Report from Our Librarians
A New Face at the Piedmont Avenue Library
Remy Timbrook has come to work with us as Acting Manager after Leni Mathews gave her resignation in April. Friends of PAL said farewell to Leni with a lovely bouquet and heartfelt thanks for all her work as manager of our library.
Remy has years of experience at Main and different branches. The Supervising Librarian for branches, Jenera Burton, has told us that Remy is a trivia master and an all-around fun person. Please introduce yourself and welcome Remy. She is providing us with great service and programs.
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From Shani Boyd, Children’s Librarian:
Tuesday story times for children, held outdoors beginning at
10:15 am, will continue through the summer.
Next month, we have:
· 6/1 - Insect Discovery Lab @ 6pm - Wednesday
· 6/10 - Little Petting Zoo @ 2:30pm - Friday
· 6/15 - Drag Queen Storytime @ 6pm - Wednesday
· 6/2,9,16- Build, Make, Play @ 1:30pm - Thursdays
The program for teens in June is Henna for Teens on 6/17 @ 1:30pm - Friday
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Summer at the Library
Here’s a secret: there’s no age limit for the children’s summer reading program that starts June 1 at Piedmont Avenue Library, so if you don’t have a child of your own or a grandchild and can’t borrow one from a neighbor, you can come anyway, but you won’t be eligible for the prizes. Prizes? Yes, every child gets to choose a book to take home and keep.
Also, some kids will get free tickets to watch the A’s play and to the Oakland Zoo for getting the most tiles on their game board – a reading log designed to look like a Scrabble or Monopoly board. You get one when you sign up online to be a part of the program.
The weekly program this year begins on June 1 and includes an insect discovery lab, petting zoo, Brazilian dancers, a magician, ballet instruction and a yoga session. You will get the full program when you sign up. Each program will be held outdoors for 1 to 1½ hours.
In addition, Build, Make, Play continues on Thursdays at 1:30 with opportunities to make ice cream, bubbles, buttons, beads, and tie dye shoelaces.
Shani Boyd, our Piedmont Avenue Children’s Librarian, has done a great job setting up these programs for children in the community and, if you act nice and say please, she’ll let you come, too.
By Ruby Long, a neighbor whose work has appeared in local and national publications.
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From the Friends of Oakland Public Library and Library Advocates -
Measure C on the June 7 Ballot
Support of the Oakland Public Library with passage of Measure C is critical because it will continue the funding that comprises about 40% of OPL operating budget.
Measure C renews Measure Q which voters approved in 2001. Measure C does not increase the tax rate or create a new tax; it continues the same tax we are already paying. Making sure people understand this is vitally important now.
If Measure C does not receive a 2/3 yes vote in the June 7 election, libraries will lose funding and face reduced hours and an unknown number of closed branches.
Here are the ways you can help get this word out:
- Ask your friends to vote YES ON C.
- Spread the word on social media.
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Make phone calls. Phonebank volunteers are desperately needed! Call from your home Monday from 5-8 p.m. It is the best way to reach voters who still don’t know about Measure C. For instructions, go to protectoaklandlibraries.org.
Your Ballot for the June 7 Statewide Primary Election
You should have received your ballot in the mail. If you have not, visit the Registrar of Voters at acvote.org/go or call 1 (800) 834-6454. The web site will also show you where your nearest Ballot Drop Box is or where you can vote in person. For the PANIL area, that is at Oakland Tech.
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At our library May 7th supporters of Measure C gave out lawn signs and asked library patrons to vote yes on C. |
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A wonderfully successful Book & Bake Sale at Key Route Plaza May14th spread the word about Measure C. |
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Notes from the Friends of the Piedmont Avenue Library (PAL)
The next meeting of the Friends of Piedmont Avenue Library (PAL) is Tuesday, May 17 at 6:30 pm at the library! To learn more about the Friends check out our website https://www.friendsofpal.org/ Please join us to support the Piedmont Avenue library - give a HOOT.
There will be cookies served!!
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Ukrainian Libraries Respond to Russian Invasion in Surprising Ways
Converting basements into bomb shelters. Using storytelling to combat children’s trauma. Preserving the truth about the invasion. These are some of the many ways Ukrainian libraries — and the brave people who work in them — continue to serve their communities and country amid the struggles of war.
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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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Childhood: The Biography of a Place by Harry Crews
Harry Crews’ A Childhood: The Biography of a Place is a book I discovered last month. It is a memoir about Crews’ early childhood. It’s not a pretty tale. Indeed, in many ways, Childhood is about surviving, by the skin of his teeth, a hardscrabble, painful childhood in Bacon County Georgia during the Great Depression. In powerful, taut prose he credibly describes near fatal accidents, a bout of, perhaps, polio, domestic violence, fights and flights. To escape Bacon County he joined the Marines. After his Marine service he took advantage of the GI Bill and studied literature and writing, taught at the University of Florida, and wrote many short stories, memoirs, novels and essays. His childhood and youth shaped the man he became and while he was not, perhaps, always a good man - he was a macho, an alcoholic and a dopefiend, a brawler who enjoyed ‘blood sports,’ a carousing philanderer - he wrote like an angel. And he comes across as honest to the bone.
Suffice it to say, this book is not for the faint-hearted. But it is spot-on in finding a voice for a small child experiencing life in rural Georgia, full of details of black and white lives led, of a Jewish peddler, of faith-healers, of hell-and-brimstone preachers, of folk medicine, of the kindness, cruelty, and cupidity of neighbors, of the profound magnetism of a home-place. Beyond that he describes the countryside, the lives of mules, pigs, dogs, cattle, the rigors of picking cotton, the joys of fishing and hunting, the beauty of nature, trees, water, swamps and hills. He limps and runs through the countryside, breathing deep and swearing and figuring out the mysteries of life. He imagines, based on talking to older relatives and neighbors, the lives of his father and mother, grandparents, uncles and aunts. He writes of all this and more in economic yet vivid anecdotes and mesmerizing and exquisite prose. Chapter six is particularly brilliant in its evocation of childhood and the people of Bacon County.
One of the first ‘grown-up’ books I read was Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. I had been primed for that book because both my stepfather and my mother were brought up poor and in desperate straits during the Great Depression. And both were story-tellers. They told me stories of hunger and abandonment, squalor and despair, resistance and cruelty. But their stories ended, no matter how difficult, with inexplicable grace notes. Both could tell tales, tall and otherwise, that vividly evoked that past before I was born. Later I would read B. Traven’s Death Ship [1934], Dos Passos’ USA Trilogy [1930-1936], Harriet Arnow’s The Dollmaker [1954] and Billy Holiday’s Lady Sings the Blues [1956]. All of these tales moved me and fired up my curiosity about the world, about history, and about the craft of story-telling. All of them introduced me to people and places that, otherwise, I could never have imagined. And as Ken Kesey once said, whether the tales happened or not they were true.
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.
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What's Happening at the Library |
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Our library is open six days per week!
Sunday Closed
Monday: 10 a.m. – 5:30 p.m.
Tuesday: 10 a.m. – 8 p.m.
Wednesday: 10 a.m. – 8 p.m.
Thursday: 10 a.m. – 5:30 p.m.
Friday: 12 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.
Saturday: 10 a.m. – 5:30 p.m.
Toddler Storytime on Tuesdays at 10:15 am outside on the patio, weather permitting.
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The Friends of the Piedmont Avenue Library is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Our tax ID is 84-4203055.
All contributions are tax deductible.
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