Welmer

I don’t know how many of my readers liked late 80s/early 90s grunge, but I was a pretty big fan as a teen. Soundgarden, Nirvana, Mudhoney and Mother Love Bone were all big sources of local pride for us Seattlites back then. My dad had a ratty apartment above the Off Ramp at the time, [...]

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I am a fourth generation Seattlite, and as deep as my attachment runs to my birthplace, I find myself suspicious of it, as though there were whiff of decay beneath its attractive exterior. This biblical verse comes to mind: “ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of [...]

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I have often heard it said that Seattle is the lesbian capitol of the US, while San Francisco is the gay male capitol. I don’t really care whether someone is gay or lesbian, but I do care about what it means for straight guys like me. One thing about gay men is that they do [...]

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The pleasures of spring in Seattle are short, but they make up for brevity with intensity. After many long months of cold, wet darkness with only the somber shades of the evergreens and the sodden, but green grass to remind us of life, a few intervals of sunshine and clear evenings appear between the misty [...]

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Globalization was a euphemism for progress for decades, but now that the world is coming face to face with the problems it has created people are beginning to see what they’ve lost as their connection to local communities weakens and loses relevance. The big issues created by globalization, such as outsourcing, loss of industry and [...]

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Seattle has come to be known as a very difficult place to break the ice. Penetrating the tightly woven social cliques in the city frustrates newcomers and natives alike, and a number of theories have been proposed to explain this phenomenon. Some blame the ethnic composition of the city, which includes many Scandinavians and East [...]

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