I like to keep my finger on Marysville’s pulse to detect change. Like my doctor, I need to know if there have been any significant happenings that might account for change.
Unless you’ve been there, it’s impossible to come close to envisioning anything about Turkey. Any child’s first contact with Turkey is the edible fowl of the same name. Call someone a turkey and he’s labeled as dumb or unknowing. Turkey-ness means stupidly comic. Gobble-gobble.
Judging from recent voting patterns, clever propaganda blitzes convince people to believe just about anything. Poor people have been convinced it’s in their interests to award tax breaks to the super-rich. Workers with no pension plans are conned into voting against Social Security. What a strange world.
We have often reflected in this column about the remarkable qualities that emerge in everyone when people of all abilities — including people with developmental conditions like autism, Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, and so on — engage fully with each other. Why is this, and how does it work?
I like to keep an eye out for the dirt-cheap bookings my condo association offers for last-minute cancellations. So when one popped up at Whistler we tossed some things into a bag and headed north. North took us past that vacant stretch of developers’ dreams between I-5 and Old 99 where leveled and staked FOR SALE acreages sit like empty tables in a restaurant at 4 p.m.
Several factors are influencing our state’s tax collections outlook, which dictates the overall state budget. Unfortunately, the record $32.4 billion 2011-13 budget passed last May will likely be adjusted downward based on lagging tax collections due to continued job losses and hesitant consumers.
