Back when I was but a little squirt, my friends and I played outside in the neighborhood as long as we possibly could in the summertime. Parents would holler usually around dusk, "Get inside! You've been outside way too long." (Today, parents exclaim, "Get outside! You've been inside on that computer way too long.")The end of summer vacation and another year of school began without incident. We had our own newspaper called The Weekly Reader that depicted the world in rosy shades in spite of the pending war. The headlines sometimes announced the winner of the spelling bee or how Jimmy helped his grandparents with their wheat crop and learned how to steer a tractor. There was also the story about Mrs. North's homeroom receiving an award in the paper-drive contest or a description of our new "book mobile" or how one classroom visited a local factory that canned soups. In class, there were very few details discussed on what was happening in the war itself.Looking the partDressing for school was not out of the ordinary. A few kids picked through myriad hand-me-downs left over from an older brother or sister; others sufficed to wear bib overalls. A few girls disguised flour sacks to look like dresses, and some, like me, had dutiful moms sew patches on any clothes that still fit. Kids made fun of other kids if patches were put on crooked. Some even had identical patches, which gave cause to a ribbing. Because of rapid growth rate, a real sewing challenge was dealing with pant legs ending just below the knee, about where the beltline lies on today's fashions.
The competition in the 43rd District race passed with the primary, and victory in November is in the bag for Democratic nominee Jamie Pedersen. For the independent or conservative living in Seattle, however, it can be tough to choose whether to go with a Democrat, vote for the doomed Republican, leave it blank or cast a "throw-away" vote.Before you fill out your ballot, it's important for you to know a little bit more about the candidates than you would know from the voter's guide.Hugh FoskettRunning as a Republican for the first position in the 43rd District is Hugh Foskett. Foskett is a sophomore at the University of Washington, majoring in mathematics, which he hopes to pursue as a teacher. Foskett has plenty of other priorities in his life, and he admits that the chances of a Republican winning in our district are very slim."It'd be really nice to win, but it's a really liberal district. I think it'd just be nice to get 13 percent of the vote," Foskett said. "It's mostly about running for the people that want someone different to represent them."Foskett sees the campaign as a positive learning experience. "I've met a lot of great people. I might run for something down the road," he said.
The mid-term senatorial election is fast approaching, and this November's general ballot will feature candidates from several parties vying for Democratic incumbent Maria Cantwell's seat. On that list is former Leschi resident and Green Party candidate Aaron Dixon. Now a Beacon Hill resident, the 57-year-old Dixon is a father of six, with a well-established history of community activism. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Dixon was a crucial, organizing member of the Seattle chapter of the Black Panther Party (BPP). During his time with the BPP he advocated for the civil liberties of black students at Rainier Beach High School, started the Free Breakfast for School Children program and helped open a free legal clinic and a community medical clinic, which is still operational as the Carolyn Downs Clinic, located on East Yesler Way. Today, Dixon juggles the responsibilities of a statewide political campaign with his North Seattle nonprofit organization, Central House, which he founded in 2002 to provide transitional housing for homeless young adults as well as a base for a youth leadership project that currently operates in four Seattle high schools.
People have great expectations when they visit a dietitian for the first time. They are motivated and ready to make real changes in their lives. I have seen many clients with serious health problems - often caused by reckless, addictive or otherwise dysfunctional lifestyles. Naturally, I talk about the importance of sound nutrition, the need to exercise and the dangers of alcohol and nicotine. That is what gets discussed on the surface. In most cases, it doesn't address the real issues. It's only the tip of the iceberg. Unhealthy lifestyles are typically symptomatic of ailments that lie much deeper. People who have otherwise happy and fulfilling lives don't normally exhibit self-destructive behavior. Consequently, I don't believe in treatments that deal only with the symptoms and don't go to the root of the problem at hand. Prescribing a weight loss and exercise program may be a good and even necessary first step, but it can only go so far - like kicking tires when buying a used car: you don't learn much about the other parts that may need fixing.
