Texas Xxxxxxx

• an op-ed about asking students what THEY want in a high school .  The author, Susan Engel, followed a group of 8 high school students as they "designed and ran their own school within a school."  Interesting reading.  Here's a connecting lesson plan.  A couple of thoughtful parts:

OLYMPIA – Washington is poised to become the first state to ban a toxic asphalt sealant made from industrial waste because its ingredients are turning up in ordinary house dust as well as in streams, lakes and other waterways at levels that concern government researchers.

In some places these chemicals have been measured in people’s driveways at levels that would require a toxic-waste cleanup if the same concentrations were detected at a Superfund site, as InvestigateWest reported last year.

The legislation (HB 1721) bans driveway and asphalt sealants derived from a creosote-like substance known as coal tar that is a waste product of steelmaking. The bill has cleared the House and is scheduled for a hearing on Tuesday, March 22, in the Senate Environment, Water and Energy Committee.

The coal tar sealants already have been banned in Washington, D.C; in Austin, Texas; in Madison and surrounding Dane County, Wisc.; and in a succession of towns in the Midwest. U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, is seeking...

Jackson sharpshooter Brett Kingma will compete at the 2011 National High School Slam Dunk & 3-Point Championships. Here are the details:

CHICAGO - Ten of the 16 roster spots have been filled for the 2011 National High School Slam Dunk & 3-Point Championships, as selected by MaxPreps.com, the online high school sports leader and a CBSSports.com site. Sheldon McClellan and DeAndre Daniels highlight the all-star roster of seniors, who will compete at 7 p.m. CST April 1 at the Berry Center in Houston,

Still from Queen of the Sun

It was a full house at the Northwest Film Forum last night, for a showing of Queen of the Sun, which made me hopeful for director Taggart Siegel.

Yesterday he'd emailed me that, "The Film Forum mentioned last night if the audience is big enough on Monday night and possibly Tuesday night they will extend it for longer."

The Film Forum just announced the bee documentary is being held over. The original run ends March 10, but they've booked an extra showing on Sunday,

Seattle University's learning assessment program has just undergone an enormous renovation.
...

Josh says, re: Rahm Emanuel,

“Not a Rahm fan. But first Jewish mayor of Chicago is cool karma re: that whole former U.S. Sen. Abe Ribicoff thing. Google Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley and ‘Fuck you, you Jew son of a bitch’ and see what you get. Congrats Rahm.”

(Melissa at Shakespeare’s Sister—who lives outside Chicago—is less than thrilled at the prospect of Mayor Emanuel: “Chicagoans don’t care as long as the trains run on time. While Emanuel’s mayorship was being preordained and preemptively celebrated,

Come in from the cold tonight and join Mayor Mike McGinn in giving a warm welcome to Vincent Kitch, whom the mayor recently named to lead the Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs.

The meet-n-greet is from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at City Hall. Enter on 5

Vincent has worked in the arts for nearly 20 years, most recently as the Cultural Arts Program Manager for the City of Austin, Texas. Previously, he was the Education and Capital Improvement Programs Coordinator for the Michigan Council of Arts and Cultural Affairs; the founding director of the Ysleta High School Performing Arts Magnet Program in El Paso, Texas; and the Arts Program Coordinator for the City of El Paso.

Vincent has served as a volunteer mentor for the Kennedy Center’s Arts in Crisis Program, as an executive committee member of the Americans for the Arts United States Urban Arts Federation, and on numerous...

A new Seattle Parks Foundation report concludes that the city’s parks can’t be maintained at its current level without new funding sources.

“In summary,” the report says, the parks department

now faces a $25 million shortfall in the annual cost of operating and maintaining the existing parks system. In addition, the Department has a backlog of major maintenance projects, such as roof replacements, seismic upgrades and forest restoration, that already exceeds $200 million. The Department has increased

Two Seattle U students, sophomore Emma and nbsp;Jornlin and nbsp;and senior and nbsp;Jourdan and nbsp;McGinn and nbsp;have been nominated for a Students in Service award. and nbsp;
...

The Seattle Police Department just held a press conference this morning in regards to the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office decision not to charge Officer Ian Birk in the shooting death of John T. Williams.

Handouts that the press received include the following:

Office of Professional Accountability Investigation Timeline

Final Report and Recommendation, Firearms Review Board

Austin Police Department Peer Review

San Diego Police Department Peer Review

For your convenience, these reports have been posted electronically on the Seattle Police Department Web site.

We’re pleased to announce Mayor Mike McGinn has named his pick for the new director of our office. We look forward to welcoming Vincent Kitch, who hails from Austin, where he most recently worked as the cultural arts program manager. Read the mayor’s press release here. As the Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs celebrates its 40

Pacific Northwest Ballet corps de ballet dancer Kylee Kitchens as Fairy Godmother and soloist Rachel Foster as Cinderella with PNB School students and Company dancers in Kent Stowell’s "Cinderella" (Photo Angela Sterling)

This is a ballet that draws adorable little moppets like nothing else. They may fade a little at an evening performance; I saw a few fathers heading out at second intermission with daughters deep in slumber over their shoulders. That's all right: They've seen the stepsisters

COMMENTARY

You might give the FBI the benefit of the doubt that it had some incriminating evidence when it raided the homes of eight antiwar activists in Minneapolis and Chicago September 24th except for the fact that its past record in such cases is stinko. The F.B.I. broke down Mick Kelly's door around 7 a.m., and it wasn't to get an early cup of coffee from a man employed as a food service worker at the University of Minnesota.

