It's as simple as a mathematical equation: The Depression-World War II generation is passing away; therefore, baby boomer kids are undergoing the loss of their parents, a universal experience that remains one of life's most intensely private ordeals.Not everyone is a poet who can both live and utter it.John Marshall is one. "Taken With," a series of 26 poems about the decline and death of his mother, Eleanor Wallace Marshall, a lively, gregarious woman with a sharp wit who lived on Queen Anne's north slope.
The importance of light shines through in the second collaborative exhibition of mother-and-son artists, whose show opens Friday, Sept. 2, at Windows Art Gallery in Wallingford.With their compatible color schemes, Jonathan Owens' and Jan Hart's paintings will intermingle on the walls in the upcoming exhibition Familiar Light. The exhibition illustrates how light has been a motivating influence for both painters.
ow often does a blind date result in 65 years of marriage, three children, eight grandchildren and nine great-grand children? Dean and Vivian Hausle celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary in June. The couple met on a blind date in 1938 and hit it off right away. "I knew she was the one I wanted," Dean said. "She was always laughing and full of fun." According to their daughter Carol Zada, the couple went together to the 1939 World's Fair in San Francisco, where Dean proposed to Vivian on a rowboat.
The Neighbors of Epiphany School sponsored a rooftop party featuring Seattle musician Jim Page atop the Bowling Green apartments in Madrona on Aug. 14. The group raised close to $1,000 toward its lawsuit against the city's decision to permit the Epiphany School's expansion.
826 Seattle, a nonprofit writing center, is opening this fall in the heart of Greenwood just in time for students to get some needed help with their homework."Writing is an essential skill to be successful in our world. We want 826 Seattle to be there for all young people. We have a large team of fun, enthusiastic volunteers ready to greet them," said 826 Seattle founder and director Teri Hein.
As King County District boundaries shift in the 2005 election with the reduction of its council districts from 13 to nine, the dynamics of many races have been altered in voter diversity as well as the candidates seeking office within them. However, one of the largest political changes will be the incorporation of Capitol Hill, First Hill and the downtown area north of Yesler Way into the Metropolitan King County Council's District 4. Once only serving the Greater Seattle communities of Queen Anne, Fremont, Ballard and Magnolia, District 4 will now serve more businesses, residences and a diversity of lifestyle interests. Out of the integration of District 4 comes a race that will feature one of the only independent candidates running for county office this year, Ed Pottharst, against 14-year county councilmember and chairperson Larry Phillips.
Southwest Airlines sweetened the deal Aug. 18 when it pledged to use only the quietest of Boeing jets, to not schedule red-eye flights and to use GPS technology to route southern-bound flights over Elliott Bay if its proposed move to Boeing Field is successful.Not everyone was impressed with the promises, but the low-cost carrier maintains that moving from Sea-Tac International Airport to the King County airport would be good for the flying public, Boeing Field itself and the Puget Sound region.
Rain or shine, The Theater Squad, a Seattle-based political theater group, hopes to draw in activists, joggers and other passers-by to Sleepwalking Apocalypse: 9/11, an outdoor event at Green Lake Park that will take place Sunday, Sept. 11.With its lush green scenery and Sunday-afternoon peace vigils, Green Lake seemed a natural choice for the group, who considered producing the event in Pioneer Square or downtown."We like Green Lake visually," said Wallingford playwright Edward Mast, who, in collaboration with The Theater Squad, is directing and scripting the event.
When I asked Scott Jonas, of Jonas Jensen Studios, why he and his partner chose to move their business into the neighborhood, he gave me the most memorable answer I've ever heard. "Fremont's phenomenally casual," Scott explained. He thinks his clients, some of them performers with a certain magnitude of stardom, can comfortably walk, shop and dine here without problems. I agree.
