A letter to Councilwoman Joy Hollingsworth

Joy,

We’re enjoying the new Seattle city park on the Graystone property. Skyline and other First Hill residents played important roles in getting it developed.

It’s on the property that previously housed the office of Paul Thiry, one of Seattle’s most famous architects.

Could you please suggest to the Park Dept. that it be named the “Paul Thiry Park?”

The photo below shows how birds as well as residents are enjoying this new park! It was featured in our in house blog–

Best regards, Ann Milam (Skyline Resident)

This first year Glaucous-winged Gull, trying to act like a heron, enjoyed a refreshing bath in the waterfall pool, then strolled away, enjoying the sun last Thursday. The park was used later that evening as a petting zoo, hosted by the First Hill Improvement Association.

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Voting as prevention

Thanks to Mary Jane F.

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It’s getting more bizzare — and dangerous

Commentary by Heather Cox Richardson

As the two presidential campaigns position themselves for the final sprint to the election on November 5, the difference between them is dramatic. 

Trump is hunkering down behind what has always appeared to be a plan not to attract voters but instead to create chaos on Election Day. Creating confusion around the election could enable his loyalists to put in place the plan the Trump team concocted in 2020 to throw the election into the House of Representatives or get it before the Supreme Court, stacked as it is with Trump loyalists. 

A central piece of that plan appears to be to rile up his supporters to violence, and a few of them have been delivering. News broke yesterday that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) had advised federal emergency workers to evacuate Rutherford County, North Carolina, which was hit hard by Hurricane Helene, because of concerns about their safety after Trump and MAGA Republicans spread the false rumor that federal agents are forcing people off their land to start lithium mining projects. The alert came after the U.S. Forest Service sent an email to federal responders saying that National Guard troops had encountered armed militia saying they were “hunting FEMA.” FEMA officials will no longer go door-to-door with disaster assistance, but instead will stay in fixed locations. 

A man has been arrested and charged with threatening FEMA workers with an assault rifle. He was released on a $10,000 bond.

To the extent Trump or his running mate Ohio senator J.D. Vance talks about them, their policies are promises to repair what they insist is the damage caused by President Joe Biden (although the stock market hit record highs again today), or threats that reinforce an authoritarian Christian nationalist worldview. Today, Bill Barrow of the Associated Press explored the extensive overlap of Project 2025 from the Heritage Foundation and other right-wing groups and the plans that Trump and Vance have set out. 

Both promise to cut taxes for the wealthy, but Project 2025 has more detail about how. Both plan to cut off immigration and to fire federal workers, replacing them with loyalists. Both say the president can decide not to use the money Congress has appropriated (in 2019, Trump refused to disburse the money Congress had appropriated for Ukraine until Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky agreed to smear Trump’s chief Democratic rival for the presidency, Joe Biden). Both call for slashing government regulations and getting rid of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs as well as protections for LGBTQ+ individuals and programs addressing climate change. (continued)

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Can we turn the page? It may come down to Pennsylvania.

Ed note: The commentary below by Heather Cox Richardson paints a frightening picture. The concern about a fascist President is real as expressed by those previously close to Donald Trump.

“He is the most dangerous person ever. I had suspicions when I talked to you about his mental decline and so forth, but now I realize he’s a total fascist. He is now the most dangerous person to this country…a fascist to the core.” 

This is how former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, the nation’s highest-ranking military officer and the primary military advisor to the president, the secretary of defense, and the National Security Council, described former president Donald Trump to veteran journalist Bob Woodward. Trump appointed Milley to that position. 

Since he announced his presidential candidacy in June 2015 by calling Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals, Trump has trafficked in racist anti-immigrant stories. But since the September 10 presidential debate when he drew ridicule for his outburst regurgitating the lie that legal Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating their white neighbors’ pets, Trump has used increasingly fascist rhetoric. By this weekend, he had fully embraced the idea that the United States is being overrun by Black and Brown criminals and that they, along with their Democratic accomplices, must be rounded up, deported, or executed, with the help of the military. 

