The latter shows the frustration we often see from athletes when the game is already in hand with a playoff berth waiting the winner and a trip home for the loser. What’s sad is that the brief violence on the field — seemingly well handled by the officials, spread to the sidelines and stands. The former is a clip showing a 20-year-old defender from New Mexico bringing the hammer down — literally — to various BYU players has gone worldwide with whole Web sites devoted to either villifying or defending her actions. Some peers in college soccer say she’s only getting this kind of attention because of her gender and that if she were a male, this would not be happening.

I take exception to this, going back to the infamous head butt by French player Zinedine Zidane in the 2006 World Cup contest. His extreme behavior also went viral. It’s not so much the gender as the actions that grab the attention.

Watching the 20-year-old in action, a few things become clear:

1. Her responses were not entirely unprovoked. In the shot of her throwing an elbow into the back on another player you can clearly see she reacting to being elbowed in the stomach. In the instance of her pulling the ponytail of another player, yanking her head back and throwing her to the ground, note that the BYU player is pulling on her uniform. I’m not saying that her actions are justified in any way. But let’s at least give her the benefit of the doubt that she was out to just brutalize other players.

2. There is no clear justification of her  punching a player in the face or when she kicks the ball into the face of another player after a teammate has tripped that player. But again, let’s remember, we are seeing clips, not the entire game, so there may or may not have been prior provocation.

3. Given the style of her play, her remorse following her indefinite suspension isn’t easy to completely accept. An aggressive style of play such as she showed takes time to develop — it doesn’t come out just in the “heat of the competition.” I’m thinking some high school and college coaches along her soccer career might know more about this than they have said.

There is plenty of Internet buzz about the two incidents — evolving into a discussion of what we expect of female vs. male athletes and the form of competition we expect of the genders. But what isn’t being talked about here is what I think is the root of the matter: Not that players are getting more aggressive or brazen, but that youth coaches are allowing that behavior at younger levels — all in the name of competition.

Having coached a variety of (male) youth sports for a number of years now, I can say I’ve seen my share of unsportsmanlike conduct in the way some coaches approach a game. In firsthand experience, I’ve seen coaches try to cheat by using the wrong size ball, heard them tell their players to purposefully try to hurt another player, bad mouth officials using colorful language in front of their players and even break out into a fistfight (that was two coaches on the same team …) in the middle of a game. These are sports at the 8- and 9-year-old divisions — not even close to high school age.

Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of really good youth coaches out there who every day try to teach the conduct of fair play and good sportsmanship. But I think there is a distinct disconnect in developing good coaches across the board. All you need to be a youth coach is a desire to do the job and the time to be at practice. There is no requisite for experience or moral sense of fair play.

For every youth sport, there are off-season coaching clinics, camps and seminars, but I see few coaches take advantage of these — often because they must foot the bill to attend out of their own pockets. Seldom do I hear of mandatory coaching clinics. Usually, there is one mandatory coach meeting before a season begins. But as a typical example, in Gig Harbor Little League baseball, the mandatory meeting is to go over details about rules and drafting order — everything except good coaching. There is the obligatory speech (usually near the end) about everyone working together for the betterment of the kids, coaching for the players — not for your ego, but you can easily see those good intentions benched early on each season.

I’ve always been a little amazed there isn’t some kind of “coaching” school that youth coaches should be required to pass before being handed their whistle. We require so much of other adults who come into daily contact with our children, such as educators and daycare personnel — yet we are happy to release junior to a virtual stranger for two hours a day over a three or four month period. It’s as if we as parents and those who run leagues are all playing a great big game of Roulette with our children — willing to blindly accept a “bad” coach for a season here and there while wishing for someone better.

Until we modifying the world of youth sports, we shouldn’t find it so surprising to see videos of women soccer players pulling hair and trading punches, upset parents flying out of the stands and sucker punching a ref, or Little League teens going ballistic and head butting an umpire. We are a competitive species living in a competitive society and this sense of competition is drilled into our youth at a very early age. It is unfortunate that in our haste to get the little one to play her best, we are willing to let some unscrupulous coach teach them the underhanded techniques to get that extra edge on the field while masquerading as someone trying to teach them how to properly kick a ball.

