This sort of thing makes me blush. It feels surreal. Did we really just sell out our entire first print run in a under three weeks? There have been lots of runs to the post office, as I personally mailed copies to you while we scrambled to get a second run printed. It's here now, and everything's good in the neighborhood.

Purchase the book online here, through Elliott Bay Books. Find it in local bookstores like Elliott Bay or Phinney Books– Tom, the owner at Phinney, is wonderful. He's setting up shop with a new store (Madison Books) in Madison Park as well. It also lives at Third Place Books (at Lake Forest Park, my favorite branch).

Ask your other local booksellers about getting a copy; we're continuing to reach out and develop relationships. Where you won't find the book is on Amazon; I think they have enough money! We want to keep the little people alive too.

In case you missed it, here I am

• on KING 5 talking up the book;
• being interviewed on KUOW about the job;
• and in Seattle Magazine, who somehow think I'm one of Seattle's 35 most influential people. (That's got to be a typo. Did they mean one of Seattle's 800,000 most influential people? Ah, yes, now it makes sense...)

This book idea got rejected by countless publishers in New York. Countless. The reasons were varied, but centered around the fact that there's no other book like it on the market; the author isn't popular enough; the stories are too confusing(!); the subject matter won't resonate; it's too unlike other bestsellers.

Which is why we did it from the ground up ourselves. As I've said earlier, this is a home-cooked meal. The success it's already had floors me. I was just happy to get the book out. But things are happening. I have a lil' surprise to announce shortly– stay tuned!

But for now, tell your friends about the book! Poke around on the blog (good places to start here), and if you like what you find, give the book a try.

Let's show those naysayers that there are those of us who actually do want to focus on compassion and empathy to all people. That kindness really can sell.

Thank you for reading! More anon!

​"How's it goin', old school," said one man to another. 

They shared in the brotherhood of being tall, a slow-hipped swagger from the American past, two dark-skinned street denizens born before the microwave. They were the generation that saw Vietnam come home and remembered the days before computers. I wondered if they might have been– like me– more at home amongst the earthy grit of Aurora than marooned out here on Greenwood. 

But here we were.

I like listening to other people talk. It goes without saying that I learn more from listening than talking, but I definitely learn more when I'm not even part of the conversation, and have the luxury of eavesdropping. The one with the fedora and ear piercings spoke to the fellow with the stylish cane, giving a soliloquy I found poignant. Mr. Stylin' Cane had just commented on another of the many new apartment buildings lately sprouting* out of the ground, unaffordable to most and eyesores to architects the world over. Mr. Fedora sighed wistfully.

"It's fa sho changin', you got that right. Like our parents used to say, cain't even recognize this place. But hey. We's the old folks now, talkin' 'bout the old days. You know back in the day, the old Seattle, how it used to be? The way stuff looked, how it was? And you'd see people around, but you was never really friends wit' 'em? But you see 'em now and it feels like they are?" 

The storytelling pause. He continued.

"'Cause you and them both know how it used to be. It's so different now. But man, you see their face and it feels like everything's A-okay, maybe jus' fo' a minute. 'Cause they understand you. They got memories you also got."

I realized then that this was his way of naming his listener as one of these very folks, someone never really a friend but a friend now, because here we were tonight, marooned not just on Greenwood but more potently in the future. Here we were, together.

"I know just what choo mean," the listener replied. "Ah get that feelin' all the time."

Which meant, of course, the same in return. They say women always mean more than they say, while men say exactly what they mean. But when it comes to emotions, anything sensitive, men, raised as they are to suppress feelings, to pretend against delicacy and matters of the heart... Well, they speak in code as much as anyone else. The bald and unvarnished truth of the listener's response might really be something more like this:

Thank you for being you, and being here. Because it makes me feel like myself.

Which he definitely didn't say. But that doesn't mean he didn't mean it.

---

*Like everything to do with housing, this is more complicated than it sounds. An interesting comparison with Vienna's housing solutions here, courtesy of Mike Eliason at The Urbanist.

Update to the update: the second print run has now arrived! Head on over to Elliot Bay Books to grab a copy!

