News around town: Learn a trade, musical ice, cell phone dinosaur

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Commitment of time, commitment of effort, commitment to mental health and commitment to this rendition of Port Townsend Observation Deck News Around Town.

T-SHIRT SAYING OF THE WEEK: “Who is this and why are you calling?”

TRADE NEWS: For all the high school seniors (and their parents) looking forward to graduation in five months or so and wondering what the future holds, consider this: There are job openings today in plumbing, appliance repair, electrical, roofing, refrigeration, marine trades, auto repair and the housing construction industry. “Sure, most parents like the idea of their child getting a college degree and getting ahead,” said one man who turns wrenches for a living. “In this day and age, when kids graduate college $60,000 in debt with no job, it’s a better long-term bet to learn a trade. Just saying.”

MUSICAL ICE NEWS: Our recent spell of cold weather wasn’t quite enough to thicken the ice to safely draw ice skaters to lakes and ponds, but was enough to create music. Hikers at Anderson Lake and Gibbs Lake reported hearing the lakes “singing” – the sounds of ice creaking and heaving. That’s all well and good, but after protecting a leaky outdoor faucet from subfreezing temps, the sound of rain this week is all right with me.

SCANNER CALL OF THE WEEK:  Dispatch reports a complaint out of a business in Port Hadlock: "Male subject in the parking lot talking with customers and making them uncomfortable."

CELL PHONE NEWS: “It seems like we are more tied down with grandkids than we were with the kids. Life is more hectic,” says a man, age 57, who is not even leashed to a cell phone. “Yeah, I’m still flying under the cloud and I hope to stay that way at least until my grandkids are old enough to have phones.”

CONFLICTING THEORY NEWS: Football is a lot like a Hallmark Channel movie, says the woman of the house. It’s predictable. Someone wins, and someone loses. Not so, says the man of the house. In a Hallmark made-for-TV movie, the good girl always gets the good guy. In football, the good guy often loses.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: This may be a pessimist’s view, but I’m still passing it along because the source has plenty of years under his belt in the Jefferson County business world: “Any new [retail] storefront is in effect victimizing existing businesses, unless they are selling heroin. Competition is the law of the land and it's not going to change. But something is going to change, and we are either the victims or the beneficiaries of a whole bunch of attention from people who don't live here, and probably don't have any intention of living here on a full-time basis, but still want to move here. Whether that leads to support of our retail sector is the big unknown.”

(The Port Townsend & Jefferson County Leader’s Patrick J. Sullivan appreciates anyone trying to make a living in retail in this age of ordering online.)