You meet new friends...Encounter provocative new ideas...Pick up nifty hints about detailing your car...And maybe even do some good.
The University of Washington Botanic Gardens' Rare Care program is holding its annual Celebrating Wildflowers event June 30, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., at the new Olympic Sculpture Park.Bring the family to celebrate native plants and the role they play in nature and in our lives. Create a wildflower from recycled materials. Take an illuminating look at plants through microscopes. Plant a seed in an origami pot. Explore a wide diversity of native mosses and share your discovery using magnetic poetry.
JUNE 12 - Queen Anne's own Sluggers softball squad, sponsored by orthodontist Leone & Vaughn, reached the championship game of the city Tournament of Champions on Tuesday before last. In an exciting final, manager Molly Sweeney's 9- and 10-year-old girls were bested by the Purple People Eaters of Northeast Seattle, 15-5. The Northeast team was led by the strong pitching of all-star Casey Pelz, who also contributed with her bat.
JUNE 4 - Buckley's advanced to round two of the city tournament with a strong showing against the RUG Incredibles team. JUNE 6 - Buckley's continued its march to the championship by defeating the number-two seed, Magnolia's Carol Ard team, 9-6.JUNE 8 - Buckley's Rachel Livengood and Super-Graphics' Mindy pitched excellent games during the playoff finale on Friday. JUNE 12 - Buckley's entered the final game of the City Tournament at Husky Stadium as the only team to have defeated Pennon Construction during the regular season.
The two best teams in the Queen Anne Major League - 5 Spot and Metropolitan Market - squared off on a beautiful late-spring evening to determine who would walk away with bragging rights for 2007 in the Majors championship game. The buzz was palpable, as more fans turned out to watch this contest than any other that this reporter has witnessed. Fittingly, both teams rose to the occasion, playing a tight, tension-filled game that was not decided until the final play. A scoreless first inning featured good pitching and defense from both teams.
Magnolia resident Eva Gianutsos made the most of a recent haircut: she donated 14 inches of ponytail to Locks of Love, a nonprofit organization that provides hairpieces to financially disadvantaged children suffering from hair loss for any reason. Three years ago she donated a similar amount of hair. Wielding the shears was Alexandria Slider, owner/stylist of Soul the Salon (2508 Fifth Ave.), who donated her time for a good cause. For more information about this program, visit http://www.locksoflove.org/
McClure Middle School principal Kathy Bledsoe is retiring after seven years at the school. All told, Bledsoe has spent 40 years serving children and their families in the field of education both in the United States and in Canada.During her tenure at McClure, she worked hard toward McClure's mission to ensure that McClure remain a safe and nurturing learning environment, and that programs were focused on what was in the best interest of students.
Sheer chance and the brave efforts of a mom-and-daughter team helped save two blind women when the kitchen of their Queen Anne home caught fire around 9:30 in the morning Nov. 28.It was sheer chance because 16-year-old Catherine Scott would normally have been in class at Ballard High School. Ballard High was having a snow day that Tuesday, though, and Scott was still asleep in her upstairs bedroom, she said.She woke up to the sounds of screams and loud voices coming from her neighbors' house in the 400 block of W. Smith St. And, she said, it was easy to figure out what was going on. "I can see out of my bedroom window inside their kitchen window," she said of the house Maxine Eckman and her daughter, Robin Ross, have lived in for nearly 40 years. Scott saw a small fire in the women's kitchen. "But since they were both blind, I decided to check it out." So she ran downstairs, told her mother Chris McBride about the fire and asked her to call 911, Scott said.Then the teenager, with her mother in the lead, headed over to the burning house through the back yard of their home on Fourth Avenue West. "By the time I got to the house, my mom had run into the burning house," Scott said.
We'll follow the old show: 'White Christmas' delights anew at 5th AvenueBy Starla Smith As Seattle counts down to the holidays, 5th Avenue Theatre special-delivers a musical gift that warms our hearts.Irving Berlin struck gold with his 1942 Oscar-winning tune "White Christmas," written for the film "Holiday Inn." The song's enduring popularity inspired the 1954 remake of "Holiday Inn" as a movie called (but of course) "White Christmas." Bing Crosby starred in both pictures, sharing the remake with Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen. Now comes the stage adaptation based on the holiday chestnut. Under the direction of Jamie Rocco and David Armstrong, this feel-good production delivers an abundance of old-fashioned charm. Yes, it's sentimental, the plot is contrived and that old comedy shtick makes you simultaneously smile and cringe. But it's a refreshing change from the hoopla over TomKat's wedding and Britney Spears' pantygate. Best of all, we get to hear all those wonderful Berlin melodies sung live by a talented cast.For the stage musical, other Berlin tunes have been added to the score, mixing familiar standards with rarely sung numbers. Songs and scenes have been shifted, shortened or deleted, but the plot plays out much the same as the film.
