Griffey joins Mays, Aaron, and Ruth as the only big leaguers to hit 600 home runs without using steroids. -RR

MIAMI - Ken Griffey Jr. got the count to 3-1. Mark Hendrickson, the big Florida left-hander, threw a curveball.

Griffey set loose with his classic uppercut stroke. When bat met ball, there was no question it was going out. It went way out – a high shot well into the seats in right field at Dolphin Stadium.

And just like that – after all the waiting, all the anticipation – Griffey was a member of the 600 home run club. Griffey pumped his fist as he rounded first.

Read The Full Story At: The Cincinnati Enquirer

I'll be updating this later - and I meant to create an entry earlier - but I wanted to at least make people aware of the protesting over the resumption over American beef to South Korea.

Over the last couple of weeks demonstrations have been ramped up, especially this past weekend. And by "ramped up", I mean in the neighborhood of 50,000 people filling the streets of Seoul. Since U.S. bases and military personnel are a direct representation of the American government, there's a little bit of unease over whether the protesting will shift from being directed at the South Korean government and move toward our bases.

Prime Minister Han Seung-soo - along with the rest of the South Korean cabinet - has just offered to resign. I've asked some of the Korean nationals who work with us what they think about the American beef dispute, and they've said President Lee Myung-bak shouldn't be "playing with the lives of Koreans." Many Koreans are convinced that American beef will kill them if they eat it because our safety regulations aren't up to standard.

Now, I have no idea about whether American beef regulations are on par with South Korea - or whether we are inferior or superior, for that matter - or whether this entire dispute is over something different entirely and beef importation is the only way for Koreans to express their displeasure, but the entire situation is interesting to watch up close.

UPDATE [11 JUNE 2008]: Here's a link from CNN on the protesting last night. Note the candlelight vigil. I have no idea why this is popular in South Korea - I'll ask a Korean national - but Koreans enjoy holding candles during some protests. I'm not sure if it's mourning - as it would be associated with in the West - or what.

It's really weird to bike past the woods one day and the next see a big empty lot with a bunch of felled logs. Yes, I know that where my house stands there was once trees, but it's still pretty dramatic.

The location is on Division, south of Walnut. Anyone know what's going in? Probably a new housing development.

Thanks to the People for Puget Sound for showing The 42 minute film "The Inland Sea: Where have all the Orcas Gone?". It contained some realistic scientific evidence regarding the dangers of polychlorinated biphenyls in sediments.

Where is the worm-safe packaged tuna boycott? Who killed that cause? Did it go underground to hang with celtic Christians?

Worms and bottom feeders rate higher than dolphins and orcas in many marine life risk assessments; attention rests where attention is due.

I nearly fell asleep watching a half-hour of a slow motion great white shark attack on a seal during the Discovery Channel film, but the local films were top-notch. They generated interest, emotions, and inspirations. Filtering rain water through neighborhood rain gardens was one great idea. Why drain directly into the bay at all?

Let us filter dangerous plastics' entrance into the ecosystem too. Containment cruxes constituation. Now we safely contain nuclear waste in earth-quake-safe permanent containers and hand-feed plastic to worms, ocean bottom feeders and ourselves over and over again, as if nuclear is the problem.

Solutions presented by the City of Olympia and People for Puget Sound during the films at SeaCinama Film Festival 2008 included bikes, busses, rain gardens, regulated whale watches (instead of unruly watches), and classification of species high on the food chain as endangered.

Over all, Ocean Day was a great event. I wondered why there were any empty seats!

OLYMPIA — Four people charged with felonies for violence at a February concert at The Evergreen State College have been accepted into a diversion program.

Charges will be reduced to misdemeanors if they complete the program and pay $45,000 for destroying a patrol car.

Thurston County court papers say criminal charges against a fifth person who hid a seat stolen from the car will be dropped if he completes the diversion program and pays $541.

Read the story here.

Lifted from the Olympian:

A rain garden workshop will be offered from 6:30 to 8:45 p.m. Wed in Olympia. Participants will receive info about designing and building a rain garden, as well as a free step-by-step color guidebook.

The workshop is free but registration is required. For more information or to register contact the WSU Native Plant Salvage Project at 360-754-3588, ext. 110 or nativeplants@wsu.edu.

The workshop is co-sponsored by the Thurston County Stream Team and WSU Extension's Native Plant Salvage Project.

Olympia City Manager Steve Hall and Public Works Director Mike Mucha were interviewed by Christopher Swope for an article title "A Rising Tide" that was published in the US GSA magazine Governing.com. You can read the article here. This article is from December 2007 so it is pretty current.

Here are some things to consider from that interview:

Steve Hall says the Olympia community is "pretty engaged around the whole climate change issue" and Hall says that Olympia has met the Kyoto protocol standards.

It's an interesting read and focuses on the impact of rising sea level which makes sense because Olympia is a coastal community, even if the coast is the intercoastal Puget Sound. The City's planning is set around sea level rise of one foot, two feet and three feet.

Public Works Director Mike Mucha notes that planning for sea level rise in Puget Sound is not simply looking at global sea level rise, the planning has to take into account tides that can cause regular 20 foot sea level fluctuations with the tides. Mucha also notes that the rising sea level is magnified in Olympia because we are at the end of Puget Sound.

The problem is that as sea level rises, it's not going to be felt as a gently lapping body of water that creeps slowly higher, it's going to be increased flooding that occurs during specific events when high winds, heavy rains and high tides coincide and that when these three coincide we will experience increased flooding.