I live with a wild cat. Well, not actually a wild cat. Factually, Emmy Lou is a declawed Domestic Shorthair-type feline that found us as a stray.Before anyone complains: She was already declawed when she found us. We'd never even begin to think of doing such a cruel thing to a cat. She can't protect herself at all, other than biting, and she can't climb anything in order to escape a pursuer.Consequently, Emmy is a house cat. She never goes out. Open the front door and Emmy doesn't even begin to make a move to try to get out. (She probably remembers those horrible days before she found us, when she was running loose in Discovery Park.) No, Emmy is never out. Absolutely everything she needs, and probably a lot of things she truthfully doesn't, are provided for her.So what does she pay in return?
I was tooling around Green Lake last week in the amazingly consistent February sun (thank you, global warm-ing - I guess). My companion was a successful writer friend (if you judge success, as most Ameri-cans seem to do, by amount of money made) who has always been a much more strident environmentalist than little Midwestern Denny.A huge Hummer with dark-tinted windows pulled into the main parking lot and stopped my friend dead in his tracks."I wanna see who gets out of that monstrosity," he said.I expected a version of the sub-urban hip-hop wannabes I usually see driving similar rides along First Avenue on Friday night. Imagine my surprise to observe two old men - even older than this middle-aged witness - climb stiffly out, their sparse white hairs blowing softly in the breeze.
We all know that the seven-way intersection at the northeast gateway to Queen Anne is a manic bumper-car zone, but there's another locus of jeopardy just a couple of hundred feet away that, despite boasting a mere three-way intersection, is arguably more perilous.I'm talking about the junction you come to when you turn off northbound Aurora Avenue just short of the Aurora Bridge; or take the hairpin turn up toward Aurora from Dexter Avenue North; or drive under Aurora from the aforementioned seven-way intersection with the intention of either turning left to get down to Dexter, or right to go get onto Aurora.Technically, the streets involved are very stunted sections of Halladay and Sixth Avenue North.Here's the problem. Traffic coming from two directions encounters a stop sign. Traffic coming from the third direction - from Aurora - does not.
Lawrence Brownlee may not be tall physically, but the young bel-canto tenor's operatic stature is growing by leaps and bounds.Barely out of both college and Seattle Opera's Young Artists Program, Brownlee made his debut in June 2002 at Teatro alla Scala as Almaviva in Rossini's "Barbiere di Siviglia" - and he's been in hot demand ever since. Besides revisiting La Scala for more Rossini, Brownlee debuted with several operas around the world, from the Boston Lyric Opera to Opernhaus Zurich. In 2003, he trod the boards again at Seattle Opera, this time on the main stage to rave reviews as Ernesto in Donizetti's "Don Pasquale."
"Singin' in the Rain," now playing at 5th Avenue Theatre, makes a lovely splash. It's corny and clichéd, but the stage version of the classic 1952 Gene Kelly-Debbie Reynolds-Donald O'Connor film delivers plenty of charm and cheer. Basically, it's the same affectionate spoof of Hollywood's transition from silent pictures to "talkies," only performed live. And yes, it rains onstage during the title tune. Betty Comden and Adolph Green adapted their screenplay for the stage, using the same unforgettable songs by Nacio Herb Brown (music) and Arthur Freed (lyrics). Freed grew up in Seattle, and on opening night at 5th Avenue his granddaughter was there to take a preshow bow.Directed and choreographed by Jamie Rocco, this is the show for people who hate musicals. It's Hollywood, circa 1927. Kathy Selden (Christina Saffran Ashford), a plucky, stagestruck showgirl, accidentally runs into debonair silent-screen idol Don Lockwood (Michael Gruber). Sparks fly. As their love blossoms, Lockwood's vapid, self-centered, on-screen lover Lina Lamont pitches a hissy fit. And she's got the voice to do it: when she speaks, cats run for cover.
