Library staff abuzz over bee

The Seahawks aren't the only Kirkland-based team striving toward glory this month.

The men and women of City Hall, Madison House Retirement Community, the Kirkland library and the Kirkland Downtown Association all hope their practice will pay off — not at the Super Bowl, but at a spelling bee for grown-ups.

And they hope others have the guts to join them.

Come Feb. 28, as many as 10 teams of three competitors each will gather on stage at the Kirkland Performance Center. Stomachs will be aflutter with butterflies many say they haven't felt since elementary school, the last time most spelled aloud in public.

But fear not, rusty spellers: Three heads are better than one. And if your team misspells a word in this showdown, you can always buy your way back in for 20 bucks. After all, it's going to support the library's literacy programs.

"We just want this to be fun," said Jeong Kim, a reference librarian. "We're hoping that the city of Kirkland will turn out en masse for this."

The bee is the brainchild of Kirkland managing librarian Tom Joselyn, who heard about other adult spelling bees around the country. Teams will vie to outspell each other with words handpicked by none other than Anu Garg of Woodinville. He's the author of "A Word A Day: A Romp Through Some of the Most Unusual and Intriguing Words in English" and founder of Wordsmith.org, a Web site that e-mails a new word each day to subscribers who adore words (linguaphiles) Stuti Garg, his wife, will serve as the orthoepist. That's a pronunciation expert.

"If children can have fun, why not adults? Why do we have to sit back in the audience?" Anu Garg said.

Become a stellar speller


Here are a few tips from Anu Garg, author of "A Word A Day: A Romp Through Some of the Most Unusual and Intriguing Words in English" and founder of Wordsmith.org.

Read because seeing new words in context helps commit them to memory.

Study the National Spelling Bee Web site at www.spellingbee.com.

Consider the roots of words and pay attention to spelling patterns and common prefixes and suffixes.

Use your new words in conversation and when you write to gain confidence and "own" them.

Kirkland City Councilwoman Mary-Alyce Burleigh, a former longtime government and history teacher at Redmond High School, is representing the City Council on one of two City Hall spelling bee teams.

"Everyone else, at least as far as I know, has begged off," Burleigh said. "I think I've been ruined by spellcheck."

Even the audience will be in on the act, with a spelling quiz and prizes. Adult spelling bees are buzzing around the country, in bars and libraries, for fun and to support literacy efforts. A National Senior Spelling Bee has been going strong for 10 years. Kirkland librarians hope to make the library bee an annual event.

Most of all, Kim hopes it will be fun. She can empathize with competitors nervous about spelling in public for the first time since grade school. Even the library staff had a tough time persuading a third colleague to join their team.

Rather than pluck words randomly, Garg said, he'll present them under several categories, such as words that are derived from someone's name. Some will come from his latest book, "Another Word A Day."

"Here, the spelling bee is not to find out how many words you know. The idea is to have fun and raise funds for the library, and talk about words," Garg said. "I'm on a mission to spread the magic of words, and a spelling bee is one of the ways to do that.

"Words are like an artist having a palette of colors: You don't use all the words in a single painting, but having a vast vocabulary is like being an artist who has the right colors to bring out just the right ideas, as they have pictured it in their mind."

Karen Gaudette: 206-515-5618 or kgaudette@seattletimes.com