Carded!

The most amazing place has been found. A repository to satiate your imagination. What is this mysterious place? The Seattle Public Library. Times have changed. This is NOT the library from childhood. Oh, no. It is modern, efficient and inspiring.

Libraries for All
Seattle voters in 1998 approved the largest library bond issue then ever submitted in the United States. The landmark "Libraries for All" bond measure, which proposed a $196.4 million makeover of the Library system, garnered an unprecedented 69 percent approval rate at the polls. The massive measure will double the square footage in Seattle's 22 libraries, including the building of new branches, plus also produce a new $169.2 million Central Library (including $10 million for the Temporary Central Library) to replace its worn-out 1960 predecessor.

In 2004, the central library downtown opened. Designed by Rem Koolhaas, this sculpture for public access provides a gathering place for those seeking knowledge.

Of course I'm partial to my neighborhood library in Ballard (the most amazing neighborhood ever!) Also complete with a modern design, it is within walking distance saving me time, money and lowering my carbon footprint.

RIP Seattle P-I

The final daily version of the beloved Seattle Post-Intelligencer (1863-2009) prints today. The publication will continue online with a severely reduced staff of 20 persons -- down from 165.

The disappearance of newspapers raises many questions. What next? If news becomes an online only source, what aspects of tradition will slip away? What will become of it's replacement? Reducing a staff at the rate the Seattle P-I did can only limit the amount of information presented. What gets cut and who decides?

Seattle is an amazingly culturally rich community. The P-I served as only one source for information. The intelligent, critical reader uses many sources to form an opinion. With papers disappearing one by one, could be we suffocating ourselves from independent thought? Not likely, but the paradigm is certainly shifting and the future unknown.

Getting Stoned with Rosetta

So today marks an very important day. I am learning German. Rosetta Stone offers their course on CD-ROM at a price most nomads, like myself, can't afford. However, they do offer an online subscription for the same materials at half the cost! Naturally, I bought it.

The Rosetta experience uses full immersion -- visual and contextual clues leading to mastery. The premise, they suggest, is the same as when we learned our first language. I'm so drawn into the language that the slow pace at which it moves doesn't seem to affect me.

My goal: Six-months from today I desire enough fluency to spend some quality time in the town I love so much: Salzburg, Austria. And, of course, to throw back a few beers.

Mmmm....beer. Let's bookmark this thought until we can make a proper toast at that awesome beer place in Fremont.

The Nerve

Trekking across the country on an airplane can be filled with, well, a lot of crap. So, it was on this earlier evening's journey that I suddenly was inspired to write about nerves. How people get on our nerves and why is it it rarely seems that someone's behavior soothes our nerves. And then somewhere along my path of many travels, I started hearing good folk retort "You're getting on my last nerve."

The Last Nerve. What is that? The final one. What happens next with no more nerves to get on?

It could just be the last nerve is merely the other end of the thread one might be hanging on.

Are the last nerve and wits end somehow interrelated? Those phrases sometimes appear interchangeable. Maybe one arrives at the wits end before the last nerve. Kind of like a warning prior to the trigger being pulled.

Or, perhaps, it's me annoyed at someone's distinguishing bodily function because I only slept 3 hours last night. I don't care to listen to a man's obnoxious cough or the flight attendant's inaccurate and rather laborious announcement of how we are about to land in Chicago. We are headed to Dallas.

Happy New Year!

Ok, so it's been nearly a year. Let's call it an extended hiatus and toast to the return of reading.