Can't get enough Canyon Sam? Neither can they!
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A book club reads Sky Train.
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Greetings!
 We are so excited to present The Car That Brought You Here Still Runs: Revisiting the Northwest Towns of Richard Hugo in March. Author Frances McCue and photographer Mary Randlett will both be at the March 31 launch of the book at the Richard Hugo House and they'll also be appearing at local venues throughout April as well ( more info below). This book -- part travelogue, part memoir -- is a true celebration of poetry, as well as a tribute to Richard Hugo and the towns around our region that inspired him. And, just another reminder -- the University of Washington Press is now on Facebook. We've also launched a Facebook page for the Modern Language Initiative (MLI), our Mellon-funded publication grant. Look for us there -- we'd love to see you as Fans!
All the best,
Rachael
remann@u.washington.edu
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Charles LeWarne |
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The Love Israel Family
In 1968, a time of turbulence and countercultural movements, a one-time
television salesman named Paul Erdmann changed his name to Love Israel
and started a controversial religious commune in Seattle's middle-class
Queen Anne Hill neighborhood. He quickly gathered a following and they
too adopted the Israel surname, along with biblical or virtuous first
names such as Honesty, Courage, and Strength. They
flourished for more than a decade, owning houses and operating
businesses on the Hill, although rumors of drug use, control of
members, and unconventional sexual arrangements dogged them. In The Love Israel Family, Charles LeWarne tells the compelling story of this group of
idealistic seekers whose quest for a communal life grounded in love,
service, and obedience to a charismatic leader foundered when that
leader's power distanced him from his followers.
Charles LeWarne
is the author of Utopias on Puget Sound, 1885-1915 and Washington State, a text used in many regional school districts.
Join Charles on
Tuesday, March 2 at 7 p.m. at Village Books, Bellingham
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Linda Chalker-Scott |
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The Informed Gardener Blooms Again
The Informed Gardener Blooms Again picks up where The Informed Gardener left off, using scientific literature to debunk a new set of common
gardening myths. Once again, Linda Chalker-Scott investigates the
science behind each myth, reminding us that urban and suburban
landscapes are ecosystems requiring their own particular set of
management practices. The Informed Gardener Blooms Again provides
answers to questions such as: - Does using drought-tolerant plants reduce water consumption?
- Is it more effective to spray fertilizers on the leaves of trees and shrubs than to apply it to the soil?
- Will cedar wood chips kill landscape plants?
- Should I use ladybugs in my garden as a form of pest control?
- Does aerobically brewed compost tea suppress disease?
Linda Chalker-Scott is an urban horticulturist and
associate professor at Puyallup Research and Extension Center,
Washington State University. She is the author of The Informed
Gardener, winner of the Best Book Prize from the Garden Writers
Association. She is the editor and co-author of Sustainable Landscapes
and Gardens, the Washington State editor of MasterGardener magazine,
and author of the online column "Horticultural Myths." She has a new
blog at gardenprofessors.com.
See a book trailer about The Informed Gardener here.
Join Linda on
Tuesday, March 2 at 7 p.m. at Elliott Bay Books
Sunday, March 7 at 3 p.m. at Eagle Harbor Books, Bainbridge Island
Tuesday, March 30 at 7 p.m. at Third Place Books
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Canyon Sam
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 Sky Train: Tibetan Women on the Edge of History
Publishers Weekly called Sky Train a "remarkable book. . . . Visceral and
deeply felt, this narrative deserves a read from anyone interested in
human rights and the untold stories of oppressed women everywhere."
The San Francisco Chronicle says, "As a woman talking to women, Sam uncovers a much more intimate Tibet, which survives stubbornly in a tattered land. The passage of time between the interviews
gives their testimonies both richness and preciousness . . . . captures the heart-rending complexities of Tibet and China and how close to home they can be."
Join Canyon on
Wednesday, March 3 at 7 p.m. at Tibet House, New York City
Monday, March 8 at 7 p.m. at Cape Cod Community College, with Titscomb's Bookshop, Cape Cod, MA |
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| Reinhard Stettler |
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 Cottonwood and the River of Time: On Trees, Evolution, and Society
Cottonwood and the River of Time looks at some of the approaches
scientists have used to unravel the puzzles of the natural world. With
a lifetime of work in forestry and genetics to guide him, Reinhard
Stettler celebrates both what has been learned and what still remains a
mystery as he examines not only cottonwoods but also trees more
generally, their evolution, and their relationship to society.
Reinhard F. Stettler is professor emeritus of forestry at the University of Washington.
Join Reinhard on
Monday, March 8 at 7 p.m. at the South Sound Chapter of the Washington Native Plant Society at the Capitol Museum Coach house
Friday, March 26 at 7 p.m. at Village Books, Bellingham
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Lorraine McConaghy
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 Warship under Sail: The USS Decatur in the Pacific West
Ordered to join the Pacific Squadron in 1854, the sloop of war Decatur
sailed from Norfolk, Virginia, through the Strait of Magellan to
Valparaiso, Honolulu, and Puget Sound, then on to San Francisco,
Panama, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, while serving in the Pacific until
1859, the eve of the Civil War. Warship
under Sail focuses on four episodes in the Decatur's Pacific Squadron
mission: the harrowing journey from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean
through the Strait of Magellan; a Seattle war story that contested
American treaties and settlements; participation with other squadron
ships on a U.S. State Department mission to Nicaragua; and more than a
year spent anchored off Panama as a hospital ship.
Lorraine McConaghy is the historian at the Museum of History & Industry in Seattle.
