What We're Reading: August 2024

Summer is over and what an epic summer we've had! From reading about Kamala Harris's historic democratic nomination for president, beginning with her 2003 run for SF DA and through to the celebratory selfies at the DNC; to the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, which saw the amazing placing of Cal and Stanford athletes, who outperformed some countries; to our own race for San Francisco mayor heating up (where do the candidates stand on public safety?)—there has been no lack of riveting articles to inform us. Nonetheless, this August edition of What We're Reading is serving up some articles to give a break from the exhilarating and exhausting news cycle we've been on. 

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The best livestream so far this year? A corpse flower slowly blooming

New Scientist, August 10, 2024

Read it in Flipster, an eMags platform courtesy of SFPL

For journalist Annalee Newitz, this was a favorite story to write this year. As they said on the social media platform Bluesky, "Plant time is the best way to get away from social media chaos." Watching the plant slowly grow day by day on livestream wasn't the only draw; spectators also got to watch the blossom's owner cut a small "window" in its spathe in order to be fertilized by pollen from a corpse flower in another state. After 13 years of growth, this corpse flower gave virtual watchers the ability to unplug from tech while using tech, and get pretty emotionally invested in the process.

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She Survived the Maui Wildfires. She Couldn’t Survive the Year After.

New York Times, Aug 21, 2024 

This story, which is available to SFPL patrons through the weblink above rather than in any print edition we can offer, follows the trajectory of wildfire refugee Edralina Diezon following the 2023 Lahaina fires in Hawaii. Having emigrated from her homeland of the Philippines to Lahaina in 2015, Diezon worked as a janitor at a local hotel and managed to survive the wildfires by sheltering there. But, as the article explores, getting help following the disaster was ultimately too difficult.

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SF Investor Uprooting Businesses

San Francisco Chronicle, Aug 20, 2024 

This disturbing piece by business and real estate reporter Laura Waxmann started ringing alarm bells in our neck of the woods as it doled out bad news for legacy businesses like the beloved restaurant La Med in the upper Fillmore. Good news came a few days later in an August 27 follow-up about proposed legislation from supervisor Aaron Peskin that would protect these businesses and was tempered by a contrarian piece in the SF Standard that ran August 26. Update 9/30: Investor in the project Neil Mehta counters the "sinister plan" in an SF Standard op ed.

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Gen-Z Is Killing the Curveball

FanGraphs, August 22, 2024 

Baseball writer Michael Baumann is a poet! In this online and openly accessible piece, he rhapsodizes about the disinvestment in the curveball by younger pitchers who prefer the slider for its efficiency. Baumann characterizes his beloved curveball as a "calligraphy brush, all swooping lines and fine control," while the "changeup is a Blackwing pencil, rich and precise, its marks here one moment and gone the next." The worse insult comes for the slider: it "is a crayon." Sports writing is anything but dull in this piece, which reads as a sext in praise of the finer nuances of a baseball's movement.

Recap: Bound Magazine Bingo Activity

On Saturday, August 24, the Magazines and Newspapers Center presented a program featuring an intriguing selection of magazines from SFPL's extensive archive of bound volumes. Presented in partnership with the Art, Music, and Recreation Center, the activity was called Bound Magazine Bingo, and participants were given bingo cards whose squares had different types of content you could expect to find in historic magazines. The objective was to find examples of the types of content on the bingo cards in the magazines in order to win a prize. 

What is a bound magazine? 

Magazines are published as individual issues per time interval (week, month, bi-monthly, etc.) and after a certain amount of issues have been published, the library's team sends them to a bindery to get combined into a single volume. Using the term "bound magazines" is meant to signify the historical characteristic of the object; if a magazine's issues have been around long enough to be bound, then it is no longer "current" and has passed into the realm of presumed historical significance. 

A participant looks through a volume of McCall's next to a book cart of bound magazines

How do you play bingo with bound magazines?

Rather than participants relying on a person calling numbers to mark on a bingo card, they are self-directed in attempting to find various content types in the magazines. The content types for which they search are indicated on the squares on the bingo cards, and participants mark off the content types they find with a highlighter. Those who mark off a row, column, or diagonal of squares can win a prize, and anyone who can achieve a "black-out card"--getting every single square--wins a grand prize.

Honestly though, participants just loved the ability to freely graze on the interesting selection of magazines on hand. 

Participants play bingo with bound magazines

What magazines were included? 

