The Elizabeth Gregory Home, a shelter with 11 beds for women in transition, needs to raise approximately $30,000 over the next two or three days. Donations have dropped off significantly, decreasing from an average of $200-300 down to $100 this year. The reserves that the shelter had were used last year, and they are basically out of money.

The shelter needs to give notice to their landlord on Monday if they cannot raise the needed funds and the women at the shelter would be turned away at the end of the month. In addition to the 11 beds, the shelter also provides food, laundry, Internet, and case worker services to up to 150 women each month.

You can read the complete Seattle Times article here, but if you can help, here is their contact information.

Elizabeth Gregory Home
P.O. Box 45310
Seattle, WA 98145
206-729-0262

Note: I suggest calling them, even if you are planning to mail in a donation so that they know what they have to count on by Monday.

.612 OPS.

All you non-stat-minded, non-baseball people just went, “Huh?” But here’s the deal. OPS is the sum of a player’s on-base percentage (their ability to get on base, whether by hit or walk) and slugging percentage (the total number of bases a player accumulates where a homer equals 4 bases, a triple equals 3, etc. divided by the total plate appearances — at bats and walks). It’s a quick-and-dirty way to determine whether a hitter is doing the two things they should be doing — getting on base, and getting a lot of extra base hits.

And Vidro was a hitter — the Mariners’ DESIGNATED HITTER, in fact. His job was to hit, not field, not pitch, just hit.

.612 is a bad OPS. The average OPS in the AL right now is .750. It’s abysmal for a DH. Not only is he last among all regular DHs in OPS, he’s almost 100 points behind the next worst hitter — 39 year old Gary Sheffield, who is wrapping up his Hall of Fame career as the Tigers’ grumpy old man.

If you look at all players in baseball with at least 300 plate appearances (which takes into account most part-time players), you find Vidro near the bottom of the list, with a guy who can only steal bases and a now injured shortstop in a mega-slump.

And again, Jose Vidro is a DESIGNATED HITTER. His job is to HIT. Not steal bases. Not field. Hit. And he couldn’t.

He might be the worst designated hitter to ever get 300 plate appearances ever.

And the Mariners traded for him in 2006, sending away two prospects to the Washington Nationals. Why?

So he could be their designated hitter. No, I’m not kidding.

And that pretty much sums up everything that’s been wrong with the Mariners in the last few years. They’re like that guy you know who always seems to offer stock picks for companies that tank. You find yourself wishing you could make money off betting against his idiocy.

Say what you will about Jason Fortuny (go ahead, say it, he loves the attention) he doesn’t let you to sit on the fence. Fortuny, as nearly everybody knows by now, perpetrated one of the most infamous and despicable Internet pranks of all time [wiki, encyclopedia dramatica]. He loves to couch what he did as a “social experiment” but ask any social scientist if what he did qualifies as an experiment and listen to the laughter.

Today, we finally receive the news his comeuppance may be close at hand. According to 10ZenMonkeys the plaintiff in the $75,000 lawsuit filed against Fortuny in April was finally able to find a valid address for him and a summons has been issued. This means at least one victim of Fortuny’s will get his day in court.

According to the suit Fortuny “acted with actual malice to harm and deceive the individuals responding to the Craigslist ad.” The suit demands a jury trial and seeks a full slate of damages — compensatory, statutory, and punitive, plus attorney’s fees and costs.

“Plaintiff has suffered, and continues to suffer, harm arising from the foregoing wrongful conduct by Mr. Fortuny,” the lawsuit complains, identifying the victim as John Doe and arguing that the incident affected his private life “and the manner in which he is viewed among family, friends, and colleagues.”

I don’t know if this suit has legs but I do know which side of the fence I’m sitting on. Did I mention Fortuny will be representing himself?

[via waxy]

Over the weekend, there was a situation between cyclists and a driver that resulted in many citizens taking sides, making unreasonable demands, and multiple misunderstandings. From 300 miles away, I could see the tensions rising through blog posts, editorials, and biased articles in the daily papers. This situation will not go away overnight, but will linger for months it not longer. I spoke with a few folks in Eugene, OR on my visit there and they expressed shock and amazement that such an incident happened. Eugene demonstrates how cyclists and drivers can work together to make the road safe for almost everyone.

This morning, I rode my bicycle down the backside of Capitol Hill to the UW. Traveling at 30mph (the speed limit down the hill), I need to focus ahead to ensure that I don’t jam my tire into a rut or misalignment in the pavement while also keeping an eye on cross-traffic and pedestrians. A driver traveling in the left lane rolled down his window and screamed at me “GET OFF THE STREET B***H!” without provocation. I was shocked. Did this stem from the Critical Mass situation?

Regardless of which side you choose, bicycles and driver will have to continue to share the road. There are a few things that we as a whole can do to make this easier for everyone. The main one is to be considerate of others.

Cyclists: ride as predictable as possible. Use hand signals, don’t swerve between cars, pull to the side if you’re holding up traffic, and stop blowing through red lights. Sidewalk riding is legal, but yield to pedestrians and ride at a low level of speed (3-7mph is usually what I ride at).

