Seeking Silverdale and Central Kitsap

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Things seem quiet this morning on the Ridgetop.

We took a walk down to the Silverdale Post Office yesterday, leaving the house about 11 a.m. I figured that I had no stomach for the Christmastime Silverdale traffic congestion, so walking in the rare sunshine that blessed us Friday seemed like the better plan.

We were surprised as we walked down Ridgetop Boulevard that the traffic wasn’t backed up the hill like it so often is during the holiday shopping season. The parking lots at Best Buy, Costco, and some of the other stores we passed seemed pretty full, but traffic on the streets just wasn’t as stuffed as I expected it to be. The Sun’s story on Black Friday reported lots of shoppers in the early morning hours, but some readers who commented said the crowds thinned considerably by mid-day, when we were walking around. That would seem to be confirmed by the lack of traffic we observed.

And, even more surprising, when we appeared at the Post Office about 11:40, there was only one person in line in front of us. I’ve never been to the Silverdale Post Office, at the slowest times, let alone during the holiday season, and seen fewer people waiting in line. Maybe it was because there were more postal employees at the counter and the customers were being served faster than normal.

To be honest, I’m not sure why anyone would wish to camp out all night for a chance to get a special deal on some kind of item. The chance of one of the few items that are on special sale are actually on your Christmas list seems pretty remote. Add to that the fact that it’s unlikely you’d actually find that item in stock by the time you get inside the store (it is well documented that retailers actually stock only a few of the items that are outrageously under-priced, in a modern version of bait-and-switch).

I’m all for supporting the economy, and for buying local when you can, but I’d just as soon stay out of retail stores during the next month.

— Jeff

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OK, forgive me for this one. I’ve been frustrated at not finding a way to link up with something, and so I thought I’d use my blog to ask all of you for suggestions.

I am an amateur wood worker. I’ve never taken any classes or workshops on the subject, but my learning style allows me to learn by reading, and so I’ve read quite a bit on the subject and I regularly look at the articles in Fine Woodworking Magazine. I also have watched a lot of the woodworking how-to shows on television, including “The Woodwright’s Shop” (no power tools) and Norm Abrams “New Yankee Workshop” (all power tools).

Since I live on in one of the housing subdivisions on the Ridgetop, I don’t have a lot of space for a shop. I built in two work benches in my garage, one of which houses a radial arm saw. I have an old chop saw. I have a nice router with a router table. I have a biscuit joiner. I have a belt sander and a finishing sander.  And I have a circular saw and a jig saw. And I have a friend who occasionally lets me borrow his surfacing planer and a small joiner/planer that he owns. It’s not a plethora of tools, but it covers most of what I do.

My woodworking projects have mostly been simple furniture. I don’t do any wood turning and I haven’t done any gift items like boxes. I just did my first cutting board this month to replace the bread board that came with the kitchen cabinetry of our house.

This table has been my most ambitious project to date, and the one that I’ve felt best about as well. It’s made up mostly of figured maple from the Olympic Peninsula, with walnut legs.

After doing this project, I decided to try my hand at doing a dining table. It will be of similar design, again using figured maple boards for the top. But this is where my project bogs down. I have three maple boards that are six feet long. One is about 10 inches wide; the other two are more than 15 inches wide. I need a pretty heavy duty piece of woodworking equipment to prepare the edges that will be glued together to make the tabletop.

So here’s my question. Do any of you know of a place where I could get access to a wood shop around here? Olympic College doesn’t have one. I once understood that they had a woodworking shop for Bangor residents, but I don’t have base privileges.

Do any of you know of a local wood workers cooperative? I’ve heard that in some places, a group of woodworkers have gone in together to purchase equipment for a wood shop and then they share the cost and each has use of the shop. But I’ve never heard of something like that around here.

Any help would be appreciated.

— Jeff

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I just got off the phone this evening after an interesting phone call about Central Kitsap Schools.

My caller ID told me the call was coming from a local business. The caller identified himself as representing an organization that supported Central Kitsap Kids, and asked me if I was willing to take two minutes to answer a couple of questions. I said I would.

“If you had a chance to grade the Central Kitsap Schools, would you give them an A, B, C, D or F?”

“The Central Kitsap Schools will be seeking voter approval for a levy replacement on the ballot in February. Would you support the levy renewal, oppose the levy renewal, or are you not sure?”

I gave them my answers. I’d be interested in hearing yours. Are you happy with the performance of the Central Kitsap Schools? Do you plan to support their levy renewal in February?

Let’s have a discussion.

— Jeff

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You’ll have a chance Thursday night to participate in the planning process for the new Central Kitsap Heritage Park.

It’s not every day, or every year, or even every decade that a community has a chance to create a major park. In this case, the park will be about 1,000 acres in west Central Kitsap between Newberry Hill Road and Seabeck Highway. For more details on the park, check this previous blog entry.

Now that the county has secured the land for the park, it’s time to start planning how the park will be developed. Thursday’s meeting is part of a rare opportunity to be part of the creation of a large park that will serve the public for many years in the future. Hope you all make maximum use of this opportunity and make your voice heard on the park’s future.

— Jeff

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I happened to put in a call to an old acquaintance yesterday afternoon. He had left me a message asking for a reference for a job he is seeking.

I called, and we had a nice conversation, but then the subject turned to the news of the day, and the initial reports about the shooting at Fort Hood in Texas. Sounds like a terrorist attack, he said.

From what I had heard, it was a shooting on a secure Army base. While the shooting suspect had been named, and the name sounded Muslim, I did not assume that it was an act of terrorism. But my friend did. The fact that I now know the suspect is Muslim, and opposed our involvement in the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, still does not lead me to conclude it was an act of terrorism. It sounds like the act of a really disturbed individual.

