A celebration of the Wing Luke Asian Museum's new location in the East Kong Yick Building on King Street and Eighth Avenue was heralded with several speakers and performances including the Seattle International Lion Dance Club and the traditional Japanese drumming group Tsunami Taiko.
Both Angel Bolaños and Casey Corr, two of five candidates for Seattle City Council Position 4 took part in a preliminary candidate forum sponsored by the Coalition of Southeast Seattle Community Councils and hosted at the Mount Baker Community Club on Sept. 8.
The Seattle Police Department recently announced it will use 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 rhetoric and the spin appeared to fly faster than the jetliners roaring into SeaTac overhead at the Sept. 7 South Beacon Hill Neighborhood Council meeting concerning Southwest Airlines' proposed move to Boeing Field. Members of the audience sat with arms crossed, occasionally breaking into tight smiles as heated exchanges soared between opponents of the move and King County and the Texas-based airline's representatives.Both sides of the issue appeared emphatic about their respective positions, and there was no actual shouting or name-calling.Perhaps this was because meeting chairman Bill Mallow presented written rules stating, "We are here to learn. We are not here to scream, yell, etc. If you are not prepared to follow these simple rules, leave now or we will call the police."
In three years, the average price for regular gasoline in Seattle has gone from $1.26 a gallon to nearly $3 per gallon. That's a 100- percent increase or, in inflationary terms, 33 percent per year. It sort of feels like living in Argentina, or other South American countries where inflation lives in double digits much of the time.This is not news to any of us who drive a car. We've felt the impact in our wallets, bigtime. What's going on, and where will this all end?There's no shortage of accusations being thrown around, from the oil companies gouging the public to OPEC holding us hostage. My guess is that there's an element of truth in many of the rumors, but the answer is more complex.
There is a saying among journalists about going the extra mile for the story, giving it your all, tossing caution to the wind to get the facts, all the facts and nothing but the facts. Then, of course, it's all right to embellish. After all that hard work, you're entitled. I'm just kidding. We generally embellish before we get the facts. I'm here to tell you that I have spared no personal pain to bring you a startling story. It's not for the faint of heart, and you may want to make your children leave the room while you read. They're going to wonder why your face suddenly screwed up as though you'd just had a flashback to the governor's race.
A well-intentioned pinhead where I work my other job (in market research) - who has been more and more feverishly defending her vote for Pinhead Number 1 since his dismal performance after the hurricane in New Orleans - said the other day, "You guys [meaning journalists] have been heroes this time. Usually, I don't like reporters, but you guys have been good during Katrina."She seemed surprised that reporters were on the ground and stayed on the ground in the midst of the carnage and squalor days before Pinhead left Crawford, Texas, and took a little helicopter trip east to the stricken Gulf to spew some platitudes on the already dunked citizenry.Most of my co-worker's surprise probably stems from her being oblivious (how else could any person making the $10 per hour she makes vote for Tax Breaks For The Rich Li'l George twice!), but she has a point.Journalism has gotten pretty safe and boring in America.
The Seattle branch of the English Speaking Unions Shakespeare committee (ESU) met at the Queen Anne home of Sara Reed-Plumb, where several Queen Anne and Magnolia residents had gathered to mail out invitations for high school English and drama teachers to attend a six-hour workshop on teaching Shakespeare creatively, taking place on Saturday, Sept. 24, at Cornish College of Arts. The Seattle branch of the ESU's Shakespeare committee had been sponsoring the Shakespeare competition for local high school students for the past 16 years. The 2006 competition is scheduled for early March at the Frye Art Museum. The winner of the local competition will travel to New York City to compete in the national competition.The National Shakespeare Competition continues to be ESU's premier educational program, the one that reaches the largest number of students and teachers around the country. The 2004 competition involved more than 16,000 high school students, as well as about 2,000 teachers hailing from 60 branch communities - an incredible testament to the ongoing, seductive power of Shakespeare's words.A recent report from the national alumni forum reported that many Ivy League schools are dropping Shakespeare from their curriculum, and English majors are no longer required to study the Bard in order to graduate.It is alarming to think of an English major heading out to teach and having no knowledge of one of the greatest - if not the greatest - writer of all time, in any language.
The pictures from New Orleans last week looked to me like watery Impressionist views of Iraq: terror, poor people displaced, soldiers and cops standing around watching insurgents and looters - an almost complete breakdown of law and order, the sharp teeth just beneath the skin of our shared human nature, which is animal at its core. 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 past few years, leaving the levees unrepaired and unshored. The money was almost surely rerouted by the current gang in Washington, D.C., and what funds aren't lining rich men's pockets are probably busy blowing up in Iraq somewhere.
