Arlington Public Library

Everyone Has A Story

Yu-hsin Hsu: Growing Generosity

Everyone Has A Story

Yu-hsin Hsu, Library Garden Volunteer, and friend

"It would take some work, but if we start soon we could have a new garden in that unused space by spring." - Yu-hsin Hsu

Several years ago, when Yu-hsin Hsu moved from the Courthouse neighborhood to Virginia Square, and started using the Central Library instead of the Plaza Branch Library, she also took note of the Central Library gardens.

So when she happened to pass by the Library’s native pollinator garden and saw a staff member weeding, she offered to help - and has not stopped helping since, eventually taking over the care of the pollinator garden.  (This garden is particularly special to Library staff, as it was created and nurtured by former coworker Lynn Kristianson, who died in 2015.)

An ardent supporter of Arlington’s natural resources, Yu-hsin Hsu has also volunteered with Long Branch Nature Center, the Natural Resources Management Unit and Arlington Regional Master Naturalists. As a result of her combined volunteer work, in 2017 the County Board honored her as one of two of that year's recipients of the Bill Thomas Outstanding Park Service Volunteer Award.

Yu-hsin continues her oversight of the pollinator garden, making improvements each season. She has extended her care of Central Library's green spaces to the native plant garden at the 10th Street entrance, and recently built two new rotating compost bins as well.

Her work also helps other local gardeners. When she and her colleagues thin plants from our pollinator garden, those plants are then available for transplant to other gardens. This fall, the Thomas Jefferson Middle School's teaching garden recently inherited a car load of button bush, iron weed, swamp milkweed, blue flag, copper iris, blue mist flower, mountain mint, sundrops, golden ragwort and black eyed susan!

 

Susan Parker: Friend of Books

Everyone Has A Story

Headshot of Susan Parker

“I love working with books first, but that is closely followed by working with a very engaging and bright group of people."

With a Library degree, and a passion for Russian history and Scandinavian mysteries, Parker has spent the past 9 years lending her talents to the  Friends of the Arlington Public Library's all-volunteer book donation team. She says of her fellow volunteers, whom she clearly enjoys working with, "We have a team of 18 and fill daytime shifts 7 days a week. It is both intellectually and physically challenging.”

When she's not volunteering, her days are filled with helping to care for her two granddaughters, knitting, indulging in local culture and planning her next cruise to Copenhagen via the Russian Arctic.

Parker, who has called Arlington her home since 1981, advises others who want to make a difference:

“There are many good opportunities. I recommend volunteering at a library book sale as a start—it is so much fun.”

Diane Kresh: On Coming Out

Everyone Has A Story


"Before there was a 'coming out,' there was a coming of age."

"To me, a relative latecomer to this party, it means something more. It means standing up for yourself. It means opening yourself up to risk and disappointment. It means finding your voice, and speaking out with that voice, and not only when it's safe to do so. It means telling yourself you can, when everyone else says you can't, or shouldn't."

Listen as Arlington Public Library Director Diane Kresh tells her moving coming out story at Arlington County's 2017 Pride Celebration.

Zadie Smith: Empathetic Voyeur

On October 4, 2018, author Zadie Smith reflected on writing, the state of the novel, and many other things:

On whether the novel will persist, or be replaced by some other form: “I think it’s already happening now… I’m not one of those people who is desperate about the state of the novel.”

On radical empathy: “I think women are extremely able to imagine themselves into other people’s lives.”

On different forms of storytelling: “I think of actors as writers with less control over themselves.”

On social media: “To add another layer of curation, of idea, I can’t live in that. I can’t do it. My feeling of life is so foreshortened, that there isn’t time to get to the next thing before I go, that the idea of spending that time inside something Mark Zuckerberg made, is just – I can’t do it.”

On Brexit: “If it wasn’t such a disastrous thing for so many people’s lives, it is comic instruction.  They’re having to lay down medical supplies as if we’re in a war. they’ll have to redo electricity between Northern Ireland and England, because there’ll be no electricity for Northern Ireland. Planes might not land. A comedian described it as watching a country punch itself in the face. It’s absolutely extraordinary, I’ve been away for so long that it has an air of surreality to me but of course to all my family, and everyone else over there, it’s unbelievable.”

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