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Leaving Amazonville
by Skye Moody
Liv Fun: Vol 4 – Issue 3
My apartment building is cheek to jowl with Amazon’s main campus. When I peer out our bedroom window I look straight into Amazon offices. Just about anyone who lives in this neighborhood can say the same. One of Amazon’s drone testing sites is so close to my windows that I’ve actually witnessed two experimental package delivery fly-overs and occasionally wonder what I’d do if a drone accidentally crashed on my balcony.
In Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood, we’re surrounded by Amazon’s ever-expanding campus; by default, we are Amazonville, a booming lakefront urban community where today you can’t see the water for the cranes. This isn’t a complaint but rather a somewhat woeful view of untethered commerce, fast-forward progress, and the failing sight of urban planners, which drives home the futility of the hollow threat “Not in My Backyard” lobbed at the goliaths of industry.
By virtue of Amazon’s internationally stocked employee roster, the neighborhood gives off a lovely pastiche of racial and cultural diversity. Yet that visual diversity is somewhat deceiving. What binds this community is the Amazon employees’ unique lifestyle. About 90 percent of my neighbors are Millennials, under 30, and Amazon employees; 60 percent are males. In actual years, I’m old enough to be their mother. In attitude and spirit, I’m ageless and have formed solid friendships with several of my under-30 neighbors. Yet, these friends come from the 10 percent minority; none work at Amazon. Here’s why:
We neither speak nor comprehend the main language spoken here. No matter which country they emigrated from, all Amazonians speak the same mysterious techie dialect, a sort of click language completely untranslatable by a layperson. This produces awkward moments, for example, when I chance upon Amazonians in the elevator; hyper-texting, earbudded Millennials, parted from their work cubicle, forced to share a small space with a stranger. They didn’t, after all, enter the elevator to converse with a neighbor, and, anyway, they lack the social lingo essential to greeting strangers.
Liv Fun
by Leisure Care
Autumn 2015
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Going Solo or Singing With the Choir?
by Elana Zaiman
Years ago I heard this story about an African tribe: When a woman in this tribe knows she’s expecting a child, she heads out into the wilderness with a few women friends, and they pray and meditate and listen for this child’s song. When they hear it, they sing it over and over again. And when they return to their village, they teach it to their entire community, so that when this child is born, everyone can sing this child into the world.
Leaving Amazonville
by Skye MoodyMy apartment building is cheek to jowl with Amazon’s main campus. When I peer out our bedroom window I look straight into Amazon offices. Just about anyone who lives in this neighborhood can say the same. One of Amazon’s drone testing sites is so close to my windows that I’ve actually witnessed two experimental package delivery fly-overs and occasionally wonder what I’d do if a drone accidentally crashed on my balcony.
A Strategic Approach to Friendship
by Tammy Kennon
While it’s no surprise that social isolation can be detrimental to our emotional health, scientists are now finding surprisingly strong evidence that it can be deadly — as damaging to our health as smoking, alcohol abuse and obesity. Conversely, researchers are finding that having strong social connections improves our health, helps us ward off disease, and demonstrably extends our lives.