Thurston County NOW is sponsoring an Oly City Council candidate forum on the 23rd from 2-4 at the Nonna Rosa Café (inside the New Caldonia Courtyard across from Radiance on 5th). We have just two scripted questions for the candidates, and one is how they plan to protect the vulnerable in our society, specifically, teens, the homeless and the GLBT population. This may be of some interest to some of your members, if you want to pass it on. The owner of Nonna Rosa is providing free refreshments.

I just noticed that Rob W. put a link in his personal blog to photos he took of last weekend's march. (Y'all have to let me know when you do cool stuff so we can get it on the front page -- or better yet, just post it there yourself.) As usual, he took very nice pictures. Check them out here.

At the Eagles Hall (basement): 805 East 4th Ave
Show 10/29 from 6 pm til 1 am
** ALL AGES ** $5 cover or $3 with costume!

The Blackberry Bushes
Grant Potters
A-Kamp
Icthiostega
Gyunyunyu and the Science Fun
Leala Smith and Sarah Hubert

PLUS food vending: Pizza and Ryan Friez
Games! Prizes!

www.frolympia.org

This is something I didn't know about Olympia. From the Boston Globe:

The pluses and minuses of cul-de-sacs have been the subject of quiet debate among city planners since the 1980s with the rise of the ''new urbanist" movement, which advocates walkable communities, according to Dennis Frenchman, a professor in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

A few communities have taken action. Ten years ago, Olympia, Wash., prohibited cul-de-sacs, except where the topography prevents street connections, according to Governing magazine. Baltimore County in Maryland did much the same thing five years ago, and Austin, Texas, pushed for subdivisions that were more walkable, attempting to ban cul-de-sacs in the late 1990s.

Norfolk is another community that has acted to discourage cul-de-sacs, beginning even before these other efforts. Back in the late 1980s, as Norfolk's farms and fields increasingly were taken over by single-family houses, the Planning Board decided to minimize the use of cul-de-sacs in subdivisions. Town officials did not want to ''isolate people into little pods," said Daniel Winslow, then the chairman of the panel. In his opinion, the effort paid off.

''Fast-forward almost 20 years later. As the neighborhoods have started to develop in Norfolk, we can now see what the impact of that regulatory change was," said Winslow, who pointed out the former cul-de-sacs on a drive through town this summer. ''Children can bicycle for miles and never leave a neighborhood street. They can visit their friends from other neighborhoods without going on the main roads. Residents can take walks that go somewhere. . . . There's multiple links into multiple neighborhoods, just knitting neighborhoods together"

Does anyone want to help set up a local chapter? From the website:

The Church of Reality is a religion based on the practice of Realism, believing in everything that is real. Our motto is, "If it's real, we believe in it." Since no one knows all of reality, the Church of Reality is about the pursuit of reality the way it really is. We commit to being intellectually honest with ourselves and with others so that we can cut through the mythology. We want to know about the way things really are in the real world.

The Church of Reality provides a religious identity for people who have made a personal commitment in their lives to pursue reality the way it really is. The pursuit of reality is something that is a shared process. It's something we do together as a church, as a community, and as the human race.

The Church just received its 501(C)3 tax exempt status from the IRS.