David Williams finds natural history stories wherever he looks and has incorporated these stories into his new book, "The Street-Smart Naturalist - Field Notes from Seattle." Some of those stories verge on the fantastic. Others are wry and whimsical. Still others are subtle. But he finds a few sad ones like the story of Ravenna Park's Douglas firs.A popular attractionSome of the largest, known Douglas firs of Seattle's past grew in Ravenna Park. They were nationally recognized as "vegetable skyscrapers," as a promotional brochure called them. "One known as the Robert E. Lee supposedly topped out at nearly 400 feet," Williams writes. Another, named after Theodore Roosevelt measured 44 feet around and was called "the single most-famous thing in Seattle" by a chamber-of-commerce publication. By the 1890s the Ravenna trees had become one of Seattle's biggest attractions. Williams writes that visitors to the trees included naturalist Enos Mill, Teddy Roosevelt and famed pianist Jan Paderewski. "The Ravenna trees survived until at least the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition but disappeared under mysterious circumstances by 1925."
In the photograph, David B. Williams stands with his right hand grasping a crow. His fingers gently but firmly wrap around the bird's legs. The scene gives the appearance that Williams holds a large, black Popsicle - a Crowsicle. Observers might be tempted to ask, "This is science?"Science it is, though Williams and the crow are participating in the study for different reasons. He's there, along with University of Washington researcher John Withey, to study the birds. As Williams explains, "Being social birds, crows gather in roosts to converse and share information. In the summer breeding season, the number may drop as low as 300 because they stay and defend their nest territory instead of socializing." The remainder of the year can find more than 10,000 birds occupying the roosts.The bird waits patiently while Williams points out what makes crows such successful urban birds. With three forward-facing toes and one facing rearward, crows have an incredibly strong grip. Stout legs are good for walking, strutting and jumping. Their stout beaks can pry open food containers and rip up garbage bags.
The Capitol Hill Block Party is so much better organized than other events or would-be events of its type (e.g. the thrice announced, only once attained, Alki Music Festival). That's partly because the block party's run by professional music/nightclub promoters, by people who know how to get performers on board and get everything else arranged.But there's also something missing from the block party-that special vibe you can sense when a scene is really happening.You could tell it on the Saturday and Sunday afternoons. A few dozen folks milled about the merchant and food booths. But there weren't nearly enough people to create that big summer-happy-time feeling, and probably not enough to satisfy some of the merchants. The big crowds only came at night, for the big-name bands on the main stage. And even they weren't all as big as some of the bands which performed the previous two years.
It went pretty quickly, all things considered. Given the way things typically go for Sound Transit, the time between the news that the First Hill station might be dropped and the actual board vote confirming its elimination moved at a record pace. The board, acting on staff recommendations, pointed to the considerable cost of building the station, the increased risk to federal funding if it did, as well as delays. Additionally, the station's depth posed greater safety concerns than originally expected. Even still, this was the wrong decision.
Sleep deprivation is now in full swing. With the summer heat upon us, our homes are too hot to sleep comfortably in. And the summer evenings are so mild and beautiful that the conversations linger - no one is in a hurry. But when the light comes up in the morning, if you are savvy you throw your legs over the edge of the bed and get to the kitchen. On the way, all the windows and doors are opened to let the cool morning air circulate through the musty rooms.Fill the pans with cold water for the pasta, vegetables and eggs. While they are coming to a boil, rush out to the garden to set the sprinklers. Fighting your way through the spider webs brings a final sense of being awake in spite of the short hours of sleep.
No, this isn't about gardening. My green thumb is from eating spinach with my fingers. I'm talking about the changes in Magnolia's cuisine scene.Depending on your point of view, you may see the changes as blooming, or as a patch of weeds if you're longing for the good old days. However, we can most likely all agree that our neighborhood is evolving.When we moved to Seattle 25 years ago, I referred to our city as Des Moines-Iowa West, a derisive reference to Seattle's dearth of ethnic and fine food restaurants. Seattle seemed to be where recipes came to die.
The snowball fight took place atop Mrs. Feldon's garage roof.A fence separated Mrs. Feldon's garage from her backyard neighbor. First we would climb onto the fence, balancing on a post nearest to the garage while using nearby shrubs to stabilize ourselves.Next, we'd lean across the gap between the fence and the rear wall of the garage and grasp the edge of the sloped roof. At this critical stage in the maneuver, the body formed the hypotenuse of a right triangle, if you get the picture. The year was 1949.Jerry, 9, and yours truly, 10, were seated on top, facing each other - about three feet separated us. The morning rain had soaked the previous week's snowpack. Every kid on the block knew the meaning and consequences of such weather on the making of a hand-packed snowball. No longer was it categorized as a snowball. It took on a revised, upgraded, more sinister name: Iceball.An iceball weighs more than a similarly sized snowball. An iceball also packs in less time. And it causes more pain to anyone unlucky enough to get nailed by it.
Sartre was wrong."Hell is other people," wrote the diminutive French philosopher, author of The Age of Reason and one of the heavies of 20th-century existentialism. It's a famous quote, commonly dropped by angst-riddled 20-year-olds who make a habit of intentionally waking up on the wrong side of the bed.Granted, as a broad and inclusive category, "other people" are responsible for such irritating behaviors as tailgating and talking too loud, not to mention a long list of more substantial sins.Yet, without other people, where would we be? No man, or woman, is an island, and it is just such other people who point out a sunset or pick us up when we fall.
