News

Five to Four

by Josh Feit

In the last month or two I've managed to alienate some pals: I've lashed out at Seattle City Council Member Judy "Lights! Camera! Action!" Nicastro; leaned on Mayor Greg "Did I really say I'd repeal the TDO?" Nickels; and antagonized women's advocate Cathy "Richard, Jim, James, Dave, Rick, Mike, Kelly" Allen. Man, I even managed to pick a fight with Seattle's excellent Ethics & Elections Commission director, Carol Van Noy, who is--seriously--my favorite person at city hall.

So, this week I'd like to take a softer approach and applaud one of my few remaining fans. Thanks for sending the blanket, Mom!

My mom politicized me way back in 1972, sending six-year-old me on George McGovern leafleting missions in Nixon's silent-majority suburbs. More recently, she mailed me a Feit family heirloom: the Watergate Blanket.

The Watergate Blanket is the checkered black, white, and lavender afghan that my mom knit as she sat and watched the televised Watergate hearings in the summer of 1973. Of all my childhood memories from the sullen early '70s (Vietnam, the energy crisis, women's lib, inflation, masked terrorist guerrillas, Patty Hearst), the thing I recall most clearly is my McGovernik mom, her knitting needles bobbing in rhythm as she watched Senator Sam Ervin's "Watergate Hearings."

It was 319 hours of television--broadcast on all three networks from May 17 through August 7. Enough time for Mom to knit a rather large blanket.

As the early '70s receded, the blanket simply became a reliable part of our home. I associate it with any number of things: falling asleep while secretly staying up to watch Saturday Night Live; draping it over myself as I crouched over a heating vent on cold mornings listening for the school bus; throwing it around myself and my high-school girlfriend Sharon for make-out sessions. I even took it to college, returning it to my parents' house after graduation. Then the Watergate Blanket faded from my memory.

It all came flooding back to me, though, when I visited my parents last December. Retired now, my parents have sold my childhood home, and this was my first visit to their new apartment. It made me kind of sad; their new place didn't seem anchored to anything I knew.

Thankfully, while poking around for signs of home, I opened the linen closet and saw the Watergate Blanket sleeping on the shelf. Then last month, a surprise UPS package arrived at work, and I carried it to my apartment.

Calling B.S. on Margaret "Conflict of Interest" Pageler or on goddam city council administrative manager, old Barbara "What do you want?" Hadley, is not in the same universe as stuff like Watergate, but the family blanket, now tossed across my futon, reminds me to keep trying.

Thanks, Mom.

josh@thestranger.com