled-down version. Some of these are struggling to recover from their previous farm-implementation-manufacturing or post-harvest-processing endeavors - but even in these struggling cities there's a still-present and obvious support for arts, recreation, tolerance of all manner and creatures and a desire to bootstrap themselves again.
This approach to understanding the ethic and moral of a place relies on that intuitive approach - does this "feel" like (fill in the thought). Humans are far too complex and their societies have evolved to become even more complex. Still, one can break a lot of complexity away and look at core elements, or core "beings" of a place (or society). In the case of these four "societies," they all "feel" right to me - I could stay or hang around there and be comfortable. I wouldn't feel like a real outsider because a lot of what was the local zeitgeist also fit with what I held to be true.
Since I'm Anglo-Saxon by background, it might be that I'm comfortable in these states because they fit with my genetic social sensibilities. That's not too far a reach and I'm cognizant and willing to accept that I have a bias towards places which operate on a commonwealth basis - a basis where citizens support each other and have allegiance to a common set of laws and tolerate a variety of views, both religious and social and economic. I'm also significantly Scots with a powerful Southern Irish wedge and tantalizing spicy elements from Germany, France and Alsace-Lorrain. I'm also convinced that there couldn't be any Scots or Irish background which was without its share of Norse pre-history. Which means it's entirely possible that I'm predisposed to these kinds of societies by dint of a long genetic background wandering around Northern Europe and then lighting off for the New World early in the game.
The odd thing about genetic history is that it's so interwoven into the meanderings of the whole of the human race. For example: I'd love to get to the slopes of Kilimanjaro some day because I'm one-hundred-percent-positive that I'd feel right at home at the base of that African mountain.
Which brings up my second observation - that of where I live now.
West Seattle. I love this place - already. I mean, I also love Seattle - which is saying a lot. I love DC - it's a wonderful city and all four seasons there are different and filled with different people. I've only been in Seattle for two sets of four seasons but already I know that the four seasons here are different and are filled with different people. So, yeah, I am everyday pleased to be living here. But, I'm also pleased everyday to wake up in West Seattle and to think back at how long ago I dug into moving out here and where I then decided I wanted to live in the city. It was West Seattle back in 2000 when I first began my diggings into local politics, local economics, local housing stock and neighborhoods, local ethic and moral, and local lore.
In Seattle, geography is everything. In DC, geography was a bit easier but it was still everything. Where did you live? In DC? In Virginia - where in Virginia? In Maryland? Prince Georges or Montgomery - or some other county? IN DC - Northwest, where, west of the Park? In Georgetown, where, by the University or by the Gardens? So even without grand views there is still geography. But in Seattle there ARE grand views and they're not just of the mountains. The city curves around both a bay and a lake so the urban dense areas have strikingly different silhouettes depending on where you are or where you live.
One of the things I liked about living at 3961 Fessenden St., NW in Washington was that from my house I could see a park and nothing but a park in front of me and just a handful of neighbors around and behind me and rolling hills of Virginia and Maryland in the distance from upstairs. I could pretend that I lived in a small town because I couldn't see any evidence of the city - literally. Down the block from me or up the block from me were Wisconsin and Connecticut Avenues - each two the most major commercial and through arteries in the city. And yet, when I intersected these major avenues from my street they appeared no more "urban" than the downtown of a small town (well, big small town, but small town still). This was beginning to change on Wisconsin Avenue and was one of the reasons why leaving wasn't so hard. My former "small town" neck of the woods - what my friends who were downtown snobbies called "the burbs" - was beginning to evolve into just another set of dense urban blocks. For the longest time, though, living at Fessenden Street allowed me to live deep in the heart of a giant metropolitan area (when we moved there Metro DC was about 3 million and when we left it was about 6 million) and still be surrounded by a neighborhood street and park-scape which felt more like a neat small town - some place like say State College or Ithaca.
