Question: what can say more than a thousand words but has no mouth?Answer: a picture.Nov. 16 was all the way live, and like we said, we could tell you about it but you won't fully believe us until you experience it for yourself. On this date we hosted a screening of "The FBI's War on Black America," and the crowd really dug it. We had a nice mix of colors, ages, political philosophies and genders - you name it. It wasn't the typical lefty event where everyone knows everyone already and usually knows what they're going to say because they've said it before... so many times! It was people who really wanted to know what secret government agencies do with our tax dollars. This was not a movie about conspiracy theories, but about human rights. So we showed the film and facilitated the question and answer.
Woody Gray got a lot of things wrong when he was a young man. He was quick to say he could have been a better father, a better husband. But by the time Woody Gray left us Nov. 29 he had managed to get a lot of things right. He befriended so many people in so many ways. Most recently he worked with security for King County. He often described incidents in which his Christian beliefs reduced if not eliminated the tension. He spent approximately two years at Southwest Mortuary meeting people at their best and at their worst, helping them in all kinds of ways, often off the clock. For over 24 years Woody was a firefighter, a black firefighter, and he learned to extinguish fires of all kinds. During much of this time Woody was a member of Mount Zion Baptist Church where almost everyone knew him. For years he attended the Sunday school class and Bible study class taught by his best buddy firefighter Clarence Williams. He sang in the Brotherhood Chorus. He was one of the first members to join the security force at Mount Zion Baptist Church. He regularly came to Prayer Meeting. He performed a variety of tasks in Vacation Bible School. He was a deacon. He would like being described as a servant.He was always helping someone. One woman said, "Woody was everybody's friend." It may as well have been true because he did not have to know you to help you. He would encourage you. He could and would pray with you, and for you. But he knew that sometimes we need a tangible kindness before we can understand the spiritual. So, if you needed a ride to or from church, the airport, and the doctor's office - call Woody. If you were scared to drive in the snow - call Woody. If you needed someone to spend time with your son - call Woody.
The idea that the United States is a melting pot where arriving immigrants shed their national identities and turn into homogenized Americans has never been true, and it shouldn't be, according to Alma Plancich, executive director of the Ethnic Heritage Council.Speaking in the council's office on the third floor of the Seattle Center House, Plancich sees immigration in this country from a different perspective. "It's like a salad bowl," is how she put it. "There's nothing wrong with that. I think it's what makes this country so unique."But Plancich can also draw from her own experience. She arrived in America as a child from Croatia with a few stops along the way, and she settled with her family in a tight-knit fishing community in Anacortes. "It was like a village from Croatia had been transplanted there," she said.She remembers singing Croatian songs in church and while cleaning crabs, and Plancich took it for granted that her cultural identity would be preserved. "But when I was in college, I realized it was very, very fragile."
I don't know how many thousands of people were in the British Museum in London the day we visited. It was late July, and in the cavernous entry room the crowd was large and noisy. I looked at the signs pointing in every direction for various exhibits and wonders to see, I heard the buzz of people speaking a dozen different languages, and then ... it all stopped. It was quiet. Movements around me crept to slow-motion speed. There it was, right in front of me. The Tree of Life.I had read about it, even described it in a sermon once. The Tree of Life was made by artists from the war-torn country of Mozambique. It's constructed out of metal; you might glance at it and notice nothing more than that the old metal pieces were put together in the shape of a tree. But if you look harder, the pieces of metal stop you in your tracks. Grenades. Pistols. Mines. Chains. Machine guns. All were so rusted that the color seemed to drip from one item to the next. They were real, too.
There was an awful lot that was good and commendable about last week's breakfast with Lance Armstrong at the Sheraton Hotel. And that is all to Steve Fleischmann's credit.Two years ago, Steve, who runs an office-interiors business across from the old Olympic Hotel, was on a gurney being wheeled in for prostate surgery at the University of Washington Hospital, when he took a last look at his beautiful wife and vowed: "Honey, I'm gonna bring Lance Arm-strong to Seattle."Steve had read the book.Nowadays, first the doctor says the deadly word, "C-A-N-C-E-R," and then your friends give you Lance and Sally Jenkins' book, "It's Not About the Bike."It's one of life's passages, like the birds-and-bees book your parents gave you when you turned 13, only this is a great read.Last Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2005, survivor Steve Fleischmann looked out at the ballroom of the Sheraton Hotel into the faces of 1,100 people. It was so packed the fire marshal was counting heads.This was Steve's dream. He'd gotten Lance (for $150,000), had a song written for him, filled over 30 tables himself. Even put a Douglas fir seedling on every chair.It was a super job, and I don't think he should be blamed for those little round towers of omelet that stood up on our plates like they'd just slid out of an Alpo can.
