Shiro Kashino (1922-1997) I first learned of Shiro “Kash” Kashino while researching the life of the Filipino immigrant and labor activist Carlos Bulosan, who lived in various places in today’s International District, as well as in Leschi. I found the movie “East of Occidental” (free to Seattle Public Library cardholders on the Kanopy.com  website). Eighteen minutes into the film there is a photo of a child in a Leschi School baseball uniform. That was Kash, who was interviewed for the video. Kash was the son of Japanese immigrants, a Nisei (the first generation born in the US). As I searched for more information about him, I learned that he was born in Leschi in 1922, the youngest of six children, at 512 32nd Avenue, which his parents had rented when they moved to Seattle from Denver in about 1918. After both of his parents died within a year (1934 and 1935), the older children moved the family to what was once called Renton Hill – now thought of as the southern part of Capitol Hill, near 18th and Columbia. (In 1941, the Leschi house was sold to the parents of a college classmate of mine.) Life moved along. Kash was a star player on the Garfield High School football team that won the all-city championship. But everything changed, of course, after Pearl Harbor. By May 1942, every person of Japanese descent on the West Coast, whether a citizen or not, had been ordered to report to “assembly centers” and then relocated to concentration camps inland. Most Japanese Americans in the Puget Sound area were first sent to makeshift camps at the Puyallup Fairgrounds, and then to Minidoka, Idaho, a barren desert tract that was soon fashioned to primitive quarters for many thousands. Kash had lived most of his young life in what he referred to as “all-white” Leschi, which it pretty much was in those days. He later said that growing up among whites, and then attending multi-racial Garfield, taught him how to get along with people of different backgrounds and to assimilate. He was unreserved – atypical of Nisei males, his daughter told me – and stood up for what he thought was right. He was short, but if bullied by bigger students at Garfield, he fought back. The concentration camp was his first exposure to a Japanese community. Before the war, most Japanese Americans in Seattle lived in Nihonmachi (Japantown), centered from Yesler Way to Jackson Street, from today’s International District up to about 18th Avenue. A couple years into World War II, the Nisei were offered the opportunity to enlist in the US military. Many joined, anxious to demonstrate their loyalty to the land of their birth and citizenship. Kash was among them, assigned to the all-Japanese American 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which fought the Nazis valiantly in France and Italy. He took on a leadership role and was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, six Purple Hearts, two Bronze Stars, and one Silver Star, along with other commendations. After the war, Kash married and returned to Seattle, where he became an esteemed community leader. He helped establish the Nisei Veterans Committee’s memorial hall, in Seattle’s historic Japantown, which, to this day, honors this son of Leschi. An important achievement of Kash’s was raising the money to erect the memorial monument at Lakeview Cemetery in honor of those Washington state veterans who were killed in action. This was accomplished around 1949. In his leadership of the committee, Kash steered it as not only a veterans’ group but also a community organization. He encouraged sponsorship of youth athletic programs for basketball and baseball. He was the organizer for many community events that encouraged the families and community members to engage in social interactions such as dances, bazaars, and picnics. Because of the discrimination at the time, these social events were important in rebuilding a Japanese American community. Shiro Kashino died in 1997. The funeral of this important and beloved Japanese American community leader was attended by 750 people. His story has been told in the Seattle Channel video “Community Stories: Shiro Kashino” (20 minutes, 2015); in the movie “Kash, the Legend and Legacy of Shiro Kashino,” by Vince Matsudaira (2011); and the book “American Grit,” by John Suzuki (2023). Showings of the movie can be arranged through the Nisei Veterans’ Committee in Seattle. See also the PBS video “Betrayed: Surviving An American Concentration Camp.” (2022, 57 minutes) Special thanks for their assistance to Kash’s daughter Debbie Kashino; Michael J. Yaguchi, Lt Col, USAF, retired, presently Commander of the Nisei Veterans Committee of Seattle; and Vince Matsudaira, movie director. ~Roger Lippman The author writes monthly about Leschi history and his experiences over his 48 years in the neighborhood.

The Office of Planning & Community Development (OPCD) is currently taking public comment on draft maps for zoning changes. The public comment period will be open from October 16 to December 20. The OPCD will host a series of information sessions, one in each of the seven Council Districts and two virtual. Information Sessions are opportunities to engage with OPCD staff, ask questions about the proposed zoning, and learn more about how to provide your feedback. They will also offer virtual office hours.  You can find info about the info sessions and office hours on the Zoning Update site. To get to the site, search online for “one Seattle plan zoning update” or use this shortcut link: bit.ly/3A99Pqy . From the homepage, click the Engagement link for information session details and options to register for virtual office hours.  District 3’s session is scheduled for Thursday Nov 7, 5:30-7:30pm at 153 14th Ave, Seattle, WA 98122. The second virtual information session will be on Thursday, Dec 12, 5:30-7:30pm, link available on the website. You can reach the OPCD project team with your questions at oneseattleplan.zoning@seattle.gov . ~Ashley Martin

