The new CEO of Kroger, parent company to brands including Fred Meyer and QFC in Washington state, is looking to compete with Walmart and other companies by lowering prices. This is a QFC in the University Village… (Erika Schultz / The Seattle Times, 2024)More
By Jaewon Kang(Ed note: Here’s the good news, but see the next article!)
Kroger’s new CEO is looking at big price cuts in order to win back market share and take on his former employer, Walmart Inc., and other competitors.
The largest US grocery company, which owns 21 chains including City Market and Fred Meyer, is laying the groundwork for lower prices across product categories, CEO Greg Foran told Bloomberg News in his first interview since taking the role in February. Management is currently making plans to test price cuts and then phase them in.
Kroger is looking to compete more fiercely with Walmart and other companies that have gained ground in recent years at the expense of traditional grocery operators. Across food retail, businesses emphasizing value are outperforming those seen as offering higher prices, Foran said, pointing to Walmart, Costco Wholesale Corp., Trader Joe’s, Aldi and Amazon.com Inc.
“I think about our business a bit like a Formula One race. There’s a lead group of cars that are doing a very good job,” Foran said. “Our objective is to get out of the midfield and start lapping faster, make up the gap on the first-group cars and then ideally pass them.”
In addition to cutting prices, Kroger is working to make service in stores friendlier and faster. It also wants to accelerate new store openings.
The company is forging a new path under its first external CEO following a failed deal with competitor Albertsons Cos. and the abrupt departure a year ago of long-time leader Rodney McMullen. The company is now contending with increasingly cautious US consumers, escalating inflation worries and GLP-1 drugs that are reshaping eating habits.
Foran, 64, said Kroger will look to trim expenses in part by importing merchandise directly and using technology more effectively, and then put savings toward price cutting. Items across the store will get cheaper, he added, while declining to quantify the investment.
‘Thousands of Products’
“The reality is, the basket has to come down. And not everyone’s basket is the same,” Foran said. “It needs to be across thousands of products, and it has to be something that passes the commonsense piece with customers.”
Retailers, especially grocery chains that operate on relatively thin margins, typically don’t disclose their tactics to lower prices for merchandise. Walmart said Thursday that it’s cut prices on about 7,200 items, up more than 20% from a year ago. The world’s largest retailer said low prices are helping it gain market share across income levels.
“This is a competitive market and has been for all the years that I’ve been in retail,” Walmart CEO John Furner said on a call with analysts, in response to a question about other retailers’ push to cut prices. “This is an industry, particularly in food, where everyone is looking for value and has been for a really long time.”
Walmart said it will continue to prioritize low prices, especially as higher gas prices squeeze shoppers’ budgets. Inflation has accelerated with the conflict in Iran pushing up fuel prices, and the tightening of government benefits has also led some households to pull back.
Kroger’s Foran said consumers are “wary of what they’re seeing at the gas pump. They’re wary of some of the commentary about what might be coming down the line in terms of some increases.” While they are not changing habits in a notable way and grocery spending has remained healthy, affordability concerns could worsen if macroeconomic challenges persist, he added.
Cincinnati Roots
Kroger started as a single store that Barney Kroger opened in Cincinnati in 1883. As the company grew, it broadened its assortment and added services like in-store bakeries before acquiring various chains over the years. It now generates nearly $150 billion annually in revenue.
Foran, who was born and raised in New Zealand, has returned to the U.S. — and the retail industry — after about five years running his home country’s national airline. Before leaving for the airline in 2020, he was credited with whipping Walmart’s US stores into shape.
At the big-box retailer, he was known for visiting stores frequently, studying their performance and asking specific, detailed questions to field staff. He made stores cleaner, friendlier and easier to shop, in addition to lowering prices and zeroing in on the fresh food assortment. During his tenure, Walmart’s US division generated three straight years of increases in quarterly same-store sales and his departure was seen as a blow to the company.
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Foran, who went to Air New Zealand to try his hand in a new industry, said he wasn’t aware of the Kroger opening when he stepped down as CEO of the airline, but he became excited about the prospect as he learned about it.