Bells are ringing, nutcrackers brighten downtown streets and soon the candles will be lit. It's winter holiday time, and Seattle theaters are geared up to greet the season. Whatever your cele-bration - Christmas, Hanukkah or Kwanzaa - you'll find some-thing in local theaters to bring you cheer or tug at your heart-strings. Two ferinstances:At ACT Theatre it's "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens. The spirit of Christmas is evident in the audience even before the performance begins. Little girls in black velvet and white lace, hair pulled back Alice in Wonderland-style, totter about on shoes that seem a bit too high for their tiny feet. Boys in white shirts and ties look longingly at their age mates whose parents let them come in jeans and gym shoes. Adults seem cheery, especially those wearing red stocking hats trimmed in white. They're all ready for a good time, and that's just what they'll get.This is ACT's 31st annual production of the holiday classic, and they have it down. From the start, the audience is transported to Victorian London. Gas-lit streets, flurries of snow, old Scrooge's austere office with its writing quills and scrivener's desk. It is there that Bob Cratchit sits.Poor Bob Cratchit, filled with good cheer and love for his fam-ily and his fellow man, has to work for a mean-spirited, miserly old man who sits counting his money but won't let Cratchit put even one lump of coal on the fire. We all know the story.
Bells are ringing, nutcrackers brighten downtown streets and soon the candles will be lit. It's winter holiday time, and Seattle theaters are geared up to greet the season. Whatever your cele-bration - Christmas, Hanukkah or Kwanzaa - you'll find some-thing in local theaters to bring you cheer or tug at your heart-strings. Two ferinstances:At ACT Theatre it's "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens. The spirit of Christmas is evident in the audience even before the performance begins. Little girls in black velvet and white lace, hair pulled back Alice in Wonderland-style, totter about on shoes that seem a bit too high for their tiny feet. Boys in white shirts and ties look longingly at their age mates whose parents let them come in jeans and gym shoes. Adults seem cheery, especially those wearing red stocking hats trimmed in white. They're all ready for a good time, and that's just what they'll get.This is ACT's 31st annual production of the holiday classic, and they have it down. From the start, the audience is transported to Victorian London. Gas-lit streets, flurries of snow, old Scrooge's austere office with its writing quills and scrivener's desk. It is there that Bob Cratchit sits.Poor Bob Cratchit, filled with good cheer and love for his fam-ily and his fellow man, has to work for a mean-spirited, miser-ly old man who sits counting his money but won't let Cratchit put even one lump of coal on the fire. We all know the story.
Here's one way to beat the December chill: visit Bayou country in Seattle Children's Theatre's world premiere of "The Sorcer-er's Apprentice." SCT's original adaptation of "Philopsuedes," the Greek fable written in 150 C.E. by satirist Lucian of Samosata and previously revisited in a Goethe poem, a Paul Dukas symphony and a beloved segment of Disney's "Fantasia," gets a swampy new take by playwright OyamO (Charles F. Gordon, writer-in-residence at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor). One might not feel, exactly, moist heat emanating from the production's sets, full of tangled moss and vines drooping from contorted trees, presumably along the banks of muddy creeks. But the supernatural dilemma of the title character, a hungry lad named Charles (Connor Toms) who stumbles across an enchanted forest and proves too eager to learn magic from queenly sorceress Marguerite (Anne Allgood), feels like a mystery shimmering in the fever of American folklore. Without getting too specific about time and place, "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" looks as if it's set during the Great Depression, a hard era in which it would make sense for young Charles to be wandering for miles alone in search of a meal, possibly after riding the rails for days.
The number of bags airlines have lost or misplaced is skyrocketing, according to the Transportation Department, which notes the rates for last September shot up an incredible 93 percent from a year before."I think since 9/11 all the regulations and rules from the airlines have been tough on customers," said Jan Paolini, owner of Queen Anne Mail and Dispatch on Upper Queen Anne Hill. In fact, she said, one of four bags is lost or misplaced by the airlines these days.But Paolini has an alternative: Box up your clothes and belongings, and ship them ahead of time instead of depending on the decreasing chances your luggage will arrive at your destination when you do.Losing your luggage forever is a hassle, but having it show up late is also a pain, she said. "It could take two days for your luggage to catch up to you." And on a three-legged trip, that means travelers would have to stay an extra couple of days somewhere while their bags get where they were supposed to be in the first place, Paolini said. "It's happening in Europe, and you're looking at $300-a-night hotels."Paolini said her business ships packages through both UPS and regular mail, and she even sells the boxes people can use for the shipment to destinations that include hotels.
JOSH STENDERA"We have to go shopping on our own instead of people shopping for us. I guess that there is more to think about instead of just enjoying it."JENNIFER STENDERA"It is more stressful - dividing time between families [after getting married]."BEVERLY WITTE"I am all by myself now. All of my family is gone, so I don't celebrate very much. I don't do the traditional Christmas things like presents and the tree."<
The new year always turns thoughts to the new tax season, and when it comes to taxes there's no place like home to find shelter. Your home offers a score of tax deductions and credits designed to help offset the cost of housing and to keep the housing market fueled with new buyers. Some federal-level politicians would like to separate you from some of those benefits and they may or may not be successful, so take advantage of them while you can.