The Queen Anne Community Council election is Sept. 20 7 p.m. at McClure Middle School.The following candidates have filed for positions on the Queen Anne Community Council board. There is still one more week before elections. If you live or work on Queen Anne, please contact Mike Warren at Mikew@Drizzle.com and you can run.
Two boys showed up at my door yesterday to see my son. I welcomed them in and noticed something immediately 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 sizable 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.
Questions over the legality of a preschool and a theater school in the Magnolia United Church of Christ have been cleared up for the theater group, according to Jeannie O'Meara-Polich, who runs the Magnolia Theater School of Drama. "They withdrew the violation for our theater," she said of the Department of Planning and Development (DPD).The problem was sparked last spring when a nearby neighbor complained about traffic and parking associated with the preschool and the theater school. There was also a question about whether either use was allowed in a single-family zone, said DPD spokesman Alan Justad.O'Meara-Polich was adamant that her drama school was an educational, not a commercial, operation, and she pointed out that amateur theater groups in churches are not that unusual.
As of July, the solid-waste division of Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) had all but eliminated any location except near South Corgiat Drive in Georgetown for a new truck-to-rail intermodal garbage-transfer facility.That's changed following comments at a series of three public meeting about the $70 million project, said solid-waste director Tim Croll. The Seattle City Council also had second thoughts about the Corgiat site, he added.Objections boiled down to "what-if" options that included not building a third site at all and instead expanding the existing transfer stations in Wallingford and South Park, according to Croll. Other options included taking another look at Harbor Island and at another Georgetown location on Edmonds Street. But the one suggestion for the facility that has taken many by surprise is the Burlington Northern Santa Fe rail yard in Interbay between the Magnolia and Queen Anne neighborhoods.
Improving your home's curb appeal doesn't require a guest appearance on a makeover TV show. Here are some tips from the experts at Magnolia Garden Center.Look at the 'before': Before you begin any project, stand back at the curb and take a fresh and objective look at the parking strip, the walkways and driveway, the front yard fence, wall or rockery, your lawn and foundation plants and the front door and porch.Assess your satisfaction with what you observe. If you see the need for improvement, ask yourself, "What's most important?" and "What can I invest in time and money to make some changes?"Don't overlook the curb: If your parking strip is devoid of fresh and healthy-looking plants, usually grass, consider an alternative. Small, curbside gardens have become very popular as a replacement to struggling lawn. Just remember: choose plants that hold up to traffic and neighborhood pets. Also, select plants that are primarily evergreen.
The new metropolitan ballroom of the Seattle Sheraton & Towers hosts the Queen Anne Helpline's Annual Fall Gala and Auction Oct. 1 at 5 p.m.This year the auction features the chance for a meet-Dr.-Phil package. In addition, you and three others could attend a live taping of the "Dr. Phil Show" at Paramount Studios in Los Angeles. To top it all off, you and your guests will have the unique opportunity to go backstage to meet the guy Oprah made famous. You will also receive an autographed book and have your picture taken with the psychologist, life strategist, author and celebrity we've all come to love and respect.My name is ...Here's your chance for a walk-on role on the Emmy award-winning comedy, "My Name is Earl." Have you ever wondered what goes into the making of today's hottest television shows? Now's your chance to be a part of the magic on a working set.Spend time watching all the action and even playing a part on this hit comedy. Who knows, you could be a star in the making. Your winning bid could be your lucky break!A week in Mexico, tooEverything from a week in Mexico in a beautiful hacienda-style setting to a bagpiper performance will be available.
Your child tells you he is being bullied at school.Do you:A. Advise him to ignore it?B. Ask what he did to provoke it?C. Tell him to hit back?D. None of the above.The correct answer is D.Children who are being bullied need their parents' support, says Brian Bailey, violence prevention supervisor at Youth Eastside Services. Start by acknowledging the courage it took for your child to tell you about the problem, he says.Make no mistake, bullying is a problem.Fear of being bullied causes thousands of children annually to miss school, and the stress can affect their academic performance and physical and mental health, not to mention leave lasting emotional scars.
The Starbucks Neighborhood Parks Program  held a  "Benches at Bumbershoot" auction on Aug. 31.More than  $23,000 was raised for area parks.The "Wired Basket"  and "Benchmark" benches (seen below) were sponsored by Bayview-Kinnear Park. They fetched a nifty $900. In total, 14 benches were  auctioned off; the funds were funneled directly to 11 local  parks and green spaces.