Myah Ward of Politico noted on October 12 that Trump’s speeches have escalated to the point that he now promises that he alone can save the country from those people he calls “animals,” “stone cold killers,” the “worst people,” and the “enemy from within.” He falsely claims Vice President Kamala Harris “has imported an army of illegal alien gang members and migrant criminals from the dungeons of the third world…from prisons and jails and insane asylums and mental institutions, and she has had them resettled beautifully into your community to prey upon innocent American citizens.” (click on Page 2 to continue)

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Government to fund £120 blood test that could detect 12 most common cancers

Ed note: This will be interesting to follow and large population studies are needed to see whether the clinical outcomes of a large group are improved. Even a one out of 50 (2%) false positive test rates will generate lots of unnecessary anxiety and testing in large numbers of otherwise healthy individuals. Also, how about false negative tests?

Mionco screening has potential to be a ‘gamechanger’ in five years, says health secretary, Wes Streeting

Nadeem Badshah Sat 5 Oct 2024 in The Guardian (thanks to Pam P.)

The government will provide funding for a £120 blood test that has the potential to detect the 12 most common forms of cancer before symptoms develop.

The Mionco screening can identify 50 cancers before producing a false positive and is a form of the PCR test used during the Covid pandemic, according to the scientists involved in its development.

It checks the 12 most common forms of the disease: lung, breast, prostate, pancreatic, colorectal, ovarian, liver, brain, oesophageal, bladder, bone and soft tissue sarcoma, and gastric.

The government will provide £2.5m via the National Institute for Health and Care Research to improve the speed of the test, the Sunday Mirror reported.

The health secretary, Wes Streeting, a cancer survivor, told the newspaper it could be a “gamechanger” in revolutionising treatment of the disease in five years.

Streeting said: “Just a couple of drops of blood could tell you if you had lung, breast or bladder cancer, helping end months-long waits for tests and scans.

“These innovations could be gamechangers and life savers. But Tory underinvestment has left the NHS 15 years behind the private sector when it comes to tech. We have fewer scanners per patient than Greece.

“Your life chances rely on your postcode and whether you can afford to go private. I am determined to equip the NHS with cutting-edge technology so it benefits the many, not just the few.”

Scientists at Southampton University are understood to have used clinical information from 20,000 cancer patients to develop the screening.

The next stage involves improving the efficacy of the artificial intelligence involved, which analyses the test samples and biomarkers by entering 8,000 blood samples from people of diverse ethnic backgrounds.

Prof Paul Skipp from Southampton University said: “A test like this could save many lives, catching cancers much earlier. We hope to have an NHS test in five to seven years.”

Currently, breast, bowel, cervical and lung cancer have NHS screening tests but they involve a scan or a biopsy.

Skipp added: “The UK spends £800m a year screening for these four cancers, and an additional £91m is spent on false positive follow-ups.”

Last month, a £42m screening trial aimed at revolutionising the treatment of prostate cancer began in the UK.

Thousands of men will be involved in its initial phase, and several hundred thousand volunteers could be recruited as the programme progresses in coming years, say the trial’s organisers.

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Resources for discussing and documenting end of life choices

Ed note: Here’s the handout from the recent presentation (which was recorded). The hyperlinks are “clickable” to check out the various resources. In the near future you’ll receive more information in your inboxes about the survey conducted by the Health Care Committee.

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Cats and the ticket

Thanks to Mary Jane F.

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What’s behind the excuse?

thanks to Mary Jane F.

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How did they know?

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First Hill Community News – October


Thanks to Ann M.

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Skyline’s 15 Anniversary celebration!

Ed note: What could be nicer! Good company, great food, red carpet across 8th Avenue, and a great show by Michael Cavenaugh (below). Working with Billy Joel, who discovered him in Las Vegas, Michael had the lead in New York’s Broadway show Movin’ Out. (If you had trouble with the video, it’s fixed. Please take a look/listen)

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Jazz Has a New Home in Seattle. One Caveat: The Place Is ‘For Lease.’

