West Seattle, Washington
25 Wednesday
In hopes of helping connect West Seattleite who need help with those who want to help, community advocates Phil Tavel and Brendan Kolding, with help from Sarah Rodermund, have launched a new collaborative effort online. The website – westseattlecovid.recovers.org – is intended “to better connect individual volunteers and community organizations with local needs” in the coronavirus crisis. They’re using the Recovers.org platform, founded in 2012, which can connect volunteers with individuals who have specific needs, in a more-structured way, supplementing what’s already happening around the area. “It’s not an either/or,” Tavel said in the launch announcement. “It’s a both/and. We need everyone in our community to come together on this, and we are eager to provide additional tools.” Organizations can use the site too; the announcement explains, “Both needs and resources are tagged with specific labels like ‘transportation” or ‘medical supplies’ that are searchable to streamline the matching process. In addition, site administrators can help facilitate communication and recruit resources as needs emerge.” Got questions or want to help coordinate? Contact Phil Tavel at 206.949.8680 or ptavel@gmail.com.
With in-person meetings out of the question, some support-group participants have lost a lifeline – but online meetings are springing into the void. Thanks to Pam for sending word that AA is among them – if you haven’t already, you can find the list of Seattle-area online meetings by going here.
Can’t stop the music – West Seattle’s Mode Music Studios (WSB sponsor) is taking its lessons online! You can support the arts and support local business, as Mode explains in the video above, and below:
Local musicians are suffering with venue closure and event and tour cancellations. We are doing our part to make sure our local musicians are employed throughout this time. Shows and service industry jobs have taken a major hit and this is a way you can show your support to the music community.
Mode Music Studios employs over 50 musicians and teaching artists in the local Seattle scene. Sign up now for private music lessons (piano, voice, ukulele, guitar, bass, drums, violin, viola, cello, trumpet, trombone, French horn, accordion, banjo and more) at modemusicstudios.com and support our local nonprofit Mode Music and Performing Arts with our group Theatre, Dance and Music enrichment programs at modemusicandperformingarts.org.
You can email welcome@modemusicstudios.com or call 206-659-4018.
6:34 PM: At 8:49 pm, spring officially arrives – that’s the equinox moment. Right now, a West Seattle change-of-seasons tradition is happening as it has, four times a year for the past decade – West Seattle astronomy educator Alice Enevoldsen is leading her change-of-seasons sunset-watch event. But because of social distancing, it’s online this time – 6:30-7:30 pm, webcast via Zoom – click here to join. (Read more about her sunset watches here.)
7:20 PM: The webcast just wrapped up. We monitored the second half; about 20 others tuned in, and the sunset was spectacular. No recording but we added a screengrab above – her daughters assisting as always. If this had been a “normal” season-change sunset watch, Alice would have been at Solstice Park, explaining the equinox/solstice.
It was lovely! @westseattleblog Happy equinox! pic.twitter.com/I19uIUQl5W
— Alice's AstroInfo (@AlicesAstroInfo) March 20, 2020
ADDED: Photos, courtesy of Jason Enevoldsen:
(Photo by Scott Scowcroft – Alice’s spring-equinox sunset watch in March 2019)
Virus or no virus, the earth keeps turning, and spring will arrive this Thursday (March 19th). Like many other events, West Seattle astronomy educator Alice Enevoldsen‘s change-of-seasons sunset watch will go online this time around. Alice says you’re invited to join it via Zoom – 6:30-7:30 pm on Thursday. She will post the link here (and of course we’ll remind you too) that day.
Disruption in so many regular routines means disruption in pets’ lives too. So in case you weren’t already aware, a reminder of one of the resources we offer: For more than a decade, WSB has had the only all-West Seattle Lost/Found Pets page on the open web. The first thing to do if you lose/find one is of course, canvass the area – then (if you’ve found one), check our page in case s/he is already posted – if not (whether found OR lost), send us a pic/info: westseattleblog@gmail.com or text 206-293-6302. Here to help!
In a time when community meetings are often lightly attended unless something mega-controversial is on the agenda, government agencies keep trying new ways of engagement. Washington State Ferries is testing the waters by hosting its first-ever online public meetings next month. The announcement:
Washington State Ferries is hosting a round of community meetings through a new, online webinar in order to share the latest information and engage people in ferry-served communities from Tacoma to the San Juan Islands.
During two live online community meetings, WSF staff will give a brief presentation with updates about 2019 accomplishments and what is next for implementation of WSF’s Long Range Plan. Online participants will be able to ask questions and provide comments.
