Pith in a Postcard

My dear friend Wendy and I have a long standing tradition of sending each other postcards. Years before I began my current mission, she and I were postcarding just for fun. She'd go somewhere (Arkansas for a family reunion; Portland for a long weekend), stock up on postcards, and send me one. I did the same. We communicated this way about weekly, each postcard a pithy response to the one just received. We struck it up again this year, a very satisfying, amusing habit.

In early June, I met up with Wendy in Seattle. We arrived a day early for our Alaska cruise, so we had time to take the light rail from our airport hotel to the waterfront to explore things like Pike Place Market. Pioneer Square was our train stop, and we climbed out of the subway onto a chilly, windy street overlooking the sun glinting off the Puget Sound. (Actually, the sun was obscured by clouds, but "glinting" sounds better, right?)

Founded in 1852, Pioneer Square was once the city's heart.  Though it purports to be a 21st Century center for night life, charming cafes, and art galleries, my impression is that now, it is the city's bowel. There was just a gloominess hanging over the area, a nonspecific, murky sense of foreboding.

We were waiting on a corner for a red light to change when a disheveled man came up behind us, sighed and abruptly walked around us. As he crossed against the light, ignoring oncoming traffic, he shouted, "Don't just stand there like a couple of hookers! Cross the damn street!" What could we do but laugh? We'd both lived in the Bay Area. Pugnacious homeless dudes don't scare us.

And when I got home from Alaska to find a Pioneer Square postcard in my mailbox referencing prostitutes, signed by Wendy, and postmarked "Juneau, AK," what could I do but laugh all over again?