#laurelhurst

On the third day, I arrived in the teacher’s room with my little sandwich, and an older teacher stood up and came over to me. “You’re in the wrong place,” she said, smiling coldly. I looked confused. The other teachers were all eating, too, so it wasn’t the wrong place to eat, clearly. The older woman said, “Follow me. I’ll show you where you are SUPPOSED to be.” I packed up my sandwich and followed her. She led me across the hall and down a bit, to a storage room where the printer and construction paper was kept. There was one tiny child’s chair in there and a milk crate set in front of it. “This is where YOU eat lunch,” she said.

I figured that I wasn’t going to be there for very long and anyhow it wasn’t very much fun in the teacher’s room. For the remainder of the two weeks I was there, I went dutifully to the supply closet, sat on the tiny chair by myself, and ate my sandwich. Sometimes a teacher would come to retrieve their copies and get startled by my presence there. But really, no big deal, I could listen to my audiobook on headphones and finish my lunch in peace.

On the evening of the last Thursday that I was there, a television special about me aired on the local PBS station. It was something they re-ran every once in a while, talking about the lack of arts education in Oregon and how schools made up for it by hiring real artists to come teach little two week long programs, and sometimes those two weeks were all the students ever got for the year for art. It was a good show, about fostering creativity in students and how that helped them to apply critical thinking skills to other areas in life. They followed me through a class at a different school and interviewed me at my studio.

The next day, my last day at that school, I was walking through the hall, talking to a couple of the little girls from the class I was teaching in, and one of the teachers from the teacher’s room stopped me. Oh no, I thought. I’m probably WALKING in some spot I’m not supposed to be in now. “I SAW YOU,” she said. My mind raced, going over any transgressions I might have done that morning and coming up blank. She said, “I saw you on TELEVISION last night.” I said, “Oh. Yeah, that was me.” “The kids are all EXCITED! Everyone is talking about how they saw you on TV and you’re here now!” she said, beaming at me. I said, “oh, good, yeah, it’s a good show, I’m glad you saw it.” She said, “You should join us in the teacher’s room today at lunch! We’re all really SO happy you’re here!”

Laurelhurst at Night

In February 2021, a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, vice president Pat Chaney asserted that the agreements between the hospital and the neighborhood regarding helicopters “aren’t being followed currently,”according to the summary of the meeting. The council made Chaney the lead on the helicopter issue. At the next month’s meeting, Chaney presented data on helicopter landings that showed “a dramatic shift in locations where helicopters are landing,” with the majority landing at the hospital rather than the UW site. According to the meeting notes, which are not direct quotes, the council asked the emergency department director at Seattle Children’s about these landings and he said “every rooftop landing was justified.” During the April meeting, Chaney “expressed concern about neighbors being stressed by the noise and vibrations of helicopters landing so close to their houses.

The group then discussed whether those patients landing on the roof really needed to land there. Helicopter landing data from the first half of 2021—during the same those meetings took place—shows that the top three reasons for hospital helicopter landings were overdoses, respiratory distress, and diabetic ketoacidosis. Of the 72 landings in those six months, 26 were newborns, six were infants, and 12 were toddlers needing treatment.

Later that year, in an October 2021 meeting, a member of the neighborhood council mentioned that there are websites where you can track helicopter flights. The minutes mention that helicopter pilots landing at the site do not want their flights tracked, Chaney relayed to the group. But Chaney said she would request data on every flight.