The second-longest serving member of the Washington House of Representatives, Helen Sommers, is retiring at the end of the current session, according to Crosscut. The second-longest-serving member of the Washington Legislature has confirmed she will not run for re-election. “This is my last session. I’m not going to run again.” Asked why, she laughed and said: “Because I’m 75 years old and I’ll be 76 in a couple weeks. That’s why.” She's been in the......

We have gathered some of the top political writers in the country and asked them to discuss the presidential race throughout the year. Today they will discuss the Democratic race between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Seattlest-- How do you feel Senator Clinton's recent attacks on Senator Obama are shaping the upcoming Texas and Ohio primaries? Jeff (San Francisco Chronicle)-- I've got to come clean with my dirty secret-- I'm starting to get cold feet......

Image Courtesy of the dualy talented, Jay Cox of The Sea Navy and Our Seattlest Flickr Pool Long spoken of and rarely acted upon, the renovation and remodeling of The Seattle Center was again on the docket for Monday's City Council meeting. Center officials presented a number of new design ideas for the redevelopment of the Center. Central to these are the demolishing of Memorial Stadium and The Fun Forest. Proposed uses for the......

Knowledge: Seattle University is having a Globalization & Justice conference and you're invited. Today's keynote speaker is the very famous, very sharp...Anil Gupta, ladies and gentlemen! Put your hands together for his talk, "G2G – Grassroots to Global: the Knowledge Rights of Creative Communities." Gupta founded the Honey Bee Network, which is good because if the real ones don't bounce back, we may need to turn to them for pollen collection. 5:30pm // Pigott......

We first saw Toshi Reagon at the House of Blues in New Orleans, where she was opening for Ani DiFranco. Not the greatest venue for acoustic music -- the NOLA HoB has an echo problem. Toshi sat on a stool center stage and just oozed music, though, and we were totally sold. Something about that woman you just gotta see and hear. She's the daughter of Bernice Johnson Reagon--the woman responsible for Sweet Honey in......

photo by Flickr Contributor lachance This weekend the Washington State Senate narrowly passed a bill approving remote cameras to take photos of speeding drivers. A single one of these cameras, so-called "photo cops," can issue as many citations as 25 police officers. Washington State is eager to approve more uses for police cameras, as the installation of four red-light cameras in Seattle have brought in more than a million dollars of revenue in their......

Is February Jane Austen month? PBS has turned every Sunday evening into a Jane celebration (see the KCTS Jane Austen blog for the definition of overkill), but if you want to experience Jane Austen the way she meant to be experienced (if you get our drift) and are too lazy to read a book, then Book-It's Persuasion is all you, baby. Book-It is the place where they actually act out the whole book, which to......

We here at Seattlest really wanted to go out and caucus on Saturday, however, HBO is showing Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. So we made some calls, and the DNC gave us permission to hold a special caucus today. They even threw in a couple delegates that Utah wasn’t going to use: Courtney: I'm caucusing for Obama even though it kills me not to be an active part of trying to put the first......

First of all, let us say that we didn't plan our Super Tuesday get-together as an Obama event. We support Obama; we've even given him $$. But we didn't ask candidate affiliation before inviting some friends, who invited some friends, and it just so happened that all 10 people who came to Seattlest HQ last night were Obama supporters (except for one girl who backs the Phoenix Suns. She was not a winner). One girl......

We see on CL that Richard Hugo House is now accepting applications (deadline April 11) for its writer's residency program. Only two writers will be selected, who will have the chance to teach in the Hugo House's writing classes. The residency starts this September 1, 2008, and lasts one year. The highlight is you get to live, subsidized, in one of the “Hugo Huts”—Seattle’s historic Belltown Cottages. The rent subsidy doesn't include utilities, jackets with......

This Seattlest will be heading to a private party tonight, where we will celebrate among our favorite people the fact that Super Tuesday is FINALLY here. But, if you're looking for somewhere more out-on-the-town to get your drink on and watch the returns trickle in, and pancakes aren't your bag, here's the guide for you. Most of these events start at 5pm, and they're all free. Go America! The Paragon is hosting an indie......

They can't solve the arts space shortage in Seattle fast enough for the Pat Graney Company. For her newest work, House of Mind, Graney wants to bring the audience "into the very nature of how she conceives of memory." To do that, she plans to create a complete world in a 10,000-sq.-ft. warehouse-type space. This turns out to be a two-part process. That's the second, more artistic part. The first, more discovery-oriented part sounds like......

Are you feeling lazy this winter in Seattle? It's been raining and dark (well, not so much this week), and maybe you just haven't felt like doing much or going anywhere. Well, it's time you got off your ass to do something about it; like go to a beer festival. If you've never been out to Port Townsend, this weekend is a great time to make the trip. Water Street Brewing will be hosting......

photo courtesy of caseysail in the Seattlest Flickr pool. We hope this isn't a growing trend. From the Croc to the Sunset Bowl to all of Seattle's bars, it seems as though any place of which beer is an integral component is endangered with stifling regulation or closure or even the wrecking ball. The very latest, of course, is a portion of the old Georgetown brewery just a scant few days after the 104th......

[Via Komo] We've been loosely planning our Alaska adventure for a few weeks now. Loosely, we say, because we haven't actually made any reservations yet. Mostly we've just been cruising the web, gathering information and daydreaming about sitting out on the deck of a ferry as it makes its way through the inside passage of America's 49th state. We have routinely been checking the Alaska Marine Highway System (AMHS) website for the summer schedule and......