Operation Evergreen, a Washington state effort to host up to 2,000 people from the Gulf Coast disaster area, was announced Monday, Sept. 5, by Gov. Christine Gregoire."Like so many people in Washington, I want to help our fellow citizens in their hour of need" the governor said. "My heart goes out to the people in Louisiana and Mississippi who have lost loved ones and virtually everything but the clothes on their backs. Their suffering, and what they have witnessed and been through, is unimaginable."When the first Hurricane Katrina guests will begin to arrive has yet to be determined, but they could come later this week. One tentative option is that they could land at McChord Air Force Base and be housed temporarily at Fort Lewis before moving to other residences. This has not been confirmed and is pending federal approvals.
Even if you haven't been to Vancouver lately, you may have seen it in countless 1990s movies and TV shows, many of them fictionally set in Seattle. It's remained a thoroughly walkable central city, with several sub-districts. If it's not quite a 24/7 city, it's at least an 18/6 city.In the commercial core, stately old buildings (the Bay department store, Hotel Vancouver) alternate with modern, postmodern and neomodern monuments-and with cheap hotels, working-class bars and strip clubs. One of downtown's busiest streets, Granville, was long ago dedicated for the exclusive use of buses and pedestrians.Just beyond the commercial core in one direction lies the residential West End. Pre-World War II brick apartments sit alongside tall, thin, gleaming condo towers. These residents are served by neighborhood schools and churches, as well as stores and restaurants. Old streetcar-fed retail streets have seamlessly become modern bus-fed retail streets, where hundreds of big and small merchants sell both the necessities and the luxuries. By day, joggers and strollers intermingle with shoppers and tourists. By night, the clienteles of fine restaurants and rowdy sports bars share the sidewalks with quasi-legal pot purveyors and legal streetwalkers.
There's that oft-stated notion that you can't go home again. And Matt Smith isn't actually trying to. But in his one-man show "My Last Year with the Nuns," Smith gets a chance to revisit, on stage at least, both a place and an era. Smith grew up on Capitol Hill and attended eight years of parochial school at St. Joseph's Catholic Church on 19th Avenue East. "Nuns" concerns his eighth grade year in 1966. As he describes it, that part of the Hill was very different in the mid'60s. There was a great deal of racial tension (redlining was still the norm) and homophobia; the area around St. Joseph's was predominately Catholic and home prices were low enough that large families lived there. "It was basically two neighborhoods next to each other," said Smith. "This whole centralized, Catholic culture has disappeared over time. And it was like two separate neighborhoods, one black and one white."
The Seattle Police Department announced last week at a press conference that it will be using European technology first developed for the war on terrorism to nab car thieves. But the effort to combat an epidemic of auto theft in the state also includes a low-tech approach: a discounted price for The Club.The high-tech system uses cameras to automatically scan license-plate numbers and compares them to a hot sheet listing stolen cars, said SPD spokesman Rich Pruitt. The initial software was developed by the Civica company in the United Kingdom for anti-terrorism purposes, he said. "Our region is a good market for them, obviously." Indeed, something like 9,000 vehicles a year are stolen in Seattle, according to SPD records.
Community groups often take on something of the character of the volunteers who choose to take part. The typically small number of people who usually make up a community organization's core can become synonymous with the group. Frequently a single member gives a neighborhood group its shape.That's certainly the case with the First Hill Improvement Association (FHIA), where Mike Gray has been involved with the First Hill Improvement Association since 1987. But his personal circumstances have changed, and after 18 years Gray is phasing himself out from his long-standing role as president. While other volunteers have taken on many of the tasks Gray has performed for years, the FHIA will be without a president when he steps down. Gray said he expected to stay at the FHIA helm through the end of the year.
Even though Seattle calls itself a progressive city I often see instances where we fail miserably at election time. When it comes to picking candidates for offices like the Port of Seattle we really blow it.The Port of Seattle actually should be called the Port of Martin Luther King County because they represent the county and are elected countywide. It's a position that most people know very little about and it seems that those who run the port would prefer to operate under the radar.So when it's time to elect someone we often are faced with candidates that we have ignored until right before the election. On top of this, the port operates so differently than the city or county that we simply don't know enough about it to make rational decisions. As a result, we are faced with a position and candidates that we know very little about, and many voters will often skip over the position or just vote for the most familiar name.