Jennifer Wing

Isn't it exciting when the plum or fig tree you've been nurturing finally bears fruit? But keeping up with the bounty  and eating it all can be a challenge. Rather than tossing the excess or letting it rot, there are volunteers who are happy to come to your home and harvest what you are willing to give away.

As the Taylor Bridge Fire continues to be battled from the air, people are looking for a safe place to put their horses, cows, llamas and other livestock. The fairgrounds in Ellensburg are holding 150 large animals and counting.

There are so many ways we can listen to music. Usually the easiest these days is playing tunes on a digital gadget such as a phone or laptop. It wasn’t that long ago when we had to make a trip to the local record store to stock up on the latest hits.

The current exhibit at the Henry Art Gallery, The Record: Contemporary Art And Vinyl, shows how the flat black disk and the sleeve that holds can do so much more than just play music.

Here’s an odd fact: Seattle’s dog population is estimated to be around 140,000 and climbing. The number of kids? … 93,000 and dropping.

Seattle’s not such a bad place to raise kids, but based on the 2010 census, roughly 15 percent of our population is 18 or younger. And, when you compare Seattle to Boston, New York City or Chicago our share of little ones looks pretty paltry.

In fact, Seattle is neck and neck with San Francisco, which has the lowest population of children of all major U.S. cities.

So where did all of Seattle’s kids go?

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A political tale of the little guy going up against the establishment that happened in Seattle more than a decade ago is now on the big screen in movie theaters.

The film Grassroots tells the mostly true story about former monorail champion Grant Cogswell running against incumbent Richard McIver for a seat on the Seattle City Council in 2001.

Have you ever been to Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo and had a difficult time seeing the animals through all of the trees and plants? Well, it’s supposed to be that way. It’s all by design.

The naturalistic animal exhibit was born in Seattle at Woodland Park Zoo nearly 30 years ago.

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A tiny space with big ideas. This is the motto of the Telephone Room in Tacoma. It claims to be one of the smallest places in the world where artists display their work.

The Northwest is home to a variety of companies that have changed how we live our lives.

We spend more now on coffee thanks to Starbucks. Amazon is changing the way we read books. And another company with deep local roots has gotten many of us to buy more of everything: Costco.

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Right now the Tacoma Art Museum is the only place on the West Coast where you can see the controversial exhibit, Hide-Seek, Difference and Desire in American Portraiture.

The show covers nearly 150 years of art from the gay and lesbian perspective. It also explores the theory that the gay and straight worlds intermingled more freely before World War II.

Did you know that in just about every sacred text there is a reference to the environment? From the Bible to the Koran, to ancient Buddhist writings, there are passages that talk about how people have either been destroying the Earth or how we need to do a better job taking care of it.

A new coral work performed by Seattle First Baptist and Plymouth Church focuses entirely on the environment. It's called A Song For Our Planet.

The Academy Awards are coming up this Sunday. There are many wonderful films that don’t get an Oscar. And there are lots of not-so-great movies that win the coveted award.  Seattle’s “20-20” awards look back at past Oscar winners and how they’ve stood the test of time.

In Seattle, we’re never satisfied: Viaduct out of fashion (… and a little dangerous) – remove it and dig a tunnel; Kingdome no longer fits our vision of a great sports venue – poof!

Remove all the hills because they’re in the way of progress – leveled!

One of the earliest engineers to envision grand changes for Seattle was R.H. Thompson. He’s the guy who leveled the hills in what’s known as the Denny Regrade. To understand our drive to give Seattle a constant make over, we decided to take a closer look at this unsung engineer who dramatically changed the city more than 100 years ago.

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Is Seattle a great but lonely place to live?

The city often ranks pretty high on those lists of the best places to move to – There’s the food, the water, the mountains, the music. But once people get here, they find it’s pretty tough to make friends. There’s even a name for it: The Seattle Freeze.

We wondered: When did the freeze set in? And, how can a newcomer ever break through it? 

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Fear of a ticket from paternalistic police? Group angst? Peer pressure?

Whatever the reason, even if a car is not in sight, Seattleites will often wait patiently for the light to change rather than … jaywalk.

Pedestrians in this city are unlike their fellow walkers in San Francisco, Boston and even Portland, Ore., and the culture of waiting at the light goes back decades.

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Seattle is home to one of the most extensive collections of Asian art in North America. It lives at the Seattle Asian Art Museum in Volunteer Park. But over the next several weeks the collection’s best pieces are on display at the Seattle Art Museum in downtown.

The exhibit is called Luminous: The Art of Asia. It features ancient Buddhas, delicate pottery, and a new modern work which ties everything together and transports you to a different place.