A substantial marble carving of a Mexican god of war stolen overnight Nov. 13 from the front yard of a home in the 2600 block of 34th Avenue West has been found, said its owner, Paul Sutton. The theft was listed in the Nov. 23 Police Blotter of the News.The sculpture ended up in the back yard of a home in the 3800 block of 35th Avenue West after it was dropped in the middle of the street, said Maurie Lamoureux, who lives at the house."I almost ran into it," he said, adding that he and a buddy muscled it into his back yard. "Man, that (SOB) is heavy."
At Thanksgiving my family gathers to discuss what we will be doing for our four-day weekend. One cousin starts the holidays with shopping, heading downtown for the sales; another skis whenever she can find snow close to home. I go to "The Nutcracker" at Pacific Northwest Ballet."But isn't that just for children?" asks the ski bum.As I argue for the right to attend without kids, I wonder why so many adults like the ski bum won't go to something "just for children." Let's face it, as sublime as Balanchine can be or as startling as modern dance likes to think it is, most of us first discovered our addiction to ballet through Tchaikovsky's story ballets.
Dig out those platform pumps and tug on that glitzy jumpsuit. The national tour of "Mamma Mia!" is back for a second run at the Paramount. You'll be hard-pressed to resist the campy enthusiasm of this unlikely blockbuster. In fact, it spearheaded the trend of "jukebox musicals" on Broadway and introduced ABBA's songs to a whole new generation.In case you don't know, the Swedish group ABBA ripped through the '70s pop scene and dominated the top-40s charts. Some 30 years later, someone got the bright idea to fashion Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus' hit tunes into musical theater. New York theater critics were scandalized when the show opened in 2001, but audiences embraced it lock, stock and Spandex. Four years later, fans are still flocking to Broadway, as well as to theaters around the world. And producers are raking in the dough."Mamma Mia!" features a hit parade of 22 ABBA favorites, including "Waterloo," "The Winner Takes It All," "Chiquitita," "Super Trooper," "S.O.S.," "Knowing Me, Knowing You," "Take a Chance on Me," "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!," the pulpy, peppy tune "Mamma Mia!" and everyone's all-time favorite, "Dancing Queen." If you don't know or remember the lyrics, the person sitting next to you may be mouthing the words.
Every year about this time, old Ebenezer Scrooge drops by to dampen our Christmas spirits. I'm here to tell you that he's back yet again. But this year, that crusty old curmudgeon has had the audacity to bring charges against Marley and the Christmas ghosts, those well-meaning individuals who showed him the error of his ways and brought joy into his heart.The crotchety old man is here to participate in a trial that is being held at Taproot Theatre. Audience members sit as spectators in the courtroom as Judge Steve Manning presides over this somewhat out-of-control hearing. Scrooge, played ably by Nolan Palmer, represents himself with muttered asides, antagonistic postures and unacceptable outbursts. Solomon Rothschild, lawyer for the accused, is a gentleman through and through. Those against whom Scrooge has brought charges of kidnapping, assault and battery are well served by Rothschild as played by Kevin Brady. He is both gracious and friendly and treats all witnesses with respect. His conduct is in sharp contrast to that of the unpleasant Mr. Scrooge.One after another, the witnesses are brought forward.
A downtown gallery owner, squiring around a group of Japanese art collectors not long ago, drove them to Mark Tobey's former house in the U-District."They couldn't believe there wasn't a plaque or anything for this world famous artist," he told me.Seattle's never been head-over-heals for its past. We knock down beautiful old buildings like bowling pins. But the gallery owner's comment got me thinking: What if there was a walking tour Web site about the salad days of the U-District arts scene? North Beach in San Francisco has such a tour. I think the names Roethke, Tobey and Jeffers can stand up to Kerouac, Ginsberg and Snyder any day. OK, maybe not in a popular marketing sense, but certainly their work more than stands up.A little research and a walk around the neighborhood with historian and author Paul Dorpat, who knows everything, would do wonders. Maybe this is a marketing baton for the Greater University District Chamber of Commerce to pick up.
