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Two More Christmas Photos!
Couch: Brandon, Katie, Cathy, Randy
Front: Danny, Susie, Andy, Kenny
We got our Christmas tree
Kenny, Danny, and Susie helped us Cathy and I chose a pretty spruce from the Lions Club lot. It almost touches the ceiling. Katie, Brandon, Andy, and Kathy (Andy’s girlfriend) are joining us to add the final decorations!
BNSF Corridor update
A vote by the BNSF Corridor Advisory Committee has voted to leave train tracks in all sections of the Eastside Rail corridor, with the exception of the Renton to Bellevue section that is needed by the dinner train!
Here is an excerpt from Dean Radford’s story in Sunday’s King County Journal….
The committee took votes on the fate of four segments of the corridor. The (Renton) council member, Marcie Palmer, voted no on the committee’s recommendation for the segment from Bellevue to Renton because to her it precluded using the corridor for trains in the next 5 to 10 years.
She’s still hoping to keep the Spirit of Washington Dinner Train in Renton, but there’s no chance of that happening if the track is gone. Eric Temple, the train’s owner, is already talking to Woodinville about moving the jumping off point there.
But keeping the rail possibility open in a shorter time frame “would leave the door open a little more,” Palmer said.
Temple’s fate likely is sealed anyway because BNSF Railway Co. is going to abandon a section of the line at the Wilburton Tunnel in Bellevue. That will allow the state transportation department to save millions of dollars in construction costs in the Interstate 405 widening project because it wouldn’t have to accommodate trains through the project.
The Renton City Council voted to protest the abandonment but has not formally done so. Burlington Northern is addressing some of its concerns about ensuring that The Boeing Co. will continue to get its 737 fuselages delivered to its Renton plant by rail without disruption, according to council president Randy Corman.
This has been disappointing for Renton, as we would have liked to keep our beloved dinner train.
Remembering last summer…
Renton Fire Departement cools things off at a neighborhood picnic
Yet another gorgeous sunset at Coulon Park
Photos courtesy of Gary Palmer
Former Renton Longacres Jockey becomes winningest ever!
Jockey Russel Baze, who raced many years at Longacres here in Renton, has just become horse racing’s winningest jockey ever!
He still has strong ties to our city, as his brother Dr. Randy Baze is a very likable and successful chiropractor in our city. Dr. Baze is just about to open an all-new office next to the East Valley 13 movie theater. Dr. Baze began his study of chiropracty after first seeing how effective it was on race horses.
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Saturday, December 2, 2006 – Page updated at 12:00 AM
Baze breaks jockey record
Jockey Russell Baze, far right, rides Butterfly Belle in the fourth race at Bay Meadows in San Mateo, Calif., Friday, Dec. 1, 2006. Baze finished first. It was Baze’s 9,531st victory to eclipse Laffit Pincay Jr.’s career record to become thoroughbred racing’s winningest jockey.
Russell Baze
SAN MATEO, Calif. .. Russell Baze fell off a horse when he was a teenager, and his father thought he didn’t have a future riding the animals.
Good thing Baze didn’t listen to dad.
Baze, who grew up in Granger, Wash., and began his career in the state, became Thoroughbred racing’s winningest jockey Friday when he broke Laffit Pincay Jr.’s record with a victory aboard Butterfly Belle at Bay Meadows, with his father, Joe, looking on.
Win No. 9,531 came in the fourth race, when the 48-year-old Baze found a hole along the rail and drove through it. He whipped the filly right-handed down the stretch to win on the Longden turf course, named for Johnny Longden, who once held the record Baze broke.
“When I got started galloping horses, it was so thrilling and challenging,” said Baze, who had ridden three Longacres Mile winners and is in the Washington and national racing Halls of Fame. “From the start, I knew this is what I wanted to do. I was just praying I wouldn’t outgrow the profession.”
He didn’t.
Baze started riding in Yakima and raced for five seasons at Longacres in Renton.