There's a nice little piece over at Crosscut this morning about Georgetown's Rainier Cold Storage Stock House (and the demise of), but just like the neighborhood opposition to the building's demolition, it's too little too late. To be fair, the building's owners broke their way through many walls (a much beloved building that defines a neighborhood, an official Seattle Landmark) with the wrecking ball of public safety: it's going to collapse onto Airport Way,......

We caught War Made Easy at the Film Forum last night, but we weren't in the big hurry we thought because its run has been extended through Monday, the 21st. Despite being narrated by Sean Penn, it's fairly lo-fi -- a cool-headed interview with media critic Norman Solomon intercut with film and video footage to illustrate salient points on how gullible/acquiescent the American public is when it comes to run-ups to war and how supine......

This weekend's highlight for Geoff will be a Brewer's Dinner at The Collins Pub held by Hair of the Dog Brewery from Portland. 6 courses paired with 6 beers, plus a few special releases to boot. As a Bears and now semi-Seahawks fan, he'll be hoping that Brett Favre breaks a hip during Saturday's Seahawks game at Lambeau Field. Aside from the glamorous task of replacing the gutters on his house, Jack's weekend pretty much......

You know how when you're at the bus stop and the Local shows up and it's packed and obviously only has room for you if you stand in the aisle and clutch at a post and you think, "I'm better than that. I'm waiting for the Express," the Express--which is scheduled to come only minutes later--never shows, late or ever? Then, thirty-five minutes later you're presented with the same dilemma, only this time the Local......

When Starbucks announced last night that Howard Schultz was returning as CEO, they included his "agenda" in their news release. And like all business agendas (and breakfast pastries), it's puffy and larded with high-calorie, low-nutrition information. Example agenda item: "Re-igniting the emotional attachment with customers and restoring the connections customers have with Starbucks(R) coffee, brand, people and stores." Portfolio's Jack Flack goes through the list point by point and translates the jargon into somewhat-more-normal person......

This fall we are combining our love of the football and our dream of learning to cook. On Sunday morning, following a trip to a local farmer's market/major supermarket chain, we will be preparing a meal from the city of the Seahawks opponent. Then at halftime we will throw our badly burned hands in the air and make hot dogs. The Waffle House restaurant chain dominates the highways below the Mason Dixon Line, and provides......

While trolling through today's Floor Proceedings of the U.S. House of Representatives for our other job (it's an exciting one), we noticed something that will probably get no coverage anywhere else. However, we think it is important to note when Congress singles out one faith as important. We think it's doubly important to note when the vote is taken while Congress fights with the Bush Administration over funding the government for the next year, haggles......

Anti- reissued three Neko Case albums today: Furnace Room Lullaby from 2000, Blacklisted from 2002, and last year's Fox Confessor Brings the Flood. Stock up if you don't have 'em. If you're like Seattlest -- obsessed -- you already own them. So what's new? Bonus disc. This year's Fox Confessor comes with a 5-song disc containing "Set Out Running" and "Furnace Room Lullaby" from Furnace, "Deep Red Bells" and the lovely "I Wish I Was......

According to his blog, NYTimes Op-Ed columnist and Princeton economics professor Paul Krugman is "sick as a dog" today, right before his visit to Town Hall tomorrow night. Krugman, like Bill Greider at Rolling Stone in the Reagan years, has taken up columnistic arms against the flow of disinformation from the White House. Who will tell the people? Krugman, that's who. (Actually Greider will too.) Sick or not, Krugman will be at Town Hall to......

Seattle Shakespeare Company's Pericles is awash in contradiction. It's the rarely performed Shakespeare play that Shakespeare may not have written. It's a comedy about a singularly painful life. It's fueled by strong performances -- Reginald André Jackson's Pericles is every minute compelling -- but marred by a directorial misstep that plagues the whole production. We don't recommend it as anyone's first Shakespeare play, but if you have never seen Pericles before, this production is a......

CHS had the news last night, and then Metblogs posted before us, too, so to make up for our tardiness, we visited the Office Nomads site, chatted with cofounder Jacob, and took pictures. They just signed a 3-year lease the beginning of this month, and are in full prep-mode before their opening on November 1. (Open House 6pm-9pm.) The new Office Nomads offices are located in the old Heath Printers building on Boylston, the block......

Woody Guthrie was, and in many ways still is, one of the most important figures in the history of American music. He's responsible for hundreds of songs, some of which are still being found and put to music. His contributions to the American songbook include, of course, "This Land is Your Land," but also "Pretty Boy Floyd," "Pastures of Plenty," and other topical tunes by which topical songwriters continue to measure their worth. He also......

The Stranger has endorsed a No vote on the RTID Proposition 1 (along with the Seattle Times, but thankfully with more logic and, er, research). Their reasoning? "Rather than letting compromised politicians tell us what's possible, the people should tell the leaders what's needed: more light rail without massive roads expansion." So what is the proper course of action for Congress regarding the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA, bill? The bill would ban employment discrimination......

It's still raining, but that's not stopping us this weekend. As we get ready to head out the door, the Seattlest staff is once again sharing our weekend plans in the hopes that we'll see you along the way. Kim will be burning up the dance floor tonight for Gay Salsa Night at Century Ballroom after eating piles of sushi at Maneki. If she decides it’s worth breaking the bank, she might attend some silly......

We love the Frontier Frittata Bagel Sandwich at Frontier Café. We proved it here. Its tantalizing taste that embraces all things dairy and flour keeps us moving in the morning. With this in mind on our way to work, we were more than animated to receive a free espresso coupon from the kind employees at Frontier Café as we walked into our building on 3rd and Cherry, (we do NOT condone soliciting buildings with advertisements......