Episode 47: From the Bookmobile to regency romance, discovering the library
Release Date: 11/15/2019
Episode 63: Podcast creator Jason Becker will change your mind about umpires
Check It Out!
Let’s meet the baseball nut who sticks up for the guys behind the plate that every baseball fan loves to hate. Yes, we’re talking about umpires. In this episode of the Check It Out! podcast, host Ken Harvey talks to his friend Jason Becker, creator of the . “In my book, he’s a genius, and he’s producing a fascinating podcast for the officials behind America’s favorite round-ball sport. That’s baseball, and those are umpires,” Harvey said in introducing Becker. “Fans and players often...
info_outline
Episode 62: Professor's academic research on racial strife leads to his first novel
Check It Out!
In Episode 62 of Sno-Isle Libraries Check It Out podcast, co-hosts Ken Harvey and Tricia Lee talk to local author Stewart Tolnay and learn how he has used his study of American racial history to create interesting fiction and nonfiction. Tolnay is a Ph.D. professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Washington. His first fiction novel, “,” features a Black Vietnam War veteran, his white girlfriend and the struggles they face as an interracial couple in Everett in 1969. Tolnay is also the author or co-author of...
info_outline
Episode 61: Peek inside the childlike mind of Chris Ballew and meet Caspar Babypants
Check It Out!
Part 1: You Don’t Wanna Be a Rock-and-Roll Star Chris Ballew lived the rock-and-roll life. As frontman for the late, great Presidents of the United States of America, he wrote infectious, goofy, catchy hits about “Peaches” and a “Dune Buggy” when heavy grunge dominated Seattle’s FM radio waves. He toured all over the world. He played to packed arenas and stadiums. He even won a Grammy award. But that’s the old Chris Ballew. Today,...
info_outline
Episode 60: Thanks to the internet and copious amounts of data, the future is now
Check It Out!
Rodney Clark helps deliver the future. As the vice president of the Worldwide Internet of Things and Mixed Reality Team, Clark and his crew work with more than 8,000 partners and clients to connect billions of everyday devices to the cloud. Sensors on stop lights, cash registers, automobiles, home appliances, exercise monitors, video doorbells. They all generate information and data that allows organizations to take action on that data and insights. “It’s a wave, it’s a reality,” Clark said. It’s no longer “the future.” “The job that I have and...
info_outline
Episode 59: If coronavirus has you worried, this good doctor reminds you you're not alone
Check It Out!
If you’re anxious about the global coronavirus pandemic and COVID-19, you’re not alone. In this episode of Sno-Isle Libraries , you’ll hear how a globe-trotting disaster-relief doctor loses sleep about the deadly virus that has upended our sense of “normal.” is a clinical assistant professor at Washington State University’s Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine after spending 33 years at the University of Washington School of Medicine in a similar role. In 1994, he and his wife, Debbie, founded CMRT, the nation’s first state-affiliated medical disaster response...
info_outline
Episode 58: Claudia Samano-Losada loves libraries as much as she loves her communities
Check It Out!
Claudia Samano Losado has many talents. Early-childhood educator. World traveler. Life coach. Recreation-center owner. Dance-movement instructor. But maybe most importantly, Losado is a fervent Oak Harbor Library supporter. “I think I’m very passionate about a lot of things, and one of my passions is to share with others and to take and give in the same way,” said Losado, a member of the library’s board. “Since I have had so much from the library I’ve wanted to give back to, and this is a very good way to give back, but not just that, to know more about the...
info_outline
Episode 57: For food critic Nancy Leson, deadlines got in the way of a good time
Check It Out!
Chapter 1: Meet the writer who’s not fond of writing Nancy Leson loves books, she loves libraries, she loves to talk and she loves food. That makes the Edmonds resident an ideal guest for Sno-Isle Libraries . Libraries figured large in Leson’s childhood in Philadelphia. Her family had little disposable income, so off to the library they went to borrow books and glean information from encyclopedias. These days, Leson says, the Friends of the Edmonds Library book sale is her favorite book event every year. Books and learning followed Leson into adulthood. ...
info_outline
Episode 56: A Rich Frishman picture isn't just a thousand words. It's a story unto itself.
Check It Out!