A librarian from the Art, Music, and Recreation Center at the Main Library curated the selection of magazines, and drew heavily on design magazines of all types. Anyone up for some Art Direction, Communication Arts, Step-by-Step Graphics, or Designers West? The selection also included staples from annals of American magazines like McCall's, Vogue, Thrasher, and Better Homes and Gardens. Special shout-out to the extremely historically significant magazine Soviet Life, volumes of which we had on hand for 1967 and 1980. 

>> See the full list of magazines.

You can request any of these magazines on the 5th floor of the Main Library even if you missed the bingo game! 

Two carts holdings the selection of bound magazines pulled for the game 

When is the next time the Bound Magazine Bingo activity will be offered?

Hopefully soon! Let us know a time that would work for your schedule in the comments. 

An example of one of three bingo cards!

Pistahan and a Webinar on Fire Safety for Filipino Americans

Pistahan

Last weekend some librarians from the Magazines and Newspapers Center visited the Pistahan Festival at Yerba Buena to meet publishers of Filipino newspapers like the Filipino-American Post and Philippine News Today as we gear up for FILAM, SFPL's Filipino American history celebration, in October. 

Two MNC librarians in front of the sign for the 2024 Pistahan Festival, August 10, 2024

Filipino American Post marketing and operations manager Edwina Aniag

 

It remains to be seen how we can collaborate with these Nor Cal newspapers, but we look forward to exploring getting the newspapers at SFPL and partnering to create interesting programming for SFPL patrons. 

Philippine American Press Club USA

We also met a wonderful person, Esther Chavez, former president of the Philippine American Press Club USA (PAPC). According to the PAPC website, the organization was "founded [in 1988] by former members of the National Press Club of the Philippines who had immigrated to the San Francisco Bay Area and saw the need for US based Filipino-American media group." 

While we hope to collaborate with Esther on future programs, her advocacy may already be useful to you! The PAPC has co-organized a webinar with PG&E about wildfire prevention, which will be in "Taglish," a combination of Tagalog and English, and will be moderated by Regina Venzon, Chief of Staff to the Chief Operating Officer at PG&E and proud Filipina. Esther will be a co-presenter along with Joseph Peralta, current president of PAPC and Vice President and General Manager for the Northern California Bureau of Asian Journal Publications. 

Wildfire prevention webinar focused on reaching Filipino American communities in NorCal

Tuesday, August 20 at 4 pm PDT
Zoom link: bit.ly/KaligtasanSaWildfirePGE
Attendee Dial-In: 1-312-626-6799
Conference ID: 844 9707 2353
Passcode: Mabuhay

You can also access the webinar through PG&E’s website, pge.com/webinars

During the webinar event, customers can: Learn about wildfire safety prevention improvements; Hear about resources available to support them; Connect with PG&E experts and ask questions.

Hope you can make it!

Post Tutorial Recap: The San Francisco Examiner Online

We hope you found the tutorial about using the San Francisco Examiner online useful, and if you didn't make it yesterday, no fear. You can now access the info shared during the webinar. 

Front page of the New Year's Eve 1899 issue of the Examiner, in where we learn reptile brain was also a 19th century insult

 

Use this information to access and search the San Francisco Examiner online, available with your San Francisco Public Library card, from the eNews and eMags webpage, or from this direct link to ProQuest.

Video Recording 

Access the recording of the tutorial.

 

PDF Handout

View and download the handout from the tutorial:

 

 

PDF Slides

View and download the slides from the tutorial:

 

 

Post Tutorial Recap: San Francisco Chronicle Online

Perhaps you joined us for the tutorial on using the San Francisco Chronicle online last week; perhaps you missed it. In any case we now present to you the recording of the webinar, the handout, and the slides. 

Use this information to access and search the San Francisco Chronicle online, available with your San Francisco Public Library card, from the eNews and eMags webpage, or from this direct link to NewsBank.

Video Recording 

Access the recording of the tutorial.

 

PDF Handout

View and download the handout from the tutorial:

 

 

PDF Slides

View and download the slides from the tutorial:

 

 

San Francisco Chronicle Goody Bags Raffle Winners 

We did the raffle draw at 4:55 pm on August 7, 2024 to select three winners of SF Chronicle goody bags. Winners have been contacted via email. 

A MNC librarian using a digital raffle spinner to select three winners of SF Chronicle goody bags.