PERSONAL NUGGETS
These are short essays Brad publishes occasionally. They may help you know something about Brad.
Woody the Alpaca
Woody the alpaca has moved in next door to our home. We northernmost Shoreline Lancasters live next to a storm water retention pond. This time of year, the pond grounds are fervent with dandelions, new growth brambles, and hip-high grasses. Once or twice a year, a city employee comes to tamp back the exuberance so that the fenced pond does not become a jungle in our midst. Occasionally, we scale the fence to pick up garbage or do some whacking ourselves. In 2012, Woody the alpaca has shown us weed control done by a professional. Woody has pared back all the grasses and weeds. Read more...
Death
My father the veterinarian brought the kitten home from work. We three kids, too young to be clever, named it Kitty. Kitty became a ten-pound white yard tom; a mottle of black and brown spilled over one eye. We kids loved Kitty and Kitty adopted us, in the manner of cats, as well. The Lancaster urchins were Kitty’s odd pride, in both the human and feline senses. ...Read more...
Fear
Kim and I, before we became a law office, were paint and wallcovering contractors. In 1990, a Japanese firm invited us to work on a Virginia colonial mansion in Omotego, Japan. The “Amelican” house boasted four sixteen-foot Doric columns and a Gone-With-The-Wind staircase; it nestled into a steep hillside. The rear foundation lay seventy feet below the chimney cap. Laborers accessed these heights from scaffolding built for Japanese laborers. ...Read more...
Decaffeination
Out my office window, while mulling some human tangle, I occasionally watch traffic. Every day thousands of cars pass our intersection bearing Shoreliners about their tasks. We Shoreliners are busy people, serious people. Not many smile, capsuled in their automobile universes. More than a few honk, gun waiting engines, swerve onto sidewalks to steal that tempting right turn. Many speed, screaming breakneck by. Some deem stoplights mere advisory opinions. ...Read more...
Mentors
John Terris invaded Dalton Gardens in a dying Volkswagen, ink still drying on his music education diploma. Coeur d’Alene School District assigned John six elementary music programs. One was Dalton. I sat in John’s first band class, an undented rental trumpet in my hand. Our herd of noxious sixth graders made stupid blats and giggled wildly. John pattered in, unnoticed amid childish cacophony. His baton timidly tapped the conductor’s stand. ...Read more...
News
I walked the Interurban bridges. No reporters scribbled. No photo flashes blinded me. Lucy, our little dog with the big attitude, towed Kim and me down the newest section of Interurban Trail, over those lovely pedestrian bridges, and up to the dignified bronze raven that graces the Interurban’s southern terminus. We pulled a few weeds and sequestered some windborne trash. No one died. The SWAT teams stayed home. Our saunter was not news. ...Read more...
Ox Mountain
Omar, aged eighty-three, loved the Mariners and ship traffic passing on the Sound. Time eroded Omar’s memory. He forgot cooking. The washer stumped him. Unfortunately, Omar’s attorney (call him Smutch) “helped” Omar. Smutch made Omar’s son-in-law (call him Dolt) Omar’s legal agent. Dolt, with Smutch’s assistance, pilfered Omar’s ready cash. Then Smutch helped Dolt refinance Omar’s residence, so Dolt could “manage” what remained of Omar’s funds. Omar found out. He came to me. ...Read more...
Pacifist Assassin
Decades ago, I passed some years happily incarcerated in Fuller Theological Seminary’s deepest basement. There, among fine minds living and dead, I encountered Dietrich Bonhoeffer (German, 20th century A.D.). Concerning his earliest works, I wrote a half-dissertation in my abortive doctoral studies. From Bonhoeffer, I learned a lesson. Right conduct frequently confounds our ethical ideas about right conduct. ...Read more...
Regret
Butch spent his first nine years of life in the lap of a spinster. When her infirmity deepened, she left Butch the Boston terrier with my father, the veterinarian. Dad brought the dog home to his three young kids. ...Read more...
Sweetness
Life brings unexpected sweetness. Dawn’s illumination of hanging mists in Hamlin Park. Eclipse of a harvest moon over Lake Washington. Rose petals after rainstorms in North City yards. A thoughtful speaker over lunch at Rotary. Wenatchee tree-ripened peaches. Odd conjunctions of disparate ideas, spilling laughter over beer. A friend’s ear when needed. Great old books. Kim’s snuggle in darkness. ...Read more...
Truly Selfish
In 1845, Henry David Thoreau (American transcendentalist, 19th century A.D.) cobbled together a cabin in woods near Walden Pond, outside Concord, Massachusetts. Thoreau rhapsodized nature and solitude. He ruminated, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation” and “have become the tools of their tools” Walden. Thoreau sought escape. ...Read more...