The Five Fs
While price is a key component of making Kroger more competitive, Foran said it also has to offer strong service, fresh food, popular products and e-commerce to win over shoppers. Part of that effort involves staff training to improve consistency.
Internally, the company has been discussing what he said are the five Fs: fresh, fast, affordable, friendly and for you. The last item speaks to Kroger’s ambitions to offer greater personalization and tailor its stores to their specific neighborhoods.
“Our objective is to execute what we think is a very clear, sensible plan. We want to be America’s best grocer,” he said.
Kroger is planning 70 to 80 new stores next year, double the amount being opened in 2026. While it is closing some locations as well, Kroger said its store count is positive on an overall basis, and that trend is accelerating. The new locations will play an important part of e-commerce operations that continue to expand as consumers prioritize speed.
The retailer will be thoughtful about opportunities to further grow through acquisitions, Foran said. The company sees room in the Northeast where it doesn’t have a strong presence, as well as markets with strong population growth such as Texas, the Carolinas and parts of Florida.
(Updates with Walmart comments beginning in ninth paragraph.)
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
Story by Alix Martichoux Published in “The Hill” Washington D.C.
(NEXSTAR) – Federal inflation data confirms what you may have been feeling already: Groceries are getting more expensive. Unfortunately, things may be about to get a whole lot worse, economists are warning.
The price of groceries rose 2.9% in April compared to the same month a year earlier, according to government figures released in May. That was the highest year-over-year inflation rate for the category since August 2023.
When compared to the same time last year, fruits and vegetables have seen some of the biggest price hikes. Tomatoes are 40% more expensive now than they were this time last year. Bad growing weather, tariffs, and rising fuel prices have all contributed to the huge change in tomato prices, reports the New York Times.
Coffee, another imported product, is 19% more expensive than it was last spring.
You’re also likely seeing inflated prices at the butcher counter. Meat is up 9% overall, but beef has grown even more expensive. Ground beef is about 15% pricier, beef roasts are 18% more, and steak is up 16%.
What’s contributing to the price spikes? Fuel prices have soared while the Iran war prevents cargo ships from passing through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital corridor for global oil supplies. Diesel fuel powers fishing boats, tractors and the trucks that ship 83% of U.S. agricultural products.
Just as you’re paying more at the pump, so are truckers who transport goods all around the country. Some vendors and suppliers are adding fuel surcharges to make up for the increased cost of transporting and delivering their goods.
Weather is also to blame in some cases. Dry weather in the West is making things harder for cattle ranchers, therefore driving up beef prices. Global drought is affecting coffee production.
Bad news may soon get worse, experts warn. The full impact of rising energy costs on food likely has not hit retail grocery prices yet in the U.S., according to Purdue University economists Ken Foster and Bernhard Dalheimer. Higher costs to produce, process, store, and transport food can take three to six months to show up on supermarket shelves, where prices typically fall slowly once increased, they said.
“Most of what we’re seeing now in the food price chain probably predates the conflict,” Foster, a professor of agricultural economics, said. “We’re cautiously waiting to see what the June numbers and the May numbers might show as they come out in terms of … the extent to which energy shocks in the Strait of Hormuz and shipping blockades and so forth are going to impact food prices.” “The big story right now is oil, the next story is food,” economist Justin Wolfersagreed in an interview with MS Now.
“You see fuel prices rise, that’s the rock hitting the pond. And then the ripples are that jet fuel prices rise, and air fuel prices rise, and then the price of trucking your groceries to the grocery store rises. That’s the full set of ripples out of this,” Wolfers explained in another segment on the network.
If fuel prices remain high, we could see more issues “seep down the supply chain,” Foster said. Fertilizer could be more expensive, for example, since about 30% of the world’s supply of fertilizer moves through the Strait. That would make growing food more expensive for farmers, and those costs would eventually get passed on to the consumer.
If you’re looking for a silver lining in these tough economic times, check out the egg aisle. Eggs are 39% cheaper than they were this time last year, thanks to some normalization following last year’s avian flu crisis.
