In your big weekend news dispatch: the end of Seattle Weekly as we know it; that Eastside state Senate race gets sleazier; defending Freeway Park’s original design; a four-point affordable housing plan.

For Tuesday from MISCmedia MAIL: Indigenous Peoples Day; California burning; two women on the housing front lines; ESPN vs UW; disappearing salmon.

In our big weekend MISCmedia MAIL: Smith Tower goes automated; three-teen murder tragedy; local alt-right ‘mocking’ victim; did City Attorney Pete Holmes go too far?

The Seattle Public Library, in conjunction with my ex-Stranger colleague Charles Mudede, recently held a public workshop on the topic of “What Every American Needs to Know.”
Attendees were asked to make their own lists of subjects they want everybody to learn. With Mudede’s presence/influence, the topics nominated veered toward racial justice/awareness issues, past and present.

The event was inspired by, and named for the subtitle of, E.D. Hirsch Jr.’s 1987 book Cultural Literacy. Hirsch listed some 5,000 terms, people, historic events, popular movements, and concepts that ought to be familiar to citizens young, old, and new.

UW instructor Eric Liu, founder of Citizen University and author of the political-activism book You’re More Powerful Than You Think, recently revived Hirsch’s concept, as something to be “crowdsourced” from citizen contributions.

Since the library event, Anika Anand at TheEvergrey.com asked that site’s readers to nominate similar topics that every Seattleite needs to know.

Here are my own nominations, in 10 overgeneralized, inter-related categories:

1. Our history and heritage.

Why the Northwest is more “north” than “west”. The early explorers, missionaries, and fur trappers. The Nordic homesteaders arriving on the land-grant railroads. The Gold Rush and boosterism. How Seattle was “bourgeois from the start” (Roger Sale).

2. Our racial/cultural mosaic, past to present.

The rich indigenous heritage, and the people who fight to keep it alive. The Anti-Chinese Riots; the WWII Japanese-American internments. FIlipino cannery workers. Vietnamese refugees. The black struggle, from redlining to gentrification. Hispanic/Latinx immigrants, and their fight to stay.

3. Our homegrown pop culture.

Seattle black music/art (not just Hendrix). Seattle pop/rock music (not just Hendrix and Cobain). Seattle visual art and artists (not just Chihuly). Self-aware, self-deprecating humor, from The Egg and I to Almost Live. Twin Peaks and the “Northwest Noir” genre. Kids’ TV; drag clowning; neo-circus; performance art. Sports, from the Hawks to the Huskies to the hydros. Gone-but-not-forgotten restaurants, stores, and dive bars. Allegedly “Seattle” things we had nothing to do with (“designer grunge,” Fifty Shades of Grey).

4. Our boomin’ n’ bustin’ economy.

Timber and the original “Skid Road.” Railroads and steamships. The Alaska connection, from fishing to oil. Boeing. The Depression; hydro power as a “public works” project. WWII; “Rosie the Riveter;” Hanford. The Jet Age; the ’70s Boeing Bust. The baby-boomer entrepreneurs behind Starbucks, Costco, and the first microbrews. The early dotcoms’ rise and fall. Washington Mutual’s rise and fall.

5. Techie Seattle and its Boeing roots (really).

How a City of Engineers morphed into a City of Coders. The UW’s heritage in medical technologies. Bill Gates and Paul Allen’s “old Seattle” backgrounds. Why Jeff Bezos and Nintendo set up shop here. Video games as an art form. The “tech bro” stereotype and tech-biz sexism.

6. Our bio-region, its ecology, and threats to same.

The “natural Northwest” relentlessly reshaped, regraded, dredged, dammed, and filled in. Hanford. Trident. Clearcut forests. Depleted fish runs. Volcanoes, earthquakes, and wildfires. Climate change and weird weather.

7. Politics past and present.

Prohibition rum-runners; brothels and speakeasies. Labor radicals, and anti-radical “massacres.” ”The 47 states and the Soviet of Washington.” “Progressive Seattle” as an historically white-dominated movement. “Feel-good liberalism” vs. making the hard choices and doing the real work. Why gay marriage and legal pot were easier to achieve than economic or racial justice. The high-end housing boom; single-family neighborhoods; “Livability” vs. “affordability.”

