I mentioned this four years ago and it’s worth a repeat.  24 girls, aged 16-19, are attending Camp Blaze this week in Bellevue, Washington. Started in 2001, the camp gives girls a taste of life as a firefighter. They rappelled off the Bellevue Fire Department’s training structure, learned to use the equipment of the trade including the jaws of life, and put out simulated fires. Their trainers, professional firefighters, volunteer their time and the camp is free to attend, funded by donations. It’s a unique opportunity for girls to challenge themselves, build confidence, and try out a male-dominated career with other like-minded campers.

Most urban beekeepers mail-order their supplies or obtain them from like-minded locals, but in San Francisco the unique Her Majesty’s Secret Beekeeper has reopened. They say they’re the only urban beekeeping store in America. Beginner beekeepers can purchase all the essentials to start their new hobby, from protective gear to hives and starter colonies. Those who are not keen on keeping their own hives can peruse the honey and other bee products for sale.

In Seattle, the Ballard Bee Company will install active beehives on your property for the spring through summer seasons. They visit regularly to check on the bees and do any maintenance. Beehive hosts pay for the service, but they do receive a jar of honey and a well-pollinated garden in return. The company also keeps bees for commercial clients such as the Fairmont Olympic Hotel where the hives sit on the roof and the honey goes into the restaurant’s menu. Our yard is already happily populated by bees that fly in from elsewhere. I’ve been wanting to top off my flowering herb plants so they grow wide instead of high but every time I go out there the teeming bees on the flowers make me feel too guilty to lop any off.

It hasn’t been the same since reality TV took over, but we can remember the time when MTV felt like this 30 years ago.

Copyright Berkeley Breathed, used without any permission whatsoever

They can’t bring back Mister Rogers but they are carrying on his Neighborhood of Make Believe in a new series. PBS has announced the animated series “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood” which features the same characters from the original show all grown up with their own preschool-aged kids. Title character Daniel is actually the four-year-old son of the first Daniel the Tiger. He’ll talk directly to the TV audience, just like Fred Rogers did, though nowadays kids are used to that technique used in many other shows. The main puppet characters had all been voiced by Fred Rogers himself. I’m curious to see who else will make an appearance in the new series. Will cranky Lady Elaine Fairchilde or her offspring fill the antagonist role again? Will Henrietta Pussycat’s kid have a larger vocabulary than her mostly meows? And is the Neighborhood of Make Believe still a monarchy? The show starts in Fall of 2012 so we’ll have to wait a year to find out.

Did you know there’s a Dr Pepper Museum in Waco, Texas? And it has a weblog. And a summer camp where kids can learn all about making and marketing soda (a lucrative skill indeed). There’s an online store too in case you were looking for Dr Pepper bar stools or golf towels.

After a long, successful, relevant run, Gap has been struggling in recent years. They lost their stronghold on American culture, from Saturday Night Live parodies to commercials so hip they made khakis fashionable. Nothing spoke clearer to their loss of touch with current culture than the failure of their new logo launch in October which took all of a few Internet days to be shot down by public opinion. Today they’re launching a new marketing campaign for their 1969 Premium Jeans line. The San Francisco based company went south to Los Angeles for the inspiration and vibe of the campaign. Its L.A. “denim design” office stars in the videos and print ads. They’re also rolling out “Pico de Gap” food trucks serving tacos with store coupons enclosed. If the denim campaign is successful they’ll translate it to the rest of the store’s line. Those of you feeling nostalgic for the Gap of old, try this 5 min video which takes you through 40 years of Gap history from “fall into the Gap” to its success with siblings Old Navy and Banana Republic. It made me realize that the hip style successor to the Gap was not another clothing store: it’s Apple Computer.

It’s a strange new social media world when the top headline in the local section of the newspaper is “Police unload volley of tweets“.  Reading almost like an opinion piece (but suitably factual and mostly balanced), the Seattle Times articles says “For 12 hours Tuesday, police bombarded their Twitter followers with nearly every incident reported to officers.”  It was a day of non-stop tweets that illustrated the busy and varied life of the Seattle Police from welfare checks to traffic stops with shoplifting and accidents in between. The 12 hour experiment (and PR exercise) lost @SeattlePD some followers as phones and Twitter clients “blew up” with the constant posts, but a police spokesman says they’ll rejoin.  Since the tweetathon ended, there have only been six tweets. Surely there’s a balance they can strike there, perhaps closer to the six in 24 hours than the six in a minute.

Glimpses behind the scenes of two cooking shows form the core of this Boston Globe article about the not-new phenomenon of chefs marketing themselves on television. Ming Tsai tapes his PBS series on the premises of a high-end appliance distributor. Instructors and interns from Johnson & Wales prep his ingredients. Guest Jacques Pepin joins him to saute up a turkey breast and butterfish, then feast on the results with wine and champagne. Over at Joanne Chang’s restaurant kitchen, she welcomes “Ace of Cakes” star Duff Goldman who is taping a new Food Network show “Sugar High.” Crisis strikes when Chang realizes she gave too many fortune cookies samples to the crew and needs more on-air for her recipe. Goldman offers to take the blame by telling viewers that he ate them all. Things are always more perfect than reality after these cooking shows are edited for broadcast.

The N.Y. Times reports that several museums are adding graduate degree programs like the Richard Gilder Graduate School at the American Museum of Natural History. Only 4 or 5 students are year are accepted into the AMNH’s degree PhD program and they get hands on experience in paleontology, evolutionary biology, and access to the museum’s vast collection of specimens and laboratory equipment. They also learn the essential skill of grant writing.

In 2003 Congress established the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee to provide recommendations to the Secretary of the Treasury on the designs of circulated coins, national medals, and commemorative coins. Eleven committee members of different backgrounds, most of course with an interest or specialization in numismatics, serve four year terms. Seattle artist Heidi Wastweet currently fills the position of member “specially qualified in the medallic arts or sculpture.” Her expertise in bas relief sculpture has earned her numerous commissions for medals, plaques, tokens, and coins. Her hope for the CCAC and the future of American coins is that our currency is viewed as an art form, and that the the mint sculptors are treated as artists instead of worker bees in little cubicles at the mint. Her recommendations have included the addition of an art director and improved working environments for the in-house sculptors. Will the art of the coin become more revered as coin usage is gradually replaced by cards and electronic money exchange?