SW Washington, Columbia Gorge: — Length 6.0 miles, roundtrip — Elevation Gain 2,800 feet — Highest Point 2,948 feet (thanks to Sharon L.)
The slopes of Dog Mountain rise steep and rocky above the Columbia Gorge, exposed to hard wind, summer drought, and intense sun. Soil slips downhill and roots struggle to hold the mountain in place. Fire has long moved through the Gorge during dry seasons, while erosion and unstable ground repeatedly disturb the slopes.
After the last Ice Age, grasslands and flowering plants spread across these warm south-facing hillsides. Winter rain still sinks deep into the volcanic soil before spring sunlight quickly warms the earth. Each May, balsamroot, lupine, paintbrush, and phlox bloom across the open slopes. Forest competes constantly with these meadows, but the mountain’s harsh conditions prevent trees from fully taking over many of the flower fields.
Iberá National Park and Iberá Provincial Park are home to sweeping grasslands, marshlands, forests, and 4,000 species of flora and fauna. Together, they form the largest park in Argentina.
In early May, tour guides were leading tourists through the park when they spotted a jaguar resting on the trail. It was Ombú, a young male born in Iberá Park in Corrientes, Argentina.
He marked the first wild jaguar sighting in 70 years.
“Since we dedicate ourselves to this work and know what the jaguar represents in Iberá, throughout the province of Corrientes, and here in Argentina, it really fills us with joy,” park ranger Víctor Cereal said in an audio testimonial.
“And being able to share it with visitors makes us extremely, extremely happy,” he said. “It’s a mix of many emotions, and honestly, I’ll never forget this. It’s like the greatest reward someone can have as a guide.”
Seven decades ago, jaguars were driven out of Argentina by twin forces: logging and poaching. As hunters killed them for their pelts, the forest shrank around them.
The sighting comes after decades of hard-fought conservation work, education campaigns, and rewilding efforts.
Image via Mario Martins / Rewilding Argentina
Thanks to Rewilding Argentina working in tandem with local institutions, scientists, park rangers, and ranchers, Corrientes went from having no free-roaming jaguars to now containing 50.
That’s nearly 20% of all the jaguars currently living in Argentina.
“After more than 70 years without the presence of the jaguar here in the wetlands, seeing it again in its natural habitat, as I said, is truly historic,” Cereal said.
“The arrival of the jaguar to this place is very important, especially at this stage of conservation, because it’s a predator that we were missing here in the wetlands,” the park ranger continued. “We’ve been seeing many capybaras, caimans, and different animals that complete the ecosystem, but we were missing him, the top predator. And well, honestly, that was what we lacked.”
Jaguars play a critical role in forest health. As an apex predator, they regulate the populations of other species, sending positive ripple effects down the food chain.
Mario Martins, a recently retired tour guide with a deep love for photography, recalled the moment that he saw the jaguar and captured it on camera.
Image via Mario Martins / Rewilding Argentina
“That fleeting glimpse, that sign that the lord of the forest was there, was the moment when it really dawned on me just how significant what was happening was,” Martins said in an audio testimonial. “It was a face-to-face encounter between two beings in absolute silence.”
Martins added that the moment was bigger than a single jaguar — it was what it represented.
“This sighting is living proof of the success of a collective effort,” he emphasized. “The fact that a jaguar… roams the region shows that the ecosystem is regaining its health.”
Soon, the jaguar moved on, leaving Martins awestruck.
“[I] make the most of the experience,” he said, “knowing that the real magic lies in the animal continuing to feel free.”
Ed note: This article highlights the dangers and pitfalls of the corporate takeover of healthcare. There are perverse incentives when medical care may be compromised by preference being giving to stockholder’s interests. However, there is no perfect set of incentives. Should physicians charging fee for service be given complete control? Or should physicians, like nurses, be salaried and in a non-profit structure like Kaiser. Should a government entity run the whole thing–and put limits on expensive procedures and technology? One thing for sure, the current direction isn’t working to improve healthcare. Dr. Hartsock has a point, but the ultimate answers aren’t that clear. When I worked at Group Health, administration reported to a lay board. The agreement with the medical staff was that they would not interfere with the practice of medicine. That was not a perfect system, but it was a non-profit with built-in checks and balances.
