Director's Blog

“Too Cool for Yule” 2018

A number of years ago, I began creating the holiday play list, variously known as “Don’t Touch that Dial,” the “Too Cool for Yule” blog, and more simply, the Director’s Playlist.

It’s a collection of seasonal tunes that I look forward to assembling each year, right around the time holiday music earwigs begin their assault on the senses. From schlock (hopefully not too much of that) to rock, over the years we have managed to amass quite an eclectic set of “mix tapes,” and this year is no exception.

Black and white filtered photo of pine trees on the edge of a lake in winter

Before you start clicking and singing along, however, a couple of explanatory notes (pun intended) are in order:

In August, the magnificent voice of the Queen of Soul was silenced. Like many in my age cohort, Aretha Franklin’s music was a soundtrack to my life. Represented here by a swinging “Blue Holiday” from her second album, it’s a brilliant reminder that ‘Retha was as deft with the keyboard as she was with her vocal chops.

Paul Simon and Joan Baez launched Farewell Tours (NB: sorta kinda, Baez is briefly rebooting in April) and are represented by “Getting Ready for Christmas Day” and “Amazing Grace,” respectively.

I’ve closed the list with two “secular” selections. While libraries were not exactly what Bob Dylan had in mind when he penned the classic, “Shelter from the Storm,” we are indeed that for many in our community - an inclusive and safe place for knowledge, for belonging and for comfort.

And finally, 2018 was the centenary of American composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein’s birth and I have chosen to give him the last “word.” Jazz pianist Bill Evans’s emotional rendering of Bernstein’s “Some Other Time” from the buoyant “On the Town” is a pitch perfect ballad for this time of year, when we recall where we’ve been and anticipate where we are going if we have the luxury of time.

“Where has the time all gone to

Haven't done half the things we want to

Oh well, we'll catch up some other time”

Whether you eat Chinese food and see a movie on Christmas Day, attend church, binge on Netflix, curl up with a good book or board game you borrowed from the library, or sit quietly with your thoughts, all of us at Arlington Public Library wish you and yours the very best.

Free To Be

Coming Out Day

Thursday, Oct. 11, 2018, marks the 30th anniversary of National Coming Out Day, an annual observance to raise awareness of the LGBTQIA+ community, its interests and rights.

Arlington Public Library is honoring this date by flying the Pride flag at Central Library and by displaying Pride flags at all of our locations.

As a gay person, National Coming Out Day holds personal significance.

Watch Diane's keynote speech at Arlington County's 2017 Pride Celebration, in which she tells her own coming out story.

Central Library

As an Arlington County leader, the day represents my encouragement of staff to show up at work as they truly are — proudly and without fear of consequence.

And as a public library director, it is a reminder that each day in the library is coming out day. For The library is the eternal judgement free zone – the safe space that is welcoming of all who enter its doors, regardless of beliefs, preferences, origin, income status or appearance.

We will respect and accept you as you are on National Coming Out Day and every day.

Diane

Thank You For Participating in the Library Collections Survey

We received 14,504 responses and over 5,000 written comments, a rate of response that absolutely floored us.

We are reading all of the comments, and will publish the complete survey results and findings this fall.

Here’s what we can tell you now:

Will print materials (books) be cut?

No. Arlington Public Library is committed to providing popular collections (bestselling books, DVDs, children’s books) and maintaining the lowest possible wait times. This survey asked about collections that have different usage patterns and cost structures than physical items such as books.

Is the budget cut now in effect?

Yes. As of July 1, 2018, the County is in the FY 2019 budget year. The Library collections budget has been reduced by 17 percent, or $250,000. Decisions on how to absorb this reduction will be made throughout the coming year and we will continue to keep you informed.

How will the Library make decisions about what materials to cut?

The survey will help inform our decisions but it is not the sole factor. We will also look at usage, cost, and what overlap exists among collections. Again, please stay tuned for more information.

Thank you for your ongoing support of Arlington Public Library. It’s you who make us who we are.

Diane

Commitment to Racial and Social Equity

Today, the Arlington Public Library joined with libraries in our area and around the country in signing the Urban Libraries Council Statement of Commitment to Racial and Social Equity.

Read the news release from the Urban Libraries Council.

Director’s Blog: Vital Signs

A number of years ago, I was invited to mount a photo exhibit in Zagreb, Croatia.

“Vital Signs” was a collection of photographs that chronicled several years in the LGBT Movement in the United States. The show’s narrative arc began with images of quilts from the AIDS Memorial Quilt displayed on the National Mall in Washington, DC during July 2012, and ended with images of New York City’s Pride Parade of 2013, the victory “lap” following the U.S. Supreme Court’s findings on June 26 that both California’s Proposition 8 and Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) were unconstitutional.

