The world is not really all that bad in spite of what we may be feeling at the moment and in spite of the best efforts of governments to convince us it is. One-on-one, people are not out to do each other in. On the whole, we would much rather love our neighbor than beat him up. The trouble is that loving your neighbor never makes the headlines. I had searched through my piles and piles of essential papers, like unanswered Christmas cards and clippings I've cut from the paper to share with various correspondents. I was looking in vain for a check I'd received a couple of weeks ago. I had looked in every purse, some I hadn't used in a year-and-a-half, hoping I had put the check in one of them. I even cleared off the coffee table.
Watching our City Council in action reminds us sometimes of watching our Congress in the other Washington. They seem to lack self-respect as the legislative branch of government and let the executive trample over them. With lamentably few exceptions, City Council members fail to stand up to Mayor Greg Nickels, rarely put forth a vision of their own and routinely ignore their own past decisions.A case in point is the South Lake Union streetcar. Back in summer 2004 we critiqued the mayor's plan for the streetcar. We noted that according to a report by council staff, 19 bus routes already serve the area and the streetcar would cost 30 percent more to operate than bus service. We warned of cost overruns and said the money would be better spent making a dent in an identified $500 million backlog of transportation needs caused by deferred maintenance of city streets and bridges.While doing nothing these last two years to address this backlog, the City Council gave the go-ahead for the mayor's streetcar plan at an estimated cost of $47.5 million with annual operating costs of $1.5 million. By creating a Local Improvement District (LID), the mayor planned to tax property owners in South Lake Union for half the cost, leaving the taxpayers to cover the rest.
The opening shot in this year's race for the U.S. Senate in Washington state was fired at Garfield High School on Saturday.It was standing room only in the gymnasium as Seattle greeted Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wa., and Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., at an event sponsored by Cantwell's office. Garfield principal Ted Howard welcomed nearly 4,000 people to hear discussion on education from the junior senators from Washington and Illinois. International overtones hovered in the crowd.An antiwar message and call to action rang in Rev. Kenneth Ransfer's opening prayer. Ransfer is pastor of the Greater Mount Baker Baptist Church in Seattle's South End.Beneath the purple championship pennants of the Garfield Bulldogs, elected officials, civic activists and area students prepped the crowd with tales of success overcoming hardship through education programs. Mary Bass, a member of the Seattle School Board, introduced Seattle SCORES, a program inspiring students to academic and athletic achievement - combining soccer and creative writing - serving 384 third-through-fifth graders at 11 schools in Seattle, Tukwila and White Center. Friends of the Children of King County was also honored for work with the most vulnerable students. Making Connections, a program of the University of Washington's Women's Center, was highlighted by LaTasha Green, a senior honor roll recipient of the Ku 'Onesha Award, which recognizes academic achievement by African American students at Garfield High.But it was the keynote speakers that drew the crowd.
Efforts to improve the economic climate on Broadway were once again the focus of a community gathering last week. But where similar efforts have often met with an underwhelming or even indifferent response, the Thursday, March 16, event, held in the afternoon inside the Northwest Film Forum, was a success based on the crowd alone. More than 85 people attended, creating a palpable sense of enthusiasm over Broadway's future if not quite a direct and concrete plan about what to do next.Dubbed a retail strategy forum, the event was sponsored by the Capitol Hill Improvement District (CHID), an organization that is working to gain the signatures necessary to create a self-taxing improvement district among Capitol Hill property owners.Chip Ragen, who has been working on CHID for two years, admitted that the signature-gathering effort had slowed. But while those efforts may have stalled, there is great interest in seeing Broadway's, and Capitol Hill's, business fortunes improve.
Firefighters work to contain a blaze reported at an abandoned structure near the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. Way South and South Graham Street March 17. According to the Seattle Fire Department's public relations representative, Helen Fitzpatrick, the fire report was logged in at 6:37 a.m. by the dispatch office. Fitzpatrick said it was reported as "a rubbish fire behind the nursery."
