Events
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Start: 2:00 pm
Presented with the SEATTLE ROOM of THE SEATTLE PUBLIC LIBRARY. Most known as R.H. Thomson, Reginald Heber Thomson traveled to Seattle by steamer in 1881, and by 1892, had become the City's head engineer. Historian William H. Wilson speaks this afternoon about Thomson's seminal influence on the city's infrastructure, as Seattle grew from a small town of wood-framed building to a more modern city—with a working sewage system, re-graded hills (bigtime), a municipal power plant, and a clean, reliable water supply. Shaper of Seattle: Reginald Heber Thomson's Pacific Northwest (Washington State University Press) is William H. Wilson's account of both the man and his considerable accomplishments. Free admission is on a first-come, first-serve basis. The Microsoft Auditorium in the Seattle Public Library is at 1000 Fourth Avenue (between Madison & Spring). Special $5 parking coupons for the Central Library garage are available on a limited basis for those attending the program. For more information, please see www.spl.org, or call (206) 386-4636.
Start: 2:00 pm
We'll participate in one of the year's last events, if not the final one, honoring the 2009 Centenary of the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, or AYPE, today, with the authors of three major recent books concerned with this 'first Seattle World's Fair' speak about the AYPE's enduring legacy. Joan Hockaday's Greenscapes: Olmsted's Pacific Northwest (Washington State University Press) is the first full-length treatment of the work of John Charles Olmsted in this region. His many projects include the design of the AYPE site on the University of Washington campus. UW Visual Collections curator Nicole Bromberg's book, Picturing the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition: The Photographs of Frank H. Nowell (University of Washington Press), features the work of the Fair's official photographer, who documented its construction, workers, landscaping, and visitors. History Link staff historians Alan J. Stein and Paula Becker's Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition: Washington's First World's Fair: A Timeline History (HistoryLink/UW Press) provides a detailed, fully illustrated history of the fair and fairgoers, and of many political issues (women's suffrage) in the air at the time. A lively program, much sharing of the visuals—this should be fun.
Start: 7:00 pm
Johnny Cash's album, Bitter Tears: Ballads of the American Indian, was recorded in 1964, in collaboration with folk musician/activist Peter La Farge, just one year after Cash's hit, Ring of Fire. Journalist and filmmaker Antonino D'Ambrosio tells the story of the making of the album, its historical context, and the social justice movements that inspired it in his new book, A Heartbeat and a Guitar: Johnny Cash and the Making of Bitter Tears (Nation Books). Antonino D'Ambrosio is also the author of Let the Fury Have the Hour: The Punk Politics of Joe Strummer, the film version of which, directed by D'Ambrosio, is due to be released in early 2010. "A rich history, not only of Johnny Cash's life, but of the Indian struggle for justice, which inspired Peter La Farge to write the song, 'The Ballad of Ira Hayes' and Cash to sing it. The book is full of fascinating character sketches of the great folk singers of the Sixties, and their part in the social movements of that exciting era." - Howard Zinn. Joining us this evening to perform some of the songs is Seattle musician/songwriter Rocky Votolato. Formerly frontman of Waxman, he now performs music influenced by that which shaped his early life in Texas.
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