If nothing else, life is serendipitous, at least when a person is open to the unforeseen. For example, check out our sports feature on page A10. It details the unusual turn of events for a 15-year-old island girl who one day in mid-December was just an ordinary sophomore in high school and the next day she was asked to train as a slalom skier for the Youth Winter Olympics being held in Austria in less than a month.
Merriam-Webster has officially declared “pragmatic” to be the Word of the Year for 2011.
There certainly are good reasons for the pessimism – vast income disparity, war, environmental calamity and on and on.
Still, I’m struck by the perhaps faint, but certainly persistent signs of hope I see in the strong connections between the Occupy movement and the coming of Christmas.
If one can believe the campaign rhetoric offered by three – Steve Bonkowski, Sarah Blossom and Dave Ward – of the four islanders who will be sworn in early next month as members of the City Council, the city is in for an abrupt change in the way it does business. New councilor Anne Blair may also join the swing away from the current council’s leadership style, but she may be resistant to a fixed agenda to begin her four-year term.
‘Tis the season for hanging out with weird relatives. I received my first injection of strange relative juice last week with Thanksgiving and expect to receive a number of other doses between now and New Year’s.
I received a funny article over the Internet the other day. I was at work at the time, so, of course, I immediately dropped everything and read it.
Warning: In response to legitimate complaints by people with ADA parking permits, the Bainbridge Island Police Department recently became more aggressive in enforcing illegal parking by people without permits in the seven ADA spots located near the Bainbridge Island ferry terminal. Some violators have received a $450 ticket, even when they are parked only temporarily while unloading passengers.
