Our 36th District senator, Jean Kohl-Welles, D-Queen Anne, has been busy in Olympia this current legislative session. One of the bills she is sponsoring addresses the very real issue of "cyberbullying" in our schools. Kohl-Welles' legislation would have school districts amend their anti-harassment laws to address the use of computers and cellular phones for intimidation or bullying.Such a provision is an unfortunate - albeit necessary - addition to the legal tools available to school administrators to enforce student standards of responsibility and accountability. My regret is that it does not go far enough, because it doesn't hold parents jointly responsible for the mis-use and abuse of technology (cellular phones, laptops, PDAs) they provide to their children.
It's been asked, "When the flamingos return to K-Mart, can summer be nigh?" Well, spring has finally returned. When I was cruising up Magnolia Boulevard just two days ago, I was startled to spy one front yard that had a veritable flock of the pink lawn decorations displayed. Despite this, the pink plastic flamingo (Flamingus polythylus) is on the endangered list, and its gradual disappearance is indeed a perplexing one. The bird's ever-decreasing numbers can't be blamed on the encroachment of man, after all, for it is we - men and women of all ages - who shell out the $12.95 per pair to buy them. They are impervious to pesticides; the problem can't be traced to pollution, for flamingos are of its essence. I've been a flamingo fancier for years. My affection took wing after I'd seen John Waters' "Pink Flamingos," probably the most tasteless film of all time. For me anyway, the plastic flamingo became the epitome of tacky.
The public's right to know what government officials are up to is under attack - again. This time the threat comes from the state legislature. Last spring, a 5-4 vote in the state Supreme Court made it perfectly acceptable to withhold records from public scrutiny, as long as the records had anything to do with communications between a lawyer and a government agency or official. Prior to that ruling in Hangartner v. City of Seattle, attorney-client privilege applied only if the sought-after records concerned "completed, existing or reasonably anticipated litigation." The Supreme Court Justices also ruled in the same case that public information was exempt from disclosure if the requests for it were over-broad.This ill-conceived ruling flies in the face of the Public Disclosure Act and related court cases that say the best government is a transparent government.
Girl Scouts from Magnolia and Ballard were on hand Friday, March 4, to welcome home the sailors on the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln when it returned to port in Everett.The girls of Troop 1363 also were there to thank the many sailors who purchased altogether more than 1,200 boxes of Girl Scout cookies while at sea.
Chuck Read, owner of Read Products on 15th Avenue West, admits he wasn't a monorail fan when the public narrowly approved the system in a 2002 vote. He's even less of one now.That's because the Seattle Monorail Project (SMP) needs access to some of his property on the Magnolia side of the Emerson Street Bridge. It's a vacant lot and not much to look at, but the way the agency has gone about getting access to the land has the business owner fuming.
The Gunnar Nordstrom Gallery will feature two artists in March. The first is Lori-ann Latremouille, who works in charcoal and colored pastels. The second is Lynda Meurk Anderson, who works with Intaglio and mixed media. The show will run from March 9 - April 10. There will be a private preview and artist reception on March 9 from 6-9 p.m. The Kirkland Artwalk is March 10 from 6-9 p.m.
It's been asked, "When the flamingos return to K-Mart, can summer be nigh?"Well, spring has finally returned. When I was cruising up Magnolia Boulevard j u s t t w o days ago, I was startled to spy one front yard that had a veritable flock of the pink lawn decorations. The pink plastic flamingo (Flamin-gus polythylus) is on the endangered list, and its gradual disappearance is perplexing. The bird's ever-decreasing numbers can't be blamed on the encroachment of man, after all, for it is we - men and women of all ages - who shell out the $12.95 per pair to buy them. They are impervious to pesticides; the problem can't be traced to pollution, for flamingos are of its essence. I've been a flamingo fancier for years. My affection took wing after I'd seen John Waters' "Pink Flamingos," probably the most tasteless film of all time. For me anyway, the plastic flamingo became the epitome of tacky.
"God for Harry! England and St. George!" Ah, not this time, mate. March 1 was St. David's Day - in honor of the patron saint of Wales - and a day when Captain Llewellyn, the Welshman of Shakespeare's "Henry V," recommended that every Welshman wear a leek in his cap.Although the lowly leek is an ancient vegeta-ble and greatly prized in soup and other culinary delights, it hardly compares with the shamrock. So, while thousands of Seattleites of Irish origin (and thousands more would-be Irish) celebrate the shamrock and St. Patrick on March 17, the Welsh celebration of St. David's on March 1 went largely overlooked. So, what about St. David?Unlike England's St. George, Wales' patron saint was born, bred and educated in the country where he is honored. He was the son of Sant, Prince of Ceredigan (Cardigan), and presumably he was born in Dyfed (now Pembrokeshire) in the sixth century.
