The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's March 21 exposé on the failings of the Experience Music Project only reinforced what many of us have come to think about that bulbous ghost museum down the hill, if we think about it at all.In a word, disappointing.Whether you choose to discern EMP's shortcomings in the exorbitant admission price ($19.95 just to get in the door), poor planning, lack of vision or - even more problematic - the inherent contradiction of turning a vibrant cultural force into a glass-encased relic, there appears little doubt that the museum so far has flubbed its initial promise of becoming a world-class cultural institution and an internationally recognized Seattle landmark. More like a white elephant.
In the early 1900s, polio was widespread in the United States. In the summer of 1916, one of the worst epidemics hit; in New York City alone, 2,000 people died, and another 7,000 were affected. Panic struck as people tried to leave the city. Hospitals refused patients. In 1921, the disease afflicted Franklin D. Roosevelt, impairing his ability to walk and changing his life forever. Through his struggles, FDR also grew as a person: Eleanor Roosevelt said the disease gave him courage and taught him patience. Others said the disease gave him compassion and understanding for the downtrodden and afflicted. The disease would help shape his presidential policies and the health of American children. It would also lead to Roosevelt founding the March of Dimes.
You hear about it happening to other parents, but you just know it can't happen to you. You brought your children up with values and morals, and they simply wouldn't trash all your training for self-gratification of the lowest order. It's not something that is supposed to happen in good families. If your children start up with this stuff, you hide it from your friends out of embar-rassment and with good cause. Who wants their children to consort with someone who'd stoop to this level of behavior?My son has been eating Spam.
For the third biennium in a row, our state budget is in a hole. It's raining, but our rainy-day fund has long ago run dry. Current revenues aren't adequately funding services essential to the health and well-being of Washington citizens, such as our state's correctional facilities, health and critical mental health services and our public schools. Although our state is moving forward, we're falling farther behind.
The problem with political correctness - even if I subscribe to some of its core beliefs, especially making damn sure that opportunity is truly equal for minorities - is that PC's most-rigid followers misread the world with their blink-ered view, just as surely as those folks who follow an allegedly conservative bent in their natures to the exclusion of other viewpoints.One of the major problems with following any ideology is that you often can't see the variety in the forest for the darkness of the trees in the aggregate.I was telling a friend the other day about a conversation I had a couple of years ago at a Seattle party. Another partygoer, an attractive young woman, grew more and more exasperated with me during the course of our initially convivial chit-chat.We had been talking about abortion and had agreed that we were both pro-choice. Somehow the death penalty came up soon after, and I said that after working closely with convicts for two years in the state of Washington, I'd become a limited advocate of the death penalty in some, not all, cases.The look on her face said plainly that I'd transgressed.
Impossible this past week to escape the ugly emotional fallout generated by the battle between those who want Terri Schiavo alive at any cost and those who are willing to let her go. (I'm writing this on Sunday, so the hapless object of media, legislative and clerical blitzkrieg may have already passed away by the time you read it.)I've been deeply shocked at the level of verbal violence loosed by this awful argument - an argument that should have remained private and personal, rather than being politicized, turned into talkshow fodder, exposed to mob hysteria.
Strolling through Seattle's parks and neighborhoods at this time of year, the air laden with the pungent, warm aromas of tree buds bursting into pink and white flowers and green shoots rising from damp, dark soils, always fires me with a deep urge to ramble. In my household the feeling is known as "Springer Fever," as in Springer Mountain, Ga. This low peak holds the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail, a 2,200-mile path winding through 14 states to Mount Katahdin, Maine. Back in 1999 my wife and I joined the seasonal, nomadic community of backpackers determined to walk the trail's entire length in one go. While we never considered ourselves homeless with the woods as our domain, we were when compared to a city dweller.
Children of all ages and their attending adults braved the wettest day of the month to grab their fair share of spring themed candy and eggs. Approximately 1.31 inches of measurable precipitation fell on the reagion on this day, according to weather instruments housed at Boeing Field.
The peaceful forests of Seward Park hold many secrets. For instance, every day park visitors walk past the stone bridge and log pumphouse on the eastern shore of the peninsula, yet many of them have no idea that behind the bridge, the dry creek bed leads to an abandoned fish hatchery. At the behest of local sport fishermen, the Seward Park Fish Hatchery was built in 1935 by a Washington Emergency Relief Act work crew. At the time the hatchery generated protest from citizens who felt that the flurry of public works projects in the park was destroying its natural forest landscape. Now the hatchery site is being redeveloped and reforested, but a few of the old rearing ponds remain, looking for all the world like ancient moss-covered ruins in the forest.
For the past three years the Seattle Police Department's South Precinct has been without a community newsletter. According to the precinct's crime prevention coordinator, officer Mark Solomon, the last written update issued from the station was a quarterly newsletter back in 2002. However, with the spike in strong-arm robberies that began piercing the South End's neighborhoods more than six months ago, Captain Tom Byers and Lieutenant James Koutsky decided it was time to reprioritize their methods of community outreach.
Marinated lamb, wine, pastries and lattes - oh my! Olive You, which opened in January, specializes in Mediterranean cuisine and is also part café, part espresso stand, part winery, with a dash of bakery thrown in. Timur Leno, Olive You's owner, was raised in Istanbul, where meals are a part of the social fabric and each course serves as a warm-up for the next. "I come from a live-to-eat culture," Leno said. "Antipasto, wine, main course, dessert, coffee - it's a chain that signifies a good, traditional Turkish meal."
By now, the dust from last month's City Council decision not to sell the property at the corner of Lake and Central to a developer should be starting to settle. The sun still comes up. The world is still round. And the property is still a parking lot and remains an underutilized parcel in a downtown that could clearly use a shot in the arm.
Today we're going to discuss tofu and its heart-healthy benefits in a diet low in salt (taste) and sugar (fun). We'll discuss that right after we discuss the conspiracy to make me believe that my memory is failing. Which it isn't.
Officers from more than 40 police jurisdictions in the Pacific Northwest and Canada mourned the death of Seattle Police Harbor Patrol Officer Jackson V. Lone.
What is the number of degrees in a right angle times the number of degrees of one angle of an equilateral triangle? Compute in your head only.This is a sample question posed at the Washington State Math Championship held in Blaine on March 19. Hosted by ConocoPhillips and the Blaine School District, more than 1,400 fifth- through eighth-grade students from all over the state competed as teams and individuals. Queen Anne's Seattle Country Day School team, which includes a student from Magnolia, came out on top in both categories.