In the transient and fickle restaurant business a solid thing can be hard to find. Anyone who has worked in restaurants, frequented restaurants or been in anyway affiliated with restaurants knows this all too well. Places come and go. Faces come and go. Only once in a while does a staff become a family. In the southeast reaches of Lower Queen Anne a group prolongs the family of the Cloud Room, former occupant of the 11th floor of the historic Camlin Hotel. Several people from that erstwhile Seattle institution have found a new home here.The Emerald Grill took over 211 Dexter Ave. N., former site of a pan-Asian restaurant adjacent to the Holiday Inn, about a year ago. In an effort to reorganize, the hotel's former general manager, Dave Watkins, brought in Jeff Morris. After a month of deliberation Morris, the Cloud Room's former executive chef, came aboard to "reinvent the place." Morris brought his specialization and know-how to the table - a fruitful effort to give this Holiday Inn an extra edge.
After four years of planning, fund-raising, hard work, much excitement and anticipation, the Seattle Opera once again will present Richard Wagner's momentous musical epic, "The Ring of the Nibelungen." The full cycle of all four operas - "Das Rheingold," "Die Walküre," "Siegfried" and Götterdämmerung" - opens with "Das Rheingold" on Sunday, Aug. 7, at McCaw Hall. Audiences will cheer as Valhalla materializes in Puget Sound and the faithful make pilgrimages from all over the known world to pay homage to Wagner. The tradition was started in 1975 by Seattle Opera's founding director, the late Glynn Ross; there would be annual "Ring" performances through 1984. In that first decade, the whole thing was treated very much like a religious experience; with requests to remove charm bracelets lest they rattle, and to hold applause until curtain time. Apart from Bayreuth in Germany, English National Opera was the only other company to present the complete "Ring" cycle.Seattle presented the only double-"Ring" ceremony in the world. The first week the entire "Ring" was presented in the original German. The second week it was presented in the English translation by Andrew Porter originally commissioned by English National Opera, with many E.N.O. stars singing the title roles. We have been treated to a bevy of beautiful British Brunnhildes, commencing with Anna Green and including Rita Hunter, Margaret Kingsley, right up to the present, fabulous Jane Eaglen.
Sleep deprivation is in full swing. With the summer heat now upon us, our homes are too hot to sleep comfortably in. And the summer evenings are so mild and beautiful, that the conversations linger - no one is in a hurry. But when the light comes up in the morning, if you are savvy you throw your legs over the edge of the bed and get to the kitchen. On the way, all the windows and doors are opened to let the cool morning air circulate through the musty rooms.Fill the pans with cold water for the pasta, vegetables and eggs. While they are coming to a boil, rush out to the garden to set the sprinklers. Fighting your way through the spider webs brings a final sense of being awake in spite of the short hours of sleep.
People come to Interbay Family Golf Center on summer Thursday evenings for a variety of reasons, not all of them related to golf. What makes Thursday nights different from the rest of the week is outstanding music at bargain-basement prices. Some of the region's hottest jazz artists play from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m., and to hear them, all you have to do is buy some beer or wine, a hamburger or some barbecue and sit back and listen - no cover, no admission fee, no minimum. It's one of those Seattle experiences that make the city such a great summer playground.
Prior to the 1992 publication of "All the Pretty Horses," Cormac McCarthy was what's known, with no especial merit, as a writer's writer. A notorious recluse, he labored away in relative obscurity, penning these ghastly but literate novels that wildly redefined the term Southern Gothic. McCarthy's early work, such as "Child of God" and "Outer Dark," dealt with the ultimate taboos - incest, necrophilia, cannibalism - in a violent, pared-down language that was equal parts Faulkner and Melville, and though these disarmingly gorgeous novels garnered a cult following and strong critical praise, they one by one fell out of print. At one point, McCarthy, who to this day types on an old Olivetti portable, had the electricity in his trailer shut off. Melville would have sympathized.
Staging all four operas in Richard Wagner's "Der Ring des Nibelungen" as Wagner intended, within a week's time, is an undeniably audacious undertaking. That the Seattle Opera has turned this marathon into an internationally renowned production owes as much to the company's backstage members as it does to the artists whose work is more visible.Two crucial backstage presences are Queen Anne residents Clare Burovac, "Ring" production coordinator and stage management department head, and Yasmine Kiss, one of the cycle's two stage managers. Their job, according to Burovac, is to make sure everything is in the right place at the right time as planned by the artistic staff."Stage managers are like a communications hub," Burovac said. "During rehearsal, the director might say, 'Brünnhilde needs a helmet in this scene,' and the stage manager communicates this to all the departments that need to know so the helmet shows up onstage when it's supposed to."The stage manager must have everything - props, costumes, scenery - set so rehearsal can start on the dot, Kiss said. It's also the stage manager's job to "call the show." "We cue things to happen, like lights, and sound, and people going onstage," Burovac said.
The Welch Hardware store was a fixture in the Central Area until it closed in 1998. While the venerable business no longer exists, its name lives on. Rising from the former site of the hardware store, Welch Plaza provides a variety of floor plans for renters, condo dwellers and businesses in three separate buildings.