Albany Public Library Archives - Page 4 of 7

In-person FFAPL book reviews are back!

also, author talks

The Albany Public Library announced that is opening meeting rooms and resuming in-person programs starting Monday, April 4. This means that the book reviews conducted by the Friends and Foundation of the Albany Public Library (FFAPL) are back every Tuesday at noon, starting April 19 at the Washington Avenue branch!

The Friends of the APL, one of the antecedents to the FFAPL, held book reviews or author talks Tuesdays every week when the library was open literally for decades. In recent years, these events were scheduled primarily by Eugene Damm and Jonathan Skinner. They continued until… well, you know what.

For a while, there was no book review programming at all. Then someone suggested that maybe we should utilize that new-fangled electronic device known as ZOOM. I got involved with this mostly because my computer was more robust than Jon’s or Gene’s, and because had retired. Some of the talks were recorded; you can find some of them here. A few we don’t have because the technology failed. A couple that was done outside at the Bach branch had too much noise from neighbors and the wind.

The Upper Hudson Library Council noted the effort that Jon and I had done in the remote world by awarding us as UHLS volunteers of the year. We were among several folks honored in June 2021, online, of course.

We’re BACK

Here’s the schedule thus far for the Tuesday talks. Albany people: if you can pass the word, it would be greatly appreciated.

19 April Book Review | Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human by Elizabeth Hess. Reviewer: Joseph Krausman, MA, MFA, retired policy analyst, poet, and teacher.

26 April Book Review | The Color Of Law by Richard Rothstein. Reviewer: Roger Green, a former librarian and past president of the Friends of Albany Public Library.

3 May 3 Author Talk | Pippa Bartolotti, Cornish/Welsh human rights and climate activist, discusses & reads from her poetry book, The Symmetries: Book 1 Poetic Symmetry.

10 May Book Review | The Trial of Leonard Peltier by James W. Messerschmidt. Reviewer: Larry Becker, lawyer, activist, past member of Albany’s Community Police Review Board, & producer of the Radio Free Blues Show.

17 May Book Review | Science on a Mission: How Military Funding Shaped What We Do and Don’t Know About the Ocean by Naomi Oreskes. Reviewer: Jonathan Skinner, Ph.D., retired statistician & amateur classicist.

24 May Book Review | A Wild Idea: How the Environmental Movement Tamed the Adirondacks by Brad Edmondson. Reviewer: Tom Ellis, educator, and activist.

31 May Book Review | Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate by M. E. Sarotte. Reviewer: Gene Damm, former journalist and past president of the Friends of Albany Public Library.

March rambling: quotation marks

Support the Albany High School robotics team!

tractor_beam_2x — **From https://xkcd.com/2579/**

In a world-historic first, microplastics were detected in human blood

The Our World in Data COVID vaccination data

How American conservatives turned against the vaccine

The Lancet: Paul Farmer

Cameroonians fleeing conflict are in dire need of Temporary Protected Status – cf. Inside “the most diverse square mile in America”

What Caused the War? Ukraine and Russia in Historical Context

The Race to Archive the Ukrainian Internet

Ukrainian Actress Oksana Shvets Killed in Russian Rocket Attack

Non-war conflict

Hate and extremism

How did Christianity become so toxic?

The Interactive Theater of Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Confirmation Hearing

Addressing racial inequality in paid leave policy

Sara Jacobs, one of the youngest members of Congress, talks about sexism and ageism in politics.

Writing Women into History

Women in medicine are running up the wrong side of the escalator

Where Does the Religious Right Go After Roe?

Sojourner Truth’s Battle to Free Her Son from Slavery

Actor Tim Reid on addressing racial issues on WKRP in Cincinnati

Texas’ New Voting Law Disenfranchised Thousands Of Otherwise Eligible Voters

The Tangled, Messy Roots of Fake News, long before it became djt’s favorite term

Ginni Thomas demanded Congressional Republicans take the fight to overturn the 2020 election to the streets

John Bolton admits that ‘it’s hard to describe how little [djt] knows’

I Know There’s An Answer

Climate Change Brings Uncontrollable Wildfires

The Illinois town that got up and left

The 1950 Census is Coming: What You Need to Know

Timbuctoo Institute would build opportunities in the Adirondacks

About Those Gas Prices

Concert Tickets: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

2021 County and Economic Development Regions Population Estimates for NYS

Luka’s mural

Jobfished: the con that tricked dozens into working for a fake design agency

“They’re called ‘quotation marks’.”