You might think that, as a card-carrying agnostic or possibly atheist, I would be cheering the movement to change the words "Merry Christmas" to "Happy Holidays," or some other innocuous phrase like "Happy Neutral Non-secular Celebration," but I'm not. I think it's a load of... well, reindeer manure.The last time I checked, we live in the United States of America, a nation founded on the principles of freedom of speech, religion and actions within the law. When did we turn into a country that wants to control people's thoughts and words?By going to court to force businesses to cease using the words "Merry Christmas," and to remove such horrifying images as angels and wise men from their Christ... excuse me, holiday trees, in favor of fruits and vegetables, these secular bigots without a life are forcing our government to play a role in dictating religious thought and celebration. That's a violation of our Constitution, which states that the government shall make no laws regulating religion.
I was raised by a small, compact Irish Catholic woman who believed that Jesus Christ, as represented by the Pope in Rome and his cardinal boys, was God, Saviour and cosmic policeman all rolled into one.My mom brooked no arguments about Jesus and she didn't get one from me until I was a teenager, when I argued with her and everybody else about God (god?) and everything else.I never trust those "good" little teenagers every staid adult always likes. To my mind there's something wrong with a kid who never rebels or at least sneaks around making faces behind the grownups' backs.Anyway, at about 12, I read the New Testament for myself and realized that the historical Jesus bore little relation to what my Mom, and the parish priest, Father James Lunn, a choleric Irishman from somewhere around Boston, were laying down.Their Jesus was a disciplinarian, the Jesus of the New Testament was kind and favored the company of working folk, including a reformed hooker (Mary Magdelane wasn't no Avon Lady, yo).Even when I walked away from Catholicism at 18, I kept my fondness for historical Jesus. Life being what it is though, I couldn't live very long without some kind of spirituality. Life is too hard at times to deal with alone.
The day after Thanksgiving, Christmas tree lots bloomed around the neighborhoods like dandelions after a spring rain. Where there were only vacant parking lots a few days before, now stood row after row of Douglas firs and other evergreens ready to lend holiday cheer.Recently, the papers and the TV news carried stories about the lines of people who had gathered at the United States Department of Forestry offices in order to sign up for permits to cut their own Christmas trees on state land.I can imagine what a family adventure that could be: the struggle out in the possibly snowy forest to find just the right tree, and then the work of cutting it down and hauling it back to the car. An outing like that would be completed only after you had gathered around a crackling fireplace and warmed as you slowly sipped steaming-hot chocolate.Yeah, in my dreams. Remember, I grew up in the land of excess-southern California-home of the flocked white, blue and pink Christmas trees. The excursion to obtain the yearly Christmas tree usually took place in about 70-degree weather, and if it weren't for the Christmas programs on the TV, you'd have no idea what time of the year it was.
It's a Queen Anne story, but it casts a shadow toward Magnolia and any other community that hungers to hold on to its sense of place.Metropolitan Market on upper Queen Anne, formerly Queen Anne Thriftway, may lose its lease to QFC at the end of next year.Contrary to Friday's article in the Seattle P-I, it's not a done deal (see page 1 in today's News).Still, even the possibility is a lump of coal in Queen Anne's stocking.OK, full disclosure up front: Metropolitan Market is one of the biggest advertisers in the Queen Anne News, associate paper to the Magnolia News. If they do in fact lose their lease and don't relocate in the neighborhood, we at the newspaper will blink, for sure. But we'll soldier on.But this is about more than just business. It's about community.
Jeez, is nothing sacred?I was just getting the hang of making out my checks to Metropolitan Market, not Queen Anne Thriftway, when the news comes about the upper Queen Anne mainstay possibly losing its lease to QFC.Contrary to Friday's article in the Seattle P-I, it's not a done deal (see Page 1 in today's News).Still, the possibility is a lump of coal in Queen Anne's stocking.OK, full disclosure up front: Metropolitan Market is one of this newspaper's biggest advertisers. If they do in fact lose their lease and don't relocate in the neighborhood, we here at the newspaper will blink, for sure. But we'll soldier on.This is about more than just business. It's about community.
