2 Camp Long updates: Festival today; volunteers 9/20
First — Luckie sends three pix from the Arts-in-Nature Festival‘s second and final day at Camp Long today, before the deluge:
Luckie was up on Schurman Rock to get that photo of the dome set up as part of the Nature Consortium‘s annual extravaganza. Next, kids working on, well, art in nature:
Final pic – an unwelcome guest at the festival – Luckie says a Camp Long naturalist found it in one of the park ponds and told her that “it’s a non-native species that is partly responsible for driving out the native frogs. Nobody knows how it got there—possibly, someone slipped it into the pond. The naturalist noted that releasing a non-native species such as this one opens a Pandora’s box of possibilities, which are seldom good”:
The Nature Consortium does a lot more than put on this festival; restoring the West Duwamish Greenbelt is its main mission, and you can join the effort in a work party almost every weekend (watch the West Seattle Weekend Lineup and greenseattle.org). Second Camp Long-related note tonight: We just got a news release about what sounds like a HUGE volunteer effort at Camp Long on September 20th – up to 500 volunteers fanning out to work in the park. Here’s the full announcement:Read More
Car-Free Day #1 (2 weeks till Alki) report, in case you wondered
Two weeks till the Alki Car-Free Day, third in a series of three; that series started today, sort of, in a manner that our friends at Capitol Hill Seattle call “a slopping wet joke,” and not just because of the weather. Will add other links as we find them, starting with:
*Casey McKinnon calls it a “non-event event”
*P-I visits Alki during the Cap Hill closure
*KING calls it a washout, noting (as did CHS) it ended two hours early
*KOMO focuses on … kids who had a lemonade stand
*Seattle Times mentions the lemonade stand too (among other things)
There’s a thread in the WSB Forums, too. (Background on the scheduled 9/7 Alki Car-Free Day, from the 7/30 announcement, is here and here.) We will check with SDOT in the coming week to see if what happened on Capitol Hill will lead to any changes in the plan for Alki (and, next week, Rainier Valley) — we’ll be asking, in particular, about the pre-event towing plans (which seemed to be the biggest shock on C-Hill).
Who’s behind new Snap Fitness in The Junction: Longtime WSB’er
Meet Jim Flynn and M.J. Benavente of Gatewood. You might know Jim better as “JumboJim,” the handle he uses when commenting (or forum’ing) on WSB. Our archives show his participation goes back at least a year and a quarter – to a time when only about 25% of the current readership was stopping by – so we wanted to give his new business a special shoutout, once we found out he was behind it. It’s been mentioned on WSB before – a new fitness center coming to Jefferson Square, Snap Fitness, in the former West Seattle Animal Hospital space next to Subway (WSAH is elsewhere in JSq now); they’ve even posted jobs in the WSB “West Seattle Jobs Offered” Forum, but until a few days ago, we didn’t know who was behind it. Here’s a little more about what Jim and M.J. have in store:Read More
Road watch: High Point semi-updates
Thanks to Scott C for the tip that, while the upgraded signals at 35th/Raymond (previous WSB coverage here) still aren’t unbagged and turned on, a left-turn lane has just been painted onto 35th (a little hard to photograph in the monsoon, but we tried). Meantime, a little ways southeast, the Lanham/Morgan light isn’t unbagged yet either, though multiple sources had suggested it would start its week of blinking tests (here’s our 8/8/08 update; here’s an update on the High Point Neighborhood Association site this past week. Maybe a rain delay? We’ll keep watching – let us know if you see either one go into test mode before we see it!
Reader report: “Good door-to-door news”
That’s how Julie titled her e-mail, seeking to share this:
Today in our neighborhood (Genesee)……..we had two very polite West Seattle High School football players (selling Gold Card Savings coupons for new football uniforms) come to the door.
We’ve had so many unsavory obscure organizations canvassing for ages it is hard to remember there really are some worthy causes out there. And they were polite teenagers too!
I hope they get lots of support from our community. Go Westside!
We’ve told you before about the uniform-fundraising drive — which kicked off with a food booth at West Seattle Summer Fest.
Reader report: Alki Ave power problems
(photo added 2:59 pm, through-the-windshield shot showing part of the big SCL presence at scene)
We don’t have any official Seattle City Light info on this but CL reports power trouble in his building and possibly others in the 1100 block of Alki Ave (map) – unofficial word on the scene is water trouble with a transformer, though this was before the rain arrived, so it may not be THAT kind of water trouble.
Share the wealth (of knowledge): Be a tutor!
Kay from the Youth Tutoring Program in High Point says some WSB’ers stepped forward to help when we last mentioned one of their open calls for help – and it’s time for another one, as the new school year gets closer. Here’s her announcement; hope you can spare a little time to make a huge difference in local kids’ lives:
Tutor Great Kids!
The Youth Tutoring Program is looking for tutors in West Seattle!
YTP is a non-profit tutoring program that provides one-on-one academic support to students living in low-income housing. We operate five tutoring centers throughout the city. We are in great need of volunteer tutors at our High Point tutoring center located on 35th Ave. SW in West Seattle.
Tutors commit to one evening per week for two hours and work with one student at a time on homework, math and language arts skills. Available sessions are Monday through Thursday from 5:30-7:30 pm and Tuesdays and Thursdays from 4-5 pm.
Many of our students cannot get the homework help they need at home and depend on our tutors for academic support!
Our School Year Tutoring Program will be starting the week of September 22nd and we need hundreds of dedicated tutors! New tutor trainings will be held the week of September 8th!
Make a difference in the life of a child in your neighborhood. Apply today at www.ccsww.org/ytp or call 206-328-5659.
Having a ball as curtain falls on ’08 “Movies on the Wall”
Leave it to Lora Lewis of Hotwire Coffee (WSB sponsor) to keep throwing a curveball into each West Seattle Movies on the Wall showing this summer — tonight, it was a juggling competition (with balls provided to showgoers by co-sponsor Viking Bank), which ended in a dusk juggle-off (shown in the video clip above) between Mike (white shirt) and Mark; Mike won the $25 Pagliacci Pizza gift card. “Galaxy Quest” was the perfect laugh-out-loud conclusion to the movie series, which WSB’ers (via online “voting”) and Junction visitors (via “ballot boxes”) helped shape — the five previous movies were “Finding Nemo,” “Ghostbusters,” “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” “The Goonies,” and “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” Only one rainout – “Nemo” on 8/9, successfully rescheduled to this past Thursday – and no serious glitches, just a ton of fun. Thanks to Lora and the other West Seattle businesspeople who made the series possible (WSB was a co-sponsor this year too); we’re looking forward to next summer already. P.S. There is one more outdoor movie in West Seattle before summer ends — High Point Community Center is showing “The Wizard of Oz” next Thursday night; center coordinator Brian Judd suggests you get there by 6.
Since Friday morning, when we 
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