A quiet shift in perspectives is taking place across many areas of our daily lives. People are coming together to develop the resources they need, rather than looking to the plans or solutions created by the government, private business or non-profits.Taking care of a family member used to fall completely on the shoulders of a family member. But with our families scattered across different communities, those that could afford private care had resources to draw upon, while the rest of us went into triple overtime to continue our lives and do the needed caring.
Recently, about midway through an intense viewing of the Daytona 500, the first pangs of hunger began to gnaw through my stomach. What, I asked myself, could taste better than a hot dog while watching a car race?During one of the many commercial breaks, I managed to locate a couple of wieners hidden in the far reaches of the refrigerator, and commenced to nuke them in the microwave. I thought of all the "racetrack steaks," as my father always calls them, that I'd consumed at various southern California drag strips and other racetracks, and how they were always cooked 25 at a time on an immense griddle.Microwaves! What is this world coming to?Then, after finding a couple of stale buns in the bread drawer, I went hunting for the required bottle of bright yellow mustard. My partner, the Lady Marjorie, must have 15 different kinds of mustard in the kitchen. There are big jars in the refrigerator, little jars in the refrigerator door, and I'm sure there are numerous containers of "dried" around someplace, if I'd only look.Every package is different.
It has been a little more than three months since 14 writers and six editors accepted the challenge of writing additional history essays for the Magnolia Community in a follow-up to the first volume, 'Magnolia: Memories & Milestones.'The collection will be published in a format similar in size and quality to the previous edition, and will feature essays touching on the largely unpublished history of Magnolia through the decades of the 1920s to the 1940s.One of the biggest undertakings is being tackled by Stacy Furness and Rob Hitchings, who are preparing a chapter of World War II history entitled "Over There and Here." Part of this project involves asking the community to contribute their own memories of where they were when they heard that Pearl Harbor had been bombed by the Japanese.The article will include remembrances of Magnolia "victory gardens" and scrap metal drives, as well as daring feats of Magnolians in battle.
The Queen Anne Community Council voted almost unanimously last week to call for "appropriate legislation" that might change-or torpedo-the proposed QFC project slated to replace the Metropolitan Market, two homes and an apartment house on Upper Queen Anne Hill.The legislation would ban the construction of upstairs "strip-mall" parking and prevent the net loss of residential units in the Urban Village at the top of the Hill, both of which would happen under a preliminary plan proposed by the developers.The original proposal would have placed a one-year, citywide moratorium on the two elements being included in Urban Villages, said community council board member Kirk Robbins, who said he came up with the idea. However, the proposal was changed so that it applied to only Upper Queen Anne.
They are by turns graceful and gangly, with long, elegant bodies lofted in flight by a tremendous wingspan, and their late-night calls sound like the prehistoric yawp of a pterodactyl, something straight out of Jurassic Park.It's rare for the great blue heron to nest in an urban environment - too much noise - which is all the more reason for Magnolia to welcome back the colony that returns to Kiwanis Ravine every February to court, mate and birth a new generation of rara avis.Heron Habitat Helpers (HHH), a Magnolia-based nonprofit dedicated to the upkeep and preservation of heron habitat at Kiwanis Ravine, held a Heron Homecoming March 1 at Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center in Discovery Park. United Indians of All Tribes Foundation (UIATF), which owns Daybreak Star, co-sponsored the event, and UIATF CEO Phil Lane was the evening's emcee.
He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone. No never alone. No never alone. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone. -Martin Luther King Jr.I'm in training. I'm trying to learn to pay attention. That seems to be the recurring theme in my life right now, paying attention to where God is, what He is doing in the world, in the people around me and inside of me. The training is difficult work, much harder than I would have imagined. On a recent Tuesday I drove over to Genesee, Idaho, the small town where both my parents grew up and I used to spend part of each summer with my grandparents. I've probably made that drive a hundred times in my life. My Great-Uncle Don had passed away the week before, and his memorial service was Tuesday. Knowing I would have a lot of time to myself in the car (it's 300 miles each way, and I had to go and return the same day), I resolved to try to pay attention.
Violinist and symphony conductor Milton Katims died Feb. 26 at the age of 96. The next day, Classic KING-FM radio devoted its whole schedule to musical tributes to the maestro. Mr. Katims was music director of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra from 1954 to 1976, transforming a part-time, floundering ensemble operating on an annual budget of less than $200,000 into one of the region's most respected orchestras. KING aired many of Seattle Sym-phony's recordings conducted by Katims during his 22-year tenure: beautiful music, string quartets, with violin solos by Isaac Stern, no less. Katims was born in New York City and educated at Columbia University. A talented violinist and violist as a boy, he later played viola with the Budapest String Quartet and other ensembles and edited viola music. He also served as principal violinist of the NBC Symphony, where Arturo Toscanini encouraged his interest in conducting. In 1947 Katims became assistant conductor of the NBC Symphony, launching a career that would take him across America and to Israel and Japan.
It's interesting to observe the behavior of boys, especially as growing up I had only a sister. I understand the world of girls in a more personal way, though recently I have been learning quite a bit about boy world. Much of this comes from observing their interactions with each other, as well as reading books about the psychology of boys. I wrote of relational aggression among girls in my last article (Schools, Feb. 22). Such behavior, however, isn't unheard of among boys, though it is somewhat more difficult to detect.I've noticed that, for the most part, boys seem to get along quite well. However, there are times when misunderstandings among males do arise - for instance, when one boy appears effeminate in his mannerisms, when he acts more "like a girl." Such perceptions can arise because a boy truly enjoys school and studies a lot; or maybe he's quiet and shy; or he cries when someone says something derogatory about him.
