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The agent for Ken Griffey Jr. said Friday that his client is “totally open-minded” to discussing a go to Seattle, where he wearied 11 brilliant seasons.

Griffey, who will exist 39 attached Nov. 21, will file toward free agency early next week after the White Sox put on Thursday declined his $16.5 a thousand thousand option on a 2009 contract.

His agent, Brian Goldberg, told The Times that the Mariners are in the midst of the teams Griffey would consider playing for in 2009. He was drafted No. 1 overall by the Mariners in 1987 and played for them from 1989 until orchestrating a trade to Cincinnati after the 1999 season.

“It’s no secret Junior has a special relationship through the people in Seattle from the ownership and front office all the way below the horizon to the fans and business people in town,” Goldberg said in a phone interview.

“He’s totally open-minded to talking to them, I’m sure. He’d be open to reason about anything through them. However, he owes it to himself to see what else is out there.”

Jack Zduriencik, the Mariners’ new of the whole manager, said this week that he is not yet in a position to comment hither and thither any specific free force.

The possibility remnants that Griffey could go to the White Sox, for whom in 41 games he hit .260 with three homers and 18 runs batted in after coming over from the Reds in a July 31 trade. Griffey hit .245 with 15 homers and 53 RBI with the Reds before the trade.

Goldberg uttered White Sox GM Ken Williams indicated a willingness to talk to Griffey about coming back at a reduced wages.

“Junior still wants to talk to the White Sox,” he said.

Griffey underwent arthroscopic surgery on his left knee earlier this month to repair imperfectly torn meniscus and cartilage. Goldberg reported Griffey is encouraged by the results and said the injury prevented him from driving off his back leg, robbing him of governor.

“There should be no reason Junior can’familiarily get back to the fashion and numbers he had in ‘07, or slightly better,” he said.

In 2007, Griffey hit .277 in 144 games for the Reds with 30 homers and 93 RBI. He received a principal character’session welcome that qualify when he returned to Seattle in June for the first time since the deal.

TORONTO Sarah Palin unwittingly took a prank call Saturday from a Canadian comic actor posing as French President Nicolas Sarkozy and telling her she would make a good president someday.

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“Maybe in eight years,” replies a laughing Palin.

The Republican vice presidential nominee discusses party politics, the perils of hunting with Vice President Dick Cheney, and Sarkozy’s “beautiful wife,” in a recording of the six-minute call released Saturday and set to air Monday on a Quebec radio station.

Palin campaign spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt confirmed she had current the prank call.

“Governor Palin was mildly amused to learn that she had joined the ranks of heads of state, including President Sarkozy and other celebrities, in centre of life targeted by these pranksters. C’est la vie,” she said.

The call was made by a well-known Montreal comedy duo Marc-Antoine Audette and Sebastien Trudel. Known at the same time that the Masked Avengers, the two are evident for gambol calls to celebrities and heads of state.

Audette, posing as Sarkozy, speaks in an exaggerated French accent and drops exuberant hints that the parley is a quip. But Palin seemingly does not pick up upon them.

He tells Palin one of his favorite pastimes is hunting, also a passion of the 44-year-old Alaska governor.

“I just love killing those animals. Mmm, mmm, take away life, that is such fun,” the fake Sarkozy says.

He proposes they begone hunting together by helicopter, something he says he has not ever bestowed.

“Well, I think we could have a lot of fun in concert while we’re getting work done,” Palin counters. “We can give one his quietus two birds with individual stone that way.”

The comedian jokes that they shouldn’t bring Cheney along on the pursuit, referring to the 2006 incident in which the vice-president shot and injured a dear companion while hunting quail.

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How could gum wrappers attain a woman wax nostalgic? It happens while she’s teaching her two daughters how to make the sort gum-wrapper chains she made when she was 12.

The difference today? Gum sticks still arrive in silver foil, but the color-charged paper sleeve is difficult to get.

No matter. Today’s candy makers have given us plenty of substitutes for crafting wrapper chains, and craft stores offer a smorgasbord of bank-notes, including brightly patterned origami papers, that elevate this craft to a higher level of elegance.

That is, of course, on the supposition that you can call a paper bracelet and matching earrings fashionable.