I am currently reading a book about the voyages of Captain Cook, the working-class British sailor who climbed all the way up the ranks to captain and then went and looked closely at places no white man had gone before.For more than 10 years, until his luck (and brains) ran out on a Hawaiian beach, Cook lived a life of adventure.He also kept a journal in which he unwittingly delineated all the differences between the officer class, many of whom were alcoholics by our standards, and the sailor class, almost all of whom were alcoholics by Cook's lights.Without openly addressing the matter, Cook, himself ascended from the toiling segment of society, seemed to feel the officers and the "men" were of two very different orders.Intellect and the ability to read played a big part in Cook's scenario, and I couldn't help but apply his standards when I saw, on AOL, a news blurb asking "readers" to vote on which "hero" they preferred, the new Superman or Johnny Depp's fey pirate, Captain Jack Sparrow.Where would the American film industry be without the non-thinking classes, whose lives are so intellectually void that these are the artistic matters weighing heavily enough on their little minds that, like Bush vs. Gore, they feel compelled to put down their Doritos and press a button or two?Both of these films, however entertaining, are rehashes of popular culture that haven't been pertinent or interesting in years.I just keep seeing a modern-day visitation of Cook's vessel the Endeavour, rocking peacefully in Elliott Bay while drunken sailors cheer for the latest adventures of the fourth or fifth actor to play Superman as they are projected on dirty sheets strung over the yardarm.It was always thus, I guess, but in a country where one in three folks is obese and yet still reacts to driving past a Mickey D's like a sea gull spotting a bread bag full of crumbs, a country in which, according to a recent study, drivers on their cellphones while in motion kill more people than drunken drivers, a country where the rich get as rich as desert potentates while the poor, the lame and the mad pile up even on the condo-gilded streets of Fat Greg's transformed Seattle (ride some late-night Metro buses before you object to this), old Captain Cook's societal division by classes looks sadly prescient.There are a lot of folks - clutching their Super-Sized sandwiches and waving their little flags while waiting for Hollywood publicity departments to tell them who their newest heroes are - who belong below decks where they can't cause any more trouble.I guess the good news is that the thousands of cretins who voted for either Captain Jack or the latest in a wave of fresh-faced Clark Kents are getting a little good practice for 2008 so they can press Jeb's button.
It seems some people will do anything to improve their view.Just ask city arborist Nolan Rundquist. The Nebraska native has encountered all manner of arboreal shenanigans on the job, from the overzealous - and illegal - topping of city trees to vigilante "girdling," a processes whereby an unbroken circumference of bark is chiseled from a tree's trunk, breaking the continuous flow of water and nutrients and often killing the plant. Usually such acts are commissioned with a view to improving visual access to that vaunted Northwest scenery of mountains, water or, ironically enough, more trees, and they can be carried out by anyone from the lone homeowner wielding a chainsaw, to a private arborist hired to trim some bothersome foliage.Whatever the case, Rundquist points out, cutting into trees on city property without a permit is against the law - period. And it's not just arborcide - tree murder - that can get you in serious trouble. "Typically, someone doesn't commit arborcide," he says of the frequency of types of tree damage, adding that such instances as the girdling that occurred last week in Queen Anne don't happen all that often. Rundquist says that of the two or three tree-related violations he sees every week, most cases involve the improper topping and trimming of trees on city property. A police report is filed every time.
Someone from outer space, spying on our pop culture, might conclude that our gods du jour are a handsome boy with a perfect curl and a silver-haired ice queen. The striking physogs of Superman (Brandon Routh) and the Devil Who Wears Prada (Meryl Streep) are billboarded everywhere, inviting, by their juxtaposition, some subliminal thoughts about the nature of male and female power in the movies.Director Brian Singer abandoned his onetime favorite godlets in the X-Men franchise to resurrect the Man of Steel in the form of Routh, who dreamed of succeeding the late Christopher Reeve even while laboring in the salt mines of soap opera. Singer lathers on myth with a trowel in his "Superman Returns," turning a cool brother from another planet into God's gift to humankind. In the new film, Superman returns from his five-year sojourn in the "graveyard" of what used to be his home planet, Krypton, to be greeted lovingly by madonna stepmom (Eva Marie Saint) and indifferently by Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth), now a mommy herself, happily shacked up with a really nice guy.