By Eric Olson in the NYT – Reporting from Seattle (thanks to Sandy J.)

The nonprofit Seattle Jazz Fellowship has carved out a performance space in the historic Globe Building — for now — and is putting its economic model to the test.

The exterior of a building has construction signs in front of it.
The Seattle Jazz Fellowship is putting on shows at a new venue where it pays utilities and insurance, with one caveat: A prominent “For Lease” sign remains on the front window at all times.David Jaewon Oh for The New York Times

The Pacific Northwest might be synonymous with grunge rock, but Seattle’s music scene has historically maintained a rich undercurrent of jazz. Even in the 1990s, with plaid-clad darlings riding high on barre chords, the trumpeter Thomas Marriott recalls an ideal downtown scene for budding improvisers to “pay dues,” a sort of low-cost, low-pressure musician’s utopia where rent could be made in a single weekend’s worth of gigs, and “you could just take your horn, walk up and down the street and see people you knew.”

Marriott, 48, is a longtime fixture in the area’s jazz community and knows better than most what makes an operable scene. “Bandstands and elders and youngsters,” he said. “The whole cycle.” Soft-spoken but fiercely opinionated, often wearing his signature orange-tinted glasses, Marriott won the prestigious Carmine Caruso Trumpet Competition in 1999 and used the prize money to move to New York. After several years, he returned to Washington State to build a livable career.

But two decades later, art is barely sustainable in Seattle. Small and midsize jazz venues are floundering. Marriott calls the city’s musical pay scale “abysmal.” “The whole crux of the problem,” he said, “is that economically, local jazz is not really much of a commercial enterprise.” Rent is too high. Tables don’t turn over enough. Tastes have shifted. ( continued)

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How do you dispose of a pumpkin?

Thanks to Cam A.

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More ghostly than expected

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Trying to navigate Caremerge

thanks to Sybil-Ann

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Freeway Park October-November

Note: Volunteers needed for area cleanup – meetup 10 AM on Saturday the 19th at the Seneca Plaza to walk through First Hill. Tools and bags provided. Bring gloves!

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Trump’s Pardons Crooks Who Stole 1.58 Billion

Thanks to Mike C.

Judith Negron, the former owner of a Miami-area mental health company who was sentenced in 2011 to 35 years in prison for her role in filing $205 million in fraudulent Medicare claims and ordered to pay more than $87 million in restitution. Trump commuted her sentence in February 2020.

Trump granted clemency to Daniela Gozes-Wagner, a Houston woman who was sentenced in 2019 to 20 years in prison for helping falsely bill more than $28 million in claims to Medicare and Medicaid for medical tests that either never happened or were unnecessary. Those tests supposedly took place at 28 testing facilities that turned out to be empty offices — and prosecutors said Gozes-Wagner went so far as to hire “seat warmers” at those offices who were instructed to notify her if Medicare investigators arrived.

Trump commuted the sentence of Philip Esformes, who had been convicted in 2019 “for his role in the largest health care fraud scheme ever charged by the Justice Department, involving over $1.3 billion in fraudulent claims to Medicare and Medicaid for services that were not provided, were not medically necessary or were procured through the payment of kickbacks,”the department said.

Trump granted clemency to Salomon Melgen, a Florida eye doctor who had been sentenced to 17 years in prison after being convicted for his role in defrauding Medicare out of $42 million; and to John Estin Davis, a Tennessee health-care executive who had been sentenced the year before to 42 months in prison after being convicted for his role in filing over$4.6 million in fraudulent claims to Medicare.

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Stopover on your First Hill walk

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Note about a friend in Ashville

Ed note: I received this note today from a friend who was able to contact a mutual friend in Ashville, NC. Hard to imagine. Are we ready here with water, supplies, sanitation and cash?

