It's that time again. For the second year in a row I returned to Cincinnati for my mother's birthday; she turned 87 on Nov. 5.Since my father died at 57, it is my mother's genes I am hoping are dominant in my little life.Mom is a remarkable woman. We started each day with a 2-mile walk in a local park, up hill and dale on a Green Lake-style path, where the bikers and rollerbladers are separated from the amblers by a mere yellow line painted on blacktop. At 87 Mom is still toddling along at a brisk pace.Cincinnati is a physically pretty place, especially by Midwestern standards. Culturally and socially it is less attractive.The racial tension is palpable almost everywhere, which is certainly not something an accurate observer could say about Seattle. Oh, we have our flashpoints, but Seattle ranks far higher on the cultural-tolerance scale than my birthplace.Socially, there are more neighborhood bars and fewer citywide-patron-drawing nite spots in Cincinnati.And the Esquire Theater in Clifton, Cincinnati's U District, is the only arty moviehouse in a city almost as populous as Seattle.
Thanksgiving is almost here, and with it comes one of those traumatizing times for us menfolk - namely, carving the turkey.What's the big deal, you ask? All you've got to do is take a knife and hack the thing into bite-sized chunks.That might be suit-able when it's just you at home alone and all we're talking about is fending off a mild case of starvation. But on Thanksgiving you usually can't get away with something that simple.Thanksgiving is the traditional family feast day, and if everybody's at your house, that means you might have a grandparent or two, some parents and at least a few uncles and aunts gathered around. And, like it or not, you, dear Bunkie, are on display.So, when the turkey comes out of the oven, all golden brown and fragrant, it's up to you to get it reduced to appealing, individual servings.
Well, Seattle, we've done it again. Okay, I'm a monorail advocate, and I promise this will be my last lament, at least until the next initiative.The bottom line for me is that the only thing more buses, or trains - or anything else you put on the ground - is going to do is add to an unbear-able congestion prob-lem. Look at the num-ber of buses running empty today, and ask yourself if more buses are the answer.In case you missed it, our state is expected to grow by another million people over the next decade, with a substantial number of them landing in the Seattle and Puget Sound region.If you don't mind spending an hour getting from West Seattle to Ballard on the bus, then our current system is adequate. The train might be a little better when it's up and running, but it's still not going to be zipping through the city at 40 m.p.h., and it will impede other traffic as it moves.We need a system - not just mass transit, but rapid mass transit - to move people from one spot to another in the city.
Throwing myself out into the early-morning cold last Friday, I set about with a long to-do list. I wasn't going to let what I thought was a little squalling storm stop my pursuit of getting all the line items on that list finished.As the morning wore on, it became apparent that the deck was stacked against me. Finally, as the hours slipped into early afternoon, I had to just laugh out loud, and retreat. At every turn it seemed that I had been thwarted. I never found myself getting angry, but rather just bemused at the ongoing folly of it all. Picking up some groceries for our dinner meal, I also grabbed a hunk of fresh celery and a packet of chicken wings.I figured that making a huge pot of chicken stock would set the day right.I continue to be amazed at how many people find the process of stock making too time consuming or, worse, boring.
Sandra Nunez came to Seattle from her native Spain almost a decade ago. She quickly became a licensed massage practitioner here, as she had already been in Madrid (she's a graduate of the Escuela de Masage de Madrid), and settled down to helping folks relax and feel better with her strong hands and helpful nature.For quite a while Nunez was satisfied with her massage business, first in Lower Queen Anne and then later at 600 W. McGraw St. (282-5386) atop Queen Anne, where she still is today."For me massage was connecting with people, getting to know the person, by reading their body more than by them telling me what they do," she explained, in her clear but still softly accented English.
Tower Records & Videos on Mer-cer Street closed its doors last Sunday after almost three decades conduct-ing business in Queen Anne. That doesn't mean the store has disappeared from the neighborhood forever, though. Owners plan to reopen by Memorial Day weekend in temporary quarters across Mercer Street on the Seattle Center parking lot near the basketball courts and skateboard park off Fifth Avenue North.
Two of "Saturday Night Live"'s most beloved and successful alumni, Mike Myers and Will Ferrell, are at the heart of holiday films this year. Sadly, it's hard to care about either movie.
With Thanksgiving just around the corner, while searching for the large turkey platter, I was reminded of my first Thanksgiving in England many years ago. My husband Hal, a true native son of Seattle, and I were living in England a few months after our wedding. He was determined to celebrate Thanksgiving in the traditional manner. This was easier said than done.First, of all, Thanksgiving was not celebrated in England, for obvious reasons. There was still food rationing, for it was right after World War II. And the menu was completely strange to me.All I knew about sweet potatoes and yams was what I gleaned from "Gone With the Wind." The local greengrocer in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, when asked about sweet potatoes, replied, "Oh, yes, it be part of turnip family and we feeds 'em to the horses."
