Kim Varian of Paranormal Washington has agreed to share a little of what she found Monday night at The Pantages Theater.

In reviewing the voice recorders set up in the darkened theater she said she found “audio clips of the same female voice that was speaking in a language I believe is Italian. The voice is heard at two different times in the evening in the same location.”

She forwarded to The News Tribune a clip of the recording of the woman’s voice. (Paranormal Washington retains full copyright for use of the audio clip.)

On the clip, Varian is heard saying “that’s interesting” and then a female voice apparently singing something that sounds like “Mia Mi” can be heard.

=> Read more!

Maurice Akins, Dion Ames and their families are loyal customers at the Hilltop’s Safeway at 1112 South M Street.

They like and admire the people who work hard to keep the store clean and orderly, and the atmosphere friendly.

Their issue is with the building. It’s old. It’s drab. And it’s too small to offer the services Safeway customers in every other quarter of Tacoma enjoy. It has no bakery, no deli, no coffee bar, no China Express. Its meat and produce departments are smaller than in other stores.

That’s why they were picketing the store this morning.

Ames’ sign read “If this store was a child, I’d have to call CPS.”

Akins carried one that read “Safeway Shape Up Or Ship Out.”

=> Read more!

The Pantages Theater got a good going over Monday night by a team from Paranormal Washington but they report no apparitions, including the lady in the balcony.
That was word this morning from Kim Varian, a team member who spent the night in the performing arts center in downtown Tacoma.

”I would love to tell you that we saw an apparition ourselves but the truth is we did not,” she said in an e-mail. The spotting last week of an apparition of a lady in the balcony late at night by a theater staffer brought the team to the theater.

Though it was “mostly uneventful as for personal experience,” Varian said several investigators “felt as though someone was sitting next to them or following them.”
A full report or what they call a "reveal" won’t be available until the team reviews 40 hours of recorded video gathered by six cameras during the seven-hour investigation, she said.

=> Read more!

Abbi Wonacott used to ride the school bus past the Mashel River near Eatonville and as a young girl heard the story of a group of men from Oregon who came up and killed Indian women and children by the river in the Spring of 1856.

What was known as the Mashel Massacre was public knowledge but details were vague, she said.

“We didn’t know why it happened or who they were,” the 44-year-old Bethel Junior High teacher said.

Until the Spring of 2007.

Wonacott and her ninth grade class of highly capable students took on the Mashel Massacre as a history research project. They delved into histories, libraries and original documents. They consulted historians, including Cecelia Carpenter, author and Nisqually tribal historian. They visited the site of the massacre.

Little was know and what was printed wasn’t accurate, Wonacott said, but the class finally solved the mystery of that terrible day in local history.

The result is “Where the Mashel Meets the Nisqually: The Mashel Massacre of 1856,” a 40-page paperback complete with maps and photographs.

Wonacott will join other local authors Saturday at the Meeker Mansion in Puyallup for the Third Annual Author’s Expo. Some of her students who helped in the research and editing of the book will be there with her from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. to sign books and talk about their research. The book costs $10.

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It’s Halloween Week and what better way to celebrate than a ghost hunt.

That’s what Paranormal Washington will be doing tonight from 9 p.m. to 4 a.m. at the Pantages Theater in downtown Tacoma.

A night-time caretaker at the theater told the group he saw the apparition of a woman up in the balcony last week. He invited the team to check it out.

Along with their curiosity they are bringing technology to record what, if anything, they find.

The team will be haunting tonight with infra-red cameras, audio recorders and a KII Meter for possible communication with any spirits living there, according to Kim Varian of Port Orchard, one of the group’s investigators.

By day she works at Point Defiance Zoo. By night, she looks for spirits.

Varian said the TV reality show "Ghost Hunters" got her interested in the subject nine months ago. She admits to being somewhat skeptical about the spirit world but wanted to find out for herself.

“I’m still on the maybe side,” she said. “I think eventually I will believe. If something knocks me down I will believe.”

Besides the cameras, she said they will set up an electro-magnetic detector since spirits are known to have detectable electromagnetic fields.

Varian said they will also have the newest tool in paranormal investigation: the KII Electromagnetic Field Detector. It supposedly allows one to talk to ghosts in real time.

Here’s how it works, according to Varian.

=> Read more!

While most area farmer’s markets are closed already or are shutting down after this weekend, the Proctor Farmers’ Market is extending its season into November.

