Tag Archives: san antonio public library foundation

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Library Foundation flapping red cape for the bullish on books

"Toro Obscuro," Joel Salcido, poster artist for San Antonio Book Festival 2013,

“Toro Obscuro,” Joel Salcido, poster artist for San Antonio Book Festival 2013, http://www.joelsalcidogallery.com/

A full day of readings by recently published Texas authors is on the horizon for Saturday, April 13. No need to steel yourself for a drive up I-35 because the San Antonio Public Library Foundation is bringing a fresh edition of the Texas Book Festival here to the Central Library and the Southwest School of Art for seven hours of readings, discussions and signings.

logoThe preliminary schedule is so packed I assembled links to resolve (or attempt to resolve) conflicting pulls among the readings in advance. Definitely check the official website for updates before heading downtown:

All Day

  • Book Sales
  • Coloring Station, Painting Bookmarks; H-E-B Children’s Area
  • Latino Leadership for the Library En Nuestras Palabras: My Story Van, Stories on the Porch, Create A Story, Meet the Story Tellers, Stories are Milagros for the Future; Central Library Plaza Walk

10 a.m.

10:45 a.m.

  • Elaine Scott (Buried Alive!: How 33 Miners Survived 69 Days Deep Under the Chilean Desert); Children’s Area, Central Library
  • Storytelling with Sarah Loden; H-E-B Children’s Area

going-clear-cover11 a.m.

11:15 a.m.

  • Celebrating Small-Town Texas Souls with Liza Palmer and Lynda Rutledge; Moderator, Josie Seeligson; Southwest School of Art, Ursuline Campus

11:30 a.m.

SweetOnTexasNoon

12:15 p.m.

12:30 p.m.

  • A Sense of Birthplace: Investigating the Past: Beatriz de la Garza and Sarah Cortez; Moderator, Yvette Benavides; Southwest School of Art, Navarro Campus

oleander12:45 p.m.

1 p.m.

  • Sandra Cisneros performs from Have You Seen Marie?; Moderator, John Phillip Santos; Central Library

I always tell people that I became a writer not because I went to school but because my mother took me to the library.

Sandra Cisneros

job-cover1:45 p.m.

2 p.m.

2:15 p.m.

alicia2:30 p.m.

2:45 p.m.

  • At War Over the Environment: Two Experts on the Politics of Parks and the Natural World with George Bristol and Char Miller; Moderator, Weir Labatt; Southwest School of Art, Navarro Campus

3 p.m.

  • Esmeralda Santiago on Conquistadora; Moderator, José Rubén De León, Central Library
  • For readers of Young Adult fiction: Summer of the Mariposas with Guadalupe Garcia McCall; Moderator, Yvette Benavides; Southwest School of Art, Navarro Campus
  • Thinking caps and creativity crowns; H-E-B Children’s Area

3:15 p.m.

4 p.m.

4:15 p.m.

site-map

An incredible agenda for a first-time event (May there be many more).

Of course you will need breaks, so there will be children’s activities and music throughout the day.

And nourishing your mind makes you hungry, so some of San Antonio’s favorite food trucks will be parked nearby for refueling.

Hmm, this is San Antonio. Wonder where the beer stand is….

cafeNote to Austinites: Your turn to hit I-35.

Note to Self: Never get so excited about something you decide to post the whole schedule – with custom links – again.

And thanks to the Mister Barista for that caffe corretto blast.

April 12, 2013, Update:

Just received the schedule for the Latino Leadership for the Library area just outside the Central Library, and it adds another slew of author appearances.

latino-leadership2

latino-leadership

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’1,2,3. What do you see?’ Too many toucans to count.

And the hardest part of counting must have been choosing what colorful images to include in 1, 2, 3, Sí! A Numbers Book in English and Spanish. The partners creating this new bilingual board book had to narrow down what to count from the immense holdings of the San Antonio Museum of Art.

Can’t imagine how they managed. And never have Pre-Columbian earthenware babies looked so appealing and downright ticklish, or a combination of images of eight animals from artisans of different centuries from five different countries seemed so logical.

With the assistance of many donors, the San Antonio Public Library Foundation provides the more than 25,000 babies born in Bexar County each year with their first books. Shortly after the newborns arrive, the books are delivered in the hospital to their parents in a Born To Read tote bag that also contains a Library card application and a map of branch locations throughout San Antonio.

Fluffy rabbit from "Pat the Bunny"

A baby’s first books are so important in starting a child off in the direction of a life-long love of learning. If a book is fun and appealing, a baby will want it read again and again. And again and again.

Our daughter wore out her first copy of Dorothy Kunhardt’s Pat the Bunny, but could not bear to be parted from it. We were forced to buy a second copy and perform countless more readings. Alas though, soon “Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair.” We finally had to alter the words for the second over-petted rabbit to “Love the poor bald bunny,” foreshadowing her impending graduation to The Velveteen Rabbit.