Photo of the commemorative plaque at the Stonewall Inn

Photo from "Vital Signs" exhibit by Diane Kresh, 2013.

The final image in the show was of a plaque commemorating the Stonewall Inn, a bar in New York City frequented by gays, which was the site of riots following a raid there by police the night of June 28, 1969.

After Stonewall, the gay rights movement came “out of the closet and into the streets” and into the public consciousness where it has remained since.

The first Pride Parade was held in New York City on Sunday, June 28, 1970, one year after the riot. More than 45 years after Stonewall, Pride events are now held nationwide in cities large and small, in red states and in blue states, from San Francisco to Omaha and New York to Sioux Falls.

Every June, Arlington Public Library (APL) celebrates Pride, to honor LGBTQIA+ Americans and their allies who have fought for and continue to fight for the right to be treated fairly, to be granted equal protection under the law and afforded the inalienable right to be happy.

Gay rights are human rights, and libraries have a unique role in supporting the LGBTQIA+ community: through our safe spaces where we foster inclusion, our collections which reflect diverse points of view, and our programs that educate and celebrate the differences among us that make Arlington a thriving community.

More than a year ago, we signaled our embrace of inclusion with the addition of rainbow welcome signs posted on the entrances to each of our buildings.

And last year we added a banner at Central Library acknowledging that June is Pride month at APL.

And this year, for the first time, we joined Arlington County Government and are proudly flying the Pride Flag at Central Library.

Photo of the Pride flag flying on the flagpole under the Arlington County flag at Central Library

Throughout the month, we will be offering a range of Pride public events.

And in keeping with our mission to educate, we have created a Pride booklist.

Watch Diane's Keynote speech from Arlington County's 2017 Pride Celebration.

June is Pride month, but in reality, every month is Pride month at APL.

For we are always:
Open to accepting others for who they are
Open to embracing diverse points of view
Open to protecting and nurturing those who are most vulnerable
Open to fulfilling hopes and dreams
Open to making Arlington the best it can be.

Our commitment to you.
Happy Pride
Diane

Women’s Work

Hidden Stories of Persistence and Influence

Librarians of Cherrydale Library, August 1961

Librarians of Cherrydale Branch Library, August 1961

Many years ago, I was attending a party for Charlie, a work colleague who was retiring. It came time to cut the cake and he turned to me - one of the few women in the room - and asked me to do it, adding that it was “women’s work, anyway.”

At the time, I was the assistant division chief responsible for a couple of hundred employees. But to him, I was a woman and he was not, and there were tasks - cake cutting among them - that it was my “job” to do.

Rather than demur, I did as I was asked, and yet never forgot the experience.

Today (with a bit of tongue in cheek) and in honor of Women’s History month, Arlington Public Library launches a new digital exhibition:

Women’s Work: Stories of Persistence and Influence

A New Online Exhibit from the Center for Local History

Education

Entrepreneurs

Libraries

Politics

Social Activism

The collection profiles the women who made Arlington the community it is today. Entrepreneurs, activists, educators, politicians, and homemakers, the women of Arlington helped found Arlington’s first hospital, fought to integrate the school system, and established the Black Heritage museum. Even the public library system we enjoy today, a vibrant system comprised of a Central library and seven branches, exists because of the largesse of citizen bequests and the vision and hard work of leaders of Arlington women’s civic and garden clubs who understood only too well that knowledge is a core service. Several years ago, sociologist Robert Putnam warned in “Bowling Alone” that civic engagement was dying and with it the life and hope of communities. But Putnam doesn’t know Arlington’s residents, particularly its women.

As the exhibit unfolds over the upcoming year, through photographs, personal papers, and oral histories, you will find the story of Dr. Phoebe Hall Knipling, science teacher and founder of the Arlington Outdoor Education Association and its 225-acre Lab in Fauquier County, where Arlington students can experience nature and learn how to protect the environment. And Elizabeth Campbell, board member for Arlington Public Schools and founder of WETA-TV, the first public television station in Washington, D.C. And entrepreneur Margarite Reed Syphax, who began a real estate and construction business with her husband William, and who was one of the first black business women to be designated a Certified Property Manager.

This first release presents several stories and over the next year, we will continue to add more. But this collection will never be complete because a “woman’s work is never done.”

Diane

Scrawled DK signature

If you know of an Arlington woman who should be included in this exhibition or if you possess artifacts or other source materials of Arlington women that you would like to donate to the community archive, please contact the staff of the Center for Local History.

