BETTIE PAGE, 1923-2008: The legendary pinup model was the most accidental of icons. She modeled for five years, mostly for small niche-market publishers. She then completely retired from what faint spotlight she had. Everything since was the work of avid fans (and ambitious republishers of her old public-domain photos). It was several years into the revival that she even heard about it, and several more before she gained legal control over her name and likeness rights. (Rocketeer comic-book creator Dave Stevens was a key figure in both in promoting the Page revival and in getting her financial renumeration from it. Stevens died last March from leukemia at age 52.)

THE GOOD TIMES WERE KILLING US (apologies to Lynda Barry): A coalition of local government and nonprofit groups has issued its fourth triannual Communities Count report, documenting how King County residents live and/or survive. The report’s online at communitiescount.org; a condensed version was issued as a tabloid circular in the local dailies. A lot of it’s not pretty, as seen in these headlines from the report’s newsprint version: “The gap between rich and poor continues to grow.” “Almost half of all jobs available in King County do not pay a living wage.” “The richest fifth earn nearly half of the county’s income.” “Public transportation doesn’t work for working parents.” “Too many lack health insurance.” “Domestic violence continues to be a major problem.” These research-backed statements are based on long-term trends that far predate the current crap in the “larger” economy. The material lives of non-zillionaires have sputtered WHILE the condo towers and the suburban McMansions sprouted, while the financial markets boomed, while countless purveyors of “luxury” products and services emerged.

DAY OF WRECK-ONING: I’ve known Thomas Frank’s work since his cultural-commentary zine The Baffler and his first book The Conquest of Cool. As the Clinton era and the tech bubble gave way to Bush’s Reign of Error, Frank’s focus morphed from “hip” youth-marketing to the financial speculation mania, then to the heart of conservative malevolence. This is the setting of his latest treatise, The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule. Frank’s premise in a nutshell: Many of your worst conspiracy theories about the right wing are true, and he’s got the voluminous research to prove it. Legislation is sold to lobbyists for big money at golf courses and expensive restaurants. This lobbying industry’s made DC’s Virginia suburbs among America’s wealthiest enclaves. Among the results: tax and regulatory breaks for the rich and connected, the outsourcing and even offshoring of many government functions, the hiring of well-connected incompetents at business-unfriendly agencies such as FEMA and the Department of Labor, support for overseas sweatshops and oil drilling in national parks, the decimation of consumer protection and endangered species, etc. Frank particularly enjoys tracking this through the career of uber-influence peddler Jack Abramoff, who seems to have been everywhere graft and sanctioned bullying have been. Abramoff’s depicted as helping turn the College Republicans into a gaggle of liberal-bashing shock troops, coordinating apartheid South Africa’s US PR drives, and turning the Republican Congress into a highly organized machine for legal and quasi-legal bribery. Like Naomi Klein, Frank’s work covers a few sectors of the vast right wing conspiracy in excruciating detail, but is silent almost to the point of nihilism about what progressives might do to reverse these trends. This is particularly ironic considering one of Frank’s chief argument points, that Republican corruption and mismanagement increase public cynicism toward government—an opinion Republicans actively want to promote. (Frank calls this situation “Win-Win Corruption.”) At the opening of the Obama era, this everything-sucks attitude on the part of the left has simply got to give way to more practical (and, yes, hopeful) strategems.

THE PATIENCE OF...: Su Job has been a longtime local art-world fixture, specializing in fabric-based works. She’d also designed and made custom scarves and shawls, and taught art classes at the Art Institute of Seattle and elsewhere. She’d lived in the Tashiro Kaplan artist lofts since they opened in 2004, and played an influential role in getting the Pioneer Square building preserved as artist spaces. But perhaps her best-known role was as the longtime queen bee of the 619 Western building. For more than a decade, she ruled its five stories of gallery/studio lofts with a friendly but firm hand. (Artists, and people who claim to be artists, can occasionally be fiscally flaky.) That’s where I spotted her during December’s First Thursday gallery openings. She was her usual self—gracious toward friends and patrons, stern toward an artist/tenant who’d allegedly been slow on her rent. Job did this from a motorized wheelchair, taversing 619’s levels via Seattle’s second coolest elevator (after that in the Smith Tower). A friend followed closely behind, towing a shopping cart. Inside the cart were flowers and gifts from Job’s tenants and friends, as well as an extra jacket for Job and some emergency medical stuff. Job’s friend passed out postcards with Job’s face superimposed on the classic “Rosie the Riveter” poster. The postcard advertised a benefit art auction to help pay her hospice-care expenses. Yep: She was dying. She’d had a lingering pain in a leg for weeks. Then, as she announced in an email to friends on Nov. 18, she got the diagnosis. She had a rare, fast-spreading bone cancer. All that could be done was to care for her. But that late-stage nursing care wasn’t covered by her insurance. Thus, the auction on Dec. 13 in the Tashiro Kaplan. Organizers report it raised more than needed; the surplus will go to an artist-support fund she’d organized. Job passed away in her studio space at 7 p.m. Christmas night. She is loved and she is missed.

SNOWTOPIA: So we finally had it. The Big One. The Perfect Storm (Western Washington version). The utter catastrophe the TV stations breathlessly threatened/promised every fall and winter since at least 1997. I won’t disparage the impact this has had on the homeless (who deserve a better lot in life year round). And the snow’s timing left thousands unable to leave or enter the area for holiday reunions; not to mention leaving already-troubled retailers bereft of holiday shoppers. No matter what week it occurs, a snow like this will be tough for car commuters and truck shippers. This time, it also hit bus and train travelers. But damn if it wasn’t the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. And the most joyous. The first non-sticky flakes of Saturday the 13th were all the “white Christmas” miracle I’d come to expect here in the ol’ Puget Sound convergence zone. It was lite; it went away. The local newscasts promised/threatened an even huger blast the following Wednesday. It didn’t happen. Those of us who’d been through this in the past figured, “Of course. They’ll threaten but not deliver.” Then, in the predawn hours of Thursday, the snow came. And came some more. For four days. As I’ve written in the past, snow in Seattle is a rare treat. It turns us all into children. Most of us can’t do our normal dreary lives. All we can do is play, and coccoon, and reconnect with those in our most immediate vicinity. But by Sunday the 21st, even a Snow Miser like me could feel a little melancholy while walking through the winter wonderland. Can there be such a thing as too much beauty, too much wonder? When does it turn into, as the cliche goes, a “great and terrible beauty”? Sooner for many other people than for me, that’s for sure. Lovers who’ve ignored the world beyond one another’s arms must resume doing whatever they do to stay fed. Children must return to school. Trucks must be able to get stuff to and from us. The wheels of commerce must turn again. But memories remain—of street sledding on flattened cardboard boxes, of mugs of cocoa or Irish coffee thawing frozen fingers, of strangers becoming allies in the great adventure, of our normal wintery dim grey turned blinding white. This snowapalooza occurred around and on the solstice, the day after which everything becomes just a little brighter. This has been the last winter solstice of the Bush era; the economy’s in the undisputed dumps, the nation’s civic fabric is in tatters, but the hope of better times already beckons.