How did folks get around before I-5, Rapid Ride buses and traffic choked streets? Come to hear Junius Rochester’s talk about the Mosquito Fleet. “Why did both Natives and Euro-Americans find Lake Washington (also known as “It-How-Chug,” “Hyas Chuck,” later “Lake Geneva” and “Lake Washington”) perfect for home sites, recreation and business?  Once the haven of mollusks, deer, bear, mink, coot, loons and swans, this great body of water evolved into a community of canoes, sternwheelers, and sail boats. Mt. Rainier and Mt. Baker loomed above both ends. Logging was underway in the 1850s. In 1887 a rattling cable car from the Big City arrived at Leschi, and in 1889 a wild amusement park arose on the shore. This watery environment boomed in 1916 after the lake dropped nine feet following the opening of Montlake Cut. Development companies invited newcomers with the promise that the lake harbored “no pestilence or plague; no famines; and failure of crops is unknown.” November 13 at 7pm. Grace United Methodist Church, 722 30th Ave. S on the lower level.

Here is a quick update from the Public Safety committee, which has been a slow-moving process so far. We're continuing discussions with the city about installing “Your Speed is XX” signs along Lakeside and are looking into alternative funding options. We hope to have more details by the end of October. We’ve also begun exploring the possibility of adding crossing lights at Leschi Place & Lakeside and Lake Washington Blvd & Lakeside for added safety. Regarding the Lake Washington Boulevard project between Seward Park and Mount Baker, while it doesn’t directly affect our area, it should help reduce traffic speeds along the lake. You can see the latest news by following this link . Beyond traffic, we’ll also focus on emergency preparedness and neighborhood safety. I've been reaching out to nearby communities to learn from their programs, and we'll share more updates as we gather information. More to come soon!

“Johannes Kunst Hiding from the Nazis,” Center on Contemporary Art, curated by Matthew Kangas, September 5-28. Alice Dubiel “Landscape Tales,” Center on Contemporary Art in Collins Pub, 526 Second Ave. Open 11:30am to closing until October 31. Nothing is easy to understand or predictable in these two exhibitions, both sponsored by the Center on Contemporary Art (COCA). Matthew Kangas’s curated exhibition of the work of Johannes Kunst, presents a constantly changing style and iconography, while Dubiel’s “Landscape Tale” juxtaposes maps, literary quotes and reproductions of 19th century landscape paintings to provoke us to find connections between them. Johannes Kunst, from the Netherlands, hid from the Nazis in an attic during the war because non-Jewish young men were forced into slave labor. After the war he came to the United States, served in the army, then became a graphic designer in California, where he was an art director for the regional planning commission of Los Angeles for 25 years. At the same time, he went to two different art schools briefly in 1959 and 1980. His painting in the 1970s called the “Attic Series” refers to his experience of confinement in an attic during the war. Strange puffy figures with no features, against a dark background or in cubicles are immobilized in the spaces. If we jump forward to the 1990s another approach entirely emerges, with outlines dominating a quirky hard-to-decipher iconography. One is Red Bird/Face , and indeed we do see that, but what it means is another story. A huge bird with an odd shaped head and wings seems to be standing on the head of a man in profile with a large nose. “War Series” continues the outlined style with again a strange surrealistic juxtaposition of a bird, a face, a submarine, or the Red Cross. Also, in the early 1990s Kunst created a series of paintings, several of them self-portraits. These painful images, especially the Artist as a Young Man , with its jagged red cheek that spills into space, gives us a direct expression of Kunst’s experience during the war: it is intensely sad. The artist has stated “The war affected my whole life. You never get rid of it. You live it every day. I must use my art to express my feelings and deep compassion to humankind.” The disconnectedness of Kunst’s various styles as well as his imagery does indeed suggest the traumas of a wartime, when nothing feels safe. Kunst’s work is deeply felt and highly original. Although the work is no longer on display, you can get a catalog from the Center on Contemporary Art. It is a timely exhibition that brings home what is happening in so many places today. Alice Dubiel’s “Landscape Tales” presents entirely different challenges, although equally difficult to summarize in a sentence. Hung in a dark café, which somehow seems appropriate to the exhibition, are large maps of cities, like Seattle or London. Above the maps are reproductions of 19th century landscape paintings with elaborate frames. Interspersed between these are quotes from many sources about landscape and its relationship to colonialism, exploitation and what Raymond Williams called “agrarian bourgeois art.” So, the urban maps show us end point of this landscape control in which nature has been entirely subsumed. The distance between the fantasy made reality in nineteenth century landscape paintings and our contemporary cities, both of which exclude humans even as they display human control, is not as far as we think. Look at the map of Paris for example, in which the only natural element is the river, barely surviving through the city’s bridges and streets. Of course, one thinks of Frederick Law Olmsted who brought the bucolic landscape into the center of the city, but he does not figure in this work. There is no compromise between the imagery of 19th century landscape control and the twentieth century cities in which we impose our grids without thought of nature. The many quotes that Dubiel has provided speak to some of these contradictions ranging from Shakespeare “Are not these woods more free from Peril than the envious court,” Jane Austen speaking of “improving land,” to Edward Said: “The actual geographical possession of land is what Empire in the final analysis is all about.” Both Johannes Kunst and Alice Dubiel address the threats to our lives as we continue to wage war and destroy the land in the name of development. Their work seeks to help us rethink our actions. ~Susan Platt, PhD www.artandpoliticsnow.com