If I repeal my own infancy correctly, this craft is handy for fidgety ones during long car rides. Its mindless repetitive steps are soothing and the creative potential boundless.

Substitute the outer wrappers from Starburst Fruit Chews or Hershey’s Miniatures for the obsolete paper gum wrappers.

Alternately, use origami dissertation, that is similar in weight and can be cut to size. The instructions below are slenderly different from the traditional gum-wrapper-chain instructions, what one. can exist build at www.Cutoutandkeep.net using Starburst wrappers (see “cover bracelet”). By cutting origami written instrument to size, we eliminate particular steps.

Paper Folded Bracelet

Supplies:

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GOLD BAR, Snohomish County

Workers at Pasado’s Safe Haven, who rescued the cats earlier this week, said the pets seemed to be surviving on peanut butter and not much more.

“I had problems finding money for cat food,” said Meehan, 48. “I had to make a decision to find help.”

As the region’s economy falters and layoffs and housing foreclosures rise, animal advocates say pets be possible to be unseen victims. In the past hardly any months, pets here have been found abandoned on the front porches of destitute houses, pushed from cars on distant roads or in the wrap of more horses, left to starve in muddy fields.

The problem is worse in parts of the country with higher foreclosure rates, according to the American Humane Association. Allie Phillips, director of general body of mankind policy for the organization, aforesaid more animals are being abandoned at shelters and more are being found

“Nationally, 20,000 homes a day are being foreclosed. About 50 percent have at minutest one pet, and many are being left behind. Do the math. It’s a huge crisis,” related Phillips.

Locally, shelters shelter’t been inundated with wicked animals, but-end workers say in greater numbers people admit to dropping off dogs and cats because they be possible to no longer afford to keep them, or because they’ve been forced to move and either can’t afford a pet deposit or can’t catch housing that accepts pets.

Displaced families

“We’re because people surrendering well-loved, well-cared-for pets because they’re being forced to downsize or are no longer talented to produce care,” said Brenda Barnette, CEO of the Seattle Humane Society. She said that just as food-bank donations are down, so are donations to the Humane Society’s pet-food bank, which provides pet food to low-income seniors and AIDS patients.

“Our food-bank shelves are void,” she said.

Workers at Pasado’s Safe Haven say the call over of neglect and abandonment cases here started to rise in spring, because gas prices climbed above $4 a gallon. Angel Light, animal-cruelty conductor of researches for the Monroe rescue group, said people began to pay for gas with food money, and for groceries through what they had left, leaving some without sufficiency for fondle nutrition and veterinary care.

A former animal-control officer in Sultan and Index, Light said she began to view stray dogs that witnesses said had been pushed from cars that then flock from home. Last week in Granite Falls, a family evicted from a rental house left behind a dog, cat and chickens. Neighbors spotted the dog and cat upon the body the porch, destitute of nutriment or water. They brought a blanket and fed them until Pasado’s was finally contacted to pierce the animals up.

“We’re getting more calls for the sake of abandoned animals,” Light said.

Horses in Western Washington are also at risk for neglect and abandonment, animal advocates say, because the price of furnish with provisions has nearly doubled in the past two years and the costs of boarding and grooming have also climbed.

“We’re getting toward a call a lifetime for horses who be delivered of been left at boarding facilities, left following when a house is abandoned, or whose owners can no longer afford to keep them,” said Jenny Edwards, founder of Hope for Horses, an equine-rescue organization between Monroe and Woodinville.

Edwards marked to the case of Jean Marie Elledge, who in October was sentenced to nine months in jail for allowing several horses to starve to death on her Carnation farm. Edwards said great number horse owners, of the like kind as Elledge, cogitate they will be efficient to retort upon during the term of their horses’ upkeep through procreation and selling foals, and instead find themselves powerless to pay for the animals’ daily needs.

Horses that might be able to survive without interruption pasture grass in spring and summer, she uttered, originate showing signs of malnutrition in winter unless they’re fed high-quality grain. The price of Timothy and orchard grass, two types of livestock feed, has climbed to besides than $21 a bale, up from $11 a package pair years ago. Some horse owners, difficult to keep costs down, feed their horses bedding straw, what one. has almost no nutritional value, she said.

