David Martin, CEO and founder of human resources innovation company Trakstar, moved to Capitol Hill in 2006. At that time, both the national economy and Seattle in general were different places than they are today, but even prior to the economic collapse of 2008, keeping a startup company afloat wasn’t easy. Trakstar prevailed, though. It moved from Martin’s home office to an increasingly enviable space at the corner of Pike Street and Broadway where it continues to operate. 

Capitol Hill has its startups, though other neighborhoods sporting lower rent and better transit options have been more welcoming to new companies in the past several years. Now, with the City of Seattle taking a leading role in the new Startup Seattle Initiative, there may be an opportunity for Capitol Hill to be another incubator for innovation.

Startup Seattle began over a year ago as one of many grassroots efforts by Red Russak, a local professional who has made the startup community his bread and butter for several years. Now working for the very startup-friendly company Apptentive, Russak maintains the Startup Seattle website and will continue to do so until the city hires its Startup Business Sector Liaison to take over.

The SBS Liaison is the first part of the new initiative that intends to make Seattle a more inviting place for tech startups and technology education. Mayor McGinn announced the initiative on May 9 at the headquarters for Zillow, the real estate search service that began as a local startup and now dominates its corner of the online market, recently acquiring popular apartment search tool HotPads, which is just the latest in a long line of acquisitions dating back to 2011. At the May 9 press conference, Mayor McGinn put the Startup Initiative in ambitious terms, framing it as a search for “…the next Microsoft or Amazon.”

Though the city has no plans of using public funds like venture capital, it intends to use the new initiative to make Seattle a startup incubator in other ways. The SBS Liaison will essentially serve as a marketing chief to raise awareness about the benefits the city has to offer to new businesses, such as a progressive political atmosphere, scenic views and a booming food and nightlife culture.

Capitol Hill, with its glut of restaurants, bars and theaters, as well as its nonprofit organizations, certainly has all of those qualities, but it hasn’t been as attractive as many of its neighboring districts. Pioneer Square wins hands-down in the startup department. A recent business activity map created by Colliers International shows dozens of small businesses clustered in just a few blocks of First Avenue in Pioneer Square, most of them no older than a few years. Affordable rent has made that neighborhood attractive, as has a minor exodus of small companies from South Lake Union since Amazon took over multiple city blocks for its new campus there.

Though the Startup Initiative talks about expanding the fertility of small business ground beyond Pioneer Square and its less dense but still notable cousin in Fremont, Capitol Hill isn’t the first name on the list. Rather, the initiative names the University District as the prime slice of land for startup development, especially as the University Link light rail comes online in the next few years.

The truth is, startups run into the same problem on Capitol Hill as restaurants and apartment-seekers: rent. As the price of real estate on the Hill climbs, many businesses aren’t willing to take the hit on their bottom lines when more affordable space is just a mile or so away. That’s what happened with EnergySavvy, a startup that provides utility monitoring software to homes and businesses. EnergySavvy lived on Capitol Hill not long ago, but moved to Pioneer Square after an unsuccessful and partially crowd-sourced attempt to stay in its original neighborhood.

The Startup Seattle Initiative will be working with a modest budget for its first year of operation. While the search is on for the SBS Liaison, who will be officially named in August of this year, the initiative won’t start in earnest until 2014. Its budget for that year is $145,000, which will be allocated to revamping the Startup Seattle website, organizing as many as three student outreach events for hands-on tech industry experiences, performing a market assessment for the University District’s startup-fostering potential, and creating a marketing plan to attract startups to the city. The first year of programming will also involve developing a partnership with Code.org, a non-profit organization that advocates for computer programming education in schools.

While the Startup Seattle Initiative is under development, the original Startup Seattle website will continue to list networking and education events for new and prospective businesses around the city. Upcoming topics include Linkedin search optimization, angel investment, and women in the tech industry.

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The offices of Steinbrueck Urban Strategies, an architecture firm strongly associated with sustainability in design, are just one block west of Pike Place Market. Early in his political career, Peter Steinbrueck, founder of Urban Strategies, served on the Pike Place Market Historical Commission helping to reject a proposal that would have given significant control of the market to out-of-state investors. Now running for mayor, Steinbrueck still has an eye on community assets. If fundraising is any indication, Steinbrueck is an underdog in the race, though he doesn’t flinch at the big money coming in for his opponents.

