My RSS feeder just kicked up this story: Jack van Ommen, a Gig Harbor resident and Vietnam veteran, returned to the southeastern Asian country aboard his 30-foot boat.

School is back in session tomorrow at Mont Downing Elementary School in Tacoma’s North End, and families dropping their kids off will notice something new: a traffic light has been installed at North 26th Street and Orchard.

The light has split neighbors. Some have wanted it for a while. Others worry the increased speed – it was previously a four-way stop – will create potential danger to the schoolchildren.

“I wasn’t necessarily for it or against it, but I was surprised that they would put one in near the school,” said Susan Goerger, the school’s principal. “It seems to me it’s safer and easier for kids when everyone’s always stopping at the intersection. Now I’m worried people are going to run the light or make a left turn without stopping first and they won’t see the kids.

“I just see it as a danger to the children more so than a convenience for traffic.”

Teachers have talked to their students about it, crossing guards have received more training and the school has contacted families about the light.

“My biggest worry is the safety of the kids,” she said.

Emmy Trotter, who lived across the street from the school, said traffic has improved since the light was installed.

“I love it because it keeps better control of the traffic in the neighborhood,” she said. “My husband requested a light for this intersection 30 years ago.”

I drive South 56th Street more than a Seattle short-haul trucker plies Interstate 5. I’m also a big fan of Mexican restaurants and frequent Taqueria El Antojo on McKinley Hill. So when I was making one of my daily trips from my place in the South End to the fiancée’s place in University Place, I noticed that Taqueria El Antojo was opening a South Tacoma restaurant.

I was pumped.

I also noticed that the property fenced off was mighty small for a restaurant, but I didn’t think much of it. Soon a shed took up about a fifth of the property. A few weeks later, the sign said it was now open, but there was no restaurant in sight.

The next morning, I saw it. A taco truck.

Except it’s not just a taco truck. It’s more than that. It takes credit cards (a rarity in the industry) and the shed has a few tables and chairs so you can sit and your meal. They drive it away at night and return in the morning.

I don’t know what to call it: A super taco truck? A taco truck plus? A mobile restaurant?

Either way, I felt like Thomas Watson, Alexander Graham Bell’s assistant. I didn’t invent the new technology, but I felt like I was steeped in what Thomas Kuhn calls revolutionary science – right on the verge of a paradigm shift.

So to you, Taqueria El Antojo, I can do nothing but applaud. And order a quesadilla.

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What's controversial about this intersection at North 26th Street and Orchard in Tacoma? Stay tuned...

I ran across this story on Bill Simpson, the mayor-elect of Aberdeen who grew up in Tacoma and was in one of Wilson High School’s first graduating classes.

Dear Portland:

You’re a great city. Powell’s Books enticed me to spend way too much. The folks at McMenamins seem to have a good idea of how to help people have a good time. The urban core of your city is thriving. There’s no sales tax. Your residents seemed to foster a thriving inferiority complex when visitors compared it to Seattle, but that made you all the more charming. And there are plenty of microbreweries. Can’t complain about that.

But, fine city, I have two issues I must raise, both related to the pedestrian-friendly nature of the Pearl District – and it’s nothing that a few public-service announcements couldn’t help solve. To start, your residents need to remember that a non-blinking orange character on the walk/don’t walk signs mean that folks shouldn’t attempt to cross the street. There’s traffic zooming by, and someone’s gonna get hit. I might not be an expert on the history of pedestrian-crossing signs, but I believe an aim of such signs were to tell people when they should and shouldn’t cross. Yet many Pearl Districters apparently can’t decipher such difficult hieroglyphics.

The second issue (and again, nothing a few PSAs couldn't help) is that many of these same pedestrians who walk when instructed not to have apparently forgotten the age-old rule of looking both ways before crossing the street. I don’t mind the occasional jaywalk, but the pedestrians who don’t look either way before walking into cross traffic, well, it makes me believe Darwin's theories apply to yuppies.

Again, Portland, you are a great city. But do me a favor: Please remind your residents not to cross the street when there’s traffic zipping by and to remember other simple rules from their childhood.

Sincerely,

Fontaine

I'm back from a four-day weekend. That got me thinking: If I could somehow maintain my current salary and job yet somehow get a four-day weekend every week, that'd be preferable to this five-day-a-week thing. Don't get me wrong: I have so much fun reporting that it's tough to actually consider it work, but it's tough to go wrong with a four-day weekend.

If everything goes as scheduled, I'll bring a sneak peek at a story I'm working on about deep-brain stimulation, a relatively new surgery technique that has improved the lives of quite a few local residents with Parkinson's disease.

I'm also going to try to set up a ridealong with a Tacoma man who travels down to Centralia and Chehalis, finds flooded-out tractors, hauls them back here, repairs them and returns them. All for free.