Seattle as the backdrop to
Safe Harbor for the Dead
Hey GenZer’s, we ok-boomers, that baby-boomer generation, feel your angst, your pain: We held so much promise in the 1970’s when we were the “GenZer’s” of our time.
Stopped the Vietnam war, forced President Nixon and all his men to resign. The reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, were of the age of today’s Gen Z’ers when they broke open the Watergate scandal.
Got the Equal Rights Amendment through Congress and signed by the President.
Persuaded the Supreme Court to approve a woman’s right to control her own body. Sarah Weddington, the lawyer who argued the case, only 27 years old.
Then that bright promise sunk into despair:
1980 John Lennon murdered by an insane person.
1984 Marvin Gaye murdered by a crazed religious fanatic, his own father, Marvin Gaye Sr.
Reagan and the Moral Majority (precursor to MAGA) rallied to stop the requisite 38 states approving the Equal Rights Amendment, ERA
Phyllis Schlafly, the wicked witch of the Midwest, became the bullhorn of the Moral Majority.
She cast the Gay Rights movement as the bogeyman in order to stop the ERA.
Like today, as with MAGA casting the immigrant as the bogeyman.
The Reagan Administration, in bed with El Salvador, Honduran, Nicaraguan and Guatamalan Dictators, denied many Central American immigrants entry into the US.
Seattle became an outlier in 1982 with interfaith groups becoming safe havens for victims escaping dictator violence.
The grand ol’ dame of Seattle, the Smith Tower, built in 1914, still looks as if it’s giving its middle finger to the other Washington—the Trump Administration in WA DC.
Smith Tower giving the middle finger to Immigration & Customs Enforcement.
Seattle sits on the edge of the Pacific Ring of Fire
Alan Rudolph, a well known film maker, came to Seattle in the 1980’s to make the movie, Trouble in Mind. He said, ”Seattle has a hard-boiled romanticism.”
Yes, it’s a romantic city with a rough edge to it.
On the edge of the Pacific Ring of Fire, volcanic peaks rise above mountain ridges.
Bound on the west by the inland sea of Puget sound with Lake Washington running the length of the city on the east side, water erodes and shapes the city.
Seattle in the 1980’s, damp and decaying, where the oft winter rain erodes the psyche and seeps into the bone marrow.
Albeit Seattle interfaith groups in 1982 became a beacon of light, a safe harbor, for distressed refugees escaping dictator violence.
This is the backdrop for Ryan Hart, the protagonist in Safe Harbor for the Dead.