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LAPL Celebrating a Century of Light and Learning
Bookmarks by Christine Trzyna C 2026
Showing posts with label LAPL. Show all posts
Showing posts with label LAPL. Show all posts
4/25/26
LOS ANGELES HOMELESS STUDENTS : NUMBERS RISE TERRIFYINGLY : RESOURCES
LOS ANGELES HOMELESS STUDENTS NUMBERS RISE TERRIFYINGLY
In recent times I've met some adults at the library who are enrolling at certain community colleges in the county of Los Angeles for the benefits of being a student. These include:
Being able to park without harassment by police. i.e. a homeless student sleeping in their vehicle.
Free breakfast or other meals.
Free public transportation passes.
Free laptop computers.
Free showers - sometimes limited to those taking an exercise or gym class or using a campus gym.
Classes can include non-credit classes, certificate programs supposedly aimed at available employment; one need not be taking credit classes in order to eventually earn a degree.
This shows that at the community college level, it is understood that students living in poverty need basic-needs support in order to obtain education which may be necessary to compete for work. However, some of these full grown adults have simply found another means for their survival and do the same enroll and then dump out routine semester after semester. That strikes me as taking advantage of the college - or whomever the funder(s) is.
Some time ago I got up on my soapbox and ranted about the homeless student situation in Los Angeles and I recently reread what I wrote. I was stunned by my own expressed anger. That anger has not gone away, but maybe back then my sense of injustice also revealed an idealism I no longer have.
So this morning, I asked Google, about the Los Angeles homeless student situation. Based on the Los Angeles Times report as of April 2026 (though stats from a couple years ago were used by researchers)
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-04-01/la-county-student-homelessness-study
Key drivers include a shortage of affordable housing, economic hardship, limited federal funding for schools and longstanding inequities affecting people of color and people with disabilities.
This is the link to the Los Angeles County Office of Education, which has links to 'help'.
Excerpt: LACOE HEP works to help districts and charter schools maintain compliance with the McKinney Vento Homeless Assistance Act, an integral part of the Every Student Succeeds Act.
According the the summation provided by Google AI:
Key Data on LA Homeless Students (2023-24): Surging Numbers: The number of homeless students has seen a sharp, rapid rise, representing the highest rate in the past five years.
Demographics: Latino students are disproportionately affected, accounting for 3 out of every 4 students experiencing homelessness.
Black Students: Approximately 11.5% of homeless students in LA County are Black, which is slightly higher than the state average.
Living Situations: Most students categorized as homeless are in "doubled-up" situations (living with others due to economic hardship), rather than on the streets.
Soon enough I realized what was happening. The same families were coming to the library for the Summer Reading Program Events. They were actually spending long hours - days on end - in the parks. At night some were in their vehicles and some were sleeping on the floors of more fortunate families, often renters in older neighborhood buildings.
Black Students: Approximately 11.5% of homeless students in LA County are Black, which is slightly higher than the state average.
Living Situations: Most students categorized as homeless are in "doubled-up" situations (living with others due to economic hardship), rather than on the streets.
Some years ago I volunteered informally to support a so called Summer Reading Program at a branch of LAPL. The librarians told me that they were surprised at the huge increase in attendance and also that children's parents or other adult family members where staying and participating with their children rather than awaiting the children. Activities often included snacks. Students received, at program/summer end, backpacks, shoes, school supplies. (Not much reading was actually going on in the arts and crafts aspect of the program.)
That summer there was also special program to help teen students get job experience. It was considered to be gang membership prevention in the City of Los Angeles. It was held at various parks including a park close to that LAPL branch.
One day they had a little fair during which various local politicians had tables. I went to the fair and saw that families were being given a free evening meal and some basic activities, such as good old-fashioned games. Music was blaring. These feeds were happening at least five evenings a week for about six weeks.
Soon enough I realized what was happening. The same families were coming to the library for the Summer Reading Program Events. They were actually spending long hours - days on end - in the parks. At night some were in their vehicles and some were sleeping on the floors of more fortunate families, often renters in older neighborhood buildings.
Then the evictions started for building tear downs. Whole families were coming into the library to ask the librarians where they could find housing.
It's my suspicion that the 2025-2026 statistics, if they were available, would reveal a tripling of the statistics used for this LA Times article.