“We want to hear from the communities we serve, because they are an essential part of our decision making process here at ferries,” said Amy Scarton, head of Washington State Ferries. “I hope even more of our ferry riders and terminal neighbors weigh in with this exciting new format.”
The first round of WSF’s 2019 community meetings in April and May saw nearly 530 attendees at 10 public meetings, one for each route. With the new webinar format, members of the public can attend and participate in a conversation about ferries from a laptop, desktop, or mobile device.
Registration information
Each meeting will cover the same information and participants will need to register in advance.
1. Those interested in attending can choose between two sessions: Saturday, Dec. 7 at 9 a.m. or Tuesday, Dec. 10 at 6 p.m.
2. Registration is available online. Participants must provide a name and valid email address and have access to a computer or mobile device with an internet connection.
3. Once registered, participants will receive an email with detailed instructions on how to log in to the webinar.
Meeting materials and recordings will be available online after each meeting.
(seattle.gov photo – current installation similar to part of what the city’s proposing)
Wireless phone/internet service doesn’t just come via those big towers – it’s also provided by boxes on city utility/streetlight poles. The city’s expecting a lot more of them, so it’s come up with proposed design standards and is asking for your comments. The “small wireless facilities” might be canisters, or panel antennas, and the proposed standards – which you can review here – are very specific about the allowable size and height. The proposed standard also specify where these should not be installed. See images of the suggested designs here; you can comment through November 27th here.
(Joey Baumgartner, photographed by Steve Richmond)
By Judy Pickens
Special to West Seattle Blog
After watchers spotted coho spawners struggling to enter Fauntleroy Creek from the beach, the Fauntleroy Watershed Council called on State Fish and Wildlife to assess conditions there and get permission from the reach-to-the-beach property owner for emergency clearing of vegetation choking the channel.
(Spawner in Fauntleroy Creek)
Spawners were hampered by logs on the beach and a thicket of vegetation that was almost impenetrable. Restoration of this reach happened a decade ago but reed canary grass and nightshade soon got a toehold and began spreading. Spurred on by Tuesday’s sighting of 30 robust spawners schooling near the mouth, neighbors, volunteers, and Steve Richmond and Joey Baumgartner with Garden Cycles set to work.
(Steve Richmond, photographed by Dennis Hinton)
“In my opinion, Steve and Joey really saved this spawning season on Fauntleroy Creek,” said council member Dennis Hinton. “Within four hours, they had adjusted logs, cleared vegetation in the channel, and anchored erosion-control fabric where banks needed support. By the end of the day, another dozen spawners were poised to enter the reach and head to spawning habitat.” This work was the first to draw on the Fauntleroy Watershed Stewardship Fund established in 2018 to accept private donations.
You will have a chance to see spawners during an “open creek” on Saturday, noon to 3 pm. Come to the fish-ladder viewpoint at SW Director and upper Fauntleroy Way to catch the eye of a salmon watcher below or come directly down the driveway at 4539 SW Director Place. Dogs must be tightly controlled.
Can’t make the “open creek”? Watershed Council members will be at Sunday’s Fauntleroy Fall Festival (2-5 pm in the church/Y/schoolhouse triangle, 9100 block of California SW) to talk salmon during this “Silver Anniversary” year honoring the first spawners in 1994.
Happens every so often. Our server-management company Linode had to do emergency maintenance that took WSB (and likely others) down for about half an hour but it’s back now. Any time you can’t access WSB, if it’s an issue that’s totally taken our site down, we will still honor our commitment to report breaking news, primarily via Twitter (where you can see our tweets at twitter.com/westseattleblog even if you’re not a regular user of the service), and if longer-form coverage is necessary during a WSB outage, we’ll use our other site White Center Now, which is hosted with a different company. Thanks for your understanding!
(WSB photo, Tuesday night)
2:08 PM: Last night, we reported on a warrant operation in the 9200 block of 9th SW. Today, Seattle Police announced the results:
Detectives seized 13 pounds of meth and large quantities of heroin and oxycodone on Tuesday following a narcotics operation targeting a south-end drug dealer.
After purchasing narcotics from a 39-year-old South Seattle man over the last month, police arrested the dealer in Georgetown early Tuesday.
