The roots of Mossback

I'm a native Seattleite who grew up in the Rainier Valley part of town in the 1950s and '60s. My family has lived in Seattle for five generations, three of those generations in the Mount Baker neighborhood. I am the third of four Knutes. Needless to say, like most native Seattleites, I love the rain and cannot afford to live in the neighborhood where I grew up.

I attended John Muir Elementary (as did my father), Asa Mercer Junior High, commuted for two years to the Overlake School in Redmond, then transferred to Lakeside School in Seattle, where I worked on the student newspaper, The Tatler. I graduated in 1972, the class between Paul Allen and Bill Gates. I got my B.A. from Evergreen State College in 1976. There I helped launch the school paper, The Cooper Point Journal, and worked in the news department at the student radio station, KAOS-FM.

After a couple of years working on magazines in the Bay Area, I returned to Seattle in 1977 and worked on a national magazine start-up called Adventure Travel. I then joined a Seattle-based publishing consultancy, Pacific Publishing Associates. From 1982-84, I worked as a grant writer and fundraiser for the Bob Hope International Heart Institute, to support the work of pioneer heart surgeon Dr. Lester Sauvage.

I moved from Ballard to Kirkland in the early 1980s because Seattle had become too expensive and my then-wife and I needed more room to raise our newborn twins. In 1984, I was tapped to be managing editor of Washington magazine. While there, I also co-founded the quarterly magazine for the Washington State Historical Society, Columbia. I left in 1989 and worked for the Washington State Centennial Commission, coordinating a time capsule project. I later helped to found the International Time Capsule Society at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta.

In 1990, I was hired by David Brewster to help Seattle Weekly launch an Eastside newspaper, Eastsideweek, one of the nation's first suburban alternative newsweeklies. From 1990-2000, I served in a variety of capacities for the company, including two stints as editor of Seattle Weekly. I left the company in 2000 to work on a book (unfinished).

After 9/11, I took a part-time position with the Federal Emergency Management Agency as a member of the disaster reserve cadre. I returned to Seattle Weekly as editor-in-chief in 2002 and wrote Mossback as a column. During this time, I moved back to Seattle, where I reside today.

After Seattle Weekly's owner, Village Voice Media, was taken over by the Phoenix-based New Times chain in 2006, I decided it was time to leave.

Currently, I write for Crosscut; I am editor-at-large at Seattle magazine and write the monthly "Gray Matters" back-page column; I write a quarterly column on state politics for Washington Law & Politics magazine; and I'm a weekly guest on "Weekday with Steve Scher" on KUOW-FM, reviewing the news of the week with a panel of local journalists.

My family's first connection with the region began on my mother's side in the 1850s, when her great grandfather, William Gooding, was appointed surveyor general of the Oregon Territory. He turned the appointment down, however, and stayed in Illinois. He wasn't alone. About the same time, Abe Lincoln turned down the offer to be governor of Oregon.

My maternal grandfather ventured to Seattle in 1898 en route to the Klondike. He loved it, but he, too, moved back to the Midwest. My paternal grandfather and namesake, Knute, emigrated from Norway in the early 20th century and became a prominent engineer and inventor of marine and logging equipment. The company he founded, Smith-Berger, still exists, though the family hasn't had any formal connection with it since the 1940s.

My father, Knute Berger II, went to Franklin High School in Seattle, graduated from the University of Washington, and went to Yale medical school, where he met my mother. He was a physician, medical illustrator, and research pathologist. My mother, Margi, was a nurse and medical administrator, and is a poet in the best Northwest tradition.

(Photo of Mossback by Kari Berger)

• Knute Berger is Mossback, Crosscut's chief Northwest native. He also writes the monthly Gray Matters column for Seattle magazine and is a weekly guest on Weekday on KUOW-FM (94.9). You can e-mail him at mossback@crosscut.com.