The NWArts & Life section of Sunday’s Seattle Times opened with this…
After 35 years, The Seattle Times has realized that they have been paying me to go to rock concerts. Paying me to hang out with rock stars. Paying me to leave the office early and go home with a stack of free CDs to do “research.”
Actually, I’ve volunteered to leave at this time as the paper trims its staff—a terribly hard decision to make. This is my last piece.
…and closed with this…
For more than eight years, it’s been my honor and responsibility to write about that subject for The Seattle Times: What it is, why it matters, how it stacks up. I’ve evaluated the institutions that house it, the people who make it and even those who sell it, show it and, at times, abuse it.
Hi Readers. I’m going to talk with you more personally than usual today because I’m here to sign off from these pages. It’s a tough economy for newspapers and The Times has eliminated the position of art critic.
Which made reading the section a rather depressing affair. So thank goodness for the Seattle Times reader who sent in this gripe for the paper’s “Rant & Rave” column:
Rant “To the person(s) who have twice now left their dog poop in my freshly emptied garbage can in Shoreline. Yes, you had it wrapped in paper towels the first time and a plastic bag the second time, but it was smelly and disgusting to find it after arriving home from work after a hard day. If you can pick up the poop, why can’t you dispose of it properly? I don’t enjoy picking up my own dog’s droppings, but I do it, and I wouldn’t dream of dumping it in a neighbor’s garbage can. I guess I should be grateful that the poop is wrapped up.”
I’d declare the letter a fake—spotting fake emails is something I do in my day job—but in my heart I want to believe that there’s someone in Shoreline whose first impulse after a hard day at work is to rush out to the alley and take a long whiff of his “freshly emptied” garbage can, someone who regards the placement of dog poop in a garbage can as an improper method of dog-poop disposal, someone who unwraps and inspects dog waste to determine that, yes, today’s droppings came from the same dog that yesterday’s droppings.
Seattle is a lesser place for the loss of music critic Patrick MacDonald and art critic Sheila Farr. But we can all take comfort knowing that people who unwrap and inspect the random dog shit they discover in their garbage cans still have a platform in the Seattle Times.
On one hand, I understand watching arts & culture coverage die before your eyes.
On the other, I’m glad I’ll never have to read Patrick MacDonald’s reviews and articles in a major paper ever again.
I hope MacDonald and Farr move on to better things in life.
I don’t think the dog poop letter is a fake. I don’t have a dog but ocassionally smell dog shit in my garbage can. Dog owners are rude to leave shit in other people’s garbage cans. Don’t do it! It’s YOUR dog, take the poop with you.
Too bad about the art critics. Didn’t they also fire the fulltime editorial cartoonist?
*MY* garbage can smells like roses and cotton candy.
As the late great Molly Ivins said, “… Our product isn’t selling as well as it used to, so they think we need to cut the number of reporters, cut the space devoted to the news and cut the amount of money used to gather the news, and this will solve the problem. For some reason, they assume people will want to buy more newspapers if they have less news in them and are less useful to people…”
This isn’t the first time there’s been a rant about people leaving dog poop in the ranter’s garbage. Expect some fun rebuttals in the coming weeks.
I bet it’s real. I notice when I go to put trash in my garbage outside that sometimes there’s already someone else’s bag of dog crap in it. I can see why people would think this is harmless, but they don’t know if you’re going on vacation or when your trash day is or whatever, so sometimes it’s not cool.
Every now and then I find a dogshit bag in my garden. It says to me that someone was watching when the dog shit, so it got bagged. It may have even gotten a few blocks before it was just tossed.
I think the greatest joy for a dog owner is a shit-walk with nobody else watching, then they can just leave it there.
Does anyone still read the Seattle Times?
Why?
For @6 and others who seem to be endlessly bothered by bagged poop in your can, as the Seattle Times runs this idiotic rant so often. (I assume the Blethen Family finds their neighbors’ bags flaming on their porch):
What are you doing with your can that it must retain a pristine interior? Filtering your drinking water? Washing your clothes? Bathing your children?
What are you doing at home that creates so much waste that your can is always filled to the rim every week?
Why can’t you move the can away from the sidewalk or strap a bungee cord across the top to keep your neighbors out of it(keeps raccoons out too) if it bothers you so much?
@9 — How about you give us your address and we’ll tell all of these asshole dog owners to put their dog shit in your garbage can?
My dog’s poop bag (hermetically sealed in a Seattle Times delivery bag) doesn’t stink up your trash can. Your own rutting stinking filth does.
Once the Times and PI go out of business, then my dog’s poop will stink up your trash can because I will be sans sac à crottes.
I don’t mind so much when someone leaves bagged dog crap in our garbage can when I’ve forgotten to take it back in after pick-up day. What I do mind is when they leave their crap in the coffee-grounds-only can at the coffeeshop up the street. The garbage cans are locked, but the compost can isn’t, so I guess they think that means it’s for their trash. It isn’t. I empty that can every week and load the bags of grounds onto my bike so I can take them home and use them in the garden. I really don’t appreciate having to pick the bags of crap out while I’m unloading the coffee. Especially when the bags of shit aren’t properly tied off.
In the early ’70’s, Pat MacDonald’s show on KOL-FM was *the* place to hear what was going on in music, outside of the bubble-gum on top 40 radio. I’ll miss his reviews, too, both for their clarity and their punctuality.
There used to be this rumor around town that McDonald once reviewed a show he didn’t attend, or left early, or something like that — and was caught because the review described stuff that didn’t actually happen. Unfortunately I can’t remember the details and don’t know if it was actually true, but it was pretty widely believed by a lot of folks. Anyone know more about that? Did it happen?
Leaving your dog’s shit — even bagged — in someone else’s trash can is just plain disrespectful. Any one who owns a dog can man or woman up and carry the damn bag home or to a proper public trash can that has a liner. Aside from the fact that dog shit bags thrown into an empty trash can sometimes get stuck to the bottom, it just doesn’t feel good to open up your “empty” can and find something foul in there that someone else left there. Tampons and used condoms come to mind as other items I wouldn’t want to find in the bottom of my trash can. Yes, better to find them in the trash can than in my yard, but still, it’s disrespectful.
@12 – you have my heartfelt condolences.
It was the P-I’s Gene Stout who got caught leaving a show early, not MacDonald. It was at the HUB Ballroom and he left before somebody set off the fire sprinklers. His P-I review the next morning did not mention the drenching and, boy, did he catch hell. Don’t remember the bands. This was in the late ’80s or early ’90s.