Victory No. 1 came at Yakima Meadows on Oct. 28, 1974. The 16-year-old apprentice came from just off the pace aboard Oregon Warrior to win a 6-furlong race for $1,250 claimers. The purse was $700. The winner was trained by his father.
His ties to the Northwest go back to the day he was born .. Aug. 7, 1958 in Vancouver, B.C. Baze was born in Canada because his dad was riding at Exhibition Park (now Hastings Park). Joe Baze was an outstanding jockey during his riding career, winning many races at Longacres and in the Bay Area.
After winning two races from 20 mounts in 1974, Russell Baze made his way to Longacres for the 1975 season. His first win at Longacres came on May 31, 1975 aboard G. G. Hill (trained by his father) and he finished the season with 72 wins in 444 starts (16 percent) good enough for second place in the jockey standings.
Baze rode regularly at Longacres the next four years.
Baze moved to the Northern California tracks in 1980, and has dominated there since, except for a time in the late 1980s when he tried the Southern California circuit.
Baze has won at least 100 races each of the past 28 years, and has led the nation in yearly wins eight times. His best total was 448 in 1995.
Baze has won eight races (in 40 mounts) at Emerald Downs in Auburn, including two Longacres Miles: with Sky Jack in 2003 and on a Adreamisborn in 2004.
Baze, a 5-foot-4, 115-pounder, is nicknamed Russell the Muscle, and he needed his muscle aboard Butterfly Belle, who was crowded and forced to check out of the starting gate. She went two-wide into the stretch and was stuck behind a wall of horses.
“I was looking for a way out,” Baze said. “When [the hole] started developing, I immediately headed for it. I was just glad it stayed open until I could get through it.”
The win came on a 4-year-old Washington-bred filly whose only other win came at Emerald Downs in 2005. Crossing the finish line, Baze said he felt “elation that I had won the race and become the winningest rider, and relief that now it’s over. Everybody can go home.”
Baze doffed his riding helmet to the cheering crowd.
“I’m not going to do much celebrating,” he said. “I’m going to do a lot of relaxing.”
Pincay had owned the mark since Dec. 10, 1999, when he took it from Bill Shoemaker. Pincay, 59, was on hand for his fifth day of watching Baze, who had won one race each of the previous two days.
Shoemaker had been the king for 29 years after surpassing Longden.
“Who would’ve thought 32 years ago a skinny little kid with no experience would be standing here today,” Baze told the sparse crowd as he stood in the winner’s circle. “I could hardly believe this would happen.”
Baze’s mounts were heavily bet down from their morning-line odds by fans seeking souvenir $2 win tickets. Butterfly Belle went from 6-1 to the 9-5 favorite.
Pincay said he bet on every horse except Baze’s in the historic race.
“I was trying to jinx them,” he said.
Baze only had moderate success when he rode in Southern California and he has ridden in just two Kentucky Derbies .. 10 years apart. He is 0 for 3 in the Breeders’ Cup.
“I gladly would’ve been a big fish in a big pond,” he said about his brief stint in the big time. “I’m still available if someone wants to give me more chances.”
Times handicapper Gary Dougherty contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company
Loss of the Dinner Train could impact our Pavilion Event Center
Renton has a lot riding on our dinner train. We could lose a lot of downtown economic activity if BNSF and WSDOT force Eric Temple and his Spirit of Washington dinner train out of town.
The Railroad and the Agency have been working on a frustrating deal in which Washington State DOT will pay BNSF about 30 Million dollars instead of rebuilding the railroad’s connection over I-405 in Bellevue during their upcoming widening project. While the money works well for the Railroad and DOT, this deal breaks the Eastside Railroad line and takes away most of the track for Mr. Temple’s dinner train. (It also takes away redundant rail access to the Boeing plant.)
