What are you going to do with all those old face masks?: Today So Far

• There is a lot of coincidence and serendipity surrounding Washington's recent Powerball jackpot winner.
• There are $30 million worth of Funko Pops in need of salvation.
• The last lingering mask mandate in Washington state is now slated to end April 3.

This post originally appeared in KUOW's Today So Far newsletter for March 6, 2023.

Auburn might just be the luckiest city in Washington state. Actually, there is a lot of coincidence and serendipity surrounding the recent Powerball jackpot winner.

For starters, two Powerball lottery tickets have been sold in Washington state that were big jackpot winners. Both were from Auburn. In 2014, an Auburn woman won $90 million. And just last month, the fifth largest Powerball jackpot in history was won by Becky Bell. She purchased the winning ticket at the Auburn Fred Meyer.

Then you have the Boeing connection. Bell has worked at Boeing for 36 years as a supply chain analyst and was planning to retire in June (she's retiring a lot earlier now). The other Auburn jackpot winner from 2014 — her husband worked at Boeing. Also, there's the reason Bell purchased the Powerball ticket in the first place. She says she usually spends $20 a week on lottery tickets and had already played that week. But then, at the grocery store, she happened by a sign stating the jackpot total: $747 million. As a Boeing employee, Bell knew that the last 747 jumbo jet rolled off the assembly line that week and figured it was a sign. So she bought yet another ticket, beyond her usual amount. And that was the winner (actually, she purchased two sets of Powerball numbers on one ticket; the other numbers won $8). In total, Bell won nearly $755 million.

If Bell is looking for ways to spend her big winnings, there are $30 million worth of Funko Pops in need of salvation. Everett-based Funko is planning to send millions worth of its vinyl figurines to the dump. The company says it has too much inventory sitting around in warehouses, taking up space and costing money. Its solution is to just throw them all in the trash.

During the pandemic, there was a surge in collector activity, and Funko enjoyed a bit of that increased interest. Funko collectors are a special breed, and stray, culturally, from your usual beanie baby, porcelain figurine, coin or trading card collectors. Funko devotees are to the collector scene what edgy puck rockers are to pop music. But this passionate group of fans aren't enough to keep the company's finances thriving. Funko lost $47 million in the fourth quarter of 2022. It's also looking at cutting its workforce by about 10%.

Funko's trashy move comes about a year after the company opted to close its Washington warehouses and distribution center. It moved those operations to Arizona. Its HQ is still in Everett. If those warehouses are purged, expect hordes of collectors to descend upon Arizona landfills in the months ahead. The situation brings to mind the legend of the E.T. Atari game. The video game was created in 1982 and was apparently so bad, the company decided to send all of the cartridges to a landfill instead of putting them on the market. Some folks were able to dig up a few of those cartridges and sold them for big bucks, decades later.

The last lingering mask mandate in Washington state is now slated to end April 3. Masks are still required in many medical and health care settings. Also, correctional facilities. The state is now nixing that requirement. It's worth noting that the masks did some good, and still do. Private businesses still have the right to require masks, and in general, it's probably a smart idea to still mask up in crowded settings.

If you're like me, however, you now have a collection of stylish face masks, more than what you need, and you don't know what to do with them all. I have Schitt's Creek masks, and a Bill and Ted mask. I even found a Magnum PI mask (original, not the remake). I've been toying with the idea of using them to patch up holes in my jeans, or sewing them onto my shirts as elbow patches. Even making a face mask quilt. Ideas? What are you doing with your face masks? Let me know at dyer@kuow.org.

AS SEEN ON KUOW

The largest aircraft yet to fly on hydrogen-electric power made a successful first flight at Moses Lake, Washington. The maiden flight of a converted turboprop airliner offered a preview of one possible pathway for how to make future flights more eco-friendly. Hydrogen fuel is one of several options the aviation industry is testing to reduce its carbon footprint, but the technology still attracts notable skepticism. (Northwest News Network)

DID YOU KNOW?

More and more people are flocking to our national parks, but attendance still isn't at pre-pandemic levels. With 312 million people, park attendance was up 5% in 2022, over the previous year. But that's still 4.7% under 2019.

This story rounding up the top 10 most visited national parks in 2022 gave me mixed feelings. At first, I was bummed that no parks in Washington state made the list. Then again, our national parks around here are massive in scale, with the Olympics and Mount Rainier. That's a lot bigger than the Lincoln Memorial in D.C. (no. 5) or the George Washington Memorial Parkway (no. 6). Even the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, which comes second on the list of most-visited national parks, is only 82,000 acres. Olympic National Park comes in at 922,650 acres. So it's not exactly apples-to-apples here.

Then again, the most popular national park in 2022 was the Blue Ridge Parkway, a 469 mile road that spans parts of Virginia and North Carolina. Apparently, this is often the most-visited park in the USA. That's a lot of miles, so not exactly a small park. Of course, it's a roadway, so again, not comparable. Folks are driving this national park. People go to the Olympics or Mount Rainier to get out of their cars and hike and camp. Which switched up my feelings again, and got me thinking, "What's your problem America! Have you seen the Olympics?! They're awesome."

But here we go again. On second thought, "Shut up Dyer! Don't tell people. Then they'll come. You know how hard it is to even get a camping spot out there. Keep it a secret. Remember what happened as Seattle's characteristic buildings came down, and rents went up? Folks started talking about how cool Tacoma was ... and then folks moved there. Damn it! Keep the parks a secret!"

At least, that's sort of how it went in my head.

Just in case you're curious, NPR also noted the least-visited parks in the country during 2022, which include the John F. Kennedy National Historic Site (Massachusetts), the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site (Washington D.C.), and the Clara Barton National Historic Site (Maryland). It should be noted that these sites are basically houses on streets where people still live, and not so much tourist destinations in a public mall or forest.

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