'The Cedar Branch Chronicle' by Jocelyn Curry

Seattle: 2007. One-of-a-kind. Sculpture, mixed media; Yellow cedar, watercolor and laser images on paper. Designed specifically for its location at Wessel & Lieberman Booksellers. // For 'The Cedar Branch Chronicle', Curry collected one natural artifact and one man-made artifact during her daily walk. Without any self-imposed rules other than scale, upon returning, a watercolor 'journal-entry' composition was created from these found objects on a uniform 3-1/2 x 7" card. The thirty-one daily paintings are suspended from a dramatic 17-foot long cedar branch found on the shores of Puget Sound near the artist's home. The finished installation is essentially an alternative book-form, the paintings/pages free to be touched, and turned by the viewer, allowing for a rather kinetic experience of the author/artist's 'illustrated diary' of her daily ritual over the course of July, 2007



An artist book, The 31 Journal Pages of the Cedar Branch Chronicle: A Book of Days by Jocelyn Curry, was published in an edition of 31 copies to accompany the exhibition.

'The Cedar Branch Chronicle' is a tremendous piece and one that clearly exudes Curry's deep sense of place. The combination of the man-made found object with the natural artifact is tastefully and elegantly presented. By pairing the found with the natural Curry skillfully transforms the negative weight of the human litter that populates our natural world into a digestible form. Magically, it somehow becomes something we can live with.

It's sure nice having this hanging around the shop.

Other work from the exhibit can be seen here.

Be sure to click on top and side image to enlarge.

City Council Does the Right Thing: Increases Library Funding by $2 Million

It seems everywhere you turn library budgets are getting slashed. In some cases the budgetary reality it's so ugly that the management of public library services is being outsourced to private companies.

But here in Seattle things are a bit different.

The Seattle City Council has adopted a $2 million increase for The Seattle Public Library’s 2008 materials budget.

They already know that libraries matter. In 1998 the citizens of Seattle voted overwhelmingly for the "Libraries for All" bond measure, a $196.4 million infusion to build new, and remodel existing, branches citywide. This is where the money for the Rem Koolhauss designed Central Library came from and where the recent boon in library usage originates.

How busy has the library gotten:
For her piece in the Seattle Times, Looking for that hot new title? At Seattle library wait may be long, Mary Ann Gwinn tried to get a copy of Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and there where 726 people ahead waiting for one of the 119 copies in circulation.
Not exactly serving the community by any stretch.

And if the $2 million increase isn't amazing enough the City Council also set "a significant new funding guideline for future library materials budget proposals." The new guideline or “Statement of Legislative Intent” basically requests that "the library present the ideal level of resources needed to accommodate the growing library system and resulting patron demand."

Tell us what you need and we will try and help!
I forgot the government worked that way.

The Color of Romance

"Between the kitty litter and the toothpaste, on a lonely aisle of your supermarket, they cry out for love. Highlander Untamed! Unleash the Night! To Pleasure a Prince! The Boss's Wife for a Week! Willingly Bedded, Forcibly Wedded!"

So begins Brian Miller's piece in the Seattle Weekly, A Billion Dollar Romance Novel Industry, And its Lonely Black Author.

Miller profiles the Seattle romance novelist Edwina Martin-Arnold and in the process gives us a peek into the world of Romance publishing.

How big an industry is it:

The genre accounts for 26.4 percent of all popular fiction sales
It annually produces around 6,000 titles
Harlequin, the godzilla of Romance publishing sold $471 million worth of books last year
40% of all Romance books are sold at the big box retailers like Safeway, Wal-Mart and Costco.

How diverse of an industry is it? Not very.

"Among these coded book covers, where yearning maidens cling to strapping lads with gilded locks, it's nearly impossible to find an African-American face. Nor any Latina features, nor any Asian figures, nor any sign that love exists for nonwhite women."

The Romance Writers of America (RWA) claim around 9,500 members, "but a spokesperson draws a blank when asked about the ethnicity of its authors and readers. While there are plenty of market-research factoids available...the RWA's race demographics are curiously blank."

The "race demographics might be curiously blank" on the writer side but on the reader side, at least for Harlequin, their targeted demographic are the seriously white. You might remember that earlier this year Harlequin inked a multi-book deal with NASCAR for a 16-book paperback series, all of which will have Nascar settings, and include cameo appearances by a real-life Nascar driver.

Seattle Weekly also has a gallery of 11 romance novel book covers to supplement the article.

New York Times story back in February on the Harlequin/Nascar deal.
Previous Book Patrol post The Harlequin Romance and Nascar: A Marriage Made in the Boardroom

The Reminiscences of a Seattle Bookseller

"That was the day that I really understood I could buy books and sell them for more money. That was the day I got hooked by books."

