The smell is first, that fragrant, bursting of new life that overloads the senses. Flowers, grass, ocean air. It's the olfactory equivalent of stepping from dreary black-and-white into Technicolor.Then comes a sudden pickup in what for lack of a better term we'll call your biorhythms. The blood starts pumping again after the long freeze, and dormant sensations awaken. Some call this the "itch," with its concomitant, altogether exhilarating visual perceptions: people look better, more alive, more beautiful. It's time to take a walk in the park.
The season of bursting out all over is upon us. The cherry blossoms seem so full this year, and the forsythia blossoms give the impression of pulling the new intensity of the sunlight right down into our gardens. Is all this new concentration of color due to the plentiful rains this past winter? Or is it just the usual delight and surprise of springtime's freshness?With the relatively balmy temperatures during the midday hours this past weekend, it was impossible not to abandon chores and other schedules and get out to the garden. The roses needed to be pruned, the peas planted, the vegetable beds dug, and we wanted to clean up the last of the brown, sodden winter detritus lingering about in the corners.
Once again I am writing from Cincinnati.My youngest daughter wanted to see her grandmother and wanted me to go along to help with her son, an active 9-year-old boy named Elijah.They flew in Friday evening, a straight, six-hour flight.But I left on a Tuesday afternoon on Amtrak and still arrived only 12 hours earlier on the same Friday, albeit in the morning.The reason for this fragmented travel schedule is simple. I like to travel but I don't like to fly.
The season of bursting out all over is upon us. The cherry blossoms seem so full this year, and the forsythia blossoms give the impression of pulling the new intensity of the sunlight right down into our gardens.Is all this new concentration of color due to the plentiful rains this past winter? Or is it just the usual delight and surprise of springtime's freshness?With the relatively balmy temperatures during the midday hours this past weekend, it was impossible not to abandon chores and other schedules and get out to the garden. The roses needed to be pruned, the peas planted, the vegetable beds dug, and we wanted to clean up the last of the brown, sodden winter detritus lingering about in the corners.
We were headed out on the freeway to the airport recently, and as I gradually pulled up behind a new-model sporty car, it began to weave back and forth across the white-dotted lines separating the lanes. I put on my turn signal and moved over two lanes."Just what we need," I commented, "another drunk driver.""He was impaired all right," answered my partner, the Lady Marjorie, as we put the other car's reflection in our rearview mirror, "but he might not have been drinking. He was busy on the phone.""I hate those cellphones when people are driving," I said. "I see people every day who are too busy yakking on their phone to pay any attention as to what's happening on the road around them."Used to be the cellular car phone was one of the more desired "status" options available on certain makes of new automobiles. So much so, that some luxury models offered every car with a cellular phone as standard equipment.With the strides forward that the cellular industry has made, however, you no longer have to rely on the built-in car phone. The same cellphone that some people use obnoxiously in restaurants and theaters also works just fine in their car.
Ah, Spring.The smell is what gets you first, that fragrant bursting of blossoming life that inundates and overloads the senses. Flowers, grass, ocean air. It's the olfactory equivalent of stepping from dreary black-and-white into Technicolor.Then comes a sudden pickup in what for lack of a better term you might call the biorhythms. After the long winter freeze, the blood starts pumping again, and dormant sensations awaken. Some call this the "itch," and it's accompanied by a heightening of the visual perceptions: people look better, more alive, more beautiful. They glow. Yes, it's time to take a walk, get outside.
With the new year settled in and thoughts of spring upon us, naturally my thoughts turn to renewal. As always, there is much to consider.There is nothing new to write about the sunlight's resurgence or, for that matter, the gar-den's. So I won't, other than to say I've already confronted every conceivable metaphorical image of seed within earth in previous writings, and the only thing I've come up with is that weather is too wearying to write about after all.Intrinsically speaking, I feel as though there is another season upon us. And should it not draw in soon, I'll be utterly disappointed in the way you are when you prep and prep for something and then realize it's not going to happen, ever. In the meantime, I have enough certitude to help move me from one day to the next, meaningful work, a marriage that weighs me solidly to the world and good friends to help fill in the gap that awaits its arrival. Still, at what point do I face the fact, and I need to, that our country may not be up to receiving this season I am trying to describe?In recent weeks, three separate (though connected) things occurred that pushed this very question forward for me.
