The fields are being prepped, the equipment cleaned and the snow and storms are, hopefully, leaving us. Kids are venturing out onto the fields with bats and gloves.It's time to move into Little League season.Magnolia Little League (MLL) currently is organizing for the 2007 season. While looking to the future, the league will take some time to examine and reflect on what role MLL plays in the community.According to Bill Olson, Magnolia Little League officially began roughly 21 years ago. "I think youth baseball had always been played in Magnolia," Olson said. "I think youth baseball was played in Magnolia more then 40 or 50 years ago. But the organization known as Magnolia Little League was started maybe three to five years before I became involved."There were 300 kids involved in baseball the first year, he added.Olson has been involved in MLL for 16 years, as a manager, a coach, an umpire, scheduler and former vice president for six years.
Of the many immigrants from Japan that have settled in Seattle, one couple named their son George.George studied forestry, then architecture, graduating in 1929 from the University of Washington, and later earned a master's degree at MIT. He left architecture in 1940; lived in Paris, Japan and India; was a friend of the renowned sculptor, Isamu Noguchi; and became a famous artist himself before his death in 1990.Can you name him? No, it wasn't George Tsutakawa; it was George Nakashima, who became an award-winning craftsman of fine but distinctive furniture.Author of The Soul of a Tree, first published in 1934, and innately attuned to the Japanese aesthetic, Nakashima's creations were a form of spiritual activity that relied on simplicity and revealing the beauty of nature's gift of wood.Last month, Sotheby's in New York held an auction of Nakashima's furniture. Nearly all items sold for tens of thousands-and some for hundreds of thousands-of dollars.Why relate all this? An Oregonian this month told me he once gave away several pieces of Dale Chihuly glassware; he was unaware of what he had. Now imagine owners that prize a container they possess but are clueless that what is inside is actually a priceless treasure. The latter case, I fear, applies to those of us who live here in Magnolia.
When you decide to sell your home or buy one, you will probably want a real estate agent to help you through the maze of barricades, traps and missteps that can loom in the offing. Some people may drive around and choose the agent whose name appears on the most signs. Some might look for the largest ad in the phone book, and some might just throw darts at the newspaper's classified real estate section.Checking with friends and finding a recommendation is a good way to find an agent. If none of your friends has a recommendation, then the sign trick might not be a bad idea. If an agent's name pops up more often than others in the neighborhood you like, then that person is likely to know the neighborhood, its amenities and special conditions.Do your homeworkDon't hire an agent you meet by chance or discover through advertisements or on the Internet without thoroughly checking their credentials, experience and practice.In fact, begin by doing your own homework. Learn the homebuying/homeselling process, from credit scores and mortgages to close of escrow. This information is available on the Internet, classes, seminars and counseling workshops. Learn about financing, your legal rights and how to evaluate comparable house prices. The more you know going in, the better you can work with an agent and the better your experience will be. If you are buying a house, be ready to tell your agent the kind of neighborhood you want, what size and style house you need and what amenities are absolute necessities and which would just be "nice to have."Find the right agent for youMake a short list of agents and check their credentials and practice through the Internet and official sources like the Better Business Bureau. Then make appointments with the ones you want to meet. Ask them personally about their experience, whether they work at real estate full-time, if they are available during regular office hours and how to reach them after-hours. Does the agent belong to a professional organization, like the Realtors, that have established standards of conduct? Has he or she won any professional awards or been recognized some way by his or her peer group?Does what he or she says square with what you learned in your research?Compatibility is important because you will spend a lot of time with your agent. Is this an agent that you feel comfortable to be around? Is this person a good listener who will hear you out before making recommendations? Does the agent have recommendations that make sense to you? Does the agent understand what outcome you expect?