“I’ve never left public life,” he told The Capitol Hill Times. “I was an activist before Council. In fact, it was one of the reasons I ran for City Council in 1997.”

Indeed, Peter Steinbrueck sat on several major committees in Seattle City Council between 1997 and 2007, including chairing Housing and Human Services, sitting on Parks, Education, and Libraries, then finally chairing Urban Development and Planning. Now six years away from his last turn in office, Steinbrueck measures the other candidates against his own experience.

“I’m not just running against one incumbent. I’m running against four incumbents. There are four other electeds and I’m not an elected,” he said, adding, “My qualifications run deep and are extensive and I’m considerably more experienced than nearly anyone in this race.”

Steinbrueck’s ten years on City Council have to stack up against six years a piece for current Councilmembers Bruce Harrell and Tim Burgess, one-term incumbent Mayor Mike McGinn, and 17 years state legislator Ed Murray. This is not to say that Steinbrueck retreated to the private sector after leaving City Council. Between 2009 and 2010, he was a Loeb Fellow at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, conducting independent research into urban sustainability.

In his research, Peter Steinbrueck found many cities both close to home and far abroad that inspired his ideas for Seattle’s future. A strong supporter of P-patches and other urban agriculture concepts, Steinbrueck calls Birmingham, Alabama’s Jones Valley Teaching Farm “a gem of a project” for the way it combines agricultural education, community outreach, and local business development. He also looks to Portland, Oregon as a model for city governance, New Orleans, Louisiana for its progress in social justice, and Istanbul, Turkey for its growth management in the face of hundreds of thousands of new residents each year for the past decade.

Steinbrueck’s focus for Seattle-specific plans is on neighborhood outreach. “There’s been a disillusionment over the City’s withdrawal from neighborhood developments,” he said. The cornerstone of his policy is what he calls, “a complete neighborhoods blueprint for the city’s future,” that takes into account each neighborhood’s “assets and deficits” while “restoring faith and confidence of Seattle’s residents.”

When speaking about Capitol Hill, Steinbrueck sees it as a large district composed of many, different neighborhoods, from the busy retail and nightlife sector of Pike/Pine to the more family-oriented regions east of Broadway. He says he wants to work with residents to support a diverse range of living spaces, from single-family homes to dense apartment buildings.

“Not everybody wants to live in a high-rise, and you don’t really want or need that to create density,” he said.

Along with Seattle’s population growth and tendency toward density, Steinbrueck also wants to see the local economy shift its focus to small businesses and labor.

“We don’t do economic development well in this city, especially for small businesses,” he said, citing his belief that the Office of Economic Development is understaffed. He also sees great potential in the Port of Seattle as a source of stable, middle-income jobs. While the Workforce Development Council of Seattle reports wages for entry-level jobs like deckhands averaging at $20,000 to $25,000 per year, those wages climb considerably with additional training. Junior engineers tend to start at $30,000, while more experienced engineers can earn anywhere from $40,000 to $75,000 in their first year. Steinbrueck calls this and other middle-income sectors “the backbone of the local economy” and wants to see SoDo and other South Seattle regions examined for industrial development.

Outside of Seattle’s industrial potential, Steinbrueck returns to his focus on neighborhoods to identify a “place-making” strategy. He’s interested in using attractive, retail-and-restaurant-driven areas like the market, Pike/Pine and the busiest parts of Ballard to “recruit, support and retain small businesses” while looking into what government and logistical issues have a negative impact on small business.

The last piece of Peter Steinbrueck’s neighborhood focus is to use city assets to support supplementary educational services. He talks about the benefits preschool provided for his two sons, who have grown up in Seattle’s public education system. He also sees great potential in opening city facilities for use in after-school programs.

Though his roots are in activism, Peter Steinbrueck’s approach to government is ultimately measured. “Let’s start incrementally with some practical approaches that bring people along,” he said, all while keeping big-picture ideas in the conversation.

