Anyway, I messed around with the picture and added some of my own stuff to it.

It sounded incredible to me, too…but a 1940s survey by the City of Olympia identified 96 active artesian wells and springs in the downtown area. They supplied water for restaurants, steam trains, water fountains and industry in a city where it was cheaper to drill your own well than pay the high prices demanded by the private water companies. I could only name one artesian well, in the Diamond Parking lot on 4th Ave., so what happened to the other 95?

I read a subsequent study done in 1994 by Thurston County and Friends of Artesians which located 31 wells still functioning. The last study, in 1999, conducted by LOTT Wastewater Management, found only 19 wells and 3 springs. The numbers were dwindling, indeed. Were there some charming watering holes I didn’t know about that could disappear any time now?

Using the maps from the 1999 study, I spent an afternoon exploring whether or not there were other artesian wells accessible to the public.

Two of the existing wells, #32 and #34, supply drinking water to The Spar and The Reef. Many other artesian wells emerge into downtown buildings, and then are plumbed directly into the sewer outflow such as U.S. Bank, Bamboo Restaurant, Bayview Market, the YMCA, Olympia Fireplace and Old Town Bicycle.

All this talk about reducing our usage of plastic bags really got me thinking. For some reason, we have an addiction to garbage bags in our house. We really don't need them, since we compost our food waste and our garbage is generally pretty "clean" and not stinky, wet or gross. So why not get rid of the garbage bags all together? I think that we'll give it a shot and get off the plastic bags for good. I'm not going cold turkey, though, but I admit we have a problem and and working my way through the 12 steps of plastic garbage bag addiction :)

We have had a variety of compost bins in the multiple houses we have lived in. Most of them didn't really work, one of them was infested with rats and the rest just turned into slimy, smelly sludge. But, last year, we put our mind to it and lo and behold, have been getting compost from our brush bin and hope to have compost from our food waste bin this year (see the worm picture!! BTW - pistachio nut shells NEVER compost - that's them in the upper left hand corner of the picture!!).

After another 4 hours of clown games - not exercises - GAMES... and impro's. [that's the Queen's English way of saying 'improv']

First trial with the self-timer... I didn't make it there in 2 seconds!

I handed the camera off to Georgie, Eugene's son, who had been calling me Pie-guy all morning.  What a day!

I am scrolling through the great speeches on the American Rhetoric website today. I was thinking about Martin's Vietnam speech and how much flak Martin took for finally stretching beyond the injustice of race in America and spoke out about the injustice and senseless violence of the Vietnam war. The current attacks on Rev Wright are remininscent of the attacks on Martin way back when. So I was planning to listen to the Vietnam speech and probably still will, but I got sidetracked and have been listening to the Mountaintop speech for the past few minutes.

I watch as people today embrace Martin and his principles of forty years ago, but they want to attack Rev Wright and his ideas today and there is a problem for me because when you come to embrace a person's politics and aspirations 40 years after he has been assassinated, you really shouldn't think of that as a source of pride or proof of enlightenment, if you are unable to listen and think with an open mind about the folks who are the political and spiritual torch-bearers for the same movement that Martin led.

Here are quotes from the mountaintop speech:

First, the disclaimer. I am not an attorney, nothing posted here should be construed as legal advice. It is simply my ruminations on how case law develops from statute, how activist judges come in every political flavor, and on the general state of the economy of the South Sound and a little whining about having to work too many hours for the past six months. That disclaimer duly acknowledged, herewith:

I am pretty much throwing every thing aside these days to work on bankruptcy filings. My contract with bankruptcy work has pretty much been my bread and butter work now for several years. It's surprising to me that I enjoy it as much as I do. I have heard the same thing from other paralegals who took a job doing BK legal work thinking it would pay the bills until real work came along and were surprised to find bk legal work to be interesting and an area of law that has attractions (few pre-trial or summary judgment weekends among other attactions).

The work is cyclical though. It has certainly been a thin couple of years since the new bankruptcy law was enacted in 2005. That change in the law made the work of filing bankruptcy harder. It raised costs for citizens who are already swamped by financial demands and it thinned the ranks of firms doing bankruptcy work because the due diligence standards are pretty high under the new statute.

For those of you living on Cooper Point:

Cooper Point Association

Annual Meeting

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

7:00 pm

Marshall Middle School Cafeteria
3939 20^th Ave NW
Olympia WA 98502

This year we will host a Town Hall style meeting using the theme

Discovering Our Cooper Point

We have invited representatives from

Sorry, folks, I've remained as quiet as I can be on this.  After reading the docent mail, I finally have decided to put in my two cents.  It is my understanding that opinions are still allowed (I had to correct a Freudian typo, I had written "aloud" - now THAT is funny)

I posted a blog on the anniversary of MLKs death.  A part of it WAS a comparison to Reverend Wright - not my idea, something that a TV journalist (sorry, his name escapes me, but he's not a screamer) presented.  It reminded me that King was demonized for his activities by those that opposed him.

A docent threw the caution flag that my blog wasn't "hyperlocal" enough.  I'm not going to pretend to have a clue where the word "hyperlocal" came from as the dictionary responds "No results found for hyperlocal' when I seek a definition.

Thus it becomes a pool of subjective thinking that, in this man's view, seems to ebb and flow with emotional tides.  This reminds me of playing football at the park as a kid. One goal was the flagpole, but considering that there wasn't another point of reference, goal line stands became the subject of controvery due to the constantly moving imaginary line.

I'm not sure why Olyblog's community has sought to sterilize conversation to the point of avoiding the slightest controversy.  Is this the only way we can survive differences of opinion?  I think not.