Figuring out whether you're ready to buy a house - whether you're a renter or are aiming to move up or size down - can be a daunting task. But there are signs that will indicate whether you're ready to take the buying plunge. If you are thinking about buying, you're not alone. David Lereah, the National Association of Realtors' chief economist, said the housing market has reached a new plateau. "Over the last few years, it's become apparent that the level of home sales will generally remain at higher levels than what was common in the mid-1990s," he said. "The fundamental change is a growing population with a rising number of households entering the age in which people typically buy their first home. In short, we have the need, desire and ability for people to buy homes." Making the moveSo are you ready to make the move? You might be if you:
At least five times a day, I hear someone - either in frustration or condescension - say, "Well, I guess you just can't teach an old dog new tricks." It's been said and said again so often it is now accepted as an absolute, undeniable fact. I do believe that even many of us old dogs are convinced it's true.It's time we call "enough" to this disparagement. We must rise up and challenge those who would spread such rumors. We must start a campaign, possibly including a march on the Federal Building with banners and chanting our theme, "Old maybe, but we have the know-how." We might even invite The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to join our movement as certainly the statement is defaming old dogs as well as old people.
As Seattle's most dramatic windstorm in decades announced itself with sweeping power outages, the annual PONCHO holiday party managed to go on. Joseph Walter and Kathy Mares, on 36th Avenue, hosted the beautiful party for the dynamic board members who have helped make a difference in the Seattle arts community for more than 40 years. Llew Pritchard, Rose Dennis, Madrona neighbors Chloe and Lance Muller, Leigh and J.P. Canlis and artist Steve Jensen were among those who made it a success. Flashlights, candles and chutzpahStanding out in front of his wine shop, Fred Andrews tried to keep the retail light burning on Dec. 16. Too dark below at Madison Park Cellars, he ushered customers down his shop stairs with a flashlight so that they could purchase wines for dinners that would more than likely be canceled. The weekend before Christmas is typically the best weekend for retail sales during the year. This year, however, due to the power out-ages throughout Leschi, Madrona, Madison Park and Madison Valley, independent retailers opened their doors wherever possible and helped residents with whatever they needed.
A towering tree hangs by power lines in the 4200 block of East Garfield Street following the Dec. 14 windstorm.
As I write, the Seattle School District is defending its policy of race-based school assignments to the U.S. Supreme Court. This is a hot-button issue that has gotten Seattle mentioned throughout the mainstream media.The school district's official defense for its race-based assignments is that it "enhances students' education by introducing them to people with multiple backgrounds and points of view." That may be what the bureaucrats at the school district tell themselves, but for many of the people who actually felt the brunt of their policies, opinions are quite different.
At the first sign of snow, Madison Parkers have always known what to do: make a call to work and sound as distressed as anyone would be with 9 feet of snow on the ground (that Madison Street hill was impassable). This notion was bound to get you off the hook with the hill that had a slightly less elevation than the Matterhorn. Before cell phones, throngs of people waited to use the phone booth by the drugstore as they rehearsed their lines to company heads. Others skiied by, saying, "See you at the pub!" The Madison hill has provided many a day off through the years. Meeting people on the Ave as though we haven't seen each other for years is just one way to keep composure during a storm.
After nearly 40 years, John "The Flower Guy" at Bert's Red Apple has officially retired. John Gallen, 54, started working at Bert's in 1968 and quickly blossomed into a staple in the very community he's called home since birth. Gallen, born Jan. 17, 1952, start-ed at the ripe age of 15 as a box boy for Bert's Red Apple, and has done just about everything for the small, neighborhood grocery store. "I've been a box boy, a bag boy, a checker, a stocker and a manager," Gallen said. "I guess I found my calling selling flowers."The resident expertA Garfield High School graduate, Gallen is a true Madison Park native. He attended McGilvra Elementary School and Meany Middle School. Although he never formally studied botany or biology, Gallen is the resident expert among flower-seekers in the area. "Selling flowers has been a joy, because really nice people buy flowers," said Gallen, who himself favors the Busy Lizzie impatiens. "They bring happiness to just about anyone. Roses and tulips have always been the favorites, but I always try to pick the best flower for that particular customer."<
On a night plagued by tempest, the Madison Valley lost a beloved member of its community. Longtime resident Kate Fleming, 41, fell victim to a flash flood that roared down Dewey Place East, adjacent to East Madison Street, into her home. Fleming had gone down to her basement the evening of Dec. 14 to collect the audio equipment she had used for the recording and production of audiobooks. Fleming's home-based business Cedar House Audio is a local production company that specializes in audiobooks and spoken word. Fleming started the business after moving to Seattle from the Washington, D.C., area in the early 1990s. The flood that would eventually take Fleming's life trapped her inside her windowless basement, while firefighters worked to pry open the blocked door.
