http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/20/us/20ventura.html
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER
Published: June 20, 2009
The new passion of the science fiction writer Ray Bradbury is raising money for California’s libraries.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Magna Makes a Difference
Me and my family use the library every day. My son Carl reads a lot of the books (magna). It’s a great place to use the computers, check emails and so forth. After school programs well affect the children’s homework. My son would not do as much reading as he does now and it affects everybody in the community
So by losing Monday it is very sad and the community will feel it because a lot of kids are gonna be on the street and the workers are losing a whole day’s pay so it is not a good thing at all.
~Martha H. Weaselbear
So by losing Monday it is very sad and the community will feel it because a lot of kids are gonna be on the street and the workers are losing a whole day’s pay so it is not a good thing at all.
~Martha H. Weaselbear
Thursday, July 30, 2009
She is a patron of the MLK Branch
The library is an asset in our communities. Like EOYDC it keeps our children off the streets and their minds from being idle. Its another safe haven for our children. It has also provided many hands on programs to our children where they can engage both mind and hands. The library has been a blessing to my family and it keeps them from wasting numerous hours on the T.V., playstation or games on their cell phones.
~Chinise Mason
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Re: What was your Bookmobile like?
Yea libraries! You are doing important work. Thank you, Patrick. My bookmobile was
like a bread truck but with books inside. It came Pond, to the small agricultural town in the central valley of California where we lived. I was quite small; my mother got novels to read. I remember the stairs and how nice and snug it was inside -- nice for a child.
like a bread truck but with books inside. It came Pond, to the small agricultural town in the central valley of California where we lived. I was quite small; my mother got novels to read. I remember the stairs and how nice and snug it was inside -- nice for a child.
Best wishes on your worthy projects,
Kay Ryan
A Public Trust
I went to Berkeley High, which was in the 1940's already a school of over 3000. In the Bobby sox Regiments of the time, where peer group pressure demanded a crushing conformity of dress, speech, and behavior, being an intellectual, especially an intellectual girl, was a hard, humiliating task. You lived in disguise. You hid your brain in the closet. You tried your damndest to put your heart into squealing for Frankie Sinatra. You bought skirts and sweaters just like the BWOC wore. But you never fooled anybody. It was like going to Finland and pretending to be Finnish without being able to speak Finnish. It was hopeless. It was six hours a day of social failure and internal exile for three years. The one thing that redeemed it for me was the Berkeley Public Library, right around the corner.
I went there as soon as school was out and stayed an hour or two or three, roaming the stacks. I was home. Home free. Free at last, Lord, free at last! I say that in all seriousness. That library was my liberty. There I restored and regained all the soul I compromised or lost at school. The librarians soon knew me, knew my type, and never bothered me. I investigated all the departments and all the floors. When I found French literature up on the dark third floor where nobody else ever came, I more or less moved in there. There was a window with an inner ledge where I could sit and read -- plowing very slowly with my third-year French through Cyrano de Bergerac and weeping aloud at the end, or lost to the world in Tess of the d’Urbervilles, or wallowing with earnest adolescent ecstasy in the poems of Ernest Dowson. The librarians in those days couldn't let people with a high school library card check out sexy bestsellers such as Forever Amber, but if there was a copy on the New Books shelf, they never knew if you took it up to the third floor, palpitated or yawned through it for hours, and then put it back.
Or maybe they did know?
Whatever they knew or didn't, I bless their memory, and that of the beautiful building full of books, and my third-floor window-niche. And, though American society of the 1940's was in many ways anti-intellectual, benighted, and rigidly oppressive, yet let me say this for it: The Public Libraries then were a public trust, a community responsibility. They were open every afternoon, six days a week, every week of the year, offering everybody liberty, learning, and the chance to make your soul.
With all good wishes,
Ursula K. Le Guin
Portland, Oregon
http://www.ursulakleguin.com/UKL_info.html
Photo Copyright © by Marian Wood Kolisch
I COULD LIVE IN THE LIBRARY
make my bed on the floor
behind the stacks in Business & Technical,
wash in the women’s restrooms,
eat meals smuggled in knapsacks
by friendly students,
listen to Vivaldi on the ground floor
at the bank of turntables with headphones,
lounge in Periodicals
with the daily paper and a bootleg TV
after closing time,
race up and down the stairwells
to raise my pulse,
collect my mail at the Circulation Desk:
behind the stacks in Business & Technical,
wash in the women’s restrooms,
eat meals smuggled in knapsacks
by friendly students,
listen to Vivaldi on the ground floor
at the bank of turntables with headphones,
lounge in Periodicals
with the daily paper and a bootleg TV
after closing time,
race up and down the stairwells
to raise my pulse,
collect my mail at the Circulation Desk:
Everyone is fine. The washer broke.
