Carl K.

  • Charles Curtis, America’s first mixed-race Veep

    Kamala Harris is breaking barriers with her election to the Vice Presidency, however, she was not the first person of color to achieve that office. Obscured along the decades, Charles Curtis, a United States Senator who was a one-eighth Native American member of the Kaw Nation of Kansas, was elected to serve as Vice President… Continue reading

  • Book-It Repertory Theatre’s MY ÁNTONIA: Beyond the Theatre

    Book-It Repertory Theatre presents MY ÁNTONIA by Willa Cather, adapted and directed by Annie Lareau, from November 29 to December 30, 2018. Librarians at Seattle Public Library created this list of books, video, and podcasts to enhance your experience of the show. Annie Lareau, director of Book-It Repertory Theatre’s 2018 production of MY ÁNTONIA, has… Continue reading

  • Seattle Rep’s A PEOPLE’S HISTORY: Beyond the Theatre

    Seattle Repertory Theatre presents A PEOPLE’S HISTORY by Mike Daisey, from October 17 to November 25, 2018. Librarians at Seattle Public Library created this list of books and video to enhance your experience of the show: Seattle Rep’s A PEOPLE’S HISTORY: BEYOND THE THEATRE. Through his discovery of Howard Zinn’s classic work, A People’s History… Continue reading

  • ACT’s Until the Flood: Beyond the Theatre

    ACT’s Until the Flood: Beyond the Theatre

    policACT (A Contemporary Theatre) presents UNTIL THE FLOOD by Dael Orlandersmith from June 8 to July 8, 2018. UNTIL THE FLOOD focuses on the social unrest following the fatal police shooting of unarmed Black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Librarians at Seattle Public Library created this list of books and films to enhance your… Continue reading

  • Bird Week: Mythology and Birds

    Bird Week: Mythology and Birds

    The Seattle Public Library is partnering with the Seward Park Audubon Center for the first ever Seattle Bird Week, April 23-30, in celebration of the center’s tenth anniversary. Throughout human mythology, birds fly with us, inspire us, sing to us, and explain the natural world to us. Consider the ancient Greeks using the idea of a… Continue reading

  • Bird Week: Shakespeare’s Birds

    Bird Week: Shakespeare’s Birds

    The Seattle Public Library is partnering with the Seward Park Audubon Center for Bird Week, April 23-30, in celebration of the center’s tenth anniversary and the National Audubon Society’s 2018 Year of the Bird. ‘Tis unnatural, Even like the deed that’s done. On Tuesday last, A falcon, tow’ring in her pride of place, Was by a… Continue reading

  • Baseball Culture in Cuba

    Stateside we sometimes say that baseball is as American as apple pie. Baseball is also the Cuban national sport, so you might say as Cuban as the national dish, ropa vieja. How did it start there? In the USA, we have our myth of Abner Doubleday laying out the ballfield and explaining the rules to… Continue reading

  • Intiman’s Dragon Lady and Philippine Migration

    The migration of a family from the Philippines to America has been explored in colorful form by Sara Porkalob in Dragon Lady, a one woman show at the Intiman Theater, closing October 1st. She revisits the arc of Philippine culture and assimilation from her grandmother’s time to her own, as she portrays three generations of her family members.… Continue reading

  • FIRST FOLIO! Shakespeare and a Battle Remembered

    The power of the pen can be as mighty as a host of lances in the hands of a great poet. One speech in one historical battle has lived on for six centuries, wrapped in myth and inspiration, mainly due to William Shakespeare. A legendary event during the Middle Ages was the Battle of Agincourt,… Continue reading

  • NAAM Art Exhibit

    ~posted by Elizabeth S. and Carl K. Jacob Lawrence, Elizabeth Catlett, and Romare Bearden are among the notable artists featured in a traveling exhibit of 68 works at the Northwest African American Museum now through April 17th. The Harmon & Harriet Kelley Collection of African American Art: Works on Paper includes drawings, etchings, lithographs, and watercolors,… Continue reading

  • Presidential Lives (and Deaths)

    -posted by Carl K. “Who is buried in Grant’s tomb?” was a question famously and frequently asked by Groucho Marx of contestants who would otherwise be leaving without a prize on You Bet Your Life, his witty 1950s game show. And it was a trick question. The answer to this question and the path to… Continue reading

  • 2014 A. Scott Bullitt American History Lecture presents George Packer

    ~posted by Carl K.  George Packer has a disconcerting point of view about the United States. The New Yorker journalist, who will be the speaker for The Seattle Public Library’s 2014 A. Scott Bullitt American History Lecture, looks through the lens of individual Americans to see the state of the nation in his book, The… Continue reading

  • A Tale of Two Burgs

    In July of 1863, 150 years ago, Blue still fought Gray and the fate of a nation was hanging in the balance. Two great battles ensued simultaneously, one to control the western nation and one as an invasion of the north. At Vicksburg, Mississippi, a great siege was in progress under the command of General… Continue reading

  • Goodbye to All That (the Passing of an Era)

    Harry Patch’s life nearly ended in 1917 as he stood in a muddy trench during the World War I battle of Passchendaele. An artillery shell burst right over his head, wounding him and killing three of his best pals. But Patch didn’t die that day; in fact, he survived to become the last living veteran… Continue reading