I’m writing to you this morning from the porch. The crows are at it, flying from perch to perch and letting you know what they’re doing with delighted cries. There’s something about a Seattle crow.

We’ve begun porch season in fits and starts this March. Right now it’s quite chilly, in the low 40s. But I’m dedicated to my craft, so I’m bundled up. We’ve had some truly spectacular sunny days spent facing west from this porch watching the sunset. We also watched a rare storm roll in the other day.

Yuki loves the porch. We have a baby gate that we put up so she can come out on the porch with supervision. She likes to make as much trouble as possible but how can we resist letting her be out in the fresh air and sunshine?

I had lunch with a newer coworker friend the other day. We’re both from the Midwest, although he’s been in the Sea-Tac area far longer than I. He made an observation of how a lot of Seattle folks want to “create community” but what they end up doing is just really focusing on the friends they already have. (Seattleites are known for being kind of cold, and I have found this to be fairly true.) Community, he posited, was more than close friendships. It’s a network, it’s knowing your neighbor (shout out to Kirby, the dachshund a few doors down) and your mail carrier (shout out to David, the best mail carrier in U District), your barista (shout out to Izzy), etc.

I have a long ways to go, though, but that takes time and I’ve not lived in a neighborhood for longer than a year til now. A lot of things invite this sort of community, though, which seeks to know the service workers, the neighbors, the regulars in our lives. I think the porch counts for sure, although we’re very privileged to have a porch. But my sister knows the neighbor through the backyard fence from playing in the yard. There’s a lot to be said about safety, though, especially for marginalized folks, and capacity, especially for service workers. This is definitely a complex issue, and not one size fits all.

Perhaps I’m just using this community stuff to justify sitting on the porch all the time, but the older I get, the more I just want to have a chat with whoever I can find. I remember being so annoyed that my parents wanted to socialize after church as a kid, but now I get it.

Have you chatted with a stranger recently or have you any connections like this? I’d love to hear about it, just reply to this email. I could use some hopefulness this week.