We are a branch of the Los Angeles Public Library located in Highland Park. Keep yourself updated on our doings here...
The article “Heritage Square gets ‘religion’” by Roger Swanson describes the arrival of the former Lincoln Avenue Methodist Church at the Heritage Square Museum. The article, from 2/14/1981, describes the process by which the building was moved as well as a bit about the history of the building itself. Check it out.
This time we asked what the coldest temperature recorded in California was. A temperature of -45 degrees Fahrenheit was recorded in Boca, California on Jan. 20, 1937.
Learn all about the weather as well as pick up weather related trivia in the place where this question, and answer, were found the Weather Almanac. The Weather Almanac is a Gale Virtual Reference e-Book. The almanac presents hundreds of in-depth weather records for 108 major U.S. cities and a climatic overview of the country, including 33 U.S. weather atlas maps. It can be found on LAPL’s Research & Homework page under W and accessed with your library card.
This year the Arroyo Book Club will once again be participating in NEA’s Big Read program. This year the book we will be reading is The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui. Let’s turn to what the NEA has to say about this book:
Bui’s memoir traces her family’s daring escape after the fall of South Việt Nam in the 1970s and their effort to build new lives for themselves in America. Bui documents parental sacrifice, excavates family histories, and grapples with the inherited struggles of displacement and diaspora. “This memoir feels not just created but also deeply lived” (The Washington Post). “A stunning work of reconstructed family and world history” (Booklist Online). “Narratively intricate, intellectually fastidious, and visually stunning” (Vulture). Writes Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize winner and board member: “A book to break your heart and heal it.”
Find more information about the book at its NEA Big Read site (https://www.arts.gov/initiatives/nea-big-read/best-we-could-do-illustrated-memoir)
The book is available via Hoopla (https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/12474862) if you would like to read it online. You may also elect to place a hold on a library copy and, since our branch is currently closed for repairs, arrange to pick it up at another branch.
We will meet to discuss the book via Zoom on April 23 at 3:00. Email ayosco@lapl.org if you would like to join us.
Join us for our annual Library Lummis Day Poetry Event. We have an excellent slate of poets lined up
to share their work & thoughts this year. But first, details about the
event itself... it will take place via Zoom on April 16 at 3:00 pm. Email ayosco@lapl.org
for the program link. For information on
Lummis Day Festival of Northeast Los Angeles 2022--Sunday, April 24--visit
lummisday.org.
Now about those poets… You will hear from:
Laurel Ann Bogen is the author of 11 books of poetry and short fiction, the most recent of which is Psychosis in the Produce Department: New and Selected Poems, from Red Hen Press. A native of Los Angeles, she was an instructor of poetry and performance at the Writer’s Program at UCLA Extension from 1990 - 2021 where she also received an Outstanding Instructor of the Year Award. Well-known for her lively readings and a founding member of the acclaimed poetry performance troupe, Nearly Fatal Women, Bogen has read/performed in venues as diverse as Cornell University, The Savannah College of Art and Design, The Knitting Factory (NYC). Her work has appeared in over 100 literary magazines and anthologies.
Jack Grapes teaches writing based on his two books Method Writing and
Advanced Method Writing. His poetry books are also available on Amazon: The
Naked Eye: New & Selected Poems; All the Sad Angels; Poems
So Far So Far So Good So Far To Go; Any Style; and Wide
Road to the Edge of the World. His forthcoming book of poetry is titled
Exit Music. Also forthcoming this year will be two non-fiction
books: How To Read Like a Writer and Yes I Said Yes I
Will Yes, a study of James Joyce's novel Ulysses. Jack
also wrote and starred in Circle of Will, a metaphysical comedy
about the "lost years" of William Shakespeare, which ran
for several years and won theater critic awards for Best Actor and Best Comedy.
Elisabeth Adwin Edwards shifted her focus to poetry after a successful 20-year career as a regional theater actor. Her poems have appeared in The Tampa Review, Rust + Moth, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, The American Journal of Poetry, A-Minor Magazine, and elsewhere; her prose has been published in Hobart, CutBank, On The Seawall, and other journals. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize. A native of Massachusetts, she lives in Los Angeles with her husband and teen daughter in an apartment filled with books.
