August 2007

The fall session of the King County Sheriff's Office Citizen's Police Academy will begin Wednesday, Sept. 5, with weekly classes running through graduation on Dec.

During public comment at the Seattle Port Commission's Aug. 9 meeting on the Lora Lake Apartments, former Burien City Councilman Stephen Lamphear did not identify himself as a gardener. That reference was erroneously made by Ralph Nichols in his column in the Aug. 15 Times/News.

Dog killed after attack

August 15-One dog was shot and two others were taken into custody after the King County Sheriff's Office received a 9-1-1 call that three aggressive dogs running loose in the 200 block of South 132nd Street.

The caller reported that a woman had been attacked by the dogs.

According to sheriff's office spokesman Sgt.

I am walking with a painful knee this week. I was walking across the front room last week and stubbed my toe on the rug while carrying a haffa cuppa cold coffee. The cup hit Elsbeth in the shoulder and she got all wet.

I landed on my left knee and it meant I was lamed for three days. I can now walk by wincing and use a cane. I should be able bodied in a week or two.

What goes around comes around.

In 2005, Burien exercised its power of eminent domain to claim land occupied by Meal Makers restaurant to accommodate Urban Partners in its development of the city's Town Square.

This regrettable move, which pushed back the limits of private property rights, could have been avoided.

The Strobel sisters, who owned that parcel, offered a reasonable alternate design for that part of Town Square.

In "Letters" July 25, 2007, Paula James used the Old Testament to justify keeping homosexual couples from enjoying the same legal rights as other loving couples though Civil Unions. She defends this discrimination by saying it is not bigotry, it is just what "Christians who uphold entire Bible" are required to do.

She is entitled to her beliefs, but eating shellfish is an abomination. Leviticus 11:10. I do not know if it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. Leviticus 18:22.

Those who work on the Sabbath should be put to death. Exodus 35:2.

Here they come again, those Burien Bearcats!

Watch out Tigers, and any other whatever named team that they will play in junior league football this season, because they're...

Grrrrrrrrrrreat.

That's the sound, that is, the "grrr" part, of little and big, young and old, boys-six to 14 year olds going at it hard against each other in their respective divisions on the gridiron as the 2007 JFL practices get underway at Evergreen High School.

The greatest team of all the age group divisions was the Juniors, again.

Last week I related a litany of narrow escapes I have had in my life and hinted that the ultimate saga I would tell you later and I will in a minute but first I want to explain how being half an inch taller might have saved my life when I was 7.

We lived a mile from the Columbia Slough in Portland, a sluggish branch of the big river, and we kids loved fishing for crappies, bluegills, catfish and chub from its slippery muddy bank or from a huge log boom of cedar trees waiting to become shingles.

One rainy day I ventured into an abandoned houseboat laying askew on the bank

The first time I saw "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" I arrived at the theater - for reasons that have nothing good to say about my time-management skills - 45 minutes late. After an earnest warning by the teenager in the ticket booth that he would hate to see me set myself up for disappointment with this fragmented bit of entertainment I secured my ticket, likewise a largish tub of popcorn, and tiptoed into the darkened theater. One hundred and twenty three minutes later I sauntered back out giving the ticket boy a thumbs up.

Memory - 1995: My oldest is eight weeks old. I can't stand the crying anymore. I am sleepy, sweaty, exhausted, and tense. I take her out for a walk around our Portland neighborhood and run into our wonderful neighbor, who has kids in their teenaged years. She looks at me, and asks to hold the baby. I hand over the crying baby, and find myself fighting my own tears. Jackie touches my shoulder and says, "Oh my gosh. I remember. I know how tired you are.