What should I use for diaper rash?
When are you coming home?
When are you coming home?
Good luck to you and your friend. Libraries are one of my loves and vital to all of us.
Linda
Linda RodriguezHeart's Migration (Tia Chucha Press)
The "I Don't Know How to Cook" Book: Mexican (Adams Media)
http://www.lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com/
The "I Don't Know How to Cook" Book: Mexican (Adams Media)
http://www.lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com/
Everyday Hungers
For the temporary branch of the Multnomah County Central Library,1995-1997, a former state unemployment office.
The temporary library in winter
had the closeness of a submarine.
Grade school children, hungry writers,
office workers, artists, dozers--
we crowded through the doors as if embarking
on a peaceful trip under the river
while a great storm raged up above.
It was all of a piece: the smell of
winter clothes, the ceilings that once
umbrallaed the unemployed, the hiss of
fluorescent rain, and the baskets of
children’s books, flaps glued,
pages dotted with erasered light.
The halls of our vessel began to smell
like the halls of a public school at lunchtime.
After a while we stopped missing the
main library building’s marble stairs.
Because the mind has its everyday hungers,
and the soul needs nourishment, too,
we followed the comforting odors
issuing from the kitchen,
drew our seats up to the tables,
and opened the delicious books.
The temporary library in winter
had the closeness of a submarine.
Grade school children, hungry writers,
office workers, artists, dozers--
we crowded through the doors as if embarking
on a peaceful trip under the river
while a great storm raged up above.
It was all of a piece: the smell of
winter clothes, the ceilings that once
umbrallaed the unemployed, the hiss of
fluorescent rain, and the baskets of
children’s books, flaps glued,
pages dotted with erasered light.
The halls of our vessel began to smell
like the halls of a public school at lunchtime.
After a while we stopped missing the
main library building’s marble stairs.
Because the mind has its everyday hungers,
and the soul needs nourishment, too,
we followed the comforting odors
issuing from the kitchen,
drew our seats up to the tables,
and opened the delicious books.
~Barbara LaMorticella
Dot Floored Me
On Tuesday, June 30 I attended my second Oakland City Council meeting concerning budgetary cutbacks to the library system in Oakland. Again I held up Patrick’s sign, “Save The Libraries,” and again with my usual ambivalence about public speaking: it’s scary/it’s important/stretch the parameters of comfort (work those muscles and make them stronger), I marched up to the podium.
Earlier in the day I had sat comfortably enough in the office of my Dentist Dr. Thuy Bui of Alameda, whom I trust and recommend, whole-heartedly. As I had my teeth cleaned, I concocted this little story, a composite of sorts…
The other day as I returned from my morning bicycle ride around the lake, I came across my elderly neighbor, Dot, doing a bit of gardening, having earlier hobbled home from her morning walk to the Lakeside Library. Amazingly, dot who is eighty-seven years old makes this daily pilgrimage, she worships at the alter of books and learning, this plus the walk is what has kept her so young and spry, both physically and intellectually. She greeted me with an unusually crabby (for her), “Can you believe the City of Oakland allows these climate change deniers to run noisy gasoline-powered leaf-blowers and water-blasters as a matter of course, any time for any excuse? Don’t they know there is a draught happening? Global warming? What about my asthma and that of the kids in the neighborhood, don’t they know that all those leaf-blowers do is raise all the dust? Do they care if the water-blasters make me deaf or crazy, or if they give me a heart attack? No, I guess they don’t care about me, but for them to recklessly allow all those greenhouse gasses to destroy our planet for no reason is unforgivable!”
I tried in my usual calming tones of acknowledgement to assure Dot that she was heard, but I had to ask her, in some puzzlement, “I follow you, I agree with you, Dot, but why did you call those who use the leaf-blowers and the water-blasters ‘climate change deniers?’ She amazed me by telling me that when she goes to the library she not only reads the likes of Bill Mckibbon, Paul Erlich, and Jeff Rubin to name a few, but she takes their messages to heart. She told me she fails to understand how anyone using those aforementioned gasoline-powered implements could possibly not be in total darkness, therefore denial of the peril to our entire civilization and all species, our earth, waters and atmosphere, if they were willing to use them.
