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Frink Park 8: William Cumming, Part 1 “Sometime in an autumn in the late fifties … I was living in a disintegrating house on Thirtieth and Yesler [126 30th Avenue, Apt. 2], painting again after a fifteen-year exile occasioned by tuberculosis and a mad desire to change the world for the better, and I felt an ancient hunger to see and hear a friend twenty years out of the past who, more than anyone, had formed and shaped me out of the raw sewage of small-town youth. So, enveloped in the meager warmth of a lemon-yellow October sun, I walked up to the ridge overlooking Lake Washington …” This description of a walk through Leschi opens William Cumming’s “Sketchbook, A Memoir of the 1930s and the Northwest School.” The notional School was a pack of artists that he ran with, including Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, and Kenneth Callahan, who were the best known. Cumming described the School, which he had earlier denied existed as such, as a group of individuals who exerted a certain amount of influence on each other, who all worked “within the matrix of Northwest air and light and earth and water,” leading to some common approaches. Cumming himself was quite the youngest in the Northwest School, and his memoir is full of his lack of self-confidence as part of that crowd. He said that painters in his circle have all known the utter despair that says to you in the night, “After all, isn’t it just a bit of mud smeared on a flat surface?” But he learned from the others and turned out to be considered quite good himself. I’m no art critic, so who am I to say. But he certainly was a writer, and his delightful memoir drew me in, with what one reviewer described as his “richly allusive references,” even if his overlong sentences can sometimes be a challenge. For years he was literally a starving artist, sketching passersby in Frink Park, living in little shacks where he would set up a studio; he was a sometime habitue of Skid Road and greasy spoons until that breed of eatery vanished, its place taken by “the modern fern-filled gourmet establishments where you have difficulty telling whether you’re eating your salad or the décor.” He didn’t lack for wild companions. One fellow artist was working on display cards for a department store. Arriving at work falling-down drunk, the friend was barely able to crawl up on his stool, tottering dangerously. Somehow, he would get ahold of himself and accomplish his lettering perfectly. Asked by Cumming if he could have pulled that off sober, he replied, “I don’t ever recall being sober.” Late in the Depression years he fell in with an older sculptor, Irene McHugh, who he would have known from the Federal Art Project. She had a tiny Leschi cottage at 414 Lakeside Avenue South, where Cumming spent much of his time in the summer months. His work, like that of the writer Carlos Bulosan, his contemporary (profiled here last spring), was interrupted by a bout of tuberculosis, for which he spent time at Firland Sanitarium, in Shoreline, a decade after Bulosan. Also, like Bulosan, he was involved in leftist politics, though for Cumming it was a wrong turn, as he became a shrill Stalinist rather late in the game, in the early 1940s, by which time a lot of people knew better. (My mother had left the Communist Party orbit in 1939, at the time of the Hitler-Stalin pact.) Cumming finally left the Party in 1957, in response to the Soviet invasion of Hungary, and had to repent his membership at length. (That invasion finally turned my grandfather, too, against the Party. He was more stubborn than my mother.) Bulosan’s activism, on the other hand, was earthier, more abiding and grounded. After he left the Party and took better care of his health, Cumming’s artistic productivity resumed. By the early 1960s he had won all the major prizes in Northwest painting. Cumming also taught art lessons at his 30th Avenue apartment. One of his students was the young Tim Patrick, son of Josephine Patrick, previously mentioned here with respect to her relationship with Bulosan, who lived with her and her sons for a time in Leschi. The Patrick family knew Cumming through their Communist Party memberships—a common thread in a lot of pre- and post-war Leschi relationships. Continued next month ~Roger Lippman The author writes monthly about Leschi history and his experiences over his 48 years in the neighborhood.