West Seattle, even remotely via the web and in 2000, seemed like a similar kind of place. A small town buried deep within the core of a pretty big metropolitan area. But, a place where you could NOT SEE the evidence of the big city. In a way, just the same sort of place that my little corner of Friendship Heights-Chevy Chase-Tenleytown was a small town enclave in a giant urban mosaic. Even cooler about West Seattle is the not-true but seeming disparateness of the place. It looks on a map like it's totally and impossibly separate from the rest of the area. Being in Seattle and wanting to get to West Seattle for anyone not completely familiar with the many ways seems like a navigation-skills task. Not very many of the folks I've run across have actually ever been to West Seattle - though they've all had reasons at one time or another. In this sense the separateness seems to be somewhat self-perpetuating. For those who actually live in West Seattle, and there's somewhere between 75 and 80-thousand or something like 13 percent of the city residents, the rest of the city is incredibly easy to access. There's this feeling that we live in a separate "city" which is connected by means only we know about to the rest of the landscape. West Seattle appears to "act" as if it were the city's largest and most prominent "suburb" but it's not a suburb because we're in the city and part of the city. It's a strange feeling to describe. Ballard folks, or Fremont folks, or U-District, or Beacon Hill or Capitol Hill folks all know where their neighborhood begins and ends and there are lots of little transition streets which are one side Fremont and the other side Greenwood. But being in these other places doesn't allow one to feel like one is separate or distinct or apart. Being in West Seattle allows one to feel this way because we can see a true spatial separateness from where we are and where the rest of the city is.
You can ramble and roll from Upper Queen Anne to downtown to Capitol Hill and then on to Madison Park or First Hill and down to Rainier Valley without much effort or thought. A bridge here or a bridge there will get you from Seattle's geographic mainland to any of the other areas such as Ballard or Fremont or Wallingford or the U-District and from there you can get to Loyal Heights or Greenlake or Ravenna or points north easily.
From West Seattle one can get to points north or south or central easily but it takes knowing. The way one would know how to cut through the woods to get to grandmother's house. Only by living there and trying a variety of approaches. I've learned enough ways now to get to just about any point in town in about 20 minutes by car and maybe three times that time by bike and four times that time by bus. The bus part's the killer and probably why most folks in the rest of the city don't come here. It just seems daunting. There's a few hot spots such as Alki Beach or the Vashon-Southworth Ferry which have lots and lots of traffic from folks in other sections of town. But the routes to these places are nearly the same and right off all three of the local freeways. A no brainer. It's once you're IN West Seattle that getting about to other sections of town seems impossible. That's good news and bad news all rolled together. Some of what's cool about Seattle is this inter-neighborhood mingling. What's the local scene or ethic in Wallingford can be easily accessed from Capitol Hill or Queen Anne. So, not being able to blend easily and meld with the other neighborhoods is an element of West Seattle which is bad because it deprives others of what's here. It doesn't deprive us of what's there because we know how to get around. It's good in that it keeps this area separate and removed from the rest of the city - further perpetuating the feeling of separateness and - for good or bad - uniqueness.
I honestly think more Seattleites have been to Bainbridge Island than have been to West Seattle. So, right now, living in West Seattle is like living in a uniquely-separate, almost-as-if "gated" neighborhood for "others" but unbelievably familiar turf for those of us who live here. We've got views all around. In fact, in some parts of town we're the reason those folks don't have Sound views. There are parts of West Seattle which have as profound and spectacular views of downtown as exist - so one could feel like one was right in the center of the urban density if one wanted to. Or, one could have views of the Cascades and Rainier and maybe Baker. Or one could have views of Elliott Bay, Magnolia and the north Sound. Or one could have views of the entire south Sound area with all the islands and Olympics in the distance. Or, no surprise here, one could have any combination of these views. And, still be close to a supermarket, cafe, restaurant, movie house or video rental, bar, and, above all else, park. Or one could be in-between any of these. In other parts of town there's an interesting mix which creates the same mosaic of homes and shops and entertainment/recreate venues but one would be crossing this strange phenomenon of "neighborhood boundaries." Here, that blended mosaic is the same place - just different parts of the same place. Thus giving more rise to the feeling that West Seattle is its own separate "city" with its own set of merging and diverging neighborhoods - each with some unique combination of access and view.
