I had never paid much attention to my mouth before. It was simply a passageway where food went in and syllables came out. In fact, I thought my oral cavity was rather pedestrian - nothing like the signature chops of Jagger, Leno and Jolie.Not until the recent birth of my baby daughter, Neah, did I fully comprehend my mouth's distinctiveness. Everyone, and I mean everyone - from the nurse who helped with delivery, to friends and family, to strangers on the street - has commented on the fact that Neah's mouth looks just like Daddy's.Undeniably, she has an unusual mouth: her razor-thin lower lip framed by a full upper lip and a sunken chin. And it's precious. Never more so than when she protrudes her lower lip from her overbite in a signal of poutiness. But this gift, which was bequeathed by me, wasn't even on my radar.
As I was asking my children to write their Christmas wish lists out for me, I realized that it's been an awfully long time since anyone has asked me, The Mom, She Who Must Some-times Be Obeyed If You Don't Get Caught, and Fulfiller Of Christmas Dreams, to make a wish list for Santa. I decided it's high time Santa heard from me. First of all, I would like a Never Ending Supply Of Tape. I will designate a drawer in the desk for tape. This will become The Magic Tape Drawer. I will expect it to never empty of clear tape, masking tape, duct tape or that blue tape you use when painting. Then whenever the husband or one of the offspring comes to me in search of tape I will be able to point them to my magic drawer. I'm tired of telling them "I don't know" and "Did you look in the kitchen junk drawers?"Next, I'd appreciate it if you would make white chocolate one of the major food groups. Oh, and cause it to have negative calories. Don't worry about any other color of chocolate; I'm not greedy. Fixing the white for me will do just fine. Thanks.<
As Christmas draws closer, I've realized that I've been writing this column for close to 28 years. In that time, we've spun out quite a few stories about this, that and some other things. I hope they've amused you-sometimes made you laugh and sometimes even made you cry. I know they've had that effect on me.I also hope to continue to keep writing in this space for a while, so don't think that this is goodbye just yet.I want to take the time now, in the last "Ramblings" before Christmas, to say thank you to all of you who have enjoyed my scribblings, and to pass on as my Christmas gift to you the recipe for a pecan pie that is to die for.My wife and partner, the Lady Marjorie, has standing in the kitchen a bookcase that is four shelves deep. This bookcase is filled with cookbooks authored by some of the most acclaimed chefs in the country. The Lady Marjorie is no slouch herself when it comes to demonstrating her gastronomic skills in the kitchen."If the house ever catches fire," she told me sternly one day early in our marriage, "there is one thing I want you to rescue." It was a hint at her priorities. "On your way out," she said, "grab this cookbook."She handed me a thin, paperbound volume that looked almost like a magazine giveaway pamphlet.
Once upon a time there was a man named Bartleby. He was a good enough guy, though a little odd in the estimation of those who knew him.In fact, few did know him. Bartleby allowed no one close enough for that. His work colleagues knew little of where he had come from, couldn't really understand the decisions he made at work, and even his good-hearted supervisor was at a total loss when Bartleby slowly slipped out of life. Herman Melville's main character in the short story "Bartleby the Scrivener" has been dissected for decades by high school students and college students, with no real agreement over exactly what ailed him.But whatever else was wrong with him, it seems apparent that Bartleby suffered from the same malady that affects an astonishing number of us: he was lonely. And whether that loneliness was self-inflicted or caused by the carelessness of others, it was nonetheless a fact.Regardless of our status-single or married, old or young or inbetween, surrounded by family, believer, atheist or agnostic-we too are prone to such profound loneliness. At our core, we long to know and to be known. To be intimate. I believe this longing is fundamentally a desire for intimacy with God, the One who created us and designed us. We yearn to experience acceptance, forgiveness and unconditional love, and to know the One who reaches towards us in these ways.
The Two Bells tavern on Fourth Avenue, near Bell, was the epicenter of the old, pre-yuppie, Seattle outsider arts scene. Painters, musicians, writers and just plain bohemians once crammed the tiny (half as big as it is now) place, and owner Patricia Ryan was many a failing hipster's alcoholic and financial lifeline (including moi).The new Bells (Ryan passed away a few years ago) is still the home of some of this city's best burgers, and in amongst the lawyers and realtors some of the old guard still stand as tall as drink and age will allow.Tomorrow night, Dec. 14, many of the folks who rocked Seattle's pre-grunge and pre-Microsoft house will be gathered between 8 and 10 p.m. to honor painter David Kane.Kane, one of the more original local talents to put brush to canvas, is fighting a virulent form of cancer, and the Bells is the site of an exhibit of some of his earliest work - paintings that in some cases haven't hung in galleries for more than 20 years.If you like art, enjoy interesting people and want to do a good thing, drop by the Bells, say hi to David and maybe buy a painting after you have your burger and beer.<
Magnolia artist Brom Wikstrom will present a series of paintings celebrating the holiday season in an exhibit titled The Holiday Collection, with an opening reception set for 5 to 8 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 16, at the Arthead Gallery, 5411 Meridian Ave. N.At 21 years of age, Wikstrom-a Northwest native-suffered a swimming injury in New Orleans that left him paralyzed; after his rehabilitation at the University of Washington Medical Center he began developing a technique whereby he paints with a brush in his mouth, and he used this experience to create an arts program at Children's Hospital, for which he received arts commission funding.