If a picture is worth a thousand words, some of photographs could be novels. Frishman was a news photographer for The Daily Herald in Everett and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize before he left to pursue freelance work. He knows how to tell a story with a photograph, and he still sees and tells the stories of America through his camera lens. Frishman has criss-crossed the country to chronicle its beauty and everyday life in his collections, and , and the guarded secrets in The difference between Frishman and the rest of us who think we take good pictures is how...
info_outline
Episode 55: Sometimes, a guest's gift can be hard for hosts to swallow
Check It Out!
admits he was a bookworm as a child. Is that why the prolific author loves insects, and loves to eat them? Sno-Isle Libraries hosts Ken Harvey, Jim Hills and Jessica Russell sat down with Gordon and chewed the fat about his reputation as “the bug chef.” And they graciously accepted the guest’s gifts, as polite hosts do. Yes. Harvey, Hills and Russell ate bugs. The Seattle-based author of “” and 19 other titles covering , and has appeared on many TV shows and headlined national festivals. When Gordon visited Sno-Isle Libraries and laid out plates of edible bugs, the hosts were...
info_outline
Episode 54: From "J.P. Patches" to elusive gorillas, this Edmonds pair has seen plenty
Check It Out!
If you’re old enough to remember when Seattle television was limited to a handful of broadcast channels and you remember J.P. Patches, you’ve seen the work of Sharon Howard and Mike Rosen. Howard got her start in broadcast TV in 1977 with KIRO-TV as a floor director for newscasts and “.” It was performed and broadcast live, six mornings a week. Without any rehearsal to speak of. “Well, everybody thinks that we had a script and it was planned, but our plans were to meet in the cafeteria 15 minutes before the show,” Howard said. “And we just played it by ear. Somebody would say,...
info_outlineEven for the folks whose jobs are to know things about the library, Sno-Isle Libraries continues to amaze and surprise.
In this episode, co-hosts Ken Harvey, Jim Hills, Jessica Russell and Paul Pitkin, “Go over the highlights of what we don’t know.”
Service Center
Hills points out the oddity that while the library district’s Service Center in Marysville serves all 23 community libraries, Library on Wheels and online services, it is not itself a library.
Jessica Russell, Assistant Director of Technical Services - Collection Services, says that, yes, all the materials that are in community libraries flow through the Service Center, those items aren’t there for very long. “Our job is to get them out into the libraries and the hands of our customers,” Russell says.
Pitkin adds the fact that for visitors and employees alike, the Service Center building can be a confusing place. “You see people wandering around looking lost because the building has been added on to three times. People walking around lost, but trying to not look like they’re lost.”
Special days
With everything from Peanut Butter Fudge Day (a Pitkin favorite) to special days for vegans, clams and craft jerky, November is more than just Thanksgiving. “Craft jerky?” Russell asks. “You mean, like craft beer?”
With the “fall back” to standard time in November, Hills takes an informal poll of the co-hosts for their preferences:
- Harvey – “Daylight Savings Time all the time.”
- Pitkin – “Never. I like the darkness. In the summer it just gets ridiculous.”
- Russell (a recent Texas transplant)– “But, it’s such beautiful light here, so soft. If you ever want to know what it’s like to be a bug under a magnifying glass, go to Texas.”
- Hills – “I’d keep both. I love summer nights when it’s light until 9:30 maybe 10 p.m.”
- Harvey (again) – “And if our listeners have an opinion, let us know at [email protected]
Title talk
“One of the most clicked on things on our website is the ‘new items’ link,” Hills says. “And Jessica is responsible for getting the stuff that’s new in the collection.”
Russell says it is actually the work of “the amazing, wonderful, collection development staff.”
For a person who sees the world of what’s published, Russell says her personal reading list is currently focused on “regency romance” novels. “There are tons and tons of regency romances,” she says.
For Russell, that means downloading from Overdrive to her iPad. “I have become an almost exclusively digital reader,” she says.
Still, Pitkin wondered about “regency.”
“Is that a publisher?” he asks.
The phrase, regency romance” refers to a time period of dukes and other royalty, Russell says. “If you’ve ever watched ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ you’ll love regency romances,” she says.
Bookmobile
As executive director of the Sno-Isle Libraries Foundation, Pitkin says he is always looking for great stories of how library services supported by donations to the foundation are helping customers.
“The Bookmobile is just an amazing service,” Pitkin says of the mobile service that is part of the larger Library on Wheels department.
Russell said a recent ride-along was inspiring to her. “The depth of knowledge our staff members have of their customers and how they know what customers are looking for is amazing,” she says.
Episode length: 34:45