The UW Library has announced that sound engineer Jim Anderson’s collection of recordings from the previous incarnation of the Crocodile Cafe will be available on August 11th for perusal in the Odegaard Library Media Center. No online streaming for now, due to copyright restrictions, but a great chance to hear one of the hundreds of tracks from bands both great and obscure (sometimes both) in-person at the library.

UW Press Release

Swimming race at Colman Pool, circa 1960 by Seattle Municipal Archives

From 1:30-3p.m. Saturday, you can get free admission into the Rainier Beach and Meadowbrook pools, part of Seattle Parks and Recreation’s Summer Splashtacular. There will also be free diving instruction at Madison Beach from 2-5 p.m., and at West Green Lake, Pritchard, Matthews and Madrona beaches. Flotation devices from Oodles of Noodles will be available from noon to 6pm at the beaches.

Little ones will get wading pool toys and activities at 14 local wading pools from 1-4pm.

6:00 PM – Rachael Brownell: Mommy Doesn’t Drink Here Anymore: Getting Through the First Year of Sobriety
Elliott Bay Book Co.
Brownell has an easy, readable style and a simple message. There is no glowing happy ending, just the reality that life must be faced one day at a time. This work will appeal to readers who like memoirs about ordinary people overcoming difficult life problems; individuals who find 12-step and recovery literature helpful will also be interested in this personal journey.—Crystal Renfro for Reed Business Information
[LINK]

You thought there could be nothing cuter than a baby tiger, but you were wrong: baby snow leopards are cute critical mass. And Woodland Park Zoo has them!

Two of them in fact, female cub Batu and her male twin brother whose name WPZ would like you to help select. Go to their voting page and select from these Mongolian names:

Gobi – after the Gobi desert in Mongolia
Boke – meaning “strong”
Irbis – meaning “leopard”
Vachir – meaning “thunderbolt”

Vachir and Boke, by the way, are way cooler than Gobi or Irbis, but let your conscience guide you. (Batu, by the way, means “firm, hard, honest”.) Voting enters you to win cool prizes and the cub’s new name will be announced on Saturday, August 15 during the International Snow Leopard Day festivities which run from 9:30 am to 3:00 pm. The cubs will be introduced at noon.

A fire at the Lawrimore Project yesterday torched SuttonBeresCuller’s There Goes the Neighborhood, a living room in a trailer that has been hauled into King County’s suburbs. No other artworks were damaged because of some remarkable consideration on the part of the firefighters, who moved some art works out of the way of their hoses and contained the water so that it didn’t flood the basement. It was an awfully thoughtful move on the part of the firefighters.

Lawrimore’s Spite House opens tonight: “SPITE HOUSE is an exhibition that will reveal invisible territories of spite. By articulating the threshold between spite-r and spite-e, the work in the show emphasizes that the vacillating polarity between these two extremes depends on how you scrutinize the property line.” The fire was accidental, but it had some interesting timing. In honor of it, the gallery will have a bar serving flaming cocktails set up in the charred back sculpture yard.

(Via Slog.)

11:00 AM – Phyllis Yasutake: Storytelling
Northwest African American Museum
“This summer at the Northwest African American Museum, gifted griots—storytellers—will enchant young and old with tales recounted following oral traditions. Children of all ages are invited to experience the art of storytelling and the power of stories…” (NAAM)
[LINK]

12:00 PM – Elizabeth Sims: The Extra
Seattle Mystery Bookshop
Sequel to The Actress: law student and occasional actress Rita Farmer investigates on the set of a movie.
[LINK]

3:00 PM – Joyce Major: Smiling at the World: A Woman’s Passionate Yearlong Quest for Adventure and Love
Inner Chapters Bookstore
I’ve got to applaud the cause and the writer’s enthusiasm, but this is barely a book. The writing is weak, at best, and Major doesn’t really inform the reader about how to use voluntourism to make a positive difference.
[LINK]

3:00 PM – Raleigh Briggs: Make Your Place
Pilot Books
Learn how to make your own cleaning supplies from a non-toxic guru. Briggs will teach from her new book and then you can buy the book and make the recipes your very own. You know you want to. All the cool kids are doing it.
[LINK]

6:30 PM – Bree Loewen: Pickets and Dead Men: Seasons on Rainier
SPL Columbia Branch
The story of a young woman’s experience as a climbing ranger where respect is hard won and on-the-job performance can be the difference between life and death.
Bree Loewen has been a climbing ranger on Mount Rainier, an EMT in Seattle, and has written for Climbing magazine. She has taught rigging and navigation classes for search and rescue groups and lives in Carnation, Washington, with her husband and daughter.
[LINK]

