The Library as a Lighthouse

Have you visited the library lately?  Have you borrowed any books or media?  Declining numbers are a way to justify cuts to the library, so it is critical to keep those numbers up.  If you need a reason to visit, Saturday is Lighthouse to the Bayfront Day right next door to the library, so please make plans to visit the Blasco if you are taking a tour.  This event isn’t sponsored by the library, but what a cool metaphor for the library and what a great excuse to swing by the library either before or after a tour and check out a book!  The Blasco is truly a lighthouse of our community and a wonderful piece of our bayfront that everyone can enjoy.  It provides a powerful light for all of us.  Please make sure it continues as a beacon for generations to come!

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“To be a lighthouse, you must be strong enough to resist every kind of storm, to every kind of loneliness and you must have a powerful light inside you!”

~Mehmet Murat Ildan

Don’t Be Like Bonnie Tyler

Unless you are a Gen Xer or older, you may not have heard of Bonnie Tyler. It is possible you may have heard her hit song this past summer in conjunction with the eclipse, “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” One of her hit songs from the 80s is from the movie, Footloose,—the original, not the remake (to Gen X, the only Footloose). It’s called “Holding Out for a Hero.” Well, KOLPers, that something we don’t have the luxury of doing. No one is coming to save us or our beloved Blasco Library. This is something we must do ourselves. We have to be our own heroes. If you have already donated to our legal fund, thank you and please consider giving again. If you haven’t donated, be your own hero and donate today. Otherwise, you might discover another one of Bonnie Tyler’s hits: “It’s a Heartache.” We’ve raised $30k so far. Let’s keep that momentum going!

For those younger than Gen X, our hair really did look like that in the 80s, and MTV really had music videos like these.

Don’t hold out for a hero. Be your own hero and please donate to our legal fund.

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“Heroes are ordinary people who make themselves extraordinary.”

~Gerard Way

Word of Wisdom from Jimmy Kimmel

I shared this in one of our original KOLP newsletters, and recycling is a good thing, right? Things have been a little heavy lately, and sometimes you need a good laugh to keep you going, so please watch and enjoy: Let’s Not Throw Librarians in Jail!

If you had a laugh and it made you think, please consider donating to our legal fund to dissolve the lease at the Blasco Memorial Library.

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“Shhhhhhh!”

~A Librarian

Promises

So true. “Promises” by public officials include their official actions: laws, ordinances, codes…and dedications. When leaders live up to their promises, it helps to build trust all the way around.

The public trust is non-negotiable. “Inviolable,” you might say. Back at Christmastime 1996, we placed OUR trust in a large group of Erie area leaders, including the Bishop of the Erie Diocese and the President of Gannon University, who gathered to dedicate the newly built Blasco Memorial Library. Funded partly by generous donations, the Blasco Library is held in trust by elected officials, but it belongs to all of us.

Believing that the public trust was violated by the 2023 lease of the Blasco Library to Gannon University, we formed “Keep Our Library Public” (KOLP), and have sued to have the lease invalidated. Unchecked, it will certainly have future negative implications for libraries and other public spaces in Erie County. While we don’t presume to tell librarians how to run the library, we DO take exception to the people who are trying to give the library away to a private entity.

Erie County citizens can take a cue from other communities, who have joined together to defend their libraries, in some cases raising millions of dollars. Please join us. You can show your support especially by making a donation today to the KOLP Library legal defense fund. Join us today!

You can also help spread the word by downloaded flyers here: Promises flyers

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“The whole point of promises is to build TRUST. If there’s no trust, none of this is possible. No libraries, no roads, no power lines.”
~Mom, “Bluey” episode : Promises

Banned!

Libraries all across the country are facing challenges. There are book bans, closures, and farming out library spaces for other uses (sound familiar?), among other tactics to limit people’s access to literature and the free exchange of ideas. Here are some resources to help you observe Banned Books Week from September 22-28, 2024:

As an act of rebellion against restriction of free speech, pick up one of the books mentioned, and read it! Books are a wonderful way for kids and adults to not only see themselves, but to see others.

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https://www.etsy.com/listing/1495197378/a-book-worth-banning-book-lover

“A book worth banning is a book worth reading.”

~Issac Asimov

How Things Are Done in Ohio, part 2

A member that is a former Cleveland resident found yet another example of how they do things in Ohio. If you remember from our first Ohio post, the country executive holds Ohio in very high esteem when it comes to an example of how things should be done.

