While watching "Miss Saigon," now playing at 5th Avenue Theatre, you can't help but think about the current conflict in Iraq. Only Broadway's 1991 pop-culture tearjerker unfolds during the Vietnam War, and its aftermath is a hi-tech spin on Puccini's poignant opera, "Madama Butterfly."Beautifully directed by David Bennett, 5th Avenue's production eclipses the touring show that played Seattle in 1999. The new offering owes its power to several things: The rich, visual dynamics, including the strong set design by Michael Annania and dazzling lighting by Tom Sturge. The talented actor/singers. The terrific orchestra and its virtuoso Asian percussion. And the soaring ballads by Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg.
We've seen the blossoms, the leaves budding on trees and birds frolicking about, but the final harbinger of spring for the Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender community is still a few weeks off. It is the annual edition of Push magazine.The subtitle on Push is "Queer Feminist Subversions." Using the term "queer" rather than lesbian allows the magazine to be broader and more inclusive according to members of the collective that steers, edits and publishes the magazine. As for subversion, well....
You can never knock the 5th Avenue's ambition. The company keeps pushing their boundaries as a producing theater, creating the first non-roadshow version of "Miss Saigon" to be seen in Seattle.The cast is loaded with "Miss Saigon" veterans from Los Angeles and New York, like Emy Baysic in the lead role and Raul Aranas as the Engineer, so everyone had the lyrics and music permanently engraved in their brain before they got to Seattle. Local talent includes Louis Hobson as the American in love with Miss Saigon. Hobson, who has been wowing 5th Avenue audiences since "Hair," just keeps getting hotter. Down in the pit, the unsung heroes of the show are the orchestra.
Every year we lose about 2,000 to 4,000 low-income units to demolition, speculative sale, abandonment, conversion and increased rents. For every one unit we build with limited public funds, we lose three to four times that amount to the forces of redevelopment and gentrification.As we write this column, the City Council's Land Use Committee is entertaining changes to the Downtown land-use plan and zoning changes elsewhere around town proposed by Mayor Greg Nickels that will translate directly into the loss of even more low-income housing in our city.Tearing down existing apartment buildings and replacing them with larger new ones always results in increased rents in the new units. The inflation in building and land costs over time, and the desire of developers to maximize their profit, work against replacing older units with newer ones for the same price. That's why the mayor's rezones aimed at adding increased density in our neighborhoods will only exacerbate our city's shortage of low-income housing - unless the City Council intervenes and takes steps that either prevent demolition or guarantee 100 percent replacement of units that are destroyed.
It was a triumph of justice in the face of a personal tragedy. Last week, the Seattle Office for Civil Rights (SOCR) took action to prevent Jennifer Howlett's landlord from evicting her. The agency ruled that the 42-year-old Capitol Hill resident, gravely ill with terminal colon cancer, had been evicted from her apartment because she was dying.The SOCR determined that landlord Jean Whinihan had discriminated against Howlett due to her illness just as Whinihan's court action to evict her was set to go to trial. In the settlement, Whinihan was required to pay $2,000 to Howlett and guarantee her the right to remain in her apartment throughout her illness. The agreement spared Whinihan a likely $20,000 judgment had the case gone to a hearing examiner and required her to attend a fair housing seminar.
For once, Fred Thies was being interviewed. In his line of work he has interviewed thousands of people over the years. Now the tables were turned.Fred has worked for State Farm Insurance on Queen Anne for 50 years. He joined the company in 1955, when he was 30 years old. For the first decade he was a salaried employee. Then he became an independent con-tractor on commission. "The harder you work, the more you make," he says.His agency now has about 8,000 policy holders, twice as many as usual for a comparable agency. Fred calls that success, reasonable success.Although Fred was raised Lutheran, his view of life has a Buddhist cast. Moderation in all things. Do not over-indulge in habits like eating and drinking. Learn to say no. Quit smoking, as he did cold turkey on June 15, 1956.
