Hypertension, or high blood pressure, has been called the "silent killer." Without symptoms, it can severely damage arteries and organs and lead to heart attack and stroke.Only in severe cases does hypertension carry warning signs - fatigue, confusion, changes in skin color - which is why healthy adults should have their blood pressure checked every one to two years. The Healthy Aging Partnership (HAP), a coalition of a coalition of 40 Puget Sound-area not-for-profit organizations dedicated to the health and well-being of older adults, recommends more frequent checkups for those with risk factors for heart or blood-vessel disease.Risk factors include: high blood pressure in the past; smoking; being overweight; diabetes; age (45 and older for men, 55 and older for women); and a family history of coronary artery disease and/or early fatal heart attacks.Blood-pressure tests measure the force of your blood against the walls of your arteries. With high blood pressure, that force is too strong and usually means the arteries have been narrowed by a build-up of plaque.
It's Monday morning, the clock says 8:58 and Carol is late for work. While looking for her car keys, she remembers she needs to make her lunch and rushes to the refrigerator. While picking up the sandwich meat she hears her email ding-dong and scurries to the computer to answer a message from her husband.While typing her response she recalls an auction she's bidding on at EBAY and hops on the Internet without finishing her email. Upon returning to the kitchen she sees dirty dishes in the sink. She begins to load the dishwasher, stops halfway and finishes making her sandwich, after which she resumes looking for her keys.Dishes half done, email unfinished, at 9:24 a.m. Carol runs out the door forgetting her briefcase and gym bag, as well as an important report for work.We all have days like this every once in awhile. Yet for Carol, such chaos is commonplace; her days are filled with missed appointments and forgotten tasks. Carol is among the approximately 4 to 6 percent of the population in the United Sates living with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).
Cafe Fiore-fiore, Italian for blossom or flower-at Third West and West Galer virtually bloomed Oct. 2 with the artist's reception and opening of the Anne Baumgartner Collage Exhibit, "Sing," which runs through Nov 1.Each of the individually and intuitively designed pieces brightens and greatly enhances the painted walls and woodwork and enlightens Cafe Fiore patrons with collaged colors and carefully chosen words, drawings, numerals, phrases or small found objects that spark and inspire thought and long, repeated contemplations. You will want to return at least several times to let these restfully stimulating beauties stir and reveal new reflections and considerations. I suggested to Cafe Fiore that they keep on permanent display at least three or four of these collages for customers to enjoy and revisit over their cups of brew and tasty treats.
I am off for my annual fall trip to Cincinnati.The old home keeps getting older, as well as its occupants. Principally my mom, who will be 88 next month!But I will file at least one column from the alleged heartland, where the populace in general is fatter and, in their professed support for Georgie, Dick the C. and Rummy, obviously fatter-headed.A recent report released by the FBI forced me to remember Li'l Georgie's about-face on the issue of Osama bin Laden. I'm sure you remember how our esteemed president declared war on terrorists and said he wouldn't rest until bin Laden was dead and buried.Then, within a year, when we couldn't find old Osama, Bush started claiming Osama wasn't important.Well, the FBI must be reading Georgie's manual on backtracking.Immediately after a report was released to the press noting that only 33 folks in the entire agency speak Arabic-you know, the language spoken by alleged terrorists held without trial in Cuba and points west-the FBI, 12,000 strong, which means 11, 967 don't speak any Arabic at all, claimed it is "not crucial to know Arabic."Must be why we did so well sniffing out the 9/11 terrorists.
The bell inside the old school building jangled last week as I drove past with the windows down and the Beach Boys on the CD player.I was able to continue on toward Magnolia a few more blocks before the craving became too undeniable. I stopped at the first ice cream store I came to.Here it is, the middle of October, and we're still getting clear, sunny, blue-sky days with almost 70-degree temperatures. Watch-by writing that, I've now cursed the weather gods, and by the time this appears in print we won't see anything but gray skies and rain from now until April.But a few days ago it was nice, and I pulled the minivan into a 31 Flavors ice cream shop. Inside were six uniformed scoopers, all standing at attention, and two customers: me and some electronics equipment repairman with his company truck parked outside.The franchise employees were an interesting lot as they stood before us, eager to scoop our choices. There was an older gentleman with a folding, company-logo paper hat over his salt-and-pepper hair; a woman who looked like everybody's mother from anyplace, USA; two high-school girls on a work-release program from the school day's final period; and, finally, the young franchise owner (who's just been to business management school) who was lecturing the new guy about inventory control.
