Results tagged “seattlepubliclibrary”

Mayor Nickels’ 2010 city budget is on the table before the city council, and within it is a $2.6 million proposed decrease in the Seattle Public Library budget for next year - approximately 5% in cuts. Twenty-one library branches will see their operating hours reduced in 2010, and expect a repeat of this year’s week-long library systemwide closure to trim expenses even further.

A man was assaulted in the U District when he refused to give a group of assailants his pizza.

ONE WORLD, TWELVE FINALISTS: Central Cinema will be featuring some of the twelve best short films submitted to the 2009 Manhattan Shorts Festival tonight--the first night of the three-day event. Manhattan's goal is to show the finalists in venues on every continent, uniting audiences around the world, for this one week only. We must admit that they have a point when they ask, "For up-and-coming filmmakers, what greater test for your film is there than to be judged in cinemas by a global audience?" So go join in on the judging fun, and let your inner-critic shine.

Back where we come from, there's places known as "cooling centers". These are public buildings that are air-conditioned in the event of a deadly heatwave such as the one in which we currently find ourselves embroiled. We remember our afternoon cartoons being interrupted by ticker-style warnings about the heat and the elderly and cooling centers for those without A/C in the home. Libraries were the foremost among the list of these cooling centers.

Exactly 20 years ago today, Diane Wei Liang said goodbye to the love of her young life forever. Almost. The preternatural calm over Weiming Lake at Beijing University, patiently awaiting the arrival of army tanks, would have been the perfect setting for two would-be revolutionaries to end their romance that was never-to-be. "Weiming Lake was as peaceful as ever," Liang writes in her memoirs of the heady days of 1989.

"Dewey readout" by Bill Bowdish, from the Seattlest Flickr pool

First of all, let Seattlest be clear up front: we have almost zero respect for Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series. Poorly written, dumb story line, not worth our time. Harry Potter, on the other hand, we loved. A group of opinionated kids at the Seattle Public Library debated the merits of the two series yesterday, and here's the video. Attention, kids: read a lot, frequently, and continue to hone your debate skills--they'll serve you in good stead in MySpace chat rooms for the rest of your lives.

"wt [10]" by Patrick Wright, from the Seattlest Flickr pool

To mark the centennial of Theodore Roethke’s birth, poets Linda Bierds, Andrew Feld, Richard Kenney, Colleen McElroy, Heather McHugh, and Pimone Triplett are gathering to read and talk about Roethke, who inspires that kind of devotion, whether you knew him personally or not. The Washington Center for the Book, Poetry Society of America, and University of Washington Creative Writing Program are throwing the party at the Seattle Public Library, in the Microsoft Auditorium. It's this Wednesday, from 7 to 8:30 p.m., and it's free.

ALL INCLUSIVE: Knowledge is power. Bone up on making your website design more accessible to every PC, Mac, and Blackberry by taking this course, sponsored by Refresh Seattle. Consultant Wendy Chisholm will speak and everyone will head over to the Red Door for snacks afterward.

Ten years ago, during the height of the dot-com boom, Seattleites voted to spend almost $200 million to update all of the libraries in our system and to add four new neighborhood branches to it. This week, the Libraries for All Initiative comes to an official close and we thought that, in honor of such a magnificent and useful achievement, we’d allow ourselves the oddity of crushing—for this week only—on an inanimate object: Seattle Public Libraries. We are a bunch of writers who dearly love our books, after all.

Seattlest's childhood summers were for three things: camping, sleeping late, and reading. The latter was the most pervasive. We borrowed stacks of ambitiously thick books at a time from the Lake Hills library--a bike ride through the greenbelt away--and we'd burrow somewhere comfortable to read for long hours. We inhaled books, goldfish crackers, and pina colada-flavored slurpees from the corner store during those summers like there was no tomorrow, because back then, it was almost like there really wasn't. At least, there wasn't a tomorrow we needed to concern ourselves terribly with--as long as we had a good book waiting.

JUG BAND IDOL: Starting today, Greg Vandy of KEXP's The Roadhouse will hold live auditions for a new jug band. Without a harsh Brit, we're not sure what to expect, but we know it's unmissable.

FULL PUPPET NUDITY: You might have noticed that big banner on the side of the Paramount advertising puppet cleavage Avenue Q. Well, tonight is opening night, so if you haven't gotten your tickets for this ever-so-brief run of the Tony Award-winning show, now's your time. Seattlest will be there tonight for the kick-off, but then it's up to you to get out and see those puppets sing and swear all over the place.

