Education

Hablemos Español: Spanish classes starting up at El Centro

It’s time for a new quarter of Spanish classes at El Centro de la Raza, for adults at the beginner to intermediate levels. Winter quarter classes start on Tuesday, January 17, and run on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 6:00 p.m., through March 22.

Classes are taught by native Spanish speakers in an interactive, community-based setting. The class fee is $300, and fees are used to help support El Centro’s human service and community-building programs. For more information, please call (206) 957-4605 or email execasst@elcentrodelaraza.org.

Clean and Green, Getting Around

Take a guided bicycle tour of Beacon Hill Greenway Tuesday

Photo by kashgroves in the Beacon Hill Blog photo pool on Flickr.
Those planning to attend Tuesday’s Neighborhood Greenways meeting at the Beacon Hill Library via bicycle might be interested in a guided tour of Beacon Hill’s 18th Avenue South Greenway before the meeting starts. Kashina Groves from Beacon BIKES will be the tour guide.

The tour leaves from the junction of the Jose Rizal bridge and the Mountains-To-Sound trail at 5:30 p.m. and will arrive at the library just before the 6 p.m. meeting.

Lost and Found

Is this your dog?

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This friendly, fixed pit is waiting at the Seattle Animal Shelter for his family to find him. Photo submitted by Twitter user @gabekerbrat.

(Editor’s note, 1/13: We have been told that the dog is back with his family now.)

Are you missing a pit bull? A neighbor reported to us via Twitter:

“Found this beautiful fixed male pit trying to get into our yard to play. South Beacon Hill. We had to take him to the Seattle Animal Shelter. They will hold him and can be contacted about him. He was super sweet.”

Life on the Hill

Owl on the prowl?

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Have you seen one of these around Beacon Hill lately? Photo by mybulldog via Creative Commons/Flickr.
Neighbor Paul Zilly writes:

My brother and I were taking our morning run a couple of weeks ago, and my hat was snatched off of the top of my head mid-stride by what I believe to be a great horned owl! The incident took place at 6:30 AM on Cheasty Blvd .S. at the southeast end of the golf course. Neither of us saw the perpetrator at the time—we just heard a faint swooping sound behind us. I felt something glance off of the side of my head, and my hat was gone. We initially thought it was a crow since we had seen a family of crows at that same spot a couple of days before. But yesterday, we saw the marauder close up. It was huge—a beautiful owl, two-feet tall. It had just flown into a tree directly behind us, perhaps ready to strike again? I’m wondering if anyone else in the neighborhood has had a similarly eerie and quite wonderful experience.

Clean and Green, Getting Around

Neighborhood greenway organizers meeting on Beacon Hill next Tuesday

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This sign was placed on the 17th Avenue South greenway on North Beacon Hill. Photo by Wendi.

A Seattle city-wide neighborhood greenway organizers event will be held on Beacon Hill at the Beacon Hill Library next Tuesday, January 10, from 6-7:45 p.m. Beacon Hill currently has a new greenway in progress along 17th/18th Avenues South, between Jefferson Park and the Mountains-to-Sound Trail. For more information on what neighborhood greenways are all about, see this video about Portland’s greenways project.

Here’s the announcement for next Tuesday’s meeting:

Seattle’s Neighborhood Greenways movement is attracting many newcomers to bike advocacy who are eager to transform Seattle into a city where everyone can bike and walk safely. Come join us to learn about the history of bike advocacy in Seattle, and how our growing Neighborhood Greenways movement can complement the hard work that’s already been done to make Seattle one of the nation’s most respected cities for bicycling and walking.

We are privileged to welcome Blake Trask as our featured speaker for this meetup. Blake is the chair of the Seattle Bike Advisory Board (SBAB) and is the Statewide Policy Director of the Bicycle Alliance of Washington (BAW). He’ll be providing us with the context for Seattle’s current (2007) Bicycle Master Plan: who was involved in it? What was the vision? What were the biggest challenges? And how can Neighborhood Greenways be incorporated into the 2012 update to the Bicycle Master Plan?

Blake brings a wealth of knowledge and many years of experience in improving bike safety “from the inside”. By learning from Blake where we’ve already been as an advocacy movement, we will be even better equipped as Neighborhood Greenways organizers to “work within the system” to make bicycling and walking safe and attractive for all Seattle.

We will also be discussing the upcoming neighborhood project fund grants (deadline Feb 1). This is a great and easy way to get some Greenways built in your neighborhood NEXT YEAR!

Please attend this meeting if you can.

Arts

Benders opens Saturday at NEPO House

This Saturday from 6-9 p.m. another Little Treats art show opens at NEPO House (1723 S. Lander St.). The show, Benders, is an exhibition curated by Zack and Gala Bent, featuring the work of local and national artists Calvin Ross Carl, Lee Piechocki, Maria Gamboa, Molly Epstein, and Nathaniel Russell.

According to the folks at NEPO, the show will bring together “works that toy with the perception of space or the limits of matter,” along with Bent household artifacts, homemade pretzels, and an essay by Gala Bent.

Before the opening on Saturday, guests are invited to join Zack Bent at 4 p.m. in “an exercise of chemistry and bending, making handmade lye dipped pretzels.”

Benders will run from January 7-21.

Meetings

NBHC starts 2012 with station block discussion

The North Beacon Hill Council is wasting no time getting started with 2012 business. The council’s first meeting of the year is Tuesday, January 3 at 7 p.m., at the Beacon Hill Library, and tentatively includes a presentation by the designer/architect of the proposed development on the Beacon Hill Station block.

Here’s the scheduled agenda:

  • 7:00 Welcomes and introductions
  • 7:05 (tentatively scheduled) The designer/architect of the proposed four-story commercial/residential structure at 2721 17th Avenue South, the southeast corner of the Beacon Hill Station block, will be present to discuss the project. (See previous posts about this project here and here.)
  • 7:35 Q & A
  • 7:50 Community concerns, reports from committees, announcements
  • 8:15 Executive board meeting as needed
Getting Around

Light rail to operate later hours on New Year’s Eve

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Waiting for the train in Beacon Hill Station. Photo by Wendi.
If you are planning to take Link light rail to your New Year’s Eve celebrations, you’re in luck. Link will have slightly extended hours on Saturday night, December 31, to make it easier for you to ride home in the wee hours of 2012.

There will be two additional southbound trips from Westlake Station, at 12:58 a.m. and 1:13 a.m. The last northbound trip isn’t so late—it leaves Sea-Tac Station at 12:20 a.m.

On Sunday, New Year’s Day, and also on Monday, January 2, Link will run on a Sunday schedule, which means that the first northbound train won’t reach Beacon Hill Station until 6:43 a.m., and trains will run only every 10 minutes during most of the day. Service will return to normal on Tuesday, January 3.