"We're waiting to go until the children are old enough to really appreciate the trip." Admit it, you've heard that line before or even said it yourself. The rationale for saying such a thing being that at age 2, 3, or 4 you would have to be a lunatic to take a kid on a long trip. Then, when the kids hit5, 6 or 7, this line may come tripping off your tongue:"Well, wouldn't it be better to wait just a bit so the trip might be helpful in their schoolwork?" As this monologue continues, a couple of years slip through your fingers and the kids become deeply engaged in activities like summer camps and baseball. Before you know it they're teenagers with a lot of attitude who don't want to know you.Is there a perfect age for the big trip? Well in my opinion the problem starts with the word big. Don't view it as the trip of a lifetime. Instead, see it as a taste of what is out there with the intention of returning and exploring more in the future. Taking on an epic family trip in this way suddenly makes everything more manageable.
To outsiders, Seattle has a reputation: a place full of tree huggers, the politically liberal, environmentalists and the like. But it's also been deemed a city where folks not only care about politics and the environment, but about their bodies and what they put into them.But is it true? If you look at the number of farmers markets, restaurants and grocery stores that are either certified organic or feature organic choices, indeed it is. But why is organic food so popular? Most agree, it's the type of people who live here: "forward-thinking people," some say.While eating organic may be expensive and a little frivolous to some Seattleites, more people are spending a few extra bucks to fill themselves up with all things natural.
With the 1997 publication of "Timequake," a sparse and elegiac novel of looping time and sentimental double-takes, American author Kurt Vonnegut Jr. at last called it quits. He'd labored on the manuscript for years, and - despite his best efforts - the work had spun utterly out of control, becoming a baggy, ungovernable monster that, in Vonnegut's own estimation, was unpublishable. So he carved out the good parts, stitched it all back together with autobiographical meditations on such sad daily news as the death of his brother, and floated his umpteenth book into the world, wiping his hands of the whole affair with something resembling resignation. He was done.Trouble was, he kept living. Old habits die hard, like the filterless Pall Malls Vonnegut still sucks down one after the other ("A fire at one end and a fool at the other," he jokes). The author, now into his ninth decade, keeps finding things to talk about. And in his relationship with Seven Stories Press and the political rag In These Times, Vonnegut has discovered something of a second wind, as well as an audience still pleased to engage his wry, idiosyncratic style and off-kilter observations on the state of the world.
The Toronto International Film Festival is the most comprehensive, best-organized and -operated, most international-press-friendly and - for my money - most important film festival in North America. Running 10 days in early September in the Ontario metropolis and showing upwards of 300 films (features and shorts) in 20some venues, it offers just about everything new the cinema gourmand could want to have a look at, with points of geographical and spiritual origin as diverse as Singapore, South Africa, Latvia and Hollywood, U.S.A. If you couldn't get to Sundance, Berlin, San Francisco, Cannes, Venice or Telluride, and can't make it to Lincoln Center later in the month for the ultraselective New York Film Festival, don't worry: the pick of those crops will (mostly) be on tap somewhere within hailing distance of Bloor and Yonge streets. Moreover, at least since 1999, when the year's surprise top contenders for the Academy Awards, "American Beauty" and "The Cider House Rules," were both unveiled there, Toronto also has become the unofficial kickoff of the Oscar season.
For some it's the familiar fragrance of stale hot dogs wafting in the crisp autumn breeze that evokes memories of the baseball playoffs.Others might associate numbers, such as 1995, the year the Mariners first tasted the postseason, or 11, the digits on the back of Edgar Martinez' uniform, with baseball in October. I wish a smell, a number or even a snippet of music elicited playoffs memories for me. Instead, I associate an obscure word with our national pastime. My first brush with the word logorrhea was not a pleasant experience. Due to a scheduling conflict I was attending a play with my wife on the same night a crucial playoff game was scheduled, and I was trying to determine the length of the performance.Scanning a review of the play in the newspaper, I came across the following ill-boding description of the main character: the actor's "logorrhea is apparently contagious," charged the critic. Logorrhea didn't sound good, and the dictionary confirmed my suspicion: it means an inability to shut up.
