THESE TIMES

This is what I saw and what I heard.

Two young men, who appeared to be in their mid-20s, were exceedingly drunk, judging from their muttering and their full use of the sidewalk's width to accommodate their lateral staggers.

I was maybe 30 steps away, walking toward them. It was 10:30 on a Thursday night, May 18, and I was a quarter-mile from my son's apartment at the north end of Green Lake. I was at the end of a 5-mile walk from South Lake Union. Sanctuary was at hand and no one was around but we three.

That morning, 12 hours earlier, I had walked from my son's Green Lake place to The S...