Two weeks ago, a top-flight team of sociologists released a report chronicling a one-third drop in the number of people with whom the average American can discuss "important matters." The results, summarized in a paper entitled "Social Isolation in America," came from comparing national surveys in 1985 and 2004. The report suggested the U.S. is becoming a much lonelier place.After reading about this development, I reflected on my own upbringing in Cleveland and my experience in Seattle since moving here in 1986. A polite yet reserved town, many newcomers discover it's difficult to make friends in Seatttle if you don't arrive with an established network.The report found baby boomers are more socially isolated than their parents, and children of baby boomers further continue the trend. My own parents, members of the greatest generation, were unique in that they wed late in life compared to their peers and didn't have a child until I came along 10 years into their marriage. At the time, my mother was 43-years old, my father 50. Their social circle revolved around family who lived within a 10-15 minute car ride from our home, friends in our suburban neighborhood, church and civic organizations and sporting leagues. Before selling real estate, my dad worked in building and belonged to the United Brotherhood of Carpenters. We patronized a community swimming pool on Lake Erie and a public golf course maintained by Cleveland Metroparks. Both my parents belonged to a bowling league. I participated in Cub Scouts and C.Y.O.All these activities and memberships connected us to a broad community of people who reached into our lives. Our neighbor, who played bridge with my parents, gave me a ride to school each day. He and his two daughters would drop me at the inner-city Catholic high school I attended. When my mom fractured her hip in 1998, a couple from my parents' church brought my father a dinner casserole one weekend. That same couple, chaplains, were present at my father's death bed a year later, praying with me and my mother when he took his last breath.
The air is warm, the days are long and the Mariners even won a few. It's the middle of summer, so naturally our thoughts turn to...the coming Democratic primary for one of the 43rd District's two House seats.For the first time in years there's an actual contest at hand. Ed Murray, the longtime incumbent who has held the seat since 1995, announced earlier this year he would seek the Senate seat held by Pat Thibaudeau. That set up what appeared to be an interesting primary until Thibaudeau announced she would not seek reelection.While that removed any drama from theSenate race, the state house is a different matter. Six candidates have tossed their hats into the ring and a fair amount of money and energy is going into an interesting campaign.The subject becomes more topical with a candidates forum that takes place on Tuesday, July 18, at Town Hall. The forum is the first occasion to see the six people vying for the seat in one place. Keep in mind the winner of the September 19 primary is the de facto winner of the general election. The Republicans will field a candidate, but this has been a safe seat for Democrats pretty much forever.
Author Wendell Berry has this belief: "If you don't know where you are, you don't know who you are..." It is all about getting "a sense of place."Of this notion, author Wallace Stegner writes: "He (Barry) is not talking about the kind of location that can be determined by looking at a map or street sign. He is talking about the kind of knowing that involves the senses..." (the thimble-sized blackberries that grow wild in secret spots on Magnolia, more in the yesterday than today, but generations passing the information down for the taste of that hot August, Magnolia blackberry jam).Berry, according to Stegner, is talking about "memories" (the memoirs of our residents Bob Kildall writing about the history of Discovery Park; Hal Will and his Magnolia childhood of the '30s; Barbara Wade Gates recalling her days at the Village Drug Store soda fountain in the '40s; or Gary Frizzell setting pins at the long-gone Magnolia Bowling Alley).Stegner says Berry means "the history of a family or tribe": say, the Muckleshoots, Tulalips, Duwamish and Suquamish, who dried clams and carved gaming pieces 4,000 years ago on the beach of what is now know as Magnolia's West Point.