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Gina Biber / The Capitol Hill Times

This past November, Washington voters made national headlines and history by approving Initiative 502, the legalization of recreational marijuana. A few weeks back, I began to notice that Capitol Hill light poles were tagged with flyers calling Capitol Hillites to join the “Cannabis Freedom March,” which was held this past Saturday, starting in Volunteer Park, and eventually making their way down, one puff at a time, to Westlake. My initial reaction to the flyer was more of an internal dialogue—“Why are we marching for cannabis freedom? Didn’t we already vote on this?” I needed some answers as to what “freedoms” marijuana supporters were peacefully rallying for. 

I like to consider myself a responsible journalist, so this past Friday, I made sure that I went to bed at a reasonable time. Neighbors at 3 a.m., I believe, was the last stop. I rolled out of bed at 10 a.m., grabbed a Red Bull, and hoofed it up the hill towards Volunteer Park. It wasn’t very hard to find where the rally was congregating; I followed the melodic reggae sounds, and the plume of smoke signals. 

Besides the mini-cannabis plants lining the front of the stage, and the occasional dancing fairy, the event was incredibly tame, and seemed more like a summer concert in the park than a protest. There were even a few families picnicking with their young children, waiting for the speeches to begin. Imagine a Rick Steves type of family—as in the PBS European travel guru, and, surprisingly, one of the biggest advocates for the legalization of marijuana in our state. Perhaps it was the secondhand smoke, but the picnicking families were far from the stereotypical criminal delinquents that many anti-marijuana advocates portray. 

Gina Biber / The Capitol Hill Times

A Native American man from Chief Seattle’s clan drummed his way through an opening prayer to bless the event, followed by a group of supporters who invited the audience “to have a moment of silence, and roll a bud for all of those who are incarcerated for the possession of cannabis.” Instead of “amen,” a puff of smoke was collectively exhaled by the crowd. I cracked a joke with my photographer that we may need a fire department present quickly, noticing that there was no Seattle Police Department presence whatsoever—well, besides the Seattle Interim Police Chief, Jim Pugel, who briefly spoke at the end of the march in Westlake. The Seattle Times reports Pugel stating, “We are not here to condemn it. We are not here to endorse it.” Although a natural one, it is a profound stance that the SPD is taking on cannabis. Many other statewide police departments are taking notice. 

As Washington State legislators and the Liquor Control Board finalize the governing laws behind I-502, many at the rally are “concerned that the voters have been misled, and that there is trouble in paradise for medical marijuana,” as stated by one of the protesters. 

A piece of literature that was being circulated at the rally read, “Our greedy, tax-hungry legislators in Olympia have been working behind the scenes with the Liquor Control Board to come up with a devious plan to end medical cannabis here in Washington without a vote of the people or even an opportunity for public input.” 

Medical marijuana advocates fear that they will be required to conform to the same standards as recreational users, such as a higher, 85-percent tax, a 1-ounce limit, no personal plant growing, restricted doctor recommendations, and, instate, a minimum age of 21-years-old for all patients. In a nutshell, the message that I got out of the Cannabis Freedom March was essentially: If you don’t act, medical cannabis in Washington will die this year.  

For further information on the group that organized the rally, visit Cannabis Action Coalition’s Facebook page, or call 206-612-9044. The next medical marijuana rally will be held in Olympia at the state’s capitol on May 21.

The post Trouble in pot paradise? Legalization is not out of the weeds yet appeared first on The Capitol Hill Times.

Nicole Lisson / The Capitol Hill Times

Please tell me that I am not the only one who always serves dessert after dinner. Whether it be a small piece of chocolate or a bowl of fruit, I like to top off my meal with something sweet. The problem is, I hate adding more dishes to my already full sink.  

This is where these brownies come in. You dump most of the ingredients into a microwave-safe bowl and heat on high until the butter is melted, stir in a couple more ingredients, then slip the batter in the oven to bake for a few minutes. 

This recipe reminds me of box brownies without the preservatives. Fudgy and rich with zero cakiness, and I recommend letting the brownies sit overnight in the fridge, since they will be a) easier to cut and b) easier to handle. 

Another bonus is that these brownies are a great base recipe. Let your imagination go wild, and add in all sorts of yummy mix-ins, like peanut butter cups, caramels, etc. The sky is the limit.

