Doing my part in Katrina hurricane relief support doesn't have to take a huge chunk of my money or time. I've considered taking a trip to Biloxi, Miss., for two weeks of building transitional housing, or maybe donating some time or money or both to the Red Cross. I want to do something and I keep thinking that doing something has to be a big deal. But it doesn't. Not right now. Right now, it can be something small and consistent for a while, like putting a few dollars into the donation boxes at Madison Market. They just set up a system on Sept. 15, whereby money donated will go to Red Cross or to a cooperative development fund to develop and implement food, healthcare and daycare coops for displaced people from New Orleans. "There's just so much we could do, so much out there," said Caple Melton, community outreach and membership services coordinator at Madison Market. "We are still just figuring out what exactly we'll do with the Coop unions, but we've gone through the application process with Red Cross to put out donation boxes for three months."
The fences are down. It's finally here.The chain-link fences that had been placed along the periphery of Cal Anderson Park more than two years ago were removed earlier this week, and the meaning is clear: after years of planning, years of physical work, years of volunteer efforts, the park is now open for business. It's not remotely the same place. As a result of the lidding of the Lincoln Reservoir, the park's area, not including the playfield, was nearly doubled. A quick walk through the park reveals that in place of the reservoir are wide expanses of green grass, curved walkways, a long and elegant water feature. A large play structure invites youthful participation (and a wading pool was open in the summer). There are several outdoor chessboards. More than 60 kinds of trees can be found throughout the park.
With the 1997 publication of "Timequake," a sparse and elegiac novel of looping time and sentimental double-takes, American author Kurt Vonnegut Jr. at last called it quits. He'd labored on the manuscript for years, and - despite his best efforts - the work had spun utterly out of control, becoming a baggy, ungovernable monster that, in Vonnegut's own estimation, was unpublishable. So he carved out the good parts, stitched it all back together with autobiographical meditations on such sad daily news as the death of his brother, and floated his umpteenth book into the world, wiping his hands of the whole affair with something resembling resignation. He was done.Trouble was, he kept living. Old habits die hard, like the filterless Pall Malls Vonnegut still sucks down one after the other ("A fire at one end and a fool at the other," he jokes). The author, now into his ninth decade, keeps finding things to talk about. And in his relationship with Seven Stories Press and the political rag In These Times, Vonnegut has discovered something of a second wind, as well as an audience still pleased to engage his wry, idiosyncratic style and off-kilter observations on the state of the world.
On the first Friday of each month Columbia City shakes it loose with a musical celebration hosted at businesses around the area's downtown core. This past month Arthur Nelson and Friends jammed at the Bookworm Exchange, and Ludmilla on keyboards with Diego Coy on flute layed down South American grooves at El Sombrero.
Like Social Security, the federal public housing program was born out of the struggles for social justice in the Depression. With the passage of the Public Housing Act in 1937, the federal government began to provide what the market had failed to-clean, safe, decent and affordable housing. Today despite the fact that more than 1,300,000 low-income families have come to depend on this public housing stock, nation-wide, and over 5,000 households alone here in Seattle, the program has come under increasing attack, and not just from budget-slashing national administrations. Our own Seattle Housing Authority (SHA) has embarked on a plan to effectively eliminate most of our city's remaining public housing stock.
Here's a bucket of Puget Sound water right in the kisser: gasoline is not going to get cheaper. In classic cause-and-effect style, Hurricane Katrina's swirling, destructive dance along the Gulf Coast region triggered our recent rate hike at the pump. I say triggered because the high-price bullet that has come blasting at us has been loaded in the oil-war gun for a long time. What's the gunpowder propelling this lump of economic lead at our pocketbooks? It's the unavoidable fact that the worldwide oil supply is reaching its peak, shorthand for the maximum sustainable daily oil output. Global oil production is tracked on a bell curve. Right now we're either at the curve's apex or a few years away from it. Hurricane Katrina walloped the crude out of Gulf Coast refinery operations. According to the United States Department of Energy, that region holds about 10 percent of the nation's oil refining capacity.With the Aug. 29 onslaught of extreme weather, our country lost one-fifth of its domestic petroleum output, and the closed and damaged Gulf Coast ports have put a kink in our foreign oil supply. By the way, the United States imported 58 percent of its total petroleum supply last year.