C 2026 Christine Trzyna
2/25/26
TALES OF THE AMERICAN (HOTEL IN DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES - AREA NOW CALLED THE ARTS DISTRICT) : CHRISTINE TRZYNA FILM REVIEW
https://www.talesoftheamerican.com/ A documentary.
I attended a presentation of this film, made a few years ago, of excellent quality, at LAPL - Central. It was made by Stephen Seemayer and Pamela Wilson and they interviewed over 140 once-upon-a-time and current artist residents in the process. The history of the building, built in 1905, which had other names, was that it was the first hotel in the city of Los Angeles to welcome Negro guests - and was then called, interestingly enough, The Canadian. It then became a place where recent Japanese immigrants could live; some were put into camps after the United States entered World War II. Eventually artists, writers, and musicians moved in. The rent was low and the then-Arts District- was vibrant - lawless - but you had a chance of honing your craft and skill because it was affordable. Now the Los Angeles Arts District is becoming too expensive for someone who is, at best, up and coming.
Perhaps the American was the Los Angeles equivalent of New York's Chelsea Hotel?
I had never heard of it.
It was not my kind of place which is probably why I had not.
Affordable. That is the buzz word these days. The word Affordable should never be used to advertise rooms for rent or apartments for lease or townhomes for sale. It's a joke word.
I was thinking while viewing the Tales of the American documentary about my experiences being around people who were .... vexations to the spirit. As, apparently, some of the people who made this place - and the in-house Al's Bar - "home" were or would be to me.
I haven't lived a life free of such people. They are everywhere. I'm just getting better at discernment/avoidance.
Lately, and I'm not the only one saying this, it seems crazy-makers are everywhere, that one cannot find that hidey-hole where one can be alone, think, sleep enough - or work.
I think there is, overall, the wrong idea that artists of every sort need chaos, that creativity needs chaos.
Actually, what one needs to create first and foremost is the time, which usually means time off, being able to either not be concerned with affording time away from the usual pursuit of self-support, maybe because parents or partner take care of that or you inherit, or because it doesn't bother you too much to hear loud music through your floors every night or have to share a filthy bathtub and toilet with twenty other people.
I'm just the opposite. I like clean. I like quietude and privacy and knowing I'm safe without three bolts on a door.
C 2026 Christine Trzyna
9/11/24
11/10/13
GARDEN VARIETY PARANOIA ? LAPL LIBRARY RECORD? ACCIDENTALLY RUNNING INTO PORN?
GARDEN VARIETY PARANOIA ? LAPL LIBRARY RECORD NOT PRIVATE?
ACCIDENTALLY RUNNING INTO PORN?
ACCIDENTALLY RUNNING INTO PORN?
By Christine Trzyna C 2013
One of my more garden-variety-paranoid associates, who used to be a security guard at a world famous museum and owns a gun collection that was handed down in his family, is, among other things, afraid of how law enforcement (maybe the FBI?) can get your LIBRARY RECORD. The way this goes is that you're suspected of doing something wrong and so they get your library account number and then a list of all the books you ever took out from say, LAPL. From this they determine a psychological profile of you.
The truth is that I do suspect that LAPL, and other libraries, are collecting this information but I don't know for sure. I feel more sure that they know exactly what you're doing on the computer with your two free hours, but then I still believe you'd have to be doing something illegal for any law enforcement to actually ask for the record.
Example, several years ago a person was arrested in the Studio City branch for using e-mail to send prostitutes to assignments. It was in the newspaper that the police had been monitoring (reading) his e-mails for years, since he'd been doing so from the Sherman Oaks branch.
I tried to calm my garden-variety-paranoid associate.
"I read all around subjects. I sometimes take out a book for the hell of it and I may or may not read the whole thing. There are books and films I've ordered, picked up, and then returned without reading or watching much of. NO ONE CAN PROVE YOU READ A BOOK OR WATCHED A FILM SIMPLY BECAUSE YOU TOOK IT HOME. NO ONE CAN PROVE YOU AGREE WITH AN AUTHOR'S POINT OF VIEW or that you were influenced by what you were exposed to! You can just as well get pissed off at an author as you can suck up information. Who can prove that what you read or watch says anything about you besides that you were curious or had a whim?"
