History, politics, people of Oly WA
For all the folks that were bashing downtown during the campaign season (Will someone please do something about DOWNTOWN?!?!??), I want to point out that among other things, downtown Oly has a world class film festival starting tonight.
My film plans for this coming week include, but are not necessarily limited to:
Interstate 5, 107 Miles South and
Fishermen’s Terminal
I’ve been interested in Municipal wi-fi for awhile, but it wasn’t until just recently when Keri and I stayed in downtown Spokane and enjoyed their free wireless access, that I really began thinking about it. Thinking about it in a “We in Olympia should do something like this.”
I’m going to be reading more about this. Here’s my first reading list:
Wired: Wi-Fi Cloud Covers Rural Oregon
Joho the Blog: Is free municipal wifi good?
Muniwireless (I know it’s not an article… I’m going to peruse their offerings)
Speaking of getting engaged online to foster civic engagement (see below), the City of Tumwater currently has two online polls running. One asks how everyone likes the new website, another asks for input on John Dodge’s idea from a few weeks ago about moving the old brewery whistle to the FishBowl brewery (the community’s last working brewery).
In addition to the polls, the city’s website also has a calendar with an RSS feed. Sweet.
Awhile back I posted on the benefits of elected officials and candidates engaging in conversations that are happening online. If there are conversations going on anywhere in our community that regards why your running or the business of the city, it pays to be engaged.
One mayor from back East actually considered such conversations as a normal part of being a mayor:
“On the street, it’s just like “Oh, I saw you on the cable station.” Now I get “Oh, I saw you on the blog.” Ed points out that an appearance on a blog’s comment threads can humanize an elected offical, and that a note directly from the mayor can temper the conversation, too. “If I go on directly and respond, if I personify the discussion” he says, “people are more careful about what they say.”
A few days ago, I started a thread over at Olyblog about Ira Knight’s interview on KGY. Like most posts on olyblog.net, it started a vibrant discussion, and now, Ira’s opponent, Jeff Kingsbury is getting into the mix. He’s not bashing Ira by any means, but simply discussing the merits of a downtown parking garage.
Good on ya, Jeff. I hope this encourages more council candidates and future and current city council members to embrace the growing blog community in Olympia.
Pulling out of the garage this morning, I heard Dick Pust on KGY preview his morning interview, saying something like “It’s a man who’s running for local office, but I’m not going to tell you who yet.” And, I thought sarcastically, “Yeah, I bet its Ira Knight.”
It was! Ira Knight Speaks! (this deserves exclamation points because up until this point, Mr. Knight hasn’t been to any public forums).
Dick went right into the source of the recent controversy regarding Knight’s candidacy, whether he supports same sex partner benefits for city employees. Obviously Knight doesn’t, but he wanted to stay on the mantra that “everyone has the right to pursue happiness in their own way,” but he also pointed out that gay marriage, for now, is not legal and that he would stick to the law. He went on to say that if the law pertaining to the nature of marriage changed, he would respect that.
Dick also repeatedly said that Knight “opened his mouth” on the topic of gay rights/marriage/benefits, which Knight never refuted.
Other topics that Dick and Ira covered included solving the downtown “problem,” sidewalks and traffic.
On downtown, Ira suggested the creation of a space where local residents could come by and hire for a day someone who was out of work. His central theme on downtown being that the problem was a lack of responsibility, and that giving handouts would not solve the problem. The problem being homeless people I guess.
On sidewalks, Ira said that he would be his number one issue when he was elected to the city council. If you’re wondering why Ira wasn’t involved in the Walk Olympia campaign last year (that brought in the first significant sidewalks investment in years), it was because he hadn’t walked around
It was nice that Ira mentioned that when he was doorbelling a lot of people said they didn’t get to see elected officials all that much.
Ira said on traffic problems that the city government should plan ahead. I wonder why they didn’t think of that before, it sounds so easy.