Then Dot floored me by telling me that even though she has no computer, she regularly visits the websites of various environmental groups at the library’s free computers, to sign their petitions, email her representatives, so that she can feel she is contributing her part to the solution to climate change.
I am in continuous and growing awe of Dot, and I feel more than ever because of her, inspired to fight to save our libraries.
I think I bombed this time in my speech to Oakland City Council because the one minute or so that they gave me just wasn’t long enough. It is up to me to find a way to create the pithiest little sound-bite koans in the future. I believe I shall for the moment persevere.
~Chandra Garsson
Saturday, June 20, 2009
June 18
About Our Mission To Save The Libraries and Presentation to Oakland City Council
Essentially I was winging it, I composed my little one and a half minute speech as I sat listening to what others had to say. I decided to make it as dramatic and personal as I could. As I forgot much of what I had "written" about midway through, I was happy to be holding the sign made by Patrick, which very sussinctly encapsulated all. My story: .....Sometimes a child is beaten, abused and neglected at home. When the child goes to school she is bullied and further neglected. She cannot relate, does not do well in school, feels she has nowhere to go. One day the child finds himself at the library, and at last begins to find himself. Perhaps the librarian and staff help the child, and perhaps she finds the most important help she will ever get in the thousands of books all around her. As she reads she is transported through conduits, portals to other worlds. For the first time his own world enlarges, brightens, expands where previously there had been darkness, pain, and contraction. For the first time and for life, the child has a family where everything is to be learned and gained. It is a safe place to go, books to read, all for free! Because of this bounty sometimes the child grows up, goes to college, even graduate school. In large part because of the library the child becomes a model citizen who never harms another person; a person who can stand peaceful, tall, strong, and creative. It takes a village to raise a child, so don't take the only village away from him that he or she may ever know. God bless the child that's got her own public place to go.
About Our Mission To Save The Libraries and Presentation to Oakland City Council
Essentially I was winging it, I composed my little one and a half minute speech as I sat listening to what others had to say. I decided to make it as dramatic and personal as I could. As I forgot much of what I had "written" about midway through, I was happy to be holding the sign made by Patrick, which very sussinctly encapsulated all. My story: .....Sometimes a child is beaten, abused and neglected at home. When the child goes to school she is bullied and further neglected. She cannot relate, does not do well in school, feels she has nowhere to go. One day the child finds himself at the library, and at last begins to find himself. Perhaps the librarian and staff help the child, and perhaps she finds the most important help she will ever get in the thousands of books all around her. As she reads she is transported through conduits, portals to other worlds. For the first time his own world enlarges, brightens, expands where previously there had been darkness, pain, and contraction. For the first time and for life, the child has a family where everything is to be learned and gained. It is a safe place to go, books to read, all for free! Because of this bounty sometimes the child grows up, goes to college, even graduate school. In large part because of the library the child becomes a model citizen who never harms another person; a person who can stand peaceful, tall, strong, and creative. It takes a village to raise a child, so don't take the only village away from him that he or she may ever know. God bless the child that's got her own public place to go.
~Chandra Garsson
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Our Library Stories
In the United States we take a lot of things for granted. Why? Simply because we've had advantages for so long, we begin to expect that they will always be there. I heard that funding for our libraries is being cut, and that libraries are being closed down. This caused me to consider what my voice in the matter is. "What is MY library story?" My library story is about knowledge and community. I can share a beginning to the story, but will the end come much too soon? Will the library in my area be closed down, requiring me to look for other means of gathering information for my schooling; other locales for our community to gather?For as long as i can remember, I've been a regular visitor to the public library. I've always been an avid reader, and the library was a place I could go to expand my mental horizons. Getting my first library card was such a big, important thing for me. Being a card member taught me many things, like being responsible for the care and return of the books, learning how to behave appropriately in quiet surroundings, and even how to use the library systems. In later years, the library has become a place I can go to get information for my extended education. Yes, I am a returning adult student to the world of academics! The library system has changed somewhat since I was a child, but idea of the public library is still the same. This has always been a place where a member of the community can go to get information. I've been able to do research for papers, check out videos for projects, and buy used books. I still have much more schooling to complete and plan to keep going to the library, what would I do if it were not there?Recently, the library became another source of delight for me. I had been looking for a meeting location for our non profit women's group to meet; I looked for weeks. I'd placed calls to many churches and local facilities. Many were not open to our group meeting at their locations, and many, the rents were just too expensive for our small, weekly meeting to sustain. My local library was the answer! They have allowed us to meet at their facility for free! This will allow our small women's group to grow, and eventually become strong enough to pay rent at another place. The public library provides the community with many different services, many more than I have included here. When I think of my library being closed, I think of these many different ways it serves our community. I think of the children who will be robbed the joy of checking out books, of educations that will hindered, and of fellowships that might never have a chance to grow. I think of other countries who don't have public libraries. I think that we, the United States, will be taking a huge step backwards if we allow this to happen. I said that my library story was about knowledge and community, well it's also about unity. The people must be united so that they can be heard - get involved. What is YOUR library story?
