PORT OF SEATTLE/ CROSSCUT

*Hi David,
re:_ Your Crosscut piece on The Port of Seattle:
_ **The Mic Dinsmore flap reveals deep
differences at the Port of Seattle
<http://crosscut.c.topica.com/maag1TrabzOJ1b8wTofcaeht2k/>

http://www.crosscut.com/port-seattle/4978/

**I must say that your piece appears to be chiefly based on quite a bit
of stale bread from the other local publications. I see little if any
attempt to dig deeper.
*
*Why the hell would I know something about the port of Seattle? Well I
wouldn't have if I hadn't been in the kitchen cabinet of a candidate who
had to withdraw for conflict of interest reasons. I then switched
support to Jack Jolley and followed the campaign closely. But in the
process of seeing whether there might be an overall story, going back to
the port's hoary beginnings, I then learned quite a bit, attended the
major forums, penetrated the warm and hard working heart of the
democratic party machinery, but then never got a paying gig, and decided
to step back. Besides, my way of going about these things can be pretty
different.

I interviewed Mic Dinsmore at length, an interesting man, exceedingly
knowledgeable about the world wide workings of these matters, and with
novelistic features. Two of the most interesting people I talked to were
Frank Clark at SS Marine [Carrix], perhaps the most impressive person
I've met in Seattle these 14 years, and the now retired David Olson of
the U.W. Carrix, the major major player, gets nary a mention in your
piece. Nor do the railroads, the BNSF. Dinsmore - lunch at Rice and
Spice, courtesy of his largesse [he had brought along p.r. ex-reporter
David Schaefer] cost the Port of Seattle $ 40.00, Mic had just come from
a meeting with the BNSF C.E.O. I see no mention of railways in your
piece. Olson, frequently consulted, also by the commission, sure knows
labor.

Also much like Alec, far more than a Tim Eyeman with a Yale degree, cute
phrase as it is, though I do wish he wouldn't be as lily-pure as not
to go on junkets: hey, you always learn something and there is no
requirement to run with the pack. I will certainly back him to the
extent of my limited capacities. He has some very interesting ideas how
to re-form the commission, so it would be less of a political football
and more effective. Looks as though you didn't talk to him either. Nor
to John Creighton, current president of the commission. So who did you
talk to?

John Creighton has come as a very pleasant independent surprise.
Deriving from silver spoon heritage, as do I myself, I found him suspect
at first, what with Seattle Times endorsement and all that; though
Molloy's self-destructive campaign obviated such endorsement I think. If
you happen to find my silver-spoon, you may keep half of it.

As a muckraking journalist, I would have pursued the make-up of the PAC
that supported the foxy lady, first choice of Carrix too, and now backs
Alec's opponent: why? What's really in it for them??? Was that attempted
payoff a tit for tit? PACs for Port Commissioner races - what's the
world coming to. It's a matter that a real journalist would at least
pursue. You need to dig a little deeper, or someone does. The reporters
at the majors sure don't. Crosscut is another alternative that isn't.
"The Best Arts Coverage in the North West" - give me a break, not even
the best links to what few good and interesting pieces appear. You and
Mossback are coasting on a retread!

On the other, it indeed is always easy to win a round or two by
appealing to the cheap runs deep. So does the all around nepotism, for sure.

The idea of combining the resources of the Ports of Seattle and Tacoma
occurred to me too: is there any use left in the two ports competing as
they did in the past? Maybe I am missing something, but I don't see it.
That would be the approach to a less myopic way of viewing what this
"port authority" can and cannot, or should do. It's import not just to
one county, but to the state, the Northwest as a whole.

No mention of Puget Sound as major naval base!

The way the Seattle Times then did its endorsing a couple of yeas back
was revelatory, too. You'll never guess I don't think the major
component of that decision making process.

In some ways you've laid out the alternatives very nicely between a
passive and active commission at least.