Angela Peñaredondo is a queer nonbinary Filipinx interdisciplinary writer, artist and educator. They are author of Maroon (Jamii Publications), All Things Lose Thousands of Times (Inlandia Institute, winner of the Hillary Gravendyk Poetry Prize). Their work has appeared in Academy of American Poets' Poem-A-Day Series, Southern Humanities Review, Black Warrior Review and elsewhere. They live in unceded Kivh territory and work as an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at California State University, San Bernardino. Their next book, A Nature to Be but Never Apprehended is forthcoming on Noemi Press (2023).
Today I have an interesting booklet for your perusal…. It is titled: Social Resources of the Highland Park Coordinating Council and was put together in 1938 by the Works Progress Administration. Overall it provides an awfully lot of detail about social and community organizations in Highland Park. Peruse it to get a sense of what things were like all those years ago (as well as where everyone lived).
Find the booklet here: http://dbase1.lapl.org/webpics/calindex/documents/11/520695.pdf.
This time let’s ask what is the coldest temperature recorded in California?
Want to grow more plants? Expand your greenery indoors and out? Join us on Saturday, April 2 at 3:00 and learn how to do just that using the power of plant cuttings. Cuttings, from succulents to perennial herbs and everything in between, can be a fun and exciting way to create more plants for the home garden. Learn the basics of how to take a cutting, soils, and tools, getting things to strike (take root), and how to care for your new plants.
This program is an LA Made program, part of a cultural programming series featuring free music, dance, theater, and conversations with local entertainers at libraries throughout the city, or these days on library social and distance platforms.
Check out the library’s online event calendar for more LA Made programs at branches throughout the city. Find the event calendar here: http://www.lapl.org/whats-on/calendar. Selecting LA Made from the Program Series drop down box will limit your results to these programs.
Here we have Highland Park: City on a Crest. This is a pamphlet type brochure from 1974 that is selling the area. It is chock full of photos and short informative essays. The photo used with this entry is one of the “middle” library branch. Check it out.
This time we asked what was Aksum and where was it located? Aksum was an important world kingdom in the 3rd century CE. It was located in the highlands of what is now northern Ethiopia and southern Eritrea and was an important state and a lively center of trade from the third to sixth centuries CE. The image above is a gold coin from ca. 340 CE bearing the image of Ezana, king of Aksum, present-day Ethiopia. Christian crosses began appearing on coins minted after Ezana's conversion to Christianity.
Learn more about this kingdom, and other historical places and events, in the database that yielded this question, and answer, World History: Ancient and Medieval Eras. This digital resource covers early human history around the globe—from prehistoric times to the beginnings of the Renaissance including references, scholarly works, primary documents and papers, photographs, audio clips, and maps. It can be found on LAPL’s Research & Homework page under W and accessed with your library card.
Silver in the Wood is a slim novel by Emily Tesh that tells a tale that springs from folklore. There is a wild man who lives in a wood, tethered to a place. Then the wood gets a new owner, a quiet, intensely curious man and the past is reexamined while new futures unfold.
This slim, 100 page book is a quick, lyrical read. I would recommend it.
The History of the “W” Car Line takes a timeline formatted look at a trolley car that ran through Highland Park. It includes photos. Check it out.
Start your spring off with a Pow! and sign up for the library’s Graphic Novel Reading Challenge. Select titles from a curated list that will enable you to explore the full gamut of graphic novels and their potential. Read four titles and be entered in a drawing.
This is an online challenge. Visit https://lapl.beanstack.org/reader365 to register or to sign into your beanstack account and sign up for the challenge.
The challenge runs from March 7 through April 9. Sign the whole family up!
This week’s document is a newspaper then & now photo of the corner of Ave 50 and Figueroa. Then being 1910 and now being 1959. Find it here: https://dbase1.lapl.org/webpics/calindex/documents/10/520236.pdf
This time we asked what the national dish of Vanuatu is. The national dish is lap lap, made by grating a root crop such as manioc and mixing it with coconut milk and meat.
The question, and answer, were found on CultureGrams. CultureGrams provides brief country reports with concise information on the history, people, customs, lifestyle, society, travel information and more for over 175 countries. The resource can be found on LAPL’s Research & Homework page under C and you can access it with your library card.