One-bowl brownies

2013-05-15 20:58:20

Fudgy and rich with zero cakiness.

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Cook Time

25 min

Cook Time

25 min

Ingredients

10 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 and 1/4 cups sugar

3/4 cup and 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 eggs

1/2 cup flour

Instructions

Preheat oven to 325 ºF. Line a 8 x 8 inch pan with aluminum foil, spray with cooking spray, and set aside.

Combine unsalted butter, sugar, cocoa powder and salt in a large microwave-safe bowl. Heat for 45 seconds to melt butter. If butter is still not melted, stir and keep heating in 10-second intervals until melted.

Mix in vanilla and eggs, and stir until batter is thick and shiny.

Fold in flour, and stir until there are no white streaks remaining, then beat for 45 more strokes.

Pour batter into prepared pan, then bake for about 25 minutes, or until a toothpick emerges from the center of the pan with a few moist crumbs. Brownies will firm up as they cool, so be careful not to over bake.

By Nicole Lisson

The Capitol Hill Times http://www.capitolhilltimes.com/

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Nicole Lisson / The Capitol Hill Times

Ever since Bakery Nouveau opened its doors in West Seattle, it has won countless awards for best desserts, best breakfast pastries, and so on.  However, so far to the west, residents to the east weren’t able to taste the fame. That changed two weeks ago when Bakery Nouveau opened its second location on Capitol Hill in the John Court Building.  

As soon as you walk inside, your eyes are greeted with rows upon rows of baked goods.  Cakes, croissants, pastries, oh my! With all of the attention on the delicious treats, though, the employees who actually produce the products are left out of the limelight, which is why I would like to introduce you to Audrey Hollis, sous chef extraordinaire. 

“I do everything,” she explained to me last Sunday, “ I know how to bake, I can do chocolates, I can make croissants and danishes—many desserts.” 

Nicole Lisson / The Capitol Hill Times

Hollis has been baking ever since her mom let her check out a worn copy of Betty Crocker when she was a little girl.  Through trial and error, she found her love of the culinary arts, and about four years ago, Hollis turned her passion into a career. 

“My boyfriend ended up working for Central Baking Company, which is where I met William, and he needed a night baker. I guess that I interviewed really well, and I started the next day,” Hollis said. 

When asked what her day-to-day work schedule is like, she laid it out for me like this: 

5:30 a.m. Wake up, and get ready. 

7 to 8 a.m.  Depending on the day, stops by the West Seattle store to stock up on ingredients, or runs into Cash and Carry. 

11 a.m.  “High tide,” aka “the lunch rush.” Help everybody make sure that they are doing the best job that they can, whether that is running to the store or helping make croissants.  

1 p.m. Bakery Nouveau starts slowing down. Dive into cake decorating and creating delectables, like chocolate squares. 

7 to 8 p.m. Wrap up, and hope to make it home before night falls. 

Hollis clarified that she typically works 12-hour shifts four days per week, but since the bakery is still trying to find its rhythm, she pulls in an extra day.  It’s not all work and no play, though. In Hollis’ free time, she likes to garden, watch TV with her boyfriend, and relax. Although she wears many different hats at Bakery Noveau, Hollis favorite product to get her hands on is the bread. 

“I love how particular bread can be, how it knows it’s cold outside even if it’s warm inside.” 

As you can you tell from Hollis’s grueling schedule, working behind the scenes at a bakery takes a certain amount of dedication. It is not all rainbows and lollipops.  

“It does take some kind of love for what you’re doing even if you are having a horrible day and you don’t want to be at Bakery Nouveau.  Everybody here works better as a team, which is great, and they really do put forth their best efforts,” Hollis told me. 

Next time you wander into Bakery Noveau, take a second out of your day to appreciate the hard work that goes into the double-baked almond croissant or the crusty baguette, and utter a simple “thank you.” It will be greatly appreciated.

Bakery Nouveau
1435 East John Court, Suite 137

The post Bakery Nouveau, thank you for moving east appeared first on The Capitol Hill Times.

Gina Biber / The Capitol Hill Times

One of George Tsutakawa’s timeless works of art sits in a state of disrepair inside the walls of Seattle Central Community College. While some are ready to remove the piece, others wrestle to restore it. 

