Category: community

community, current events

Probably not an Intended Consequence

We live in a very mixed neighborhood.  Approximately half of the homes here are market-rate, home-owner occupied; the others are subsidized public housing.  This neighborhood is mixed-everything: income, age, religion, ethnicity. Many of my neighbors are immigrants.  Community events can have up to seven translators (all talking at once).  Talking a walk in the early evening is a marvelous olfactory experience, with dinners from many places all under construction at once.  Current events are sometimes very personal around here. In the wake of  Travel Ban 1.0, some of our community members drafted a letter to our immigrant neighbors.  “We know …

community

Reclaiming Car Space

When the designers sat down to reshape our neighborhood so many years ago, I think they must have forgotten certain details of human nature. Turns out that if you build a oval park and completely surround it with roads, sooner or later drivers will think it looks a lot like a race track and drive accordingly. This is especially problematic when there’s a park in the middle, with a porous border leaking kids chasing runaway balls. Somehow we got lucky. Not only has no one been hit near our Central Park (although there have been close calls), but there are …

community, current events

Where do we go now?

It seems quiet here today. Caitlyn’s FIRST Lego League team had a field trip to Highline’s Marine Science and Technology Center, and even the kids seemed subdued, somewhat surprising for a handful of geeky 12 year olds. We parents carried on, shellshocked, exhausted, grieving. I expect there will be many, many conversations to come, but everything I could think of to say to people today sounds like empty platitudes in my head, so there were many moments of just looking at each other. “Yeah…” one of us says. “Yeah,” the other one responds. Shock. Anger. Denial. Depression. Bargaining/Compromise. Adaptation. This …

community, homesteading

A Morning Visitor

 

Wasabi was on a bit more of a tear than usual this morning, which made total sense once we realized we had a visitor: We spent the rest of breakfast watching her clamber around in the cherry tree, rather systematically eating all the cherries. Good thing I don’t expect harvestable fruit from that tree! She (I’m assuming it’s female based on this site which says that while commonly nocturnal, raccoons can be active during the day, especially if there are kits back in the den.  Raccoon kits typically arrive in April and May, and Mama tends to stay with them …

community, parenting

Way to be “On Message”

To the gentleman representing the Star Kids movie in front of Central Co-op: I appreciate being passionate about your art and your project. And, believe it or not, I’ve got some idea of what’s involved in making a movie and how much money is needed. However, I don’t appreciate being harassed on my way into a grocery store. It’s the end of the day, I’ve a first grader who needs to get home, and we’re out of milk. I don’t particularly have the time (or frankly, the interest – I’ve heard the Star Kids pitch on my way into a …

community, family, Seasons

My Weekend

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Things I did this past weekend: spent 2 hours shoveling gravel into buckets as part of a work party in our local urban forest, Cheasty Greenspace at Mt. View. We graveled 75 feet of trail! attended a showing of Once Upon a Circus, a production of the SANCA Youth Company. They attempted to tell fairy tales but kept getting the details mixed up. Favorite segments: the acrobatic seven dwarfs and Red Riding Hood’s aerial routine. The introduction skit mangling The Lord of the Rings was pretty awesome as well. made a bag from In Color Order’s tutorial: started the holiday …