The Silent Film Lounge Cemetery Project: Los Angeles
On Facebook: This is a volunteer group to clean the area around silent film stars graves in the Los Angeles area, and to plant flowers and plants to beautify their plots. Above is some of the work we have done at Hollywood Forever.
(We are in need of people to water one time per month) if you are in the Los Angeles area…
Please message the Group Admin for details, or would just like to help us water the plants, please join.
Today was my final day volunteering in the Furniture, Textiles and Fashion Department at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Snapshots of my summer: oak, prints, reading, spreadsheets, cupboards, Virgil Solis, fountain, walnut, roundels, fashion, stores, visitors, trains, light fittings, lute strings, galleries, hunting, clocks, Art, memory, history, databases, and beautiful beautiful things.
Docent Marilee explains the history of the gardens. Weekly tours take place on Sundays during the garden season and focus on history or horticulture. On one Sunday a month Stephen Byrns, the president of the Untermyer Gardens Conservancy leads a special President’s Tour.
Last week I did a live zoom drawing session with a young patient from the LAC +USC medical center with the Lollipop Theatre network and this the sketch I did with them. It was great way to give back in creating some happiness for kids who are in the hospital right now and can’t receive in personal visitors. #artistsoninstagram #volunteer #lollipoptheatrenetwork #giveback #drawing #procreate #visdevartist #doodle #socialdistancing #draw #huladancer #figuredrawing #characterdesign https://www.instagram.com/p/B-S7W33jFux/?igshid=1jrg24kds4ri4
So it’s worth noting that librarian twitter got salty as HELL about this because, to whit:
WANT THIS? GIVE THE LIBRARIES MORE DAMN MONEY.
As one account put it “you get 24/hr libraries when you pay for 24/hr libraries”.
(Worth noting that many places in the US particularly pay librarians like shit - like “minimum wage for a profession that requires a Masters” shit - fund libraries worse, and generally speaking libraries are already literally open as long as they can actually scrape up the money to be open. So yeah: people got touchy.)
It’s also worth noting that if your local library has any money to do this shit? THEY PROBABLY ALREADY DO.
Look up their adult programs. Go suggest some partnerships. You know what one of the biggest impediments to evening programs and programming is? NOBODY SHOWS UP.
worth noting that people who would like to hang out at a library 24/7 have no control over their wages and probably do all they can to vote in ways that support their local libraries
so jizzing your anger all over them does nothing? to? solve? the problem? they’re just expressing an opinion
calm down, jessica
Actually they have quite a bit of influence. They can, as noted, SHOW UP to adult oriented programs. (I’m not kidding when I say that lack of interest is a killer.)
They can actually make sure they know what their local library’s hours are (many do not, and indeed the threads at twitter and to some extent this one make that pretty clear), and write to and even participate in the local bodies involved in funding (voting being far, far from the only way you can actually influence civic politics), as well as participating in many libraries as a volunteer (which, gosh, might make one feel needed as well), particularly in the literal conversation programs featured in many libraries designed to do exactly what OP is talking about.
So maybe can it, Karen.
My library does all it can to get adults to come in, and doesn’t have the budget to pay more than a handful of librarians for full time work - everyone else does the work, but part time and minimum wage. I say this up front so you know - the librarians aren’t somehow Sucking Up The Money.
We do movie showings where we offer free soda and popcorn, all you can drink or eat. We do craft events (everything from instant pot to knitting to stargazing) and rentable kits that have everything from gopros to backgammon. We have a computer room free to any patron that wants to use it. We copy and fax and for two months we have volunteer accountants doing free tax help to anyone that needs it. We have a sizeable movie collection in addition to books that patrons can check out. We’ve offered museum discounts and blood drives and zoo tickets and events where little kids can climb on fire trucks. We run classes - free by the way - to teach adults and kids how to use programs and how to surf the internet and how to use computers in general. We run events where local civic services meant to help people who need it all come together so they can tell people who they are and what they offer. We even have running subscriptions to a few dozen magazines and about two dozen local area newspapers, most of which are available via apps if you enter your library card number so you don’t even need to come into the library to read them.
We try to tell people this stuff via twitter, facebook, city-run web pages with big old calendars on them, even the odd radio ad.
And we are a rural library, literally a hundred miles from anywhere, running on a shoestring budget and librarians dedicated enough to do the work on not-even-subsistence level wages.
Before y’all knock libraries for not being open 24/7 maybe go find out what your library and the ones near enough to it that your own zip code will let you get a card, are actually already doing. Because I’ve been to libraries that could afford to (and thus did) offer a hell of a lot more than this.
