West Seattle, Washington
25 Thursday
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That could be the fruit from your overladen trees, filling a car and eventually bellies, rather than rotting in your yard or on your sidewalk. Aviva sent us the photo and this explanation:
Got Fruit?
We’ve got pickers! It’s that time of year again when neighborhood fruit trees are laden with ripe pears, apples, and plums. Perhaps you’ve seen a tree in your neighborhood with fruit starting to fall. Maybe you even own one of those trees, but never get around to getting the ladder out to pick, and the canner out to make plum preserves.
This year, consider contacting the Community Fruit Tree Harvest, an organization which matches volunteer harvesters with fruit tree owners. Fruit is picked and delivered to organizations such as the West Seattle Food Bank.
Fruit should be pesticide-free, worm-free, and on the tree. If you know of a tree, would like to pick, or know of a organization in West Seattle who could benefit from the harvest, contact aviva@duwamish.net or info@lawnandgardenhotline.org.
GIANT THANK YOU to everyone who reads and/or participates in WSB – contributors and non-contributors alike. 
As promised, at the stroke of midnight, the Pledge Day posts stop, the “Support WSB” contribution “button” will drop to the bottom of the sidebar, and we’ll get back to posting at a dull-roar pace (a few notches lower than today’s frenzy). And stand by for a picture of the forthcoming video cam as soon as we find the right one in which to wisely invest some of the $ you entrusted us with to make WSB better! West Seattle, and everyone who’s part of it, absolutely rocks.
Somebody buy, or at least loan, Westwood Village Barnes & Noble some chairs. For the second straight year, as many people stood as sat during West Seattle mega-selling author Terry Brooks‘ annual appearance. Diverse crowd too, 7 months to 70-plus. As was the case for his ’06 visit, Brooks read from his next book and talked about his current one. The latter, “Genesis of Shannara: The Elves of Cintra,” hit bookstore shelves today; the former, the title of which he’s not disclosing (though his “Web Druid” Shawn Speakman tried tonight to get him to spill it), is still in progress — he admitted he’s rewritten its final chapters over and over. Tonight, he confirmed that book will conclude the “Genesis of Shannara” trilogy, though at one point he had hinted online it might run longer than three books. He also pitched a new graphic novel for which he provided the plot, “Dark Wraith of Shannara,” coming out next year (and offered fans in attendance cool promotional bookmarks), and noted his near-future plans include writing another book in his “Landover (The Original Shannara Trilogy)” series, plus traveling to Britain, Japan, and the Seychelles — in response to an audience question about how he so successfully imbues his stories with a “sense of place,” he declared that travel helps fire his imagination; each new place sparks thoughts about “what kind of story could take place here?” SIDE NOTE FOR WEST SEATTLE BOOK LOVERS: Square 1 Books’ “Words from the West Side” event featuring WS authors is coming up on September 16th @ ArtsWest; read more on the Square 1 blog.
Another new-ish site feature we neglected to mention in WSBPD update #4 is reader recommendation requests, and the great response they always receive thanks to your helpfulness. After the last round, we assigned them their own category. Tonight, we have three recommendation requests to send out to WSB-land; please leave a comment if you’ve got thoughts on any of them.
First: A reader who’s a dog owner wants your thoughts on good doggy daycare(s) here in WS.
Second: Readers with a baby on the way (congratulations!) want recommendations for good pediatricians or even family-practice docs here in WS.
Last but not least: A reader who’s getting married in less than a month (congrats to you too!) has to get her dress cleaned and needs a recommendation for a cleaner “who does an impeccable job with silk.” Even if it’s not in WS!
Just south of the ferry dock, work has begun in earnest on a project Fauntleroy Creek stewards call “the reach to the beach.” Over the next 2 weeks, with the help of EarthCorps, they are working to transform the last stretch of FC into something more natural. Judy Pickens tells us major work won’t start till tomorrow, but we noticed a definite difference between the view of the beach this afternoon (first photo below) and yesterday (second photo below):
The coho salmon of Fauntleroy Creek need all the help they can get, after a disappointing year; here’s hoping this project does the trick. By the way, the FC fish ladder on the other side of Fauntleroy Way celebrates its 10th anniversary next year!
As we mentioned in WSBPD update #1, the first thing we will invest in, to improve WSB, is a video camera. Some West Seattle people, places, and events just beg for moving pix and sound. Even still pix are a relatively recent addition for us — we bought a small Nikon with 10x zoom on closeout a few months back, and it’s enabled us to get beyond what we were managing to eke out with a combination of a dying decade-old Sony plus a cell-phone cam. Speaking of which, we also will invest in a low-cost blog phone line, since we’ve found that some information providers just don’t want to do business via e-mail. But that’s all “infrastructure” stuff, as our governmental friends might call it. We have tried to enhance the features you see — adding “live” screengrabs to the WS “Live” Cams page, refining and expanding the categories (list on the right-side sidebar) so you can subscribe via RSS to just the categories that interest you (Admiral Theater, Elliott Bay Water Taxi, Alki Statue of Liberty, among other topics, all have their own categories now) or bookmark the specific category page, and continuing to update the Other Blogs in WS page, currently with 91 blogs (and we’re always ready to hear about more!), as well as researching and posting the WS Weekend Lineup every Friday morning. For a while we were deluged with lost-pet announcements and about to create a pet page — that’s still in queue — and we’re mulling a few other ideas. Most important — is there anything you wish you could find at WSB? We can’t promise everything (some things aren’t scalable for a small family-run site) but we would love to hear your wish list.