There are many reasons to see "Black Nativity," the most meaningful being its ability to accomplish what our world leaders cannot: to bring people from all walks of life, races and religions together in peace and harmony. Such is the power of Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes' Christmas gift to the world. Intiman's beloved production debuted eight years ago with director Jacqueline Moscou, Pastor Patrinelli Wright and a choir of six, Rev. Samuel B. McKinney, four actors and three musicians. Now the multicultural choir numbers 40-plus, its members age 12 to 78, from churches all over Seattle. Ten of the singers are also trained dancers, six of them teenagers. And the band has swelled to a half-dozen.
For the past five years, I've watched as the Bush administration and the Republican-led Congress have turned our nation into a bullying, marauding, dysfunctional and mean-spirited oligarchy.I've watched the rich get not just richer, but obscenely richer.I've watched the rolls of American citizens without medical insurance rise by millions.I've watched thousands of jobs move overseas, even as our government tries to reduce unemployment benefits.I've watched the evening news count the American dead in an ill-conceived, and possibly illegal, invasion of Iraq, even as the Bush administration reduces benefits to our veterans.I've watched the Republicans push the Patriot Act through Congress, an act that dismantles many of the protections that have defined the separation between our democracy and the totalitarian governments we so often purport to oppose.And lately we hear rumors of CIA-sponsored prisons around the world, where we may be holding, and possibly torturing, prisoners who have yet to be charged with a crime. There's a prison in Cuba where the United States has been holding hundreds of people we've labeled as "enemy combatants," again without charges, legal representation or trial. We simply hold them against their will, apparently for as long as George Bush, Condoleezza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld deem necessary.And we call Fidel a tyrant.
I just finished my 10th read of "Dispatches," Michael Herr's mid-'70s memoir of Vietnam.To my mind, "Dispatches" is the best memoir ever written about war, any war.Herr captured the insanity, brutality and the weird exhilaration of combat that vets who've been under fire sometimes talk about as if were a dirty secret.The reading was timely because history is repeating itself again."Dispatches" is full of incidents where generals and visiting politicians tell the gullible American public, "We are winning the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese," speeches which Herr, who was on the ground and in combat, shows immediately to be misguided or, worse, blatantly dishonest.I thought of all this after Pinhead's recent speech, the one in which he claimed that Iraqi troops had led and won some big battle in a little Iraq town.CNN juxtaposed Pinhead's speech with a live report from Time magazine's Baghdad bureau chief, who had been in the battle Bush talked about.He laughed out loud when Pinhead's comments were played for him.The correspondent then went on to say that the battle had been planned by Americans and led by Special Forces "advisors" (Green Berets).If you were alive and awake during Vietnam, this all sounds deadly familiar to you.
Today is Dec. 7, the 64th anniversary of the day President Franklin Roosevelt said would "live in infamy." This is the day the Empire of Japan launched an uprovoked, pre-emptive strike against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.On that day, a single, carefully-planned and well-executed stroke removed the United States Navy's battleship force as an obstacle to the Japan's imperialist expansion in the Pacific. The United States, unprepared and suddenly considerably weakened, was abruptly brought into the Second World War as a full combatant.The day before the Pearl Harbor attack, Japan launched an attack against Malaya. The night before the Pearl Harbor attack Japan attacked Hong Kong, Guam, the Philippine Islands and Wake Island. The same morning as the Pearl Harbor attack the Japanese attacked Midway Island. It was all part of a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area.
Nick Ciccarelli, boyishly handsome at 38, with chiseled features and a passionate, New York City way of speaking, can tell you a lot about his life and how the world operates, but he can't say for sure where he was born."Either Sacramento or Brooklyn," he smiles. He knows the year, though: 1967.Ciccarelli's early life is a Dickensian saga of wandering, violence and neglect. His mother is currently married to her ninth husband. Yet all along, Ciccarelli says there was an inner voice that whispered to him, "I want to be a good guy."Now Ciccarelli is teaching others, especially women, about what he learned about self-defense on the street. He's a personal trainer with his own business, Studio 112 Training Center at 1020 N.E. 112th St.
