Up on Capitol Hill, there lives a Cat in the Hat, a Sour Kangaroo, a monkey named Wickersham and a sad little bird named Gertrude McFuzz.In their regular lives, these local actors are known as Daniel C. Dennis (the Cat), Lakeetra Knowles (the Kangaroo), Ian Lindsay (Wickersham Brother) and Kirsten Hopkins (Gertrude).After attending an open audition at the Seattle Children's Theatre, they found themselves spending most of their waking time in "Seussical," a musical based on the famous picture books of Dr. Seuss."I didn't know "Seussical" at all. I'd never heard the music, but I knew that there had been musical on Broadway based on Seuss," said Dennis.The SCT version has been considerably cut down and tightened from the Broadway musical and road show. Now a brisk 70 minutes, the show concentrates on the trials and tribulations of Horton the Elephant, his quest to save the miniscule Whos and his reluctant hatching of an egg.
She is 91 years old, takes daily walks, drives her own car and remembers walking 100 miles to avoid the Russians and living in West Germany in the aftermath of World War II.Born to a wealthy family on an estate in Pommerania, a district of northeastern Germany, Lavinia Swanson, nee Scheller, grew up in luxury, the middle child of five sisters."My father certainly didn't like it," she said of the five girls. "But what could he do? It was all my mother's fault."Her memory is still sharp. "We had our own lake," she said. It was that lake and an early desire to get into the water that gave her a life-long love of swimming. By the time she and her sisters were high school age, her father decided that the governess in charge of their education was not sufficient. They moved to the town of Hamlin - yes, that Hamlin, chronicled by the brothers Grimm in the story of the pied piper.
Several hundred people turned up at Town Hall last Wednesday night to honor and roast David Brewster. who is retiring as Town Hall's executive director.They came, as co-host Mark Sidran, in his best Woody Allen imitation put it, "to celebrate David. And also bury him." It was a moment of Seattle history worth noting.Brewster, former publisher of the Seattle Weekly, bridged the era between old Seattle, the pre-1962 World's Fair establishment that still misses the Frederick & Nelson tearoom, and the narcissistic, dynamic and "discovered" Seattle that emerged in the mid-1970s. As journalist, editor, publisher and finally, executive director of Town Hall, Brewster has been Seattle's consummate engaged observer.
She'd be the first one to admit that it wasn't all her doing. Turning a neglected and underused park into the jewel that is now Cal Anderson Park took the effort and dedication of countless individuals. Anyone who attended last weekend's grand reopening - and many did - could see that such a major project is not the result of a single person.But Kay Rood clearly stands out among many for her contributions to Capitol Hill's - to the city's - new park.
It seemed like common sense. A large number of people on Capitol Hill work on the Eastside and take the bus to work. The transfer at Montlake is awkward and time consuming. Surely the Hill deserved some direct bus service?That notion first came to Anirudh Sahni's mind in 1997, when he was working at Microsoft and making the cross-lake bus commute. His lengthy efforts to establish such service finally bore fruit this week. On Monday, Sept. 26, Sound Transit Route 545 began making stops on Capitol Hill.
The notion of a Capitol Hill art walk is nothing new. There have been previous versions of gallery walks and the like. But with past efforts having faded and folded, one Capitol Hill loyalist is breathing new life into the idea. Erin Hulbert, 26, considers herself well suited to the cause. She lived on the Hill for eight years, worked at B & O Espresso and Vivace, and now tends bar at Linda's Tavern - the neighborhood, she said, is part of her blood. Last month, Hulbert organized a new Capitol Hill Art Walk, an event that takes place on the first Thursday of each month. The second such art walk is slated for Oct. 6.
"This is a great day for Capitol Hill," said State Rep. Ed Murray from the podium. "Today we honor the vision of the community, and the vision and work of Cal Anderson."Surely no one would disagree. The Saturday, Sept. 24, grand reopening of Cal Anderson Park, named after the late state legislator, brought large crowds of people, including many children, to a park that had been long neglected. There were balloons, jugglers, a flurry of activity. The joy was tangible."I don't think this many people have been in the park combined in the last 10 years," said one man. "This is great."
As a parent it can be extremely rewarding to help your children buy their first home. Often your assistance is the key toward making their dream of homeownership a reality. There are a variety of ways you can go about helping your children, ranging from gifting them money for a down payment, to lending them money at a low interest rate, or purchasing the home for them outright. It all comes down to your personal situation and financial circumstances. Most lenders require a 20 percent down payment from homebuyers. If the buyer cannot afford this they have the option to put less down and assume private mortgage insurance (PMI). There are a variety of creative lending options available to first time buyers that enable them to put as little as zero percent down, but the trade off is a higher monthly payment and the added cost of PMI, which is essentially insurance for the lender.