Truth Speaking
Nate came to me the troubled father of young Jana. Jana’s mother had recently died of overdose. Nate’s own mother now challenged Nate’s custody of Jana. This grandmother believed herself a more able parent than her son. She belabored Nate’s misdemeanor joyriding conviction years ago; he unforgivably embarrassed her. ...Read more...
YMCA
Around 1959, Grandfather Lancaster shuffled me through the door of my first YMCA in Yakima, Washington. I floundered in their swimming pool for Grampa Paul, demonstrating half-learned strokes from Red Cross swimming class. After I had mostly drowned myself, Paul towed me to the locker room. We stripped off our trunks. He handed me a white towel scented with bleach. A foggy door swung open. I sat on the steam room tile bench, my rag draped to obscure what needed hiding. ...Read more...
Thicket
Harry Truman taught me a lesson. Not President Harry S. Truman, but rather headstrong Harold Truman, incinerated at Mount St. Helens in May 1980. I know Harry only from newspapers and television tidbits. Still, his stories stuck with me. Harry fixed and flew Army aircraft. His WWI troop carrier was torpedoed. Harry ran rum to brothels during Prohibition. For decades, Harry Truman owned Spirit Lake Lodge on Mount St. Helens. Harry was the resort hallmark, curmudgeon in residence. ...Read more...
Woodhaven
I write in praise of Woodhaven Veterinary Clinic. Woodhaven beckoned because red geraniums clung to their chain link fence. I would like to say we sought Woodhaven’s expertise because of the manifest professional competency of veterinarians Brudvik, Creason, and Endicott, supported by the caring ministrations of their staff. Of that, we knew nothing at the time. It was the geraniums. Geraniums and Lucy. ...Read more...
Requiem Lucy
Lucy has passed. Our hearts wither in the sirocco of her absence. Others, canine and human, passed from our lives before Lucy departed—beloved dogs, grandparents, friends. None has so wilted our souls. Perhaps the blade that now lacerates us was whetted upon the smooth stone of Lucy’s long final illness. ...Read more...
Kidist
My petite, bristle-haired bride flew halfway around the earth, and changed my life for (at least) eleven years. Once home, Kim laid a photo of a beautiful seven year old African girl on our office counter. This is Kidist; she needs tuition. For more than a decade. I gulped. ...Read more...
Loss
Death knocked for my great grandmother Ley. I was twelve. Louise Ley had bristly whiskers that scraped when she kissed, very white hair, and the pungent odor (not unpleasant) of aged women. The phone rang; she was gone. My grandparents, in their own time, passed. ...Read more...
Moms
Everything comes from something: mountains from subterranean pressures, a child’s smile from words of encouragement, avalanches from one flake too many, and the universe itself from We Know Not What. ...Read more...
Ruckus
Ruckus huddled in a blanket beneath the passenger seat of my friend Judy’s old car. The young puppy peered at me with intense black eyes. Those orbs talked. They flashed the insecurity of dogs fresh from the pound, and the silent interrogatory of every dog, Are we friends? I reassured puppy Ruckus. ...Read more...
Work
I got my second real job the summer of 1969. I was fifteen, my high school freshman year completed. The National Boy Scout Jamboree convened at Farragut State Park near Lake Pend O’Reille in north Idaho. Pepsi won the soft drink contract to quench the assembled thousands. The local distributor needed a tangle of teens to distribute product. Scores of pop machines sprouted from parched fields, amidst Scouts’ tents. ...Read more...
Forbearance
I flew Horizon Air from SeaTac to Spokane. My father celebrated his eightieth birthday in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, with family and friends. When boarding was announced, two flights were called. We hundred passengers walked onto the tarmac toward two identical turboprop aircraft. I stopped, backing up the line for a moment. ...Read more...
Blunt
In the summer of 1960, my parents finished their new rambler in Dalton Gardens, just north of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. The home sat on three pastoral acres, its east picture windows filled with Canfield Mountain. All things were new. My folks hoped and worked. The year before, I almost flunked out of first grade at Bryan Elementary, which was hard to do. ...Read more...
Frank
As University of Idaho undergraduates in 1974, Fred and I built youth programs together at Moscow Presbyterian Church. We became friends. Fred was a brilliant biologist. He studied cougar foraging and duck injuries in his doctoral work. Acne plagued Fred. When our friendship reached a point where I could speak frankly, we sorted out how to tame his complexion. I was gaining weight (as usual); Fred made helpful nutrition suggestions. ...Read more...
Friends
I am my friends. Their lives are mine; mine theirs. I once believed otherwise. I was an individual in the American, the Emersonian, sense. Ralph Waldo Emerson (American, 19th century A.D.) said, “Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. . . . Insist on yourself; never imitate” (Self-Reliance, 1841). ...Read more...