The Seattle branch of the English Speaking Union's Shakespeare committee (ESU) met at the Queen Anne home of Sara Reed-Plumb, where several Queen Anne and Magnolia residents had gathered to mail out invitations for high school English and drama teachers to attend a six-hour workshop on teaching Shakespeare creatively, taking place on Saturday, Sept. 24, at Cornish College of Arts. The Seattle branch of the ESU's Shakespeare committee had been sponsoring the Shakespeare competition for local high school students for the past 16 years. The 2006 competition is scheduled for early March at the Fry Art Museum. The winner of the local competition will travel to New York City to compete in the national competition.The National Shakespeare Competition continues to be ESU's premier educational program, the one that reaches the largest number of students and teachers around the country. The 2004 competition involved more than 16,000 high school students, as well as about 2,000 teachers hailing from 60 branch communities - an incredible testament to the ongoing, seductive power of Shakespeare's words.A recent report from the national alumni forum reported that many Ivy League schools are dropping Shakespeare from their curriculum, and English majors are no longer required to study the Bard in order to graduate.It is alarming to think of an English major heading out to teach and having no knowledge of one of the greatest - if not the greatest - writers of all time, in any language.
On Christmas Eve 1949, I received a Daiwo casting rod-and-reel set from my parents, who probably saved nickels and dimes all year to buy the present for me.I wanted to use my new rod and reel immediately. I whined and begged my dad to take me fishing even though it was wintertime. Dad said it was a foolish request, adding, "however, if you can convince someone to take you, then it's your decision. I am saying that you should wait until it's warmer."I took that as permission to act. I telephoned my buddy who lived across the street, Jimmy Zackary, who was a year younger than me. We had a relationship like conjoined twins: what one did, the other was bound to follow. I persuaded Jim to cajole his dad into taking us out for a Christmas-time fishing expedition.Mr. Zackary agreed to take us for a couple hours of fishing on popular Kearsley Lake. He cleared it with my dad, who disclosed his doubts. Mr. Z assured dad it'd be okay. We had to bundle up pretty good since it was December - it's very cold in Michigan during the winter months.
There's something about a good witch hunt that just gets the goosebumps arising.Listen, the idea of having Judge John Roberts take a seat on the United States Supreme Court doesn't get many folks nearly as excited - one way or the other - as, say, the possibility of getting a fresh cotton candy at the Puyallup Fair. It should. But honesty in all things, various Good Books tell us, is an honorable trait.While reading reams of words about Roberts' nomination to the high court, no opinion has settled in the minds of most Americans regarding the qualifications or preferences of Roberts. A simple majority of Americans thinks he has one strike against him - i.e., being nominated by George W. Bush - but, then again, a recent dirt-digging article about the nominee put him in much different light.
A recent telephone survey was conducted to find out what Seattleites think about putting a levy on the ballot to benefit the Seattle Center and the Pike Place Market. Respondents to the lengthy survey, this reporter included, were asked among other things if they thought the levy should include both the Seattle Center and the Pike Place Market or whether it would be better to put separate levies for each on the ballot.The survey came as news to the mayor's office, the Seattle City Council, a city clerk in charge of bond and levy measures, the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce, the Sonics, the Pike Place Market and Perry Cooper, media-relations manager for the Seattle Center.But Seattle Center Director Virginia Anderson knew about the survey. She returned to work last week after taking much of the summer off, and Anderson said the survey was commissioned by the Seattle Center as part of its long-range planning efforts.
Perceptions of crime and law enforcement in Magnolia don't quite mesh with reality, according to some frustrated neighborhood residents, Seattle police, King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng and a representative from the city attorney's office who spoke at a meeting of the Magnolia Community Club last week."A lot of people think there is no crime in Magnolia," said MCC president Vic Barry at the Thursday, Sept. 8, meeting. Real-estate agents trying to make a sale in the neighborhood will certainly say that, he said. "We who live in Magnolia know that's not true."Still, it could be worse. All categories of crime in Seattle have nose-dived in recent years - with the exception of car thefts, noted Maleng, a long-time Magnolia resident who spoke about a new Car Theft Initiative (CTI) his office recently launched.
Lt. Robert Leisy, who was killed in Vietnam by a mortar round at the age of 24 in 1969, was the subject of a military tribute at Fort Lawton on Saturday, Sept. 10, attended by many of Leisy's military comrades, friends and family.Leisy was a lifelong Magnolia resident and graduate of Queen Anne High School. He received a posthumous Medal of Honor, awarded to his mother by then-vice president Spiro Agnew, for the heroic manner in which he lost his life.The ceremoney took place at 10 a.m. at the Leisy Reserve Center at Fort Lawton, which is named in his honor.Magnolia resident Tom Weingarten, a friend of Leisy in his youth, said the memorial service held significance both for what it meant for the survivors as well as in the broader context of community relations.