This year, the Kirkland Courier, along with the League of Women Voters, is pleased to sponsor a Kirkland City Council Candidate Forum. The event takes place on October 11 at the Kirkland Performance Center, 350 Kirkland Avenue. A candidate reception from 6 to 7 p.m. precedes the moderated candidate forum, which will last until 9 p.m.
This year, the Kirkland Courier, along with the League of Women Voters, is pleased to sponsor a Kirkland City Council Candidate Forum. The event takes place on October 11 at the Kirkland Performance Center, 350 Kirkland Avenue. A candidate reception from 6 to 7 p.m. precedes the moderated candidate forum, which will last until 9 p.m.
Many people impact our community, but I finally identified someone who works daily on Fremont's culture. Brent McCrossen chose Seattle five years ago, when he decided to leave his beloved hometown of New Orleans and discover new places to expand his experience. However, he found his way to Fremont like most of us - by accident."I love people. I love inviting people to come together," he said. Brian DeWade knew this about his friend and, three years ago, approached him about forming a business partnership they call Interface Booking & Management.
With a sense of humor and a groove, what drummer Greg Williamson initially started as a way to produce his own albums has become a streamlined, independent, jazz and swing label, 11 years and 47 albums later.Between playing regular gigs and running Pony Boy Records, Williamson said it is hard for him to sit still. A Seattle native, Williamson, 40, toured with the Woody Herman and Glenn Miller bands for three years, before returning to town in 1990. He started Pony Boy Records with his first recording, "The Big Bad Groove Society."
The three-hour Phinney Ridge Community Council meeting on Saturday, Oct. 1, quickly became an unofficial political roast for the only incumbent City Council member, who attended. The residents charge that both the city and Woodland Park Zoo have neglected the public process and breeched their trust. "I feel gravely disappointed for how misinformed the council was," Corey Satten said, solemnly addressing City Councilmember Richard Conlin. "Just because it is a 'done deal' doesn't mean it is right."
An overflowing crowd of Wallingford residents and business owners met in one of the many empty spaces at the Wallingford Center on Sept. 21 for a heated discussion about the future of the sparsely occupied shopping center.Bruce Lorig, co-owner and managing partner of Lorig Associates, was at the meeting - or perhaps better described as a showdown - to answer questions and get feedback from the public about what they would like to see at the center. Representatives from other companies involved in the project also were present to take note of the community's comments and concerns.
Every October, Richard Hugo House hosts an "inquiry" into modern life and art, a chatfest for writers. "Every year, we listen to our members, donors, volunteers and writers to figure out what seems to be urgent in the culture," said Hugo House director Frances McCue. "In the beginning of Hugo House, it was the power of place and Richard Hugo. But the topic changes every year."The eighth Hugo House inquiry, taking place on Oct. 15, focuses on "Real/Fake: Examining the Intersection of Fiction and Real Life."
The opening day of the new Cal Anderson Park and Bobby Morris Playfield was a spectacular success, on a stunningly beautiful Saturday. Many Capitol Hill residents and civic leaders have expressed their hope that the park's opening day, on the first day of autumn, has marked a greater "change of seasons" in the neighborhood.They'd like to see the park's surrounding blocks transformed from its recent reputation (deserved or not) as a haven for addicts and panhandlers, declining retail and increasing vacancies. They'd like to see the beautiful new park engender a beautiful new image (or better yet, a reality) of happy, prosperous households of various gender/race variants, of confidence and neighborliness and cleanliness and commerce.I wouldn't pin all hopes on the new park. It's a great achievement (and kudos to all the planners, architects and builders involved). But it can't do everything. No building project, by itself, can turn a neighborhood around, despite years of spoken and unspoken promises in that regard by the local civic-planning establishment.
Adolescence can be hell for anyone. It is especially fierce for outsiders with unusual religions, ethnicity or sexual orientation when they attend school.Outsiders draw attention by their differentness, and among students stressed by the uncertainty of growing up, outsiders become the targets of rumor, gossip and bullying. The Safe Schools Coalition and the Seattle LGBT Community Center have combined to do something about that.Called the Hate Crime Awareness Project, the goals are to collect data on hate crimes committed by younger offenders, start community-wide discussions of youthful hate crimes and work with schools to reduce or stop bullying in the schools. To achieve the project's goals a 40-hour-per-week staff person has been hired through a grant from AmeriCorps, a program of the Corporation for National and Community Service, an independent federal agency that also oversees Senior Corps and Learn and Serve America.
