#oakland public library

[missmickiescorner]

The Libraries That Made Me | Lakeview Branch Library

Welcome Ladies, Gents, and Nonbinary Folx to an interluding segment I'd like to call: The Libraries That Made Me.

In it, I will share my experience with a library I feel set me on the path to pursuing librarianship.

First up? The Lakeview Branch Library in Oakland, CA.

In the aftermath of my son’s birth, I spent a lot of time walking with him around the Lake Merritt area. We’d walk short distances to the corner store and even around the lake itself just to get out of the house; however, when a need arose for me to have access to the internet and Word in order to complete my classwork, we found ourselves walking the couple of blocks up to the library as well.

The best way to describe the atmosphere and environment of the Lakeview Branch is “intimate”—a word used here to mean “cozy,” or “comfortable,”—it’s one of the smallest libraries I’ve ever had the pleasure of being in and for such a small building there is no lack of material. Somehow the librarians have managed to utilize every nook and cranny and create literal literary nooks for almost every age group and subject matter; including a small storytime area for teeny and tiny patrons as well as four open-access (as opposed to catalog) computers.

In hindsight, I can see that it was my time spent in this branch that cemented my appreciation for all that the public library was outside of a building for books: it was a place where I could freely surf the internet and complete schoolwork without interruption, it was a place where I could find required books for school, interesting books to pass the time, and informational books to help me navigate my new journey into motherhood. Additionally, there was a sense of security in letting my son be a toddler. So many spaces seem to be becoming increasingly hostile to children, but in the library I could bring my toddler and there’s a designated area where he can play with toys, find instruments, or just be in a colorful and bright environment.

It is easily one of my favorite libraries I’ve ever called a temporary home away from home.

References

Oakland Public Library, Lakeview Branch: Oakland Public Library, photo, https://oaklandlibrary.org/locations/lva/.

Julia Gidwani, Lakeview Library at Lake Merritt, photo, https://www.510families.com/locations/oakland-public-library-lakeview-branch/

[costarringyourlocallibrary]

The exterior of the Main Library branch of the Oakland Public Library (Oakland, CA) in Alan Myerson’s Steelyard Blues (1973).

[eltristan]

(edited and revised 3/4 front view of right side of 1241, by railfan Otto Perry, presumably at the SP engine service at the yards in Oakland, California. Date, July 25, 1937.)

[detroitlib]

Souvenir photograph folder from the Club Zombie located at 8825 Oakland in Detroit. Folder does not contain photograph. Printed on front: "Club Zombie, 8825 Oakland. For reservations call TR 2-8913. Wine, liquor, dancing. Buy War bonds, speed up victory. Open nightly 9-2. Cocktail Sundays 6 o'clock." Printed on back cover: "Gene Wilson, 286 Alfred. CA. 9104."

Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library

[lesbrarycollection]

1974: A Woman is Talking to Death, Judy Grahn

Judy Grahn read lesbian poetry in coffee houses in the Bay area and worked for The Women’s Press Collective. This publication is representative of early publications by the Women’s Press Collective, the first US feminist press of women’s liberation, with poetry typed and then reproduced on heavy paper and stapled. 

- Title: "A Woman Is Talking to Death"

- Author(s) / Editor(s): Judy Grahn

-Year 1st Published: 1974

- Year of Reprint My Copy Is (if applicable): N

- Publisher: The Women's Press Collective

- Page Numbers: 12

- # in series: N/A

- Genre(s): Poetry, Feminism

- Is It An Ex-library Copy (and from where?): N

- Author's signature (if applicable): N

- Have I Read It?: Y

- Is It On Loan (and to which friend?): N

- Average Goodreads Rating, out of 5 Stars (as of 13/10/2023): 4.67

- Amount of Goodreads Ratings (as of 13/10/2023): 79 ratings

- Amount of Goodreads Reviews (as of 13/10/2023): 2 reviews

- Summary: "This ambitious, arresting work is Judy Grahn's most celebrated poem, a piece about meaning and futility, callousness and tenderness, love and, of course, death. The poem is a factual account of a fatal motorcycle accident on the Bay Bridge—the bridge that connects San Francisco to Oakland—that expands into a meditation on the differences between love and death. Grahn said of the poem that it was “a redefinition for myself of the subject of love.”