For some, karaoke conjures up images of the ubiquitous Japanese "salary-man" or an inebriated late-night stop at a bar with co-workers that you inevitably regret the next day. But for others, karaoke is a serious form of entertainment. It's a subculture with quite a following. Its proponents genuinely appreciate those who can sound precisely like, and effectively mimic the moves of, artists that we all know and love.Eric Saloy is one such entertainer who regularly appears at karaoke venues around Seattle through On Cloud 9 karaoke. He appeals to audiences with his renditions of Michael Jackson, Smokey Robinson and James Brown. Saloy's distinctive, husky speaking voice transforms smoothly to reach the high pitched "coo-s" of Michael Jackson with the self-proclaimed King of Pop's sleek, "Thriller" dance-style quickly at the ready. With equal ease Saloy can segue into Smokey Robinson. His uncanny ability to imitate has won him the regional karaoke competition recently held at Kelso.
Best-selling business author Harvey Mackay has a favorite quote, "find something you love to do and you'll never have to work a day in your life." This could be the motto of Andrew Meltzer, 34, and Evan Andres, 36, owners of the soon to open Columbia City Bakery, located at 4865 Rainier Avenue. The hard-working team shares a passion for breads and bread making. Their new venture is a labor of love and proof positive that you can love what you do, even if it is your work.
For some kids it's not the academics that challenge them in school, it's the social scene. Fitting in or not fitting in can have serious repercussions, and according to stopbullyingnow.com, more than 30 percent of school-age kids experience some form of bullying. For years educators and parents regarded bullying as practically a rite of passage from childhood to adulthood, basically ignoring the problem. Then the Columbine High School massacre happened. It was an incident with bullying at its heart and the single greatest example of school violence in U.S. history. Suddenly educators all across the country began to take notice.
As a number of pundits have pointed out, President Bush's proclamations in New Orleans on the night of Sept. 15 were reminiscent of past presidents Lyndon Johnson or Franklin Roosevelt.So, what are the odds that the people of New Orleans will see the president's manna-from-heaven promise fulfilled? The political analysts in the media will bisect this in as many different ways as there are people to dissect it. Personally, I think the odds are very long.I wish this president instilled more confidence in me than he does, but his performance, and his priorities in the first five years in office, have been anything but LBJ-war-on-poverty like. I'm more inclined to view Bush's speech as a political gambit to repair the damage the administration's complacency has brought down on the heads of the citizens in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama in the aftermath of one of the worst hurricanes in our history.
There was a time when I didn't mention that I was a Vietnam-era veteran to many people.Americans usually claim not to remember how Vietnam vets were treated circa 1970, when I returned home to Ohio (from Texas, not Saigon - I saw the same amount of combat as Commander in Chief Bush).The word for the treatment of vets 35 years ago was shameless.Veterans, outside the friendly confines of the American Legion Hall, were considered suspect. Most popular television dramas of the era reduced the number of black criminals and substituted Vietnam vets. Seems like a combat veteran was always climbing a bell tower to endanger the citizens resting under the watchful protective eyes of Karl Malden, and then-boyish Michael Douglas. Crazed ex-soldiers were usually portrayed as longhaired and bearded, wild-eyed and animalistic, a baby-killing, business-hating bad boy with no respect for women, new cars, gilded picket fences or annuities.Suddenly, sometime during the era of Ronald Reagan - that first shameless corporate toady for the ultrawealthy - we vets began once again taking on the luster of patriotism.Now this is only right. Even those vets lucky enough to avoid combat, like me, were drafted, like me, or enlisted because they had few other choices in the burgeoning Great Society of the day. Veterans cannot be blamed for the missteps of their government.
