John Hendow

Last Saturday night I played a very satisfying gig in Seattle, at a club on Capital Hill. Late at night it can be a little sketchy in that area and I try to be aware of my surroundings when leaving. After the gig, at about 2:30 AM, I was loading the last of my gear into the car. I had just closed the trunk and noticed a black man about my age approached me on the dark street. He was alone, wearing a dirty coat and smelled like he’d been wearing the same clothes for a few days. I sized him up immediately to assess his threat level, noting whether he seemed left or right handed (in case I had to defend myself) and whether he seemed to have anything in his hands.

He asked me if he could ask a question (which always amuses me because it’s circular to ask permission to ask a question). I told him yes. He pointed vaguely up the street and said his family was up there in a car trying to sleep and he wanted to know if I could help him. It was really cold out and he was looking for a place where they could sleep for the night. He showed me a printed list of shelters / churches where they had tried to get in, but all the free ones were full and he didn’t have any money since he was out of work until Monday. What he wanted was a couple of bucks toward the nine-dollar cost of staying at the YMCA. I thought about it for less than three seconds and fished out a ten dollar bill for him. The guy immediately started to weep. He hugged me, telling me his name and saying he’d never forget my kindness, and that he’d pass it on to someone else as soon as he was working again. Then he walked away and that was the last I saw of him.

So either I got taken by some con artist with a great line. Or I helped some guy who just needed a hand. It doesn’t matter because if he was lying to me it’s on him. Either way I’m OK with it. If nothing else, got a hug for $10, which isn’t bad.

If there’s a point (and most of the time in life there ISN’T a point), it’s only that it would have been really easy to ignore that guy. It definitely constituted a risk to interact with a stranger on a dark street late at night, and I don’t recommend it to everyone. But how many people around us just want to be treated as human and are denied? The homeless, elderly, handicapped, disaffected, depressed, alone, etc etc. Those are people who really NEED to have their humanity celebrated and recognized. But most of us are socially trained to ignore that segment and to just walk on by. And in doing so we rob those people of their humanity, and eventually they don’t recognize themselves as human, which is when antisocial behavior begins… it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy… those people become less functionally human and we take even further steps to avoid interacting with them.

In a less extreme case, we might just put up our shields and ignore some guy playing the violin in a subway. I don’t know. That guy on the street said he’d never forget my kindness, and I hope I never forget that he took a risk by asking for help. I guess we both got something out of the deal.

Today I received an email from someone who mentioned this event and it made me recall hearing about it when it happened. The event occurred about a  year ago in SW Washington DC, in a subway station underneath a busy shopping mall. A youngish man in jeans, T-Shirt and baseball cap got off the 8:00 AM metro train and positioned himself against a wall out of the flow of rush-hour pedestrians.

Standing beside a trash can, he opened a violin case and he took out his instrument. He put the case on the floor, propped it open and seeded it with a few dollars and pocket change. And then he began to play. For the next 43 minutes the violinist performed six classical pieces. Over 1100 people passed by, probably on their way to work. In Washington DC, it’s possible a portion of these people were on their way to offices in the capital.

As with most street performer encounters, it may raise some thoughts … this violinist seemed pretty good, but do you stop and listen? Would you really have time for this in your busy morning? If you stop and pay attention to him are you obligated to throw a dollar or some token pocket change into his case? Or do you shuffle onward, annoyed by the moral choice and acoustic pollution?

The pieces he played were not popular tunes. They were elevated and difficult pieces more at home in cathedrals and concert halls. The rough acoustics were not bad in the metro station but it was hardly Carnegie Hall. Less than three dozen people paused to listen, if only for a minute. After all, these people were on their way to work. The listener who seemed most enthralled was a young boy about 5 years old whose parents seemed impatient but allowed him to listen for a few moments. At the end of his subway concert the young violinist had grossed a modest $32 in tips tossed into his violin case. He donated the money to charity.

Here is a video of his subway concert, from one year ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnOPu0_YWhw

The young man in the jeans and T-Shirt is internationally acclaimed virtuoso Joshua Bell, who was playing a Stradivari violin worth over 3.5 million dollars. He is perhaps the world’s finest violinist and has been awarded the Avery Fisher Prize – the highest honor in American classical music. A few nights before this impromptu performance in the subway, Bell had played to a sold-out concert hall in Boston where people fought over $100+ tickets.

Give somebody a hug today.

Snow has a strange way of dulling our senses. Familiar objects are robbed of their shape and color. Sound travels poorly. Nothing smells or feels normal. It’s akin to a dream… can’t run… can’t hear… can’t see… nothing is right. The yard and the road and the ditch and the driveway were impossible to identify individually. It’s all just white. When we left for Seattle last week, my car was a formless hump in a featureless plane. The house was covered in ten inches of snow which softened the roofline. The back yard, so carefully landscaped, was blanketed. The top of the birdbath was just barely visible. Fortunately, all that stuff is capable of surviving a good snowstorm. When we left for the holidays I was a little concerned about the weight on the roof, but beyond that I was confident all would be fine.

Upon return from Montana we found the snow had largely melted away. My car, the house, the yard… all back in their usual shapes and colors. Sometime in the last week all that snow turned into thousands of gallons of water and went… well, somewhere! Our house is fairly well elevated and water generally drains away without much problem. But I know the melting snow must have introduced a huge influx of water into municipal storm drains.

Snow is pretty, but I’m glad we don’t get much here. Life is surreal enough without it.

One of my favorite places to be for Christmas is in Montana, visiting family and friends. It’s crisp and cold during the holidays, with clean mountain air and beautiful nights. As much as I love Seattle, this is definitely one of my favorite parts of the country. We were pretty lucky to get a flight out of Seattle on Tuesday. Many of the flights were cancelled due to the snow and ice. Our original flight was cancelled on Monday evening, and we got up at 4:30 AM the following morning to drive to the airport and get on the standby list for the next flight to Great Falls. We found out we were pretty far down the list, and the flight had been oversold to begin with… eek!

