Celebrating the reopening of the Seattle Asian Art Museum (SAAM) at Volunteer Park, the Seattle Art Museum (SAM) offers up four exhibitions that skim the surface of creative activity in the Northwest. When the original museum opened in Volunteer Park on June 23, 1933, it featured galleries devoted to a core collection of Asian art, while additional exhibitions showcased the work of contemporary Northwest artists. With the closure of the downtown museum for a major expansion, the Seattle Asian Art Museum is temporary home to a wide variety of Seattle Art Museum offerings.Contemporary Art: Made in SeattleThe exhibition is a selection of paintings, sculptures, photographs, ceramics, video and photography from the permanent collection of the Seattle Art Museum. By trying to focus on the range and diversity of contemporary art in this region, the curatorial weakness of this exhibit is that it refrains from identifying any aesthetic viewpoints shared among artists working across mediums and generations. Still, there are three outstanding pieces in this uneven exhibit.Joseph Park's "Tigerish Bean" (2005) is an-oil-on-canvas painting that reflects one new, emerging dominate aesthetic: Northwest Magical Realism. "Tigerish Bean" depicts a many-armed goddess emerging from a lotus. It is both a mythic and a human personage. Her undulating figure floats on a sea of abstraction, comprised of smooth transitions and hard-edged surface design. You can see both elements of the baroque and the wood block prints that the artist admires. The amazing tonal range of this painting is realized with a single pigment. Park has described his painting as a "sculptural rendition of flowing paint, and at the same time the depiction of paint."
My father is spinning in his grave. My sister is in shock.I am shattered.According to the Wall Street Journal, crossword puzzles do nothing to keep those brain cells alive. A study the Journal reviewed stated that we start losing those cells at the ripe old age of 30 and continue to lose them bit by bit until we depart this mortal sphere.Of course, we know that is ridiculous. We have been admonished before: Use it or lose it.We have read tomes, learned to play piano at the age of 80, taken tours to exotic places and tried to learn Spanish. We've gone to the opera and bought season tickets to plays, lectures and the symphony to keep those little brain cells alert and improving.Alas, to no avail.
At 1 o'clock in the morning of June 1, a Toyota Tercel driven by a man from Philadelphia barreled down Queen Anne Avenue North on the north slope of the Hill. After smashing into a parked Subaru Outback, the car careened into the traffic circle at the corner of Queen Anne and West Newell Street and launched into the air, clearing 15 feet. It raced through two lots, traveling so fast that it jumped two driveways before crashing into a fence post and coming within inches of a house - my house.The driver, inebriated and bellig-erent, was taken away on a stretcher. The totaled car was towed to a junk-yard. The area looked as if it had been hit by the Wicked Witch of the West. The path of destruction was littered with a neighbor's prized roses, rhododendron branches torn off in full bloom, the rubble of a stone courtyard and broken fence boards.
Sitting under the blue Campari umbrella, I can feel the warmth of the midday July sun that will send the Seattle tempera-ture into the 80s. A Sinatra ballad drifts across the patio where, sit-ting alone, I sip a glass of red wine, waiting for my bowl of penne al' arrabiata - "the angry sauce." When properly made, it is a symphony of ripe tomatoes, garlic and hot red pepper flakes, producing tiny droplets of moisture on the upper lip and lower eyelids of diners.Bits of conversation are carried to my table on the breeze, mostly by people voicing their dissatisfaction with their jobs, bosses or co-workers, causing me to wonder why, when some of them become the boss, they don't recall their miserable existence and set about changing the management culture. But they will emulate the very people they complain about.
Getting old has never been easy. And being even semiliterate in Amer-ica has never been a cakewalk, either. As a culture, we worship youth and distrust thought.Reading some of the fine 19th-century novelists, or viewing a performance of "King Lear" for that matter, makes it pretty clear that aging without collapsing into a bitter little puddle of regrets has always required great effort.Until recently I never was much concerned with getting old. Like many Americans in this media-driven, media-saturated, pop-culture mishmash that has replaced thoughtful discourse, I knew unconsciously that feeling young was an essential requirement for enjoying daily American life, which is lived more and more on a painted, unwrinkled surface.Nobody fills up space in USA Today or People magazine or the airways of "Inside Edition" with questions about Paul Newman or Robert Redford's love life.It was Benifer I, then Benifer II, and now it's Brangie. Even Billy Bob seems to have been forgotten except as a relationship footnote.Ms. Spears somehow got both fat and haggard, but Lindsay L. is looking good.The undeclared war in Iraq isn't what's important. The fluctuating poll numbers of King George the Second, brother of Future King Jeb the Portly, is the real news. And to digress, how seriously can we take a discussion based on how 500 hairstylists and computer programmers in Des Moines feel Li'l Spoiled, War-Dodging, War-Starting Georgie is doing?
