When two members of the Seattle City Council approved a storm-water management facility in the middle of a Madison Valley residential neighborhood on April 20, a single hand victoriously pumped the air. Though the display of emotion could have been out of place in city hall, it couldn't have been a more appropriate reaction for Barbara Lynn. "It's been a long haul," she said. "A lot of effort, work and a lot of sweat and tears went into getting to the point where we can fix it. It's been a serious concern for the people that live in the valley." Lynn's house was one of 30 along 30th Avenue East in Madison Valley that was filled with raw sewage and rain water during a flash flood in August 2004. After many houses filled with up to 4 feet of murky liquid, 30th Avenue was flooded as manhole covers burst open from the street. "The current was so strong that you had to hold hands when you walked across the street so you didn't get swept away," Lynn said. As the neighbors gathered at each other's houses to stay dry, they did the only thing they could think of. "We started organizing even when the rain was falling," Lynn said.
We've all heard people ranting about the Internet, how people spend hours sitting in front of a monitor and how it brings pornography into the home.Like most issues, there's some truth to this harangue, but generally it's the prattle of people who resist change. Let's look at these Chicken Little cries of panic. Did anyone complain 40 years ago about someone, a child or an adult, sitting in a chair, or lying on a couch, and reading Yeats all day long? I'm guessing not, unless it was some mouth-breathing illiterate who thought their time would be better spent at the local tavern discussing sports or picking potato bugs.If you're old enough, you've heard the stories about the Sears Roebuck catalog making a trip to the outhouse. Playboy magazine, once the scourge of evangelicals, started publishing in 1953 to become one of the world's highest selling publications. They weren't sold in candy stores; if boys found them, it was under dad's pillow. Their generation needed only a pencil drawing, and a brilliant imagination to wander off the path.It seems that every generation rejects what the younger generation embraces, whether it's comic books, the telephone, radio, television, automobiles, calculators or computers. New advancements become the scapegoat for the ills of society, when in fact the ills of society have nothing to do with technology, and everything to do with human nature, parental skills and our inability to govern ourselves.
Last week, during one of the nicest stretches of evenings of the spring, north Capitol Hill neighbors were invited to view plans and discuss details pertaining to the proposed Ebsworth Chapel. It would be a vast understatement to say that they did not like what they saw. The chapel is intended to be built at 1700 17th Avenue East, at 3.7 acres the largest single-family lot in the city. The property was previously owned by the late James Widener Ray. The heavily wooded and heavily sloped property, which abuts Interlaken Park and Louisa Boren Park, was purchased for $6 million in March by Barney Ebsworth for the purpose of locating a chapel he was unable to build on the Eastside. According to Ebsworth's spokesman, the chapel is intended to be a gift to the community from a man who recognizes his great financial good fortune and wants to give something back. Ebsworth Chapel is, according the official brochure, meant "to establish an Anglican chapel in an urban setting that utilizes outstanding architectural design and provides a place of meditation and contemplation."But for the neighborhood the chapel represents a vanity project by a man who doesn't even live in Seattle and saw his previous choice for a location scuttled by Bellevue neighbors who opposed it for the same reasons they do: increased traffic, parking issues and impacts to the environment as well as the community.News of the chapel project has brought forward a unified front of profound neighborhood opposition, views voiced during three open houses at the property on May 16-18. Roughly 25 people attended each night. No one present spoke in favor of Ebsworth Chapel:"Do you think we'll just roll over quickly?" asked one woman."Why not build it at Barney's house?" asked another."Everybody here wants this thing out of the neighborhood. We will figure out a way to stop you," said one man.
I read recently that 101 new billionaires were made in the last year and simple math will tell you that to make a billionaire you must lose some millionaires. The system does not add money to make up for the money sucked up by billionaires. So, as fewer people end up with more money, someone has to starve at the other end.The oil companies have reaped billions on inflated prices and some of their executives are walking away with hundreds of millions of dollars of retirement money. You could call it hush money to make sure they are so wealthy they can't be bribed of their dirty secrets.This is the backdrop for the real story that we don't read about as much: homeless camps are cropping up all around us, and we act as though its natural. This has not happened since the great depression and should not be happening at all in the richest nation in the world.Something is getting rotten to the core in America. Something in the heart of our system is broke, and I believe issues like Immigration and the Iraqi and Afghanistan wars may be distracting us so much that we don't hear the wheezing gasp of a sick and dying democracy.
