A history lesson: On Nov. 30, 1999, up to 70,000 people jammed downtown Seattle streets and shut down the opening day of meetings of the World Trade Organization ministerial.Organized labor, environmentalists, human rights advocates, peace activists and many others gathered to protest, in essence, corporate control of democracy.While many Seattleites-thanks to media and especially TV coverage-remember mostly the actions of a few dozen vandals and the police, the protest reverberated around the world, inspiring millions.Fast forward: On March 7, 2003, the media issue came back to Seattle, in the form of a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) hearing on a proposal to further deregulate ownership of television and radio broadcast licenses.The movement for media democracy was in its infancy, but the focus was similar to the anti-WTO protests: concern over democracy being trumped by rules written in the interest of a small handful of very large corporations-in this case, the ones that control much of the news and culture Americans consume.Hundreds packed a University of Washington auditorium that day. All but a handful opposed deregulation. The three Republican members of the five-person commission did not attend and, later, passed their deregulation package despite written testimony in opposition by millions of Americans.But an appeals court overturned the FCC ruling, and if it hadn't, Congress, bowing to public pressure, might well have done so instead.So it is one of the richest ironies in recent memory that the FCC-or at least its two Democratic commissioners-will be coming back to town, to take testimony all over again on a thinly veiled attempt to reinstate the 2003 deregulation effort. And when, and where, will testimony be given? On Nov. 30, 2006, at the Seattle Public Library's main auditorium.
Many Magnolians and Queen Anners believe that replacing the existing Alaskan Way Viaduct with a new, larger viaduct is a cheaper solution. We beg to differ.Of the two remaining options for viaduct replacement- a new elevated highway or a cut-and-cover tunnel-the tunnel is the most viable, long-term solution. Low-cost fix-up solutions and the no-build option don't pencil out. The former would be short-lived; the latter unequal to the projected traffic load.Last month the city council emphatically selected the tunnel option and took action to legally oppose the elevated option. Gov. Christine Gregoire will announce her decision between a cut-and-cover tunnel and a new, larger viaduct at the end of this month.For the broad coalition of civic, business, environmental and neighborhood leaders supporting the cut-and-cover tunnel, the fundamental issue is not just replacing the viaduct. It is really about what Seattle's urban environment will look like in the future, and what economic benefits the Puget Sound region will realize from this project in the long run.We are committed to approaching every transportation decision with the objective of reducing green house gas emissions to avoid the potentially devastating economic and environmental impacts related to global warming.Seattle has committed to reducing emissions that cause global warming and cleaning up Puget Sound waters. Both of these objectives are undermined by a new elevated highway. As a city, we are committed to absorbing our fair share of the major population increase the Puget Sound region will experience by 2030.Many new Seattleites will live downtown. The open-space opportunities created by a cut-and-cover tunnel are essential amenities for thousands of current and future downtown and nearby neighborhood residents.Furthermore, convenient, safe and reliable alternatives to driving are essential, including transit and biking and walking facilities. A tunnel will provide these choices; an elevated highway will not.The tunnel gives us an opportunity to reclaim and reconnect with our waterfront. To tear down the existing viaduct, only to replace it with a higher, wider, uglier and noisier elevated structure, would permanently scar the face of one of the world's most beautiful cities. No world-class city anywhere has built an elevated highway for years; why should we place ourselves at a disadvantage?
A history lesson: On Nov. 30, 1999, up to 70,000 people jammed downtown Seattle streets and shut down the opening day of meetings of the World Trade Organization ministerial. Organized labor, environmentalists, human rights advocates, peace activists and many others gathered to protest, in essence, corporate control of democracy. While many Seattleites - thanks to media and especially TV coverage - remember mostly the actions of a few dozen vandals and the police, the protest reverberated around the world and inspired millions.Fast forward: On March 7, 2003, the media issue came back to Seattle in the form of a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) hearing on a proposal to further deregulate ownership of television and radio broadcast licenses. The movement for media democracy was in its infancy, but the focus was similar to the anti-WTO protests: concern over democracy being trumped by rules written in the interest of a small handful of very large corporations - in this case, the ones that control much of the news and culture Americans consume.Hundreds packed a University of Washington auditorium that day. All but a handful opposed deregulation. The three Republican members of the five-person commission did not attend and, later, passed their deregulation package despite written testimony in opposition by millions of Americans. But an appeals court overturned the FCC ruling, and if it hadn't, Congress, bowing to public pressure, might well have done so instead.
