Once upon a time there was a cow on the Seattle City Council who exemplified that part of the Seattle Spirit that believed success came to those who wait in the right line. Now about 1972, as she was presiding over a meet-ing, some Paul Revere wannabe rushed in and announced: "THE NORTHWEST IS ABOUT TO BE FLOODED WITH PEOPLE!" "Ridiculous," she mooed. "Whoo would want to move to Tacoma?"The audience howled because, as Seattleites, we'd been trained to laugh at any Tacoma punchline. Twenty years later, Jerry Seinfeld said at coffee, "You notice, everybody's moving to Seattle." "Yeah," George said, "it's the pesto of cities."Now, Seattleites may be weary of their city, might even enjoy a little a little trip down Puget Sound to Tacoma, where the parking is cheap, the people friendly and they happen to have a baker's dozen of great things that we don't.
I am now a finalist in the Back Spasm Olympics. I'm favored to win the Gold, if only for the amount of time I've spent training for this event.Yesterday alone I competed in the Can She Put The Apples In Her Cart event at our local grocery store. Although it was touch and go, moan and cry, for a bit, I did manage to finally get the bag of red delicious into the cart. Later, it was the Reach Down To Get Bananas relay. I was stuck at a 45-degree angle for a few seconds, but huffing and grunting like a power lifter, I finally managed to grab the bananas and get myself into an upright position once again. As with any sport, the spectators are key. I had a few of them rooting for me during my training yesterday.
Well, I'm back from Cincinnati. I rode the train in on Saturday morning, March 26. The sun was shining, and although I spend a lot of time com-plaining about Se-attle's yuppi-fication, I was damned happy to be home.Cincinnati had a couple days of chilly winter sunshine, but mostly it was gray and cold, and one day it snowed heavily, almost 3 inches. The day of the dump hap-pened to be the first day of spring, killing my only planned golf outing and wounding my spirits.The black and white thing, the racial animosity that was a defining characteristic of my upbringing, is still palpable back there. Despite the fact that Cincinnati is more than 30 percent African American, you seldom see folks hanging out together outside the University District and a couple of nightclub zones.
After a going-on-two-years process of nominations and opinion-soliciting, Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation superintendent Ken Bounds has settled on a name for the park located on the northeast corner of the intersection at Queen Anne Ave. N and Roy St. in Uptown: Counterbalance Square "An Urban Oasis." The announcement doesn't specify whether a comma, a dash or perhaps a colon should precede the part in quotation marks, but we assume that will get sorted out in the sands of time.
Magnolia Little League's Opening Day Parade & Ceremonies featured a full day of events and activities.
McClure Middle School students worked washing cars at a fundraiser on the Pizza Hut parking lot last Saturday. Proceeds will help send the school band to a band festival at Disneyland.
Confronting a child about the dangers of going online is one thing. Actually witnessing a child suffering the dangerous con-sequences of the Internet is another.That's why McClure Middle School last Thursday conducted a special seminar about "cyber bullying" for adults in the school's gymnasium.Detective Melinda Wilson of the Seattle Police Department said the March 23 seminar was meant to open the eyes of parents who might be unaware of the dangers children face each time they log on to the computer. "[The Internet] is like a gun," Wilson said. "If you don't know how to use it wisely and safely, it can hurt you. It's so dangerous."
Four years ago, Julia Bolz, a human-rights lawyer and Queen Anne resident, approached the Coe Elementary School community to ask whether the students would be interested in helping raise funds to build a school for girls in Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan.During the six-year rule of the Taliban, Afghani girls and women had not been allowed to attend school, and many schools had been destroyed. Coe students responded by raising more than $4,000 toward constructing the school and began a cultural exchange with its students that continues today.
Sheley Secrest is a phenom.This bright, lively, 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, has been working as an attorney for the Public Defender Association in downtown Seattle for only six months. 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.
On March 21 - proclaimed Oyster Day by Mayor Greg Nickels - more than 600 participants in the 17th annual Oyster Olympics consumed 30,000 oysters and hopefully helped to make Puget Sound a little cleaner.