Years of public meetings and analysis work done by the Seattle Department of Transportation ended March 16 with the announcement that the mayor's office has chosen an alternative for replacing the aging and earthquake-damaged Magnolia Bridge.Making the cut was Alternative A. It calls for the construction of a new bridge just to the south of the existing one, according to SDOT spokeswoman Marybeth Turner, who added that Mayor Greg Nickels based his decision on SDOT recommendations. The estimated cost of the preferred alternative was $196 million, which is cheaper than two other remaining alternatives that-at $213 million and $214 million-would have been located north of the existing structure.The decision hasn't been finalized yet, but SDOT is considering a realignment for the preferred bridge routing so that an anticipated $32 million for rights-of-way costs could be eliminated, said Turner.
Art Van der Wel-veteran real-estate developer and former Magnolia Business Person of the Year-has been playing fast and loose with zoning laws, according to the Department of Planning and Development (DPD). According to DPD spokesman Alan Justad, Van der Wel has been converting a single-family home he bought at 2261 Condon Way W. into a duplex. Van der Wel says he's the victim of family circumstances. But Justad said a daylight basement with a newly installed kitchen in the house is an illegal mother-in-law apartment under the single-family zoning on the street, which is just two blocks' walk to Magnolia Village. And the DPD is coming down hard on Van der Wel because of it, he added.
It's taken a decade and a half, but King County is set to hand over millions of dollars to Discovery Park for projects that range from renovating the West Point lighthouse to helping pay for the Capehart Navy-housing site.The money arose out of a 1991 legal settlement over the expansion of the West Point wastewater-treatment plant in the park. Part of that expansion involved putting giant sewage digesters on 3 acres of beach next to the sewer plant, and the settlement stipulated that $1 million be set aside for each acre.The $3 million has since grown to $5.3 million, thanks to interest, and its release was contingent on the county not being able to develop new technology that would eliminate the need for the digesters, according to a memorandum of agreement (MOA).A sludge-drying process developed by Redel/SMI was tried in the 1990s, but the technology proved to be unfeasible, and no other workable method was identified by a deadline of Dec. 31 last year.But according to the MOA, it had become obvious that a different system wasn't going to be found by 2001. "We just didn't have the technology," said King County Council president and Magnolia resident Larry Phillips. "It's a very unfortunate situation." So the council called for the formation of a citizens advisory committee to come up with ideas for projects in Discovery Park that could use the money. A West Point Citizens Advisory Committee chaired by Phillips was formed in 2002.
HOLLIS GIAMMATEO"I met a small herd of Roosevelt Elk in the Olympic rainforest. They were crossing the road, and I remember being struck by their beauty. They are beautiful animals."HEATHER SCOTT"I have eaten elk. I am not familiar with the Roosevelt Elk, but game is in."
The first two pieces of Pacific Northwest Ballet's "Points of View" demanded audience patience on Saturday night. This was an evening for those who like a lot of modern mixed into their ballet, and who are willing to wait through long buildups for a dramatic payoff.Val Caniparoli's "The Bridge" began in deliberately awkward silence as the five pairs of dancers rose and fell in an abbreviated version of the dance. Then the music began, Shostakovich's unforgiving Chamber Symphony for Strings, Op. 110a, and the pairs shuffled, crawled, leaped and twirled their way into death. There was little peace but some moments of rare grace in this retelling of a pair of lovers shot down on a bridge in Sarajevo. Caniparoli's work shied away from Romeo-and-Juliet romanticism and retold an ugly moment of history with some ugly but emotionally powerful movement beautifully rendered by the 10 dancers on the stage.Even more difficult was the new work by Dominique Dumais, "Time and Other Matters."
