• Monica Guzman over at the P-I's Big Blog published an un-cut transcript of the story Denise Gloster told her about why she chose to get involved with her community in the Rainier Valley. The story is powerful and heart-wrenching, well worth your ten minutes to read it closely.
• Whoa, since when do elementary schools in Seattle auction off fancy Palm Springs condos and offer pine-nut crusted salmon as part of their fund-raising dinner menu? West Seattle Blog says Schmitz Park Elementary is doing just that to net money for the school's core programs.
• Shauna, the Seattle-based new mother and food writer over at Gluten Free Girl, has crafted a sensible list of must-have pantry items in response to Mark Bittman's controversial compilation on the same topic. Beans, onions, vinegar--sounds just like our pantry!

You may have thought a turkey-and-gravy-flavored soda would be disgusting. No, it gets worse. A Christmas-season four-pack of Seattle-based Jones Soda features bottles labeled Sugar Plum, Eggnog, Christmas Tree, and Christmas Ham. (There's a Chanukah pack, too, with a dreidel inside: latke, applesauce, chocolate coins, jelly donut.) But we're not here to be disgusting, we're here to be informative. more ›

• Just in time for the holidays, Delicious Baby blog--sorry, extreme foodies, it's not what you think--has 10 tips for surviving flight delays while traveling with kids.
• Gay Seattle Blogspot dares to say it: the Kathy Griffin show at the Paramount was not as funny as last year's, and also offers suggestions for a gay Thanksgiving.
• Following on that, Out & Equal Washington invite you to their happy hour on December 11 at Purr; they're accepting gifts for the Lambert House.

Alexa, the internetz rating service, is out with a ranking of Seattle's top 50 media websites. Not surprisingly, da Timez-&-Pee-Eye combo site, nwsource.com, is numero uno. Our good friends at Slog are in fourth place. Seattlest.com is a more-than-respectable tenth. WestSeattleBlog is 15th. Says Alex Mayer, publisher of dead-tree Belltown Messenger (#42) and live-electron Downtown Dispatch (#36), "The future of media is on the web." more ›