The Oromo Community of Seattle is organizing a protest Friday afternoon from the CD to the Federal Building downtown. The “Protest Against Ethiopian Massacres” will gather at Bailey Gatzert Elementary at 2:30 p.m.
They will then march down Yesler toward the Federal Building Plaza, where they will hold a rally.
Bee populations are falling. Our neighborhood needs more greenery. The Pollinator Pathway Project on Columbia Street aims to address both these issues at once, and it needs your help.
The Pollinator Pathway aims to create a corridor of pollinator-friendly plants on Columbia Street from 12th to 29th Avenues to help pollinators like honey bees, butterflies and humming birds move through the neighborhood and between our growing number of urban farms.
If you live on Columbia, you can help by planting pollinator-friendly plants in your own yard. The Pollinator Pathway website has an extremely helpful guide for choosing and planting such a garden.
If you want to help with the work party, meet at 25th and Columbia May 26-27 from 11-4. More details from organizer Sarah Bergmann:
Come help build the next 4 gardens on the Pollinator Pathway! The Pollinator Pathway is a plan for a corridor of pollinator-friendly gardens in planting strips along one mile of Seattle’s Columbia Street, between 12th and 29th avenues (the project aims to create a corridor of plants between Seattle U’s campus and Nora’s Woods). The project now has 13 gardens in place along the corridor. Come dig in the dirt and help grow the project!
Bring gloves and shovels if you have them (and we could use extra wheelbarrows, too)- or just show up, there are tools there. No experience necessary.
Friday is Bike to Work Day, and there will be bike commute stations set up all over the region to give people passing by a little boost or a place to rest.
Many commuters will make their way to City Hall for an 8 a.m. rally. For more details on Bike to Work Day festivities, see my post over at Seattle Bike Blog.
The Hiawatha station in 2010
In the CD, Hiawatha businesses are hosting a station including snacks from Cafe Weekend and friends:
Café Weekend, Working Dog Bicycles & Ashoka Youth Venture Seattle host the BIKE TO WORK/ SCHOOL DAY station for the Jackson Place Business Association @ THE HUB – Hiawatha Place Urban Business district in the Jackson Place Community neighborhood from 7am – 1pm. Ride your bike down & follow the BIKE BUZZ & PERK UP signs…..treats for bikers only while supplies last.
We will also have an interactive community board up & sharing ideas about up & coming Neighborhood events….such at the Hiawatha Flea, Neighborhood Night Out + more community fun with the Jackson Place Business Association.
Other stations in the neighborhood include one on Seattle U campus, one on Lake Washington near Madrona Park and one at the east entrance to the I-90 Trail tunnel. Here’s a map from Cascade Bicycle Club:
View Bike Month Activities & Bike to Work Day Stations in a larger map
It’s finally farmers market time again. The Madrona Farmers Market opens Friday for its first day of the season. As usual, it will be located in the parking lot of Grocery Outlet at MLK and Union.
Highlights of opening day include a cooking demonstration by St. Clouds chef Michael King and, of course, fresh veggies!
From the Seattle Farmers Market Association:
Madrona Farmers Market Returns This Friday, May 18th, at 3 p.m.! We’re excite to get the 2012 season going in the Madrona Grocery Outlet parking lot, at the corner of MLK Way & E. Union Street – the confluence of the Central District, Madrona, Capitol Hill and Madison Valley neighborhoods, for its 10th season. Chef Michael King of St. Clouds, kicks off the season with another of his brilliant cooking demonstrations on opening day, May 18th, at 4 p.m., followed by Chef Carolin Messier of The Harvest Vine in Madison Valley on Friday, May 25th, with a great lineup of chefs from the surrounding neighborhoods throughout the season. The season will start off with a bang with fresh oyster mushrooms from Red Owl Mushroom Farm, sprouts and microgreens from new vendor Sprouters Northwest, the best chicken you’ve ever tasted from Growing Things Farm, local pickles from new vendor Purdy Pickle, certified organic asparagus from Alvarez Organic Farms and fresh from the market foods from Patty Pan Grill, just to name a few. Of course, one can find much more information on the Madrona Farmers Market blog, including a complete list of in-season crops, a calendar of cooking demonstrations, recipes and great background information on our vendors and their products, and more.