In a few short years - hopefully (as always) - the city will be connected by two rapid-transit systems which offer a criss-cross of some of the more distant sections of town. Both the light rail and the monorail will open relatively concurrently in 2009-20010 and once they do parts of town which are really difficult to either get to or figure out how will be easy because one won't have to navigate. Instead one can take a public tram (of some form or another) and for a certain and guaranteed amount of time and money arrive at a previously difficult-to-get-to destination. In five years there'll be train service (monorail or light rail or both with a transfer from some areas of town) to some of the furthest reaches of this city's self-contained and self-perpetuated neighborhood entities. Suddenly West Seattle won't be "over there" anymore because all one will have to do to get to West Seattle is hop on the monorail at any spot from SODO north. Alliances can form between the Ballard Salmon Festival and the West Seattle Street Fair. I neighborhood-hop all the time but I'm not typical and not daunted by such things as difficult navigation or long duration trips. Others probably are. Right now when I attend the Ballard fair it's presumed by most that I live in Ballard. Same for the West Seattle fair. This new intimacy will change some things about all the neighborhoods, including mine. But it will be more for the good because our local streets will still be our local streets - folks who aren't driving here now won't suddenly start driving here in the future. No, instead they'll hop on the monorail. I'll hop on it, transfer downtown to light rail, and get to shop at the Columbia City farmer's market - one which is actually open in the middle of the week. That'll be terribly slick to hop on a train and maybe 35 minutes later be in the market in Columbia City. Heck I could take my bike on both monorail and light rail (I'd transfer at one of three common stops near Pioneer Square) and ride from the Columbia City market to Seward Park and have a picnic lunch with stuff I'd bought at the market. Finish, bike back to any of about three light rail stations in that general Rainier Valley part of town and get home or continue on to someplace in Ballard.
This is all up and coming and will - as stated - change a lot of the perceptions and realities about living in Seattle's many and diverse neighborhoods. Will I object that my secret ways out and back are supplanted by an easy lift on the monorail? No, I'll probably be among the first to use it anyway. I'll still be able to dash about town in a car, if necessary, and get there by these secret back way roads. I'm so surprised, still, by how many folks never venture away from the Interstate in getting around a metro area. Some times the back roads - all six or twelve or fifteen that you have to take - are faster and always far more interesting than the freeway. But, the monorail and light rail will give most folks here another means of getting around, and that will be really, really good.
The reason I neighborhood hop is because this place has so many fascinating and uniquely different "little cities." It'd be a much richer town if most of the residents had access to the other sections of town. Yes, Alki Beach may get even more crowded - but so what? Now, if we could only get our act together and come up with a means of connecting the remaining sections of the city by some form of rail transit. It would also be nice if both the monorail and light rail cars had signs which showed the current ferry schedule.
That about wraps up my current thoughts on this area so far as liking it and having a great deal of expectations from it still. It's gonna get more complex, just like Upper Northwest in DC got more complex. It's fun to be here at the turning of the tide and being able to absorb what's cool and good about the present condition and imagine how things will be changing with the new set of conditions coming up. It's especially fun to participate in some of the comings and goings associated with these changes. I've invested in this place in a lot of tangible and intangible ways and it's got enough of a draw to keep me here for a while. Sometimes, though, I grow impatient. The past ten days and the next two weeks are filled with movies at odd times of the day and in odd locations of town. Getting to and from these venues is not altogether that easy at times nor is making the right connection if there's a second flick on the same day in a distant theater. One of the things which was not true when I moved back to DC but which became true was the amazing ease with which I moved about the city - on foot, on bike, on Metro, and in my car. I'm evolving to that level here in Seattle. I move easily nearly anywhere now on foot and can hook up with a bus nearly as easily - but a bus ain't no Metro. I do remember, though, when we moved from Houston to DC, that we knew there would be about a six-year wait before we would be able to use any part of the Metro. And, then, it continued to evolve toward complete utility over the next decade. Here, thankfully, the first set of installments will come from two completely different systems - monorail and light rail - and will, therefore, substantially boost what will be the inaugural rapid transit service in Seattle. Instead of one line, we'll start the system with two lines and then figure out how many more are needed (my thoughts show about three more to "cover" the city - the suburbs better start either fending for themselves or join the train somehow).
Other matters later. The posts here are evolving to be mostly the essays - which by their nature are somewhat aperiodic. For more mundane and regular postings check out <http://spaces.msn.com/members/chasblog2/> or subscribe <feed://spaces.msn.com/members/chasblog2/feed.rss>.
I'd say thanks for listening, but this ain't no radio show or podcast - so thanks for getting this far and have a most pleasant end of Spring.