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Hollywood needs to look over its collective special effects shoulders, some engineers in Seattle (tied to the Viaduct tunnel project) are looking to make the next natural disaster movie right in our backyard neighborhood of Seattle.

Words don’t do it justice, you gotta watch the YouTube video for yourself.

Alaskan Way Viaduct on YouTube

If this doesn’t play, check it out at the WSDOT Web site to find a streaming version — along with a quick explanation as to why they released this a week before the election.

Just be sure you pop the popcorn and grab the Milk Duds before watching. Who knows, maybe the producers of “2012″ will buy the rights and cut this into the upcoming blockbuster.

To read about the politics behind the delayed release and how it was first issued to KING-TV before being put out for public viewing, see the Seattle Times article that first broke the story.

Now if someone would just film the epic about Gig Harbor being ravaged by SUV-driving soccer moms all hopped up on triple lattes and radiated by their continuous use of cell phones … If anyone in Hollywood is interested, I can have the script for you in 48 hours.

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As the cool air begins to chill the nights, the annual ritual of my wife’s blood-curdling screams fill the rooms and shatter the otherwise mostly peaceful ambiance that hangs about our rural county home.

Is she susceptible to the grisly nature of horror films that profilgate the airwaves and Netflix at this time of year? (Well, yes, but that’s not what causes her to scream.) Nor is she preparing for an upcoming appearance in one of the local theaters’ annual haunted house extravaganzas — although her howls would most assuredly add an air of sinister authenticity to the fright fests.

No, what sends her into an apoplectic shrilly nonsense is our diminutive and oft-misunderstood friend: a spider.

Like many “arachnophobes,” she firmly believes our little houseguests come in from the cold as the weather takes a turn for the worse. And up until a couple of days ago, I believed the very same myth. That is, until doing research for this blog post, I came across the Web site of a one certain Rod Crawford, curator of Arachnids at Burke Museum, on the campus of the University of Washington in Seattle.

I had the pleasure of talking with Mr. Crawford on the telephone about a dozen years ago, when as a reporter, I was preparing background information on a story of a local claiming to have found a brown recluse in their home. Mr. Crawford assured me that if indeed a person had found a brown recluse, that I had a much bigger story than I intended, as no such confirmation of this particular spider being found in western Washington had yet been made.

We talked at some length of some other spider myths before ending our conversation. Now I doubt very seriously that my one phone call so many years ago led him to publish his Web site (but I’ll gladly take some of the credit, regardless), but he has, since that fateful phone call, put upon the Web — pun most definitely intended — a site about the many spider myths. And there are quite a few.

Just some of the myths he debunks are: You are never more than three feet from a spider; spiders found in bathtubs and sinks came up through the drain pipes; the Daddy-longlegs has the world’s most dangerous venom but it’s fangs are too soft to penetrate human skin; when black widow spiders mate, the female always kills and eats the male; some bubble gum has spider eggs in it; people are bitten by spiders at night while they sleep; you can identify a spider by a photo or by its markings — and a particularly disturbing myth, that we swallow an average of four live spiders per year while we sleep.

I could go on in some detail to some of the myths vs. reality, but why when Mr. Crawford has done such an excellent job already and you can read his handiwork for yourself by clicking here?

I will admit that I have heard and believed a number of the spider myths he squashes on his Web site. In particular: that spiders come into a house to escape the cold. Think about it. They are not warm-blooded so they do not react to the vagaries of outdoor temperature changes other than to die when it gets too cold. It was fascinating to read how there are in the Pacific Northwest roughly 30 outdoor arachnid species, 25 indoor species and eight that can live indoors and outside. Most of the house spiders we see have lived their entire life inside and putting them outside is most certainly a death sentence for the spider (another myth busted).

A big myth that I still have a hard time adjusting to is that spiders rarely bite and on average a person is bitten once or twice in their life. Of the thousands of spiders he has handled, Crawford claims to have been bitten only twice.

