My new business card is unlike any I have ever carried or been issued. On March 14, 2019, I took the oath and bent the knee, agreeing to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California” and began my term on the Los Altos / Los Altos Hills Library Commission through September 2021.
This is an honor, validating a Dream. After forty years of labor in writing, marketing, business development, and sales, any affirmation of service to the community is welcome.
I don’t need to state the obvious – libraries are special. When my family had no money, we had library cards and the smell and the texture of a very used library book. You experience the inner smugness radiating from completing a five-hundred page book. Maybe you escape childhood and adolescent fears and slights through literature.
It all comes back to me every time I step into a library and has never left me.
Like many Americans last year, I became involved in local politics. Combining my need to walk with my door-to-door meat selling skills, I must have knocked on over 1,000 doors in a 10,000 household city. I spoke to everyone who was kind enough to answer the door. Every day I made a new good friend, not necessarily of like political mind. Through it, I emphasized the need for people to involve themselves, no matter where they fell on the political spectrum. Above all else, you must speak up and vote.
A seat on the Library Commission opened up and I applied. This was my answer to the main question on my application, a compendium of life experience, beliefs, and lucky breaks.
What particular skills, abilities or background do you feel you would bring to this commission?
My first story appeared in the San Diego Reader when I was 17, published my first week at university. My first steady job after graduating from UC San Diego was proofreading the TOPGUN manual used at Miramar. I moved to the Santa Clara Valley in 1982 where I did seminal work around online publishing while at FMC. I went to Sun Microsystems when the network became the Computer and Adobe when pdf spec was written and Adobe Photoshop became Adobe Photoshop. I backed up my work experience with an MBA and a JD from Santa Clara University while working full time and helping parent our kids.
As a library user, I know how the processes work. I use the County Library system at least weekly, both online and in person. I have spent hours at the Los Altos library working and studying. As an author, two of my works are on the shelf in the county system; a translation of a play by Victor Hugo called Hernani, and a book I wrote called selling to steve jobs, written about, selling to Steve Jobs when he was at NeXT Computer, right before he returned to Apple.
As a resident, I love my city and I want to give back. Serving on the Library Commission would be a treasured privilege which I would consider a capstone on my American journey – an honor for an immigrant who learned English at 6 and went on to earn two advanced degrees, twenty years apart, while getting to work with people who put helped define publishing as we know it today – Steve Jobs, John Warnock, and Chuck Geschke.
And so the City Council appointed me to the commission. Now the work begins. What is a library in 2019? How I can best tell the City Council how to better meet the needs of their constituents? Many questions spawning many possible answers.
Everyone has a Library Story – and this is mine – lucky to work with modern-day Gutenbergs, melding information, reading, writing, and learning – playing with the clay on the keyboard – being a writer and maker, earning my way through Sun, Adobe, and IBM by writing my way through slideware and spreadsheets, literature themselves. Under stress, I read and write. Forged and hardened in libraries, my pen and reading glasses are always at the ready.
Great link supplied by David L on another channel. I listened to it. I am now going to put a hold on this book! https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/palaces-for-the-people/ — “Eric Klinenberg is the author of a book called Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life. The phrase “palaces for the people” actually comes from Andrew Carnegie who was known as a titan of the Gilded Age and one of the wealthiest people in the world when he lived.”
Pierre, I love your story about libraries! There is nothing like a collection of books, I remember as a child going into the local county library and being spellbound by the number of volumes. In high school I began and ended my day in the library. It was the Roget’s Thesaurus of knowledge. I read news magazines, memorized parts of “A Midsummer’s Night Dreams.” In college it seemed that every building on campus had a library, but there was nothing like the Main Library that had 9 million books and “stacks” where you could get lost in antiquity and use the study carols away from any distractions. Or the rare book library where you had to use gloves or special paper for bookmarks while working on one’s thesis.
I’m reminded that the Library of Congress was recreated, after being burned by the British in the War of 1812, buy buying Thomas Jefferson’s personal library of over six thousand books created over half a century, for about $24K. Now Jefferson always lived beyond his means, but that didn’t stop him from buying more books. He wrote to John Adams, “I cannot live without books.”
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