I can’t help but notice the days getting just a little shorter and there are leaves blowing around the streets. Fall is on its way. There is something special about this time of year. Perhaps it is all those years of associating fall with a new school year that invokes this sense that I need to reconnect with my intentions for the year and establish a new routine. Yoga is a great way to do just that. I invite you to fall back to your mat with my Fall Classes.

Rest & Relaxation Yoga

Spend your Sunday taking time to deeply unwind. In this slow moving class we will emphasize breath and mediation techniques called yoga nidra, or sleep of the yogi. Give yourself time away from the laundry and email to let your body soak up slow movements, restoring your nervous system.  Please bring a blanket to class and dress in comfortable clothing.  Registration Only                   

Sundays September 18th & 25th, October 9th & 23rd; 2-4 pm              

 Class held at the Garfield Community Center, 2-4pm                                 

$15 per class, $10 off if you register for the month

Evening Yoga 

This all levels yoga class at the Garfield Community Center helps you connect your breath your body and both to your mind.  Learn how to maintain healthy alignment for your body. Develop strength and find your flexibility as we move through a variety of poses in harmony with your breath. Drop in rate $9

Want to cultivate a yoga routine that works for you? Register for the whole month of Evening Yoga you not only save a little money but develop a more steady yoga practice.

Tuesdays & Thursdays 7:15-8:30pm Sept 6-29th, Oct 4-27th, Whole session is $48                                          

 Class held at Garfield Community Center, 2323 E Cherry St

Kids Yoga 

Roar like alion, soar like a bird and shake the wiggles out with Kid’s Yoga. We will sing, moveand play,drawing inspiration from animals, shapes and theworld around us. Learn yogaposes in aroom full of laughter and fun.

Thursdays 4-4:45 pm starting Sept 8-29th, Oct 6-27th

Appropriate for kids ages 3-9

Five classes for $39  

Class held at Madrona Shelterhouse, 3211 E Spring St

To  Register for any of these classes: Click Here or Call (206 )684-4788

Seattle Transit Blog’s Bruce Nourish dug deep into ridership figures to figure out a way to increase reliability along the corridor shared by King County Metro’s 3 and 4 buses. He concludes that moving the route to Yesler between 3rd and 9th Avenues would increase reliability. He also suggests that the southern leg of the 4 (south of 23rd and Jefferson) is redundant and could be cut.

From Seattle Transit Blog (Warning: This post gets super geeky and specific and includes some hard-to-read but info-packed graphs):

• Crush loads from downtown to Harborview in the AM peak. The average load tops out at 45, just off the chart. Keeping in mind that a Gillig trolley nominally seats 42, this means every coach is full as it heads up James. Presumably this overcrowding is already dissuading additional choice riders. This is another point in favor of the First Hill Streetcar: even though it’ll be slower, it’ll be a much more comfortable way for suburban commuters to get from the Downtown Transit Tunnel to First Hill, especially if Metro is unable to add capacity to this route in the near future. More on this below.
• Very little activity after Jefferson & 23rd, except at the two stops on 23rd at Yesler and Jackson. These two stops, in addition to frequent north-south service from the 48, have faster one-seat rides to downtown with similar headways from the 14 and 27 respectively. South of these two stops, loads are light in all time periods; boarding activity and loads increase briskly as the bus heads down Jefferson. (I’m suspicious of the apparently large number of boardings at the terminal stops on Walker; even if those numbers are true, those people have many better bus options to almost anywhere).
• Very little use of the Lighthouse for the Blind stop on Plum & 25th. While providing the ability for people who cannot drive to live and work independently is a vital function of transit, the stop here is so thinly patronized — about 15 boardings and four deboardings per day —  as to suggest that, in the context of the minimal use and almost complete redundancy of the long tail of this route, finding alternative ways to serve this facility are in order.

From the timetable

The idea of changing the 3/4 routing from James to Yesler for the I-5 crossing has been tossed around before (CDN wrote about it last year). After just a couple blocks on Yesler, the route would cut back to Jefferson at 9th Ave and continue east into the CD as it does today.

There would need to be some trolley wire changes, which could cost millions. If voters approve the $60 vehicle license fee in November, it’s feasible that some of the $20 million allotted for trolley improvements could go to this project, Nourish notes.

What do you think? Do you use the southern portion of the 4 (between 23rd/Jefferson and MLK/S Walker)? Are areas along this portion served well enough by other routes that they could be cut?

Hello!

My partner and I have two kids who are going into second and fourth grade at West Woodland Elementary school in Ballard.  We live in the CD and are interested in carpooling with another family or more.  If your kids go to school at another school north of the ship canal let me know and maybe carpooling could still make sense for both of us. 

Cheers,

Shannon

It is important that all attend  Kay Smith-Blum’s  first meeting of this school year this Saturday.  This is not just her chance to share her thoughts with us, but is also   our chance share thoughts with our School Board Representative and our community and to learn about the experiences of others in our community.    Remember that as you review the agenda items below such as capital planning , the next building cycles,  Lowell Elementary, and APP all have the potential to greatly impact the neighborhood assignment plan and the schools in the area, which in turn would affect our families and communities.