So as Halloween approaches and the visible sight of orb weaver webs can be seen on virtually ever bush and tree, take time to read how misunderstood our little multi-eyed friends are. Like sharks and wolves, they have garnered an undeserved reputation amid their human counterparts. It’s time they earned a little respect for all the good they provide by keeping a pest-filled insect world in line.

But that respect will stop short with my arachnid-fearing wife. She won’t even discuss a spider’s attributes and the photo I’ve attached to this post will guarantee to keep her from ever reading this blog.

And my apologies to Jim Stafford’s 1970s classic, “Spiders and Snakes,” about winning love through intimidation. I loved that song as a teenager.

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But in my humble opinion, this contest pales in comparison to a matchup that isn’t even part of football reality — yet.

Anyone who is even remotely involved in youth football in Gig Harbor knows there are two leagues to choose from when signing up junior to be the next Peyton Manning. Part of the harbor’s rich history in youth sports is Peninsula Youth Football, well into its third decade in developing football stars of tomorrow. A relative upstart by comparison, the still young Bulldogs Football is in its fourth year of operation. Both leagues field teams from ages 8 to 14 — and both include cheerleader squads so whole families can stay involved.

Both leagues play an eight-game season with extra games included as part of a post-season tournament. Both leagues develop young minds and bodies for the rigors of football that will eventually feed their players into one of the two area high schools. Both leagues bristle with volunteers at all levels willing to help from coaching to cheerleading to recruitment. And just like their high school counterparts, both leagues do not share common opponents beyond each other.

All these similarities end at one very important point: Unlike the Hawks and Tides, PYF and Bulldogs do not play each other for bragging rights to Gig Harbor football.

Having been involved with both programs, I think I’ve gained an insight as to why this might be. As a matter of full disclosure, my son has played three years in PYF and this year is a Bulldog. I’ve been actively involved as well, having coached those same three years in PYF and now coaching as a Bulldog.

As you can well imagine, many of the “adults” involved with PYF don’t want to see this kind of matchup because they don’t want to legitimize the Bulldogs program in any way by acknowledging it (I use the term “adults” loosely because some revert to childlike behavior when it comes to youth sports). There are no doubt detractors for such a match-up in the Bulldogs camp as well, although I must confess, I have not met any of them yet. As you can imagine, those involved in a new league are eager to prove they belong, so many in the Bulldogs organization would welcome such a once-a-year contest.

At the youth level, you better believe the players are well aware of the “other” league. My son has taken his share of ribbing from his former Seahawks teammates for going Bulldog red. I just tell him to point out the difference in the won-loss records of his former and current team.

I joke, but seriously, both programs are filled with players that will one day join together as teammates on the sidelines for either Gig Harbor or Peninsula. Having now been a part of both programs, I have a better view of the youth football world than I did a year ago. Both programs are by-and-large well-run and are filled with adult volunteers who give countless hours to helping players learn and love the game of football. To be sure, both have individuals who detract from the core essence that it is and always should be by and about the youth. But I think you’d be hard pressed to look at any youth sports program anywhere and not find that element.

An annual contest between the leagues could be a good thing for the Gig Harbor community. Like it’s high school counterpart — the Fish Bowl — the games could be built around an annual fundraiser. A nominal admission could be charged and throughout the day, each grade could square off at Roy Anderson Field for bragging rights. A traveling trophy could be created, given that there are five team levels, so each league that wins three or more for a given year would earn the trophy. Non-profits could even earn needed money running concessions for the day-long event.

Granted, there are logistics to be figured out. While the Bulldogs field one team per grade, PYF fields 2-3 per grade. Creating an “all-star” team from PYF would be unfair because those kids wouldn’t have played together through the year. Maybe the PYF teams could alternate years — a Tides team one year and a Seahawks team the next.

Despite the obvious problems (where do you fit this into the calendar) and the sublime ones (those adults who don’t want to see this happen), it is an event that could be put to good use in the community to drive youth sports awareness and community spirit. I can tell you, the players on both sides would love the opportunity to play their school mates.