"Cyrano de Bergerac" is surely the one of most heartrending love stories ever written. Cyrano's love for his Roxane is as pure as it is passionate. It's a love that comes from the soul and is lost by a nose. Seattle Shakespeare Company's current production captures the poignancy, comedy, tragedy, adventure and drama that make this play such a perennial favorite. You wouldn't think so at the beginning. This rendition starts a bit slowly, a bit raggedly, as the cast gathers to attend a second-rate theatrical production. They gossip about Cyrano, who has promised to do harm to the actor if he dares show his face on stage. As the mincing actor begins his routine, a bellow erupts from the back of the theater, and in strides Cyrano, preceded by his extraordinary nose.In the mêlée that follows, the actor is routed and Cyrano is challenged by one of the foppish attendees. Their duel is a set-up by author Edmond Rostand. It and what follows allow the full breadth of Cyrano's character to be revealed. He is a man of untarnished honor and a master swordsman. His wit is sharp. He is brave, truthful, sensitive and independent. Unfortunately the scenes are played too rapidly to serve as background for all that is to follow.Yet most of us know what's to come. Cyrano adores his beautiful cousin Roxane but is afraid to declare his love for fear he'll be scorned because of his outsized olfactory organ. Roxane is smitten by the very handsome but somewhat dull Christian de Neuvilliette, and Cyrano winds up writing the love letters and orating the words of passion with which Christian woos and wins Roxane. Poor Cyrano, always a best man, never a groom.
"V for Vendetta" is an allegory for our times, a call to arms for all those who ... would see the world change to become a place where the people are no longer herded like cattle along the paths the government sets forth; a world where people tell the government how things are going to be.... If you value freedom and democracy, go see "V for Vendetta."- Paul Benjamin, www.revolutionsf.comHave Americans gone totally schizoid? Iraq burns while we fiddle with bread-and-circus amusements unworthy of any thinking person's time and attention. Exhibit A: "V for Vendetta," the latest example of movie as popcult garbage can. Dredge up a mess of half-baked leftovers from other superhero spectacles, slather freely with political hogwash and you can bank on sending media mavens into a feeding frenzy over a controversy that isn't there"Vendetta"'s source is Alan Moore's respected 1989 graphic novel, which took a dark view of Thatcherite England, drawn as hell for homosexuals and AIDS sufferers. Released into the present climate of free-floating anxiety, the film offers bare-bones templates for the good, the bad and the ugly, inviting us to apply them in whatever quarter we wish. Some have hallucinated "Vendetta"'s vacuity into a contemporary "parable" or "allegory," a coded screed against _______ (fill in the blank with whatever or whomever you feel oppressed by: Dubya? Amerika? Bill Gates? reality TV?). Folks as diverse as Hillary Clinton and Osama bin Laden might ascribe Bushieness to the raving big-screen Big Brother (John Hurt) who heads an England of the future - Fascist, Fundamentalist Christian, heavy on spy cameras and Fingermen. But Hurt's pious demagogue might as easily conjure up the likes of Pat Robertson, or a militant mullah. Or even an avatar of Dad, grounding your free spirit for smoking pot. The field's wide open.Warring against boilerplate villains in the media, the church, the scientific community and the government, "V" (Hugo Weaving) sports black-on-black couture (cf. "The Matrix"'s Neo), swashbuckles about in cape and flat-brimmed hat (Zorro?) and hides his scorched face under a stylized mask (the Joker? the Phantom of the Opera?). His lair, the "shadow gallery," lies somewhere under London, chock-a-block with cultural artifacts - movie posters, jukebox, museum treasures - which the religious fanatics aboveground have suppressed. Chalk white, with a discrete wash of pink on each cheek, V's mask projects the inanely grinning face of a goateed Cavalier, bracketed by a pageboy that would have done Guy Fawkes proud. That's the 17th-century English terrorist our "freedom fighter" apes: a Catholic who plotted to blow up Parliament to strike a blow against the Protestant majority. After Fawkes and V, to whom is the torch of freedom passed - Timothy McVeigh? The Afghani Taliban who destroyed the giant, 1,500-year-old Buddhas? The 9/11 skyjackers? The Sunnis who blew up Samarra's Golden Mosque?Natalie Portman plays Evey (Eve V, get it?), a happily oppressed lass tortured into radical fearlessness in a dank dungeon (just like at Gitmo). The result: she stands on a balcony baptized in rain, arms raised in what might be a challenge to the powers that be .. or simple pleasure in showering after her dungeon ordeal. Her epiphany doesn't really lead to anything. She just wanders out of the movie for a while.
Nearly six years ago, in April 2000, Paula Baker bought Gypsy Trader, a consignment shop originally located on North 45th Street and Wallingford Avenue North, from its original owner. Five years after, she moved the shop to 3517 Stone Way N., she expanded the business to include a second store across the street, at 3510 Stone Way N. That store has become Gypsy Java and Gypsy Trader Home Store. It is both a café and a consignment shop, primarily devoted to home items.