I’m not sure when I actually saw the film The Shop Around the Corner, but I know I had seen Ninotchka by the time I finished sixth grade. Ninotchka was directed by Ernst Lubitsch. So was The Shop Around the Corner. Both movies are black and white classics and both films hatched musicals based on […]
To Ponder
Westside Story: 4-Step RIP Inspection Process
Mr. David Anderson, The Tacoma News Tribune and I have written something close to 90 articles criticizing the City of Lakewood’s controversial Rental Housing Inspection Program, known as the R.I.P.
Letter: Build the wall
Sometimes with the youth we reach out to we’ll have them build a wall. We even give them the materials: sugar cubes for one team; Lincoln Logs for the other. Then comes the rain (watering can), and the wind (hairdryer turned on high).
Tacoma Executives Association’s 100th Birthday Gala
What a nice evening of fun. Over two hundred people gathered at the Seaport Museum for dinner, dance, and lots of laughter. We loved the newly renovated Foss Waterway Seaport Museum on Dock Street with its walls of glass. I resigned from the Tacoma Executives Association about sixteen months ago. I thought I would re-new […]
Letter: Rental inspections – when the accused, but innocent, outnumber the guilty
A beer can was spotted by administrators at a high school football game. Before the season-opening kickoff, 75 students – row by row – were consequently pulled from the section of bleachers near where a school official saw the can and all were sequestered in classrooms, creating what some parents described as a chaotic scene.
The Wiley Coyote is the Acme of Success
We’ve all seen him trying to catch the roadrunner using rocket propelled skates, painting fake tunnels on rock walls, and running off into space from a cliff and standing there until he notices he is completely without support. He never catches the roadrunner, so why should we copy him? The coyote is a survivor, and […]
Letter: Rental Inspection Programs are an admission of failure
When a city adopts a rental inspection program, it means the originators and adopters – city staff and city council respectively – are tired of ‘fire-fighting.’ In a word: failed.
Molina Healthcare’s Community Champion Awards
“I came here because I knew you would not turn me away.” The care givers, health professionals, and community volunteers had heard those desperate words many times. It was almost the rallying cry of the two hundred people who filled the hall. My wife and I were there in Renton to see our friend Jan […]
Home from Home: First Snow
As long as I can remember, winter and snow have almost been synonymous for me. I grew up in Southern Germany, and we always experienced the white load sooner or later. We built snowmen and igloos, went tobogganing down any slope we could find, had snowball fights, ate icicles, and simply enjoyed the sight of […]