Northwest Flower & Garden Show, 2009

It’s that time of year again.

Like thousands of other gardeners, I have eagerly awaited the Northwest Flower & Garden Show.  This huge annual February event at the Convention Center is always a welcome chance to experience the joys of gardening while the ground outside is still frozen.  This year’s theme is “Sustainable Spaces. Beautiful Places.”  Many of the display gardens and free seminars will feature ideas to promote gardening techniques that are environmentally friendly. 

Not only has the Show inspired gardeners for over twenty years, it has also been the annual event that has drawn us together.  Sadly, the 2009 Show

Will Work 4 $$$$

Back in May 2008, we posted an article on how to find a job using resources available at The Seattle Public Library. Well, that was nine months ago, and a lot has changed!  The economy has tanked. Unemployment is at the highest point since the dot com crash. Now, more than ever, the good folks of Seattle need jobs!

We know: the only thing worse than working is looking for work. Let us try to make finding a job a little easier. Here are some resources (some new and some that have been around awhile) to help you find jobs, apply for them,

Nightstand Reading: Get your recommendations from Scottish mystery author Val McDermid

Crime fiction fans take note: Val McDermid, author of several popular series (including the Tony Hill series) will be at the Seattle Public Library this Sunday at 2 p.m. to read from—and talk about—her newest book, A Darker Domain. We’re wildly excited to host Val on one of her rare Seattle visits as she reads from and discusses this stand-alone psychological thriller, and also excited that she generously sent a note ahead of time to let Shelf Talk. Here’s what Val has to say about four of her recent favorite nightstand reads:

The Given Day by Dennis Lehane
I’ve been a fan of Dennis’s work ever since I read his

Music at the Library

We have a lot of programs here at The Seattle Public Library. Browse through our Calendar of Events and you’ll find very few days where there is not some kind of program happening either at the Central branch or in the many neighborhood branches. I would like to highlight three of our free, ongoing programs that are quite exceptional. They are the Seattle Opera Preview, the Ladies Musical Club concerts, and the Medieval Women’s Choir Preview.

The Seattle Opera previews are a long-standing series at the library. They are presented by Seattle Opera Education Department staff and they are very informative and, well, fun! Each opera is thoroughly discussed and put in historical, societal, and musical context with recorded examples and visual aids. The next preview on Feb. 19 at noon at the Central Library should be particularly interesting as it will be on Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle and Schoenberg’s Erwartung, two 20th-century operas receiving their premiere Seattle Opera productions this season.

The Ladies Musical Club has been presenting concerts regularly at the Central Library for literally decades. They occur at 12:10 on the second Wednesday of every month in the auditorium. Classical music of all kinds is presented in a wonderfully intimate setting. At any given concert you could hear art songs, chamber music, solo piano, or selections from grand opera and operetta…or maybe all of the above! Come check it out!

The last series at the Central Library that I want to highlight is the Medieval Women’s Choir Preview. Having begun this past fall, it is one of our newest series and one of my personal favorites. The choir’s director is Margriet Tindemans, a world-renowned player of early stringed instruments as well as a scholar of the Middle Ages. She and several members of the choir present selections from their upcoming concerts. The previews include some discussion of the pieces, providing some context which is always fascinating, but the hour-long presentations are primarily devoted to performances of medieval music. And, I have to say, acoustically, the auditorium is exceptionally well-suited to this style of music. The sound is truly glorious! The next preview for this group is Tuesday, Feb. 17 at noon. Don’t miss it!

~Bob T.

Oh Sweet, Sweet, Vacation!

In general, I would say the life of a Master’s of Library and Information Science (MLIS) student, is pretty great. We get to learn all about an institution as hallowed as the library and we get to spend our class-time with other compulsively organized and readerly people. My only complaint would be a catch-22 that faces many of us: we decided to get an MLIS degree because we love to read, yet we have no time to read for fun while class is in session. This horrible state of affairs, however, is broken up several times a year by vacations, which allow us the opportunity to intellectually gorge on the books we have been dying to read. This Winter Vacation I picked up three wonderful books that helped remind me why I love to read.

The first of these books was The Rest is Noise by Alex Ross. In The Rest is Noise, Ross does nothing less than recap the political and cultural life of Europe and America in the twentieth century through the lens of classical music. Ross masterfully relates the major events of the era to the lives and music of classical composers and deftly writes of the works themselves in a way that makes the music come alive.

In anticipation of this year’s Seattle Reads selection My Jim by Nancy Rawles, I decided