March 2011

The days are long gone, when neighbors wander by and stop in for a cup of coffee or just to chew the fat. "Chew the fat" what an odd saying.

Well, I thought those days were gone, until Des Moines resident Dick Anderson stopped by my micro-chicken farm to admire "the girls." He had read about my chickens in a past issue.

What would a Des Moines city boy know about chickens? Well, he's knows plenty! You see, Dick and his wife, Phyllis (who he affectionately calls, "Phyl"), came from Framingham, Massachusetts, where they ran a 16-acre egg fom. Well, he calls it a "fom," but I know that he means "farm." It's that Massachusetts accent that drops all of the Rs.

They had 900 laying hens and, at times, 7000 baby chicks! Now, that's a chicken farm, to be sure!
However, they didn't start out like that. They were both born in 1927, 18 miles out of Boston, where his parents had about 50 chickens, even though his father's real occupation was a police officer.

Federal Way cleared its last hurdle to the state quarterfinals with a 67-58 victory over Bellarmine on Friday, Feb. 25.

The Eagles are now paired up with Mount Rainier High School for a 5:30 p.m. quarterfinal game at the Tacoma Dome this Thursday, March 3.

Darah Huertas-Vining led the Eagles, who were ranked No. 1 earlier this year, with 20 points.

Brittany Barrington backed Vining up with 11 points and Tanji Ajeto knocked in nine.

The state tournament runs through Saturday.

From the dark days of December to March Madness, the trail to the Class 1A quarterfinals has been filled with potholes for the Seattle Christian girls basketball team.

With all-everything Lexi Petersen already out with a torn ACL, the Warriors' problems were further magiified by the season ending knee injury to starting guard Carissa Doyle.

At that point in time, few observers expected SCS to be true contenders for the title they were once top favorites to grab.

But gradually, Seattle Christian reinvented itself and changed its style to a more grind it out squad. Although the remaking of the Warriors forced some tough changes, they continued to give it their all.

Now, after two months of retrained thinking, SCS has gained the state quarterfinals at the Yakima Sun Dome after holding back the Mountaineers of Rainier, 51-41, at the state 1A state regional showdown at W.F. West High School on Saturday, Feb. 26, with a huge Seattle Christian following in attendance.

When the Seattle Times last week came out with an editorial endorsing the decriminalization of the use and possession of marijuana, I squirmed a bit. I wanted to see their view as enlightened and had I not been a reader of that paper for about 50 years, might have been able view the endorsement that way.

But after mulling their support for the legislation sponsored by our own Mary Lou Dickerson, I began to wonder where was the courage when it mattered, in 1970 and after and long before hundreds of thousands of kids got tossed in jail for having a baggie of weed under the car seat.

A limp me-too piece by the Times.

We have lived long enough to see the way our peers and their offspring have dealt with the availability of marijuana. And we have come to view it as on a par with booze. Some people can handle it. Some cannot.