Here's the plaque to go along with the Welcome Figure:

No Nightmares, Please - Why is so much children's poetry full of sadism and doom?

The First Carnival of Radical Feminists

The Real Costs of Nuclear War: Radioactive Breastmilk, Birth Defects, Contaminated Food Chains

My morning begins late and leisurely today, it is 10:30 am by the time I take a seat at Vic's Pizzeria. I've already enjoyed contemplating neighborhood lilacs in bloom, a black lab puppy that will surely be huge when he grows up, and various scrawlings on walls/utility boxes/sidewalks/poles about freedom and injustice and more indecipherable matters.

Jazz is the current sounds and a latte and a chocolate chip cookie are what I get. I read Works in Progress , The Stranger, and the Seattle Weekly. I gaze at passing traffic - land ferries that are buses sailing to and fro from downtown and TESC. Here is where I people watch and wonder. Who is that young man of shaved head and pale skin who strides around the westside in his wool German officer's coat? What gardening projects are evolving over there just on the other side of the fence? Does The Good Life Health Food store get regular business and could someone please repaint their very weathered and grubby sign?

An older couple in bicyclist garb arrives, they are regulars here, the fact that I know this probably means that I am at least semi-regular myself.

From here I can comfortably walk to a post office, I can shop at Grocery Outlet (Amy's frozen pizzas are on sale right now), I can rent dvds, and I can easily walk or bus downtown for further adventures.

No, the sun is not shining, yet, but hey, I'm on the westside. This is a good morning.