Vol 10 # 5 February 15, 2026 | | Friends of PAL invite you to - | | |
Meet the Author: Sandy Rogin, 2/23, 6:30 - 7:30 pm
Sandy Rogin’s Runs in the Family is a powerful and heart-wrenching portrait of the Rubels, an Iowa farm family over one hundred years. With graceful prose and a careful eye for detail, Rogin follows 10 Rubels as they venture beyond the Midwest and forge their own identities, family units, and careers. The collection of stories shifts between perspectives and decades. Mental illness and alcoholism are dark, devastating threads that span generations of Rubels. However, through sheer determination and risk-taking, a number of the characters overcome challenges and achieve personal success. A stunning family memoir.
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Sandy Rogin grew up on a farm in rural Northern Iowa and left home at age seventeen for California, where she
graduated from college and later earned a master’s degree. She married, raised a family, and pursued a career as a freelance journalist, writing for local, regional and national press, focusing on education, social services, and mental health. Rogin currently lives in Oakland, California.
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The Friends of Piedmont Avenue Library
Capital Campaign Committee
Would like to invite you to a launch party for our Campaign for a New Piedmont Avenue Branch Library
Let’s Build a Permanent Home for Our Library!
• Are you an enthusiastic supporter of libraries?
• Experienced at fund-raising, grant writing, public relations or advocacy?
• Interested in supporting the library through a donation to the capital campaign?
We would like to hear from you: please plan to attend!
Where: Piedmont Avenue Library, 80 Echo Ave.
When: March 24, 2026, 6:30 - 7:30 pm
At this meeting, you will:
Hear a short presentation on the Capital Campaign, followed by Q and A. Meet others who are interested in joining the Capital Campaign.
INVITED GUESTS
Zac Unger, District 1 Councilmember; Rachel Latta, District 1 Director, Oakland Unified School District; Jennifer Heeter, Principal,
Piedmont Avenue Elementary School
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From Sabah Abdulla, Branch Manager & Nathan Page,
Children's Librarian
What would you like to see happening at the library in the coming year? A new library program or ... email Friends of PAL with your ideas contact@friendsofpal.org
Programs - For more information about each event go to the OPL website.
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Ongoing -
Toddler Storytime, every Tuesday, 10:15 - 10:30 am
Songs and stories for ages 18 months to 3 years. Stay and Play after Storytime with fun toys through 11:15 am. If weather allows, Storytime will be held outside the library bulding.
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Knitting & Crochet Circle with Susan Segal, Monday 2/23 & 3/9, 11 am - 1 pm
Join us for an early afternoon of knitting and good company every 2nd & 4th Monday. Settle into a warm and inviting space where creativity and conversation intertwine. If you're a seasoned pro or just starting, everyone is welcome!
MOCHA at the Library!, Saturday 2/21,
11 am - 12:30 pm
Join us for monthly art workshops for children and families led by teachers from the Museum of Children's Art (MOCHA). For ages 5-15 and caregivers.
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Teen Pop Up Crafts, Tuesday, 2/24 & 3/10,
3:30 - 4:30 pm
Teens, come to hang out, every 2nd and 4th Tuesday, and get creative with the library staff. Supplies provided. Just bring yourself and creativity.
Plot Twists & Page Turners: A Piedmont Ave. Branch Library Book Club, Tuesday, 3/3, 6 - 7:15 pm
Come together with your fellow book lovers, every 1st Tuesday, and discover your next literary adventure at our monthly Book Club, facilitated and led by Angie McGowan. Everyone is welcome to join to share your current reads or just hang out and chat about books.
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More Events -
Game Night, Wednesday, 2/18, 6 - 7:30 pm
Come to our library to play some board games! We’ll have snacks and drinks! Have fun and meet new folks! We have SET(a matching game), Uno, Janga, and Teleconnections (a drawing guessing game)
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Lunar New Year Lion Dance! Saturday, 2/21, 12 - 12:30 pm
Celebrate the year of the Horse with a Lion Dance Performance by Cal's VSA Lion Dance! Watch as the colorful lion costume comes to life with music, drums, and dancing. This traditional Chinese celebration brings good luck and joy, making it fun for all ages.