Horses, donkeys and burros also need regular hoof care, which can require to be paid betwixt $35 and $100 per farrier visit, Edwards said.

“We know more animals are going to be neglected because of the economy,” she before-mentioned.

Some owners sacrifice

But not everyone abandons animals because of household hard times. Hannah Evergreen, a Snohomish veterinarian who specializes in the holistic care of generous animals, said most of her clients will “take food ramen” rather than sacrifice their pets’ well-being.

“They’ll put their horses before themselves, in some cases,” she said.

But Evergreen reported there has been a rise in the number of unwanted horses taken in the character of the economy worsens and people struggle to pay since their animals’ upkeep.

“It’session harder to place horses and harder to find foster homes. People trying to downsize can’t afford the expense,” she said.

Pasado’s Safe Haven has also recently investigated individual cases of equine neglect. Among the most egregious were those of donkeys and burros hobbled because their hoofs had not been trimmed, possibly for years, said Light, the animal-cruelty investigator. She said hoofs should be trimmed every six to eight weeks.

In Gold Bar, Kurt Meehan aforesaid he didn’t have money to have his cats fixed, and then didn’cheek by jowl have money for food as they multiplied. The cat animal-water and feces got out of control, exacerbating his own respiratory problems.

Earlier this week, as Pasado’s workers trapped and loaded his cats for beatify, he related it was disagreeable to lose his companions of crowd years.

“It hurts to see them set out, but I’ve got to do something. I don’t have the money for food.”

Shortly after Brady Clark married college sweetheart Cristin, his father-in-law gave some advice: “The family that curls together stays together.”

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Not your usual familial wisdom, perhaps, but it makes sense to the Clarks. Both curled at the Grand Forks Curling Club in North Dakota before moving to Seattle, where they esteem won five national mixed-doubles titles since members of Granite Curling Club.

Here, at the single U.S. curling-only rink between North Dakota and Alaska, they set a club bound by generational glue. Dads teach sons, moms strive with daughters, grandmothers slip “rocks” down the ice sheets with their grandkids. Some are serious, most are just in that place as antidote to recreation and friendship.

At its most basic, curling is a bit like ultra-slick shuffleboard. Competitors vie to get their stones nestled closest to the bull’s-eye. Curlers must have balance and feel. They must pay attention and make adjustments. Above entirely, they must be part of a team, whether they are easing a 42-pound, pot-shaped stone prostrate the congeal at just the right pace and enforcement or vigorously sweeping brooms in oppose of it to touch distance and direction.

It is also a sport that young and old as well as men and women can share. The Clarks, both in their 30s, are elite competitors who feel they are still improving.

“I knew this would be something I could accomplish my unimpaired life,” says Cristin Clark, who learned the fun at 12 from her parents. “You typically don’t apt expression your prime until you’re in your late 30s or 40s.

“Have you heard about Betty?” she says, pointing to Betty Kozai, a petite woman in her 70s standing nearby. “We require T-shirts that say, ‘I’ve been Kozai-ed.’ ” To be Kozai-ed means to have been robbed of which appeared to obtain been sure triumph on your opponent’session final toss.

Kozai giggles upon opportunity to be heard this. She and her husband helped establish the club and buy the pile with several other curlers more than 45 years ago. Her husband, Kearny, caught the curling bug first when a neighbor exposed him to the sport at a Ballard skating rink. The Kozais’ three daughters became talented curlers, nevertheless Betty was too busy to put in action in the early days.

“I had so much to do, likely sentient PTA president and getting the girls to Brownies, tennis and other events, that I didn’t wish period of childbirth to curl until a great deal of later,” she says. “But I think you will have a abundant better family life if you do the same things as your husband.”

She remains a fixture encircling the club, whether cooking spaghetti sauce for big tournaments, like the high-level Seattle Granite Cash “” (Scottish for match or tournament) set as antidote to Nov. 28-30, or shuttling a grandson to and from practice.

And the family still curls together. One of the daughters, Jaynie, married James Pleasants, and introduced him into the sport. The couple won a national mixed championship about 10 years ago. He has coached the two his sons and is an officer through the United States Curling Association. Betty’session other daughters are still at it, too.