Phobias. Aibohphobia is the (unofficial) fear of palindromes. Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia is used to describe the fear of very long words.

The official Girl Scout cookie power rankings

The Result of a Rabbit Hole

Audience participation

A GoFundMe page for the Albany High School Robotics Team to compete at the FIRST Robotics World Championship in Houston, TX on April 20-23. They placed 2nd in the New York Tech Valley Regional Competition.

Four Open Seats on Albany Public Library Board in May 17 Election. Nominations are due to the Clerk of the City School District of Albany by Wednesday, April 27, at 5 pm.

New York Bike Census

Now I Know

The Biggest Bread Soup in the World and Why Are My Baby Carrots Always Wet? and The First Computer Bug and The Phone Booth in the Middle of Nowhere and Beware the Ire of Caesar and Which Came First, The Algorithm or the Pi? and World War II’s Pre-Email E-Mail

MUSIC

Livinliv – Aleksandr Shymko

Irish tunes

K-Chuck Radio: The musical tree of Ida Red and green songs

Holiday at Ferghana -Reinhold Gliere

Lullabye of Broadway from 42nd Street

Coverville: 1393 – John Cale and Velvet Underground Cover Story and 1394 – The Blink-182 Cover Story II and 1395 – The Smashing Pumpkins Cover Story II

FFAPL Literary Legends Gala 2021

Eugene Mirabelli, Lydia Davis

The Friends and Foundation of the Albany Public Library is having its Literary Legends Gala 2021 on Saturday, October 16 from 6 to 8 pm. It will be held at the Pine Hills branch of the Albany Public Library, 517 Western Avenue. The first six annual galas were in person. The one in 2020 was, no surprise, virtual. This year’s event will be a hybrid because that’s what 2021 looks like.

The FFAPL “provides critical financial support to the Albany Public Library in order to help the Library provide education, literacy, career development, cultural enrichment, and lifelong learning.” These include supporting specific Library programs and projects, beyond the budget and scope of APL.

Our guests

The honorees are Lydia Davis and Eugene Mirabelli, each a professor emeritus at SUNY-Albany.

Lydia is a short story writer, novelist, and translator. “Her honors and awards include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation, as well as the Man Booker International Prize.” I bought her Collected Works (2009) in 2013 when she was honored by the Friends, a predecessor of FFAPL.

I attended Gene’s book launch for Renato! earlier this month. It is revised and reassembled from three of his earlier works. At the reading, he read from chapter 3 of what was part of The Goddess in Love with a Horse. It was so engaging that I bought the collection. Thirty years ago, I met Gene a few times, then hadn’t crossed paths with him until this year. He is just as engaging now as then.

The event

The gala features an online auction, already started and going on through October 16. And you don’t have to be in the Albany, NY area to participate. Here’s the link.

Tickets: ONLY A LIMITED NUMBER OF IN-PERSON TICKETS WILL BE AVAILABLE. All In-Person Tickets are “Honorary Committee” tickets at $125 each. All in-person attendees must show proof of vaccination. Virtual tickets are pay-what-you-wish, with a recommended donation of $25.

Two nearby banks have given the event organizers permission to use their parking lots for the event, Citizens Bank, 501 Western Avenue (enter from the West Lawrence St. side), and Trustco Bank, 1084 Madison Avenue, both nearby.

Plugging stuff: UREC, FFAPL gala

The 8th annual Literary Legends Gala will be held on October 16th at the APL Pine Hills Branch.

Occasionally, I would plug items for organizations that I was fond of/involved with on these pages. Then I cut back because they tended to be Albany-based organizations. Most of the readers of this blog are not from around here.

So I tended to plug happenings at my church, et al. on my Times Union blog. But now, I have no TU blog.

At the same time, I didn’t have all that much TO advocate for. And what I DID have to note was on Zoom, and except for sharing the home-grown music concerts of my niece during the pandemic, I just couldn’t muster the energy to get all that involved.

But now that I’m not so melancholy, I’ve rethought this. For instance, I should be promoting the Underground Railroad Education Center’s FreedomCon 2021 Zoom Series – Freedom Road: the Struggle for Justice Continues, especially since I’m one of the sponsors. The event has been going on since February.

Coming up these Saturdays at 3 pm, Eastern time:
Jul 24 Racist Violence is as American as Cherry Pie
Aug 21 Food Justice: Hunger, Child Poverty and Farming while Black
Sept 25 Destined to engage and collaborate: Examining the Social/Political Dynamics of Native Americans and African Americans in the United States
Oct 23 Building Community through Free Black Migration before the Civil War
Nov 27 Native American Lives Matter
It’s $10 per session.

