For those interested in such things, somebody told me earlier today that a pub crawl begins tonight 8pm @ the Fish Tail Brewpub and moves on from there. If you show up late, I hear you should look for the Santa(s) around downtown.

I came across this quote about activism from a 2003 interview and it made me think of you folks on Olyblog. Bonus: the author quoted, Ursula K. Le Guin, is even semilocal! Oregon-based, I think she lives somewhere in Portland. Here is what she had to say:

[Interviewer Erika Milo]: I’ve read that last December you were part of a writers’ and artists’ anti-war delegation to Oregon congressman David Wu, and in April participated in a protest against the USA Patriot Act. Were there ever any responses to those protests, beyond the initial news coverage?

[Ursula K. Le Guin]: The response to such protests, to demonstrations and vigils, is mostly invisible and usually pretty slow-moving. We learned that, all the years demonstrating for civil rights and against atomic bomb tests and against the war in Viet Nam. If you want an immediate response you throw a stone. Civil disobedience may be the only way to address an urgent wrong, but it is likely to backfire and cause dismay and disaffection among the very people you are trying to win over. Walking and standing are awfully, awfully slow. You feel like a fool standing there with your sign saying Bush Lied, and people go by in cars yelling things like "Why do you hate America?" that they learned from Rush Limbaugh. But you go on standing there. It worked before. It will work again.

Anyway, I thought she expressed my feeliongs more elegantly than I ever could. From this article in the magazine West By Northwest.

This is an updated list for the local farmers flooded this week. This is updated on current needs.

Monetary Donations are being accepted at the Olympia Farmer's Market (OFM). The market is open on Saturday and Sunday. The OFM office is open during the week call for hours. Make checks payable to the Olympia Farmer's Market.

There will be Paypal buttons placed on the OFM website. If it is not up today it will be soon.

Material Needs:

Pressure Washers- If you can rent one please do so.

Rubber gloves elbow length

Shopvacs- Wet/dry

Fans

Cordless tools

Flat headed shovels and shovels.

Disinfectant cleaners

Tarps

Squeegies

Gift cards to Hardware stores, groceries, or clothing stores

Remember if you go down to help the flooded farmers you will need: Warm clothes, change of clothes, your own drinking water, your own food. AND BOOTS! Rain gear is helpful. The farmers are not in a place to offer people food and water. This is not kid friendly work parties.

Work Parties are set for

Boitsfort Valley Farm (Mike and Heidi Peroni): Sunday, December 9. Carpools leave at 9:45 from the Chevron at Plum and Union. The drive is an hour+.

Rising River: Everyday call 360-273-5368 (Jim McGinn and Jennifer Belknap). All roads are open to Independence Valley Road.

Wobbly Cart (Contact Joseph): Work Parties are for Saturday and Sunday, December 8and 9. Call 273- 7597.

There is a lot of cleaning of the outbuildings. Once stuff has been washed, there needs to be a clean place to put stuff. Tarps are helpful.

For the past nine months or so, I had the pleasure of sitting on a small group with tctvjohn, epersonae and chad360 (among other folks like Deb Vinsel from TCTV), putting our brains to work about how a city sponsored wifi network might work in downtown.

From what I can tell, even though the city council put out $20,000 to jump start the process, a public wifi network isn't going to happen anytime soon.

Here is the summary of the report we sent to the council's General Government committee (Joe Heyer, TJ Johnson and Jeff Kingsbury):

The deployment of WiFi is not a simple process. The $20,000 the City has set aside for the project will not build a system. Many other cities have tried to deploy WiFi using a variety of models and many have decided to end or postpone their projects due to high costs and low revenue potential.

Many wireless companies do not want to franchise for Wi-Fi without a guaranteed anchor tenant (the city) because the financial returns from subscribers have not been sufficient to sustain a system.

It may be possible to deploy a great deal of WiFi connectivity in the downtown core by simply encouraging area businesses to create ‘hot-spots’ in their stores. However, Wi-Fi in downtown public areas (and we hope city-wide) will require a much bigger, expensive process. Questions about operation, ownership, policy issues and access to City owned assets will need to be ironed out.

It is not outside the realm of possibility, but it is not a process that can be accomplished in a short period of time without a significant financial investment.

I have lived here through the Columbus Day Storm, the '65 and '01 quakes, the '96 Ice Storm, and Mt. St. Helens blowing up real good. This one is up there in the same league, especially for those folks in Lewis, Grays Harbor, and Pacific counties. Here in McCleary I heard what could be a rural legend-- supposedly dead livestock are hanging from trees down south of here. But then again we are a town of storytellers. I'd be interested in hearing from anyone out there who can confirm this tale.