It is my contention that the American criminal justice system, like much else in today's America, is skewed in favor of the folks with lots of money.Everyone I know, black and white, admits - when pushed -they think O.J. did it.But O.J. had the funds to hire the late Johnnie Cochran, one of the best criminal defense attorneys of the latter part of the 20th century (because in addition to oratory, he hired the best experts out of the client's purse), and, like many a rich man before him, O.J. bought (I mean beat?) his case.But don't believe me. Let's take a look at two cases going through varying levels of the system right now that have both captured national media attention.
The news came quietly as rain falling on cedars: The People's Lodge is on indefinite hold. Last December, in case you haven't heard, the United Indians of All Tribes Foundation (UIATF) board unanimously approved a proposed 10-year plan focusing on repairs to the Daybreak Star center and a revitalization of the center's mission. There was nothing in the plan for the People's Lodge, Bernie Whitebear's vision of a great building for Native Americans in Discovery Park.It's a matter of finances.After the emotional debate through the latter half of the '90s, the letter-writing campaigns, the public meetings and, yes, the heartbreak of old friends like Whitebear and Bob Kildall staking opposite ground, the denouement comes as an anticlimax.It was always possible for honorable people to oppose People's Lodge. Plans for the original, 123,000-square-foot structure struck some, like Kildall, as just too big. Kildall was present at Discovery Park's creation in 1970 after the Whitebear-led Native American occupation of Fort Lawton. Not all were so dignified in their opposition.
One Reel summer concerts at Gas Works Park have been put off until next year because objections and a lawsuit filed by Friends of Gas Works Parks made it difficult for the Queen Anne-based nonprofit promotion company to book acts and line up sponsors, according to Seattle Parks and Recreation.The lawsuit calls for the city to conduct an Environmental Impact Study before the concert series is approved by the city. But the city has never done an EIS for events, and it doesn't plan to do one in this case, said Parks spokeswoman Dewey Potter.No one from Friends of Gas Works Park returned calls for comment, but the group's attorney, Dave Brickland, said an EIS should be required under the State Environmental Policy Act. SEPA often triggers environmental reviews for building projects, and the same approach should apply to events, he said.
Daybreak Star celebration features Indian traditions, bird video By Rick LevinThey are by turns graceful and gangly, with long, elegant bodies lofted in flight by a tremendous wingspan, and their late-night calls sound like the prehistoric yawp of a pterodactyl, something straight out of "Jurassic Park."It's rare for the great blue heron to nest in an urban environment - too much noise - which is all the more reason for Magnolia to welcome back the colony that returns to Kiwanis Ravine every February to court, mate and birth a new generation of rara avis.Heron Habitat Helpers (HHH), a Magnolia-based nonprofit dedicated to the upkeep and preservation of heron habitat at Kiwanis Ravine, held a Heron Homecoming on March 1 at Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center in Discovery Park. United Indians of All Tribes Foundation (UIATF), which owns Daybreak Star, co-sponsored the event, and UIATF CEO Phil Lane was the evening's emcee.
ELLEN PRITCHETT"'Cause it's fun. It is entertaining, and great gossip."MATT JOHNSON"I think secretly, in the back of your mind, you want to be a celebrity."
There's a fine line between going through the motions on a formulaic movie and hitting your marks in the honorable course of serving up a decent genre picture."16 Blocks," the first film in several years from action specialist Richard Donner, initially looks to be a rehash of the too-familiar. A SWAT team crashes through the door of a dumpy, upper-story apartment where a shellshocked cat is the only living thing in residence. Perhaps a dope deal has gone sour; perhaps a gang of miscreants has turned upon one another. It doesn't really matter, because although bloody bodies lie strewn about the floor, the scene has nothing to do with the movie that's about to unreel. Its only function is to define the miserable state to which the movie's central character has fallen in the eyes of the police department and himself. Somebody has to sit watch over the crime scene until the forensics types arrive. Somebody otherwise useless. Somebody useless, period. Cue Jack Mosley.And cut to a parody of an auspicious grand entrance. The camera's looking out the apartment door, just about floor level (the cat's perspective, though he's boogied by now). Into the shimmer of smutty light in the stairwell rises the shambling figure of veteran police detective Mosley - and by all means of Bruce Willis, looking terminally wasted and 10 years older than the last time we saw him. The shot cannily operates on two wavelengths simultaneously: as straight, if overstated, characterization of what a crummy, callused, booze-befogged waste of protoplasm Mosley has become; and as ironical, Pirandellian in-joke on Willis' tarnished image as a movie star, an action star, with a raft of bad movies on his résumé and a hapless, tabloid-fodder private life to boot.
A strange but true family saga reminiscent of "It's a Wonderful Life" has inspired Phinney Ridge resident Kevin Moriarty's play "A Rose for Danny."The three-act play is based on a 1957 incident that happened during Moriarty's Seattle childhood, in which his grandfather, 74-year-old Jack McCoy, arrived at their doorstep. A partly decomposed body found floating in a Yakima irrigation ditch had been mistakenly identified as McCoy, whom the relatives had grieved for at a funeral a month before. The grandfather's arrival - which led newspapers to invoke the term "the real McCoy" - gave the McCoys and their in-laws an opportunity to make one final effort to come together as a family and forgive one another. The play recently was honored as one of the top four entries in the Christians in Theatre Arts national playwriting contest.