Remember the sad and lonely days of COVID when we were huddled in our houses, ordering food and restaurant meals and no one came to the door except for the Amazonians who might have knocked once and fled. When we were able to get permits for community events, we resumed our annual ArtWalk and there was a sense of joy and release when the community got together in person. So many smiles! A general feeling of elation! And here we go again! This year’s ArtWalk is on September 14 from 11 to 4pm. You will see some of the regular vendors and many new crafts persons: wood working, candles, pet portraits and of course CANDY, both chocolate and chewy faves. Have you moved? The voter registration table will be there; an important election is coming in November when we elect leaders in both Washingtons. And stop by the Leschi CC table; the booth will be staffed by Board members and at least one Leschi News contributor: Roger Lippman, our neighborhood historian. If you are interested in the good old days, he’s your man! Allen Urness, LCC V-P, can tell you what’s happening in the public safety arena (and what we would like to see!) John Barber, our Parks guru, will be there and of course, our President, Ashley Martin and treasurer, Matthias Linnenkamp. Secretary Trevor Lalish Menagh will take a shift at 1 o’clock. And there are activities for the kids. They can get their thrills on the large inflatable slide or be creative with Sarah Howes at the craft table and of course, get a face paint! The older kids may enjoy the yard games. The Leschi stage is in the park near the slide and Leschi Market. Here’s the lineup: 1pm The Dysfunction Junction bluegrass band; 2:30pm Vawachi II (Marimba band) and 3pm The Rio Thing, our favorite Brazilian jazz band. Plan to eat your prime rib sandwich from Leschi Market (an ArtWalk special) while listening to a band. Enjoy this day and hope that we can get back to our other community events in the future: the children’s day at Flo Ware Park and the large Spooktacular Halloween tent where the whole family dresses up! ~Diane Snell

It has been 9 years since the passage of the metropolitan park district (MPD) which promised enhanced maintenance of neighborhood parks. There have been some improvements, but some problems remain. On the positive side, in the years after passage of the metropolitan park district, we note four improvements: First, landscaped beds that were overgrown and virtually out of control, were improved by clearing all plants in the beds–good plants as well as bad (invasives)–and preparing new beds with wood chips and new landscape plants. These were the beds along the Lake between the North Leschi Moorage and the parking lot for Madrona Beach and Bathhouse and along Lake Washington Boulevard between Erie and Huron. Unfortunately, these are also examples of how non-maintenance of landscaping leads to more drastic and expensive solutions as everything needs to be replanted. Second, the conifers of Leschi Park were limbed up to give see-through visibility. Third, the side-cutting by machine mowers was greatly improved by an operator, who avoided as much as possible the desired plants and instead mowed the weeds. Fourth, the east hillside of Powell Barnett Park is better cleared of invasive plants and new native plants are installed. However, several problems remain. Many landscape beds are overgrown with invasive plants and suffer from lack of pruning. These beds are so dense that there is little visibility in them, which makes them areas in which homeless people can set up camps. Still unmaintained are the display beds at the Leschi Park’s historic fountain, half of the historic rose beds, and the lower grassy slope next to the South Leschi Moorage where blackberries are taking over the grass. Another problem is the lack of support for maintaining the steep slopes of the natural areas like Frink Park and the Leschi Natural Area. The value of the work by crews and volunteers from previous years is being lost as they are not permitted to volunteer in these areas. There is intermittent homeless camping in Frink Park, along with one long-term camper, and also a problem with vehicle parking, with associated messes and sometimes human waste, which neighborhood volunteers remove and dispose of on an ongoing basis. With this progress and remaining opportunities, how do we move forward? We look forward to discussing budget, maintenance plans and opportunities for volunteer engagement with representatives of the Parks Department at our Community Meeting on September 11. Please reach out to leschicouncil@gmail.com  if you would like to see any specific parks related topics addressed during the meeting.

Take advantage of the many FREE activities during our glorious summers! Take the kids to a wading pool on the hot days: Peppi’s Playground 12-7pm Mon-Tues Powell Barnett Park 12-7pm Wed-Sun Volunteer Park Conservatory free first Saturdays of the month. Visit the 104 year old Jade plant and the carnivorous plants!  10-4pm August 6 Seattle’s Night Out 6-8pm. Grace United Methodist Church, 722 30th Ave. S. Celebrate with grilled  hot dogs on front lawn. Bring a salad or dessert. Leschi CC has a table where President Ashley Martin will answer questions about LCC. MOVIES AT THE MURAL: Seattle Center AT Dusk (around 9pm) Everything Everywhere All at Once August 2 Dune August 9 SHAKESPEARE IN THE PARK! All’s Well That Ends Well at Blanche Lavizzo outdoor theater adjacent to Pratt Park.  August 16 at 7pm. Watch for opportunities to help your community by joining a summer work party or just be a one person litter squad! These suggestions were brought to you by the Leschi News which is on its summer break; no printing in July and August. We’ll be back in September and be sure to put our ArtWalk on your calendar: September 14, 11-4.