10 a.m. - 6 p.m., Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday // Washington State Convention Center, 800 Convention Pl // Two Day Pass: $30, Saturday Only: $20, Sunday Only: $15

"Reflections on Old Justice" by Jonathan Hanlon

Every once in a while at a Town Hall reading, we have to pinch ourselves to make sure we're awake. Is this really true? Did over 150 people just pay $5 to hear a lecture on behavioral economics? Obviously it helps to be interviewed on NPR. Or maybe it was the New Yorker story by Elizabeth Kolbert.

The Seattlest Flickr pool knows how to navigate between floors at the downtown library. That's just how good we are.

The Friends of the Seattle Public Library are trying to get people to write to members of the City Council in support of funding collections before the council meets to discuss the budget Tuesday, October, 30. Seriously, a $2.5 million shortfall this year, and a shortfall every year since 2000 when Libraries For All funded a bunch of building upgrades (including the Central Library)? That's really lame, particularly here where we get all proud whenever some list ranks us as the most literate city in the world. The most literate city in the world shouldn't have budget shortfalls at the library, and unless it's all a big show we need to fix SPL funding. We've got a bunch of cool new branch libraries, and the Central Library is great (or not, but whatever, we've got it) but If we're going to take the time to burrow through the rat maze it would help if we could be reasonably certain of actually going home with the book we're after. It has to be fixed.

Well-known alterna-librarian Jessamyn West came to town recently, and finally had a chance to check out our flagship library. Her verdict?

I saw a real disconnect beween the lovely outside and grand entry spaces to the library, plus a few other very design-y areas, and the rest of the building. Materials were hard to find. VERY hard to find. Signage was abysmal, often just laserprinted pieces of paper, sometimes laminated and sometimes not. Doors to areas that may have been public were forbidding and unwelcoming. There weren’t enough elevators. There weren’t enough bathrooms. There wasn’t a comfortable place to sit in the entire building. There were lots of “dead spaces” that, because of architecture, couldn’t really be used for anything and they were collecting dust. The lighting was bad. Stack areas were dim and narrow. The teen area seemed like an afterthought. Bizarre display areas with a table and some books on it were in the middle of vast open areas. Most of the place felt like it was too big and then the stacks felt too crowded and I had to climb around people working to find things. Shelvers shut down the entire “spiral” concept with booktrucks. The writer’s area in this library is a shadow of the glorious writers room in the old downtown building where I had a desk briefly.

You may recall that Seattlest recently moved to Rainier Beach.

Oh, snap! That should read "The Big Harry and the Potters News This Week." The authors of songs such as "Save Ginny Weasley" and "Gryffindor Rocks" are touring the Northwest, and Friday they end up in Seattle for a performance we hear will be "AMAZING!" Hear more of their indie-HP geek stylings MySpace, then make plans to catch them live. Seriously. A friend of our says they really do rock.

Tonight at the Central Seattle Public Library, Tim Westergren, founder of music software company/massive audio archive/internet radio service Pandora, hosts a public forum on his business model and the state of digital music as a whole.

It's not only the anniversary of Mt. St. Helens exploding, it's also the event of a much more unexpected event: On May 18, 1992, for the very first time, a girl allowed 15-year-old Seattlest Seth to kiss her. If that isn't a shameless excuse for a Seattlest roundtable, what is? And so we present...Seattlest's first kiss:

Pretend for a moment that you work the circulation desk at a Seattle branch library.

SHERMAN FREAKING ALEXIE: The best-selling author returns with his first novel in ten years. Flight tells the story of an orphaned Indian boy who travels back and forth through time in a violent search for his true identity. Real Change-published poets (that would actually include Alexie, too) read as part of the program.

The Friends of The Seattle Public Library Book Sale

PREQUEL TO MCARTNEY'S WINGS: Richie Unterberger, the author of several books on the history of rock, shows some film footage and plays some music recordings of unreleased Beatles material. He´s promoting his latest book, The Unreleased Beatles -- Music and Film. We had no idea they were in jail! (Ha! Because of the "unreleased" -- see how...oh...sure, we can move on.)

It's like a painting, see? From far away, it's OK, but up close, it's a big old mess.