By Jenny Hartsock Special to The Seattle Times
Healthcare in America should not be a monopoly. (It shouldn’t be a business at all, but that’s a battle for another day.) Nevertheless, regional and national corporate monopolies are taking over healthcare. This means decisions about how our hospitals operate are often not made by local clinicians, but by nonclinical administrators hundreds or even thousands of miles away.
In Eugene, Ore., a local emergency medicine group was recently fired by PeaceHealth. The administrators claimed the emergency department doctors were not qualified to do their jobs, despite having served their Lane County community well for 35 years. Leaked records show that PeaceHealth dismissed the group after doctors called out its CEO for trying to influence medical decisions made for hundreds of patients at a local hospital.
PeaceHealth then attempted to hire a national staffing company, Atlanta-based ApolloMD, to replace the local doctors. It claims to be physician-owned but is in part funded by private equity. That’s illegal in Oregon, thanks to a state law banning corporations from “exerting authority over a physician’s medical judgment and clinical practices in the state.” ApolloMD created a shell company “owned” by a physician to try and skirt the law.
This did not go well. The physicians who testified for ApolloMD when the dispute reached court were accused of misrepresenting themselves by a judge. PeaceHealth and ApolloMD came out looking terrible, and immense pressure was put on PeaceHealth by the local medical staff, the state nurses union, state legislators and the media to undo its decision … and it worked. PeaceHealth has now signed a three-year contract with Eugene Emergency Physicians.
As a physician (full disclosure: I work at a PeaceHealth-owned facility and a corporate-owned medical group in Washington, which is the only way I can practice my specialty where I live) this gives me some hope. Hope that other states, like ours, can pass similar legislation. Washington in fact had an anti-corporate medicine bill that was voted down earlier this year, Senate Bill 5387. The bill would prohibit unlicensed corporate entities from controlling or influencing clinical decisions, and require healthcare companies to be majority-owned by licensed clinicians. The bill didn’t get a vote, largely due to corporate lobbying.
I encourage everyone in Washington who wants to see medicine shift back to local, physician-led management to write your state representative. You can find your representatives at st.news/find. We need to let our representatives know that we want this bill back next session. We want corporations blocked from dictating how patients are cared for in Washington state and we want healthcare that prioritizes patients and people over profits. We shouldn’t let corporations on the other side of the country decide what is the best medical care in Washington.
Jenny Hartsock is a physician practicing hospital medicine in Bellingham.
The organization will continue to lead the Bellevue Arts Fair and expand its role, bringing the arts to spaces and events throughout the city.
BELLEVUE, Wash. — May 18, 2026 — Bellevue Arts Museum (BAM) today announced it has finalized the sale of its building at 510 Bellevue Way NE to KidsQuest Children’s Museum, a fellow Bellevue-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit. The transaction marks a new chapter for both organizations and launches BAM’s next phase as an agile, community-embedded arts nonprofit that brings exhibitions, programs, and artist-led experiences to audiences across the city.
As part of this transition, BAM will continue its role as a leading arts organization in the Puget Sound region. The organization will produce the beloved Bellevue Arts Fair and expand flagship programs such as curated installations, educational workshops, and other community-centered initiatives that support artists and connect residents and visitors to the arts. The move reflects BAM’s evolution — trading a single address for a citywide footprint that meets audiences where they live, work, and gather. (continued on Page 2 or here)
BREAKING: Pope Leo XIV Answers Barack Obama’s Call — And What Happened Next Left the Nation Silent Before It Rose in Applause
Just hours after Barack Obama publicly urged Americans to come together in the fight against hunger, something unexpected unfolded—quietly, without announcement, without anticipation.
Pope Leo XIV didn’t respond with a speech.
He responded with action.