The Cookie Chronicles: Life Skills 101

If the sign-up sheets haven’t yet begun circulating in your office, don’t fret. They will soon.

The annual Girl Scout retail juggernaut is underway, spinning thousands of signatures into hundreds of millions of dollars in roughly six weeks’ time, a pace and margin of profit that is the envy of many CEOs. (I believe I have already committed to buying 16 boxes of Trefoils).

Photo of Queen of England Elizabeth and her sister Princess Margaret in Girl Scout uniforms

For fans of the original Netflix series, “The Crown,” both the future Queen of England Elizabeth and her sister Princess Margaret were Girl Guides (the European equivalent of Girl Scouts) in the Buckingham Palace troop. Princess Margaret eventually became the association’s president. Photo circa 1937. Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2147347/Diamond-Jubilee-Playing-castle-dungeons-Nazi-bombs-fell-Elizabeth-panto-princess.html

What began in 1917 as a modest troop fundraiser in Merle Haggard’s Muskogee, Oklahoma has become both a model of entrepreneurship and training program in “Life Skills 101.”

According to the Girl Scouts, young girls and women learn five basic skills: “goal setting, decision making, money management [boxes are priced at $4 each], people skills, and business ethics.” And consistent with the times we live in, cookie sales in at least two national councils–Houston and Minneapolis–have gone mobile. A website to support young scouts establish an online sales presence is found here.

Girls Scouts and their moms have not baked cookies in decades, even though an enterprising troop leader in Chicago created an inexpensive cookie recipe in the 1920s.

Two companies, Little Brownie Bakers, a subsidiary of Keebler, and ABC Bakers, are licensed to bake the cookies and may choose to produce among eight varieties, three of which–Thin Mints, Trefoils, and Peanut Butter Sandwich cookies–are mandatory. And there is some autonomy among troop councils as to which varieties they sell (provided they sell “The Big Three”), and which names they use: “Samoas” aka “Caramel deLites.”

Other useful bytes of information about cookies:

They have little or no trans fat and no preservatives or artificial flavors
Vegan “Thin Mints” are now available
Little Brownie Bakers does not use any high fructose syrup in its cookies
The packaging is sustainable

Not all adjustments to the nutritional value of the cookies, however, have succeeded. For example, low-fat and sugar-free varieties didn’t sell well and are no longer produced. They are cookies, after all. And some varieties, “Mango Cremes,” a vanilla and coconut cookie filled with a tangy mango-flavored crème; “Upside-Downs,” oatmeal treats with sweet frosting on the bottom; and my own fleeting favorite, “Dulce de Leche,” bite-sized cookies with milk caramel chips will never again see the inside of a cookie jar or sack lunch.

That’s the way the cookie crumbles.

I was a Girl Scout in Arlington in the mid-1960s, and was one of the legions of young girls selling cookies. In those days, the operation was pretty low-tech. I would come home from school, change into my uniform, and hit the houses in my neighborhood unaccompanied (something I cannot imagine a Scout doing today), lugging my cardboard carton of 12 boxes of the Big Three. No driving around with a parent, no meet-ups with other scouts and mothers to sell cookies in front of a grocery store or library, no sign-ups sheets carried by my father to his office. Just me, my carton and my sales pitch.

To the list of life skills that cookie selling teaches, I would add: self–confidence; the ability to look an adult in the eye; perseverance (I refused to quit going door-to-door until every box was sold); the value of team work and how achieving something individually (selling my share) contributes to the greater good (troop camping trips).

In fact, it’s the camping trips I most remember from my years as a Girl Scout. The fun of being outdoors and hiking, telling ghost stories and sleeping (only sometimes; I was notorious in my troop for keeping everyone awake all night with my joking and clowning around) in huge canvas tents with wooden floors. And cooking foil-wrapped dinners.

Most people have tried their hand at making “S’mores,” the campfire confection first recorded in “Tramping and Trailing with the Girl Scouts” (1927). While S’mores are tasty, I prefer the campfire treat favored by my Troop: a red apple (Fuji or Gala work best), cored and filled with the candy “Red Hots,” wrapped in foil and baked over a camp fire. Sweet, cinnamony, spicy, nutritious (well, sort of) and delicious.

For that treat alone, I would turn back the clock.

Shameless plug for Girl Scouts: Arlington girls interested in joining a troop or adults interested in volunteering their time and skills to serve as troop leaders and mentors, should consult http://gscnc.org. The current scout focus is the G.I.R.L. initiative which stands for: Go-getter, innovator, risk taker and leader.