Actually, to me, it's circumstantial evidence that you actually looked at or read a web-site. Unless you're Robert Blake and the FBI just looked at your hard drive and found out you were looking for murder supplies.
Through the years I have honestly and accidentally hit into porn when I wasn't looking for it. In my lifetime I have actually looked for it almost never. I'm not for it. It goes against my spiritual beliefs and what I want for this world.
One such case was maybe a decade ago when I was looking for information on Sarasvati, the Goddess of the Arts in Hinduism. (You might think of her as a patron saint of writers, musicians, dancers...)
At the time I had an EarthLink account and used their search engine. One of the main links on the first page was called "Sarasvati's Temple." So I clicked and got onto an inter-racial dating site. I believe it was owned by a woman of some Asian background and her purpose was to give dating advice to men, mostly Asian men, and to assure them that there were inaccurate stereotypes that were effecting their self esteem So if you paged all the way down to say, page 20, you got to the International Penis Size Survey. This page had a 'how to measure' that had an actual penis on it. I wasn't offended. One of my platonic men friends thought it was so funny that he asked me to print the whole thing out for him to show his friends.
However, soon after that my EarthLink account was plagued with porn spam, even communications that suggested I could get my hands on child pornography. It was disgusting. I was advised that pornographers were targeting me. I got over 700 such offers in the 3 weeks that I was out of town on vacation. One person suggested that the offer for child porn was actually an undercover operation.
Then there was the time I was checking on where hits were coming from to this Blog. I happened to be at a Latter Day Saints genealogy library taking a quick break from research and believe me when I say that in the one second that it took to see a flash of the porn and shut it down, the Church people were notified that someone was looking at porn. It was embarrassing as the manager came out and looked at what a row of young missionary men ("Elders") who had just come in were looking at on the computers.
More recently I discovered a graphic lesbian porn site linking to this blog. It took me about half a second to get back to a civilized view of the world. Sometimes people actually think that they are going to get at you in some way, say because you hate porn, by trying to infiltrate your work.
Is this where I yawn?
C 2013 - 2022 - 2025 Christine Trzyna All Rights Reserved
2/23/13
THE PEOPLE'S PALACE : A PORTRAIT OF THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY : CHRISTINE TRZYNA FILM REVIEW
A film by Kunhardt Productions and Thirteen/ New York C 2007
You read me bitch about LAPL?
Los Angeles Public Library can't compare with the New York Public Library, which still has an emphasis on being a research facility for the public's use.
Los Angeles Public Library's book purchases reflect a popular library view point. (This really hit me when I discovered a slew of Nadine Gordimer's books on a free book cart being given away because they hadn't been taken out enough over at the Studio City branch a few years ago.)
For many years and ongoing, I've suggested dozens of book purchases, some of the titles having been featured in the Los Angeles Times Book Review, the LA Weekly, or the BOOK FAIR (once known as the UCLA LA TIMES BOOK FAIR now the USC LA TIMES BOOK FAIR) and though I'm told that all such suggestions are read, they must be read and then pitched (which rhymes with bitched) because I don't think a single suggestion I've made has resulted in a book purchase.
What is most in demand at NY circa 2007?
First drafts of now famous writer's works. Manuscripts that are, because they are not in a museum but a place where they are used, are conserved but also lent out for use.
Betty Frieden wrote at New York Public Library.
So did Bob Dylan.
There are thousands of original music scores housed at NYPL, John Cage's orchestrations being the most used and studied.
Copies of handwritten documents by Thomas Jefferson (he hand copied unedited Declarations of Independence for some of his friends so they could read it and then the official, published copies, to compair. George Washington's beer recipe...
Prior to the Andrew Carnegie endowment the library was unable to expand and go public. Carnegie believed in the survival of the fittest, but he also believed in giving children a chance.
Today one of the most vital branches is the Schomberg center and their Black cultural, historical, literacy, and other efforts.
SCHOMBURG CENTER (NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY) FOR BLACK CULTURE link!
NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY link!
I 've benefited from Andrew Carnegie's largess in my lifetime. I don't have the Frequent Flyer miles or the friend with an empty nest required to go research in New York, but I wish.
You read me bitch about LAPL?
Los Angeles Public Library can't compare with the New York Public Library, which still has an emphasis on being a research facility for the public's use.