Caryl Churchill can raise more pithy questions in one short play than many playwrights can in a life's work.Churchill, in all her dramas, demands the audiences to think. She's not out to confound them. She doesn't play intellectual one-upsmanship. In straight forward, sometimes intimate little encounters, she manages to lay before her audiences contemporary moral issues for which there are no easy answers.And so it is with "A Number," now playing at ACT. Here the central topic of the play seems to be cloning but, of course, it's not as simple as that. In the play's single, 60-minute act, Churchill raises issues related to personal identity, nature vs. nurture, father and son relationships, the connections between brother and brother and the magic (or is it mischief?) of science.
You can take the Seattle Art Museum Film Series out of the Seattle Art Museum (to the Museum of History and Industry, till spring 2007), but you can't take film noir out of the series. Not if it's fall, and not if Greg Olson is bent on making a 29th year of it as curator of the nation's oldest annual celebration of noir, that cinematic belladonna that first bloomed in mid-1940s Hollywood and memorably festered well into the next decade. Olson is, of course, thus bent, and several hundred obsessive Northwest noiristes rely upon it.By this point Olson's ongoing inventory of "The Film Noir Cycle" has long since paid tribute to the cardinal noir titles (such as, last year, "Scarlet Street," "The Blue Dahlia" and "Cry of the City"). Now the series' agenda tends more toward mining unheralded gems and pushing the envelope: pushing the envelope in terms of both enlarging ticket-buyers' awareness of the myriad movies comprising this genre-that-never-was-a-genre, and of teasing out what can and cannot be defined as noir. In addition, each year's lineup now includes a title or two that postdate noir's classic, historical period (Orson Welles' 1958 "Touch of Evil" being generally regarded as the last word) and raise the question whether the crime films and thrillers of the '60s, '70s and beyond can be said to extend noir's heritage or profane it. (Semantic conundrum: Can the profane be profaned? Discuss amongst yourselves.)One other feature that distinguishes Olson's noir programming is that, whenever feasible, the curator seeks out 35mm prints, often from archives or private collectors.
It's September, and the papers are full of ads featuring school supplies in all the new styles. Some items should be purchased commercially like notebooks, paper, pens, pencils, calculators and Crayons. But when it comes to decorating the inside of their lockers, help your children be creative and express their magnetic personality with individual flair.
Fall is the time of year when people start thinking about stocking their larders - and with good reason. Just one trip to the back-yard garden yielded a bushel of perfect plums, and one can hardly visit friends or family without leaving with an armload of oversized zucchini. If you're like me, you dream of canning your own tomato sauce, but the reality of time, space and other distractions seem to get in the way. Not to mention the lack of room in the freezer, pantry and countertops. Here are some simple tips to help you make the most of your kitchen space and for creating and organizing a kitchen pantry.
Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Daniel Sheehan, a North Seattle resident for 11 years, has traveled all over the world, covering such stories as the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the breakup of the Soviet Union and the famine in Ethiopia. He lives in Phinney Ridge with his wife, Jana, and their daughters, Ema, 9, and Claire, 4."[Seattle] was a place that I always wanted to live," Daniel Sheehan said."This has been a great neighborhood," Jana Sheehan agreed. "It has the appeal, and we love the sunsets."The couple met in Prague, where Jana lived at the time. They took a late honeymoon last year to Paris."All we did was take pictures the whole time," Jana said.
We're steaming toward election season. In November, Americans across the country will go to the polls and either approve or reject the Republican Congress. And like all election years, the months before voting will be filled with fund-raising, campaigning and media blitzes. Going door-to-doorThe election season has become even more visible recently, and I caught wind of it while I was walking toward my morning coffee. I passed by two men in their 20s, adorned in identical blue shirts and equipped with clipboards. I noticed the logo on the back of their shirts and identified them as canvassers for the Democratic National Committee (DNC).I was in their shoes two years ago. In 2004, I spent three months working full-time canvassing for the DNC. While I was with them, we wore red shirts, not blue. I'm sure the red state/blue state map played a role in changing colors.
Recently, I asked one of my best friends, Marisol, what she thought of Fremont. She told me it felt like a small town, with everything nearby and everyone knowing everyone else, surrounded by a very big city. This observation came as a surprise to me, even though I've observed the same thing a dozen times before. Marisol, however, has none of my experience with Fremont. She's spent only one week in Fremont out of her entire life.Marisol Munguia de Sanchez came to visit at the start of September with her husband, Manuel Sanchez Schulte, and their son, Oscar Sanchez Munguia. Marisol and I became good friends in her hometown of Colima, located in Central-Pacific Mexico. She'd shown me her state, and after many years of friendship, I finally got to return the privilege, however briefly.From a tour of the Theo Chocolate factory to three trips on Lake Union - aboard the Fremont Ferry, a private powerboat and a Duck - I revealed Fremont as much as I could.