Join Lorraine on
Thursday, March 11 at 7:30 p.m. at Eagle Harbor Books, Bainbridge Island
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Preston Singletary
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 Preston Singletary: Echoes, Fire, and Shadows
For nearly two decades, Preston Singletary has straddled two unique
cultures, melding his Tlingit ancestry with the dynamism of the Studio
Glass Movement. In the process, he has created an extraordinarily
distinctive and powerful body of work that depicts cultural and
historical images in richly detailed, beautifully hued glass.
Singletary has translated the visual vocabulary of patterns,
narratives, and systems of Native woodcarving and painted art into
glass, a material historically associated with Native peoples through
an extensive network of trading routes.
Preston Singletary's works are in museum
collections around the world, including the National Museum of the
American Indian; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Seattle Art Museum;
Corning Museum of Glass; Mint Museum of Art; the Heard Museum; and the
Handelsbanken (Stockholm, Sweden).
Join Preston on
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Alvin Ziontz
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 A Lawyer in Indian Country: A Memoir
In his memoir, Alvin Ziontz reflects on his more than thirty years
representing Indian tribes, from a time when Indian law was little
known through landmark battles that upheld tribal sovereignty. He
discusses the growth and maturation of tribal government and the
underlying tensions between Indian society and the non-Indian world. As the senior
attorney arguing U.S. v. Washington, Ziontz was a party to the historic
1974 Boldt decision that affirmed the Pacific Northwest tribes' treaty
fishing rights, with ramifications for tribal rights nationwide. His
work took him to reservations in Montana, Wyoming, and Minnesota, as
well as Washington and Alaska, and he describes not only the work of a
tribal attorney but also his personal entry into the life of Indian
country.
Join Alvin on
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Marsha Weisiger
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 Dreaming of Sheep in Navajo Country
Dreaming of Sheep in Navajo Country offers a fresh interpretation of
the history of Navajo (Diné) pastoralism. The dramatic reduction of
livestock on the Navajo Reservation in the 1930s -- when hundreds of
thousands of sheep, goats, and horses were killed -- was an ambitious
attempt by the federal government to eliminate overgrazing on an arid
landscape and to better the lives of the people who lived there.
Instead, the policy was a disaster, resulting in the loss of livelihood
for Navajos -- especially women, the primary owners and tenders of the
animals -- without significant improvement of the grazing lands.
Environmental historian
Marsha Weisiger examines the factors that led to the poor condition of
the range and explains how the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Navajos,
and climate change contributed to it. Using archival sources and oral
accounts, she describes the importance of land and stock animals in
Navajo culture. By positioning women at the center of the story, she
demonstrates the place they hold as significant actors in Native
American and environmental history.
Marsha L. Weisiger is associate professor of history at New Mexico State University.
Join Marsha on
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Richard Baum
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 China Watcher
This audacious and illuminating memoir by Richard Baum, a senior China
scholar and sometime policy advisor, reflects on forty years of
learning about and interacting with the People's Republic of China,
from the height of Maoism during the author's UC Berkeley student days
in the volatile 1960s through globalization. Anecdotes from Baum's
professional life illustrate the alternately peculiar, frustrating,
fascinating, and risky activity of China watching -- the process by
which outsiders gather and decipher official and unofficial information
to figure out what's really going on behind China's veil of political
secrecy and propaganda. Baum writes entertainingly, telling his
narrative with witty stories about people, places, and eras.
Richard Baum is
distinguished professor of political science at UCLA and director
emeritus of the UCLA Center for Chinese Studies. His publications
include China in Ferment;
Prelude to Revolution; Reform and Reaction in Post-Mao China; and Burying Mao. He is the presenter of the Great Courses video lecture series
"The Fall and Rise of China," published by the Teaching Company.
Join Richard on
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Frances McCue and Mary Randlett
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The Car That Brought You Here Still Runs: Revisiting the Northwest Towns of Richard Hugo
Richard Hugo visited places and wrote about them. He wrote about towns:
White Center and La Push in Washington; Wallace and Cataldo in Idaho;
Milltown, Philipsburg, and Butte in Montana. Often his visits lasted
little more than an afternoon, and his knowledge of the towns was
confined to what he heard in bars and diners. From these snippets, he
crafted poems. His attention to the actual places could be scant, but
Hugo's poems resonate more deeply than travelogues or feature stories;
they capture the torque between temperament and terrain that is so
vital in any consideration of place. The poems bring alive some hidden
aspect to each town and play off the traditional myths that an
easterner might have of the West: that it is a place of restoration and
healing, a spa where people from the East come to recover from
ailments; that it is a place to reinvent oneself, a region of wide
open, unpolluted country still to settle. Hugo steers us, as readers,
to eye level. How we settle into and take on qualities of the tracts of
earth that we occupy -- this is Hugo's inquiry.
Part travelogue,
part memoir, part literary scholarship, The Car That Brought You Here Still Runs traces the journey of Frances McCue and photographer Mary
Randlett to the towns that inspired many of Richard Hugo's poems.
Returning forty years after Hugo visited these places, and bringing
with her a deep knowledge of Hugo and her own poetic sensibility, McCue
maps Hugo's poems back onto the places that triggered them. Together
with twenty-three poems by Hugo, McCue's essays and Randlett's
photographs offer a fresh view of Hugo's Northwest.
Frances
McCue is a writer and poet living in Seattle, where she is
writer-in-residence at the University of Washington's Undergraduate
Honors Program. She was the founding director of Richard Hugo House
from 1996 to 2006. McCue is the author of The Stenographer's Breakfast,
winner of the Barnard New Women Poets Prize. Mary Randlett is
a Northwest photographer noted for her portraits of artists and
writers. Mary Randlett Landscapes celebrates her photographs of the
natural world.
To look inside the project, see their book trailer.
Join Frances and Mary on
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