A tiny store at the bottom of a narrow, curved stairway holds a taste of paradise for wine connoisseurs. Located in what used to be a basement recreation room of a home at 4227 E. Madison St., Madison Cellars holds a couple other distinctions, according to owner Fred Andrews."I think it's one of the oldest places in town," he said of wine shops. Indeed, Andrews said, he will have been running the business at the location for 20 years come next August. And it was a wine store for five years before he took it over, he added.The basement business also has the distinction of being in the lowest commercial space on the western shores of Lake Washington, Andrews said. The underground location helps keep the place cool, which is important for wine storage, he said.
The image of American labor has undergone a dramatic shift in the last half century. Gone is the portrait of the earth-bound worker captured most dramatically by photographer Walker Evans: begrimed and sun-scorched from long hours in the fields, working with one's hands reaping the harvest. Manufacturing jobs have fled abroad, where cheaper labor is outsourced to unregulated markets. If you work with your hands in the United States, it's more likely you pour the coffee than pick the bean.The steady, 40-hour-a-week jobs have shifted from being dominated by the agriculture and manufacturing industries to jobs dealing primarily with the service and information industries. While Americans used to wear out the soles of their shoes and the knees of their work jeans, they now are more likely to develop repetitive use injuries from prolonged keyboard punching and weight problems from inherently more sedentary work.However, traditional forms of labor haven't disappeared: they've simply shifted to a new demographic, a growing population of immigrants that has the time and the drive to get the work done.
In a city hardwired to the proverbial motherboard of the technology movement, it's ironic to hear complaints about scarcity of information.But it appears the circuits and switches have somehow failed to penetrate all sectors of the region, at least according to residents in Madison Park who say insufficient communication between them, their neighbors and police is hampering efforts to solve what they believe is an increase in crime. Burglary, theft, stalking, sex crimes, drug use and pedestrian issues are among the issues concerning them, and while the role of police is paramount to any solution, residents also acknowledge the need for the community to become actively involved. Information, they say, is the key to crime prevention, and so they're pushing to improve the expediency of knowledge that flows between police and the community. "What we're trying to get across to the police and the city is that we need a better means of communication," said neighborhood activist and longtime resident Dick Clark. "We're sitting here in the shadow of Bill Gates and all this technology and we can't find a way to keep apprised of what's going on in our own neighborhoods. We know the police want to help, and we want to help them, but first we need to know where the problems are before we can define, resource and solve them."
The path of the writer is a difficult one. Any act of expression brings with it a requisite amount of self-doubt and anxiety, as no piece of work - no words - can ever fully embody the totality of the creator's vision. After the words have been chosen, however, another struggle begins. How does one go about actually getting one's work into the hands of readers? Or rather, in the case of La'Chris Jordan, to the eyes and ears of an audience?Jordan began writing when she was 19 years old. Now 35, a published poet ("Musings of an Eccentric Dreamer," 2001) and playwright as well as an aspiring novelist, she is no stranger to the struggle inherent in both the art and business of her medium. It's a struggle she accepts and embraces, for it offers not only pain, but salvation."For me," she says, "writing is a way of creating beauty from pain, because pain is something everybody feels. Being a writer is in essence being a healer through words."
There is no right or wrong way to tell a story. That's part of what makes telling a story well so difficult. Through stories, we share ourselves, our experiences, our perspectives, our thoughts and emotions. This is life - it's difficult, heady stuff, and the only thing more trying and complicated than living itself is successfully putting it into words."Sadie's Kitchen," the first play by local playwright La'Chris Jordan, currently in its inaugural run at the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center, is about family. It's therefore a story about the stories we tell ourselves, and each other, in an attempt to make sense of our lives. In an attempt to get to the heart of the characters' internal and interpersonal conflicts, Jordan creates moments of riveting dramatic tension but tends to undercut them with predictable, tidy resolutions.The story revolves around the family of Sadie Smith, a widow whose daughter, Clarice, is just about to graduate from college.