Two years ago, Mr. Temple offered to put $200,000 of his own money into finishing our vacant Pavilion building downtown, to lease it from the city and manage it as a community event center. He proposed catering these Pavilion events with the same modern commercial kitchen he built for catering the dinner train, in the train depot he leases and beautifully maintains downtown. Council chose this offer over an alternative plan, which was to bring in salvaged carrousel horses and create a permanent museum in the pavilion building. The carrousel museum plan would require a long term city subsidy as well as $250,000 in public start up costs. Mr. Temple’s Spirit of Washington Event Center has been extremely successful, hosting nearly 200 events per year and giving Renton over one hundred thousand dollars in extra revenue each year.
As the crowds and trees both grew at the adjacent outdoor Cinema at the Piazza, and the noise from Pavilion events and movies co-mingled, Mr. Temple offered to pay for hosting the Outdoor Cinema a few blocks up the street at a more spacious, grassy, and child-friendly Liberty Park location. Council took him up on the offer, and Mr. Temple became a major contributor to activating three regions of our downtown; the train depot with his dinner train, the Pavilion with his many events, and Liberty Park with his sponsored movies.
Council has been trying to save the dinner train by challenging the closure of the eastside rail line. And we have been working to assure that in any case Mr. Temple will still have his train depot to cater his Event Center.
Highlands Appeals
Democracy is the bludgeoning of the people, by the people, for the people. Oscar Wilde
Some land-use appeals generated a heated debate between private citizens at Monday’s council meeting.
Those of you who have been reading my journal know that in late summer of 2006 I was concerned we were moving too hastily on the highlands land-use planning, with the risk of leaving some people and their concerns out of the process.
Thankfully, council finally convened a citizen task force in October, which worked long hours to deliver highlands recommendations to council on the very day they were needed for incorporation into the 2006 Comp plan amendments. This task force performed well, reaching unanimous task force agreement on rezoning, text amendments, and comprehensive plan changes for the highlands.
After so swiftly completing so much work affecting so many already-developed acres, it’s not a huge surprise that we are now receiving a few appeals.
As these appeals make their way through the process, the important thing to remember is the appeals do not diminish the work that has been done. Appeals may do nothing, or they may lead to fine-tuning of the final product or supporting analysis, but they do not replace the hard work of the highland task force.
Furthermore, it’s important not to get upset with the parties making the appeals. Appealing a decision is a right under our law, and it is not productive to combat citizens for exercising their rights.
Instead, we should celebrate the fact that we live in a democracy that guarantees due process to all citizens, whether or not they hold the majority opinion. There is an established legal process for working through land-use appeals, and we need to simply give this process time to work. Democracy is the best system around, but no one has said that it is the fastest.
And please let Oscar Wilde’s funny quip remain only a quip…greet your fellow citizens with kindness, and let’s say ‘no’ to bludgeoning ourselves while the process works things out.
Can we make it easier and cheaper to swim in our beautiful aquatic center?
Our awesome new Henry Moses Aquatic Center, with it’s wave machine, raging river, and water slides, is the best public pool in the area by far. However, many residents have complained that it is too costly to visit, or that summer lines are ridiculously long and the pool fills up before they are admitted. The price is almost prohibitive for King County residents, at $12 per adult for entry.
I have suggested that we consider cutting the cost of entry in half, cut the session lengths in half, and double the number of sessions from two to four each day. In other words, an adult in Renton who currently pays $6 to get into a half-day session, would instead pay $3 to get into a two-hour session. In addition to cutting the price in half, this would allow twice as many people to enjoy the pool each day, thus reducing or even eliminating the line that forms as people queue up to get into the morning or afternoon session.
The only appearant downside of this change appears to be that it could work the pool staff a little harder, as the pool will likely be at capacity through most of the day on our most beautiful summer days. This is because during a four hour session, the pool starts to empty after an hour or two since very few Northwesterners can/should stay in the sun for much longer than that, and swimming is tiresome excercise. As the crowds thin, the staff have a little less work keeping track of everybody.
If necessary we could increase staffing by a small amount to compensate by just charging a few cents more than one-half the current entry fee (cut the fee from $6 to $3.25, for instance). In addition, by reducing the long lines outside the pool, we could eliminate staff needed for security, confusion, and complaints related to the 90 minute lines outside the pool.
