Well, is there? Last week, a lively and largely civil discussion on the subject took place at the Capitol Hill Arts Center. The forum was inspired by the changing economic climate in which soaring real estate prices are pushing artists and arts groups out of a neighborhood that considers itself an artistic haven.
MARGARET WILKENSThey shouldn't make the bridge look like an insane asylum. The only way to solve stuff like this is to provide people with free mental-health care. Let the body arts remind us of our inadequate health-care system.
It may not be the largest film festival to hit Seattle, but the Northwest Film Forum's Children's Festival Seattle certainly qualifies as the most family friendly and, quite often, most visually stunning. It is also the only one that opens with a pancake breakfast.For its third year, festival director Elizabeth Shepherd has collected 88 films from 22 countries
The children promptly moved from their desks to the front of the classroom upon Ms. Aubrey Dreiling's request. Eager for the day's next challenge, the group of 21 second graders sat quietly as they awaited Ms. Chia Chia Wang's arrival. For the next half hour, Ms. Wang guided them through a lesson in counting, reading and even in song - entirely in Mandarin Chinese.
Go to any greenbelt in Seattle and you're likely to run across sometimes-elaborate encampments of homeless people. And while the city has cleared out the encampments on a regular basis the last 15 years, it seems that new tents and shelters sometimes spring up in the same greenbelts within days.
Students in Ms. Langsy's second-grade class at Dunlap Elementary recently learned how to write stories about subjects they know well through the genre of personal narrative, taught to them by Anne Mulherkar of Powerful Writers. Here Alex Nguyen offers a glimpse into a special time in his life through his story, "At the Library."
The following information was provided by the city's Department of Planning and Development. Unless otherwise specified, written comments on projects should be mailed to 700 Fifth Ave., Suite 2000, P.O. Box 34019, Seattle, WA 98124-4019. Appeals are made, unless otherwise noted, to the Office of the Hearing Examiner, Seattle Municipal Tower, 40th Floor (SMT-40-00), 700 Fifth Ave., Suite 4000, Seattle, WA 98104. Appeals must be accompanied by a $50 filing fee in a check payable to the City of Seattle. The project number is in parentheses. For more information, call 684-8467.
Ealier this year the Rotary Club of Queen Anne distributed dictionaries to every third-grade student at Coe and John Hay elementary schools. The illustrated American Heritage children's dictionary, a hefty tome at 856 pages, was presented to each student for their personal use and possession. Each dictionary included a personalized nameplate, as well as an insert of Rotary's "four way test," which urges individuals to challenge the things they say by asking such questions as "Is it the truth?" and "Will it be beneficial to all concerned?
Marcus Trader, a new music teacher at McClure Middle School, is a patient man. That was obvious at a recent rehearsal of his sixth-grade band class, where some of the dozen students occasionally drifted off point. But Trader was also endlessly encouraging as the budding musicians tried their hand at Stravinsky's "Firebird Suite" last week. "Not bad at all," he told one trombone player.Now we just need you to relax."
Some days are cold, especially lately. Most of the time it is dark. The backyard is often wet. My shoes are in the other room. There are only five grapes and a few carrot slices left over from dinner. What do I do? The efficiency expert in me would just dump them and go build Legos with my kids, but the environmentalist in me says, "Deal with this." So I make a trip to the green cone.
The repercussions for our gardens from last week's arctic blast will not be completely known for several months, so it is important now to have patience and not assume the worst. Some of our treasures that look so hopeless and forlorn now may make dramatic recoveries, and the plants that do ultimately fail can greatly inform us in regards to our many gardening decisions. Do we want all the extra labor involved with protecting marginally hardy plants when there are so many hardy plants that thrive in our climate? Is it time to move away from the ever-so-trendy and expensive new cultivars, and look again at some old-fashioned and reliable, albeit long-forgotten, plants?
I have been meaning to write this love letter to Ken's Market for at least the past 15 years, but it's easy to take every day occurrences, people and places in your life for granted. I'm on this mission recently to identify and appreciate all the nuances in my life that make it great-the warm, honey-I'm-home kiss from my husband, the spontaneous hug from my independent teen, that first sip of coffee in the morning, the supportive phone call from a good friend and the unsung community jewel that is Ken's Market.
I don't know much about finance. Forget high finance. I don't even know much about low finance. I was raised in an all-but-poor, working class home, and remember well watching my mother put dollar bills in different budget envelopes every Friday night after Pops got paid. His radicalism - he KNEW he was underpaid and a pawn of his bosses, Masons all, as he told me endlessly, Protestants who had it in for Catholics - and Mom's (necessary?) penny pinching formed my soul.
Have you noticed the prices they're getting for comic books lately? Probably not, unless you've got kids that keep begging you incessantly for the colorful cartoon books. The other day I found myself in front of a spinning rack of comic books, and I picked up the latest issue of Disney's Uncle Scrooge; I wanted to see how McDuck, the world's wealthiest duck, was weathering the recession. I wondered if the Beagle Boys had caught up with him yet.
By Russ ZabelA rip-off technique that was used several times in Queen Anne and Seattle a few months ago was used again the afternoon of Jan. 19 at a business in the 1600 block of W. Dravus St. Seems some fast-talking man showed up, picked up a French press coffee urn worth $39.95, along with a coffee mug worth $19.95, paid with what he claimed was a $200 travelers check and got $135.86 back in cash. Problem was, according to the report, the travelers check was really a money order with papers stapled over most of it to conceal the fact it was for only $2. On top of everything else, it looked like the $2 money order had already been cashed.