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January 2014
Issaquah Highlands Connections
VOLUNTEER OF THE MONTH: GUDRUN FICHTER
Gudrun Fichter Volunteer of the Month – January 2014 In Fall 2009, when we were looking for a new home in the Seattle area, my family and I instantly fell in love with the Issaquah Highlands―its views and walkability, as well as its “green” focus were the main draws. While my daughters both enrolled in Issaquah High School, I decided, after 10 years of volunteering in kid-related groups, such as Girl Scouts, PTSA, and school foundations, to try new avenues and look for other opportunities.
My first foray into this adventure brought me to the Issaquah Highlands Community Association. Since 2011, I have been a member of the Architectural Review Committee, meeting once a month with a very diverse group of volunteers from the Issaquah Highlands. The committee discusses and approves the many changes homeowners apply for – sometimes a very challenging task when the individual homeowner is not aware of community guidelines. But more often it is a very fun way to participate and maintain the high standards of Issaquah Highlands, our modern and beautiful community. With the opening of the YWCA Family Village Issaquah, I saw another opportunity to support my community. In 2012, I joined the volunteer force at the Family Village with the intention of teaching computer classes. Though a banker by profession, I spent most of my professional career in Information Technology, where I did everything imaginable that had to do with computers, including hot line, implementing networks, creating and teaching computer classes, online banking―you name it. However, my love of organizing and structuring workflows got the better of me, and my job description changed. Now, I am primarily the volunteer coordinator at the Family Village Issaquah. I welcome any new volunteers to the FVI, do all the paperwork, schedule work hours, and recruit new volunteers, anything that goes along with volunteering. Are you interested in volunteering at the YWCA? If so, contact me; I’m the person to talk to! To get a handle on all the volunteering that’s going on, you can find me at the FVI all day, every Tuesday. I also work with the FVI staff to coordinate the Adopt-A-Family program at the YWCA Family Village Issaquah, connecting donors and families anonymously. In 2013 the YWCA Seattle/King/Snohomish connected over 800 families with donors, who generously made the holidays brighter for hundreds of children and
their families. Thanks to everyone who make this program so very special! And of course, my computer skills are always asked for―general support to staff and residents is interspersed with everything I do at the FVI. In my spare time, you will most likely find me on the tennis court, or taking care of Bitz, our little parrot (actually a cinnamon green cheeked Conure), who needs a lot of love and attention. Whenever possible, our family spends time abroad, mostly Europe as we are from Germany, but also visit destinations within the US, such as Glacier National Park, the Grand Canyon, Hawaii and many more are on our radar. The newest addition to spending my time is exploring the new shops in the Issaquah Highlands―now that we have everything from a grocery to a sports equipment store, from a movie theater to clothing establishments, and of course, RESTAURANTS! In total, I love living in this thriving community and trying to give back the best way I can.
MOVIE REVIEW: PAUL SLATER
Suffering from Genre Block? by Paul Slater, Crofton Springs
Every so often, even the most seasoned of movie watchers finds themselves suffering from genre block. It’s a welldocumented condition (or at least it will be now that I’ve invented the term). Sufferers of genre block find themselves unable to be excited by any movie outside of their preferred genre. Specific genres can prove particularly infectious comedies, action films and documentaries for example. Genre block can be harmful in its own right, but there is one nasty sub-strain of the disease that is particularly debilitating: sub-genre block (SGB). You might have bumped into a sufferer at work, or even in your family. These sad individuals might now be onto their 20th Marvel comics based film, gross-out comedy, or sports documentary. Fortunately, the treatment for this disorder is pretty simple. Expand your world by making up new sub-genres. No longer will you have a favorite Western, Horror film or Sci-fi flick. From now on your genres are “films set in Scotland, films with a day of the week in the title, or films that include members of the same family. To help you with this remedy - I hereby declare a new sub-genre, and recommend three films you might enjoy in it. With Oscar season nearly upon us how about “films that were nominated for best picture, but somehow lost”. First up is arguably the greatest film of all time “Citizen Kane”. At some point in one of these columns I was going to have to mention it - this is the only film I’ve seen more than 50 times; and the first time I saw it I hated it. Kane lost out to “How Green Was My Valley” - a perfectly good film, but, well, it’s no Citizen Kane. There isn’t a movie around today that doesn’t in some way borrow from Citizen Kane - and not a major director in existence that hasn’t studied it like a textbook. Deep focus, overlapping dialogue, extreme angles and unconventional timelines - Kane had all of them decades before modern imitators, and combined them with a compelling story about loss,
dressed up as a sort of elaborate puzzle, like the ones that Susan never finishes. If you haven’t seen it recently, go back and watch Citizen Kane. As soon as you are done, watch it again to catch all the things you missed. (As an example, look for the snow globe that Kane drops - you will see it elsewhere in the movie, and it will change how you feel about one of his key relationships). 1939 and 1940 were extraordinary years for movies. In just those two years Gone with the Wind and Rebecca won, but the following films were made - none of which won Best Picture - Goodbye Mr. Chips, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Ninotchka, Of Mice and Men, Stagecoach, The Wizard of Oz, The Grapes of Wrath, The Philadelphia Story and The Long Voyage Home. No, they don’t make ‘em like they used to. Rebecca is one of Alfred Hitchcock’s better films, but another one was in the list of nominees, didn’t win, and these days is often ignored - Foreign Correspondent. The film was one of Hitch’s early Hollywood movies made after his British classics, the Thirty-Nine Steps and the Lady Vanishes, and it has the spy caper feel of those earlier films. But made under the shadow of World War II, it is a thriller that combines adventure with a serious message. In many ways it’s one of the more successful U.S. propaganda films of the war era, a fact that the Nazi propaganda Chief Joseph Goebbels noted at the time. The 70th Academy Awards in 1996 saw Hollywood award Best Picture to an excruciatingly tedious love story, mercifully terminated when the boat carrying the two protagonists (and about 1500 others) hit an iceberg. But the same year that Titanic won a boatload of statuettes, another far superior film was in the running. L.A. Confidential has a great cast (Guy Pierce, Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe, Danny DeVito and a surprisingly good Kim Basinger), in a story that could teach Titanic a thing or two about pacing, cinematography and dialogue. The “should have won Best Picture, but didn’t” genre is so rich, that you could be watching these films through this years and next year’s Academy Awards. Use these three films as a starting point if you feel genre-blocks warning signs, and you will soon be on your way to enjoying a wide range of terrific films once more.