I would like to take this opportunity to send out some special thank yous to people in our community who helped me to get through an emergency.
Yesterday, as I was weeding a friend's yard, I was stung by two bees. They may have been honey bees or yellow jackets; I didn't stop to ask them. It was only a matter of a few minutes before I started feeling badly. My eyes were swollen, glazed and weepy; my tongue and lips were tingly and swollen.
For many years I have lived in West Seattle. I love the neighborhood and the friendly neighbors.
On Tuesday evening I was driving near the steel mill. A car approached me and honked to get my attention. He said that my right rear tire was nearly flat. I thanked him and started out to find a mechanic. The gas station, which I found, had no mechanic, but a helpful employee put in air so I could drive to find a mechanic on duty.
I discovered Hegge Chevron where I found Wil, the mechanic on duty who discovered a broken screw in my tire.
Congratulations to the West Seattle folks that did such a great job on the Hi-Yu float and the prize they won in the SeaFair Torch Light Parade. Beautiful job and well done. I apologize for not knowing their names. Again, Congratulations.
Harriet Benjamin
Harbor Avenue
I am writing to make a correction to the paper yesterday. I lived in Port Orchard Washington for half my childhood, home of the Fathoms 'O Fun Festival. Under a column on parade floats you wrote that Fathoms 'O Fun float was from Bremerton. I think you should research this further as the festival has always been in Port Orchard. Did Bremerton take over the float for Port Orchard's annual festival?
Mary M. Denend
Fauntleroy
It's election time again as city officials and their challengers face the voters.
Transportation is a perennial issue in every municipal campaign. Candidates talk about all of the streets that need repaving, the bridges that need strengthening and the sidewalks that have never been poured, much less deteriorated to the point of needing replacement.
There could be more commuter traffic on West Seattle streets next month when passenger-only ferry service is cut by half between Vashon Island and downtown Seattle.
Designed mainly for commuters, the passenger-only ferries between Vashon and downtown Seattle run Monday through Friday during the morning and afternoon commutes. Currently there are four passenger-only ferry runs from Vashon to downtown each weekday morning, and five runs from downtown to the island every weekday afternoon and evening.
Come Sept.
Seventy-eight White Center business owners and employees recently signed a petition asking for help to stop under-age drinking, disorderly conduct, vandalism, loitering, harassment and illegal street vending in the White Center business district.
The petition seeks assistance from the King County Sheriff's Office, Seattle Police Department, the Washington Liquor Control Board and King County zoning code enforcement officials.
and Tim St. Clair
There is $500 million worth of city street and bridge repairs that have been ignored too long and Seattle City Council President Jan Drago says it is time to get to work on that.
"The next four years, the focus needs not to be on big capital development, but on maintenance, both major and routine," she says. "The era of big capital budgets is over for a while as far as I am concerned. We need to focus on the smaller things that are more realistic for us to deal with.
Seattle Public Schools is launching this coming school year a new online portal, dubbed The Source, which provides parents and guardians with secure access to student information including grades, homework assignments and attendance.
The goal is to increase parental involvement and improve student achievement.
The portal has specific pages designed for student, parent and teacher use. Each page was developed after significant input from the six schools involved in the pilot project last school year.
The world's three main monorail builders are all expressing interest in designing, building, operating and maintaining Seattle's new monorail.
MTrans is a monorail company from Malaysia that calls itself "an urban transit system provider." It wants to compete with the other two monorail builders, Hitachi, which is part of Cascadia Monorail Co., and Bombardier, part of Team Monorail.
MTrans has 700 employees and is based in Kuala Lumpur.
