According to a new survey from the Harvard Medical School, more than one in three Americans uses some form of alternative therapy. Whether it's the taking of echinacea during cold-and-flu season or utilizing more expansive naturopathic techniques, Americans have made the leap to a more holistic approach of healing.The question, then, is why, after decades of contentment with allopathic medicine, have so many people become increasingly interested in natural medicine?Although naturopathic therapy dates back to ancient times, it didn't hit the United States until the beginning of the 20th century. But the rise of groundbreaking medicines like antibiotics, the commercialization of the medical system and the advent of widespread use of pharmaceuticals all led to a decline in the use of natural medicine.By the 1970s, however, people across the United States were becoming displeased with the limitations of traditional allopathic medicine as well as the rising costs of mainstream medical care, so they began to turn back to the therapies associated with naturopathic medicine.
You may have noticed a special section at Larry's Market, filled with brightly colored boxes that contain in turn a prodigious variety of goods made from matzah - unleavened bread. From matzah balls and Passover noodles to matzah cake meal and even chocolate, these Passover treats represent the beginning of spring and the Passover holiday. So what's the meaning behind this very large cracker? Passover is a holiday that celebrates the liberation, approximately 3,000 years ago, of the Israelites from 400 years of slavery in Egypt. Leaving quickly, they did not have time for their bread to rise and, therefore, baked unleavened bread, called matzah. This joyous holiday brings families together from around the world to participate in a Seder and remember the story of their ancient people with symbolic foods, songs and many different personal traditions.
There are many faces to the homeless, and that includes families with children.But the Interfaith Hospitality Network of Seattle (IHNS) helps ease the pain by putting up entire families in churches such as the Magnolia Lutheran Church near the Village.That's unusual, notes IHNS Communications Director Gary Davis. Normally, he said, families are split up - with fathers going to one shelter, mothers going to another and children staying with either the father or mother, depending on their sex and assuming the homeless shelters take kids in the first place. Most don't.
The weather was rainy and cold, but the mood was warm and thankful last Saturday morning when the Heron Habitat Helpers and city officials gathered to mark two years of work restoring Kiwanis Ravine. Those attending the April 16 ribbon-cutting ceremony also honored a Magnolia activist who helped preserve edges of the ravine as parkland.Standing on a Kiwanis Ravine overlook that has also been restored just off 36th Avenue West, Heron Habitat Helpers co-chair Heidi Carpine noted that restoration work in the ravine has helped preserve the largest rookery of great blue herons in Seattle.
Zen priest Richard Kirsten-Daiensai celebrates his 85th birthday, a new book and a lifetime of art through May 29 at the Kirsten Gallery in the University District.His current exhibit, entitled Gratitude, symbolizes Kirsten-Daiensai's "gratitude for everything." It includes paintings he has completed over the last 60 years.According to Kirsten-Daiensai, the recent opening of Gratitude, attracted the largest crowd in the gallery's 31 years of existence.
In the summer of 1916, one of the worst epidemics hit the United States. In New York City alone, 2,000 people died from polio, 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 also would lead to Roosevelt founding the March of Dimes.
You may have noticed a special section at your local grocer filled with brightly colored boxes containing matzah, an unleavened bread, matzah balls, Passover noodles, matzah cake meal and even chocolate. These treats represent the beginning of spring and the Jewish Passover holiday. So what's the meaning behind this very large cracker? Passover is a holiday that celebrates the liberation of the ancient Israelites from 400 years of slavery in Egypt, approximately 3,000 years ago. Leaving quickly, they didn't have time for their bread to rise and, therefore, baked an unleavened bread known as matzah. This joyous holiday brings families together from around the world to participate in a Seder, a celebration that helps them remember the story of their ancient people with symbolic foods, songs and different personal traditions.
Most of the things we fight against, or for, have to do with the relative position of our racial group in America's economic and political pecking order. Seattle's Rainier Valley reflects that reality. You can find the worst and best here in about the same proportion as the rest of the nation, and we have a mix of people that any social scientist studying racial diversity would covet.If there is a void someone will fill it, and we end up complaining about how other people see us rather than projecting our own images of who we are. Who we are must be followed by what we are going to do, and that question cannot be answered until we clarify whether or not we're Americans.