Trish Camacho
Avid Reader, Returning Adult Student
Trish Camacho
Avid Reader, Returning Adult Student
wo 27 mei - the library
12°
Patrick
I have some
reading, perception
and visual challenges. I am
very far cited and did not get
glasses till I was in high school.
My mom though it bull shit that I
needed glasses. I did great - really great
with all the eye tests. I kicked butt on those
eye wall charts. >>> They tested my reading when
I was a sophomore in high school. I could not read.
What they said was that I was reading at a third
grade level. They had just opened a special reading
class. Special books with tests at the end of each
story. Great stories - by the way. And reading
machines - to teach us "eye scan". It was amazing.
Most of my recreational reading was at my friend
Derry's. His family was from Bornmith. Pat, or
Mr. O'Donovan had his motor sports publications
shipped over several times a year. Motor Sports as
practices in europe and the UK. It was influential... to
say the least. It also effected my spelling... but that took
me years to suss out. >>> I enjoyed reading. But there became
a both volume and time limit on my abilities. After some unknown
amount of time, or some number of pounds of information - I would
just nose over. It is so disrespectful to find one self nosed over, face
down in some book.... drooling. But I kept at it. And always the big
fats ones with lots of content. Big wonderful histories with people
who did real things. The problem was it could take months to
finish. If I finished. It was normal that I'd get so far... and then
just give up. >>> At some point I wondered into a section at
the local library. That was the Redwood city main. There
were shelves of light brown boxes. I asked what they were.
Books for the blind. They required a special machine to listen.
And there was some sort of qualifying process... but said the
lady with twinkle in her eye. We have a section of booked on
cassette. It was as if the walls of my world had their supports
kicked away, they descended to the ground noiselessly
and there were green fields and paths never dreamed
of beyond the dust and mist. I got a cost effective
portable tape player and a battery recharging kit.
I became a heavy consumer, and could and did place
orders for new books. >>> At about his same time I also
discovered the research desk. On desk at work I had an open
pad. As the day and we progressed I'd write down stuff that struck
me curious. It could have been some bit - a pert of a conversation that
did not sit right. I fear either I or the other party had our facts
wrong.
Or just some confusion that struck me. Or I'm reading a history... and
all this exciting stuff is happening... yeah well. It's not like the
rest of
the world was held in stases. What else was going on. And on and on.
I'd attempt to consolidate my questions... and be sent into the stacks
by Mrs. Alidif. It would not be uncommon for me to be sitting on the
floor with two stacks of books next to me... three open in my lap
and a note pad on the floor. Mrs Alidif was also the first to tell.
and show me of internet research. >>> Just because there is
the internet, there is still required a library. One of the best
jobs the library does is teach how to form and sculpt a
question. How a question is formed, determines how
quenching the answer can be. And we always want
the satisfied feeling. It also stimulates the hunger.
So that the next question is formed with yet more
eloquence - to derive yet greater satisfaction.
There are to my mind three basic driving
forces: eating, fucking, and discovering.
It's best if we don't eat our children, or
fuck our institution and kill discovery.
Stephn J. Lewis
Advertising Art & Creative Director
Patrick
I have some
reading, perception
and visual challenges. I am
very far cited and did not get
glasses till I was in high school.
My mom though it bull shit that I
needed glasses. I did great - really great
with all the eye tests. I kicked butt on those
eye wall charts. >>> They tested my reading when
I was a sophomore in high school. I could not read.
What they said was that I was reading at a third
grade level. They had just opened a special reading
class. Special books with tests at the end of each
story. Great stories - by the way. And reading
machines - to teach us "eye scan". It was amazing.