So how about it, adults? Can we truly act our age long enough to create a Fish Bowl in miniature? Having experienced what each program offers, I can tell you flatly that both leagues teach good values, sportsmanship and determination while also developing a respect and love for the sport of football. I no longer listen to the rumors spread about either as I’ve found it all to be just that — rumors. Let’s get past the pettiness that may have spurred the development of two youth football programs in Gig Harbor, acknowledge that there are and always will be two solid programs for players and parents to choose from, and use this opportunity to create something special and unique for Gig Harbor that involves both programs in a fun and positive fashion.

Lets embrace the competitiveness that is part of having two healthy, growing programs and develop a higher sense of community oneness by using the playing field to bring this all together. We can all feel good about creating more youth participation while raising funds that can be turned back into the community to further help make Gig Harbor a great place to live, work and play football.

I’ve snapped the ball. The question is: Will anyone run with it?

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Not to sound like the proverbial old coot, but “when I was a kid,” we seldom had to bring more than a notebook of lined paper and a sunny disposition to start a new school year. I remember my teacher even handing me a shiny and unsharpened bright yellow No. 2 on the first day. But tightening budgets and burgeoning classrooms have conspired to create the system we have today, wherein parents must supply the class with many of the necessities that schools routinely supplied in the past.

Today’s student is lacking if she doesn’t bring a box of tissues, crayons, erasers, markers, notebooks, reams of paper, tape, rulers, glue sticks, highlighters, Ziploc bags, hand sanitizers, scissors, calculators, pocket dictionaries and enough pencils to build a bridge that would put the Tacoma Narrows to shame.

What got me to thinking was the demand for reams of paper. I got to wondering just how big the stack of paper would be if you totaled all the students in all the classrooms in all the schools in the Peninsula School District who were asked to bring a ream of paper to start the year. This rather simple query turned into a laborious task of Sisyphian proportions as I took to amassing the school supply lists of the 15 schools in the PSD realm.

The results of my query resulted in four rather cumbersome charts, which can be accessed as PDFs labeled in the following:

psd-09-supplies-per-student (SPS): Shows the supplies needed by each student in each grade, with a total dollar amount per student factored in with the pricing guide.

school Supplies by Grade/School (SGS): Shows totals of each item requested for each grade, based on projected enrollment numbers for 2009-10 posted on the PSD Web site.

psd-09-total-supplies-by-school (TSS): Shows total number of each item requested by each school, with a total for all of the districts eight elementary and four middle schools.

psd-09-supplies-prices (SP): Shows estimated cost of each item, total requested for the school district and the cost to parents based on these amounts.

As a matter of full disclosure, please note there are a number of discrepancies that make this list necessarily incomplete. For one, the high schools are not represented as class supply lists are not posted online. The per-student total is not completely accurate as a number of the supplies can be purchased at different stores for different prices — sometimes for big discounts at some stores. Also, the per-student total can be skewed by unlisted items, i.e. middle school students are required to provide gym clothes and some, locks for a locker, and none of this is incorporated into the cost totals.

Likewise, many parents refuse to purchase the total amount of some items requested, i.e. a student may be asked to bring 10 glue sticks, but a parent supplies three or they opt to not send some of the requested supplies to school at all.

And naturally enough, there is the matter of recycling. Many parents save items from one school year to the next — such as watercolor paints, or reusable items like calculators and rulers — eliminating the need to purchase the item anew each year. The costs per student shown on SPS assume that a parent is buying every item on the list as requested for the new school year.

Now I’m no statistical engineer, so my math and logic is in no way meant to be comprehensive or complete. Rather, this little project  led me to pose the bigger question: Given the distressed economy, could the school district pool the teacher wish lists, purchase the major accoutrement at a discounted bulk rate and save parents a lump sum of cash?

And like any statistical study, interesting facts and heretofore unasked questions come up when the data is laid out side by side.

