July 2010

While Rosanna Pansino stands just 58-inches tall, her star is rising. The West Seattle High class of '03 grad starred in season-2 of the VH1 reality series Scream Queens, to begin airing Aug. 2, guest-starred both in the Emmy Award-winning musical comedy-drama, Glee, on Fox, and Warren the Ape on MTV. She portrayed a victim for a public service commercial for the United Nations about women trafficking, and plans to audition for the Twilight movie Breaking Dawn.

"My drama teacher in high school was Andrew Finley, and he was very good to me," effervesced Pansino, an Italian-American who said she gets mistaken in Hollywood for having Hispanic, Native American, Asian, or Jewish background, and sometimes a high school teen, which helps her get roles.

"I took a ton of classes from him and he was amazing," she recalled. "I was in the musical Grease my senior year. He had encouraged me to audition, although I didn't have any formal singing training. There was a photo of Dyan Cannon hanging in drama class and she's inspired me, too."

Citing the recession and the need for public safety funding Seattle City Councilmembers Richard Conlin and Jean Godden responded to the King County Council's vote to put a sales tax increase to a vote in November.

Seattle City Council statement on King County's sales tax measure:
Seattle City Council President Richard Conlin and Councilmember Jean Godden, chair of Finance and Budget committee today responded to King County Council's 5-4 vote to put 0.2 percent sales tax measure on the November ballot.

"We are all navigating rough waters because of the continuing recessionary impacts on resources for essential public services. While raising taxes is never an easy action to take, we understand the need for King County Council to take this difficult step to provide much needed revenue for public safety," said Council President Richard Conlin.

UPDATE

In an hour-long conference call at 10:30 a.m. July 20, Mayor McGinn and Carl Marquardt who serves as his Legal Counsel spoke to Seattle media including the West Seattle Herald. The mayor's major theme was his desire to protect Seattle taxpayers from cost overruns on the Deep-Bore tunnel project. He and Marquardt pointed to a Washington State law that protects the state from paying cost overruns, or any costs associated with the project beyond a $2.4 billion cap.

He said if the contractor were to charge for extra costs while the boring machine was in the ground and all the streets were dug up, that invoice would go to the state and they would, in the current legal language, be protected from paying the extra amount and would then bounce it back to the City of Seattle who would be left to pay the tab.

Federal Way’s Reign ’93 Purple, an elite U17 girls soccer team, returned from the Davis Legacy Soccer Showcase with second place after a strong run against top-level California competition. The Federal Way girls won four straight games against higher ranked teams to reach the finals, before losing in a tight 2-1 championship game against the Cap United girls of Northern California.

Reign ’93 Purple features several high school players from Decatur, Thomas Jefferson and Todd Beamer. The team brought Federal Way’s first national championship in girls’ soccer in 2008 when they won the US National Club Cup Championship. They are currently ranked nationally among the top 200 youth soccer teams at their age level.

Reign ’93 Purple are: Kasey Carrel, Nicolette Carnahan, Chelsa Jensen, Madison Hibbard, Madison Cecil, Autumn Talney, Danielle Robinson, Sydney Rogalla, Priscilla Yu, Sarah Wachowitz, Analise Rutt, Ashley Graves, Obianaju Muoneke, Callison Hunter and Breanna Strauss. The team is coached by James Cecil. Mark Froes is Assistant Coach for the Reign.

Aggressive, and continually attacking Auburn won the District 10 Little League Majors (11-12 year-old) All-Star baseball tournament with an 8-3 championship round victory against Steel Lake at Sunset Park to complete an unbeaten run and make a provisional second game unnecessary.

Auburn moves on to an 11:30 a.m. state match up against District 7 champion South Highline National on July 24 at Smith-Murrey Park in Elma. The tournament is hosted by District 3 East Grays Harbor Little League.

"The guys played well in the tournament," said SL manager Ken Allen. "We just didn't hit the ball real well and went through a lot of pitchers to try to keep Auburn off balance."

Swinging its bats with a powerful purpose from the outset, Auburn hammered away for three runs on five hits in the top of the first inning.

Steel Lake Little League staved off elimination with a clutch, come from behind 7-4 defeat of Bonney Lake/Sumner in a loser-out game of the District 10 All-Star Majors baseball tournament on a comfortable night at Sunset Park on Wednesday, July 14.