Taylor Bowie has been selling books in Seattle for over 40 years. My first job in the book trade back in the early 1990's was working for Taylor at Bowie & Company. At the time I was working as a residential therapist at an in-patient facility for troubled kids and was beginning to show signs of social service burn. Taylor's friend happened to be the cook at this place and Taylor and I would often chat when he would come by to pick him up after his shift. When he mentioned that one of his employees was leaving I mentioned that I was ready to leave the madhouse I was working in and he offered me the job. The rest they say is history. Interestingly enough the employee who was leaving Bowie & Company was Mark Wessel who would become my partner in Wessel & Lieberman early the following year.

These reminiscences are destined to become a vital resource for the history of Seattle bookselling while also providing an intimate glimpse into the lives of the type of universal characters that populate the book trade.

Memories of forty years in the Seattle book trade: part 1

by Taylor Bowie

As a little kid, I was both inquisitive and acquisitive. By age four, I had already decided to be either an archaeologist or what we then called a “garbage man.” I loved the idea of digging around and poking around for artifacts of one sort or another, and I was always interested in what other people threw away. My first collections were of empty tin cans, shiny pebbles and match covers. Being raised in a family that was fairly literate and (in the case of my dad) very musical, by age ten I had already formed a little collection of old books, as well as started what would become a huge collection of 78rpm records.

So that is how I came to apply for my first job in a book shop here in Seattle. I had been a record customer of the Fillipi Book & Record shop for about a year, and was frankly looking for more money to spend on my new hobbies. Mr. and Mrs. F were pleased to oblige me with an every-Saturday gig, the duties of which included sweeping, wiping down the wooden steps which led to the second floor, and repairing torn sheet music and dust jackets with Scotch Tape.

Ted Fillipi was a very shy and gentle man. He had first entered the book trade in San Francisco around 1932, but in a few years had relocated to Seattle, where he opened his first shop, on Third Avenue, in 1935. He was assisted by his amazingly vibrant, hard-working, dedicated, often-abrasive and opinionated wife, Katherine...who was known to one and all as “Kits.” By the time I came to work for them in 1966, the record department (run with a velvet glove AND an iron fist by Kits) had become the more important half of the business, although plenty of great books came and went through the doors even then.

Even as an adult, I was always a little scared of Kits, but Ted was much more easy-going and began to show me a few things about books and their values. My shop duties were still of the mundane type I’ve mentioned, but I began to get a picture of what made one book desirable and made another just a hunk of paper and glue.

Fillip’s was at the same address from 1953 until the time it closed just a few years ago. The building at 1351 East Olive Way (corner of Melrose Avenue) is a sort of odd pie-shaped brick structure which originally was three separate businesses, including an auto mechanic at the far east end. When I first went to work for Kits and Ted, they had just expanded into the second unit, and in a few years had bought the building and taken over the entire space. I recall seeing the old “garage” space for the first time after they had cleaned it up and moved in bookshelves and painting...no one would ever have imagined that this had once been home to broken-down Hudsons and Model A Fords.

The charm of Fillipi’s was due in part to this interesting layout...lots of odd nooks, crannies, cubbyholes, back stairs, front stairs...you name it. And the odd layout complimented the fascinating inventory they stocked...not just books, but a huge array of 78- and LP phonograph records, old photographs, paintings and prints, small antiques, the occasional LARGE antique, even fine costume jewelry, for which Kits had a very astute eye. There were boxes of inexpensive vintage post cards, a huge collection of very inexpensive piano sheet music of the last hundred years, and hundreds if not thousands of vintage photos of film, music, theater and vaudeville performers. Many of those show biz photographs had once belonged to J. Willis Sayre, the long-time arts critic for the Seattle Post Intelligencer. Mr. Sayre had donated the photos to a local institution which either could not or would not house them properly, and they ended up in boxes in the “balcony” at Fillipi’s. The early theater and opera photos were the most mysterious...who WERE these people, many of who never made films or records? The Sayre Collection was an amazing archive of American show business history, ca. 1910 -1955. I would pay a pretty penny now if I could somehow put it all back together.

When I worked at Fillipi’s, it was not unusual to see someone come in with a specific want, but who would end up spending hours, if not the whole day, poking around at all the amazing things to be found there (did I mention vintage toys?) And the better part of them always ended up buying something, even if it wasn’t what they had been seeking in the first place. That was one of many things I learned from Ted and Kits Fillipi...make your inventory general and you’ll please more people...plus you’ll always be finding new things to add to that inventory.

While working at Fillipi’s, I met one of the most important people in my years in the book trade...someone who may have had more influence on my deciding to go into the business than any other single person.

Russell Vellias was a long-time Seattle resident, born in 1928, who as an adult had floated around from one activity to another. He sold ferry boat tickets. He played chess, sometimes for money. He played the horses, ALWAYS for money. And somewhere along the line, he learned that you could make money by buying old books in one place (thrift store, estate sale, bookshop) and selling them at another place (bookshop, collector, etc.). In the late 60s, Russ was a very frequent visitor to Fillipi’s, always with a box or two of interesting books to sell to Ted. I always poked my nose into what was going on between Ted and Russ, and soon decided that here was something else I could do to supplement my then-generous salary of $1.50 an hour.