This issue requires attentions soon; while it seems strange to think about this on a snowy November day, the spring/summer rate schedule is actually being decided by council now and in the coming weeks. Furthermore, the Mayor’s office is recommending that the session arrangement remain as-is and that the pool entrance fee actually be increased by another dollar for everyone in 2007! ($7 for Renton adults, $13 for King county adults) I feel this is getting too pricey for Renton residents, who have already paid $5,000,000 in tax money just to have the pool built. And it is disheartening for Renton-area King County residents, who can feel Renton’s cold shoulder nudging them away with such pricing.
I would like to see the price cut almost in half, and I think we could do it without impacting our budget.
Jimi Hendrix; November 27, 1942 – September 18, 1970
It’s estimated that approximately 50,000 people per year visit Jimi Hendrix gravesite at Greenwood Cemetary, arriving from all over the world. As Jimi’s birthday approaches, here is some more information to help remind you of the impact Jimi Hendrix had on rock, and on the Seattle area. .)
Historic news video from the day of Jimi Hendrix’s passing…a must see…click here
A video showing the Jimi Hendrix Memorial and burial site at Renton’s Greenwood Cemetary..click here
Jimi live at Woodstock…click here
Jim Hendrix performs Purple Haze…click here
Link directly to the story in the paper here….
In case the link quits working, here is the text of the story here….
Hendrix lives
By Emily Garland, Staff writer November 13, 2006
Jimi Hendrix would have been 64 this month.
For many who make the pilgrimage to his grave in Renton, he’s still around
Jimi Hendrix wasn’t born in Renton, he didn’t live in Renton and he didn’t die in Renton. Yet Renton is fast becoming the destination for Hendrix fans.
It all started with the gravesite. Although it’s said Hendrix wanted to be buried in England, where he spent the last years of his life, his family lived in Seattle. So after he died in 1970, Hendrix’s body was flown across the Atlantic and laid to rest in Greenwood Memorial Park Cemetery and Funeral Home in the Highlands. In April 2003, the grave was moved beneath a newly built gazebo memorial, surrounded by plots for 50 family members.
Next came the house. Just over a year ago, one of Hendrix’s childhood homes was transplanted from Seattle’s Central District to Hi-Lands Mobilehome Manor, directly across the street from Greenwood Memorial Park.
And just last month, the James Marshall Hendrix Foundation (also called the Jimi Hendrix Foundation) moved its office from downtown Seattle to a complex just up the hill from Renton City Hall.
Operated by Hendrix’s childhood friend, Jimmy Williams, and his brother, Leon Hendrix, the foundation plans to run a variety of charitable programs. All in Jimi’s name, of course.
“The key point is we moved to Renton because it’s more cordial and hospitable,” Williams said.
Williams, 63, blames Seattle and the media for the “beating” Jimi received after his death.
“They mistreated his legacy,” Williams said. “They said he was a drug addict and nobody you should idolize. Most of that stuff is just total garbage.”
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A purple haze of fans
Hendrix was born and raised in Seattle. But before Experience Music Project was built there in 1994, the city’s only Hendrix tributes were a statue on Capitol Hill and a rock named after him at the Woodland Park Zoo.
Renton City Council member and Hendrix fan Randy Corman is thrilled that Renton has become the rocker’s postmortem home.
“I’m very proud of our city’s role,” Corman said. “It’s probably the unanimous view of the City Council that the Jimi Hendrix legacy deserves the utmost respect. He was a prodigy.”
A prodigy who still brings thousands of fans to Renton every year.
“I think one would have to say, without question, that Jimi Hendrix’s gravesite and memorial is the most well-known Renton destination,” Corman said. “It’s kind of the equivalent of (rock legend) Jim Morrison’s gravesite in Paris.”
While visiting Morrison’s grave last year, Corman and his son, Andy, ran into a pack of British tourists who said that their next stop was Hendrix’s grave.
