The main fundraiser for the San Mateo Library Foundation, the Seventh annual Author’s Gala, will be Saturday, May 5 at the Peninsula Golf and Country Club. This year’s proceeds will support a Ten-Year Roadmap Project, which will meet the evolving needs of our community, and facilitate the first phase of the project: to enhance the children’s space in the main library, allowing for greater programing and services for our youth and update the reception areas at the Hillsdale and Marina branches. Yes, there will still be books, lots of them, in different sizes, languages. Books for children, for teens, for adults and for the visually impaired.
Last year’s panel on the future of the library in the digital age agreed that libraries were now more important than ever before. Children need to see, feel and read books before they became entrenched in hand-held devices. And a major part of the renovation will be a more exciting children’s library. The panel also suggested that libraries needed some places for people to work together, more places for people to work alone but still be with others. More places for other creative activities (Councilman Eric Rodriguez created a startup with a friend at the library several years ago). The original architects for the award-winning facility have now redesigned some areas to meet these and other needs and they will be implemented as the modernization moves forward. The cafe will be moved to the lobby. The teen area will be expanded. And much more.
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This year’s author is Julie Lythcott-Haims, the author of “Real American” and “How to Raise An Adult.” She was dean of freshmen and undergraduate advising at Stanford University. She has a bachelor’s degree from Stanford, a doctorate from Harvard Law School, and an master’s of fine arts in writing from the California College of the Arts. She will be discussing her most recent book, “Real American” which tells her personal story as an only child of an African-American father and a white British mother. Her father was a prominent public health expert. President Carter appointed him as assistant surgeon general with responsibility for running the Health Services Administration in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare in 1977. Here’s how her story begins: “As a child growing up in the seventies and early eighties in New York, Wisconsin, and Northern Virginia, there was something about my skin color and hair texture that snagged the attention of white children and adults. Their need to make sense of me — to make something of sense out of nonsensical me — was pressing.”
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Millbrae Mayor Gina Papan, San Mateo Deputy Mayor Diane Papan and San Mateo Councilman Joe Goethals will be the auctioneers. The Literary Society, which is an auxiliary to the San Mateo Library Foundation, is in charge of the event.
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Kathryn Dwyer, Diane Ervin and Keren Kotowitz are Gala co-chairs. Their committee includes Sarah Block, Pam Casey, Aileen Catanzarita, Michele Freed, Terri Garnick, Marni Gerber, Alexandra Gillen, Susan Graham, Shelley Goldberg, Annette Kranzier, Kim Lazarus, Amy Liou, Heather McLean, Mimi Mornell, Tea Rajic, Suzanne Simms, Marian Sosnick, Lori Tamura-Chinn, Wendy Voorsanger, Rada Zarandian and Stephanie Zheng. Information on how to support or underwrite the SMPL Foundation Seventh Annual Author’s Gala can be found on the library’s website smlibraryfoundation.org/gala.
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Congratulations to state Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, for winning the Ruth Petersen award for Sustainable San Mateo County. Hill was an early supporter of the organization when it was founded by the late Ruth Petersen (way ahead of her time) in the living room of her San Mateo Highlands home. Hill, during his time in public office, has been in the forefront of support for all those good things which make a community sustainable.
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Keep the discussion civilized. Absolutely NO personal attacks or insults directed toward writers, nor others who make comments.
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