- Cal Anderson Park, a beautifully renovated and expanded park on Seattle’s Capitol Hill, re-opened on September 24, 2005. Originally one of Seattle’s Olmsted-designed parks (named “Lincoln Park,”), it had by 1993 deteriorated into weeds, trash, and a graffiti-covered rest room, and was avoided by community members as a druggy and dangerous place. Kay Rood and the community organization Groundswell Off Broadway was a prime mover in the process of organizing to rebuild the park into a beautiful community asset with an undergrounded reservoir, a playground, community buildings, a water feature, paths, gardens, and benches. This is Kay Rood’s story of the long process of rebuilding the park, which is named for Cal Anderson, Washington’s first openly gay legislator.
- Mars (Wikipedia)
Mars is the fourth planet and the furthest terrestrial planet from the Sun. The reddish color of its surface is due to finely grained iron(III) oxide dust in the soil, giving it the nickname “the Red Planet”. Mars’s radius is second smallest among the planets in the Solar System at 3,389.5 km (2,106 mi). It has a surface gravity of 3.72 m/s2 (12.2 ft/s2), which is 38% of Earth’s gravity. The Martian dichotomy is visible on the surface: on average, the terrain on Mars’s northern hemisphere is flatter and lower than its southern hemisphere. Mars has a thin atmosphere made primarily of carbon dioxide and two irregularly shaped natural satellites: Phobos and Deimos.