Alice's Restaurant
Driving out State Route Six from Portland to Oregon’s beaches, afternoon hunger drove my car past elk warning signs to Alice’s Country House. Alice’s diner hugs the highway in the low foothills of Oregon’s coastal range, just miles from Tillamook’s dairy pastures, where live the udders from which squirt their famous cheddar. The front of Alice’s menu proclaims, “If you are in a hurry, this is the place to forget.” Every meal is home cooked. The ladies at Alice’s are serious about that promise. I tasted sincerity in my Big Spruce club sandwich and fries. ...Read more...
Arrogance
In Selah, Washington, my grandparents’ fruit ranch topped a hill. I ran amok with local pre-adolescent boys through parched, snake-infested hills, doing things against which mothers warn. The Yakima River meandered the valley below; the sky shone cerulean blue. Sun-baked dirt shimmered. The neighborhood sons were tough, progeny of seasonal Hispanic fruitworkers and hard-drinking African ranch hands. ...Read more...
Childless
“Are you sure?” asked my urologist, inquisitive professional wrinkle in his brow. “Thirty is young. This procedure is probably irreversible.” I nodded: “Knew since I was eleven. Snip on.” The doctor shaved me where I don’t shave. He made an incision, retrieved two half-centimeter sections of vas, and threw on a stitch or two. Weeks later, I gave a sample. A bored nurse peered in her microscope. “Zero count. Good to go.” It was 1984. I was sterile. ...Read more...
Dispute with an Absent Friend
My friend Adam has passed. We, his friends, grieve. We imagine his end. We shudder. We sob. We find ourselves impotent, just when we would act. We sigh and inquire, of ourselves, of the universe, of gods. We ponder fruitlessly. We suffer a splinter none can pull. Adam’s departure makes us, for a time, unwell. ...Read more...
Drug Diversion Court
Rain City Rotary, the new evening Rotary club in Shoreline (Thursdays, 6:15 p.m. at Barlee’s, www.raincityrotary.org) took 100 doughnuts to Presiding on the ninth floor of the downtown Seattle courthouse. Presiding is a gigantic courtroom. Around 200 gathered there to celebrate drug diversion court graduation. I think we brought too few doughnuts. The audience heard twenty-seven graduates speak, tales of failure and redemption. Judges St. Claire or Inveen introduced each, with obvious personal knowledge. Many stories of hope and gratitude moved me. ...Read more...
Civility
Shoreline is a peach of a town, with a spot of blight. Shoreline elects her officials to address civic issues directly and efficiently. For the most part, we get that. I thank city government. But the last election was a squeaker; the outcome polarized Shoreline. Sore-losers carried the election to court, filing suit against three current (and one former) Council members, alleging Open Meetings Act violations. ...Read more...
Good
I shuffled into Hotwire coffee house, damp from drizzle, to meet two teenage friends, sisters. Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, locked in sibling intensities. I smiled. “Good to see you two.” Then began trouble. Dee piped, “Why do you think you know what is good? Goodness is prejudice. ...Read more...
Intimacy
Sharon, an educated and professionally successful woman, stood five foot five and weighed as much as a Seahawk lineman. Despite her many professional accomplishments, Sharon’s self-image resembled 1946 Hiroshima. Sharon despaired. ...Read more...
Jazz Walk
Good citizens of Shoreline gathered in gobs. Trills and riffs tickled August evening breezes. Dixieland reigned. North City strutted proud sidewalks, flower baskets, and sassy small businesses. Five venues, five flavors of jazz, a new street, a fresh event. Neighbors cruised the bands, strolled at leisure, knitted by shared joys. Airy sax, nimble keyboard, brooding bass, pungent cabernet, summery chardonnay, witty desserts. A setting sun raked pink through cloud wisps. ...Read more...
Jerry and Hercules
Jerry stopped at my office to talk last summer. He did not know me; he did not need legal services. Jerry had seen Kim and me working on our office grounds. Introducing himself seemed like a good idea. So, Jerry turned his sassy electric cart into our driveway and made acquaintance. Hercules, Jerry’s seven year old 155 pound black Newfoundland-Labrador mix gave me a sniff, then consented to ear and tail scratching. ...Read more...
John Henry: Elegy
Among American tall tales, John Henry was an African American steel-driver, a towering railroad man. Henry pitted bone and sinew against steam drilling hammers of profit-crazed railways—and won. To confront worker displacement, Henry challenged his mechanical replacement to a steel-driving contest, crushing holes in granite, blasting, gouging rail tunnels through bedrock. Prevailing, Henry’s heart quit. The machine triumphed, sans glory. Transcontinental commerce coursed through Henry’s veins; America’s economic titan leapt from his loins. American workers in every age are John Henry. ...Read more...
