Monthly Archives: November 2012

Local Business, Local Events

Beacon Hill business people to meet for lunch tomorrow

Beacon Hill business members and home-based businesses are invited to the first Beacon Hill Merchants Association Networking Luncheon, tomorrow (Tuesday), November 20, from 11 a.m. until 1 p.m. at the Tippe and Drague, 3315 Beacon Ave. S. This is the first of a planned monthly event, scheduled for the third Tuesday of each month.

Cost is $15 for the lunch. RSVPs are requested since space is limited; contact Sandra Burr at 206-255-6500 or sandra@slimdowntoneup.com. Carpooling is suggested since available parking is limited to on-street parking.

Here’s how the Merchants Association describes the event:

Join us in making local business connections, building relationships that
lead to new friendships, endless referrals, and powerful advocates!
Meet, Mingle and Connect with like-minded Entrepreneurs in a Fun and
Festive Environment

  • Enjoy a fabulous lunch, network, meet new friends, and nurture new business relationships
  • Learn how to promote, showcase, and network your business
  • Hear a variety of 60-second commercials about each other’s businesses and services
  • Door Prizes!
  • Free 2 hour on-street parking

What Do You Need To Bring?

Your smile, 25+ business cards, and be prepared to give a 60-second commercial about your business.

Let’s powerfully step into the third quarter of this year meeting some new friends, making some excellent connections, and expanding our businesses now and into 2013.

Crime

Volunteers search near Jefferson Park for signs of missing woman

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Kelsey Collins.
by Kiersten Throndsen, KOMO Communities (Beacon Hill Blog news partners)

More than three dozen volunteers with King County Search and Rescue spent Sunday scouring wooded areas near Jefferson Park Golf Course, searching for evidence of Kelsey Collins who went missing from her home three years ago.

“We have strong reason to believe she was murdered. We have seen or heard nothing since early May 2009,” said Jim Pugel, assistant chief of police with the Seattle Police Department.

Pugel would not go into to detail but said they have obtained credible information leading them to believe Collins may be buried somewhere along the greenbelt or wooded areas near the golf course.

According to Pugel, Collins was forced into prostitution by a violent pimp at an early age. She was 18-years-old at the time she went missing.

“This was a particularly tragic case. As we know young girls do not voluntarily do that, they are kept in prostitution by coercion and violence, so this one is very important to us,” he said.

The hope behind Sunday’s search was to find any evidence indicating Collins may have been buried or kept in the area at some point but Pugel admits, search crews were challenged by the environment and the conditions.

“As you can see it’s very wet out here. There are years and years of environmental debris, leaves, steep terrain in certain areas, and human garbage as well.”

Pugel says there are no particular suspects at this time but detectives do have strong leads and suspicions about who may have been involved with Collins’ disappearance and possibly her death.

Clean and Green, News, Volunteering and Giving

Local volunteer recognized with Denny Award

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Seattle Parks and Recreation announced today the winners of the 2012 Denny Awards for Outstanding Volunteer Stewardship. Among the winners: Beacon Hill’s own Craig
Thompson, who received the Community Stewardship Award for his work at Dr. Jose Rizal Park and the nearby area.

Here’s how Parks described him:

“Since 2001, Craig Thompson has been on a mission to reclaim the overgrown, crime ridden hillside at the north end of the East Duwamish Greenbelt and to activate Dr. Jose Rizal Park.

“He has spent hundreds of hours clearing brush himself and organizing work parties for thousands of volunteers. After a decade of volunteer leadership and personal stewardship, Craig’s hard work is paying off. With the completion of the Mountains to Sound Greenway trail through the greenbelt and park, activity has increased tenfold. Craig now spearheads activation. He continues to solicit and lead volunteer groups. He has provided mentorship and support to the new Off Leash Dog Area Steward. He inspired and continues to lead an Orchard Steward group, which has renovated and maintains an orchard in the park. And, he is now a Green Seattle Partnership Forest Steward.”

Additionally, Russell Odell was nominated for an award. He is a youth mock trial instructor at Jefferson Community Center.

The Denny Awards are named for Seattle pioneers David T. and Louisa Denny, who donated land for Seattle’s first park, Denny Park, in 1884.

Craig Thompson at a community meeting about PacMed development in August 2011.
Arts, Local Events

Tonight: Garden House Blues with Bonnie McCoy and Mary Flower

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Tonight, another Garden House Blues night comes to the Garden House (2336 15th Avenue S.), featuring Bonnie McCoy and Mary Flower.

Bonnie McCoy, the niece of Memphis Minnie, is making her West Coast debut. Having grown up with the blues, she took time to raise a family, but now she is reaching for her dream of continuing the family blues tradition. Hear a clip of Bonnie McCoy here.

Guitarist and lap slide player Mary Flower specializes in “the intricate, harmonically subtle Piedmont style, with its good-timey, ragtime feel.” She was nominated for both “Best Acoustic Artist” and “Best Acoustic Album” in the 2012 Blues Music Awards in Memphis. See a clip of Mary Flower here.

All ages are welcome. The music starts at 8 p.m., with doors opening at 7 p.m. so you can come early and order dinners under $10 delivered to your table from Inay’s Kitchen and Travelers Thali House. Online ticket sales from Brown Paper Tickets are closed, but you can still buy tickets at the door with cash or check.

