Vol 7 # 3   December 15, 2022

In welcome news for supporters of PAL, the Oakland Unified School District has approved a long-term lease agreement for the former Child Development Center at 86 Echo Ave, subject to Oakland City Council’s final approval at the second of two readings scheduled for December 20. The first reading of the lease proposal passed as part of the Council's consent agenda on December 6.

Adoption of this agreement will clear the way for the City's "due diligence" in deciding whether to actually make the CDC a new home for the Piedmont Avenue branch. That process will include the following steps:

1. A feasibility study is budgeted to start this Fiscal Year, which would evaluate existing conditions, prepare schematic plans for a proposed branch library on the site, and estimate construction costs. A public input process will involve members of the neighborhood and school communities.

The CDC building 86 Echo Ave.

2. City Council will consider the feasibility study’s recommendations and decide whether to allocate funds for the project in a budget for future Capital Improvement Projects. Currently there is no identified source of funds for remodeling or reconstruction at the CDC site, and Oakland’s library system faces significant capital budget needs for other branches and neighborhoods that lack any library branch.



3. If the new branch project proposal is approved and budgeted by City Council by November 2024, planning for it can continue to move forward; otherwise, the City can terminate the lease before the 11/30/24 "opt-out" deadline that is written into the agreement.



Friends of PAL will continue working with OPL and other library advocates as this process gets underway. We are thankful to all who sent messages to support passage of the lease agreement and hope to welcome people interested in working on deeper outreach and areas of fundraising which could include grants and campaigning for a local parcel assessment to support the Piedmont Avenue Branch. Please let us know at contact@Friendsofpal.org

Notes from our librarians

From Shani Boyd, Children’s Librarian

Programming in December:

12/17 - Winter Baby Cafe from 10:30 am - 12:30 pm. Recommended for ages 18 months to 4 years of age. Snacks provided

.

12/31 - Noon Year's Eve Party from 10:30 am - 12:30 pm. All ages are welcome. Snacks provided.

Winter Bingo is a fun family literacy game recommended for kids ages 0-14. The game begins on December 17, 2022. Complete any 5 activities in a row before January 29, 2023, and win a prize book, courtesy of the Kenneth Rainin Foundation.

Visit your local 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 during the holiday break. There are white cards for early learners and blue cards for kids in grades K-8.

The HOOT asked Shani to recommend three books as holiday gifts.

Book Recommendations (Choosing only 3 was too hard!!!):

1.  Hooky by Míriam Bonastre Tur (Graphic Novel/Book 1)

2.  Garlic & the Vampire by Bree Paulsen (Graphic Novel/Book 1)

3.  Remarkably Ruby by Terri Libenson (Chapter book/ Emmie & Friends 6) 

4.  The Blur by Minh Lê (Picture book)

5.  I'm A Unicorn by Helen Yoon (Picture book)

Book Recommendations Young Adults::

1.  Once Upon A Broken Heart by Stephanie Garber (Fiction, Fantasy/Book 1)

2.  Fangirl v. 2 by Sam Maggs (Graphic Novel/Book 2)

3.  Cells at Work! by Akane Shimizu (Manga series)



Our Librarians

Cicero wrote, “If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.” Our libraries, our magnificent public libraries, I believe, give us almost everything we need. They are one of the best expressions of a democratic society and culture, vital guarantors of a thriving public discourse, agents of social change, repositories of hope. No wonder they’re under attack.

I don’t want to make our Chief Librarian Jamie Turbak uncomfortable by unleashing an early blizzard of love and appreciation for Oakland Public Library, so today I want to say a word specifically about those wonderful people who greet us and help us, the public face of our libraries – the librarians. And the whole library staff in general for that matter. Timothy Healy, the late president of the New York Public Library, noted, “The most important asset of any library goes home at night – the library staff.”

I believe you do not get the attention and the credit you deserve. As a member of the FOPL board, I listened with a mixture of awe and humility to Jamie’s bimonthly reports of what was asked of you during the pandemic. We have learned too of the daily challenges with the unhoused and mentally ill faced by librarians at Main and other branches. Libraries and librarians should be neither the front line of the culture wars nor the repairers of a severely damaged social fabric.