At the end of in the interview, Dick asked him if there was anything that he wished he had been asked, and Ira told him about his time serving in the 89th Air Wing, the unit that maintained and flew Air Force One. I think this is a direct quote, but Ira said, “If you aren’t doing your job, they’ll get rid of you in a heartbeat.” That he served in that unit for 11 years speaks to his makeup as a person.
Scott Chacon, who is running in the CA-11 against Richard Pombo, makes a good point about recent emails he’s received from both Democrats and Republicans. The Dem emails are overly long, and when you get down to it, ask simply for you to send more money. The GOP emails he received where shorter and asked for action:
(The GOP email) rather than smearing the other side as evil devils in a 600 word rant then asking for money, they ask you to adopt 25 voters, give them personal attention, ask them to vote and talk about the issues. It is easy to help, easy to read, inclusive and respectful – all in about 200 words.
There have been some good examples of using internet tools (email, websites, yadda, yadda) to pull people into the process, to engage them. Asking for money and votes are the two least important ways to engage people. Votes are of course the nut of any campaign, but not democracy; engagement is.
Money, on the other hand, while it fuels the campaign has also help develop a professional political class that seems to say “anything worth while on a campaign or in politics needs to be done by a professional.” Politics shouldn’t be a business. There should be smart people involved, but it should also be open.
As a party, we shouldn’t be asking people to cut us checks and then going off and spending it as we see fit. We should be urging them to get involved in the party, campaigns and politics in general.
You know, if Ira Knight had just kept his mouth shut, mumbled something about not liking the Nuclear Free Ordinance and didn’t say anything about not liking gay people, he might have won. But, he goes and shoots himself in the foot.
Its one thing for the local Christian Coalition to put out a “pastors pick” (pdf file) for the entire county, but they also put out this gem (pdf file), pointing out the differences between Ira and Jeff Kingsbury.
Here’s a list of the differences:
Not that any of these issues actually came up in the election, because Ira Knight never brought anything up. Big old thanks to the Christian Coalition for pointing all of this out!
Invite your Tumwater city councilmember, because it looks good. Here’s the trailer (QT) and here’s some funny promo movies.
Speaking of Walmart, something is happening over there:
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. chief executive H. Lee Scott Jr. called on Congress to raise the country’s minimum wage from $5.15 an hour, saying the company’s customers are “struggling to get by.”
Scott, head of the world’s largest retailer, which has been criticized for paying low wages, providing few health care benefits and causing the demise of small businesses across the country, ticked off a list of changes he said the company plans to make and called for a higher minimum wage in a speech to directors and executives Monday. “We have seen an increase in spending on the 1st and 15th of each month and less spending at the end of the month, letting us know that our customers simply don’t have the money to buy basic necessities between paychecks,” Scott said in his speech, a transcript of which was released yesterday. Scott also said the company wants to reduce energy use by its stores by 30 percent.
Even though I haven’t been posting here all that much lately, tons of people (oh, I’d say 35 a day) are still coming by to see what there is to see here. Mostly it seems they’re coming off google searches for “Michael Normoyle” olympia city council and “Ira Knight” Olympia City Council.
Yeah, if I were you, I’d be googling these guys too, because no one knows who the hell they are.
Which brings me to my point, don’t vote for these two guys. Even if you hate the Nuclear Free Zone ordinance, Normoyle and Knight haven’t made themselves available during the campaign, haven’t answered our questions, and don’t deserve your vote.
Plus Ira Knight can’t spell.
Strange to find this post on USS Mariner, but it is a credit to my collegue a the fish commision, Jeff Shaw. Gifted writer he is, puts me to shame.
But, Jeff is writing about the good old concept of “home” and that sense of place we hear about from time to time. I recently picked up Scott Russell Sander’s Staying Put: Making a Home in a Restless World (in my Bowling Alone series of reading), so Jeff’s post in especially meaningfull to me.
Enjoy (and I really mean that, enjoy):
…
I inform our throng, since I’ve got a long drive home to Bellingham. This brings an unexpected query.
