If it weren't for Cindy Sherman and her self-portraits, I'll bet few in Seattle aside from feminists and art scholars would have heard of Claude Cahun. Even with Ms. Sherman, there probably aren't many who know the name. That's not to say Cahun isn't an appropriate subject for an exhibit. It's just to suggest that the current show at the Frye is more than a bit esoteric.Claude Cahun is a representative of the Surrealist movement, despite the fact that the better-known Surrealists didn't welcome her into their fold. But her whole life was surrealistic, and one has to understand that in order to understand the exhibit. Born Lucy Schwob in Nantes, France, in 1894, Cahun was the highly intelligent and radical daughter of a wealthy, conservative French publisher. Her father was Jewish, and the family wasn't particularly religious. Her school friend Suzanne Malherbe, a Catholic, became her lover, and the two set off on an artistic partnership that lasted throughout their lives. Lucy adopted the name Claude Cahun, and Suzanne became Marcel Moore. In 1917, when Claude's father married Marcel's mother, the school friends/lovers/intellectual partners became sisters. Sisterhood was a good cover for lesbian intellectuals in the 1920s.
One of the unfortunate side effects of a shrinking economy is that eventually racial, religious and political interest groups fight over a smaller pie. How we allocate resources is often determined by the perceptions the majority of us hold about the interest groups competing. If enough people believe the perceptions it soon becomes the public norm and real to most of them.If we believe that such a group is an important thread in the American red, white and blue fabric, then we support their needs. If we perceive a group is not essential, they are pushed to the back of the agenda or off it all together.Our perceptions are formed by how we are discussed on television, in newspapers and over the backyard fences with our neighbors. That's why African Americans were shocked at what talk show host Bill Bennett recently said. In a response to a caller who he had thought made a ridiculous assertion, Bennett decided to make an even more ridiculous one."If you wanted to reduce crime, you could - if that were your sole purpose - you could abort every black baby in this country and your crime rate would go down," Bennett asserted. "That would be an impossibly ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down."Anyone that looks at crime statistics knows that less than 5 percent of a given population is involved in criminal activities. So in the African American community that means that 95 percent of us are not criminals, but Bennett painted everyone with the same brush.
Euphoric recall is a funny thing when it comes to America's holidays, especially with Thanksgiving. Recreating the mythical imagery of the celebration - indigenous people eating turkey with grateful immigrants from Europe - hides its gritty reality. According to Plimoth Plantation (a living museum and Smithsonian Institute affiliate near Plymouth, Ma.) scholars analyzing the journal entries of the Plymouth Colony members found they were starving in July 1623. A severe drought had struck their corn and bean crops, and supply ships from England were stuck in an unnerving three-month delay. Facing a cold, hungry death, colony leaders called for a long day of prayer, and the following morning a mellow rain began falling. It lasted for 14 days, reviving the separatists' withered crops and their hopes for winter survival. Feeling their prayers were answered, a public day of thanks was organized, but there was no feast, excepting a good lobster tail or two and some fresh water. What I like about this historical account is the base moral that has survived the fantastical feast fabrications we have built around the facts: Physically expressing an attitude of gratitude when receiving an unexpected break, especially a life saving one, makes surviving this too-often rough life a whole lot nicer.
What is the military doing in our schools? Last month Southeast Seattle residents gathered at the Rainier Beach High School Performance Center for two hours to explore this question.The free Oct. 23 forum was designed for students, parents, teachers and community members concerned with the activities of armed forces recruiters on our public school campuses. More than 120 people from around Seattle attended the event. As community members arrived, they were greeted by The Peacemobile, a van bedecked with posters illustrating the costs of war, such as children missing limbs and other atrocities. In the lobby of the performance center, participants filed past an assortment of information tables with pamphlets and handouts from American Friends Service Committee, Youth Against War and Racism, the Center on Conscience and War, Campus Antiwar Network, The Palestine Solidarity Committee, the International Socialist Organization, and others.
The Mt. Baker Varsity Junior Boys won first place in the Mens Jr.8+ Championship (eight rowers and a coxswain) race at the Head of the Lake Regatta, held on Sunday, Nov. 13.The Regatta is hosted by the Lake Washington Rowing Club and is the largest head race west of the Mississippi. A head race is held over a winding river course and is usually about three miles in length. In the United States, head races are scheduled in the fall months.
Over the weekend Mayor Greg Nickels made a short appearance at a public meeting to respond to audience questions concerning the future of Rainer Beach and Southeast Seattle.Nearly one hundred residents filled the Rainer Valley Cultural Center's auditorium to see what was in the future for their diverse and impacted neighborhoods. The appearance is the first since Seattle voters ushered him back into office on Nov. 8, and while scheduled to field questions for an hour Nickels announced he had to leave after only answering three audience questions.
In response to a high number of accidents on Rainier Ave. S., community, city and state representatives launched a program to increase safety. The Seattle Department of Transportation and Seattle Police are leading a Corridor Traffic Safety Project for Rainier Ave. S., in partnership with the Washington Traffic Safety Commission and Washington State Department of Transportation. This is the first project of its kind in Seattle. The 35-member task force will identify problems, create an action plan and implement recommendations.This project is a product of the city's Southeast Seattle Action Agenda, which highlighted community concerns about safety on Rainier Ave. S.