In later years when I had my own shop, Russell Vellias became a valued friend, a source of supply of amazing material, a frequent source of capital when I was short, and a great customer as well. But back in the 60s he was more of a friendly competitor, and seemed more amused than anything else by my first baby-steps as a book scout. Remember, too, that at age 13 or 14 I was restricted to taking the bus from one sale or shop to another. I envied Russ, not just for his car, but for his terrific ability to scope out a huge shelf of books, and find the one or two worth bothering with.

I was able to scoop Russ at least once. I had gotten wind that there was to be a book sale at the St. Nicholas School on 10th Avenue East (building now owned by Cornish). For some reason, the good ladies of the school Mother’s Club had not done much advance promotion for it, but I had learned of it from the St. Nick Alumni Newsletter that was sent to my sister.

So I got to the sale about an hour before it opened, thinking I should get a “good place in line” as I assumed there would be many others waiting to see the book treasures inside. Imagine my shock when I got there and there WAS no line...there was nobody else but me, the not-quite 16-year old would-be “book scout.”

Even better...the nice ladies inside saw me standing at the door and asked me if I wanted to come in early. Uh...yes, I did...and they gave me full run of the place, especially when I mentioned that my sister had graduated from there just a few years before.

By the time that Russ and others arrived, I had scooped up every good book I could find, including some valuable signed limited editions and fine illustrated books from the teens and twenties, each priced at either ten, twenty-five or seventy-five cents! I put a lot of extra money in my piggy bank from my $17 investment that day. Would it surprise you that the best and most valuable books were the ones I bought for ten cents?

That was the day that I really understood I could buy books and sell them for more money. That was the day I got hooked by books.

As a budding book scout and part-time employee of Fillipi’s, I always offered Ted first crack at anything I found...but that sometimes meant that I would have left-overs, either out-and-out junk which I shouldn’t have bought at all, or perhaps items which he already had in stock, or which were not in the nice condition which he demanded.

So I learned to make my way to other shops in Seattle, hauling a box of Ted’s rejects with me on the bus. The first thing I learned was that booksellers are not too keen about looking at stuff which has been rejected by another bookseller, especially one as erudite and accomplished as Ted Fillipi. But I did have the occasional transaction with other shops.

A woman named “Rose” who ran the old Raymer’s store on 3rd Avenue would never even look at what I had to offer...she rightly assumed that I’d offered my little box of wares elsewhere, which was understandable, as she was a very cheap buyer. Raymer’s was a dusty and dreary shop, of picked-over dross. I didn’t have much better luck at Janson’s Book Shop on First Avenue. Bryce Janson and his mother ran it. I recall that she would give me the most sour look when I walked in, as if I didn’t smell good (maybe I didn’t?) Bryce was genial enough, but one of those pedantic types who would tell you how much he knew about something or another, and do so at a snail’s pace. Didn’t matter what you said, he would find some reason to disagree with you, and do so in this ponderous and pedantic way which made me want to run away and hop back on the nearest bus to anywhere...the Hell with my box of books! John Knaide’s shop (originally at Broadway and Pine, later on Second Avenue) was really an antique shop and makes the list of old bookshops only by the virtue of John Knaide’s purchase of the legendary H. Scofield library when it was finally sold in the early 1950s. That is a tale better left to another time, including the incident where Knaide sold the very last of the Scofield books to a local book scout...several hundred good books for twenty dollars!

There were others downtown, of course...Shorey’s was still going strong at its long-time location at 815 Third Avenue, between Marion and Columbia. It had every manner of odd room, office, and a dark and mysterious basement which held who-knew-what. A huge, rambling barn of a place, and so many employees: Mr. Mikelson; Dewey Knowles; Fred Kronenberg (a WW2 refugee who had been a lawyer in Poland or some place); my late friend Robert Mattila, who left a few years later to open his own shop; and what I would later think of as the Shorey version of “The Odd Couple”, proprietor Bill Todd and his brother-in-law Don Lindsley.

Those of you who remember Bill Todd will recall that he had a great deal to say about many things, and that it was often difficult to disengage yourself from a conversation with him...and back then that could be a real issue for me as I was depending on public transit to get around. That said, I always preferred to sell books to Mr. Todd than try to sell them to Don. Don was a very shrewd buyer, and instinctively knew what to buy and what to avoid. I also liked that he treated me like an adult, pretty much as an equal. He knew I was trying to make a few books as a book scout and he would take time to explain to me why some I offered were OK and why others were no good.

The meanest thing I ever did to Shorey’s was with a box of hideous vanity press poetry (self-published, usually by no-talents). They had each been inscribed by the various “poets” to their former creative writing teacher, who clearly was an inspiration to each and every one of them. But the inspiration did not compensate for complete lack of talent. This was a box of the worst garbage I’ve ever read.