Chas
So, just traveling and living around I've come to gather an enormous amount of "data." As one who intuits things, I use the word "feel" a lot - something "feels" right or it doesn't. An answer "feels" right or it doesn't. This street "feels" like the way out of town or it doesn't. The same kinds of observations come about in any number of situations or everyday events. As an example, the citizens of Seattle practice courteous driving (no, not all of them, just a significant-enough number to notice). The citizens of Houston and Washington, DC do not. The citizens of those two other cities practice selfish driving - they believe they own the road and the right to exclude others from its use. These are some of the ways different places are alike or not.
In the realm of states I really like, have respect for, could easily live in (or did or do), and have strong parallels - let me introduce the States of North Carolina and Washington and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. All three of these states have a striking natural environment and setting for both recreation and commerce. All three of these states have built strong provisions into their constitutions to ensure the educational advantage of their citizens and the equanimity with which these educational advantages are distributed. All three have strong state university systems with statewide campus arrangements, all also have a secondary level of statewide universities under which is a strong statewide program of vocational and community college programs. All of these states have made responsibility a requirement of their citizens and support Good Samaritan laws and actions.
These states have significant regional and local transportation infrastructures. All three are in the national flow for the transport of goods and services via all means of transportation and therefore are all in the forefront of national transportation trends and implementations. These three states are among the few whose citizens tax themselves to provide funds to the state so that local, regional and national Amtrak service will continue at a surprisingly high number of these states' cities and towns.
These states all have faced the economic issues of former Colonial (or in the case of Washington, Expansionist) industries which have been used up or surpassed. All three have made significant advances locally and regionally to go beyond their former economic power to emerge as steady-state players in the economics of today and tomorrow. The former steel mills in Pittsburgh now make robots and what was once a gritty industrial town is now a "gritty" intellectual town. The NC Research Triangle Park area - Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Cary - are home to the same kinds of folks as work at Carnegie-Mellon or the high-tech areas of Philly or the software geeks of Seattle.
These states share a past driven by a vision. In the case of North Carolina it was a Scotsman. In the case of Pennsylvania it was a Quaker. In the case of Washington it was raving utopians who wanted a better state. In the history of these places are stories of self-reliance and growing expressions of tolerance all originating from a belief that the "state" was a collective - a commonwealth - to be shared by all but to be tended and minded by all. Citizenship brought certain freedoms but also brought certain responsibilities. We needed to look out for each other so there was a social support structure for citizens to be good to each other, to pick up after each other, and to "rat" on those who didn't. There's essentially nothing wrong with pointing out someone who isn't pulling their weight. How you manage that person after the knowledge is public is probably what defines a tolerant group from a lynch party. Irrespective, the Charter which William Penn used to create Pennsylvania carried with it a certain ethic and moral which drew from the Quaker approach and which treated nearly everyone equally and well. The Scots in North Carolina tried early in that colony's history to bend the laws to include the same things. The Finns, Swedes, Norwegians and Danes who settled in the Northwest, and became Washington residents when the state was carved from the Oregon Territory in the early 1850's, also brought with them their home-country ways of sharing and providing commonwealth support. These three states have in common a mutually inclusive form of citizenry which bestows upon its members great personal freedoms but which extracts from them a reasonable level of commonwealth support. If nothing else in the form of taxes. And, yet, these states are also in the list of states which are growing and which are contributing to the Gross Domestic Product.
These three, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Washington, also share an interesting place in the country's economic and social strata. All three are places where both hard goods, soft goods, industrial and electronic items, and food are created and livings are made. All three are places where the value-added of intellectual activity and education are also a major economic and social driver. All three have thriving arts communities - many communities devoted to all manner of arts in many cities in all three of these states. The citizens of these states have pride in what they have done, where they have come from, and where they are going and what they are going to do. This is not to say that other states are not like this or don't have these elements. I'm saying that North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Washington states all three "feel" pretty much like they're cut from the same basic cloth. It's a cloth of proletarian support, infrastructure and services which are there to provide a baseline foundation for a tolerant, art-and-culture oriented society which values hard work, honesty, and ingenuity and creativity.
