Top-notch school jazz bands to play Seward Park festival On Sunday, June 5, SouthEast Effective Development (SEED) opens its 2005 season of free outdoor jazz & world music concerts at the Seward Park Amphitheatre (5900 Lake Washington Blvd. S.), home of SEED's free music series for the past 29 years. Continuing the longstanding tradition of opening the season with a celebration of jazz and showcasing the talents of area youth, SEED welcomes three regionally accomplished and nationally/internationally recognized jazz performance groups to the stage.
Every day in King County over 50 social service agencies provide shelter and/or counseling to 2,500-3,000 homeless people. City and county governments fund these programs to the tune of over $20 million a year, not counting additional funding from United Way, churches and the private sector. Nevertheless, the number of homeless on our streets has continued its relentless upward climb, greatly outpacing the capacity of this expanding service delivery system. Where 25 years ago there were few programs and a few hundred homeless on our streets (mostly in downtown Seattle), today estimates run as high as 8,000 homeless people county-wide on any given day. A new effort, however, has recently emerged, boldly calling itself the committee to End Homelessness. Over two dozen social service agencies, church organizations, King County, the City of Seattle and United Way have combined forces and promised to guarantee "a roof over every bed" by 2014. The Committee has set up a website while the city and county have committed over $200,000 to staff the effort.
Clouds as gray as volcanic ash loomed over Beacon Hill as I drove down to Columbia City, eager to see what kind of early-season produce filled the stalls on the second week of the farmers market. The spring weather felt capricious, and I packed an umbrella in my canvas shopping bag in case a broom of hard rain suddenly swept over the city.I soon encountered a friend while poking along the first row of white tents sheltering stacks of dark and bright greens, cases of frosted fruit pastries, and racks of amber honey jars. We shook hands and quickly chatted past small talk to the latest political bombshell dropped on the city: Seattle Public School superintendent Raj Manhas' decision to scrap his high-profile school closure and consolidation plan.Since Manhas presented his plan for shoring up the $20 million 2006-2007 SPS budget deficit to the school board on April 20, a grassroots movement against the preliminary proposal flowered in the city. Folks were urged to "save successful schools," and the political heat took the issue from a simmer to a boil in a matter of days.
Ask Antonio Hopson, writer, dad, and seventh-grade science teacher about the impact of the South End on his work, and you'll get an earful. The genial 37-year-old with the expressive green eyes laughs heartily, and often. He also pauses in midsentence and reflects. When he speaks, he is deliberate.To meet Antonio Hopson is to meet someone who capitalized on the richness of the south end, his family's supportiveness, and his education at Cleveland High School to create an amazing life for himself and his young family. One of four children of a single mother , Hopson grew up in the Rainier Beach, Beacon Hill, and Columbia City neighborhoods.
A volatile vibe gripped Seattle in the late 1960s when the city's African American community found itself fed up with being the targets of an inordinate amount of police brutality and insidious pockets of racism within public and private organizations. Angered by the long standing tradition of oppression in the Pacific Northwest and throughout the country, a socially conscious faction of the city's African American youth culture, inspired by the Civil Rights movement, imported the self-protection techniques and survival programs taught by Oakland, California's Black Panther Party (BPP) to Seattle.Soon, the local chapter of the BPP organized armed patrols of the police to make sure officers stopped violently abusing their power. More than that, Seattle BPP members established an impressive array of free food, health care, housing, and legal assistance programs based in the South End and available to children and adults, no matter the color of their skin, who needed help. More than 35 years have passed since the young Panthers struck out to make the Emerald City a just and equitable place to live, and on May 13 and 14 a group of original Seattle BPP members held a forum aimed at passing on their disciplined methods of community organizing to today's young crop of social-justice minded activists.
Last week, in some introductory words about the Seattle International Film Festival, I wondered whether our cinematic feast might be a little more selective, opting for quality over quantity. Wouldn't that approach do much to educate (as well as entertain) audiences, numbed nowadays into accepting mediocrity and dreck as the best the art/industry has to offer? Since then, The Stranger, defender of the democratic way, made mincemeat of such élitism: "Seattle is not a highbrow town - for movies or for anything else.... SIFF reflects who we are." After all, the writer suggests, "'art' is best defined as communication, as opposed to mere expression." Hard to define what this odd distinction really communicates or expresses about art (so distastefully highbrow it must be diminished between quotes) - but it disses the likes of Shakespeare, Picasso and Max Ophuls bigtime! All the artistry there's ever been has gloriously flowered through "mere expression," the perfect marriage of content and style. When The Stranger lauds SIFF fare for communicating that people are much the same all over the world, that's not a such a bad prescription for us parochial Americans - but this particular élitist wouldn't mind some "mere expression" - i.e., art - with my middle-brow medicine.