Seattle participates in the National Night Out (NNO) event every year. NNO is an annual community-building event that promotes police-community partnerships and neighborhood camaraderie to create safer and more caring communities. It takes place on the first Tuesday in August, this year's event will be on Tuesday, August 6th.   Activities during NNO include block parties, festivals, parades, cookouts, safety demonstrations, youth events, and exhibits. These gatherings aim to foster a stronger relationship between the community and local law enforcement, enhancing trust and cooperation; If you are hosting an event this year, please make sure and register it here  and if you let the LCC board know, we will try and stop by to say hello. If you are looking to see if there is one in  your neighborhood, you can follow the same link above to see where they will be.   Grace United Methodist Church will be hosting a gathering this year, and all Leschi neighbors are welcome. The LCC board will be joining that event. Join us between 6-8pm at Grace United Methodist Church, 722 30th Ave S.

Longtime readers, neighbors and patrons of the Leschi Market may remember the name Ed Raftis. Others may not remember the name, but may remember a friendly, refined, older gentleman, that shuffled around the wine aisle with his larger than life, seemingly gold plated scissors that I swear could shear a lamb, cutting and hanging shelf talkers and wine descriptors. Either way, for a solid 20 years, if you purchased wine from Leschi Market anytime between 2000 and 2020, you were selecting a wine that Ed helped select for the store. In early 2020, before the pandemic had really hit, for health reasons, Ed moved from his Lake Washington condo, just minutes from the store, to Moraga, California to be near his son and his son’s family. Last month, we at the Market learned from one of Ed’s oldest friends, Richard Nelson, that he passed away in April, shortly after celebrating his 88th birthday. Ed’s passion for wine led him to Leschi Market in his retirement. He was extremely instrumental in the expansion of and dedicated his time and knowledge to the success of the Leschi Market Wine Department and what it is today. I will forever be grateful for my time spent with Ed, in the store and out. Whether he would ever admit it or not, he took me under his wing in 2007 as the wine department grew and grew, and become increasingly difficult for a one-man show (in retirement mind you), to run. He taught me a lot about how retail worked, what he looked for in wine and the ever important price to quality ratio. He respected my palate, valued my ideas, and slowly transitioned into a supporting role – focusing his time pouring over reviews upon reviews of wines, recommending wine to bring in, and creating and fully facilitating weekly email blasts and monthly newsletters in addition to every single shelf talker hanging on the shelves. Ed also wrote for the Leschi News for many, many years. When he decided to hand that over to me, he approached me with a printed copy of every single column he had ever written, and said, “Maybe this can give you some ideas.” I have so many fond memories of Ed. From our early adventures carpooling to trade tastings together, to his unfiltered, unapologetic, and at times brutally honest feedback on wines, and somehow maybe even more critical opinions on labels. “The sales people need to know what they are working with!” I have a plethora of valuable insight from my time with Ed that I carry with me today. I’ll share some of my favorites here in no particular order. Be honest with feedback to winemakers and sales reps. Sometimes a phone call is much simpler than an email – tone and meaning will not get lost or misconstrued. Wearing shorts in January is okay, “shorts are a sign of royalty!” Don’t spit wine, spit olive oil and beer. The first chilled wine of the day is the best wine of the day. Really cold wine hides its flaws, the question is, was it shown this way intentionally? I don’t know much about Ed growing up in Colville, or his life as an attorney in New Jersey, but I am proud to have worked with him and know him how I did. He was a proud grandpa that bragged about his grandkids. He loved Mariners baseball and Gonzaga basketball, which always led to heartbreak in the end, and maybe a little extra friendly ribbing from this Husky. He loved wine and reading and writing about wine. Wine was a true passion of his. German Riesling was his gateway wine, and when he tasted one, you