A week and a half after the arson that destroyed the in-progress building @ 4132 Cali and forced nearby residents out of their homes, what was left of the charred ruins is now gone — driving to The Junction, we just noticed the demolition crew clearing the site (photo @ right is as close as we could pull over). Still no report of anyone under arrest; 800-55-ARSON if you have any tips that might help investigators.
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We’re not golfers, but this just-published “ode to the West Seattle Golf Course” almost makes us wish we were.
Despite three crosswalks with pedestrian-activated lights, crossing Fauntleroy Way SW along the length of Lincoln Park remains hit-and-miss, at best. Sometimes literally. And right across from LP’s biggest parking lot, the city plans to take away a remaining non-signalized crosswalk, this one at Fauntleroy/Rose, while another problem percolates …
What makes this stretch of road more problematic than others, besides the presence of a big busy park on one side, is the traffic bound for the Fauntleroy ferry dock. Gary Dawson of the Fauntleroy Community Association says the crosswalks and ferry traffic aren’t mixing well, to say the least:
If you use any one of (the Lincoln Park crosswalks) during the afternoon commute period you put your life at great risk, stop lights or not. The reason is, the line to the ferry dock going southbound moves when queued, whether there are pedestrians in the crosswalks or not. Another near-miss (yesterday) afternoon. A neighbor going southbound stopped so a young boy could cross over to the park. The ferry queue did not. The lad had to run for his life. This, sadly, is more typical than not.
This time the Fauntleroy Community Association is contacting the Mayor’s office (the neighbor already has) to find out how serious he is with his pedestrian safety program.
We’ll stay in touch to find out what FCA hears back.
If you’re just joining us, welcome to WSB Pledge Day (it ends @ midnight so if you don’t want to hear about it, it’ll be safe to come back then). 
MEGA-THANKS to everyone who has chipped in so far. The other type of contribution that makes this more interesting every day are your e-mails and on-site comments – from “news tips” to rants/raves, and way beyond. Right now, we wanted to call your attention to the comments on our favorite post from last weekend — the one about the yard-sale signs. Several members of the family that staged the sale have come to WSB to post some very touching, lively follow-up comments, just another example of how finding out more about our neighbors, whether through a website or through in-person conversation, gives us big thrills, every day, and we hope you get a kick out of it too; e-mail us any time with something interesting you’re seeing, hearing, planning, doing.
From the past few hours … first, a mysterious morning beach fire on Alki:
Next, the intrepid early-morning fishing denizens along Seacrest:
And from The Junction … the sun-dappled breakfast crowd @ Easy Street Cafe (tomorrow by the way, we plan a post asking everyone for their WS food favorites … we love ES and a few other spots but recently discovered Skylark brunch and want to dish about that too … ES and Skylark are among the places where you can even order lunch for b’fast!):
One year ago today — we posted that Cactus had just opened on Alki. Congrats on a successful first year (nice website overhaul, too)!
Half the team is napping to recover from overnight Eclipse Watch (what a sight, especially when the moon turned smoky shadowy rust-red during “totality”), the other half is out gathering new pix and info to share on a stepped-up posting schedule in honor of WSB Pledge Day. Meantime, an artistically promising associate proclaimed the original “Support WSB” graphic (seen in the sidebar at right) “too dull” and cooked up the one making a cameo here:
On the same day the second novel in his latest series goes on sale, West Seattle best-selling author Terry Brooks returns to Barnes & Noble @ Westwood Village, where he spoke to an SRO crowd a year ago, just after the first book in the series debuted. Earlier this summer, in an open letter on his website, he explained the link between the new series, his past work, and the real-life world of today. Before attending Brooks’ 2006 B&N-WV appearance, we had only read his Star Wars novelization, but found him so interesting, we couldn’t resist reading some of what he’s far better-known for. Tonight’s reading at B&N-WV: 6:30 pm.
2:05 am, blurry but you get the idea. Very easy to see if you look high in the SW sky:
ADDED PHOTOS, 2:40 AM: Views of the moon, pre-eclipse, taken last night by Shelby Stenson from the Kingston-Edmonds ferry, forwarded by WSB reader Jan:
As mentioned earlier, we’re calling today WSB Pledge Day — riffing off those public-tv pledge drives, and we’re starting early since we’re up late awaiting the lunar eclipse. Here’s what “Pledge Day” is about: For the first time since we fired this thing up more than a year and a half ago — when we had no idea it would take the thrilling turn it’s taken, becoming a forum for info and input from all of you, as well as a place to report the things we see, hear about, and check into — we’re accepting contributions. Full disclosure, we are NOT starving artists (you already probably figured out, we’re not even artists); also, we expect to eventually accept some ads — local, relevant ads, not those annoying spammy national types. Moderating WSB’s metamorphosis into a community news/info/discussion hub has taken a ton of time and an increasing amount of $, so we feel less sheepish about giving you a way to contribute, but only if you really want to — no hard feelings if you don’t.
If you click that button, which will appear on the site multiple other times today, it will take you to the page for our new PayPal $-receiving account. You do NOT have to be a PayPal member to contribute; you can give PayPal a credit card number (which will NOT EVER be seen by us). Please note that you will see the name “A Drink of Water and a Story Interactive” atop the page; that’s the name we’ve given our fledgling umbrella operation. (The first item on our wishlist for whatever this all brings in is a video camera; so much of what we see begs to be recorded on video, so we all can share the sights and sounds of WS people in good times as well as in bad … from the Hi-Yu Parade to important community meetings, and way beyond.) For all those of you who chip in, THANK YOU!!!! and let us know if it’s OK to put your name on a supporters’ page that we hope to set up, just for posterity’s sake.
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