A collection of these short pieces follows here.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.annefocke.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/Dash-border-644x24.png\")
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Drawing on snow<\/h3>\n
February 2019 was Seattle\u2019s snowiest month in 50 years \u2013 more than 20 inches fell during the month. One morning, sitting in my bright second-floor corner apartment after the month\u2019s first big storm, I got a good view of neighborhood comings and goings and of the weather and sidewalk conditions at the intersection below. I admired the snow, layered up smoothly on the tops of bushes along the sidewalk. Though it came roaring back later that week, on this day the snow had begun to melt. The sun was out, the street was wet, and the sidewalks were slushy and icy.<\/p>\n
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As I watched, wondering how long the snow would last, an older woman with a cane, in a pink coat, walked toward my building. As she approached the corner, she turned toward one of the flat snow-topped bushes, lifted her cane, and wrote or drew something in the snow on top. She admired it briefly and walked on.<\/p>\n
The bush faced away from my window, just out of sight. I was sorry I couldn\u2019t see what she had written. Eventually, my curiosity got me on my feet. I put shoes on, grabbed a coat, and went out to see what the neighborhood walker had drawn.<\/p>\n
When I saw it, I thought, of course! What would anyone of any age draw with just a few strokes? Her cane-drawn heart lasted three days until the next big storm came through.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.annefocke.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Photo-message-on-snow-1-644x483.jpg\")
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Instant community and a lime<\/h3>\n
One evening after a busy and fragmented day, I enjoyed a light but just-right meal at a neighborhood bar and bistro owned by a friend. While I sat by the front window eating, a colorfully dressed, 25-year-old woman walked out the door past me. Standing with a cigarette, she initiated, in a way that seemed effortless, a street-side conversation with a gray-bearded man sitting on a motorcycle he\u2019d just parked. They were soon joined by a young black man pulling behind him a loosely-full garbage bag. With laughs and small gestures, all three seemed to be having a good time and eventually headed off in separate directions. From where I was, only a few feet away but on the other side of the glass, they were like players in a silent movie.\u00a0What an amazing instant community, I thought.<\/p>\n
Apparently, the young woman felt I\u2019d been a friendly, if mute, part of their conversation, and, before returning to the bar, came over to tell me about herself, which is how I know her age. A little later, as she left the cafe, she came back and gave me a lime.<\/p>\n
A lime? I learned afterward that she’d bought it from the bartender. Surprised, I thanked her. It\u2019s the only time I\u2019ve been given a lime. Her gift, and the easy openness she carried with her, were soothing \u2013 a magical antidote to an otherwise hectic day.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.annefocke.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Lime-e1555462839469.jpeg\")
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What I love so often falls in between<\/h3>\n
In 2005 a space in Seattle\u2019s new City Hall was given my name. The Anne Focke Gallery consists of the lower-level elevator lobby and a stepped-back space that becomes a corridor to the community meeting rooms. At least half-a-dozen rooms in City Hall were dedicated to specific people that day. Unlike many \u201cnaming rights\u201d these days, naming these rooms had nothing to do with financial support, and I was one of just two who were still alive. I felt honored. I was also on the program to say a few words at the dedication ceremony. As often happens, I carefully planned my remarks, but when my turn came and I faced the crowd, my mind went blank. I spoke extemporaneously, forgetting most of what I\u2019d prepared. This is my chance to share some of what I\u2019d written in advance<\/em>.<\/p>\n May 14, 2005<\/p>\n Many thanks to the City for giving this space my name. I\u2019m truly honored.<\/p>\n The space seems just right. An etched wall plaque suggests permanence. But this space is the passageway to community rooms. It\u2019s also an intersection as people come and go from the elevator. This room will always be full of energy as the art on the walls, the people passing through, and the communities they care about change. Their inevitable shifts and turns will fill this space with possibility.<\/p>\n My hope for this space is that it can also stand for:<\/p>\n Paying attention to what doesn\u2019t seem to fit. \u00a0So many of you in the room contribute to making our city what it is. Much of what the City remembers me for I had the opportunity to do when I was in my 20s. Perhaps every five years or so the space should be renamed for someone else who made a difference when they were young.<\/p>\n Finally, I hope this gallery can stand for the qualities of luck, serendipity, and openness to the unexpected. So much of what I value requires what Jane Jacobs called \u201cdrift,\u201d a kind of work defined not by \u201cpractical utility,\u201d but by play, curiosity, and aesthetic investigation \u2013 work that often falls in between.<\/p>\n 2019 coda: Increasingly we live in a black and white, either\/or, in or out world. Can we discover the value and beauty of grays, the possibility of and\u2019s, the creativity and energy in between?<\/em><\/p>\n I\u2019m not a specialist.<\/p>\n Self-analyst that I am, I\u2019ve known for years that I\u2019m no specialist. Recently I ran across a crinkled, brown paper napkin where, perhaps five years ago, I\u2019d scribbled a list of observations about this character trait. I\u2019d probably forgotten to bring notepaper along to the coffee shop where I\u2019d been sitting when the need came to jot the list down. After reflecting on the words for a moment, I probably just absent-mindedly tucked the napkin into whatever I\u2019d brought along to read, and it took a while to resurface. The deciphered handwriting says that I\u2026<\/p>\n Know a little about a lot of things. \u201cKnowing a little about a lot of things\u201d is not something that shines on a professional resume or in a job interview. But it seems a fine, even useful way to live, love, and work. And I\u2019ve managed to get a lot done even without a specialty.