could actually see with each sip how he was transported back to a specific time and place in his memories. I want to close by giving a heartfelt thank you to Ed-Edmund B-Mr. Raftis. Thank you for all you did in your time at Leschi Market. Your contributions live on in the store and the neighborhood. Here are five current offerings of favorite Ed Raftis wines, complete with accurate and thorough descriptors. Louis Roederer Collection 244 Champagne An elegant Champagne, with bright acidity buoying a well-integrated range of ripe pear and white cherry, almond skin, fleur de sel and apple blossom notes. Fine and seamless, with a lingering, spiced finish. –Wine Spectator, 93-points, 94-points James Suckling, 93-points Wine Enthusiast 2022 Cristom Mt. Jefferson Cuvee Pinot Noir Eola-Amity Hills Dried flowers, incense, rosemary and dried strawberries. Wonderfully fresh, crunchy in feel, with stimulating acidity offsetting its tart red fruits and hints of sour citrus that pucker the cheeks. Finishes with youthful tension, lightly structured, leaving suggestions of tart raspberry. –Vinous, 93-points 2021 Ridge Three Valleys Red Sonoma Coast Nose of toasty oak, strawberry jam, mixed berry pie, black tea and baking spice. Layered black and blue fruit on the palate with milk chocolate, cherry, garrigue and textured tannins on the finish.  –Winemaker notes 2022 Lobo Hills Dry Riesling Yakima Valley This Riesling was slow fermented on yeast cultivated from Alsace, France, which produced a range of lovely aromas: apricot skins, white peaches and honeysuckle. On the palate, this Riesling has a rounded quality, giving way to flavors of apricots, melons and peaches.  –Winemaker notes 2021 Walla Walla Vintners Merlot Walla Walla Valley Lifts from the glass with a blend of peppery red berries and dusty rose. It’s luxuriously soft, with a pleasant inner sweetness and crisp wild blueberry fruit. This tapers off with admirable length—pleasantly chewy with a dark resonance. –Vinous, 90-points ~Kenneth Benner Co-Owner & Wine Director Leschi Market / Leschi Cellars 206.322.0700

Raven, the creator in the Tlingit mythology, rescued humans from darkness by stealing the sun. “He was a white bird and the world was in Darkness. Raven decides he will try and do something about the darkness, for himself and for the world. As he follows the Nass River, he encounters the Fishermen of the Nights … They tell Yeil ( as Raven was then called) that Nass Shaak Arankaawu ( the Nobleman at the Head of the Nass River) has many treasures in his Naa Kanidi ( Clan House)including beautifully carved boxes that house the light,” So Raven having disguised himself as a human baby, took the moon and the sun out of their boxes and liberated them. Preston Singletary wondered what Raven has been doing since mythic times, so in his new series of glass works he brings Raven back, he wakes him up to our disastrous world. This exhibition (which unfortunately closed on June 1 but there is a free catalog you can get ) includes many versions of Raven as well as a new story about Raven written by collaborator Garth Stine: “I Dream Therefore I am Raven.” The exhibition is contained in the smaller room at Trevor Gallery, a low lighted space with a large photo of the forest at one end. Interspersed throughout the room are the new Raven sculptures, it feels like we are walking into the forest with Raven all around us. Just outside the entrance is “Blue Light Spirit Mobile” suggesting blue spiritual light floating in the air. On the other side is “Communicating with the Spirits” two children riding on a composite bird/animal who seem to be joining us. So, the stage is set for a special event. At the entrance a sign says, “Please Feed the Raven.” In these stories Raven is constantly in pursuit of food, as he realizes how degraded the salmon and berries he is given have become. We see a white Raven. Raven was originally white, but when he rescued the sun, the Chief was so angry that he threw ashes at him and turned him black. But after sleeping for such a long time Raven grew new feathers and turned white again. As he arrives among people all glittering and white, they stare at him, so he decides to rub himself with ashes and turn black again so no one will notice him. Preston: “In my interpretation of what is happening now I want to believe that Raven is battling climate change, protecting the Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women, or helping discover the Boarding School grave sites. So the first story tells us