Vol 7 # 4   January 15, 2023

Notes from our librarians

 

From Shani Boyd, Children’s Librarian


Thank you to everyone who attended the Noon Year's Eve party! It was packed despite the storm with lots of fun and laughter.

 

There is still time to participate in Winter Bingo this month! Complete any 5 activities in a row before January 29, 2023 and win a prize book, courtesy of the Kenneth Rainin Foundation. To play: visit your library and pick up a Winter Bingo card, OR, go to https://oaklandlibrary.org/news/are-you-ready-for-winter-bingo-2022/ and download a game board and print at home OR, register online using you Beanstack account. Each bingo card suggests 25 engaging activities to enjoy. There are white cards for early learners and blue cards for kids in grades K-8.

 

Families, be sure to visit the branch and get a special take-home craft from the children’s room this month!

Fun at the library!

Campaign for a permanent home - next steps


With Oakland City Council's approval of the long-term lease agreement for the former Child Development Center site*, the campaign for a permanent home enters a new phase. As described in the December HOOT, the next step is for the City of Oakland to initiate a feasibility study for the conversion of the existing building to a branch library. The City's Library and Public Works Departments are working on how to get the feasibility study done to meet the deadline of November 1, 2024 for submitting a Conceptual Design to Oakland Unified School District. We expect that Friends of PAL will be part of the study's process for public input.


Early in January the Executive Board of Friends of PAL discussed the project with Jamie Turbak, Oakland Library Director, who identified fundraising as a major hurdle regardless of how big or small the cost will be for the conceptual design. The lease allows either party to "opt out" before November 30, 2024--the most likely reason for that to happen would be if the city doesn't have funds committed for construction by that date. Ideally the feasibility study would provide a cost estimate in time for the mid-cycle budget process that will start in spring 2024, but there are no guarantees that the CDC project will get on the priority list for capital project funding. Unless the costs are for a very minimal renovation, the project will probably need to put together multiple sources of funding.


Starting January 17, Friends meetings will discuss these issues and recruit volunteers to help work on possible fundraising options; these may include grants, private fundraising, and a local parcel assessment for just the Piedmont Avenue neighborhood (similar to one that helped fund the Rockridge branch in 1991).  


*The lease is written for 50 years with possible renewals; full text is at https://ousd.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=11467343&GUID=F7F6EBD4-D8A1-455B-B6FA-BCC31256C9BD It provides that no rent will be paid on the CDC until 2026 or a certificate of occupancy is issued for the branch to move to the renovated building. In the meantime, the branch library will continue in the existing portable building.

Former Child Development Center next to the library

From the Friends of Pal

The next meeting of Friends of PAL is Tuesday January 17th, 6:30pm, at the library, 80 Echo Ave. The Friends will discuss the ongoing campaign for a permanent home and recruit volunteers to help work on possible fundraising options; these may include grants, private fundraising, and a local parcel assessment.

OPL Annual Report by Jamie Turbak, Library Director

  

Dear Friends, I am pleased and proud to share with you the Oakland Public Library's 2021-22 Annual Report. It covers a busy year of transition (July 2021-June 2022) during which OPL resumed in-person programming after a long hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It includes information and photos about these highlights:

  • what’s new on OPL's newly launched website, https://oaklandlibrary.org/
  • information about the significant grant received to support youth art instruction,
  • an introduction to the 2022 Oakland Youth Poet Laureate,
  • details about library funding secured with the passage of parcel tax Measure C in June 2022


Reflecting upon this busy and productive year fills me with gratitude for the tremendous support that the Oakland Public Library receives from Friends, volunteers, funders, and the community.


Please enjoy this report because it is a testament to our collective efforts to strengthen and enhance public library service in Oakland. You can download a copy of the colorful 11-page report from www.OaklandLibrary.org/AnnualReport  https://oaklandlibrary.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/100/2022/12/2021-22-OPL-annual-report_spreads.pdf

 

From the Friends of OPL (FOPL) newsletter, Off The Shelf, January 2023

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. 

Patrick Radden Keefe’s Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty [2022]

 

Patrick Radden Keefe writes in the lineage of great American Muckrakers. Ida Tarbel, Frank Norris, Upton Sinclair, Ida B. Wells, Louis Brandeis, and Carey McWilliams were the progenitor generation. They exposed injustice and the machinations of the malefactors of great wealth and fearlessly detailed the systemic wrongs in our beloved but flawed democracy. With Empire, Keefe now joins the ranks of Woodward and Bernstein, I. F. Stone, Frank Bardacke, David Halberstam and Mike Davis as chroniclers of power and its multiple abuses. Empire of Pain brings new blood to the hallowed muckraking tradition. 

 

The book operates on interlinking levels: it is an inter-generational history of the Sackler family, a case history of predatory capitalism, a portrayal of undue influences of Big Pharma in general and Purdue Pharma in particular upon the judicial system and the Food and Drug Administration. It details the actions of executives, lawyers, doctors, and PR agents who enabled the promotion and legitimization of opioids and distribution of Oxycontin whose legacy, in turn, led to almost a half a million deaths. The book also shows how the mechanisms of art patronage helped secure legitimacy and obfuscate the Sacklers’ cold and calculating criminal network. The Sackler family -who, it is said, inspired the wildly successful series Succession- are exemplars of perfidy, avarice and greed. But that is not to say that their patronage is much different than the Rockefeller, Carnegie, Ford, and Mellon and Stanford foundations, legitimating through philanthropy their own corporate skullduggery. These behaviors didn’t start with the Sacklers nor will they end with the demise of Sacklers’ empire. The book is a shocking expose, an indictment of a family and Purdue Pharma that caused great damage to millions. Intertwined in this book Keefe -who dedicates the book to “all those who have lost someone to this crisis”- celebrates the relatives, journalists, artists, lawyers, and ex-addicts who helped to dismantle Purdue Pharma by mobilizing, organizing, litigating, and exposing this criminal enterprise.

 

Full disclosure: I have more than passing interest in the history of opioids. In my youth I used secobarbital, opium, heroin and dilaudid. These drugs helped dull my anxiety and fear. Their efficacy seemed wonderful at the time and while I consumed these drugs I read DeQuincy, Jean Cocteau, John Rechy, and William Burroughs. Burrough’s Junky had these lines that could be the motto of the Sackler family and, beyond that, the logic of Big Pharma: “Junk is the ultimate product…the ultimate merchandise. No sales talk is necessary. The client will crawl through the sewer and beg to buy….” The Sacklers built their empire on that strategy, they created the market and their sales force which included doctors and pharmacists who became frontline pushers.  By a turn of fate I reached my personal bottom a long time ago and remain in recovery.  I was impressed by Keefe’s passion and solid analysis but, as well, I took the book personally as I mourn many of my friends who died from opiates. 

 

For more on the book see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HfLEUp9bOU

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. 

What's Happening at the Library

Tech Support Fridays , 3 - 5pm at the library

1/17 – Friends of Piedmont Avenue Library meeting 6:30 - 7:30pm at the library. 

Access free movies with your library card! Go to oaklandlibrary.kanopy.com/

Our library is open 6 days a week

Sunday Closed

Monday: 10am. – 5:30pm

Tuesday: 10am. – 8pm

Wednesday: 10am. – 8pm

 Thursday: 10am. – 5:30pm

Friday: 12pm. – 5:30pm

Saturday: 10am. – 5:30pm


The Friends of the Piedmont Avenue Library is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Our tax ID is 84-4203055.
All contributions are tax deductible.

A direct and compelling headline