A newcomer on notice
Choosing to live in Seattle, and arriving here by way of St. Louis, Miami, and Tacoma, you see things differently than the mossbacks.
I've lived in Seattle for two years now, so I'm still a newcomer. According to the mossbacks, I'm part of the problem; my very presence here is ruining everything. But there isn't anywhere else I can say I belong. A child of the military, I learned early on not to call any place home, as we'd soon be leaving it. Seattle is the only place I chose to live as opposed to being shuttled there by other forces.
My childhood education was spent in eight different schools in four different cities. We lived in one place for only three months; the longest we lived anywhere was five years. My three siblings and I hold birth certificates from three different states. My youngest brother speaks with the self-proclaimed redneck accent of one born and raised in Southern Illinois. I think of that part of the country as merely where I went to high school.
The husband and I chose Seattle deliberately — once we figured out that living in Tacoma might be close, but not close enough. We moved to that sub-Seattle city five years ago, having traveled from about as far away as you can without leaving the contiguous United States: Miami. We made the trip with three cats, three little cat carriers hoteling it in the back of our CRV. (Anyone who says she had to abandon her cat for relocation reasons is just making excuses.)
When you're sitting under the mango tree in Miami and gazing at a map of Washington state, Tacoma looks like it's close enough to Seattle to be under its influence. The whole metropolitan area hiding under the skirts of the Cascade range and hugging the knees of Puget Sound seems to promise two things: 1) the benefits of cultured city living not dependent on South Beach celebrities or a professed hatred of Fidel Castro, and 2) proximity to a wilderness unspoiled by the forces that drained the Everglades and shot 95 percent of the birds out of Florida skies.
My would-be academic colleagues played up the transformation taking place in Tacoma: the Glass Museum, the downtown renovations, the waterfront. The area around the school where I went to work boasts glacial lakes, pungent swathes of Douglas fir, and a breathtaking view of Mount Rainier. (Seattleites, take notice: Tacomans have a much better view of the mountain.) The gig I had in Miami was good for a teacher: My own grad school wanted me to work there full-time. But it wasn't tenure-track, and Miami wasn't where the hub and I wanted to stake a claim.
So we packed up the mini-ute and headed for the Northwest.
Only to find that things were a bit harder than we'd anticipated. Okay, a lot harder. First: the rain. Coming from Miami – which gets 250 days of sunshine per year and where we were known to bike-ride to work/school and get a fair amount of tennis-playing in before sundown, not just in the summer but in the winter, too – the transition was a shock. My colleagues shook their heads at my parka and informed me that no, I would not develop webbed toes.
Second: hard times for the hub. There just weren't any jobs for an artist-cum-exhibit preparator down south, and he was spooling away up to four hours daily commuting by bus to Seattle. I hardly ever saw him. He had neither time nor energy left for art-making. And since he spent so many of his waking hours en route to or from Seattle during the week, he just couldn't get up for a Seattle social outing on weekends.
Still, we really did try to make a go of it in Tacoma. I successfully secured tenure, and teaching was my passion. But somewhere along the way, teaching got passed up by writing, which had been there all along. Sure, I could have morphed into a career writer from the southern edge of Puget Sound, but coupled with the hub's struggles, the town just didn't take. We were too deeply attracted to Seattle's cultural offerings. After living in Miami, which is finally claiming its title as the Capitol of Latin America, at least as far as art is concerned, and the very culturally underrated St. Louis, it was tough for us to take the step backward that Tacoma represented. Sorry, Tacomans, but it's true.
So we joined the legions in Seattle who are house-poor but rich in so many other ways. Here in the northerly tip of Ballard/Crown Hill, there are sidewalks, and people use them. We live on a busy street because that was the only way we could afford a house in this neighborhood, but the city is just this week painting in bike lanes, which the hub will use on his daily commute. We can walk to Ballard proper and its lively restaurant/music scene; we can hoof it to Golden Gardens Park. We went to Seafoodfest this year and felt like part of a community.
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Comments:
Posted Sat, Sep 22, 2:35 p.m. inappropriate
Welcome Ms. Albers and Hub!: Dear Ms. Albers,
Nicely written; thank you for the thoughtful,
clear and enlightened perspective on Seattle -
your city! As a fourth-generation Seattle native,
with so much moss clinging to my back that only
during July and August am i able to stand up straight,
I welcome you and your "Hub"!
Looking forward to reading your poetry as well.
Cheers!
Jay Licata ( Troubadour Poet )
Posted Sat, Sep 22, 2:53 p.m. inappropriate
Tacoma Arts: Certainly Tacoma has nothing on Seattle as an Arts 'hub', however it is not without merit.
The Pantages Theatre is classic, the Museum of Glass truly a one of a kind. The Grand Theatre may not manage as many screens as the Seven Gables chain, but it might even be better than anything Seattle can offer. A small popcorn is only $2 bucks!
Like most recently Georgetown (where I have lived) in Seattle Tacoma is affordable. It is on a well beaten path from the cheap and affordable that allows the most innovative to get a toe-hold.