The Library Foundation changes the books in the Born To Read bags every other year so families with more than one child receive different books. The idea to create a book based on the San Antonio Museum of Art’s collection was inspired by My First ABC.  Each letter in this bright board book is illustrated by a work of art drawn from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, from Paul Cezanne’s “Apples” to an X-shaped painting by Frank Stella.

The expertise of Trinity University Press was tapped to publish 1, 2, 3, Sí! The bright and colorful look of the book was designed by Madeleine Budnick, with photography by Peggy Tenison.

While promoting counting, bilingual literacy and art, 1, 2, 3, Sí! contains smaller-font hints for parents, grandparents, sibling and sitters to use the images for additional interaction. For example, the pages containing ten masks prompts “Which mask would you like to try on?,” with options including a rabbit mask from Mexico, a dog mask from Ecuador and a spirit figure from Papua New Guinea. A mesmerizing pair of eyes from an Egyptian coffin provides an opportunity for playing peek-a-boo.

Other suggestions for stimulating babies’ growing minds will be found in a companion activity booklet being designed by César Proa of Proa Design. Trinity University Press is creating a website – www.123-si.com - with ten related coloring and activity pages for teachers or parents to download and print.

Mayor Julián Castro officially will unveil all of these during a Family Launch on Saturday, September 10, at the Museum of Art. Families need only show their library cards to gain free admission to the museum during the event.

While the publication of 1, 2, 3, Sí! is exciting, there is more to come. The partners promise board books focusing on colors, shapes and animals will soon follow.

For those of us with no babies being born in San Antonio hospitals, 1, 2, 3, Sí! will retail for $7.95. 

Born to Read from SAPLF on Vimeo.

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Lost and Found Art and a Closing Celebration

As an architect, he has received recognition from the Texas Society of Architects; and his annotated drawings of San Antonio landmarks are part of the Historic American Buildings Survey published in the 1980s.  His 1985 poster design for Fiesta San Antonio Commission was one of my favorites. 

These things are but small parts of Roland Rodriguez’s past he would prefer I not share.  It is not like I am revealing any sordid secrets, but I feel as though I am betraying him by mentioning things from a quarter of a century ago even in passing.

Roland emailed me:

Generally I refrain from re-stating the past.  When I do it is usually in non-specific terms.  I’m not too fond of being tied to dates or places.  People seem to think they know something about you with that kind of information and to me it just misses the real truth in living life.

Artists participating in an event such as San Antonio’s Luminaria Arts Night design their site-specific art well aware of its ephemeral nature.  But Roland created two murals in San Antonio he thought would be enduring.   

One combined San Antonio’s landmarks in what itself became a landmark – “Victory and Triumph” – clearly visible in HemisFair Park and to drivers traveling north on the interstate.  Roland’s work had been selected through a competitive design process I had worked on with Dianne Powell when she was executive director of the now-extinct San Antonio Business Committee for the Arts.

Installation of the mural cost close to $100,000, much more than we had anticipated, because of the rough texture of the southern walls of the Arena.  “What Arena?,” you might ask.  The Arena deemed unsuitable for renovation that was torn down, its former site now covered by the continually expanding Convention Center. 

The late David Anthony Richelieu wrote about the mural’s uncertain future in his October 22, 1996, column in the San Antonio Express-News: 

When it was announced the Arena would be razed to expand the Convention Center, city officials and staff promised the mural would find a new home at the expanded convention complex.  Last Friday, I went out to Kell Munoz Wigodsky Architects for an update on the latest design work of the $175 million expansion project. 

At one point I asked:  “And where’s the mural going?”  That eventually prompted the architectural equivalent of “Houston, we have a problem.”  City staff and officials, however, insist the design team was formally told to incorporate the mural into the new complex and are certain it will be done.”

Well, it was not done.  Although the panels were photographed (wish I had some of those photos to share) and carefully removed by the City, they never have resurfaced. 

Riding up the escalator under Dale Chihuly‘s shimmering “Fiesta” in the Central Library, it still feels miraculous that words I put on paper for a grant for the San Antonio Public Library Foundation translated into something so incredibly beautiful.  On the other hand, I am saddened my work on the mural competition seems to have been completed in invisible ink.  PASA,  the “Winged Victory” and mission spires of Roland’s mural truly merit resurrection. 

The location of the second mural, which was privately commissioned, is more mysterious.  The late  Arthur P. “Hap” Veltman asked Roland to create the “River Corridor Mural” for a pedestrian linkage he opened in the 1980s between Losoya and Alamo Streets in the Alamo Plaza South project.  Downtowners became accustomed to utilizing the shortcut in an otherwise long block to pick up a sandwich from Elton Moy or access shops at Rivercenter.  They regarded both the pedestrian walkway and the mural as public, but, alas, they were not.

While the visionary Hap was willing to maintain public right of way through expensive Alamo Plaza real estate, more practical successive owners found that of little appeal.  The pathway is now the entrance and enclosed courtyard of Pat O’Brien’s, and locating the mural might require an art sleuth as persistent as Clarence Epstein.  

 

From 6 to 8 p.m. on Wednesday, March 31, C4 Workspace, located at 108 King William Street behind the Filling Station Cafe, will be the site for a celebration of not only Roland’s current artwork, an exhibit closing that day, but of the fact that Roland is able to continue to create art at all.

