There are occasions in life when the stars are all in just the right alignment for making life a dream come true.There is always enough ice cream in your freezer, you never gain an ounce no matter how much you eat, your credit rating is in the stratosphere, the drywall guy who comes to work at your house is gorgeous so you get to look at him all day long and bliss is yours. Obviously, that's not the destiny the stars have in store for me. OK, I got the cute drywall guy, so apparently the stars believe that was enough bliss in this lifetime. There is a dearth of ice cream in my freezer, mostly due to the fact that I ate my way through it all yesterday while ranting and raving like a lunatic on the phone to different credit-reporting agencies and mortgage-refinancing people.
In 1776 we Americans declared our political independence from Britain. Tired of high taxes and a long train of abuses, and with no democratic controls on those who governed us, we decided it was time for us to run our own affairs. It was not just our break with Britain but also other manifestations of the virtues of independence that helped us Americans to make this the greatest country on earth. To begin with, Americans as individuals exercised moral independence from the time of the first settlers. Colonists - whether they sought economic opportunities, religious freedom or exciting adventures - accepted the responsibility of making their own judgments about what was best for them in life. They took matters into their own hands and risked a dangerous ocean voyage to achieve these goals.
To preserve Seattle's rich architectural history, the city is surveying significant historical and architectural structures in Walling-ford and other neighborhoods in a project that will involve community input and provide a comprehensive database of historical resources for Seattle's residents. On Tuesday, June 28, in the University House auditorium, dozens of Wallingford residents attended a slide show of the Wallingford buildings that are candidates for inclusion in the City of Seattle's Historic Resources Database.
Last October, Sumner Cherberg stood in the middle of Greenwood Avenue North and held up traffic for 30 minutes, while holding a sign that protested cars not stopping for pedestrians. Cherberg was arrested and held in jail overnight."I was cuffed, taken to the North Precinct, fingerprinted, photographed and put in jail clothes," he said. Cherberg explained he was trying to do something to help the elderly, the disabled, and other people who have a difficult time crossing the street safely. "I have a feeling that the city doesn't care about people," he said.
In early June Seattle City Council's Transportation Committee voted 5 - 2 to go ahead with the South Lake Union streetcar - at a cost of more than $50 million. On June 27 the council followed the committee's recommendation and green-lighted the project. Millions in limited city transportation dollars will be siphoned off to underwrite the construction of the 2.6 mile line designed to shuttle office workers, tourists, and residents into and out of billionaire Paul Allen's glitzy new South Lake Union neighborhood.What's worse, the city council also signed off on the mayor's plan to take funds earmarked for new Metro bus service hours in Seattle and divert those funds to help cover the streetcar's estimated $1.5 million annual operating cost. Literally half of all new Metro bus service (9,000 annual hours) committed to Seattle's neighborhoods for the years 2002-2007 will be taken. And when the streetcar's operating expenses rise above projections or when fare-box revenues don't bring in expected revenues, the streetcar plan approved by the council would allow even more neighborhood bus service to be reduced to cover the shortfalls.
This column is dedicated to the memory of Lonnie Larae-Tierre Brown (a.k.a. "Wisdom"). May 15th, 1976 - May 27, 2005. Father, teacher, emcee, and friend.Why are young black men being killed, and killing each other? We are members of this peer group, between the ages of 16 and 45, who have been labeled Generation X (after Malcolm X, in our case) or Generation Y. Being pall bearers and guest speakers at many funerals of our peers qualifies us to address the subject. The first reality we must acknowledge is that we are at war. However, this war is waged upon young black men in a different way than how it is waged on young whites, Asians, and other non-white people. Racism is the grease that capitalism fries us in. It keeps workers divided along lines of color, based upon differential treatment, distinct levels of social and economic privilege, and hyper-enforcement (or lack of enforcement) of government policy and laws.It is a clever tactic: racism fools the public and makes us think we are all different.
One small step for The Seattle Times, one big kick in the craw for metropolitan Seattle.Regardless of the legal validity of the state Supreme Court's June 30 ruling stating, yes, the Times can include financial losses from 2000 and 2001 in exercising an escape clause in the Times/Post-Intelligencer Joint Operating Agreement (JOA), the real story is that Seattle has just inched closer to becoming a one-daily-newspaper city.
