Voices

Ask a Therapist: Taking Stock at the End of the Year of Everything

by Liz Covey, LMHC

I’m anything but a historian, but this whopper of a year has me thinking like one. I find myself pondering what it means to have lived through 2020, a year that was full of so much and also so little. A year so unique that it will be talked about for decades to come, if not forever, just as we swap stories about where we were when the Towers fell or when Kennedy was shot. But however alike in terms of before-and-after comparisons, those events were mere instances, specific moments in time. Questions to which there is a simple answer.

What about the momentous phenomena that occurs over a long period of time? The flash points of history that seem to unfold in slow-motion, or more accurately, in regular motion — that which occurs at the pace of day to day life? What do we make of events that happen amidst the laundry and the bill paying and which will span enough time for some to have two birthdays come and go? 

The kind of experience that allows one to answer the where were you question is distinctly different from the one that asks how. How were you the year that everything happened, beauty and terror, to loosely quote Rilke. 

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News

State Health Officials Cautiously Optimistic as COVID-19 Rates Hold Steady and Vaccination of Health Care Workers Continues

by Andrew Engelson

The day after Gov. Jay Inslee announced he was extending the state’s current COVID-19 restrictions by one week until Jan. 11, officials from the Washington State Department of Health (DOH) said during an online press conference on Wednesday, Dec. 30 that they are cautiously optimistic about statewide infection trends and that vaccinations for high-risk health care workers and residents and staff of long-term care facilities are ongoing.

“We are in a very precarious position,” said Dr. Scott Lindquist, state epidemiologist for communicable diseases. “This is the highest rate of cases in Washington State since the beginning [of the pandemic]. But we’re starting to see this downward trend. It’s all very encouraging.” Lindquist noted that while the results are still preliminary, the number of positive tests across the state have plateaued slightly in the past week. He also noted that post-Christmas hospitalization rates are down slightly, saying “I’m optimistic but cautious.”

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Arts & Culture

‘The Shadow Beside Me’: Seattle Nonprofit Debuts Poetry From King County Juvenile Detention

by Mark Van Streefkerk 

“You see that I am always getting in trouble

Trouble follows me

like a shadow right behind me, always

You see that I am always in fights

Always rebel fights, arguments

But you don’t know me. I’m not that type of person

I’m really caring, giving

Always trying to help people”

Those are the opening lines to “Josiah,” a poem by 16-year-old Damian, a youth incarcerated at Seattle’s Children and Family Justice Center (CFJC), formerly King County Juvenile Detention. “Josiah” appears in The Shadow Beside Me, a new anthology of poems from youth at CFJC, published by the Pongo Poetry Project. In the poem, Damian writes about how life changed when his friend Josiah was shot and killed. “Josiah was the only person we knew who had graduated / had a job, and had something going for him / When he left, it broke me.” 

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Community

FUTURE GAZING: Free the Artists, Fuel the Movements

by Julie-C

The last thing Seattle needs is some system reboot to its “last saved version.” We don’t need those program files restored. Not the crises of affordability, not the persistent disparity in education, resources, and opportunities. Not the heinously lopsided “economic growth,” not the endless civic “community feedback processes” that forever result somehow in more of the same. And definitely not the feel-good liberal jargon that tactfully, tactically sugarcoats it all.

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Community

FUTURE GAZING: A Place Where Poverty Is No Longer Criminalized

With a challenging year soon to be behind us, we asked community members to share their vision of what they hope becomes of our city post-pandemic.  

by Xing Hey

My imagination for a post-COVID Seattle is one that is more BIPOC, less techy, and where poverty isn’t criminalized. As we are currently witnessing city administrators sweep and raid houseless encampments across the city, it should remind us that the poor, those who are Black, those who are Brown, those who are Indigenous to this stolen land, the mentally impaired are the ones often criminalized and living on the margins of our city. It highlights that in order to protect the privileges of one segment of Seattle, another segment of Seattle must suffer under the hands of discriminatory laws and policies.

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News

Tegaru Community Gather in Candlelight Vigil for People Killed in Ethiopian Civil War

by Ronnie Estoque

“Stop bombing Tigray! Stop the genocide in Tigray!” chanted members of Seattle’s Tegaru Community as they gathered for a candlelight vigil at Westlake Park on Christmas Eve. The memorial gathering served to honor those killed in the recent civil war that has displaced an estimated 1 million in Tigray, a northern region in Ethiopia. The event was organized by the Tigrean Community Center and the Tigray Youth Association. 

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Voices

COVID’s Heartbreak Half Mile: What Lessons to Take Into 2021?

by Sarah Stuteville

A decade ago, I went through a brief period of long-distance running. During that time, I was introduced to the idea that, no matter the length of the run, it will be the last half mile that nearly kills you. My father, a man who has made a personal study of physical endurance in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest, often refers to this phenomenon as the “heartbreak half mile.” It is when we see the light at the end of a challenge that we start to fully experience the cost of the miles behind us, exponentially compounding the effort ahead. The last stretch may be short, but it is intense as hell and is often where we most squarely face ourselves.

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Community

FUTURE GAZING: Striving for Black and Brown Queer and Trans Joy

With a challenging year soon to be behind us, we asked community members to share their vision of what they hope becomes of our city post-pandemic.  

by Trans Women of Color Solidarity Network

The year 2020 has brought many people in our community, including Trans Women of Color Solidarity Network (TWOC Solidarity Network), heartache, stress, and difficult times. However, what we’ve also seen is the way our community comes together to provide care and mutual aid when we cannot rely on the same from our government. We’ve seen the queer and trans community pool its resources, utilize different levels of privilege, as well as put itself on the frontlines of issues that affect our community at all intersections; we’ve also urged others to do the same.

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Amplifying the Authentic Narratives of South Seattle

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