" 'A Woman Talking to Death' is a triumphant elegy, a nine-part poem that mixes fact and fantasy, narrative and modern myth-making. The poem tells a series of inter-related stories that memorialize the lost, drowned, and dispossessed of her generation; while mourning these losses, the poem also creates and celebrates a community of resistance. This community, imagined as "lovers," challenges the social powers cast in the poem as Death or as agents of death." --- taken from https://www.triviavoices.com/on-living-with-a-poem-for-20-years-judy-grahns-a-woman-is-talking-to-death.html

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[thinkingimages]

Harry Houdini Scrapbook [Photographs with Jack London] 

Creator/Contributor: Quincy Kilby (1854-1931), creator; Harry Houdini (1874 –1926), contributor 

Date created: 1904-1926 

Physical description: scrapbook 

Summary: This remarkable scrapbook was compiled by Houdini’s good friend Quincy Kilby, a Brookline resident and Boston theater impresario. Materials in this large volume were collected over a twenty-year period and include personal letters, photographs, programs, newspapers clippings, and other unique memorabilia. Knowing that Kilby was amassing this collection, Houdini would send him items specifically “for your Houdini scraps book.”  

The scrapbook is open to an eclectic spread of photographs of Houdini with Jack London and their wives in Oakland, California, in 1924; a lecture advertisement in which Houdini promises a sensational expose of miracle-mongers; and a note on Houdini’s personal stationery to Kilby with an apologetic postscript, “I was in Boston but was so fixt could not get away. Only 1 night.”   

Location: Boston Public Library, Rare Books & Manuscripts Department

[scotianostra]

November 13th 1850 saw the birth in Edinburgh of Robert Louis Stevenson, the renowned essayist, poet, and author of fiction and travel books.

Nowadays we remember the man with an anual event, Robert Louis Stevenson Day 2024 includes a number of events for fans to attend. The event which includes readings, screen shows and an unbirthday party. Although most events take place here in Edinburgh on Saturday you can find the unbirthday party in Monterey Public Library, Clifornia. Remarkaqbly this dates back to 1891 when Annie Ide, the 12-year-old daughter of the American Land Commissioner in Samoa, told RLS of her disappointment that there were no special celebrations to mark her birthday on Christmas Day, he came up with an ingenious solution. As a qualified Scottish advocate, he drew up a legal document declaring: ‘I, Robert Louis Stevenson . . . have transferred and do hereby transfer to the said A.H. Ide, all and whole my rights and privileges in the thirteenth day of November, formerly my birthday, now, hereby and henceforth, the birthday of the said A.H. Ide.’ Now each year the Robert Louis Stevenson Club of Monterey holds aan event as such.

Stevenson had a brief sojourn in the Californian town in 1879, he went there to court Fanny Osbourne, a woman he met in France and fallen deeply in love with. Fanny was from Oakland and had returned to attempt a divorce from her husband. She had summoned Stevenson from his family home in Edinburgh and he readily obeyed her request. He wrote a memoir of his journey from New York through the heart of America, to the West coast in The Amateur Emigrant. Although brief, Stevenson’s time in Northern California deeply affected his work, inspiring his classic tales of adventure. RLS boarded at the French Hotel there, it is now known as Stevenson Houseand is a museum and property of the Monterey State Historic Park. t holds a large collection of Stevenson papers and Stevenson memorabilia. It features a bas relief depicting the author writing in bed, as seen in the pics. The second of the photos is Robert Louis Stevenson's Memorial in St Giles, Edinburgh.

[coffeebooksandmore]

Reading is a form of attention.

Be it listening to the words on a drive or taking in the words of a book in the park with your eyes.

Reading is a book taking hold of you and refusing to let go of you. Going to your local bookstore, especially one where all the proceeds go to the library, can make the hours you spend there feel like participation in the community you want. I stepped into this beautiful old building full of books, The Bookmark Bookstore, which is owned and operated by the Friends of the Oakland Public Library and is staffed by volunteers. Isn't that the world you want to live in? Because I know I do. I know it's hard to just live sometimes because so much is out of our hands and is unjust, but supporting your community isn't. No matter how small the act might seem.

coffeeandbookss

[dailyanarchistposts]

“For me, wherever I go, I know my natural and eternal environment, and I know it as part of me and me of it. Beyond whatever we think, there is a darkly glimmering mystery far beyond reason and sanity, but full of the wholeness of beauty. It perpetually sustains and bestows all things with their own nature and being- perfectly, fully and without need for further elaboration or rectification. This is the sorcerous conception of deity.”— Robin Artisson, The Toadbone Treatise

It’s December and the air is warm here.