Crime

19-year-old gang member arrested for September drive-by shooting

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A 19-year-old member of the Insane Boyz gang has been arrested for the drive-by wounding of a member of rival gang Tiny Raskal Gangsters on September 5, according to Seattle Police.

Police say that the two gangs have been violently battling for months. In the September 5 shooting, a 17-year-old youth was shot in the thigh while walking in the 5200 block of 29th Avenue South, a couple of blocks north of Dearborn Park.

The victim refused to co-operate with detectives, but police say they were able to find some evidence at the scene. Earlier this month, King County Prosecutors filed gun charges against the 19-year-old man, and then SPD gang detectives arrested him on a warrant. He then confessed to the shooting, according to police.

The accused shooter is being held on charges of assault, drive-by shooting, and unlawful possession of a firearm.

Health and Safety, Meetings, News

Airplane noise meeting veers off the path

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David Suomi of the FAA spoke with the audience. Photo by Wendi Dunlap.

About 100 people from Beacon Hill and other neighborhoods came to Cleveland High School on Tuesday night for a meeting hosted by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Port of Seattle, but the meeting did not go as planned.

The Port and FAA intended the meeting to “provide information on existing flight procedures into and out of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and Boeing Field,” and started the evening with an introductory “Aviation 101” slide presentation. The crowd had other ideas.

Previously, the FAA had been criticized by some for the strictness of their meetings in Ballard and Federal Way, when residents were not given an opportunity to ask questions. This time, it was clear that they intended to let people ask questions, and ask they did.

During the presentation, people in the audience frequently broke in with shouted questions to ask about the topic that most were there for: airplane noise over Beacon Hill and other communities under the Sea-Tac flight path. There was no printed agenda available, so the neighbors in attendance were restless, and in no mood to wait through presentations to get a turn to speak.

The basic issue, said neighbor Tina Ray of the Quieter Skies Task Force with audible agreement from the crowd, is that flights overhead are “every 45 seconds to two minutes, and they are darn low. And it’s been going on for a year.”

The Port and FAA representatives would not commit to installation of more noise monitors on Beacon Hill, but promised to take residents’ concerns seriously. Some neighbors were skeptical.

Ray expressed the frustration many were feeling: “We’re not making it up; we haven’t dreamed this… This is what’s going on right now in Southeast Seattle. This is what the discussion needs to be.”

The crowd listening in the Cleveland High School auditorium. Photo by Wendi Dunlap.
Uncategorized

Poet Raúl Sánchez reads tonight at El Centro

Last night was the Beacon Bards poetry event, but it’s not the only poetic activity on the Hill this week. Tonight, November 15 at 6 p.m., the poetry moves to El Centro de la Raza, where Mexican-American poet Raúl Sánchez will read from his debut chapbook, All Our Brown-Skinned Angels. There will also be a book signing after the poetry reading.

The event is free, but if you are interested in attending, please RSVP to execasst@elcentrodelaraza.org or at 206-957-4605.

Here are some lines from a poem in All Our Brown-Skinned Angels, “My Father Was a Bracero”:

He didn’t want me to live
by my strong back, strong arms
but by my words

Arts, Local Events

Local poets reading at The Station Wednesday night

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Kelli Russell Agodon
The Beacon Bards poetry series returns to The Station coffee house this Wednesday, November 14 at 7 p.m. with a reading by two local women poets, Kelli Russell Agodon and Annette Spaulding-Convy.

Agodon is the author of Letters From the Emily Dickinson Room, winner of the ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Prize in Poetry, and a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. Her other credits include Small Knots, Geography, and co-editing Fire On Her Tongue: an eBook Anthology of Contemporary Women’s Poetry. Kelli is a co-editor of the Seattle literary journal Crab Creek Review, and the co-founder of Two Sylvias Press.

Annette Spaulding-Convy.
Annette Spaulding-Convy‘s collection In Broken Latin is a finalist for the Miller Williams Poetry Prize. She previously wrote the chapbook In The Convent We Become Clouds, which won the 2006 Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Award and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Along with Kelli Russell Agodon she is a co-editor of Crab Creek Review, co-founder and co-editor of Two Sylvias Press, and co-editor of the Fire On Her Tongue anthology.

Health and Safety, Meetings

FAA/Port to meet with community tonight

Photo by Dr. Wendy Longo via Creative Commons/Flickr.

Reposting this as a reminder: the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Port of Seattle meeting originally scheduled for October 23 has been rescheduled for tonight, November 13, from 6:30 – 8:30 p.m. at Cleveland High School, 5511 15th Ave. S. on Beacon Hill.

The FAA, Port, and Boeing Field representatives are holding the meeting, they say, to “provide information on existing flight procedures into and out of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and Boeing Field.”

Members of the Quieter Skies Task Force, a group of Beacon Hill and other Southeast Seattle neighbors, plan to be at the meeting in force, bringing concerns about recent and planned future airplane noise over our neighborhoods, and a petition signed by more than 300 neighbors. See our earlier post about the original October 23 meeting.

Uncategorized

Have you seen this bike?

Neighbor Claudia writes,

This bike was stolen out of our yard on Friday night 11/9/12. My housemate is very distraught and I was hoping that the good good people of Beacon Hill could keep an eye out for it?

Here are the details on it.
The paniers were not on it.
Steel frame, carbon fork.
good quality accessories and parts.
Old Man Mountain rack, rigged up nice.
Rocky Mountain frame, No stickers.
Little Canadian flag sticker on frame.

Please contact claudia.loves.food@gmail.com if you can help.