Being 12 years old can be complicated.It's an age that brings with it a desperate yearning for maturity, or at least for the superficial trappings of adulthood. When everything begins to change, both inside and out, bridging the gap between being a kid and being a grownup can seem as daunting as crossing the Atlantic Ocean by canoe. Not so for Eli Higham. Focused, composed and articulate, he seems to be weathering the desperation inherent to his age with relative grace and ease. He's tall and thin, but not lanky and awkward, and the excitement that permeates his words and gestures as he speaks carries not even a hint of manic tension or self doubt.
"The entire roof blew off revealing large swaths of sky between the rafters above," said Jessie Dejoie, while sitting in a Columbia City coffee shop as she recalled the condition of her home back in New Orleans. "The upper story of a neighbor's house flew completely off its foundation and landed on our house." Her neighborhood was scrambled and tossed about like a structural salad. Dejoie's house stands with part of a neighbor's house layered over the top of it, one gable of the other house still intact. Dejoie said she wept at the sight of the exterior devastation of her home, but her heart completely sank when, with difficulty, her family made their way inside. Floodwaters had picked up her belongings and redistributed them throughout the house. Nearly a foot of insulation mixed with mud and grimy water had fallen in from the roof and now covers everything. This mixture of soggy filth is piled like black snowdrifts on every piece of furniture from antique wood to fine upholstery. Nothing was spared. In a tearful gesture of futility, Dejoie said she reached in a drawer and took a few summer clothes along with her. However, she remains keenly aware that the rest of her things still remain in the wrecked, roofless house soaked from Hurricane Rita.
Despite recent financial hardships, Fremont's Empty Space Theatre forges ahead with a new theater season and a newly appointed managing director at its helm.Concluding an international search, The Empty Space Theatre recently appointed Melanie Matthews, an established theater manager from the United Kingdom as its new managing director. According to the theater, Matthews' appointment follows the success of its recent debt-relief campaign, in which a total of $403,865 from more than 3,000 individuals kept Empty Space from closing.Matthews will oversee the adoption of a new business model, developed by the theater's board and staff, that aims to keep the theater above water. The goal for the theater is to remain true to the $600,000 budget.
Beth Hanson holds up a quilt top she made to donate to the Hurricane Katrina survivors during the Greenwood Senior Center's Time to Sew event on Sept. 27. Volunteers made 25 quilt tops and about a dozen fleece bed rolls that day for the local Project Linus effort, which will distribute the items to survivors who have relocated here, according to community volunteer Leah Stahlsmith.
Menopause may have been the silent passage. But not anymore. Not if "Menopause the Musical" has its way. Making its Seattle bow in an open-ended run at ACT Theatre, this sassy musical revue celebrates women with plenty of attitude and a sensational cast. The show is boisterous, brassy, bawdy, satirical - and hilarious.Menopause has long been a taboo topic in some circles - synonymous with old age. But thanks to this musical, hordes of women across the country are flocking to the theater to share and celebrate. Even a few good men, who will probably never be the same, are joining the frivolity. But don't expect classic musical theater like "Gypsy," "Guys and Dolls" and "My Fair Lady." Inspired by a hot flash and a bottle of wine, writer/lyricist/producer Jeanie Linders created the parody to salute women on the brink of, in the middle of or survivors of "The Change." As humor bonds them together, even the production announcement - to place cellphones and beepers on vibrate - gets a huge laugh.
Menopause may have been the silent passage. But not anymore. Not if "Menopause the Musical" has its way. Making its Seattle bow in an open-ended run at ACT Theatre, this sassy musical revue celebrates women with plenty of attitude and a sensational cast. The show is boisterous, brassy, bawdy, satirical - and hilarious.Menopause has long been a taboo topic in some circles - synonymous with old age. But thanks to this musical, hordes of women across the country are flocking to the theater to share and celebrate. Even a few good men, who will probably never be the same, are joining the frivolity. But don't expect classic musical theater like "Gypsy," "Guys and Dolls" and "My Fair Lady." Inspired by a hot flash and a bottle of wine, writer/lyricist/producer Jeanie Linders created the parody to salute women on the brink of, in the middle of or survivors of "The Change." As humor bonds them together, even the production announcement - to place cellphones and beepers on vibrate - gets a huge laugh.