Behind the scenes, a $12 million donation was transferred to the JBJ Soul Foundation—a move that would go on to fund millions of meals for families struggling to get through the night.
There was no press conference.
No headlines—at first.
Only impact.
Then, at a small gathering inside Soul Kitchen in New Jersey, Pope Leo XIV said something that no one in the room expected to carry so far… yet it did.
“If I can help even a few families feel safe tonight,” he said quietly, “then that is a greater legacy than anything I have ever been called.”
It wasn’t the amount that stunned people.
It was the intention behind it.
Because in that moment, the focus shifted—from power to purpose.
Within hours, word spread. And then came a response no one saw coming. (see Page 2)
This is a brief follow-up to my recent post about government statistics and economics — a post which proved, embarrassingly, to be timely. No sooner had the ink dried than the government announced that the inflation rate had “ticked up” to 3.8%. The economists were shocked. The pundits were shocked. Headlines across the entire media sphere erupted in coordinated disbelief: unexpected, higher than estimated, defying projections. One cable news anchor looked as though he might need a moment alone.
“Ticked up.” I want to dwell on that phrase for a moment, because it is doing heavy lifting. It suggests a modest, even dainty movement. Not a lurching, stomach-dropping leap in the cost of living. Somebody in a communications department earned their salary that day.
Now, I have a question. Where, exactly, do these economists live? Because it is clearly not anywhere near a supermarket, a gas station, a hardware store, or any establishment that sells goods to actual human beings. They appear to inhabit a parallel universe where numbers drift gently across screens, and no one has ever stood in a checkout line doing silent, horrified arithmetic.
The average consumer, not a credentialed expert in anything, knows about inflation weeks or months before the economists get around to measuring it. We know because we buy things. Radical concept, I realize.
Let me offer some data points from my recent fieldwork at a local grocery store conducted without a research grant.
Radishes. A humble bunch of radishes averaged somewhere between 95 cents and $1.10 for as long as anyone could remember. Dependable little things. Yesterday: $1.95. That is not a “tick.” That is closer to a full-throated leap, and radishes have not, to my knowledge, done anything to deserve it.
Gasoline jumped from roughly $2.80 a gallon to well over $4.00. I will leave the percentage calculation to the economists, since arithmetic appears to be their primary skill set, and even they seem to be struggling.
The one-pound bag of frozen, sustainably harvested, certified Wild Gulf Coast shrimp, a product I have watched with the devotion held steady around $9.00 for what felt like geological time. Yesterday it was $12.98. I stood there in the frozen foods aisle holding it at arm’s length as though it had personally wronged me.
A box of breakfast cereal of the middling kind, not the fancy kind with the dried fruit that falls to the bottom, is now $7.49. It contains, by weight, approximately as much air as cereal. The manufacturers have also quietly made the box narrower, apparently believing we won’t notice. We notice.
A rotisserie chicken, long celebrated as the great democratic protein of the American table, has crossed the $10 threshold in some places. The chickens themselves are the same size they always were. They have simply become more expensive through no fault of their own.
Coffee. Don’t get me started on coffee. Actually, let’s: a one-pound bag of mid-range ground coffee that once cost $8.99 is now nudging $14. There are people being paid to study inflation who cannot afford to stay awake long enough to understand it.
And so it went, down every aisle — condiments, bread, pasta, paper towels (paper towels!) — each item up anywhere from 5 to 25 percent. The sole exception, that defies all logic and provides no comfort whatsoever, was eggs. Eggs, after their own adventure in the stratosphere last year, have come back down to earth. I suppose we are meant to be grateful. I am choosing, instead, to be suspicious.
This chasm between what we are told and what we actually experience is not merely annoying. It corrodes something. Trust, though, that particular resource has been running low for some time. When the official version of reality and the lived version diverge badly enough and often enough, people stop bothering to reconcile them. They simply conclude that the official version is for someone else, describing some other country populated by economic abstractions who do not buy shrimp or fill their tanks or notice that the cereal box has gotten smaller.
