A local poem for a foggy night. 

Every December, one of the owners of this apartment complex slaps on a Santa hat and makes the rounds. Surveys are sent out a week earlier. The owner takes a full day to visit every single apartment, and this is a big place. He is friendly, he looks people in the eyes, and he really listens.

The owner goes over each concern a resident brings up and he knows his stuff. He can discuss everything from how heating dry air is easier than heating moist......to the proper placement of outdoor lighting.

This year I mentioned the unofficial mayors and he knew exactly what I meant. He told me that he treasures them.

Not only does he visit every single apartment to discuss our concerns, not only does he listen, he also offers everyone a bottle of champagne or sparkling cider. 

Best of all, he does something with what he hears from us. Change actually happens. Ideas are considered, decisions made, and the entire place is the better for it. This apartment complex has come a long way, for many reasons, including a guy in a Santa hat. 

Olympia music scene wiki-fied. Olympia is described as a "tiny Western Musical Town".

My main squeeze and I went down to The Brotherhood last night after takin' in a flick (Syriana -- liked it). It was so nice to sit and drink a beer without smelling like I'd smoked an entire pack by myself. I do believe I'll go tomorrow and listen to The Tune Stranglers strangle some tunes.

Of course, not everyone is as happy as I am about it.

John Winn Miller wrote in today's O:

I got into newspapers nearly 30 years ago because I wanted to make a difference. What I’ve come to appreciate while working in half a dozen cities and two countries is that there are a lot of people who are making a real difference but who go largely unrecognized.

This seems like a great first step for the Olympian toward becoming more community minded. We should be flooding his inbox with stories of great folks in our neighborhoods who do great things.

Want more blogs to read, more ways to share blog posts you believe to be fantastic? Hop on a carnival. There are carnivals of everything from Arnold to Unschooling. Maybe eventually OlyBlog can host a Carnival of Olympia.

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When I was a kid, the Daily Olympian (as it was called back then) was an unapologetic right-wing newspaper, specializing in lurid car crash photos on the top of the fold. On Sunday, the comics section was not in color, but it was printed on pink paper (!?!) We had another paper here in town, a weekly, called The Olympia News, which, as I recall, made the Daily Olympian look like the New Yorker. That newspaper was headquartered where Canvas Works now resides. The Daily Olympian was stationed on the SE corner of Capitol and State.

From the Olympian:

OLYMPIA — Barefoot and blinded by the hood over his head, Josh Elliott rolled on the ground as Cristina Maza pretended to kick him in the gut. Maza towered over him holding a cardboard gun.

It caught the attention of several drivers Saturday as they passed Maza, Elliott and others from the Olympia Movement for Justice and Peace who were calling attention to the abuse and torture of U.S.-held prisoners taken in Iraq and Afghanistan.

[snip]

Organizers of Saturday's event included the newspaper as a protest site because they think the media are not doing enough to expose abuses carried out by the U.S. government. For example, they said, the media have mostly ignored a hunger strike by prisoners at Guantanamo Bay since it began in August.

 Duh.

Dangerous sex felons: Address unknown

"Instead [convicted sex offender Patrick Stearns] took advantage of a weakness in Washington's sex offender registration law — simply stating he was homeless in Seattle.

Stearns is part of a growing problem across the state as hundreds of sex offenders register as homeless — making their whereabouts unknown. In King County, the number of offenders who say they are homeless has nearly tripled in the past five years to 364, a Seattle Times investigation has found."

"Even more alarming, many of these offenders are deemed the most dangerous, what the state defines as Level 3. In King County, one-third of the high-risk sex felons say they are homeless. That means there are 111 high-risk sex felons who could be living on the streets or next door."

"Homeless offenders are required to sign in weekly at the sheriff's office. But most don't, which is a felony."

"Seventy-five percent of King County's homeless sex offenders didn't sign in weekly in October, a Seattle Times analysis has found. More than half of Seattle's 140 homeless sex offenders, as of last month, had arrest warrants for failing to sign in."

Continued: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002677104_homeless11m.html