Hermona Girmay of Edmonds, who was named Miss Seattle in February, was crowned Miss Washington 2024 on July 6 at Capital High School Performing Arts Center in Olympia.

Girmay, who was born and raised in Edmonds, attended Holy Rosary School and graduated from Edmonds-Woodway High School.

According to a news release, Girmay is a 2023 cum laude and departmental honors graduate of the University of Washington, where she earned a bachelor of arts in public health-global health and completed a minor in bioethics. Girmay’s plans for graduate school are to complete a master of public health to further her career in health policy.

“Her Community Service Initiative, “SHECAN: Support Her Education, Change A Nation,” encompasses her 10-plus years of girls’ education equality activism inspired by her family’s journey to the United States as refugees,” according to the news release.

Girmay will compete for the title of Miss America 2025 next January.

(After Facebook.)

Social networking is this year's megahit. At MCT we're making available our own version that we call Member Networking. The tools are provided by our web host, Clark Internet Publishing. To participate, just follow the Join link atop any page.

Features for members...

• Secure communications with other members through our double-blind message center; member contact data are not published
• Instant Twitter-like personal updates
• Personal journal (blog)
• Member-to-member messaging
• Personal profile with avatar or photo
• Embed pictures from any popular photo site
• Embed movies from any popular video site
• Link other networks (Twitter, Facebook, Myspace...)
• List and link your favorite websites, movies, music
• Personalize your member space with HTML/CSS
• Continuing sitewide features...

And as always for readers

• Flexible naming and addressing and simple forms
• News and forums
• Editor feedback form
• Editor to membership notices
• New features always under development

Got news? Use the To The Editor form and tell the editor about any blog post you think the whole readership should see. If we think so too, we'll link it from The Editor's Desk and tweet in on our Twitter page.

Mill Creek's central area is mentioned among thousands of other places considered "speed traps" by readers of Speedtrap.org, a website that offers open postings and commentaries. The writer asserts that a happy hunting ground is located "anywhere north of Mill Creek Blvd" where police and sheriff's deputies regularly circulate in and out of local headquarters.

Do you have an opinion on speed traps, or on whether MC really has one? Try the Talkback forums, or visit the Speedtrap.org website. MCT takes no position on the matter.

Visit Speedtrap.org

The ABC docudrama Road to 9/11 aired September 10-11 apparently added heat but little light to the national debate about the World Trade Center attacks. Commentators from all sides have chastised the program for putting words into the mouths of public figures who held office in the months and years leading to the attacks. We'll be following this story as it develops.