For the first time in its 15 years, the market will continue to operate through Nov. 22, according to co-market manager Jessica Troy. The decision to extend was made a while ago but she wanted to make sure the word got out. “We’ve talked about it for years,” she said but finally vendors, customers and supporters decided it was time.

Along with vegetables, fruit and flowers, Troy said they have a few new vendors offering goat cheese, fresh homemade pasta, fresh tamales, local honey and even some potted evergreen trees that could be Christmas trees.

A Lopez Island farmer with ties to Tacoma will offer grass-fed meat, she said.

The market is located in the Proctor District on North 27th Street between Proctor and Madison streets. It is open from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturdays.

We had a news item earlier about the parking and traffic problems from Saturday's Celine Dion concert at the Tacoma Dome.

Here's a first-hand report sent in by reader Len Barrett:

The Celine Dion concert on Saturday night was a reminder that Tacoma is not quite ready for prime time. It has been known for months that this concert was coming. Yet the lack of adequate parking, inefficient traffic control and incompetent dome staff made for a most unsatisfactory experience.

We arrived at 23rd and Pacific at about 7:15 PM after a wait of about 25 minutes to get to that point. As we got closer to the dome, the police directed us further away from the dome, specifically down the hill on D street to Puyallup Avenue.

As long distance walking is not feasible for this writer and handicap parking was apparently not available my passengers jumped out and walked to the dome while I drove around trying to find parking that might work.

It did not happen. I stayed with the car and parked on D Street near Johnny’s Dock restaurant and waited for friends and family to come out of the concert.

When we met after the concert, they told me how three different Dome staff members had directed them in three different directions to get to their seats. As they approached the dome, a staff member standing on the sidewalk directed them to the upper level ramp. When they got to the door, staff directed them to the lower level. When they got to the door at the lower level, they were redirected back to the upper level.

It would appear that Tacoma at many different levels is not ready to handle large crowds who want to attend events at the Dome. I can tell you that it will be a very long time, if ever, that this family ever buys a ticket to attend any event at the dome.

FRIDAY UPDATE: We just received a response back from city public assembly facilities director Mike Combs, with an explanation and some suggestions for future events.

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A tip from a reader sent me off late Tuesday afternoon to Point Defiance Park’s Five Mile Drive in search of a kitty.

This was no ordinary feline but one apparently living with a family of raccoons, according to the caller. A gray kitten, she said. Very cute.

I didn’t think cats and raccoons got along. Such an anomaly of nature seemed worthy of investigation, a photograph at least. It had national news written all over it, as one newsroom wag said.

The caller even had a general location for the kitty: it often can be seen on Five Mile Drive between mile markers 1 and 2 around 5:30 p.m.

I first called Metro Parks and the Point Defiance Zoo to find out if they had reports of the gray kitten among the park’s large population of beggar raccoons. No reports, they said with a laugh. And while such a co-mingling seemed very rare to them, they supposed it possible.

=> Read more!

This morning I went for a bike ride with members of the City Council, Tacoma Pierce Chamber of Commerce, City of Tacoma Public Works Department and the Tacoma Wheelman’s Bicycle Club (including “recovering journalist” Dave Seago).

Small groups of a half dozen people started out in one of three locations from around the city: McKinley Ave. and S. 56th streets, Top Foods and the Metropolitan Market.

I left my house to meet my group at 7:35 a.m. with a sense of dread and a flat tire.

My group consisted of council member Julie Anderson, whose mountain bike also had a flat tire, Seago, David Boe, Rob McNair-Huff, a community liaison for the city, Jessica Holden, who works at the Chamber and brought me a helmet, and a handful of other wheel -men and -women.

What was the point? For the people making the decisions to get firsthand understanding of what it's like to be a cyclist. The group commute was followed by a meeting in City Hall, where the group of about 30 talked about surprises, problems, questions and possible next steps.

The commute was lovely: The sun was shining, I'm sure birds were chirping, the views on our trip were gorgeous and, except for a brush with an elementary school at drop-off time, the traffic wasn't so bad.

The problem: When we got to City Hall, there was no place to put our bikes. City buildings don't have bike racks out front, so we stowed the bikes inside the building.

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Larry Robinson was among the first to arrive at the Tacoma Dome early this morning for the day-long Project Homeless Connect.

The second annual event is expected to draw more than 750 of Tacoma and Pierce County’s homeless in search of everything from medical care and housing to haircuts and jobs.

