Beacon Hill Back Carry Away Set It in Its Place Again Make Any Thing of That

Artwork by Miles Pepper at the Beacon Hill Branch

Miles Pepper's kinetic gunkhole sculpture rises above the building like a large weathervane pointing into the cakewalk. The highly engineered sculpture captures Buoy Hill'southward air current patterns and slowly changes form every bit information technology opens and closes with the wind. The fabricated metal boat symbolizes the spirit of hazard Pepper feels when entering a library.

The concept of the boat appears in the legends and myths of human civilization all over the world. On every continent, in almost every culture, mankind has applied creative ingenuity to gear up out upon the water. The kinetic dream ship atop the new Beacon Loma Branch uses the image of a modest current of air-blown boat as a metaphor for human marvel. Information technology represents our instinctive desire to know and understand, our chapters to dream, and our passion to explore and find the world around the states.

The spirit and concept of this thought was sparked by a library volume called The Kon-Tiki Expedition that inspired me as a young reader. Based on the true story of six men crossing the South Pacific Ocean on a manus-hewn log raft, the adventure details a 3-month journey confronting all odds. Their leader, the belatedly Thor Heyerdahl, was attempting to prove his theory that the settlers of Polynesia could have been of South American origin. The expedition'due south success was an inspiring beginning for Heyerdahl'due south lifelong effort to understand the role of the boat in the early distribution of mankind. His examinations of prehistoric boat petroglyphs around the globe have supported his theory that the parallel between the development of the gunkhole and the spread of human culture is part of our common heritage.

My intention is that this small wandering sailboat be interpreted every bit a metaphor for each individual's personal journeying. That the library, similar a port at the edge of a great ocean, exist viewed as a signal of difference from which each traveler may freely prepare sail. That the art piece, floating to a higher place the edifice, office as a visible and animated landmark for both the library and the Beacon Hill customs. That this Dream Ship correspond a place to explore, a place to detect, and a place to dream.

Pepper also designed pelting openings (scuppers) for the west side of the building in his starting time project using the force of falling water. The scuppers collect rainwater from the lower roof of the branch. When they're full, they release the h2o into landscaped areas below.

Miles Pepper is a kinetic sculptor based in Pullman, Washington. His sculptures, which are set in motion by the natural movement of air, reflect his affinity for the "machine aesthetic" and his interest in the employ of energy sources in nature.

The evolution of his work stemmed from a persistent need to create, a lengthy art education, and an exposure to a variety of skilled trades. He studied near of the fine art globe disciplines, including drawing, painting, photography, printmaking, ceramics and various methods of sculpting. He likewise took courses in metals technology, has had feel in construction, and learned to repair the different vehicles he has owned. Together, those disciplines have given him the skills he uses today.

Pepper has been deputed to create many public artworks, including for the Oregon Zoo in Portland, the metropolis of Oxnard, Calif., the cities of Corvallis and Bend in Oregon, and the Portland International Drome. He has art-related degrees from Sierra Community College, University of California-Davis, and California Country Academy-Humboldt, all in California, and Washington State Academy in Pullman.

Eleven Buoy Loma-area writers and poets were selected to take their work installed at the branch.

Writing submissions were in two categories: haikus most each of the four seasons, and short verse, prose or fiction.

Prose and fiction writers selected were: Anna Balint; David Bowen, Elaine Iwano; Ted Iwata; Janice Kennedy; Claudia Mauro, and Shira Richman.

The pieces were recorded and so they could be played in the branch entry hall and added to the Library's CD collection.

Haiku writers selected were: Stephanie Cerezo; Xiu Vinh Mao; Craig Thompson; and Kathleen Craig. Stephanie and Vinh were in third grade at Beacon Hill Uncomplicated Schoolhouse when their submissions were selected.

The haikus were engraved into outdoor quarry rocks.

Funding was generously provided for the quarry rock haikus past the Friends of The Seattle Public Library; Marenakos Stone Centre donated the stones. The Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs, which manages the Library's public art program, generously funded the audio recordings.

