Is it possible? Has the popularity and thrill of proving to everyone that you always operate around the clock, every day of the week, begun to wear thin?There are reports coming out from researchers who have studied the impacts on health, creativity and effectiveness from the 24/7 experiences. Their data suggests that there is a high negative price to pay. And 10 days at a foreign spa, with your cellphone and laptop engaged, will not cure your ills.The threat of cellphone use being allowed on airline flights after takeoff has provoked nightmares for many who travel. In many ways, airlines are the last bastion of cellphone-free areas.
One of the many problems with the Internet, which seems more and more to me to be exacerbated television, is that the information comes all in a rush, commingled in such a way that nothing is more important than anything else, which isn't the way real life really works, where some things are super-important and other things are all but meaningless.For example, on the way to checking one of my e-mail sites, one of those headline-news pages popped up. I don't remember if it was Hotmail or AOL, two of the places where I get my mail, but I do remember the lead photo was one of those waist-to-neck shots of some gargantuan American man or woman, the photo subject too fat for gender identification, and a headline: Soon we'll all be overweight.Beside the photo were three other stories, one of which was, 21 best places to get steak in your town.
The Southwest Airlines public-relations machine is at full volume concerning its proposed move from Sea-Tac International Airport to Boeing Field (King County International Airport). Unfortunately, Seattle residents are not matching the carrier's noise with hard questions and harder facts about the impact such a change will have on the region. Considering how many people reside in the immediately affected areas of Georgetown, Beacon Hill and Magnolia, few have shown up at community meetings to voice their dissent over the proposed move with Southwest Airlines and King County representatives. While this citizen apathy continues, Southwest Airlines and King County Executive Ron Sims are running their own campaigns of vague promises of regional benefits, with very few people listening closely to what they're saying.Sims called Southwest Airlines "generous" with its $130-million relocation-investment proposal. However, Southwest wants to limit the spending to its new passenger terminal, parking garage and any "accommodations" it must make for increased airport traffic. This doesn't include improvements to the existing road system; Ron Ricks, a Southwest Airlines senior vice president, deemed the roads feeding into the Boeing Field area "adequate." Ricks is citing an older traffic study done by the county, a study that didn't take into account the effect a major airline would have on the area if it set up shop at Boeing Field. With this in mind, Ricks also neglects to mention that each of the airline's projected 80 flights per day will drop off about 200 passengers each and pick up about 200 more. These people will need to get to the airport somehow using cars, taxis or buses. Light rail is out of the question - it's going to Sea-Tac Airport.
REBECCA MORTON"No. I just don't think it is very likely. I think that people get scared about a lot of things that are very unlikely."ERIC BAUMGARTNER"Yes. I have a 2-year-old daughter who I am concerned would be susceptible. It does seem like a very real threat, and it is having a minor impact on my thoughts about travel. Heading to a place like Taiwan for extended travel is a little less appealing than it otherwise would be."
A proposal by local business and property owners to revitalize the Interbay area near West Dravus Street by turning it into a Hub Urban Village is dead in the water; the city said no. But the Interbay Neighborhood Association has come up with another approach that might achieve the same goal. It involves a zoning overlay that would increase density in the area by raising the heights of buildings, said association member Jeff Thompson.Speaking last week at a meeting of the Queen Anne Community Council, he said change is necessary because the area is marked by blight, leaving a neighborhood that is "in essence abandoned."While that may be, the city didn't agree that turning the area into a Hub Urban Village was a solution because it didn't qualify for the designation, said Bob Morgan, a central staff member for the Seattle City Council.
The Department of Planning and Development (DPD) has issued a Master Use Permit to the Seattle Country Day School allowing it to almost double in size to 78,250 square feet, but it's not quite a done deal yet.The Mayfair Neighbors Association - which has fought tooth and nail against the private Queen Anne school's expansion plans - has filed an appeal to a city Hearing Examiner seeking to overturn the permit, said Elliott Ohannes, chairman of the neighborhood group. The appeal to the Hearing Examiner is scheduled to take place on Nov. 2, 3 and 4, according to DPD spokesman Alan Justad. Ohannes wasn't sure exactly what the grounds were for the appeal. "It gets into technicalities that are kind of beyond me," he said. But Ohannes is adamant that an appeal is warranted. "It showed absolutely no willingness to deal with the community's needs," he said of the permit.Country Day School head Michael Murphy disagrees.
The fate of Japanese-Americans following Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor has been the subject of numerous nonfiction and fiction books, feature films, museum exhibits and documentaries. Many of us know something about the nationwide suspicion and fear of ordinary people of Japanese descent that led to their ignominious detention. (The Seattle chapter alone of this dark period in civil rights is startling to discover.) There is some awareness, too, of the story of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, formed in 1943 and made up of Japanese-American volunteers who distinguished themselves on the battlefields of Europe. Still awaiting a place in America's collective memory are the remembrances of a few Japanese-American citizens who challenged the detention law in court on constitutional grounds. But personal recollections of the attack on Pearl Harbor and its aftermath are important, too. It was with that value in mind that students at Oahu's Wahiawa Elementary School, working with Honolulu Theatre for Youth on a "December 7, 1941 Project," were sent into their community a few years ago to collect oral histories from people of all ethnicities about events on Dec. 7 and their residual, social impact on the island. The culmination of that effort was "Nothing Is the Same," a new play based on some of those recollections and written by the prolific Y York, whose work has premièred four times at Seattle Children's Theatre (including "Afternoon of the Elves" and "Mask of the Unicorn Warrior").
