December 2009

Meet the real Santa Claus

You can tell he is the genuine guy because the pin he fished off of his shirt front is his wife Carol.

Now that is a true sign of pride and devotion. He has to be a saint.

He is Ron Vailencour and lives in SeaTac when he isn't wearing his red suit.

He and Mrs. Santa have two sons.

He has been doing this Salvation Army Christmas bit for eight years and says the generosity factor is alive in spite of the recession.

He did say one donor, dressed in fine duds stopped by recently, reached in his pocket and pulled out a heaping handful of coins, carefully chose a shiny penny and dropped it in Santa's pot. Then smiled and left.

"Merry Christmas, sir," Santa Ron said.

Meet Jessica Gasperini

She is holding hungry impatient 5-week-old son Jack during a rest stop while shopping in Burien.

Jessica works as a recruiter for Microsoft, which is diligently looking for sales employees who work or formerly worked for Google to sell advertising.

She and her husband live in South Park. He is a finished cabinets and interior woodworking craftsman.

I really like Roger Patten’s cable-stayed bridge over Elliot Bay as opposed to a tunnel:

It’s above ground, affording a beautiful view of sound and city while driving.

Same for pedestrians and bikers, and maybe even light rail riders.

It gets it off the land real estate developers would love to have, not that they should get the land.

It clears the view real estate developers and landowners want for property value and view.

The cable-stayed bridge is a work of art and adds beauty to the city.

It beats two claustrophobic lanes each way underground by a long shot with three lanes each way in the sunshine (and cloud cover.)

The viaduct can remain in service until traffic is cut over to the bridge.

What worries me a bit? Getting a new approach – the “floating” foundation – to work and be approved.

I hope it passes muster. Any civil engineers want to chime in here?

I’m cheering for the bridge. Thank for all your hard work, Roger!

And thanks, Highline Times.

Dave Kelley
Normandy Park

Every year, I have to watch “White Christmas” and “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Is it any wonder I can’t stop revisiting the “North Pole” that was on Northwest 32nd Street and 71st Avenue Northwest even though it has been gone for years?

Everyone of a certain age remembers the North Pole. It was a beautiful house that had been decorated to the nines for the holidays as long as the house had been standing. The mast of a ship stood both as a symbol of Santa’s home and actual pole.

Another family member lived farther south, at the “South Pole.”

The house was built in 1929; each subsequent generation added to the traditional holiday decorations.

From hand-painted nativity scenes in the window to moving panoramas on the lawn, lights suspended from every bush and a giant star atop the roof, the display inspired other houses to competing heights of festivity.

Year ago I would walk to the house on winter nights, surrounded by a small band of children carrying lanterns with tea lights. The North Pole was a destination.

Siblings Aaron, Chelle, and Sean McMonigle were stationed outside the Westwood Village Santa House Saturday, Dec. 19. The teens, Alki residents, were busy wrapping presents for shoppers while asking for donations for the annual spring Youth and Government fieldtrip to Olympia. The organization is a high school legislature program through the YMCA. Students write a bill, debate, and work the floors of the Capitol building while they conduct a mock legislation.

“A lot of bills that show up by the students are actual bills hitting the Capital,” said Sean, who graduated high school last year after participating in the organization. “We had a mock legislature and ran the whole thing, from the governor to the house and senate reps. I loved the debating aspect, putting my two cents in.”

“We all write our own bills,” said Aaron, a junior in the Running Start program at South Seattle Community College. “My bill I am working on is about physician-assisted suicide. A spouse doesn’t have to tell the other spouse the physician is assisting him to die. I feel if you are the patient choosing this option you should be obligated to tell the spouse.”

Dear Editor: (my message to Mayor Nickels)

Dear Outgoing Mayor Nickels,

We too appreciate the profit opportunity Albert Gorelioni's anthropogenic global warming scam presents. It's tempting! Indeed, you've brilliantly parlayed your career for a commissioning into the Gore/Obama skimming operation. "Cap-n-Tax" would extort industry, it workers and all consumers to buy "castles in the sky" carbon credits. In contrast, Bernie Madoff ponzi scheme was a parlor game! Don't do it! Think of your legecy.

Since being forced into retirement by a Texas village idiot, Albert Gore has reaped tens of millions from his "green" investments which include a carbon credit trading house (Generation Investment Management) and a waterless urinal company (Falcon Waterless Technologies). Hey! you've got waterless urinals in City Hall. Like me, you may covet Gore's millions each time you aim. In 2001 Gore was worth only $2 Million, but now has positioned himself to become a billionaire if Cap-n-Tax is implemented.