These three states also share an internal divide between citizens of the state in the form of conservative social approaches and fundamental religious sects. Each of these three states has its share (the preponderance) of progressive and liberal-minded citizens who are usually willing to tax themselves for the common good and who generally abide in laws passed for the common good. Each of these three states has a powerful and un-shy minority group with more conservative or fundamental approaches to the common good and the interpretation of laws. Not surprisingly, the split in all the states is usually along urban-non urban lines but in Pennsylvania and Washington several of the large but not dominant cities also have powerful conservative and sometimes fundamental roles and positions. This makes for an interesting dynamic within the state and each of these states has a set of very defined and well-recognized "areas" or "regions" where one or the other political and economic flavor is the dominant flavor.
The fact that all three of these states have weathered some serious recent social, political and economic events and changes suggests perhaps that the overall and underlying approach of the citizens is that of commonwealth - the social imperative - and that when push comes to shove the citizens of these three states can knuckle down and agree to work toward a common good.
I know - far fetched and based purely on years of living and traveling throughout the country and particularly in these three states - but still, there's meat on these bones and some of those older and pre-Columbian approaches to community seem to be working in the New World quite well and have been for a number of centuries for two of the states an over a century for one. This is a different approach to viewing the question "does tolerance make a difference" or an ancillary question "what makes a creative society." In this approach I look at the long-term histories of three states which I feel are similar in their views on the world and of citizens. In each of these three places one has an opportunity to excel - in fact one is encouraged to excel and one is never discouraged to try something else or something new. There's a reasonably widespread and natively-accepted level of tolerance to different approaches and different styles - so long as things like "good fences" remain in place - which is to say that everyone generally obeys the existing law.
It's a form of "treat me right and I'll treat you right; treat me wrong and I'll still treat you right, but, you'll have to change or leave."
Of course it doesn't hurt that these three states are outrageously well stationed with respect to natural resources, natural beauty, forests and mountain ranges, and, if not natural oceansides and beaches, then abundant rivers and streams. All three of these states have acted early and with precision to protect and guarantee these natural resources for a very long time (eternity is way too long and "in perpetuity" is way too oblique).
That doesn't necessarily mean these are my three favorite states or anything like that. Again, this is simply an exploration of three of the 49 states and Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia which I have knowledge of. Haven't been to Hawaii, yet. In my way of thinking, these three have a similar ethic, a similar moral, and when I'm in these states I feel I'm in a place where my sensibilities are reasonably understood by strangers and reasonably accepted by strangers. I don't think ill of most authority in these places. I dearly love the District of Columbia but that is one place where a loathing of authority is sure to produce a profound problem since the authority figures in DC are everywhere and everywhere omnipotent. I believe the Pennsylvania State Troopers will nab me if I'm going pretty much anything over 4 miles an hour faster than the posted limit. But, I don't think they'll be nasty and sneering at me when they stop me. I do think they'll be like that in New York or Missouri or Illinois or Texas.
I also don't think my taxes are hugely misappropriated in these three states, whereas, living in the District of Columbia I was not only sure but saw daily evidence of the waste of my tax dollar.
So this isn't a top-ten states list, or a "best of breed" list. It's a characteristic analysis of three states which seem to have had slightly different beginnings but beginnings which might have held the same promise. These states feel "right" for reasons explained here and for other reasons which have to do with the presence of their citizens. Being proud of one's place - one's home - means that one is not beholden to someone else. Not being beholden to someone means that one can give assistance freely, give advice freely, give of oneself freely. I get that feeling whenever I'm in North Carolina, in Pennsylvania, or here in Washington. And, perhaps not surprisingly because of its history, and, to some degree because of its natural resources, Iowa feels the same. Iowa is also in a crossroads situation and has made transportation and education powerful elements of their society. They also practice a very Pennsylvanian form of tolerance and have a charter which describes much the same as the other three. I'm not much of an inland person; nor am I much of a level-plained environment person. This isn't to say that the wonderful, verdant, rolling hills and endless mighty rivers and coursing streams of Iowa aren't beautiful nor that the landscape there isn't breath-taking at times or awe inspiring. It's more that I'm driven to see vast landscapes from atop high mountains and like to see distant or near seas in my view. So, Iowa's geography doesn't quite fit me. But it's social and economic and political "self" does suit me. Make this an essay of four states of equal ethical and moral parity. Perhaps this is, then, no surprise - Des Moines is an incredibly pleasant, open, and intellectually and culturally rich little urban enclave. All the more so considering that it's a thousand miles from nowhere. The rest of Iowa is filled with a seemingly unusual number of little cities - real cities but in a much scaled-down version. Some of these are struggling to recover from their previous farm-implementation-manufacturing or post-harvest-processing endeavors - but even in these struggling cities there's a still-present and obvious support for arts, recreation, tolerance of all manner and creatures and a desire to bootstrap themselves again.