Well, Thanksgiving is upon us again and as usual there is plenty to be thankful for, starting with simply being here to celebrate another year in a world that is never less than interesting.But one thing I won't be thanking anybody for is the Seattle weather this November in this Year of Our Lord.As of Nov. 15, 2006, at 8 p.m., this month was already the WETTEST November on record, with 11.64 inches of rain drowning the helpless corner of the earth where we drip and drip like an Eddie Al Poe short story.I don't want to hear about how the rain is making things green. How about a little drier and a little browner, and hold the downpours?Friends recently arrived here from elsewhere comment on the number of passive-aggressive folks they encounter. They also talk about the number of depressed people.They theorize about the city's Scandi roots. They talk about a changing, more and more isolated society. A place where people shoot at each other over Play Stations!To me, though, if these newcomers are right and more folks here are passive-aggressive depressives than, say, inside the city limits of Topeka, it is a simple cause and effect equation: endless rain and gray, leaden skies pressing down on folks day and night makes them irritated and depressed. Voilà!It's the weather, man.I know it is close to personal over-load time when each night brings a dream of Hawaii or Thailand. Dreams of blue skies and beaches. Dreams of places where rain rents a room and doesn't own the whole house for months at a time.It's not just me.The Bartell's clerk tells me about customers coming in and saying goodbye for the winter."They are going to their second homes in Arizona or Hawaii," he says. "It is tough to take," he adds.Who can disagree with the fella?Not moi.The rain in Spain, and elsewhere, falls mainly on Seattle. Or so it seems.All I can say is, No Thanks!JUST WHEN you think O.J. Simpson, once a genuine hero, couldn't sink any lower, the news gets out that Simpson is "writing" a book entitled "If I Did It?", an alleged account of how he, the Juice, would have killed his ex-wife Nicole and her friend Ronald Goldman.If he did it? Get it?Nothing about this tawdry story since the night in 1995 Simpson was acquitted of the murders by a racially polarized jury brings any credit to anybody. But no one looks worse than Simpson.
The 13th annual post-election analysis and fundraiser State Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles (D-36th District) held 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, where the event was held, not to put too much store in the results. Polls showed, he said, that people voted against Pres.George Bush more than they voted for Democrats. "It's something we should keep in mind."One 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. "It takes a lot less work and creativity."
When Henie Feinberg came to America at the age of 10, "everyone was chewing," she says, "just chewing." This was a strange sight to her, because where she came from people didn't chew gum.Henie was born in 1913, in Metz, Alsace-Lorraine, a town on the Moselle River. Named Henriette at birth, she was the second of Cecelia and Heinrich Drolshagen's three children. Cecelia was French and Heinrich was German. Alsace-Lorraine, a border region between France and Germany, has changed nationality several times in its history. At the time of Henie's birth it belonged to Germany.Henie remembers tagging along with her mother to fancy pastry shops in Metz, picking lilies-of-the-valley in the surrounding woods and taking the train along the Rhine River to visit her grandparents.Heinrich was in the construction business; he helped build factories, doing such specialized jobs as waterproofing tanks and building chimneys. During World War I he served in the German army. When Alsace-Lorraine was returned to France following the war, the Drolshagens moved to Hamm, Germany, near Heinrich's birthplace. Five years old, Henie entered kindergarten at a Catholic primary school.Growing up, Henie was close to her younger brother, Otto; there was also a sister, significantly older, that Henie didn't know as well.Heinrich, too, had a brother, also in the construction business, who lived in Chicago. He persuaded Heinrich to move his family once again and join his business there. They immigrated in 1922 through Ellis Island. "Moving to America was a blessing," says Henie. "There wasn't much food in Germany. My siblings and I had to share one egg, and once my father went as far as Holland to buy some horsemeat. Here you have everything." Their American life began in Chicago, where Henie enrolled in public school and the Sheehy Dancing School as well. She attended dancing school nearly every day, studying mostly ballet but also tap and acrobatics.Whenever her father worked on a construction project elsewhere for a year or more, the family moved with him. This meant that they lived in Alton, Ill.; Cedar Rapids, Iowa; and Port Arthur, Texas, until Henie's mother said, "Enough!" and they settled for good in Chicago.Henie graduated from high school in 1931, "by the skin of my teeth," she says. Her mother wanted her to attend finishing school in Europe, but instead she joined the Balaban and Katz dance troupe in Chicago. Under the stage name Henie Hagen, she performed in lavish Chicago theater productions and traveled with the dance troupe from Maine to New York City and other metropolises, to the Texas state fair, to Sheridan, Wyo., where she was "introduced to the cowboys."After a glamorous, two-year career, she quit showbiz and took a job as a "coffee girl" in a diner, uniformed in a brown dress and brown hat. One day, as she refilled a customer's cup, he scrawled an invitation to dinner on a napkin and slipped it to her. She accepted.