Whether you're hearing or you're deaf, the national tour of "Big River" presents a groundbreaking theatrical experience that poignantly speaks to the heart. Broadway's first sign-language musical offers a sensitive insight into deaf culture, as meaningful for what is not said as for what is. It all started at a small theater in North Hollywood. Deaf West wanted to stage a sign-language version of the 1985 Tony-winning musical, "Big River." Soon Broadway director/choreographer Jeff Calhoun signed on, and the production subsequently moved to the Mark Taper Forum, where it received numerous awards, then on to Broadway, where it garnered the 2003 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical.
Pretty early on, watching Kate Mulgrew impersonate Kate Hepburn in "Tea at Five" at Seattle Repertory Theatre, I yearned to go home and revisit "The Philadelphia Story." That luminous 1940 concoction - adapted from a play Philip Barry wrote especially for Hepburn, deftly directed by George Cukor, divinely performed by Kate, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart - both adored and punished Hepburn's Athena-like character. For aiming at impossible ideals that leave mere mortals in the dust, the goddess had to be brought down to earth, a flawed and passionate woman.There are moments of unbearable vulnerability in "The Philadelphia Story," moments when you swear Hepburn must have been feeling in her bones how hard it was to stand and shine in her own radiant dream of herself, while movie father (John Halladay) and ex-husband (Grant) ranked her cold, disappointing, overbearing. The power of Cukor's film lies in the psychic push and pull between men and women - between movie stars and audiences - that involves the pleasure of falling off a lonely pedestal, the triumph of toppling it, the queer ache where it used to stand.You'll find few of those provocative ambiguities abroad in "Tea at Five," Matthew Lombardo's wafer-thin divertissement in two acts: the first featuring a garrulous 31-year-old Katharine Hepburn, stigmatized as "box-office poison" after seven movie flops, and the second focused on Kate at 76, palsied, given to remembrance of things past.
Land that once belonged to a 19th-century African-American entrepreneur in Seattle was officially opened May 14 as the Madison Valley's newest park, dedicated to a modern-day African-American man of high achievement.
The Capitol Hill Farmers Market has relocated to its new home with a new name, but not in Madison Valley as it had been expected. Organizers plan to have the market open with about 30 vendors on Fridays from 3 to 7 p.m. year-round at the corner of East Madison Street and 20th Avenue East, near Mount Zion Baptist Church.
During the first week of May, Level 4 (also known as 10th grade) art students at the International Community School (ICS) were taught the fine art of Renaissance dancing by Anna Mansbridge, director of Seattle Early Dance, thanks to a wonderful grant from the Kirkland Youth Council's Mini-Grant program.
So you want to be an idol? Think you have what it takes? Metro Parks is looking for a special local someone with the talent, ambition and spark to be named Kirkland Idol! The first annual Kirkland Idol Contest will be held on July 16 from 7-9:30 p.m. at Kirkland Performance Center, 350 Kirkland Avenue. The winner of the Kirkland Idol Contest will go on to compete in a regional contest for $1,000 at the Battle of the Idols on stage during the Puyallup Fair.
Seattle Opera closed its latest season with a magical, lyrical and altogether wonderful production of "The Tales of Hoffmann."Amid the standing ovations and bravos on opening night, Opera general director Speight Jenkins appeared on-stage followed by a trolley bearing a large cake ablaze with a multitude of candles. The cake was in honor of Archie Drake's 80th birthday. The actual date had fallen in March, but that mere technicality didn't spoil the occasion. Jenkins said, "Archie has been the heart of the Seattle Opera for 38 seasons. With the amazing longevity of his voice and his enormous stage presence, the variety of his accomplishments cannot be equaled by anyone else in his voice category."
The white picket fence at Gina Gilmore's former house is slowly disappearing. She doesn't own the house anymore. That's because picket fences can't fend off cascading sewage or surging storm water. Gilmore's was one of four flood-damaged homes that the city bought, along with an adjoining vacant lot, in Madison Valley on March 31, after a deluge last summer literally blew the doors off some houses, sending residents scurrying for higher ground.
Two longtime members of Boy Scout Troop 72 will be honored at a special Eagle Scout ceremony on Thursday, June 2, at Bethany Presbyterian Church. To earn scouting's highest award, Daniel Gannon and Dylan Johnson each had to earn 21 merit badges, serve as a leader in the troop and complete a major community service project.