Spring
At Buoy Loma Park

Sell lemonade and flowers

On a sunny solar day

- Stephanie Cerezo

Summer
Summer is also hot

Summer is when bugs come up out

All kids accept no school

- Xiu Vinh Mao

Fall
Leaves race along streets

similar children rushing to school,

pages to a book

- Craig Thompson

Winter
Winter moon hovers

powerlines ripple the dusk

crows wing toward habitation

- Kathleen Craig

Susie
I made myself upwardly.

Not English, not Hungarian, not Romani Gypsy. I took what there was and made this. Self-fashioned. A cosmos. A nineteen-year-erstwhile office worker who writes poetry on the sly. Who cooks egg and fries for her widowed dad. Who lives in London. Who answers to the name of Susie. Who is almost to exist married.

The mirror tells me I am blackness-haired, brown-skinned, my eyes as dark as the Romani girl I was born as. My fiancé, Colin, tells me I am beautiful.

He tells me this while tracing the shape of my nose and the bones of my face with a fingertip. Perhaps we are lying under a tree. Perhaps the tree is in Finsbury Park, or Hampstead Heath, or out of London altogether. The day we take the railroad train away from the soot, chimney pots, and ruins of war. Yes, it is that 24-hour interval, on the border of Epping Wood, a picnic basket open beside united states of america, its contents half eaten. Sunday streams through the leaves of the tree. In its green yellow glow Colin's eyes smooth, his irises the color of leaves.

He is propped on ane elbow and leans over me. He tells me I'yard his princess, his queen, Venus herself. Today I believe all these things. Colin'southward voice is a lilt. Information technology touches me softly. Rise and falling, similar the hills of Wales he came from.

When I speak, London comes out of my oral fissure.

Its hurried, slightly inclement rhythm has get comfy, the way a shoe does subsequently being worn 24-hour interval after day. Sometimes I wonder how I used to sound. My trivial girl phonation, before Zsuzsa became Susie. When Zsuzsa was still Paprika. Before I had shoes. When I lived in Budapest. I used to listen to Mum and Dad talk between themselves in the onetime language. I'd listen to the shapes of their words, or the occasional burst of song when Dad was shaving, trying to hear my niggling girl self. But she had already flown away.

Now Mum is dead and Dad has gone tranquillity.

Hungary has gone quiet. Go a dream with a courtyard. Become shreds of forgotten language, fragments of song. Become a blue river. Become the memory of a sunflower. Go the memory of a sister, her face fading like a photograph left in sunlight.

I place English flowers on my mother's grave. Long stem daisies and forget-me-nots. She lies in an English graveyard. Her stone says "Elizabeth, wife of Alexander" not Erzsebet, wife of SaZdor.

I eat fish and chips, Toad in the Hole and mashed potatoes. Jam doughnuts and custard tarts. I read the Bronte sisters, and poems past Robert Browning. Jane Eyre is my sis, and Scotland is my home. My wedding dress is borrowed. I am borrowed. My wearing apparel is white satin and doesn't fit me well. I will stuff the bust with rags, curlicue my hair with rag curlers, and I'll do. I don't fit this country, merely I'll do.

The war has ended, and I am notwithstanding hither.

London is a slaughterhouse, my mother is expressionless, but I am here.

My skin looks very brown confronting the white satin of my sick-plumbing equipment wedding ceremony dress, merely the Church of England vicar will ally me just the same.

Mum tried to have me with her when she died. I felt her pulling and tugging from wherever she was, and for a while I wanted to become. Then I woke up one day and decided to stay, and she floated abroad. Similar a cakewalk going out of the window instead of coming in.

During the war I was sent away. Out to the countryside with all the other children. A gas mask in a box, a tag around my cervix. Maybe if I'd stayed backside in London I'd be dead.

"Pinch me Colin. I can't believe I'chiliad really here." Sometimes I say that.

Last Friday night, standing in a halo of light under a lamppost, waiting for a motorbus, with Colin's arm curled about my waist. "I can't believe I'm really here."

Each time I say it, I hear the wonder in my own voice.

