Time and tide
If you share our night-owliness, you may be happy to hear the weather looks promising for tonight’s big (well, technically, tomorrow morning) lunar eclipse. (The height of the excitement, according to NASA, is between 2 and 4 am. You’ll probably see us out looking for the latest-available latte before Ladro closes at 11ish, or is anyone open later?) Since it’s a full moon as well, that brings tidal extremes; we were down by the water for some low-tide sights this morning. First photo, a starfish hugging one of the pilings at Seacrest; second, a NOAA ship passing Alki (with the help of NOAA Ship Tracker, we think it’s Miller Freeman, but aren’t 100% sure thanks to reader Frank @ NOAA for informing us it’s the Okeanus Explorer):
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Maybe Queen Anne would have been a better example
Our websearch for WS news turned up the following quote in this story from Spokane. We’re scratching our heads because honestly, even with the condos and townhouses, we still think WS is far from a horror story.
“My vision of Spokane Valley is not to look like West Seattle in 30 years,” (Spokane) Councilman Rich Munson said
You suppose we can get our WS-dwelling mayor and councilmember to call him up and tell him to stop dissing us?
It’s in their nature — and yours
Every week in our West Seattle weekend lineup, we include the “work parties” that are set up each month at sites that are among our area’s most precious natural treasures. For example, the Brandon Street Natural Area, which is a section of the Longfellow Creek Legacy Trail, where Jay Mirro leads the monthly events and is hoping to see a few more folks turn out today. He writes:
Brandon Street Natural Area is just west of the corner of 26th and Brandon Street (2 blocks west of Delridge). We work from 10-2. Volunteers can expect to pull weeds and wheelbarrow mulch. It is a family friendly day of work along a beautiful day section of the trail by Longfellow Creek. Folks should bring water and a lunch.
Nice day to work outdoors, too, with the cloud cover. Drop by & be a hero. If you’re wondering first, what’s a work party really like – Lina Rose from EarthCorps wrote us with a recap and some pix from the West Duwamish Greenbelt event last weekend; like the one today at Brandon Street, it involved a lot of mulch:
Click ahead to read Lina’s recap (including what this work will enable volunteers to do next time), see more pix (including one that might answer questions such as “gosh, would I really fit in at one of those work parties?”), and find out about an event next weekend:Read More
Two sets of “then & now”
Updates on two sites we last mentioned two months ago, both with pix. First set, the doomed south Beach Drive trees. Left photo below is from June; right photo from this weekend, when we noticed the chopping had begun:
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Next set, Erskine & Dawson, the former “Thor’s Towing” property, soon a new home. Old structures seen in June at left; right photo is courtesy of WSB reader Luckie (in the week since she took it, construction has begun):
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Parking space explained, and then some
Last weekend we drove past Me-Kwa-Mooks and saw a space roped off on the street in front, marked RESERVED FOR UDALL BUS TOUR. We were in something of a rush to start with; then we got sidetracked by something and completely forgot to look up what it was all about. Then this just appeared at the P-I site. How cool of them to side-trip to WS to help remove The Evil That Is Ivy.
Imagine this view … with water up to your knees?
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Tonight’s sunset, from Alki, where the sand runs out on the eastern edge. How much might global warming/climate change/whatever-ya-wanna-callit alter our WS shorelines? The National Wildlife Federation is out with a new report attempting to answer that, while examining potential effects on other shoreline habitats around our region. Channel 7 tv news came out to Alki to do its summary of the NWF report and even traveled south of the point to cast a suspicious eye on the pilings-propped Harbor West complex, but we can’t find that clip online, yet. You can read the entire NWF document for yourself, however (and note the WS photo on page 13, taken by WSB reader/chasBlog blogger Charles Redmond). Bottom line? Maybe a 2-foot rise around here, so it sounds like Beach Drive waterfront houses are safe, for a century or so, at least.
Recycling, the final frontier
We’ve confessed before that food-waste recycling is the one type of recycling we just haven’t quite gotten on board with yet. Looks like we’re going to have to; reports this morning (Times here, Weekly here) say we’re all going to be paying for pickup in less than 2 years. We hate paying for something we’re not using. Like the basic cable channels we don’t watch. Wish tv channels could be purchased a la carte. But we digress. So, we’ll get with the program. Maybe Sustainable West Seattle has advice! (More on the city’s “zero waste strategy” here.)
Hoofing it
We won’t be able to check this out in person for a few hours, so we don’t know yet if they’re back in action today, but a couple notes have come in saying The Goats were at work in West Seattle again, this time on hillside brush toward the bridge end of Admiral.
TONIGHT: “Sustainable West Seattle” meets
6-8 pm @ Southwest Library – all are welcome at the next meeting of SWS, which describes itself as “a newly-formed group of West Seattle citizens who want to make a difference locally, working within our neighborhood to become more self-reliant while using fewer natural resources.”
Lady in wading
Next Monday, if you’re out for a walk on Alki around 9-something am, watch for a woman heading out into the water. No, not a polar-bear swimmer … a County Public Health employee. We’ve seen her the last two Mondays – today, wading quite some distance from shore – taking water samples, then returning to her official county government car. Trying to find out where we can see the test results!
They trashed trash
That’s what a spirited crowd did last night at City Hall, according to this P-I article, which mentions that somebody from WS was part of a contingent advocating a farewell to foam (containers).
We’re on the move
In southeast WS, a sensor is tracking earth movement, and this story says that it’s moving northeast at a rate of up to four inches a decade. Scientists are keeping an eye on it and dozens of others around the NW in hopes they may get some clues about predicting earthquakes. If you want to know every geeky little thing about this site, including its latitude/longitude, go here and click on its log (symbol “SMAI”); you can also look at its charts here (choosing SMAI from the left-side menu). By the way, if you ever want to see a map of the most recent NW earthquakes (hours/days/weeks ago), keep this site handy.
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