Quick Update on Clean Up

Dan and Pat from Northshore Nursery have cleaned the upper culvert and have been working, along with the county this week on cleaning up and filling Brooke Drive. What a difference from last weekend. It's beginning to look more normal around here. Once the basic clean up has been done I have asked Dan and Pat to give us a bid on any culvert repair replacement work that needs to be done in the future. I will keep you apprised but as for now everything is going well here at Shorehill.

County Scheduled to Clean Community Entry Tomorrow - December 14th

I spoke with the road crew manager and we are on their schedule for tomorrow, December 14th. They will work on the entryway to the community and North Shore Road. They will move the debris back into Brooke Drive to start filling the ravine in the middle of the road.

Update on Flood Damage

If anyone has ended up with extra shovels or rakes let me know. We and Goranson's are missing tools.

North Shore Nursery is currently working up on Brooke Drive to open up one of the major culverts and try to get the water flowing back into the proper channels. This will help if we have some more heavy rains. I have also contacted the county to get on their list for cleanup of the entry into the community since it is a county road. Pat from NorthShore is also going to talk to them about getting some of the fill they are picking up to fill Brooke Drive.

North Shore Road is now accessible. There are still piles of mud and debris on the road but one lane has been opened up so that you can get in and out. Use caution. Vehicles low to the road may have difficulty.

Pictures of Flooding

What a day! We had an amazing crew of people come out to help save the community as best we could. Pete, Sandy, Dennis, Chris, Trina, Tom, Sally, Ron, Gayle, Greg, Keith, Gloria, Bill, Randy, Harold, Paul, and Chrystal all showed up and did all that could be done in a fight against mother nature to help divert the water and avoid damage. We checked the houses on the waterfront and worked hard to keep the water from flooding. Everyone's homes seem okay at this point. As you can see from the pictures, there is alot of work to be done once the floods are over. North Shore Road has been closed most of the day. Ron and I went for a drive about an hour ago to see if any progress had been made to open up the road. In a 4 wheel drive vehicle we made about seven miles, crossing 4 major slides on the road. Huge piles of dirt are across the road. One side is opened enough that with a 4x4 you could climb slowly over. We then came across county trucks working and turned around. Here are some pictures. Pete also has a PDF file with lots more but I could not post the PDF file here. I believe he has emailed them to most of you but if you didn't receive a copy and would like one just email me and I'll get them to you. We'll let you know more as there is more to tell. Please feel free to call me if you have any specific questions about your residence. Thanks again to everyone to worked so hard today. This picture was taken later in the afternoon, after the rains had calmed down.

This was a good thing to see, the beach still not damaged and the water flowing

through the culvert. It got a little rougher later in the day but the beach is still okay.

Thicker than it looks.
Where few men dare to venture.
Pete takes a strole up to see what's going on at top of Brooke Drive. Not a pretty site.

Gary and Karman's home doing fine. Ostranders' place okay but getting a little mud and water flowing through their property.

One of the first morning photos. Tom and Sally's and Brooke's cabins did okay.

No coffee, no breakfast. The floods got us all up and out working early.

Beginning of the day photos

Having seen some of the other places down the canal, we have faired well thus far, although there is major work to be done on Brooke Drive. Pray for sunshine!

Flooding at Shorehill

I hate to report that we are experiencing flooding again at Shorehill. Brooke's cabin and Tom and Salley's cabin are doing okay at this point. Brooke Drive is not holding up well. Dirt and rocks are flowing down the center and into the entryway and the canal. Work at beach is doing fine. I will post some pictures soon. Ron, Tom and Pete have assessed the situation and are going to trying doing a little shoveling to divert water and rocks but the consensus is that there is probably not much we can do until after it stops. The volume of water seems to be the main problem. The work done behind Tom's cabin last time seems to be holding up well.

If you are at the canal and able to help Ron, Tom and Pete, please grab a shovel and come on down.

I will update the blog as anything new transpires.

Gayle

4 Waterfront Homes Burglarized!

Four homes located on the waterfront of our community were recently burglarized. Liquor, sleeping bags, misc. items were taken, along with furniture items presumed to be used to remove items from the homes. Drawers and cabinets were gone through and homes were left in disarray. PLEASE HEIGHTEN YOUR AWARENESS OF UNFAMILIAR PERSONS AND ACTIVITIES WITHIN THE COMMUNITY. If we together keep an eye out for the entire neighborhood and report any suspicious activity, hopefully we can help prevent the success of any future breakins. To those who experienced the recent breakins we are sorry to hear of your losses. Thank you for letting us know so that we can all work together to hopefully tighten up security within the community. If you need any assistance with clean-up, etc. please let us know.