The mid-term elections are upon us and, as you might have guessed, I have an opinion or two to share. I offer this to you with love from the left, and what I hope is a dash or two of common sense.We are faced with some confusing initiatives. I'll try to simplify those for your consideration.Initiative No. 920 does away with (no pun intended) the so-called state death tax. The voter's pamphlet states the schools will lose $184.5 million over the next two fiscal years due to this initiative. It also says the impact won't occur until the 2007-2009 budget period, giving the brainiacs in Seattle and Olympia time to find other revenue sources.We all want the best education for our children. And while we like to pick on millionaires, this tax seems unfair. It affects estates above $2 million, $4 million for couples, exempting property used primarily for farming.I earned my money and paid taxes. I paid taxes on the growth of investments, property taxes on my home and sales taxes. I find it repugnant that when I die, the government could tax all of that one more time if my estate reached the tax threshold, and with ever-increasing home values, many of us may get there.My inclination is to vote for this initiative. Let Olympia find a better way to finance education than going after a bereaved family.
Gioacchino Rossini was a master of opera buffo, concocting a structure on which other 19th-century composers modeled their comedic operas. Yet the humor in his "L'Italiana in Algeri" has successfully made the leap across the centuries from its 1813 première in Venice, Italy, to its Seattle Opera premiere last weekend."L'Italiana in Algeri" owes its ageless drollery in part to Rossini's music, which is brimming with patter, comic ensembles and a bubbly quality requiring a skillfully light touch by conductor and orchestra if it is to maintain its buoyancy. Edoardo Müller and his orchestra acquitted themselves admirably on opening night of Seattle Opera's production.Then there's the pickle into which Rossini throws his characters, a scenario that would be rather grim were it not for the absurdities he writes into it. The cruel Mustafà, the Bey of Rossini's fantasy of Algiers, is tired of his chief wife, Elvira, and commands that she wed his Italian slave, Lindoro. Mustafà announces to his servant Haly that he wants an Italian woman. Serendipitously, while the Italian Isabella, accompanied by her aging admirer Taddeo, is searching for her boyfriend Lindoro, her plane crashes in the desert and she is brought in chains to Mustafà.
"Thom Pain (based on nothing)," the one-man show now playing at Seattle Repertory Theatre, is not for the casual theatergoer. It's fodder for the intellectual, philosopher and sophisticate. A maybe for the cynics and misfits of the world, and a must-see for iconoclastic existentialists. So if you're looking for hope and optimism to rise out of despair, stay home and watch James Stewart in "It's a Wonderful Life." This theatrical experience will probably depress you with its ramblings about the futility of life and love. And if you're taking an anti-depressant, the one-act monologue should be a good test of its effectiveness. Written by Will Eno, "Thom Pain" evokes the American Revolutionary pamphleteer Thomas Paine in its title and follows in footsteps made by the Theater of the Absurd. Think Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" and Eugene Ionesco's "The Chairs," among others.This solo show, directed by Jerry Manning and performed by the talented Todd Jefferson Moore, unfolds like a manic stream of consciousness. There is no storyline, no coherence. Just a man with a short attention span, so distraught and disturbed he's unable to connect a premise with a conclusion. Sometimes it seems like a therapy session with the audience standing in for the therapist, while a schizophrenic shares the voices inside his head for 75 consecutive minutes. The play opens in the dark, with Thom trying to light a cigarette on the bare stage. The promise of things to come, he plays with the audience like a cat with a half-dead mouse. A few minutes into the performance, a man stands up and stomps out of the theater. But it's all part of the staging. Existential angst. A contrived exit that sets up the actor's line, "I'm like him. I strike people as a person who just left."
By the time Kay Stave was 8 years old, she knew what she wanted to be when she grew up: a surgical nurse. She used to cover her mother's card table with a tablecloth, neatly set out six spoons and "operate" on her cat.Her aspirations were reinforced a few years later when she fell out of a pear tree and broke her wrist. The doctor botched the casting job. She was convinced she could do better.Eventually she did become a surgical nurse, but not directly.Kay Hill was born in 1921 in Chilliwack, B.C., to Doris d'Ernée and Jack Hill. She had one older sister. Her parents were born in England and emigrated individually to Canada, where they met. Jack, a handyman, came to do odd jobs at the house where Doris was working as a housekeeper. Kay's father called her mother "Bunky."Jack and Bunky never had much money. When Kay was christened, they paid the minister with two hen turkeys. The family lived in a farmhouse with no electricity or running water.They moved to Seattle when Kay was 4 years old, first living in a houseboat on Lake Union, then two consecutive places on Dexter. Even though Kay's father was an unskilled laborer, he was always employed during the Depression.