The recent hurricanes in the southeast, and especially Hurricane Katrina, have brought up a subject that has been shelved for most of us for close to 40 years. I'm talking about racial discrimination.Some argue that a disproportionate number of people in New Orleans were poor and black; others argue that a majority of the populace is black, so it follows that a majority of poor will be black. Did race enter into how our nation responded to this tragedy?Does racial discrimination color our actions and decisions about people who look different from us? The perception that it is harder for a black person, or Latin American, or other people of color to share in the good life in America won't go away.
Autumn had arrived. One of my grade-school buddies, Tommy, and I were outside passing a football back and forth across the yard. The huge maples and oaks that landscaped the yards of the Chicago neighborhood, one of the homes of my youth, had set the lawns afire with their falling leaves of red, yellow and orange.Up the block, waiting at the light where the main road crossed over the street where I lived, was a huge semi truck hauling a cargo of automobiles covered with canvas shrouds. Tommy and I looked at each other and spoke as one: "NEW CARS!"We dropped the football and jumped on our bikes, pedaling after the fast-disappearing truck as swift as our 8-year-old legs could propel us. We tailed the truck to the DeSoto dealership which was, luckily, only about 10 blocks away. When we rode up, though, the mechanics shooed us away while they pulled the truck inside and unloaded it.The automotive world then was an entirely different animal than what it is today. Cars were huge things that advertised "road-hugging weight," gasoline was comparatively cheap and foreign cars - especially in Chicago neighborhoods during the late 1950s - didn't exist. The première of the new cars each fall was a major news event.
Something extraordinary is happening behind the old Magnolia Elementary School on 28th Avenue West. A weed infested expanse of cracked asphalt is being transformed into a beautiful new park.The commitment of the Seattle Parks Department to community involvement has led to a series of public meetings, providing interested citizens information about the park's progress and a chance to have their opinions heard about what kind of park will best serve the people of Magnolia as well as our city.The current plan for the park is appealing. It includes a large, open grassy area, beautiful plantings, a circular gravel path for walking, a basketball half court, a children's playground and a picnic area.The plan also includes a 1,200 square foot pavilion, costing about $90,000. Our problem is that park's budget does not include the cost of the equipment for the playground, which is $70,000. The Parks Dept. has asked the community to raise funds ourselves to pay for the playground.We think the playground equipment would serve our community more than would the pavilion. The playground equipment would be used daily by the neighborhood - but a pavilion which will be used only for "special occasions?"
Gertrude, Zelda and Beatrice just cluck at all the media attention they've received lately. That includes an upcoming segment on The Today Show, numerous spreads in national magazines and a write-up this month in Seattle Homes & Lifestyle magazine.But the three fowl represent a growing phenomenon in this country. They're so-called city chickens, of a breed known as Buff Orpingtons living in a modular, brightly colored, two-level pied a terre coop in Magnolia resident Jennifer Carlson's back yard.Carlson, a landscape designer, is more forthcoming than her feathered friends about the popularity of city chickens. For instance, she's taught Seattle Tilth classes about them at the Good Shepherd Center in Wallingford. "We have standing-room-only classes of 40," Carlson said of City Chickens 101 and City Chickens 201. "Now I only teach city-chicken-coop-building classes."
Sue Reynolds and Cherie Mueller, co-owners of Java Jazz on 15th Avenue West, had a problem on their hands that led them to become victims of a vehicle prowl in August. Happens all the time, but Reynolds said she ended up helping Bellevue police solve the crime by checking out the Internet for clues several weeks later. The original problem had to do with a generator used to power an espresso step van the women own and park in the triangular parking lot in Magnolia Village. "The generator had been acting up for a week or two," Reynolds said.
The coffee table in the Baker family's Queen Anne living room is a low oval marked with faint, colored scars, with two Lilliputian blue chairs on each side. This is where Addison and Kylie Baker spend hours at a time drawing and painting."They get in a zone," says their mother, Lynn Baker.In the past few weeks, their artwork has taken on another purpose, besides just being creative. Addison and Kylie have been making cards to benefit survivors of Hurricane Katrina.So far they have raised more than $500, all deposited into the Washington Cares Fund at Washington Mutual Bank and slated for the American Red Cross. Not bad for a first business venture.