I was about to walk into Shorey’s with the box, hoping for mercy and maybe five bucks of pity money, but I saw through the door that Don Lindsley was behind the counter. I lurked about the corner of 3rd and Cherry and kept peeking in to see who was running the front. When I saw Mr. Todd take Don’s place I barged in with this box of unsaleable rubbish and showed it to him. He knew the creative writing professor by name and was very impressed with the sincerity of the various presentation inscriptions...who was I to argue? And I walked away with fifty bucks...a teen-age book scout fortune in those days.

The next time I saw Don he looked at me sort of ruefully and then had to laugh at what I’d managed to put over. Eventually Don and his wife left Seattle and returned to Idaho. I look back on Don Lindsley as one of the real gents of my early book years.

A few of you may recall Robert Mattila’s first open shop, at 115 South Jackson in Pioneer Square. I recall going to the opening which was ca. 1975, and telling Bob what a beautiful shop he had. It was really nice, in an elegant space with an Art Moderne facade. It showed off Bob’s better antiquarian stock to fine advantage, along with his decorated cloth bindings and leather sets. I was sorry that Bob chose to close the place after only about a year. When I “designed” my own little space for my second location (1981-82), I tried to bring in some of the flavor of Bob’s shop.

To be continued....

First published Summer 2007 issue of The Journal, a publication of The Book Club of Washington

Book Madness in Seattle

There is so much book related stuff going on this week in Seattle that Mayor Greg Nickels has designated it "Book Collecting Week."

Here's what's happening:

The premier non-new book event in the Pacific Northwest, The Seattle Antiquarian Book Fair & Book Arts show, takes place the weekend of the 13th and 14th at the Seattle Center Pavilion. With close to 100 exhibitors from around North America and as far away as Germany you are bound to see some of the best books, manuscripts and ephemera currently on the market. The exhibitors this year are particularly strong with many being members of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America.

Don't let the word "antiquarian" keep you away, you don't have to be a high-end book collector to enjoy this event. If there are books in your life on any level then this is a can't miss event.

The Miniature Book Society is holding its Grand Conclave in Seattle on the same weekend. The society, chartered in 1983 , is an international non-profit organization whose purposes are to "sustain an interest in all phases of miniature books, provide a forum for the exchange of ideas and to serve as a clearing house for information about miniature books."
This gathering is sure to set the Seattle record for the most people here at one time who have a love for books 3" or smaller!

Anne Bromer, a bookseller and co-author of the beautiful new monograph on Miniature Books published by Abrams in association with the Grolier Club, will also be giving a talk at the pre-fair dinner co-sponsored by the Book Club of Washington.

Also at this dinner the winners of the Fine Books & Collections Magazine 2007 Collegiate Book Collecting Championship will be given their awards. Did you know that three dozen colleges and universities host book-collecting contests for their students every year?

The subject matter of the top three collections this year are:
1."Landmarks of Classical Scholarship"
2. "Drama of Oceania"
3. "Mathematician Emil Artin"

In the introduction to the 1934 book New Paths in Book Collecting John Carter, who worked in the Rare Book Department at Scribner's for over 20 years, says:

The enterprising novice must be made to realize how infinite are the possible variations on the book collecting theme. A collection of "high-spots may sound the chord of C major...yet there are other and more subtle harmonies, the pleasantest are those we evolve for ourselves...By rearranging familiar books according to some constructive plan, a new significance is added to them and, which is more, the unfamiliar, the neglected books, will acquire significance by their context.

For over 70 years booksellers have been worried that there isn't a next generation book collector, that once this generation kicks it there will be hardly enough book collectors to sustain a trade. An event like this reminds us of the permanency of collecting. There will always be a healthy amount of collectors.

The Lewis Carroll Society of North America has also decided to visit Seattle this weekend for its fall meeting. The organization consists of Carroll admirers of all ages and interests and are interested in keeping Carroll, the creator of Alice in Wonderland, relevant in today's world.

There is also one ongoing book related event that is worthy of mention and that should be on the itinerary for all those coming to town and for all us book types that live in town.

The seminal exhibit Shu: Reinventing Books in Contemporary Chinese Art is on view at the Seattle Asian Art Museum through December 2. The show was organized by the China Institute and was curated by Wu Hung, a leading Chinese art scholar. The exhibit was originally held in two parts featuring over 20 artists; almost all are part of the post Cultural Revolution generation and for all books are an integral part of their work. It is a great opportunity to see the power of the book in all its glory. I will have a dedicated post on the show shortly.

There is a lot of book energy in this town.


Last photo of Yue Minjun's “Garbage Dump” by Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

The Growing Bestiary of Briony Morrow-Cribbs

The "Cabinets of Curiosity" of the 16th and 17th century is the jumping off point for Morrow-Cribbs. These rooms of mythical constructs blur the boundary of fact and fiction, where the real and the imagined share the stage.

Morrow-Cribs says she "uses the mediums of print and the book arts (and occasionally ceramics) to create a graphic connection between the recognizable 'real' world and my invisible, 'fantasy' world.

Her latest project is providing 11 aquatint prints to accompany the first book publication of Brigit Pegeen Kelly's prose poem Iskandariya. The book is designed and published by Rollin Milroy at Heavenly Monkey.