Who knew that the 6,000-some voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences would emerge as the collective voice of sanity in the run-up to the 79th Oscars?I'd begun to fear that this would be one of those Academy years bearing scant resemblance to the one I'd spent at the movies. The films I most esteemed had been getting the cold shoulder. Clint Eastwood's brave, complex, even radical "Flags of Our Fathers," although garnering mostly respectful reviews, had been counted out as a decisive box-office failure in the shadow of an increasingly unpopular war. As for the late Robert Altman's "A Prairie Home Companion," Hollywood sentimentality rarely extends to posthumous Oscars.Especially depressing were the nominations for the Directors Guild Awards, usually a highly predictive slate. Only two candidates - Martin Scorsese for "The Departed" and Stephen Frears, "The Queen" - deserved to be in the running. There were no slots for such strong directorial talents as Altman, Guillermo del Toro (for the dazzlingly original "Pan's Labyrinth"), Alfonso Cuarón (the hyperkinetic "Children of Men"), Paul Greengrass (New York Film Critics and National Society of Film Critics winner for "United 93") or Eastwood, who by then had checked in with a "Flags" companion piece, "Letters from Iwo Jima." Those who did make the DGA list instead included a very talented director, Alejandro González Iñárritu, who had turned in a seriously disappointing film, "Babel"; a neophyte team - Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, of the entertaining but lightweight "Little Miss Sunshine" - who weren't ready for prime time yet; and Bill Condon, the writer-director behind "Dreamgirls," a movie I hadn't seen at that point.A week or so before the nominations I did finally catch up with "Dreamgirls," which appeared to be edging "Babel" as front-runner for best picture. Musicals are not my genre, I freely admit, and Bill Condon had written the screenplay for the second-worst "best picture" ever, "Chicago" (though I prefer to attribute the egregiousness of that picture to director Rob Marshall; Condon's previous outings as a writer-director, "Gods and Monsters" and "Kinsey," were decent movies and then some).I enjoyed "Dreamgirls" more than I had been expecting, for a half-hour. The well-worn premise of a trio of game gals rising from amateur status by singing their hearts out is hard to resist; Motown surely warrants a decent movie made about it; and Eddie Murphy and "American Idol" champion Jennifer Hudson were just as splendid as everyone had said they were. But then the movie went off the cliff, with facile civil-rights-era references, rhythm-less camerawork and editing, and storytelling so perfunctory that it seemed less a film than memos from a story conference. The latter three-quarters of "Dreamgirls" scarcely attempts any real development of interaction, character, drama.And this was the front-runner for the Oscar?Well, actually, no. As the nominations in the top categories were announced two Tuesdays ago, it took me a while to register that ... "Dreamgirls" ... wasn't ... getting any. Yes, Hudson and Murphy are up for awards in the supporting categories, and yes, that's as it should be. Yes, "Dreamgirls" boasts eight nominations, more than any other film - but three of them are in the song category (all indistinguishable from one another, like the tunes in "Phantom of the Opera"). But there were no nods to Jamie Foxx and Beyoncé Knowles in the lead-acting division, no nominations for Condon as screenwriter or director. And as every Oscar headline would proclaim for the rest of the day and week, none for the film itself as best picture.The front-runner for the Oscar didn't get nominated.Meanwhile, in from the cold came Clint Eastwood as a best-director candidate and "Letters from Iwo Jima" for picture and screenplay. Although "Little Miss Sunshine" - this year's anointed sleeper hit, "the little movie that could" - got plenty of Academy love, its directors were not put forward as coequals of anybody who did get nominated. And with only one exception, none of the putative five best pictures has a performer in contention for lead-acting honors.In short, on Oscar night next month, there can't be a sweep. And in most cases, regardless of personal favorites that might have been omitted, the nominees