While Sound Transit begins to pour concrete and lift the face of Martin Luther King Jr. Way South, homeowners have noticed another trend. Town home developments are blossoming on the hillsides as winter melts into spring. Property values are skyrocketing. Revitalization is happening in the Rainier Valley.Many residents see these changes as harbingers of better days while some are hesitant to declare that everything is coming up roses. Kris Zawisza is a homeowner on Kenyon Street just south of the Othello Station development. She has always been a light rail supporter and is not one to complain about small inconveniences like the impacts of construction upon her commute to work in downtown Seattle. Zawisza looks up at attractive, new gabled rooftops gracing the skyline and appreciates their esthetic improvement over pockets of blight such as run down apartment buildings, trash-strewn lawns and cars parked in mud puddles along curbless streets. Even so, Zawisza is fond of her neighborhood and worries about unwanted impacts that all this revitalization could bring.
Anybody can miss a stair, slip on a rug or tumble over a bump in the sidewalk. Falls happen in our harried, hurried lives, but they don't have to be a consequence of aging. Older adults are more likely to be plagued by falls as their bodies, coordination and reflexes weaken. But there are simple steps they can take to improve their balance and avoid injury, notes the Healthy Aging Partnership (HAP), a coalition of 40 not-for-profit organizations dedicated to helping older adults live longer, healthier lives. Strength- and balance-building exercises, changes in medications, and safety improvements around the home can all go a long way in preventing falls and the staggering costs associated with them.
We often ask one another, "How are you today?" It's worth taking a moment to ask yourself this very question, and honoring what you discover. Do you feel a sense of heaviness or discomfort anywhere in your body? Is your mind occupied with recurring thoughts? A holistic approach to wellness instructs us to listen to the messages of imbalance, and respond constructively. I can remember repeatedly stubbing my toe when I was a child. Each time I'd first cringe with pain, then I'd slap a Band-Aid on it and get running again. I don't recall taking a moment to ask myself what this accident was telling me. Maybe the same cycle kept repeating because I just wasn't getting the message.The body is like that. The information we need is right with us at all times, held and reflected by our bodies. Just last week, I was observing customers come and go from a store and could see this so clearly. Take a moment to notice those around you. Notice how body posture and movement reveal a life story.
Watching our city council in action reminds us sometimes of watching our Congress in D.C. They seem to lack self-respect as the legislative branch of government and let the executive trample over them. With lamentably few exceptions, council members fail to stand up to the mayor, rarely put forth a vision of their own and routinely ignore their own past decisions.A case in point is the South Lake Union (SLU) streetcar. Back in the summer of 2004 we critiqued the mayor's plan for the streetcar. We noted that, according to a report by Council's own staff, 19 bus routes already serve the area and the streetcar would cost 30 percent more to operate than bus service. We warned of cost overruns and said the money would be better spent making a dent in an identified $500 million backlog of transportation needs caused by deferred maintenance of city streets and bridges.While doing nothing these last two years to address this backlog, the council gave the go-ahead for the mayor's streetcar plan at an estimated cost of $47.5 million with annual operating costs of $1.5 million. By creating a Local Improvement District (LID), the mayor planned to tax property owners in South Lake Union for half the cost, leaving the taxpayers to cover the rest.
Ah, Spring.The smell is what gets you first, that fragrant bursting of blossoming life that inundates and overloads the senses. Flowers, grass, ocean air. It's the olfactory equivalent of stepping from dreary black-and-white into Technicolor.Then comes a sudden pickup in what, for lack of a better term, you might call the biorhythms. After the long winter freeze, the blood starts pumping again, and dormant sensations awaken. Some call this the "itch," and it's accompanied by a heightening of the visual perceptions: people look better, more alive, more beautiful. They glow. Yes, it's time to take a walk, get outside.
