In the Media
Lizanne Schader founded The Neighborhood Playhouse about 10 years ago in, she says, "a sort of backwards way - with the outreach first, teaching workshops in the schools through the Allied Arts Education Project, and then added character-trait assemblies, after-school drama clubs, school musicals, residencies and summer drama camps."
The organization now has nonprofit status and continues to do all of those programs.
Bare-knuckled brawlers sometimes have to fight to be seen. College students chasing a person across campus frequently don’t notice two guys beating up a lone victim in plain sight, a new set of experiments finds.
That result has real-world implications, say psychologist Christopher Chabris of Union College in Schenectady, N.Y., and his colleagues. Consider a Boston police officer who was sentenced to prison in 1998 because jurors didn’t believe his claim that, while running after a murder suspect, he passed but didn’t see fellow officers pummeling a misidentified suspect.
A dejected Gov. Chris Gregoire gave final approval Wednesday to a new state spending plan, bemoaning in particular the sweeping cuts it makes to one of her prized issues: education.
Gregoire said the spending reductions — totaling $4.5 billion over the next two years — were necessary at a time of economic turmoil. But she was not pleased with the results of the last two-year spending plan she will sign before departing office in 2012.
“I undo how many years of my career? I’m going to undo how many of the things I’ve worked for?” Gregoire said. “I have a very heavy heart today.”
With what she called a heavy heart, Gov. Chris Gregoire signed a new budget Wednesday that will slash state spending in public schools, colleges, health care and human services in the next two years.
"We cut and we cut deeply," she said. "We did not resort to gimmicks or short-term fixes or to new taxes. That in and of itself is historical for the times."
If you set out to write a formula for societal failure, you'd be hard-pressed to do better than this:
Let state support for public colleges and universities erode over more than a decade and then, when the economy tanks, cut university funding by another 50 percent. With no other options left to maintain quality, hike tuition to the point that middle-class families are priced out of a public university education.
The beginning of the end of Ethan Remmel's life began just over a year ago with an ache in his abdomen.
He didn't think much of it at the time. After all, he was fit, he ate well and he was only 40 years old. But the pain worsened, so he went to a doctor. Later, after a colonoscopy, he got the word.
While the local economy remains troubled, it appears becoming a business owner is a growing trend in Whatcom County.
In the first nearly six months of 2011, I've spotted or written about 67 brick-and-mortar businesses that have opened or are getting ready to open. That's well ahead of 2010's pace, when I spotted 77 business openings for the entire year.
There was an infant dressed like Justin Timberlake, front and center.
He wore checkered dress pants, a matching vest, a white dress shirt and black Italian leather shoes in the arms of his mother.
As his mom, Bayview School graduate Courtney Cox, was presented by her advocate, the little star decided it was his time to shine. He pulled her cap off by the tassel. Cox tried to put it on him.
That wasn't the point - he just wanted some attention, and the shiny numbers dangling from her cap were too tempting to resist.
There was also plenty of tugging on heartstrings Wednesday, as Bayview School celebrated its Class of 2011 at the Whidbey Institute.
Medical treatment for people at the end of life will be the topic of the next Bellingham City Club meeting, Wednesday, June 22.
When Major League Baseball's season began, so did Darren O'Donnell's.
O'Donnell was two years out of Western Washington University, where he majored in economics and accounting. He worked at a Bellingham food co-op, where he had been promoted to meat manager.