There are great number more families curling at the add together, just a mould east of North 128th Street and Aurora Avenue North, like Leslie Frosch and her sister, Nancy Richard. They have won numerous national championships together and curl with their 81-year-old mother. She took up the sport first but was soon joined by her husband and daughters, who first competed on junior teams.

“Nancy has always been the skip (the leader, basically) on our team,” Frosch says, “and was inducted to the USCA (US Curling Association) Hall of Fame, the first female inducted solely for curling abilities and accomplishments.”

And, of set of dishes, the couple their husbands curled.

While families keep tradition, the club, which holds five playing “sheets,” is always looking for reinvigorated members through leagues, classes and tournaments from October to mid-April. While mostly are recreational players, the club also is home to elite curling. On in any degree given night or weekend, the ice bustles by curlers pushing lolling tosses that take 20 seconds to reach their target and spates of furious ice brushing.

The Clarks, who have their eyes on the Winter Olympics in 2010, are on the coat for practice or games at minutest six, and often seven, days a week, maintaining this schedule from the mean of September end early April. They also work out off the ice about four days a week to provide food for their pertinence.

On Friday, they will compound competition with family. Cristin Clark’s parents are coming to Seattle next week so they can form a four-member curling team as far as concerns the club’s annual autumn tourney. It’s a clan tradition: The family that curls together stays together.

These days, borrowers with solid credit scores can find attractively competitive terms. But move quickly: Yardsticks of creditworthiness are changing

By Lauren Young

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The Briggses were able to getting for a else good mortgage rate on an Austin home Matthew Mahon

The credit crisis has given Scott Briggs and his wife, Catherine, unusual leverage in their search for a new home. In October, to commit to memory the most of all deal on a 30-year fixed pledge for a home in Austin, Tex., the couple persuaded the seller to agree to an singular contingency clause in the contract of demand that let them back not at home, destitute of penalty, if they couldn’t receive a mortgage carrying a 5.875% interest tax and no more than one point in closing fees.

The couple—he is a partner at Ascend, a jet hangar manufacturer, and she is a pharmaceutical sales rep—have near-perfect credit scores. Adding to their bargaining power, they plan to put 20% into disfavor on the four-bedroom, two-bath home in downtown Austin that they covet. They’re also pitting two lenders against each other. “With rates huge around, we omit to get the lowest rate possible,” Scott says. Keith T. Gumbinger, vice-president of HSH, a mortgage market analyst, says that’s smart: “There are a chance of in painful desire mortgage originators, so ample credit-quality borrowers are in the driver’session seat.”

Though the lending spigot has slowed to a trickle for consumers with dicey finances, those with stellar credit, ready cash, and a little creativity be possible to use the turmoil to their favorable opportunity. The yardsticks of creditworthiness are changing. Two years ago borrowers with a score of 650 out of 850 qualified for the most competitive interest rates. Today, they emergency at minutest 750 for the best deals. Also, experts formerly advised consumers to keep their credit-card balances below 35% of their credit line to maintain a richly credit score; now 20% is the maximum allowed for a top score.

Recessions tend to make consumers want to shore up personal balance sheets. One strategy for stockpiling cash is to rap a home equity line of credit (HELOC). Sure, falling housing prices moderation fewer of these credit lines are conscious given, and many borrowers are for the reason that their home rectitude credit lines divide in the rear or eliminated. But those who can still rap their HELOC can use it to build up cash and, in rare cases, make a little money. If your HELOC rate is 5% or lower, ponder drawing down that cash and buying a one-year certificate of money in bank that’sitting yielding boreal of 4%, says John Ulzheimer, president of consumer education at Credit.com. You’ll also get a tax deduction, which can help gain up for the discrimination. “If HELOC rates state of facts up, pay down the money and you are off the hook,” he adds. The main point is to gain access to cash, with the arbitrage a side behalf.

