5 March 2008
We drove into Seattle in 1961 and there in the distance was the famous new Space Needle built for the coming World’s Fair. At that time the tallest building in town was the Smith Tower built in 1914 and it was a towering 42 stories. To our minds Seattle was a jewel. Across Puget sound to the west were the snow capped Olympic Mountains and if one looked east across Lake Washington there were the Cascade Mountains also snow capped. Before too long we were to enjoy learning to ski in the Cascades. While the L.A. area had it’s beaches, we were thrilled to discover camping and skiing within an hour or two from Seattle.
After quite a few years enjoying Pacific Northwest life, progress began to rear it’s ugly head. The roads became much more crowded, industry was booming and smog arrived. This is to be expected when a city grows but it’s sad to see it happen. Tall buildings shot up in downtown Seattle and in Bellevue east of Lake Washington. The building boom is still in full swing here in Seattle while in other parts of the country there is trouble in the housing market. Seattle has gone condo crazy and for the life of me I don’t know how they are going to fill the number of units that are going up everywhere. Lower income people are being forced out of apartment buildings that are converting to condos. Neighborhoods that I used to be able to recognize are changing so much that when I travel by bus I’m not sure where to get off. Of course part of that could be old age.
I can deal with change and adapt but is all this change for the better? I’m beginning to have my doubts. The infrastructure in Seattle is sadly in need of major repairs to it’s bridges and the main viaduct that runs thru downtown. I’m talking about billions of dollars worth. We are rapidly sliding into a recession and I have visions of hundreds of condos sitting empty and roads and bridges crumbling. The U.S. government has such a huge deficit that federal funds for rebuilding are hard to come by. Our huge war spending is taking money from many internal needs. I’m looking at only one city and I know that cities all over the country are having similar problems. I think that it will be many years before we work our way out of the mess that the Bush administration is leaving behind. I’m still having trouble divorcing myself from writing about the current administration and I guess that won’t really happen until after the election. I’m trying, I really am.
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