A couple of weeks ago I wrote my first column about weather since I lived on Kauai and occasionally had to write about hurri-cane and tropical storm warn-ings. Little did I know mere rain and snow was nothing without the wind.
Millions of dollars of property damage in our latest bout of really bad weather.
Four people in this area dead due directly to the wind, rain and flooding.
And a million people without power, including moi.
Our building did without for about 20 hours.
My appreciation for old Honest Abe Lincoln, who supposedly educated himself by candlelight in a Kentucky log cabin, increased ten-fold after trying to read for a half-hour by flickering candlelight, while encrusted in quilts, wrapped around my hooded sweatshirt.
If I were Abe, I would have stayed a railsplitter - I think my one night of candlelight reading has doubled my myopia (nearsightedness).
Are we done yet?
CHRISTMAS is coming again, the holiday that leads the holiday pack in suicides and depression as the lonely folk look around and see all the happy folk, or at least the seemingly happy, celebrating various things within the bosom of family and friends.
As a kid, and then again as the parent of little kids, I loved Christmas.
Like most parents I tried to ensure that my kids' Christmas exceeded my own when I was a whelp.
My grandsons are both 10 now, and the Christmas-Morning-Scene isn't quite so cute; the best Christmas mornings feature very small children whose excitement as they rip open packages cannot be contained.
Greed is one of my least favorite vices, and I have often called some of our tough-talking yet fearful leaders to task for greed in this very space. But there is something exceedingly cute when the greed for stuff is em-blazoned on the face of a 4-year-old.
My advice is that if you have little kids around, enjoy it. And if you are one of the unlucky who have no one on this holiday, just remember: Christmas is only one day. People will by and large be back to their passive-aggressive selves soon enough, so tough it out - grim, gray normality is back before you can say Kris Kringle. Be strong, New Year's - and a resolution to get more social in 2007 so next year's Christmas is better - is right around the corner.
TALK ABOUT holiday tempests in a treepot, how about the Sea-Tac snafu.
For those of you who have been living in a cave, a local rabbi complained that our airport had Christmas trees but no menorahs, a feature in Hanukkah celebrations.
Personally, I don't care if the airport has both trees and menorahs, or neither trees nor menorahs. With all the real problems in the world, I am always amazed at people's ability to squeeze out the important details while focusing on the trivial.
ANOTHER LOW-INCOME health clinic has closed its Seattle doors. Aradia on First Hill, which offered health care to low-income women for 34 years, is going under.
More condos, more Starbucks, more phony suburbanized, sterile urban amenities, and less and less in the city for the poor people who carry it on their back in this fair, minimum-wage-hating, yuppified culture. The Seattle that really was for everybody takes another step out of the picture. That's a Christmas thought more important than trees or candles at Sea-Tac.
Merry Christmas, Happy Hanuk-kah, etc., etc. May your holidays be bright and long, and if they are dark and grim, may they pass quickly.[[In-content Ad]]