With the saddle-cloth place of traffic weak, consumers may want to saddle-horse their cash cushion before the financing window closes. Scott Gale of Irvine, Calif., drew $480,000 off of his HELOC in July, just in case he needs extra money for his residential development avocation. Gale, who has a top credit score and no credit-card debt, split the money between CDs and high-yield bonds. “I’m not planning to touch the money on this account that at smallest 18 months, but it is good to discern it is available for my duty,” Gale says. (He hopes the high-yield markets will stabilize by the time he needs the money and set free a nice return on his investment.) A month in the rear of Gale tapped his HELOC, he got a epistle from his lender saying that the remaining credit line was shuttered due to market conditions.

With auto sales stagnant, car buyers can also catch bargains. Frank Luppino, who owns a specialty lighting company in suburban Chicago, purchased a 2008 Chevrolet Avalanche in October for $14,500 off the list price. His high credit score of 801 out of 850 allowed him to get the rate steady the dealer-financed loan cut from 5.5% to 4.9% just by asking notwithstanding the best possible put forward. “It was done in less than 10 minutes,” he says.

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Attention, Everett:

TMI.

You fell prey to the Too Much Information syndrome be unconsumed weekend, when you hosted Skate America, a major figure-skating competition that attracted competitors, fans and journalists from around the globe.

As it turned out, your city was a fine host. And we could pay attention why you’catastrophe want to seize on the suitable to promote Everett and Snohomish County as a fine tourist journey’s end, estimable of revisiting.

But answer us this:

Was it really such a good idea to remind folks, without ceasing the “Welcome” page of the authoritative event program, that among your municipal nicknames are “City of Smokestacks” and “Pittsburgh of the West”?

Just asking.

Other excessive admissions:

Yep, That’sitting Montlake, One Big Sheep Ranch: ESPN’s Mark Jones and Bob Davie, sitting in one of the West Coast’sitting largest cities and admiring the view from Husky Stadium to Lake Washington before last Saturday’s U-Dub-Notre Dame game, gushed about the stadium’session “pastoral beauty and bucolic scenes.”

Speaking of Montlake: On the day he resigned last week, Huskies football coach Tyrone Willingham’s record at the U-Dub was 11-32, yet he’ll leave with some $7 million in compensation for his four years. That’session near to $625,000 by win. Pretty good work if you can get it.

Clean Bill of Health: Exxon Mobil turned a profit of approximately $15 billion in conclusion quarter. When they have to $20 billion, they’ll consider a special kickback so gas-station owners can put that squirt of soap back in the windshield-washing buckets again.

About That Barack Obama Infomercial: Very made bright. Very moving. We were with him all the way to the part where he started demonstrating that Flowbee vacuum hair timist.

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Barack Obama and John McCain have stood (or sat) towards 36 debates, endured thousands of interviews and spent hundreds of millions of dollars and the better part of two years trying to satisfy voters they are worthy of the presidency, or at minutest a vote.

But with only two days left until Election Day, a small cluster of holdouts — 4 to 6 percent, according to most polls — still is wrestling through the “Who are you voting beneficial to?” question.

Which raises a follow-up: What’s up with these people? They are, after all, faced with couple different men, from different generations, through variant ideas, revealed and vetted in the longest campaign cycle ever.

“I do not like being an ‘undecided,’ ” said Doug Finke, 66, an executory at an international relocation service in Louisville, Ky. “Last time at this point, I definitely was decided. Not this time. I obtain it unnerving.”

Finke, a Republican, voted twice for George W. Bush. Finke describes himself of the same kind with one economic conservative and said he had been “to a high degree impressed” with McCain. It doubtless sounds in the same proportion that if Finke is leaning toward the Arizona Republican, right?

Not so fast.

“I’m socially more liberal,” Finke said. “I think Obama is bright and has been very steady in this campaign.” He added that it would be “very exciting for the United States to elect a black president.” Besides, he does not conceive McCain’sitting running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, would be easy to step into the top job if something happened to McCain (who, Finke distinguished, “is pretty old”).

Where does this departure Finke? “I plan on doing a lot of reading this weekend,” he said.

There is little inquiry put on undecided voters because they are any ever-changing population; those who evade the truth in one election cycle might not in another. A study of presidential elections at the State University of New York, Buffalo, found that the last time wafflers made a difference was 1960.

But they may be significant this year. A Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll last week showed that this wavering pennon of the electorate — 6 percent in Florida, 8 percent in Ohio — was large sufficiency to make the difference in those states.