The water from some of the 12th and Alder Youth Services Center drinking fountains is truly nasty. Also, the place smells. Really bad.
The County Council recently decided to place a $210 million levy on the November ballot for public approval. If it passes, the area bounded by 12th, 14th, Remington Ct and Spruce St could see some dramatic changes as new areas open for private development and public space. The plans would replace both the detention and judicial facilities.
The levy would cost the average homeowner $25 per year for the next nine years.
Seattle Channel’s City Inside/Out recently dove into the debate over the center, and several people involved with it made the case for a new facility:
The program gives a look inside the failing facility, with it’s uncontrollable heating system, brown and gray water and lack of spaces for private family consultations. The panel attempts to make the case that even repairing the building’s biggest problems, which could cost as much as $40 million, the center would still fail to meet the needs of the families and youth it is trying to help.
They also stress the need for the facility to have good transit access, one reason for not moving the facility entirely as some people in the neighborhood have suggested.
After winning two fights at the Women’s World Championship Tournament in Qinhuangdao, China, Garfield alumna Queen Underwood lost by one point to Norway’s Ingrid Egner. The tournament is also the 2012 London Olympics qualifier, so Underwood’s chances of making it to the games are now slimmer.
Underwood must now wait to see if the Olympic Tripartite Commission will grant her a spot in the games. (UPDATE: Emmanuelle Moreau at the International Olympic Committee says the Tripartite Commission will meet “sometime in June.”)
Girlboxing reports that the Queen of the Ring lost the bout 26-25 after a big fourth round comeback. After losing the first two rounds 6:4 and 8:5, Queen tied the third 6:6. Then she had a thunderous comeback in the fourth, scoring 6:10, just one point shy of tying the bout.
The Queen has been training hard with her eyes on the prize for years. Training at Cappy’s Boxing Gym at 22nd and Union, Underwood fought her way to the number 1 spot in the country, a position she still holds five years later.
Businesses in the neighborhood helped her get going down the Olympic road as best they could, but the financial needs to get to the Olympics are intense. Queen opted to train with Tacoma Boxing Club last summer, and has been working toward her goal ever since.
Her training has been trying both physically and emotionally. She went public to the New York Times in February with painful details from her childhood. Her father sexually abused her and her sister for years, something she has largely held inside until recently. Her story of fighting back and empowering herself has been inspiring people around the nation for months, through the national print media to The View to Anderson Cooper (who she punched in the stomach):
Stay tuned for more as the Queen waits to see if she will get a chance to fight for the crown… I mean, gold.
Bernard Mustafa III had an estimated $200,000 worth of suspected Fentanyl, loads of cash and a rifle attached to a tripod on the kitchen table aimed at the street below his 18th and Spruce apartment, according to court documents posted by Seattle Weekly. He was arrested April 19 and is now facing drug and weapon charges in US District Court.
DEA agents say they found about 20 grams of Fentanyl in Mustafa’s apartment. While that may not sound like much, Fentanyl is an extremely potent narcotic — 80 to 100 times the strength of morphine — and is typically measured in micrograms. One gram can make about 4 ounces of sellable mix, and each ounce of mix can go for $1,000 on the street, the documents say (an excellent 2011 story by the Stranger notes a much lower selling point).
Though Fentanyl is still rare in comparison to herion, it is sometimes cut into heroin. This can have deadly results because the strength of hits can vary dramatically depending on how much Fentanyl is in each one.
In addition to the rifle pointed at the street (it was not loaded), agents also found a second rifle, a handgun and a bullet-proof vest. In addition to the large amounts of cash, he also had some gold coins and a diamond locked in one of two safes in his apartment.