Margaret Bourke-White, the self-appointed queen of the machine, used her camera to record and honor the coming of age of American industrial might. The Tacoma Art Museum's current exhibition of 140 stunning historic prints explores her emergence as one of the most successful photographers of the 20th century.Focusing on the first decade of her career, the exhibit offers insights into her developing artistic vision and worldview. It also documents the nation's stumble from optimistic expansion into dismal Depression.Bourke-White was a woman before her time. Ambitious, glamorous, brash, entrepreneurial and highly paid for her work, she was a pioneer both as a photographer and as a person. She gained entry to places forbidden to women, such as the steel factories of America in the 1920s. She hung from skyscrapers and small planes, entered slaughterhouses and mines. She began work as a commercial photographer and ended as a lauded photojournalist.
Fresh from Seattle Opera's 2004-05 Young Artist Program, Edlyn de Oliveira is well aware of the import of being cast in the lead female role in Jake Heggie's "The End of the Affair." De Oliveira will play Sarah Miles in the Friday-Sunday cast of the new work, which introduces Seattle Opera's 2005-06 season on Oct. 15. Mary Mills will perform the part in the Saturday cast."They took a huge chance to hire me in June to open their season in October," de Oliveira said. "As an emerging artist, if someone does that, takes that chance on you, that's something you always hope for."Speight Jenkins, Seattle Opera's general director, is known for casting unknown but promising singers. "That's how Jane Eaglen got her start in the U.S., stepping into 'Norma,'" de Oliveira noted.
Have you ever heard a song from the '60s called "The Book of Love"? Taproot's "Last Train to Nibroc" offers a staged version of the same theme, only this account is in three acts - first act the lovers meet, second act the lovers part, third act the lovers give it one more chance. It's sweet, it's pleasant. It's as all-American as a Norman Rockwell painting.The unlikely couple meets in 1940 on a cross-country train headed east. She's been disillusioned in romance and is going back to her home in Corbin, Ky. He's been washed out of the Army Air Corps because of epilepsy and is headed to New York, even though he's from a small Kentucky town right next to hers. Their destinations say much about their personalities. Back to the old Kentucky home for May, an uptight would-be missionary who's reading the uplifting "Magnificent Obsession" by Lloyd C. Douglas, a Lutheran clergyman. Off to New York for Raleigh, a would-be writer who's thrilled to know that he's riding on a train that's transporting the coffins of Nathanael West, who wrote the somewhat blasphemous "Miss Lonelyhearts," and F. Scott Fitzgerald, the scribe of the Jazz Age ... two of his favorite authors.
If you have a choice between going to see "The King Stag" or staying home and setting fire to yourself and your belongings, the latter would be far more amusing than Seattle Repertory Theatre's mainstage season opener. Some audience members bolted from the theater at intermission. Others dutifully stayed on for the kill. As did some of our favorite Seattle players who are trapped onstage with this material. Touted as the world-première adaptation of Carlo Gozzi's 18th-century fantasy tale of the same name, this wannabe farce is adapted by Andrei Belgrader and Shelley Berc, with Belgrader directing. It's hyped as a comic fairy tale for all ages about the power of love, a metaphor it fails to deliver.Done correctly, commedia dell'arte (comedy of art) should be fabulously funny, a raucous romp packed with exaggerated characterizations, split-second comedic timing, physical antics, sight gags and lowbrow improvisation that pokes fun at the foibles of human nature. Think the Marx Brothers meet the Brothers Grimm. As with other commedia offerings, in "The King Stag" there's a crew of stock characters. A noble king who dreams of true love, a magic statue, a magician trapped in the body of a green parrot, a slutty girl with more cellulite than charm, a beautiful girl with a pure heart. Add a giant bear, a chubby butler, two pretend deer, a few fools and an evil villain.
The red-hot Seattle real estate of last spring and summer has cooled slightly, but the market is still strong and Seattle needn't expect any downturns soon, say North Seattle real estate experts.According to The Nation magazine Manhattan has experienced a 13-percent drop in real estate prices in the last three months, and prices are falling in Boston and Washington, D.C., as well. That is not the case in Seattle.
One of the most frequently requested resources at the Green Lake Branch of the Seattle Public Library is Consumer Reports. Year after year, regardless what the latest best selling fiction title might happen to be, Consumer Reports shows up to work every day and plays a vital role in the library's ability to provide unbiased consumer information.When the time comes for Seattleites to buy new refrigerators or determine which features of digital cameras are truly mandatory, the independently published Consumer Reports is the resource of choice for smart shoppers across the city.
As a young boy, Carl Verheyen begged his parents for a guitar. Then, on his 11th birthday, he took his first lesson."My parents had to tell me to stop practicing, get out and play," he said. "Forty years, five months and two weeks" later, Verheyen is still going strong.Guitar magazine named the L.A.-based Verheyen as one of the top 10 guitarists in the world. He also has received the L.A. Music Awards' Best Guitarist Award and similar honors in Germany, France and the United Kingdom.
Two months ago, Kennedra Raymond had picked out the hall and booked the church for her wedding to Ervin Harris on Nov. 17. Her eldest daughter, Izhané, had started school, and baby Ekeriyah went to day care. Kennedra went to school to study radiology while she prepared for the arrival of her third child, due in April.Hurricane Katrina disrupted a million lives, in a million ways. Kennedra and Ervin had planned to move after their baby's birth, and they discussed Seattle. Ervin has family in this area, and "he's always said how great it is here and how great the people are," Kennedra explained. They planned to move eventually until the storm turned "eventually" into now.Kennedra and her daughters formed part of a group of 30 family members - including her parents - who fled her hometown of New Orleans on Aug. 28, just ahead of the hurricane. Crowded into three vehicles, they drove to Memphis.