I peer out my window with drink in hand, watching the blood-splashed sun collapse beyond the horizon and into the highway. For a moment I relish being in a State where drinking a lime-juice cocktail isn’t a desperate plea for warmer days. Here winter never comes, and as such, we never need to change our tastes to heartier or heavier food and drink.

The Southeast is the only home I’ve known: a land of sweltering heat, mosquitoes the size of your arm, and uninterrupted madness via Florida Man. Where I dwell is nothing special: an average middle class town, the wonder and mystery of the city far away and only faintly sensed. The hustle and bustle of modern living remains only a faint rumor on the wind. Life moves along uninterrupted, save for twinges of change here and there. I can imagine such a life would not be enough for some, and truthfully it’s not enough for me. But in the meantime, there’s no rush; I drink deeply from the land and Spirits around me.

I think about Gordon’s piece on Natural Magic, the equation of Self+Spirit World+Place. It rings true to me. I think about the natural world around me, my own slice of it. Underneath the regular suburban dregs still beats the heart of that wild Florida, in every thicket and every wood. In them I’ve rattled open doorways between realms in areas smaller than some public parks, I’ve spoken with Swamp Spirits and learned the unspoken keys to plant identification, and I’ve traded payment and favors with the local Dead and seen them manifest right before my eyes. All these things happened in my hometown not in spite of it, but through it.

The great lesson of Folk Magick has always been that magick was right at hand, that you didn’t need a library of books or special clothes and wands to do it. In Hoodoo a quick trip to the grocery store and some significant places around town will allow you to hurl just about anything at people. When I’m particularly stuck for an ingredient I always go Journeying into the Spirit World and ask my friends there what might do the trick. And often the most powerful gifts are the simplest.

I came to read playing cards, to cast my eyes into the twisting nether realm of probability and possibility not through some online course nor through paid lessons from a teacher. I went down to the crossroads for nine nights around 11:45pm and called out to the One Who Dwells There to teach me, the only sacrifice being the time I spent there. And teach me He did. I found whole new ways of looking at the cards, as books and ideas seemed to drop into my view from all over; I read what I could, but the biggest advances seemed to come from just being out there, alone and in the dark, hearing whispers in my head and seeing symbols dance before my eyes. I read the cards now with great accuracy, with my window into the shifting seas of potentiality amounting to an admission fee of one dollar.

Often in life our own worlds can seem disenchanted, our existences too far away from any of “the action” to feel meaningful. As in spirituality so too in politics: the same way my heart longs to stir up the dead in St. Augustine it flutters at thoughts of joining in armed resistance somewhere in the streets of Rojava; as I ponder the possibilities of protective mojos made and blessed with the dirt from Castillo de San Marcos, I wonder what revolutionary potential I could add to the people’s struggles in Baltimore, Oakland, Chiapas, and Greece. Economics and familial ties, at least for the moment, always get the upper hand.

But I do not rest on my laurels. I read, I study, I speak with those around me. I consider myself the advance guard, the agent behind enemy lines. I gather folks of like mind around me and we plan, we plot, we create pockets of resistance and freedom. We are the first cells of the revolution you see, mitochondria that will one day evolve into a greater being. We put pamphlets, we put up posters, we engage in Direct Action. Rather then wait for ‘THE Revolution” I’ll do what I can here and now, building “the new world in the shell of the old.”

Those that simply wait for monumental change, or worse vote in the hopes it will come, display a distinctly unmagical air about them: they don’t believe anything can change unless everything does, they can’t imagine that their actions could move even the tiniest mole hill, they huff that the time is never quite ripe, that until some Unknown Messiah arrives we’d best simply hope for change.

Surely we, through direct experience, know better then this?