Milroy says the poem offers "a perfect companion for Briony's growing bestiary of anthropomorphically jumbled creatures."

Millroy and Heavenly Monkey continue their ascent to the top of the fine press world with each book taking us on a quality journey utilizing the most creative artists, writers and book makers this region has to offer. I have yet to be disappointed.

Morrow-Cribbs, the daughter of two artists, has yet to leave her twenties so settle in, this journey is just beginning.

There is an exhibit of the work of Briony Morrow-Cribbs to coincide with the release of Iskandariya at Wessel & Lieberman Booksellers in Seattle through Halloween . For those who can't make it here is the online version.

Roethke Lives

The premier of David Wagoner's one-act play First Class opened last night at Seattle's A Contemporary Theatre (ACT).

For Wagoner the play is a "remembrance of his friend and mentor, the legendary poet Theodore Roethke. In this world premiere, you’re a student in Roethke’s classroom. Why does art matter? When does genius become madness? And what does it mean to live a passionate life? Please discuss."

Seattle actor John Aylward plays the lead and does so so convincingly that Wagoner says "he's absolutely channeling Roethke in many instances."

Roethke is a legend around these parts. His time here in Seattle raised the literary stakes for the region. In addition to Wagoner his students at the University of Washington included Richard Hugo, James Wright and Carolyn Kizer.

The play is a must see for anyone interested in a glimpse of how influential he was as a teacher and as a poet.

The ACT blog has numerous videos and links about Roethke and the play.

The Roethke Readings: Meter and Madness (co-produced with Eleventh Hour Productions) will follow many of the performances. The program is inspired by the early 20th-century nightclub Cabaret Voltaire and will feature readings, dance, and music.

Here is an awesome one minute trailer for the Roethke Readings:


Wessel & Lieberman Booksellers has also published a broadside for the event featuring David Wagoner's poem The Rosebush: a memory of Theodore Roethke and a photograph of Roethke taken by legendary Northwest photographer Mary Randlett.

The Seattle Central Library: The Perfect Public Space?

Linnie Rawlinson has a piece on CNN titled Seattle Central Library: Creating the Perfect Public Space in which she urges people looking for ways to make "public spaces outstanding" to look to Seattle and how it pulled off and executed the Libraries For All campaign in which it raised over $200 million to create and remodel 27 library branches. The crown jewel of the campaign being the Rem Koolhaas-designed Central Library.

"Seattle is a city of readers, but our library buildings were getting tired...they were not working, not big enough, not functional for the change in the way information is being delivered." City librarian Deborah L. Jacobs told CNN.

The Central Library "has been designed as a fully-functional, hard-working public space" while also being "equipped to act as a community hub."

It is also very much a green building. It utilized local and recycled materials during the construction process and is energy efficient as "it maximizes daylight and uses automated lighting controls, while the wire mesh in the structure's glass helps conduct heat out of the building, decreasing the need for air conditioning."

But the main point here is not how well the building is designed or how many people visit or use their services. The reason it is a successful public space is that it is does not have a retail focus. Yes, the Friends of the Seattle Public Library have a great gift shop in there but this is a place one can go and not have to spend money or be inundated with the trappings of consumerism.

We also need to be careful with the term "public." As I have mentioned in a previous post the library was also designed to keep part of the public out. The design of the Seattle Central Library might be the first library in history to have homelessness be a major factor in the collaborative process between the library and the architect. The library was built from the ground up with the homeless in mind.


Previous Book Patrol post Library As Shelter


Thanks to Library Stuff for the lead

Potterpalooza

The University Bookstore here in Seattle launched its contribution to Pottermania. A week long tribute to the upcoming release of HP7.

The festivities include a full slate of WizRockStock Concerts where "Hogwarts disciples have created their own genre of indie rock to ease the stress of battling magical and social corruption, and promote literacy," featuring bands like the The Remus Lupins, The Parselmouths, The Weird Sisters, Firenze and the Centaurs of the Forbidden Forest and Harry and the Potters.

There will be events like these going on in every nook and cranny of this country. The good part is that this is an amazing example of the power of books the bad part is that much of the mania is fueled by corporate culture.

Paul R. LaMonica in his piece on CNNMoney, Harry Potter and the mountains of cash, has come up with a "Potter Index." The index tracks the performance of various public companies that have a stake in the Harry Potter brand. From Amazon which already has 1 million of the books pre-ordered to Hasbro which sells Harry Potter candies to Mattell who sells the Harry Potter action figures. The index is up 11% for the year outpacing the S&P by almost 3 1/2%. There are a couple of laggards in the index including the two brick and mortar entries Barnes & Noble which is down 2.6% and Borders which is down 12.8%.

The most surprising part of the index is that the two companies closest to the core of the Potter phenomenon aren't fairing so well either. Scholastic, which publishes the Potter series in the U.S., is up a weak 1.2% and Time Warner, the parent company of Warner Bros. who is releasing the film Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix this week, is down 3% for the year.