about Raven’s Dreams of the World Before with clear skies, clean water, uncorrupted animals, “magnificent salmon, berries ripe to bursting, and roe hurling themselves up river to spawn. “Before the world turned on itself with contempt and tore itself apart.” Altogether there are sixteen pieces that reference Raven’s efforts to heal the world, each accompanied by a story written by Garth Stein. They include Raven using ashes from the fire to change himself back to black from white. Crying to unfreeze the frozen river, and purify the water to liberate the fish there, protecting the children who have died at boarding schools, and taking on a fog hat and a fighting hat. The final piece is “Wolf sitting on a Rock “observant, cunning, ruthless, merciful, the spirit he would need to lead People into the Future World.” It is hard to overstate how creative this collaboration is between Stein and Singletary. The sculptures each convey the poignancy of the stories. They are all subtly colored, red, yellow, blue and created with blown and sand carved glass compressed within a larger shape and the form lines of traditional Tlingit sculpture, Stein’s stories seamlessly bring together the mythic and the contemporary in narratives that both tell us of the degraded state of the world, and the possibilities for healing it. Yet in the end we see how much must be done. How ironic that white colonial settlers tried so hard to obliterate native culture, but now we increasingly realize that Indigenous knowledge may be the only way forward for our planet. One upcoming exhibition I would like to mention. Gallery 4Culture, June 6–27, 2024 Opening: Thursday, June 6, 6–8pm JOHN FEODOROV: Assimilations A series of paintings and prints question the ways colonization shapes identity. John is a wonderful quirky artist whom I included in both of my recent books, Setting our Hearts on Fire , and Art and Politics Now . He has a unique perspective and sense of humor on cultural intersections. ~Susan Platt, PhD www.artandpoliticsnow.com

Frink Park 7: Carlos Bulosan, Part 2 Carlos Bulosan’s union work and his writing ability led him from California back to Seattle, where, late in 1951, he went to work as publicity director for the largely Filipino Alaska Cannery Workers Union, Local 37 of the ILWU. He produced the local’s 1952 yearbook. This was the first US union local to be organized by Filipino workers. Bulosan’s work was often cited as an inspiration by the young Local 37 reformers Silme Domingo and Gene Viernes, who were murdered in Seattle in 1981 at the behest of the Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos. At a party given for Bulosan shortly after he arrived, he was introduced by union organizer Chris Mensalvas to Jo Patrick, a member of the Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born, which fought the deportation of union leaders. Patrick was a longtime activist for farm workers’ rights who had met many of the young leaders of Local 37 while organizing at farms near her Yakima hometown. Bulosan wrote of their meeting in the summer: The sun was perched on the pillars of the sky, But it came down to sit upon her feet; Then it entered her shining brown eyes And stayed there to gaze upon the moaning world. Patrick, 33, was separated from her husband and raising two young boys. As a communist, she was blacklisted and unable to find work in teaching and worked instead in factories and sweatshops. She was instantly drawn to Bulosan, then about 39. From about 1953 to 1955, they lived together in her Lake Dell house, and he helped raise her children. In the autumn, he wrote, The moon stepped out from her hidden throne, And sat upon a carpet of hidden cloud; Then she clapped her hands, and the sky Became a splendor of gold and blue. He wrote long letters to her older son, Tim, about his life, the history of the Philippines, and its colonization by Spain and the US. These were also his most productive years in writing poetry, though little if any of it was published until years after his death. In the winter, She smelt of snow, white snow, pure snow. … the wind was howling in the bare trees, Not long after his return to Seattle in the early ‘50s, he had a recurrence of tuberculosis, for which he had earlier been hospitalized in California. He recovered somewhat after treatment at Firland Sanitarium, north of Seattle. In the springtime, Many flowers were dancing about her feet, Clapping their hands and dancing, about her feet. His years with Jo Patrick were complex. They each