Tiffany Smiley

Seattle Some strange things have been happening here in the Pacific Northwest. We've had a freakishly warm and dry October, for one, and just the other day Seattle apparently boasted the worst air pollution in the world. That was thanks to the smog from all the nearby wildfires, though I’m pleased to report that more normal monsoon conditions have since returned. Elton John was in town for the fifth or sixth time as part of his interminable farewell tour, and in an unrelated development, hundreds of young people, many sporting wigs and dressed in their underwear — if even that — took to the streets to illustrate their role in the city’s annual LGBTQ+ zombie-apocalypse Halloween rave.

Someone once asked Johnny Depp about the secret of good acting, and he replied: “I pretty much try and stay in a constant state of confusion just because of the expression it leaves on my face.” Okay, maybe Depp’s not someone to hold up as a sage on the human condition. But I think we can at least agree that he knows what he’s talking about when it comes to projecting the sort of halfway engaging befuddlement that earned him a reported $90 million as Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. I mention all this only in so far as it applies to seventy-one-year-old Patty Murray, Democrat from Washington state. Murray won her primary election on Tuesday ahead of what could be a sixth consecutive term in the US Senate.