Of course there are many other factors involved when it comes to the health of these multi-national corporations but it is an amusing exercise nonetheless during the current fervor.

When the hype is all over I trust it will be the Harry Potter books and movies that will live on in our cultural genes while all that Harry Potter candy will go sour and those action figures will all disappear from the store shelves.

Hovering Over New Arrivals

University of Washington Bookstore employee "preparing for the 2008 Shelving Olympics."


Via Shelf Life

The Library Asylum

Chip Ward just retired after 29 years at the Salt Lake City Public Library. He left as the assistant director and might be the highest ranking library administrator to let the "dirty little secret" out.

What's the secret?

"Public libraries have become de facto daytime shelters for the nation's street people while librarians are increasingly our unofficial social workers for the homeless and mentally disturbed."

Of course this is not news to anyone who frequents the downtown library in any city. We all have our homeless stories.

Some of Chip's homeless highlights:

Overheard:
-"Don't mind me, I'm dead. It's okay. I've been dead for some time now."
-"The... Jews have been at it again"

Observed:
-Franklin "carefully pokes out the eyes of the celebs in any photo" in any of the magazines he reads
-"Bob tends to pace restlessly all day and is often on the move when, without warning, his seizures strike"

Keep in mind this is Salt Lake City!

I recently did a post on our new downtown library here in Seattle. In my research for the piece I watched a video of a presentation by architect Joshua Prince-Ramus, who was U.S. Director of Rem Koolhaas's Office of Metropolitan Architecture during the libraries construction. The video focuses on the collaborative process of building the library.

What I learned:
The Koolhaas designed Seattle Central Library might be the first library in history to have homelessness be a major factor in the "collaborative process". The library was built from the ground up with them in mind.

The consequence of this, our "dirty little secret", is that the library will always be mired in the form vs. function debate. Lawrence Cheek's recent article in the Seattle PI and the 59 comments that follow being the most recent flurry. It is designed as much to keep them out as it is to keep us in.

This is Reganomics gone wild. Hopefully the 2008 election will be the beginning of getting these people the services they need and giving our libraries a chance to fulfill their core mission for the communities they serve.

Ward's Op-Ed titled "What they Didn't Teach Us in Library School: The Public Library as an Asylum for the Homeless" originally appeared at TomDispatch.

It has also appeared in various places under various titles and is getting a lot of play in the librarian blogosphere.

AlterNet title: "America Gone Wrong: A Slashed Safety Net Turns Libraries into Homeless Shelters". 205 comments to the post here so get comfortable.

LA Times title: "Shelters for Dickens, Shakespeare and the homeless". This is an edited version.

Medindia.com title: "Public Libraries Turning into Shelters for the Homeless in US"

My post back in November "Library as Shelter" touched on the issue here in Seattle.

Seattle and the New Koolhaas Central Library: Is the Honeymoon Over?

Before we dive into the current flurry of the form vs. function debate regarding our Rem Koolhaas designed Central Library lets step back and take a look at the big picture.

The library is one of the many gifts of The 'Libraries For All' 1998 bond measure that passed by the largest margin of victory for a bond measure in Seattle history.

Seattle got a new Koolhaas designed Central Library, 5 other new branches and improvements to all 22 existing branches in Seattle.

The impact on our city has been profound:
-library usership is up citywide
- the Central Library has become a top tier tourist attraction pumping millions of dollars into the city
-each project has added something positive to the neighborhood. The latest library opening occurred earlier this month in my West Seattle neighborhood. A stunning addition.

In the Seattle PI on Tuesday Lawrence Cheek offered up his take on the Central library in his piece, "How the New Central Library Stacks Up".
An admitted cheerleader when the library opened Cheek is now ready for his "post-occupancy evaluation".
He dissects the building one feature at a time concluding that each of them "exist to draw attention away from the fact that most of its work and pleasure spaces are actually cheaply finished or dysfunctional...failing at fulfilling the promise of its stunning skin."

In 2002 Cheek did an article for the Seattle Weekly on the remodel of the stunning Suzzallo Libary at the University of Washington. In talking about the grandeur of the building he says "Few new public buildings of any kind today even try to provide big, dramatic spaces...The magic show is over...ALL GREAT ARCHITECTS eventually figure it out: interiors are more important than exteriors—they're why buildings are buildings and not just big lawn ornaments."

He's an inside guy.

He then does a bit of a flip-flop and admits:

"The Central Library hasn't stumbled in its iconic mission, not at all. It has energized our urban center more than any building in Seattle's history. It has launched both the image and substance of the Seattle Public Library into a new era."

That sounds like a positive function to me.

Towards the end of his Weekly article Cheek's ponders what the proposed reading room at the new central library might be like:
"the new Seattle Central Library promises a dramatic reading room on the eighth floor with nearly the footprint of Suzzallo's (50 by 200 feet) and a view of Elliott Bay. Judgment will have to wait until it's finished."

Judgment day has arrived.

