Monthly Archives: March 2010

Weather

WSDOT Profiles a Pika (Photo)

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“Day 6 – Crews spot a Pika” courtesy of WSDOT

This cheers me up. “According to the book we looked the Pika up in” is one of the more wonderful things I’d ever expect to hear from WSDOT:

Crews spotted this little guy (or girl)–a Pika–while clearing snow off the highway. It’s not a rodent. It belongs to the same order/group as rabbits and hares. According to the book that we looked the Pika up in, it says that they are extremely social creatures that live on rocky mountain slopes. They spend their days cutting grass, which they dry and cure like hay. Essentially, they’re little farmers.

I’ve been keeping an eye on WSDOT’s mountain passes advisories, given all the snow hammering the mountains, but to date they’ve been keeping roads clear and haven’t had to announce avalanche work delays. The only thing the new powder has brought–besides “sick days” spent at ski resorts–is an extension of studded tires until April 10.

News

KOMO Newsradio Reverse Engineers Podcasts, Puts Blogs on the Radio

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Full disclosure: We’re on the radio!

Tuesdays at 9:15 a.m., The SunBreak has a cameo on the “Nine2Noon” show on KOMO Newsradio (97.7 FM, 1000 AM), with Brian Calvert and Nancy Barrick. It’s their new 3-minute segment, “The Nine2Noon Blogosphere.”

This morning they talked with Portland’s social media/start-up blog Silicon Florist, to find out how the Twitter hashtag #pdxboom helped police solve a mysterious explosion (a pipe bomb went off). Thanks to Twitter, a Google map, and instructions on how to describe how close the explosion sounded, police were able to triangulate on the general location.

“While we still present the top stories of the day,” says Calvert, “the feel is more of a ‘news magazine’ as we have more of a conversation about the day’s news. Our show’s slogan is ‘We keep your morning moving,’ evidenced by our bouncing from topic to topic with fewer commercials.”

Calvert and Barrick have five blogs lined up so far, and are working on adding another five.

The full Monday-Friday 9:15 a.m. lineup is after the jump:

Monday: Seattle Crime

Tuesday: The SunBreak

Wednesday: The Silicon Florist

Thursday: Seattle Transportation Watch

Friday: Seattlepi.com’s nightlife blog After Dark

Arts & Entertainment

On the List: March 31-April 6

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(Last-minute Tuesday)

  • Early this month, Animal Collective and Danny Perez displayed ODDSAC, a “new synthesis of music and film” at the Guggenheim museum in New York–watch the visual album @ the Egyptian tonight. On Wednesday, Deakin (Josh from Animal Collective) plays a solo set with Jabon & Peppermint Majesty @ Neumo’s

Wednesday

  • The Low Anthem can go from haunted to hootenanny several times within a tracklisting. Armed with classic (bellows organ), creative (cymbals played with a violin bow), and innovative (spoiler alert: group cell phone experimentation) instrumentation the transitions from the heartbreakingly effective weepers to the upbeat foot stompers provide jarring relief. With the delightfully creepy goth-folk and blues of Timber Timbre @ the Crocodile

Thursday

  • Opening: Seattle Opera‘s Young Artists take on Ariadne auf Naxos (through April 11) @ the Meydenbauer Center
  • Gerard Schwarz conducts the Seattle Symphony, a little Janacek and Prokofiev, plus Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition (through April 3) @ Benaroya Hall
  • The League of Women Voters sorts out how to make democracy work with a panel including Nancy Amidei, director of the Civic Engagement Project; Seattle Times columnist Jerry Large; and author Paul Loeb (Soul of a Citizen) @ Town Hall
  • Owl City goes from his parents’ basement to playing @ the Paramount
  • Citizen Cope and his nappy dreads play his first of three dates @ the Showbox
  • FREE: Daniel Atkinson, a doctoral candidate in ethnomusicology at the UW, talks about slavery and the musical legacy of the Louisiana’s Angola State Penitentiary @ the Northwest African American Museum

Friday

  • FREE: noir novelist Walter Mosley returns with a Leonard McGill story Known to Evil @ Seattle Public Central Library
  • Juno may have introduced you to the Moldy Peaches; half-Peach Adam Green plays from his album Minor Love @ Chop Suey
  • The Morning Benders have really come into their own on new album Big Echo.  Tonight, first they play a free all-ages set @ Sonic Boom Capitol Hill, then a 21+ show @ the Croc

Saturday

  • Michael Buble seems unable to escape appearing in public without being stalked by a velociraptor or two. The possibility of ferocious dinosaurs at the performance might add extra incentive to the “Crazy Love” arena tour @ Key Arena

Sunday

  • FREE: Frances McCue and photographer Mary Randlett give a talk–part travelogue, part memoir, part literary scholarship–called “The Car That Brought You Here Still Runs: Revisiting the Northwest Towns of Richard Hugo” @ Seattle Public Central Library
  • California-sounding Florida band Surfer Blood gets the kids riled up @ the Vera Project
  • Hugh Cornwell of seminal UK punk band The Stranglers plays a solo show @ the Tractor

Monday

  • FREE: David Laskin reads from The Long Way Home: An American Journey from Ellis Island to the Great War @ Seattle Public Central Library

Tuesday

  • Opening: The musical Dreamgirls runs sassily through April 11 @ the Paramount
  • SOLD OUT: Brandi Carlile does her singer/songwriter thing @ the Crocodile
  • FREE: PNB education manager and Tudor Choir founder and director Doug Fullington talks with choreographer Mark Morris @ Town Hall
Announcements

Seattle Center Public Meeting on Redevelopment Tonight

Seattle Center is holding a “Fun Forest Redevelopment Public Hearing” in the Center House, Conference Room A, tonight at 6:30 p.m. Most of you dodged an earlier solicitation for public input, so they’re doing it again, using the heated public reaction to the Wright family’s Chihuly glass house proposal as a motivator.

While it’s your golden opportunity to chime in about the Fun Forest space south of the Monorail, the Center is also interested in public suggestions for events, art installations, and community gatherings that could be held in what they’re calling the Center Square, the three acres north of the Monorail, where the Fun Forest’s larger rides used to be.

The only hitch is that the use is temporary–at the end of 2011, the Center will need the Center Square back for their 50th Anniversary celebration in 2012. Otherwise, redevelopment of the north space is all planned out: Center spokesperson Deborah Daoust says there’ll be a large tent for concerts, a 3,500-sq.-ft. children’s garden, a basketball court, and a hay bale maze. They’re also taking over the Center Square Pavilion, a 7,000-sq.-ft. building adjacent to the Center House’s east side that I remember mainly for having an ice cream shop with exactly the same choices as those inside the Center House.

For the south area’s redevelopment, Daoust says the future of the 1.5 acres is being opened up to an RFP process, to see if members of our outraged public can come up with a better idea than the Wrights’. Meanwhile, the Fun Forest’s “kiddie rides” will remain in place until Labor Day 2010.

Daoust reminds the “But it’s a public park” contingent that while it would be nice to think so, the city’s allocation of public funds has not historically been a major driver of what gets done on Center grounds. Since 1990, the Center has enjoyed about $700 million in redevelopment spending, of which $440 million came from private sources, with public levy funding accounting for about $62 million.

I remember, when the Seattle Center Century 21 Master Plan was adopted by the City Council in a unanimous vote, being shocked by the unanimity on a $570-million price tag, until I realized that it was largely a feel-good gesture on the part of the City Council. The relevant wording: “The plan will be supported, as redevelopment has in the past, by a mix of private and public funding.” Translation: “We’re behind this plan a full 9 percent, public funding-wise. Now git ‘r’ done.”