The little free library that's always open

Take a book, return a book ...  a simple guiding premise.

I had just bought the November Monocle, the bookish and dense global briefing on international affairs and culture, from my favorite magazine shop, Issues, where they were holding a copy for me. As I walked back to retrieve my car that was parked less than 50 yards away, I came upon a small, colorful structure that resembled a miniature one-room school house.

A closer look revealed something totally unexpected to me. What I saw was a Little Free Library in front of the residence at 38 Glen Avenue, just off Piedmont Avenue in Oakland.

The noted Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar and writer Cicero once opined: "To add a library to a house is to give that house a soul."

Although I'm not sure if this is what Cicero had in mind, after seeing this lovely and quaint rainbow-colored Little Free Library, built with repurposed wood and other materials, and filled with a few choice books and periodicals leaning against an interior wall, it left me wondering if this was the start of something new or a part of a larger movement.

So, I decided to find out more about Little Free Libraries.

Open morning, noon and night.

Did you know: Little Free Libraries are part of a U.S. and worldwide community movement offering free books housed in small containers -- some resembling wooden doll houses -- for members of the local community. According to a recent story in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, there are more than 12,000 Little Free Libraries around the world in countries such as Italy, Japan, Brazil and Ukraine -- even Pakistan. They have a website, http://www.freelibrary.org, and, they even have a dedicated Facebook page with more than 36,000 likes.

Other names for these little free libraries include: community book exchanges, book trading posts, pop-up libraries, and Noox (Neighbourhood bOOk eXchange). Anything that encourages people to read more is a good thing. Fostering a sense of community, reading for children, literacy for adults and libraries around the world adds up to a tremendous mission with a wonderful sense of purpose.

A friendly site in wintertime.

Even Hollywood has found a way to give a shout out to the movement's new-found popularity. Earlier this month, the new motion picture "The Book Thief", about a young girl's relationship with her foster parents, other residents of her neighborhood, and a Jewish fist-fighter who hides in her home during a period of heightened escalation in World War II, offered a special opportunity for Little Free Library stewards to spread the word about the importance of books by sharing photographs of their own little free libraries via Twitter and Instagram accompanied by the movie's hashtag #thebookthief.

The bottom line to this great community -- and worldwide concept -- is simple: Take a book, return a book ... as the sign says.

Oh, to have a hungry mind and to be able to nurture it!

To learn more about Little Free Libraries or to order a library, go to http://www.littlefreelibrary.org. 

Top photograph by Michael Dickens, copyright 2013. 
Other photographs courtesy of Google Images.

A Tuesday Night Memo: The First Anniversary

A Tuesday Night Memo /
Musings about my life filled with
music, sport and urban travel.

A Tuesday Night Memo celebrates its first anniversary on January 26.  The year has passed quickly.  Yet, there's been so much to write about. And, now that I have an iPhone, I can jot down ideas and store them electronically for instant retrieval instead of trying to commit them all to memory.

Has it really been a year since I launched this blog?

The pleasure of our gardens /
Calla lily.

Here's some background about my blog:  I started writing A Tuesday Night Memo as a means of sharing musings about my life filled with music, sport, and urban travel and to foster community with my friends, family and Facebook colleagues while giving me an opportunity to hone my writing skills.  People who know me well know that I'm passionate about these three areas: music, sport and urban travel.  Additionally, I have used my blog as a vehicle for sharing news and photos about our flower gardens at home. These posts always seem to generate great interest and enthusiasm.  Maybe, it's because of the pretty shapes and colors of the flowers?

A European icon /
The Eiffel Tower on
a spring day in Paris.

Up to now, I have "blogged" 80 entries for A Tuesday Night Memo. Among the subjects I have written about include:  my appreciation of tennis champion Roger Federer, CNN International, classical music, validating our travel through pictures, my interest in wine, photography as art or science, the Giants winning their first World Series since moving to San Francisco, and a profile of Issues, my favorite news and magazine store in Oakland, Calif. I have combined my interest in digital photography with my blog, which has enabled me to illustrate my posts with nice visuals to match the words I write.

A favorite local destination /
Issues, Oakland, Calif.

The feedback you have given me after reading my posts is not only very much appreciated, but I also find it very useful.  Most of it has been positive, but sometimes it's also been critical. Whether good or bad, I've found the feedback a learning tool. From time to time, I like to sneak a peek at my blog's statistics, which are the key indicators showing how many total "hits" the blog has received, which entries have been read the most, and what countries comprise the blog's readership.  The numbers are modest, but nevertheless interesting.

Alondra de la Parra /
"Summer, the Symphony
and the Maestro" is
my most widely-read
blog entry.

