This goes along with the theme that war, killing and violence are essentially unholy. Just because Israel is a religious nation, and the Jews were persecuted during Hitler's genocidal holocaust, doesn't mean that they themselves are immune from doing wrong.

This week, Don Brunell of the Association of Washington Business came by the Olympia City Council to defend union jobs. Earlier he had written his thoughts on the three cities' lawsuit to get some of the water rights associated with the old Tumwater Brewery property. He's not a fan:

All-American, which had difficulties putting the financing together to convert the brewery to a bottled water plant, recently secured $125 million to fund its project. The company says it’s willing to sell excess water to the local governments. The company even offered to transfer the water rights to the cities in exchange for a lease agreement that guarantees them 2.5 million gallons a day.

At this point, most council members apparently would rather put the company out of business and kill 200 good union jobs than allow All-American to keep enough of its water to operate.

Again, my weekly review of the Olympia city council packet. If you don't find something of interest here, read the packet yourself. It is fun.

1.  The city council is planning on engaging the public again in their budget writing process. What a cool thing, their is no more basic act of local government than deciding how much money they want and how they're going to spend it. And, the more pubic input they get the better.

What really excites me is that on the second page of the staff report for this piece, they ask the simple question: "Do you want to use a web-based process?" To that I say HECK YA. There is nothing worse than an entire process based in in person meetings where you're only going to get the typical folks that always show up. Put the conversation online. Not everything should be online, but the online conversation will help bring folks out of the woodwork and into the conversation.

2. Heck of a section on the water rights discussion at the March 7 meeting. There as a portion of the meeting tacken up by the Olympia's (and now Tumwater and Lacey's) lawsuit to claim the water associated with the old Tumwater Brewery.

Its interesting that not only did All American Water's lawyer show up, but the Teamsters asked the city not to shut down All American, but Don Brunell of the AWB showed up. Here it is:

City Attorney Bob Sterbank summarized the issue and recommendation. He said the Council passed Ordinance No. 6394 on February 13 to condemn property and water rights at the old brewery. Tonight the Council will reconsider the ordinance and decide whether to ratify it or revoke it and not proceed further. If the Council ratifies the ordinance (they did), it should then consider the Interlocal Agreement with the cities of Lacey and Tumwater.

Dear Neighborhood Association President/Vice President,

Please pass on to your neighbors that the City of Olympia Parks, Arts, and Recreation Department wants to begin a "dogalog" with the community about the feasibility of creating an off-leash dog area in one or more City of Olympia Parks. The public is invited to provide input at a meeting Thursday, March 23, 6:30 PM, at The Olympia Center Rm. A, 222 Columbia NW.

This year the Parks Department and the Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee plan to prepare a feasibility study to explore the idea of an off-leash dog area.

While there is currently not funding identified in the City budget for implementing an off-leash dog area, City officials felt it was important to explore whether an off-leash dog area would be feasible in one or more parks and what the costs would be.

For more information, contact Jonathon Turlove at Olympia Parks, Arts and Recreation at (360) 753-8068 or jturlove@ci.olympia.wa.us.

Attached please find a flyer for the meeting as well as a survey form that can be filled out by those people not able to attend the meeting. Thanks for spreading the word about this.

Students participating in this year's Butoh Theory and Technique class at The Evergreen State College will present a performance piece, "dreaming einsteins", in the Experimental Theatre, March 10th and 11th at 8 pm. Under the tutelage of doranne crable, their facilitator and teacher, they began their work last Fall. For the first time, this year's class focused on a particular text, Alan Lightman's Einstein's Dreams, exploring the intersections of light, time, and space. The piece is loosely based on images from that novel. There is no storyline, as usual, to the piece. Rather, it is an exploration of imagery as well as an opportunity for the dancers to present what and how they have learned to dance Kazou Ohno's interpretations of the possibilities of Butoh to provide a place in which an audience can simply experience what the see, hear, and feel, not what they think, expect, and analyze Kazuo Ohno's technique is central to the work, as is one of his most quotedinterpretations: "The wounds of the physical body always heal; the wounds of the heart, never. Once we accept that, we can speak poetry through the body that words can never utter."

The March 2006 issue of the free environmental paper South Sound Green Pages has a good article on a local critter I'd never heard of, the Mazama Pocket Gopher.

Mazama Pocket Gophers are now listed as a Washington State Threatened Species.

The Washington population of the Mazama pocket gopher became a candidate for federal listing under the Endangered Species Act in 2002. Mazama pocket gophers are known to persist at 27 sites scattered across the southern Puget Sound grasslands and alpine meadows of the Olympics. These may total in the low thousands, but many are small populations on marginal sites that are unlikely to persist.

Pocket gophers play an important a role in ecological communities by altering soil structure and chemistry, affecting plant occurrences, and serving as prey for many predators; their burrows provide a retreat for a wide variety of other species, including the western toad.

This is starting to get closer and closer to the top. A cabinet member resigns today. Who's next, and how far up does the corruption go?

More songbirds are in town now as the seasons turn once again. A particular bird song caught my attention this morning, I've decided it is distinctly urban.

First there is a series of beautiful tweets......tweet tweet tweet tweet.......and then the surprise of a suddenly nasal flat blaaaaaaaaat sound.

Like hearing gorgeous music swell from a car idling at a traffic light nearby. Just when everyone within earshot is in the groove of that music, a loud obnoxious car horn sounds, reminding us all to wake up and pay attention to where we are.

Or like admiring a colorful mural in an alley, getting lost in the swirls and images, only to be brought back to earth by the sight and smell of garbage overflowing a dumpster.

Urban. Gritty. Unpredictable. It's for the birds.

Tweet tweet tweet tweet.......blaaaaaaaaaaaaat!

April 25-27, Olympia, WA, speaking tour by LEAP spokesperson Norm Stamper. Contact Mike Smithson at (315) 243-5844 or speakers@leap.cc for further information.

Check out Drug War Chronicle for more information on the consequences of drug prohibition.