One matter that Mic and I agreed on was that there ought to be the
equivalent of an Alameda corridor to move the stuff from port side o'er
them thar hills more expeditiously. But he had had his handful with the
third runway. I was not too surprised that he decided to retire within
the year. However, if I ran a big shipping company I would have hired
him for a million or two a year, what with his contacts and knowledge of
the ins and outs of Asia! Knowing how to play a hand close to the vest.
We found one port that he had been not to that I had: Chalna! I can't
recommend Chalna, a trans-loading spot up an arm of the Indus in
Bangladesh where you can still get eaten by the beautiful natives in
their long canoes. We were going to load jute after we lowered anchors.
The captain was forced to get his handgun to keep me, his
responsibility, from joining these ebony beauties who were offering us
the bounty from their fruit trees.

Yes, just imagine making a deal with some Asian potentate and having to
run it through the Seattle processor! It has got a lot worse since I
came here 14 years ago. E.g. I have one prescription, simple stuff, that
needs refilling once a month. The UW Pharmacy used to have three
windows: one for giving them the one to fill, two for pickups, of
refills and the new. On off-hours this never took more than a minute.
Now the new pharmacy has 7 windows. Three for dropping off prescription,
allegedly, and four for pickups. However, the first set of three windows
features a # dispenser, so that you have to wait in the lounge for your
number to come up on the screens above the four windows in the lounge
area. Thus, if you have a new p., you may first have to wait for half an
hour or longer to hand them the p. that needs to be filled. If you are
there to pick up a refill, well the last time I waited 20 minutes and
during that period the six people working - or rather scrambling around
the pharmacy - managed to completely absolve a single customer. When I
mentioned my observation to the person serving me, she instantly shot
out with: here is the # of our supervisor, we're working as hard as we
can. Yes and so they were, filling out forms on the computers, etc etc.
50 hoops for one pill! Basically, mostly this is a hick rah-rah town
that's got itself tied up in administrative knots... with veneer as a
mirror. I write as I watch the slugs ooze onto the 520 on the way to
Bellevue at 7:30 am. But my sending it seems will have to wait a bit,
the "drewandjill" wi-fi - on first look I seemed transported to
Rawalpindi - on which I was poaching - has gone off, perhaps they
noticed me; or is it the profusion of crows in my surround?

I'll stop now.
*
--
MICHAEL ROLOFF
714-660-4445
Member Seattle Psychoanalytic Institute and Society
this LYNX will LEAP you to all my HANDKE project sites and BLOGS:
http://www.roloff.freeservers.com/about.html

http://www.crosscut.com/mudville/4163/The+new+boss+at+the+Port+of+Seattle+is+wasting+no+time/#comments

i have a slightly different take
Report a violationPosted by: mikerolm on Jun 16, 2007 7:36 PM

maybe mr. corr ought to have checked with some folks in what passes as "the city" hereabouts to check what kind of good old boy Tay Yoshitani really is. a list of prior jobs does not really do the trick as probing reporting goes.

as to mr. dinsmore. i interviewed him at great length around the time of the last election for commissioner, and i have interviewed nobel prize winners, and usually they like to open up to me, as did mr. dinsmore [but knute berger, then of the seattle weekly did not even have the courtesy of exercising the first refusal rights i offered him] and found Mic the Great to be a character worthy of an American novel, but evidently not a tragedy. unusually seigneural. especially considering his origins in the butt of the american industrial wasteland. a lunch whose tab cost the port a mere $ 40, for three. it appears that toward the end of his tenure he was rather hand's off as a manager, but played the making of deals in Asia close to his vest, as i would, too, I must say, not only with a board of overseers such as the by and large fine bunch like the current crop [my favorite is alec fisken, and i think john creighton and lloyd hara are fine, too; bob edwards i have not to come as well as i ought to have; the foxy lady appears to be a bag lady for what joel connelly calls croney capitalism, but who knows, perhaps crony capitalism nepotism is best for seattle??? which exerts its efforts through p.a.c.s; pacs for port commissioner races, good grief!!] but faced with the slug processor just imagine having that shibboleth "transparency" vet a big contract for a shipping line to make the port of Seattle its American home port. ah me gawd, it would be like the building of a fourth runway.

http://www.crosscut.com/mossback/4159/Theodore+Roethke+lives+through+David+Wagoner/

Roethke is a fine German nature poet in American,
Report a violationPosted by: mikerolm on Jun 17, 2007 3:44 PM

and he certainly fits the No' West. However, he only spent the last years of a fairly short life in these parts. His appropriation by the locals is yet another instance - August Wilson is a more recent example - of their dressing themselves with laurels developed elsewhere, since they allow so few of their own to flourish.

