Vol 9 # 6 March 15, 2025

Teen Pop Up Crafts, every second and fourth Tuesday, 3:30 – 4:30 pm

Come and hang out and get creative with us every second and fourth Tuesday of the month. Teens ages 13 – 18, all welcome. Snacks will be provided.

More Events - - -

Waterwise Gardening and Irrigation Options, Saturday, March 22, 2 - 3 pm

Learn how to conserve water while maintaining a lush, thriving garden in this workshop. Explore plant water requirements, effective soil management, and discover efficient irrigation systems like drip irrigation. Gain valuable insights into selecting drought-tolerant plants and creating a sustainable, water-wise garden that thrives in any climate.

Perry Yan Magician, Wednesday, March 26, 6 – 6:45 pm

Come and experience Perry Yan’s amazing magic, laugh-out-loud comedy, and storytelling. Perry Yan is an award-winning magician who has entertained families all over the Bay Area.

Plot Twists & Page Turners: A Piedmont Avenue Branch Book Club, Tuesday, April 8, 6 – 7:15 pm

Do you need to talk to someone about your latest read? Are you in a reading slump and need some tried and true recommendations? Come together with your fellow book lovers and discover your next literary adventure at our new monthly Book Club, facilitated and led by Angie McGowan.  



Everyone is welcome to join to share about their current reads or just to hang out and chat about books in general. The Book Club will meet every second Tuesday of the month.

Wednesday Night Art Club: Natural Object Printing, Wednesday,

April 9, 6 - 7:30 pm

In this class, we’ll use natural objects like leaves, flowers, and vegetables to experiment with different techniques for creating positive and negative prints of plants on paper. Come play with shape, pattern, and texture as we celebrate spring!

Belly Dance Performance with Nicole Maria!, Tuesday,

April 22, 5:30 – 6:30 pm



Join us as we celebrate Arab Heritage Month and experience an interactive Arabic-style dance performance with multi-award-winning dancer Nicole Maria!

Learn the art of Southwest Asian/North African belly dance with Nicole’s interactive performance, ending with a belly dance lesson for all!

Container Gardening, Saturday, April 26, 2 – 3 pm

Learn the art of gardening in containers to maximize space and flexibility. UC Master Gardeners will share tips on selecting containers, choosing organic soil, and optimizing sunlight exposure for thriving plants that can be moved as needed.

Celebra el día de los niños/El día de los libros (Children's Day/Book Day), Wednesday, April 30, 6 – 7 pm

Come celebrate Día, El día de los niños/El día de los libros (Children's Day/Book Day) with Mariela’s Music Time. An energetic and interactive bilingual performance for infants, toddlers, preschoolers, and their families. There will be music and free books! Dia is a nationally recognized initiative that emphasizes the importance of literacy for all children from all backgrounds.

Sunday, April 6, from 1:00-3:00 pm, in the courtyard outside the Main Library (125 14th Street in Oakland).

Celebrate the Oakland Public Library and the volunteers who support it!

The event will include a short program featuring: Library Director, Jamie Turbak, 2024 Oakland Youth Poet Laureate, Ella Gordon and OPL staff, the Friends of the Oakland Public Library, and the Library Commission.

Attendees will enjoy refreshments (courtesy of volunteers – feel free to bring finger foods to share), meet other library supporters and book enthusiasts, and have the chance to win a prize from The Bookmark Bookstore, which raises money to benefit the entire library system.

Will you join us? RSVP today.

OPL Advocates is an informal coalition of advocacy groups, working together to maximize resources and amplify messages in support of Oakland Public Library. For more information, contact OPLAdvocates@gmail.com.

Deep Oakland: How Geology Shaped a City by Andrew Alden, 2023

Among the cover blurbs of praise on Alden’s Deep Oakland David Williams' is “Andrew Alden has written a love song to Oakland, the people, the history, and the geology.” Indeed, Alden has written a love song to the city he lives in. Ominously, the first chapter is about the Hayward Fault, perhaps the most significant fault line that traverses the East Bay and Oakland. The cataclysmic tectonic shake is evoked. This is a love story? I’m all shook up. And then Alden evokes the geological sense of time, a wonderful praise song to the earth, that puts human habitation in geological context. If the history of Earth were condensed into a 12 hour period, Homo sapiens would appear in the last two seconds. A single wave crashing into the shores of an immense and timeless ocean.

Alden takes us into the evolution of Lake Merritt, the San Antonio Canyon, a creek, 500,000 years ago, to an estuary to the beating heart of Oakland, exploring the evolution of rocks and tectonics to the Age of the Anthropocene. Chapter three marvels at the uniqueness, geologically, of Oakland and the creation of Oakland’s downtown from the Spanish Empire to Mexico to the Anglo Americanization of The Town in the wake of the War of 1848 and the subsequent Gold Rush, orchestrated by hucksters, realtors, and white supremacists. It’s here that the geology recedes, for a while, to history. From the Ohlone to funky Broadway. Alden describes with great respect and insight the native peoples and the new wave of urban dwellers. Quarries play a big role in this chapter.

Chapter Four is devoted to Mountain View Cemetery. Woven through this are Alden’s critical view of geologists, Alden’s tribe, and where they are buried, their persistence and their flaws. For anyone who enjoys walking through this wonderful necropolis, this is a moving and illuminating chapter. We then move eastward to the geological and social history of the Piedmont Block. Alden’s love song to Oakland has some mordant digressions, more like the Blues than a romantic song. Chapter Six details the unusual gravel fans that form on top of the bedrock into the flatlands of our city. From there, a chapter on the center of Ohlone life, a canyon, and of what will become Lake Merritt. Then east along the fault, with wonderful descriptions of the geology and history of East Oakland, quarries, suburbs, and all. In Chapter Eight, the camera eye widens to the evolution of the Bay by means of tectonics and by landfill. And a diatribe, more like HipHop, on “landslaughter.” Then back into Miocene Era and a fascinating description of Sibley Volcanic Regional Preserve. Finally back to Leona Heights and the southern Oakland hills and finally the book closes along Oakland’s Ridgeline.

For all who love Oakland, a very cool book.

https://oaklandgeology.com

By Louis Segal. Louis was born in Oakland, raised his family in Oakland, dropped out of school in 1968, worked many jobs over the decades, dropped back into school in the 80s, got a Ph.D. in history, taught as an adjunct professor from 1993 to 2015. Retired but not withdrawn. 

I am taking a three month leave of absence to tend to pressing tasks but I look forward to further encounters with you, dear readers, in mid-June.

PANIL Meetings – Open to All

The Piedmont Avenue Neighborhood Improvement League (PANIL) holds Zoom meetings from 6:30 pm to 8:00 pm every other month.  The next is Wednesday, April 9, with speaker Jen Heeter, Piedmont Ave. Elementary School’s new principal this year. To join the meeting, use the Zoom link published in PANIL’s monthly newsletter.  You can subscribe to the newsletter (it is free) from the PANIL website https://www.panil.org/newsletter-signup/

Friends of the Piedmont Avenue Library Board of Directors 2024

President: Ronile Lahti; Secretary: Arleen Feng; Treasurer: Joanna 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