“I’m hoping to work with housing services,” Robinson said. The 50-year-old Tacoma man wore a sweatshirt with the hood over his head against the cold. It was only 7:30 a.m. and the doors to the event wouldn’t open until around 9 a.m.

=> Read more!

From reporter Mike Archbold:

I’m heading for the "Republic of Parkland" this afternoon to get a taste of what it would be like not to have our First Amendment freedoms.

A portion of the Pacific Lutheran University campus called Red Square will be roped off from the 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. during the second annual Free Food Festival.

Anyone who wants a free lunch of pizza can get a passport to the Republic of Parkland and eat their fill.

The catch is to get the passport, visitors must sign away their First Amendment rights – freedom of speech, assembly, petition and religion. Enforcers will be on hand to make sure the visitors follow all the rules and obey the authorities. Breaking the rules or failing to obey a command from an enforcer will lead to immediate expulsion.

Funding comes from the Western Washington Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, the Washington News Council and the Washington Journalism Education Association. Costumed actors from PLU’s Theater Club will portray protesters and enforcers.

“We look forward to giving the community a shock about how our First Amendment rights are taken for granted,” campus SPJ President Nate Hulings said, announcing the second annual event. “Americans don’t think about their rights until they feel them slipping away. We’re going to show them what it feels like to have them completely gone.”

The public is invited to participate.

Check out our video from last year:

In Saturday's column I railed against the corporate CEOs, CFOs and directors who have taken millions in salaries and bonuses, not to mention extravagant perks, as they steered the businesses toward disaster.

Readers had plenty to say. Here's a sampling of their e-mails:

Thank you so much for your article! Finally, the confusion, disbelief, and anger that is giving most of us deep hurt in our guts has made it to print. I only wish that it had been the page one headline as well as the lead editorial. The people are really weary of all the hype and sensationalized headlines and accounts of this crass fiasco. I personally feel though, that the members of Congress, much more so than even the CEO's, are the ones, regardless of the administrations' party, that are the real culprits. Integrity and responsibility has yet to be a consideration to any of them. Until we all take a much more pro-active effort to make our elected representatives transparent and responsible, the government we get is to a large extent of our own making and the status quo is most likely to continue.
We enjoy your columns very much; keep up the good work.

Gene Beavin
Gig Harbor

P.S. If you haven't already read it, you may perhaps enjoy Peggy Noonan's "frisbee" article in yesterday's WSJ.

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Tammy Fitting entered the courtroom promptly at 8:30 a.m. Before the immigration judge sat down, she looked around the windowless room inside the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma.

There wasn’t much to see. It was a standard Monday master calendar hearing last month. Eighteen detainees filled half the seats. Across the aisle, the pews were bare – except for Colleen Waterhouse.

Waterhouse, the chairwoman of the American Civil Liberties Union of Tacoma and Pierce County, has sat in the same spot in the back corner most Mondays over the past three years. She listens, takes notes and fills out stacks of surveys for the National Lawyers Guild’s court watch program.

The forms ask dozens of questions to ensure the judge and Immigration and Customs Enforcement lawyer are providing due process: Has the judge inquired into the detainees’ mental health? Does the government lawyer provide legal advice? Does someone adequately explain the process to the detainees?

“We always try to make sure we have someone here,” she said. “We make sure to keep an eye on what’s going on.”

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More than 1,000 people participated in a three-mile walk through Tacoma's Stadium District on Saturday to raise funds for breast cancer research and awareness programs. The event raised about $90,000 said Liz Lamb-Ferro, a spokeswoman with the American Cancer Society.

The walk was followed by a celebration at Stadium High School, including a performance from country music group Nathan Chance, which helped raise funds and donated half of its CD sales to the event

Sixty percent of the funds raised will go toward early detection and awareness programs, Lamb-Ferro said, with a particular emphasis on providing mammograms to uninsured and underinsured women. The other 40 percent is earmarked for breast-cancer research.

The orchard is just past the Roy, up a hill, past a graveyard and behind a group of five new homes sitting on a cul-de-sac.

For 10 young professionals from Seattle, it was the perfect place to spend a Saturday.

“The weather is great, I’m with friends and, most of all, we’re helping people,” said Thomas Buford, a 29-year-old attorney for the Department of Justice.

The group spent much of the day among the 3-year-old apple and prune trees. They donned canvas bibs with giant pockets, filled them with dozens of apples and transported them to cardboard boxes. The fruit is destined for the Emergency Food Network, which will distribute them this week to area charities.

