#1128 Est Word

As fall comes to the great Northwest it’s time to steel up our nerves for another run at nine months of gray. They say they get more rain in a year in Atlanta than we do here. But Atlantians get their rain over with, we just get stuck in a constant lingering unrelenting season of gray.
So it was odd the other day when I was stopped at a stoplight and the first 20 cars going by were all gray. You’d think to counter the oppressiveness of that dreary color we’d all buy cars that were bright and perky.
But no, we in the Northwest are both liberal and practical. We are not black and white thinkers, we prefer shades of gray. We also know gray cars don’t show the Northwest dinginess of sodden soil and road grit like the other colors.
Still, speaking of political choices, I’d be willing to bet we are mostly one-issue voters. Voters tend to be one-issued because it’s easier. There are so many complex reasons out there for things, and so many facts and opinions to balance, it’s simply easier to fixate on one thing and make that the hinge upon which all the rest of our decisions swing.
On the national level, those one-issue items tend to be taxes, abortion and gay marriage. Here in Olympia, the issues tend to be the isthmus and the estuary.
Yep, I said it. The Est word. Estuary. Those dad-blamed scientists want to drain our beautiful dome-reflective Capitol cesspool and change it into a swamp.
So what will happen to the isthmus that the other people are fighting over?
It will probably become a collection station for West Nile infected mosquitoes.
Seriously, it’s pretty certain in the next few elections that how a candidate feels about the Capitol Lake versus Estuary issue will be a deal maker or deal breaker for them.
The estuary is a hard sell. The lake, on the surface, continues to look beautiful. And “estuary” is one of those scary indeterminate words. We know what a river and a lake is. An estuary sounds dingy and swampy and filled with shadows.
An estuary sounds, well, gray...
America, ya gotta love it.