Because I’ve been doing sooooo well with the two blogs I have, I decided to start another one! No…it wasn’t really my decision…although my comment was the impetuous for it. Here’s what happened: a few weeks ago I was cruising around the ‘net looking for art related opportunities for my lovely, talented husband and I happened upon a notice of RFPs being accepted for an upcoming show at the Kirkland Art Center called Steambot. It said they were seeking individuals and collaborative groups to create interactive artwork for an exhibition in the KAC Gallery during October and November of 2010 and that it would feature work that combines both current and 1900’s-era technology. Woohoo, thought I, sounds steamy to me! So I wrote to Cable Griffith, the Exhibition Director and all-round charming guy, and long story short he came and talked with our local Steampunk Social Club and 6 of us decided to form a team and applied. The application was due on the same day the inaugural Seattle Steamcon started, just last Friday, so much gnashing of gears was heard but we managed to get everything ready and in.

Our idea is to create a Steampunk version of the Penny Arcade at Seattle’s Luna Park, the largest amusement park on the west coast at the turn of the century. And, acceptance be damned, we are already at work on designing our amazing machines and exhibits. So…when I found a blog post about a blog post about a Steampunked arcade machine (albeit one more 1980s than 1880s) I got all excited and sent it off to the rest of the team and Gary decided we needed our own…blog that is. And here it is – Seattle Steam Group.

My dear friend and past editor Julie Pheasant-Albright and her lovely co-author Celeste Smith are having a book signing tonight for Images of America: Private Clubs of Seattle at the Swedish Cultural Center. As the Swedish Club states in their newsletter, “At what other bookstore can you get a drink?” And I would add, a good strong drink at a very reasonable price at that! And then there’s the view! Best in the city bar none. And of course the opportunity to mingle not only with the hoi polloi but those select few actually pictured in the book not to mention the charming authors themselves.

I have yet to buy my copy and am eager to get my hands on one. As mentioned previously in this blog, the Woman’s Century Club (and one of its prominent members, Mayor Bertha Landes) is playing a major role in the graphic novel that my husband Tony Hicks and I are currently working on (albeit a Steampunk tinged version of said.) Source material – yea!!

7:00pm tonight at 1920 Dexter Ave N – see you there!

On Friday May 15^th at 12:00 noon I’ll be at the Woman’s Century Club for their event Seattle Women Authors Book Event. The Club is presenting a High Tea and hosting four Seattle women whose writing deals with historical topics. I’m joining Julie Pheasant-Albright, author of Historic Ballard and Private Clubs of Seattle, Celeste Smith, co-author of Private Clubs of Seattle, and Helene Gabel Ryan, author of Hakujin. 

We’ll be in the Deluxe Building…home now of the Museum of the Mysteries and famously haunted. I wonder if we’ll be given Electromagnetic Frequency Detectors such as the ones used on the ghost tours or if I’ll have to bring my husband’s Chamber of Spectral Concentration or the Prism of the Veil. He and I are working on a illustrated novel about a Neo-Victorian Muldar and Scully set in a Steampunk tinged 1880s Seattle. The female character is a Spiritualist and I’m having fun researching the practitioners of the time.

Friday May 15th, 2009 at 12:00 noon

Woman’s Century Club-Harvard Exit Theatre

807 E. Roy

Seattle, WA

www.womanscenturyclub.org

RSVP 206.322.9565

president@womanscenturyclub.org

The look and feel of the iconic Frederick & Nelson Tearoom will be recreated at 2pm Wednesday, May 6th at Chateau Pacific in Lynnwood.  Special guests will include local author Ann Wendell who will read selections from her new book Images of America: Frederick & Nelson.  Accompanying Ann will be Lamont McDonald, longtime F&N employee and inventor of the Frango Mint machine.  Lamont, Ann, Chateau residents and members of the public who previously reserved a space for the event will have an opportunity to share their own memories of Frederick & Nelson and the Tearoom while they enjoy Walt’s Chicken Salad sandwiches, Frango mint desserts and Tearoom coconut cake.  Chateau Pacific residents will model or display vintage fashions, many of which were purchased at the legendary department store from the 1930s to the 1970s.  An extensive collection of historic F&N memorabilia, ranging from a doorman’s hat to a 1916 catalogue will be in display.     

This event sold out in record time with 80 people attending the Tea and another 70 on a waiting list. But don’t fret! Due to the popularity of these events I’ll will be joining the Chateau community again in June (date TBA) for a Frederick & Nelson Tea to celebrate the opening of their new facility Chateau St. Laurent in Bothell. This event will be open to the public and will feature a fashion show from a Bothell boutique. Stay tuned!

This evening and tomorrow I am venturing down to the fair city of Olympia to participate in the Olympia Book and Author Fair . It’s one of those events that came a bit out of left field seeing as, on the whole, I have the Seattleite’s obliviousness about the “South Sound.” However, at last year’s InfoCamp I met a lovely librarian (are there any other kind?), Kelsey Smith of the Olympia Timberland Library and she graciously invited me to participate.