are almost all worthy candidates, so it will be hard to work up outrage over the final outcomes.Let's carve the bird:I'd begun to fear that this would be one of those Academy years bearing scant resemblance to the one I'd spent at the movies. The films I most esteemed had been getting the cold shoulder. Clint Eastwood's brave, complex, even radical "Flags of Our Fathers," although garnering mostly respectful reviews, had been counted out as a decisive box-office failure in the shadow of an increasingly unpopular war. As for the late Robert Altman's "A Prairie Home Companion," Hollywood sentimentality rarely extends to posthumous Oscars.Especially depressing were the nominations for the Directors Guild Awards, usually a highly predictive slate. Only two candidates - Martin Scorsese for "The Departed" and Stephen Frears, "The Queen" - deserved to be in the running. There were no slots for such strong directorial talents as Altman, Guillermo del Toro (for the dazzlingly original "Pan's Labyrinth"), Alfonso Cuarón (the hyperkinetic "Children of Men"), Paul Greengrass (New York Film Critics and National Society of Film Critics winner for "United 93") or Eastwood, who by then had checked in with a "Flags" companion piece, "Letters from Iwo Jima." Those who did make the DGA list instead included a very talented director, Alejandro González Iñárritu, who had turned in a seriously disappointing film, "Babel"; a neophyte team - Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, of the entertaining but lightweight "Little Miss Sunshine" - who weren't ready for prime time yet; and Bill Condon, the writer-director behind "Dreamgirls," a movie I hadn't seen at that point.A week or so before the nominations I did finally catch up with "Dreamgirls," which appeared to be edging "Babel" as front-runner for best picture. Musicals are not my genre, I freely admit, and Bill Condon had written the screenplay for the second-worst "best picture" ever, "Chicago" (though I prefer to attribute the egregiousness of that picture to director Rob Marshall; Condon's previous outings as a writer-director, "Gods and Monsters" and "Kinsey," were decent movies and then some).I enjoyed "Dreamgirls" more than I had been expecting, for a half-hour. The well-worn premise of a trio of game gals rising from amateur status by singing their hearts out is hard to resist; Motown surely warrants a decent movie made about it; and Eddie Murphy and "American Idol" champion Jennifer Hudson were just as splendid as everyone had said they were. But then the movie went off the cliff, with facile civil-rights-era references, rhythm-less camerawork and editing, and storytelling so perfunctory that it seemed less a film than memos from a story conference. The latter three-quarters of "Dreamgirls" scarcely attempts any real development of interaction, character, drama.And this was the front-runner for the Oscar?Well, actually, no. As the nominations in the top categories were announced two Tuesdays ago, it took me a while to register that ... "Dreamgirls" ... wasn't ... getting any. Yes, Hudson and Murphy are up for awards in the supporting categories, and yes, that's as it should be. Yes, "Dreamgirls" boasts eight nominations, more than any other film - but three of them are in the song category (all indistinguishable from one another, like the tunes in "Phantom of the Opera"). But there were no nods to Jamie Foxx and Beyoncé Knowles in the lead-acting division, no nominations for Condon as screenwriter or director. And as every Oscar headline would proclaim for the rest of the day and week, none for the film itself as best picture.The front-runner for the Oscar didn't get nominated.Meanwhile, in from the cold came Clint Eastwood as a best-director candidate and "Letters from Iwo Jima" for picture and screenplay. Although "Little Miss Sunshine" - this year's anointed sleeper hit, "the little movie that could" - got plenty of Academy love, its directors were not put forward as coequals of anybody who did get nominated. And with only one exception, none of the putative five best pictures has a performer in contention for lead-acting honors.In short, on Oscar night next month, there can't be a sweep. And in most cases, regardless of personal favorites that might have been omitted, the nominees are almost all worthy candidates, so it will be hard to work up outrage over the final outcomes.Let's carve the bird:
