The Suburban Times
A community bulletin board for Western Pierce County.
Joseph Boyle · · ·
Two thoughts motivate me to write this story. One, what I have to share could save a life, yours or someone you love. Two, if my story fails to save any lives, it is my hope my tale will be entertaining.
Publisher Ben Scair and I reviewed the oral version of my story, and we both agreed it would be better if I serialized the story in order to tell my tale in bite size pieces.
Let’s start.
David Anderson · · ·
December 5, 2014 is evidently the day to celebrate by lifting your glass, as it is the 81st anniversary of the end of “our nation’s failed experiment with alcohol prohibition.”
If you’d like to drink up to that, you can join in here.
David Anderson · · ·
According to the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) Point Defiance Bypass Environmental Assessment (Appendix F: Traffic and Transportation Discipline Report, p.83), “None of the individual crossings are predicted to experience accidents more frequently than one in every 10 years.”
This to save an estimated 10 minutes of Amtrak travel time from Seattle to Portland, and this in spite of proposed safety upgrades.
Dorothy Wilhelm · · ·
“I think we’ve just about ruined Christmas,” said the man behind the counter. I tried not to take it personally as I pushed a huge stack of packages across the counter. “All this stuff that has nothing to do with Christmas at all. I’ve got no choice about what I do here,” he continued, “but at home I make sure that everything we do is the REAL Christmas.”
David Anderson · · ·
We called him Frosty the Fairytale Facsimile, our token snowman.
No corncob pipe, just a stick. There were no carrots in the vegetable bin, so a stick served for the nose too. No rolling snowballs around in the yard. No snowman bigger and better than the neighbor’s. A scraped and mounded pile of snow served just as well in which to stick the obligatory twigs. No boots, no buttons, no broom.
David Anderson · · ·
Of all days for our annual family outing in search for the perfect Christmas tree, it was during a blinding snowstorm.
Ok, half-an-inch of snowfall doesn’t qualify as a storm but the sun shining on the snow was indeed blinding. Though not enough to make a snowman, the snow in the winter wonderland almost-foothills of the Cascades had flocked all the U-cut Grand Firs, Douglas Firs, and Charlie Brown trees too.
Joseph Boyle · · ·
From time to time I attend programs sponsored by an amazing organization called National Speakers Association or NSA. Dorothy Wilhelm, my favorite post-retirement mentor, introduced me to NSA. For those of you who know Dorothy Wilhelm, if she says NSA is the place to be, you know, NSA is the place to be.
David Anderson · · ·
A thief posing as fisherman? That’s an insult.
“Police seek South Hill pharmacy robber wearing fisherman’s hat,” blazed the banner this past Thanksgiving-eve.
Not ‘cowboy hat,’ or ‘stocking hat,’ or ‘baseball hat.’
Fisherman’s hat.
David Anderson · · ·
What the heck is sage for?
Other than the second of four herbs in “Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme” – Simon and Garfunkel’s “first masterpiece” – why was sage included in our Thanksgiving dinner grocery shopping list?