Legendary trumpeter, singer-songwriter and yes, father-ambassador of the African sound, Hugh Masekela, came to town in early May and stole hearts, if they hadn't already been long lost to him. The signature sound of Masekela's trumpet and his leathery, sweet but no-nonsense voice graced the Triple Door, Seattle's downtown venue that allows you the intimate illusion of being played to personally.It is impossible to categorize Hugh Masekela's music, but once you have heard it, you will never mistake it for someone else's work. It is not just jazz or African jazz or world music. These titles are inadequate and limiting. Is he more of a trumpeter than a singer? His horn playing is instantly recognizable and on a par with the likes of Wynton Marsalis, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis and Louis Armstrong. But equally distinctive is his voice - soft like kid leather, raspy but rich and incredibly sexy. Perhaps it is the two together; Masekela switches between them seamlessly mid-song, hanging his horn in the crook of his arm.Those looking to hear favorites were well satisfied. "Stimela," the soulful song of the slow coal train, painfully recalls the exploitation of miners and is symbolic of South Africa's darkest days. "Grazin' in the Grass," the 1968 hit that launched Masekela into mainstream America and District Six; a tribute to the underground scene where many African musicians, including Masekela, cut their teeth were also played. Masekela's sound was nurtured during an innovative musical period of the late 50s in Johannesburg, South Africa. The Western Jazz styles of Armstrong and Gillespie and others were familiar and admired, but local musicians radicalized it and infused it with a distinctly African flavor making it their own.If I am sad about one song's absence it was "Politician," but it was somewhat made up for with "Bring Him back Home," which refers to Nelson Mandela, a song accepted in his native country as an anthem for justice.
The Beacon Hill News/South District Journal won three awards in the Society of Professional Journalists-Western Washington Pro Chapter's 2006 Excellence in Journalism Competition. The investigative team of Beacon Hill News & South District Journal editor Erik Hansen and Magnolia News editor Rick Levin took first place in the Social Issues category for their multiple-part series "Work wanted: America's unknown labor." The four-part story previously earned a second-place, Washington Press Association "Communicator of Excellence" award in the editorial journalism for non-daily newspapers category. The series ran in successive issues of the Beacon Hill News & South District Journal from Oct. 26, 2005, to Nov. 16, 2005. It focused on the predominantly Latin American immigrant culture in Seattle that utilizes the Seattle day-labor organization CASA Latina.
A Somewhere In Time Unlimited (SWIT) Spring Event styled after a shopping spree in a country village followed by an elegant English tea was set for the end of April. The weeks before an SWIT event are always fun, what with sorting costumes finding the right hats and accessories, and people dropping in to borrow hats, gloves, bits of lace, ribbons or shoe buckles from my collection accumulated over the years.April 30 started bright and clear, but by the time we had been laced into our corsets, adjusted our numerous petticoats and secured our bustles, the rain was pelting down. Undeterred, we replaced our parasols with umbrellas, covered our fancy hats and went out to join the other SWIT members at Elizabeth and Alexander's English Tea Room in Bothell.The rain continued, but we arrived safely at the very English Victorian tearoom to find the elegant ladies and gentlemen already enjoying their afternoon tea. Several of the ladies were wearing costumes of decidedly nautical flavor and accompanied by a gentleman in full naval uniform. On enquiring I found his persona to be a Yankee clipper ship captain, which was quite appropriate since the clipper ships had a great deal to do with the English tea trade.
Some people have a bear story to tell; Betty Negro has six.Negro (pronounced nay-groh) encountered five of the bears on fishing trips, but it's the sixth that is most memorable. As she drove through Yellowstone National Park, a bear suddenly appeared in front of her car. The collision killed the bear, cracking the car's radiator.Fog, fire, wild snowstorms and rainstorms, a cattle drive of longhorn steer-Betty has driven through them all. She was always the one behind the wheel, while her husband Jim sat beside her in the passenger seat. "Jim never drove because of his poor eyesight," Betty explained. "He used to call me Barney Oldfield, after the famous race car driver."Betty and Jim took many trips together after they both retired in 1970. They went to Hawaii 12 times, and visited Reno twice a year. "I never gambled more than I could afford to lose," she says. "Once I won $1,200 on the slot machines."They traversed Canada, and often visited Jim's family in Wyoming (where she and the bear so fatefully met). Jim was interested in the history of the Wild West, and they visited many museums and historical sites along the way, including "all the forts" and Custer's Last Stand. "We never made reservations," says Betty, "and we took some unbelievable detours."
Paintings and three-dimesional masks lined the halls of McClure Middle School, welcoming teachers, students and parents to McClure's sixth annual "Lure of McClure" on Thursday, May 18. The artwork, designed by McClure students, was just one of the creative elements that made up the McClure event.Created by Principal Kathy Bledsoe, the "Lure" allows children to perform their original poems, film and short stories in front of members of the community, including parents and teachers. Each room at McClure was designed to showcase individual talents, including a film festival, music room and poetry slam.In the gymnasium, balloons scattered throughout the room as parents, kids and teachers gathered to watch each child's performance. Both the advanced and intermediate bands from McClure and Catharine Blaine K-8 also performed. Children watched each other excel in different events. Band students watched the poetry slam, clutching their instruments and awaiting their own performance. After the slam, the intermediate band, composed of sixth-graders (and one seventh-grader) performed two songs they had practiced for months. The band recently visited Disneyland and won fourth place for their performance.The Writers' Stage and Poetry Slam were sponsored by Writers in the School, a literary program that houses local professional writers for yearlong residencies.
I've got an appointment with a dental chair and some very sharp pointy metal things this morning. I'm not looking forward to this experience because I have a healthy fear of all things painful. This activity ranks very high on my Pain Meter.I mentioned to the dentist that I would like to have nitrous oxide while having my teeth cleaned. He blinked. Then blinked again. "But cleanings aren't painful, just uncomfortable at times," he said. "I'm sorry," I said, "but I subscribe to Medical Terminology for Dummies and have the great tome, 'How To Understand Your Doctor's Secret Code.' So I know for a fact that when you say something 'may be uncomfortable,' in the next couple of seconds I'll be trying to leap from my chair to smack you repeatedly about the head and shoulders with your own dental drills."His eyes went wide, and there were some hemmings and hawings, and his eyebrows were raised up over his eyes.I've been there. I know what goes on in the dentist's chair. This is why I haven't been there since I lost my last baby tooth. My Pain Avoidance System is in full operational order.
We've all heard people ranting about the Internet, how people spend hours sitting in front of a monitor and how it brings pornography into the home.Like most issues, there's some truth to this harangue, but generally it's the prattle of people who resist change. Let's look at these Chicken Little cries of panic. Did anyone complain 40 years ago about someone, a child or an adult, sitting in a chair, or lying on a couch, and reading Yeats all day long? I'm guessing not, unless it was some mouth-breathing illiterate who thought their time would be better spent at the local tavern discussing sports or picking potato bugs.If you're old enough, you've heard the stories about the Sears Roebuck catalog making a trip to the outhouse. Playboy magazine, once the scourge of evangelicals, started publishing in 1953 to become one of the worlds' highest selling publications. They weren't sold in candy stores; if boys found them, it was under dad's pillow. Their generation needed only a pencil drawing, and a brilliant imagination to wander off the path.It seems that every generation rejects what the younger generation embraces, whether it's comic books, the telephone, radio, television, automobiles, calculators or computers. New advancements become the scapegoat for the ills of society, when in fact, the ills of society have nothing to do with technology, and everything to do with human nature, parental skills and our inability to govern ourselves.
I've been chatting with folks who live and work on Magnolia Hill-informally, and with assurances of anonymity, at least for now. I'm looking into issues that are bugging residents and business owners.I promised these subjects that I will be back for a proper interview at a later date, and then we'll have attributions with quotations. "Fair enough," they say.A couple business owners independently brought up a common issue: their perceptions of a hill divided along economic lines. "Do you know poverty exists on Magnolia?" one soul asked.
These days it's no surprise to see child care and youth programs full of kids. Many of these kids come from families where both of the parents work. Caregivers, teachers, nannies and other youth workers are essentially raising children who come from those families.In other cases, kids' own peers are "raising" them. They spend most of their time with friends, trusted to take care of themselves until one of the parents arrives home from work. What I see is that many kids spend a good deal of their time alone. When I say alone, I mean without their parents or anyone from their family. The parents may spend some time with their kids, or perhaps take them on a long vacation every now and then, but for the most part they are absent from their childs' lives. My parent's divorced when I was 12. After this separation, my mom went back to work. Up until then she had been working primarily from home, running her own businesses on the side.Suddenly, as if my world hadn't been turned upside down enough already, my mom (and dad) disappeared from my immediate world. I can look back now and see that my mom has come a long way as a single mother, working as hard as she could for us. I have a lot of respect for single mothers.
I've just finished performing for 200 people at the Market Theater in downtown Seattle. The mere fact that I've managed to convince dozens of theater directors, as well as writing conference, university, corporate and fundraising boards, that a staged reading from one of my books can and will hold the attention of a theater-going audience is cause for celebration. But tonight I cele-brate much more: Both Bronx-born Jackie Leone, the actress I work with, and I "nailed it," a feeling that comes after you have practiced and practiced at something and just shown the world your best work. The high reminds how alive you really are. And it's fleeting.Anyway, after the performance, I'm standing in the lobby signing copies of my book, when a gray-haired-balding-on-top-pony-tailed man approaches. You know the kind of faded, middle-aged, ex-hippie I'm talking about. And this is what he, in my moment of celebration, chooses to say to me: "You need to speak from lower in your diaphragm. I used to work in theater, you see, and I think...."
There are days in this life where you wake up and something happens and you realize, instantaneously, that you don't really understand other people.The surprised husband, when his wife tells him she wants a divorce, is a staple of soap-opera-ish fiction, but it has happened a lot in so-called real life, too.You suddenly understand that this person you thought you knew, and understood better than anyone else on earth, is at some deep level a stranger to you.On a more global scale, these things happen to me some days when I pick up a newspaper and read an article purporting to be what you, my fellow Americans, are thinking.I spend the rest of the day - whether it is on Queen Anne's generally pacific streets, or up at Interbay bashing little white balls, or even over at Green Lake, perambulating around and around smiling giddily in the bright sunshine - trying to look into your eyes to see if you are one of the vacant ones, those eternally surprising co-Americans who, despite six years of news that has gone from bad to worse internationally - Iraq and now maybe Iran, budget surplus transformed into huge deficit, health care literally ripped from the hands of more than 50 million Americans - still support "our" President, the Pinhead.