What a crazy week

It's been tons of community fun all week...hell, it's been that way for the past two weeks. Between planning for everything, I haven't had time to do anything, including write for this blargh. Here's this (last) week's highlights:

• I was lucky enough to attend this year's Opus Prize Awards Ceremony, which was hosted by Seattle University. The professor who was kind enough to get me a ticket said that this event would be "mind-blowing" - she was absolutely right. These are the best of the best of faith-based humanitarian entrepreneurs, each of them incredibly loving people doing amazing things despite horrifying circumstances. I hope I'll have some time around Thanksgiving to write more about this year's finalists.

• Thursday brought more news on Sound Transit's plans to remove trees from the Capitol Hill Light Rail Station site. From what I've been hearing through the Capitol Hill Community Council, the tree removal count just keeps getting higher and higher - starting with "only one or two" trees this September, the numbers have gone up over time to reach a final count of about seventy trees that will be destroyed when demolition starts on the station site at the end of November/ beginning of December.
  

  A number of community groups have been pursuing this issue over the past several months, asking ST if the removals are necessary, and if so, if the trees could be transplanted to other locations. No real answers have been given so far, except that the removals are necessary and that tree transplanting is costly and survival is not guaranteed. The CHCC Open Space Committee is sending out a letter requesting that Sound Transit look more carefully at transplantation as an option, especially in light of the Mayor's initiative to save Seattle's canopy cover. Stay tuned...

• This was actually last week, but it was super nifty - drinks with WorldChanging Seattle! I got to meet my fellow Seattle bloggers and the amazing Julia Levitt, editor of WC. The short story is that WC wants us all to write at least twice a month. Oh boy. Now to find the time to do it...
  

• Speaking of bloggers - Seattlest hosted a little shindig at Grey this last Monday so that central Seattle bloggers could actually meet each other. I only caught the very end of it, but I still had a great time. I couldn't help thinking of Terry Pratchett's theory of L space - if enough people who are nexuses of local knowledge and information gather at the same location, will we too begin to bend space and time? B space?