"We didn't commit five errors like we did on Tuesday (in a loss to Auburn)," said Steel Lake manager Ken Allen. "You gotta catch the ball. Our guys fielded the ball, we had base runners and got timely hits."

For the first part of the game, the conflict resembled dueling World War II battleships with both teams exchanging heavy fire.

In the beginning, Steel Lake created the lead and the momentum by onloading its lethal armaments in the first inning. Michael Ziccarelli's lead off walk followed by two wild pitches and a walk to Brycen Allen positioned runners at first and third with no outs. Fitch delivered a sacrifice fly out to center field for a 1-0 SL lead with a runner on first base.

Pac West manager Joe Antush spoke some challenging words to his players following PW's 12-3 loss to Redmond, which followed after an opening day win (July 17) over Mulkiteo area's Mill Creek, 9-7, in the Seniors State Little League All Stars Tournament at Hartman Park in Redmond July 18.

"We have to come ready to play tomorrow (Monday) or we're going home," said Antush, talking to his players after the game. He saw some things against Redmond that were not very good from the game's beginning.

Still talking to his players huddled listening to his thoughts outside the field of play after the loss to Redmond, the home-field team of the tourney, Antush said, "I noticed we were a little lethargic, and lazy out there. So, how are we going to look tomorrow?"

This game Pac West's Senior All Stars looked pretty good early on as Redmond picked up a couple hits and RBIs in the first inning to lead 2-0 after the bottom of the first inning completed.

"Just a couple hits and two runs from it, they were earned," said Antush, adding, "But I am always telling them 'Got to stay away from the big inning,' and 'two runs is no big deal.'"

It was a quartet of pitchers that produced the tune of victory for the Federal Way National Little League Majors (11-12 age) baseball All Stars in a District 10 tournament opening win gainst Soundview on Friday, July 9.

As Tanner Knapp, JJ Asinas, Kaden Jacobs and Mitchell Grant held the SV offense in check most of the way, the Nationals overcame a 1-0 deficit and broke through in the final three innings for a 5-1 win at Sunset Park.

"I knew we had a lot of pitchers," said FWN manager Tim Robbins. "Our core group of players has been together for three years and have had one-run games. All can hit."

After trailing 1-0 through three complete innings of play, National battered Soundview pitching during the final innings.

In the top of the fourth inning, Baden Jacobs led off with a single for Federal Way and moved up to second base on a wild pitch. Knapp then torched a double to left field, scoring the equalizing run.

The Seattle Public Library will be celebrating its 100th anniversary of the West Seattle Branch on July 24 from 1 to 3 p.m. The library is one of three original Carnegie Libraries celebrating 100 years in Seattle. The other two celebrating the same day are in the University and Green Lake.

Here's the wikipedia entry on Carnegie Libraries.

CLICK THE PHOTO TO SEE MORE IMAGES OF THE LIBRARY

The library, which opened in 1910, is a Carnegie-funded branch designed by W. Marbury Somervell and Joseph S. Coté. It is listed on The National Register of Historic Places.

On exhibit will be vintage clothing styles provided by representatives from Goodwill Industries featuring an interactive hat show with hats to view and try on.

Branch Manager Sibyl de Haan said, "The West Seattle Branch library opened on July 23rd, 1910. About a week later they opened the University Branch and a week after that they opened the Green Lake Branch(...) We're going to have period piano music, cookies and lemonade, we hope and the Goodwill vintage collection."

A leaking roof over books? That can spell a lot of damage so the 42nd Avenue S.W. branch of the Seattle Public Library in the Admiral District will close to get the leaks fixed to the tune of $250,000 on Sunday August 15 at 5 p.m. The repairs will take about a month to complete. The library is set to reopen at 10 a.m. on Saturday Sept. 11.

Here's the press release from SPL:

The Seattle Public Library’s West Seattle Branch, 2306 42nd Ave. S.W., (206-684-7444) and book drop will close at 5 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 15, so a partial re-roofing project can be completed. The branch and book drop are scheduled to reopen at 10 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 11.

The roof’s waterproofing membrane on the 9,500-square-foot historic Carnegie branch will be replaced by Centennial Contractors. The membrane roofing was last replaced in the 1980s and portions have begun to fail and leak. Existing slate shingles will be removed as necessary for the project and will be reused as much as possible. Funding for the $250,000 roof repair comes from the Library’s capital budget, which pays for major capital maintenance projects.