Frink Park 9: William Cumming, Part 2 I became interested in the artist William Cumming last year, when I attended a “town hall” put on by our three 37th District legislative representatives. I went there to buttonhole them about my opposition to some pro-nuclear power bills making their way through the legislature. I accomplished that with fairly good results, I thought at the time. Unfortunately, during this year’s session, all three of the representatives voted in favor of nuclear power when it came before them. I sat down before the proceedings began. Next to me was Ted Kadet, a few years older than me but looking none the worse for wear. We fell into an easy conversation, and before long it emerged that he was an optometrist. In his later years, William Cumming ended up back in Leschi, where he had lived earlier. My newfound friend told me that Cumming regularly took walks in Frink Park and stopped to sketch people who lingered or passed by. He was so poor that he didn’t always have his own paper to draw on, Ted told me; sometimes he sketched on a newspaper that had been left behind. There is corroboration: in the early 1960s he drew on pages of a German medical textbook. Dr. Kadet himself had a Leschi connection. Many years ago he had been married to a daughter of Herb Schneider, an early president of the Leschi Improvement Council (now the LCC). In the middle 1970s, Cumming’s eyes needed attention, but he couldn’t afford care (or hardly anything else), so a deal was arranged: he traded some drawings for the eye-doctor Kadet’s services. As for the earlier sketches from Frink Park, Cumming would often bring them to Leschi resident Art Mink, who years later was the editor of this publication (and I was his copy editor for a while). Mink gave a dollar or two for each drawing – enough for Cumming to get something to eat. Cumming made similar exchanges with other comrades from his former Communist Party days who lived in and around Leschi. Now their offspring have those drawings, and I have been fortunate to track them down among several of the next-generation people I know. In that period, Cumming described his art, and that of his Northwest compatriots, as manifesting austerity and thoughtfulness, representing “the texture and form of our land.” Cumming often drew his subjects without facial features, or even without their faces showing at all, as in the example above. He suggested that people can be recognized at a distance by their posture and gait, and thus, to an artist at least, facial recognition is less significant to capturing a person’s identity. He also felt, during the period of McCarthyism and its aftermath, that it was prudent to avoid identifying people directly, lest they become subjects of anti-communist persecution. In 2005, an exhibition of Cumming’s work was presented at the Frye Art Museum. It was organized and curated by Seattle art critic Matthew Kangas, who also published a book to accompany the show. Cumming survived his earlier health difficulties by many years, dying in 2010, at the age of 93. Thanks to Ted Kadet and members of the Mink, Schneider, Castle, and Sussman families for their support and assistance, and for providing a look at several of Cumming’s unpublished works, including those shown here. Thanks also to Matthew Kangas, author of “William Cumming: The Image of Consequence,” University of Washington Press, 2005. This article concludes the series on Frink Park. ~Roger Lippman The author writes monthly about Leschi history and his experiences over his 48 years in the neighborhood.

We were not sure if we would find community or conflict as we headed down the hill to the BluWater Bistro on Tuesday, September 10 to watch the presidential debate. The place was buzzing when we arrived, and we got seats near the fire, fortifying ourselves by ordering cider, beer and what proved to be very tasty street salmon tacos. There were at least 12 TVs set up throughout the bar and restaurant, all tuned to CNN and fortunately sporting closed captions. The ethnically, though not as it turns out politically, diverse crowd of around 100 strong had clearly come to eat, drink, and tune in. (Well, except for the 8-year-old who had come to celebrate her birthday with family, but her group chose to sit outside under heaters and were gifted desserts.) Bart Evans, owner of the BluWater, has been hosting presidential debates at the bistro since 2016. He said that at the last debate (Biden v. Trump) the air quickly left the room. This Tuesday night was different. The first roars and applause broke out when Democratic candidate Kamala Harris insisted, “The government, and Donald Trump certainly, should not be telling a woman what to do with her body.” Loud guffaws echoed when former president Donald Trump claimed [CHOP] protesters took over a big percentage of Seattle. More roars and applause when Harris pointedly told Trump that Putin would “eat you for lunch!” The crowd, it turned out, was indeed partisan and the waves and thumbs up as folks prepared to leave showed who they thought had won the evening. In the words of our waiter, who whispered to us as we settled the tab, “She kicked his ass tonight.” ~Anne Depue [This is a resident’s experience. The Leschi Community Council does not endorse candidates.]

