March 2011

Boeing Employees Credit Union (BECU) has awarded a grant worth nearly $2300 to Arbor Heights Elementary School to be used for the purchase of a new A/V cart.

Sarah Lyons, Member Consultant from BECU's Roxbury branch (inside the Safeway Store), delivered the grant check. "We have a school grant program giving grants to local schools in Washington State because we feel education is important and I had a contact list of emails that I sent out to schools in the area. Some of them wrote in and I was sent the checks to deliver. Arbor Heights is receiving a check today for $2,289.88."

The cart will allow videos to be shown to assemblies, and it includes a P.A, system plus closed captioning. This is currently lacking in the school's system so, for those hearing impaired students this will be extremely helpful. Teachers can link a laptop computer or other video device to the system and the cart includes a lockable area so the system can be made secure.

From the 8400 block of Delridge Way s.w., a woman called policed at 2 p.m. on Feb. 23 to report her apartment had been ransacked. When officers arrived she immediately said, “the people upstairs did this” and explained her keys had disappeared from the communal laundry room two days prior. She said the upstairs neighbors are crack dealers and she has repeatedly complained to the apartment manager and Seattle Police Department Narcotics Section, at this point to no avail. There was no sign of forced entry and the investigation is ongoing.

The Greenwood-Phinney Chamber of Commerce has announced the 61st Annual Greenwood Seafair Parade to take place on Wednesday, July 27 and calls out to the community for volunteers and sponsors.

The parade, which is the oldest neighborhood Seafair parade in the region, runs south along Greenwood Avenue from North 95th Street to North 85th Street, then heads west to 6th Avenue Northwest. Businesses and individual support is needed to make this event a success year after year, and getting involved is a great way for families to teach their kids about the importance of community involvement.

“We are looking forward to this year’s event and want to invite folks to be involved,” said parade director Ann Woodward.

“You can volunteer on the parade committee or become a parade sponsor and take advantage of promoting your business. Sponsors get to have an entry in the parade and enjoy the cheers of the crowd.”

In honor of what would have been his 67th birthday, a dozen Seattle musicians will celebrate Townes Van Zandt with performances and drink specials at the Tractor Tavern tonight.

Townes Van Zandt, the Americana singer-songwriter legend, died in 1997 but his music lives on.

"I like to put shows together where they aren’t necessarily performing their original songs but songs of artists that have influenced them in their own musical paths," said Debra Heesh, special events and booking associate at Seattle Theatre Group.

"I have on many occasions been inspired by Townes," said musician Pete Droge.

"On many a late night, I swear that I have channelled his spirit.  But that may have just been the sleep depravation talking.  Or maybe the cough medicine."

Droge said Townes Van Zandt was great at taking traditional music forms and patterns and turning them on their ears.

"He could make something sound so simple and pure - but when you dig into it and look closely you see that there is more than meets the eye.  He could put that unique turn to the end of a phrase that would make it all his own," Droge said.

Morgan Carson is a young, up-and-coming Seattle fashion designer and creator of Rene Ropas. In her formative years she was part of a straight-edge group whose stomping ground was Ballard. During those years she fell in love with fashion and started tearing clothes apart to make something new. Now, years later Carson is preparing for her third large-scale event and debut of her spring collection.

But during her interview with the Ballard News-Tribune Carson didn't talk much about her designs or about her recent success in the fashion industry. Her story is that of her best friend's lost battle with leukemia - a story that is both extremely sad and inspiring. During the interview neither Carson nor the reporter were able to contain their emotions and were both reaching for tissues on either end of the phone conversation.

After a walking tour of the Westwood neighborhood, Mayor Mike McGinn spent over an hour at the Southwest Branch of the Seattle Public Library on 35th talking with neighbors who wanted to bring their questions and concerns directly to the man in charge.

The Mayor brought with him on the tour and to the meeting people from his own office, and others from SDOT, King County, Department of Neighborhoods and other city departments to engage people and as he put it escape the "echo chamber" of City Hall.

"Our goal is to do about 50 of these kind of neighborhood meetings over the course of the year," McGinn said.

Are you interested in having a community garden plot of your own or sharing one with someone?

The improvements to Genesee Hill School grounds organized by the Genesee-Schmitz Neighborhood Council have included renewal of nine garden plots located in the northwest corner (near 51st SW and SW Dakota) of the playground. They are available for your stewardship.

If interested, please email Gretchen DeDecker at gdedecker@seattleschools.org with the subject of “Genesee Hill Community Garden.” Gretchen will reply with garden guidelines agreement and garden plot confirmation.

The 5’ x 17’ plots are numbered 1-9 with plot #1 at the south most and plot #9 north, nearest SW Dakota. The plots can be shared. If a smaller plot is of interest, please indicate willingness to share.

By Deborah Ann Frederick, Attorney

Fear strikes your heart as you notice the red and blue lights in your rearview mirror or worse, suddenly hear the police siren behind you. As you pull over many things might cross your mind, including, “What did I do wrong?” or “I’m getting caught!” There are some basic things you can do to make this process easier or prevent it altogether.

First, the best preventive measure to being pulled over by police is to make sure your vehicle is in proper working order, specifically, make sure all your lights and blinkers are working. Once a month, have a friend or loved one stand first in front of your car and then behind it while you go through testing all your lights and blinkers.

Sometimes a non-working taillight is the only reason the officer has to pull you over. You can prevent this ticket, or worse, receiving a criminal charge if the officer notices something else is wrong once he or she is speaking with you.

White Center resident Aimee Kenoyer is a full time scientist who does leukemia research at Fred Hutchison. She also happens to be the president of the Pacific Northwest Herpetological Society (PNHS) and keeps "some smaller pythons, geckos, and dogs" as pets.

"They don't all play on the floor at the same time," she pointed out. "The dogs would eat the snakes."

This weekend Kenoyer has been riding heard over snakes, lizards, turtles, frogs, mice, vendors and attendees in what she calls "the reptile community" at the Emerald City Reptile Expo at the Lake City Community Center. The event is sponsored by both the PNHS and the Bean Farm, which sells herpetological supplies out of Carnation.

Lizard lovers roam from booth to booth to examine exotic, slothful wide-eyed lizards, plastic tubs filled with baby turtles with out-stretched necks reaching toward the light bulb clipped above, and slithering snakes, some tiny that resemble elongated colorful jelly beans, others long, dark and thick, wrapped around goth-dressed young adults with tattoos-a-plenty and multiple metal face piercings.

On March 2 Seattle Public Schools Interim Superintendent Dr. Susan Enfield replaced Dr. Maria Goodloe-Johnson and the School Board released a statement that read, in part, "At its meeting this evening the School Board voted 6-1 to appoint Dr. Susan Enfield as Interim Superintendent. The appointment is effective immediately and extends through June 30, 2012. The Board anticipates considering whether to extend a longer term employment agreement to Dr. Enfield or conduct a search for a permanent Superintendent prior to January 19, 2012."

The Board voted unanimously to let Goodloe-Johnson go as a result from a $1.8 million financial scandal involving a district business development program. Also fired was Don Kennedy, the district's Chief Financial and Operations Officer. The scandal involved the district's Regional Small Business Development Program, created following complaints from the African-American community that minority contractors were being cut out of the small-dollar contracts issued for school-district projects.