Ever since (fill in the blank) left us, Seattle has never been the same.Some nostalgia buffs might stump for Frederick & Nelson; others, Ivar Haglund or Bob Murray's Dog House.In "Vanishing Seattle," Seattle writer Clark Humphrey has come up with more than 200 photos of past Seattle icons-both people and places-and provides an insider's commentary on what we've lost.The 128-page book is an ode to Seattle before it was so darned "livable." And expensive.As Humphrey notes, "Real estate hyperinflation helped obliterate the remaining vestiges of the city's more downscale past."Humphrey, editor of the Belltown Messenger, former staffer for The Stranger and retro Seattle hunter and gatherer, has linked up with Arcadia Publishing to produce the book. The cover shot sets the vernacular tone.The Dag's reader board on Aurora advertises Beefy Boy Burgers for 19 cents, the spindly, new Space Needle standing in the background. As Humphrey notes, one of the drive-in's slogans was "This is Dags ... Canlis is ten bucks north."Humphrey knows where the old Seattle sweet spots are.
When I began my new job on the first day of summer, I inherited a "Norman Rockwell's Wonderful World" 2006 calendar along with my cubicle. For the past month I've been glancing at a painting of a boy wearing a straw hat sitting on top of a garden fence, his trusty dog and his idle hoe by his side, staring longingly at a steam train passing in the distance. The painting is entitled "Boyhood Dreams.' I can relate, except for me it was planes, not trains.Since I was little, I've always stopped and looked up when I heard a passing plane. I'd wonder where it was going or where it was coming from. Did I know someone on the plane? Was someone looking down at me? Some afternoons while I was playing basketball in my backyard I would stop and wave to the guy in the low-flying propeller plane who did the rush-hour traffic reports for a local radio station. Since he never mentioned me on the air, I'm guessing he didn't see me. Unless there were so many children waving up at him every day he couldn't mention us all.
You could meet the Monster and never feel Monstrousness. He'd sit on his stool, resting a Budweiser on the bar top, Blondie, say, on the jukebox, and he might mention his job spraying paint on trucks. Two Buds later he might add, shaking his head, how he'd rented out his house and moved into his own garage to pay off his ex-wife. Rubbing the thin spot at his crown, pushing slipping glasses back up his nose, he'd nod to let you know what money meant to him. To the lawyers and detectives, he added that to his rationales. The money he paid for the sex, he put back in his pocket. And all the sex after that, of course, came free.Mark Prothero, Gary Ridgway's co-lead attorney, felt sure he'd get the call-up when the arrest broke. "You're the DNA guy," remarked a colleague. And Prothero, who'd grown up near Renton, knew his DNA. He'd educated himself into the most unenviable position in all Pacific Northwest law. In all humility he admits not seeing the Monster on their first meeting. Or the first score of times. "This can't be the Green River Killer!" he wrote of the man sitting at Kent's Regional Justice Center. "He's too small! He's too polite! He can't possibly have murdered forty-nine women...."He'd killed even more than that."Strewn through that gap in perception lie years of recounting the deeds of decades, years measured out in painstaking months, minutes. The Green River Killer featured no magic button to unscroll the enormity of his crimes.
Certain habits started in my youth have fallen by the wayside, including weekly attendance at mass, daily hoops play and believing every girl who smiles at me might become the (then-first) Mrs. Wilken.One habit I thankfully retain is reading an hour or two every day, in addition to newspapers and magazines. I 'm talking about books.My mother pushed me toward reading as a quiet (as a kid they say I was) older child who spent a lot of time by himself until the siblings started coming and the sports teams started opening up.I've been reading one to two books a week for more than 50 years, and I am extremely grateful to my mother and the nuns of St. Peter and Paul, Norwood (Ohio), for their early pushes.In addition to being a wonderful time-passer, reading, if pursued seriously, is an education in humanity.