Perchance if I'd stayed backside in Hungary I'd have been rounded upward like my sis Rozsa, taken to a concentration camp, and I would be dead. Like Rozsa's husband, and their babe, and my Granny, and all the others I can't remember. Or mayhap I'd be live, but barely, and thin equally a shadow, with a number first with "Z" tattooed on my arm. Like the ane my Auntie Maria showed my mother, when later the war she arrived from who knows where, just long enough to tell her terrible stories before she disappeared again.

But these are things I mustn't speak of. Dad forbids it. The sadness considering of information technology killed my mother.

As it is, I am alive, and will marry and have children.

"Pinch me Colin. Tell me I'k here."

"You're here, love. We're hither."

I'thou so glad of Colin'southward voice, the jump in his stride, and the firm, believable shape of him. Glad of our future together. Glad of the bustle of London, of the building and re-building going on all over the urban center these days. Glad that I am alive.

Sometimes, when we're in the park, I loosen my hair from its combs and pins, and permit it tumble down my back. I kick off my shoes, and let my skirts swirl, showing off my strong legs. Colin thinks of me every bit Gypsy then. "A real Gypsy girl," he says, and "Complimentary as a Gypsy." Nothing could be farther from the truth. I laugh, because sometimes I don't know what else to do. Running barefoot betwixt the trees on Hampstead Heath, shrieking and running, him chasing me downward into a bomb crater that's filling up with new greenish grass, running up the other side and out again. I run barefoot between trees, shrieking and running. And so I cease. My breath comes in spurts because of the running.

"There'due south cypher gratuitous about existence Romani. It's not about freedom. It's about poverty... and persecution..."

My anxiety are dusty. Peradventure I'm remembering something from a long fourth dimension ago.

Most of the time I vesture shoes.

I like shoes with heels that click. I like walking in the city. I want people to know I passed by, that Susie was here, and I'one thousand non leaving.

There are so many things Colin doesn't know. I will marry him anyhow, and maybe he'll never find out. How it is sometimes. Fifty-fifty now, walking down Essex Road, on my way to the office where I work, stepping firmly, holding my head high. I hear both catcalls and whistles. Men call out from building sites.

"`one-time upward a infinitesimal darlin'..."

"Wot you doin' tonight then love?"

But it's not always darling or honey they telephone call me. Sometimes it's blackie or darkie or Gyp, and it's every bit if I'm back on the school playground again. The other twenty-four hour period, a gob of spit landed at my feet.

"England for the English!"

I cranked my head a little college, stepped over the spit, and kept walking, the well-baked sound of my shoes, rat a tatting my answer. Fugitive the cracks in the paving stones, I hurried on. One more office daughter on her style to a charabanc-stop, past another bombsite, animate the aforementioned dust equally anybody else, her heart beating simply a little bit faster.

There's never whatever sense in looking dorsum. I but go on.

- Anna Balint

Thoughts on the impending completion of a library branch which is being built beyond the street from my house

I'chiliad almost sure at that place will be some sort of hum. A murmur perhaps, most likely depression, probably very low. Although information technology could be high, mayhap a small bird-like noise, an indistinct fluttering sound. For some reason I don't sense anything in the middle registers, why this is I'm not sure. You'd call back it would be louder at night but of course that'south not the case, it would merely seem that mode. Fifty-fifty so you would have to be very quiet to hear information technology, that kind of quiet where you almost accept to squint, your heartbeat drumming in your ears. The novels and magazines and textbooks and biographies, all of them vibrating with data, urgency. Pamphlets and maps and books on tape lining the shelves, stacks upon stacks, the words and sounds and images piled up to the ceiling. Dictionaries and leaflets and meaty discs all of it crying out to be read, listened to, gazed at, thumbed through, glanced over, absorbed, processed and put once over again back on the shelf in the exact same spot from where they came. It'southward the sound of empires falling and continents shifting, universes expanding and collapsing, the mourning of that which was lost and the celebration of the things yet gained. A burst of laughter off in the distance on a warm summer night. The subtle hiss of the sun as it rises out of the sea.

I just promise information technology doesn't keep me up at dark.