8. “Seattle Nice” and its limits.

Why, personality-wise, we’re more like Canada than California. Nordic stoicism; passive-aggressive distancing. Why you MUST develop and use an “inside voice,” and stop screaming in public all the time.

9. Words and phrases and pronunciations.

It’s “I-5,” not “the 5.” It’s the Department of Licensing, not the DMV. There’s no “S” in “Pike Place Market.” How to pronounce “Puyallup” and spell “Weyerhaeuser.”

10. The (Real) World of Century 21

The future promised at the World’s Fair vs. what we really got. Making a better future, not just a profitable one. Saving our nation from social/political disaster. Saving our planet from ecological disaster. Saving our own corner of the planet from the side effects of its own “success.”

On this day of sorrows, we discuss a VR ‘experience’ with a message; deadly street pills; and whether this latest sick tragedy will FINALLY lead to action.

In Monday’s MISCmedia MAIL: What Michael Bennett DIDN’T do; ICE targets ‘sanctuary cities’; today’s Amazon compared to yesterday’s Sears; Seattle’s ‘Poetic Grid’ makes the PBS NewsHour.

In your big weekend MISCmedia MAIL: Origami litter in Seattle parks explained; GeekGirlCon lives again; should Sodo be razed for offices?; can a methanol plant be eco-friendly?

The company formerly known as Madison Park Greetings won’t issue more of its hip/cute greeting cards, now that its out-of-state buyer suddenly shut the whole operation down. In further reading today: Michael Bennett’s fan base; love for the rainy season’s start; a Swedish left-activist infiltrates a Seattle “alt-right” meeting; and a local online radio station “gets real.”

In our midweek missive: Republicans just won’t stop trying to kill affordable health care (and thus several million Americans); a local social-justice activist vs. useless “purity” obsessions; tentative victories in eco-lawsuits; the end of the CD’s indie supermarket; and helping the homeless feel “at home,” if just for a moment.

Our third mayor in a week will be our last new one for a whole ten weeks! Other things we peruse this Tuesday: A UW doctor’s tale of tragedy n’ triumph; a new complication to the KeyArena rebuild; Boeing wants to “Blame Canada”.

PARK(ing) Day is here again, and talk radio just complains about the  precious car spaces being taken over for temporary human use. Our big weekend newsletter also mentions black guys who like Jenny Durkan and a white guy who doesn’t; a teen convicted for “sexting” (but with complicating circumstances); goats becoming un-welcome in Olympic National Park; and the “priorities” for Bruce Harrell’s mayor-ship (which could end today).

We’ve got our second mayor of the year, will get a third, and may get a fourth in between. MISCmedia MAIL covers this, as well as why Seattle shouldn’t bend over backwards to appease Amazon; how design and power intersect; a “re-brand” for PCC; and an elementary school not getting a “Satan Club” after all.

At 11 a.m., Ed Murray was about to hold a public announcement at KeyArena. A little more than two hours later, he sent word he was resigning. We’ve got glimpses of the whirlwind from assorted angles in today’s extra-long e-missive. We’ve also got Nordstrom’s latest plan to stay un-acquired; Durkan and Moon’s very different housing-crisis solutions; and potential new ways to make a border run.

Another week of MISCmedia MAIL begins with Nordstrom bringing back the concept of the old Sears “catalog store.” We’ve also got still more cities that want to pimp themselves out for Amazon’s “HQ2”; Rep. Jayapal’s respectful answer to a wingnut C-SPAN caller; and a comix legend worrying that young people these days aren’t bored enough.

Amazon wants to do for, or to, another North American city what it’s done for, or to, Seattle. That’s the top story in our big weekend e-missive. Other subjects include the resurfacing of some onetime local TV stars; Chris Hansen’s plan for KeyArena; and a reason to go to Kent (other than jury duty or junior hockey).