August 2014

By Fred Freeman

If you ever go across the bridge to Ballard
then maybe at the closing of the day,
you'll sit and watch the moon rise oer Ray's Boathouse
and see the sun go down on Shilshoal bay.
Oh the Danish, and the svenska,and the Norskys
all have a years supply herring in the fridge.
They're prepared to live in total isolation
if Ves Uhlman tries to close the Ballard Bridge.
Oh, the smell of lutefisk a cookin in the kitchen
is enuf to keep the strangers far away
for the strangers think that Ballard's really burnin
they don't know that lutefisk always smells that way.
So for all of you who ever lived in Ballard
from Market street to Blue, or Phinny Ridge
we will ask our God to let us make our Heaven
in that dear land across the Ballard Bridge.

By Dean Wong

I ran into Pat Robinson recently. He was photographing people flying kites at the Seattle Chinese Garden for the West Seattle Herald. Pat is part of the Robinson Newspapers family, owners of the Ballard News-Tribune where I was a staff writer and photographer for eight years.

In between shop talk about camera equipment, Pat said “People ask me all the time, what is Dean up to?”

I appreciate readers in Ballard wondering about me. After all, the Ballard News-Tribune fills a chapter in my life’s work.

When I came on the scene, as a journalist of Asian American descent working in a predominantly Scandinavian community going through rapid change, I was the new kid on the block for lack of better words.

I’m a second generation Chinese American born in the good old USA. When I wrote a personal commentary, that experience influenced my message.

One reader told me she appreciated the diversity I brought to the newspaper.

Readers get to know a person by reading their stories. That happens when your work ends up on the printed page for all to see.

Thief tries to enter home while resident tends to tomatoes

August 16 officers responded to a burglary report at the 8300 block of 11th Avenue Northwest. When officers arrived the victim told them that at about 9 p.m. that night she had finished gardening and started to prepare dinner. She noticed her kitchen window screens had been cut. Upon inspection, officers said that they had not observed “anything pertinent for the call,” however they did observe fraying on the screens from the cuts. No fingerprints were found.

Shower thief waits for victim to bathe then raids house

By Bob Sims

I remember the first time I walked on the lush Sick's Seattle Stadium grass as a 12-year-old kid. Vividly. It was on Little League Day in the summer of 1962, the year of the Seattle World's Fair.

I picked up a patch of the verdant Rainier Valley turf and put it in my back pocket, carefully, as if it were part of hallowed ground.

The ghosts of Rainiers past had trod there, and I knew it, names like Earl Averill, "Kewpie" Dick Barrett, Bobby Balcena, Fred Hutchinson, Vern Kindsfather, Rogers "The Rajah" Hornsby, Hal Turpin, Dewey Soriano, Edo Vanni, Ron Santo, Jo Jo White, Joe Taylor, Maury Wills, "Jungle" Jim Rivera and Artie Wilson.

All of them helped contribute to the burgeoning Seattle renaissance after the Depression. They were big stars.

"The Rainiers were Seattle's first big entertainment offering," said Dan Raley, author of "Pitchers of Beer: The History of the Seattle Rainiers."

National Heroin Awareness Day
Statue of Liberty at Alki Beach
1702 Alki Ave. S.W.
Sunday, August 31st, noon. The Seattle Chapter of Not One More will be hosting a remembrance & recovery walk. Our purpose is to educate families of the hazards of heroin and other drug abuse. We provide support as well as education about recovery and change. We want to inspire young people to stay drug free and to be a role model to the people around them.

Discovery Shop
4535 California Ave. S.W.
206 937 7169
All items with yellow tags are $1 through the end of the month, all pink tagged items are half price starting September 2 and all men's wear is reduced 40% every Sunday. Have you checked out our gently used clothing for girls and boys, infants through size 12? We have many great back to school choices and new items are out every day. Please consider volunteering in our shop as a cashier, sorting and pricing items in the back room and donating clothing and housewares you no longer use. The all volunteer run, nonprofit American Cancer Shop will be closed Labor Day, September 1, is open Sundays 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and all other days 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

by Pat Cashman

Baseball fans have been getting plenty of exercise this summer---jumping up and down from the Mariners’ bandwagon. The team swings between looking playoffs-bound---to just plain bound---as if the players’ need more fiber in their diet.

But back in the seasons of the early 1980’s, the M’s were a team with a solid lock on last place, mathematically eliminated sometime in spring training.

They were a franchise that measured its crowds in the hundreds, not the thousands---playing in a cavernous sarcophagus called the Kingdome.

It was during those days that I had an exciting job as a fledgling TV writer and producer---and it was my assignment to dream up broadcast commercials. Because the Mariners were still a new expansion team, the roster was often comprised of castoffs, rookies and fading stars on their last, cleat-scarred legs. My job? Don’t sell the game of baseball. Sell the athletes that played it, and show them as loveable and funny personalities.

By Tim Clifford

Frightening attack on woman in West Seattle
On Aug. 2 West Seattle police officers were dispatched to interview a victim at a Shoreline hotel about an attack that had occurred the night before in West Seattle. The victim was unsure of the exact location of where she was attacked but remembers seeing street signs that suggest she was on the 8100 block of 12 Ave. S.W.

The night before the victim had been celebrating her birthday at a club in downtown and was drinking very heavily. Drinking mostly Hennessey and coke the victim eventually passed out, though she is not sure where or when exactly that occurred.

The 12th Annual NW Hope and Healing 5k Run/Walk was held on a somewhat foggy Sunday, Aug. 24 but for the more than 1100 participants it was a chance to prove their mettle and do some good. West Seattle based NWHH helps women with breast cancer meet their financial needs as they fight the disease.

The top finishers in the event were:

Men
Miler Haller
Joe Sheeran
Chris Tolonen

Women
Somer Kreisman
Caroline Austin
Hailey Kettel

Due to some technical issues with the equipment, Rogue Sports was not able to provide the times.

On hand again for the event was Carol Dellinger, cancer survivor and marathon runner. "I've run 11 marathons since I saw you last year and now my total is 278," Dellinger said, I just figure every marathon I run, the miles i put is just that much more distance between myself and cancer. That's why I feel I'm winning the Cancer battle."