Can’t find the book you’re looking for? Move over, library staff! Call in the agents from Albany’s #1 Dewey Detective Agency.
Over 200 fourth and fifth graders have learned a thing or two about the old “Dewey Gum Shoe” after recent visits to the library. (See the photos below and the entire album on Albany Library’s Facebook page.) They will be happy to help you conduct your library search, especially if it involves the hunt for Wooly Mammoths or increases their Monthly Allowance!
The class visits featured a tour of the library, including an inside peek at the book drop! Next we looked at the library’s online resources with a stop at the helpalicious Homework Page. http://guides.aclibrary.org/homework and a demo of our Digital Worldbook. (Thanks again to Gardener and Margaret Young for the bequest that transformed our meeting room into an audio-visual showplace!)
Once the show and tell was over, the kids got down to business. Albany’s Dewey Detectives drew a topic from a hat, decorated a cupcake to help them solve their case, and looked on our web catalog for a Dewey clue to guide them to a book on their topics.
The gooey part followed the Dewey part. After cupcake consumption, students checked out books with their new library cards. These info-seeking aces are ready for any case that comes along. Just ask ‘em.
On April 26, Albany Library hosted groups raising awareness for Victims Rights Awareness Week. The information fair was coordinated by Kelli Sage of the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office. Children and adults passing through the lobby on their way to the library stopped and picked up information and spoke with the presenters. One ingenious display gave children a chance to write about their own experiences as victims and how they stood up for their rights in difficult situations. The Albany event was part of a series of consciousness-raising fairs, hosted by different Bay Area libraries.
Last month’s Brown Bag Speakers Forum featured Cristina Campbell, a volunteer at U.C. Botanical Garden. Since retiring from her work as a university librarian, she has worked in a volunteer capacity at the Garden, propagating California native plants.
Ms. Campbell introduced us to the Garden and its role as a lab for the university’s botany and environmental education programs. Read more about the garden: http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu
Cristina’s talk was filled with detailed information about specific plants and the history of the garden’s efforts to conserve native species. (Plants are labeled native if they grew in a region prior to European contact and survived the introduction of new species brought by settlers and explorers.) She described the local habitats where these plants will thrive, encouraging gardeners to plant natives that are well-suited to our soil conditions and micro-climates.
Opal Palmer Adisa & devorah major read at Albany Library in California, as part of Second Tuesdays Poetry Series. “You cannot disappear into the crowd. You have been named.” –Opal Palmer Adisa
Our featured readers at the November 13 poetry night were Betty Roszak and Murray Silverstein.
A fascinating collection of painted tubes stood to the left of the podium as Betty Roszak read her poems, glowing like a futuristic city. These designs are part of the cover art for her collected poems: For Want of the Golden City.
The art fit the mood of the poems. Just as the decorations on the tubes were reminiscent of a hippie bus, the concepts held under the poet’s scrutiny shimmered in a groovy way as they caught the light. See photos below.
Roszak also stared down the problems of pollution and greed and her poems were a testament to ecological awareness. As Catherine Taylor writes,
“Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals and reviews. Her audio-texts, Starbirth and The Crest of the East Pacific Rise, poetic evocations of recent scientific discoveries, have been presented to the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Exploratorium in San Francisco. The poem “Global Ocean Flux” was commissioned by the American Geophysical Union.”
Murray Silverstein was the second reader. He read favorites from his collection, Any Old Wolf, reminding the audience how rooted we are in spoken truths. The voice, narrating the passages of family life, is great within us and Silverstein’s voice is particularly clear and strong.
His idiosyncratic poems about a series of buildings in Modesto (with slides of each building) were a delight to hear and see. Not only did we meet the people who lived in the buildings; the structures spoke out–each revealing its own persona. The architectural poems were written for Modesto’s 2012 International Architecture Festival.
Look for Murray’s new book, Master of Leaves, from Sixteen Rivers Press.
Many accomplished poets stepped up to the open mic following the featured readers, a night remarkable for its clear voices. I hope to add video recordings of the featured poets at a later date.
The cheers and sighs, the clapping and the cringing are over for the time being. The candidates have spoken, the citizens have taken note. Not an ordinary night in Albany, but a night where nearly 300 gathered to express their collective curiosity. “Who are these guys?” “Which person’s vision will revitalize the country?”
After the televised debate, Professor of Cognitive Linguistics, George Lakoff took questions and reflected on the drama we had just seen. His analysis–both simple and complex–seemed more stimulating than the wrap-up on TV. (Incidentally, the main hall and foyer of the community center and the Edith Stone Room were filled to capacity, with 3 TV screens running.)
Dr. Lakoff showed how our own political speech and notions of justice and fairness spring from our frames of reference. He challenged us to discover our own moral imperatives and push our representatives to do the same. He exposed the folly of enlightenment rationality that supposes the “best argument” should win the debate. As he points out in The Little Blue Book, people rarely look to logic for persuasion. Rather, it is the “look of understanding and the tone of empathy” that wins. (Of course, it doesn’t take an H. L. Mencken to point out how often this empathy is fake, or how the handshakes get heartier when there are dollars pressed between.)
