The drawing on the cover this week is by Paul Hoppe.

Dan Savage’s Defense of Dignity
“On Monday morning, after eliminating all other possibilities (a virus, pneumonia, some rare desert fungus), a doctor pulled me and my stepfather out of my mother’s room. They were out of options. Nothing more could be done. Her battered lungs were failing; one had a widening hole in it. Amazingly, the doctor didn’t say, ‘It’s over, this is it.’ He laid out the facts and we stared at him dumbly for that world-without-end moment, and then one of us—my stepfather, me, I don’t remember—finally said, ‘So this is it?’”

Erica C. Barnett on the Important Stuff at the Bottom of the Ballot This November
“You can relax about one thing this Election Day: Obama is going to win Washington State. It’s the rest of the ballot Seattle progressives need to worry about. This election is your chance to have your say on the people and proposals that will have a real, tangible impact on your daily life here in Seattle—from how you get around to how much say you have over your own body and medical decisions.”

David Schmader Visits a Veggie Slaughterhouse
“Does fennel scream when it’s slaughtered? Does the sight of the killing floor cause eggplant to taint itself with fear hormones? An invitation to tour the just-opened Field Roast factory offered the possibility of answers.”

Jen Graves Drives Three Hours North to See WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution at Vancouver Art Gallery
“I spent 13 hours in the galleries over two days. (I didn’t take a single break in all that time; I went through as if in a trance.) The show has something like 40 hours of video and also includes photography, painting, sculpture, installation, film, documentation, sound, a large rubber net to play in, and even one paper relic that was famously dipped in vagina 34 years ago. I rushed from work to work, watching videos of performances I’ve only seen in photographs, discovering new sides to artists I’ve known for years, marveling at how funny, smart, brave, and radical these women were and are.”

Lindy West on An American Carol
“Awww look, you guys! How cute! The conservatives tried to make a comedy! They put, like, little jokes in there and everything. Hey—there’s Chris Farley’s brother, Dennis Farley or whatever! It is so good to know that guy’s not homeless. I was worried. I mean, what is on Steve-Farley-or-whatever’s résumé? Besides ‘Skills: fat face slightly reminiscent of actual funny person (deceased), tap, ballet, clarinet, cockney accent’?”

ALSO IN THIS WEEK’S ISSUE: South Seattle’s violent summer; one long-shot vision for the Capitol Hill light rail station; the musical Sarah Palin doesn’t want you to see; the meat at Fremont’s Triangle Lounge; five new books from Portland publisher Microcosm; the very good second album by Seattle band the Pica Beats; Dave Segal’s interrogation of the Dead C; Lindy West crashes a fire-themed party; Dear Science answers whether a pencil dropped from the Space Needle could kill you; plus all the other columns and calendars.