Make a difference in the lives of others! Become a volunteer tutor! Mason County Literacy and Thurston Bookends will be hosting an ESL (English as a Second Language) volunteer tutor training on the 22nd and 23rd of August at South Puget Sound Community College. Please contact 360-464-8578 or 360-426-9733 for more information on the training and on how to become a volunteer tutor.

Also, we have other urgent needs for volunteers especially in Shelton in the following areas: data entry, creative work, clerical work, bilingual-Spanish computer class, database management, childcare and more! We also have several workstudy and internship opportunities.

We look forward to hearing from you! :)

Advocates for the houseless-homeless-mobil homeless (rv-car campers) continue their grassroots efforts in Lacey and Olympia, as evidenced by recent Olympian and olyblog reports.

• Olympia council to discuss RV parking rules tonight Eugene, Ore., tells how it successfully controlled problem
• Lacey ban on tent city challenged
• "We all have a part..."

A little while back I referred to a lawsuit that is making its way through the state court system that might impact Lacey's new homeless ordinance.

Tomorrow (sometime after 9a) the state Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case between Woodinville and Northshore United Church of Christ. A few years ago, Woodinville passed an ordinance restricting how churches can host homeless camps. Basically, the church is arguing that the city doesn't have any business telling them how they can practice religion as it relates to their helping the homeless.

How the Supreme Court decides (at least I think this) will have a lot to do with whether Lacey is sued over their ordinance.

The arguments will be live on TVW and I'll post them here after they're on the internet.

Anyone know the typical turn-around on a state Supreme Court case?

The Kitsap Blue Jackets of the West Coast Collegiate League will play the Olympia Athletics (an affiliate team of the BlueJackets) at St. Martins baseball field.

More information here.

Kitsap BlueJackets

Olympia Athletics

The Kitsap BlueJackets and the Olympia Athletics will play a two game series down here in early June.

This will be the first "home game" ever for the Olympia Athletics, which despite their name, are a travelling farm team for the BlueJackets.

This series will also be a preview for South Sounders of the level of baseball when the real-deal WCCBL franchise is expected to start playing at the Lacey Athletic Center in 2009. The baseball field that the new team will occupy is currently under construction.

I couldn't find the actual story that talks about the new team on the Olympian's website, but here's a place that points to it.

Saturday 07 Jun
Saint Martin College (Lacey, Wash.)
5:00 p.m.

Sunday 08 Jun
Tumwater High School (Tumwater, Wash.)
5:00 p.m.

I don't know about you, but I can't think of one single thing I can buy in Lacey that I can't buy somewhere else.

Not that it will, in the scheme of things, make any difference, but why don't those of us who support Camp Quixote and care about homeless people take a look at doing our shopping in those places that understand that a regional, even state approach is needed to providing social services, including a safe place to spend the night if your home is a tent.

Do we lose anything by doing this? Maybe some of our smaller, struggling, independently owned businesses have something to gain here.

Here is our OlyBlog thread on this

Fundraising site for Patrick and family

Patrick Menendez works as a support technician at ReachONE Internet. On his way home from work Monday evening February 4th, he got off the city bus and was then struck by a drunken driver in a Ford F-150 pickup truck about 8:15 pm. The driver of the pickup truck did not stop.

Fortunately, a concerned driver followed the truck to downtown Olympia -- calling the police -- where the police arrested the man and took him to St. Peter's Hospital to assess his level of drunkenness.

The incident happened at Pacific Avenue near Sawyer Street in Olympia. If you have information regarding this hit and run, you are asked to contact Olympia police at 360-753-8300.

Patrick suffered a fracture in his hip, his left leg is broken in several places and his right knee was mangled.

For more information about the incident, please see http://HelpPatrickandMary.com

From a local website, seeminlgy based on this article from a conservative magazine:

Quietly but systematically, the Mah/Clarkson administrations are advancing the plan to build a huge Oly/Lacey Super Highway, one/fourth a football-field-wide, through the heart of the Olympia, from the Lacey border at Komachin Middle School to the Tumwater border north of the cemetery.

Once complete, the new road will allow cars from the far east of Thurston County to enter Olympia through the Lacey's Mullen Road , bypassing the downtown Olympia exits in the process. The suburban cars, without passing by the highway sign for the Urban Onion, will drive on what will be the county's most modern road straight into the heart of Olympia. The Lacey cars will cross the border in two lanes.

As incredible as this plan may seem to some readers, the first Trans-Lacey segment of the Olympia Lacey Super Highway is ready to begin construction next year. Various local government agencies, dozens of state agencies, and scores of private neighborhood and homeowner associations have been working behind the scenes to create the Olympia Lacey Super Highway, despite the lack of comment on the plan by President Bush. The Olympia public is largely asleep to this key piece of the coming “North Thurston County Union” that government planners in the new trilateral region of Olympia, Lacey and Tumwater are about to drive into reality.

In my months of reading Olympia city council packets every Friday, I had read of and heard rumors of this project. I had always scoffed at the myth. There was simply no way the maze of roads and suburban subdivisions in SE Olympia and Lacey could be straightened to make such a road possible.

But, after seeing the evidence slowly mount before my eyes, I can no longer but believe that such a monterous project is coming.

Russ Olsen was the one Lacey candidate that you could be interested in, because well, for a Lacey candidate, he was suprisingly good. If he were a Olympia candidate, he would have been down the same line as Rhenda Strub or Craig Ottevelli, but for Lacey, he was pretty left of center.

And, he almost won. Here are the precincts that went for him.

Aside from driving through Lacey on various routes every day, I don't know all that much about Lacey and why certain neighborhoods would have voted the way he did. But, a few thoughts.

1. SE Lacey was Russ country. Pricier homes along the lakes? Are these the neighborhoods less likely to be transient? There are also some brand new neighborhoods down there (not even showing up on Google maps yet), so maybe it was the transient vote.

2. Two old neighborhoods near the mall went for Russ. They're some older neighborhoods by Lacey standards.