The Tenth Central District Garden Tour (GT12) will be from 11 am to 4 pm on June 9, 2012. Our theme is urban gardens, community/kids’ edible gardening and public art. The CD is one of Seattle’s oldest neighborhoods, and many unique, community-friendly happenings are quietly sprouting and thriving in our midst. We will publicize some of these by listing them as “Check It Out” features. One is Green Plate Special (GPS), an independent garden-to-table pilot program, designed for at-risk and under-served youth, grades 6-8. The initial pilot program is located in the Madrona-Central district, on the corner of East Union Street and Martin Luther King Junior Way. “Our mission is to be part of a movement that provides access to and tools for our low income Seattle youth to become the healthiest next generation, breaking the cycle that surrounds inadequate diet, poor eating habits, and the lack of access to and knowledge of healthy whole foods.”
GT12 HQ plaza at 23rd & Union will be lively with local performing art including students from Meter Music School on Union, Mt Calvary church and UmojaFest. Lunch options include newly-opened restaurants at and near 23rd & Union, including Med Mix serving a tasty assortment of Mediterranean foods and the Big Easy food truck serving catfish po’ boys. Cascade Edible Landscapes will be selling pesticide-free veggie and fruit starts. Union Biscuit will sell wholesome dog treats. There will also be pottery by Sandi Berlin and garden themed greeting cards and calendars by artist Mary Magenta. Alleycat Acres’ two community gardens are Check it Out features. They are also organizing a group bicycle Garden Tour that leaves GT12 HQ at 11:45am.
Other sponsors are Central Cinema, CD Association, Earl’s Cuts and Styles, Girlie Press, Jackson Street Corridor Association, Key Bank, Leschi Market, NetGrafix, Realtor Ken Latz, Sea Suds, State Farm, Mark Travers Architect, Williamson Landscape Architecture and 2020 Cycle.
Beginning on May 12th, $7 advance tickets will be available online at http://gardentour.centraldistrictseattle.org/, at City Peoples (2939 E. Madison), Leschi Market (103 Lakeside Ave), and on June 9th, $10 Day of Tour tickets at GT12 HQ, (MidTown Plaza at 23rd and Union). Learn more at http://gardentour.centraldistrictseattle.org/
Garden Central is a not-for-profit neighborhood organization and is open to anyone. Garden Central puts on the annual CD Garden Tour of private and community gardens. All proceeds go toward creating public art in the Central District. Our first art construction will be information kiosks/gathering places along 23rd Avenue, possibly beginning at Coyote Central. Learn more at http://artproject.centraldistrictseattle.org
Questions? Email [email protected] or call Mary Pat @ (206) 324-5161.
You really couldn’t ask for a better day for a neighborhood fair. Hundreds of families showed up for Saturday’s Madrona Mayfair, which kicked off in the morning with a kids bike and tricycle parade down 34th Ave.
Festivities at Madrona Playfield continue until the evening. See our previous post for a schedule of events.
Attached are some photos from the fair. Feel free to add yours in the comments!
Middle and high school students need to register by June 1 if they want to take Hollow Earth Radio’s August radio play and circuit bending classes.
Registration is $100, but there are some scholarship opportunities.
Details, from Hollow Earth Radio:
Hollow Earth Radio will facilitate Around the Bend, a Circuit Bending Camp on August 6-10th 1-4pm for high school aged youth. Around the Bend Circuit Bending Camp will explore this electronic art by giving youth opportunities to experiment with bending circuits on battery-powered toys to make their own musical instruments. Circuit bending is an electronic art that explores short-circuiting electronic devices, often children’s toys, to create new musical instruments and sound generators. Youth will do hands-on experimentation and will learn about basic components of electronic design, soldering techniques, visual & interface design theories, and tactile manipulation of electronically produced audio. This camp will provide youth with knowledge and experience to venture further into this art-form on their own. The registration fee is $100, and there are a few scholarships available. To register for this camp, email [email protected] by June 1st.
Hollow Earth Radio will facilitate On the Air, a Radio Play Camp on August 13-17th, 9am-12pm for middle school aged youth. On the Air Radio Play Camp will give youth the opportunity to learn about the history of radio drama, making sound effects, writing radio plays and acting out their own creations. Youth will work together in groups to produce their own radio plays that will be broadcast on HER. The registration fee is $100, and there are a few scholarships available. To register for this camp, email [email protected] by June 1st.
Both Camps will take places at Hollow Earth Radio (2018A East Union Street) in the Central District of Seattle!