Injured Birds
It’s evidently pigeon-hunting season in downtown Seattle. The
Stranger has received numerous tips and photos from downtown office
workers about a number of pigeons found strutting around Westlake
Center with four-inch blow darts through their heads.
Licenses are not required to exterminate pigeons. However, most
downtown businesses implement humane pigeon deterrents such as nets and
spikes.
No one has claimed responsibility for the pigeon
puncturing—the parks department, animal control, and Fish and
Wildlife all denied being involved—and no one appears to be
looking for rogue pigeon hunters. SPD says they haven’t received any
calls about the injured birds. NANCY DREW
Intriguing Proposals
The city council is just starting the process of amending the city’s
comprehensive plan—the planning blueprint that guides the city’s
land-use policies. In one intriguing proposal, the city’s Department of
Planning and Development suggested that the city build a lid over
I-5 linking downtown and Capitol Hill. The idea, according to a DPD
spokesman, is “just a vision right now,” with no specific
structure, location, or price tag, although it ultimately could include
a park or housing. ERICA C. BARNETT
Unhappy Editors
After just eight months, Emily White quit her job this week as arts
and entertainment editor for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. On
Monday, April 7, she sent an e-mail to friends and colleagues that
began, “It is official, Emily can’t work for corporations.” Her
departure was immediate. (White was the editor of The Stranger from July 1995 to February 1999.)
“My main problem was they had a—to me—irrational
attachment to banker’s hours. Like, you have to be here from 8 to
6, when actually much of a newspaper can be done remotely or at other
hours, and I have a daughter. We’d be doing all these stories about how
to be green and then be sitting in [rush hour] traffic all the time,
which was really contradictory.”
She adds that higher-ups didn’t understand what she was trying to do
with the arts and music coverage. “The breaking point was having to
defend wanting to put [musician] Daniel Johnston on the cover of What’s
Happening,” she says, referring to the P-I‘s arts guide. “I
couldn’t believe I had to defend that. So it’s a generation gap, I
think.”
She’s working on a novel and has a long-distance gig teaching grad
students in North Carolina.
Calls to the P-I weren’t returned by press time.
CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE