"My life is the poem I would have writ," Thoreau wrote. "But I could not both live and utter it."John Doty, 78, to a remarkable degree, has been able to both communicate the perennial values to his students and to live them. Whether he is talking about his life or politics, truth and common human decency, it's clear his words come from a deep place.Doty taught English at Queen Anne High School for only four years in the 1950s, but he made an outsized impact on many of his students there in his role as self-described "Dutch uncle."That role meant respecting his students enough to teach them to think for themselves-a precious gift for kids at a vulnerable age.Decades later former students have told him he helped change their lives. He has stayed in touch with a number them.
Chances look good that a new QFC will replace the Metropolitan Market on Upper Queen Anne Hill after the Met Market's lease expires in January 2008.But the specialty grocery store will continue to have a presence in the neighborhood, thanks to the company's purchase of the Larry's grocery store at the bottom of the hill. The deal closed at midnight on Thursday, Aug. 31, said Terry Halverson, president and chief executive officer of the grocery chain.Reached on his cell phone as he supervised the taking of inventory at Larry's on Thursday night, Halverson declined to provide the terms of the purchase agreement because of a confidentiality clause. "We felt like we got a fair deal, and we're happy with that." Halverson was clearly jubilant about adding a new store to the chain. "We got Larry's," he said. "It's number six for us." Besides the existing Queen Anne store, there are Met Markets in West Seattle, the Admiral area, Sand Point, Dash Point and Proctor, which is in the Tacoma area. The Larry's name will stay in place for a while, but the grocery will eventually be renamed a Metropolitan Market, Halverson said.He and his staff face a lot of work at the store. "We're hoping to completely remodel it," Halverson said. "We've got quite a few things to do."
Movie magic goes on every day on 15th Avenue West at Victory Studios, a pioneer in high-definition video. And with tens of millions of dollars' worth of equipment, nine editing rooms, a core staff of around 52 and hundreds of freelancers, the business keeps pretty busy, says Kurt Horn, director of operations. They do it all, too, from production to post-production, he said.But the focus used to be narrower, said Mark MacDonald, president of the company. "We used to be purely post-production only." Conrad Denke, who founded the company with his wife Laura, said he felt the community needed a place for post-production services where people requiring the services wouldn't have to worry about having their clients stolen by the post-production company, MacDonald said.That was in the early 1980s, when video started to hit the scene. Denke was one of the first in Seattle to embrace the electronic medium in favor of film, MacDonald said. "He's a visionary."It was an ahead-of-the-curve change for Denke, who originally started out in 1978 as a filmmaker in a small house in Ballard. The company, American Motion Pictures, was behind the award-winning "Tunnels Under Chicago" and an award-winning film on soil surveys commissioned by the Weyerhaeuser Corporation, according to the company's Web site.The foray into video led to the formation of the American Video Laboratory, which moved to its present location in a building that used to be a military-induction center, MacDonald said.
Seattle Weekly's ex-editor-in-chief Knute Berger has penned his final Mossback column, my favorite alt-news column for years. His brand of honesty has been my weekly city-roundup fix. And, for one thing, I love my fixes. Giving up Mossback will be difficult. And there's no hard and fast detox for it, either.But anyone who's met him might have predicted the tone his last column would likely assume. For he is, and I mean no disrespect, the epitome of old-school Seattle. And not even the opportunity to give a few final words of hopefulness to a captivated audience could lift him up past this lean toward pessimism, a trait I find in many that have grown up here and now must endure the city's growth spurts while they struggle to make themselves feel safe.Maybe, in the long run, it's less painful to have a city like New York as a reference point, where the land was pulverized into the maximum per-capita square footage in terms of living space way before I was born, and where one grows up to believe a city will never, ever be anything other than noisy, intense, addicted and problem-riddled.
I am a firm believer that you do not know the city you live in if you drive more than you bus and walk.You may know your favorite areas, or the denizens of the blocks around your work and home. But that is not really knowing a city.One of the reasons I failed at suburban living was that there were very few places to walk, very little bus service outside of rush hour and very little of interest to see.But even with the condo-ization of parts of Lower Queen Anne and the rest of the city, Seattle is still bubbling with rude, interesting life one can see while walking and busing.Here are a few of the things I've seen recently.
Two boys showed up at my door yesterday to see my son. I welcomed them in and noticed something im-mediately about each of them. They had these things stuck in their ear lobes. Shiny things. "Hey, did you guys know you have, um, things, metal things, stuck in your ear lobes?"They regarded me with wide-eyed surprise, and both of them put their hands up to their lobes to feel the earrings that have pierced their flesh. One kid had little loops and the other one had a blue disk of some sort that was actually stretching itself a nice hole in his ear. "Oh, uh, huh. Ha ha," they responded slowly, not quite sure how to take my comments. "Chris!" I yelled to my son, "your friends have been pierced by metal objects - get me the pliers so I can save them!"Chris just snorted at me from the other room. He knows me by now, so he was pretty certain his pals were in no imminent danger of death. Although if he'd brought me the pliers, they might have been. Have you noticed that more and more kids, and when I say kids, I mean the offspring of parents other than myself, are putting more and more metal items in their ears, noses, lips, chins, eyebrows, tongues and other places best not mentioned in a family newspaper?
"Fantasy worlds and Disney girls, I'm coming back."- the Beach BoysIf you're a child of the 1950s, or even if you watch a healthy amount of TV today, you're probably aware that this is the year Disneyland, the theme park, celebrates its 50th birthday.The Magic Kingdom-"the happiest place on Earth"-has turned the corner on its way to 100. (Although he'll never make it himself, can you imagine Willard Scott, or someone like him, showing a picture of the Fantasyland castle and a circling Tinkerbell on the front of a jar of Smucker's jam?)Like me, you might first have become aware of Disneyland huddled around a television some time in 1955. We were watching the weekly hour-long program that Walt Disney had put together to publicize not only the product his movie and animation studios were putting out, but also the amusement park he was building in southern California.Those old black-and-white televised images showed us episodes of The Adventures of Davy Crockett, Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck cartoons, or rehashed Fantasia segments. Then there was Walt Disney himself, showing us drawings of the park he was carving out of the orange groves on 180 acres in Anaheim, Calif.The films of the park construction I liked the best were the sped-up shots of orange trees disappearing, bulldozers racing around, construction workers scurrying about like ants, and the old-time steam railroad and the fairy castle appearing in mere minutes.I was living in a suburb of Chicago in 1955, and one of the temptations my parents used to break the news that we were moving again, in less than a year, was that this time it was to southern California. I could go to Disneyland.
"Fantasy worlds and Disney girls, I'm coming back."- the Beach BoysIf you're a child of the 1950s, or even if you watch a healthy amount of TV today, you're probably aware that this is the year Disneyland, the theme park, celebrates its 50th birthday.The Magic Kingdom-"the happiest place on Earth"-has turned the corner on its way to 100. (Although he'll never make it himself, can you imagine Willard Scott, or someone like him, showing a picture of the Fantasyland castle and a circling Tinkerbell on the front of a jar of Smucker's jam?)Like me, you might first have become aware of Disneyland huddled around a television some time in 1955. We were watching the weekly hour-long program that Walt Disney had put together to publicize not only the product his movie and animation studios were putting out, but also the amusement park he was building in southern California.Those old black-and-white televised images showed us episodes of The Adventures of Davy Crockett, Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck cartoons, or rehashed Fantasia segments. Then there was Walt Disney himself, showing us drawings of the park he was carving out of the orange groves on 180 acres in Anaheim, Calif.The films of the park construction I liked the best were the sped-up shots of orange trees disappearing, bulldozers racing around, construction workers scurrying about like ants, and the old-time steam railroad and the fairy castle appearing in mere minutes.I was living in a suburb of Chicago in 1955, and one of the temptations my parents used to break the news that we were moving again, in less than a year, was that this time it was to southern California. I could go to Disneyland.
I am not politically correct.But having said that, I am not some reactionary fool either, who hides a lot of racist, sexist drivel be-hind an allegedly independent viewpoint.I do not always blame white men for every prob-lem in the world, though, and that's a practice which is popular in these precincts. I noticed during the run-up to our bogusly declared but all-too-real police action in Iraq that Colin Powell and Condi Rice were way on board with Dubya, especially the Condster, who happens to be a woman and an African American.On the other hand, I am not some allegedly Conservative throwback who calls talk radio shows and spews hatred about "them": e.I have said in this space that I am pro-woman and pro-black, since those two categories encompass the two daughters I single-parented in their teen years.I learned more about women while watching them negotiate high school, dating and the service-kidjob market than I learned in all the romantic relationships of my life rolled together.I am totally in support of gay marriage. As a divorced heterosexual man, I want my gay brethren to suffer too.Let them marry is what I say. Hell, make them marry.
A couple of weeks ago a reader angered by publisher Mike Dillon's Aug. 16 editorial titled "Impeach President Bush" telephoned and left a message several minutes long. (He had to leave a message because at the time he called no one was in the office to pick up the phone. You know... lunch?)At the outset he declared, with a bewildering sense of "Gotcha!" that apparently we were "afraid to hear from anyone who disagreed" with us because we "make it so hard for anyone to get in touch with you."This was strange, not least because here was the man, emphatically and at great length, in touch with us.Stranger still because how can we be construed as making it hard to reach us? The address of the paper's office is right there in the masthead on page 4 and, in all but a very few issues, in a box on page 5, the other designated Opinion page, announcing in large type that "The News welcomes Letters to the Editor."
A couple of weeks ago a reader angered by publisher Mike Dillon's Aug. 16 editorial titled "Impeach President Bush" telephoned and left a message several minutes long. (He had to leave a message because at the time he called no one was in the office to pick up the phone. You know... lunch?)At the outset he declared, with a bewildering sense of "Gotcha!" that apparently we were "afraid to hear from anyone who disagreed" with us because we "make it so hard for anyone to get in touch with you."This was strange, not least because here was the man, emphatically and at great length, in touch with us.Stranger still because how can we be construed as making it hard to reach us? The address of the paper's office is right there in the masthead on page 4 and, in all but a very few issues, in a box on page 5, the other designated Opinion page, announcing in large type that "The News welcomes Letters to the Editor."
I have many friends of the Baby Boomer generation, including professional women whose well-maintained good looks are essential to their careers. As far back as 2002, at least three of them called alerting me to a PBS-TV program entitled "The Wrinkle Cure" presented by Dr. Nicholas Perricone, a dermatologist. I had seen part of the program but did not pay much attention at the time; being blessed as I am with a good English complexion, wrinkles were of no great concern, and if any made their appearance in the future, they would be well earned and accepted. The program, however, did solve my Christmas gift problems. That year I presented all three of my special friends with Dr. Perricone's bestselling book, also entitled "The Wrinkle Cure."I went on with my carnivorous lifestyle, enjoying my juicy steaks and good old English roast beef with all the trimmings, slapping generous quantities of butter on most things, lots of good Scottish shortbread with my afternoon tea, and lattes and Danish in between. I must admit to being a bit impatient with my dedicated vegan and vegetarian friends when we dined out. All this changed in 2003 when one of the special three came to stay at my house, looking radiant and bringing along her well-used Perricone library, now including "The Perricone Prescription." My friend was seriously committed to the Perricone program and insisted that I read the latest book.
'Put your hands up' for, in this case, the hip-hop group Common Market.
Sorry to lead with the weather again, but it's unavoidable! At Pier 66 on Aug. 25, under a gorgeous blue sky, the first annual Greater Queen Anne Chamber of Commerce Sounds of Summer cruise got underway. Led by executive di-rector Margaret Irvine and her crew, the event boasted three bands, gourmet food by Queen Anne area res-taurants, unusual auction items and spectacular sunset views.Around 140 Chamber members and friends climbed aboard the Argosy's Lady Mary and showed their support for local charities as the evening gave way to the auction. There were some great items from the likes of Nirvana and Jamie Moyer, and a murder-mystery evening with Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske in Bayview Manor's penthouse suite.
Ken Bruen, an Irishman out of Galway, is two writers.He has a series of books about some semi-washed-up Irish private investigator which, despite critical acclaim, feature that worst sin of the "tough guy" writer: violence that doesn't seem even half real to someone who has been punched in the nose a few times.But Bruen's writer number two is the best "noir" guy going on the British side of the Irish Sea (after the incomparable Bill James, whom I've endorsed here before) when he moves his action to London and dumps the overwrought  P. I. Jack Taylor for two nails-hard British cops named Brant and Roberts.There are three Bruen books you want to get a hold of .