“I had a good full talk with ……several days ago, after a couple days trying to contact him (finally able to reach him with help from ……….. who gave me his son ………..’s number).  He was doing OK, though without power; likely restored by now.  No water for a LONG time as big mudslide destroyed water main from mountain reservoir that serves Asheville – you’ve probably heard about that.  A huge oak tree was resting on his roof, & was to be removed by large crane in a few days; if it had fallen slightly differently, a large branch could have crashed into his bedroom & killed him in bed.  During the very heavy rain, water was pouring into his backyard & forming a pool, despite his efforts to block the water coming in from nearby stream.  He was able to eat peanut butter & jelly sandwiches, & had lots of breakfast cereal, hoping to be able to purchase food before long.  After fallen trees were cleared from all the roads, he was able to drive downtown, where Trader Joe was open, with long line (2 blocks) waiting to get in – he heard woman guarding the door say, OK next 3 people can go inside.  Other grocery stores apparently closed.  He was in good spirits & taking things as they come, as well as he can–at age 86.”

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Trust this horse?

Thanks to Bob P.

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60 Minutes, Medicare and more — comments from Heather Cox Richardson

“It’s been a tradition for more than half a century that the major party candidates for president sit down with 60 Minutes in October,” host Scott Pelley said to the camera last night before 60 Minutes aired an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. This year, both Harris and Republican nominee former president Donald Trump accepted an invitation for an interview.

“Then a week ago,” Pelley said, “Trump backed out. The campaign offered shifting explanations. First it complained that we would fact-check the interview. We fact-check every story,” Pelley said. “Later, Trump said he needed an apology for his interview in 2020. Trump claims correspondent Leslie Stahl said in that interview that Hunter Biden’s controversial laptop came from Russia. She never said that.

“Trump has said his opponent doesn’t do interviews because she can’t handle them. He had previously declined another debate with Harris, so tonight may have been the largest audience for the candidates between now and election day. Our questions addressed the economy, immigration, reproductive rights, and the wars in the Middle East and Europe. Both campaigns understood this special would go ahead if either candidate backed out.”

And with that, 60 Minutes aired its interview with Vice President Harris.

Trump broke a fifty-year tradition so his false world would not be challenged by reality. He apparently wants to make sure voters cannot base their decisions about the country’s future on facts. Hiding reality is in keeping with his continued refusal to release his tax returns or a medical report—even after the shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania—or the video from the incident at Arlington National Cemetery, instead insisting that people take him at his word about what happened. 

If voters trust his disinformation campaign, rather than thinking things through for themselves, who will his policies help? 

A bombshell story from a forthcoming book by veteran journalist Bob Woodward today revealed that in 2020, when he was president, Trump secretly shipped Covid-19 testing equipment to Russian president Vladimir Putin for his own personal use at a time when Americans could not get it.  

A Trump aide told Woodward that Trump and Putin have spoken as many as seven times since Trump left the White House, prompting Edward Luce of the Financial Times to comment: “What possible business could an out-of-office U.S. president have to call Vladimir Putin seven times?” Woodward recounts a moment when Trump told a senior aide to leave the room so “he could have what he said was a private phone call with Russian president Vladimir Putin.” 

The Woodward book also says that when South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham was visiting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, also known as MBS, in March 2024, Graham said “Hey, let’s call Trump.” According to Woodward, an aide brought MBS a bag full of burner phones, one of which was labeled “TRUMP 45.”

This news highlights the fact that Trump retained classified documents when he left the White House, carrying them with him to Mar-a-Lago, where he tried to hide them from federal officials. A grand jury indicted him on 37 felony counts for those actions, but Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, dismissed the case in July after concluding that Special Counsel Jack Smith was improperly appointed.  

Trump’s campaign came out swinging after the story broke, with Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung calling Woodward “a total sleazebag who has lost it mentally.”