From 0 to 90 in 4.5 nanoseconds - we wait and wait and complain and yearn for the heat of summer - and then whammo, it comes in so fast. And then we complain. So Northwest! And do remember, it will be raining on the Fourth of July weekend.Last weekend's dramatic change in the weather upset any notions about carrying on as usual. The heat felt so oppressive. The crisp marine air was non-existent. Bustling about with a full list of activities lost its appeal. Time to move slowly, to relax into the heat.I had the good fortune to relax into Stanley Kunitz's last book, "The Wild Braid: A Poet Reflects on a Century in the Garden" (ISBN 0-393-06141-8). This extraordinary book is a paean to the power, mysteries and renewable energy that the garden bestows upon her devoted servants. And Mr. Kunitz freely acknowledges that his garden was as important as his work as a poet. "I am curious. I'm active. I garden and I write and I drink martinis."
Before last week, I had never seriously considered, or even briefly entertained, the thought of attending a Seattle Pride Festival. So on Saturday afternoon, June 24, as I walked into the Seattle Center (the first time the event has been held there), I had almost no clue what to expect, what I would see or how I would entertain myself for a few hours. But above all else, I decided before ever entering the festival grounds that I would put all assumptions and premonitions aside and just take in the event as it was - nothing more or less.When I finally set sights on the festival, my first thought was, "Wait, isn't this Folklife?" The setup was very similar to the Memorial Day gathering, with booths set up around the area, music blaring and the fountain spraying in the middle. Except for the small number of people present, it was very difficult to tell the two apart. Walking around the various booths, I started to notice some subtle differences. Familiar organizations such as The Seattle Times and Washington Mutual popped into view, surrounded by lesser-known names such as the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force. Animal rights and protection groups occupied more than a few of the many stalls.But in general, most aspects of the event were similar to other public festivals in Seattle. Petitioners every third step - OK, every fourth. Political candidates occupying booths and corners, seeking voter support and a chance to explain their issues.An evangelist approached me with a flyer; another man stood on the grass and shouted out a Christian message. I saw tons of different ethnicities and age groups, all walking around and enjoying the beautiful day. Although the music definitely had a pro-homosexual focus, there were mainstream tunes, too. The smell of greasy, carnival-like food permeated the air as crowds lined up to fill their stomachs. There were also the usual interesting clothing styles among the attendees.
It seems some people will do anything to improve their view.Just ask city arborist Nolan Rundquist. The Nebraska native has encountered all manner of arboreal shenanigans on the job, from the overzealous - and illegal - topping of city trees to vigilante "girdling," a processes whereby an unbroken circumference of bark is chiseled from a tree's trunk, breaking the continuous flow of water and nutrients and often killing the plant. Usually such acts are commissioned with a view to improving visual access to that vaunted Northwest scenery of mountains, water or, ironically enough, more trees, and they can be carried out by anyone from the lone homeowner wielding a chainsaw, to a private arborist hired to trim some bothersome foliage.Whatever the case, Rundquist points out, cutting into trees on city property without a permit is against the law - period. And it's not just arborcide - tree murder - that can get you in serious trouble. "Typically, someone doesn't commit arborcide," he says of the frequency of types of tree damage, adding that such instances as the girdling that occurred last week on Queen Anne don't happen all that often. Rundquist says that of the two or three tree-related violations he sees every week, most cases involve the improper topping and trimming of trees on city property. A police report is filed every time.
Magnolia's 12-year-old Little League All-Stars made a statement last weekend at Ballard's Gilman field, starting off the annual District 8 double elimination All-Star tournament with convincing wins over teams from Ballard, 8-1, and North Central, 11-2.In the Saturday, July 8, game against the home team, Ballard, Magnolia quickly overcame a 1-0 deficit in the bottom of the first inning with a two-run homer to left field by Oliver Guarino, which drove in Ryan Books.Nathan Guinasso (3 for 3, double, 2 RBIs) added another run the same inning with an RBI single.One inning later, Jason Books followed suit with a three-run blast over the center field fence that drove in his brother, Ryan, and Brad Baker to make the score 6-1.And while the Magnolians added two more runs in the fifth-including a 2-out RBI single by Jack Santucci that drove in Ian Zapolsky-they didn't need the insurance.
