Have you ever heard of lint art? I never had until recently when my friend, Edra Zook, who recently retired from Starbucks #313 after ten years service, showed me her latest artistic creation. What you see was 20 years in the making.
Donate your old eyeglasses
Looking to donate those eyeglasses you’ve had laying around the house for a long time? Look no further than the Lakewood First Lions Club, which has been collecting and recycling used eyeglasses since 1954.
The used eyeglasses collected by the club (more than 6,000 in 2014) are processed and packaged by the Northwest Lions Eyeglass Recycling Center in Lacey, which either includes them in their own humanitarian efforts or distributes them to other humanitarian groups traveling to developing countries.
Westside Story – Good Cop / Bad Cop
Every day we are bombarded with Bad Cop stories. Most of these stories, at their basic foundation, are faulty stories. In this avalanche of Bad Cop stories, there are a few accurate stories. There has to be, because bad people are everywhere including law enforcement, teachers, doctors and ministers.
Letter: The (Tillicum) Center of the storm
How many City of Lakewood audits of the Tillicum Community Center have been conducted since the latter began receiving federal funds dispersed by the former 15 years ago?
One.
Westside Story – A Story From Hell
Have you ever had someone tell you to go to Hell? I have, especially when I was dealing with unhappy criminals. Most criminals are unhappy, especially those who belong to the Felons Club. I remember one, in particular, who told me to go to Hell and then tried to burn me in the face with his lit cigarette. As you might imagine, I made arrangements for him to spend a few days and nights in a non-smoking facility. I guess his threat was not an idle threat. He told me to go to Hell and to Hell I went. At least most of us would think of the Pierce County Jail as a kind of Hell. When he told me to go to Hell, he did not count on my taking him with me.
From Lakewood to Haiti
Father Peter Mactutis remembers very well the last time he saw his father who was at the end of his battle with cancer. “I was just a teenager,” Father Mactutis remembers “and he couldn’t talk any more. All I could do was put out my hand and clasp his. Sometimes that’s all you can do.”
Letter: The world beyond the knothole
How intriguing is our sometimes fantastical world – what we can see, though not with the naked eye.
For Alice, of “Alice in Wonderland” fame, it was by “by climbing through a mirror into the world that she can see beyond it,” as told by Lewis Carroll in the sequel “Through the Looking-Glass, and what Alice Found There.”
Westside Story – Kiwanis – Lakewood First Lions Skate Park
I remember back in the late 90s when I was with the Lakewood Police Department, a proposal surfaced to build a skate park. It was thought a skate park would provide our youth with healthy, safe and legal activity where they could hang out with friends and expend some of the teenage energy that we all wish we still had. Some of our local youth made an organized effort to communicate to our Lakewood City Council their support for building a skate park. Our city council listened and then took action. Isn’t that great? Kids talk and adults listen. Kids and adults working together to make our city a better place to live, work and play. Lakewood is a kid friendly city.
Easter egg hunt at Springbrook Park
Approximately 300 Lakewood children participated in an Easter egg hunt on Saturday, March 28th, at Springbrook Park, sponsored by the Lakewood First Lions Club and Caring for Kids.