This approach to understanding the ethic and moral of a place relies on that intuitive approach - does this "feel" like (fill in the thought). Humans are far too complex and their societies have evolved to become even more complex. Still, one can break a lot of complexity away and look at core elements, or core "beings" of a place (or society). In the case of these four "societies," they all "feel" right to me - I could stay or hang around there and be comfortable. I wouldn't feel like a real outsider because a lot of what was the local zeitgeist also fit with what I held to be true.
Since I'm Anglo-Saxon by background, it might be that I'm comfortable in these states because they fit with my genetic social sensibilities. That's not too far a reach and I'm cognizant and willing to accept that I have a bias towards places which operate on a commonwealth basis - a basis where citizens support each other and have allegiance to a common set of laws and tolerate a variety of views, both religious and social and economic. I'm also significantly Scots with a powerful Southern Irish wedge and tantalizing spicy elements from Germany, France and Alsace-Lorrain. I'm also convinced that there couldn't be any Scots or Irish background which was without its share of Norse pre-history. Which means it's entirely possible that I'm predisposed to these kinds of societies by dint of a long genetic background wandering around Northern Europe and then lighting off for the New World early in the game.
The odd thing about genetic history is that it's so interwoven into the meanderings of the whole of the human race. For example: I'd love to get to the slopes of Kilimanjaro some day because I'm one-hundred-percent-positive that I'd feel right at home at the base of that African mountain.
Which brings up my second observation - that of where I live now.
West Seattle. I love this place - already. I mean, I also love Seattle - which is saying a lot. I love DC - it's a wonderful city and all four seasons there are different and filled with different people. I've only been in Seattle for two sets of four seasons but already I know that the four seasons here are different and are filled with different people. So, yeah, I am everyday pleased to be living here. But, I'm also pleased everyday to wake up in West Seattle and to think back at how long ago I dug into moving out here and where I then decided I wanted to live in the city. It was West Seattle back in 2000 when I first began my diggings into local politics, local economics, local housing stock and neighborhoods, local ethic and moral, and local lore.
In Seattle, geography is everything. In DC, geography was a bit easier but it was still everything. Where did you live? In DC? In Virginia - where in Virginia? In Maryland? Prince Georges or Montgomery - or some other county? IN DC - Northwest, where, west of the Park? In Georgetown, where, by the University or by the Gardens? So even without grand views there is still geography. But in Seattle there ARE grand views and they're not just of the mountains. The city curves around both a bay and a lake so the urban dense areas have strikingly different silhouettes depending on where you are or where you live.
One of the things I liked about living at 3961 Fessenden St., NW in Washington was that from my house I could see a park and nothing but a park in front of me and just a handful of neighbors around and behind me and rolling hills of Virginia and Maryland in the distance from upstairs. I could pretend that I lived in a small town because I couldn't see any evidence of the city - literally. Down the block from me or up the block from me were Wisconsin and Connecticut Avenues - each two the most major commercial and through arteries in the city. And yet, when I intersected these major avenues from my street they appeared no more "urban" than the downtown of a small town (well, big small town, but small town still). This was beginning to change on Wisconsin Avenue and was one of the reasons why leaving wasn't so hard. My former "small town" neck of the woods - what my friends who were downtown snobbies called "the burbs" - was beginning to evolve into just another set of dense urban blocks. For the longest time, though, living at Fessenden Street allowed me to live deep in the heart of a giant metropolitan area (when we moved there Metro DC was about 3 million and when we left it was about 6 million) and still be surrounded by a neighborhood street and park-scape which felt more like a neat small town - some place like say State College or Ithaca.