Nowhere does Mr. Berger - while citing prizes, posts held, accolades showered, influences exerted - even attempt to define even a single quality of Roethke's, or manifest a kind of personal response to his work. I am afraid I find this to be typical not just of Mr. Berger's work in such matters in these parts.

Mr. Berger's Mossback columns in The Weekly were one of the few things I at least looked forward to, that one could at least disagree with, whereas as an editor he certainly did not develop or allow any interesting writers to flourish. With few exceptions, Roger Downey being the most significant, The Weekly must have had a collection of some of the most godawful writers going anywhere. Who do I miss, well Claire Dederer is now at the NY Times. Suspicion is in order when an editor chiefly features himself, as is the case once again in Crosscut [Neither cross nor cuts nor much of a section says this once lumberman who however took down his last tree with a double bit about 20 years ago.]

I recently re-read quite a bit of Roethke, on-line, on the occasion of The Stranger's Brendan Kiley's take on Roethke,

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=166026

where Kiley's quoting did not seem [to me, obviously] to do Roethke the best of service. Thus there are different kind of Roethke's to respond to.

http://gawow.com/roethke/poems/

http://www.english.uiuc.edu/

maps/poets/m_r/roethke/roethke.htm

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/13

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Roethke

sincerely

http://www.roloff.freeservers.com

Seattle Port Commission/ Call for Pat Davis to Resign

Dear Commissioners,

As some of you know, my interest in the Port of Seattle was piqued, first, as a "kitchen cabinet" member of a candidate who then withdrew because of conflict of interest, then persisted with my allegiance shifting to Jack Jolley. What I instantly liked about Jack was that he replied to a message conveyed after a radio debate: Ah, someone who is responsive, and to a whoever; who however asked sufficiently interesting question that it was worth checking out.

As you now, Jack lost by something like 1/2 half of one per cent to a PAC based and backed and Seattle Times endorsed Commissioner Davis, a foxy lady as she struck me the one time I met her, during the Civic Forum Debate. The race turning out to be a whisker... the kind of race that a bit of last minute t.v. advertising might have changed.

My own feeling is that fellow Stanfordite Pat should retire, with Mic, to a well earned position at a hedge fund... and I got to know Mic the great too, and I think appreciate him - from a novelist's perspective - more than I know some of you yourselves do. I don't know: Mic as a dictator and there would be an Alameda Corridor to Stampede Pass and the freight would be whizzing out of the port like Maseratis... Pat got a little too deep into the nepotistic there I would say, and you ought to appoint Jack in her place. Which the public ought to be able to accept in light of the election. Moreover, Jack is a self-made millionaire several times over, and therefore it is most doubtful his becoming too deeply beholden to any take other than what he regards as constituting the public weal.

Sincerely,

--
MICHAEL ROLOFF

A COMMENT ON "NEIGHBORHOODS"