To really understand something, you need to put the information in context. For local Aerials Express dealer John Nagy, that context includes a birds-eye perspective married to invaluable real-estate information for the entire Puget Sound region.The Arizona-based company uses a single-engine plane with a million-dollar Leica digital camera to take sky-high photos of 5,600 square miles of the area, said Queen Anne resident John Nagy. "The resolution is just incredible." However, the extremely high-resolution photos are just the basis for the real meat of the business: data. Make that a lot of data that can be overlaid on the aerial photos with a click of the mouse. The computer-based information system includes, among other things, property lines, city boundaries, street names, wetland maps, zoning maps and the owners of the property. Customers can also zoom in and out on an area, and specific plots of land are linked to Excell spreadsheet details that also provide sales histories.
Roberto Maestas, co-founder and executive director of El Centro de la Raza, received the 2006 Thomas C. Wales Award for Passionate Citizenship Nov. 18 at the Thomas C. Wales Foundation's Night Among Heroes dinner gala.Named after the late federal prosecutor Tom Wales, who was gunned down and killed in the basement of his Queen Anne home in 2001, the foundation is "dedicated to the promise of ordinary citizens actively helping to create a more livable and fair society."But picking the winner of the annual award wasn't easy, said John Hoffman, a longtime friend of Wales, a foundation director and chairman of the award-selection committee. "It is personal, emotional and, in the end, humbling work," he said.Those up for consideration included a University of Washington student who works in homeless shelters, a major-league baseball player who sets up camps for children, a woman who brings street kids back to education, and a mother and daughter who are a doctor and nurse who treated rape victims in the Congo, Hoffman said.Still, four finalists were also honored at the dinner.
Through four decades, five television series comprising more than 700 episodes, 10 feature films and an animated series, fandom's thirst for more Star Trek stories has been unquenchable.From the earliest short-story adaptations by James Blish in the 1960s, followed by the first original Star Trek novels during the '70s and on through the '80s, '90s and into the 21st century, fiction has offered an unparalleled expansion of the rich Star Trek tapestry.Author Jeff Ayers, a Magnolia resident, has immersed himself in nearly 600 books and interviewed more than 300 authors and editors in order to compile Voyages of Imagination: the Star Trek Fiction Companion, a definitive guide to the history and evolution of an incomparable publishing phenomenon.Voyages of Imagination takes a look back on the first 40 years of professionally published Star Trek fiction, revealing the personalities and sensibilities of many of the novels' imaginative contributors as well as offering an unprecedented glimpse into the creative processes.
