SOTABOTS came to my attention when my wife Peg interviewed high school senior Addie Bjornson for a possible P.E.O scholarship. Peg loved her determination to become an engineer and the enthusiasm she had for robotics and her group whose mission is to change the way society views education through implementing an innovative approach to learning. […]
The House of Caviar
In the 1980s and 90s my friend Jim Whitacre and I traveled each year to the furthest away Husky football game. Neither of us went to the University of Washington (him to Western and me to UPS), but Jim’s brother did and was a captain of the football team. Our first trip was to Houston […]
Stage Door Friends
On a cold and wet weekend when we could have been quietly reading the Sunday papers and napping, we instead drove through I-5 and SR 167 crazy drivers to Renton. We saw the play “See Alice Run” at the Renton Civic Theatre, not because we wanted to, but because a friend had a part in […]
Serendipity, Sri Lanka, and Peter Pan
“A safe but sometimes chilly way of recalling the past is to force open a crammed drawer. If you are searching for anything in particular you don’t find it, but something falls out at the back that is often more interesting.” James M. Barrie When I was attending Hudtloff Junior High School my parents bought […]
Tolls on downtown streets?
On April 3rd, Mayor Jenny Durkan announced that Seattle will develop a plan to toll city roadways as part of its efforts to reduce traffic congestion and greenhouse-gas emissions. The Seattle Times used the comment and information as a front-page story. I had just finished a white paper for a history project about the changes […]
Raining On My Parade
In my senior year at Clover Park High School it rained so hard during the Daffodil Parade in downtown Tacoma, our band was told we wouldn’t be marching. My buddies and I took our leader’s word for it, put away our instruments, and wandered through the crowds. We were taken by surprise when we heard […]
Moctezuma’s Mexican Restaurant Tacoma – Restaurant Review
We hadn’t been to Moctezuma’s in years, but we were taking Peg’s sister and her boyfriend out for Easter dinner and we knew they loved Moctezuma’s. Back in the 1980s when we were producing Video Realty on local cable, Moctezuma’s was one of our first advertisers. We’ve long felt a kinship for them . . […]
Indo Asian Street Eatery – Restaurant Review
Indo Asian Street Eatery wants to provide the feeling of eating Asian street foods. The mission is simple: serve delicious, affordable food that guests will want to return to week after week. The website says the restaurant is the perfect place to experience fine Southeast Asian dining. . . but they also want to take […]
Bewildering and Beguiling – A Peter Review
“Peter and the Starcatcher” could have been retitled, “War of the Words.” You have to admire a script that mentions Genghis Kahn, Caesar, Napoleon and Ayn Rand in the same twenty word line. There are puns, jokes, “in” jokes, “out” jokes and perhaps even “in-between” jokes. Sometimes the plays on words are flying about so […]