West Seattle, even remotely via the web and in 2000, seemed like a similar kind of place. A small town buried deep within the core of a pretty big metropolitan area. But, a place where you could NOT SEE the evidence of the big city. In a way, just the same sort of place that my little corner of Friendship Heights-Chevy Chase-Tenleytown was a small town enclave in a giant urban mosaic. Even cooler about West Seattle is the not-true but seeming disparateness of the place. It looks on a map like it's totally and impossibly separate from the rest of the area. Being in Seattle and wanting to get to West Seattle for anyone not completely familiar with the many ways seems like a navigation-skills task. Not very many of the folks I've run across have actually ever been to West Seattle - though they've all had reasons at one time or another. In this sense the separateness seems to be somewhat self-perpetuating. For those who actually live in West Seattle, and there's somewhere between 75 and 80-thousand or something like 13 percent of the city residents, the rest of the city is incredibly easy to access. There's this feeling that we live in a separate "city" which is connected by means only we know about to the rest of the landscape. West Seattle appears to "act" as if it were the city's largest and most prominent "suburb" but it's not a suburb because we're in the city and part of the city. It's a strange feeling to describe. Ballard folks, or Fremont folks, or U-District, or Beacon Hill or Capitol Hill folks all know where their neighborhood begins and ends and there are lots of little transition streets which are one side Fremont and the other side Greenwood. But being in these other places doesn't allow one to feel like one is separate or distinct or apart. Being in West Seattle allows one to feel this way because we can see a true spatial separateness from where we are and where the rest of the city is.
You can ramble and roll from Upper Queen Anne to downtown to Capitol Hill and then on to Madison Park or First Hill and down to Rainier Valley without much effort or thought. A bridge here or a bridge there will get you from Seattle's geographic mainland to any of the other areas such as Ballard or Fremont or Wallingford or the U-District and from there you can get to Loyal Heights or Greenlake or Ravenna or points north easily.
From West Seattle one can get to points north or south or central easily but it takes knowing. The way one would know how to cut through the woods to get to grandmother's house. Only by living there and trying a variety of approaches. I've learned enough ways now to get to just about any point in town in about 20 minutes by car and maybe three times that time by bike and four times that time by bus. The bus part's the killer and probably why most folks in the rest of the city don't come here. It just seems daunting. There's a few hot spots such as Alki Beach or the Vashon-Southworth Ferry which have lots and lots of traffic from folks in other sections of town. But the routes to these places are nearly the same and right off all three of the local freeways. A no brainer. It's once you're IN West Seattle that getting about to other sections of town seems impossible. That's good news and bad news all rolled together. Some of what's cool about Seattle is this inter-neighborhood mingling. What's the local scene or ethic in Wallingford can be easily accessed from Capitol Hill or Queen Anne. So, not being able to blend easily and meld with the other neighborhoods is an element of West Seattle which is bad because it deprives others of what's here. It doesn't deprive us of what's there because we know how to get around. It's good in that it keeps this area separate and removed from the rest of the city - further perpetuating the feeling of separateness and - for good or bad - uniqueness.
I honestly think more Seattleites have been to Bainbridge Island than have been to West Seattle. So, right now, living in West Seattle is like living in a uniquely-separate, almost-as-if "gated" neighborhood for "others" but unbelievably familiar turf for those of us who live here. We've got views all around. In fact, in some parts of town we're the reason those folks don't have Sound views. There are parts of West Seattle which have as profound and spectacular views of downtown as exist - so one could feel like one was right in the center of the urban density if one wanted to. Or, one could have views of the Cascades and Rainier and maybe Baker. Or one could have views of Elliott Bay, Magnolia and the north Sound. Or one could have views of the entire south Sound area with all the islands and Olympics in the distance. Or, no surprise here, one could have any combination of these views. And, still be close to a supermarket, cafe, restaurant, movie house or video rental, bar, and, above all else, park. Or one could be in-between any of these. In other parts of town there's an interesting mix which creates the same mosaic of homes and shops and entertainment/recreate venues but one would be crossing this strange phenomenon of "neighborhood boundaries." Here, that blended mosaic is the same place - just different parts of the same place. Thus giving more rise to the feeling that West Seattle is its own separate "city" with its own set of merging and diverging neighborhoods - each with some unique combination of access and view.