Just a quick update here– I've added a page on the site with info about my book and how to order it. We're currently anticipating a second printing (!) arriving within the week. After it arrives the bookstores we have agreements with will start stocking again. Thanks so much for your support and enthusiasm in buying this little baby of mine! I never imagined it could be this popular! How I love being proven wrong on these sorts of things...

Thanks to all of you who have already reserved copies!

This one is a companion piece of sorts to the one below.

---

He swaggered onboard with the lost hope of a man who wished he ruled the world. In delusion there is comfort; maybe he did and still would, in the final place where such things matter, the secret recesses of your mind and that of your friends.

I was grateful for his familiarity on this 5/21, where I feel like a stranger in a strange land: a crush of haggard commuters now, the affluent, overworked, and exhausted set, not interested in talking and perhaps understandably so. I'm no judge. People have different solutions for the parts of their lives they don't like. I'm used to a different type of crowd, though. The Seattle I describe in an earlier post isn't the Seattle of most of these route 5 passengers tonight. 

But this man, this swaggering dark-clad man with the wild eyes... this man spoke my language.

You may not know that crack cocaine often has no noticeable odor. He smokes it in the back of buses sometimes, and you can see the full whites of his distended irises from all the way up here, where I'm sitting, through the rear-view mirror. That sack-boned gone and dirty need, a speedometer starting at shame and going the other way... What is it about reducing yourself from a human mind to a mere lonely chemical? I see the pipe and I see irreversible brain damage. He sees it and sees release, freedom, comfort, all the things he can't find in easy reach.

But my job is not to solve the big problems. That's on someone else. I see too many. I'm not sitting on the piles of capital and infrastructure opportunities that would help. I'm doing what the power players can't do: I can be their friend. I'm the authority figure who has no agenda. Let me help you feel acknowledged, free, comforted. 

I tell myself I'm okay with all of what I see. It looks like I don't care. But that's where I need to sit in order to offer what I have. You're Abdulahi, drunk at 8 AM, and all the cops and aid workers in Seattle know you and they're rolling their eyes. Everyone else is crossing the street to get away from you, because you're scaring people. 

But I know your name, friend, and I lean in for a fistpound, as I did this morning in the line at CVS. Because you're my people and you've been nice to me. I leave the solving of problems to more-equipped others. I stick with what I'm best at, and what they may not be able to do as easily: make you feel human. 

One night I talked to him at the terminal, after the others had all left.

"Hey, my guy."
"'Sup."
"Listen, you're welcome to ride my bus again, but I gotta ask you one favor, which is to please, dude, we can't be lightin' up in here. Can't be smokin' out inside the bus with all these other people. I don't mean no disrespect."
"It's cool, it's cool, I won't do it no more."
"I know sometimes it's hard, maybe you really want to, but just outta respect, I gotta ask you please."
"I gotchoo, bro. I apologize."
"Thanks, man."

And he stopped. Two weeks later he got on again.
"Thank you for not smoking, my guy," I quickly said.
"Ey!" Elastic toothy grin, making my heart soar with relief: "You remember!"
"I appreciate you!"
"You a cool bus driver!"

And that's how it's been since. "Ah be good, ah be good," he'll say when he slips on. And he is. It was in the breath of our histories (above and earlier, linked below*) that he saw me now, tonight. 

"THE FIVE?" he exclaimed, in shock.
"I KNOW," I replied, throwing my hands up in the air. 
"Aintchoo sposed tuh be on the 7?"
"TOTALLY, MAN! It's like, what am I doing here?"
"Ey. It's good to see you."

I can't tell how he's doing, if he's better or worse tonight. But he engaged. He was kind. I no longer mind if people are unresponsive to me. But doesn't it feel good when they do respond? I'm sure these plugged-in people have their strengths. Silence and interiority are virtues, not drawbacks. 

But. He was the person on this bus who said hi to me. I was Abdulahi at CVS, and he reminded me that I belong, too. 

And that counts for something.

---

*These sorts of things can come and go with the tides. Here he is doing worse, and better; incremental improvement is still improvement.

In case you missed the broadcast earlier this week, here it is online! Hope you enjoy!

A huge thank you to Joseph Suttner, Suzie Wiley, Julia, and of course Michael King, for their graciousness and enthusiasm.