Strike hits all creatures great and small and finny

Funny how one day our town can be linked arm-in-arm in 9/11-related solidarity and the next day reduced to bareknuckled “Lord of the Flies”-style divisiveness.

Funny, but not necessarily in a ha-ha way.

It’s like we woke up this week and found ourselves in a Third World country. Superintendent Art Jarvis seizes control from the Tacoma School Board and declares martial law, like Pinochet in Chile circa 1973. A teacher or teachers try to intimidate the judge who may seal their fate, like drug barons in Colombia during the ’80s.

Even so, we have every confidence that, in the end, both sides will do the right thing to protect the small, defenseless, floundering casualties of this whole fiasco.

And by that we mean goldfish, not children.

We read about it in the Washington Education Association’s newsletter. It seeks to answer questions teachers might have before hitting the picket lines, such as: “Should I remove personal belongings from my classroom or work site?”

Here’s part of the answer: “If you have fish or other animals that cannot be removed easily, you may want to make other arrangements for their care.”

Phew. We were worried they’d be the voiceless victims of the strike – locked in dark classrooms, flushed, or given to UPS fraternity houses for eating or to the Harmon Taproom for racing.

Again, we mean goldfish, not children.

Silence from the education mayor: When she ran for bosswoman of Destinyville two years ago, Marilyn Strickland promoted herself as the “education candidate.”

Nowadays her duties as the education wife take precedence.

When asked about the teachers strike this week, Strickland said she was not “at liberty” to comment because her hubby, Pat Erwin, is a school administrator who sits on the district’s bargaining team.

Shucks, life was so much simpler in ’09, when she was still the education girlfriend.

All’s well that ends well, though, ’cause it leaves Strickland more time to focus on her new, more pressing role:

The bring-a-pro-sports-team-to-the-Tacoma-Dome mayor.

Our second-favorite holiday: Right after April Fools’ Day, we rank Talk Like a Pirate Day as a close No. 2.

So ahoy, me buckos, we’re higher than the mizzenmast to learn that Foss Waterway Seaport has a day of squiffy dress-up fun set fer noon Saturday at 705 Dock St.

Huzzah for the unionized pirates who might show up, ridin’ the tailwinds that be blowin’ through Tacoma schools and the nearby Port of Tacoma. They aim to parley with their salty cap’ns. They’ll carry a list of demands and give no quarter:

• Less swabbing.
• Less out-of-pocket costs for bloodlettings and pegleg fittings.
• Keep fair share of treasure. Resist cap’n’s plan to pay in pieces of seven instead of pieces of eight.
• Senior mates can’t be forcibly reassigned from poop deck to bilge.
• Smaller lass sizes … wait, make that larger! We like our lasses large enough to love, yo ho!
• Less buckle, more swash.
• Binding ARRR!bitration.

Fircrest, hide your valuables: Every few months, The Pierce County Council vacates the swanky confines of the County-City Building in T-Town and sets out for dusty frontier outposts such as Frederickson and Gig Harbor.

Next Tuesday at 6 p.m., the road show will go to Fircrest, aka the Utopia Under the Water Tower. No doubt the pols will arrive at City Hall with their usual retinue of assistants, bodyguards, wine stewards and other hangers-on.

Thus increasing the population of Fircrest by half and the number of blowhards by 100 percent.

We trust the municipal welcome wagon won’t skimp on the customary greeting given to the rest of us infrequent visitors: a ticket for driving 26 in a 25.

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