Let’s begin in Little Italy. I’m in a bar called the Spring Lounge. It’s small, woody, and very boozy. The man next to me recognizes that I’m not a regular. He knows I’m from out of town. “Where are you from?” he asks. I tell him, “Seattle, which is presently freezing.” New York City is 50 degrees F; Seattle is 15 degrees F. The New Yorker, who is familiar with Seattle, thinks I’m bullshitting, checks his phone, and is shocked to find that I’m saying it like it is. Yes, this is the coldest it has been in 30 years. Yes, this is the world we now live in: the end of the stable Holocene and the beginning of the unstable Capitalocene (also called, incorrectly, the Anthropocene—capitalism is not a part of human nature; it’s historical and cultural).
The following day, my plane, 737 Max (more about that in another post), landed at Sea-Tac Airport. Getting out of the plane took forever. The airport’s Green Line North Train Loop tram was easy enough to find, but something was up when my partner and I arrived at its doors. Pipes somewhere in the airport had snapped. The D Gates exit was closed. We had to go to C Gates and climb up several flights of steps. Make sense of the confusion. Find the hard signs to Link’s station. The plane landed at 8:30 pm; we were on a Columbia City-bound train at 11:20 pm.
But the story does not end there.
On Monday, the airport told KIRO 7 it is dealing with multiple burst pipes. https://t.co/E7lGoWKzwT
— KIRO 7 (@KIRO7Seattle) January 16, 2024
MLK Day—the day it was reported that more pipes snapped in Sea-Tac airport and “flooded the baggage claim area”—was pretty cold, but not as cold as Sunday or Saturday. Things were warming up. But, at the same time, stories of flooding, and brown flooding, were rising.
And:
And:
The Discovery Park Visitor Center is currently closed, and all programs are cancelled today (1/16), for major cleanup following flooding that occurred at the facility last night. We are working on getting the Visitor Center back up and running; please check back here for updates. pic.twitter.com/LFrD3GA5vA
— Seattle Parks (@SeattleParks) January 16, 2024
And:
That cold-snapped pipe did not make the news. It was next to my crib. It thawed and cracked on January 16. Seattle Public Utilities was called to turn off the main source of water, but they were too swamped to promptly deal with my emergency. I was not the only one in this situation. Sea-Tac, Seattle University, and Angry Beaver were joined by flooding in homes and apartments all over the city. And so it is. We got a glimpse of the future that we’re already trapped in, like light that has entered the event horizon of a black hole. We are all going into the Capitalocene. There is no going back. Once fully inside of it, life on this planet for the large-scale organisms (insects to mammals) will be radically different.
If this cold snap tells us anything meaningful, it is that we have, in Seattle, an infrastructure that’s not at all prepared for what will become normal: extreme weather events. We are instead worried about pleasing the business community, enforcing “public safety,” punishing taggers, and the like. We vote as if we are not experiencing violent and unprecedented swings in the weather. This bewitchment finds its expression in the key concerns of our elected officials, which are unified by one concern: high and endless economic growth. We want to dream as if the Holocene is not done and gone. This is the council and City Hall we now have. And yet, our infrastructure is not at all prepared for the kind of environment that’s really emerging from 300 years of unchecked economic growth.
Some say Rome fell because of lead pipes. Perhaps pipes will be our downfall as well.
“…capitalism is not a part of human nature; it’s historical and cultural”
Homo Sapiens started putting carbon in the atmosphere as soon as they figured out fire, and haven’t stopped since. When you’re a mammal, hypothermia is a thing.
“our infrastructure is not at all prepared for the kind of environment that’s really emerging from 300 years of unchecked economic growth”
I’ve probably frozen and cracked an outdoor hose bib at least every other winter since 1990. This happened because I failed to properly prepare for the predictable outcome of forecast weather events: I could have easily shut off and drained the hose bibs, and/or covered them with those insulated things every hardware store in Seattle sells this time of hear. It would make no sense whatsoever to blame “the council and City Hall” for my cracked hose bibs, or attribute them to capitalistic greed.
Oh Charles, Dear Charles. I hope for your sake that you are paid by the word.
Seattle is a coastal city, and fairly high up in the latitude (47, to be exact, as anyone who remembers that nightclub on Lake Union could tell you). That means that while we generally have a temperate winter, that’s no guarantee that the pipes won’t freeze.
Whatever was going on at the airport was the airport’s problem. Individual property owners’ issues are not a climate trend.
I don’t think you need to worry your sweet little head about that.
like my brother likes his steak
this was exceedingly well
done Chas.
your Euology
to Humanity
& life as we
Know it rox.
yonder cometh
the Cataclysmic
but by all Means
let us Comfort
big biz. they
got us here
they’ll get us
Outta here.
one way
or another.