If it weren't for Cindy Sherman and her self-portraits, I'll bet few in Seattle aside from feminists and art scholars would have heard of Claude Cahun. Even with Ms. Sherman, there probably aren't many who know the name. That's not to say Cahun isn't an appropriate subject for an exhibit. It's just to suggest that the current show at the Frye is more than a bit esoteric.Claude Cahun is a representative of the Surrealist movement, despite the fact that the better-known Surrealists didn't welcome her into their fold. But her whole life was surrealistic, and one has to understand that to understand the exhibit. Born Lucy Schwob in Nantes, France, in 1894, she was the highly intelligent and radical daughter of a wealthy, conservative French publisher. Although her father was Jewish, the family wasn't particularly religious. Her school friend Suzanne Malherbe, a Catholic, became her lover, and the two set off on an artistic partnership that lasted throughout their lives. Lucy adopted the name Claude Cahun, and Suzanne became Marcel Moore. In 1917, when Claude's father married Marcel's mother, the school friends/lovers/intellectual partners became sisters. Sisterhood was a good cover for lesbian intellectuals in the 1920s.
The news out of New Orleans is grim, and even grimmer is the fact that the Army Corps of Engineers has been proclaiming for years that the levees that broke were unsafe and needed repairing. But they couldn't get the money. According to regional news reports from the New Orleans media, the Corps budget was cut up to 80 percent in the last few years, leaving the levees unrepaired and unshored. An administrator in Holland - a country besieged by the ocean and built mostly below sea level - was quoted in the newspaper as saying she couldn't believe this had happened in a Western nation.
I can let a lot of things go in the morning rush to get my family out the door - clothes on the floor, beds unmade, wet towels on a chair. As much as I would like them done, they are not critical to me.There is, however, one thing that is sacred to me in the morning, and that is eating breakfast. This is the one thing I cannot let go of no matter how rushed. n a pinch, this may mean breakfast becomes a protein bar or yogurt and banana eaten on the run. That is fine with me. But in the "perfect-morning-world," I want everyone to sit down at the table and eat something. Preferably something that will hold off their hunger for several hours and give fuel to their brain.
My granddaughter now has pierced earrings, a rite of passage today as one turns 12. I didn't know what pierced ears were when I turned 12 in the remote days in which I grew up. I had my ears pierced when I was 42. >After several months of pleading, my eldest daughter had her ears pierced at 16, although I wasn't sure that it was at all fitting. She assured me that everyone in her school except her had their ears pierced, so I reluctantly gave in. By the time the fourth young lady was 12, ear piercing had become a ritual birthday present.
At right, Lyman and Liz Black (from left) and Andy and Marianna Price, the charter owners of the Nimbus. The Park Shore Community's sailing fleet received a special blessing during a ceremony last month. At right, Lyman and Liz Black (from left) and Andy and Marianna Price, the charter owners of the Nimbus.
The space vacated by the Union St. Red Apple on the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Way and East Union Street last March has been filled by the discount-retailer Grocery Outlet, which will open its doors on Saturday, Oct. 8. "This thing is really going to boom," said Steve Mullen, who owns the store with his wife, Debbie. "It's really giving back to the community." The California-based chain has more than 120 locations on the West Coast, and almost 30 in Washington alone, including stores in Beacon Hill, Burien, Lynnwood and Kent. Specializing in closeout items, Grocery Outlet offers products sold in mainstream supermarkets at substantial discounts.
A proposal to build a bike path from the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge (state Route 520) to Madison Park has surfaced once again.Instead of an east-west bike path through the north end of Broadmoor and the Washington Park Arboretum that was proposed in the '90s, this proposal looks at two options in north Madison Park: at the north end of 37th Avenue East, outside Broadmoor, and at the north end of 43rd Avenue East, to the east of the Edgewater Apartments. Both routes would lead to East McGilvra Street and onto McGilvra and Lake Washington boulevards East.
>hen real-estate agent Kim Thomas decided she wanted to help Hurricane Katrina evacuees, she did what came naturally. She put a family into a new home. Thomas, who works at the Madison Park office of Windermere Real Estate, said she was watching CNN coverage of the disaster when she thought about the house in Fultondale, Ala., that she owns with her brother Chris. She called a church there and asked the pastor if there were people in Fultondale seeking shelter. "He said, 'Yes, there is a great need,'" Thomas recalled.Fultondale had become a refuge for victims of Katrina, which hit Louisiana and Mississippi on Aug. 29. And the house that had been vacant for the five years since Thomas' grandfather had moved into a nursing home was a resource just waiting to be used."We knew there was an immediate need, [with] families staying in campgrounds and stuff like that," Thomas said.
■ Honor: Dr. Steve Overman's "You Don't Look Sick: Living Well with Invisible Chronic Illness" was recently selected as a finalist for USA Book News' Best Books of 2005 in the Health category. The Madrona resident published the book last April.Overman, a rheumatologist at Northwest Hospital in North Seattle, wrote the book with patient Joy Selak, offering both a physician's and patient's perspectives. Selak had been diagnosed with interstitial cystitis and fibromyalgia, diseases that have no cure.