You've finished all the books you feel like reading. You're tired of doing crossword puzzles each day. You're even a bit fed up with bridge. You could go for a walk, but it looks like rain and walking in rain is not your idea of good fun. You're bored and feeling quite useless and dull. What to do?Finding a causeRecently, I came upon one answer that might pull me out of the doldrums. The guest speaker at an Older Women's League meeting I attended a couple of weeks ago spoke about RSVP, an organization I had never heard of - although it has been around since 1971, when President Nixon established it after the White House Conference on Aging.I now understand my ignorance. At that point, I was still trying to survive motherhood and wasn't at all sure I would survive to be older, much less worry about being bored if I did reach antiquity. But survive I did, and now my armor of self-pity was being penetrated by her talk about RSVP and volunteering to suit yourself.
Afraid of things that go bump in the night? Don't worry - not once will you be exposed to the "Thriller" cat eyes of Michael Jackson or the hockey mask of a marauding Jason. I've even managed to keep ol' blemish-free Freddie Krueger safely buried away for the time being.My problem this week is in choosing the proper Halloween costume. The right lookIt seemed to be such a simple task only a few years ago: Just strap on your gun belt, load up your cap pistol with a new roll of caps (do kids today even remember rolls of caps?), pull on your Roy Rogers boots and hat, hitch your bandana up over your face and you were ready.Oh, you had to remember to take along a big bag, too.But then, one year, I got tired of being a cowboy, and Mom knew that she might be recruited to put in a lot of time sitting at her sewing machine if she didn't do something quick. We made a run down to the local five-and-dime store."Here's a bunch of nice costumes, Gary," she commented as she steered me toward the under-$5 display. "Here's a pirate. And a king. And how about a policeman? You could wear your cap-gun with that one."
The city's proposed "road diet" for Stone Way North has drawn mixed reactions in Wallingford and Fremont. The Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) wants to reduce the number of vehicle lanes from four to two, with a center turn lane. Bike lanes would be added, as well. The changes would take place between North 34th and 50th streets. In that stretch are four uncontrolled, marked crosswalks, meaning there is no traffic signal accompanying them: North 38th, 41st, 47th and 48th streets. If the road is not "dieted," the city would remove the four crosswalks."Based on the traffic volumes and lane configuration, if you look at the [federal] standards" for crosswalk placement, said SDOT spokesperson Gregg Hirakawa, "that configuration is not safe for a marked crosswalk."It would be safer, the city says, for pedestrians and bicyclists to cross three lanes rather than four.
Lions and tigers and pumpkins - oh, my!North End families are encouraged to get those costumes, strollers and trick-or-treat bags ready because more than 1,000 jack-o'-lanterns will light up Woodland Park Zoo from the South Gate Plaza to the Family Farm starting Friday, Oct. 27, through Sunday, Oct. 29. In collaboration with Bartell Drugs, the zoo's fifth-annual Pumpkin Prowl offers "three howling nights" of fun. Two sessions of "howling" are scheduled each night: 5 to 7 p.m. and 7 to 9 p.m., except for Sunday, which just offers the earlier session.The zoo will be filled with spooky Halloween fever as booths from various sponsors offer treats to young goblins, pirates and princesses.
Melanie Hendricks and her family can't get enough of the show "Ghost Hunters." The popular show on the Sci-Fi Channel sparked Hendricks' investigative spirit this past Friday the 13th so much that she organized her own search party. She and her family trekked to the Good Shepherd Center near their Wallingford home around 11 p.m. that evening, and what they encountered had them seriously startled."I don't really believe in ghosts," Hendricks said, "but I was a little creeped out that night." Her husband, Rand, toted his digital Olympus camera as the family was determined to capture some paranormal activity. A handful of their photos returned with orb-like figures, and a few others captured a floating white mass. "It was bizarre," Hendricks said. "In some of the photos, there was nothing; in others, there were these orbs and figures."
You've finished all the books you feel like reading. You're tired of doing crossword puzzles each day. You're even a bit fed up with bridge. You could go for a walk, but it looks like rain and walking in rain is not your idea of good fun. Call someone to go to lunch with? You're bored and feeling quite useless and dull. What to do?Finding a causeLast week, I came upon one answer that has me quite excited, the very thing that might pull me out of the doldrums. The guest speaker at an Older Women's League meeting I attended a couple of weeks ago spoke about RSVP, an organization I had never heard of - although it has been around since 1971, when President Nixon established it after the White House Conference on Aging.I now understand my ignorance. At that point, I was still trying to survive motherhood and wasn't at all sure I would survive to be older, much less worry about being bored if I did reach antiquity. But survive I did, and there I was feeling useless and thinking to myself, "Is that all there is? There isn't any more?" when my armor of self-pity was penetrated by her talk about RSVP and volunteering to suit yourself. So often I've tried helping out when I read of a need, but I've never had the opportunity to pick and choose what it is I like or what I do the best. Since there are 2,000 RSVP volunteers in more than 120 nonprofit health-care and public agencies in King County, I could surely find one or two that appealed to me.