The agents were probing to see if the occupants of any of the homes they burst into were supporting “terror organizations.” Uncle Sam here might be a trifle jealous of private citizens' backing violent entities when it has always assumed it had a superpower's exclusive franchise to fund violence.

The Midwest raids are correctly seen as “a U.S. government attempt to silence those who support resistance to oppression and violence in the Middle East and Latin America,” by the International Action Center of New York, an anti-militarist group. Kelly, after all, was a key...

At a meeting of the city council’s energy committee this afternoon, representatives of Seattle City Light told council members they would need to increase electric rates 4.2 percent a year starting in 2012 to maintain its current “financial baseline.” The rate increases would be on top of a 4.3 percent increase this year, one of the highest rate increases in recent history; last year, the city council approved increasing rates next year’s increase by 3.2 percent.

Major reasons for the likely rate

A former Enron accountant who blew the whistle on fraud at the energy giant says she doesn't trust the Securities and Exchange Commission to handle tips from company insiders, even though the agency plans to offer a generous new bounty for information about fraud.

“I don’t think the SEC’s culture is one that will make this effective one iota,” said Sherron Watkins, a one-time vice president at Enron, referring to expanded protections for whistleblowers included in the Dodd-Frank financial reform law.

If she was in the same situation today as 10 years ago, when Watkins approached government authorities about accounting fraud at Enron, she would probably instead take her information to an organization like WikiLeaks, Watkins said.

In August 2001, Watkins warned then-Enron chief executive Ken Lay that Enron “might implode in a wave of accounting scandals.” After she was ignored, she told her story to government investigators. But by then it was too late and Enron had begun collapsing under the weight...

As Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords begins rehabilitative therapy in Houston after being shot in the head in Tucson earlier this month, she was transferred today [1] to TIRR Memorial Hermann, a premier rehabilitation hospital renowned for its treatment of traumatic brain injuries [2] .

On its website, the hospital calls itself [3] “one of very few hospitals in the country designated as a model system for traumatic brain injury.” Among the techniques it relies on is cognitive rehabilitation [4] therapy, a tailored type of medical treatment designed to retrain the brain to do basic tasks.

Ron Sims

Don't freak out, but I have found someone who approves of both Ron Sims and Brightwater. Mark Hertsgaard has an article in Mother Jones, "Why Seattle Will Stay Dry When Your City Floods," and the hero of the piece is former King County Executive Ron Sims (currently HUD's Deputy Secretary). 

I also approve of Ron Sims, I should say. I was among the tens of people who voted Sims for senator ('94) and governor ('04) because almost uniquely among politicians, he consistently takes the

For some teams in both the Class 4A and 3A WesCo leagues, district playoff berths are close. Yes, a few already have earned their spots.

On the boys side:

- 4A North teams Arlington and Monroe are in (four total).

- 4A South squads Jackson and Kamiak have earned positions (four total).

- 3A Glacier Peak and Meadowdale have two of the six spots sewn up.

For the girls:

- No. 4 Edmonds-Woodway and Jackson are in. Despite 2-9 league records Cascade and Kamiak are all but in, as well.

- 4A North is up for grabs,

Chicago blogger Claire Zulkey needs help figuring out what the hell is going on with this McDonald's bus ad. I looked at it for about 20 minutes, and I still have no idea what the hell is going on.

So you can get any size beverage for $1. Got that part, although only after reading the small text on the right. But what's with "Parfait, McChicken, Salad"? Are those $1 too? Why is salad the biggest one? WHAT IS GOING ON?!?!

Help, Slog.

[ Comment on this story ]

[ Subscribe

Do bedbugs really bite if you don't tuck yourself in at night?
...

According to US Census data, the South is the most popular region in the country for same-sex couples to raise children, the New York Times reports. Jacksonville, Florida, for example, is home to one of the biggest populations of gay parents in the nation—a finding the Times calls “surprising.”

[C]hild rearing among same-sex couples is more common in the South than in any other region of the country, according to Gary Gates, a demographer at the University of California, Los Angeles. Gay couples

Image via The Pioneer Woman Cooks.

On Sunday, Jan. 30, I’ll be pitching in as a cook for the Seattle edition of Soup and Bread, the Chicago-based soup party started by Seattle native Martha Bayne. It’s at 5:30 pm at the Funhouse, 206 5th Avenue N.

What is Soup and Bread? According to Martha’s web site,

Soup & Bread is a free weekly soup dinner at the Hideout, a bar and music venue in Chicago.

Each week we round up a handful of Hideout staff and regulars, plus local musicians, writers, artists, and

Top-ranked Lake Stevens built a big lead early, then held on to beat No. 3 Moses Lake, 36-34, in a showdown between the state's top 4A wrestling programs Friday night at Cavelero Mid High School in Lake Stevens.

The Vikings swept the first six matches -- including a pin by Jessie Peterson at 103 and a forfeit at 112 -- to open up a 27-0 lead, but Moses Lake used three straight first-round pins to power back into the match.

Lake Stevens' Jack Reeves answered with a 40-second pin at 160 and Andrew King