Here is Roland’s story:

Last year (almost exactly 12 month ago) I was in the emergency room in the best hospital in Oakland at 3 a.m. undergoing a spinal tap.  This was after collapsing at my friend’s home (I’d driven from Los Angeles to San Francisco the day before, in spite of feeling horrible.). 

The level of protein in his spinal fluid led Roland’s neurologist to diagnose his condition as Guillain-Barre, which affects only one in every 100,000 people.  Roland continues:

The following day (less than eight hours later) I started aspirating as my lungs started failing.  Emergency intubation with induced coma as everything started shutting down.

According to the National Institutes of Health:

Guillain-Barré syndrome is a disorder in which the body’s immune system attacks part of the peripheral nervous system. The first symptoms of this disorder include varying degrees of weakness or tingling sensations in the legs. In many instances the weakness and abnormal sensations spread to the arms and upper body. These symptoms can increase in intensity until certain muscles cannot be used at all and, when severe, the patient is almost totally paralyzed. In these cases the disorder is life threatening - potentially interfering with breathing and, at times, with blood pressure or heart rate….

Roland spent nine days in a coma:

Waking up in the ICU I had a sense of coming upon a vast prairie after living my entire life in a forest.  With the sense of rebirth came the realization that I could barely move.  A sobering moment for someone used to walking eight miles every day and relying on manual dexterity for many creative activities.

Regaining movement was a slow process.  King William neighbors watched his determined progress from barely walking with a cane to sitings blocks away. 

Concrete Abstractions on display at C4 represents his return.  Join in the celebration on Wednesday and experience his artwork with newfound recognition that this art could have been lost as well.

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Books so flavorful you can taste them

A sold-out barge full of women laughing their way around the river bend launches the San Antonio Public Library Foundation’s 2010 round of Literary Feasts, which translate literature into words you want to eat.  Diane Mathews and JoAnn Boone are hosting tonight’s floating feast based on the ultimate feel-good book for women, The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin.  Ironically, though, Rubin recently blogged that she is far from being a foodie:

I must confess that I have very little interest in the ruling passion of Julia Child’s life. Food has never been very interesting to me. I love certain foods, of course, but I like very plain food best. I don’t get much of a kick from visiting new restaurants, or from eating a wonderfully cooked meal. Some people love exploring farmers’ markets or learning about how foods’ origins or cooking – not me. One of the sad aspects of a happiness project, for me, was to Be Gretchen and to admit to myself that this area of experience, so vibrant for so many people, leaves me cold.

Fortunately, JoAnn and Diane are, and so is Jason Dady.  Dady is opening four of his restaurants for feasts, with the first one at Insignia in the Fairmount on Tuesday, March 23, focused on a book firmly fixated on food, High Bonnet: A Novel of Epicurean Adventures by Idwal Jones.  According to Publishers Weekly:

This is a novel about food with a capital F, about meals, extravagant meals, had in fine dining rooms, country gardens and filthy taverns alike. As Anthony Bourdain (author of Kitchen Confidential) says in an introduction, in this book “everyone” from Jean-Marie’s confectioner uncle to the Gypsy coppersmith who mends the kitchen pots “is a gourmet or a gourmand, racing through life oblivious to all creature comforts but the pursuit of flavor.”

Celtic music, Irish food and plenty of spirits will be featured in the feast hosted by Joan Cheever and Trisha Tobin on April 15.   McCarthy’s Bar: A Journey of Discovery in Ireland serves as the inspiration for the dinner.  MacMillian describes author Pete McCarthy’s approach to his journey:

…traveling through spectacular landscapes, but at all times obeying the rule, “never pass a bar that has your name on it,” he encounters McCarthy’s bars up and down the land, meeting fascinating people before pleading to be let out at four o’clock in the morning.

Erasing the stereotype that all children are picky eaters is the thrust of Nancy Tringali Piho’s My Two-Year-Old Eats Octopus, the theme of Dady’s family-friendly feast on April 17 at Two Bros. BBQ Market.  AP writer Michele Kayal described Phio’s book:  ”If you’re bent on raising a gourmet, this is your Dr. Spock.”

In a Publishers Weekly post, Frances Mayes writes,  “The happiness that suffuses my Tuscan days drove my pen.”  It drove her pen to describe many a good meal in Under the Tuscan Sun, the theme for a feast at Dady’s Tre Trattoria on May 18.  Note to self:  After returning from Merida, head to Tre for my favorite meal to split with Lamar -  grilled radicchio; goat cheese, pistachio and balsamic cippolini pizza; and, for dessert, a grilled peach with marscapone.

Other dinners include South Pacific on May 6 at Zinc Wine and Champagne Bar; Napa: the Story of An American Eden  on June 22 at Bin 555; and The Great Gatsby on July 27 at The Lodge.  Jill Giles Design created appetizing “bookplates” as the online invitations for each feast.

Proceeds from the Literary Feasts benefit the San Antonio Public Library Foundation.