(Seattle Police photo)
Investigators searched his vehicle and recovered 334 grams of meth and 76 grams of heroin. They then served a warrant at a West Seattle home, in the 9200 block of 9th Avenue SW, in connection with the case, and seized a duffel bag containing over 13 pounds of methamphetamine, 53 grams of heroin, and 74 oxycodone pills from a trailer in the backyard. Police also arrested a 41-year-old man at the home in connection with the case. Both men were booked into the King County Jail for narcotics violations.
We’re checking now on the suspects’ status.
2:34 PM: Both remain in the King County Jail.
In case you didn’t get this via a text alert or see it elsewhere: Metro has an online survey under way, asking you to agree/disagree with statements in categories including: Availability (including “The bus service is usually reliable”), accessibility (such as “It is easy to move around inside the bus”), information (“It is easy to get up to the minute information on when my bus will arrive”), time (“The bus gets me to my destination in good time”), customer care (“Staff are helpful”), comfort (“The bus is clean”), security, environmental impact, and more. It’s described as for everyone even if you seldom use the bus. If you have a few minutes to spare, go here.
With just hours remaining in 2018, here’s this year’s edition of our one traditional year-in-review story – the year’s 10 most-commented-on WSB stories. Again this year, there are 11 on the list, with a tie along the way:
#10 – ANTI-SEMITIC VANDALISM IN SUNRISE HEIGHTS
November 26, 2018 – 138 comments
Anti-Semitic slurs painted behind Sunrise Heights homes drew regional attention, and a support rally in The Junction a week later. No arrest reported so far.
#9 – DEADLY STABBING ON ALKI AVENUE
June 2, 2018 – 140 comments
22-year-old Jonathan Pecina was stabbed to death near Anchor/Luna Park. No arrest reported so far.
#8 – HEAD TAX
May 14, 2018 – 141 comments
This story looked at the “head tax” passed by the City Council – which later repealed it.
#7 – NOVEMBER POWER OUTAGE
November 30, 2018 – 145 comments
This outage affected about 3,000 West Seattle homes and businesses for an hour and a half.
That’s Seattle Channel video (click here if you can’t see it above) from last Thursday’s West Seattle meeting about some of the city surveillance technologies that are currently under review. If you missed it, you can attend one of the three meetings still ahead and/or comment online through next Monday. What the video doesn’t show you, since it only covers the meeting-opening presentations, is what we can tell you since we were there to cover it: The small-group discussion wasn’t much of a discussion. The sizable city-staff contingent was prepared to break attendees into multiple small groups, but there were only enough for one, and all but one of that handful of attendees said they were there in hopes of hearing/seeing what the general public had to say. But before we get to that – the overall toplines, including what we learned from the presentations (including one thing we weren’t aware of):
First big event of Hallo-weekend – more than 300 people on the paths of Lincoln Park, raising money for local co-op preschools via the West Seattle Monster Dash. It was a beautiful morning in the forest:
Spooky creatures everywhere you looked:
This set of outfits, you might call sweet:
Here’s our video as everybody left the starting line:
This was the Monster Dash’s seventh year!
The first version of our 2018 West Seattle Halloween (Etc.) Guide is up – find it here! If you’re planning a seasonal event/activity/show that’s open to the public, free or fee, and you haven’t sent us the info yet, please e-mail the what/when/where to westseattleblog@gmail.com – we’ll be updating the guide daily as new info comes in. P.S. If you spot cool Halloween decorations, we’re interested in those too – please send the location and we’ll go look!
By the end of the year, Washington State Ferries is under orders to deliver its next Long-Range Plan to the state Legislature. First, WSF will make the draft version public soon, in time for a round of open-house meetings in the communities it serves. The dates and locations are already set, including one here in West Seattle – Monday, September 17th, 5-7 pm at Fauntleroy Church (9140 California SW). The new Long-Range Plan is supposed to cover the ferry system’s future through 2040.
The technical work we mentioned the other day had to continue this morning, so it will be a few hours until the site is stable. If you get a warning message on certain browsers/devices – it’s a bit ironic because the work that is under way is actually related to beefing up site security (changing WSB to https access, like many websites already have done) but we have so many internal links that those might trigger the warning. Apologies and thanks for your patience!
Just a heads-up: We’re planning some technical work very early Thursday, around 5 am. It shouldn’t take more than a few hours but if you experience anything unusual later in the morning or beyond, please let us know – westseattleblog@gmail.com remains the best address, and of course you can always reach us immediately at 206-293-6302, text or voice. If the work interrupts access to WSB, we will of course report any breaking news in social-media channels (Twitter is always first). Thanks as always for your patience!