Congratulations to Mike Veseth - Washington State Professor of the Year

CONGRATULATIONS to Mike from all of us at Shorehill Estates!

The following article was published is the Tacoma News Tribune:

For 35 years, popular University of Puget Sound economics professor Mike Veseth has used a distinctive personal approach, getting to know students individually and finding unusual – some might say bizarre – ways to help them learn and grow. Today, his fame goes national.

University of Puget Sound professor Mike Veseth shows how he uses the study of soccer and wine as ways to examine world problems from a political and social perspective. Veseth was chosen by the Carnegie Foundation as Washington state’s Professor of the Year.

In too many places, Mike Veseth says, college classes are like ATMs.
"They've become transactions," he says. "Students turn in papers and get grades. If that's all it is, then there's no relationship that's going to grow." Chances are no one will ever describe one of Veseth's classes that way.

For 35 years, the popular University of Puget Sound economics professor has used a distinctive personal approach, getting to know students individually and finding unusual – some might say bizarre – ways to help them learn and grow.

He teaches complicated international economic theory in classes about soccer and wine. He demonstrates educational principles through juggling and has been known to set heavy economic theory to music, encouraging students to sing and dance to the “Gross Domestic Polka.”
Veseth’s approach has earned him the adoration of hundreds of UPS students over the years. Today, his fame goes national.

Veseth flew Wednesday to Washington, D.C., and accepted the Washington state Professor of the Year Award from the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

It’s a prestigious, competitive award, bestowed each year on professors who demonstrate “extraordinary dedication to undergraduate teaching.” Veseth learned about the award last week, but was asked by its sponsors to keep it a secret until today’s announcement.

On Tuesday, in his office on the UPS campus, surrounded by books, soccer paraphernalia, wine bottles and juggling balls, Veseth seemed slightly embarrassed by the award. “It’s a nice recognition of a lifetime of effort,” he said. “Personally, I’m pleased because of what it says about my students. My own mentors helped me so much, it makes me proud to think I contributed that to my students.”

Student testimonials figured into the Professor of the Year selection process, and the students who wrote in support of Veseth were lavish in their praise. Some went so far as to say he changed their lives.

“I was a prickly, argumentative and contrary student,” wrote Kirsten Benites, who graduated from UPS in 2003 and now lives in London. “Regardless of whether he personally believed my arguments, he taught me how to defend my position in a logical way.”

Theater artist Seema Sueko, who graduated from UPS in 1994, said she was a shy student and that Veseth’s popularity initially intimidated her. That feeling quickly disappeared, Sueko said.
“He transformed me,” she said. “He gave me a voice and laid the foundation for me to excel.”
Veseth is an instantly likable guy, with a muff of gray hair around his bald head and a big friendly smile. He picks up a soccer ball and acts as if he wouldn’t mind spending a few minutes tossing it back and forth.

He was born and raised in Tacoma, and his family background is classic for the area: A father who migrated out from the Midwest after military service in World War II. His dad was a blue-collar worker at the old Hooker Chemical plant on the Tideflats. Veseth graduated from Lincoln High School, where he was the editor of the school paper, the Lincoln News. He attended UPS as an undergraduate and got his masters and doctorate in economics at Purdue University.
With his Ph.D in hand, he came straight back to Tacoma and a job at UPS. He’s been there ever since, except for brief teaching posts at the American Institute on Political and Economic Systems in Prague, Czech Republic, and Johns Hopkins University’s Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Bologna, Italy.

Now he lives with his wife, Sue, just three blocks from the UPS campus. He walks to work.
“I’m a lucky guy,” he said. Veseth is most famous for his teaching, but he has other academic credentials. He co-founded and directs UPS’s International Political Economy Program, an innovative interdisciplinary approach to the study of international and global problems.
He’s written several books, including “Mountains of Debt,” “Selling Globalization” and “Globaloney: Unraveling the Myths of Globalization.”

A new book, “Wine Wars,” due out next year, is based in part on globalization issues his students explore in his popular class, “The Idea of Wine.” Why wine? And why soccer?
Veseth lights up at the question. It goes to the heart of his teaching philosophy. Both are accessible subjects that students don’t have to struggle to work up an interest in, and they open up worlds of topics including racism, nationalism and marketing. His excitement is contagious.
UPS Academic Vice President and Dean Kristine Bartanen put it this way: “Being an outstanding teacher is not just what Mike does, it’s who he is.”

Read more: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2010/11/18/1429330/tacoma-kid-now-states-professor.html#ixzz15rODdt1r