information from SWSHS

"Words, Writers & West Seattle's" monthly book-talk series will be held on July 8th instead of the usual 'First Friday' this month because of the holiday on the 4th. Once and Future River: Reclaiming the Duwamish, is just published with the University of Washington Press and is about the damaged landscape of Seattle's Duwamish River, finding hope in the story of our past, present and future impact on the earth. The project has also been honored with sponsorship from Blue Earth Alliance.
Photographer Tom Reese and journalist Eric Wagner's presentation is rich with photos from their new book,and they discuss local efforts to reclaim the river, what its future might look like, and how life can thrive even in the murky waters of this iconic river.

The Southwest Seattle Historical Society sponsors this free book-talk series on the 'First Friday' of each month. this presentation of Once and Future River, the 34th installment of the series, will take place at 5 p.m. Friday, July 8th, 2016, at Barnes & Noble/Westwood Village.

Declared a Superfund site in 2001, the Duwamish River has faced a battered history; it's been straightened, dumped into by over 40 companies, and neglected to the degree that the river now has only a small percentage of its original natural habitat. As Seattle joined several other cities in a lawsuit against Monsanto to help pay for cleanup, and Boeing invests millions into restoration, the hope for rejuvenation seems positive but according to Reese and Wagner, reclamation of the Duwamish is nothing new.

Once and Future River has been called an instant classic. It illuminates what was lost in destroying the lower Duwamish River, and what our souls can gain from restoring it. Photographer Tom Reese and author Eric Wagner make tragic poetry out of a riverscape damaged and overlooked for a century, and miraculously generate hope from neglect. "Describing the Duwamish River, poet Richard Hugo wrote: 'This river's curves are slow and sick,' and just as many of Hugo's first poems rose up along that river, Tom Reese has turned his camera on the waterway for a number of years. The resulting photographs, with clarity and ache, bring us close up to this ruin of a river and our desperate attempts to restore it.”

Reese's work as a newspaper and magazine photojournalist has been nominated for Pulitzer Prizes in breaking news photography, feature photography and explanatory reporting during his career at the Seattle Times. Currently he is an independent photographer and editor based in Seattle, where he lives with his family. Recent books and projects focus on the complex relationship between humans and the rest of the natural world. Wagner writes from Seattle, where he lives with his wife and daughter. He has a Ph.D. in biology from the University of Washington, for work he did on Magellanic penguins in Argentina and he is currently working on a book about penguins.

"Words, Writers & West Seattle's" next book-talk is scheduled for August 5th and will feature Georgie Kunkel and her autobiography, Color Me Feminist, that includes her activities in the women's movement years. For videos on these and other authors' presentations, visit: www.loghousemuseum.info/events/words-writers-and-west-seattle. Additional information on future presentations can be obtained by contacting Dora-Faye Hendricks, Chair, "Words, Writers & West Seattle" by phone at 206-280-9983 or by e-mail at Dora-Faye@comcast.net.