NSK - Neue slowensiche Kunst, or New Slovene Art - has been challenging the status quo in art and politics for more than 20 years. It's a collective of artists in many fields, a philosophical and political perspective, a virtual country - and now the subject of an exhibit at the Frye Museum. Although well known in industrial/techno music circles throughout the United States and Europe, the collective is off the radar screen for much of the general public. The Frye exhibit will delight existing fans and offer insights to the rest of us.But some background first.
The end of First Christian Church came last month with a whimper and a lot of bangs. The beautiful 1928-viintage Broadway landmark fell to the slow, steady assault of the wrecking ball, one section at a time, just because nobody wanted to pay for seismic repairs. It was sad, and I still believe it was preventable.Those interested in ironic statements might note that the 2001 "Nisqually" earthquake took place on the morning of Ash Wednesday, that traditional start to Lent with its rites of atonement and self-denial, and that the first major public building in Seattle to be demolished as a direct result of the quake's damage is a church. But I have other feelings about this minor tragedy, which had been in the works for nearly three years with nobody trying very hard to stop it.
"Hey, people, I need to sleep! I pay rent. I work. Get the hell away from here. Go! Leave now!"It took yelling those words at 3ish a.m. on April 26 in my pajamas through the front window to four people who had been smoking crack in the private entranceway of the apartment building where I live, to get them to leave.I live in the East Precinct on 20th Avenue, between Madison and John, about a block away from the notorious Deano's bar and grocery. I ask chronic crack addicts and homeless people about four times a week to leave our front entrance, and they usually do. On the morning of the 26th, they didn't. I eventually called 911, but of course it wasn't a high priority call, so it took a while for the police to get here. In the meantime, the addicts sauntered over to the window where they could see a glowing light emanating through my blinds and proceeded to talk in real loud voices. Sometimes, yelling at them is what it takes.
The area near Deano's lounge, meaning around 21st Avenue East and East Madison Street, remains one of the city's crime hotspots. Drugs, loitering, prostitution and numerous related issues, have long plagued the area dubbed "the war zone" by residents, many of whom are weary of the issue or frustrated by city and police response.That the area has a high crime rate is beyond dispute. According to police statistics provided on the Miller Park Neighborhood Association's website, 2005 has seen 144 felony narcotics arrests, more than any other precinct. The East Precinct also considers the 21st and Madison area its No. 1 priority as far as allocating resources.Two different approaches by groups of neighborhood residents serve as examples of how neighborhood residents are coping with the persistent crime problem.
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 connected with the fledgling Black Panther Party while attending the funeral of Bobby Hutton in Oakland, Ca. The young, unarmed BPP member was tear gassed and shot to death by police. The Seattleites had traveled south to San Francisco State University for the second annual West Coast Black Student Union Conference, but when they learned about the memorial services for Hutton their plans changed. A week later party co-founder Bobby Seale was in Seattle helping set up the first chapter of the BPP outside of California. Within the first month after opening their headquarters on 34th Avenue and Union Street over 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.
Committees with more degrees than I have socks have looked at this. How do you develop mass transit that works? A solution must start with the automobile, and our love affair with these metal cocoons.In the past, you could be strung up or shot, for stealing another man's horse. I'm certain we feel that way about our cars.We unblinkingly spend $20,000 to $40,000 for new cars. That says something about our commitment to the automobile. If you don't understand that passion for a car, you are unlikely to design a competitive system.We have to look at the many ways we use our cars, and where transit might be a viable substitute.
There is an elementary school in Seattle that has a small problem involving expediency and a tree. I am not naming the school, because this is not all about them; it is about adults versus kids.On one end of the playground stands a lone tree, a modest evergreen, the kind you look at but don't really see if you are an adult. But kids see it as the center of their recess universe.It shades the playground equipment from the hot sun. It is "base" for endless games of tag. It is a natural umbrella in the rain, and it even has a name: "Freddy" (not its real name).The kids talk to the tree, and Freddy always keeps their secrets. He has as much personality as the talking tree in the Disney movie Pocahontas.To the adults, the tree became simply an inconvenience in a planned remodeling project for the school.So sometime during the planning process, the adults at the DPD, SDOT, the construction company and the school decided that this tree had to go, so that the trucks could flow in and out of the site more easily.To the kids, Freddy, their BFF (ask your kid), was given a death sentence for no good reason. The kids were not told about it until four days before Freddy was cut down and dismembered.At the assembly, when they found out, the kids started to cry, scream and chant in protest. The adults were shocked at their reaction.