Please join us for our election forum to get up close and personal with the two candidates for position 8, Tanya Woo and Alexis Mercedes-Rinck. Whoever wins the seat will have significant influence on the policies, laws, and funding mechanisms that make our city work (or not, depending on your perspective). Please email us any topics or questions you would like the candidates to address to leschicouncil@gmail.com . The format of the discussion with the candidates will be that of a debate, with time-limited statements, answers and rebuttals from each candidate. We will have prepared questions, based on what we hear from the community. To the extent possible we will entertain questions from the floor. Additionally, we will discuss with a representative of the city what's behind the $1.5 billion Seattle Transportation Levy that will be on the ballot. What is it funding over the coming 8 years, what types of projects are earmarked, which projects may affect Leschi residents? You can find out more about the levy at seattle.gov/transportation/about-us/funding/levy-proposal . Send us your questions to leschicouncil@gmail.com . The meeting will be held in our usual space at Grace United Methodist Church at 722 30th Ave S. Bring your neighbors! Doors open at 6:30pm, snacks and bottled water will be provided. The meeting date has been changed from the usual first Wednesday to meet the needs of the candidates.

The high point of the summer for me was the Lillian Pitt exhibition “Celestial Ancestors” at the Stonington Gallery (125 South Jackson St–August 2024). I have known Lillian for many years, since way back when she visited Washington State University while I was teaching there in the mid-1980s. I bought a pair of her earrings that I still cherish! Along the years I have acquired prints, a Stick mask in ceramic, and a small standing Shadow Spirit in ceramic. I first wrote about her when she had a major exhibition at the Warm Springs Museum  in 1999, an article published in  Art Papers Magazine  and my book, Art and Politics Now . Pitt has created many series of works. In “Celestial Ancestors,” she introduces the Star People: In Native American legends, the Star People are often associated with advanced knowledge, spiritual insight, and the ability to traverse space and time. They are seen as benevolent helpers whose wisdom has been passed down from generation to generation. In some traditions, the Star People are revered as ancestors. In others, they are regarded as beings who came to Earth to teach humans essential skills of sustenance, such as planting and healing. Alternatively, they may be seen as guides who assist individuals in finding their way home. These stories hold a special place in my heart, and it brings me great comfort to have a skilled sculptor, Ben Dye, bring my version of the Star People to life. ~ Lillian Pitt As we enter the gallery, we immediately encounter a large red glass mask of the iconic Tsagaglal (“she who watches”) who benevolently presides over all of the star people. Tsagaglal is an actual petroglyph on the Columbia River and has been Lillian Pitt’s lodestar for decades. Behind her, six feet tall painted steel sculptures of Star People based on  outlines and patterns, rather than a solid form,  lead us through the exhibition with titles like Pondering his Direction and Protected from the Dawn . On the back wall hangs a smaller Tsagaglal. Facing walls include clusters of other Star People, each one offering us a different mood through a specific title.   Many are painted on fragments of wood, a new material for  Pitt with the color alone suggesting the title. For example, Star Person After Visiting Hawaii’s Hot Spots , has some pink striations; Star Person Fully Dressed for the Big Dance  suggests an elegant outfit with an edge of bark as a wrap! They are almost miraculous, I felt guided and comforted as I looked at them. There is both humor and reverence in these works. The exhibition also includes some of her jewelry in various media, including jasmine rings and silver earrings, blown glass with embedded imagery, and a large Spirit Watcher , with huge feathers surrounding his head, and a painted raku face. He reminds me of the great headdresses worn by youth at a recent Powwow here. Stick Indians have been a subject for Pitt for many years and this large figure seems to be the grandfather all those smaller Stick Indian masks, much larger and more dominating. One of the wonders of Lillian Pitt’s work is that she is constantly evolving with new media and subjects, even as all of her work is unified by her particular view of the world.  Barry Lopez expressed it beautifully in the catalog of her exhibition Spirits Keep Whistling Me Home  (1999): One of the hardest things to hold together in modern American culture–a rice paper house in a hurricane–is a community founded in memory, in imagination, in moral relations with the land. Lillian’s Pitt’s work tells us at least one woman among us won’t quit. She hasn’t given up, And so each of us gazing at her work has a place in the community of which she is a working part We’re standing together because of Lillian. ~Susan Platt, PhD www.artandpoliticsnow.com

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.