Most of my recreational reading was at my friend
Derry's. His family was from Bornmith. Pat, or
Mr. O'Donovan had his motor sports publications
shipped over several times a year. Motor Sports as
practices in europe and the UK. It was influential... to
say the least. It also effected my spelling... but that took
me years to suss out. >>> I enjoyed reading. But there became
a both volume and time limit on my abilities. After some unknown
amount of time, or some number of pounds of information - I would
just nose over. It is so disrespectful to find one self nosed over, face
down in some book.... drooling. But I kept at it. And always the big
fats ones with lots of content. Big wonderful histories with people
who did real things. The problem was it could take months to
finish. If I finished. It was normal that I'd get so far... and then
just give up. >>> At some point I wondered into a section at
the local library. That was the Redwood city main. There
were shelves of light brown boxes. I asked what they were.
Books for the blind. They required a special machine to listen.
And there was some sort of qualifying process... but said the
lady with twinkle in her eye. We have a section of booked on
cassette. It was as if the walls of my world had their supports
kicked away, they descended to the ground noiselessly
and there were green fields and paths never dreamed
of beyond the dust and mist. I got a cost effective
portable tape player and a battery recharging kit.
I became a heavy consumer, and could and did place
orders for new books. >>> At about his same time I also
discovered the research desk. On desk at work I had an open
pad. As the day and we progressed I'd write down stuff that struck
me curious. It could have been some bit - a pert of a conversation that
did not sit right. I fear either I or the other party had our facts
wrong.
Or just some confusion that struck me. Or I'm reading a history... and
all this exciting stuff is happening... yeah well. It's not like the
rest of
the world was held in stases. What else was going on. And on and on.
I'd attempt to consolidate my questions... and be sent into the stacks
by Mrs. Alidif. It would not be uncommon for me to be sitting on the
floor with two stacks of books next to me... three open in my lap
and a note pad on the floor. Mrs Alidif was also the first to tell.
and show me of internet research. >>> Just because there is
the internet, there is still required a library. One of the best
jobs the library does is teach how to form and sculpt a
question. How a question is formed, determines how
quenching the answer can be. And we always want
the satisfied feeling. It also stimulates the hunger.
So that the next question is formed with yet more
eloquence - to derive yet greater satisfaction.
There are to my mind three basic driving
forces: eating, fucking, and discovering.
It's best if we don't eat our children, or
fuck our institution and kill discovery.
Stephn J. Lewis
Advertising Art & Creative Director
My Library Story
I am independently happy. My horizons have been stretched around the world and to nearly every state in the US. I am comfortable enough to take months off from work at a time. Work is a pleasure that I continually strive to perfect. I love what I do. I live in a wonderful city (Oakland, CA).
This is worlds away from the impoverished, gang-ridden streets where reading a book or going to the library was an invitation to a beating. Yes, beating from the gangs and beating from parents who saw no value in anything that came from books.
Libraries, books and a mother, who took the time to read to her young son, even while she worked two low-wage jobs to support her family as a single mother, are directly responsible for my liberation from the anguish of a cloistered mind. Sometimes I wonder if “no brains, no pain” might not be an easier way to live but then I experience the joy and wonder of interacting with my peers and my community on a level only granted to those who can see beyond the neighborhood block, and I know better.
Today I became seriously involved with my local Friends of the Library because our City Council is considering reducing library open hours to help alleviate an 83 million dollar deficit. About 30 of us came together to strategize and organize a plan to demonstrate community support for our libraries. We also realized that as a community of volunteers we have to be willing to step up and do our part to ensure that our libraries are supported in such a way that they can not only remain open, but enhance their services.
What is your library story? How has access to a library changed your life? I know that once I can get half of our City Council to tell us their library stories, closing libraries is off the table.
Patrick S. Camacho
Library Advocate
This is worlds away from the impoverished, gang-ridden streets where reading a book or going to the library was an invitation to a beating. Yes, beating from the gangs and beating from parents who saw no value in anything that came from books.
Libraries, books and a mother, who took the time to read to her young son, even while she worked two low-wage jobs to support her family as a single mother, are directly responsible for my liberation from the anguish of a cloistered mind. Sometimes I wonder if “no brains, no pain” might not be an easier way to live but then I experience the joy and wonder of interacting with my peers and my community on a level only granted to those who can see beyond the neighborhood block, and I know better.
Today I became seriously involved with my local Friends of the Library because our City Council is considering reducing library open hours to help alleviate an 83 million dollar deficit. About 30 of us came together to strategize and organize a plan to demonstrate community support for our libraries. We also realized that as a community of volunteers we have to be willing to step up and do our part to ensure that our libraries are supported in such a way that they can not only remain open, but enhance their services.
What is your library story? How has access to a library changed your life? I know that once I can get half of our City Council to tell us their library stories, closing libraries is off the table.
Patrick S. Camacho
Library Advocate
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