In contrast to Trump’s disinformation campaign, Vice President Harris is running a normal campaign, offering policy proposals. Today she proposed a plan to permit Medicare to help cover the costs of long-term home health care aides for seniors. Harris announced the plan on ABC’s The View, where she spoke of the so-called sandwich generation, people—mostly women—who are taking care of their elderly parents at the same time they are also taking care of children. “[I]t’s just almost impossible to do it all, especially if they work,” Harris said, adding that many end up having to leave their jobs. She also called for Medicare to cover vision and hearing care to enable seniors to live independently for longer.  

Harris said the money to pay for the new services will come from savings realized through Medicare’s new ability to negotiate drug prices—an ability Republicans are eager to end—and through cracking down on Medicare fraud. A fact sheet about the plan emphasizes that it will enable the government to work with the private sector to expand the home care workforce and provide more access to telehealth. 

Her plan also calls for stopping states from seizing family homes of recently deceased Medicaid beneficiaries to restore funding, a program called “Medicaid estate recovery.” Those seizures particularly hurt rural and minority populations, she noted, preventing them from building wealth. 

Reed Abelson and Margot Sanger-Katz of the New York Times note that both expanded home care benefits and drug negotiations are popular. KFF, which conducts health policy research, reports that Medicaid estate recovery has been criticized because it “falls primarily on individuals with limited incomes, raises little revenue, and is applied very unevenly across the states.” 

Deepa Shivaram of NPR noted that a relatively large percentage of middle-aged and older women remain undecided in this race and Harris’s plan speaks to their needs. The plan would also bring more money and care workers into rural towns with aging populations, giving those areas an economic boost.  

In a fact sheet, the Harris-Walz campaign noted that Trump is focused on tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, has repeatedly called for cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, and gave clemency to those abusing the system. As Amy B. Wang and Azi Paybarah explained in the Washington Post: “In his last year in office, Trump commuted the sentences of at least five people who collectively filed nearly $1.6 billion in fraudulent claims through Medicare or Medicaid.”

On The View, Harris said, “In this election, people are ready for a new generation of leadership that’s about fixing problems.” 

The 2020 60 Minutes interview for which Trump demanded an apology last week was the one in which he promised his health care plan was “fully developed,” then angrily walked out. His exit was apparently planned, for shortly after his departure, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany walked up to Stahl with a giant book, saying: “Lesley, the President wanted me to deliver his health care plan. It’s a little heavy.”

Trump and McEnany likely expected that the audience would remember their theatrical move rather than the reality, which was that the book contained no Trump healthcare plan because one didn’t exist. 

Four years later, it still doesn’t. Trump said at the September 10 presidential debate that he has the “concepts of a plan.”

CNN today set a deadline of Thursday for Trump to accept its invitation for an October 23 presidential debate. Harris has already accepted. 

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So What?

Thanks to Mike C.

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Art on screens at Museum House

The twin towers just east of the Cascade Tower are opening in the coming months. They are beginning to show art (hard to discern) on exterior screens. Not sure how this is really going to work but here’s a current photo I snapped. Check out their website here which states “Museum House is a collection of over 500 rental homes, designed for inspired living. Comprised of a North and South Tower, the project includes rooftop level and third floor amenities,….

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What do you see?

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Telecom giant AT&T to remove 8 miles of lead cables in Lake Tahoe after legal battle

A remnant of an old telecommunications system, the lead cables were forgotten for decades

By Julie Brown Davis, Tahoe Editor (thanks to Pam P.)

Lake Tahoe is one of the most protected bodies of water in the country — and yet, for decades, 8 miles of lead-clad cables have been abandoned underwater, where they remain today. 

Those lead cables have no place in Lake Tahoe, say environmental watchdogs.

Now, after a protracted legal battle, a telecommunications giant agreed to pull the lead cables out of Lake Tahoe as soon as this fall, with an expedient path to do so in the works. 

AT&T said it will remove the lead cables from Lake Tahoe as part of a court settlement reached on Sept. 18. The settlement ends a yearslong legal battle with environmental nonprofit California Sportfishing Protection Alliance. (click Page 2 to continue)

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