Olyblogosphere links for February 22, 2012 (more credit stolen, meta request)

1. Flummel, Flummer, Flummo posts what I find hilarious: "I watched him read my card and stuff it in his pocket. There was nary a hint of embarrassment or shame."

2. According to Mark at Notes on the State of Olympia, the planning commission is in a hurry, but still probably won't make their goal:

Finally, and most importantly, if we cannot meet this schedule by even one meeting because there aren’t enough Mondays and Wednesdays in March, we’ll have at least three new commissioners who will be responsible for voting on the entire package without much of a clue about what they are voting on. Ironically, while we collectively convinced ourselves of the need to hurry, except for the personal desire that the departing commissioners had to complete this during their terms, I didn’t hear another argument in favor of an expedited schedule. As we left it last night, if we cannot complete the SMP on this new timeframe, we’ll defeat the purpose of a condensed schedule anyway and will waste up to 24 hours (assuming that meetings do not exceed three hours) of meeting time and staff hours. Our collective response was: “we should try.” Thus, Fonzie sailed over the shark.

3. Mojourner Truth blog has a lot more to say about the downed wood on Legion Way:

But what really interested me was the next comment, from a resident of Legion street, where some beautiful but doomed oaks were damaged. Under normal circumstances, she said, the city crew would cut, and the neighbors would then come through and salvage the wood. But this storm hit too many trees, and a contractor was hired that proceeded to block access to locals, while allowing someone from out Delphi Road way to come in and load up with prime firewood. The commenter said she called the City, which said that no, the contractor was not entitles to the wood.

Yet again, we see how transfer of a government function to the private sector can devolve to piracy. I don't know whether the load of firewood is destined for the market, or just heating some guy's house. But I do know that putting up barriers and preventing the neighbors from getting a share is wrong. I also see that when all is said and done, private entities will have lined their pockets with government funds, even if they are not ripping off firewood, for work that some of the neighbors would have done for free.

4. Tobi Vail has been blogging a series of posts at Collapse Board called "Hello from Olympia, WA." Here's post #5, that includes this wonderful line: "We got to the Lower East Side at 4 AM. Apparently the city that never sleeps does sleep from 4-5 AM. Olympia has more stuff that’s 24 hours than the Lower East Side."

5. I'm linking to this post from the Griffin Neighbors, not because I think the topic is interesting at all, but because it points about that the Steamboat Island/Griffin metroplex has its own print newspaper called the Register.

I propose that Olympia Views blogger pick up a copy and give us a well thought out blog post about these little local newspapers (like the KeyPen News) and how they fit into the news ecosystem. I heard a story once that the CPJ was one of these neighborhood rags before becoming a horrible student newspaper. That would be interesting to read about.