An adventure wrongly considered is an inconvenience. An inconvenience rightly considered is an adventure," says Tadashi Nakaya-ma, a character in Helene Gabel Ryan's novel "Hakujin." Ryan, a longtime Wallingford resident, could have said that herself. She has had many adventures in her 88 years - from growing up in Seattle during the Depression and World War II eras to babysitting gorillas at the Woodland Park Zoo. She marched against the Vietnam War and for the Pike Place Market and was a mainstay of the Wallingford Community Council for many years. Wartime prejudiceRyan began the novel when she was in her 60s. Its title, "Hakujin," is a Japanese term for a white person. Set in Seattle during World War II, the book tells the story of 18-year-old Robin Mueller. She lived on Yesler Way with her family and, like the author, graduated from Garfield High School. Her friendship with Kiko Naka-yama and her twin brother, Tadashi, forms the core of the novel. The book follows the experience of the Japanese before and after the evacuation and how life changed for the young women and the young men they loved during the war.An important theme of the novel, according to Ryan, is that of equal opportunities for women. Born just before women received the right to vote, Ryan said her generation "won the right to work because of the war."
The press conference announcing the sale of the Seattle Sonics and Storm basketball teams last week was incongruous on so many levels, it's difficult to know where to start.To begin with, the press conference was ironically held on the teams' practice court near the Seattle Center. But there were also basketball sneakers with floating balloons tied to them placed on top of standup tables - as if the bombshell news was something to celebrate. There were a couple of coffee urns, too, which were notable because they didn't feature Starbucks logos. There were tubs full of lukewarm bottles of pop and water as well, which was fitting because lukewarm was about the best way to describe the general reaction to Howard Schultz's attempt to paint a happy face on the whole situation. To point out what a swell hometown guy he is, for instance, Schultz claimed he even turned down other offers for more money because, he said, the unnamed buyers would have moved the two basketball teams out of town - unlike Oklahoma City's Clayton Bennett and his Professional Basketball Club investment group, which will wait at least a year before bailing. And hey, it's just a coincidence that Oklahoma City's Ford Arena will be vacant right around then as the Hornets move back to New Orleans.
After four years of pursuit, Kvichak Marine has successfully landed what co-owner Brian Thomas cautiously calls a "great contract."With the assistance of the much-larger, Wisconsin-based Marinette Marine, Kvichak will design and build 250 U.S. Coast Guard RBMs (response boat-medium) over the next 10 years.Tucked in the west corner of Fremont, near where Leary Way meets North 36th Street, the small industrial company sees the "recognition by the Coast Guard that we have the best product out there."Over the next 10 months, Kvichak will design the boats, and in 2007, it expects to construct the first eight in Fremont. From there Kvichak and Marinette will build every other boat, turning out one every three weeks."We expect to add 100 people to the payroll," Brian admitted, "and we're thinking of a second plant. We're looking for the best place." Brian explained that may be in Seattle or farther north, outside the city.Brian said the city and the Office of Economic Development (OED) have been very supportive and enthusiastic about the contract, "but we haven't asked them for any heavy lifting yet."To stay in the area Kvichak might need help from the city but, then again, they may not be able to find a workable space here no matter what OED can do.At the same time Kvichak, gears up for an ambitious opportunity, the Fremont Chamber of Commerce turned to the east side of the neighborhood, to Stone Way North, to help industrial businesses there retain the most important of city help: roads.Recently proposed changes may cripple businesses along Stone Way.
The second-annual Roosevelt Bull Moose Festival is scheduled for Saturday, July 29, as an official part of Seafair festivities, and organizers predict a much-higher attendance this year.A pancake breakfast will kick off the day between 8 and 11 a.m. at Calvary Christian Assembly church, 6810 Roosevelt Way N.E. More than 100 classic cars also will be on display there.Whole Foods Market, 1026 N.E. 64th St., will feature more than 40 booths where visitors can participate in a food taste.Other features will include karaoke, open-air art, a fashion show, a charity dog wash and photographs with the Bull Moose for kids. In addition, a free concert is scheduled from 3 to 5 p.m. at Cowen Park.
More than 1,500 people overflowed the Ballard High School gym last Sunday, June 23, filling to capacity the un-air-conditioned building on one of the hottest afternoons of the year. It was a tremendous testament to the impact the unresolved shooting deaths of Mary Cooper, 56, and Susanna Stodden, 27, had on the Green Lake and Ravenna neighborhoods where they lived, as well as the city, the region and the state.The path they choseCooper, a beloved librarian at Wedgwood's Alternative Elementary School No. 2, and Stodden, who was to become a teaching intern at the University Child Development School in August, were killed while hiking the Pinnacle Lake Trail near Mount Pilchuck in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. These were the kind of socially contributing citizens every area wants to have. They were killed by a person, or persons, unknown; the kind of citizen every area wants to root out.Not all of the 1,500 at the memorial service knew the two murdered women. But they knew about them. They knew that these women went into the forests for which Washington is famed, looking for the renewal that closeness to nature gives us all. They were trading, for a while, the hectic, urban society for a slower, more nurturing environment. They were embracing the cathedral of greenery and shade and streams and vistas of the world around us that are so easy to ignore in our urban lives.Whoever else chose that same path July 11 were not looking to renew themselves. They chose to put a horrifying slash of murder across that natural refuge, the way less-murderous misfits spray-paint mailboxes and buildings. The suspects made their mark with murder, an act so profoundly obscene that it not only diminishes them, but our entire perception of the outdoors.It is significant that the perpetrators of this act chose as their victims two, highly competent women exercising their empowerment as emancipated women. They felt free to pursue activities that 50 years ago would have almost always required the presence of male companions. However, the presence of 1,500 at their memorial service, and the presence of several hundred at an earlier candlelight vigil at Green Lake, shows clearly that the attacks on personal liberty, freedom and safety this crime represents will be resisted.
