23 year old Josh Lipsky asked to be on the advance team for President Obama’s visit to Buchenwald hoping to fill in some holes in his family history. Lipsky’s grandfather, Samuel Smulowitz, met his wife-to-be at a labor camp but they were separated when he was sent to Buchenwald. With help from the Buchenwald guides, Lipsky retraced his grandfather’s steps, stood in the cellar under the kitchen where he worked, and held a check-in slip bearing his signature. Lipsky’s grandmother survived to liberation and searched for Smulowitz, eventually finding him in Munich. They married, moved to the United States, and had three children, one of them Lipsky’s mother.

Valeriy Palnchuk, facilities engineer at the Space Needle, says his most difficult task was replacing the airplane-warning light at the top when it went out during the night. In his words: “The beacon is at the very top [605 feet] and sits inside a disk. It’s like a big wok. I hook up at the bottom, go through all the lights, then, at the top of the mast, I have to pull myself up about 8 feet higher to be in the ‘nest’ and change the bulb.” But he enjoys his job, especially walking “the halo,” the ring around the observation deck. Many tourists have taken his photo out there.

Among metal sculptor Don Carlson’s clever creations are working barbecues shaped like toothy monsters and aliens. He also makes benches out of compressor tanks.

I didn’t take much notice of Seattle’s King Street Station when I picked up friends arriving on Amtrak. It was just another run down, neglected train station with little glory left after “modernizing” renovations hid much of the circa 1905 ornate interior. But Seattle has managed to gather up funds to restore King Street Station and various sources are contributing to the project such as Amtrak and Sound Transit. Its 242 foot clock tower, modeled after Venice’s Campanile di San Marco, is functional again with the help of local clock hobbyists. The ornate ceiling will be revealed after years behind suspended tiles. A grand staircase will be restored. And, most importantly, King Street Station will continue to serve as a critical public transportation hub. U.W. has a photo from 1943 of the then busy waiting room.

18 year old Shehade Shelaldeh has his own violin repair shop in the West Bank where there has been a growing interest in classical music. Ramzi Aburedwan, a violist who runs a music center for Palestinian children, encouraged Shelaldeh, who lived next door to the center, to learn the trade. Shelaldeh spent 3 months apprenticing in Italy and also received lessons from visiting European luthiers. He’s still got plenty to learn and he’s hoping to attend Newark College’s violin-making program, but for now he’s keeping the students’ instruments in shape, for a musical escape from the politics that surround them.

Cranium, the Seattle company that brought us a multi-faceted game of the same name, was purchased by Hasbro in early 2008. The resulting absorption of the company is now complete with only 8 of the 80 employees at time of acquisition staying with Hasbro. The Seattle office closed on Friday. In 2006 The Seattle Times took readers inside the fun-loving company culture, revealing that they knew of 6 men who have proposed using Cranium, some with custom game cards provided by the company. With funky job titles (the two founders went by Grand Poo Bah and Chief Noodler), an understanding of Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, and a new approach to sell their product first in Starbucks and bookstores, the company mixed fun and smarts in their quest to create games where “Everyone Can Shine.”

New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority maintains nesting boxes for peregrine falcons on area bridge towers and monitors them for activity. Five chicks have hatched in the past few weeks in their temporary homes stop the Verrazano-Narrows, Throgs Neck and Marine Parkway-Gil Hodges Memorial Bridges. They’ll fly off before July.