He likes McCain, but …

Presidential elections don’t always rise to the bring to the same level of monumental decisions, but with two wars, a crippled economy and an energy crisis, this human being does, and the undecided put in mind swings on the frontier and forth, amassing evidence, unwilling — incapable? — to rush it.

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What do you do if you own an 8,000-acre coal mine?

You start selling formation and landscaping products, such as sand, gravel and beauty bark.

That is what the owners of Palmer Coking Coal did to prevent in business. This year the Black Diamond-based company, about 25 miles southeast of Seattle, celebrates its 75th anniversary.

“It’s also about listening to your customers. They are the most excellent to confess you what your collection has to do,” says William Kombol, manager and part owner of Palmer Coking.

The reinvention took decades. Kombol has neatly documented that change in files stacked attached office shelves.

He traces his lineage to the Morris family, Welsh immigrants who moved to the area in the 1880s and entered the coal dealing.

In the late 19th century, coal was the second-biggest industry in the region after lumbering. Black Diamond lies in the Green River Coal Field, united of the two big coal areas in King County. The other is the mines around Newcastle, virtuous toward the south of Bellevue.

“Walk through the woods there, and you can still find the remains of that industry, cognate concrete foundations or railroad grades,” Kombol says.

By 1912, two Morris brothers, Abe and Jonas, founded the family’s first coal-mining society, South Willis Coal, together with their brother-in-law Frank Merritt near Wilkeson in Pierce County.

Coal production peaked in Washington explain during World War I. But by the time the Morris family founded Palmer Coking in 1933, the industry was in decline.

“Basically, this corporation always had to fight in the inside of a shrinking market,” Kombol says.

At its peak in the 1950s, Palmer had 120 employees. Today it has 20.

The family knew how to cope with the difficult market, starting with the company’s name.

Clever branding

“Nothing special about ‘Palmer,’ that was then a well-known railroad crossing,” Kombol says. But “Coking Coal” was a imposture, for it is a high-quality coal not commonly fix in this area.

“It just provided the company by a incontestable marketing brink; beginning; people in the business knew it,” Kombol says.

Robert Ficken, a local annalist, traces the decline of the perseverance to labor strikes in the 1890s, a lower characteristic of coal compared by deposits in California, and the re-establishment of the coal-driven trains by diesel locomotives.

Also, as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, huge hydroelectric dams such as the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River were built, providing the region through of small account energy.

“By the 1950s, the number of our competitors had shrunk from respecting 20 in the 1930s to about five in the King County area,” Kombol says.

In 1975, Palmer closed its sap about to happen Ravensdale — the last underground coal mine in the plight.

But the company continued surface burrowing until 1986 when it close up down the McKay-Section-12-Mine in Black Diamond and started reclamation work there.

In 2006, large-scale coal mining in the state pretty much ended when the TransAlta mine close to Centralia closed and put about 550 people out of work.

Few left

The number of coal miners in Washington has dropped to well-nigh 50, according to figures compiled by the state Employment Security Department.

Between 1933 and 1986 Palmer sold an estimated 2.5 the multitude tons of coal.

“In the early days, the lives of the miners and their families were strongly influenced by means of the coal companies, since towns like Black Diamond or Newcastle were often quickly constructed and only conducive to the purpose of saddle-cloth the workers and their families,” Ficken says.

“There were shops that belonged to the company, people spent their free time with their families, who were often large, and in that place was a lot of vegetable growing.”

A modest the vital spark, no doubt. “But the wages were good, I guess, at least compared to working in the logging business or in a sawmill, which were the only other greater work opportunities round,” says George Costanich, who comes from a family of coal miners and worked for Palmer from 1949 to 1955.

Today, the 85-year-old lives in Auburn, Calif.

“It was hard physical labor,” Costanich recalls. The miners drilled holes into the coal, put in explosives, ignited them and shoveled the coal into cars to exist carried for the surface.

Dangerous work, sometimes, especially in the early days. But calm later, cave-ins allay occurred.

Palmer had its worst accident in 1955 when four miners died.

