West Seattle, Washington
18 Sunday
In today’s traditional WSB sponsor welcome, we’re letting you know about the Allstate Insurance agency in Morgan Junction where you’ll find (left to right in our photo) Phillip Plenkovich 
and Andrew Mead. Phillip is a West Seattle native who attended Arbor Heights Elementary, Denny Middle School, Chief Sealth High School, and the University of Washington. His community involvement includes the West Seattle Rotary Club and coaching youth basketball at the West Seattle YMCA. His specialties include auto, home, and life insurance. Andrew helps clients with life-insurance and disability coverage; he and his wife Sharon moved in August 2006 from Maple Leaf in North Seattle to High Point here in West Seattle, where he’s working to build community as the president of the new High Point Neighborhood Association. Thanks to Phillip and Andrew for supporting WSB; if you are interested in finding out how to join them, check out our Advertise page (which also lists the current sponsor lineup) – we’ve got new opportunities coming up in the new year!
THIS MORNING: As Katherine noted in the WSB Open Discussion forum, Lien Animal Clinic is inviting the community to drop by till noon today and offer “happy retirement” wishes to Dr. Larry King.
TONIGHT: The New Year’s Eve happenings list on the WSB Holidays page is probably about as long as it’s going to get, unless you’ve got something to add. “Science Friction” at Youngstown Arts Center, and watching the Space Needle fireworks from any vantage point on the West Seattle shore, are among the highlights. (And we’re still working on the New Year’s Day coffee list; what we have so far is on that page too.)
SIDE NOTE: Times Square fans might appreciate some of the New York pix that Wendy Hughes-Jelen from High Point has been posting on her blog while traveling.
Beautiful scenes like that remind us what a wonderful place West Seattle is — but it’s not just the scenery, it’s the wonderful people too … which is why, in collaboration with Julie Mireille Anderson from Divina (subject of a P-I profile this weekend), and as many West Seattleites who want to be part of this, we are announcing a way for you to give the gift of recognition:Read More
Just found this in an Indianapolis newspaper, of all places: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation CEO Patty Stonesifer and her husband, nationally renowned writer Michael Kinsley, are moving to West Seattle (from Madison Park); in that article, Stonesifer lauds WS as having “some of the best views on the West Coast.” (They may be here already, since the article says the interview with Stonesifer happened last month.) Welcome!
(P.S. Gates Foundation assistance has helped with some good work in West Seattle, including a big grant that assisted with the transformation of the old Cooper Elementary on Delridge into the Youngstown Cultural Arts Center.)
We recently mentioned that Jeanne Clem, wife of Bill Clem – a Mars Hill-West Seattle pastor after leading Doxa, the church that had the space previously – was losing her fight with cancer. Now there’s word she died this week, and a memorial service is set for 3 pm today (more on the Mars Hill website, which says the church will be running shuttles from the Chief Sealth HS parking lot for attendees).
No, that doesn’t refer to some old joke – rather, to that 35th/Avalon crash that Creighton told us all about on Sunday morning. Last night, that post drew a comment from “lara7,” who included a Flickr link to the following photo:
Explanation from “lara7”:
I was one of the 3 Santas in the Cab- lady ran the red light by the KFC and plowed into the cab and another car. No one was hurt. But if you want coal in your stocking, hitting Santa’s cab is a sure way.
Now, you ask, what was the deal with all those people in Santa suits who didn’t exactly look like they’d just been spending their evening listening to tiny tots’ wish lists? Following a link from lara7’s photo, they appear to have been part of Santarchy 2007 (explained here).
Over the weekend, we mentioned the fire that swept through this house early Saturday. Tonight, we have a followup e-mailed by Ricardo Guarnero, proprietor of nearby Cafe Rozella:
Wanted to let you know of an unsung hero in the fire that gutted the house at 9415 Delridge. Six people were sleeping upstairs where neighbor Paul saw a bright light from his window next to the house. He looked out and saw flames bursting out of the lower window. Paul immediately started yelling to wake up the inhabitants. He then ran out and saw a truck with a ladder. Wasting no time, he propped it against the house and helped out all six residents. Had it not been for his timely actions all could have perished. Paul is the owner/mechanic of 944 West, a high-end German automobile repair shop.
Thanks to Ricardo for sharing that. (Also thanks to Trina for posting a comment with similar info, below the original post.) Whatever you see/hear/find out about in your neighborhood, e-mail WSB with info (photos and video welcome too), any time.
Sorry for the subpar drive-by photography but in this case, it’s the spirit that counts – we were stopped at walk-all-ways in The Junction, headed back home from the latest Christmas-light photography (tonight’s update is minutes away), when we saw and heard this group doing a raucous rendition of “Feliz Navidad” right outside the professional offices south of JaK’s Grill. Much whooping and clapping ensued, from the spectators as well as the performers. Fun times.