had found the love of their life. They made a pact: I will write to you and you write me back every single day. Yet, due to his health struggles and excessive alcohol consumption on the part of both, there were difficulties, and they eventually separated. In 1956, his health declining from the effects of TB and alcohol, Bulosan died of pneumonia. In researching this story, I explored the extensive collection of Bulosan’s papers at the UW Special Collections, with support from the helpful staff. There I saw a chronology of Bulosan’s life by Licerio Lagda, who had written his master’s thesis about Bulosan at the University of the Philippines in 1984. I found Mr. Lagda, well into his 80s and sharp as a tack, in Southern California, where I visited him, and he generously shared with me his thesis and many other papers not found in Seattle. My heartfelt thanks go out to him and his family for their support. ~Roger Lippman The author writes monthly about Leschi history and his experiences over his 48 years in the neighborhood. A WALK THROUGH THE WOODS It was morning, not too early, not too late, For the air was low and blue; And the downward hill, sloping under our feet, Was fresh with dew: It is a wonderful day, she said, Touching leaves and grass, eating flowers Off the vines and bushes. “Do you hear it, the song of summer? she said. Touching her hand, going downhill, Trying to discover the enchantment that charmed her, I tried in vain; and in vain did I hear the song of summer. What was lacking in me, what was amissed in my heart? We walked through the woods, holding her small hands, Down the hill, fresh with dew, Toward the waiting lake, and her memory; And at last, seeing sailboats flying on the water, At last I saw, or seemed to see, The rapture of her summer morning … “Do you hear it, the song of summer,” I said. “O I wish it will never end, until eternity!” she cried. Through her I heard the song of summer. Through her I saw the glorious day. That summer, a year ago, I found everything through her, and through her alone. Come with me to her forest and lake. Under a dewdrop is her bright white face, Surrounded by unicorns racing on blades of grass, And fairies dancing in newborn flowers. All her summers are in the maplewood. All her springs are in the heartshaped crocuses. Come with me, come with me, To her forest and lake; Where it is never too late To see her small white feet dancing downhill Toward her enchanted paradise. —Carlos Bulosan An unpublished poem among those written in Leschi for Jo Patrick. Credit: University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections

As the Public Safety Committee is in its early stages, we will be spending the next couple of months developing our plan for the Leschi community and seeking volunteers to assist us. The committee will focus on three main areas: Traffic Calming, Personal and Property Crime Safety, and Emergency Preparedness. Below, you can learn more about each area and our initial plans. We aim for this effort to benefit the entire Leschi community, and we invite you to get involved. Some community members have already joined in, and if you want to help shape and support this initiative, please let us know. Traffic Calming Traffic calming involves various measures to reduce vehicle speed and volume on roads, making them safer and more pedestrian-friendly. Our initial focus has been discussions with the city regarding options to slow traffic along Lake Washington Blvd, but there is more work ahead. Personal and Property Crime Safety There are many ways to improve safety, such as partnering with community police liaisons for home safety reviews and participating in neighborhood block watches. One way to get involved is by participating in Night Out (seattle.gov/police/crime-prevention/night-out) on the 1st Tuesday in August, which raises crime prevention awareness and unites communities. We will explore training and resources to support our community and collaborate with partners to share information. Emergency Preparedness Community emergency preparedness involves planning, responding to, and recovering from emergencies and disasters. We will begin by focusing on individual and family preparedness and gradually expand to the entire community. I am reaching out to neighboring communities to learn from their experiences and successes. If you are interested in helping in any of these areas, please email me at Allen.Urness@gmail.com and I will follow up in the coming weeks as we establish the committee.