Drivers: cyclists are aware that you are right next to them so act predictable. Don’t blow your horn or yell, it could cause an accident. If the bicycle is moving slower than the flow of traffic, pass when it is safe to do so. There is no need to punch the gas pedal, race ahead, then slam on the brakes to prove a point.

My rule of thumb has been the same for the 2 1/2 years that I have been biking around Seattle: bikes vs cars in an accident results in the car winning almost every time. It’s not worth my life. It’s also not worth aggravation/impatience/high blood pressure when a car or a bicycle delays my trip for a few minutes. If everyone cooperated together, respected each other, and became aware of one another, these kinds of incidents wouldn’t happen nearly as often. I am not taking sides here, I am making a stand to continue sharing the road whether I am the driver or riding my bicycle.

Stop acting like anarchists and start acting like a protest movement.

For example:

1. Get official buy-in. Get permits if you have to.
2. Announce the time — and the route — in advance. Perhaps last Friday’s fiasco wouldn’t have happened if the driver had known the ride was going to happen on his street.
3. Bring in the community more. And that not only means possibly getting some bike cops mixed in, but also get the community itself to buy in to what you’re doing.
4. Get a real purpose. Corking isn’t the solution, it’s uncivil disobedience. Critical Mass, despite its size, cannot point to one single positive thing it’s done to improve conditions for bikers in Seattle.
5. Can the “silence” and the smug, self-serving Seattle passive-aggression. If people ask you why you’re riding, tell them. If there are angry drivers, talk to them respectfully.
6. Identify the problem riders and self-police. If someone’s being an ass, do something about it.

Civil disobedience movements have always been about respecting others while disrespecting injustice. And being respectful of others and respectful of community mores is possible even while standing against injustice. Look at the Civil Rights marches of the early 1960s — African American men and women and children wearing their Sunday clothes, walking home from work, sitting at lunch counters, marching in Birmingham and Selma and DC. What turned the course of this country was watching white cops turn firehoses and truncheons on well-dressed, respectful African Americans seeing a little equality. It appalled white America. And they were willing to listen to a suit-wearing preacher from Atlanta via Montgomery, because they were increasingly afraid of what would happen if they didn’t listen to the ones who were respectful.

By comparison, the WTO protests couldn’t find their dignity. They turned to pageant, then to farce, then to violence. And in the end, the anti-WTO movement became marginalized as the globalization movement just got better security and marched on. A lack of respect for this city, and the people of this city, may have stopped the WTO meetings, but they lost the war on globalization.

So, Critical Mass, ball’s in your court. Do you choose the way of the bike lane, seeking to protest peacefully while working towards a transit system that respects all forms of transportation — bike, car, pedestrian, bus, or train? Or do you choose the way of the sharrow, the way of chaos, anger, and the marginalization of everything you believe in?

_{Boy with bicycle watching toy sailboat races, 1924, dropped in the Seattle Metblogs Flickr pool by frequent contributors Seattle Municipal Archives}

Yesterday’s road-rage-turned-vigilante-violence incident involving Seattle Critical Mass riders and a hotheaded driver is a black eye to all bicyclists in this city.

Yeah, sure, some media accounts were incredibly biased and were heavily contracted by eyewitness accounts. But the fact remains that despite the violent nature of the driver’s action, the violent reaction by bikers should not have happened. Now Critical Mass has moved from a protest movement into a vigilante movement.

And yet, what are the gains that Critical Mass has won bikers, exactly? Have they really made the streets safer for bikes? Have they effectively educated drivers on etiquette? Did they bring us dedicated bike lanes? Are we more or less likely to see these sorts of road rage incidents in the future?

Can anyone point me to anything of substance they’ve been able to accomplish that’s made this bike-car mess we’re in any better?

I can’t think of any. But I’m sure I’ll have to come up with one, else they’ll start flashing their knives. Or maybe they’ll slash DL Byron’s tires for suggesting they’re counter-productive.

Despite foolish lionization by partisans in some quarters, I don’t see how Critical Mass can continue. Their awareness campaign has now turned into a childish, passive-aggressive gang that, like some overwrought quasi-Marxist insurgency, ultimately hurts the ones they originally said they were helping.

This is a bad time for biker-driver relations. We desperately need common sense and education on the roads. We need some sense in City Hall to figure out how we can share the road. We need to name and shame bad drivers and bad bikers.

Most of all, though, we need mutual respect between drivers, bikers, and pedestrians.

And Critical Mass has damaged our hopes of fostering that mutual respect. They’ve become the monsters they claim to fight on the roads.

It’s time to drop some control rods into Critical Mass, before we see more meltdowns.

_{Downtown Seattle from Don Armeni Park, courtesy of Forrest Pangborn}

I don’t know about you guys, but this summer is Seattle is starting to freak me out. I thought the feet washing up in B.C. was a little creepy and somewhat entertaining- but more importantly, far enough from Seattle to maintain some sense of distance.