<\/p>\n An experience as a pre-teen gave me an image I continue to value. When I was about twelve, a difficult day at school had left me feeling rejected and desperately insecure. It might have been the day I was called a \u201cleech\u201d by girlfriends and banished from the lunch table. When I got home, I went out behind our house and took my anger and frustration out by knocking rocks into the valley with my baseball bat.<\/p>\n As the high emotion gradually seeped away, I wondered how I could go on, how I could get past the bad feeling I had. I got help from my love of geometric forms \u2013 a love probably fostered by my physicist father \u2013 and imagined two choices. I could think of myself as an upside-down pyramid with everything balanced on one point, meaning that if I were knocked off that point (as I\u2019d felt that day), the whole structure would come tumbling down. Or, I could think of myself as a complicated polyhedron with many points, meaning that if the point I balanced on was disturbed, the structure would turn only slightly to another point and I would only fall a little. I couldn\u2019t be completely knocked down.<\/p>\n The mental picture of having many facets and many points of balance remains a valuable piece of my self-image. It affects my approach to emotional challenges and it gives me a boost when I feel insecure about my lack of a \u201cspecialty.\u201d All those facets and points on the polyhedron in my mind help me remember the value of knowing many little things, rather than just one big thing. Getting work done this way means thinking and moving horizontally rather than vertically, learning and making connections broadly rather than specializing deeply, being able to move easily from one thing to the next.<\/p>\n Excerpt from an email response to David Mahler, December 5, 2009.<\/em><\/p>\n Yes, indeed, thanks. I am finding many ways to get walking into my life.\u00a0I try to walk two to three miles a day, though it varies.\u00a0I’ve had a personal tradition for the past four or five years of circumambulating Lake Union on Thanksgiving Day before the big meal. My aim is to stay as close to the water as possible. It’s a continuing treat. The weather definitely plays a role, and the terrain and landscape change a lot on the way around. Surprising phenomena and characters always show up. One year I passed the same couple twice and we realized we were each doing the same thing. We said, “See you next year!” though we haven’t.<\/p>\n This year I took a shortcut and ran into a wild-looking fellow on a little road that ran along a run-down complex of wooden buildings where I suspect he lived. As he chased pigeons away from the building, he muttered to me, “Too much society!”\u00a0I smiled and scooted away, hoping I also wasn’t too much society. After I passed by, he shouted in my direction, “Hey!” I turned around and saw him give me a big thumbs-up, “Thanksgiving!”<\/p>\n Once upon a time, we lived with convenient polarities \u2013 us and them, women and men, black and white, young and old, the in-group and the out-group. We now know better. We have so many ways to define gender, so many shades of human color, so many ways to be our many ages.<\/p>\n In truth, I move through the world inside many different groups, and outside many others, inside many varieties of \u201cus\u201d and outside many different \u201cthems.\u201d Sometimes us shifts and becomes them, or them transforms into us, or the boundaries become porous and I am neither or both at the same time.<\/p>\n In fact, my world is all mixed up and always shifting.<\/p>\n How is it that we\u2019ve allowed ourselves to be defined by sharp divisions? We need our many small communities, but do they have to be at war with each other? How do we stop the warring without losing the community that we get from \u201cus?\u201d<\/p>\n In the Port Townsend home of friends during a self-made writing and thinking retreat.<\/em><\/p>\n Sitting alone trying to write, I\u2019m distracted by the silence . . . though, in fact, it really isn\u2019t \u201csilent.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0When I hold still, I hear the inside of my head, and then the sound of the keyboard when I start writing. Whatever noise there is, I make myself.<\/p>\n It\u2019s startling. I can\u2019t stop listening. The refrigerator is off, no car is crunching down the gravel street. It\u2019s 9:30 pm. The birds are silent.<\/p>\n Ah, now I hear the hum of a small plane, far off, fading quickly. The soft hum-buzz in my brain keeps going. I wonder if someone with better hearing would hear more. But there . . . the refrigerator seems to be slowly gearing up, just one small step up in volume at first. A couple of tiny creaks from the house, probably cooling down from the day. And now the fan of the heating system kicks in. (It wasn\u2019t the refrigerator after all.) The temperature has dropped low enough to trip the thermostat. The sound of the fan rises, first slowly . . . now with more oomph.<\/p>\n The silence has vanished.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.annefocke.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/The-plaque-b-w-adj-644x483.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\nIt\u2019s an odd little space
\nbetween things
\nnot exactly a room
\nnot exactly a corridor
\nnot exactly square.
\nIt\u2019s a space that falls between other spaces.
\nIt suits me. The art and work I love so often falls in between.<\/p>\n
\nMaking room for something new.
\nPutting trust in artists \u2013 their imagination, their ideas, their work.
\nGiving young people real responsibility.
\nCelebrating our contemporaries, people who are alive in the world.<\/p>\n
\nKnowing a little about a lot of things<\/h3>\n
\nKnow a lot about how to live and move through the world knowing a little about a lot of things.
\nKnow how to do a lot while knowing a little about a lot of things.
\nKnow a lot about how to do a lot while knowing a little about a lot of things.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.annefocke.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/3-DodecahedronIcosahedron_700-copy.gif\")
<\/p>\n
\nToo much society?<\/h3>\n
\nUs and them<\/h3>\n
\nQuiet in Port Townsend<\/h3>\n
\nNotes<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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