Here you see West Seattle Cub Scout Pack 793 Webelos I & II meeting with Mayor Nickels Thursday afternoon. Thanks to Angela for sending the photo and info — She says, “The scouts met with the mayor to complete their Citizen Badge. He gave the boys information about how the Mayor’s office is run and then let the boys ask him questions. One brave little scout even asked about his plans for the Alaskan Way Viaduct!” Pictured with the scouts are their den leader and cubmaster, Pat Heidal and Nick Roach. (Find out more about Pack 793 at their website here.)
That’s the sign that started it all.
One year ago this week, we were going about the business of WSB being a standard-issue little hobby blog, a little info here, a little opinion there. Only a few hundred people knew we were here.
Then: Windstorm ’06.
We lost power for four days. Many people in West Seattle went without it for even longer. Almost as bad as the power outage – the information outage. West Seattle-specific updates were virtually impossible to come by.
We happened to be off work that week. So we decided to start roaming WS and trying to gather and share some of that info. We received, and answered, e-mails from people stuck at work or out of town and wondering if their lights were back on yet.
From there, even after the power came back on, with the phenomenal help of reader e-mail, tips, photos, and other contributions, WSB started morphing into a community-news site. “Hyperlocal,” as the buzzword goes. The more news and information we put up, the more came in, and more people kept finding the site, by Googling for something specific that we happened to have reported, or by word-of-mouth.
For months, we’ve been doing this in our spare time, early morning, late night, lunch break. But now it’s time to make a real commitment. So your editor here just quit her day job.Read More
What a night last night turned out to be — not just because of the Christmas Ship, but also because “West Seattle Art Attack” and accompanying elves (explanation and background here if you need it) struck again. Here are a few of the pix that arrived with the WSAA communique:
If you missed it in the comments on this post last night – “West Seattle Art Attack,” the mysterious glass artist who roamed West Seattle around Halloween (as reported here, here, here, and here), has surfaced again. Pictured at left is one of the “elves” who accompanied WSAA on an attempt to find a certain house last night; we’re told they may be out and about again over the weekend – stand by for updates.
We’re starting the day in a thankful mood — so first we want to post a public thank-you of our own. WSB may not look any different than it did a week ago, but it is running a lot more smoothly “under the hood,” thanks to a whole lot of time, energy, creativity, and sheer determination expended by STUART MAXWELL. We’ve known for months WSB simply had to move to a new “host” server because the old one was on the brink of doing what it did back in June, and worse — publishing a simple update or change took extra time just to wait for the server to deal with it (or not) — but because we needed to make the move without losing any of the thousands of posts, comments, and photos published on WSB in the past two years, and for some other reasons Stuart discovered along the way, it was way too complicated for us to handle (despite some bleary all-nighters during which we tried). We asked technically oriented crosstown friends for advice on a tech adviser — and the inquiries blazed a trail straight back to West Seattle (of course!), and, in fact, to someone who happened to have a site linked from our Other Blogs page (one of Stuart’s many projects is The New Big). So again, HUGE thanks to Stuart – his tireless, creative, good-natured, patient work has saved the site and our sanity, and is paving the way for more improvements. … Also on the thankfulness front – an unusual tale landed in the WSB inbox – someone who pulled off a last-minute wedding with a lot of West Seattle help:Read More
When we post your Reader Recommendation Requests, we don’t always hear how things worked out — with so many people in the WSB community willing to take time to answer RRRs with their suggestions and experiences, we are confident that connections are made. But this morning, Francine posted an update to her RRR from 2 weeks ago, and we thought you would want to know, so we are highlighting it here on the main page:
Thanks to one of the recommendations from a WSB reader, I hired two incredibly compassionate and helpful caregivers from an agency called Family Resource Center. But I have a sad update. My dear, sweet, courageous husband Mike lost his battle to brain cancer on Wednesday 11/28/07. It all happened so fast. He died peacefully at home surrounded by his family, friends and our devoted kitty, Adam (who never left his bed). Thanks to all for the recommendations and kind offers. I now know of two other people in West Seattle with brain tumors. We must work to find a cure for this horribly devastating disease. (see abta.org) Thanks again.
Our condolences to Francine … both of us lost parents to cancer, so we’ve “been there.” We hope she will let us all know if there is anything more we can do.
That’s Darius Dale, posing during his senior year @ West Seattle High School for WSB contributing photographer Matt Durham, who reports that Darius has made the All-Ivy Football Team @ Yale (scroll down this page to “second team offense”). Matt recalls, “When I met Darius, he struck me as a gentle giant. He was very kind and intelligent, and students and staff appeared to have an high affection for Darius. If my memory serves me correctly I seem to recall Darius was carrying a 4.0 GPA at the time of the photo. On first impression he appeared to be such an outstandingly well-rounded teen that I attempted to recruit him into the fire service, telling him to finish college first.” This page details Darius’s achievements at WSHS and Yale, where he’s now a junior.
