Wallingford, Seattle

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

We read with interest yesterday's New York Times on "Hyperlocal News" (‘Hyperlocal’ Web Sites Deliver News Without Newspapers). It addresses how small blogs and web sites are supplanting traditional newspapers, providing a level of focus that traditional newspapers never could, by covering the minutia of neighborhood life. Sound familiar? We were disappointed, though, that the focus of the article was big start-ups like Everyblock and Outside.in, which are nationally scoped companies that are trying to tackle "hyperlocal" news. Isn't that something…

When people meet Baby Z, they tend to say one of two things: What beautiful eyes he has (he does, though) He's so alert (translates as "frenetically, voraciously excited about everything." cf. parental exhaustion) This was driven home to us the other night trying to enjoy a meal with friends at Via Trib in Fremont. Great food. Great company. Perhaps we'll eat in next time. Unwilling to give up entirely, however, we are hoping to pick up some tips tonight at…