If you love sing-along Christmas carols and wish it were the 1950s all over again, if you can't wait to put on that bright red sweater embroidered with the snowmen and Santas, you'll like Taproot's production of "It's a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play."The rest of you may want to take a pass.The production is, of course, based on the Frank Capra film that's become a holiday TV tradition. Each year, Jimmy Stewart moseys into our homes as the somewhat awkward but lovable George Bailey. He's a man whose acts of kindness and generosity lead him to unfulfilled ambitions but never bitterness. Life hasn't turned out as he would have wished, but he's blessed with a lovely wife and four adored children, and for that he is thankful. He tries to do his best, and generally succeeds except for one December when, through no fault of his own, his company's bank deposit isn't made and he's faced with financial ruin. Overwhelmed by this catastrophe and the potential disgrace, he decides that suicide is the only solution.But, of course, the heavenly powers don't want that to happen, so they send an angel named Clarence down to Earth to persuade George that he can keep on going. Clarence shows George just how important his life has been, just how much his acts have benefited others. George sees that it's true: life is indeed wonderful, and he doesn't want to lose it. He goes home to a Christmas celebration and the news that he is supported by friends near and far. Bailey is bailed out. All's well with the world.
You might call it a mission from God, but the Queen Anne United Methodist Church would like to lend a helping hand to a sister church in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans.Specifically, the congregation wants to send a truck full of church pews, crosses and other church furnishings to the St. Luke's United Methodist Church in New Orleans. The neighborhood church recently bought new furnishings, and the old stuff was stored in a garage next door. Like most of the Big Easy, the sister church was heavily damaged by water that rose to 8 feet, said Rev. Rody Rowe from the Queen Anne church. "So they lost everything."QAUMC initially posted an ad on Craigslist.com and figured that the old furnishings would sell for anywhere from $20,000 to $30,000, Rowe said. "We were practically giving it away."However, Queen Anne Methodist parishioner and Louisiana native Dana Ezell-Rabon said she got married in the southern state three months before Hurricane Katrina roared in. "So New Orleans was fresh in the minds of everybody," she said.
The Moyer Foundation raised nearly $500,000 at the fourth annual Evening for Erin, a live and silent auction held Dec. 2 at Seattle artist Dale Chihuly's private studio.The event benefited Camp Erin, the nation's largest network of bereavement camps for kids, which was created and funded by the Moyer Foundation. Camp Erin-which currently includes seven camps in five states-is a free, weekend-long camp for children ages 6 to 17 who have experienced the loss of a loved one.Due to the overwhelming success of Evening for Erin, the Moyer Foundation hit the $10 million mark in total dollars raised, which is allocated to over 100 different organizations that help children in distress.
Renée Harpe has given up.The mother of two daughters has shut down the Village Kidz Daycare she ran in the basement of her family home for nine years, she's sold the house on 32nd Avenue West, and Renée and her husband, John Harpe, are moving away from a neighborhood she's lived in since she was 4 years old. The reason? Five women from prominent Magnolia families spread what turned out to be false rumors that John was a pedophile who had sexually abused a 3-year-old boy at her daycare last March, according to Renée, who cries easily these days.Village Kidz was a licensed daycare where a maximum of 12 children could stay on any given day, and Renée said she had about 30 families as clients who dropped their kids off from time to time.It was one of those clients who called her about abuse rumors the last week in August, said Renée, who has a degree in early childhood education and had an unblemished record as a daycare operator.The caller said she'd heard that Renée's boyfriend had done something inappropriate to a child, Renée said. John's status was unclear because he and Renée had gotten married secretly last summer, added Renée, whose last name used to be Munn."She didn't have any details about the kid or what had happened," Renée said of the woman who called her about the abuse rumors. But the allegation had spread by then-including to one of Renée's clients, who e-mailed the Magnolia News in September asking if the paper had heard anything about the allegations.
He's been the subject of intense criticism from everyone from animal-rights activists to community groups upset with plans for their neighborhood.On the flip side, Seattle Parks and Recreation Superintendent Ken Bounds has been praised for-among other accomplishments-his leadership in helping the $200 million Pro Parks Levy pass in 2000.But after working in city government for almost 31 years-10 of them as Parks superintendent-56-year-old Bounds has announced his retirement at the end of next February. "It's time to move on," he says.And it's not a case of Bounds getting burned out as point man for seemingly unending controversies at the Parks Department. "I want to do something else," he said in his small office at Parks headquarters on Dexter Avenue."I've had three great careers with the city," said the recipient of the 2001 National Recreation and Parks Association Rose Award for management. The positions included a stint at the Office of Policy and Planning that began in 1976, a 1981 move to the Office of Management and Budget, where former Mayor Charles Royer appointed him budget director in 1989. Bounds landed a job as Deputy Parks Superintendent in 1990 and was appointed superintendent in 1996. He also survived an extensive purging of department heads under newly elected Mayor Greg Nickels in 2002.