Katherine Banwell

Thursday is the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. The event has fascinated human beings for millennia.

KUOW listener Chris Corfman is one of them. He wants to know: Are any of Seattle's streets purposely aligned with the sunrise or sunset during winter and summer solstice?

There's a lot of money in Seattle these days. Companies like Amazon and Starbucks are based here, and construction has been booming. But our city has one of the biggest homelessness problems in the country.

Our listeners are wondering about that disconnect. And they've been asking us questions about the issue.

State Trooper Rick Johnson has heard some curious excuses from people driving in the HOV lane.

"I forgot I didn’t have my kids in the car.”

“I consider my dog/golden retriever a person.”

Others are more brazen: “We’ve confiscated a number of mannequins,” he said.

Eleven-year-old Nina Parry noticed a man sitting outside her neighborhood QFC. She and her mom brought him food. But there were others.

“Ever since I can remember, I've been seeing homeless people asking for money or just sitting in the streets being cold,” she said.

Have you wondered where your recycling goes once it's picked up? A KUOW listener was curious about that, so we asked Hans Van Dusen, the solid waste contracts manager at Seattle Public Utilities.

He tells Kim Malcolm about the journey our cans and paper takes. 

Last month a teen stormed into his former high school in Florida and killed 17 people. Teenagers from the school are demanding that the federal government ban assault-style guns like the one used there. 

The incident prompted a question to KUOW about counseling for school-age children. So we talked to David Bilides. He's the head counselor at Jane Addams Middle School in Seattle.

Bilides is worried about how students there are handling this latest news.

Poor, neglected, carrying around a broom as substitute for the guitar he didn't have.  These are images of Jimi Hendrix growing up in Seattle.

And Hendrix biographer Charles R. Cross says that even when Hendrix returned to the city as a superstar to play a concert 50 years ago, on Feb. 12, 1968, he was heckled by students at his old high school. Cross says Hendrix always had a complicated relationship with Seattle, but the city should use this anniversary to do more to honor him.

Thousands of people – maybe tens of thousands, according to the city of Seattle — are expected at the second Women’s March in Seattle this Saturday.

Douglas Chin says there’s a lot at stake in the legal argument over the latest version of President Donald Trump’s travel ban.

Like Hawaii’s “aloha spirit,” said Chin, the state’s attorney general.

We don't need statistics to see that Seattle is growing at an unprecedented rate. One neighborhood where the change is most noticeable is the Central District.

After a white police officer killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, there were months of protest across the country, including Seattle. New attention focused on how the police interact with black people.

Now, police departments are considering whether special training can help their officers overcome their own biases.

Many white Americans believe that black Americans earn close to what their own families make. The truth is far different.

Blacks, on average, earn half of what whites do in this country.

People who are chubby or fat often experience prejudice. 

But a recent study out of the University of Washington found that for Asian Americans, being fat correlates with being viewed as belonging in the U.S. Dr. Sapna Cheryan is a psychology professor at the UW. She talked to Kim Malcolm about the study's results.  

Washington state and federal officials want to make it easier for you to access the state's many parks and recreation areas.

Right now, there are about 20 different kinds of passes, leading to a lot of confusion for park goers. 

Marty Jackson runs the Southeast Area Network of the Seattle Youth Violence Prevention Initiative. For years, she had worked with Stephan Stewart, trying to keep him off the streets.

And her efforts appeared to be working.

When 30-year-old Charleena Lyles was shot and killed by Seattle Police, her death became part of a legacy of trauma absorbed by the black community. Brain scientists are only now researching impacts this kind of violence has on the psyche of African-Americans and their involvement in the criminal justice system.  

Kendra Roberson, a lecturer at the University of Washington School of Social Work, provides therapy services for black school-age girls. She told reporter Patricia Murphy that young people experiencing long-term trauma can begin to believe that bad things will happen to them.

When Stephan Blanford ran for Seattle school board four years ago, he won 89 percent of the vote.

But he often felt stuck as a member of that board and now says he won’t run again.

Charleena Lyles lived in housing owned and operated by Solid Ground in Seattle's Magnuson Park. The nonprofit organization manages a campus with 175 housing units for people who have come through the experience of being homeless. Mike Buchman is the communications director at Solid Ground. He told Kim Malcolm that a neighborhood has been created at Sand Point for hundreds of people. 

The African American community in Seattle is in shock after city police shot and killed 30-year-old Charleena Lyles. Jenny Henderson is a therapist in Seattle whose clientele is mostly black. She tells Kim Malcolm that Lyles' mental illness was not taken into account. 

Chief Sealth International High School in West Seattle is among the most diverse schools in the city. Seventy-five percent of the students are black, Latino, Asian or Native. But a lot of its students of color felt that the teachers tended to pay more attention to the white kids.

La TaSha Levy is an assistant professor of American Ethnic Studies at the University of Washington. Patricia Murphy talks to her about the intersection between Black Lives Matter and the Black Panther Party and how the two movements have more in common that we may realize. 

Is it OK to call someone of color ethnic? What does half-white mean? 

Staff at Southern Heights Elementary School were concerned about an 11-year-old boy. He wouldn't make eye contact with people and was disengaged from those around him.

Then the Young Artists Academy came to the Highline school. The class helps kids in 4th through 10th grades find their voices.

"I had NEVER hugged a white man in my whole life. And now I'm like hugging these guys and saying 'I love you, brother.'"  

If you're a kid of color living in poverty in our region, getting to college can be tough. The Road Map Project has been trying to help for seven years. Its goal was, by 2020, to double the rate at which students in South Seattle and South King County finish college.

But with growth changing the region so quickly, people at the project reassessed that time frame. The new goal: Raise the college graduation rate to 70 percent by the year 2030.

The Trump administration wants to end the EnergyStar program – you might know it from labels that mark the most energy-efficient appliances when you shop for a TV, refrigerator or computer.

Nives Dolsak and Aseem Prakash of the University of Washington told KUOW’s Emily Fox that ending the program doesn’t make sense, for a number of reasons.

Information was released this week about how the Republican health plan would affect people in Washington. UW associate law professor Sallie Sanford spoke with Kim Malcolm about who loses the most.

Seattle sees itself as a progressive city. Then there are those taxes ...

A nationwide study of 51 cities says Seattle is the fourth worst for taxes if you’re poor. But if you’re rich, it’s the fourth best.

Gene Balk, the data-reporting FYI Guy of the Seattle Times, wrote about the study and told KUOW's Kim Malcolm about the disparity for the poor (defined as a family of three earning $25,000).

Recent hate crimes prompted President Donald Trump to condemn such acts in a speech to Congress. Some of those incidents have been in the Pacific Northwest, and now the shooting of a Sikh man in Kent is being investigated as a possible federal civil rights violation. 

UW history professor James Gregory told KUOW's Kim Malcolm about the prevalence of hate crimes in the Pacific Northwest.