Pastor Erik R. Wilson Weiberg, of Ballard First Lutheran Church, delivers the homily during the 75th Annual Blessing of the Fleet, at Fisherman's Terminal in Ballard, Sunday, March 14. About 100 attended the blessing of the Cormorant Isle, piloted by Daryl Knutsen.
Wow! On Labor Day the annual Houghton-Lakeview neighborhood picnic at Terrace Park experienced the best weather ever. By 11:15 the big kids, little kids, toddlers and babies streamed into Terrace Park near Lakeview Elementary School to line up for the mini-parade.
"Get ready to duck," yells Michael Malone, our Canadian tour guide, who bears a striking resemblance to "Crocodile" Dundee. "Pull in your shoulders and look forward, or you'll get whacked," he says. Whacked? An aerial root hanging down from the mangrove tree in front of me swings into my shoulder and punctures my skin. Whacked. "There are boa constrictors in these trees," says Malone with a shrug. "Let's try to keep them out of the boat. They aren't venomous - they just crush the life out of their prey, and they are kind of a hassle to deal with."
A couple of decades from now people will look back in wonder at the fuss over the same-sex marriage debate.When that eventuality has come to pass, we will be a saner, more humane and more functional society.This is a civil rights issue. And the issue involves up to possibly 10 percent of our fellow citizens - friends, neighbors, co-workers and loved ones.To deny the full rights of marriage to a selected group of people based on gender is un-American.
They're back!Yes, the happy, young walk to schoolers; the happy, young drag racers, the happy young joggers from PE classes, the happy moms that are driving them, and the happy moms that are dropping them off for eight hours! I'm sure you all can relate to that.
If both people involved in any proposed marriage are over 21 and mentally competent, then their attempted union is none of my business, or yours. Leave them alone, wish 'em luck, and watch them try to stay married. It ain't all that easy.
When it comes to same sex marriage, Seattle does not appear to be sitting on the fence, especially on Capitol Hill. People are not spooked by it; in fact they can be quite eloquent when explaining why they favor it.
"When I was 9, I started ice skating. I was trying different things. I heard that ballet strengthens ankles and legs. I was also taking tennis. I had to drop something," said Downtowner Lauren Anderson about her ballet journey, one that has led to her attending the prestigious Universal Ballet Academy's Summer Program in Washington D.C.
Their Web sites say it all. Both Theatre Babylon and Theatre Under the Influence created online fundraising links for a new performing space in the wake of the fire marshal's closure of the Union Garage's largest theater.If they can't raise the money to improve their current venue, both companies may need to find a new home.
If WestFarm Foods and the Teamsters have gotten any closer to settling the lockout at the company's Darigold plants in Issaquah and on Rainier Avenue, there is little outward sign of it.The nearly 200 locked-out Darigold workers in the Seattle area are represented by Teamsters Local 66, which is now operating under the trusteeship of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Teamsters Joint Council 28, which represents locals in Alaska and Washington state and is tending to the day-to-day operations of Local 66, put up pickets last Tuesday at WestFarm plants in Lynden and Chehalis, Wash., effectively putting the company on notice that Teamsters Locals 231 and 252 workers at those plants could walk out in a sympathy action.
The Highlands neighborhood picnic was held on Sept. 7 at Spinney Park, and we had a great turnout. Goldilocks would have loved it: thanks to some clouds, it wasn't too hot and it wasn't too cold. It was just right.
Mayor Greg Nickels took a new approach to the office this month by touting a huge list of relatively inexpensive accomplishments made during the first 100 days of his administration. Among the accomplishments: potholes have been filled, nobody was murdered at Mardi Gras, tow trucks were stationed on bridges, Neighborhood Service Centers were opened in the evening and during weekends, and ongoing training was re-instituted in the Seattle Police Department.
It doesn't look like much from the outside, that industrial building that takes up all of that odd-shaped block just north of where 23rd Avenue angles into Rainier. Except for the faded sign on the Rainier Avenue side, there's not much to indicate just what goes on there.What goes on there, and has gone on there pretty much nonstop since the late 1940s, is the manufacture of ice cream and other frozen treats.
Fifth-graders from Van Asselt Elementary School took to the wilds of Seward Park last Friday, March 12 to apply some of what they had learned in the classroom through the Woodland Park Zoo's 'Wild Wise' program.
Grab a pen and something to write on. October 9 is the date of the Second Thursday Gallery Walk in Kirkland, and the Howard/Mandville Gallery will be opening a show of new works by four Northwest artists, painters Kent Lovelace and Jhenna Quinn Lewis, and sculptors Tim Cherry and Cathryn Jenkins.
"Get ready to duck," yells Michael Malone, our Canadian tour guide, who bears a striking resemblance to "Crocodile" Dundee. "Pull in your shoulders and look forward, or you'll get whacked," he says. Whacked? An aerial root hanging down from the mangrove tree in front of me swings into my shoulder and punctures my skin. Whacked. "There are boa constrictors in these trees," says Malone with a shrug. "Let's try to keep them out of the boat. They aren't venomous - they just crush the life out of their prey, and they are kind of a hassle to deal with."
Last week, in "Your marriage ain't my business (or God's)," columnist Dennis Wilken creatively made some sound observations about marriage. "Marriage is hard," he observes. As one who has been married to one woman for 37 years, I couldn't agree more. In fact, she would agree with equal vigor. Wilken continues, "Staying married is even harder in today's debased American pop-culture drivel muddle." Oh yes!And, I think I hear Wilken saying, because marriage is really hard and we don't quite pull it off a lot of the time, we ought not to stick our noses judgmentally in one another's marriages and marriage failures. I'm still with you, Dennis. As one whose family has been touched by the pain of divorce, I have no desire to be condemning people whose marriages fail.
Summer may be but a memory, but that doesn't mean new memories can't be found at the theater. Over at the Kirkland Performance Center there's plenty of offerings to fit all kinds of tastes.