Rentonite Pete Sikov owns Hendrix’s childhood home. Sikov, 52, had a memorable Jimi experience on an overnight flight from New York to Seattle in 2003.
“The guy behind me turned to the woman next to him and said, ‘Where is Jimi Hendrix buried?'” Sikov recalled. “It was a six-hour flight, and he’d just woke up, and it was the first thing he wanted to know. And he expected the woman to know. I let them go back and forth for a while before telling the guy where it was.”
A visit to Hendrix’s grave is on the to-do list of most everybody who visits Seattle, Sikov said.
To answer that demand, the Renton History Museum has a pile of hand-drawn maps showing the route up Sunset Boulevard to the cemetery.
“It got to be a hassle of people coming in and having to walk outside and point up the street,” museum research specialist Tom Monahan said.
The museum’s only mention of Hendrix is an album cover pasted in the 1960s section of the Renton timeline. Still, Monahan gets a couple inquiries a month about the location of Hendrix’s grave from people living outside the country.
“It is fun when people from foreign countries come in and they don’t speak English well and they’re trying to find his grave,” Monahan said. “They don’t have the right words. All they say is ‘Jimi Hendrix,’ and then they do a guitar motion. I usually figure it out.”
At the Renton Chamber of Commerce office, questions about Hendrix’s grave can number up to 50 a month during the summer, receptionist Lucy Crozier said. And inquirers are from all over the world.
“I’ve had them from England and Germany, from Italy and Mexico,” she said. “I get a lot from Canada. Just from all over.”
Many Hendrix admirers come to the memorial to pay tribute on Nov. 27, his birthday. He would have been 64 this year.
Fans Crozier encounters range from teenagers to people well over 60. So, is she a fan, too?
“Absolutely not!” Crozier said. “I am no fan of that kind of music. I am in my 70s.”
But, she admitted, “I think I heard one song that he played, and I was shocked that I liked it.”
The house experience
Jim Davis’ trailer in Hi-Lands Mobilehome Manor is stocked with Hendrix artifacts. Photos of Hendrix with his family and bandmates litter the kitchen table and hang on the walls beside framed newspaper and magazine clippings. Tagged to a wood-paneled wall is the two-record “Electric Ladyland” by The Jimi Hendrix Experience.
“I’m a big Jimi fan,” the 54-year-old Davis said. “Probably since I was in high school. When I was a teenager in Ballard, I was listening to his 8-tracks, and when he first made it big, we celebrated.”
Davis is one of the lucky few who caught Hendrix live during his four brief years of fame.
“I was 18, in the Navy, and stationed at San Diego,” he said. “It was quite the experience. When the concert was over, I just stood there for 15 minutes staring at the stage, going, ‘Wow, wow, wow.'”
Needless to say, Davis was, as he puts it, “jazzed” when Hendrix’s childhood home came rolling into his mobile-home park last fall.
To save the house from demolition, Sikov shelled out $5,000 in 2001 and became the owner. In 2001, Sikov paid about $30,000 to move the house a few blocks to Jackson Street. But Seattle officials soon decided the home, frequently the subject of drug-use complaints, didn’t fit with plans to refurbish the neighborhood. So, Sikov spent another $30,000 to truck the house to Renton.
“This wasn’t just anybody’s house,” Sikov said. “There’s no reason to demolish history.”
Jimi, Al and Leon lived in the two-bedroom house, originally located on Seattle’s South Washington Street, for a few years in the 1950s. With gray and green splotches of paint on its white exterior, plywood boards covering the windows and scraps of blue tarp hanging from the tar-papered roof, the house is not much to look at now.
But Sikov has big plans for the property. With help from Leon and Jimi’s other living relatives and friends, Sikov hopes to make the house look exactly like it did when Jimi lived in it — from the siding and roofing down to the furniture and record collection. Outside would be manicured landscaping, and maybe even a statue.
