In case you have not been keeping score, I struck out in my campaign to require all tattooed ladies in Snohomish County to spend at least one week a year in a circus sideshow.

Engels Pub has been rated one of the top blues bars in the Seattle area, serving outstanding food and drinks.  Bloggers have also described it as "Biker Friendly."

There are a lot of retired residents in Edmonds, well educated in schools or the workplace, who discover they have both the time and inclination to write a book. Jim Hodges and Reggie Allen are two who have transmitted that lust into literature. Their backgrounds indicate few other resemblances.

Granted, if you have a bad case of "the hungries" your food lust will doubtless be appeased during a visit to The Taste of Edmonds. But you should be aware that the menu, which has been prepared for this weekend, does not represent the acme of culinary adventure.

Have you ever discovered a Japanese fishing float on a Washington beach?   Do you know any friends or relatives who have discovered glass balls on the beach?  Neither have I.  

It must have been four or five years ago when Your Obedient Correspondent voiced a warning.  "We've got trouble, trouble, trouble, right here in South Snohomish," I cautioned.

In 1884 the local newspaper proclaimed the surrounding community "one of the pleasantest towns on Puget Sound.  It is comprised of two stores of general merchandise, one drug store, three hotels, two saloons, one blacksmith and wagon shop, courthouse, post office, schoolhouse and about 25 dwelling houses and a church of the Methodist denomination.

He wrote about the sights and sounds of a rainy autumn day,  "the call of seagull and rook... the knock of sailing boats on the webbed wall" and how "the mussel pooled on the heron priested shore."

It's really a spectacular state, stretching from Wood River and   Sun Valley in the south to vast mountain lakes like Coeur d'Alene to the north.  

Did you notice how quickly Buzz Lightyear, Woody, Jessie and the Gang ran Robin Hood out of town? Robin and his Merry Men lasted only about three sacks of popcorn before they were replaced at the Edmonds Theater by Toy Story 3.

A sign posted over the fresh salmon stall at the Edmonds Saturday market reads, "Vegetarian:  Ancient Indian word meaning Poor Fisherman." It was good for a laugh.   So is a list of rules regarding admission to the market, which is supposedly limited to "Dogs with social skills."  

The finger of blame has been pointed directly and frequently at the petroleum industry.   Nobody yet has indicted the oil barons for an epidemic of obesity in this country.  But it's about time they did. 

Edmonds' merchants are always looking for new customers.  But they won't find any in the back booths at Skippers. We might find some south of the county line, in the kingdom now ruled by Mike McGinn.  

During a recent stroll through the Edmonds Marina I noted a fleet of well-worn fishing boats that were similar to the Suquamish Tribal fleet we had previously seen offloading shrimp at the local docks.

When you are a teenager, just out of high school, anything seems possible.   Like hitchhiking from Great Falls, Mt., to Hollywood, to catch a few rays of California sunshine, to hit a beach or two that did not involve the Missouri river.  

I don't want to be an alarmist, but we clearly are experiencing a crime wave in Edmonds. And I know "who did it."

I was recently convinced that as a resident and registered voter in Edmonds I was required to take a position on Skippers.  

Nobody ever accused me of being a mathematical genius and I blame this on my stutter-start to formal education.  Which is to say that in my first five student years I attended six different elementary schools in five different communities.

If somebody at the Creative Retirement Institute had a flair for hyperbole, they might have introduced a guest lecturer in a spring quarter class as: "The Most Dangerous Man in America." "Terrorist and Death Merchant." Or "The Great Gatsby of the Spook World."

You know how your Super Froster Frickers arrive at your breakfast table. Tony the Tiger brings them. But did you know that the milk in the cereal bowl might have been transported to your Edmonds grocery store over a distance of 200 miles and 500 years?