January 2019

By Katy G. Wilkens

Some of us in the Pacific Northwest wait all year for snow to arrive in the mountains. It’s a good year if you can ski or snowboard by Thanksgiving, and even better if conditions allow spring skiing. Cross-country skiers and snowshoers come out in numbers.

Whether skiing, snowboarding, snowshoeing or just playing in the snow, you need food that has enough carbs to give you quick energy, enough protein to keep you feeling full several hours, and enough fat to keep you warm.

Think of your meals as if you were lighting a fire. The carbohydrates are like the paper that gives you quick energy. Like paper, carbohydrates get the fire started, but don’t last long. Protein is like kindling, the small branches you put on a fire; it burns and provides energy, so you are still happy two hours later. Fat is that big log that burns for hours, keeping you toasty warm until you get back to the car.

By Cerise Barber (fka Cerise Cornutt) -

The rhythmic hand of waves

  Beckon me to the deeper heartbeat of life;

White foam mounds in an undulating liquid edge,

  Burnishing sand and barnacled rock

  It tumbles

  Retreating once again to take its turn at

  Greeting the welcoming shore.

The bowled cerulean expanse

  Lids the earth

  Horizon to horizon.

Reveling in the beauty of the sky and sea,

  I lean in

         Listening

                  To the unspoken

                         Words

                                 Of Alki.

(Having been a denizen of West Seattle since 1981, raising and home schooling her two children until high school and Middle School, the author is now an ex-pat living in Puyallup.   My poem is a paean to the wondrous years living by the sea.)

information from Taproot Theater

Taproot Theatre Company’s 2019 Jewell Mainstage Season: Family Ties opens with Joseph Kesselring’s killer Broadway comedy Arsenic and Old Lace (January 23 – March 2, 2019).

Pam Nolte (TTC Co-Founder, Sweet Land and Relativity) and Kim Morris (Taproot Theatre’s Lady Windermere’s Fan, Room Service and Silent Sky) costar as the meddling matriarchs under the direction of Marianne Savell (Taproot Theatre’s Lady Windermere’s Fan) in her first solo directing gig on the Jewell Mainstage.

Director Marianne Savell said, “Arsenic is the hilarious and smartly written comedy that takes protecting family to a comedic extreme. It’s about community, friendship and unconditional love. People love this play and we’ve put together an incredible ensemble that sparkles with intelligence and comedic ability.”

By Jean Godden

Seattle coffee lovers just received a wake-up call -- not that we needed an alarm in this over-caffeinated city. However, we are hearing that a new survey claims Seattle is no longer the number one coffee city in the nation.

As an admitted coffee addict, my first reaction is to protest: It simply isn't so. But a recent Apartment Guide Survey has compiled the numbers of coffee outlets in U. S. cities over 100,000. That survey claims three U.S. cities had more coffee retailers per capita than Seattle.

Surpassing Seattle in this "best cities for coffee lovers" contest were Berkeley, Ca., Vancouver, Wa., and San Francisco. Berkeley has one coffee shop for every 2,073 residents; while Seattle lagged behind at number four with one shop for every 2,308 people.

On January 23, assisted living residents of the Village Concepts of Burien and Issaquah, gathered at Ivar’s on Seattle’s waterfront to show their support for local businesses impacted by the viaduct closure. Many residents in attendance had grown up in and around the Seattle area, with many memories of the waterfront area and Ivar’s, and wanted to do their part to help.

One such resident, Phyllis Soldano, used to work at Ivar’s in the late 50’s and early 60’s, and remembers the area fondly. When asked about the viaduct and its impact on the waterfront she responded, “The waterfront is for the people. Not for cars and pollution.”

“People should be able to come down and enjoy it,” Solando said.

By Gwen Davis

King County Executive Dow Constantine has long been a hard-core public transportation advocate for the greater Seattle area. On Thursday evening, Jan. 24,  at the monthly West Seattle Transportation Coalition (WSTC) meeting, his commitment to robust transportation projects was on full display.

"I’ve spent a lot of time my time in office on transportation," he said. "From bringing the water taxi from nearly nothing to what it is now, to bringing Metro Transit back from the deficit of the recession to being recognized as the best transit system in the nation."

But he said that while transportation is strong, work still needs to be done.

Regarding ST3, the light rail extension project, Constantine would prefer that light rail be extended to West Seattle via an underground tunnel.

by Patrick Robinson

News, spread digitally is DEVALUED as a service and thus is increasingly unsustainable. News organizations now almost daily announce layoffs, cutbacks and reduced coverage.

It doesn’t help to have people attack legitimate reporting as “fake news” since that equates even the most minor perceived bias as utterly false. That’s not reality.

The truth of a matter is sometimes lost in the haze of prejudice. People often say they wish they could “just get the facts” but a pure fact based story is not possible in many cases. News and information are often fluid and incomplete, not to mention subject to change. hence the striving to be FIRST puts ACCURACY in peril. If something can be corrected 10 minutes after it is first said… you have NO idea if the impression first created is corrected. As Jonathon Swift said "Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it” which today happens at the speed of light.