I sit above the motorway The city gazes at me As beasts stream up and down I look below At the bellies of the beasts A peculiar calm in liminal space Amongst a chaotic river of movement
Alexander Dennis rumbles towards me I wave as she disappeared Uninterested and unrelenting I stand and turn around People scuttle hurriedly above the motorway The crevasse that separates šilšul and sluʔwiɬ
I turn around Towards the rumble and the screams I feel A peculiar lull in a place of transition Amongst the hurried flow of change
What’s up everyone, it’s dǰ pišpiš. To celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day 2020, I am posting to this website a collection of King County Metro timetable covers that I edited. Language is derived from the Burke Museum’s Waterlines project map, and their second edition is posted at this link: https://www.burkemuseum.org/static/waterlines/project_map.html. The work began as my final project for the Northwest Indigenous Architectures and Placemaking class (Autumn 2019). Its purpose is to disrupt our settler colonial knowledge on place and space across the Seattle area, using public transport to aid in the awareness and knowledge of Indigenous placemaking. Since the initial work, I continue to expand the scope of the project, adding new routes while keeping up with the regular service shakeups.
Follow my Instagram, where throughout the next several months, I’ll be breaking down the intellect of these bad boys. See the project gallery for the latest timetable covers.
We stand here today to recognise the stewards of Coast Salish lands, the original and current caretakers: Duwamish Suquamish, Tulalip, and Muckleshoot. Our hands go up and recognition spreads.
What’s up everyone, it’s dǰ pišpiš. In an astonishing twist, Asian Alliance for Mental Health (AAMH; formerly API Cares) announced they are undergoing a major rebranding and organizational transition. This is such a big outcome for the UW Pacific Islander student community that would leave even Seattle Time’s Danny Westneat speechless. AAMH’s reasoning for making the transition is below the jump.
In the Worst Course Ever, I mentioned that I’ll talk about some of the other bad courses that I took at University of Washington. But I couldn’t figure out how to tackle the subject without sounding overly negative. Until now. Today, I’m going to put a spin on this disco ball and create a tier list of bad courses I took at UW.
What’s up everybody? It’s dǰ pišpiš. I haven’t done a blog post in a while. That’s on me. I just haven’t had a chance to write anything with all the civic events and job searching going on. Today, I want to do a rider tier list for King County Metro coaches that are currently in service. As a rider with 13 years of experience riding public transport in most areas of King County, I feel very qualified to rate coaches according to their comfort, ease of interior detailing, and cool/innovative features. I’ll rate coaches in order of model year. All photographs are linked from the CPTDB wiki, and are the property of their respective owners. Let’s do this s***.
Some of you know I’m a big fan of Maisey Rika, a Māori musician who in my opinion made some pretty timeless songs and music videos even to today’s standards. One of my favorite songs, “Letting Go”, has a montage where Maisey hitchhikes on a truck bound for Helensville, a rural Auckland area town. The CBD portion of the hitchhike reminded me of the CBD I saw while I was there in person 10 years later. So, I decided to investigate what streets the truck drove by while Maisey shot her music video. The only clue I gotten during this montage was the part where the truck passed by Hanover Finance adjacent to the Auckland Art Gallery, the former of which I later found is located at 2 Kitchener Street.
This week, Indian Country is up in arms about threats made against Seattle’s first—and only—Indigenous city council member Debora Juarez, Blackfeet. I want to say right away that I do not condone anyone going to someone else’s residence to harass or berate them. I hate that s***. I don’t think that—unless we’re talking about Jeff (Em)Bezos or some other privileged white person who has a whole couple of suburban blocks for themselves and a mansion—going to someone else’s house in the middle of the night for several nights to “protest” is going to be productive. But that stuff did happen. And I believe it creates tensions across BIPOC communities that are counterproductive to the goals of de-funding the police and re-appropriating taxpayer money for community social and health services.
You may be asking, “Who is this person in the room? That can’t be Fa’aumu. Fa’aumu is cooler than this guy.” Don’t worry, folks. It’s me, Fa’aumu. And I use they/them pronouns.
Karen. Chad. Becky. If you follow social media, you should have no issue recognizing these archetypes of white folks who wreak havoc in public and cause problems for everyone around them. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I compiled a playlist of videos that provide a rich introduction to the very real but social phenomenon. Come stop by. I’d love to hear what you think.
Studies suggest that wearing masks can prevent people from spreading coronavirus (CDC 2020). In other words, masks don’t prevent people from getting coronavirus unless everyone else also wears one and follows the usual distancing and sanitation protocols.
Incognito Transit 