PATRIOT BREMERTON
FRIDAY, AUGUST 1, 2014 | Vol. 17, No. 24 | WWW.BREMERTONPATRIOT.COM | 50¢
Puppy love Community rallies to help dog hit by car Page 8
Kitsap deputies won’t endorse Russ Hauge BY KEVAN MOORE KMOORE@SOUNDPUBLISHING.COM
Seraine Page/staff photo
Kabuki Academy dancer Ariel Dennison performs at the downtown Bremerton Library on Monday for spectators.
Library gets dose of Japanese culture BY SERAINE PAGE SPAGE@SOUNDPUBLISHING.COM
Patrons wandering into the downtown Bremerton Library this week got a little taste of Japanese culture. Special guest Mary Mariko Ohno, a transplant from Tokyo, Japan, filled a small portion of the library with Japanese music, chants, singing and dances for onlookers. Ohno, who owns a dance studio in Tacoma, visited Bremerton for the first time on Monday afternoon. Bremerton resident Erick Painter brought his two little boys to the event for some exposure to a different culture. Painter spent some time
as an exchange student in Hiroshima as a young adult. “I really like to share it with them,” Painter said of the Japanese culture. Painter and others sat on the floor of as Ohno and three of her dance students performed different dance routines and songs. For one special number Ohno and two students performed on the shamisen — a three-string musical instrument — and played the familiar tune from the Mario Brothers video game. Ohno’s dancers also brought out scripts with easy Japanese songs and encouraged the audience to sing along. Ohno sang a verse and
then asked audience members to mimic her, allowing for a playful atmosphere that left most kids bobbing their heads to and fro. Dances special to the Japanese culture dotted the hour-long performance by Ohno and her students. At the end, she encouraged the youngest library visitors to get up and dance with her. “All the little ones were so happy,” Ohno said. Some in the audience weren’t just lucky to have wandered upon the event, presented by Kabuki Academy. One parent of a dancer follows the troupe from city to city. Eric Dennison of Silverdale,
has trailed behind his daughter, Ariel, 18, from Tacoma to Kingston for the last year and a half she’s been involved with Ohno’s studio. She’s even learning some Japanese. “She’s really into it,” he said of his daughter, whose Japanese stage name is Akina. Once a month, they travel around to attend performances, some with audiences as large as 4,000 people, Dennison said. Ever the proud dad, Dennison brings along his camcorder and camera. “It’s amazing. I can’t take enough pictures,” he said. “It’s really neat when we walk through an area and she gets stopped to take a photo with someone.”
The Kitsap County Deputy Sheriff ’s Guild hasn’t determined which candidate it will endorse in this year’s Kitsap County prosecutor’s race, but it has decided who it will not endorse — incumbent Russ Hauge. The guild announced last week, in a strongly worded statement, that while it was still assessing the other three candidates for the prosecutor seat, it had decided to officially oppose Hauge and encouraged the voters to consider one of the other three candidates in the August primary. Running against Hauge are fellow Democrat Bob Scales, Republican Tina Robinson and Independent Bruce Danielson. Guild President Jay Kent explained that the guild took the unusual position of issuing an “anti-endorsement” because of its strong opposition to Hauge. “The prosecutor’s office is a mess and Hauge is responsible for that,” Kent said. “We are not going to get the office’s problems fixed until he leaves the office.” Kent said the guild wanted more time to assess the other three candidates, but it is “firmly set” against Hauge’s reelection. Hauge said he was disappointed that the guild was not supporting his re-election effort. “The issues that they raise are issues that we really have no control over, nor can I comment on them. We act as legal counsel for sheriff’s office and county commissioners, who manage labor contracts and pay. We’re
essentially just the lawyers and anything I say to the county commissioners or the sheriff is subject to the lawyer-client privilege and I can’t rally talk about.” Hauge noted that the deputies guild, unlike many other public sector bargaining units has for years used mandatory arbitration as a tool for negotiating contracts. Those arbitrations are contested legal matters, in many ways similar to an ongoing legal trial, and are adversarial, Hauge said. “It’s an adversarial legal proceeding and we represent, by law, the adversary of the deputy guild in these legal proceedings, that is the sheriff’s office management and county commissioners,” Hauge said. “The positions that we take in the mandatory arbitration that the guild asks for, are positions that we are instructed to take by our clients. A lot of things get said in the context of litigation, but consider the source. Personally, I think every sheriff’s deputy should make twice as much as what they make now. I’m sorry the deputy guild is taking it personally.” Kent, though, explained that the guild and its members had “no confidence” in the Prosecuting Attorney Civil Division. “We are especially unhappy with Hauge’s manageSee full ment of story on the civil law m a t t e r s ,” website Kent said.