June 2013

Sunny days and warm winds put me back in time to days spent pestering fishes on the regions lakes, streams and saltwater. One memorable trip was to Neah Bay with a friend and his son and my son, Ken. The boys were about 14. We rented a 16-foot kicker boat and headed out toward Tatoosh Island near the mouth of the straits to chase silver salmon.

My friend, Jim Cardwell, was as ardent an angler as I. Ken and I soon began getting hookups with bright, frisky silvers. Cardwell could not seem to get a bite. He was running the motor, looking downcast and eating butterscotch cookies from the package without using his fingers. In frustration, after a couple of hours of watching us reel in our catch, Cardwell grumpily insisted we move to shallower water so he could at least dredge up some bottom fish.

It wasn't long before he was able to demonstrate his fishing skill and prove his manhood too by hooking and bringing to the boat a big halibut. He wore grin like a Cheshire cat as he gaffed the big fish and dragged it onboard.

It was beginning to look like his day after all. Then, luck betrayed him.

How dangerous is it to cross the intersections of Ballard?

In another interesting data piece from seattlepi.com, the intersection at 15th Ave NW and NW Market St in Ballard -- which probably has the widest amount of road to cross and has the heaviest amount of traffic -- was the only one from to make the list. Four car-on-pedestrian crashes occurred in the last three years; a significant number.

The top prize, however, went to the intersection at 3rd Ave and Pike St in downtown Seattle, which saw nine car-on-pedestrian crashes in the last three years.

The data was compiled using the state Department of Transportation collision records to see which Seattle intersections had the most car-on-pedestrian crashes in the past three years.

Want to see how different intersections stack up? Check out the article.

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PacWest prevailed over South Highline American, 3-1, to capture the District 7 Major Little League Tournament of Champions championship.

The victorious Dodgers and American's Nationals both went into the tournament as the winners of their respective charter titles and had to survive single-elimination action to get to Monday's final at the Normandy Park City Hall complex.

Josh Enciso threw the entire game for the Dodgers to earn the victory, striking out 11 South Highline American hitters.

Jason Fenster of the Nationals also went the distance on the mound, only to take the loss in the low-scoring contest. He struck out nine Dodgers hitters.

PacWest of SeaTac and Burien scored solo runs in the second, third and sixth and the Nationals put their only run on the scoreboard in the sixth.

Dylan Shaw singled and later scored on a wild pitch for PacWest in the second, then John Kemp doubled and scored in the third.

Mark McClean singled and came around to score an insurance run in the sixth.

Gregor Dovich walked and scored for American in the sixth.

From Ballard High School

Each year, the Northwest Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences presents High School Awards of Excellence to celebrate the most outstanding high school productions from Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana and Alaska. The productions are nominated, and the winners determined, by a jury of Academy members. When the envelopes were opened at the 50th Annual Regional Emmy Awards, students from the Ballard High School Video Production Program won 3 of the four categories in which they had been nominated.

This marks the seventh year in a row that Ballard High School video producers have been winners at the event.

Here are the winners, by category:

Community/Public Service Announcements:
Not Even Once by Sam Baldwin, Paris Burhen, Brian Cropp & Gabriel Tagulao

Long-Form, Fiction:
The Godsend by DJ McCoy

Photographer/Editor:
Dream House by Ariahna Ghormley, Ana Krafchick & Louis Weissman

For more information on the Ballard High School Video Production Program, visit www.bhsvideo.blogspot.com.

Information from Det. Renee Witt with the Seattle Police Department:

Two people were injured in an early morning collision. This morning just shortly after 2:00 a.m., an adult female was driving a full sized van N/B on 17th AV SW, and drove through the stop sign at SW Cambridge ST without stopping.

The van hit a small car travelling W/B with 2 occupants, pushing it completely through the intersection, and up the sidewalk into a fence, and crushing the driver’s side halfway into the passenger side of the car.

Both occupants of the car sustained critical injuries. Seattle Fire responded and treated them on scene. Both were transported to an area hospital. The 4 occupants of the suspect van got out and ran westbound across Delridge Way, where responding officers caught them.

The female suspect/ driver was processed and booked into King County Jail for DUI – Vehicular Assault.

There's nothing quite like it in Seattle: Naked bicyclists, speedo-wearing superheroes, belly-dancing hulahoopers, stilts-wearing steampunkers, dancing silver-painted people, zombie marching bands and much, much more.

Of course, we speak of the Fremont Solstice Parade, which took place yesterday on a wonderfully sunny day. Thousands swarmed the streets of Fremont to catch the show, and those in Ballard even got a sneak peek as bicyclists zoomed up and down Ballard Ave, Market St and past Populuxe Brewing.

While we had many great images with all sorts of body parts hanging out for all the world to see, we tried to be tasteful in our curation for this slideshow because, well, we have a long tradition of being a family newspaper.

To view the slideshow, click on the main photo above or the thumbnails below.

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While many people believe the "supermoon" which is the closest and fullest, full moon of the year is also on the same day as the solstice, June 20, actually it happens here at 4:32am June 23. However if you'd prefer not to be up that late (or early) the best time to view it is the evening of the June 22. The Super Moon presents the moon’s closest encounter with Earth for all of 2013. The moon will not be this close again until August, 2014. It will be approximately 14% bigger in the night sky.

This is referred to as a "perigee full moon" meaning the moon’s closest point to Earth for a given month.

Here's the Super Moon's Track through West Seattle. The lighter blue line from lower right to the Junction, that then switches to orange is the path.

All it takes to realize a bunch amateur radio enthusiasts are congregating at one spot it to take a look at the cars and trucks in the parking lot, with their massive antennas reaching to the sky like those of ants standing at attention in a Pixar film.

Such was the case on June 22 as Seattle-area “Hams” (as radio operators are called) took over a grass field on the south side of South Seattle Community College in West Seattle. While the weather was ideal and the barbeque was rolling, this wasn’t just a casual gathering: these enthusiasts are prepping for the worst case scenario of a disaster knocking out our traditional forms of communication.

To read more about this weekend's event, which is open to the public, please click here.

If that day comes, know your neighborhood Ham will be the guy or gal who can communicate with the outside world.

The White Center Community Development Association is taking a different approach to their Spring Clean program over the summer of 2013, spreading their cleanup and goodwill projects over the course of several months instead of having one big community service day, as they've done in the past.

On June 22, WCCDA Community Builder Marquise Roberson-Bester and a group of helpful teens from the Evergreen Campus Key Club kicked off their latest spring clean project with a wall-wide mural on the side of Tom Salle’s Meat the Live Butcher shop at 9432 16th Ave. S.W.

SLIDE NO MORE. Construction of deep retaining walls and a drainage system to stabilize a hillside along Beach Drive was well under way on June 21.

The story reaches back to 2007 when a resident near Atlas Place S.W. built a retaining wall with improper drainage in a non-compliance area that led to landslides. Residents along the 5000 and 6000 blocks of Beach Dr. filed a lawsuit against the homeowner and city of Seattle over the problem and a resolution finally came in August of 2012.

The City Attorney’s Office ordered the homeowner, Peter Saladino, and his insurance company to cover the cost of the new features, which they said should stabilize the hillside into the future.