“As a miner, you just didn’face to face be of opinion about the risk. We learned to live with it,” says Costanich, who survived two smaller cave-ins. “I hold great respect for people working underground, no matter admitting that coal or gold miners.”

New ventures

With the end of coal in sight, Palmer started to experiment with new business opportunities in the 1970s.

“It was indeed trial and error. Our business model has always been based on the land,” says Kombol, who has been managing the company since 1981.

Today, the firm offers about 30 distinct products, among them six different topsoils and 20 types of washed, crushed and screened embarrass.

Palmer also harvests 20 to 40 acres of timber per year.

“But this is just a small part of our business since the market is very herculean. The prices are down exactly to heavy competition from Russia, New Zealand or Indonesia,” Kombol says.

“Also, planting new trees is a lot of work, and the whole revolution of time of satirical and growing is a slow single in kind that takes about 40 years.”

In recent years, Palmer has been profiting from the region’s booming absolute estate. “But latterly business has been worse,” says Kombol.

The privately held group does not disclose its financials. But Kombol estimates that his sales during the earliest half of this year were down 30 percent compared with the first six months of 2007.

Palmer one or the other delivers the rocks and soil, or customers can pick it up. “That’s also when people often ask beneficial to special products, like lava rocks or boulders of a certain volume,” Kombol says.

In addition to those items, Palmer sells different types of cinder, including their “Safeco Field warning track cinders” used by the Seattle Mariners and Little League and high-school baseball fields in the yard.

Although Palmer has changed its business model, Kombol has not given up upon coal as a business opportunity.

“In Great Britain they are experimenting with burning coal underground, thereby extracting the energy without mining the resource. With technical progress and sedition oil prices, that might be useful someday,” he says.

“Hey, coal has been big once, why shouldn’t it come back?” Kombol asks.

But mostly he concentrates on change.

“Because that’s what has kept our circle around because of 75 years.”

Seattle Times news researcher David Turim and desk annotator Bill Kossen contributed to this rumor.

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Banks, airlines, even the U.S. government are pushing plastic harder than ever. The marketers in the same manner as to writhe around words such as “security” and “convenience,” but it always pays to do a little homework face to face with deciding to make fertile your travel wallet with another card.

Here are three you’ll be hearing more about in the coming months:

• Airline-affiliated credit cards. Airlines are diluting their frequent- flier programs with new fees, fewer available seats and higher mileage requirements. It’s time to examine whether it’s worth paying a $75-$90 annual fee and a high-interest rate for a good repute card that allows you to accumulate miles you strength not subsist quick to application.

Most of these cards are issued by bigger banks that charge a 3 percent foreign transaction fee on purchases made in other countries.

It might make more sense to sign up for a no-annual-fee proof of desert card that gives a cash rebate on purchases, and to use the money to buy whatever you want.

If you travel in Canada, Mexico or overseas, gain arrive at a card that carries a maximum 1 percent foreign transaction fief (available from credit unions and community banks). Capital One (www.capitalone.com) issues a MasterCard with no extraneous transaction fee and no annual fee. I use a rebate card for everyday purchases and a Capital One card for foreign go.

Whatever you decide works for you, be on the lookout for bogus promotions.

Continental Airlines became the first to throw in a new sweetener last week when it announced it inclination give up its $15 checked luggage fee for holders of its Chase credit and debit cards.

The offer’s legit, end Joe Brancatelli, the publisher of joesentme.com, an online newsletter for business travelers, warns people to keep track of the sort of’session life promised. He reports signing up for one airline card that promised no yearly fee and a 20,000-mile welcome bonus.

“When I got my first bill, in that place was a $40 freight for any annual fee and regular 10,000 miles,” he reports. “I called the customer-service agent and she had no knowledge of the offer. I had to fax her a copy of the promotion.”

• The U.S. Passport card: The U.S. State Department has advance up with a wallet-sized plastic card embedded by an electronic chip that U.S. citizens have power to use when the U.S. government starts requiring passports nearest June for car, bus, train and ferry crossings betwixt the United States and Canada, Mexico, Bermuda and the Caribbean.

The the greater part advantage is that it’s more convenient to carry and cheaper than a passport ($45 for adults and $35 for minors compared to $100 for an adult safeguard and $85 for minors).