I’ve even got a mention in the article in The Olympian . My favorite part is this –

OK…I’ll admit it…I’m a social networking junkie/whore (why is it that the terms that seem most relevant here are pejorative?) I’ve lost count of how many I’m on and I’ve been doing it since the ‘net was just a twinkle in Al Gore’s eye. Recently I became involved in a conversation on Biznik relating to the decision process people use to decide whether or not to add someone to their network. My criteria for accepting invitations/add requests/etc vary widely but relate specifically to the reasons I’m a part of that particular community.

I wear many hats in my roles on various social networks – sometimes I am acting on behalf of an employer or client…other times it relates to a particular professional or personal interest of mine. For work I’ve belonged (and in some cases still belong) to networks focusing on topics as diverse as surgical nursing, C++, SQL Server, business banking, Croc wearers, and Pokemon. Personally and professionally the topics range much further including living with cancer, Steampunks, books, comic books and cartooning, local history, entrepreneurship, startups, recruiting, competitive intelligence, librarians, school alums, user interface, and writing.

I’ve had my moments of going over the top – I once got thrown off Matchmaker.com for creating a profile of the ultimate Booth Babe in rhyming computer slang…but I did get a hire out of it . Certainly I’m a big fan of wit and humor when approaching people you don’t know, but want to get to know, and believe that a common interest can indeed act as an introduction. I’m also not opposed to networking with people I haven’t met in person. When I first was starting out as a consultant a number of my clients were people I met on Guy Kawasaki’s Rules for Revolutionaries mailing list. I met a business partner there and we created an online community website (this was 1999…we were unfortunately, a wee bit ahead of our time) without ever meeting in person, working primarily by Instant Messaging.

Here are my guidelines -

1. Social Networks are for creating connection and community. Look to thine own self first…for what you can give, not what you can get! Are you someone that others want to connect with? What have you offered to the community? What have you done/said that might attract others to want to connect with you? On Twitter I always do a quick browse to see if there’s a question I can answer, a recommendation or introduction I can make, a website I can point to, or a friendly nudge in the right direction. And, on the whole, this doesn’t mean always referring someone to my own website or blog. When I’m deciding whether or not to follow someone I’ll look at their recent tweets and see if they’ve done the same…or at least provided a good laugh!

2. Social Networks consist of human beings. If you don’t speak in a human voice, you’ll be dead in the water. There is nothing that makes me hit the delete button faster than receiving an invite/intro/add request with nothing but the canned lines in it. I don’t care if we’re in the same subgroup together or were in the same room with a 100 other people at an event or went to same school. Those are all good starts…but, like Meredith Grey, I want you to “pick *me*”. Tell me that a mutual friend thought we’d hit it off, or you overheard me telling a story and laughed so hard your martini came out your nose, or my last blog post was brilliant, or we met in a past life, or that *something specific* in my profile made you think I might be interested in your upcoming event.

I met my husband online. I had spent 2 years dating the dregs of humanity and was considering joining a nunnery. I signed up for a trial on Yet Another Online Dating Site and put up a profile that was quite specific about who I was seeking and pulled no punches explaining just what to expect from me. He wrote me a charming note, fully demonstrating that he recognized all my obscure movie and book references, that he enjoyed my warped sense of humor, that he “got” me and knew our connection was worth pursuing. I wrote back (from Seattle), “Dude…you’re in California! What are you thinking?” A few weeks later he came to visit and never left.

Online connections are like any other. They need someone to take the first step and both people to be open to possibilities. They need to be mutually beneficial. They take some investment to have them continue and grow. Every day I wake up in awe of who I might meet today, just sitting in front of my computer screen. For every person halfway around the world, there’s also someone just across town that you never would have known about without [insert your favorite social networking site here.] Know what you have to offer and what you’re looking for – then go for it!

I’m telling myself I’m doing my bit for sustainability by re-purposing and recycling my newsletter as a blog post. At moments I can even believe that. For the most part though I just feel like I need to hire someone to be my Information Filter…oh wait…that’s what I do. Yikes.

At the moment my sister is 15 min away from picking up  my daughter and I for the Wendell Girls Road Trip (hmmm…I guess I’m the only Wendell…no wait…I’m pretty sure in my sister’s many name changes that she actually hung on to Wendell in some way and my daughter has now turned 18 and reached the age of reason where she could, if she so desired, drop her current last name (her father’s) and use Wendell which I conveniently gave her as a middle name proving of course I can see the future. ) We’re on our way down to Portland…and then McMinnville for a whirlwind college tour. My daughter is participating in Scholarship Day at Linfield College on Sunday and we’re going to tool around University of Portland and Reed today.