Winston Wachter Gallery, 203 Dexter Ave, ph 206.652.5855; Tues-Fri 10am-5pm; Sat 11am-5pm Henry Art Gallery, 15th Ave NE & UW, ph 206.543.2280; Thurs 10am-7pm; Fri-Sun 10am-5pm, Free 1st Thursday ARTS at King Street Station, 303 S Jackson St, Top floor; Wed-Sat 11am-5pm; First Thursdays 11am-8pm (Octavia Butler show until May 23.) This article responds to Georgia McDade’s column last month “Rage on the Page” in which she advocates reading and writing and creativity in general as a way forward from so much violence in our society. She cites the example of “Pongo” a poetry writing program for teens that reaches out to youth in prisons and foster care, among other places. Last month I briefly mentioned Barry Johnson and Hank Willis Thomas, both making art in response to the deaths of young men in their families. Here I give a little more detail on these two artists, followed by a comparison with an exhibition dedicated to Octavia Butler at King Street Station by Mia Imani Harrison and Mayola Tikaki “Dream Temple (for Octavia):” Who can afford to dream? Given the systemic racism and racial trauma that Black people often face in society. “Dream Temple” aims to counteract the exhaustion and stress that is carried intergenerationally while also creating a portal of healing and imagining. These three artists all address ways of healing from violence. Barry Johnson’s “Never Leave without saying goodbye” exhibition (Winston Wachter Gallery) consists of a series of paintings in which the artist is grieving for the loss of family members to drugs, especially his brother. Each painting is a stage of grief. In the first image, the artist is sitting on the branch of a huge tree leaning against its trunk. He sits meditatively. The caption says, “First Cry in 20 Years.” “More than a Tree” expanded to a larger frame. I leaned against the rough bark of the tree, the weight of Black History on my mind, particularly the horrific legacy of lynchings. Despite that burden I place my hands behind my back and looked up slightly, my gaze hopeful. It was a stance of resilience, a declaration that I refused to be defined by fear or worry about the future. In contrast to the personal exploration of grief by Barry Johnson, Hank Willis Thomas in “Loverules” (Henry Art Gallery) addresses major features of society that produce racism and violence particularly in advertising. After his cousin was murdered in a vigilante attack in 2000, apparently to take a gold necklace that his partner wore, Thomas found it obscene that the murder occurred basically to obtain a commodity. Commodities for status are deadly. In two series of photographs titled “Unbranded” he removes the original text and replaces it with brief phrases that highlight their sexism and racism. “UnBranded” one with the subtitle “Reflections in Black by Corporate America,” the other “A Century of White Women.” In “Farewell Uncle Tom,” we see two beautiful black people in the style of the 1960s, one of them smoking. In “A Century of White Woman” racist and sexist images become obvious with new captions like “The Hardened Snowman.” His flag with over 20,000 stars representing black men lost to violence in ten years emphasizes the catastrophic violence we accept as a daily reality. “Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.” ~Octavia E. Butler, “Parable of the Talents” (1998) Enter Octavia Butler. We all know Butler as a science fiction writer, but she fills her fantasies with spirituality and emphatic political statements. In Mia Imani Harrison and Mayola Tikaki’s “Dream Temple (for Octavia),” we are invited to lie down and listen to Butler’s blunt wisdom: videos present Butler reading short invocations from her 1998 Book of the Talents . They are astonishingly pertinent to our present moment, undoubtedly the reason for their choice by the artists. Octavia Butler “prophesied 2024 as the year society in the United States grows unstable.” The artists continue: DREAM TEMPLE (for Octavia) features an enclosed resting space with low lighting that contains resting mats, an altar, and projections featuring imagery of Black rest and contemplation of Octavia Butler’s work. Over the course of the exhibition, the space will feature rest rituals, interviews, and performances by the artists. Butler was amazingly clairvoyant in her books to the point where her science fiction feels like a description of our present condition. Her writing opens our eyes to new possibilities for moving beyond violence, as do Barry Johnson and Hank Willis Thomas. She died prematurely in 2006. ~Susan Platt, PhD www.artandpoliticsnow.com

Frink Park: Carlos Bulosan, Part 1 Overlooking hills and valleys, where trees dance and birds sing under the splendor of the sun in summertime. Where leaves turn gold and the world becomes a carpet of dreaming cloud under the enchanted moonlight in autumn. When the night warms the otherwise trembling world in winter. Where flowers bloom and dance in the sweet-smelled soft tides of spring. That’s how the renowned Filipino writer Carlos Bulosan characterized Frink Park in a poem written for the political activist Josephine Patrick, his beloved, who lived nearby, at the top of Huron Street. He spent many days in the early 1950s walking in Frink Park, sometimes stopping to sit on a bench to write. Born in the Philippines, Bulosan immigrated to the US in 1930, landing in Seattle at barely 18. He worked on farms around Yakima for a while and eventually made his way to California, to return here three decades later, ending his days in Leschi. As a worker in the fields and shops of California he experienced the full weight of the racist oppression felt by thousands of Filipino immigrants. That