All you need to know about George W. Bush's recent State of the Union address is that after making the central point of his speech a plea to balky senators to give his escalation of the war in Iraq "a chance," the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted the very next day to pass a resolution calling his plan "not in the national interest." And that many of the Republicans voting against the Senate measure said they, too, had reservations about the escalation.By the end of the week, Bush's somewhat pathetic plea was all but forgotten, drowned out in the headlines by some 3,000 boisterous anti-war demonstrators here in Seattle and what organizers claimed were a half-million congregating within view of the White House.Next week, our area will see another major anti-war event as the court-martial of Army Lt. Ehren Watada, the first officer to refuse deployment to Iraq, takes place at nearby Fort Lewis.A diminished presenceThe overwhelming sense of this year's State of the Union was that Bush has become not irrelevant exactly, but diminished - far more so than his lame-duck status alone would suggest. Except for the wary respect for the executive power he still wields, nobody would take Dubya seriously any longer. Nobody. Not Sen. John McCain, not Vice President Dick Cheney, not his wife Laura, not his dog Barney. Bush has lost all credibility with the public, and once that's gone for a politician, there's no recovering it.
In a small, Capitol Hill office, Christmas lights still hang in the windows and a framed poster of Martin Luther King Jr. delivering his famous "I Have a Dream" speech in front of the Washington Monument hangs on a wall.This is the home of Powerful Voices, a nonprofit organization supported mainly by foundation grants and private donations, that for 11 years has worked to improve the lives of girls in both middle schools and juvenile-detention centers. Its motto: "Because strong girls become strong women."Anshu Wahi, the instructional coordinator of the after-school RAP (Girls Rights! Action! Power!) program, is passionate about her work. Wahi speaks with energy and passion about the challenges "her girls" face. It is easy to see how young girls would respond to her enthusiasm and charisma. Leaning forward, she explains how the organization addresses both the immediate and personal needs of the girls, while improving their awareness of the broader issues of racism and sexism in their environment.
In just a few short years the word Blog, derived from Web log, has become synonymous with independent commentary, homespun punditry and individual journalism. From quiet beginnings more than 10 years ago, by the end of 2006, the blog search engine Technorati reported to be tracking more 60 million blogs.Close to home, one local blog has garnered considerable attention in the year its been online. Capitol Hill Seattle, the creation of Justin Carder and his wife Kristin Boraas, has attracted a growing crowd of loyalists. Featuring a whimsical take on life on the Hill, the blog gets between 150 and 200 hits a day.For Carder, starting a Capitol Hill blog was a natural evolution. He and Boraas moved to the Hill from Belltown one year ago. Carder, who has worked for Microsoft since 1996, had created a technology blog three years ago. "I quickly found out that I didn't have anything new to say on that subject," he said. "And no one was reading it, either."While living in Belltown, Carder created a blog that focused on that neighborhood. It was thus a natural evolution to establish Capitol Hill Seattle when the couple moved to the Hill a year ago. The blog's focus, some may be surprised to learn, is not on Broadway or Pike-Pine. Those areas are well covered in the public's imagination, Carder said. And besides, that's not the part of the neighborhood where the couple lives. Capitol Hill Seattle devotes most of its posts to the area between 15th and 19th avenues. Living closer to St. Josepth's Catholic Church than the Egyptian Theatre gives a different perspective."People naturally think of Broadway when they think of the Hill, which is fine. But people here are different. It's less sexy, more bucolic, and there are many more kids. The blog tries to keep an eye on what's interesting up here," he said.