It’s an old scraggly, stark-naked tree, not a leaf on any of its many – and most decidedly – dead branches. Like the twisted, gnarly and bony fingers of what remains of a skeletal hand thrusting claws up through the soil which our mom was fond of placing about the yard at Halloween, the solo […]
Letter: Safe at Home
The little guy was standing at third base. Seven years old. His fellow teammate at the plate had swung furiously at the first two pitches. And missed. I knelt down on my knees in the third base coaches’ box and leaned out over the chalk line that fairly shouted ‘proceed no further,’ and spoke as […]
Letter: Larry Saunders – Behind the Badge
On this January 9 National Law Enforcement Appreciation Day (L.E.A.D.), “we show our support for our nation’s approximately 780,000 police officers.” What it means to lead was poignantly demonstrated by first-City-of-Lakewood-Police-Chief Larry Saunders whose life of leadership was cut short too soon with his untimely and unexpected death just this past January 6th.
Letter: “Governments using their citizens as ATMs”
Also known as “policing for profit.” What do the following have in common? Backyard BBQ’s where the applied steak sauce yields – in the opinion of the smoke-detectors, aka Lakewood Code Enforcement Officers (CEOs) and Community Service Officers (CSOs) contracted with the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency (PSCAA) – too much pollution?
Letter: What can you do for $10,000?
Now that the Clover Park School District (CPSD) has announced it will put before the voters on Feb.9, 2016 a “replacement educational programs and operations levy proposition,” while not necessarily a levy-breaker this is nevertheless an opportune time to consider what you can do for $10,000. Ten-thousand dollars is the estimated price to purchase a […]
Letter: The little black(ened) books
It would be doing them a favor to call them nondescript. Decrepit would be far more descriptive. “The only thing left in the dirt and trash were these two old books, covers ripped off, quite plain looking for all intents and purposes, little revealing what lay inside. I picked them up, blew off the dust […]
Letter: Home for the Holidays – it wasn’t going to happen
There are hardly more frustrating experiences than having searched the house for the last piece of the puzzle. It doesn’t matter whether the puzzle is a simple pre-school child’s version of a mere handful of pieces, or a far more time-consuming, complex and complicated puzzle of a thousand little bits of funny-shaped and patterned cardboard.
Letter: The great shopping cart roundup
The following is an excerpt from the book “Lonesome Dove,” by Larry McCurtry, that kinda casts a loop around what the Lakewood City Council will hear Monday night (December 14, 2015) when Chief of Police Mike Zaro reports on the long-awaited roundup of what has been a 21-month study (p.46) by the Public Safety Advisory Committee […]
Letter: Bradley, the forgotten reindeer
Our adopted daughter Jennifer Bradley – a Physical Education Director in the local school district – jokingly complained on Facebook yesterday that a certain national restaurant chain discriminated against those, like her, whose name had nothing to do with Christmas and therefore, unlike another of our daughters – Christina Noel (Anderson) Klas (Mrs. Klas, born […]