The Lone Reader turns his gaze to this series of essays and photos describing the fate of the lower Duwamish River, which empties into Elliott Bay in Seattle.
cc Audio:
Early morning on Yaquina Bay, by daveincamas
Inderhalle
Samantha "Sam" Power's memoir of her time as a close confidant to President Barack Obama in the realm of foreign affairs.
Music: String Quartet No. 14 in D minor "Death and the Maiden," by Franz Schubert, courtesy of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Reveals the hidden world of "nomads," financially strapped older people that live in vans and cheap RVs, driving where their work takes them.
Music: Darkdance, by Eric Kanold
Mr. Neutron gives the skinny on this early Lawrence, KS punk band, whose music is "somewhat repetitive, minimal, slow to develop, without much growth or direction. Vocals are stylistically odd and sparse. There is a sloppy feel to the whole endeavor. But it all works together brilliantly!"
A manifesto against the belief that older people are weak, drab, depressed, dimwitted clones of one another.
Music: Blues Jam 2011, by Steve Belong
Alan takes us on a social justice trip to Oakland, through the medium of two recent films: 2013's "Fruitvale Station" and 2018's "Blindspotting."
Music: Flatwound: A View Southward, by John Pazdan
What do Akron Ohio and Portland Oregon have in common? Why, iconic first-wave punk music. Mr. Neutron elucidates...
The story of the engineering of California's water supply. California leads the way, so they say. Unfortunately, as regards water, it seems to be leading us down a sinkhole.
Music: Supernal Liquid (Reign Water Remix)
At times funky, possible progenitors of post-punk, filled with the occasional outburst of bubbly pop music, Talking Heads brought a healthy arsenal of tools to their repertoire.
Garry Kasparov, one of the strongest world chess champions of all time, also grew into his prime during the rise of computer chess-playing programs. This is Kasparov's story of the evolution of these programs, including his 1997 loss to the IBM-funded Deep Blue, a dedicated chess-playing supercomputer able to analyze 200 million positions per second.
Music: Petak 13Friday13, by Tomo Sombolac
Savage aliens make the mistake of invading a London council block (low-income neighborhood), the turf of a group of street youths. Outer space meets inner city. A thinking man's action film, bursting with humor and satire. And aliens.
Demonstrating a praiseworthy diversity of styles from this fabulous album.
Mr. Neutron is Ron Averill of Everett Public Library (WA).
The Lone Reader follows food guru Michael Pollan's foray into feeding not your body but your head: Reviewing studies in which carefully controlled doses of psychedelics like LSD and Psilocybin are shown effective in treating certain types of mental illness.
Music: Beats, by Crooked Vision
Two films, 87 years apart, put the flutter in our ribcages.
The Lone Reader seeks relief for his tech-driven nightmares through reading a radically different world view: Native American religion, as interpreted by Indian writer Vine Deloria, Jr. It doesn't help.
Alan illuminates some underappreciated noir classics.
Stuart Kaminsky's irascible Soviet detective Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov travels to Siberia to find a murderer in a village full of exiles and incompetents.
Music: String Quartet No. 1, Op 7, by Bela Bartok, performed by the Borromeo String Quartet.
Alan surveys that American celluloid genre called "film noir": sinister, evocative, and doom-laden, both in style and content.
Image: "The Photographer," by Joaquim Alves Gaspar
Mr. Neutron explores the dark underbelly of mainstream popular music in the form of Portland's three-sister-act, "Joseph"
The Lone Reader takes aim at Joshua Hunt's scalding critique of the massive influence that the sports apparel manufacturer Nike wields over the University of Oregon and its football program.
The Treatment tips into the recent dark successors of films like "The Maltese Falcon," "Touch of Evil," "Chinatown," and "Reservoir Dogs":
"Bad Times at the El Royale," and "Under the Silver Lake."
Everett Public Library’s latest podcast explores the Great Book Scare of the early 20th century and how libraries coped with it, particularly here in Everett. The seven-minute-long audio podcast is part of the Smokestacks Soundbites series of local-history podcasts.
Credits:
Voice actors:
Van Ramsey
Cameron Johnson
Script: Cameron Johnson
Audio editing and engineering: Cameron Johnson
Music:
“Klincek Stojo Pod Oblokom” — Tomo Sombolac
“String Quartet N. 14, Op. 131” (Beethoven, Ludwig van)
Cited works:
Nice, L.B. “The Disinfection of Books,” c1911
“Suggestions For Disinfection,” Wisconsin Library Bulletin, April 1906.
“Public Library Is A Popular Institution,” Everett Herald, 7 April 1906.
Sound effects from Freesound.org
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From punk to country, from old-timey, to sugar-coated power pop, Mr. Neutron scales the best of 2019.
Jonathan White's description of and homage to the mysterious phenomena we call tides.
Music: Francesco Iannuzzelli, "Tarantellamodale"
A new Everett Public Library (WA) audio podcast brings to life the early history of Everett Public Library, in which a small group of determined Everett women parlayed political muscle and donated books into an enduring civic institution. The podcast is part of the City’s observance of the 125th anniversary of the library’s birth.
21 min.
Voice actors: Abigail Cooley, Van Ramsey, Mindy Van Wingen, Ron Averill, Lisa Labovitch, Andrea Wallis, Carol Ellison, Eileen Schnarr, Alan Jacobson, Joyce Peter, Laura McCarty, Cameron Johnson.
Script: Cameron Johnson
Audio editing: Cameron Johnson
Excerpts:
1Clark, Norman H. Mill Town. Seattle: University of Washington Press, c1970.
2Everett News, July 5, 1894
3 Croly, Mrs. J.C. The History of the Woman’s Club Movement in America, New York: Henry G. Allen & Co., c1898
4 Dilgard, David. “Origins of the Everett Public Library” [unpublished]
5Book Club Member Frances King Sears, 1921 letter [unpublished]
6 “Woman’s Book Club,” composed by WBC Historian Nellie R. Hake. Published in A History of Woman’s Book Club, November 12, 1962. Foremothers’ Luncheon, Elks Home—Everett, WA [Unpublished]
7From: “The Magic City,” date unknown, author unknown. [Unpublished]
8Spriesterbach, Cora. History of Everett Woman’s Book Club: 1894-1940 [Unpublished]
9Everett Public Library Historical Sketch, 1894-1954 [Unpublished]
10Herald editorial November 1, 1894
11 Spriesterbach, Cora. History of Everett Woman’s Book Club: 1894-1940 [Unpublished]
12Origins of the Everett Public Library—date unknown [Unpublished]
13Everett—Thumbnail History. HistoryLink.org
14Origins of the Everett Public Library [Unpublished]
15Herald April 27, 1901
16 “The Origins of Everett Public Library.” [Unpublished]
17Everett News, July 5, 1925
18 Everett Herald January 20, 1903
19Spriesterbach, Cora. History of Everett Woman’s Book Club: 1894-1940 [Unpublished]
20Application for National Register status [Unpublished]
21 Everett Herald April 7, 1906
22Dilgard, David. EPL Evergreen Branch [Unpublished]
Music:
Bach, Johan Sebastian. Cello Suite No. 1 in G. John Michel.
Beethoven, Ludwig van. “Choral Fantasia, op. 80”, Washtenaw Community Orchestra Chorus, Michigan, 20 December 2009.
Barnacled, Cloud Pump.
edba-4217
Killian, Joy and Richard Beserra, Exotic Music from Enchanted Lands.”
Pianodamper. Schubert, Franz, “Piano Sonata #13.” STE-043-cut-reverb. Internet archive.
Sound effects from freesound.org:
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