Just as I don’t conclude that the multiple murders in Cleveland were a function of suspect Anthony Sowell’s religion, I don’t conclude that the killings at Fort Hood are a function of Nidal Hasan’s religion. But apparently many people do … there were reports this morning of hate e-mails being delivered to mosques in different parts of the county.

What happened at Fort Hood is a tragedy. We shouldn’t be making it more of a tragedy by making assumptions with no basis in fact.

— Jeff

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As my regular readers (few as you may be) know, I don’t spend each one of my waking minutes blogging about Central Kitsap for the Kitsap Sun’s web site. I do other things as well, including working a half-time job with Kitsap Regional Library, cooking meals for my wife, woodworking projects, photography, reading for pleasure and yard work around the house.

I also keep up with my Facebook friends, and pretty regularly post my status and comment on other people’s posts on that social networking site.

On election night, I posted something expressing some of my feelings about the election, and what the results seem to be saying about the mood of the electorate. I’m pretty sure that post generated more response and comments from my friends than just about anything I had ever posted on Facebook before.

What I noted was the change in voter mood since a year ago. And I’d be very interested to hear your comments about that and what you’re thinking. Please jump on a leave a comment on this blog post about it.

Here’s a synopsis of what I had to say.

A year ago, despite the sinking economy and a pretty gloomy international outlook, the majority of voters responded by choosing to express some hope in casting their ballots. Before you tune out, this is not intended as either a pro-Obama or an anti-Obama piece. It’s really intended to be asking a question about the rest of us.

In the year since the presidential election, the depth of our economic crisis became clear. The statistics confirmed that we were actually in a recession when last November’s election occurred; in fact, the worst recession since the 1930s. I lost my job; people I know, both here in Kitsap and in other parts of the country, have lost their jobs. Luckily, I don’t know anyone who has lost their home to foreclosure, but perhaps you do. And the people knew all this really before the government released the economic statistics that confirmed it.

Today, there are signs that we’ve seen the worst of our economic situation. Many of the promises that were made on the campaign trail during the presidential race last year have been kept, and there is action on many of those issues that have not yet been resolved.

Yet the voter mood as expressed Tuesday was much more sour than the one expressed a year ago, when our situation was actually worse.

That leads me to ask: Are we, as a public, simply unable to show restraint. While there was a degree of euphoria that seemed to come from the public after the election of 2008, there was a degree of real anger and disgust shown in the results this year. Is our situation that much worse this year, or are we reacting to it that much worse?

Are we manic-depressive voters, incapable of maintaining an even keel and of allowing our leaders a reasonable period of time to accomplish what they have promised to try to make happen? Do we insist upon bouncing from one extreme to another, even when the evidence would suggest that things are never as good as we see them, nor as bad?

What does this say about us and our ability to emerge from the political morass we find ourselves in?

I’m asking you, and hoping to hear your thoughts about it.

— Jeff

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I’m sure there’s been a lot happening around Central Kitsap, but the news hasn’t come my way.

There was a pretty dramatic fire in a house on Clear Creek Road last night, but luckily the family that lived there escaped safely.

The news about the black bears in Bremerton has made the Seattle TV stations, but I haven’t noticed any of the critters hanging around in my neighborhood on the Ridgetop. I have enough critter trouble with the family of racoons that keeps coming around and digging up my yard under the bird feeders. So I’m certainly not going to be inviting any bears to come around.

If you’re like me, you get some seasonal depression this time of year when Daylight Savings time ends. I hate it when it gets dark at 5 in the afternoon. I have to say there’s a lot I love about our area, but the short winter days is not on the list. I put up with them because they are balanced by long summer days. But I don’t like them. And the standard way of dealing with them (leaving in the winter to “snow bird” somewhere in Arizona) is not my cup of tea. I find it difficult enough to manage one household; I certainly don’t need two places to take care of and worry about.

But there’s no reason to be depressed today. The sun is shining. I’ve already seen several woodpeckers at my feeder this morning.

The neighborhood black cat survived Halloween and came by the back door for a treat already today.

Barak Obama was elected president just about a year ago, and last I noticed, the United States has not become a Muslim nation, has not confiscated everyone’s firearms, has not trashed free-enterprise, has not taken over your health care decisions (and, you know, it won’t do that even if there is a public option approved in the health care reform legislation), and has not yet suffered another terrorist attack on our soil. All of those gloomy outcomes were predicted before his election victory. And I guess some believe they will still come true; but I don’t.

Unfortunately, the recession seems  pretty intractable, despite a lot of money being spent to try to stimulate the economy. I still have some friends who are out of work, and I feel for them. Those of us who had money in the stock market through 401k plans or through other investments and who did not panic have seen the value of their portfolios bounce back a little, but not to pre-2008 levels. And for the majority of us for whom our house is our largest investment, the value in that investment is still below what it was in 2008. At least we in Kitsap were lucky to see only about a 10 percent reduction in housing values here, compared with 25 and 30 percent in the areas hardest hit by the foreclosure problem.

But I fear it will be a while before people feel more economically secure and ready to look forward again with some confidence and anticipation.

When that point comes, what will we be thinking? Will we be changed by this recession like people who lived through the 1930s were changed by the Great Depression?

I doubt it. The Depression lasted for almost 10 years. It wasn’t until the nation geared up for World War II that we really climbed out of that hole. In many ways, what we’ve been through is much less traumatic. So the question is whether it will mark our thinking and our economic behavior for the coming years.

I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts on that.

— Jeff