Her email announcement is below: Kay Smith-Blum, Seattle School Board, District 5

BACK-TO-SCHOOL COMMUNITY MEETING SATURDAY, AUGUST 27TH, 10:00-11:30 A.M.

I will be holding my first community meeting of the 2011-12 school year this Saturday, August 27th at the Douglass-Truth Library, at 23rd and E. Yesler, Seattle, WA 98122

Topics for discussion will include (but not limited to):1. Update on Lowell Elementary current program; 2.Update on APP at Lincoln process; 3.Upcoming Board policy work around capital planning and Series 4000, including visitor policies, disciplinary policies, law enforcement interaction, etc.; 4.. Update on enrollment; 5.. Discussion on next building cycle and how it can effect the central region schools;6. Recap of Board workshop on technology, vision for 21st Century Classrooms.

Hope you’ve had a good summer! I look forward to our ongoing work together.

Kay Smith-BlumDirector, Position 5, Seattle School Board

Fire alarms are going off in buildings across Capitol Hill and the Central District late Monday afternoon as a “power surge” hit the area. We’re also updating the story at CapitolHillSeattle.com.

Four incredible Hedgebrook Alums are on stage at Broadway Performance Hall on August 23rd, 2011.

The lineup includes: Lenelle Moïse’s  jazz-infused, hip-hop bred, politicized poetry; Rebecca Brown’s ripe,imaginative and darkly humorous words; Thao Nguyen’s cleverly crafted and emotionally evocative songs, and Ruth Forman’s wise soothing stanzas. The talents of these women have been recognized both locally and nationally. Rebecca Brown is a Stranger Genius Awardee, Ruth Forman is a Pulitzer Prize Nominee in poetry, Thao Nyguyen’s recent show with Mirah sold out at the Crocodile and Lenelle Moise’s off-Broadway sensation Expatriate toured nationally this past year. It’s a sure fire recipe to tap your core and inspire your soul

We would like to introduce you to the Jackson Street Corridor Association’s new sites:

JSCA on Facebook

JSCA on the Web

Please check ’em out when you get the chance! We are excited to be a part of  your community and look forward to working with any and all of you!

Thanks and see you soon!

Summer. It wouldn’t count if you didn’t spend at least one day on the beach or watch your neighbors pull a roasting pig from a hole they dug in their backyard.

I love my neighbors. They dug this hole early Saturday morning before the 19th Annual 20th Avenue Block Party (which just so happens to be my street). Here’s a little photo montage of the big moment when they finally pulled the pig, after being buried for most the day.

Now, I don’t eat a lot of meat, actually. But pig cooked Polynesian-style? Delicious.

I followed-up the block party the next the best I could: By chilling out at Denny-Blaine Park beach enjoying the sun.

Do you have photos of fun in the Central District sun this weekend? Leave them in the comments.

Recruitment is wrapping up in a couple of months…… Compensation Provided!

The largest coordinated safety program ever undertaken in the United States . . .

The Second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP 2) was established by Congress to investigate the underlying causes of highway crashes and congestion in a short–term program of focused research. The objective is to identify countermeasures which will significantly improve highway safety through an understanding of driving behaviors. The study will incorporate approximately 3,100 drivers in six states throughout the United States.

Call 1-866-215-6617, or visit www.drivingstudy.org for more information.

When Kim Swanson saw two dogs pressing their faces against the front window of a burning house, she didn’t think. She acted.

“I just went,” she said. Smoke was flowing out the tops of the windows and out the gutters as she and her partner Karen Swanson-Jacobs started pounding on doors and windows trying to find a way in.

Kim Swanson and Karen Swanson-Jacobs

Kim was able to get one dog out of the house near MLK and Pine, but the other ran away. That’s when she took off her outer shirt, grabbed the garden hose and soaked the shirt. Holding the shirt to her face to breathe, she broke a latch to a window and went in.

“I was terribly scared there were kids or somebody in there asleep,” she said. She found the second dog and handed it through the window to Karen.

Then Kim went through the house, checking in closets and under beds. “I heard people sometimes hide in the closet during a fire,” she said. So she checked them twice.

She got a little turned around in the smokey house, and when she finally made her way to the front door, firefighters were there to meet her.

The fire appeared to be confined to the attic or roof of the home, and nobody was home except the dogs.

Sitting on the porch next door to the house that caught fire shortly after firefighters extinguished the flames, Kim could hardly believe what she had just been through.

“It doesn’t seem real,” she said with a slight rasp in her voice from minor smoke inhalation she got while inside. “I am not an impulsive person, I am a very logical person.”

But with the dogs safe in the neighbor’s basement, Kim coughed into her still-damp shirt clutched in her hands.

“I would do it again in a second.”

Original story:

The response to a reported attic fire in a single family home in the 1500 block of MLK has closed the major arterial to traffic Sunday night.

Early reports are that the fire was contained to the attic and there are no injuries but we’re still confirming details.