October 2008

As one of the demented few who have never voted against a parks or school levy in my life, it's with some discomfort (but not really that much in this case) that I oppose Seattle Proposition 2, also known as the "Seattle Parks and Green Spaces Levy."

It's "green" alright, if you count the color of millions of dollars being thrown away on hidden costs, while we face one of the most dire financial crises in our city's history.

It was a big day for Sal's Deli in Burien last week. A group of students from Highline High School chose to employ their artistic talents and decorate the windows of several area businesses to announce their big Homecoming celebration. Jim Hughes, owner of Sal's was finished with his remodeling and for the first time was able to begin serving breakfast to his hungry customers. Hughes says Burien now has upward of fifty restaurants of all shapes and menus, including franchises and has now become the location of choice for great places to eat.

One of the biggest stories for the White Center business district is the conversion of the historic skating rink to a Swap Meet on Saturdays and Sundays. Sometimes this popular activity is called a Flea Market.

This promises to be fun and an exciting venture for the Tom Brown family. Tom is the grandson of the founder of the historic rollerdrome, which Pop Brown operated from the early 1930s to the 1950s.

Today, skating has lost its popularity and Tom has hit on a likely idea to provide citizens a place to sell surplus stuff to others every Saturday and Sunday.

It is 6 a.m. on one of those West Seattle autumn mornings where, the moment you step outside, it's as if you're at sea. A pea-soup fog envelops the land, pierced here and there by the glow of street lights; and the heavy smell of seaweed permeates the air.

I have to leave these sea-like surroundings and drive to work, and just as I get in my car the blast of a fog horn echoes through the air. As I start the descent down the east side of the peninsula the fog lessens, and Mount Rainier becomes visible off in the distance, a gray silhouette on the predawn sky.

In "WALL-E," Pixar Studio's latest animated film, the future is a cluttered place, literally awash in its own garbage. Humans have abandoned the planet in favor of resort-like spaceships and left behind an army of robotic garbage men to clean up the mess. Now hundreds of years later this automated sanitation department has slowly broken down except for one industrious little fellow named WALL-E.

WALL-E looks like a kitchen trash compactor on tractor treads. He scoots around huge drifts of garbage, dutifully scooping it into his compactor. It's lonely work but WALL-E is no slouch.

Bette Markley, 91, West Seattle

"The earliest and most important fact of my life is my father owned a grocery at Fauntleroy and Morgan Street on the southwest side of California where Starbucks now is. Dad had a three-bay store; one of the most noted stores in West Seattle, one of the finest, a delux store with the produce all laid out like at Pike Place market. It failed during the Depression; that was a pretty sad experience, to lose your entire lifetime efforts. The store fell from being a beautiful, prominent store to a one-stall store by the post office on California.

Environmental Film Night

Free Ages 5 and older

The Northwest Environmental Education Council and Camp Long Advisory Council are happy to bring you monthly Environmental Film Nights. The films are free, and we welcome donations. This month we explore the world of international farming and migratory birds.

"Bird Song and Coffee: A Wake Up Call"

Coffee drinkers will be astonished to learn that they hold in their hands the fate of farm families, farming communities, and entire ecosystems in coffee-growing regions like Costa Rica.

The city-appointed board that reviews major mixed-use projects in the area was happier with the massing of a six-story 234-unit apartment building set to replace the Sunset Bowl at the second meeting to review the project, but they had some suggestions for improvements.

At the first design review in late July, AvalonBay Communities Inc. presented its preferred design option to the Northwest Design Review Board. Board members said the massing and scale of the proposed building at 1400 N.W.

Nov. 30, 1993 I got the call. "They're in the culvert!" whispered the voice on the other end, as if it might not be true if she said it out loud.

It was Nancy Malmgren. Members of the Carkeek Watershed Community Action Project had been looking out for the salmon for several weeks, although each year they expected only a few stragglers to return.