By now you've heard the news. During the early daylight hours on Saturday, March 25, a man opened fire on a group of young people, many of whom were sleeping following a party at the blue rental house at 2112 East Republican Street.As numerous accounts throughout the city, the country and indeed the entire world made clear, the shooting rampage left seven people dead, including the killer.The shootings lasted only a few minutes and ended when Aaron Kyle Huff, a 28-year-old North Seattle resident, took his own life after being confronted by a police officer. The incident was the worst mass killing in Seattle since the Wah Mee massacre claimed 13 victims in a gambling-related incident in 1983. The shootings took place at a party held at the house following a rave at the Capitol Hill Arts Center (CHAC) on 12th Avenue. Huff apparently met someone at the rave-marathon musical events featuring DJs, costumes and electronic/techno/disco music-who invited him to the party in the Miller Park Neighborhood. The event at CHAC was attended by several hundred people, and ended at roughly 4 a.m. It was described by police as peaceful. According to police, there was no obvious incident that triggered the shooting. At roughly 6:50 a.m., Huff left the party, walked to his truck, picked up a pistol-grip shotgun, a handgun and an ammunition belt, and went back to the house. He also painted NOW with spray paint in several places on the sidewalk as he approached the dwelling.
Magnolia resident and longtime Post-Intelligencer photographer Phil Webber was a colorful character in more ways than one, those who knew him say. Webber, who died March 18, was well-known for his colorful outfits and his usually mismatched colored shoes, two of which had portraits of his pet beagles painted on them, said Bonnie McGoldrick, who works at Secretarial Services in Magnolia Village.Webber's latest business card also demonstrated a colorful personality, McGoldrick said. The card includes a photo he took of his wildly painted home at 31st Avenue West and West Barrett Street, and it shows his dogs, Milo and Bagel, looking out the living room window. And in a perfect bit of timing, two raccoons on his roof are included in the shot, and they're, well... fooling around.Webber, who was 67 when he passed away, also had strong connections to the community, McGoldrick said. He took pictures of board members for the Magnolia Chamber of Commerce Web site, and he always photographed neighborhood events such as the Summer Fest parades and the yearly Halloween celebrations in Magnolia Village.
Benjamin Britten's opera based on Henry James' eerie ghost story "The Turn of the Screw" is no operatic walk in the park. Undaunted, the members of the Seattle Opera Young Artists Program are slated for six performances of Britten's difficult work by two completely different casts.Director Peter Kazaras and conductor Dean Williamson, who both have hefty track records with Seattle Opera, are guiding the spooky tale of a governess watching over two children at an English country estate while their guardian is away. The production is also benefiting from youthful singers who already have mainstage experience, plus several returning members of the Young Artists Program.
A pillowman should be soft and comfortable, right? Well, get that thought out of your mind. The current production at ACT of Martin McDonagh's "The Pillowman" is one of the most shattering, disturbing yet intellectually stimulating plays I've seen in a long time. It's not for the "Sound of Music" crowd, and don't even think of bringing the children. But if you like theater to challenge your mind and arouse your emotions with stunning performances and rich language, this is a production you won't want to miss.There's something about the rugged landscape and tortured history of Ireland that nourishes a playwright's talents. McDonagh is Ireland's latest gift to the theater, following in the steps of such superstars as George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, Sean O'Casey, John Millington Synge and Samuel Beckett.Although McDonagh was born in London where his Irish working-class parents had sought a better life, he was surrounded by Irish expatriates, schooled by Irish priests and steeped in the lore and traditions of his homeland. At 16 he quit school and lived on unemployment and menial jobs. It allowed him to spend endless hours reading, watching TV and making up stories - grotesque folk tales. Some of his work captured the attention of people in the film industry, and in 1994 he was awarded a fellowship to UCLA to study screenwriting. He wrote seven plays in nine months. All have been produced but one, and all received rave reviews. Among those seven was the first draft of "The Pillowman." It was mounted in London in 2003 and since then has been produced in theaters around the world. In New York it garnered six Tony nominations.
Sho [Japanese calligraphy] is an art that incorporates time and space with something left over afterward. -Master Calligrapher Kaneko OteiCherry trees are blossoming, and birdsong from the roof of Key Arena swells down the river of cars on First Avenue with the exaltation of spring thaw. Master Calligrapher Yoshiyasu Fujii's timing is impeccable. At this heady change of seasons, Meito Shodo-Kai, the Japanese calligraphy association of which he is president, is holding an exhibition April 1 and 2 to commemorate its 10th anniversary. The theme of the exhibition at Seattle Center's Olympic Room, "Kinshin - Returning To One's True Self," explores the idea of looking back on one's history and returning to the unclouded purity of one's origins.