Attendees: Michael Harris, Pleasant Hill City Council Sue Noack, Pleasant Hill City Council Bill Bankert, PH Planning Commission Patrick Remer, PH Library Katherine Bracken, PH Library Commissioner Wendy Gollop, resident June Catalano, City Manager Steve Van Dorn, PH Chamber of Commerce Susan Weaver, Friends of the […]
The Library: The New Hub for Digital Innovators?
If you haven’t noticed, our millennial and post-millennial generations are seeing themselves become more and more inseparable from their digital selves. Whether it be a picture they take “for the Insta,” or a video they record “for the Snap,” the phenomenon seems to dominate every social conversation and casual outing. We love getting involved in […]
A Camel Staircase Library
A great deal of transition and movement in my life started this spring that still has me all soft and squishy: a whirlwind house purchase and move, seven straight months of daily meditation, my son finishing his first year at preschool and celebrating his 4th birthday, and a week-long visit from my mom and sisters–the […]
Reflections on Independence Day
Shortly after I graduated from law school and began working as an attorney in San Francisco, I experienced something that might be described as a kind of cultural epiphany. I realized that I had spent so much of my youth engrossed in the literature, history and culture of western Europe that I had little knowledge […]
Why Our Public Library Matters
When I was growing up in San Mateo in the 1960s I was blessed to live within easy walking distance of the city’s public library. On weekends and during summer vacations I probably spent more time there than anywhere else. My middle school and high school years were a period in which I explored my […]
On the Loose in Alaska: A Review of Heroes of the Frontier by Dave Eggers
In Dave Eggers’s latest novel Heroes of the Frontier Josie is a sort-of retired dentist from Ohio and single mother of two whose life has been turned upside down and inside out through a sequence of upheavals both heartbreaking and hysterical. Her dental practice has been all but destroyed through a lawsuit in which an elderly […]
Support the Library during East Bay Gives 2017
Donate to the Friends of the Library Dear Friends, We are asking for your support by donating ONLINE to the Friends of the Pleasant Hill Library on May 4th during the East Bay Gives 2017 challenge. Help us fund our treasured library! East Bay Gives 2017 is an opportunity to mobilize everyone in the East […]
Park District and County agreement sets stage for new library
The Pleasant Hill Recreation & Park District, Contra Costa County and the City of Pleasant Hill have announced proposals for potential new recreational fields and a new community library. This has been made possible through an agreement between the County and the Recreation & Park District. The County Board of Supervisors voted to approve the […]
True or False: Fake News, and Internet Literacy
It’s never been more apparent than now of just how much how much millennials love their mobile devices. Take just a few meager steps at your local college campus and you’d see no less than ten people buried in their phones as they rush to their next class. Walk into a coffee shop and every […]
Thank you, Pleasant Hill Library
April 9 to April 15 is National Library Week. And so it is fitting that as I sit here taking in a magnificent view of Mt. Diablo from the bedroom of our new Pleasant Hill home–into which we moved just six days ago–I am overwhelmed by the urge to write our community library a thank […]
Unusual Minds: A Review of A Doubter’s Almanac, By Ethan Canin
A Doubter’s Almanac by Ethan Canin (Random House, 2016) is a remarkable novel with a unique cast of expertly drawn and memorable characters as well as an engaging story of human and family relationships. The novel is largely populated with university academics in the field of mathematics, which may dissuade some readers from trying it, […]
Here to Stay
I’m an immigrant. More specifically, I’m a first generation immigrant who knows nothing else but the scuff of a hiking trail and the greenery of our valleys. California has my heart, it’s always had my heart. And this year marks a very special year because it has been a decade since we’ve made that big […]