CITY WALKER Having lived in Seattle for about thirteen years, I wonder whether the generally held view of the city as, simultaneously, "progressive" & liberal & "pro-neighborhood" jibe, whether these terms even mean anything any more. Whether the preferred self-image fits. A city walker everywhere, including twenty-five years in New York, [also Calcutta, not just the twenty-five years I put in on the one on the Hudson had become when I left around 1985] I have walked the breadth and length of town and beyond. During my first walk-around Seattle in the summer of 1994 I was appalled to see, north of Downtown, a city scape with huge, macadam dark parking lot gaps, many of now filled with high rises. I was sorry to note that all that was left of the older commercial Seattle was the Pioneer Square district. Fremont and Ballard have changed drastically , so has Belltown. There is something called "Allentown" that, in its way, is converting an industrial and warehouse district. The sky scraper section of Seattle at night is the usual American set of freezing, canyons unpeopled except by the detritus of the voracious dynamic capitalist engine. Meanwhile, having lived in a variety of parts of the 98105 & 98115 zip code [but for two delightful years in the Vietnamese section of the misnamed "International" district], I have noticed that up to half, but at least one third, of single family homes in many blocks in the area - north of the Ship Canal, east of I-5, up to 125 Str. NE - have changed owners during my residence here. The gridlock has become worse. Never using my car, I gave it to a longshoreman friend about five years ago. Each morning and afternoon I notice that you can canoe more quickly across Lake Washington in either direction than crawl it by vehicle. Much has changed in Seattle since circa 1900: Seattle once had a great street car network. Like the rest of the country, Seattle submitted to the siren song of the automobile, gasoline, cement and rubber industries and is paying the many prices of that submission; the depression, an economy contingent on a thoroughly integrated infra-structure of the military industrial complex - just note how terrified everyone is at the possibility of a base closing, or how everyone cheers when Boeing receives another big military contract. See the poverty that you can find yourself amongst in parts of the city, check with D.S.H.L., notice the industry of the Vietnamese as they expand southward on Rainier, the development that the Light Rail line is generating there. The industriousness of those - from many parts of the world - who expand alongside the ill-named Aurora Avenue. Also, quite a few three and four story condos have gone up all over; decrepit and sometimes not so decrepit bungalows have gone down. It is my guess that the increase in real estate value and the influx of well paid professionals is merely yet another of the succession of generations of strivers that marks the continuous transformations of American cities and of the U.S. economy. Both the mayor of Seattle and New York have to consider set-asides for for lower and medium income housing in the hubs of their cities; the segregation of the U.S. into a more strictly delineated class society seem apace. Real estate brokers and upscale-driven glossies such as Seattle Magazine and Seattle Metropolitan cater to neighborhood transformation. The above is meant as a description, not as endorsement. - If I had my druthers, I would live as a Plains Indian, say a Crow, that way I would move with the seasons and have someone to steal the occasional Sioux horse with! Knute Berger recently was pleased to note that the increase in the population of Seattle had been no greater than about seven per cent during the same period. I myself tend to think [but not walk too much the side-walk-less East Side!] in more regional - Everett Tacoma corridor - or at least county-wise terms. But I wonder not only about the number of births and deaths in Seattle during the past decade, but about the proportion between the influx of newcomers and departure of old timers. For I think that a lot of the "Bungalow Janes and Joes," as I think of the old timers, found the price right and sold to younger "breeders" [as Dan Savage, editor of "The Stranger," called them a decade ago before becoming part of a couple and adopting a child]. When "the price is right" Bungalow J. & J., fledglings gone, will sell the resoundingly empty bungalow and leave the "hood"... and the thought occurs whether the tax assessment on these now right-priced properties have risen proportionally. On a more serious note: Having spent the first decade plus of my life in a north European village, I expect that had I stayed put I'd be spending time with the local farmers who all lived pretty much with their live stock in their living room, and had for thousands of years.On weekends I often breakfast at a restaurant frequented by a lot of old timers. I find it a pleasure to be amongst them; as much as I did one Memorial Day weekend sitting with the ranchers in the Throckmorton Diner in Throckmorton the seat of Throckmorton County, Texas, which calls itself the "Cow Capital of