@3
Sounds to me as though you are advocating for personal responsibility. Thats just crazy enough to work if enough people gave it a try.
I doubt we’re in any danger of that happening though.
For folks willing to give it a try, do this when it gets really cold:
1. Head to any hardware store and pick up some pipe insulation and as many of those styrofoam nipples as you have out door faucets. The styrofoam won’t damage the environment because when it warms up, you put them away to reuse next winter.
2. Open cabinets underneath any faucets on exterior walls.
3. Turn your faucets on just a little bit. If the sound keeps you awake at night, put a sponge underneath the stream.
Step 1 should have been done in the fall when it started to cool off.
You don’t know where your water cut off is? Hint – usually by the sidewalk with a large metal plate over it. You don’t need to call the city to shutoff your water. Seriously?!
@7
Seriously.
Seems like something he could have figured between glasses of wine. Then again, marxists aren’t exactly known for actually doing things, just for talking a lot.
7, dear, you’d be surprised. My first house’s water meter was down the hill on the corner.
Several years back, a neighbor called me because she noticed that a mutual neighbor – who was traveling out of the country – had a broken basement pipe (she could hear the water gushing out). So I grabbed my water meter closing thingy and headed over.
The house was up on a bluff like ours, so I assumed the shut-off would be off the cul-de-sac that the house was located on, like the other houses, but I couldn’t find one. So I called Water Operations, and they told me it was down on the avenue, where there’s no sidewalk, just woods. I had to go on safari to find the box, which I finally did, and we got her water shut off, but the placement made no sense.
But that was the old-timey Seattle Water Department way.
Bursting water pipes versus an also bursting capitalist economy is an innovative approach to criticism. I’ll give Charles that.
More of The Stranger not wanting anyone to take responsibility for anything. In winter I make the effort to wrap my pipes. By putting in this effort my pipes never freeze. When will Charles write about how we’ve been here 300 years and there is no one to wipe him?
I’ve been a homeowner since the 90’s. I’ve owned three houses (one in Eastern WA). I’ve never had a pipe freeze. Never even worried about it.
@9
we had a similair experince on Juanita Drive
where when going to a mutual friend’s
(who was out of country) home found
a broken water line blasting out the
homes foundation it was Quite the
excavation and the water meter/
shutoff was Far from where one
might reasonably expect one.
so does that mean
we’re gonna need an
Alien Invasion to Unite
Earthlings? probably tho
some’re gonna be on the
Aliens’ Side. fucking Fascists.
“3. Turn your faucets on just a little bit. If the sound keeps you awake at night, put a sponge underneath the stream.”
–@Saxxy
excellent idea!
however
not all Drains
are created equally.
last winter mine froze
and water backed up into
my kitchen sink requiring digging
up & repairing pipes & breaking up
an ice plug* in the daylighting end where
greywater escaped. not up to code but it was
what it was.
*I used a metal spear
from my spearfishing gear
and poked at it till it broke up
tho damn near ran outta (48″!) spear.
17 was your mother upset that her basement compound that you live in at the age of 45 was flooding?
“When
will Charles
write about how
we’ve been here 300 years
and there is no one to wipe him?”
–@subby, above
this Obsession
you have with Mothers
subby: norman bates’s Envious.
our Values
have been co-opted
by those seeking profit
exploiting our Humanity
What If Our Society
Valued Civics as It
Does Entertain-
ment?
A teacher once said to me: “A society pays for what it values.” If so, our society values commercial entertainment, including spectator sports, orders of magnitude more than it values civics defined as the rights and duties exercised by citizens in a democracy.
What if we lived in a society that valued both equally?
Possibly the most visible event would be an annual Academy of Civic Heroes Awards viewed by tens of millions of people. The glitter would shine not on the winner’s wardrobes, but on their victories of justice and on their groundbreaking documentaries, books and features.
The acceptance remarks would not be gushing flurries of thank yous, but concise evocations of their hard-earned struggles for, and portrayals of, a just society.
–by Ralph Nader; 1/20/24
megatonnes More:
https://mailchi.mp/nader/what-if-our-society-valued-civics-as-it-does-entertainment-mwo00jkc1l?e=ae71353e32
our ‘Leaders’
couldn’t Lead us
Out Of a paper bag.
and won’t.
So sweet – blaming capitalism on climate change and bragging about flying jet planes around the country in next sentence.
@7- not being able to shut off ones water valve is right up there with taking 3 hours to get out of the airport because he had to use a different stairway. If only the airport had, I don’t know, maps posted or something?