CHERI NICHOLSYou asked the wrong person. I have seven typed pages of resolutions. If I achieve half of them, I will be happy.JASON PATTERSONI resolve to quit smoking. I've got the patches, the gum and the lozenges. I'm ready to go.
The Mayor's Office has announced that the Summer Nights on the Pier concert series produced by Queen Anne-based One Reel is moving from South Lake Union to the southeast end of Gas Works Park for the foreseeable future. It was an announcement made with short notice during the busy holidays, and the decision was made without consulting the Wallingford neighborhood near the popular park, complained Betty Richardson, a nonvoting member of the neighborhood community council.Seattle Parks and Recreation did hold a meeting for affected neighborhoods two days before Christmas, but there was only two days' notice about it and many were unable to attend, she explained. That included members of the Queen Anne Chamber of Commerce, said spokesperson Margaret Irvine, who added that many South Lake Union businesses are members of the Queen Anne Chamber.
This has been a screwy movie year for me. Of the films that would end up on my Ten Best list, only two opened theatrically in the United States in the first half of 2005. As I put it recently to a colleague, "You could say that film in 2005 was confined to several days in September at the Toronto Film Festival." Whatever the reasons, there was a long, highlight-challenged stretch from the Seattle bow of 2004's best picture, "Million Dollar Baby," in the first week of January 2005 and the diamond-dust storm of fine films that has swirled around us in the last four months of the year.
It's that time of the year again. Another 365 days in the can, put to bed, down the hatch, however you wish to phrase it. Gone is still gone.Time goes a heck of a lot faster as a body grows older.I never thought I'd become quite the cliché-monger I've turned into, but certain things the old folks used to say above my head when I was a child have, to my great surprise, turned out to be true. Time really does fly, and the flight speed picks up as we age.As I do every year, I am making me some resolutions.I always make two, one internal and one external.The external one is unfortunately a rerun from 1997. That's when I quit smoking, after 30 years of puffing away.But in late 2004, I traveled to Thailand with a Thai friend. I spent days not seeing anyone, other than my friend, who could speak English. My Thai is extremely limited. And yet, I quickly adapted - my ex-wife always claimed I had chameleon blood. The first day on the ground, the family was making an extra plate of food for me, which in Thailand means not hot. But I learned the word for hot, pet, and by Day Two I was eating out of the communal pots, which seemed to please my hosts no end. When introduced to newly arriving family members (my travel partner has 12 siblings), the first thing said about me wasn't "He's nice" or "He's stupid," but "He eats our food. He likes it hot!" I was as proud as any other oddity would be of himself.So after dinner - Thai food, real Thai food, not the dressed-up and toned-down stuff fed to us in most local Thai restaurants (good, but still a pale approximation of what everyday Thais are eating at home) - is one of the wonders of the world.Afterwards I noticed all but the young, and my Americanized friend, were smoking (buurey, they called it). I might say adaptable, you might say weak, but the inevitable took place: I started up again with evil Mr. Nicotine and devilish Ms. Tars.
Some random thoughts from New Year's Eve on Capitol Hill:1. Thank goodness for Saturday banking.For various reasons I won't elaborate here, I was out of cash on New Year's Eve afternoon and didn't have a debit card. But the Washington Mutual branch in the Harvard Market complex was open until 4. Hence, I was able to obtain my required potluck-dinner contributions.2. Be careful what you wish for.With a little time to kill between the bank's closing and the potluck's start, I found myself at one of the Pike/Pine corridor's newly smokeless bars. Among the few patrons was a local guy who'd moved to New York three years ago to pursue an acting career. He admitted to having been one of those Capitol Hillers who'd snootily despised everything about Seattle that wasn't sufficiently New York-esque. "I used to hate the way Seattle drivers were so timid and cautious when I lived here. Then on my first day back, I was walking across the street and almost got sideswiped... Something's definitely different about Seattle these days," he said.3. Am I getting old or what?The potluck took place in a beautifully restored duplex on east Capitol Hill overlooking the Arboretum. The other guests included musicians, painters, arts promoters, grad students and public-school teachers.In prior years, this gang's range of conversation topics would have included aesthetic theory, global politics, unfair state budget cuts and whether the local economy would become any less pathetic in the coming year. This time, the group (including me) was pretty much obsessed with such more mundane subject matter as real estate investment, career schmoozing and the best private schools to ship their own kids to.When I was a young adult in the 1980s, I'd scoffed at the characters in the movie "The Big Chill" as examples of what I would never, ever become. Am I becoming more like that anyway?