Students from the Queen Anne/Magnolia area graduating from the University of Washington this June are:Pauline Lavonne Amell (B.A., humanities), Corbin Reid Anderson (B.A., business administration), Alena S. Angell (B.A., business administration/accounting), Amber Dawn Arnold (B.A., anthropology), Jane Victoria Arnold (B.A., history), Ehsaneh Michelle Barghelame B.A., political science), Dustin James Barnes (B.S., computer engineering), Grisell Baullosa (B.A., art history), Arbella Herutha Bet-Shlimon (B.A., English), Mark Andrew Blanchard (B.S., civil engineering), Tristan Douglas Bligh (B.A., music), Katherine Davison Blizinsky (B.S., neurobiology), Jeffrey Ryan Bonar (B.A., international studies, general), Carlton A. Bronson (B.A., geography), Charlotte Renee Brown (B.A., social sciences, sociology), Clare Elisabeth Brown (B.S., botany), Clare Elisabeth Brown (B.A., anthropology), Amy Katherine Bruhn (B.A., political science), Jean Deborah Campbell (B.S., computing and software systems), Maria Tina Carter (B.A., sociology), Kathleen Alexis Cassidy (B.A., anthropology), Kathleen Alexis Cassidy (B.A., Scandinavian area studies), Eugene Bugay Cerdena (B.A., business administration/information system), Caitlyn Mary Clauson (B.A., business administration/marketing), Christian C. Clauson (B.A., political science, history), Kristen Marie Cole (B.A., art history), Robert H. Collins III (B.A., business administration/accounting), Julia Ramona Cox (B.A., interdisciplinary visual arts), Erin Marie Crawford (B.A., interdisciplinary visual arts);
I've about had it with the right-wing attempt to label anyone opposed to our invasion and occupation of Iraq as unpatriotic.I received an email the other day linking support for our troops-along with loyalty to God, our country and home-with wearing red on Fridays in an effort to show you support our troops. Gee, do you suppose the choice of red (think red states during an election) was a coincidence?The email I received is sprinkled with words like dignity, class, prayer and love of country, implying that if you're opposed to our presence in Iraq you don't support our troops, let alone have the attributes of dignity, class or love of country.I'm tired of the Republican Right linking everything from patriotism to being a good parent with this debacle the Bush administration began and seems to have no clue how to resolve.The vast majority of us do love our country, and the invasion of Iraq notwithstanding, are proud of this nations' many accomplishments, both in peace and in times of war.
When you hear the words "Western Swing," you might think of Willie Nelson tunes, twirling full skirts and dancing cowboy boots. That is, unless you're a fan of professional drag racing. Then you think of the three summer drag races that occur in the western half of the United States, of which the recent Shucks Auto Parts NHRA Nationals at Pacific Raceways in Kent was one.Women have always enjoyed a somewhat equal footing to men when it comes to driving a drag car. Some say it's because they tend to weigh less, and one of the laws of physics is that it's easier to get a lighter mass moving. Others argue that women have faster reactions to the starting signals. The three NHRA championships of Shirley "Don't call me Cha Cha" Muldowney tend to prove that women can drive drag cars at the highest level.I had a chance to talk with two of the more prominent women - Top Fuel's Melanie Troxel and Erica Enders, who drives a Pro Stock Dodge Stratus R/T - competing in this year's POWERade racing series. Both drive for the powerful Don Schumacher Racing team, although in different classes of competition.
Hey, how about that good Christian man Mel Gibson?Remember a couple of years ago when he was all over the television talk-show circuit pro-moting his bloody movie about Jesus?He told anyone who would listen he wasn't anti-Semitic. His movie was simply a factual retelling, in vivid crimson, of the allegedly greatest story ever told.Nobody who read in depth about Mel (you know, read more than headlines and blogs) could really doubt that where there was anti-Semitic smoke there was fire. But his publicity people backed him up. He was a good guy, not a Jew-hater.For us here in the Great Northwest, the timing of Mel's drunken outburst to a cop who pulled him over in Malibu about 4:30 the other morning was made doubly pertinent because of the massacre at the Jewish Federation down on Third Avenue, where some whack Pakistani man from southwestern Washington is alleged to have walked around shooting unarmed female office workers at their desks. One poor lady died; five more, including a pregnant woman, were badly hurt.It's ironic and maybe, you think, disproportionate, linking some bigoted, drunken Christian actor's vile tirade against a whole people with a multiple shooting, but I firmly believe the two things are tied together by the simple thread of stupidity and cowardice.
A crowd is captivated as "action humorist" Leif Olson juggles fire during the Roosevelt Bull Moose Festival on July 29.
Jazz composer and French hornist Tom Varner, 49, moved with his wife and their two children to the Roosevelt neighborhood last October, after living in New York City for more than 20 years."I miss friends, and I miss people and musicians, but I don't miss day-to-day life [in New York]," Varner said "The day-to-day life in Seattle, frankly, is just wonderful."The French horn has been his instrument of choice since the New Jersey native picked it up at age 9. He started out playing classical music."I don't know why [the French horn] intrigued me, but it did," Varner said. "Then I just got the bug when I was 16 or 17."As a junior and sophomore in high school, Varner listened to a lot of jazz."It just seemed natural to me," he said. "I was drawn to the freedom."Then, after high school, he went on to study at Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio and the New England Conservatory in Boston. At that time, he took some lessons from legendary French hornist Julius Watkins, who inspired Varner to play jazz.