Salt Tasting

It sounds like one of those things your grandparents might tell you when they were feeling crotchety: You kids don't know how good you have it. Back in my day, we didn't have wine and cheese for tastings. No! We had salt tastings, and were glad for it! My da' would pile all twelve us into the basket of his bicycle (which had no wheels, mind you) and take us down to the salt market, where each one of us would…

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Burke Gilman Saturday clean-up

We can think of no more perfect counterpoint to the industrial gash that is Interstate 5 than the sedate and lovely Burke Gilman trail. How appropriate that they run exactly perpendicular to one another. So let's pitch in give it a Spring clean this Saturday: Wallingford / Fremont Burke Gilman Trail Clean & Green In an effort to promote community volunteerism, support community building, and improve public safety in the area, Clean & Green Seattle - in partnership with the Wallingford…

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Inseminating the Elephant

The title just grabs you doesn't it? If we ever write a book, we're going to call it "Inseminating the Elephant", because nobody will be able to pass it by without picking it up. Wait? What? Someone already has a book called "Inseminating the Elephant"? And she's reading from it tonight at 7:30 pm at Open Books? Olympia poet and MacArthur Fellow Lucia Perillo’s fifth collection of poetry, Inseminating the Elephant ($22 Copper Canyon Press), is a subtly stunning book. Reading…

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Archie McPaintjob

Looks like Archie McPhee's is making progress getting their new Wallingford digs ready for their grand opening: Ian, in an e-mail entitled "Act of War", suspects there's more to this psychopathic decorators: the paint job that has been done to the old liquor store by Archie McFee is wonderfully awful.   I'm not sure if they were going for a McDonalds theme or was is just French's Yellow with Ketchup Red.   The colours are so vivid and saturated it is…

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How Green is my Wallingford?

Green is the new black, people, so get on it! This month's Wallingford Walk, led by Pam Burton of Puget Sound Solar, will take us on a tour of three Wallingford home that have "greened the energy in their homes": One took extra measures to improve energy efficiency, one recently installed photovoltaic and solar hot water and one has had solar hot water operating reliably since 1982. They will tell us what they did right and not so right and you…

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Give us your poor, your tired, your extra recycle bins

City Fruit "promotes the cultivation of fruit in urban landscapes in order to nourish people, build community and protect the climate." It's an outgrowth, we take it, of Solid Ground's Community Fruit Tree Harvest, which coordinated gleaners in the harvesting of extra fruit from people's backyard trees for distribution to the needy. Well, the new "throw everything in one bin" recycling program has opened up an opportunity for the group. We hear from Sarah Sanford via Kimberly Christensen: Heads up: those…

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60 x 60 at the Chapel

We love short. We love the Pecha Kucha / Ignite-style talks (5 minute talks, 20 slides, 15 seconds per slide, slides advance with or without the speaker), the 14 / 48 theater style (14 plays written and performed in 48 hours)  and especially Mrs. Wallyhood (5 foot 1 inch). On that note, this Friday's "60 x 60" show at the Chapel Performance Space in the Good Shepherd Center looks interesting (via Wayward Music blog: Curated by composer Robert Voisey, 60x60 is…

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