I was so angry that when I came home from the store, I made a pot of soup from items I usually discard. Asparagus bottoms, the stems of watercress and arugula, a potato with developing eyes, the stems of parsley, and an onion. After blending, it was delicious. Next, I will attend to my victory garden and perhaps buy Eugenia Bone’s book, The Kitchen Ecosystem.
The TV analysts will continue to pontificate. They will talk about “core inflation,” which is inflation minus the things that actually went up; food and energy being the classic exclusions, presumably because no one eats or drives. They will reference “base effects,” “supply chain normalization,” and other phrases designed to make the incomprehensible sound merely technical.
Meanwhile, the rest of us will stand at the checkout, watching the numbers climb, and do the math ourselves.
The famous “Recombobulation Area” signs are located at Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport (MKE) in Wisconsin. These signs are placed immediately following the security checkpoints to provide a designated space for travelers to get “recombobulated”—put their shoes back on, gather belongings, and reorganize—after going through TSA screening.
Ed note: Where does discombobulate come from anyway? A quick search provides the following: Origin: Originated in the United States in the early 1800s, with finding the first recorded use in a Maryland newspaper in 1825.“Mock-Latin” Fad: It was part of a popular trend of creating elaborate, absurd, and pseudo-Latin words (“Dog Latin”) to mock educated, high-society speech. Bottom line: You might as well have a smile as you recombobulate! Kudos to Milwaukee.
From US Fish and Wildlife Service – notes & picture
Golden paintbrush adds splashes of bright yellow to the prairies of the Pacific Northwest when it flowers in late spring. This vibrant perennial plant is native to the prairies of Washington State, Oregon and southern British Columbia. As those prairie ecosystems were dramatically fractured and reduced in size by development, agriculture and fire suppression, golden paintbrush too became increasingly rare. However, a suite of public and private partners have worked hard to help populations rebound in recent years. At the time the species was federally-listed as threatened in 1997, fewer than 20,000 plants remained at just 10 sites. By 2018, hundreds of thousands of plants could be found at 48 sites.
Ed note: Here’s a few pictures from a friend celebrating Prarie Appreciation Day in SW Washington.
Just about everyone in Seattle knows why we have a homelessness crisis. Or they seem to. In fact, these confident observers don’t just have vague ideas; they have firm convictions informed by what they see on the streets, what they hear from housed neighbors, and what they gather from TV anchors and Talk Radio Jocks. We, however, think these armchair quarterbacks are wrong, and we write to offer an alternative explanation that Seattle homeowners won’t instinctively embrace.
But first, why do we reject the conventional wisdom?
First, very few of these local pundits seem to have read any of the academic literature on homelessness, and even fewer have ever bothered to talk with someone who is unhoused. In addition, and perhaps more telling, they have wildly different answers to the “why” question. It’s like watching a Jackson Pollack painting: What will stick to the canvass?
On social media, we hear that the primary cause of homelessness is:
Substance abuse. Repeatedly we are told that rough sleepers in Seattle are drug addicts and alcoholics. The evidence is visible: “open air drug markets,” needles, bottles, tin foil left in camps, homeless people behaving erratically.
Mental illness. Almost as often we are told that unhoused folks are crazy or unhinged and cognitively impaired. This, too, we see with our own eyes. They don’t behave normally.
Parents. Some folks tell us that folks on the street have been abused or neglected by their parents. The unhoused didn’t get a proper upbringing.
Poverty. The poor, we hear, are naturally going to end up on the street, regardless of underlying conditions. They are the have-nots, after all.
Weather. Temperate climates on the West Coast, some argue, are amenable to campers, while harsher climates are not.
Lavish services. We live in “Freeattle,” it is often said. The unhoused congregate here because progressive churches in Seattle (deemed enablers) provide a free breakfast of meat blanquette on mashed potatoes, even though it might be overcooked. And because left-wing politicians have brazenly agreed to finance some shelters and tiny homes.
There are other reasons offered, but these are the ones we hear most often. Why do we reject them?