Knitting from the Tangled Skein
Maggie knits. You may imagine I mean that Maggie plops in an armchair, watches professional wrestling, and produces scarves and gloves and sweaters from a thread of yarn bent to the rhythmic clicking of fingers and needles. She may. I do not know. Nevertheless, I say, Maggie knits. Not every knitting produces garments. When bones break, the fractures knit. When relationships fray, tattered feelings require knitting. Even history, a chaos of threads, begs a careful hand to untangle the skein and weave a useable fabric. Maggie knits in this latter sense. ...Read more...
Mental Illness
The worst day of my life ransacked me on a drizzling winter’s evening in 1986. My lovely bride Kim lay crushed by depression and intractable parenting litigation. She fled our home, bent on suicide. Just before dawn, I stopped searching. I sobbed and waited for the inevitable phone call. It came from Idaho. “Kim survived,” said a stranger. In relief, I sobbed again. ...Read more...
Perseverance
Tom bought KittyTub, his sailboat, on Lake Union. The hull needed work, as did interior hardwoods. KittyTub was more Tom’s therapy than transportation. The vessel promised escape—from America, from expectations, from his life. Tom sought release from work, from parents, and (I hate to admit this) from me. Tom wanted ultimacy, not penultimacy. Tom longed to voyage around Vancouver Island, down the west coast, past Mexico, then to parts yet undetermined. Tom fought to haul anchor and vamoose if the locals started bugging him. Tom’s bottom line bothered me most: Tom had no intention of returning. He was going for good. Leaving. ...Read more...
President with a Mirror
National elections loom. Politics as usual threatens. Our quadrennial season of mutual distortion draws nigh. Rightist pundits rant: “Obama, weird Christian with Islamic leanings and America-bashing wife.” Leftists spit: “McCain, reactionary Bushist at death’s door married to Barbie.” These are dog days of talking heads and bombast. ...Read more...
Rabuor
Loyce Ong’udi’s mother, Rosemell, lives, as has she throughout her life, in the small west Kenyan village of Rabuor, three kilometers up gentle hills from Kisumu highway. My friend Loyce recalls an idyll of childhood, playing in the security of Luo tribal life, sheltered in the bosom of Rabuor. Poverty did not grind Rabuor. Villagers ate and bore young and grew old and died, as had Rabuor families for generations. ...Read more...
Selassie
I shook the hand of a king or a god. August 1974, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Our bus filled with college students rattled down a long, straight road of spotty asphalt. Scores walked narrow shoulders as we jostled toward the Imperial Summer Palace. Ethiopians are a warm, generous people with an ancient culture. But they are poor, desperately poor. Lacking facilities, pedestrian roadside urination was the rule. I pointed out a line crew tending utilities. Our guide corrected me, “Thieves pilfering telephone wire for the copper.” Despite their difficulties, smiles adorn Ethiopian faces like bees on flowers. ...Read more...
Symphonies
Singers massed at Spartan Gymnasium. Youthful voices rattled retracted backboards. The gym, usually salted with hoopla and sweat, purred with harmony and syncopation. The Sixth Grade Honor Choir Concert showcased an army of elementary school vocalists, as well as ensembles from both local high schools. Instructors stood proud and nervous. Educators received well-deserved, praise-stuffed bouquets. And music erupted. ...Read more...
Teacher
The best teachers speak little. They scout poignant, instructive moments and shepherd pupils to them. Fine educators midwife pregnant events. Silent experience writes young minds, indelible. So my Father taught me. ...Read more...
Teams
“Big Daddy” Rasmussen taught me football. I slouched into the first practice, ambivalent. At fourteen, books, not blocking, fascinated me. It showed on the field. I rapidly earned the sad distinction of slowest man over forty yards. Fifty push-ups defeated me. August scorcher two-a-days doused my wan enthusiasm: sore muscles, dehydration, exhaustion. Big Daddy saw. He demoted me to junior varsity. I was “black dog,” as Winston Churchill (English, 20th century A.D.) called his despondencies. ...Read more...
Trash
Shoreline may soon boast a third Rotary Club. Its prospective members have begun meeting weekly at Grinders, a classy sandwich shop located at 199th and Aurora Avenue North, on Thursdays 6:15-7:45 p.m. The fellowship is a family of Rotary families serving humanity locally and internationally. Bring your spouse and kids. Let Mitch and Mom (Grinder’s proprietors) cook you some dinner. Come serve with us. Help shape the heart of this new Rotary venture. Good-will put to action makes a difference for others—and for you. To be true to our charge, we did an initial modest service project on Saturday afternoon. We picked up trash on Aurora and the Interurban Trail for an hour and a half. I had expected to fill a few bags in about an hour. But as we walked, the crush of highway trash came clear. In ninety minutes we filled a pickup truck, and completed less than one-half of the twenty blocks we set ourselves. ...Read more...