Seventy-one years ago, Broadway High School operated in the building that now houses SCCC. At that time, World War II was in full swing, and instead of class, Japanese American students (who made up 25 percent of the student body) were mandated to spend the next years at inland “War Relocation Camps.” 

Tsutakawa is one of the many Japanese American students who attended Broadway High School before the internment. It is there that he was first recognized as an artist, winning first prize in a student-work art competition sponsored by Scholastic magazine. And going on to become a world-renowned contemporary artist, Tsutakawa gifted his old stomping grounds, SCCC, with “Fountain” in 1973.   

Though Fountain is still beautiful to look at, it is in need of tlc. The piping has endured through the years, but it needs to be cleaned, and the inner mechanics fixed. 

One estimate stated that the total cost of restoring the fountain could amount to as much as $80,000, but SCCC Director of Multicultural Services Tina Young, said that after a couple of engineers were brought in for an assessment, it is more likely that the cost of repairs will be around $50,000. SCCC administration has offered to match up to $40,000. 

Those in favor of renewing Fountain call it SCCC’s “treasure,” and say that it serves not only as an exquisite piece of art, but also as a cultural landmark and testimony to history, showing the “brilliance that can emerge when opportunities, when encouragement, and when access are available.”

Others who oppose mending the fountain argue that it is too costly and a potential safety hazard. The concern is that there is a limited budget, and any extra money should be allocated to student funding. And if Fountain were to be repaired, then people might fall in and hurt themselves, or water-born illnesses could arise. 

“They say ‘either scholarships for students or the fountain,’ but we think that it can be ‘scholarships for students and the fountain,’” Young said, adding that the fountain uses recycled water. 

Tomorrow, May 17, an event to kick-start the fundraiser will be held in The Atrium at SCCC from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. The evening will include a few words from Tsutakawa’s eldest son, Gerry Tsutakawa, performances, foods prepared by the college’s chefs and students, as well as a silent auction with artwork, goods and services provided by local businesses.  

Young said that the goal is to raise at least $40,000 in the next few months, and to have Fountain in perfect working order by June of 2014. 

Besides the fundraiser, the Tsutakawa Fountain Committee is accepting donations, and looking for grants and foundations that can bring Fountain back to repair.   

For more information or if you would like to make a donation, contact the Tsutakawa Fountain Committee at savescccfountain@gmail.com or call Tina Young on behalf of the committee at 206-934-4085. 

The post Saving Tsutakawa Fountain at SCCC appeared first on The Capitol Hill Times.

Photo courtesy of Holly L. Forbis.

From a scarcely-filled theater that holds 45 seats, the opening crack and fizz of a soda can lid draws attention up to the lighting designer’s booth, where the spray travels across the lamplight of her station. Her readiness is as much a curtain call as any to the start of Shakespeare’s play, “The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice.” Eclectic Theater’s wingless stage is already crowded with actors, creeping out, yawning and stretching before the first cue.

“All you need is the will to perform and the language,” the play’s title character, Michael D. Blum, said. 

That may be true for career actors like Blum and Othello’s Duke and Clown, Jeff Allen Pierce, but the play directed by Kim Deskin exemplifies a production’s need for much more than a couple of brilliant actors and the language of Shakespeare.

For one, each cast member should have memorized their lines, but Deskin maintained “I’m about the stories of Shakespeare getting into the eyes and minds of today’s contemporary audience. I don’t really care if an actor needs a book.” Husband to the Director and antagonist, Iago, Rik Deskin read from his script three weeks into the show’s run. 

The set design is insufficient in delineating one scene from another. “I’m very non-traditional in my approach to Shakespeare. I work from theme, not period,” Deskin said. Though the black-and-white color scheme suggests symbolism and modernity, the costumes disorient the viewer through several eras, and fall short of meaningful contrast.

The last missing element was cohesion, which is integral to any story. The once minor role of an insidious clown who set chaos into motion is reinvented as a “chorus of clowns.” Principal clown, played by Pierce explained the insertion of the chorus as “manipulators,” and “catalysts for action among the main characters.” 

