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Giant Cedar Tree Repurposed as a Little Free Library

Just up the street from my house (near downtown Everett) there was a large cedar tree.

a majestic giant cedar tree just up the street from my house (photo via Google Street View)

a majestic giant cedar tree just up the street from my house (photo via Google Street View)

Recently, the owners of the property had a tree service come and cut the tree down. I was sad.

Strangely though, they did not cut the tree all the way down. A bare stump about twelve feet tall was left behind, a lonely testament to the cedar’s former glory.

Then a few weeks later, something magical happened…

Over the course of a few days, the sad stump was transformed into a the most creative Little Free Library I’ve seen to date.

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Little Free Library carved into a giant cedar stump

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Bears, Owls, and Books!

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Some old cabinet doors serve to keep the books out of the weather.

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The current reading selection.

I’m still sad that the tree is gone, but I have to admit, this is a pretty awesome alternative, and it definitely adds some cool character to our neighborhood. Well played, neighbor. Well played.

You can visit the library in person at 35th Street & Wetmore Avenue here in Everett.

[Update]
A couple weeks after I posted this, the Everett Herald wrote up a more in-depth story about the library: Everett woman turns beloved cedars into whimsical library

It all started when Sara Sanders’ beloved cedar took a turn for the worse.

It dropped a big honking limb onto Wetmore Avenue.

“It came down just before that big windstorm (in late August),” Sanders said. “It was time for it to go. The city sent me a letter that said ‘You must.’ ”

Still, it was hard letting go.

“The tree meant a lot to me. One of the reasons I bought the house 17 years ago was because of the tree,” Sanders said. “I wanted to be able to commemorate it in some way because it was a wonderful tree.”

What was once a 120-foot cedar is now a bear bearing books.

A couple days after that, KOMO News ran a video story:

[Update: Unfortunately KOMO deleted the story and the video from their website.]

[Update 2: The KOMO story reappeared on their website!]

Great stuff!

Everett to Seattle Traffic Is Blowing Up

Has Seattle traffic suddenly gotten a lot worse, or is it just my skewed perception? I take the Sound Transit 510 express bus from Everett to Seattle every day for work and in the past few weeks I’ve experienced some really excruciating commutes, particularly in the morning on the way into Seattle.

Seattle’s worsening traffic has been the subject of a number of recent articles in both the Seattle Times1 and the Everett Herald2 based on a recent Corridor Capacity Report published by the Washington State DOT. However, this report only covers data through 2013, and my impression has been that things have gotten considerably worse just in the last few weeks.

As it turns out, I just so happen to have been collecting detailed data about my commute for over three years. Since late 2011 I’ve been logging the time at fourteen points along my way to work in the morning and on the way home in the evening. Using this data set, I can visualize my commutes to see if the last few weeks have seen anything truly out of the ordinary.

The plot below has a blue dot indicating the time between boarding the bus in Everett (at 34th & Broadway or 38th & Broadway) every morning and disembarking on one of the first stops (Stewart Street) in downtown Seattle. Orange dots represent the time spent on the bus in the evenings going the reverse direction. The lines are a 30-day rolling average.

Everett to Seattle Express Bus Rides

After peaking at 56 minutes in late 2012, then peaking at 54 minutes in late 2013, the 30-day average morning commute has risen to an hour and five minutes as of November 3rd.

In fact, six of the ten worst morning commutes I’ve experienced in the last three years have been in just the past three weeks.

Top Ten Worst 510 Express AM Rides
Date AM Ride
2014-10-20 01:49
2014-10-28 01:47
2014-11-04 01:46
2014-09-24 01:44
2013-11-08 01:40
2012-11-19 01:35
2014-10-23 01:33
2014-10-21 01:33
2012-05-31 01:33
2012-11-01 01:33

Probably due to the combination of the onset of rainy weather, less daylight, and other factors, the fourth quarter of each of the last three years has seen considerably worse morning traffic than the rest of the year, but this so far year it has been absolutely dreadful.

Median Everett to Seattle Morning Commute by Quarter

Interestingly, evening traffic in the opposite direction over this same period has not seen any significant increase compared to last year.

Median Everett to Seattle Evening Commute by Quarter

Hopefully the last few weeks have just been a series of terrible flukes, rather than the beginning of a trend of consistently nightmarish morning commutes.

At least I always get a seat on the bus, where I can sleep, read Reddit, or write blog posts like this.