We have relied on your resilience for too long. But I think there is a growing recognition of your work and our debt. It was notable, I felt, that at last month’s National Book Awards in New York City, the American Library Association was the recipient of the Literarian Award for Outstanding Contribution to the American Literary Community. The award was presented by Ibram X. Kendi to executive director Tracie D. Hall, the first Black woman in that role. In her remarks, she noted, “One of the central things we learn in library school is that information wants to be free. Let history show that librarians were on the frontlines of upholding democracy.”



Sabaa Tahir, who received the young people’s literature award, thanked “every librarian and educator and bookseller who has put my work into the hands of a young person who needs it.” Listen to that again: “Every librarian and educator and bookseller” – what a subversive triumvirate!

The first Muslim and Pakistani-American to win this award, Tahir concluded with words addressed to her “beautiful readers [who] have told me my books make them feel less alone. You make me feel less alone. I have been a misfit and an outcast and lonely and lost, but when I write for you, I am none of those things.”

So, our beloved OPL librarians, please keep putting books in the hands of your patrons, especially our kids. We need you now more than ever.

 -- From the speech given at the FOPL/LAC mixer 12/4/22 by FOPL board member, Professor Emeritus of History, Stephen Cole

Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth [1992]

An old friend, a trusted correspondent and fellow traveler over the decades, recently commended me to Barry Unsworth’s Sacred Hunger. The book immediately captured my attention with both its strong narrative line, part of a long tradition of boat tales where men, and very occasionally women, are trapped in economic, historic, and climatic currents beyond their control. They often serve under a churlish captain and that, in turn, often leads to a mutiny. Think Noah’s Ark, Ulysses, Moby Dick, Benito Cereno, Huckleberry Finn, and B. Traven’s Death Ship.

The book opens in Liverpool in 1752. A merchant oversees the construction of his boat, The Liverpool Merchant, to sail the Guinea Trade. The boat, once completed, will trade goods along the west coast of Africa, buy captive Africans to be sold as chattel slaves once they are shipped to Jamaica. The opening books of the novel seem a comedy of manners, with a rehearsal of the Tempest within the novel and the merchant’s supercilious son woos a banker’s daughter. Their world is vividly portrayed with the vanities and conceits of Liverpool’s upper classes. But soon we reach deeper waters as the boat sets out for Africa. Many in the crew have been dragooned, the captain is full of greed and malevolence, and the ship’s mates and the crew fear him.

They reach the coast, and the trade commences. Rum and guns and axes and knives are traded for captives and provisions from the interior. The captives are thrown into cages below the boat’s deck and suffer the cruel indignities of the Middle Passage. A melancholy doctor, the merchant’s nephew, tries to provide succor. He soon realizes his only job is to ensure that the “property” is sellable when “it” gets to Jamaica. He understands his complicity. He meets upriver a colonial artist who buys passage on the Liverpool Merchant to flee a decadent colonial outpost along the Sherbro River. The boat soon heads west, tossed between storms and doldrums and, in the cold logic of insurance, dysenteric Africans are jettisoned into the sea. The artist, inspired by the Rousseauian fermenting ideas, and the doctor, inspired by ideas that foreshadow the republican revolutions, take part in a mutiny, an uprising led by the slaves and crew. The survivors soon bond into a utopian community in Florida and the thirst for freedom and the theories of the philosophes and English abolitionists help frame the egalitarian community. The story ends badly in vengeful violence, animated by the ideas of “free trade,” and the logic of capitalism and the rule of law; the coercive force provided by the British Red Coats.

This novel, like War and Peace, is a profound meditation on power and history and it is peopled by Dickensian characters. My sole objection to the book is the narrative tension revolves around the merchant’s son and his cousin. Captive Africans are opaque until the ninth book of the novel, unheard and hardly seen other than as a tableau vivant. Still, this is an engrossing book if you like thoughtful historical fiction.

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. 

The PAL Book Bag

 Better than wrapping paper, holds all your presents, sturdy, attractive, and supports our library. At the library for a $10 donation!