Can’t a hidden gesture or half-mumbled phrase move someone’s mind? Won’t a fervent prayer, a simple oil, and an intensity of Will attract unseen hands to guide you? Doesn’t the simplest mix of red pepper, black pepper, and sulpher cause the flames of hell to leap up at our command? You can’t have it both ways: either you and your allies can literally shift the movin’ and shakin’s of the luck plane as well as this artifice we call physical reality, or it’s all a sham.

I don’t know about you but I’ve got notebooks filled with proof that what we deem “inevitable” or “unmalleable” is plainly not so.

Magic presupposes we can change the foundations of the world around us. Why do our political beliefs so often not follow this maxim? Why are we waiting for some Vanguard, some Party, some Candidate, to rip up the noxious weeds of Capitalism and The State? Did we come by any of our magical knowledge by waiting or did we simply go out and start doing what we could? Wasn’t every bump in the road a lesson, every victory a confirmation that even against the odds we can win?

My tradition courses through the land and was born in struggle: against the State, against the Boss, against the Police. Under candle light and shroud of burning herbs I can feel the air thick with those that whispered or sang prayers in other times; they know, they understand: the battles may be different, the symbols may have changed, but the struggle has not. Candle flames burst with the same heat and energy raging away in my heart, teeth gritting in Nietzschean Will to change the world and break anything that stands in my way. Road Opener work or Revolution, what’s the difference?

My tradition is not alone: anyone laying hands on the practical magic of the past is touching a People’s History. You did what you could with what you had on hand, including whatever ghosts and goblins happened to be around. These people were in the same boat we are: under the heel of an oppressive state apparatus, one that could kill them at any time, all for the service of an economic elite. They too watched an increasing portion of all the value they created get siphoned away, hunger pangs and anxiety the mother of many a prosperity spell. Any good witchcraft carries with it the sublime scent of necessity; by the time you’re in the woods at midnight making pacts with unseen things it’s safe to say the usual channels of change have been blocked.

What else is magic but the metaphysical embodiment of Anarchism, of politics on a spiritual plane? That YOU could defy the laws of the “Lord” and make new arrangements for yourself, that YOU could gain insights and knowledge beyond your “station” in life, that YOU needn’t wait for someone to save you because you were going to save YOURSELF? Isn’t that what Sorcery is all about? Wasn’t it a battle against the dragon Zarathustra spoke about, the one that must be defeated, that must be slain?

“Who is the great dragon whom the spirit will no longer call lord and god? ‘Thou shalt’ is the name of the great dragon. But the spirit of the lion says, ‘I will.’ ‘Thou shalt’ lies in his way…”

The day is dead now, street lights and shabby store signs acting as artificial suns. The lights manage to keep the hum-drum thoughts of day still near, a collective religious belief in the firm and unvarying nature of reality, that nothing has nor will it ever change. The lights bring stability and safety. In this warm paradise where winter never comes it’s easy to believe the lie that most things are unwavering, that some things just stay the same.

For instance, global capitalism or a client’s bad luck?

But I have neither the time nor the inclination for such adult bed-time stories. I close the blinds and set about the work of changing the world around me. To succumb to the thoughts of static existence, of even settled accounts is preposterous. I call out to the Unseen with techniques and tricks propelled into the future by the most disadvantaged in this region while the plantations of the past have gone from places of frightening power to mere relics. While others buy and sell my soul flies right down to the primal, throbbing tap-root of the land around me; what was once an altar in any other townhouse becomes the Crossroads of All Existence; my voice no longer my own, my body wracked with spasms, I become a conduit for things that others claim can’t or shouldn’t exist.

Impossible? Can’t? Won’t? Shouldn’t? All these words are nothing to me! There is only The Will. And if you Will it, it is no dream.

[reasoningdaily]

The Black Panther Party [Reconsidered]

This FREE BOOK DOWNLOAD is from THE BLACK TRUEBRARY

The Black Panther Party [Reconsidered]

A collection of essays written by scholars and former Panthers incorporates participant-observer perspectives in an exploration of the party's organization, gender dynamics, and legacy

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Here is a searing, illuminating and unapologetic look at the Black Panther Party, whose 1966-1982 history is one of the most controversial and dynamic political dramas of our time.

