* 2:00 PM: Elliott Bay Book Company hosts Christina Pratt, author of An Encyclopedia of Shamanism. [LINK]

* 2:00 PM: “If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes,” is something Seattle-ites say a lot. Why? Why is our weather so messed up? Cliff Mass, UW atmospheric scientist and radio personality explains it all in his book The Weather of the Pacific Northwest. Finally! He’ll be at SPL Central Library, Level 1, Microsoft Auditorium, to answer our burning, freezing, and rain-drenched questions. Mass says, “The weekend looks generally dry (a few light showers perhaps in the north half of the state) and cloudy. Highs in the mid 50s.” Shocking. [LINK]

* 2:00 PM: The Ballard Branch Library hosts local author Michael Schein. He’ll be reading and signing Just Deceits: a Historical Courtroom Mystery. Strangely, I can’t find any holdings at SPL, so don’t expect to be able to check out the book from the Library. Schein is director of LitFuse Poets’ Workshop. Sponsored by Secret Garden Bookshop. [LINK]

* 3:00 PM: Local science fiction/fantasy author David Page will be at the Northgate B&N to talk about his latest novel, Mithras Court: A Novel of the Mists. [LINK]

* 4:00 PM: Travel writer Rolf Potts has travelled back in time from the future to talk about his book Marco Polo Didn’t Go There: Stories and Revelations from One Decade as a Postmodern Travel Writer, at Elliot Bay Book Company. Ask him how! [LINK]

* 5:30 PM: Michael Eric Dyson, author of a ton of books on race and class, is hosted at Mount Zion Baptist Church (1634 19th Ave, Seattle) by the Bush School and Seattle King County NAACP for a lecture entitled “Power, Justice, Freedom: Vote!” The election may be over, but the topic lives on. And can I just take a moment to say, “Yes, we can!” WOOT! I’m finally recovered from the almost debilitating relief. [LINK]

* 7:30 PM: Leslie Walker Williams, author of The Prudent Mariner, yet another novel of the American South, will read and sign at Elliott Bay Books. How many gripping, wise, lucid, inventive, evocative novels of the American South have been written and published to date? Way, way too many. [LINK]

photo by Scott Cahill Rude [flickr] via our group pool [#], which hungers for your pictures.

• Approximately a thousand words about the Goodwill glitter sale on the occasion of its twenty-fifth anniversary. Pack your redbull and shopping bags for this weekend. [times]
• You can keep that Obama sign in the window until all the color fades, but please take down those election signs. [p-i]
• Ably dodging a “spec” controversy, CHS gets a design intern and a new logo. [capitolhillseattle]
• Enjoy Thanksgiving by watching captive animals gnaw on frozen turkeys [zoo]. This post includes the best two photos of the day. Recomended! [slog]
• It turns out that the best place to get coffee in front of a fireplace with wifi and a view might not be Tully’s. [seattlest]

I’ve been charged with posting some photos of tonight’s impromptu party on Capitol Hill: Broadway and Pike: celebrating Obama’s victory. I spoke to the SPD on my way home and they said they were going to let the party burn out on it’s own (unless it turned violent), so expect it to continue going until the beer runs out. There were probably in excess of 1,000 people celebrating at this one intersection on the hill, undoubtedly after part of the 1st and Pike crowd joined the crowd.

pike & first avenue.

Dear Seattle,

My appreciation for having lived in a city that, upon receiving word of these election results, bursts into spontaneous dance in clubs under cable new feeds, stages impromptu parades, shuts down intersections with song and dance and celebration, engages in spontaneous hugs with strangers, raises hands in celebratory high fives on sidewalks, and generally glows with the relief of having seen the rest of the country correct a serious mistake cannot be overstated. It is only tonight, having experienced the collective glow of a bar, neighborhood, city in celebration that I realize how living here together, sharing the burden, has ameliorated the last long years. For that, and for tonight, and for the time to come, I thank you deeply and most sincerely.