led him to union activism, and he became an experienced organizer. He wrote prolifically. His first published work, in a poetry magazine in June 1934, consisted of ten poems written when he was still a laborer at a fish cannery in San Pedro, California. His work was all the rage in that era. By the mid-1940s he had authored six published books, along with shorter works contained in a dozen anthologies. Several of his short stories were published in  The New Yorker from 1942 to 1944. Others were printed in Harper’s, Saturday Review , and The New Republic . His most enduring book was his memoir “America Is In The Heart,” published in 1946 and re-published several times since. It relates the exploitation and poverty experienced by the first generation of Filipino immigrants to the U.S. While the book was autobiographical, it was later referred to as “a novel,” since parts of it are fictionalized. A former head of the University of Washington libraries described Bulosan as “a fine literary artist” “a dreamer” who didn’t always write the literal truth. He wrote to give a literate voice to the voiceless 100,000 Filipinos in the US, Alaska,  and Hawaii. “I want to interpret the soul of the Filipinos in this country,” he told a Seattle Times  reporter. Much of his writing exudes a life of sadness, from his impoverished childhood to the mistreatment of Filipino workers by employers in this country and widespread discrimination against Filipinos, as well as his own health struggles. The Saturday Evening Post commissioned Norman Rockwell, its cover artist, to paint representations of each of the Four Freedoms that were the subjects of President Roosevelt’s January 1941 State of the Union speech. The paintings were published in the Post  in early 1943, each along with an accompanying essay. Remarkably, Bulosan was selected by the magazine to write of “Freedom from Want.” For this assignment, the editors wanted someone who had experienced physical want. Bulosan’s essay was incongruously accompanied by Rockwell’s painting of a white family partaking of a sumptuous Thanksgiving dinner. The immigrant low-wage worker and labor organizer was in distinguished company among the other three authors: Will Durant, Booth Tarkington, and Stephen Vincent Benet. In the article, Bulosan wrote, in part: Our march to freedom is not complete unless want is annihilated. The America we hope to see is not merely a physical but also a spiritual and an intellectual world. We are the mirror of what America is. If America wants to be living and free, then we must be living and free. If we fail, then America fails. What do we want? We want complete security and peace. We want to share the promises and fruits of American life. We want to be free from fear and hunger. If you want to know what we are—we are marching! By the late 1940s, with a conservative trend and the advent of McCarthyism, he was blacklisted in the publishing world and his work fell out of favor. He later estimated that he had about a million words in print, and another million not published. A substantial amount of that unpublished work is to be found in the Special Collections of the University of Washington library. Perhaps a million more words have been published by others about Bulosan and his work. Continued next month. ~Roger Lippman The author writes monthly about Leschi history and his experiences over his 48 years in the neighborhood.

The April community meeting was packed with important topics and guests, including representatives from SDOT, Seattle Police, and Council Member Joy Hollingsworth. SDOT kicked off the meeting by presenting the Lake Washington Boulevard Renovations Project (Proposed Design Concepts), focusing on traffic calming from Lake Park Dr S to S Orcas St. Although this project doesn’t directly affect Leschi neighborhood, it was insightful to see the ongoing work to the south and their commitment to continue along the boulevard as resources allow. Following SDOT’s presentation, they fielded questions from the group, sparking a lively discussion mainly centered around traffic calming efforts in Leschi, even though we knew it wasn’t the primary focus of their presentation. Both SDOT and Council Member Hollingsworth encouraged everyone to review the “One Seattle Comprehensive Plan” and provide feedback to shape the city’s growth and investment strategies for the next two decades. Next, Council Member Hollingsworth addressed the community, discussing traffic safety concerns. She highlighted the Transportation Levy Proposal, urging us to review and give feedback by April 26 to influence the final proposal. She also mentioned her efforts to install “No Parking” signs in the Lake Washington business district and ended by sharing a new email address to use when sharing questions or concerns to her office ( d3help@seattle.gov ), and is seen by her whole staff which ensures it gets addressed in a timely manner. In the final segment of the meeting, SPD Crime Prevention Coordinator, Joe Elenbass, fielded questions from the community, particularly regarding how to contact the police effectively. He reiterated that for any serious situation or emergency to call 911, but for anything that is not an emergency to use either the non-emergency number (206.625.5011) or the Online Crime Reporting portal and you will receive follow up contact. He also did share if 911 is called, and it’s not a serious situation or emergency, individuals can request a call back from a member of the Telephone Reporting Unit, who will follow up as soon as they are able. A big thank you to all who attended the meeting and to those who shared their projects and insights. ~Allen Urness, Leschi resident