Vol 8 # 1   October 15, 2023



The new Teen Advisory Board, is having their first meeting,

Tuesday, October 24th, 4 - 5 pm

Join the Piedmont Ave. Branch Library Teen Advisory Board (TAB) and make your voice heard by taking an active role in creating and planning programs and services you want to see at the Piedmont Ave. Branch library!

Before the parade, join Storytime with Shani at 10 am at Key Route Plaza, 41st and Piedmont Ave

The parade starts at Montel & Piedmont Ave. at 11 am



After the parade, at the library from 2 - 3:30 pm, Día de los Muertos

Come and make sugar skulls at the library. Sugar skulls are usually made out of cane sugar and used to decorate altars honoring ancestors during Día de los Muertos. We will be using Model Magic to create the skulls then we’ll decorate them with glitter and other supplies.

OPL History Center’s Annual Fall Series

A diverse slate of in-person programs for the 2023 Fall History Series, with eight events over eight weeks, celebrates local authors, oral historians, educators, and Black Panther Party history. This year, they’re bringing back the Haunted History Bike Ride (on October 29) and introducing a history program for teens. 

The Fall History Series began on September 26 with a panel discussion with local authors and ends on November 8 with a special writing workshop for teens: “Teen-imagined Histories: Make New Stories from Old Photos”. 

One event is the talk about Mountain View Cemetery by Liam O'Donoghue of East Bay Yesterday on Tuesday, October 24^th, from 6 pm – 7:30 pm at the main library. 

Mountain View, Oakland's largest cemetery, was designed by Frederick Law Olmstead and has been the final resting place for generations of Oaklanders since it opened in 1863. At the October 24 talk, hear about the impressive monuments, famous residents, and other interesting stories to be found in the cemetery’s history. 

See these special exhibits:

Sister Love: Celebrating the Women of the Black Panther Party, Oct. 1st – Nov. 30th, features photographs from 1969-1973 by Black Panther Party Photographer and Labor Organizer Ducho Dennis, and color photographs from 1996-2001 by Billy X Jennings. Additional photographs will celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Black Panthers Party Oakland Community School which was founded in 1973.

Dr. Marcus Foster: Making Oakland Schools Work, Oct. 3rd – Dec. 30th, commemorates the 100th anniversary of the birth and 50th anniversary of the death of Dr. Marcus Foster, superintendent of Oakland public schools during the 1970s. This exhibit explores Foster’s arrival in Oakland, his transformative vision for Oakland public schools, his assassination in November of 1973 and his enduring legacy.

The full list of all events can be found at oaklandlibrary.org/ohcfallseries. 

Our House is on Fire: Scenes of a Family and a Planet in Crisis [2018]

By Malena Erhman, Beata Ernman, Svante Thunberg, and Greta Thunberg

My criteria for the Hoot Avid Reader reviews are that I must like the book, that I learn something important from it, that I was delighted, dazzled, or deeply moved by it, that reading it made me abandon my dogmatic or ideological preconceptions. In other words qualities sufficiently valuable to recommend it to fellow avid readers. At times I knew I would write a review from the opening chapter, on a couple of occasions only very late in the book do I realize the criteria cannot be met. With this book I was filled with ambivalence about whether or not I should review it.

The book goes on two tracks. One treats the domestic crises of the Thunberg-Ernman household. The two children have serious mental issues, they have Autism Spectrum Disorder [ASD] and they have great difficulty adjusting to conforming normalities. Their mother, Malena Ernman, also had -if not ASD- difficulties in focusing in school and in life.  Yet she has shaped a very successful life as an opera singer. As the children initially are failing to thrive there is trouble at home as the parents struggle in finding balance and getting help from Sweden’s once flourishing social welfare state. The children both do get help and the second track of the book deals with Greta Thunberg, the eldest daughter, focusing her formidable attention and intelligence on the climate crisis. Her family supports her as she leads a school strike to address the burning [sic] issues of the day. She becomes a woman-child who evolves into a children’s crusade against the fossil fuel industry and the media and politicians who support the ongoing degradation of the atmosphere. In this book these two tracks are artfully woven together with much food for thought.

In the history of our literature there are many books that make their readers uncomfortable. Consider our imperfect republic: Thomas Paine’s Common Sense [1776] and Crises [1776-1783]; Frederick Douglas’ The Life of Frederick Douglass, An America Slave [1845] and Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments; John Brown’s letters from jail; and Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural speech should still be required reading.  Also, we can see the same ethical challenges in Populist literature in the late 19^th century and in Eugene Deb’s eloquent opposition to WW l in his many speeches and letters from jail. There was The Port Huron Statement [1962], Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring [1962], Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique [1963] followed by Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail [1963] and Malcolm X’s Malcolm X Speaks [1965] We must also consider Orville Schell’s ground breaking The Fate of the Earth [1982].  These books, all wake-up calls, have had analogs in world literature. Now we are facing the severity of the climate crisis and Our House Is on Fire is part of a literature and movement that will, indeed, help determine our future. We must engage with energy and clarity to forestall the terrible fate that is unfolding before our eyes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Elv-c3ZTkYg

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/greta-thunberg-mom-malena-emman-bullying-eating-disorder-autism-190535259.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZWNvc2lhLm9yZy8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAACiFv_ZAeRk6vl-faNxzZhuZ5MH3K4ej4IL4jJQkfEnvzMFtU-w4A7N9V4AefsYn25-nDlKJaUeCglYZ3Pe4g58QOUTFPpChoPm6xeTtQG9PsvrzQlsF6rePHUTHRrL7m81ctp3FVKiK5u3Z8fmvElgyhWod-9D7_IRLMksNCRUF

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.