Next, we had the spikes in Greenlake- and much like the B.C. feet, more and more spikes are showing up in the lake. I couldn’t imagine someone being evil enough to put that much effort into hurting swimmers and boaters, so I’m still clinging to the more benevolent explanations- plastic sheeting, theater, whatever. As long as some psycho’s not swimming around Greenlake in the winter to set up spikes intended to hurt people months later…

But then we had the case of the traffic circle gardener, who died after being punched during an altercation. (#) This was a story that just seemed… awful. Granted, there are multiple versions to any story, but the idea of a 60-year-old man dying from a single punch to the head while tending a public space- no matter how much of a cranky curmudgeon he may have been- it just seemed like the worst kind of tragedy, one that could have been easily prevented by someone taking a different approach.

And today, I run across news that suggests that some Critical Mass bicyclists may have attacked a driver after he (intentionally or not) hit one of the bikers. (#) Now, I understand both sides to the story- but again, this seems like a situation that could have been easily prevented by cooler heads. Bicyclists, don’t touch peoples’ vehicles during bike rides; Drivers, be patient with slower-moving bikes… being late isn’t truly the end of the world, after all.

Maybe it’s just my idealistic tendencies, and the fact that I had to stop watching the news shortly after we moved here because it was like seeing the worst stories from the last five years of living in my hometown all packed into one half-hour segment, but I just can’t quite seem to wrap my head around people being so angry here. Like another Metblogger said (#), Seattle, what’s wrong with you lately? You’re freaking me out…

Does anyone have any good, uplifting stories to help us see the brighter side? I’d kill for some good news…

The blogosphere is abuzz lately with reports of garden thefts. From traffic circles to yard gardens to p-patches, people are helping themselves to flowers and produce at an increasing rate. Komo 4 reports on kale theft:

“There are some things we don’t grow anymore because they’re ripe for picking, literally,” said Donaldson. “I don’t think that people are stealing the food because they need it. I think it’s a callous act and a selfish act.”

Capitol Hill Seattle:

…I spotted two women and a man in the traffic circle. The two women had scissors or shears and were cutting themselves some pretty summer flowers. The same flowers that come from plants that other people buy, water and care of (not the city) to make our neighborhood beautiful. Not their house or table. Unable to contain myself this time, I called out to them and explained that the traffic circle is planted and cared for by the neighborhood. They apologized and claimed “We didn’t know”…

Some random people just decided to have an impromptu picnic and game of frisbee over our garden. I went out and asked them if they lived here and they said no, so i let them know this is private property. they told me they thought the yard (which is obviously a yard unless you’re totally stupid) was a “community center”.

Though I’m siding with nobody in particular in regards to this story, I think the concept of people getting pissed off to the point of random violence over a cone blocking part of a traffic circle is absolutely ridiculous.

I can understand drivers asking the guy to remove the cone, but what I find disgusting is the fact that somebody decided to actually get out of their car and knock the guy to the pavement.

NEWS FLASH:

It’s a freaking cone, people. Life goes on.

Sadly, some people are too insecure and caustically violent to realize such things. It’s depressing that things like this happen, honestly.

I read an opinion piece in the Seattle Times by Jerry Large that perfectly demonstrates the unwillingness of the average person to learn new ways of every day behavior. Here are the key points and my suggestions/opinions for his “argument”.

In the case of Seattle’s effort to get rid of disposable paper and plastic grocery bags, there are many, one of which is that dog owners may have to pay for the plastic they use to scoop up what their pets are returning to nature.

There are now biodegradable pet waste bags that likely will not be taxed.

As customers try to stuff more into fewer bags, his members have to lift heavier loads. And if some shoppers bring unsanitary bags with them, clerks will have to touch them.

Clerks touch grocery carts, baskets, door handles, and other unsanitary items at the grocery stores all day long. Perhaps they should have hand sanitizer at their stations?

Worse, I show up at PCC with Safeway bags in the trunk. Carrying a PCC bag into Safeway is no biggie, but the other way around is socially embarrassing. Someone might think I buy white bread and produce that isn’t organic.

“Oh no! Someone might think that I’m too low on the socioeconomic ladder to shop at PCC based on brand name of the reusable bag that I am using!” No one cares what the brand name of your bag is, as long as you use one.

There’s a Whole Foods near work. I’d sometimes pick up lunch there, so I bought one of their reusable bags, but I always leave the office without it, which means I can’t buy lunch at Whole Foods.

If you’re buying so much at one time for lunch that you can’t carry it back to the office (one loooooooong block away from Whole Foods), then something else is likely wrong. There’s no shame in carrying a few items by hand in case you forget your bag. I’ve done it, I see others doing it all the time. Just carry the receipt with you as you leave the store in case a clerk wants to verify that you paid for your purchase. It’s easy.

As quotes in the article: “People will learn how to bring their own bags in the same way we learned to buckle our seat belts and the way we will soon learn to drive without talking on a cellphone.”