The more things change...

Oh, hello there. I didn’t see you come in. Please, do sit down. I’d shake your hand but, you know... I'm just pixels at the moment. So there's that.

You don’t know me yet, but I’m Daniel Nash, the new editor of the Madison Park Times. Vera Chan-Pool was in charge of this fine publication for a long time and I’m sure she left some large shoes to fill. I haven’t found them yet, but the smell around my desk is… I don’t want to go into it, I just know they’re there, OK?

A little about me: I’m East Coast born and West Coast raised. I graduated from the University of Washington in 2009. I realize to some of you that may seem too recent. It’s OK. There are college students who weren’t alive when “The Simpsons” was good, so I’m pretty much going through the same thing.

I began my journalism career as a reporter for the Courier-Herald newspapers in south King and east Pierce counties. More recently, I reported for some of Sound Publishing’s weekly newspapers on the Eastside. There, I was also editor of Eastside Scene, a monthly arts and entertainment magazine.

In addition to this paper, I’m also editor of City Living. But, unlike with that publication, I’ve had an entire month to familiarize myself with the southeast central Seattle neighborhoods — at least somewhat, anyway. I’ve done the visitor activities: walked portions of the Arboretum, seen Kurt Cobain’s last home, walked the shore of Madison Park Beach.

I watched as Madison Park Community Council member Bob Edmiston passionately pitched Madison/McGilvra intersection improvements to the East Neighborhood District Council on behalf of Alice Lanczos’ Neighborhood Street Fund proposal. And as he described the horrific August 2013 bicycle/pedestrian collision that made the intersection’s visibility problems plain.

Because of their work, the District Council made the proposal one of its five recommendations for city funding, moving it toward cost analysis and engineering by the city Department of Transportation before it moves toward a final yea or nay.

I’ve walked the site of City People’s Garden Store and the residential neighborhood below with members of Save Madison Valley, listening to their concerns over a proposed mixed-use development on the garden retailer’s property. I sat in on the presentation of potential designs for that development by Studio Meng Strazzara President Charles Strazzara.

It’s funny how these issues can be. On the one hand, they’re very common. Every community I’ve covered has had a problem intersection, with at least one accident publicized above all others. Every community has had a development that its neighbors opposed. 

On the other hand, it’s a mistake to think there’s nothing unique about the issues at hand. The beats are the same, but the particulars differ. Every community is like a college course unto itself. It can take years to really “know” it — and even then, you’re wrong.

So here’s the deal: I want to give you folks the coverage you deserve. But I don’t know everything yet. Not by a long shot. I need your help for that. I need you to call me, e-mail me, stalk me in dark alleys — anything you want to do to tell me what you’re doing and why it’s important to you — why it’s important to the community.

I want you to educate me, so I can inform you.  I’m looking forward to it. 

Who knows? We might even have some fun by accident.