The visual display of major themes by the clowns who used billboards to literally spell out words in jest or irony is creative, but to simply insert a theme into a story does not work without reworking the entire play, and so supporting characters were left to distract from the action by wandering around the perimeter of the stage. The “new and improved” take to the 410-year-old play is misguided, however ambitious. 

Still, the story of Othello is relatable. Blum said that Othello is a “good man who is misled into believing that he has been betrayed, and that betrayal is shattering.” 

Othello’s cohort, Iago, and Lieutenant Cassio push Othello, the scorned newlywed, into violence, and, finally overcome with jealously, destroy his relationship and a few important lives. 

So, why see the production despite its shortfalls? Here are three reasons: 

1. You’re a patron of the arts. Great theater is not born overnight. Audiences can pay their dues, too. Volunteer productions need more support than well-funded shows. While Othello cost only $750, the show may still not break-even. Supportive criticism is an active form of appreciation.

2. You’re a theater snob. The smallest of details can make or break continuity, and the actors’ timbre. See this rendition of Othello to refresh your palate. You’ll learn more about theater logistics and technical construction. You’ll bring this awareness to every play that you see after it, and your appreciation will gain a quantitative element. Better yet, you’ll raise your cocktail banter up a notch.

3. You’ll see some great performances. You’ll get to zero-in on stand-out character actors, like Pierce. Blum’s crystal clear voice and cadence is impeccable, and he inhabits Othello with ease and authority. Here is Shakespeare’s 27th play, which set the stage in 1660 for the first female actress to play a female role in an otherwise all-male industry. The famous role is characterized by a foreigner, and its casting is often led by an actor of ethnic diversity.

The joint Actors’ Equity Association members and Eclectic Theater project is a reflection of the Actors’ Union Code, recently revised to allow members to put on projects to “showcase their talents.” Casting directors will appreciate the recital of new-to-Seattle Blum and Pierce, and steady, first-time performance of Clown Chorus 3, Alexa Oo.

Volunteer productions like this one are springing up everywhere against the industry’s shrinking budgets. Our growing actor population is facing the reality of fewer opportunities for talent and crew by creating their own. The joint venture of eager Equity actors without Equity productions, directors and crews without opportunity, and newcomers without the space to grow, are convincing in their commitment to the work. 

That being said, not everyone should be exalted. Sometimes the direction is simply coordinated poorly. Perhaps, sometimes the show shouldn’t go on. Yet, to engage in theater arts, is to go often, and inform your opinion with variety.

The post Othello suffers while players play appeared first on The Capitol Hill Times.

by Chason Gordon

As you know, the bicycle was invented when two unicyclists were jousting. It’s true! They crashed into each other, tangling up the lances when a third man noticed and said, “I told you hippies to get off my property!” Later, somewhere else across the country, and completely unrelated to the aforementioned anecdote, the bicycle was invented. And so the legend spread.

I opened with that story because I want to talk to you about something important: abortion. No, wait! I mean “cycling” (whew!). This Friday is Bike to Work Day—or last Friday, depending on when you’re reading this (what is the future like?). Bike to Work Day is part of Bike to Work Week, which is a subsidiary of National Bike Month (God, these cyclists really lay it on thick). I don’t know if there’s a Bike to Work hour or minute or quantum singularity, but I’ll look into it. 

Bike to Work Day is not the same thing as Take Your Daughter to Work Day. That day involves bringing your angry 18-year-old daughter to work, and keeping her hidden in the office so that your male coworkers don’t creepily flirt with her, especially Jim; I don’t trust that guy at all. If you want to combine Take Your Daughter to Work Day with Bike to Work Day for your own Take Your Daughter to Work on a Bike Day, that is totally up to you. You’ll probably need one of those double bikes that you always see celebrities on. “God, my dad is so lame,” your daughter will later say, getting into Jim’s car (callback!).

I feel like this article is all over the place. Let’s try to reign (rain?) things in (rein?). According to some press release that my editor forwarded me, on Friday, May 17, over 20,000 people are expected to bike to work in celebration of the quasi-holiday, and will be able to stop at one of dozens of stations featuring maps, snacks and souvenirs, like plastic hands that cyclists can use to pat themselves on the back. (Don’t even think about stopping at one of these stations if you’re unemployed or driving a car or you’ll be arrested). The event is sponsored by F5 Networks. I assume that they make the “F5” keys that we use when we want to refresh our internet page.