There are few rites of passage in teenage-dom as monumental as passing your driver's test and taking your first solo drive. Ah, the unbridled freedom! Playing your music so loud that your ears bleed; win-dows open, hair blowing in the wind. It's a heady feeling. There are few rites of passage in parenthood as monumental as The Taking Away Of The Teenager's License For Blatant Infraction. Sadly, not a week had passed from the first passage to the second. I think she set a new land speed record for the loss of a driver's license. What's sad is that just before she left the house she'd asked me if I'd ever had a ticket. me: "Nope. Not one."
What's missing, in much of what I read in the two daily newspapers I plow through seven times a week, is any written sense of the déjà-vu I'm feeling every day. Is it be-cause the columnists and reporters laboring in the fields adjacent to Elliott Bay, under the spinning world of the P-I, and those terrified survivors of the first newsroom purge of the year up on Fairview Avenue, are too busy writ-ing to read recent American history? That's a question I can't answer.But rather than belabor other toilers in the local journalism vineyards, I will attempt to the fill the need as I see it, as is my wont - some might say "bent."
Traditionally, spring is the time when people decide to prepare the garden, clean the house and get rid of the clutter of winter. It's also the time when my wife decides we can't live another week without getting outside and assembling one of those do-it-yourself arches over our front walk. For my part, I pray for rain.But I digress.The didactic, do-gooder-ly point we need to make here is that spring - when things are just itching to grow - is also the season when donations at thrift stores and charities slow down. Well-respected, above-reproach charities such as the Salvation Army, St. Vincent de Paul, Seattle's Union Gospel Mission and Goodwill. Accordingly, a lot of these organizations must carefully watch their costs, play it close to the vest and reserve resources needed for their programs that serve so many low-income and underserved people.They must do this even though need knows no season.
In the spring of 1968, a small, motivated group of African Americans active in the Garfield High School and University of Washington black student unions hooked up with the fledgling Black Panther Party while attending the funeral of Bobby Hutton in Oakland, Calif.The young, unarmed BPP member had been tear-gassed and shot to death by police. The Seattleites traveled south to San Francisco State University for the second annual West Coast Black Student Union Conference, but when they learned about the memo-rial services for Hutton, their plans changed. A week later, party co-founder Bobby Seale was in Seattle helping set up the first BPP chapter outside of California.Within the first month after opening their headquarters on 34th Avenue and Union Street, more than 300 black men and women had joined the party.Now, nearly 37 years later, Seale is coming back to Seattle to participate in the first regional Black Panther Party forum and reunion on May 13-14 at Seattle University and Garfield Community Center.
EMILY HOLT"Almost none. I am Jewish. It doesn't affect me at all, and this is Passover."MARNIE FOUST"It didn't have an effect on me, although I was struck by a comment made by Andy Rooney: 'I am glad that the coverage of the pope is replacing Terri Schiavo.'"
When Parks and Recreation Superintendent Ken Bounds last week announced his decision to name a new park in Ballard the Ballard Commons Park, a collective sigh of relief was heard on Crown Hill - at least, among the handful of Ballard activists and die-hard skateboarders who have lobbied for years to preserve the open space as a neighborhood and city treasure.The new, 1.4-acre park at 5701 22nd Ave. N.W. was formerly known as Bal-lard Commons or Ballard Civic Center during its development into a neighborhood park. Improvements to the site, which will be completed later this year, include a skateboard area, a lawn, a central promenade, large "landmark" trees and public art.
The Port of Seattle has released a Draft Environmental Impact Statement for its proposal to find new uses for 94 acres of largely vacant land in the North Bay area above Terminals 90 and 91. The Draft EIS includes five alternatives that could transform the under-utilized area in the next 25 years. Three of them include a controversial proposal to add residential uses to the mix. Some of the alternatives also would require an amendment to the city's Comprehensive Plan governing development in the Ballard-Interbay-Northend Manufacturing Industrial Center (BINMIC).
The Little League report is compiled from submissions by volunteer field reporters. The News cannot verify the accuracy of the individual reports. Reports will be published on a space-available basis.
The Little League report is compiled from submissions by volunteer field reporters. The News cannot verify the accuracy of the individual reports. Reports will be published on a space-available basis.