In a few short years - hopefully (as always) - the city will be connected by two rapid-transit systems which offer a criss-cross of some of the more distant sections of town. Both the light rail and the monorail will open relatively concurrently in 2009-20010 and once they do parts of town which are really difficult to either get to or figure out how will be easy because one won't have to navigate. Instead one can take a public tram (of some form or another) and for a certain and guaranteed amount of time and money arrive at a previously difficult-to-get-to destination. In five years there'll be train service (monorail or light rail or both with a transfer from some areas of town) to some of the furthest reaches of this city's self-contained and self-perpetuated neighborhood entities. Suddenly West Seattle won't be "over there" anymore because all one will have to do to get to West Seattle is hop on the monorail at any spot from SODO north. Alliances can form between the Ballard Salmon Festival and the West Seattle Street Fair. I neighborhood-hop all the time but I'm not typical and not daunted by such things as difficult navigation or long duration trips. Others probably are. Right now when I attend the Ballard fair it's presumed by most that I live in Ballard. Same for the West Seattle fair. This new intimacy will change some things about all the neighborhoods, including mine. But it will be more for the good because our local streets will still be our local streets - folks who aren't driving here now won't suddenly start driving here in the future. No, instead they'll hop on the monorail. I'll hop on it, transfer downtown to light rail, and get to shop at the Columbia City farmer's market - one which is actually open in the middle of the week. That'll be terribly slick to hop on a train and maybe 35 minutes later be in the market in Columbia City. Heck I could take my bike on both monorail and light rail (I'd transfer at one of three common stops near Pioneer Square) and ride from the Columbia City market to Seward Park and have a picnic lunch with stuff I'd bought at the market. Finish, bike back to any of about three light rail stations in that general Rainier Valley part of town and get home or continue on to someplace in Ballard.
This is all up and coming and will - as stated - change a lot of the perceptions and realities about living in Seattle's many and diverse neighborhoods. Will I object that my secret ways out and back are supplanted by an easy lift on the monorail? No, I'll probably be among the first to use it anyway. I'll still be able to dash about town in a car, if necessary, and get there by these secret back way roads. I'm so surprised, still, by how many folks never venture away from the Interstate in getting around a metro area. Some times the back roads - all six or twelve or fifteen that you have to take - are faster and always far more interesting than the freeway. But, the monorail and light rail will give most folks here another means of getting around, and that will be really, really good.
The reason I neighborhood hop is because this place has so many fascinating and uniquely different "little cities." It'd be a much richer town if most of the residents had access to the other sections of town. Yes, Alki Beach may get even more crowded - but so what? Now, if we could only get our act together and come up with a means of connecting the remaining sections of the city by some form of rail transit. It would also be nice if both the monorail and light rail cars had signs which showed the current ferry schedule.
That about wraps up my current thoughts on this area so far as liking it and having a great deal of expectations from it still. It's gonna get more complex, just like Upper Northwest in DC got more complex. It's fun to be here at the turning of the tide and being able to absorb what's cool and good about the present condition and imagine how things will be changing with the new set of conditions coming up. It's especially fun to participate in some of the comings and goings associated with these changes. I've invested in this place in a lot of tangible and intangible ways and it's got enough of a draw to keep me here for a while. Sometimes, though, I grow impatient. The past ten days and the next two weeks are filled with movies at odd times of the day and in odd locations of town. Getting to and from these venues is not altogether that easy at times nor is making the right connection if there's a second flick on the same day in a distant theater. One of the things which was not true when I moved back to DC but which became true was the amazing ease with which I moved about the city - on foot, on bike, on Metro, and in my car. I'm evolving to that level here in Seattle. I move easily nearly anywhere now on foot and can hook up with a bus nearly as easily - but a bus ain't no Metro. I do remember, though, when we moved from Houston to DC, that we knew there would be about a six-year wait before we would be able to use any part of the Metro. And, then, it continued to evolve toward complete utility over the next decade. Here, thankfully, the first set of installments will come from two completely different systems - monorail and light rail - and will, therefore, substantially boost what will be the inaugural rapid transit service in Seattle. Instead of one line, we'll start the system with two lines and then figure out how many more are needed (my thoughts show about three more to "cover" the city - the suburbs better start either fending for themselves or join the train somehow).
Other matters later. The posts here are evolving to be mostly the essays - which by their nature are somewhat aperiodic. For more mundane and regular postings check out <http://spaces.msn.com/members/chasblog2/> or subscribe <feed://spaces.msn.com/members/chasblog2/feed.rss>.
I'd say thanks for listening, but this ain't no radio show or podcast - so thanks for getting this far and have a most pleasant end of Spring.
Chas
Posted: Wed - May 25, 2005 at 08:19 PM
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Published On: Jul 04, 2005 05:41 PM
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Published On: Jul 04, 2005 05:41 PM