In hot countries, hot dishes and spicy foods help people sweat, and thus cool off. Here, we rather like cold soups. Today, I give you a Chinese soup that’s served hot or tepid. My daughter Suzanna Leigh, whose inspirational motif is the dragon, gave me the name for it.

Standing at the counter of the University of Washington Bookstore looking at conducting batons seemed odd and surreal. Standing next to me, instructing the clerk, was the man who had told me a decade before I couldn’t conduct adults or an orchestra or band because,  “(He) couldn’t handle the competition”.

Vashon Allied Arts offers several summer youth camps for arts and fun.

Top sheepherding teams from across the country will be competing on Vashon a month than usual earlier this summer --August 22-25, Misty Isle Farms.

The only female in the competition, Alexina Slater was more than a long shot. She was seen as a risk to the whole event. Too young, too reckless, too weak and too female for such a challenge, the organizers sent a special boat along with the swimmers to trail the main group and pick up the girl once she fell behind and before she drowned.