The Magnolia Community Club brought in representatives from several city departments at its Feb. 9 meeting to brief the neighborhood about potential disasters it might face. Organized by MCC board member Shary Flenniken, the meeting included comments and warnings, but some of the information was at times both a little vague and somewhat misleading.MCC president Vic Barry noted that the neighborhood residents don't have to worry about floods or volcanoes, but he wasn't so sure about cargo containers at the Port. "If they can smuggle in people," Barry said of an incident involving illegal Chinese aliens found in a shipping container, "who knows what else they could smuggle in?""Obviously, the big one is the earthquake," he said of a more likely disaster scenario that could wipe out the bridges connecting Magnolia to the rest of the city.
Seattle Center director Virginia Anderson stunned her employees last week when she announced her resignation after 18 years at the helm of the one of the region's premier gathering places, said spokesman Perry Cooper.Anderson sounded a bit surprised herself that almost two decades had passed since she took over. "I didn't think I would be here that long," she said. But the Queen Anne resident added that she'd been thinking of leaving the job for around a year, and she picked now because the Center is back operating in the black. Anderson said she wouldn't have resigned otherwise. "It's ready to go to the next big stage," she said of a facility that saw an incredible $700 million in public and private investments made during her tenure. "So I feel good about that."That's not to say the Seattle Center still doesn't face challenges, Anderson conceded. A big one, of course, is the fate of Key Arena and its resident basketball teams, the Sonics and the Storm.
A sense of 1960s-style activism was revived at a press conference in the Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center in Discovery Park last week when a new version of the Four Amigos banded together to launch a blistering attack on proposed federal budget cuts.The Amigos (a.k.a. Gang of Four) originally included Larry Gossett, now a King County council member; Bob Santos, now executive director of the non-profit Inter*Im; Roberto Maestas, now executive director of El Centro de la Raza; and the late Bernie Whitebear, who founded the United Indians of All Tribes Foundation.Whitebear, a tireless American-Indian activist who once led an occupation of Fort Lawton, died from cancer in 2000. But Phil Lane Jr., the new UIATF director, simultaneously evoked the spirit of Whitebear and stood in for his old friend as he joined the other three Amigos at the sparsely attended Feb. 10 press conference.Lane said the four of them represented a spiritual union of African, Asian, Latino and American-Indian communities, which in turn encompass 80 percent of the world's population in the Western Hemisphere.He also said that unity of the four groups is needed to fight federal budget cuts that will affect social-service programs such as Head Start.
"The Wedding Singer" has something in common with its leading character. He's a wannabe rock star. The world-première musical now playing at 5th Avenue Theatre is a wannabe Broadway blockbuster. But despite an exuberant cast and Tony-winning director John Rando ("Urinetown"), this show hits a sour note. It fails to engage. At two hours and 45 minutes it's too long, too clichéd and too loud. The biggest problem? The sophomoric creation lacks heart. Although it gains momentum during the second act, that's not enough to rescue the production from a mediocre evening of musical theater. As an audience, we had high hopes. After all, the same folks who produced the fabulous, Tony-winning "Hairspray" are behind "The Wedding Singer." But they have their work cut out for them before opening on Broadway this spring. Somebody had the bright idea to turn the 1996 film starring Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore into a Broadway musical. Like the movie, the musical unfolds in 1985, the era of big hair, powder-blue tuxedos, junk bonds and Pac-Man. The film delivered a sweet love story about two happy underachievers who find true love; the musical fails to capture the same feel-good charm.
There are ghost people at the Frye Museum these days. They hover around the photographs by Candida Höfer. We can't see them, but clearly they were there a minute ago or they're about to reappear.This is one of the compelling features of "Architecture of Absence," the exhibition of 50 of Höfer's large-scale photographs of public rooms. She has invited us to enter some exquisitely rendered public spaces, and left us to enjoy them all by ourselves. As the Frye puts it, these are "spaces marked with the richness of human activity, yet devoid of human presence."This first North American museum survey exhibition of Höfer's work gives American audiences the opportunity to become acquainted with an artist who is better known in Europe and whose depictions of the interiors of museums, libraries, auditoriums, dance studios, lecture halls, restaurants and private houses are becoming increasingly pricey throughout the world.
It's not good when you like the cowboy music that resonates though the theater before the play as much as you like the production itself. That's not to say that "Plainsong," Book-It's current staged adaptation, is bad. It has some wonderfully funny elements, and there's great poignancy in its sweet story. It just falls a bit flat.Call it a case of too much and too little. There are too many characters, too many set changes, too many vignettes. Yet there's not enough to make all the disparate events a cohesive whole. The book from which the production is drawn spins a contemporary story of a small Colorado town set on those vast plains east of the Rockies. We meet a cross-section of its population - schoolteachers, ranchers, teenagers, little kids, old people and a slew of others who carry out the day-to-day tasks that keep a community going. As in all societies, there are the good guys and the bad guys.
Despite a lot of negative press, the Medicare Part D prescription-drug plan is helping many seniors who need assistance paying for their medications. Of course, the plan can't help you until you've done your homework, so the first step for Medicare-eligible seniors is to find out more about what Part D has to offer. The Medicare Plan Finder - which is on-line at www.medicare.gov or by calling (800) MEDICARE (800-633-4227) - matches beneficiaries with the best plan for them with all costs laid out.One-on-one counseling is available for seniors who need some assistance in using the Plan Finder Program, or who just want to ask questions and gather more information. At Medicare Today we've sponsored several enrollment and information sessions at the Wallingford Senior Center, 4649 Sunnyside Ave. N, Suite 104.