I don't know how people get addicted to some medicines when I can't even get the top off the bottle.I try - oh, how I try - but on more than one occasion, I decide I'll give up and live or die without the aid of modern medicine. Other times, when I'm less resigned to my fate, I examine the bottle closely and discover I must deal with cellophane that invisibly covers the top and neck of the bottle before I can figure out how the bottle cap works. I approach the cellophane with several tools, scissors, embroidery scissors, nail scissors, nail file, paring knife - until, finally, the cellophane gives way. It is then that I find the semi-perforated line running down the side of the bottle to ease the removal of the cellophane, should I be so lucky or my eyesight so good as to spot the perforation.Now, I assume, I can remove the lid. Oh, would that it were true.
Although the art world focused its attention on more abstract Northwest artists during the 1940s, the Seattle area was home to countless successful and accomplished painters, photographers, sculptors and printmakers from 1890 to the mid-century. David Martin is noted expert on early-20th-century Northwest art. Since 1990, he has discovered the works of renowned artists like Myra Albert Wiggins (1869-1956), Jess Cauthorn (b. 1923) and Yvonne Twining Humber (1907-2004). The long-time Capitol Hill gallerist was the curator of Women Painters of Washington (WPW) which exhibited at the Whatcom Museum of History and Art in Bellingham last year. The University of Washington press published the catalog of the exhibition in 2005. The WPW was founded in 1930 when six women joined together with the aim of overcoming limitations they faced as female artists. Celebrating its 75th anniversary in 2005, WPW is one of the state's oldest arts organizations. WPW has held among its membership talented artists of national prominence whose stories have not been widely shared. The exhibition celebrated the organization's accomplishments, from founding members' early efforts to support fellow women artists all the way through the contemporary members' cultural exchanges and international exhibitions. When you visit the Martin-Zambito gallery on East Pike Street, you will enter into a space that is suffused with art.
Conventional wisdom tells us that the more units of housing we build, the more affordable they should be. But here in Seattle exactly the opposite is true. Runaway growth has correlated directly with higher rents and an increase in the number of existing low cost units that are demolished to make way for new more expensive development. Growth also has been accompanied by an alarming number of units lost to condominium conversion.Upzoning property for greater density only increases the pressure to tear down existing housing. Older duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes and single-family rentals are particularly susceptible. As for condo conversions, an April Seattle Times article explains how 9,200 apartments have been converted to condos since 2000, county-wide. In the city we see the same trend. Just this past year, between June of 2005 and May of 2006, Seattle lost more than 2,000 housing units to condo conversions and 681 to demolition, of which the great majority had been home to low-income renters.
He actually had the audacity to say that this is what's best. Starbucks coffee baron Howard Schultz, the Seattle Supersonics principal owner, tried to present last week's sale of the team to a group from Oklahoma City as a celebratory affair. But the bal-loons and streamers screamed of audaciousness, disingenuousness and just plain B.S.And frankly, it was insulting.The sale was a good thing for Schultz and the group of Sonics owners he led. They made $75 million or so in the five years they owned the team. Which is good work if you can get it. But the truth is that Schultz and Co. sold the city out. Sure, the team's lease with the city isn't a good one from the team's point of view. The luxury suites inside probably need a new coat of paint. But that lease was in place when Schultz bought the team. And the absurd economic model under which the NBA operates was already broken when he took the helm. Meaning Schultz should have known what he was getting into. He should have known that player salaries are absurd. He should have known about the lease. He should have known that the Sonics were the first team to get a new stadium, not the next in line for a new pleasure palace.
Tattooing is sometimes treated by pop-culture journalists as some new fad. It is more popular today, with middle class kids and some of their parents than it ever has  been in America, but there is nothing new about tattooing itself, or other bodily adornment like piercings.According to the University of Pennsylvania's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, tattooing has been practiced since the days of the ancient Egyptians, although the pharaohs and their gang must have called it some other word. Tatau is a Tahitian word, and ta-tu the Marquesan word that Captain Cook's sailors brought back from their 18th-century travels to Polynesia, where tattooing held great cultural significance on most of the far flung islands of the South Pacific.Sailors became the first segment of western populations to go for tattoos in a big way. Veterans of overseas wars and convicts followed.But something has happened in the past 15 years or so, and tattooing has exploded into the mainstream.