Cuyahoga County Public Library announces October groundbreaking for new Parma Heights branch

The new Parma Heights branch of the Cuyahoga County Public Library was designed after public feedback (WHAT?!) from 3 (YES, 3!!!) public input sessions on a “shovel-ready site” (yet another favorite catchphrase of the county executive that he wrongly attributes to himself–like below).

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“Let’s get to work.”

~President Barak Obama, November 9, 2012

Pick a number, any number

Fair season is coming to a close in NW PA, and if you’re missing the opportunity to play games of chance on the midway, you can still pick your lucky number, and Blasco Library can be the winner. Our RallyUp donation site has the option of recurring donations–along with remaining anonymous–so you can pick a smaller amount to continue giving every month. None of us is independently wealthy. It’s this grassroots effort that will help our legal fund continue to grow.

So what’s your lucky number?

  • $7 for the price Gannon is paying per square foot?
  • $10.90 for the percentage our property taxes increase?
  • $25 for the length of the lease?
  • $27.99–the average cost of a hardcover book?
  • $51 for the number of properties Gannon owns in the city of Erie?
  • $115 for the number of properties Gannon owns in Erie County?
  • $160–the address of Blasco Library?
  • $1913–the amount of monthly rent Gannon will be paying that is not even close to the going rate for Bayfront property?
  • Number of books you read?

Or you can choose your own lucky number. Just don’t choose the amount of property taxes that Gannon pays. Games of chance are fun, but we can’t take chances with our library. To set up a recurring donation, please use the RallyUp! button below. You can also make a one-time donation by going to our donate page.

RallyUp!

“It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.”

~E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web

How Things Are Done in Ohio

If you’ve ever spent any time on the Erie County Executive’s Facebook re-election page (and you have my sympathy because life is short, and you will never get that time back), you’ll know that he is constantly holding up Ohio as a shining example of how things “should” be done in Erie County.

One of KOLP’s members (and this is why I love this group–so much input on library issues) recently shared that the Mentor, OH Public Library has plans to enhance its main branch. Here is the link to those plans: Future of MPL’s Main Branch – FAQ. A few key takeaways from these enhancements: there is no space being leased to outside, tax-exempt, religious organizations, there is a plan to improve traffic flow, and the enhancements are based on the strategic plan which was created with public input: Mentor Public Library Strategic Plan. Can anyone say, “Irony?”

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“How can any man judge, unless his mind has been opened and enlarged by reading.”

~John Adams

A Tale of Two Cities

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Heck, it was a pandemic…it was the worst of times.

American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds were designed to help the country recover from the effects of the pandemic. For more information on how ARPA grants were to be distributed and the qualifications: State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds. Project NepTWNE was granted $1.5 million in ARPA funds to build a water research lab in the Union Fish Building as the ordinance was written: https://keepourlibrarypublic.com/faqs/#erie-county-documents-regarding-the-1-5-million-grant-to-gannon. Keep in mind these funds were granted to a private, religious university with a large endowment. Gannon still had remote classes during the pandemic: Gannon to pay $1.1 million to settle class-action suit over COVID-era remote instruction.

This has since morphed into a display at the Blasco Erie County Library instead of a research lab: https://www.gannon.edu/about-gannon/initiatives/project-neptwne/great-lakes-education-and-research-center/. Although Gannon’s marketing campaign states that it will include a NOAA Science on a Sphere, the lengthy application process was not started as of the public meetings for Project NepTWNE back in August.

Another project in town (Grow Erie at Savocchio Park. Urban agriculture site takes shape at Savocchio Park. When will it be ready?) was denied $750,000 by the county executive (Loss of funding puts Savocchio Park’s community garden ‘on the backburner’) Grow Erie is projected to generate $748,000 annually and create employment in a neighborhood that needs jobs and needed these funds. The people in this neighborhood didn’t have an endowment to fall back on during the pandemic.

So, we have a tale of two cities–one on the west side that could operate during the pandemic, one on the east side that could not. One that has an endowment, one that does not. One that got ARPA funds, the other that did not.

Please donate to fund our lawsuit.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way…”

~Charles Dickens

Reservations at the Library

Once Gannon gets their foot in the door…. They can book all the public meeting places in Blasco. They have full use of the entire library at no cost. They were given a lease which should have been approved by taxpayers AND the courts! Lawsuits are not free.
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https://keepourlibrarypublic.com/donate

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“Information helps you to see that you’re not alone. That there’s somebody in Mississippi and somebody in Tokyo who all have wept, who’ve all longed and lost, who’ve all been happy. So the library helps you to see, not only that you are not alone, but that you’re not really any different from everyone else.”

~Maya Angelou