Some of the inbound flights had been cancelled, which isn’t good for those passengers who had hoped to make a connecting flight to Montana. But their misfortune allowed us to get seats on the only flight that went out that day.

We’re enjoying our visit and hopefully our flight home will be much less eventful. Merry Christmas to our wonderful friends and family! We look forward to seeing you soon. Stay safe and warm today, and give hugs to everyone around you!

We just measured the accumulated snow on our deck, and we have TEN INCHES of snow! This is Seattle and that seems impossible. It’s beautiful and inconvenient. I’m really ready for it to go away now.

One of the interesting side effects of having fresh snow on the ground is that we can clearly see the animal tracks going through our back yard. Over the years here we’ve seen dozens of raccoons, innumerable squirrels and birds of all sorts. Not surprising since I have bird feeders in the front and back yards, and several bird houses as well. Birds are the modern-day descendents of dinosaurs, and until we resurrect the dinos, this is as good as it gets for me. But in the fresh snow, we’ve positively identified the tracks of a fox. We’ve suspected a few of them were living in the woods behind our house.

Fascinating stuff. Now let’s get back to summer please.

Last night’s storm was indeed cold and windy, but we’re managing pretty well. I’m looking forward to this crazy weather going away. Seattle doesn’t have the appropriate infrastructure for snow management, and for good reason: we generally don’t get much snow in the Northwest. I am impressed that the downtown Seattle streets are generally cleared. In my neighborhood the roads have an inch of solid ice, topped with four inches of snow. I’ve never seen a snowplow anywhere near my neighborhood, but I’m amazed that the streets have been sanded at least once a day.

Hope everyone is staying warm and safe out there. Happy holidays. Happy solstice!

Well, here it comes. According to all kinds of weather feeds and the Cliff Mass weather blog, we’re in for 24+ hours of the most intense winter storms Seattle has seen in a long time. In my neighborhood there is already five inches of snow and it’s about 20 degrees and dropping. The snow is beginning to fall again, with as much as eight inches predicted overnight along with 50 MPH wind storms, followed tomorrow by freezing rain and even lower temperatures.

If nothing else, we’re going to have a comfy night in the Tiki Bar. I’m opening a bottle of good wine and cranking up the gas fireplace.

And we still have Montana to look forward to in a few days… currently -30 where we’re headed…

It seems certain “the weather” is the #1 local blog topic this week. Generally speaking, I’m not fond of cold weather, and really don’t enjoy snow all that much. It’s lovely to look at and can be briefly fun to romp in, but it is miserable for driving / walking / living. This Seattle snow storm is described as the worst we’ve had in 20 years, and I would concur.

Yesterday’s adventure: I tried to drive to work. I ordinarily take the bus, but our annual holiday potluck was scheduled for this day and I had items to take. I managed to make it to Hwy 509 and got stuck in a massive backup. The radio weatherman was saying the roads were very bad and things were expected to get worse with falling snow. After an hour I had progressed about three miles, so I exited and returned home to work from my home office all day. And THEN it snowed another four inches.

Today’s adventure: I made it to the local transit center and found a large crowd of commuters waiting for a bus. Apparently many of them had already been there for a long time. The buses were running at about 50% total route capacity, and all of the articulated (double length) buses are garaged due to poor handling in the snow. So the buses currently running are smaller and less frequent. My morning commute involved 45 minutes of waiting at the station and scrambling to cram onto a bus that was already over capacity – we left a number of disappointed people behind and at all subsequent stops the driver told waiting commuters the bus had no room. The trip usually takes about 25 minutes. This morning it took over 90 and I wound up standing the whole time, shouldering a heavy laptop and somewhat heavy commuter bag.
The good news is that downtown Seattle is really pretty clear. The roads have been ploughed and sanded, and surprisingly we seem to have managed this unusual storm without the usual apocalyptic “close everything down” reaction. My office is very quiet today, and I may seize the opportunity to do a bit of “surprise redecorating” for selected individuals… I wonder if anyone around here has a good stock of “my little pony” merchandise…

At last… the kitchen is done. It’s quite amazing to have this project completed. I still can’t quite get my head around the idea. Thanksgiving morning we hung up the vent hood, which turned out to be pretty easy, except for the part where I had to shear through about 30 linear inches of stainless steel – using a pair of tin snips! My paws are still mighty sore, and I sustained a few minor owies during the install. But overall, a very satisfying project.

We had a bunch of friends and family over last night for dinner and everyone was pleased with the outcome of the project. Next up: remodeling the dining / living room. There is no finish line…

Since beginning my new job in August, I’ve been commuting downtown by bus every day. The commuting itself is convenient and simple, provided I catch one of the two express buses. But parking at the transit center is inceasingly challenging. My local transit center is undergoing a substantial renovation and relocation; once complete in mid-2009, the entire transit facility will be much larger and more modern. But while construction is underway heavy equipment is occupying / tearing up more than half of the parking spaces in the existing lot resulting in a morning dash to find parking. I arrive in the morning before 7:00 AM and it’s not unusual for all of the parking spaces to be full, with the overflow lot being over more than four blocks away.

In order to maximize the capacity of the smaller lot, the parking spaces have been restriped to make them about 1/3 smaller than standard parking spaces. I drive a Toyota Camry and it barely fits within the lines of these spaces. Large trucks and SUVs cover both lines, encroaching on adjacent cars. On several occasions I’ve found myself unable to get slither into my car because the doors can’t be opened.

I’ll be happy to see the new transit center completed. It will be a big improvement just to have a sufficient quantity of regular parking spaces again.