“I want to make a positive impact. That’s why I’m here,” said 28-year-old Greg Chiarella, part of the group from a nonprofit called Seattle Works that helps link men and women in their 20s and 30s with various charity efforts. The group meets one Saturday each month for a different task; previous assignments include sorting donations at Goodwill and cleaning a homeless shelter.

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Want to be one of the first people to check out Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium's newest exhibit, Animal Avenue?

Time to get the brain crankin'.

The zoo is hosting a frog haiku contest. Winners will be selected in each age category (I'm going for "adult published writer," hoping that my coworkers won't read this and enter). Each winner can bring a guest for a behind-the-scenes tour of Animal Avenue. The runner-up gets two free tickets to the zoo or Northwest Trek.

The rules are here.

Here's my best shot. (OK, it was actually the first thing to sprang to mind.) You can clearly do better:

Kermit: A good frog?
No. Kermit is a great frog
He taught me to spell

Students from Stadium High School's Darfur Action Club are staging a "displacement camp" at Washington-Hoyt Elementary School overnight tonight. They'll sleep in cardboard boxes and have minimal food and water, to simulate conditions in a Sudanese refugee camp. Group organizer Luke Kneeshaw said he expects 50 to 70 students. The point, he says is to raise awareness and educate about the genocide happening in Darfur.

Tacoma Police Department’s Tow Day program is winning fans, both individual and civic.

For Tow Day, officers take printed lists of common parking infractions and head for blocks plagued by abandoned cars and illegal parkers. Officers mark the rules the vehicles are breaking, stick the notices on windshields and come back a week later. Any vehicle still in violation earns a trip on a tow truck, at the owner’s expense.

In Tacoma, the first sweep got 35 cars off the street and planting strips. Word spread to the next Tow Day target blocks, where all but three or four vehicles made it into compliance with the law.

Now we hear that Auburn City Councilwoman Virginia Haugen loves the idea. She intends to share our column on it with other council members. She’d like Auburn to replicate the program, which, as Tacoma officers point out, involves no new laws, just enforcement of existing ones.

We’ve heard, as well, from residents in Puyallup and unincorporated Pierce County who have problems with abandoned vehicles and scofflaw parkers. In Puyallup, Laurie Lowery in code enforcement is the person to call for help at (253) 770-3327. In unincorporated parts of the county, contact Pierce County Responds, (253) 798-4636, about junk vehicles.

By MIKE ARCHBOLD
mike.archbold@thenewstribune.com

A state Liquor Control Board inspector made a second sweep today through a number of grocery stores in the new Alcohol Impact Area on Tacoma’s East Side and South End looking for illegal fortified alcohol wine and beer.

None of the 20 stores visited were found selling any of the 44 beverages banned in the week-old Alcohol Impact Area. Inspectors did find some of the products the storerooms of 13 stores and warned store owners to get rid of them immediately because even having them on the premises is illegal. Signs advertising the fortified beverages also must come down.

The AIA became effective Oct. 1 after a nearly 2 1/2 year effort by neighborhood groups to get it approved by the City of Tacoma and the state Liquor Control Board. It is the second such zone in the city that is aimed at reducing chronic public inebriation and its effects on neighborhoods.

“I’m not giving them the benefit of the doubt,” said State Liquor Control
Board enforcement officer L. J. Sawyers as he left the Tacoma Police Zone 4 Station on McKinley Avenue about 11 a.m. for the store checks. “If they are selling product, they’re going to get a ticket. There is no excuse.”

=> Read more!

Stop!

Drop!

Roll!

We’re in the middle of Fire Prevention Week, an excellent time to go over the strategies that can help you avoid, or survive, a fire.

Tacoma and Fircrest residents can get those messages from the professionals, and in a festive fire station from 1 to 4 p.m. Saturday.

Firefighters will host open houses at six stations, sharing information on how to prevent home fires, set up and practice an escape plan and get prepared for a disaster. They’ll show off their life-saving equipment, and they’ll have plenty of info to take home.

And there will be snacks. Perfect!

The six open stations will be:

• Station 3, 206 Browns Point Blvd. in Northeast Tacoma.

• Station 4, 1453 S. 12th St., on Hilltop.

• Station 11, 3802 McKinley Ave., on McKinley Hill.

• Station 13, 3825 N. 25th St., in the Proctor District.