So…my sister and I are staying at the Hotel Oregon in McMinnville on Sunday night…which is….tada…the Oscars. Hotel Oregon is owned by McMeneman’s so I was figuring they’d have some kind of of hootnanny going on to celebrate…and of course they do…in Portland. I write to the Hotel (which doesn’t have TVs in the rooms to encourage serenity) and plead for some sort of frivolity whereby we can have a few champagne cocktails and hoot at the celebrities on the red carpet…or at least huddle around an old TV in the staff lounge. I get a call from the manager and…he’s working on turning on the sound on the TV in the billiard room. Don’t worry he says…worse case scenario you can watch the Oscars with subtitles. Anyway….here’s my announcements!

Tuesday, February 24, 2009, 6:30 – 7:30pm: Ann reads from ‘ Seattle’s Ravenna Neighborhood’ at the Northeast Branch of Seattle Public Library

Ann will be sharing pictures and talking about her first local history book, Seattle’s Ravenna Neighborhood. Come see why Ravenna Park was called Big Tree Park when it was a private attraction for visitors to the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in 1909. You’ll also learn about the historic college in Ravenna that was not connected to the University of Washington. In addition Ann will be talking about local resources from which she acquired the pictures and a bit about researching and writing local history.

This program accompanies the neighborhood history exhibit hosted by Northeast Library during the whole month of February. Third Place Books will be on hand selling copies of both of her books – Seattle’s Ravenna Neighborhood and Frederick & Nelson.

Library events and programs are free and everyone is welcome. Registration is not required. The Northeast Branch is located at 6801 35th Ave. N.E. For more information call 206-684-7539 or visit the Seattle Public Library events calendar.

If you missed Ann’s interview on January 28^th’s Sound Focus on KUOW 94.9FM you can still go to their website and listen to, or download, the interview. Ann joined host Dave Beck to talk about Frangos, the Tearoom, and the other elements that made Frederick & Nelson such a center of creativity and community.

See the photo spread in the January 15th Bothell-Reporter.com – “Memories Flow at Frederick & Nelson Tea Party”

Author Ann Wendell joined the residents of the Chateau at Bothell Landing for a holiday tea and book signing party focused around the memories and lasting impressions of one of Seattle’s oldest and most revered department stores.

It’s my birthday too yeah! I was born on my father’s birthday February 3, 1958 (he’s was of course before that…47 years before to be exact.) Over the years my dad and I perfected our birthday greetings to each other into something resembling a vaudeville routine – “Happy Birthday to you!” “No Happy Birthday to you!” My mom would get us a cake (she didn’t do cakes…pies OTOH were her specialty and in later years I would always have a birthday menu that consisted of Eggs Benedict and Lemon Meringue Pie…preferably in bed) from Carolyn’s Cakes on Capital Hill (gone but not forgotten)…yellow cake with chocolate frosting that said simply “Happy Birthdays.” When I was pregnant with my daughter I tried for the three generation Hat Trick to see if she would join us on the 3^rd but alas even then she had a mind of her own and waited until the 8^th. My dad passed away when he was 83…on Feb 9^th…I always thought he waited until after both ours and his granddaughter’s birthdays to go…and my mom many years before that. I miss them both…all the time…but am glad I have so many wonderful memories of them.

So…to all the February 3th Birthday Buddies out there -

Happy Birthdays to Us!!!!

So much to blog…so little time. The Big Thing I must get out today is that my radio interview on Frederick & Nelson is airing today on KUOW 94.9 FM at 2:20 PM!!!! The host, Dave Beck, and I only taped the segment yesterday…I had thought I might have a bit more time to get the word out but…I’m just thrilled it finally happened. This interview was supposed to originally air on Christmas Eve but the inclement weather repeatedly prevented the taping from taking place.

Taping the interview was a lot of fun. Being in the recording studio was just like being on Frasier! Except, of course, Dave is a lot cuter (and not as full of neuroses)  as Kelsey Grammer. I, of course, looked particularly fetching as we all know that’s of primary importance on radio. I restrained myself from playing with the knobs and switches and trying to make them go to eleven.

The focus of the interview was on Frederick & Nelson’s contributions towards creativity and community. All the standard topics were covered and a few new stories for the listeners. Hope you get a chance to tune in!

On Thursday, January 15th at 2:00pm I will be a featured presenter for the Chateau at Bothell Landing’s Frederick & Nelson Reminiscence Tea. Pushed back because of inclement weather in December, this much-awaited holiday tea and book signing with residents will take place at the Chateau (floor B1) on Thursday, January 15 at 2 pm. I am so happy this has been rescheduled! I’ll read some passages of my book, and then invite others to share memories themselves. Senior Citizens ranging from their 60s to 100s will recall the glory days of a true Seattle landmark in an open-mike setting.

The event is open to the public. Former bakers from the famous Frederick & Nelson tea room will supply their famous coconut cake. A former F&N president and other employees including Frango candy makers and a one-time manager of the Tearoom have indicated they will attend. Adam Conley, Chateau Retirement Communities Communications Director, and at 32 one of the youngest generation to fondly remember Frederick & Nelson, coordinated the event and will bring his collection of vintage F&N memorabilia, including a doorman’s cap, for display. Guests are encouraged to bring Santa photos and memories, and come have a good time! For more information call Adam at 425.488.2400 ext 230.