World Views

I was walking on 1st Avenue, south of the Pike Place Market, when I heard two men talking loudly. They were close enough to make me turn and look. The guys were burly, not in the best of shape, not old, but not young; it’s hard to tell someone’s age. What caught me by surprise was that they were making disparaging remarks about my city.  

The blue-skied Seattle day is warm for February 8th. I walk across the freeway overpass on Madison Avenue and turn right onto 6th Avenue. A man is huddled on the steps leading up to the Plymouth Congregational Church. The building is the color of a white palace. The man is young, black, lean, but he takes up the entire landing at the bottom of the steps; his battered blue backpack is large and looks heavy. He is crying, sobbing into a blinding-white concrete buttress.