Oh, and before that: the July 4 Oration is back in person at The Stephen and Harriet Myers Residence, 194 Livingston Avenue, Albany, NY 12210. But NOTE: it is on Saturday, JULY 3 beginning at 11 a.m. It features “an enriching presentation by Rev. Roxanne Booth on The Third Reconstruction.” I’ve heard her speak before, and she’s quite good.

The talk will be followed by light refreshments. Bring a chair and a dish to share if you like. Oh, and “this program will be live-streamed for those unable to join in-person. Details will be available on or before July 1.”

Library types know how to party!

The 8th annual Literary Legends Gala will be held on October 16th at the Pine Hills Branch APL.2021 Literary Legends Tickets on sale NOW. Support the Friends and Foundation of the Albany Public Library and join us as we celebrate this year’s honorees, Lydia Davis and Eugene Mirabelli.

“Last year’s gala was virtual and we are navigating the new normal and learning what will make our honorees and guests comfortable. Like you, we are figuring things out as the post-pandemic situation changes each week. Some things we do not yet know: there may or may not be a buffet, or a live jazz band. But there will be food, and there will be music! And our silent auction is back this year! Get your ticket and join the party!

“The Friends and Foundation of the Albany Public Library provide critical financial support to the Albany Public Library in order to help the Library provide education, literacy, career development, cultural enrichment, and lifelong learning. We can’t wait to party with you at the library!”

Buy general tickets here or purchase Honorary Committee tickets here. Purchase your Honorary Committee ticket by August 6th to be listed on the invitation card. You may also buy an ad at either link. If you are interested in donating food or a silent auction item, please use the link here.

Openish in the liminal space

standing on the threshold between two realities

I went to two events recently which made me feel more OK mentally than I’ve felt in a long, long, long while.

This is not to say that I hadn’t felt glimpses of this before. Eating lunch on April 6 with friends Carol, Karen, Bill – all of whom I’ve known since kindergarten. Also, Michael, who I only met 35 years ago. This was 13 days after my second vaccine shot, so I was still feeling tentative.

On May 1, I had a date day with my wife, seeing the tulips in Washington Park, visiting Peebles Park, and eating indoors for the first time in 15 months, which made me a tad wary.

The Friends and Foundation of the Albany Public Library had a small reception for our Literary Legends for 2021 this month. The accomplished Lydia Davis signed my copy of her collected works back in 2013. I knew Gene Mirabelli 30 years ago as a mentor of other writers, in addition to his own prodigious output, and, remarkably, he looks about the same.

I got to chat with both and their families and later introduce the authors. This felt… normal. In another time, this might have been No Big Deal. But in light of the last 15 months, it felt like, to quote Joe Biden when the Affordable Care Act was passed nearly a dozen years ago, a BFD.

It helped that the day was PERFECT. Not hot and humid, or chilly and raw, or rainy, since the event was held in the garden of the Bach branch of the APL.

Then I had a delightful conversation with the two librarians, Christina and Deanna, about why I play my CDs in birthday order, which, because they are librarians, made sense to them. It’s SO good to be understood.

Church

Then on Father’s Day, my wife and I attended church in person, as opposed to on Facebook. We were asked if we felt ill (ill and well sound the same with a mask) and were seated n socially-distanced “pods”. But it was in the building. No one could sing except the soloist; I discovered at least one other person besides me moving their arm as though they were singing the individual notes. Hearing Trevor on the organ in that space was a vast improvement over listening to it on the laptop.

In the sermon, the pastor used a word I had heard only on a single occasion before. The same pastor talked about liminal space.

From here: “The word ‘liminal’ comes from the Latin root, limen, which means ‘threshold.’ The liminal space is the ‘crossing over’ space – a space where you have left something behind, yet you are not yet fully in something else.” An example would be “that time in the early morning when you are floating in and out of sleep.”

Or from here: “In certain spaces under certain circumstances, you’ll experience a feeling of things being slightly off. An altered reality, if you will.”

So we are in a liminal time. Not quite back to “normal”, as much as some folks want like to believe. Vaccine reluctance in some parts of the country could – strike that; probably will – bring on a surge in the Delta variant of COVID-19. We need to protect the children who haven’t had the opportunity to get the vaccine, which is why APL still requires masks indoors.

But we’re getting there.