On Oct. 28 The Seattle Times ran an editorial criticizing the conduct of the war in Iraq that was, for all of its well-placed thrusts, emblematic of the whole sorry mess.Where was the Times' percipience before the war? The same could be asked of rest of the nation's media. And politicians.In February 2003, during the infamous "run-up" to the war, while weapons inspectors were in Iraq doing their job and due process was being exercised, the Times proclaimed the coming war as "just."At the same time more than 70 percent of the nation favored the invasion of Iraq.Since Sept. 11 we have seen what fear, and fear mongering, can do in a democracy. The news is not good.Now the President's approval ratings are at an all-time low with unease over Iraq at the center of the disquiet. So let's ask ourselves: What do we know about Iraq now that we didn't know a year ago at election time?
Our shores and open water were nearly naked through summer without the gulls, terns, scooters, and grebes that winter pushes into the protection of the Sound. This "empty" landscape allowed the king of summer, the osprey, Pandion haliaetus to shine. Now, however, the weather has shift-ed again and migration is in the air.
This year marks the sixth annual Dog-O-Ween fashion extravaganza, which took place Oct. 29, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Genesee Park off-leash area, 4316 S. Genesee St. More than 200 people (and the same number of attired canines) were in attendance.
"Oh, my God. Oh, my God!" screamed my wife Jen as we drove on Greenwood Avenue North toward the hilly intersection of North 90th Street.Sitting in the backseat, I looked away from my infant son Kyler in his carseat and refocused out the windshield toward a small streak of red taillight zipping in front of us. One second passed that felt like 10 minutes. From the opposite lane came the booming thud of molded plastic being crushed mixed with the tinkling of shattering headlights.
Call Jamie Wertz at home or at work, and you will hear a cacophony of birds in the background. "All the chirping and singing is a comforting soundtrack," says Wertz. "If it stops, it really gets my attention." Jamie Wertz was born in 1948 in Aberdeen, Wash., and raised in nearby Montesano. As a child he began to collect budgies - budgerigars, better known as parakeets. After graduating from high school, he attended a culinary-arts school in Tacoma. He went on to work as a chef for more than 20 years and managed a music store for a decade after that.Wherever he lived and whatever he did for a living, Wertz always had budgies. In 1975 his collection grew to include a variety of parrots: cockatiels, lovebirds and parrotlets, the smallest true parrots in the world.
Pushing tiny buttons, reading the manuals which some wag perfectly summed up today as "just the inventor's opinion," I tried this week to address the myriad appliances that needed to respond to Daylight Savings Time. Of course the computer does it automatically, with a pleasant window that announces the change and software that makes you check the change. Many other appliances also change the time on the appropriate date. However, when I found a simple clock on which I could just move the big hand in one full forward circle, I felt such a simple and straightforward satisfaction.
Rosa Parks died last week at the age of 92. This small, slight woman didn't look like your typical hero.She didn't wear the armor of a warrior. She didn't make the impassioned speeches of a modern-day Joan of Arc.She wasn't a fiery social activist like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.She didn't preach changing American culture from the bottom up as Bobby Kennedy was beginning to do when he was assassinated.But make no mistake, by refusing to stand up on a public bus in 1955 Montgomery, Ala., Rosa Parks fired one of the first salvos in the civil-rights revolution that changed the face of America more than anything else in the 50-some years I've stumbled around on American ground.Rosa Parks helped force America to extend its promise to chase the American Dream to the 12 percent of its citizens whose ancestors had been brought here in chains from Africa.
Stefani Quane's office looks nothing like the stereotypical lawyer's office. Instead of sleek leather chairs and a glass desk, Quane offers her clients soft, comfortable chairs in an older house painted a cheery yellow. It's hard to imagine, settling onto the couch and petting her giant German shepherd, that Quane deals with people every day who may be going through the most bitter or difficult event of their lives: divorce.Yes, Quane, otherwise known as "The Lawlady," is in the business of breakups, but with a twist. Quane practices collaborative law, a relatively new approach to handling divorces.
Many citizens who live in King County show concern for the earth by recycling, taking mass transit instead of driving and giving to environmental causes. Now these individuals can do one more thing: They can patronize businesses and public services that participate in the King County EnviroStars certification program, which is part of the King County Local Hazardous Waste Management Program.
The image of American labor has undergone a dramatic shift in the last half century. Gone is the portrait of the earth-bound worker captured most dramatically by photographer Walker Evans: begrimed and sun-scorched from long hours in the fields, working with one's hands reaping the harvest. Manufacturing jobs have fled abroad, where cheaper labor is outsourced to unregulated markets. If you work with your hands in the United States, it's more likely you pour coffee than pick the bean.The steady, 40-hour-a-week jobs have shifted from being dominated by the agriculture and manufacturing industries to jobs dealing primarily with the service and information industries. While Americans used to wear out the soles of their shoes and the knees of their work jeans, they now are more likely to develop repetitive use injuries from prolonged keyboard punching and weight problems from inherently more sedentary work.However, traditional forms of labor haven't disappeared: they've simply shifted to a new demographic, a growing population of immigrants that has the time and the drive to get the work done. Strong bodies and quick hands are still essential for America's economy to function, and statistics from the United States Bureau of Labor back this notion.
Bobbing for pumpkins is a favorite game at this time of year in the Wookland Park Zoo's hippopotamus enclosure. Great costume, eh? The zoo's annual Pumpkin Bash always kicks off with keepers tossing pumpkins to the hippos.