Gardening Workshop: Planning Your Vegetable Garden
Saturday, 2/28, 2 - 3 pm
UC Master Gardeners will guide you through the essentials, from soil preparation to pest management. Learn how to select the right crops, create a personalized garden plan, nurture your seedlings, perfect watering techniques, and manage common garden pests. Start your vegetable gardening journey with confidence and expertise.
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Tax Help
Get free basic tax preparation assistance from AARP Tax-Aide volunteers at the Oakland Public Library. Go to the OPL website for more details and to schedule an appointment.
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The Avid Reader by Louis Segal
I’ve been an avid reader since I could read. In high school I used to cut school to read in the Berkeley Public Library. I’m writing this column to share some of the books I love. I hope, perhaps, you might grow to love a few of them.
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Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner, 2024
I’ve read Rachel Kushner’s novels, Telex from Cuba, The Flamethrowers, The Mars Room, a few of her essays and I just completed Creation Lake. What comes across in reading Kushner is that she is erudite, streetwise, witty, a marvelous writer both in structure and in scope. She grew up in the streets of the Inner Sunset and was not afraid of the School of Hard Knocks. As a kid she lived on the wild side, liked fast cars, and hung out with tough kids. But she also became an accomplished scholar and with her travels, her linguistic fluidity, her honed skills as an observer combined with insatiable curiosity about the world she has entered into the first rank of American writers. Her observations about ideas and people are lucid and unsentimental.
In many ways Creation Lake reminds me of John le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. But to suggest Kushner’s book is merely a noir spy mystery degrades its scope and depth. It is a profound book with a strong narrative line, a fascinating narrator, lyrical passages, and long disquisitions on the origins of homo sapiens, and how to, and not to, live in a counter-culture on the ragged edge of the late Anthropocene with all the attendant strategems and disquietudes.
We meet the narrator in France’s Guyenne region. She, calling herself Sadie Smith, is “secretly reading” the email correspondence of two men speculating about neanderthals and homo sapiens, their physical and intellectual capacities. Doing most of thinking is Bruno, an organic intellectual who ponders the mystery of human origins. His interlocutor is Pascal Lacombe, a well-born leader of a back-to-the-land group, in hard-scrabble southwest France, the Moulinards. Why is she hacking into their e-mails? Who is she? Who does she work for and why? Kushner scatters hints about who this manipulative hard-drinking woman is. She describes what Bruno and Pascal and the Moulinards are up to. They are working for a better world. But are they withdrawing from it or are they committed to changing it?
Along the way we learn -through a series of hints - that Sadie is a spy, that she worked for the FBI and later was hired by a large multinational corporate entity to be an agent provocateur. She is armed with deadly weapons and sophisticated digital surveillance equipment. We know she’s whip smart, we know that she holds few illusions about who she is but we wonder if this novel will turn into a redemption tale; if her infiltration among the Moulinards will be subverted by something akin to sympathy to those whom she spies on, sleeps with, and manipulates.
I leave it to you, dear reader, to learn the answers to these questions. But the ability to create characters so quixotic, so complex, so capable, that both attract and repel is no mean literary accomplishment. It’s pretty clear that Rachel Kushner will win the Booker Prize. And if you prize literature you might want to read her.
https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/features/rachel-kushner-interview-creation-lake
https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=interviews+with+rachel+kushner&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:6cb0ff82,vid:jBHRgpaMLDc,st:0
| | One of the many designs you can choose for your library card! | | |
Our library is open 6 days a week
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Sunday Closed
Monday: 10 am - 5:30 pm
Tuesday: 10 am - 8 pm
Wednesday: 10 am - 8 pm
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Thursday: 10 am - 5:30 pm
Friday: 12 pm - 5:30 pm
Saturday: 10 am - 5:30 pm
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Friends of the Piedmont Avenue Library Board of Directors 2024
President: Ronile Lahti; Secretary: Arleen Feng; Treasurer: Joanna Smith; Judith Smith
The Friends of the Piedmont Avenue Library is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Our tax ID is 84-4203055.
All contributions are tax deductible.
Donate to Friends of PAL
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