That's it! You've had it! You've decided it's time to act and unleash your long-harbored, diabolical plan of full-scale revolt. You're tired of the chaos, the stupidity or the manifest illogic apparent in the... well, something about the world, and you've decided it's time you took charge. You've thought about it, dreamed about it and muttered incoherently about it to yourself as you've driven home through your neighborhood each night. Now, what to do?Having harbored quite a few plans of my own, brought several to reality and aided others as they unleashed their twisted visions onto the mean streets of funky and fomented Fremont, I have the knowledge. And now, I will reveal the secrets of just how you - yes, you - can mobilize a community organization to your own agenda.<
The 13th-annual post-election analysis and fund-raiser state Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles (D-36th District) sponsored on Nov. 16 was markedly different than her first 12. That's because in the latest election Democrats trounced Republicans at a state and national level for a change.However, KIRO-TV reporter and master of ceremonies Bob Branom cautioned a roomful of people at the Hale's Ales Brewery & Pub in Fremont, where the event took place, not to put too much store in the results. Polls showed, he said, that people voted against President George W. Bush more than they voted for Democrats: "It's something we should keep in mind."Good spin on good newsOne of six panelists at the event, veteran political consultant Blair Butterworth had another take on the election results. In the past, he said, Democrats at Kohl-Welles' yearly event tried to put a good spin on bad news; this year, they got to put a good spin on good news. Butterworth said, smiling, "It takes a lot less work and creativity."He also said that one truly interesting point about the local campaigns was "how lazy the Republicans were in recruiting people." The opponent for state Senate candidate Claudia Kaufman (D-47th District), for example, was "really mediocre," Butterworth said.<
Lasse Nord chips away at a root ball before planting the tree, while Eileen McAuliffe (next page) removes the ties from a newly planted tree during a major planting party in late October, just in time for fall's wet weather. Nord, McAuliffe and other Wallingford neighbors planted 150 trees throughout their neighborhood in one day.
Democrat Jim Mc-Dermott - the famously liberal 7th District U.S. representative from Washington state - is obviously pleased that Democrats trounced so many federal-level Republicans in the last election. "I think the world took its first deep breath and sighed," he said.But the congressman believes there were other reasons besides the war in Iraq that Democrats scored such a decisive victory. That's not to say the war wasn't an important factor; it was, according to McDermott, who represents most of Seattle."It's no question it was the issue," he said of the war. But Democrats also set out to make the election a referendum on President Bush's policies that include, among other things, the gutting of environmental regulations and a botched FEMA response to Hurricane Katrina, the longtime congressman said."We looked like a Third World country," McDermott said of post-hurricane New Orleans, many parts of which are still devastated. "There clearly were no adults running the country." FEMA did such a poor job, he went on to say, that if the Alaskan Way Viaduct fell down today, the federal agency wouldn't be the first one contacted for help.
November's torrential rains - capped by a week of frigid air, snow and ice - raise an obvious question about all that money for Seattle streets that voters approved on Nov. 7.When are they going to fix the potholes?A lot of money readyEmergency repairs such as potholes have been a renewed focus of the city in the last five years - one of the few truly beneficial things the Greg Nickels administration has done for neighborhoods. But it's been in the context of declining city revenues dedicated to transportation so that paving and other longer-term projects have gone begging. Court decisions, initiatives and the state's funding formula reduced dedicated revenues from $37.5 million in 1995 to $13.1 million in 2006. With new taxes and passage of the levy, money for potholes and maintaining roads will go up dramatically - eventually.
Yeah, change is coming to the Pike-Pine corridor, just as it's always been changing. This time around, there are businesses worth preserving through the tumult of morphing. There are ways to help preserve them.But first, some history. The Pike-Pine funk as we know it is an oh-so-recent phenomenon. The corridor had been known since the 1920s as Seattle's Auto Row, pieces of which are still with us (Phil Smart, BMW Seattle). In the 1960s, as the car showrooms had begun to disappear, the old Edison Technical School (previously Broadway High) evolved into Seattle Central Community College. In the early 1970s came the first wave of gay bars and bathhouses, a few of which are still with us (Cuffs, the Eagle). Bill's Off Broadway Pizza opened in 1980. Soon thereafter, the old Masonic Temple became the Egyptian Theater.As I've previously recounted in this space, the corridor in the mid-1980s was a much "edgier" place than it later became. Drug dealers, aggressive panhandlers and straight and gay streetwalkers openly traversed the area day and night.Linda's, one of the corridor's current straight-bar anchors, opened less than 13 years ago. Even then, at the height of "grunge" mania (spawned partly at the Squid Row bar down the street at the current Kincora site), a young-hipster bar on East Pine was a risky proposition. But it worked out, due to a growing area population of young adults with bohemian aspirations but without starving-artist incomes.