• Station 16, 7217 6th Ave., Skyline in the West End.

• Station 17, 302 Regents Blvd., in Fircrest.

Got a question? Call the Tacoma Fire Department Fire Prevention Bureau at (253) 591-5740.

Now for the quiz:

How many active fire stations does Tacoma have, not counting fire boat stations, offices and dispatch centers?

Of those, how many are on the National Register of Historic Places?

How many of the stations that will be open Saturday are on that list?

Which ones?

Leave your answer in the comments section of the blog. The first person to blog with all the right answers can pick up a snappy News Tribune travel mug at our front desk, under the Chihuly at 1950 S. State St.

(Disaster preparedness tip: In the event of an earthquake, do not stand under the Chihuly.)

Submitted by reader Jay, who snapped this in downtown Tacoma:

My beloved 1996 minivan was never meant to climb the Fairbanks Street hill up from Portland Avenue twice in one day.

You know the hill. It needs a sherpa service. It causes reliable transmissions to wince in pain and strain.

I’m blaming it for the Unfortunate Incident that unfolded as I drove back from touring the First Creek Neighborhood with Lena and Guy Thompson.

The van and I were two blocks from The News Tribune when an awful clatter arose from the undercarriage. Smoke billowed from under the hood. We slammed to a stop. The smoke got alarming. Worried that the car was about to catch fire, I dialled 911. The response was swift, and on the humiliating side: By the time Engine 4 arrived, the smoke had died down.

Turns out, the transmission had not merely f ailed. It had exploded. Shards of metal were everywhere, and a rivulet of slippery transmission fluid was snaking toward the Sprague Avenue overpass. The cordial, yet professional, firefighters commiserated, sprinkled anti-skid dust on the fluid and suggested that we not leave the vehicle there. Cars whizzing by could have creamed it.

They could have, but they didn’t whiz by.

Two young men pulled over to push the van into a less hazardous location. I didn’t know them. They didn’t know me.

“When I come by and see a problem, I’m going to stop and help,” said Robert Boddie, first on the spot. “When I helped, other people started helping.”

He’s right.

Leon Murray of Summit was out of his car and pushing without ever saying a word.

All of us working together did better than get the van off to the side of the road. We shoved it to The News Tribune’s garage.

I couldn’t thank Murray and Boddie enough. They kept saying it was nothing. Anyone would have done it.

They’re modest in their goodness. Lots of people would not have stopped to help. But in the Tacoma that people like Robert and Leon have helped shape, more and more people are stepping up and pitching in. Boddie and Murray are local heroes, setting the example for the rest of us.

Thanks, gentlemen, from all of us who love living in a community where kindness and grace are the emerging norm.

I swear I could see the sign from Highway 512. It called to me, like a beacon through a dense fog.

Biergarten.

Welcome to Oktoberfest at the Puyallup Fair.

I didn’t imbibe – hey, I’m on company time – but managed to dig into a bratwurst ($7) from Mount Angel Sausage Company. My first impression was that it just seemed heavy for such a food. And it was mighty tasty. It had spices but didn’t knock you over the head with them.

And I needed something to wash it down with, so I went to the Root Beer Garden. (Cute name, eh?) For $3.50, I got a souvenir stein full of the tasty stuff.

Speaking of stuff, I’m stuffed after all of this.

Let’s be honest: Most people come for the beer. After 7 p.m., Oktoberfest at the Puyallup Fair becomes a 21-and-over event. Even in mid-afternoon, the liquid ambrosia flowed freely.

That’s what attracted Mike Budd. He just got off work in Sumner and made a beeline for the fairgrounds.

“Hey, I like beer,” he said. “And this is a pretty cool place to have a few.”

Indeed it was. German music filled the room, prompting several people to dance. A woman swayed on a swing attached to the rafters. And food booths served up sizzling sausages.

“There’s something about an Oktoberfest celebration,” Tacoma’s Keith Henderson, “that makes me just want to come and have a good time.”

Oktoberfest Northwest continues through Sunday at the Puyallup fairgrounds.

Hours: tonight until midnight; Saturday- 11 a.m.-Midnight; Sunday-11 a.m. -7 p.m.

Admission: $8. Children 12 and under free with adult. (Half price on Sunday.)

More info.

Really, is there any doubt what drew these two to Scandinavian Days at the Puyallup Fair?

One’s name is Skjaldvor Guo. The other is from Sigrid Straatveit. They’re both from Olympia.