In northwestern South Carolina, where Interstates 26 and 85 intersect, sprawls the city of Spartanburg. Historic sites and former plantations in the area date back to pre-Revolutionary War days.Nestled in the rolling foothills of the nearby Blue Ridge Mountains, this former textile mill town and peach-growing center has turned into an industrial complex with a population of almost 40,000 souls. The new BMW plant there produces the world's supply of the sporty Z3 roadsters.While I was there recently to write a magazine story, the white blossoms of the dogwood trees and the purple blossoms of the wisteria vines were in full bloom. Unfortunately, it was raining, thereby making it impossible to run on the dirt track with the car I'd traveled all the way to Spartanburg to take a ride in.Despite the rain, one of the necessary things it was still possible to do was to eat, and Southern cooking is one of my favorite culinary styles. The popularity of Paula Dean's "Home Cooking" show on television's Food Channel Network shows I'm not alone, either.
raditionally, 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 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.
An April 28 public meeting about plans for a new park in Magnolia was supposed to garner ideas for a preferred design, but comments coming from roughly three dozen people at the meeting focused more on what they didn't want to happen than what they did.The fledging park is currently a derelict playground that used to be part of the long-closed Magnolia Elementary School on 28th Avenue West between West McGraw and West Smith streets. It's been Seattle Parks and Recreation property for around 70 years, explained Parks planner Cathy Tuttle. "But it was in a long-term lease to Seattle public schools."With the closing of the elementary school, however, the 2 1/2 acres of land behind the school has ended up back in Parks Department hands, she said. It hasn't been forgotten, though, and almost $1.4 million was earmarked for its revival in the Pro Parks Levy.
Walking toward the tiny green recording studio somewhat arbitrarily placed in a far corner of a Fremont parking lot, I watch as the members of The Muttering Guppies set up for another recording session.The drummer offers me an ice-cold Pacfico and empties his equipment from the back of his gray pick-up truck. I swing my legs off the side of the wooden deck outside, the hot afternoon sun beating down on my face, listening while the guys discuss potential inventions and politics.In the dark, sweaty studio, James Thomas, creator of the Guppies and a Magnolia resident, stands in the middle of the room in a black T-shirt and jeans fiddling with his microphone. The drummer and bass player lurk in the dim corners of the small space.
Editor's note: Scott Driver, a 66-year-old Magnolia resident, qualified this winter for the Boston Marathon, a story covered in the seniors section of the Jan. 26 issue of the Magnolia News. During our interview for the story, I implored Driver to give me a call after the big date, April 18, when he joined thousands of long-distance runners in the world class race. He called, of course, but he also sent what I considered a fantastic narrative of both his cross-country motorcycle trip to Boston as well as a depiction of the marathon itself. As he wrote in an e-mail... 'the components of the experience have blended together in the last week or so and it seems like each day the memories, as they relate to the physical, emotional & sometimes spiritual feelings, are still evolving and becoming more defined and powerful...
On the third floor of Coe Elementary School on Queen Anne, there is a very special classroom - special not just in the school, not just in the Seattle School District but, perhaps, in the nation.It is Room 310, set up primarily for students with Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD (see sidebar). Teacher Shealeen Stabelfeldt has been there since its inception in the fall of 2002.This year there are nine students in the class. "Many of them are smart, but they have heightened senses," says Stabelfeldt.With the help of district occupational therapists Sharon Groves the first year and Carrie Wheeler the past two years, as well as instructional assistant Nancy Gruber, Stabelfeldt has developed a unique curriculum using sensory teaching tools.
A 7-year-old girl walks through a brilliantly luminous, deep-red hallway at the Central Library in Downtown Seattle. Fascinated by the iridescence of the tunneled scene, the girl tilts her head, as though studying a painting in an art gallery. "It's red," she says to her aunt, Elizabeth Trautman, who guides her by the hand. Equally taken by the scene, Trautman admires the sight of color with her niece, who is blind.
The Golden Plungers' offensive resurgence continued on Saturday morning, May 30, at Queen Anne Field No. 3 against Queen Anne's Video Isle.Nearly every player scored or drove in at least one run in the 18-0 rout, with Kevin Miller (4 for 5, 3 runs, 2 RBI) and Jason Books (3 for 4, four runs, 3 RBI) leading the way.