“It will be so somebody from this side of the world and somebody from that side of the world can meet there and they’ll have something in common,” Sikov explained. “They’re going to be friends. That’s what music does.”
Big plans for someone who intends to fund the entire project himself. Sikov, a real estate investor, has spent $150,000 so far. And he plans to part with a few more hundred thousand before the project is finished in a year or so. But no monetary cost is too much for the educational gift the finished house will bring to fans, he said.
“This was the nicest house (Hendrix) ever lived in” growing up, Sikov said. “Most of the time he lived in the basements of relatives, hotel rooms, apartments. But most people don’t think about that part of Jimi Hendrix. They think about the music, the flashy rock star clothes. But it’s important to know this part of the story, to know that he overcame tremendous disadvantage.”
Sikov has been a Hendrix fan since he turned 13 and began listening to all the greats – The Doors, Janis Joplin, The Beatles, Bob Dylan. Why does Sikov like Hendrix?
“Why do I like Monet or Picasso?” he replied. “There’s just something about hearing Jimi Hendrix.”
Plus, Hendrix was a true musical pioneer, Sikov added.
“Everyone who plays guitar nowadays is influenced, whether they know it or not, by Jimi Hendrix,” he said. “‘Cause he was the first one to do what he was doing.”
Although he didn’t discover Hendrix until he was 15 or 16, Andy Corman, now 19, is an admirer.
“I don’t like him a lot more than other music,” Corman said, “but he’s so different from anyone else — how he invented the wah pedal and played his guitar upside down.”
Good deeds for Jimi
Sikov took on the Hendrix- house project because one of his friends was friends with Leon, and Leon was looking for help. Sikov then served on the board of the James Marshall Hendrix Foundation for five years, until Williams took over as CEO in August.
The foundation was officially created in 1988, when Al communicated in a notarized letter that he wanted Leon to set up a non-profit foundation in Jimi’s name. Under Leon’s leadership, the group put out a fan newsletter and organized several food drives. But it wasn’t until 2003 that the foundation got together a professional board and helped save from demolition Seattle’s last nursing home that served primarily poor, African-American people.
Activities over the next few years slowed due to a lawsuit brought by Experience Hendrix (run by Jimi’s stepsister Janie) over Leon’s rights to use Jimi’s name and image. But now, finally, the foundation is beginning to kick again.
The first step is getting the building refurbished. Then Williams plans to launch several ambitious projects, like a music program that will give new musical instruments and instruction to disadvantaged children.
The foundation will also help finance the stem-cell research of an Arizona doctor. By using stem cells extracted from donated blood and umbilical cords, Dr. David T. Harris is working to treat sickle-cell anemia and a multitude of other diseases.
“This is a fight Jimi probably would want to get into,” Williams said.
Also in the works is a Jimi Hendrix comic book. Called “Captain Strata,” after Hendrix’s guitar, the lead character is a cartoonish guy who wears a headband stretched over his huge afro.
Williams said that in papers left with his drummer Mitch Mitchell, Hendrix said he to return to the West Coast, break into the R & B genre and create animated superheroes.
“The only cartoon around at that time was Mighty Mouse, and Jimi was totally enamored with Mighty Mouse,” Williams said. “So I thought I was going to do something to finish this off for Jimi.”
Williams hopes sales of the comic, plus profits from the office’s concession stand and a possible movie deal, will help the foundation continue to develop beneficial projects, like maybe an after-school program with a computer lab for kids to use.
The foundation doesn’t have much cash in the bank right now, but Williams isn’t worried.
“All I have to do is paint by the colors and everything is going to work out just fine,” he said.
The two Jimmys
In fourth grade, Williams moved to the same Seattle neighborhood as Hendrix, and in fifth grade the two became close friends after Williams sang in a school talent show.
“Jimi was in the audience, and when I got through, he said, ‘That was really, really great,'” Williams remembered. “He said, ‘You know, you’re going to be a famous singer one of these days. Can I be your best friend?'”