For example: While most schools require at least one box of Kleenex per student, kids in Goodman Middle School must have particularly runny noses as they are expected to supply 2,196 boxes of tissues for the 549 students — a total of four boxes per student. And kids at Artondale and Purdy elementary schools plan to glue a lot of paper, with both schools expecting more than 3,500 glue sticks, while Evergreen Elementary and Goodman Middle School students will glue nary a dozen pieces of paper together with Evergreen asking for little more than two glue sticks per student and Goodman less than one per student.

And my original question on reams of paper? Students at Harbor Ridge and Voyager didn’t need to weigh their backpacks down on opening day as they were not asked for any reams, while Kopachuck tipped the other end of the scale, requesting 1,112 reams from the 656 students. Districtwide, a whopping 4,355 reams of paper were expected to be collected. With a ream of 20 lb. bond measuring 2 inches deep, that’s a stack of reams topping out at just over 725 feet high. If you were to stack the reams 10 feet high, you would need a closet measuring at least 6.5 feet by 7.5 feet and 10 feet high.

Anyone who has manipulated statistics knows you can create a number or set of numbers to represent just about anything you want. Looking at the numbers, a parent could wonder why a fifth grader at Artondale requires more than $80 in supplies while his counterpart at Minter Creek can meet her needs with less than $20. And do Artondale third-grade and Harbor Heights fourth-grade teachers really expect to go through 60 pencils per student in one school year? (That’s a new pencil for every three school days.)

But that’s not the point here. I’ll leave that kind of number crunching to those of you who feel compelled to look into this further. My point is to the school district. Couldn’t the district, with its buying power, purchase the non-reusable items on the lists each year — say  like the 23,432 glue sticks (parent price of 3 for .99 cents, costs parents $7,732.56), 7,714 Kleenex boxes (.99 each for a total of $7,636.86), and 4,355 reams of paper ($2.99 per ream, $13,021.45)?

The district could recoup the funds by then charging the parents what it paid for each item, so the parents are still footing the supplies bill, but getting the district’s buying clout.

It just seems to me a good starting off point to talk about the district looking to be innovative in ways to help parents meet the needs of the classroom by using its buying power to reduce the overall costs of going back to school. Anyone agree?

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Some define it by one’s ability to stand up to insurmountable odds like an American Patriot facing a charge of the British Army. Others may define it by the quiet determination of a toddler as she stands at the edge of the diving board for the very first time. Courage can be personified in standing up to a superior for what’s right, and is aptly illustrated by a stranger rushing into a burning house to rescue someone inside.

Courage comes in large Costco-sized crates and can also fit neatly into a pocket. It is both colorful and colorless, tasty and bitter, blunt and sharp.

And it is represented anew in the sweet face of a child.

The story of 9-year-old Isabelle Smith of Gig Harbor in the current issue of Gig Harbor Life personifies courage in every sense of the word.

Most everyone faces issues at some time in their lives that leave scars either real or emotional, but few of us receive them at such a young age and for most of us, we can hide or mask life’s “wounds” from the people around us. But Isabelle has been given a route through life few could endure — and yet she does so with a grace and style — and with the innocent smile of a child.

Her parents, M.K. and Ted Smith, have long ago learned to endure and survive the questions, stares and often rude and ignorant comments that come their child’s way, and they have taught Isabelle to do the same.

Even beyond the scale of impropriety from the public at large, Isabelle has had to endure numerous surgical procedures to battle the rare affliction she was born with, sebaceous nevus — bringing into sharp focus just how courageous this small child truly is.

I am in awe of people like Isabelle and the courage they routinely display every day of their lives. She demonstrates a strength of character I find seriously lacking in many people, and I find it both humbling and uplifting to read of her life and the courage she displays.

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Before making the decision to go weekly, we looked long and hard at the idea of Gig Harbor having two weekly newspapers. The residents of Gig Harbor have been served for years by a very dependable and quality weekly publication. But in looking at the differences we offer our readers and advertisers to the choices given them in the past, we realized we were comparing apples to oranges.

Gig Harbor Life has been and will remain a free publication, direct-mailed to households on the peninsula — including Fox Island — and we remain committed to bring our readers content they won’t find anywhere else: stories about their friends and neighbors, businesses and activities that make Gig Harbor a unique and special place we all call home.