- David M. Bowen

Untitled
As a child growing up in small-town Ohio, I loved to read. I read in my room, I read in my basement, I fifty-fifty climbed trees and read upwardly in the limbs in the sky until the alcoholic neighbor lady would come out and yell at me to get downwards. Afterwards, as a teenager, that first love evolved into something new - what I really loved was to write. While all the other loftier school students rolled their eyes and complained about having to write papers, my muddied little hugger-mugger was that I loved it. I loved the whole procedure, from researching to writing to revising and editing.

Being a petty on the quiet side, people knew I was smart simply nobody really knew that I loved to write, except my English instructor, who submitted some of my work to the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts. As a inferior, I was given a national honor as a Promising Immature Artist in Writing. At present I had another dirty little secret.

I did not want to pursue writing, as I just knew of writers equally journalists or existence described with adjectives like "starving," and I certainly wanted no office of that. I took the letters of interest and even scholarship offers from colleges (i a full-ride!) and hid them in a brown paper sack under my bed. To this day, I never even told my parents.

Y'all could say I was stupid, or you could say I was just non fix. Honestly, I did not understand the ability I possessed, nor that I potentially had a "voice" as an creative person. What would I say, the merely Asian kid in my whole school? I couldn't write about my Japanese civilisation - no affair what I might say, everybody always chosen me Chinese anyway. Information technology never occurred to me that perhaps my words could impact any of that.

Merely now, 20 years later, through some struggles of my ain and through the creative inspiration of others inside my community take I come back to writing. Having the rich variety of Beacon Loma helped coax me out, I recall, helped me to realize that I did have a voice. Maybe in my mind I pulled out that brown paper grocery pocketbook and restarted where I left off. Within the last yr, I started to telephone call myself a writer, fifty-fifty though I hadn't published anything. Funny, but somehow everybody believed me. Even me. I edited a book. I began to freelance for local publications. I wrote wonderful pro bono stories for nonprofit organizations. I even hunkered down to be serenity and allow some verse to come up through once more.

I draw virtually of my inspiration from within our community. So many people run into "culture" as an acquired luxury, civilization being what you become for paying $l for opera tickets at the Seattle Center or perhaps something you would pay lessons for. On the contrary, I see civilisation every bit coming out of our mean solar day-to-mean solar day lives, an emanation from our neighbors, from our homes, from our children. As people of colour, sometimes this office of our voice has been overlooked, ignored, stereotyped. We are very real to ourselves and fiercely dependent on each other, but in many ways invisible to an outside "audience."

Nosotros are not invisible to ourselves. We live, breathe, talk, sleep and walk our culture. We could not contain it if nosotros even tried. Our culture lives every day. And sometimes, as in my verse form, when the time is right, one small, everyday occurrence will shake the earth. What so? The touch could exist big and loud - a Tsutakawa playing jazz or splashing art beyond the country. It could be Ken Mochizuki sharing stories around the world. It could exist our community middle youth taking stage to dance at the famed Apollo Theater in Harlem. Or the touch could exist a smaller one, with a quiet ripple effect - a simple and humble obasan taking her grandchild to preschool on the jitney every day, Filipino mothers loading upwards tables full of nutrient for an issue, an old Chinese uncle walking home with a live turtle in a handbag for soup after that evening.

I've been in Seattle and living on Buoy Hill since 1995. My kids accept gone to preschool on Beacon Hill, and we are regulars at the Customs Center and Red Apple tree Market. We are too probably ane of the most regular patrons of the Buoy Loma library co-operative. It holds a wealth - books and materials at manus in my own neighborhood, available virtually every day - what treasure! To me, it seems like magic, all these books for free. I come often, with my ii immature children and on my own. I feel my obligatory allocation of Japanese shame when my books are overdue, simply with thirty cents I am exonerated to go browse the shelves again.

And and then, nosotros come up. I love my community, and I am adequately certain that because of the diversity and leadership here, my children won't be hiding their dreams in dark-brown grocery bags underneath their beds. I am grateful that my handbag never got lost. Information technology waited for me.

- Elaine Iwano

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