In rereading “Travels with Charlie” recently, I came upon Steinbeck’s commentary about Seattle as he and his precocious dog traversed the country. Does his description of our city echo with your views some 60 years hence in 2021? Is he too pessimistic? When does progress become destruction?
“I remembered Seattle as a town sitting on hills beside a matchless harborage–a little city of space and trees and gardens, its houses matched to such a background. it is no longer so. The tops of hills are shaved off to make level warrens for the rabbits of the present. The highways eight lanes wide cut like glaciers through the uneasy land. This traffic rushed with murderous intensity. On the outskirts of this place I once knew well I could not find my way. Along what had been country lanes rich with berries, high wire fences and mile-long factories stretched, and the yellow smoke of progress hung over all, fighting the sea winds’ efforts to drive them off.
This sounds as though I bemoan an older time, which is the preoccupation of the old, or cultivate an opposition to change, which is the currency of the rich and stupid. it is not so. This Seattle was not something changed that I once knew. It was a new thing. Set down there not knowing it was Seattle….I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction.“