With a variety of Seattle Housing Authority properties in West Seattle, there’s certainly grounds for interest in how the SHA spends its money and time. It currently has a survey going, and whether or not you have a direct SHA connection such as tenancy, the SHA is interested in your answers. You can find it here.
2:02 PM: Two days after West Seattle’s first homicide of 2018, no arrest yet in the shooting death of 44-year-old Lorenzo Marr at WS Stadium. That’s according to Seattle Police; we talked with Southwest Precinct commander Capt. Pierre Davis before he spoke to today’s West Seattle Chamber of Commerce lunch meeting at The Kenney. He said the belief that it wasn’t random is the newest information on the case, and they are continuing to look for a silver Toyota Camry – sightings reported so far have not panned out. Mr. Marr was identified publicly by friends and family last night as they launched a crowdfunding campaign to cover funeral costs. According to the Rainier Beach Track Club – one of two community-center track clubs (along with High Point) there for a meet on Tuesday night – Mr. Marr was a club dad. The shooting happened about 7:30 pm Tuesday in the stadium parking lot; the victim, who police say was shot multiple times, was rushed to Harborview Medical Center but could not be saved. (Photo: Lorenzo Marr Memorial Fund page)
ADDED 3:49 PM: From Seattle Parks this afternoon:
Seattle Parks and Recreation (SPR) is deeply saddened by the events that took place on May 8 outside of West Seattle stadium during an SPR youth track meet. Our thoughts are with the families, children, and staff who were present at the stadium.
We are grateful to staff and parents who quickly responded to keep children and families safe and sheltered. Johnnie Williams, Luwam Ogube and Brieah Marino as well as other staff, acted heroically and we cannot thank them enough for their quick judgement and bravery.
We have scheduled a Community Healing Circle with Reverend Harriett Walden on Saturday, May 12 from 10 am-1 pm at Rainier Community Center (Gym #2). We invite all those seeking support to attend.
We are canceling the Lowell Barry track meet that was scheduled for Saturday, May 12.
City Championship track meets will take place on Monday and Tuesday, May 14 & May 15 at Chief Sealth HS Stadium. Monday’s meet is for ages 7-10, and begins at 5:30 pm. Tuesday’s meet is for ages 11-18, and begins at 5:30 pm.
We have reached out to Seattle Police Department to request their presence at both championship meets.
Our thoughts are with the victim’s family, the families and children who were participating, and the SPR staff and volunteers who run the track and field program. Again, we are incredibly grateful to our staff who quickly reacted to keep our kids and families safe during this event, and we will be considering how to offer active shooter training for all youth athletic coaches, volunteers, and staff.
We mentioned last month that our email-serving company was having trouble. While we are working on moving to a different company (not so easy with the huge amount of email we have stored over the past decade-plus), the problem has worsened – not just for us, but for other customers – and our main account has been all but inaccessible when it’s most important, during the day and early evening hours.
Luckily we have a backup Gmail account that works well, so for now, if you’re sending us anything, please send it to (or at least CC it to) westseattleblog@gmail.com.
We hope to have this problem resolved soon. (Side note – this is NOT affecting the WSB website itself, which we moved last year to a different company that’s done an excellent job of keeping it up, running, and responsive, even in times of breaking-news overload.) Our apologies and thanks, as always.
Congratulations to the West Seattle Linux User Group, now one year old. If you’re interested, you’re invited to its meeting tomorrow, which is also an anniversary breakfast. From co-founder Justin:
The West Seattle Linux User Group (WSeaLUG) is celebrating its one-year anniversary this month. It has been a great year getting to know fellow Linux enthusiasts in West Seattle and beyond. We have have average of 10 members show up every other Saturday morning to enjoy chatting and learning from each other about all things Linux. We have also had a few presentations about items such as ‘installing and configuring a web server,’ ‘LUKS & YubiKey,’ and ‘Linux Firewalls & IPTables,’ to name a few. We were also community sponsors of the Seattle GNU/Linux Conference last November.
If you are a Linux enthusiast or want to learn more about Linux, we hope you will join us.
Tomorrow morning’s meeting is at a different location than usual – Be’s Restaurant in The Junction, 9 am (4509 California SW). Otherwise, the club usually meets twice a month at the Fauntleroy YMCA (WSB sponsor) – check here; we list the meetings in the WSB West Seattle Event Calendar, too. (If your club meets regularly and is open to interested members of the public, we’d be happy to list your meetings too – e-mail the info to editor@wsb.blackfin.biz – thank you!)
| 4 COMMENTS