Don't miss the comments or Soundoff section at the end of the article. There are 40+ and leaning negative

Seattle Public Library group on Flickr . Over 500 images

Natalia Ilyin's article in Metropolis "Why I Like the Seattle Public Library"

Rob Forbes, founder of Design Within Reach, article "Taking an overdue notice of a library"

Video of Architect Joshua Prince-Ramus, who was U.S. Director of Rem Koolhaas's Office of Metropolitan Architecture during the libraries construction, deconstructing the collaborative process of building the Seattle Public Library. If you want to know how it all came together the first 10 minutes of this video is for you.

The Roethke Pool

“There are those to whom place is unimportant, / But this place, where sea and fresh water meet, / Is important. . . . ”
from “The Rose” which he read to an enthusiastic audience at the Seattle World’s Fair in 1962

Theodore Roethke is arguably the greatest poet to have spent a significant amount of time living in Seattle. His years teaching at the University of Washington (1947 until his death in 1963) put the region on the literary map. "The sixteen years of Roethke’s residence in Seattle changed the region’s literary maturity and taste."
He is to the Northwest School of Literature what Mark Tobey was to the Northwest School of Art. The anchor.

The pool of poets that studied under Roethke include: Richard Hugo, David Wagoner, Carolyn Kizer, Tess Gallagher and Duane Niatum.

It was in the other kind of pool that Roethke's life ended. He was found face down in a pool on the grounds of the Bloedel family's estate on Bainbridge Island in Washington State. Brendan Kiley, whose folks live very close to the Bloedel Reserve as it is now called, has a tremendous article in the Stranger on his trip to the "poet's deathbed" and Roethke's role in his life.

The story he heard from a neighbor about Roethke's death went like this:
"Roethke—who taught poetry at the University of Washington and was large, vivacious, and a heavy drinker—was by the pool with Mrs. Bloedel and her daughter one summer afternoon, fixing mint juleps. Mrs. Bloedel went to the main house for towels or a telephone call or something. The daughter followed. When they returned, the poet was floating face down in the water. Three perfect mint juleps sat on a table by the edge of the pool. The family, grieved by the death of their friend, filled in the pool and turned it into a Zen rock garden. There is no plaque."

His obit in the New York Times obituary simply says Roethke died "apparently of a heart attack... while wading in a neighbor's swimming pool"

The Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Readings at the University of Washington began soon after he died 1964. The reading features an A-list contemporary poet. The 2007 reading is by Robert Bly and will be held in the Roethke Auditorium.

Archive of Roethke photos at UW
Roethke at Modern American Poetry
Chronology

The Book Designs of John D. Berry

For over 25 years John Berry has been designing books, editing books and writing about typography.

He was house designer for Copper Canyon Press in the early 1990s, and more recently has both edited and designed several books for Mark Batty Publisher, including U&lc: influencing design & typography.

John Berry is also one of the foremost writers on typography and design. His first two Dot-font books are selections from the essays he has been writing for the last seven years in his “dot-font” column for Creativepro.com. In these direct, colloquial essays, he turns a critical eye on the role of design in our everyday lives.

John D. Berry is the former editor of U&lc (Upper & lower case), and he edited the landmark volume Language Culture Type: international type design in the age of Unicode (ATypI/Graphis, 2002).

Wessel & Lieberman Booksellers is proud to host the first exhibition of John D. Berry's book designs. The exhibition will run through the end of April. A reading and book launch, open to the public, will take place on Thursday, March 22, from 6-8pm for his two new books, Dot-font: Talking About Design and Dot-font: Talking About Fonts (Mark Batty Publisher, 2007).

The Green Lake Poet

Sure sounds better than the Green River Killer.

This is a poet on mission. Every Sunday Amy Allin sets up shop at Green Lake, a heavily trafficked man-made lake in North Seattle. She puts out a little table marked with big glass letters spelling out "P-O-E-T" and reads poetry to anyone in earshot. She began her quest in July and has been there every Sunday since. Her goal is to be there for 1 year.

Allin doesn't own a car and walks four miles each way to Green Lake to perform her public service.

Allin says:
"If the world is run for science only and for commerce only, we're no longer informed by creative notions that could solve problems. The artists allow us to see things"

"Poetry can make a dull life the most exciting ever. You're no longer just walking down a dim street. Life becomes vivid and so much more worth living"

"I talked to 15 people who otherwise would not have had poetry in their lives,"

Here is a link to her blog Nostaligia: the Poetess at Green Lake and don't forget to sign up for her daily poem via email.

The Associated Press picked up her story and hopefully she will now get all the accolades she deserves

Thank you Amy

March of the Librarians: A Video Tribute to ALA Meeting in Seattle

"Didn't you wonder where your librarians disappeared to last January? Ten thousand of them were in Seattle for an American Library Association convention, and I was there to capture the bizarre congregation on video." nnicck

Hysterical rendition of the meeting. Good Seattle footage. An instant YouTube biblio-classic.

P.S. you can insert any trade show and it works.