The cure to our country's insatiable oil-addiction is being administered in Seattle, and its application could not have come at a better time considering recent developments in Washington D.C.On March 17, with a 51-to-49 vote, Senate Republicans managed to marshal their forces and kill a Democratic and moderate Republican effort to take out a provision on oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from the 2006 congressional budget resolution. The vote gives credence to the GOP-controlled House and the Bush administration, both favor drilling the oil out of ANWR. Here's the rub, drilling ANWR, considered by many to be the Serengeti of North America due to its pristine landscape and abundant wildlife, will not free Americans from their dependence on imported oil. Says who? Well, good old Uncle Sam.
In our midst there are hidden sanctuaries that most of us do not know exist. Three years ago, I stumbled upon such a haven while I was looking for something to do between my two jobs on Wednesday mornings. I happened to be in Beacon Hill's Jefferson Community Center to pick up a program brochure when I noticed a group of senior citizens playing bridge. For no apparent reason, I stuck up a conversation with them. Later, while reflecting on our talk, it dawned on me that the time frame and location made playing bridge an ideal fit. Fortuitously, what started as a desire to fill in a two-hour time block evolved into a pleasurable and rewarding experience.
Getting a good cup of Joe may be one of the easiest purchases a Seattle resident can make. The near ubiquitous presence of java joints in the Emerald City is truly laughable but no less appreciated when you look at the foot traffic padding in and out of their store fronts. Today, with three coffee shops hissing out high quality coffee drinks within a half a mile of each other, Columbia City is no exception. However, seven years ago, before Kate Gill blazed an espresso-based entrepreneurial trail by opening Lottie Motts on one of Columbia City's most visible corners, South End residents had to travel to the city's core and its northern neighborhoods to get some decent coffee. The last day for Gill's Lottie Motts arrives on Saturday, April 30.
What do you get when you let 400 kids dance on stage at McCaw Hall with original choreography, music and spoken-word accompaniment? A lot of excited kids, an even bigger bunch of proud parents and satisfied teachers and, Pacific Northwest Ballet hopes, some new addicts to the world of dance.Unlike PNB's DanceChance program, which seeks out public school students with the potential to become ballet dancers and trains them at PNB, the Discover Dance program goes into various schools to inspire students and their parents to get excited about ballet. The program concludes with the public performance of "Leaping Legends" on Saturday, April 23.
Some days you just wake up on the wrong side of the bed, and everything that should feel ordinary - like one's home and furnishings and family - suddenly seems off-center and not quite commonplace. Which explains why the set of Seattle Children's Theatre's stage adaptation of Judith Viorst's perennially popular 1972 book "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day" looks like the interior of a house frozen midway through a magnitude 9 earthquake. A great slab of Pergo-like laminated flooring rests (somehow) on one long edge at perhaps 60 or 70 degrees from the stage, with bathroom fixtures and a table securely attached to the slanted surface. A miniature version of Alexander's handsome wooden bed hangs upside down in the boy's room. Nothing is level because Viorst's miserable little hero is about as out-of-sorts with his world as he can be.
Sam Peckinpah was one of our great modern filmmakers, but for many his name summons up such a fearsome Hollywood legend, of blighted career, outrageous excess and epic self-destructiveness, that remembering the great films becomes secondary.The legend began to lock into place with his third feature film, the 1965 "Major Dundee" - though it's worth noting that even his universally admired second film, the beautifully elegiac "Ride the High Country" (1962), was nearly thrown away by its parent studio, only to be hailed as "the best American film of the year" by Newsweek magazine. "Ride the High Country" was a small film - a program picture, really - featuring two over-the-hill cowboy stars (Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott). "Major Dundee" would be, by mid-'60s terms, an epic, with a $4.5-million budget, two recently Oscared or Oscar-nominated stars - Charlton Heston and Richard Harris - and an international cast with more color and flair than, perhaps, any one motion picture could accommodate.
Sam Peckinpah was one of our great modern filmmakers, but for many his name summons up such a fearsome Hollywood legend, of blighted career, outrageous excess and epic self-destructiveness, that remembering the great films becomes secondary.The legend began to lock into place with his third feature film, the 1965 "Major Dundee" - though it's worth noting that even his universally admired second film, the beautifully elegiac "Ride the High Country" (1962), was nearly thrown away by its parent studio, only to be hailed as "the best American film of the year" by Newsweek magazine. "Ride the High Country" was a small film - a program picture, really - featuring two over-the-hill cowboy stars (Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott). "Major Dundee" would be, by mid-'60s terms, an epic, with a $4.5-million budget, two recently Oscared or Oscar-nominated stars - Charlton Heston and Richard Harris - and an international cast with more color and flair than, perhaps, any one motion picture could accommodate.