The Debate Watch on Tuesday was a hit for the whole community. The City of Albany, Alameda County Library, The Friends of the Albany Library deserve a huge round of applause for providing space, tech-savvy, staffing and funds to create this Town Hall Meeting. Catherine Taylor, who arranges the Second Tuesdays Poetry Series, was central to the evening’s success. Her interest in the way ordinary people speak of politics prompted her to suggest Dr. Lakoff as a guest speaker. We were pleased to have Pegasus Books on site to sell “The Little Blue Book,”and, of course, Dr. Lakoff, his wife and guests.
It was great to have Chris Pech from the Alameda County Registrar of Voterson hand to answer questions about voter registration and the upcoming election. We were honored to have Amelia Lopez from Assembly member Nancy Skinner’s office, who told Albany Library Manager, Ronnie Davis “she was ‘blown away’ by the community response and the role that libraries play in creating this kind of community forum.” A super thanks goes to Nancy Rubin for the great photographs showing democracy in action!
Commentator Lakoff spoke of the mirroring our brains perform as observers. We form connections with others because we form connections first in the neuronal circuitry of our noggins! Watching the debate with other voters–partisan or neutral–inspires us to think and act politically; it sparks conversations, nudging us to see how others see.
Albany Libraryis an ideal venue for watching the debate; as it is our mission to promote life-long learning and civic engagement. (We also have many binders full of women! Albany City Council recordings, for example!)
Remember to register for this election by October 23 and to vote on or by November 6.
On Monday, October 15, Mani Feniger read from her book, The Woman in the Photograph: The Search for my Mother’s Past. The author’s odyssey into her family history was prompted by the accidental discovery of a packet of photographs in a family closet.
These pictures showed a young woman from Leipzig, Germany in the 1930′s. Mani’s own memory of her pragmatic, thrifty mother contrasted with the rich, soft images of the girl in the photos. This puzzled her. The pleasure evident in her mother’s face was a side of her mother the author had never seen.
Through discussions with relatives, email exchanges with strangers, records searches and a trip to Leipzig, the stories of her mother’s youth (and the family’s former property in Germany) came to light.
The author’s resolve to accept everything that was revealed–including pain and disappointment–made the stories very compelling and built empathy for this woman who kept so much of her life “to herself.” The memoir improves our understanding of how people cope with fear and danger, passing those traumas on to their children–at the same time, surrounding their kids with comfort and love.
Feniger was especially eloquent in describing the symbolic re-emergence of her mother’s ring–one of the view tangible treasures from her mother’s past.
The Friends of the Albany Library held their annual membership meeting on Wednesday, October 10. After a short business meeting, the group’s guest speaker, Dr. Preston Maring, spoke about public health, healthy eating and the beneficial effects of Farmers’ Markets.
His statistics and personal stories showed how fresh food, prepared at home, improves health and helps the checkbook. Dr. Maring started the Kaiser Permanente Farmers Markets. These markets provide access to fresh food in communities served by Kaiser and give shoppers the added assurance of knowing how and where food is grown. Visit Kaiser Oakland’s Market on Fridays, 10-2.
http://www.pcfma.com/market_home.php?market_id=9
Dr. Maring closed with a demonstration of his cooking (and chopping!) skills. The program was followed by some serious cookie consumption, thanks to the Friends!
On September 10, Dr. Joel Parrott, President and CEO of the Oakland Zoo and Volunteer Programs Assistant, Chantal Burnett took us on a historical tour of the zoo. They spoke of their latest plans to partner with U.C. Davis to give hands-on “exotic animal” training to veterinarian students. Chantal took out several animals to show the audience, but left her tigers in “the slide projector!” It was fascinating to learn Oakland Zoo’s leading role in the preservation of elephants. It was also a pleasure to see how the zoo makes every effort to match habitats and allows animals plenty of purposeful activities each day.
Please attend future Brown Bag Speakers Forum programs listed on our calendar. The forum is jointly sponsored by the Albany YMCA and the Albany Library.
On September 11, 2012, the Second Tuesdays Poetry Series celebrated labor with poems that addressed social, political, economic, aesthetic, and cultural realities of the 99 percent.
99 Poems for the 99 Percent demonstrates how the aims of poetry are in concert with the aims and ambitions of the vast majority of Americans. It is proof that poetry can speak in a vital, robust, and meaningful way about real issues to real people. The blog is unique as a collection of poems representing the diverse concerns, experiences, and interpretations of 99 American poets nationwide.
Six poets read their own poems and a selection of works from the blog’s other contributors across the United States. Featured poets: Blog Curator Dean Rader; Dan Bellm; Julie Bruck; Gillian Conoley; Zara Raab; Tess Taylor
The open mic was a microcosm of our own homegrown 99%!