Have you conjugated a word lately?We were having a conversation the other day, an elders' mourning session actually, about "English as she is spoke" and the unique use of tenses and numbers that have become standard modern English. In the course of reciting a long list of pet peeves, someone asked about "conjugating."Everyone remembered what it was, but for some reason, they hadn't indulged in conjugating nor had they given much thought to "parsing."If you should try to explain the words to your grandchildren, they would say that that just proved school in the olden days was really weird. We, on the other hand, decided they were being deprived of one of the highlights of English class.
With four world-premieres in the last 12 months, Laurelhurst resident and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Robert Schenkkan has had a busy year.This month, Schenkkan's adaptation of the classic short story "The Devil and Daniel Webster" will make its world premiere at Seattle Children's Theatre (SCT)."It is an honor to have him writing for us," said Linda Hartzell, SCT's artistic director, adding that she hopes to have him write for SCT again. "He has two teenagers and so he, having been a father, really knows and respects what, especially, we've been trying to do at Seattle Children's Theatre when we produce theater for young audiences and for families. And he has understood everything that I think a playwright needs to do to make a vibrant, entertaining play for that audience."
Youths today are often portrayed as disrespectful, self-centered individuals who only care about music, clothes and looking cool in front of their friends. Too often, society paints them with the same brush when only a few individuals may resemble that description. Enter the Boys & Girls Club of King County, who recently honored 13 teens as Youth of the Year at Benaroya Hall for their outstanding efforts at home, at school and in the community.Among the honorees were three North Enders: Marques Camp, Suzanne Hall and Addie Morton representing the North Seattle, Ballard and Wallingford Boys & Girls Clubs, respectively. Each of them spoke about what the club means to him or her.
Getting dumped hurts, even if you know it's coming. It's even more painful when the dumper fibs to the dumpee and says, "It's not you; it's me." You know very well it's you, but they're simply too wussy to state their true feelings and be honest. Four years ago, we were dumped by someone we'd come to trust. Oh sure, we knew it wasn't personal. It just felt like it was personal. If only you'd had the guts to be honest with us and say, "It's not you, it's me. I've messed up production lines for so many years, frittered away the goodwill of my employees, reduced morale to an all-time low and now, now you must leave because I need to streamline the company and make bigger profits for my executives and stockholders." We would have understood. We wouldn't have liked it, but we would have understood. Fickle, fickle Boeing.
Shopping Fremont is not the same as shopping Kmart. Our stores don't feature the uniform, the standard or the basic, and sometimes we leave out the practical. Instead, you'll find the colorful, the eclectic and the unconventional. We have no mega-large, mass-produced, corporate conglomerates here, and unfortunately, prices here don't reflect machine-made, cookie-cutter, mass-produced discounts.Higher-end shoppingI'm not a trend-setter, but I do know Bliss (the clothing store at the center of the Center of the Universe, at 3501 Fremont Ave. N.) and Dream (her sister store across the street, at 3427 Fremont Place N.) feature the hottest in jeans, with prices to match. Sevens, the brand currently all the rage among those who know, cost around $300 a pair. Another brand featured artfully arranged rips, stains and shredded denim for $240 each, or $350 for a pair with an immense quantity of embroidered detail.Such prices feel out-of-scale with our working-class neighborhood. Lola Pop, at 711 N. 35th St., sells skirts priced at $200 each.
A sense of 1960s-style activism was revived on Feb. 10 at a press conference in the Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center in Discovery Park when a new version of the Four Amigos banded together to launch an attack on proposed federal budget cuts.The Amigos (or the "Gang of Four") originally included Larry Gossett, now a Metropolitan King County Council member; Bob Santos, now executive director of the nonprofit Inter*Im; Roberto Maestas, now executive director of El Centro de la Raza; and the late Bernie Whitebear, who founded the United Indians of All Tribes Foundation (UIATF).Whitebear, a tireless American-Indian activist who once led an occupation of Fort Lawton, died from cancer in 2000. Phil Lane Jr., the new UIATF director, simultaneously stood in for his old friend and invoked Whitebear's spirit as he joined the other three Amigos at the sparsely attended Feb. 10 press conference.
Mayor Greg Nickels patted himself on the back last week at the Greater Queen Anne Chamber of Commerce luncheon, where he gave a State of the City talk."It's been a fascinating journey this past four years," he said. Noting that he was elected to his first term as mayor in 2001, Nickels said his focus from day one has been on safety and security: "We've had to make sure our city is safe from attacks like Sept. 11."But the mayor also said a major earthquake is more likely to happen than a terrorist attack in Seattle, and that thought segued into a brief discussion of city plans to replace or upgrade its aging fire stations. Two-thirds of the fire stations could fall down in a quake, Nickels said: "When you think about it, that's a real problem."
Sheley Secrest is a phenom.This energetic 31-year-old woman is the newest president of the Seattle Chapter of the NAACP, which stands at 2,000 members strong.Secrest, a former law clerk for federal Judge Franklin Burgess, had been working as an attorney for the Public Defender Association in Downtown Seattle for only six months when she was tapped for the top spot.But this Seattle University Law School graduate, originally from Puyallup, isn't the type of person to let the grass grow under her feet.Secrest hasn't risen so far so fast by playing politics either: She is forthright and outspoken.Secrest characterized the local chapter of the NAACP in the past as "more of a social organization."Filling big shoesSecrest calls herself a protege of Carl Mack, who brought the NAACP into the news over the last few years with his many bold and confrontational approaches to problems of racism, real and perceived.Alfoster Garrett succeeded Mack in early 2005, when Mack moved out of the area, but Garrett's tenure only lasted about nine months. Secrest had little to say about Garrett, but she admires Mack immensely.