Hendrix really picked up the guitar in seventh or eighth grade, Williams said, after their friend Pernell began playing. “From then on, he was seldom seen without his guitar,” Williams said.
The two Jimmys (both were y’s then) joined the military in 1961, and Williams never saw or talked to Hendrix again.
“He came back to Seattle in May 1970 and did a show at Sicks Stadium in Seattle, but I didn’t make the show,” Williams said.
Hendrix died that September.
“I’m not a fan, I was his best friend,” Williams said.
But he digs his music, too. And how could he not?
“He’s the greatest rock-and-roll guitar player in the world,” Davis said. “Nobody’s touched him since.”
“And all the best guitar players in the world agree with you,” Sikov added.
Emily Garland can be reached at emily.garland@re
porternewspapers.com or (253) 437-6009.
My good friend and trusted colleague Denis Law to run for mayor
I am delighted to report that my good friend and council colleague Denis Law will be challenging the mayor in next year’s election.
Denis has a stunning record of community and business achievements, and he has been a joy to work with as a councilman. I proudly supported his candidacy four years ago when he first ran for council, and I have been encouraging him to go for the mayor role through much of the last year.
He has successfully managed many small businesses, and most Renton citizens are familiar with his work. He has founded and run several award winning newspapers, and has recently started a new Renton magazine that is getting rave reviews.
As a councilman, Denis has been a consistent source of wisdom and guidance. He has a steady devotion to keeping people of all backgrounds and perspectives working together, a quality which has been important during the last year and an inspiration to those of us who know him well.
Denis knew that I had seriously contemplated a possible rematch with the mayor myself, and he was completely gracious in the way he approached this possibility with me. Had I chosen to run, he would have aggressively supported me.
But Denis is the right candidate right now. He is expertly skilled for the job, he has the time to field a winning campaign, and he’s at an excellent career stage to serve as mayor.
I studied for years to become an airplane designer, and I have been having a great time making planes and proving them safe. By the election, I’ll have 23 years behind me at Boeing, with less than ten to go to early retirement. And I’ll still have two kids in college, and two in grade school; so I want to stay on this track for a while longer.
I’ll also achieve the rank of being the city’s most experienced council member when councilwoman Toni Nelson retires next year. This will allow me ample opportunity to influence the direction of our city and contribute my ideas to our shared future.
I want to thank the many people who have been encouraging me to run for mayor again; your support and confidence mean so much to me. It’s been heartwarming to hear from so many of you, especially during this last year.
I ask everyone to now join with me and my council colleagues Don Person and Marcie Palmer and past councilman King Parker, along with former Mayor Jesse Tanner, many Renton School District leaders, and countless dedicated and hardworking members of our community in supporting Renton’s beloved and respected Denis Law for Mayor of Renton 2007.
Sincerely,
Randy Corman
The “Over the Rainbow” Flight
I just returned from four days in Wichita Kansas. It was windy when I flew in Tuesday, but pleasant and sunny when I left on Friday. The city of 300,000 is surrounded by seemingly endless well-kept farms on Kansas’s legendary rolling praries. The people I met were caring, friendly, and good-humored, reminding me of my parents (who were both from Kansas). I love how Kansans celebrate the Wizard of Oz in so many of their shops and restaurants. One can purchase Wizard of Oz calenders, figurines, t-shirts and ruby slippers many places, anywhere from Barnes and Noble to the local drug store. I bought a nice Chritmas Ornament of the Scarecrow, my favorite character from the story. As I was going though the shops, I remembered my older brother Roger reading me all 14 of the original Oz books when I was eight year old and he was twelve. Good and Bad witches, the Wizard, the sawhorse, the red hen, Pumpkinhead, Ozma of Oz…the zany and sometimes frightening characters went on and on in book after book. Very similar to Harry Potter today…what a great book series the Oz books are. And what a great memory with my brother…thanks Roger!
As I was flying back to Seatttle, it occured to me that I was leaving Kansas to go back to the Emerald City. Perhaps United Airlines should advertise the route as the over-the-rainbow flight.
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