Three nights down. Nine bands tested.The battle is on.You can taste the dreams in the air, the moist sweetness of hope and excitement mixed with the seductive bitterness of ambition and ego. The upstairs performance space of the Science Fiction Museum - the venue hosting the 4th Annual Sound Off!, Experience Music Project's 21-and-under battle of the bands series - has been transformed into a bubbling cauldron of adolescent emotion. Groups of teenagers from around the state cluster in cliques reminiscent of a high-school hallway. They congregate around their friends, separating according to which city or town they hail from, what styles they choose to endorse. Here we have the punk rockers, their foot-high Mohawks and liberty spikes bobbing up and down in time to heated conversation. Over there are the hip-hop kids in doo rags and baggy pants, arms folded, waiting in steely composure. In the middle are the mop-headed, indie-rock hipsters, their as-yet-untried emotions worn not on their sleeves, but on the dangling ends of colorful silk scarves. The smell of sweat and sexual tension intensifies as the room fills up.
Several, in fact, as Pacific Northwest Ballet soars to the occasion
Queen Anne Baptist Church was full on Saturday, Feb. 5. Amid the wooden pews, friends and family members gathered to say their last goodbyes to Robert Allen Gardner, a Queen Anne resident and renowned community member, husband, father and friend to many."He never talked about what religion he was," said Eric Vogt, a professor at Seattle Pacific University. "He lived it."Robert A. Gardner, known as Bob by friends and family, passed away at his home on Sunday, Jan. 30. He was 85 years old. His wife Aline, daughter Sue Gardner Lucier and son Greg survive him.
Saturday errands can be a fascinating roller-coaster ride if you keep your sense of humor close at hand. First stop was the drycleaning establishment that promises one-day service. They advertise that service in very large letters on their windows. What they don't advertise is the service is only available Monday through Friday.So, in a fog, it is off to the next errand. The mind is wandering over the choices in my closet that might work as alternatives for the party tonight. Also I miss a couple of turns while thinking about helping them to paint M-F on their windows.
I found out today that being unreliable has its place. It's a good thing that my husband is unreliable, because I counted on this little personality trait of his when I locked myself out of my house this morning. It happened because I was in a hurry, trying to get my two youngest daughters down to the bus stop in time. The second the door closed, I knew I was locked and I was, shall we say, up that proverbial creek without the proverbial ladder ... er, paddle. Or key. Or enough brain cells to figure out what I was going to do next.
November 1971. Across an old oak table piled with print, the old librarian passed me the latest Rolling Stone. Under a drawing from hell was:We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like, "I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive..." And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about 100 miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas...Hunter Thompson and his 300-pound Samoan lawyer were on a roll:
In my mind hypocrites are the worst sinners. Whited sepulchers is what I believe George W. Bush's alleged personal Savior called them back in the day when gods walked the earth and Brittany spears were weapons for the then-feisty Gauls, who hadn't yet been weakened by excessive saucing (ask the Romans if you don't believe me).According to a reader's letter in the Feb. 23 Seattle Times, local television traveler Rick Steves, whose trips to Europe are among the brighter spots on local PBS, told an audience at the University of Washington's Kane Hall that some dim bulbs are rating his shows according to how much nudity (ancient statues and post-medieval art museums) he's foisting upon the ever-innocent American public.
It's not news that "humankind cannot bear very much reality," as T.S. Eliot once noted. We've always looked for short cuts to avoid confronting certain individuals and experiences head-on, in all their richly intimidating complexity. Only difference nowadays is that our culture actually encourages us to grab the first and handiest label when it comes to anything more complicated than a cartoon character. (And despite his lack of depth, even poor Sponge Bob Square Pants can't escape getting slapped with a scarlet H - for homosexual - by the religious right.) Easy to say we're a polarized nation, drowning in politically correct idiocy, and let it go at that. But that red and blue, liberal and conservative dichotomy is spawning a truly scary way of describing the world. Faced with living, breathing, messy reality, we're given to saving time and thought by whipping out conceptual cookie-cutters to make it fit into our own, familiar status quo.
JOHN CRANE"A large role. In meeting people and just getting an initial vibe from someone, I pay attention to what I first feel in any situation."MARK KROEGER"I don't think that it plays a role - it is just there. You don't think about it - it just happens."
It's a chilly Saturday morning in Discovery Park. A thick, soupy fog hangs low in the winter sky, obscuring the surrounding treetops. Not the ideal conditions for bird-watching. But the group of about 20 people and a smattering of dogs that has gathered in front of the Visitor Center is undeterred. Those in attendance are representatives, volunteers and friends of various local environmental and neigh-borhood nonprofits, and everyone is excited to begin this morning's walk along the Salmon Bay Wildlife Corridor.