With the 1997 publication of "Timequake," a sparse and elegiac novel of looping time and sentimental double-takes, American author Kurt Vonnegut Jr. at last called it quits. He'd labored on the manuscript for years, and - despite his best efforts - the work had spun utterly out of control, becoming a baggy, ungovernable monster that, in Vonnegut's own estimation, was unpublishable. So he carved out the good parts, stitched it all back together with autobiographical meditations on such sad daily news as the death of his brother, and floated his umpteenth book into the world, wiping his hands of the whole affair with something resembling resignation. He was done.Trouble was, he kept living. Old habits die hard, like the filterless Pall Malls Vonnegut still sucks down one after the other ("A fire at one end and a fool at the other," he jokes). The author, now into his ninth decade, keeps finding things to talk about. And in his relationship with Seven Stories Press and the political rag In These Times, Vonnegut has discovered something of a second wind, as well as an audience still pleased to engage his wry, idiosyncratic style and off-kilter observations on the state of the world.
Every year as the Seattle Opera season approaches, I wax nostalgic about past performances, comparing them to current productions while, I hope, keeping an open mind and accepting changes and new concepts. Although I prefer my opera in the grand manner, I am happy to say I have attended every opening night since 1963 when my late husband and I arrived in this city. This year I eagerly await Oct. 15 and "The End of the Affair," a new opera based on a novel by Graham Greene, with music by Jake Heggie.It's always a challenge for an opera company to present a new work, especially for the opening of the season. As usual, general director Speight Jenkins has risen to the challenge. After attending the world première of "The End of the Affair" by Houston Grand Opera in March 2004, he commented: "'The End of the Affair' astonished me first in the appropriateness and romantic quality of its music. It also gripped me with its drama from the beginning. This was a fascinating story, well told. The vocal lines were not easy, but they were superbly composed for the voices involved, and the minor characters all had interesting parts to play, vocally and histrionically."Post-Houston there were changes. American composer Jake Heggie reworked the opera before the Madison Opera production in 2005, creating a new ending. Since then, Heggie has rearranged the order of Act I and doubled the number of strings in the orchestra from 14 to 28. These changes will be retained in the production presented at Seattle Opera; to quote Heggie, "Such are the variables of new works." Although the ending is not consistent with the novel, it is not inconsistent with Greene's interpretation.
Depending on your point of view, we are either fortunate or cursed with an abundance of wildlife in the Northwest, including here in Magnolia. Most of these species have lived on the earth longer than modern humans, and certainly longer than any of us have lived in Magnolia. Can we coexist with all this wildlife? I'd like to think so, as long as we use a little common sense and dispense with the urban legends.I'm a lover of wildlife, as is my wife. We put out food and water for the birds, cats, dogs, raccoons and any other critter passing by. Our yard is frequented by a variety of birds, neighborhood cats and the occasional opossum.Our other visitors are raccoons. There's a legitimate concern that feeding raccoons can make them too familiar with people, setting up potential confrontations, but that's not been our experience. We know and respect that they are wild animals. If I step outside when they are around, they scatter into the bushes; and that's how it should be. We don't try to "tame" them.
To get a take on John Braseth, longtime Seattle art dealer and Queen Anne resident from 1982 to 1992, consider this: When Paul Horiuchi died in 1999 at age 93, it was Braseth, then 40, who gave the eulogy at the great artist's service.Horiuchi had lived a quietly heroic life - creating works of intense, elegant beauty - a life which, uprooted because of Horiuchi's Japanese an-cestry, included a sometimes dangerous odyssey through the interior of the western United States during World War II. Horiuchi lived long and knew many people. Still, it was the relatively youthful Braseth who was chosen to stand up and deliver his friend's farewell."I have a lot of respect for older people," Braseth acknowledges in his modest, down-to-earth way. Hori-uchi, Braseth says, "might have been the most gentle person I have ever met."Braseth, 46, is one-half of Gordon Woodside/John Braseth Gallery, one of Seattle's oldest and most respected galleries. He started in the business at 18 and became a partner at 20. He's known, represented and/or exhibited the work of many of the Northwest masters, including Guy Anderson, Morris Graves, William Ivey, Mark Tobey, Kenneth Callahan, Hilda Morris and James Washington Jr.