I don't know how many thousands of people were in the British Museum in London the day we visited.It was late July, and in the cavernous entry room of the museum the crowd was large and noisy. I looked at the signs pointing in every direction for various exhibits and wonders to see, I heard the buzz of people speaking a dozen different languages and then... it all stopped.It was quiet. Movements around me crept to slow-motion speed. There it was, right in front of me. The Tree of Life.I had read about it, even described it in a sermon once. The Tree of Life was made by artists from the war-torn country of Mozambique. Constructed out of metal, you might glance at it and notice nothing more than the fact that the old metal pieces were put together in the shape of a tree.But, on closer inspection, the pieces of metal stops you in your tracks. Grenades. Pistols. Mines. Chains. Machine guns. All were so rusted the color seemed to drip from one item to the next. They were real, too.
Disputes in many parts of the world erupt into war, but not in Czechoslovakia-at least not in Martina Jambrichova's lifetime. In fact, when the country separated into two, there was no dispute as far as Martina could tell-no prejudice or clashing beliefs. "There was nothing to fight about," she says.In 1918, at the end of World War I, the closely related Czechs and Slovaks of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire merged to form Czechoslovakia. After World War II, the land fell within the Soviet sphere of influence and became a Communist nation, along with many other Eastern European countries.Soviet authority finally collapsed in 1989, and Czechoslovakia regained its freedom through a peaceful "Velvet Revolution." On Jan. 1, 1993, the country separated, again peacefully, into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
The idea that the United States is a melting pot, where arriving immigrants shed their national identities and turn into homogenized Americans, has never been true-and it shouldn't be, according to Alma Plancich, executive director of the Ethnic Heritage Council.Speaking in the council's office on the third floor of the Seattle Center House, Plancich sees immigration in this country from a different perspective. "It's like a salad bowl," is how she put it. "There's nothing wrong with that. I think it's what makes this country so unique."But Plancich can also draw from her own experience. She arrived in America as a child from Croatia with a few stops along the way, and she settled with her family in a tight-knit fishing community in Anacortes. "It was like a village from Croatia had been transplanted there," she said.She remembers singing Croatian songs in church and while cleaning crabs, and Plancich took it for granted that her cultural identity would be preserved. "But when I was in college, I realized it was very, very fragile."That led to the formation of a Croatian dance ensemble, and her college years in the early 1970s also exposed Plancich to other ethnic groups such as Finns, American Indians and African Americans.
The idea that the United States is a melting pot, where arriving immigrants shed their national identities and turn into homogenized Americans, has never been true-and it shouldn't be, according to Alma Plancich, executive director of the Ethnic Heritage Council.Speaking in the council's office on the third floor of the Seattle Center House, Plancich sees immigration in this country from a different perspective. "It's like a salad bowl," is how she put it. "There's nothing wrong with that. I think it's what makes this country so unique."But Plancich can also draw from her own experience. She arrived in America as a child from Croatia with a few stops along the way, and she settled with her family in a tight-knit fishing community in Anacortes. "It was like a village from Croatia had been transplanted there," she said.She remembers singing Croatian songs in church and while cleaning crabs, and Plancich took it for granted that her cultural identity would be preserved. "But when I was in college, I realized it was very, very fragile."
The first full weekend of the new smoking ban in bars has passed, and it hasn't become the end of Western Civilization as smokers know it, according to a random sampling of Magnolia and Queen Anne drinking establishments.But judging from a huge number of cigarette butts littering the streets and sidewalks, hardly anyone seems to be obeying the 25-foot rule, a provision in the law described as everything from ridiculous to "bull(poop)" by smokers and nonsmokers alike.Down at the Mecca bar in Lower Queen Anne, a place that was one of the smokiest joints in town, many regulars were steamed and some were in open defiance of the law against smoking in or near bars.A Mecca regular who called himself William Dawes was critical of the 25-foot rule. "That might work out in the sticks, but it won't work in the city," he said. Seattle bars usually don't have parking lots where smokers can go, Dawes noted. "Furthermore, it puts a lot of people out on the streets who have been drinking," he added.