Were you a Girl Scout with a story to share?

I would love to hear from you in the comments section below.

This is a photo of a black and white girl scouts group.

The author, top row, second from right.

Libraries Now and Forever

Libraries matter — Here is why:

They provide open access to information.

They are free.

They are inclusive.

On any given day, kids come to storytime, and read to dogs; teens meet with young adult authors to review books and instruct older adults on new technology; those new to our country practice their English; a homebound patron receives an audiobook by mail; residents explore their community history and learn about desegregation in Arlington Public Schools; the pop-up Library exceeds expectations; our award-winning Energy Lending Library provides energy efficiency solutions to home-owners; we learned at Arlington Reads from 3 award-winning authors — Colum McCann, Elizabeth Strout and Viet Thanh Nguyen — why fiction matters; and our Library app puts us in your pocket.

Libraries now and forever — committed to you.

On behalf of all the Library staff, thank you for being part of a great public library system and best wishes for a bright new year.

Diane Kresh
Director, Arlington Public Library

Put an “i” in Civic

Looking for something fun and meaningful to do this holiday season, either on your own, with your family or with a group?

Try checking out the interactive exhibit Put the i into Civic currently “wintering” at Central Library.

Created by local artist Linda Hesh, the project, done in collaboration with Arlington Public Art, asks each of us to consider “what Civic means to you.”

“What do you expect from your government? What do you appreciate? Civic Expectations or Treasures? What might be your contribution, your Civic Duty or Civic Pleasure?”
— www.lindahesh.com

With each installation, Hesh photographs citizens standing in for the missing “i” and records their statements about the meaning of civic life:

The result is a diverse portrait of the citizens of Arlington whose pictures and statements are collected and posted at reimaginecivic.com. For more on our plans to promote this exhibit, watch this space.

The concept is simple — the meaning is anything but.

Being somewhat of a word nerd, I looked up the origin of civic and found that the word’s original use was in “civic garland, crown, etc., translating Latin corona civica, denoting a garland of oak leaves and acorns given in ancient Rome to a person who saved a fellow citizen’s life.”

That seems about right. We live in community and we need and depend upon one another for our health, our safety and our prosperity. From the services the government provides to keep us cared for, to the individual acts of kindness each of us dispenses each day, we demonstrate empathy and gratitude for what each of us brings to community life.

Putting others before ourselves is a big ask and not easy to do. And yet, our well-being demands that we do so. Several years ago, sociologist Robert Putnam bemoaned the diminution of social capital – the ties that bind us – in his classic, “Bowling Alone.” From data and interviews conducted over a quarter century, Putnam documented reductions in community engagement (voting, family dinners, singing in choral groups) that have led to an overall “dissing” of community life resulting in disaffection, disenfranchisement and disappointment. In “Better Together,” Putnam described the potential for rebooting engagement and, not surprisingly, called out the pivotal role of the public library in rejuvenating communities.

Which brings me back to why the “wintering” of Put the i in Civic at Central Library is particularly apt.

I can think of no better place than this place, which welcomes and protects all comers of all ages, all beliefs, all experiences, all countries of origin. All day and every day. At the heart of every vibrant community is a strong and dynamic public library. The staff and I at Arlington Public Library don’t take that for granted, and neither should you.

And for the record, there are two “i”s in Civic. Which means You and Me. Together.

And while you’re at it? Put the “i” in Arlington and help make us all wiser, healthier and happier.

From all of us to all of you, thank you for your support in making this the best public library anywhere – and best wishes for a bright new year.

Don’t Touch That Dial 2017

The Library Director’s Annual Holiday Music Yule Blog

Thanksgiving has come and gone which means it’s time to dust off the annual “Don’t Touch That Dial” holiday mix.

I’ve been creating this playlist since 2008, and it’s one of the things I most look forward to. You’ll find there’s a little something for everyone in this one, including tunes by musicians we lost this year – Chuck Berry, Tom Petty, Glen Campbell, and David Cassidy, RIP. Enjoy.

All of us at Arlington Public Library believe we are lucky to live and work in a community that is welcoming, tolerant, curious and compassionate. And that wholeheartedly supports its libraries. From all of us to all of you, we are grateful for your support and wish you a safe and happy holiday season and bountiful new year.

We leave you with the chorus from one of my all-time favorite songs, John Lennon’s “Imagine,” the last song on this year’s playlist. Released as a single in October of 1971, the words are as resonant today as they were then.

“You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one”

With all good wishes,
Diane

Director's Blog

“Too Cool for Yule” 2018