A visit to Port Gamble is a step back in time. Situated on the shores of scenic Hood Canal, on the northern tip of Kitsap Peninsula, this unique town is a 120-acre National Historic Landmark. It's a quaint spot, complete with turn-of-the-century buildings, an historic church and picturesque views of Gamble Bay. Its namesake was Lt. Robert Gamble, a serviceman wounded in the War of 1812, but the town was founded in 1853 by A.J. Pope, Capt. Win C. Talbot and Cyrus Walker, who made it the home of their sawmill company. The men had Port Gamble built to look like their native town of East Machias, Maine, and until 1995 it was the site of the oldest continuously operating sawmill in North America. In its heyday, everyone who worked at the mill lived in the town, and the men were encouraged to bring their families with them from Maine, to create a sense of community. Today the place, having been authentically restored, is managed and maintained by Pope Resources of Poulsbo.
Everything I needed to know about Global Conflict I learned from my teenager. There are two ways this works.One entity - say Iraq - believing itself more powerful and therefore more worthy, sees something belonging to someone else that they want to own. Be it land, oil, eye shadow or that really cool boombox that Mom won in a writing contest. Because they, Iraq, perceive themselves to be more powerful than the governing body that has ownership of what they desire - for example, Kuwait - they decide to simply take what is not rightfully theirs. After appropriating by stealth what was not theirs to appropriate in the first place, they claim ownership by maintaining that they could make better use of it and said resource was not being used anyway and besides, they need it more. This also explains the highly charged conflict between rival hip-hop pants-to-their-knees-wearin', gangsta-rappin' moguls. We're not certain what turf they are taking from each other, and quite frankly we don't care. We have bigger fish to fry: in the matter of missing makeup and CD players.
Late afternoon Saturday, Feb. 26, I was running along the shoreline of Myrtle Edwards Park and Elliott Bay Park, taking in the last rays of a beautiful sunset over the Olympics. Up ahead I saw a couple clambering down the rocks to the edge of the water. I wondered what they were up to and thought it was certainly not a good idea to go swimming this time of day. Sure enough, as I drew nearer, the woman started removing her shoes. I ran past, and as I looked back, I got a complete view of the scene and understood. A duck was frantically trying to free itself from something, and this woman had opted to give it a hand. I stopped dead in my tracks and walked over to them, my mind already set on helping out.
The public's right to know what government officials are up to is under attack - again. This time in the state legislature. Last spring, a 5-4 vote in the state Supreme Court made it perfectly acceptable to withhold records from public scrutiny, as long as the records had anything to do with communications between a lawyer and a government agency or official.Prior to that case, Hangartner v. City of Seattle, attorney-client privilege applied only if the sought-after records concerned "completed, existing or reasonably anticipated litigation." The Supremes also ruled in the same case that public information was exempt from disclosure if the requests for it were overly broad.The ill-conceived ruling flies in the face of the Public Disclosure Act and related court cases that say the best government is a transparent government.
The third-grader gripped one of the wheelchair's wheels, and then the other, pushing and pulling. He was trying to pivot. "One hand pushes forward, the other hand pushes backward - that's how you play basketball," the white-hatted, mustachioed man in a wheel chair joked. After getting the hang of it, the third-grader stood up and moved on while another student took his place. Last Thursday and Friday Coe Elementary School played host to YADA (Youth Awareness Disability Assembly), a nonprofit that educates students on how life is lived by the disabled.
The two Queen Anne water towers will be replaced with a single 2-million-gallon steel tank, according to Seattle Public Utilities (SPU). But the design of the new water tower is still evolving, said SPU engineer William Heubach. "It's not written in stone."Speaking at a meeting of the Queen Anne Community Council last week, he also stressed that Queen Anne residents made it clear at a Jan. 18 public meeting they want to be involved in the design of the tank. Having the public involved is something the utility would prefer anyway, Heubach added.There are currently two water towers at the top of Queen Anne Hill, and the concrete-clad one has been designated as a historic landmark. The tanks - which were built early last century - hold 1.2 million gallons, but an SPU study in the early 1990s determined that the amount wasn't enough to serve a growing neighborhood population, Heubach said.There was another reason they needed to be replaced, he explained. "Back in 1900, there were no seismic standards for water tanks." That puts neighborhood residents and a fire-house on the site at an unacceptable risk these days, according to Heubach.
Non-native plants are not ugly. They don't eat little children or send toxic pollen into the Northwest air. They won't smother you while you sleep or lure you to their poisonous berries. They are not an obvious enemy; deceptively green, they look just like native plants. Yet the damage that they cause is horrific. "I don't think that they are evil," said Greg Rabourn. "They are just in the wrong place." Frighteningly enough, that wrong place can be your very own backyard. As skyscrapers replace trees and concrete crowds out our city's green spaces, what we do in our own corner of the world is increasingly important. Non-native plant species, typically defined as plants that arrived since the time of European contact, interfere with the functioning ecosystems in our region. They displace the native plants that provide food and shelter to native animals.