February 2012

Not bad for two teams that had to combine to have enough swimmers for meets during the regular Metro League season.

West Seattle and Chief Sealth each left their mark at this past weekend's state Class 3A meet held at the King County Aquatic Center in Federal Way, with the Wildcats coming in 24th with 11 points and the Seahawks finishing 26th with seven.

If they would have been combined for state, their total of 18 would have tied them for 23rd with Ingraham, also of the Metro League.

West Seattle junior Luke Asatiani led the local contingent by taking eight place in the 100-yard breaststroke championship finals with a time of 1 minute, 3.32 seconds.

Seahawks sophomore Carlos Morgan Montemayor took third in the consolation finals of the 100 butterfly with a 54.49 time to place 11th overall and fellow Chief Sealth sophomore Michael Stewart came in 16th with a consolation finals time of 1:53.21 in the 200 freestyle race.

After delayed constructions, today was the anticipated groundbreaking of the Compass Housing Alliance Nyer Urness House on 1753 NW 56th St.

Slated for opening in March 2013, the seven-story, 80-unit housing development on 1753 NW 56th St will provide housing for formerly homeless adults, and include a Neighborcare clinic to serve the building's residents as well as other homeless adults in the Ballard area.

Compass Housing Alliance provides residential living accommodations in many communities throughout King County and has established a good relationship with each community. The management of Compass and the Nyer Urness House staff are committed to being good neighbors to Ballard.

The building is named after Rev. Nyer Urness, a Compass Center chaplain from 1989 to 2006. Compass Housing Alliances praises Nyer for being "a gifted conversationalist and a master listener who made his friends, old or new, feel unique, important, loved and heard".

Learn more about Compass Housing Alliance at www.compasshousingalliance.org.

Well known northwest garden expert Ciscoe Morris will be making a personal appearance Sunday, April 15, at Village Green Perennial Nursery 10223 26th Ave s.w. from 1:00pm until 2:00pm.

New Hours: Weds/Thurs/Fri. 11-6, Sat/Sun 10-4:30

About Ciscoe Morris
KING5 TV airs his popular gardening segments with Meeghan Black as well as his weekly show “Gardening with Ciscoe”. His Friday night Q & A show, ‘Gardening with Ciscoe Live’ broadcast on Northwest Cable News and Ciscoe also makes regular appearances on 'Gardening by the Yard' on the Home and Garden cable network. You can also catch his gardening advice mixed with a hearty dose of humor every Saturday morning on News Talk 97.3 KIRO FM.

UPDATE 2/22 11:30 am

Albertsons has responded to questions regarding the store closing:

When did the White Center Albertsons open?

The store was opened June 4, 1963.

What is the actual closing day?

Operations will cease March 21, 2012

Will there be a Closing Business Sale?

As the date gets closer, there may be.

How many people work there? and are they being offered other jobs?

There are 50 associates working at this store. Saar’s has indicated that it will accept employment applications from existing associates. Associates may also apply for other positions and when possible, Albertsons will move affected associates to other positions.

Will Saar's also restart the Sav-On Pharmacy or will that be incorporated into the store or just remain closed?

Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn will deliver his annual State of the City Speech this afternoon.

McGinn will touch on his efforts to widen the circle of prosperity, public safety, and how to position Seattle to compete and succeed in the global economy.

The speech will be streaming live from 2 p.m. until 3 p.m. on the Seattle Channel on Cable 21.

Ballard High School will be hosting a mid-winter basketball camp for 6th to 8th grade girls.

Starting Monday, Feb 27, the camp will take place from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 pm each evening until Thursday, to Thursday March 1, at Ballard High School, 1418 NW 65th St.

The cost is $40 per player.

Contact BHS head girls basketball coach Wetstone at wetstonesara@yahoo.com for more details.

Car Washes:

Additionally, the BHS girls basketball teams will be raising funds for the upcoming season with a number of car washes during the off-season.

All of the car washes will be at Bernie's Automotive, 4420 Leary Way Northwest.

The schedule for the car washes is:

Saturday April 28th 10:00 am to 3:00 pm
Saturday May 19th 10:00 am to 3:00 pm
Saturday June 2nd 10:00 am to 3:00 pm
Saturday July 14th 10:00 am to 3:00 pm
Saturday August 4th 10:00 am to 3:00 pm

As happens once or twice a year, I was recently smashed by my boulder. The boulder being my work, my health, my family and my life in general. It started as it usually does, with a manic phase. January was a slow month client wise for me so I spent a lot of time sending out new course proposals, submitting articles to journals, and pitching myself as a speaker. After years of running my own business, I know this nonpaid, somewhat humiliating work is part of the deal. If I don’t do it, I don’t get clients and I don’t teach, which will certainly lead to my children and me starving to death. I can market myself and submit my work relatively easy when I receive some validation and response from the people and places I query. This didn’t happen much in January.

The Seattle based daily deals effort called Gividend that sought to be a conduit for supporting charities has announced it is closing shop Feb. 22. In a letter to its customers and partners, CEO and Founder Aaron Bird announced that the "competition for customer acquisition in the daily deals space has become too fierce."

The service was launched in October of last year and hoped to provide support to the West Seattle Food Bank, an early community partner as well as KEXP radio, the American Red Cross and many others. They had planned to extend the service to 28 other cities.

Dear Gividend Customers and Partners,

I'm very sorry to announce that we will be retiring the Gividend service. Since launching Gividend, we have been unable to get the kind of traction in the market that we need to be successful and the create the impact we need to for our non-profit partners. We are going to shut the service down and send out our last checks to our non-profit partners this Wed, Feb 22nd.

My special friend and I escaped from being recently snowed in when we headed for the Skagit area on a cold but beautifully sunny day. Mt. Baker, with its new blanket of white, rose majestically on the horizon as we passed immense fields of rye grass covered with snow geese. They come from Alaska and Siberia to winter along with the majestic swans. My friend looked at the hundreds of white geese gleaning in the fields and remarked, “I wonder how they can tell each other apart when they all look alike.” I replied, “We humans probably all look alike to them as well.” After Googling snow geese I found that they can distinguish each other by the sounds they make. No two geese sound the same even though they all sound the same to us humans.

In 1952 I accepted an offer to manage this newspaper if I could also buy it someday. I had no money. I was a trained electrician at Boeing before a neighbor mentioned that there was a job opportunity in advertising and writing for the old Kent News Journal. 

In high school a friend had told me he'd like to own and operate a small community newspaper. It was not on my bucket list. I wanted to become the best ballplayer or the snazziest dresser so the girls would admire and hopefully love me.

A funny things happens to a man when he discovers his passion. Not passion itself. I mean the passion for loving what you do.

With no particular training beyond holding a job at Meier & Frank, a Portland, Oregon department store, I worked as a copy boy in the ad dept. I did take a mail order advertising course; but I had no qualifications to own a newspaper. I had to learn as I went.