the World," who had come to have their memorial steak and talk about their "dawgs" [and I have had some awfully good dawgs meself]; and I note how pleasurable they find each other's company. But there is nothing sprightly about them, they are staid, they are slugs, they are as sodden as wet boiled potatoes, dried crinkled apples; progressive they are certainly not. I noted that the Longshoreman marched against the WTO. As to how they got to be so staid and rooted, their memories become vague. They are uptight and not communicative, say, as compared to the Mexicans I lived amongst from 1991 to 1994, where everything is out on the street. Nine months of inclement weather fail to enliven the spirit. Thus one thing that occasionally bugs me about Bungalow J & J, ambivalently, is how set they are in their ways, their lack of curiosity. What slugs they can be. They go "ooh aah" at the often splendid sets at the major theaters, and giggle a lot, and the new set of gigglers just hatched. And so I may be forgiven for being delighted to encounter the occasional Brooklyn accent [and it me] among that nicest of groups in Seattle, its bus drivers.Ah how we commisserate with each other while yet singing the praises of our new home! The young breeders cart their kids around, the young men often are championship bikers on competitive runs to pay the mortgage. Nor liberal. Or anything approximating "hip." And never will be no matter how many lattes. In many other part of the country they would be called "rock-ribbed" [a term I adored when trying to visualize it] Republicans. Hypocrisy of a special Nordic type is rife. Having a touch of the Norseman in me I yet appreciate their sometime Juniper dry wit. As usual, I find myself conflicted between my love for the permanent and impulses for a permanent revolution. Heavy of bone and butt. Each collective here, no matter its size, is marked by its ingrownness, by provincial nepotism. More importantly: with respect to what can only be called the prevalent "save the neighborhood" ideology: a sense of "neighborliness" in the 'hoods - a feature you would expect considering the degree to which local neighborhoods are touted - I must say that I found very little if any of that in the various blocks I have lived in except among the Vietnamese, who are perpetuating their close-knit extended village culture. I have had a single real neighborhood since coming to this country in 1950 where its inhabitants, urban pioneers, cared about each other, were of common purpose, and exchanged skills: And that was "Tribeca," [Triangle below Canal Street], very downtown Manhattan: that lasted from about 1974 until 1985 when gentrification as well as what is called the bonfire, as well as cesspool of vanities, the latter spilling over from the East Village, put the end to that project. Another musical is born: "Rent." "Tribeca," now the name of a car, has become the second most high-priced district in Manhattan: all within the span of little more than 25 years! The 4,000 square foot space that the woman and I had decided to live in and develop in Duane Park we acquired for $ 10,000 in 1975, must have increased in value a 100 fold meanwhile. Around 1971, Tribeca at night, was so unpopulated you could fit its inhabitants into one shoebox-sized bar. Here, folks who have lived next to each other in the same block for decades scarcely know or talk to each other. Yet the newest newcomer, who of course also moved in because of the "neighborhood" will near instantly join the list of its saviors. During my time in ranch country in New Mexico you truly loved your neighbor more than you could thyself, if you happened on one of them, since you might not find another per square mile! The fruit on the fruit trees hereabouts rots unpicked [except by me] at the fences in the often still very rural alleys. I frequently have the feeling that I am walking in a pre-Ibsen or Strindberg Nordic city with all the nanny looks I get from behind the curtains. Whereas those regions have changed, a lot of the so-called old Seattle appears to be under the suasion of the unchanged ethos that their grandparents brought with them from wherever, perhaps just trundling down the Cascades from miserable regions point east. My short hand for this is: the Jazz clubs on S. Jackson were shut down in the forties, and there's no lap-dancing on the mayor's lap. One discernible result is the discontinuity of a great jazz tradition. Artistically it is not a productive city. Besides, the repression is too nice, too polite, nothing sufficiently adamantine to make for great transfiguration. Besides, cheap runs deep in Seattle, and I think I know why. With all the amnesia, some memories are embedded in bones. So it strikes me that it is more the possibility, or the fiction, the idea of neighborliness - some sense of community - that various publications and their editors [you know who you are!] here seem to fancy and propagate, a perhaps useful fiction, but little else. The fear of the loss of "neighborhood" I suspect points to other, greater, unarticulated, justified fears. Perhaps "neighborhood" is yet another not particularly useful myth. -- MICHAEL ROLOFF