By C.R. Roberts
The News Tribune

Only once a year – every year – Nancy LeMay opens the gates of her Parkland home to those who truly believe in Harold LeMay’s dream and who appreciate his obsession to collect.

The LeMay Museum is open year-around at the former Marymount Academy in Spanaway, and progress continues toward a newer, greater museum near downtown Tacoma.

Only one day in 365 can the public see the broadest extent of the late Harold LeMay’s collection.

The public came on Saturday, so many and so wet in the morning rain that volunteers opened the gates early.

Affectionately known as “the home,” the LeMay compound contains all manner of things related to a life long lost along the American road.

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For years, school officials have been lamenting the state's underfunding of transportation.

Without adequate funding from the state, they say, districts must devote more and more of their local levy dollars to get kids to school.

One of their loudest charges: the state doesn't reimburse districts for transporting students whose homes or daycares lie outside a one-mile radius from school. And instead of calculating the actual route mileage, the distance is measured as a direct line from school to home or daycare. Or, in the colloquial, "as the crow flies."

Actually, says Allan Jones with the state Superintendent of Public Instruction, the state does provide some money to bus kids within the one-mile radius. But not much.

Jones, director of pupil transportation, says the state gives districts some funding based on the total number of kids in kindergarten through through fifth grade within the one-mile radius.

The original intent was to help districts defray the cost of transporting youngsters who faced hazardous walking conditions, even though they lived close to school.

But it's a lower rate than what the state funds for students living outside the one-mile minimum. And the districts don't have to have hazardous walking conditions to get the money. They don't even have to use the money to transport kids within that radius.

Here's how Jones explains it, and the "crow flies" business in an e-mail to The News Tribune.

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Kevin Cavanagh with Pierce County Information Technology points out that the link we published in the printed paper for the weather tracker system left off one symbol.

The correct link is http://www.co.pierce.wa.us/PC/

If you can't bring it up, click here.

On the left side, it's titled "How hot is it?"

It's pretty cool. According to the site, "Eleven weather stations around the county record temperature, wind speed, relative humidity and more. Data is updated every 15 minutes."

My assignment today is to find spots that people are going to keep cool in the 100ish-degree heat. One of the most unconventional places is the ice rink at Sprinker Recreation Center in Spanaway.

I visited the cool spot about 11 a.m., when the center's competitive skaters were practicing their moves. It was one of the best ways to beat the heat that I've found this week.

The arena was a cool 65 degrees, which center officials say is hotter than usual. I didn't mind.

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Doris Jairala has been a faithful bus rider the past five years, taking the 53 route a few times a week to get to her housekeeping jobs.

Driving isn't an option for the 62-year-old University Place resident. She suffers from seizures and isn't allowed to get behind the wheel.

(To the left: Doris Jairala, of University Place, rides the Number 53 bus to her job as a housekeeper last month. The route will be eliminated in July as Pierce Transit reduces less-used routes such as hers. Joe Barrentine/The News Tribune)

So that means for her job, she hops on the bus to Lakewood, Steilacoom, UP and any other community in which her work takes her.

But she will be one of the thousands of riders who will have to find a new bus beginning July 12. Pierce Transit, squeezed by the economic downturn, opted to eliminate or reduce service on routes throughout the county that don't have a high ridership.

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Tacoma Public Utilities will be disposing of nine lots it no longer needs for substations.

According to state law and the city charter, they have to be sold if they're no longer playing the electricity game. The question is, should they be sold to private parties, or to a government agency that will preserve them as public lands.

Morgan Alexander has been harnessing the power of the gardening community to preserve some of the suitable lots as pocket parks or community gardens.

Who knows? Some of them might work as solar demonstration projects, combining solar panels with rows of beets and peas. If the panels feed into the grid, that might make it possible to preserve them as TPU property, and uncomplicate the process?

Alexander is making progress. Already, he is on the agenda for the Metro Parks Board meeting Monday, March 9 at 6pm, Metro headquarters: 4702 S 19th St.

Here's the list of surplus properties:

Adams, 1920 Adams St. N.

Centennial, 543 N. Stadium Way.

Downing, 1801 N. Orchard St.

Fairmont, 4924 N. 31st St.

Junett, 3008 N. 16th St.

Ruston, 5001 N. Visscher St.

Parkland, 101 127th St. E.

Warner, 3404 S. 45th St.

Lincoln Park, 1009 South 35th Street.

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:

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.

Safe Streets is hosting a meth forum this week at Pacific Lutheran University. A release promises "in-depth discussion on meth trends including drug trafficking, meth-related crime, and teen use," and it sounds a chance to get all your meth-related questions answered.

(And if you can't make it, watch a few episodes of A&E's "Intervention." Spooky.)

WHAT: Meth Forum
WHERE: Xavier Hall, 12108 C Street South, Tacoma
WHEN: 6-8 p.m. Thursday

Photographer Peter Haley compiled an audio slideshow to go with Soren Anderson's piece about the 40-foot instrument Parkland's Paul Fritts is building.

If you haven't checked it out yet, it's definitely worth your time.

Dana Resop cried after her Air Force JROTC team completed its exhibition drill performance at the national competition.

They weren’t tears of joy.

“I thought we did so bad,” said Resop, the squadron commander at Washington High School in Parkland. “I walked off the floor and started crying. I tried not to cry on the floor.”

The judges apparently disagreed. Washington finished first in the exhibition drill category at the Daytona Beach, Fla., competition on May 2. It was the school’s first top placement since it started its JROTC program in 1978. The school’s reward: a 4-foot-tall trophy adorned with eagles and plenty of pride for program’s cadets, most of whom have been in the program since their freshman year.

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Fourteen years have passed, but Carl Wilkens still remembers the sound of the crashing airplane that sparked the killing. He remembers the bands of Hutu militiamen roaming the streets of his neighborhood. He remembers the apprehension and tension he felt while driving through the streets of Rwanda’s capital during the 1994 genocide.

He wants to ensure no one forgets.

Wilkens, the only American to remain in the central African nation during the violence that led to almost 1 million deaths of Tutsis and moderate Hutus, is speaking Friday morning to students at Charles Wright Academy in University Place. Wilkens also will deliver a speech next Friday night at Pacific Lutheran University in Parkland. The latter is free and open to the public.

He first arrived in Rwanda with his wife and two children in 1990 to build schools and health centers for the Adventist Relief Development Agency. Six months later, a civil war between the government and the Rwandan Patriotic Front erupted, and Wilkens subsequently began working with internally displaced refugees.

“When the war ended with the ceasefire three years later, we were so optimistic with the prospect of a broad-based government,” Wilkens said last week on a cell phone from Memphis. “But then it was delayed and delayed and delayed.”

The optimism shattered the night of April 6, 1994. The airplane carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and Burindian President Cyprien Ntaryamira was shot down outside of the airport in Kigali as they returned from a round of peace talks in neighboring Tanzania.

The slaughter began within hours.

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