After all true art is in the doing of it, isn't it?
-Douglas Tooley
Lincoln District, Tacoma
Posted Sat, Sep 22, 3:04 p.m. inappropriate
Don't Feel Unwelcome!: Lisa,
I suspect most mossbacks don't resent your arrival in Seattle or believe you are ruining the city. Please don't feel unwelcome, because for the very reasons we are proud of our City you have chosen to live here. Your arrival is a tribute to the lifestyle mossbacks have so long cherished.
There are mossbacks out there who might take issue with those newcomers who are the contemporary carpetbaggers. These are the folks who have left a city they can't stand and moved here to get rich or exploit its good nature by changing the city into the image of the place they left. They come not out of respect of the natural beauty or a lifestyle that respects courtesy and tolerance, but would see it only as a place to cut it's trees or build massive town homes that block their neighbors views. They don't choose a neighborhood, only a site, to build edifices to their affluence. They are takers who add little to the culture, or their community. Some are so immersed in "self" and financial gain that they take up the space of people like you who have chosen Seattle as a place to create a life and give back to the City and its culture.
You are correct, Seattle will grow, but we might be much better off if the growth were not as explosive and our government did less to promote it. Sadly, we are draining people from small cities across America and Washington State because we are stealing the jobs that would support the small towns that have the affordable housing, schools and infrastructure to support them.
Posted Sun, Sep 23, 9 a.m. inappropriate
Rhetorical Question: Just how many of the folks moving here now are takers from the communities they moved from?
I've no idea, nor even any sense of how you'd measure such.
However, it would be possible to compare the wealth generated by folks bringing their home equity to the state vs., say, the imported cash brought by Microsoft, Boeing, and/or Weyerhauser.
-Douglas Tooley
Lincoln, District, Tacoma
Posted Sun, Sep 23, 10:46 a.m. inappropriate
Where?: I enjoyed this piece a lot. It is interesting to hear your perspective, especially interesting to all of us who came to Seattle over the years. We came nigh onto forty years ago, and even with the changes, much of what you say rings true.
I do have a pet peeve. Our media always satisfies itself with phrases like "I came from Northern Wisconsin," and it is never satisfying. I wonder if anyone will ever realize that the people who find that interesting would want to know WHERE in Northern Wisconsin. Green Bay is a world away from Superior. Hey, Carbondale ain't Rockford, either.
Your shyness here is particularly frustrating to me, as one of my sisters is an Albers by marriage.
Good stuff, though, Albers.
Posted Sun, Sep 23, 11:14 a.m. inappropriate
RE: Where?: Thank you, Spike. Point well taken. I'm an Albers by marriage, too, however, and my people are from Rhinelander (family names Ives and Brunette).
Posted Sun, Sep 23, 12:04 p.m. inappropriate
RE: Where?: Thank you! Rhinelander is probably the very center of Northern Wisconsin. Your hub is probably a fifth cousin of my brother-in-law. I think Albers is a very scarce name. To be honest, until your name popped up, I had never seen it except for my sis.
Posted Sun, Sep 23, 1:29 p.m. inappropriate
My parents were married in Superior, WI (they lived across the river in Duluth, MN...).
Know what summer in Wisconsin and MInnesota is? Two weeks of lousy ice fishing. Since almost by law everyone in Wisconsin has one, where was your deer camp?
Nothing better, though, than upper midwest wild rice!
But us long-timers here still have a bone to pick with the badger state...You stole our original MLB team back in 1970; the Milwaukee Brewers are really the old Seattle Pilots. We wuz robbed!
But I'm sure you had no hand in it, so welcome to town.
The Piper
PS: Tacoma ain't really a bad place, just one mired in the fact that Seattle won't ever let Tacoma live down the fact that no matter what Tacoma does to spruce things up...at the end of the day it's still Tacoma. I lived there for several years, too, with my second son being born there.
Posted Sun, Sep 23, 2:13 p.m. inappropriate
RE: Where?: Sorry; should have clarified that. The Hub was born and raised in St. Louis, where there is a sizable Albers clan (German and Dutch in ancestry) and incidentally no relation to the Albers Mill family of the NW. The Iveses and the Brunettes nee McKays are the Rhinelander folk (Norwegians and Irish, respectively - I'm a hybrid between the stoics and the hysterics, and I mean that affectionately).
Piper, if you're reading this, yes, my relatives have deer meat in the freezer.
Posted Sun, Sep 23, 5:58 p.m. inappropriate
The Piper
Posted Tue, Sep 25, 12:14 p.m. inappropriate
Ballard to Tacoma: I made the opposite move (from Ballard to Tacoma) about a year ago, and am just as satisfied with my move as Ms. Albers is with hers. My neighborhood, Tacoma's North Slope, is as safe and walkable as anywhere in Seattle, and while not as lively (or impressed with itself) as the new Ballard, the low key charm of the place, which isn't unlike how close-in Seattle neighborhoods used to be, makes up for having to drive or bus up to Seattle for the occasional music show.