Gig Harbor Life remains committed to giving businesses both large, but especially small, an opportunity to reach customers old and new with reasonable rates that won’t strain a tight budget. Given the current economic climate, we understand that businesses can ill afford to spend their hard-earned dollars on advertising that will only reach a small percentage of their target audience. With our 18,000-plus circulation, business owners can rest assured they are reaching the widest possible audience across the peninsula and know their advertising dollars are being used wisely.

Though our news staff is small, we feel we know Gig Harbor and its residents intimately and are uniquely suited to bring you quality news and information about your community each week. With editor Scott Turner, advertising transition lead Tim Lengel, paginator September Hyde and myself (managing editor) we bring a combined 65 years of journalism experience to the pages of Gig Harbor Life, with 20 of those years being served right here in Gig Harbor.

And nine contributing freelance writers and columnists bring an additional 25 years of experience writing about the people and happenings in and around Gig Harbor.

But we don’t stop there. We welcome and encourage reader participation. The fully interactive companion Web site at gigharbor-life.com allows readers to post comments on stories, as well as photos and even write blogs unique to Gig Harbor that are hosted on the Web site. We seek out story and photo ideas and welcome any and all suggestions on how we can better serve our readership both in print and online.

Speaking of the Web, readers can often find stories online well before the print publication, along with Web-only items designed to heighten the reader’s experience that print simply cannot deliver.

Going to a weekly publication will open new avenues to serve you, including the addition of an editorial page where we welcome a healthy and ongoing community discourse of the events and activities that have an impact on our daily lives in Gig Harbor.

As I said: heady times. But we know the staff of Gig Harbor Life is not only up to the task, they all are looking forward to having twice the opportunity to serve you that they had before. As always, we welcome, encourage and look forward to your comments and suggestions. You can reach editor Scott Turner at (253) 514-3107 or by e-mail at editor@gigharbor-life.com and Tim Lengel at (360) 731-7373 or by e-mail at tim-lengel@kitsapsun.com. Reach September at shyde@gigharbor-life.com and me at rhallock@gigharbor-life.com.

We remain thankful for your warm and inviting welcome to be a part of your lives and we look forward to serving you now and well into the future.

Ric Hallock is managing editor of Gig Harbor Life and lives with his wife, two sons, one cat and countless wild rabbits just outside the north end city limits of Gig Harbor.

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Or do I get the sneaking suspicion I’m being watched?

In my younger days — getting farther and farther away in my review mirror — I never used to be paranoid. How does the old joke go …? Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.

For me, paranoia started in early 2002 while living near the U.S.-Canadian border. One day out of nowhere these really high towers appeared, each equipped with a movable camera attached to the top. Being a journalist, I inquired as to their sudden existence and found they were part of a beefed up response to border security issues brought on by the paranoia of the U.S. Government and it’s response to 9-11.

But no one would answer as to who was on the other end of the continuous video feed of the high-powered cameras that had the capability to zoom in to details inside any house or vehicle window within it’s scope. And no one would say if a recording device was or wasn’t hooked up to that feed.

Jump cut to current days and a couple of articles in different publications catch my eye. One was in the North Mason Life in the July 15 edition. “Sheriff’s Office to Install Mobile Terminals.”  Essentially, some outside funds are being used to install mobile data terminals (MDTs) in Mason County prowlers and have the effect of being able to broadcast dispatch calls without going out across public airwaves. On the face of it, this sounds reasonable — why broadcast where you want to be going when any two-bit thief or hoodlum need only plunk down a couple of (stolen) sawbucks to get a state-of-the-art scanner to eavesdrop on police movements? This may be a ludicrous stretch for an anology but serves to make the point: I’m sure another reasonable sounding idea at the time was that of creating a racially pure breed of Aryan during pre-war Germany.