“Bellingham? Why,” Curto asks with furrowed brow, “do you live in Bellingham?”
He doesn’t say it with scorn, just bewilderment, the tone of voice you’d use to ask why a guy collects antique Palauan toothpicks. Something you figure people do, but have never considered doing yourself.
I think for a second. “Because I love it there,” I say. It’s an honest answer, if facile and incomplete, and for a moment it’s all I’ve got.
…
When I came to Bellingham, it was because my wife got a job. In journalism, you move roughly every two years until you get where you really want to go. The ‘Ham wasn’t supposed to be home, not really; the lovely and talented Ms. Shaw was always going to get a gig in the greater Seattle area. So it went.
This is the natural order. Waterfalls don’t flow uphill, rivers don’t run backwards to the headwaters. These patterns have all, in my experience, held true to form.
…
The unruly facial hair wouldn’t be conspicious in my town, with its complement of campsite monks, snowboard priests and kayak devotees whose faith is the mountain or threshing white rapids. The place’s apt nickname is City of Subdued Excitement, and the laconic pace and lack of pretense are appealing. I like pulling out my dress flannel and good ballcap for important meetings.
When you come, you’re issued a Subaru wagon so you can take your dogs (always plural) to Baker or the coast in rain, shine or snow. My basset hounds always roll with me into a friend’s office — the nerve center of a multi-million dollar foundation. Friends came to my scotch-and-cards birthday party with their rambunctious German shepherd and Rhodesian ridgeback in tow.
Neither of us asked first. Because in Bellingham, it’s expected.
But I’ve lived in low-key, outdoorsy places before. So what has me internally quoting poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s simple but elegant lines “I like it here / and I won’t go back / where I came from”? Is it that university towns are great, with their magical blend of intellectual stimulation and affordable beer? Or is it something else entirely?
…
Change is constant in all things. Bellingham isn’t exempt. Like I said, rivers never run backwards, and you can’t stop the onrush. You can sell your studio in San Diego, buy a place on Lake Whatcom, and have enough left to buy an entire herd of purebred poodles.
So these days, patches of new buildings that all look the same spring up by the dozens. They stand out next to the funky old Painted Lady Victorians done up in wild pastels, or the Craftsman style homes where hippies let their kids decide the colors, with a flurry of resulting purples and reds. The old places fit in here as pastiche homes for a pastiche town, a city formed by fusing three smaller burgs into a nonsensical conundrum of navigation.
One recently transplanted colleague, a wealthy sort and the proud new owner of a fresh-from-the-oven cookie cutter, drove by our house last year. The reasonably understated place got a telling outburst. “That’s so old Bellingham,” she said.
It was in no way meant as a compliment. Which is precisely why I took it as one.
…
When finishing a book I love, I manifest an odd habit. I tend to place the final section of pages between my thumb and forefinger to gauge how much time this particular story and I have left. As fun as the tale is, there’s always a touch of melancholy when you see it winding down.
This feeling amplifies the more stories you read, or the more places you live. Each is unique. The best, paradoxically, inspire the most regret as they pass. Colors get richer and quirks more endearing while the clock ticks.
The feelings are amplified now that I have substantial experience reading the handwriting on walls in successive temporary homes.
The ‘Ham — either as it is or as it is becoming — is certainly not all sunshine and roses. (As far north as we are, there’s precious little sun, and the soil’s iffy in places for rosebushes.) It seemed that the wife and I spent most of the first year looking for people to hike in the rain with. Tough to meet folks, friendly or no, when they’re always racing up a different hill or paddling to a San Juan island.
But you break in a new town like a fresh item of clothing. Comfort comes in stages. I live in Bellingham because, for now, it’s the shirt from the fondly-remembered concert, that pair of jeans that’s just threadbare enough.
…
Time to go home. For now.
On rereading it just now, I came back over Jeff’s line “either as it is or as it is becoming.” This thought may be above my pay-rate, but isn’t any place, town or community always “as it is becoming?”
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