Saturday night, Dec. 3, was an unusually busy night for the Joe Bar, the popular coffee house, gallery and living room to the Cornish/North Broadway area of Capitol Hill. It was another art opening, but it was also a book party celebrating the last three years of monthly art exhibitions.The new show is also an old show, a retrospective of the past three years of shows curated by Jess Van Nostrand. It is her last show at the gallery/café and a full-color book celebrating the 20 shows she has mounted at the café over the past three years was unveiled and available to the public.Since he took over Joe Bar, at 810 E. Roy, Wylie Bush has encouraged local artists to hang their work, and tried to curate the shows himself. It proved to be a big task forming an idea for a show, finding the artists and art, getting everything together and getting the show hung in the café's quarters in the historic Loveless Building, a block west of Broadway opposite the Harvard Exit theater.Bush said he wanted the art to be more than an after-thought way of decorating his café. It worked."It was a real easy, logical step from my customers, who are the artists," Bush said. The café is just a half block from the Cornish College of the Arts Capitol Hill campus. "As a curator, I didn't think I could cut it."Help was at hand, and after three years of winging it, Van Nostrand appeared on the scene.Van Nostrand, 32, mounted her first show at the Joe Bar in January 2004 with "Hi, Resolution: The Art of Broken Promises."
Being homeless is never easy. But when the weather turns bitterly cold as it did last week, daily life for men and women without a place to live can become is even more grim - even deadly. That's why the city opened up an overflow severe-weather homeless shelter last week in the Rainier Room at the Seattle Center, said Al Poole, the city's Homeless Intervention director.The Seattle Center temporary shelter was added to the two regular shelters: City Hall at Fourth and James, along with the Frye Hotel for homeless women and the overflow shelter at the Compass Center at Alaskan Way and Washington.The Downtown Emergency Center also opened its doors to the homeless early last week, but it was closed down almost immediately, and homeless people were directed to the Seattle Center, Poole said. The Seattle Center shelter, with space for 80 people, worked well, he added. "We didn't have to turn anyone away."Indeed, the shelter was over capacity at 103 people last Wednesday night, Nov. 29, according to John McDonough, a Salvation Army employee who was managing the facility.Emergency shelters are opened up if the temperature hits 32 degrees or below, if it snows or if it rains two days in a row, he said. The various shelters keep track of what's going on with other facilities, McDonough added. "We stay in contact with each other."
More than 125 people gathered together in downtown Columbia City on the clear, chilly evening of Saturday, Dec. 2, to partake in the annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony. Young members of the Dearborn Park Elementary School Chorus sang out a medley of holiday songs. The song selection reflected the cultural diversity of the students at the school.
Among the cacophony of table tennis balls, one competitor stood out like a David among the many Goliaths. This bespectacled Lilliputian's precision serves, agile returns and ferocious forehand belied that of your stereotypical 85-year-old grandmother. Born in Beijing, China, Sufei Fu was introduced to table tennis in elementary school where she fondly recalls playing after school and into the night by candlelight. Later, when Sufei entered high school, volleyball became her athletic passion. After high school, Sufei's sporting interests waned as she pursued her college studies. Married to an editor, this mother of four went on to become a sociology professor at Kunming Teachers College in China's Yunnan Province. Retired from teaching in 1986, Sufei remained in China with her husband until his passing five years ago. She then relocated to Seattle to live with her daughter, Jiang. Jiang, also a seasoned table tennis player, assists her mom by retrieving errant balls. Employed as an accountant, when this loving daughter senses her mom is tired, she respectfully encourages Sufei, a soft spoken and gentle spirit, to take a break. Jiang proudly attributes her mom's extraordinary physical and mental health to Sufei's open mindedness, humbleness, being an accomplished calligraphist and her daily practice of the martial arts known as Goose Kung Fu (Tai Chi-like meditative exercise that mimics the movements of this bird).