Georgia State University African American studies professor Jones uses original writings from insiders, including former officials like former communication secretary Kathleen Neal Cleaver (who now teaches law in N.Y.C.), who writes about the Algerian exile she and her then-husband Eldridge Cleaver experienced during that era; and rank-and-filers like Steve D. McCutchen, whose Panther-era diary makes engrossing reading. The 18 chapters include original essays and memoirs by, and interviews with, former Panthers.

Contributors include scholars of Panther history like Stanford's Angela D. LeBlanc-Ernest, Nakhil Pal Singh of N.Y.U., Clarence Lusane of American University and Trayce Mathews, a Chicago-based political activist whose dissertation explores gender dynamics in the Black Panther Party. Founded in Oakland, Calif., by Bobby Seale and the late Huey P. Newton to promote armed self-defense of the black community from an allegedly brutal police force, the Panthers soon grew into a national force.

The Panthers, argues contributor Chris Booker, "embodied the highest aspirations of a generation of radical African American youth." These essays are mainly sympathetic to the Panthers' aims, and there lingers among some of them a bit of uncritical nostalgia. But contributors also critically investigate the party's complex attitude toward violence (police reprisals and inner-party conflict killed over two dozen Panthers from 1967 to 1969), inner-party gender relations, the consequences of the unstable membership mix of political activists and quasi-criminal types, and the group's romantic notions of social revolution.

From Library Journal

Revisiting the revolutionary reputation of the Black Panther Party (BPP) of the turbulent 1960s, political scientist Jones (African American studies, Georgia State Univ.) contributes a six-part, 18-chapter probe of the reality behind the rhetoric and the substance behind the much-maligned Panther image.

The anthology mixes interviews with analysis, reflections, and recollections. Former BPP members such as Kathleen Neal Cleaver, Regina Jennings, and Melvin E. Lewis and others delve into the contextual landscape of the BPP's founding in October 1966, recruitment of rank and file, organizational and gender dynamics, decline, and complex legacy.

This work provokes serious thought about how authority in government and media manipulate public perception of black protest. But even more, it unfolds dimensions of the BPP as a base of black nationalism and a bridge to intercommunalism, signaling a move beyond mere memoir to helpful scholarship on the BPP's integrity and interactions.

THIS BOOK IS PROVIDED FREE COURTESY OF THE BLACK TRUEBRARY here on Tumblr

[californiastatelibrary]

These images and documents, all of which are available via the National Archives (archives.gov), show a part of United States history that should never be forgotten.

Image Caption: Oakland, California, April 1942. Part of family unit of Japanese ancestry leave Wartime Civil Control Administration station on afternoon of evacuation, under Civilian Exclusion Order Number 28. Social worker directs these evacuees to the waiting bus.

"On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, stripping people of Japanese descent of their civil rights.  That order and the subsequent actions carried out by the Federal Government represent one of the most shameful chapters in our Nation’s history.  On this Day of Remembrance of Japanese American Incarceration During World War II, we acknowledge the unjust incarceration of some 120,000 Japanese Americans, approximately two-thirds of whom were born in the United States." — President Biden, 2022

Image Caption: Los Angeles, California, April 1942. Mr. and Mrs. K. Iseri have closed their drugstore in preparation for the forthcoming evacuation from their "Little Tokyo" in Los Angeles.

The State Library's California Civil Liberties Public Education Grants are part of our efforts to shine a light on this dark time in our history. The California Civil Liberties Public Education Program funds projects which seek to spread awareness of civil liberties injustices of all types — including, but not limited to, the internment of Japanese Americans during Word War II. 

Image Caption: Oakland, California. Following evacuation orders, this store, at 13th and Franklin Streets, was closed. The owner, a University of California graduate of Japanese descent, placed the "I AM AN AMERICAN" sign on the store front on Dec. 8, the day after Pearl Harbor. 

The deadline for grant applications is April 14, 2023. To learn more, and to submit an application, please visit the Civil Liberties Program page at https://www.library.ca.gov/grants/civil-liberties/.

Image Caption: Document from “Evacuee Property Department” with handwritten numbers showing the number of evacuees, vehicles, and property under Civilian Exclusion Order Number 23 (Vacaville).  

Image Caption: Page one of the Official Exclusion Order (sometimes also called Evacuation Order) for Multnomah County, Oregon. “Instructions to all persons of Japanese ancestry” is written in large letters across the top. 

