Isaac Laquedem

The FDIC pays a return call to the Emerald City

The word on the street is that the FDIC staff enjoyed their visit to Seattle earlier this month so much that they're coming back this week to move another failing Washington bank into new hands.

How not to sell stock in your bank

A Friend Of Long Standing is now a vulture, in a cheerful and professional sort of way; she and her coworkers buy troubled assets (the nice phrase for "bad loans" and "repossessed real estate") from banks that are themselves in trouble and need to sell them to raise cash.  My F.O.L.S. reports that one small bank (not a Portland-area bank) doesn't want to negotiate the sale of its troubled assets, but is holding out for full price, and insists that buyers of its troubled assets must also buy its stock.  (The bank needs to raise capital quickly or it will be shut down this spring.)

My F.O.L.S. and I don't know whether to laugh or cry at this bank's philosophy.  If the troubled assets were still worth their face value, they wouldn't be troubled assets.  And the bank's stock would be more desirable if it hadn't made those loans in the first place.  As it is, it makes me imagine a car dealer who won't sell me a Yugo unless I buy a Lada also.

A Sounder example of mass transit

Difficult as it is for me to admit, I think I've caught a mild case of soccer fever, not from anything going on in Portland, but from watching the Seattle Sounders' opening game from a skybox at Qwest Field.  It's a fine facility that serves football and soccer, My hosts claimed that soccer outdraws baseball in Seattle, at least in attendance per game.  It's a stadium with a lot of visible sponsors and it's remarkably easy to get to on foot or by car, train, bus, or light rail.

I was also struck by Seattle's bus/rail tunnel.  I had first seen it when it was bus-only, before the rails were installed.  Now, with buses and trains sharing the tunnel, it's an efficient way for mass transit to pass through downtown.  The thought occurred to me that instead of replacing the Interstate Bridges with a new 10- or 12- or 16-lane bridge (I'm not sure where the count is today), we could build a bus-rail tunnel underneath the Columbia and not do anything about the bridge and car traffic.  With a massive park-and-ride on the Vancouver side, light rail between Portland and Vancouver might become faster than driving, something that should have been the goal of our rail system in the first place.

Colonel Doctor Professor (and good friend) Samuel E. Kelly (1926-2009)

The United States Army that Sam Kelly joined in 1944, as an 18-year-old boy from Connecticut, was segregated, and the new Private Kelly was on the wrong side of the color line until President Truman desegregated the armed forces starting in 1947.  Despite a paper commitment to equal opportunity without regard to race or color, the United States Navy had only five black officers (out of 45,000 officers), and the Marine Corps had just one (out of 8,200).  The Navy had commissioned its first black officers only in 1944.  The Army had more black officers, but they served almost entirely in segregated units. 

Private Kelly was a good student and a hard worker.  By the time he retired from the Army 22 years after enlisting, he had earned two college degrees and a master's degree in history.  He had also become a lieutenant colonel.

The newly retired Colonel Kelly went into education, becoming a history professor at two community colleges in Washington.  Then in 1970, the president of the University of Washington recruited Professor Kelly away from the community colleges to become UW's vice president for minority affairs, a new position for UW.  He earned a Ph.D. from UW the next year, thus becoming Doctor Kelly, and was granted tenure in the College of Education.

Dr. Kelly, who died at his Seattle-area home on July 6, touched our area because of what he chose to do after he retired from the University of Washington in 1991.  He and his family moved to Vancouver, and he started to teach again, initially at Clark College and then at Rosemary Anderson High School in North Portland, where he soon became the executive director and principal.  He increased the school's programs, tripled the number of students it served, and oversaw a doubling of the school building.  He had a deep sympathy for students who could not succeed (many of whom he charmed, cajoled, or bullied into succeeding anyway), and none for students who would not try.  He also had a great fondness for the crab cakes at McCormick & Schmick's and for homemade Louisiana-style seafood gumbo, which he served to his guests with gusto and enthusiasm.

He and his wife Donna changed houses more often than most.  The one addition he insisted on making to each house was to add a flagpole, on which he proudly flew the flag of the nation that had told him half a century earlier that the color of his skin would likely keep him from becoming a colonel, a Ph.D., and a tenured professor.

But what does Dino Rossi say in Seattle?

This year's gubernatorial race in Washington is a rematch between Christine Gregoire and Dino Rossi.  Governor Gregoire defeated Mr. Rossi by a few hundred, or maybe a few dozen, votes four years ago, in a Florida cliffhanger-style election.  The governor got her winning margin from late votes in King County (the county that includes Seattle).

Both camps have their campaign signs out now for next month's election.  The Rossi signs near such metropolita as Toppenish, Ellensburg, and Wenatchee have as their tag line "Don't let Seattle steal this election!"  When I pass by Seattle today I'll be curious to see on whom his signs there place the blame.