What's on offer at the Henry Gallery these days? Rockets and rocket men, radio waves and flashing lights, photos of America at its best and worst, and a comfortable little gossip chair, among other things. It's a varied assortment of exhibits that will particularly appeal to those who appreciate art as political statement and those who like art that requires language to succeed.An exhibit that both requires verbal explanation and is political is "Beyond Territory." The work consists of two multimedia installations that hearken back to the 1960s, when pirate radio ships and abandoned World War II fortifications in the English Channel transmitted independent shows and rock music in defiance of international regulations. Created by the collaborative neuroTransmitter, these installations mix sound with sculpture to draw attention to the increasing regulation, commercialization and monopolization of the radio spectrum that the artists and others believe should be more available to diverse voices and points of view.Next, there's a photography exhibit, the words in whose title suggest that this, too, is art that would benefit from explication:
Fire Station 40, 9401 35th Ave. N.E., opened its doors to the public in late October to kick off the "Change Your Clock, Change Your Battery" campaign and mark Fire Prevention Month. Visitors also were able to tour the fire station, check their blood pressure and learn about home fire safety.
It's crazy [that] we paid for something that doesn't work," said Laura Brown, a member of the Na-than Hale High School Sports Booster group. "We never got our money's worth." Other Nathan Hale parents and Booster Club members are echoing this sentiment. A 'lemon' of a liftIn 1998, a levy was passed that earmarked $40 million to build state-of-the-art sports complexes at Nathan Hale, Ingraham, Chief Sealth and Rainier Beach high schools. The lifts cost an average of $50,000 for each school.To comply with standards set forth by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), these complexes featured wheelchair lifts for people who use wheelchairs to gain access to the grandstands. However, the lifts never worked. According to school officials, the company that installed the lifts has since gone out of business. The vendor is in Canada and is unresponsive to contact attempts made by the district, they say.In an e-mail, district maintenance manager Ed Heller wrote, "The supplier is difficult to contact and does not provide spare parts or technical advice that gets these machines repaired."It is a lemon," Heller added.
The phrase "laptop battle" sounds deceptively similar to phrases like "backseat driver" or "armchair quarterback" that join two seemingly opposed concepts. Yet in this instance you'd be mistaken to think so; a visit to this year's National Laptop Battle on Capitol Hill will certainly prove you wrong.On Dec. 7 at Chop Suey, eight winners from regional Laptop Battles meet in Seattle to vie for the national crown. In doing so, they will perform a series of three- minute sets using little more than laptop computers to create music that Kris Moon, organizer of the national event, frankly described as "balls to the wall."The Laptop Battles began in 2003 when Moon and Zach Huntting hosted the first such event in Seattle's Deep Down Lounge, underneath Temple Billiards. That night it became clear they were on to something big - a crowd easily filled the venue and the night's winner literally set the speakers ablaze.<
While the rest of the theatrical world is launching Christmas spectaculars this week, Velocity Dance decided to do something different. The company has taken its NEXT program of new works and turned it into a one-weekend dance festival."For years, the dance community has been talking about creating a festival that was totally devoted to contemporary dance-based work," said Tonya Lockyer, the NEXT program manager. "This festival celebrates such work in all of its forms."NEXT Fest NW, which runs Dec. 1 and 2 at Velocity, features choreography by Paige Barnes, Jessica Jobaris and Selfick Ng-Simancas as well as performance installations by Jochelle Elise Pereña and Violette Tucker and dance films by Gaelen Hanson, Christiana Axelson, Carla Barragan, Jeffrey Braverman, Stacey Horton, Karn Junkinsmith, Amelia Reeber, Renee Rhodes, Maureen Whiting and Ying Zhou.<
The past 10 days have been chock full of news items I wanted to share with you dear readers. The cornucopia of news too good to pass up has been overflowing.Starting very close to home, four blocks from KeyArena for yours truly: Clayton Bennett, the new carpetbagger owner of the Sonics, who keeps acting as if he wants to keep the team here when we all know he wants to head back to the Dust Bowl from whence he sprung, has told the city fathers that he needs 15 to 30 acres, a new arena and some tax breaks to keep the team here on the shores of Elliott Bay.Bennett, in a display of gall worthy of former Pirate owner Howie of NYC, the coffee baron, has also said that he is against letting the public - that's you and me - vote on whether or not we, the aforementioned citizenry, pay for this new arena he must have with higher taxes he is seeking while skirting around the voters.Big old Clay is lucky I am not working for the city in any decision-making capacity, because I would tell him to pack up and get out now, and take his collection of gawky hoopster losers with him.