If by chance you had an opportunity to look at the night sky last weekend, you would have noticed a full moon. How many of you, I wonder, might have marveled at the fact that men had actually walked on that shining sphere?I was dwelling on that myself. I had just seen the Tom Hanks presentation of "Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon 3D" at the Pacific Science Center's Boeing IMAX Theater.IMAX, Lockheed Martin and NASA have joined forces with the legendary actor Hanks and filmmaker Playtone to produce the newest IMAX-3D space film.On May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy challenged the United States to go to the moon. NASA employed 420,000 people to reach that goal, and NASA achieved its objective on July 20, 1969.Approximately 600 million people watched the Apollo 11 lunar landing on television. I remember that my family was on vacation at the time, staying in a resort cottage on a lake in central Michigan. We all had to crowd into the resort owner's house to watch the landing because they were the only ones with a television set.Hanks himself was only 13 years old when astronauts Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin took that first 238,860-mile trip to the moon. Along with young boys worldwide, Hanks had a new set of heroes.In the history of mankind, only 12 individuals have walked on the moon. "Magnificent Desolation" tells their tale - the story of the actual time the astronauts spent on the moon's surface.
Some people live in Seattle because family does. Others, because family does not.I'm afraid I fall into the second category. Like most East Coast transplants, I live among friends, and over time what happens is friends become more like family than family.I chose Seattle because it seemed the best the world had to offer: clean air, picturesqueness, liberal minds and, unlike most coastal cities, a home I could afford (mind you, this was 20 years ago). The first time I saw Elliott Bay, the evening sun coloring its sky, I thought, "Another life is behind me now, and I'm finally home!"That's why it's difficult to put a name to what I feel of late, something blurred in the center of me.
If by chance you had an opportunity to look at the night sky last weekend, you would have noticed a full moon. How many of you, I wonder, might have thought, too, that men had actually walked on that shinning sphere?I thought about it because I had just seen the Tom Hanks presentation of "Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon 3D" at the Pacific Science Center's Boeing IMAX Theater. IMAX, Lockheed Martin and NASA have joined forces with legendary actor Hanks and the pro-duction company Playtone to pro-duce the latest IMAX 3D space film.On May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy challenged the United States to go to the moon. NASA employed 420,000 people to work toward putting a person on the moon. The agency reached that goal on July 20, 1969.Approximately 600 million people watched the Apollo 11 lunar landing on television. I remember that my family was on vacation, staying in a resort cottage on a lake in central Michigan. We all had to crowd into the resort owner's house, because they were the only ones with a television, to watch the landing.Tom Hanks was only 13 years old when Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin took that first 238,860-mile trip to the moon, but like young boys worldwide, Hanks had a new set of heroes.In the history of mankind, only 12 have walked on the moon. "Magnificent Desolation" is their story, the story of the actual time the astronauts spent there.
There was a time when I didn't mention to many people that I was a Vietnam-era veteran. Americans, especially those raised on the mecha-nistic, instant-titillation, then instant-forgetting of electronic media, usually claim not to remember how Vietnam vets were treated circa 1970, when I returned home to Ohio (from Texas, not Saigon - I saw the same amount of combat as Commander-in-Chief Pinhead did).The word for the treatment of vets 35 years ago was shameless.Veterans, outside the friendly confines of the American Legion Hall, were suspect. Most popular television dramas of the era, developing their new corporate sensibilities, reduced the number of black criminals and substituted Vietnam vets. Seems like a combat veteran was always climbing a bell tower to endanger the citizens resting under the watchful, protective eyes of Karl Malden and then-boyish Mikey Douglas. This crazed ex-soldier was usually portrayed as longhaired and bearded, wild-eyed and animalistic, a baby-killing, business-hating bad boy with no respect for women, new cars, gilded picket fences or annuities.Suddenly, sometime during the era of Ronald Reagan - that first shameless corporate toady for the ultrawealthy, who paved the way for the Pinhead, and made even desperate cynics such as me pine for the cinematic glory of Ronnie, or for that matter, the tainted glory of anybody but this vacuously prevaricating, lifetime failure currently at the helm - we vets began once again taking on the luster of patriotism.Now this is only right. Even those vets lucky enough to avoid combat, like me, were drafted, like me, or enlisted because they had few other choices in the burgeoning Great Society of the day.Veterans cannot be blamed for the missteps of their government.