Angela Nickerson / The Capitol Hill Times

One of the central events is (or was) the bicycle commute with Mayor McGinn. Basically, Mayor McGinn is going to bike to work as usual, but if you want to join him, that’s cool. Just don’t bring up the whole peace plaque thing. You probably shouldn’t go on the commute with him if your work is nowhere near City Hall, unless you want to attend the bike rally, which will involve music, food, speeches and the burning of a car in effigy. It all sounds like a good opportunity to pick up women. “Nice calves,” you might say. “My name’s Jim” (this Jim guy really gets around).

Bike to Work Day was created by the League of American Bicyclists in 1956, a group that was formed in 1880 as the League of American Wheelmen. As you may have gathered, the league was formed well before automobiles were available, so it’s safe to assume that the horse and buggy was the enemy at the time. In 1894, the League of American Wheelmen voted to prohibit non-white people from its membership. Does this mean that all cyclists today are racists? Probably.

As a driver and mother of three beautiful children (the first thing is true), I don’t know how to feel about Bike to Work Day. I know that every other day is Drive to Work Day, but I’m still a little intimidated. What if all the cyclists start chanting “Fuck cars!” and smash store windows? Do you know how dangerous a riot on bicycles could be? It would look like a regular riot, but sped up, like those old Benny Hill films. I just want you cyclists to know that I will not hesitate to defend myself with my club.

That being said, I hope that everyone has a fun Bike to Work Day. Let us drivers and cyclists use the day to come together against the real enemy: pedestrians. Stop living in the past, pedestrians! Its 2013, we’ve moved beyond the whole leg-walking thing. Every time I speak to a pedestrian it’s “Walk Score” this and “Walk Score” that and “You’re blocking the crosswalk” yada yada yada. They simply love walking, until they reach a highway and become driver-killing hitchhikers. You’ve seen horror movies. 

Look, I don’t mean to create divisions. I just want everyone who’s not me to get off the road. I don’t think that’s asking too much.

The post You can bike to work on Bike to Work Day appeared first on The Capitol Hill Times.

Mary Fialko
Jewelry Designer

Hillebrity: Mary Fialko
Timothy Rysdyke / The Capitol Hill Times

I start with an idea – sometimes based on an outside inspiration, sometimes a happy accident while I’m making a different type of necklace, and then I start sketching. The sketches usually turn into digital files that I laser cut into scrap acrylic that I pick up from a manufacturer. The laser cutting is one of my favorite parts; I usually do it at the graypants inc. studio down in SoDo with my boyfriend, Alan. Finally, I add beads and chain (the more the merrier!) and craft away until I’m happy with the final product!

View and shop Mary’s jewelry collection at www.etsy.com/shop/TheHeist

The post Hillebrity: Mary Fialko appeared first on The Capitol Hill Times.

by Jamie Lutton
- The Capitol Hill Times -

As I meditate on which nonfiction books I have read to review for this column, I keep coming back to “Hiroshima,” written by John Hersey. 

This book was first published in the July 15, 1946, issue of New Yorker magazine, then expanded a few years later. It is a collection of six interviews from survivors of the bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, covering the interviewees’ recollections of the day of the bombing, as well as the immediate aftermath and the weeks that followed.

Hersey was an American, and an Allied war correspondent for several years in both Europe and the Pacific. He had access to interview the Japanese survivors of this bombing right after the American Occupation of Japan. When Hersey was commissioned by the Editor of the New Yorker to do a series of pieces interviewing survivors of the atomic bomb, he was the first American journalist to do so. 

The group of six people that Hersey chose consisted of foreign nationals living in this city, a German priest, a Christian, and a Methodist—all who had been educated in the United States and spoke “excellent English.” Two doctors, a tailor’s widow left with two kids, and a young female clerk made up the rest of the group. 

No soldiers, sailors or government officials—the survivors in this book are ordinary people. By choosing to include two doctors, Hershey gives the reader the immediacy of seeing the wounded, maimed and dying through their eyes. 