7:00 PM – Chris Mooney: Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future
UW Bookstore University District
“Journalist Chris Mooney, best known for his bestselling The Republican War on Science, has now teamed up with a scientist, Sheril Kirshenbaum, in a plea for increased scientific literacy. In their new book, Unscientific America, they highlight the anti-intellectual tendencies in American society and urge all who care about the place of science in solving our gravest challenges—climate change, the energy crisis, economic competitiveness, global pandemics, and nuclear proliferation—to become an army of ambassadors who can translate science’s message and make it relevant to the media, the politicians, and to the public. Presented as part of the Seattle Science Lectures by Town Hall, with Pacific Science Center and University Book Store.” (Town Hall)
[LINK]

7:00 PM – Douglas Brinkley: The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America
SPL Central Library, Microsoft Auditorium
“A distinguished Rice University history professor who is among the most highly regarded historians and biographers to come along in recent years, Douglas Brinkley has written on a vast array of subjects: Henry Ford, Hurricane Katrina, Jimmy Carter, Rosa Parks, Hunter S. Thompson (he is literary executor of Thompson’s estate), Bob Dylan, Ronald Reagan (he edited The Reagan Diaries), among many others. He is here at Central Library this evening for his major new work, The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America (HarperCollins). In this book, Douglas Brinkley draws on previously unpublished materials in documenting the life and accomplishments of the United States’ first president to champion wilderness. This should be a scintillating, engaging evening.” (EBB) I heartily agree.
[LINK]

7:30 PM – Jane Adams: Sugar Time
Elliott Bay Book Co.
The local author will read and sign her self-published novel.
[LINK]

Ballardites will get a new pizza option soon, in the form of Delancey Seattle which will be opening mid-August at 14th & 70th. Drawing inspiration from joints such as Pizzeria Bianco, Di Fara, and Pizzeria Mozza, they hope to offer “Brooklyn-inspired wood-fired pizzeria using local ingredients.”

Can’t wait? You can follow their progress online…

wind’s poem

The relentlessly productive Phil Elverum has already prepared another new album for your eager listening. Today, National Public Radio presents an exclusive “first listen” for Mount Eerie’s Wind’s Poem , which apparently takes its primary inspirations from David Lynch’s television series Twin Peaks and black metal.

My devotion to all-things Mount Eerie is well known and anticipation for this new album high enough as it is, but bringing in the brilliantly creepy television series leaves my fingers all the more twitchy for a listen. [npr]
// Mount Eerie comes back to Seattle on 14 October for a show at the Vera Project with WHY? and NO KIDS. Be there!

• Set on the hottest day of the summer in Bed-Stuy, Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing arrives exactly one week too late for perfect synchronicity with the dramatic Seattle weather. Nevertheless, its screening tonight marks the twentieth anniversary of the film’s release (and the only outdoor showing of it this summer) and the welcome return of Havana’s much-loved summer parking lot movie series. Grab a blanket, settle in for some chilled beer and hot pizza from Via Trib and reminisce about our own brush with extreme heat. $5, doors at 8, film at 9:30. [havanasocial]

7:00 PM – Carolyn Wright & Robert McNamara: Majestic Nights: Love Poems of Bengali Women / Cat Under the Stairs
UW Bookstore University District
“We welcome not one but two people to talk about Bengali poetry. Carolyne Wright will discuss the anthology she put together of translated poems of Bengali women. And UW professor Robert McNamara will discuss the work of Sahitya Akademi Award-winning Kolkata poet and writer, Sarat Kumar Mukhopadhyay.” (UW Books)
[LINK]

7:00 PM – Mary Miller, Jonathan Evison, Aaron Burch: Big World / All About Lulu
College Inn Pub
“We had such a great time at The College Inn Pub in May, we’re returning with two fantastic young authors. The always-down-for-a-good-reading Jonathan Evison will be on hand (and reading some of his stellar fiction) to help us welcome the very talented Mary Miller. Miller’s book of short stories, Big World, is a small press wonder—startling, honest tales told in tight, beautiful sentences. Also on hand will be Hobart editor and writer Aaron Burch who will give us a preview of their tenth issue.” (UW Books)
[LINK]

7:30 PM – John Hess: The Galápagos: Exploring Darwin’s Tapestry
Elliott Bay Book Co.
Hess is a photographer, ornithologist, evolutionary ecologist, and a professor emiritus of biology at the U of Central Missouri. It’s entirely possible that he knows what he’s talking about. Also, he’s bringing slides!
[LINK]