Gravity Feed

La Toilette. A most necessary fixture in our modern home, and one that started far, far away. It was created by someone named neither Thomas Crapper, nor Mr. John. I don't know the name of the man who made it, but I know it wasn't a woman! No woman would have allowed so many obvious inadequacies in it's design.

Eventually it came to Seattle and here hangs a tale. It began as an expensive device for the rich, who lived--you guessed it--on the cliff above and not in the swamp. That made gravity feed the ideal sewage system... for them. But eventually the system found it's way to the "seamstresses" and dock workers. Those were the people who were living at or under the water table level. How could they make gravity work for them? ...put the darn things up on pedestals! More than one resident (usually inebriated) found it hard to climb the ladder to the loo.

That wasn't the end of the tale of the crappers, not by a long shot. As I said before, this was a gravity feed system and it fed into the sound. Now gravity working on crap from way high up--say on a cliff somewhere--could get a good bit of speed when it shot out into the water. That helped it go far far away and not bother anybody--there were no ecology fans at that time. The downtown potties on the other hand didn't have that advantage. Pretty soon Seattle started smelling like people were pooping in their streets--which, well, they were.

This lovely port with it's soggy roads, 10' ruts, and charming stench soon became the haven for rats. They began pouring in from every direction and these weren't the field mice of Tacoma, no we're talking rats the size of possums and ravenous enough to eat small children! Seattle was turning into quite the place to be!

I'm going to have to take another break here folks, but I promise I'll finish up in the next installment: Urban Renewal.

Eyeing Seattle

Seattle is a funky place.

For nearly two hundred years Seattle has cast aspersions on Tacoma as a weird, undesirable place to even travel through. I don't begrudge this lack of vision, but I don't share it either. From my wonderful, friendly home here in Tacoma I can look at Seattle and say with almost no smirk that it is one of the 10 best places on earth... maybe 20.

The road system is as confusing in Seattle as it can possibly get. This is not their fault. The city is built on a swamp, closed in on every side by great cliffs. There are, of course, breaks in the cliffs like at Lake Washington. That's where the expensive expensive housing is. The normal expensive housing is crammed in next to the impossible freeway stacked on top of itself and partly buried.

Hmmm. Buried. That brings up another delightful aspect of Seattle. The city has a "history" (cue the spooky music). Early settlers--having no more brains than your average stone--decided that the great big swamp in front of those bloody tall cliffs was the perfect place to settle. They had a really good reason: they were lazy. They figured if they built below the tree filled cliffs, when they cut the trees down--for both housing and profit--they could just let gravity do the hard part. It worked pretty good, too.

So they installed the "seamstresses" on the south side of town; the lumber mills on the cliff side of town; the port in the only deep end of town; and the bars everywhere else. Life was pretty sweet.

Of course there were little niggly problems, but nothing a robust man couldn't handle. The indians were more or less friendly. (The indians were more or less convinced the white man was crazy. They knew where the best places to build were and Seattle had got it wrong. ...So had an earlier group but that's another story.) The trees, once the cliffs had been stripped bare, took a bit of slucing to get to mill, but the land thereabouts had tons of water. What self respecting camp didn't have it's log skid for tree transport and it's skid road for derelicts?

There was also the plague of rats; the child or two drowning in the "mud puddles"; and the creative little problem caused by the gravity feed toilet. I'll talk about those next time.

My Declaration of Intent

For years I've tried to get my family to come see my websites, blogs, wikis, and podcasts, and in all that time I managed to get a whole 1 person to look. And I bribed him.

Now its time for the world to see what an enchanting and funny and informative person I am. Here on these pages you will find what I found to be fascinating, beautiful, hilarious, touching and in some cases, horrifying. The horrifying will be accompanied with a call to action, so be warned.

So! Without further ado may I present Quality for your Viewing!