"Well, I can see by your footwear [barefoot w/ sandals]," commented the Lady Marjorie rather snidely, "that you've now assumed your Memorial Day-through-Labor Day costume."You know," she added, "even though it's technically summer, there are times that you can wear something a little more formal than those old sandals.""What's wrong with my sandals?" I asked. "I think that they're pretty cool, and besides, they're a lot more comfortable than some pair of sweaty ol' tennis shoes. And as for not being formal, I once wore sandals with a tuxedo.""G'wan!""When I was just a little kid, about when I was only 4 or 5 years old, my aunt Marilyn got married, and they selected me to be the ring bearer. I remember they took me someplace that rented minuscule tuxedos and outfitted me with a monkey suit, but they didn't have any shoes that small.""And you didn't have any shoes at home?""Not that were black," I answered. "And remember, I was only 4 or 5; I could be pretty stubborn when I was a little kid. "My father ended up dyeing the red sandals, that I wore all the time, black. Then I wore a pair of black socks with them, and everything was copasetic.
In a recent piece on the op-ed page of The New York Times, Thomas L. Friedman waxed rhapsodic on his newfound surprises and insights during a recent trip to the Peruvian Amazon rainforest. At the Tambopata Research Center Friedman said he found no Internet or cellphone service. "There was something cleansing about spending four days totally disconnected."Buzz words are quickly developing on this subject, now called a disease. Linda Stone, a former Microsoft executive, refers to the phenomenon as "continuous partial attention." Other experts are developing studies on being "too connected."Freidman writes, "It is the malady of modernity. We have gone from the Iron Age to the Industrial Age to the Information Age to the Age of Interruption."
In recent weeks, voters in the 36th District and elsewhere in the city have been evaluating the proposal for a 10th-of-a-cent addition to the King County sales tax to support as many as 700,000 additional hours of Metro Transit bus service.Included in the package is a bus rapid transit (BRT) route along the Monorail Green Line corridor connecting Ballard and West Seattle's Morgan Junction to Downtown. Wrapped into the Seattle BRT "Rapid Ride" package is the already-planned Aurora Avenue route into Downtown. Lesser improvements in bus service frequency are promised for a few other Seattle routes serving the U District, Capitol Hill and Delridge. Some funding is included for ensuring that buses maintain published schedules.These additions, along with routes connecting suburbs on the East and West sides of the city, would lead one to believe that support from the 36th District was guaranteed. The district always comes out in force for mass transit.There is one thing missing, however: the Seattle Center.
I am currently reading a book about the voyages of Captain Cook, the working-class British sailor who climbed all the way up the ranks to captain and then went and looked closely at places no white man had gone before.For more than 10 years, until his luck (and brains) ran out on a Hawaiian beach, Cook lived a life of adventure.He also kept a journal in which he unwittingly delineated all the differences between the officer class, many of whom were alcoholics by our standards, and the sailor class, almost all of whom were alcoholics by Cook's lights.Without openly addressing the matter, Cook, himself ascended from the toiling segment of society, seemed to feel the officers and the "men" were of two very different orders.Intellect and the ability to read played a big part in Cook's scenario, and I couldn't help but apply his standards when I saw, on AOL, a news blurb asking "readers" to vote on which "hero" they preferred, the new Superman or Johnny Depp's fey pirate, Captain Jack Sparrow.Where would the American film industry be without the non-thinking classes, whose lives are so intellectually void that these are the artistic matters weighing heavily enough on their little minds that, like Bush versus Gore, they feel compelled to put down their Doritos and press a button or two?Both of these films, however entertaining, are rehashes of popular culture that haven't been pertinent or interesting in years.I just keep seeing a modern-day visitation of Cook's vessel the Endeavour, rocking peacefully in Elliott Bay while drunken sailors cheer for the latest adventures of the fourth or fifth actor to play Superman as they are projected on dirty sheets strung over the yardarm.
SHARON SMITH"Sounds like a good idea! We live on the bottom of the Hill, and we would definitely come up here more often."JENNY SHOAF"Yeah! I think that it would be great. I think that they should rip down the Safeway and put it there."