The paranoid side of me questions who will monitor the officers to see if they aren’t abusing this technology to further erode the rights of citizens? Powerful tools such as these  are a great way to fight crime, but they can be every bit as powerful in creating corruption when used by unscrupulous individuals or for nefarious justifications.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Then there is a report in Science Daily about researchers in Oregon and Washington perfecting a new method for determining the extent of illicit drug use in entire communities from the wastewater flushed into a given municipal treatment plant. According to the report, “scientists determined the ‘index load’ of the different drugs — the amount of drug per person per day — based on estimates of the population served by each wastewater facility.”

A report issued in the July 2009 journal Addiction tells of a study completed in 2008 of a statewide mapping of Oregon’s illicit drug use with a one-day testing of 96 municipality wastewater treatment plants representing 65 percent of the state’s population.

So today an entire municipality’s or state’s drug use picture (both legal and illegal) can be determined without the residents’ knowledge or consent. Today’s science breakthroughs routinely leads to tomorrow’s science fiction becoming a reality — often with less than honorable intentions. If science can now successfully test an entire community, how long before a state or federal government agency decides to place a testing device on a individual home’s wastewater flow?

J. Robert Oppenheimer, in helping to harness the power of an atomic reaction, really had no idea how that knowledge and power would be used. Scientists are often one step removed from the political powers that take their research and find new ways to apply it.

Then I read that county officials are busy mounting cameras at intersections with the intent that they can spot “pattern disruptions” and be more effective in triggering a traffic light to change than the older system of underground sensors. Again, on the surface, it sounds fine, but who can say that some government agency or official in the future see a new and more invasive use for the equipment that’s already in place?

You’d think more people would be alarmed about the continuing erosion of their private lives and the ease at which municipal, county, state and federal government agencies can tap that information through usurping of infrastructure already in place.

But then we’re talking about a populace that is ever more comfortable in posting intimate and trivial details about their everyday lives on Internet sites such as Facebook and myspace.

Want a glimpse of what may yet come of a future where we increasingly lose our personal freedoms? Rent the sci-fi thriller “Gattaca.” Then invest in a good high-speed personal DustBuster hand vac.

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For the complete story, you can check out the earlier posts: Part I detailing the anticipation of going ghost hunting and Part II, an account of the evening’s events. But if you just want to see the video, then you can watch it from the link below.

Ghost Hunt in Union, Channeling Spirits

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As the evening sky darkened, distant flashes illuminated the gathering clouds, followed by a low and ominous rumble as the thunder rolled across the sky, accompanied by gusts of wind shaking the alders and pines that surrounded our diminutive camp.

A handful of paranormal enthusiasts — along with an invited, spirit-beckoning “medium” — and a confirmed skeptic (myself) gathered together July 11 outside the McReavy house, perched atop the steep hillside overlooking the Hood Canal in Union, which has stood empty of living residents for nearly 40 years.

The purpose was to investigate purported paranormal activity (read: ghosts) that might be present at the site. My job: to help document the event in video and still digital images. The image above is of the medium channeling “Mary,” a young girl who told us, through tears, of her having great difficulties while swimming alone. The blurred effect is a result of a slowed shutter speed due to only two dim light sources, one directly behind the chair he is seated in and a second coming from a video camera off-screen to the left.

Built by John and Fannie (Gove) McReavy in 1883, the house certainly held the charm of being home to unearthly spirits. Willed to the local historical society by the heirs of the last couple to live in the home — McReavy’s daughter, Helen (who wrote “How, When and Where, On the Hood Canal,” 1960 Puget Press) and her husband — it has long been cleared of most of the interior furnishings. In fact, before the couple died (in 1969 and 1970) it appears they had come into some money and had started a major renovation of the home, both inside and out.

They removed the Victorian style pitched roof in favor of a flat beam and plank venture, essentially lopping off a third-story room just visible in some historical photos. And the first and second floors were in various array of having the interior wood plank wall coverings replaced by sheetrock.

As a result, much of the internal charm was boxed up, as fancy moldings and cornices that framed the doors and windows had all been removed to accommodate the remodeling work.

The reality struck me as a far more poignant story. Imagine remodeling your entire home and in the middle of the work, your spouse dies. For upward of a year, you continue to live in the home, but never complete the work, instead living our your days in a home with one foot in the 19th century and one foot in the 20th century. It must have been a lonely final year for Mr. Andersen.