[missmickiescorner]

The Libraries That Made Me | Diamond Branch Library

As an elementary school child, I can count the amount of times that I went to the Diamond Branch Library on my hand. It was a little out of the way, it had a very small parking lot, and frankly, I don’t think there was any perceived reason to go to this particular branch when Eastmont was in walking distance.

Whatever the case, what few times I went to Diamond certainly stuck with me because as I entered my teenage years, I would often catch the bus just to come and sit and read for a couple of hours. In all honesty, I might have just liked the branch because going so far away made me feel more “independent”—of this, I can never be sure—however, what I do know is that because I had to get to this branch of my own accord, it became sort of like a dock for all my teenage activities. Diamond Library is up the street from Diamond Park, so when I would go on dates at the time I would stop by the library to check out books and then we’d sit on the grass and read together. Eventually, when we had a child, we’d take our son to this branch and do the very same thing—check out books, walk up the street to the park, sit on the grass and read. This was even the place where my son eagerly got his first library card.

[lboogie1906]

Henry ‘Harry’ Albro Williamson (October 25, 1875 - January 3, 1965) was a postal worker and a prolific researcher and writer on the subject of Freemasonry.

He joined the Brotherhood of Freemasonry in 1904 and did extensive research documenting the progress of Black Freemasonry to determine its origins and authenticity. His research has been used by modern-day Masons to decry “bogus” Freemasonry. He was a member of the Grand Lodge of New York (Prince Hall) where he served as deputy Grandmaster, Grand Lecturer, and Grand Historian. He organized the first Lodge of Research in Prince Hall Freemasonry, becoming its first and only Master in 1943. He filled the role of Grand Secretary for over thirty years. His papers, consisting of over 1200, items including his Prince Hall Masonic collection were given to the Schomburg Center at New York Public Library in February 1936.

His parents were William Edward Williamson and Mary Elizabeth Pauline Williamson. He was born in New Jersey but moved to Oakland in 1880 when his father died. His papers are held in the New York Public Library Archives. He married Laura Julia Moulton (1901). He married Blanche C. Atkins (1920).

Works and publications

Origin of Freemasonry among Negroes in America (1914)

Negroes and Freemasonry (1920)

The Negro in Masonic Literature (1922)

The Prince Hall Primer (1925)

A Chronological History of Prince Hall Masonry, 1784-1932 (1934)

The Order of the Eastern Star (1938) #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

[8-rock]

My design was chosen! It honors Black women.

I can't wait until its February debut. 🥰

[detroitlib]

Souvenir photograph folder from the Club Sensation located at Owen and Oakland Avenues in Detroit. Printed on front: "Club Sensation, 1300 Owen Ave. Tel. TO 6-9797. Uzziel Lee, Prop. Choice liquors, wine beer. Floor shows, dancing." Printed on back cover: "For extra photos call A.D. Neal, TR. 2-4850. Photo by Bennie Lee. Tel.: TW 2-0363." Photograph inside folder depicts men and women posing at table in Club Sensation. Champagne glass, beer bottles and ashtray on table.

Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library

[sistahscifi]

Sabrina, we love your review of Wake: The Hidden History of Women-led Slave Revolts by Rebecca Hall!!!

You can check out Wake from your #locallibrary! Today, we highlight Oakland Public #Library @oaklibrary!

https://sistahscifi.com/products/wake-the-hidden-history-of-women-led-slave-revolts-hardcover

Credit to @sabrinabookshelf I read a graphic novel by Rebecca Hall called “Wake: The hidden history of Women-led slave revolts.” It’s based on the author of the book who is a Historian, a granddaughter of enslaved people, who sets out on a mission to find erased history of the women who planned & led slave ship revolts. This book is a mixture of nonfiction, historical fiction & imaginative fiction.

Rebecca Hall did a good job of filling in the gaps with her own story, but this novel was more about her struggles with finding the archival evidence.

This graphic novel would be an excellent source for younger readers or anyone new to the history of the transatlantic slave trade who prefers a more visual approach. It provides a good introduction to the topic and highlights the often overlooked role of women in resistance efforts.

@simonandschuster

@wakecomicbook

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#sistahscifi #rebeccahall #wakethehiddenhistoryofwomenledslaverevolts