By Diana Brement, JTNews Columnist Waxing nostalgic Diana Brement JTNews Columnist 1 A confluence of events brought Susan Szafir to electronically publish “Bohemia: An Essay,” a brief memoir of part of her father’s life. “I was getting my certificate in non-fiction from the University of Washington,” she says, and neededContinue Reading
By Diana Brement, JTNews Columnist 1 It’s just happenstance, I promise, but readers will see that our featured M.O.T.s have names that inadvertently, but suitably, fit their occupations. People sometimes assume Eric LeVine changed his name to match his work, but his great-grandfather changed it a long time ago. EricContinue Reading
By Diana Brement, JTNews Columnist No, this isn’t a series on the Kezner family. But if I hadn’t interviewed Larry Kezner’s cousin Llance last issue, Larry’s name would never have jumped out at me from a Seattle Times piece announcing Larry’s small-boat passenger ferry connecting Seattle’s South Lake Union andContinue Reading
By Diana Brement, JTNews Columnist Oftentimes the greatest ideas are discovered by accident. Take Llance Kezner and his wife, Lori Peha Kezner, the founders of Garlic It!, their new garlic condiments produced in five flavors, as a case in point. Their “Private Reserve Caramelized Garlic Finish” won a “Sofi” awardContinue Reading
By Diana Brement, JTNews Columnist With one British and one South African parent, Tamara Gittelson grew up moving frequently from London to Cape Town and back, interspersed with “a couple of years in Israel doing ulpan and living on a kibbutz.” By her own admission, she became a bit ofContinue Reading
By Diana Brement, JTNews Columnist 1 “We started Purple about 10 years ago — 10 years ago exactly,” Larry Kurofsky told me a few weeks ago about the well-known restaurant with branches in Seattle, Kirkland, Bellevue and Woodinville. After graduate school, Larry and his wife Tabitha started a restaurant togetherContinue Reading
By Diana Brement, JTNews Columnist It was a quiet evening at home when Arlene G. Cohen’s husband Steve turned to her and said, “Do you want to move to the South Pacific?” Steve was a tax attorney in private practice and had seen an ad for a job in Saipan,Continue Reading
By Diana Brement, JTNews Columnist A native of our fair state, Sheila (Schain) Stuart, has just completed a term as mayor of Cambridge, England. Born in Seattle, Sheila moved with her parents, Sid and Vicki Schain, to Yakima and then the Tri-Cities for a time, before the family settled inContinue Reading
By Diana Brement, JTNews Columnist They’re out there at their keyboards, typing out their thoughts for you. Writing daily, weekly, or when they have something to say, these bloggers are hard at work on our home shores. (By complete coincidence, the three Jewish bloggers sampled here came originally from NewContinue Reading
By Diana Brement, JTNews Columnist Remembering the “feeling of fear and isolation” that haunted her as a child in Rochester during her own mother’s battle with breast cancer, Anna Gottlieb became a fan and donor of the cancer support organization Gilda’s Club from its earliest days in New York. VisitingContinue Reading
By Diana Brement, JTNews Columnist Supporters and clients of Jewish Family Service in Seattle are already aware of the construction project that has dominated the organization’s land at the corner of 16th Avenue and Pine Street for the past few months. Ed Weinstein, architect of JFS’s new offices, just receivedContinue Reading
By Diana Brement, JTNews Columnist In 1975 at age 16, and a student at Nathan Hale High School in Seattle, Rob Rose spent eight months in Calcutta, India as a Rotary exchange student. That “formative experience…opened up my perspective, my world view,” Rob says. It also laid the foundation forContinue Reading
By Diana Brement, JTNews Columnist There’s a new organization in town — and around the country. Founded by local philanthropist Mark Bloome, TAP-America — Tolerance, Americanism, Patriotism — inspires tolerance and economic viability. Calling it “spiritual,” not political, Mark says TAP grew out of many years of his own spiritualContinue Reading
By Diana Brement, JTNews Columnist “I covered the story from the beginning…in early 2007,” says “barefoot bandologist” Jackson Holtz. The Herald of Everett reporter just released his book, Fly, Colton, Fly, about “Barefoot Bandit” Colton Harris-Moore, the teenage Camano Island burglar who branched out into national and international theft beforeContinue Reading
By Diana Brement, JTNews Columnist A self-described “small-town kid from Vashon,” Gary Johnson feels like he’s come a long way to his recent appointment by Gov. Chris Gregoire to the Pierce County Superior Court, replacing Judge Gary Steiner, who retired Feb. 1. He traces his success directly to the NationalContinue Reading
By Diana Brement, JTNews Columnist The challenge of being a dietician, says Lorren Negrin, is how people perceive her profession as a bunch of people saying “we want you to go on a diet.” But, really, she explains, “I’m all about moderation and no diets.” The Seattle Pacific University gradContinue Reading
By Diana Brement, JTNews Columnist Just a few months into her first year at Whitman College, Talia Rudee started a chapter of Challah for Hunger. Every Friday afternoon you can find her and another volunteer selling fresh-baked challah at Reid Hall — challah that volunteers have made over the previousContinue Reading
By Diana Brement, JTNews Columnist Our region has been in a hubbub over radiation leaks from the earthquake-ravaged Japanese power plants and, it turns out, when you need to know if and when the radiation is going to hit Washington, a local atmospheric scientist is the go-to guy and heContinue Reading
By Diana Brement, JTNews Columnist Seattle glass artist Roger Nachman in his studio with one of the “raindrops” from his “Joyful Rain” installation that will head up to Harborview Elementary School in Juneau. The artwork is upside down, as an image would be when seen through the lens of aContinue Reading
By Diana Brement, JTNews Columnist It sounds like the start of a bad joke. A Saudi Arabian student comes to Seattle to attend a Catholic high school and live with a Jewish family that keeps kosher. But it’s true. Mohammed Ashgan is the student from Riyadh, and he is livingContinue Reading