I had a near-death experience recently. My cane and I were out for a stroll, planning to wander up and down the streets, seeing if any flowers had burst forth, what type of fence is in vogue, who's remodeling what, and what new intriguing wheels are parked on the street. All at once I was rapidly heading toward the pavement. Fortunately, I managed to avoid broken bones, but black-and-blue marks tattoo almost my entire body. After I wiggled moveable parts to make sure I was unbroken, I very slowly eased myself to a standing position with my cane as an upright and looked to see what had undone me.It took only a second to realize I had broken a primary precept: Keep your eyes on the sidewalk. Do not raise them or look to the right or the left.To disregard this rule is to invite disaster.
Clear skies, free food, several raffles and lots of friendly officers greeted more than 100 residents on Saturday, Sept. 24 for the Seattle Police Foundation's "Picnic at the Precinct." In photo, Sgt. Cindy Granard announces the winners of a drawing for gift certificates good at South End businesses.
Four days after Hurricane Katrina roared on shore on Monday, Aug. 29, a gripping letter was e-mailed to us. In our last installment of Concrete Jungle we promised to tell the account of inmates locked up and left for dead as the guards and staff escaped the storm. Unfortunately, we were unable to re-contact the man who was allegedly left to die by New Orleans prison officials.However, we have been in contact with Lisa C. Moore. She told us the story of her cousin, Denise Moore, and Denise's 63-year-old mother, 21-year-old niece, and 2-year-old grandniece. It's one of many coming from the Gulf Coast region. Like the prisoner's unconfirmed tale of abandonment, the following survival story (edited for length) of Denise and her family is a disturbing example of government neglect and racism toward the people of New Orleans:
Back in the 1960s and early 1970s the United States had a host of government programs aimed directly at low-income people. But during the Nixon administration, Republicans began an assault on those programs and many of them were eventually phased out.The problems that those programs were designed to deal with still remained, and over the years we have watched the numbers of African Americans and other people of color rise sharply in the prison population. We have seen a huge upturn in gang wars over drug selling turf, and under the Bush administration the ranks of the poor have swelled to record numbers (more than a million every year) without an event like a world-wide depression. The corporate interest-driven Republicans pushed for a change in how we spent our public money, and their corporate backers also used their money to force Democrats to fall in line. Tax cuts for the wealthy and new military weapons became the preferred public expense. The wealthy and the defense contractors were often the same people.But the poor remained, and to many of us they seemed silent as the United States proceeded to dismantle almost all of the safety nets designed to aid the poor. What has been an even greater disappointment to me is how a new and growing African American middle class has failed.
Here's a bucket of Puget Sound water right in the kisser: Gasoline is not going to get cheaper. In classic cause-and-effect style, Hurricane Katrina's swirling, destructive dance along the Gulf Coast region triggered our recent rate hike at the pump. I say "triggered" because the high-price bullet that has come blasting at us has been loaded in the oil-war gun for a long time. What's the gunpowder propelling this lump of economic lead at our pocketbooks? It's the unavoidable fact that the worldwide oil supply is reaching its peak, shorthand for the maximum sustainable daily oil output. Global oil production is tracked on a bell curve. Right now, we're either at the curve's apex or a few years away from it. Hurricane Katrina walloped the crude right out of Gulf Coast refinery operations. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, that region holds about 10 percent of the nation's oil-refining capacity.With the Aug. 29 onslaught of extreme weather, our country lost one-fifth of its domestic petroleum output, and the closed and damaged Gulf Coast ports have put a kink in our foreign oil supply. (By the way, the United States imported 58 percent of its total petroleum supply last year.)So, here we are, at or near the top of the global oil-production peak. After that, it's heads-up for the consumers dependent on the ancient, slick-black stuff and look out for the developing countries that have the unfortunate luck of sitting on the increasingly rare pools of untapped oil.
For the last two weeks, the Herald-Outlook has published stories about the ongoing crime on the Ave (University Way Northeast). This week, we look at how the Ave Project has changed perceptions and resolved some problems.
Because Seattle Parks and Recreation officials anticipate the University District to have 2,000 new households and 2,640 jobs by 2024, parks staff and the Makers urban design firm are developing a plan to identify potential sites for park acquisition.Community members gathered to comment on this draft University District Park Plan on Sept. 13 at the University Heights Center. Bill Blair, Pro Parks planner for Seattle Parks and Recreation, said the city has approximately $2 million from the Pro Parks Levy passed in 2000 and King County Conservation Futures Tax to acquire a site for a new park in the U-District. "This plan will help guide the city's provision of parks and open space in the District," Blair stated. "But it is a guideline for the next 20 years - beyond the 2000 Pro Parks Levy. We've got the funding to do one thing now, but that doesn't mean that other projects shouldn't be done in the future."