This is pretty good, right?

map by fundrace x googlemaps

When I feel election anxiety and start seeing frantic e-mails from candidates making their final push, it’s fun to delve into Fundrace to see where the money is coming from, particularly close to home. Nationwide, of course, the Democrats are having a better time of it fundraising than the Republicans, but we are swimming in a sea of especially deep blue, with their database shows that $13,046,780 has been given by people who identified their city as “Seattle” — $1,594,184 from 1,430 people to Republicans and $11,452,596 from 11,290 people to Democrats.

Some of the seven-to-one democratic advantages are especially stark when you take a peek at how employees at some of Seattle’s biggest or most noteworthy employers are contributing.

These are all just off the top of my head and more careful searches would turn up more thorough results (for instance, the line for “Starbucks Coffee”, above, combines searches for “Starbucks” and “Starbucks Coffee”. I’m sure that there are many similar examples). update: the original post included “older results”; the current version omits these 2004 contributions.
Anyone finding other interesting search results?

A few days ago, I (along with fellow Metbloggers Samantha and Zee) were fortunate enough to attend a preview of Taste’s new fall menu.

Italian Sausage Calzone at Taste

Orca courtesy of Adactio [flickr]

A number of killer whales are missing, and presumed dead, from the Puget Sound orca pods, according to the Seattle P-I. (#) All three pods (J, K, and L) were affected, though the L pod lost four. The oldest orca that is missing/dead is Lummi, around 98 years old, who disappeared in spring, and was covered in an earlier Metblogs post. The youngest was new calf L-111, too young to have a name, who likely died within a week of birth.

The orca population is down to 83, with only a dozen or so reproductive females, according to the P-I (#). Two of the missing/dead whales were females in their prime, which concerns scientists. One older orca female, “Ankh”, showed signs of starvation- a lack of blubber behind her head, a phenomena referred to as ‘peanut head.’ Scientists at the Center for Whale Research believe the poor Chinook salmon population is partly to blame, but are doing research to determine if there are other factors.

The Whale Museum has a comprehensive list of ways to help the southern resident orcas, including things like supporting organic farming, buying no-phosphate cleaning products, or volunteering with a stream restoration program, or the San Juan Bottomfish Recovery Program.

photo by Jeremy Center [flickr] via our group pool [#]

• the George & Dragon and Zaina prove the 25-foot-rule and find that it isn’t entirely unenforced [p-i]. Unsurprisingly the LJ community has something to say about it. [seattle.lj]
• Veraci Pizza moves from the market a restaurant of their own. [myballard]
• This post on whether / how much money there is in neighborhood blogging is two weeks old, but the comments have since filled with fascinating discussion. [lostremote]
• Pierce County dives into ranked-choice voting. [dailyweekly]
• Ethan Stoewll and Patric Gabre-Kidan (of Union, Tavolata, and How to Cook A Wolf) are planning to open Anchovies and Olives on Capitol Hill early next year. [times via voracious ]
• Sightline decodes a report on the Olympic National Park and concludes that it’s time to restore the wolf population. [dailyscore]

With Saturday’s deadline for online and mail-in voter registration fast approaching (you are registered, right?), Seattle University has announced a plan: to get 100% of its students registered, and then to get all of them to vote, although I assume that some portion of the student body isn’t legally able to vote. I wonder if this is also going to involve setting up carpools to Renton, where you can register in person at the King County Elections office until the 20th [PI].

For the next couple of days they’ll be posting flyers and taking out ads and setting up voter registration tables all over campus, and tracking how many people register online through school computers. It’ll be interesting to see how well this works for them, although I hope it’s a great success. (I also hope that nothing goes wrong and ruins elections for those who are old enough to vote for the first time, like it did for those of us who had our first election in Florida in 2000.) No data is available yet, but I think that the easier you make the process, the more people will register. Maybe it could involve cookies.

More interesting, I think, will be to watch how the university badgers the students who registered into actually casting their vote. That should probably involve cookies too.

For the third time in the last 13 years, Boeing machinists are going on strike. (Hat tip: Don Smith at the P-I — who posted it on Twitter)