A quartet of Columbia City residents shivered in the cold, taking long drags of their cigarettes before flicking the butts onto the sidewalk and retreating to the warmth of Angie's Tavern for Fat Tuesday festivities. The patrons were able to buy seven-dollar packs of Camels inside the bar, but they had to step away from their drinks, friends and electric heating in order to smoke them. The smokers were begrudgingly obeying Initiative 901, which bans smoking in public places and within 25 feet of their doorways, windows and ventilation systems. The strictest statewide restriction on smoking in the nation, I-901 was approved by voters in November and went into effect the following month.Sunny Kim, a bartender at Angie's Tavern, said she has mixed feelings about the ban.
The opening shot in this year's race for the U.S. Senate in Washington was fired at Garfield High School on Saturday, March 18.It was standing room only in the gymnasium as Seattle greeted Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wa., and Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., at an event sponsored by Cantwell's office. Garfield principal Ted Howard welcomed nearly 4,000 people to hear discussions on education from the junior senators from Washington and Illinois. International overtones hovered in the crowd.An antiwar message and call to action rang in Rev. Kenneth Ransfer's opening prayer. Ransfer is pastor of the Greater Mount Baker Baptist Church in Seattle's South End.Beneath the purple championship pennants of the Garfield Bulldogs, elected officials, civic activists, and area students prepped the crowd with tales of success overcoming hardship through education. Mary Bass, a member of the Seattle School Board, introduced Seattle SCORES, a program inspiring students to academic and athletic achievement - combining soccer and creative writing - serving 384 third-through-fifth graders at 11 schools in Seattle, Tukwila, and White Center. Friends of the Children of King County was also honored for work with the most vulnerable students. Making Connections, a program of the University of Washington's Women's Center, was highlighted by LaTasha Green, a senior honor roll recipient of the Ku 'Onesha Award, which recognizes academic achievement by African American students at Garfield High.But it was the keynote speakers that drew the crowd.
Mr. and Mrs. Jay W. Miller will be celebrating their 65th wedding anniversary today, March 22, surrounded by their family.The couple met in Troy, N.Y., when wife-to-be Naomi was a nursing student at Samaritan Hospital and he was an aeronautical engineering student at Rennsaelar Polytechnic Institute, where he later taught and earned a doctorate.In 1951 they moved with their three children, Virginia, John and Susan, to Seattle, where Jay went to work for The Boeing Co. It was a job he loved for many years, and retired from-for the third and final time-in 1986.
The Arabia. The Baghdad. The Cheerio. The Roxy. All gone.Piggly-Wiggly. The Finnish Hall on 15th. The old mercantile store, Ross Marche, near Seattle Pacific University. The Grizzly Inn near the former Queen Anne High School.All gone, but still very much a part of Seattle native Robin Elford's memory bank.Robin, nee Roberta, was born at Providence Hospital in 1928, grew up in the Mount Baker neighborhood, spent 41 years on Magnolia and another 13 at the Grovesnor House-now called the Wall Street Tower-near downtown.Today, this active senior lives in Lower Queen Anne, close to where, as a child, she used to visit her grandmother and uncle. Getting off the streetcar and rollerskating near what is now Key Arena are still clear memories. During two recent interviews over coffee at Zingaro, Robin, quick as a metronome, ticks off the names of stores and buildings that once dotted Magnolia or Queen Anne. "So many places I loved are gone," she says. "They just weren't salvageable." Dressed in royal blue sweatpants and shirt, Robin looks thoughtful when asked to consider her favorite past places: Salladay's, a combination drugstore and gift shop; Meredith's, a dime store; and Winchell's Doughnuts. Of course, Winchell's came much later, after places like Hansen's Baking Co., built to resemble a windmill, had already been torn down.
To the beat of the band and the rumble of fire engines, Magnolia Little League (MLL) kicks off the 2006 season on Saturday, March 25, with its fourth-annual Opening Day parade and ceremonies in the Village.Magnolia resident Audra Jackley, who sits on the MLL board as well as coaching the Junior girls fast-pitch team, said the sense of community that builds around Little League is strong. "Opening ceremonies are a great way for the Magnolia community to get involved," she said. "It brings everyone together to see what it's all about, and what great athletes are involved in the program."