This two-part series examines the issue of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered (LGBT) senior housing and the unique challenges gay seniors face as they enter their retirement years. Last week, Part One examined its history in Seattle along with the initial attempt to build an affordable, gay-affirmative senior housing complex on Capitol Hill. This week, Part Two examines the current attempt to revive this vision and the unique and creative solutions seniors have come up with on their own given the current dearth of affordable and inclusive senior housing options.With 74 million Baby Boomers retiring by 2008, it's rare for a media cycle to pass without mention of Social Security, Medicare or the new prescription drug benefit. But distinct from these concerns that affect all senior citizens are a series of equally important concerns for a sub-set seniors. Will I be able to find housing that's both safe and welcoming? Will I be able to retire to a place that meets my unique needs? Will I be able to afford such a place? In short, can I age with pride?David Haack, the chair of the Department of Social and Health Services LGBT Advisory board, recalled his first encounter with homophobia at a nursing home. As a young nurse at the facility, he had befriended a World War II veteran who also happened to be gay."One day I was in a meeting with the facility administrator who instructed me to report any 'unusual activity' from my friend. She then told me that if he did anything out of line she would throw him out immediately as she didn't like his 'type' at her community," Haack said.Haack's experience is not uncommon and while society continues to become more accepting of homosexuality, gay seniors still face unique challenges as they enter their elder years and need to consider their options for housing.
Cathy MaloneI probably won't make one this year. Things will turn out how they are suppose to.Jason PattersonI resolve to quit smoking. I've got the patches, the gum and the lozenges. I'm ready to go.Cheri NicholsYou asked the wrong person! I have seven typed pages of resolutions. If I achieve half of them I will be happy.
Sometimes seemingly routine circumstances create connections we hadn't envisioned establishing. Prior to driving for Metro, I had minimal contact with disabled people. Because public transit provides mobility for a diverse segment of our community, including those with special needs, I now have a lot of contact with this particular population. In fact, this unique relationship between transit operators and people with disabilities has provided me an opportunity to meet many interesting passengers, including my friend Jim. Donning his hip sunglasses, this tall, lean man with well-groomed jet-black hair maintains an intriguing presence. Jim listens with an intensity rarely experienced in today's world of trite platitudes, and he speaks with knowledge and insight that belies that of a 20-something-year-old. With his optic nerves damaged beyond repair, Jim was rendered blind at birth. Born and raised in the Texas border city of El Paso, Jim and his younger sister grew up without their father while their young mom worked long hours to support her two children.
We all have moving stories, bits of insight into our Seattle lives that we've collected, created and captured. But too often a very limited audience hears them. A walk through Seward Park moves you to capture the moment with some lines of poetry inked out in your journal. The details of neighborhood coming together for a summer barbecue at the grouchy old-man's house on the corner becomes an engaging short story about redemption that's now stored in your computer's hard drive. Your teenage son's fantastical account of a hobo who harbors the secret of inter-dimensional travel at his camp beneath I-5 remains a forgotten assignment turned into his English teacher. The uplifting shot you took of a dog licking an unwary toddler's ice cream cone at SeaFair sits burned on a CD that's stuffed in a drawer.The Beacon Hill News & South District Journal and the artistically driven, community-building stalwart Southeast Effective Development (SEED) want you to submit such creations, new or old, to our Southeast Seattle Festival of Words and Photos. The submission deadline is Friday, January 27.