I don't think I'm going to make any resolutions for 2007. Not because I'm opposed to it or can't think of anything I can improve on.To the contrary, I could fill a hard disk with the areas in which I need improvement.The reason I'm not making any is because I have enough unfulfilled resolutions from past years that, without every making another one, could easily last me a lifetime.Every year, often with the benefit of clear thinking provided by a couple of martinis, I set out like Don Quixote to fix all the things that bugged me, or my wife, throughout the previous year.At the time, somewhere between about 10 p.m. on Dec. 31 and 2 a.m. on Jan. 1, when the lights go out, literally and figuratively, I'm filled with the optimism of the promise of accomplishment-not unlike President Bush thinking he can win "the war" in Iraq.
Until the 1752 calendar change, Jan. 5 was Christmas Eve, and Twelfth Night, sometimes called the Eve of Epiphany, falls on Jan. 5 and precedes the 12th day, which is commonly regarded as the end of the Christmas season.Actually, according to Christian tradition, Jan. 6 was the day the Wise Men visited the Christ Child. In Tudor England, Twelfth Night was celebrated even more than Christmas in manor houses throughout the country. It was a time for feasting and merrymaking with the Lord of Misrule in complete charge; even the sovereign had to follow his commands, however silly, and some of them were extremely so.Farmers in Devon, Somerset, would wassail their apple trees on this night, hoping to ensure a good harvest for the next year. This tradition is reflected in the custom of drinking a warm spiced beverage from a wassail bowl and eating a special cake like gingerbread. Originally gingerbread was a medieval mixture of breadcrumbs, sugar and spices boiled with honey and wine to make a paste that was then shaped and decorated. The name goes back to Middle English when bread was the word for broken bread and loaf was the word for the whole item. Gingerbread being made up of breadcrumbs, the name became an outgrowth of its nature.
Sitting next to Teru Beppu, gazing out toward the cityscape and Puget Sound that comprise the view from her Bayview Manor apartment, one enjoys a sense of beauty and peace.Violets of various colors are banked against the sliding doors to the balcony, where other plants and greenery provide a "garden." The setting is utterly serene, and so is Mrs. Beppu.Looking at Teru in this lovely setting, or meeting her for the first time, it would be easy to imagine that life had always been like this for her-a smooth path. One would never guess that this peaceful Seattle native, born 92 years ago in a hospital that no longer exists, Seattle General, had ever experienced any misfortune.Then, when she starts to share her memories of Seattle, it becomes apparent that her quiet strength has carried her through any number of situations that might have defeated a less hardy soul.Just 8 years old when her mother died, Teru learned about pain and suffering early in life. Her father, Kiichi Setsuda, a devoted Buddhist, would get up in the morning and put a bowl of fresh rice in front of her mother's picture. He never remarried. The family had a coal-burning stove, and Mr. Setsuda used it to cook and even bake. "He had such a hard life," she said. "We owe him so much."Although a Buddhist, Mr. Setsuda raised his three daughters and sons as Christians.
"I can find something good about almost anything," says Sarah Conklin. "I tend to be a generally happy person. Things don't get me down."Take school, for example. Sarah is a junior at The Center School, located in the Seattle Center, and she doesn't like it there. "It's too small," she says. "There are not enough directions you can take, and not a lot of structure. It's kind of boring, with no potential to meet new people."I want to go somewhere else," she continues, "but my parents won't let me. I'm stuck there." But it doesn't get her down, and she still enjoys some classes."Usually my favorite subject is math, but not this year," she says. "This year it's chemistry, taught by Mr. Pender." He makes the subject matter fun (right now they are studying different types of chemical bonds and reactions), Sarah adds, and he accommodates all kinds of learning styles. "If you don't understand," she explains, "he is willing to change how he teaches until you do."Three days a week after school, Sarah takes ballet at Dance Fremont from Miss Vivian. (With no comment about sexism, she notes that male ballet instructors are called by their last names.) She has no great aspirations as a ballet dancer. "I just like it," she says.
For many of us (regrettably, not all of us), our bellies have been filled with special holiday celebratory meals. We have gathered with family and friends, sharing our stories and other fine gifts. We have been distracted from the wildly wicked weather and been given a brief pause in our frantic and hectic lives. However, the brush piles and stumps, logs and branches loom large again outside our windows. The huge amount of detritus left from the recent storms feels like an oppressive chore that has no charm or salvation in it. But I encourage you to rethink your options.Start with the quickly produced and impressive Web site from WSU/King County Extension: king.wsu.edu/foresty/windstorm.html. Your initial reaction to this idea might be that you do not live in a forest! I just wish to suggest that I believe you will find a lot of useful information, and I do know it will change your mindset about dealing with the storms' detritus piles.