Thanks to Jeremy from PhiloBiblos for the lead

Books to Eat and Books about Eating

Bookslut has a nice post in their February online magazine by Heather Smith who writes the "Judging a Book By Its Cover" column. This month she covers "Books About Eating"

She makes an interesting observation on the evolution of the food book market noting that they have gone from "books that were kind of eating porn, in which people traveled all over the world looking for the most perfect, exquisite loaf of bread, or the most tender baby sheep that charmingly scampers and gambols on the sun-dappled Tuscan hills and therefore is all the more delicious when it is cooked and served to the author at the end of the chapter" to basically "books about feedlots".

She goes on to talk about the challenges book designers face in dealing with the new tastes in the market and how the design philosophy has gone from "soft beiges and maroons, out-of focus photographs of fruit, and calligraphic typefaces" to "the color red, and a whole lot of '50s nostalgia."

Now let's talk about books we CAN eat!

The 3rd Annual Seattle Edible Book Festival will be held on April Fools Day. Every book in the exhibit is edible and I bet most of them actually taste pretty good.

For a taste here is a link to the 2006 entries and here are a couple of my favorites:

Dictionary by Amy Broomhall

and Catcher in the Rye by Julie Smith & Dave Strauss

and if you are on the east side of the mountains Whitman College will be hosting an Edible Book Tea Party on April 1st in the Olin Book Arts Lab. Now get cooking!

The Top Writers of the Pacific Northwest Hit the Newspaper

Talk about a sense of place.

Here are the first inhabitants of the new Seattle P-I Writers in Residence project:

Sherman Alexie
Rebecca Brown
Charles Cross
Pete Dexter
Ivan Doig
Timothy Egan
Ellen Forney
David Guterson
Charles Johnson
Jonathan Raban
Tom Robbins
Ann Rule

Tell me one publisher that wouldn't want that lineup. A healthy dozen. The Northwest 12.

Here's the plan:
-One writer will be spotlighted in the PI each month.
-The material can only be "new work, unpublished past work or work excerpted from upcoming books"

Kudos to PI managing editor David McCumber for getting it going. He created the prototype for this when at the San Francisco Examiner but here the writers are strictly regional. I believe they are all Washington State residents but out here the region wins.

This is great news for readers, newspapers (both print and online), the writers and the Pacific Northwest.

I can see it now: The "PI Reader" in stores by Christmas.

Full Disclosure: My blog appears on the online PI and I am not receiving any amenities for my kind words :)

Libraries Need Computers - Libraries Need the Gates Foundation

The first shower of news from the ALA Mid-winter Meetings here is in Seattle was the Gates Foundation pledging another 5 years of support so "public libraries serving low-income communities continue to provide free, high-quality computer and Internet services and training to their communities".

Some interesting numbers from the release:

-14 million people rely on library computers to further their education, look for work and to get health and government information.

-almost 40 percent of Americans are still lacking Internet access at home.

-the Gates Foundations has contributed over $325 million to date to library technology initiatives to overcome the "digital divide"

Our hats go off to the Gates Foundation for their support let's just hope that support is not limiting the technology options for our libraries and ultimately our citizens

Here Come the Librarians!

If you don't see your favorite librarian in the next couple of days there is a good chance he or she is here with us in Seattle.

Thousands of librarians from all over the country are ascending to the Emerald City for the American Library Association (ALA) mid-winter meeting.

The most literate city in America welcomes you to library heaven and we can't wait until you see our new downtown library!

There are over 2000 meetings and events and over 100 different discussion groups, covering all the major topics affecting the trade today.

There will be book parties and book related events all over town. Over 20 official parties and receptions and many unofficial ones as well.

The ALA Mid-Winter Wiki Page is a must visit numerous times throughout the event.

Tons of information, blogs and images.

There is also a link to the Wiki entry "List of Representations of Seattle in Popular Culture" and way too much information on our "coffee culture"

Book Patrol's "There has to be something else that needs to be talked about" award for the mid-winter meeting goes to the following event:

ALA President’s Program: Learn to FISH

Attendees are invited to join ALA President Leslie Burger and speakers from the FISH!Philosophy to help inspire organizational and cultural transformation in your own library. The FISH!Philosophy - 1) Be there; 2) Play; 3) Make someone’s day; and 4) Choose your attitude about how you come to work - grew out of Seattle’s Pike’s Place fishmongers who learned how to turn stinky, grueling 12-hour shifts into a unique customer and employee experience.

Now don't get me wrong -in this the 100th anniversary of the the oldest farmer's market in the country, our Pike Place Market- we love and respect our market but I just can't make the leap or the "throw" in this case. I am sure it is good organizational behavior and team building stuff but at the end of the day you are still throwing stinking fish and probably being underpaid as well.
You might be smiling and people may be taking a lot of pictures of you but the basic activity is the same.

Yes, it is a unique customer experience and a unique employee experience and of course every library in utopia would like to make every customer and every employee have a rich and unique experience each and every day but these days the basic activity of a library and the basic role of a librarian are in flux and in the process of being redefined. One would hope that the ALA President's Program would be a little more...