This year I've been having fun performing Christmas sawngs on my razor sharp handtool on the street at the Pike Place Market. Since the 1994 Christmas season, when I first debuted, flexing a piece of razor sharp spring steel between my knees for entertainment of all those passerbys has become a personal holiday tradition. This year the streets are brimming with out-of-towners many are here in Seattle this week because of the WTO gathering. The air seems to be buzzing with talk of the protest demonstrations that will take place, marches, civil disobedience, arrests. The overt presence of law enforcement authorities everywhere leaves me wondering why all the show? The FBI has declared one of the meetings off limits to all but nine token protesters. They say it's in the interest of national security. This is all just a bit disconcerting to me because i've witnessed, when concentrations of authorities gather, they seem to over-react with impunity. Using a rifle case as I do to carry my saw around in could become a dangerous predicament.

Nervous but harmless