“We’re Scandinavian, so we just had to come!” Guo said.

The two, both from Finnish and Norwegian heritage, spent about three hours at the celebration. Inside the hall at the fairgrounds, hundreds of people lined up for Swedish meatballs and lingonberry sauce. They roamed through booths that offered T-shirts, hats, arts and crafts and clocks for sale. Exhibits described the Scandinavian history of the region.

Jamie Shilley brought her 11-month-old daughter, Violet, to the celebration. The 33-year-old Tacoma woman is part of a mothers’ group that organizes day trips.

She was waiting for the Viking meal – a plate crammed with meatballs, potatoes and vegetables. She also spent some time at Oktoberfest, just across the street.

“I’m really looking forward to the food,” she said. “And I’ve already looked at some of the booths. There’s just a lot of neat stuff here.”

OK, I’ll admit I’ve never been to the Nordic countries. A trip to Amsterdam – a mere 387 miles from Copenhagen – is as close as I’ve received. But I got the feel of Scandinavia: Words were written with with plenty of Js and Vs and Os with lines through them, and bunch of similarly designed but differently colored flags surrounded me. (Didn’t see any guys sporting a golden helmet with horns, though.)

And if this is how they eat in northern Europe, then they’ve got it good.

I started with the Swedish meatball plate with lingonberry preserves ($5). Some folks put sauce on meatballs that’s so thick it’s like glue, but this stuff was just right.

I finished with some Scandinavian pancakes ($4) – two crepe-style pancakes filled with strawberry preserves and whipped cream and topped with powdered sugar. As Southern belles like to exclaim, “Good Lawd.” This was pure deliciousness on a plate (even if they could’ve used a bit more strawberry).

And because they’re just called Scandinavian pancakes, you can use your imagination about what country they’re from. I pretended I was eating Icelandic dessert.

Zelma Zalit has been driving from Federal Way the past eight years to attend the Greek Festival at St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church in Tacoma.

“I’m here for the cheeses, the pastries, all of it,” the retiree said. “It’s just all so good.”

She also enjoys the celebration of other cultures, she said as she ate a gyro and listened to Greek music.

“It’s the ambiance of a different culture,” she said. “That’s what keeps me coming back.”

Meanwhile, patrolling the booths of the tent like a seasoned beat cop was none other than Pierce County Sheriff Paul Pastor.

“The gyros were very good, the souvlakis was wonderfully marinated and had just the right amount of oregano, and the calamari was excellent,” he said. “And that doesn’t begin to talk about the pastries.”

Give him credit: Dude knows his Greek food.

There are two places to grab a bite at Tacoma’s Greek Festival: Inside the church itself, where you can purchase by the plate, or outside under a large tent, where the food comes a la carte.

I opted for outside.

First stop was the table selling gyros ($5). I got mine without tomatoes (just don’t like them that much). The meat was tender but not overly greasy. The sauce was tangy but not salty. And the whole thing was gone in about three minutes.

The Greek fries were tasty and a good deal for $3. They’re Greek instead of French fries because, as the guy serving them told me, “they’ve got Greek seasoning on ‘em.” Oregano? I dunno; I ain’t the food critic. But one topping I did recognize was feta cheese. I never thought it would go well with French, err, Greek fries, but I was pleasantly surprised.

And I finished things off with baklava ($2). My biggest complaint about the stuff is that usually it falls apart into about a thousand crumbs after the first bite. This stuff, though, kept together but still managed to be flaky. I was tempted to purchase an entire tray of 12 pieces for $12, but my editors wouldn’t be to happy if I tried to expense my gym membership.

The festival continues all weekend at St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, 1523 South Yakima Ave.

Hours: tonight until 10 p.m.; Saturday: 11 a.m.-10 p.m.; Sunday: 11 a.m. -7 p.m.

Admission: Free

More info.

Starting next week, I’ll have a new beat at the paper. I’ll cover the military, primarily Fort Lewis and McChord Air Force Base. It’s an interim assignment while we figure out who’s gonna cover what at our paper.

Reporter Mike Archbold is shifting gears to blog here and write the kinds of stories that I’ve worked on the past year. Columnist Kathleen Merryman will still post here as well. And I’ll still occasionally contribute to Word on the Street if I see something good (or at least until the higher-ups wise up and pull my access).

The switch starts Monday. So if you’ve got any good story ideas, shoot an e-mail to Mike. And check out my new home on the Web, FOB Tacoma.

