Matthew G. Miller

      Tyler Simpson convinced his parents and older brother to compost their food scraps into the yard waste at home. Now, he's working on restaurant owners, persuading them to switch from plastic to compostable take-out containers.

      "In one million years, it'll still be there," Tyler says.

      His mother, Jean Hamilton, prompts him. "The Styrofoam, you mean?"

      "It doesn't seem right," he says. "We're consuming too much."

      Tyler, a 9-year-old third grader at Pathfinder School, has started his own organization "Green To-Go." Armed with samples of paper boxes and cups, donated by Duke's Alki Chowder House, Tyler spent Wednesday after school in the Junction.

      His mother warns him not every restaurant will be willing to switch.

      He tells her, "That's not an option!"

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      Beside a pile of torn asphalt, water bubbles up muddy, pooling in fresh dirt.

      The guy running the excavator, the green backhoe, "hooked" a water line while demolishing the old pedestal for the Alki Statue of Liberty last Tuesday. A two-inch sub-main runs under the length of the lawn, along the boardwalk from the west toward the Bath House.

      His supervisor, Patrick Donohue, thought it was buried deeper than it actually was.

      "This sort of stuff happens," he says, cell phone in hand....

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      The weather was almost perfect for a birthday party. Saturday morning the sky was blue, offering a view of the Olympic Mountains still wearing their winter whites and of ferries steaming out of Coleman Dock just below.

      She had to look her best. Like buying a new dress for the party, the Alaskan Way Viaduct got her lanes repainted, renewed dashed stripes on both road decks. Road crews hung over the edges in cherry pickers, inspecting her sides.

      The city was invited....

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