Broadway's future economic health received a notable boost earlier this week when the city committed significant money to improving Broadway's fortunes. The TV news crews, graffiti removal teams from Cleanscapes and the large crowd that gathered at Bailey-Coy Books on the morning of Monday, July 24, were there for Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels' formal announcement that more than $300,000 in city funding would be committed to help improve the economic climate on Broadway. The announcement makes good on the city's promise last summer to contribute money to Broadway following the approval of the Broadway rezone. That rezone increased the allowable building height on Broadway from 40 to 65 feet. The mayor's visit also officially acknowledged his acceptance of the Broadway Economic Vitality Action Agenda. That document, several months in the making, was created by a group of business and community members tasked with coming up with strategies and achievable goals meant to stem the tide of Broadway's actual and perceived economic decline.
When Jackie Brooks was a child in Port Angeles, Eleanor Roosevelt came there to christen a battleship. "Her purse fell in the water," Jackie recalls, "and divers had to retrieve it."The then-First Lady made an impression on Jackie that lasts to this day. "She had the courage to speak up for women's rights and for an end to World War II," says Jackie. Also, she awed Jackie by saying, "You must do what you think you cannot do" - words that have reverberated throughout Jackie's life.Jacqueline Hansen was born at home in 1935 in tiny Irene, S.D., outside Sioux Falls. The second of Arthur and Myrtle Hansen's three children, she has an older sister and younger brother.Arthur was the editor of a bi-weekly newspaper called the Tri-County News. Myrtle, a housewife, had been a track star in college. "My mother was a real tornado," says Jackie, conjuring up an image of the storms that twist through the Black Hills.When Jackie was 3 years old, the family moved to Kalispell, Mont. "It was a happy place for me," says Jackie. In summer she and other children played kick-the-can and hide-and-seek; in winter they made snow angels. On rainy days, Jackie thought, "Oh, good, I can stay inside and draw." She has been an artist ever since.
"I'm going to make you look 40 again."This is what my youngest daughter told me she was going to do to me by doing my hair, makeup and finger-nails this afternoon. She wants to make me look 40 again. I'm fairly certain that I don't want to look 40, again or otherwise. I'm not sure where she came up with this idea, but I have my suspicions and I'm cancelling my cable tomorrow so she can't watch the Health and Beauty networks. I always knew television was bad for my children. What I didn't know was that it would bring me such pain.First she collected my makeup bag, perfume, brushes and fingernail polish. She removed the combs in my hair and began brushing my hair vigorously. Normally I enjoy it when the children want to play beauty shop with me because there isn't anything quite as relaxing as having your hair brushed or played with. OK, that could just be me, but it feels so good. This time, not so much. She was yanking and pulling, then began spraying hair gel all over and pulling my bangs this way and that. At one point she had them flat on my forehead, and under her breath she commented that it made me look too much like a hippie, and that wasn't the look she was going for right now. She then painfully brushed everything straight back on my head with something that felt like a piece of wood with nails sticking out of it. I'm sure there was blood.
"I'm going to make you look 40 again."This is what my youngest daughter told me she was going to do to me by doing my hair, makeup and fingernails this afternoon. She wants to make me look 40 again. I'm fairly certain that I don't want to look 40, again or otherwise. I'm not sure where she came up with this idea, but I have my suspicions and I'm cancelling my cable tomorrow so she can't watch the Health and Beauty networks. I always knew television was bad for my children. What I didn't know was that it would bring me such pain.First she collected my makeup bag, perfume, brushes and fingernail polish. She removed the combs in my hair and began brushing my hair vigorously. Normally I enjoy it when the children want to play beauty shop with me because there isn't anything quite as relaxing as having your hair brushed or played with. OK, that could just be me, but it feels so good. This time, not so much. She was yanking and pulling, then began spraying hair gel all over and pulling my bangs this way and that. At one point she had them flat on my forehead, and under her breath she commented that it made me look too much like a hippie, and that wasn't the look she was going for right now. She then painfully brushed everything straight back on my head with something that felt like a piece of wood with nails sticking out of it. I'm sure there was blood.
The drone of the fan in the other room, the gentle tap-tap-tap of the soon-to-be-hardboiled eggs simmering in the pan for tonight's dinner, the chop-chop-chop of the melon and other fruits for the chilled salad to be served to celebrate the sun's setting are early morning kitchen sounds during this excessively hot summer weather. It seems strange to be up so early and hard at work in the kitchen.We think we have maximized the 24/7 lifestyle, and then the heat settles in. We have no quick and easy air-conditioning buttons to push. We suddenly are connected to those people sitting on a stoop in Chicago or New York, fanning themselves and waiting for the cool of the evening. Their children know how to open fire hydrants - do we?Well, we do not need to know, for we have garden hoses and lawns and sprinklers and other water devices, such as strolling to our lakes or to the edge of Puget Sound. We bemoan the heat, we become crabby, we talk and write endlessly about it, and then the beauteous marine air comes flowing back in and shuts us all up.