Individual artists, groups of individual artists, arts/cultural organizations and/or community-based youth programs with non-profit status or sponsorship are invited to apply for the 2006 Youth Arts Program sponsored by the Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs.Youth Arts provides support for out-of-school arts training projects in all disciplines for Seattle's middle and high school youth. Professional teaching artists lead age-appropriate activities. Creative partnerships with artists and integration of arts into non-art-specific youth programs and settings are encouraged. Priority is placed on serving youth or communities with limited access to arts and culture.
A year after being rebuilt, the Beacon Hill branch of the Seattle Public Library has yet to lose its brand-new sparkle. A celebration on Saturday, July 9, will commemorate the first anniversary of its new location. According to branch manager Julie Ann Oiye, new people are visiting the library every day, and regular patrons say they keep finding more to love about the facility. The new branch, which opened in July 2004, still attracts 26 percent more people than the old branch did before it closed. Along with increasing the amount of books on its shelves, the library doubled its number of computers and tripled the size of its DVD collection when it moved. The added computers and DVDs are "all heavily used," Oiye said.
King County Executive Ron Sims describes a recently revealed proposal to move Southwest Airlines flight operations to the King County International Airport from Sea-Tac as "a once-in-a-generation opportunity."Others - including King County Council members Dwight Pelz and Larry Phillips - don't see it that way, but talks between the low-cost carrier and Sims' office have been going on since 2003, the executive wrote to council members last month."The discussions with Southwest have recently led us to the point where we believe there is a possibility of reaching a tentative agreement," he added in the letter.According to Sims, the move would help stabilize finances at Boeing Field, as the airport is also known, but he concedes there are many issues that need to be worked out before an agreement can be forged between the county and the airline.
The words "Watch this," when uttered on the Fourth of July, never bode well for those involved. Especially if those people have some of my husband's DNA. Yesterday I caught my son walking upstairs with some duct tape. This generally means he has broken something or is going to duct-tape his sister's mouth shut. Neither possibility appeals to me, so I asked him what he was doing, where he was going, what did he need the duct tape for and why did he cause me to have a C-section 14 years ago?
A recent study, the SWAN Project (Study of Women's Health Across the Nation), has, like many studies, turned up peripheral evidence that is in its way more interest-ing than the study's major thrust about the overall health of women in today's America.One of the byproducts of the SWAN study that caught my eye was the debated fact that subtle acts of covert discrimination, as they build up, can hurt a person's health.In a review of this aspect of the study, the Washington Post said: "Some medical researchers have begun to suspect that repeated examples of subtle discrimination take a physical toll and may play a role in why black people tend to have poorer health than white people."
One small step for The Seattle Times, one big kick in the craw for metropolitan Seattle.Regardless of the legal validity of the state Supreme Court's June 30 ruling stating, yes, the Times can include financial losses from 2000 and 2001 in exercising an escape clause in the Times/Post-Intelligencer Joint Operating Agreement (JOA), the real story is that Seattle has just inched closer to becoming a one-daily-newspaper city.
The Seattle Port Commission has narrowly approved a controversial plan to transform its 57-acre North Bay property so that it includes research and development, office space and retail uses. The 3-2 commission vote on June 28 followed through on an earlier decision to eliminate housing from the mix - despite a staff recommendation to include it.Space for existing and future maritime use would almost double under the proposal, 2.2 million square feet would be reserved for R&D; and related manufacturing, 1.1 million square feet would be targeted for office use and 100,000 would be set up for retail businesses.
King County Executive Ron Sims describes a recently revealed proposal to move Southwest Airlines flight operations to the King County International Airport from Sea-Tac as "a once-in-a-generation opportunity."Others - including King County Council members Dwight Pelz and Larry Phillips - don't see it that way,but talks between the low-cost carrier and Sims' office have been going on since 2003, the executive wrote to council members last month."The discussions with Southwest have recently led us to the point where we believe there is a possibility of reaching a tentative agreement," he added in the letter.According to Sims, the move would help stabilize finances at Boeing Field, as the airport is also known, but he concedes there are many issues that need to be worked out before an agreement can be forged between the county and the airline.