To get a take on John Braseth, long-time Seattle art dealer and Capitol Hill resident, consider this: When Paul Horiuchi died in 1999 at age 93, it was Braseth, then 40, who gave the eulogy at the great artist's service.Horiuchi had lived a quietly heroic life - creating works of intense, elegant beauty - a life which, uprooted because of Horiuchi's Japanese ancestry, included a sometimes dangerous Odyssey through the interior of the Western United States during World War II. Horiuchi lived long and knew many people. Still, it was the relatively youthful Braseth who was chosen to stand up and deliver his friend's farewell."I have a lot of respect for older people," Braseth acknowledges in his modest, down-to-earth way. Horiuchi, Braseth says, "might have been the most gentle person I ever met."Braseth, 46, is one-half of Gordon Woodside/John Braseth Gallery, one of Seattle's oldest and most respected galleries. He started in the business at 18 and became a partner at 20. He's known, represented and/or exhibited the work of many of the Northwest masters, including Guy Anderson, Morris Graves, William Ivey, Mark Tobey, Kenneth Callahan, Hilda Morris and James Washington, Jr.
When the snow arrived in Missoula during the winter of 1993, Meadow, my beautiful and burly malamute and German shepherd cross, and I lived with two other roommates in a drafty Craftsman. Across the street sat the small, neighborhood grocery store I worked at while attending the University of Montana. Meadow and I always felt grateful for the steady stream of day-old deli sandwiches I brought home at the end of my late shift, for food was always on our minds.During one dark, sub-zero evening I found myself chatting with Bill, my Louisiana roommate, in the kitchen as he fixed his dinner. Neither of us had much money to spend on fancy food, but that didn't mean we were limited to a diet of eggs, macaroni and cheese, and ramen. This particular night Bill was cooking up red beans and rice, a southern classic and one that he didn't open a single can to fix.Watching him made me realize that the last time I could remember soaking a bean of any kind was for a middle school botany project. Using dried beans to make dinner: how old-fashioned, how economical, how cool! Bill had sparked an unexpected culinary inspiration in my head.
Rainier Beach exploded on Ingraham during their match-up Friday, Sept. 30, at the Rainier Beach field. The home advantage played strong with the Vikings, who scored a crushing 26 points against the Rams in the third quarter, sealing the games fate.
In the midst of a busy day at the Beacon Hill Library's information desk, I picked up the phone expecting to field a reference query from the public. Instead, it was my husband with a somber voice. He told me our good friend had succumbed to the brain tumor that had eaten away his life at age 63. Naturally stunned, I sat there a minute to collect myself until I felt a small tap at my shoulder. Standing there was a little girl who I've known since her mother brought her to the library as a baby. She gave me a quick hug and off she went to find some books. At that moment, it felt like the comforting touch of an angel. "Lucky," I thought to myself. "Lucky I'm a children's librarian in this neighborhood full of good people."
In our Sept. 21 column, "Destroying public housing the Seattle way," we criticized the Seattle Housing Authority's (SHA) conversion of all 310 public housing units at Rainier Vista into "tax credit" units. We also challenged similar plans of theirs to convert Yesler Terrace and 21 of their 28 high-rise buildings into tax credit projects.These changes would effectively deny access to many of our city's poorest families and would, in the long run, mean the virtual privatization and loss of nearly all of our city's remaining public housing stock. Since our column went to press, SHA has fired back with letters to elected officials accusing us of misrepresenting the facts. They insist that even though ownership of this public housing will be handed over to for-profit "limited partnerships," all the units will remain available to public housing-eligible households with incomes at or below 30 percent of median. Further, SHA says the units eventually will revert to SHA's full control once the tax advantages accompanying conversion expire. After meeting directly with SHA officials, we would offer the following two clarifications to our recent column:
There's a question no one in Washington state can answer: What is the total of taxpayer dollars allocated for education being used for athletic programs in public schools?There are people in high-dollar public positions who will say they have the answer, but they don't. The amount of tax dollars spent on football, basketball, baseball, track, soccer, cheerleading and other sports programs at public schools is so high - so out of proportion to the educational needs - that no one wants it to be made public.It is an embarrassingly high number.Over the past five years or so, educational programs across the country have been scrutinized, sanitized and turned upside down by legislators, regulators and consultants. Not a state escaped the financial avalanche caused by 9/11 as deficits in state operating capital became the norm, even in those states that have laws mandating balanced budgets.Without a doubt, education programs from coast to coast suffered.