Please don't do it! Because it will be done on our backs.

signed,

Craig Keller

January ArtWalk Artists and Locations
The West Seattle art walk is a monthly art event that is held the second Thursday of each month 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. year-round.
West Seattle Artwalk Blog
2010 1st Quarter Art Walk 
January 14th
Josh Boender Allstate Insurance
Wallflower Custom Framing
Ginomai
Bakery Nouveau 
Skylark  
Carmilias
Hotwire Online Coffeehouse
Windermere Realty Hosted by Kim Tingley and Barb Ogden
Keller Williams Realty
Artswest
Shoofly Pie
Senior Center 
Cupcake Royale
Wild Rose’s
Twilight Artist Collective
The Kenney
Gail Ann Photography
West Seattle Wine Cellars
The Body Bar Day Spa
Funky Janes
Revolution Coffee & Art
Shadowland
Bird on a Wire
Edie’s Shoes
Beauty Bar Spa & Boutique
Feedback Lounge
Seattle Wellness Programs
Sterling Images Gallery
8 Limbs Yoga
Activspace
Click! Design that Fits
Coffee to a Tea with Sugar
Sold Home Décor
Elliot Bay Brewery and Pub
Mural
The Building
Imena Salon
Alki Bathhouse

Arts West Gallery

Arts West Playhouse and Gallery

4711 California Ave. S.W.


Sunday December 27th from noon until 6:00pm
The Highland Park Improvement Club (1116 SW Holden) is hosting a luminaria (lantern) making workshop in preparation for our New Years Eve Neighborhood Parade! HPIC members, friends and families, and neighbors are welcome to join. Even if you are not making a lantern, please stop in and say hello to your neighbors!

Balloon Lanterns
Visiting artist Tricky Bunny from the Fremont Arts Council will provide instruction on how to make a paper mache lantern. To make a balloon lantern, please bring:
– Balloon(s)
– Tissue paper (colorful tissue paper looks especially pretty)
– Wire to attach your lantern to a stick or rod
– Tea candle (the kind where the candle is in a metal cup

Tricky Bunny will provide Elmer’s wood glue, dry wall paper paste, acrylic medium for paper mache, and a hot glue gun and hot glue gun sticks, along with demonstration. Wear clothing that you don’t mind getting glue or paper mache goop on. (Also, for gluten allergy sufferers, please note that wallpaper paste contains gluten.)

Bring snacks to share! Children are welcome.

An eclectic group of West Seattle residents were asked by the West Seattle Herald about their plans, hopes, and dreams for the coming new year. Some chose to discuss career goals and art, others spoke of education and community cohesiveness, and most mentioned their desire for a more peaceful earth.

People quoted below are ordered in the photos above left to right in descending rows.

John Van Lierop, Jr., Musician, music instructor

“2010 will be especially meaningful for me for I will be beginning my 30th year as organist/pianist at Tibbetts United Methodist Church in West Seattle as well as completing 40 years as a piano teacher in West Seattle. What's unique about my profession is that I am able to see piano students grow up under my teaching. This is true of two of my high school seniors who will be earning their high school diplomas in music through the National Guild of Piano Teachers based in Austin, Texas. These two students are Cooper Sinai-Yunker, a senior at West Seattle High, and Timothy Locke, a senior at Garfield High. I've had Cooper 12 years and Timothy 14 years as piano pupils.”

It was Chloe Simmons' ninth birthday Sunday, Dec. 20, and the Schmitz Park student invited her brother, Jacob, 11, and eight friends to the Seattle Animal Shelter. Simmons has been collecting money and dog and cat food since November on behalf of the dogs and cats at the shelter. She collected $400 plus about a dozen large bags of food.

"The reason I did this is because it's close to Christmas and dogs don't have a voice and can't ask Santa for anything so I'm acting like Santa," said Simmons, whose friends, plus her mother, Blythe, and father, Jerry, got a tour and lecture of the facility. The Simmon's have two dogs, Duffy, a german shepherd, and Frida, a labrador/chow. Frida was adopted from the shelter.

The beaming birthday girl announced proudly to shelter volunteers that the morning of her birthday her father matched the funds she had raised through his West Seattle company Mr. Simmons Plumbing.

The Seattle Animal Shelter
2061 15th Ave West, Seattle

Main Telephone:
(206) 386-PETS (7387)

Main Telephone Hours:
7:10 am - 8:45 pm
(7 days/week)

Adoption/Shelter Hours:
12:00 pm - 6:00 pm
(Tuesday - Sunday)

On December 19th, 2009, at approximately 2:40pm, Des Moines Police responded to a 911 call regarding a Domestic Violence incident in the 27000 block of 15th Ave S.

The female victim in that case, a 47 year old Des Moines resident and other witnesses who were present in the home, reported that she and her boyfriend had argued and that he pointed a handgun at her before fleeing her residence on foot.

The victim provided police with a detailed clothing and physical description of the suspect.

Two other Des Moines officers responding into the area located the suspect, a 40 year old Filipino male, walking in the area of 272nd & Pacific Highway South, just inside the city limits of Federal Way.

The two Des Moines officers parked their patrol cars nearby and approached the suspect on foot in order to safely take him into custody.

The Des Moines officers confronted the suspect in a parking lot south of 272nd and ordered him to the ground.

The suspect refused to comply with the officer’s commands and instead produced a handgun. Multiple shots were fired and the suspect was pronounced dead at the scene. The two Des Moines officers were not injured.