If you think the word "Italy" is synonymous with "Tuscany," you would not be alone. In fact Seattleites can be as sure to bump into an acquaintance while visiting San Gimignano as they would on Maui. But Italy is long and skinny and is really only an arbitrary cobbling of regions through the vision of Garabaldi. The weather differences are extreme. The southern tip has scorching summer heat and barely a winter to speak of, the far north boasts a cooler, refreshing summer air and snowy mountain peaks all year round. In fact, culturally a Sicilian has about as much in common with a Venetian as a New Yorker has with Montanan. But having said that, New Yorkers have a fascination with the country cowboy and the rough and tumble life of the rodeo. So, here is the Italian Alpine equivalent of the rodeo that I experienced several months ago during a family trip to the region - "La Bataille delle Reines" or The Battle of the Queen's.
When Craig and Laura Morris left for work one morning last year, they had no idea how drastically their lives would change that day. The two Qwest employees, married since 2001, had heard rumors of upcoming layoffs but were caught by surprise when it was announced that both their jobs were being relocated to Nebraska and Arizona. "We were shell-shocked," said Laura. "Instantly 150 jobs were gone, and we were going to lose our two incomes."A career fair led them to Seattle Central Community College's Worker Retraining Program (WRT) and the very persuasive WRT manager, Mary Lockman, who helped the couple turn a negative into a positive.
The mayor's office has announced that the Summer Nights on the Pier concert series produced by Queen Anne-based One Reel is moving from South Lake Union to the southeast end of Gas Works Park for the foreseeable future. It was an announcement made with short notice during the busy holidays, and the decision was made without consulting the Wallingford neighborhood near the popular park, complained Betty Richardson, a non-voting member of the neighborhood community council.Seattle Parks and Recreation did hold a meeting for affected neighborhoods two days before Christmas, but there was only two days' notice about it and many were unable to attend, she added. That included members of the Queen Anne Chamber of Commerce, said spokeswoman Margaret Irvine, who added that many South Lake Union businesses are members of the Queen Anne Chamber.
Education, technology and transportation figure as high priorities for the 2006 state legislative session, according Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles and Rep. Helen Sommers, both Democrats representing the 36th District, which includes Magnolia and Queen Anne.However, attending to a list of perceived needs could prove a tricky balancing act this year: despite an unexpected budget "surplus," legislators are anticipating a serious funding shortfall in the next biennium. The temptation to spend will meet the need to shore up resources for the coming fiscal drought.Kohl-Welles (D-Queen Anne) described the coming session as a supplemental year primarily intended to make adjustments to the state budget. Currently the state is looking at a $1.4-billion surplus for the 2006 budget - though, Kohl-Welles explained, "it's not a surplus in the true sense of the word."
During the week before Christmas, while my wife and I were parked in Magnolia's only pay lot, we couldn't help but notice the messy appearance of the area.Upon closer inspection we noted an abandoned living room sofa surrounded by black garbage bags oozing their filthy contents upon the ground. Some kind of large, unattached orange pole was protruding from the bushes as well-perhaps a remnant of a portable basketball system.The large industrial containers, besides looking bad, emanated a cloud of foul orders. And on the opposite side of the lot, where two giant, white donation containers reside, there were bags of who-knew-what casually strewn about. Either the bins were completely full, or these items were simply slung out of passing cars by lazy, inconsiderate drivers.If it was the latter, I am really ticked. I thought the Magnolia personality forbade such poor manners.
At a recent family gathering, far-flung relatives with suspicious smiles and too much time on their hands peppered my teen-age cousin with ques-tions. "No football, no girl-friend - what do you do with all of your time?""Well, I placed second in the county spelling bee," was his timid reply.Intrigued, I began my own interrogation. Is there a Millionaire clause or is the first answer always the final answer? I learned that the initial reply serves as the official attempt, so swiftness is not advantageous. Next I discovered that, as a stalling strategy, spellers often employ the tactic of asking for the definition or origin of a word. Digging a little deeper, I unearthed the siren's song of modern spelling bees. Why are children across the nation devoting hours each day, feverishly memorizing arcane spellings? For the same reason gym rats are shooting free throws in the Indiana snow: If they practice hard enough, they might one day get to perform on ESPN.