Three notable articles from the P-I this morning: #1, apparent townhome glut; #2, definite rat glut; #3, on the 36th anniversary of the legendary DB Cooper hijacking, the second half of this article features someone who claims D.B. Cooper was a transsexual from West Seattle.
WSB contributing photographer Matt Durham took these photos at an every-other-month West Seattle event that your editors admit to having never heard of before … antique-tool enthusiasts gathering at the Alki Masonic Hall on the east edge of The Junction. Matt writes:
Today members shared information and auctioned tools designed for ship-building, scrimshaw and various other uses. The Pacific Northwest Tool Collectors invite all tool collectors and dealers to join them at their meetings. To attend, you must be a member of PNTC, a guest of a member, or register at the meeting. Contact info is at tooltimer.com.
(Prints of Matt’s WSB photos and his other work are available through his site, MattDurhamPhotography.com.)
It was on our Events calendar, but not here on the main page — yesterday was the 156th anniversary of the Denny Party landing on Alki. Every year since 2001, WSB reader Margelyn reports, the “Swag Lady,” Natalie “Penny” Earnest, has decorated the Founders’ Monument as shown above. Margelyn says Penny’s swag of cedar with bird feathers and cones gathered from the beach is “her way of paying tribute both to the Denny Party who landed here on Nov 13, 1851 and to the Native Americans who helped them survive their first winter.” Closeup photo, also courtesy of Margelyn:
Margelyn adds: “Penny and her husband Mike, who passed away this year, have lived on the water at Alki Point since the early 1990’s and have been active in the Southwest Seattle Historical Society. Working with Pat Filer of the society’s Log House Museum, Penny was instrumental in getting Department of Neighborhoods funding to add plaques on the Founders Monument at the 2001 sesquicentennial naming the individual women of the Denny Party and acknowledging the role of the Duwamish and Suquamish people.” Here’s a closeup of her note on the Alki monument for yesterday’s anniversary:
Margelyn concludes, “Living right on the water at Alki Point and walking daily along the beach, Penny says she often thinks of the words attributed to Chief Seattle:”
And when the last Red Man shall have perished, and the memory of my tribe shall have become a myth among the White Men, these shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe, and when your children’s children think themselves alone in the field, the store, the shop, upon the highway, or in the silence of the pathless woods, they will not be alone. In all the earth there is no place dedicated to solitude. At night when the streets of your cities and villages are silent and you think them deserted, they will throng with the returning hosts that once filled them and still love this beautiful land. The White Man will never be alone.
For the second time this year, the Seattle Times’ Pacific Magazine peeks into the Beach Drive waterfront home of Scott and Susan Lipsky — last January, their article focused on the house’s various entertainment-oriented features; today, the same writer expounds on the house’s “secret” wine cellar, hidden behind a bookcase a la the Batcave.
Tonight before the High Point Neighborhood Association meets (6 pm, High Point Library), members of its Pedestrian Safety Committee plan a walking tour with City Council President Nick Licata. 
One of the recent tragedies that concern this group and other West Seattle residents is the accident at 35th/Othello on October 27th that killed longtime area resident and educator/engineer/inventor Oswald Clement. His memorial is now set for next Wednesday (11/14) at St. James Cathedral, according to friend and former student Sharon Stone, who has written an obituary to tell us all more about Mr. Clement and his life, which ended just two days short of his 86th birthday:Read More
Notes are posted at Leisure Books in The Junction in memory of its co-owner Curtis Clement, who died last week at age 65, and now there is an online obituary as well, which notes that Mr. Clement’s Funeral Mass is November 19th at Holy Rosary.
Since the election results suggest the council will have a couple new members soon, they might be interested in what’s on the mind of one West Seattle resident whose “open letter to the council” was forwarded to us among others:Read More
Hands down the most memorable story we’ve had the privilege of telling you this week has been that of “West Seattle Art Attack,” an anonymous local glass artist who, while working on creations for nonprofit-benefit sales, decided to plant the not-quite-perfect productions in local yards. (Previous reports here, here, here, and here). WSAA’s heartstrings (ours too) were tugged by one comment below the 1st post, from Barbara, who wrote that she longed for a pumpkin in honor of her anniversary, Halloween, because her husband’s been in Iraq for their last two anniversaries. Well, as of tonight, she has one:
WSAA contacted WSB to ask if we could mediate a pumpkin delivery for Barbara. So we did; then she sent photos, as well as thanks for the pumpkin and for the anniversary card included by WSAA (in the bag seen below) — it wished Barbara and husband a happy anniversary, on behalf of everyone in WSB-land.
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