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Jazz musicians and fans have been sending out their thoughts and prayers via Facebook and Twitter following the news that pianist Mulgrew Miller suffered a serious stroke yesterday. Details are somewhat limited but it is reported that Miller is currently in intensive care.

Miller, who has been called a protege of Oscar Peterson, suffered a stroke back in 2011 and made a full recovery. Musicians such as Terence Blanchard, Geoff Keezer, and Charlie Haden have been sending out well-wishes on Twitter.

Feeling maddened by the madding crowd? Dreaming of a quiet beach, or a mountain lodge? Looking for a way to retreat from the chaos? Perhaps what you need is, in fact, a retreat.

Sand, sun, and surf may be the image you have when you think of a getaway. But for some, the vacation this year has little to do with the beach and more to do with quiet introspection. 

Welcome to the world of monastic retreats. 

The spring's cold snaps will mean not as many cherries this summer. Flower buds and bees don’t like low temperatures. And the cherries—well, they don’t like the rain. But there is a silver lining. a week.

Bryce Kenning saw the void before him in an explosion of dust, and there was nothing he could do.

"It was like time was frozen — like a roller coaster where you're not attached to the tracks," he said Friday. "It's something you never think you will ever experience in a lifetime — driving off a straight cliff."

Joe Brewer In the wake of Apple’s battles before Congress in defense of its $100 billion tax haven overseas we have a guest post by Joe Brewer, co-founder of /The Rules, a movement aimed at identifying the structural causes of poverty and the means to deconstruct these harmful systems – including tax havens. —————————————————————————————- For … Continue reading →

No, poverty is not an accident or a immutable fact of life. That’s according to Joe Brewer, the hyper-articulate mind from Seattle-based Cognitive Policy Works behind The Rules campaign. “Pick your issue, and you can see how the rules were constructed to make it so… Poverty doesn’t exist by accident,” Brewer says. In this extended … Continue reading →

Slum tourism is a growing industry in cities with mega-slums like Nairobi and Mumbai. Now it is popping up in the United States. First there was a gang tour in LA and now a trip through New York City’s tough and tumble neighborhoods. Real Bronx Tours offers tourists to New York City the opportunity to … Continue reading →

A truck hauling a too-tall load of drilling equipment hit an overhead bridge girder on the major interstate between Seattle and Canada, sending a section of the span and two vehicles into the Skagit River. All three occupants suffered only minor injuries.

It happened about 7 p.m. Thursday on the north section of the four-lane Interstate 5 bridge near Mount Vernon, about 60 miles north of Seattle and 40 miles south of the Canada border, and disrupted travel in both directions.

Flickr, gainesp2003 In a bad sign for the world’s ability to work together to fight against bird flu or some other pandemic, a flap has erupted over some Dutch scientists applying for a patent on a newly recognized SARS-like virus that has killed nearly two dozen people in the Middle East. The virus has been … Continue reading →

Healthy soil, Charles Darwin once observed, is the key to life on Earth. We take it for granted, but it is fundamental to our well-being on all sorts of fronts beginning with food production, plant life and the health of the atmosphere. Modern agricultural methods deplete the soil and we’re losing topsoil globally. Here’s a … Continue reading →

The Guardian is marking the 50th anniversary of the creation of the Organization of African Unity with a quiz that asks, among other things, where is Nollywood. Also asked: Was the capital of Liberia named after Marilyn Monroe? Inquiring minds want to know… Mark Tran at the Guardian noted this story at Africa Check reporting … Continue reading →

The Nobel Prize-winning economist and Grameen Bank founder is the pioneer of microfinance. This writer asks: Are his plans for alleviating poverty a little too good to be true? Source: Guardian At first, it is difficult to know what to make of Muhammad Yunus. In London this week to promote his work building social businesses, … Continue reading →

Rain showers will be coming and going this weekend. That's the big picture, but Cliff Mass, professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington, has a few tips for navigating:

Here’s a somewhat hostile look at a woman who runs an organization based in Nairobi, Kenya, working to spread the use of the alternative medical therapy homeopathy in Africa. One of the first paragraphs in the story indicates the author’s view pretty clearly: Homeopathy is a bogus system of medicine that relies on the assumption … Continue reading →

India is often called the world’s largest democracy. It could also be called one of the world’s messiest democracies. Source: Ipsnews Indian Gov’t on Collision Course With Civil Society – For years India’s pro-liberalisation, Congress party-led coalition government chafed at civil society groups getting in the way of grand plans to boost growth through the … Continue reading →

Afghanistan capital city attacked by militants (BBC) — Afghan security forces have been fighting insurgents in the centre of the capital, Kabul, after the Taliban said it had attacked a guesthouse for foreign workers. Africa backs Kenyan President’s call to drop crime-against-humanity charges (Reuters) — African nations have backed a request by Kenya for charges … Continue reading →

From the Washington State Department of Transportation: 

Sonny Boy Williamson was a blues originator who helped shape the sound of modern blues. In his life, he knew the first generation of Delta bluesmen, and would go on to see the birth of modern rock music. He played with Robert Johnson in the 1930’s, and with Eric Clapton in the 1960’s.

He was a major radio star in the 1940’s on King Biscuit Time, America’s first live blues radio show. He wrote dozens of songs that became blues standards, notably “Help Me” and “Eyesight to the Blind." He recorded “Bring It On Home” in 1963, but didn’t release it until 1966.

Last fall, sixth-graders in Spanaway were forced to confront a tragedy that no student should have to go through when their beloved teacher Rob Meline died.

To make matters worse, Meline was killed in a way that made the evening news. Now, after a school year of grief and healing, the students settled on a unique way to honor their teacher by sending him into the stratosphere.

KPLU sports commentator  Art Thiel describes the Mariners' six-game losing streak as "the bleakest outlook they've had all season."And it could get worse this weekend.