There's been another shooting outside Mr. Lucky, a Queen Anne hot spot popular with the thug crowd. It happened after closing on Nov. 12 in the parking lot of the bar across the street from Key Arena, when one guy was set upon by a bunch of other guys who were beating the hell out of him. A bouncer from the joint stepped in to break it up, and the beating victim took the opportunity to pull out a gun and start blasting away, said police spokeswoman Debra Brown. And as usual with this crowd, the shooter was a terrible shot and hit the bouncer instead of his attackers, according to the police report about the incident. The bouncer was shot in one thigh, and the bullet passed through and lodged in his other thigh. The gang unit is in charge of the investigation, and they'll have their work cut out for them. Following the hip-hop code of silence, pretty much everybody was gone by the time police arrived.
I'm having a birthday this month. Much of what has happened to me recently, I blame on that fact.The past couple of months have kept me fairly busy, what with all the aging and falling apart and having procedures done to my body. I support a veritable Who's Who of medical professionals.The only upside to this whole season has been the legal narcotics prescribed for me by various specialists. I'm a walking cornucopia of pharmaceutical delectables. I have pills that take away the pain, pills to make me sleep, something to lower my cholesterol, pills to lower my anxiety about taking pills that make me sleep because a side effect of those pills might be death and we all know how anxiety-ridden that can make you.
We staged a garage sale a few months back, and my partner almost sold off my "Official Ad Man" coffee mug.It was a tough enough job just keeping an eye on my father, who wanted to sell everything that he hadn't seen me use in the past 45 minutes. But when I saw one of the last vestiges of my one-time advertising agency career sitting among the cheap gas-station giveaway glasses, that was too much. I leapt to the mug's defense."You can't sell this!" I yelped, clutching my mug close to my chest. "It's been with me throughout my whole advertising life. What do you expect me to drink my coffee out of when I'm stuck in the middle of writing... when I'm searching for just the right phrase... when I'm pleading for inspiration?""You haven't used it to drink coffee out of for 14 years.""I didn't know we still had it," I said. "Where'd you find it?"The mug itself isn't anything special; it doesn't have either a cute saying or a company logo emblazoned on its side (an amazing fact). It's just a simple, striped, ceramic mug that I found long ago in an import shop.That mug, though, had been with me from my first ad job when I was still fresh out of college, through a succession of big time, New York-based ad agencies to, finally, a spot in one of Seattle's major shops.
Bumper stickers and vanity license plates are two things that I could never get myself much inter-ested in.Bumper stickers, unless they are homemade, scream out that your ideas are shared by many people with $4.99 to burn. This I cannot align myself with.Plus, the stickers' messages, like those ubiquitous damned ribbons proliferating car backs nowadays, reek of cliché, whether they are anti-Bush or pro-Iraq.I love, and repeat endlessly, the clever retorts I occasionally hear, even if I am the butt of the retort. But there is very little funny about most bumper stickers. We have seen it all before.That said, I do remember one bumper sticker with great enthusiasm.
It's amazing how simple a world-altering opportunity can be-as simple as sitting down. With the October death of Rosa Parks at the age of 92, we were reminded how her refusal to adhere to the racist bus-seating rules of Montgomery, Ala., in 1955 gave birth in this country to the civil rights movement. This seemingly ordinary act also gave rise to one of our country's most powerful leaders, Martin Luther King Jr.The 27-year-old reverend emerged as a leader of the bus boycott inspired Parks' civil disobedience. While helping to organize carpools for Montgomery's black population, King showed his community and his country how the political power of protest-of how to walk the talk of demanding the right to live a peaceful and respected life. This was not easy to do. King's peaceful protests often were met with violence.
Despite its thriving ecology, Discovery Park doesn't run itself. There are trees that need planting, invasive species to remove. Birds, bugs, beaches, bluffs - all these things require itemizing, cataloguing, measuring, maintaining. It's a full-time job.According to Discovery Park naturalist Dan Moore, this is where park volunteers come in. It is through generous donations of time, commitment and talent that selfless individuals can aid park staff in ensuring Discovery Park remains one of the nation's great urban oases."We've got a lot of very diverse volunteer opportunities at the park," Moore explained, adding that anyone interested in checking out the program can attend an annual open house on Saturday, Jan. 21, from 1 to 3 p.m. at the Discovery Park Visitors Center, 3801 W. Government Way.
More than 300 opponents of a proposal to replace the Queen Anne Metropolitan Market with a QFC in a two-story retail complex got a reality check last week at a packed community council meeting.Providing the perspective was Brian Swanson, chairman of the community council in Wedgwood, where a pitched battle was unsuccessfully waged more than four years ago in an effort to stop a QFC from replacing a Matthew's Red Apple grocery store. Speaking at the monthly meeting of the Queen Anne Community Council (QACC), Swanson said the Red Apple was a long-term, revered neighborhood store whose planned demise sparked a crisis in the neighborhood. "The shock galvanized the community like nothing else had ever done," he added.Indeed, the dispute got downright nasty at times, according to Swanson. But the Wedgwood community activists learned some hard lessons from the land-use battle, he said. "Hopefully this might help you in Queen Anne."
The Interurban may yet return to Fremont-someday-but patience has its limits. The commuters have up and gone. But not far. "Waiting for the Interurban," the passing-strange, yet somehow cozy, statuary artifact that has weathered many a season near the north end of the Fremont Bridge has been schlepped to a temporary location one block east, outside the History House museum, while construction on the bridge gets under way.