Here are a few fun facts about A Tuesday Night Memo I thought you might enjoy:


* Since May 2010 (the earliest date data is available), my blog has been read in at least 19 different countries, including  the United States, Canada, Mexico, France and Russia ~ even India, Brazil and Australia.  The top 10 countries for readership of my blog include  the United States, Canada, Mexico, France, Russia, United Kingdom, the Netherlands, South Korea, China, and Germany.

* The biggest spike in my blog's readership happened last October after A Tuesday Night Memo received notice in the Class Notes section of Macalester Today, the alumni quarterly for my alma mater, Macalester College. (Hopefully, a few of my fellow alums bookmarked the page and have been coming back to it regularly.)

* The most widely-read blog entry has been "Summer, the Symphony and the Maestro," about a young (29 years old) and energetic conductor, Alondra de la Parra, whom I saw conduct the San Francisco Symphony last July, with over 300 hits.

Writing about wine /
One of my many
interests.

Looking ahead, a few ideas that I'm eager to explore this year include:

* Is imagination more important than knowledge?
* My recent visits to Bay Area museums.
* Connecting our world through music and media.
* My continuing fascination with British television.
* Urban cities: cosmopolitan vs. metropolitan.

In the meantime, I've thoroughly enjoyed sharing my thoughts with you throughout the past year, and I look forward to another exciting year that awaits us.  By the way, I think I know which side of the debate I'm going to take between imagination versus knowledge.

Stay tuned.

All photographs by Michael Dickens; copyright 2004, 2010.

Issues: The nice little neighborhood magazine shop that feeds our hungry minds

Issues:
Feeding hungry minds

It's encouraging to know that despite an increasing reliance of the Internet as a source for news and information, a medium that some predicted would cause the demise of magazines, our affinity with the printed word still exists.

No Kindles or iPads for us ~ yet.

We subscribe to two weeklies, The New Yorker and The Economist, and also to the Southern lit quarterly Oxford American.  Also, I like to read Monocle, a monthly published in London, and my wife enjoys reading Interweave Knits and other knitting magazines, too.

However, in our hectic, 24/7 instant information culture fed by Facebook, Twitter and all things Internet, it's a constant challenge for me to make quality time for reading magazines. Still, I find it important ~ not to mention relevant ~ and the opportunity to fit in 20-30 minutes of periodical reading while peddling a stationary bike is one of the things that stimulates me into regularly going to our local fitness center. Exercise for body and mind.

Issues:
A nice little neighborhood
magazine shop

Fortunately, Issues, a nice little neighborhood magazine shop that's about a 10-minute drive from our house in Oakland, exists to feed my hungry mind.  While the shop is the size of your average living room, it's roomy enough to house 3,000 foreign and domestic magazine and journal titles on its shelves ~ everything from Dwell, Oprah and Lapham's Quarterly to Gastronomica, Living etc and Paris Vogue.  It carries an impressive selection of food, design, business and foreign affairs periodicals.  Earlier this summer, it was the place to find a variety of titles devoted to World Cup soccer and the Tour de France cycling race.  Also, Issues sells an assortment of local (San Francisco Chronicle), national (New York Times) and international newspapers (Guardian Weekly and Irish Times), artsy greeting cards, selected second-hand books and vinyl, too. 

The friendly and knowledgeable owners, Noella Teele and Joe Colley, left their jobs as record store managers to open Issues in June 2007, and, earlier this summer, the store celebrated its third birthday with a lively in-store bash.  Located just off trendy Piedmont Ave. (20 Glen Ave., Oakland), Issues sits a few doors down from a very popular Peet's Coffee and Tea, so it receives lots of foot traffic.  While their Facebook page has over 800 fans, their bricks-and-mortar store attracts a loyal and devoted clientele ~ reviews on the website yelp.com sing high praises for Issues ~ and it gives back to the community, too. Recently, Issues hosted the East Bay Vegan Bakesale, which raised funds for the Berkeley Humane Society and Walk Oakland Bike Oakland.

Window display at Issues:
Full of eclectic titles

I enjoy visiting Issues once or twice a month to peruse new and eclectic titles and, sometimes, just to absorb the colorful atmosphere.  There's always great music playing in the background that makes you feel welcome and makes stopping in a pleasant experience.  It's where I can always locate one of my favorite but hard-to-find periodicals, Monocle, a magazine devoted to global affairs, business, culture and design, as well as Paste, a music periodical.

Issues: A colorful atmosphere,
a pleasant experience

Recently, I engaged in a lively albeit brief conversation about my opinion of Monocle with another Issues customer while I waited to purchase the July/August issue. Noella and Joe joined in the discussion at the cash register ~ for a few fleeting moments we had become a micro-community of Monocle enthusiasts ~ and, as I exited Issues, it left me with a wonderful impression of the nice little neighborhood magazine shop that feeds other hungry minds, too.