I’m heading to the Greek Festival at St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church in Tacoma today. It's my job to eat the goodies and write about it. Mmm... expense account.

A bald eagle which has been at Northwest Trek Wildlife Park since 1976 died Thursday, the park announced.

Park zoologists believe the bird was 35 years old. A bald eagle can live up to 40 years in the wild and longer in captivity, according to the American Eagle Foundation.

The eagle first arrived at Northwest Trek with a gunshot injury. He recovered at the Eatonville-area park but couldn’t be released into the wild because of the injuries.
A necropsy to determine cause of death hasn’t been completed.

He was the park’s oldest animal. That title now belongs to one of the two male golden eagles, who was born in 1974.

Gray clouds blanketed the sky and pelted the campus of the University of Puget Sound with rain. The grass of Todd Field was totally saturated.

Sounds like a perfect time and place to dig through the garbage.

James Vance, a facilities services manager, picked through eight large bags full of trash from one of the Tacoma school’s residence halls Thursday morning. He stood over a blue tarp and separated all the refuse into two piles – the kind that’s recyclable but wound up in the regular trash can and the kind that is destined for the landfill.

“We’re trying to bring attention to what can be recycled,” he said. “I mean, there’s almost always a recycle bin right next to the trash can. Just throw it in there. Make that choice.”

The "garbology" event is part of UPS' Live Green Challenge, in which the entire student body is being asked to focus on sustainability. Vance will be back at Todd Field again at the end of the month with garbage bags from the same residence hall. Organizers hope to find fewer recyclables.

=> Read more!

Worker retraining enrollment at Tacoma Community College is up more than 20 percent from last year’s numbers. I decided to drop by the campus and talk to a few students about why they’re attending classes.

Glenda Smith-Stewart was a student at TCC in 1973 but left when he was presented with an opportunity to pursue her dream – to sing lead vocals for a seven-piece traveling band.

For the next eight years, she traveled the country seeing rhythm and blues and country music. She eventually returned to Tacoma and worked at a doctor’s office as a receptionist and referral coordinator – until last year, when she was laid off.

And now, at 54, she’s back at TCC to earn her associate degree in accounting.

“When I worked at the office, everything was structured,” she said Wednesday. “We just used specialized software. When I stopped working there, I needed to brush up on my technology. I felt like I was in the Dark Ages.”

=> Read more!

I'm at the University of Puget Sound this morning to write about garbology. Facilities service crews and sustainability committee members will go through garbage cans outside the school's residence halls and see how much recyclable stuff they find in the garbage. Should be fun.

Later today, I plan on swinging by Pierce College's Puyallup campus to continue my reporting about increased higher-ed enrollment.

The area around T-Street Gulch has been one of the tiredest neighborhoods in Tacoma for some time. It has one of the most extensive collections of abandoned vehicles in the city, not to mention swaths of weedy overgrowth.

Now, energized by the city’s Clean & Safe projects and a few remarkable activists, it’s rebranding itself.

It’s First Creek now, and it’s organizing.

Since July, First Creek neighbors have held three meetings, set up partnerships with police and building inspectors, and helped bust three meth and drug sites.

Meetings have grown from the initial 10 people to 60 and 80 residents eager to take back their streets, and yards, and woods.

Their fourth meeting is tonight, Wednesday. Oct. 1, at 6:30 p.m. at Portland Avenue Community Center, 3513 Portland Ave. City and Puyallup Tribal police will be there, along with building inspectors and a box of free energy-saving light bulbs compliments of Tacoma Power.

The economy is driving more people to campuses around the area. So what’s the situation at three local colleges?

All up.

UW Tacoma grew by about 350 students this year and will have about 3,000 people enrolled, its highest ever. Most students enter as juniors after transferring from community colleges, but UWT has a freshman class of more than 220 students.

At Pierce College, more than 11,351 students fill its Fort Steilacoom and Puyallup campuses as well as its other programs, like online learning. That’s up almost 1,400 from last year.

At Tacoma Community College, enrollment has reached 7,309 – an increase of 2.67 percent. But certain areas are seeing a boom, like worker retraining (up 20.87 percent) and adult basic education (up 22.45 percent for state-funded programs).

Today I'm going to begin reporting for a story about the boom in college enrollment during the economic downtown. Most of the local institutions have reported double-digit growth.

I'll put the question out there: Have you returned to college recently? If so, shoot me an e-mail.