American Makers are Amazing and I'm a Bonehead.
I muse upon the downfall of "tech" and enjoy an Anything Bones podcast appearance
Even though it’s trite, I feel compelled to wax poetic about the Cascadian spring—its cherry blossoms and gray whales and craft brews in the sun and a raucous Saint Paddy’s night out. I even got slapped by a drunk guy in a kilt! Life is truly grand. As far as writer stuff, here is what’s on my mind.
Saltchuck Beat Musings: Tech is Down, American Manufacturing is Up
I’ve kept busy with a few sea salty magazine assignments, most recently a short bike trip and interview at Ballard, Seattle’s Snow & Company Boatbuilders. The historic sardine seiner turned Steinbeck charter Western Flyer (of which I’ve written about for Passagemaker magazine) is still there, awaiting her chance to head south for a second working life in California as a science/education/cultural platform. I was there to learn about Snow & Company’s newest build, a cutting-edge 67-foot vessel for San Francisco and probably the first EPA Tier IV pilot boat built in the USA. Expect my story on that in Pacific Maritime magazine.
What struck me in my conversation with company owner/founder Brett Snow (who is awesome) was that American boatbuilding—and manufacturing—is in an incredible phase of prosperity. Snow & Company has a full slate of boat projects that’s going to keep them busy for years and the main constraint they seem to have is a skilled labor shortage. Our conversation was as much about their growing pains and prosperity as it was about their exciting new pilot boat.
Being in Seattle, it’s hard not to contrast the story and positive tone of my Snow & Company visit—and the American manufacturing industry more broadly as I’ve seen it as a maritime journalist—with the frankly jaw dropping implosion of the “tech” sector. I put “tech” in quotation marks because, honestly, isn’t manufacturing and maritime also cutting edge technology? No? Why not? Because it’s not backed up in the cloud? Because it’s not on a glowy screen and the companies involved don’t need TikTok accounts? Grow up! Visiting a boatbuilder’s yard is like going to a real-life spaceport. Touring a Google office building is like Office Space meets an overly trendy fro-yo bar.
According to this KUOW segment posted on March 6: “Earlier this year, Amazon announced it’s laying off 18,000 workers, including at least 2,300 people in the Seattle area. Microsoft cut 10,000 workers, with nearly 2,200 of those lay offs in the Seattle area. Meta cut 11,000 workers and Google cut 12,000 employees. Both have a significant footprint in the Seattle area.”
And that’s just a taste of it. There’s far more cuts not mentioned or incoming. For Seattle—which as a city has made it clear courting the “tech” sector is its #1 priority for the last decade over literally anything else including basic public safety, infrastructure, housing affordability/cost of living, small businesses, etc.—this may seem like bad news. Sidenote, 7 out of 9 of our city council members are not seeking reelection this year. Eeep?
But maybe “tech” really means “venture capitol financial speculation gambling on digital concepts that wildly overpromise”? Weren’t we all supposed to be plugged into a Metaverse virtual reality utopia and using exclusively cryptocurrencies by now? Oh wait, those were both multibillion—if not trillion—dollar busts. Without brokering our private information as a product like an underground warren of voyeuristic goblins or inserting themselves as parasitic middlemen into all our daily transactions in app-form, they’d not have much to stand on at all, would they? Heaven forbid they just make useful computers for us and call it a day.
Yet the sectors that have always been here, like maritime, are doing very well when not directly alienated to the point of moving like Silverback Marine to Tacoma or closing like Ballard Oil. Why has The Seattle Times employed several dedicated “Amazon Reporters” who breathlessly recast and publish Amazon press releases, but not a single dedicated maritime reporter (from what I have seen anyway)? According to the Washington State Department of Commerce, maritime is a $21.4 billion industry for the state! Technology and innovation is not always on a computer.
In part due to this media blackout, I earnestly believe that within Ballard the recent arrival “tech” oriented crowd who is so prevalent at our Sunday Farmer’s Market and Old Ballard boutiques have zero clue that mere blocks from them are some of the nation’s notable boatyards accomplishing amazing things on a daily basis. And you know what? We’re entering an economic time when the golden cows of finance and “tech” may be going into the slaughterhouse. We’re going to need these amazing American makers, maritime billions, and sector stability, and I for one am dammed glad they are there. They are the real cultural and economic bones of this place. Speaking of bones…
Anything Bones Podcast: Zombie Salmon, Crime Skeleton, and Margaret Corbin
I had a great time appearing on the Anything Bones podcast with the wonderful and curious hosts Sophie Schwartz and Katelyn Hart. The podcast welcomes all topics bones and bone related, typically macabre subjects presented in a casual conversation format. When listening to an episode, I tend to feel like I spent Halloween with two brilliant and silly professors who, when it comes to their interests, are never off-the-clock.
I was brought on to talk zombie salmon, aka the rapid senescence of the fish during the spawning season. I’m a firm believer than salmon live one of the most heavy metal lifecycles in the natural world as they morph into epic battle forms and swim upriver through a gauntlet of predators while fasting, fighting each other, and rotting alive. I read a bit from my book Salmon in the Seine about my time at the end of an Alaskan commercial fishing season when I encountered these zombies, essentially the tardy salmon to the spawning ground whose flesh and eyeballs liquify when held.
From Salmon in the Seine, page 161: “I knew the fishing season was ending when the zombies invaded. Salmon stop eating as they mature into breeding stock and start to rot alive if they are late to the spawning grounds. Our sets began to contain more and more of these late arrivals, their hides mottled and scales dull. Hunks of rancid flesh sloughed off their bodies as soon as I touched them. Eyeballs liquefied and fell out of heads. The flesh around the jaw was especially vulnerable. Jagged teeth stuck out at odd angles. My raingear needed regularly hosing to get the rotten fish paste off.”
Beyond zombie salmon, Katelyn does a deep dive into the life, death, and ongoing grave drama of Revolutionary Warrior Margaret Corbin. Sophie leaps into the real-life patent for a talking crime skeleton, the dream of a real estate businesswoman to draw confessions from accused criminals by inducing the fear of imminent death via a scary interrogation room skeleton complete with glowing red eyes. Naturally, we weave a narrative of fictional construction worker Joey who ties it all together with his “I’m diggin’ over hyeah!” shenanigans and plucky New Yorker attitude. Check out the episode here!
Additionally, you can listen to the episode of my first guest appearance on the pod, It Belongs to a Museum with yarn about Mongolian fossil adventure, here.