The primary cause of homelessness, according to almost all the experts who have studied this issue, is lack of housing. When a local jurisdiction fails to supply sufficient housing, someone is going to end up unhoused. And it should not be surprising that those who end up unhoused are those who are disabled or vulnerable, for whatever reason (substance abuse, mental illness, family trauma, poverty, racism, etc.). (continued on Page 2 or here)
Ed note: Motherhood: The Second Oldest Profession is a humorous and heartwarming book by Erma Bombeck, first published in 1983, that uses witty anecdotes to explore the joys, frustrations, and challenges of motherhood. A New York Times bestseller, the book is a collection of short stories that offers a relatable and compassionate look at the “toughest job on earth,” making it a classic for parents and non-parents alike.
Most women become mothers by accident, some by choice, a few by social pressures and a couple by habit.
This year nearly 100,000 women will become mothers of handicapped children. Did you ever wonder how mothers of handicapped children are chosen?
Somehow I visualize God hovering over earth selecting his instruments for propagation with great care and deliberation. As He observes, He instructs His angels to make notes in a giant ledger
“Armstrong, Beth; son. Patron saint…give her Gerard. He’s used to profanity.”
Finally He passes a name to an angel and smiles, “Give her a handicapped child.”
The angel is curious. “Why this one God? She’s so happy.”
“Exactly,” smiles God, “Could I give a handicapped child to a mother who does not know laughter? That would be cruel.”
“But has she patience?” asks the angel.
“I don’t want her to have too much patience or she will drown in a sea of self-pity and despair. Once the shock and resentment wears off, she’ll handle it.”
“I watched her today. She has that feeling of self and independence that is so rare and so necessary in a mother. You see, the child I’m going to give her has her own world. She has to make her live in her world and that’s not going to be easy.”
“But, Lord, I don’t think she even believes in you.” God smiles, “No matter, I can fix that. This one is perfect – she has just enough selfishness.” The angel gasps – “selfishness? is that a virtue?”
God nods. “If she can’t separate herself from the child occasionally, she’ll never survive. Yes, here is a woman whom I will bless with a child less than perfect. She doesn’t realize it yet, but she is to be envied.
She will never take for granted a ‘spoken word'”. She will not consider a “step” ordinary. When her child says ‘Momma’ for the first time, she will be present at a miracle, and will know it!”
“I will permit her to see clearly the things I see…ignorance, cruelty, prejudice….and allow her to rise above them. She will never be alone.
I will be at her side every minute of every day of her life, because she is doing My work as surely as if she is here by My side”.
“And what about her Patron saint?” asks the angel, his pen poised in mid-air.
Lifestyles is exploring the addition of Spanish language classes at Skyline, with a prospective instructor from Colombia offering a welcoming, real-world approach to learning.
The proposed program would blend practical vocabulary, pronunciation, listening, and guided conversation within a supportive, beginner-friendly structure; helping participants build confidence in everyday communication. A pilot series of weekly one-hour classes is planned for June.
Bletilla striata (Chinese Ground Orchid) is a terrestrial orchid currently growing in profusion in the Olympic Tower garden. Seattle’s mild climate can match the native locales for the orchid: Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Okinawa and many provinces of central China. In the Pacific Northwest this orchid prefers the cooler summer temperatures and higher humidity that allow the plant to tolerate full sun. In hotter inland climates it needs shading.
The orchid has spikes of rosy-purple flowers that appear in late spring. The photos below show the plants now flowering at Skyline. They arise from bulbs and spread underground. The large number of flowers are from six bulbs planted about four years ago. The Bletilla dies back naturally in autumn and reemerges reliably in spring once soil temperatures rise.
Check them out in the fourth-floor garden of the Olympic Tower. As you exit the door, they’ll be in the bed immediately to your right.
— Length 6.0 miles, roundtrip — 
Elevation Gain 2,800 feet — 
Highest Point 2,948 feet (thanks to Sharon L.) 
BREAKING: Pope Leo XIV Answers Barack Obama’s Call — And What Happened Next Left the Nation Silent Before It Rose in Applause