These six residents of Hiroshima were lucky. It is estimated that 135,000 people died in the atomic explosion that day. Some died instantly, other from hideous third-degree burns caused by the blast, or radiation sickness in the days that followed, which caused repeated vomiting, hair loss and eventual death. 

Four square miles in the center of the city were completely destroyed, while many others who survived the initial blast were sick for years with hibakusha, or “bomb sickness,” causing weakness, dizziness and digestive issues, as well as leukemia and other cancers that killed years later. 

In “Hiroshima,” five of the six survivors had bad injuries from the blast. The clerk had one leg crushed and nearly destroyed.

Most survivors were viewed with suspicion by other Japanese citizens, endured prejudice in hiring and marrying, and were seen as “undesirable.” Even their children were treated as undesirables. Only after several decades, when most survivors have died, did the remaining survivors receive better treatment from the Japanese government, and stipends to live on. 

I grew up in the other shadow of the bombing of Japan. 

Most of my childhood was spent in Richland, Washington. The Hanford nuclear facility was close by, and my dad worked as an inorganic chemist there, specializing in running a sodium-cooled plutonium reactor at the Fast Flux Test Facility. The local industry in Richland had been making plutonium-based atomic bombs for the American military through the mid 1940s and the 1950s.

Still, to this day, the local high school that I went to calls their football and basketball teams “The Bombers,” and the insignia on the sports gear shows an atomic cloud. It was a matter of bragging and pride in my hometown that we had built one of the bombs that was dropped on Japan. And the stories that I heard from my dad about the war in the Pacific were part of my perception of this action. 

Dad told me that he had been in the Marines in 1945; a young man of 19, drafted, and part of the invasion of Japan. From previous battles with the Japanese, it was known that they would fight fiercely, street by street, to the bitter end. My dad told me several times that he was dreading invading Japan, and knew he would possibly, even probably, die. He always figured that dropping the two atomic bombs on Japan saved his life. 

Some WWll veterans, like historian Paul Fussell, praised the bombing of Japan. In his essay “Thank God for the Atomic Bomb,” Fussell said that the use of atomic bombs shortened the war by weeks or months, and saved lives on both sides. According to Fussell, 10,000 people—civilians and solders—were dying everyday just in Mainland China that summer. 

After being exposed to many points of view—negative and positive—the lessons that I take from them all is that ordinary people are in grave peril when war breaks out.

In the West, it has been centuries since we lived in a world where during wars our leaders were at the same risk as a man in the street. That era ended in the 1480s in England when the last king, Richard III, died leading an army in the field to defend his crown. For centuries, now, ordinary men and women who fight in armies or as hapless civilians are behind “enemy lines,” while the men who start vicious wars are safe at home, directing the fighting.

But the atomic age changed this. 

I have a gut feeling that this book was read by Stalin’s advisors in the early 1950s, by Mao’s advisors in China, and by other world leaders who acquired atomic bombs. 

When General MacArthur wanted to drop a bomb on North Korea, President Truman, who had authorized the first use of atomic bombs, forbid it. President Truman had gotten the reports back from Japan, and did not want to use such a horrible weapon again. 

Despite the bellicose Cold War that lasted from 1946 to 1989 (and some time thereafter) this little book may have delayed a nuclear World War lll. These leaders must have drawn the rational conclusion that not only would nuclear war be horrific, but there would also be nowhere to hide from an atomic bomb. 

“Hiroshima” was a best seller in the years after the war. Banned for years in Japan while being occupied by the United States, it was printed as a book only two months after being published in the New Yorker, and revised as Hersey went back and interviewed the six survivors again. “Hiroshima” has never gone out of print. 

The world has not yet found its way to world peace, and there are still dreadful threats on all sides, from religious strife to economic and political upheavals. But I do recommend that everyone read “Hiroshima.” The gripping testimony of six eyewitnesses to nuclear warfare, and the pitiful, horrifying aftermath should not be missed. Those 135,000 civilians should not be forgotten or have died in vain. 

Jamie Lutton owns Twice Sold Tales on Harvard Avenue and writes, with her business partner, John Watkins, for their blog,  www.booksellersvsbestsellers.blogspot.com

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