The only remaining vestiges of the home’s original interior were the doors, hinges and some wallpaper remnants stubbornly clinging to some surfaces. The unfinished basement provided tantalizing clues to former occupants with a mishmash of home knickknacks from rolling pins to teacups and records to steamer trunks covered in the dust of dried mildew. One item of particular interest was the front page of a Good Housekeeping magazine dated 1894 — it was found lying on the floor where it had doubtless been tread upon for decades.

Ivy tenaciously invaded one eastern window, preferring the controlled climate inside to the harsh weather blowing off the canal’s shores to the north.

The house itself had stories to tell — an intriguing one lingered about the internal fireplace with a partially dismantled brick chimney and insert installed. The backside of the fireplace faced a back room where the wall was exposed, showing burned timbers where a chimney fire must have put quite a scare in the residents of the time. They were lucky indeed that a timber house of well-seasoned and dried wood didn’t literally explode in flames, as so many homes of that era would do when exposed to fire.

And where the chimney had been removed, a member of the party discovered a large piece of cut tree trunk, bark still clinging to it, wedged between the first floor ceiling and second floor flooring. We surmised it must have been some tradition of putting a piece of unfinished wood from which the home was being built into the home to either bring good luck or ward off bad.

In an unfinished crawl space along the western side of the home, a large knarled tree stump measuring several feet across was left — obviously deemed too much trouble to try and uproot, they cut it to its base and built the home above it.

But if there were spirits lingering about with stories to tell, they remained elusive to our party.

The medium — by his reckoning — was successful in raising a half-dozen denizens of the past. But proof of this reality must be measured in quantifiable facts and every attempt to question a channeled spirit on a detail that could be fact-checked was adroitly side-stepped or ignored.

For example, when asked what book they last read, each and every one of the channeled spirits answered, “The Bible.” And of the channeled McReavy himself, an important businessman and one of the signers of the state charter, whom you would think would be in keen touch with the world around him and the comings and goings on in his own personally named “Venice on the Hood Canal.” But when I asked him what was the name of the newspaper in town, he replied, “I don’t care about newspapers.” Remember: this is the late 1800s when no other form of mass communication existed. Do you really think a man of his stature wouldn’t care to keep up on the news in his community?

I caught the medium in a few outright errors as well (that hopefully the rest of the group will pick up on as they review the videotaped sessions). His first spirit said he was a visitor in the home in 1880 (remember, it was built in 1883) and later when he channeled McReavy, presumably John as he referred to the home as his and wondered at the renovations, he said he built the home in the 1870s and later referred to the master bedroom as a guest room.

Some of the party saw validation of their beliefs in the medium’s manifestations while others maintained their doubts, but having been a theater major many years ago, I must admit that to me the mood lighting and channeled spirits who each rather conveniently “had to go” after a few minutes seemed more like a poorly staged one-act play than anything even beginning to approach reality.

To get a glimpse of the fun we had that night, check out the video here — apologies for the poor quality, but the lighting was limited.

I know one other member of our expedition was as skeptical as I when he asked a spirit if they liked to eat salmon.

The evening petered out around 4:30 a.m. with everyone succumbing to the Sandman, slinking away to find his or her sleeping bag or tent.

For what its worth, I will share my notes and observations with the group and they are free to include or exclude whatever part they desire as they prepare their report of the happening of the night.

As for me, I continue to remain skeptical, having not seen or heard anything that would change my mind. Although the stories that flowed around the room between channeling sessions and also around the campfire outside were anecdotal and filled with provoking details of secondhand sightings, I chalked up the night as being akin to a grown-up version of camp night, where the campers would gather about a fire nestled deep amid rustling trees and snapping branches as a camp counselor weaved a tale of suspense and terror of a haunted night long ago at the very site.

The scariest moment I had was while driving away and pointing down Main Street on a very, very steep incline and imagining the brakes giving way to a fast and furious ride down the hill, across a short gravel parking lot and straight into the cold waters of Hood Canal. That would be a chilly fright indeed.

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