Los Angeles Public Library's book purchases reflect a popular library view point. (This really hit me when I discovered a slew of Nadine Gordimer's books on a free book cart being given away because they hadn't been taken out enough over at the Studio City branch a few years ago.)
For many years and ongoing, I've suggested dozens of book purchases, some of the titles having been featured in the Los Angeles Times Book Review, the LA Weekly, or the BOOK FAIR (once known as the UCLA LA TIMES BOOK FAIR now the USC LA TIMES BOOK FAIR) and though I'm told that all such suggestions are read, they must be read and then pitched (which rhymes with bitched) because I don't think a single suggestion I've made has resulted in a book purchase.
What is most in demand at NY circa 2007?
First drafts of now famous writer's works. Manuscripts that are, because they are not in a museum but a place where they are used, are conserved but also lent out for use.
Betty Frieden wrote at New York Public Library.
So did Bob Dylan.
There are thousands of original music scores housed at NYPL, John Cage's orchestrations being the most used and studied.
Copies of handwritten documents by Thomas Jefferson (he hand copied unedited Declarations of Independence for some of his friends so they could read it and then the official, published copies, to compair. George Washington's beer recipe...
Prior to the Andrew Carnegie endowment the library was unable to expand and go public. Carnegie believed in the survival of the fittest, but he also believed in giving children a chance.
Today one of the most vital branches is the Schomberg center and their Black cultural, historical, literacy, and other efforts.
SCHOMBURG CENTER (NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY) FOR BLACK CULTURE link!
NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY link!
I 've benefited from Andrew Carnegie's largess in my lifetime. I don't have the Frequent Flyer miles or the friend with an empty nest required to go research in New York, but I wish.
11/12/10
THOSE LITTLE LIBRARY PENCILS ARE A WASTE OF MONEY!
As you may know, I blog a bit about LOS ANGELES PUBLIC LIBRARY. Recently a librarian expressed to me the waste of money that those little (about 3 1/2 inch presharpened) pencils are. NOBODY WANTS TO SHARPEN THEM! And I do, but they are good for about ONE SHARPEN before they become near impossible to put into the electric sharpener. And at that length they dig into a person's hand. They are uncomfortable to use as well.
WHY NOT JUST BUY FULL LENGTH PENCILS THAT HAVE MORE SHARPENING LIFE IN THEM? I see these sold for as low as $1.00 a six pack!
WHY NOT JUST BUY FULL LENGTH PENCILS THAT HAVE MORE SHARPENING LIFE IN THEM? I see these sold for as low as $1.00 a six pack!
6/10/10
QUOTE from KEN BRECHER, PRESIDENT OF LIBRARY FOUNDATION OF LOS ANGELES
From ALOUD Summer 2010 brochure.
Q: What is the future of libraries in such a technology driven world.
A: The internet and e-book are both additional resources for libraries, offering us another way to spread reading and knowledge. Reading is reading, whether it's done on a computer screen, a Kindle, on the pages of a coffee-stained paperback, or in the rare books room of the library. Books aren't going anywhere; the American appetite and curiosity for learning will ensure that we are adding new ways to access knowledge, not subtracting old ones."
Q: What is the future of libraries in such a technology driven world.
A: The internet and e-book are both additional resources for libraries, offering us another way to spread reading and knowledge. Reading is reading, whether it's done on a computer screen, a Kindle, on the pages of a coffee-stained paperback, or in the rare books room of the library. Books aren't going anywhere; the American appetite and curiosity for learning will ensure that we are adding new ways to access knowledge, not subtracting old ones."
8/11/08
WHY MARK TWAIN IS NOT ENDANGERED AT LOS ANGELES PUBLIC LIBRARY WHILE I BOUGHT SEVERAL NADINE GORDIMER's FOR 25 CENTS
.... Because teachers still have children read Mark Twain, books by Mark Twain are still represented on the shelves of Los Angeles Public Library.
The library's funds have been so cut that according to a librarian I spoke with very recently, there HAS WAS NO BOOK BUYING BETWEEN JANUARY and JUNE 2008.
If you go to the LAPL start page you can follow the links to suggest a book purchase. This is something I do frequently. I was frustrated that not a single book I suggested had been purchased.
ON THE BRANCH level, any FRIENDS OF THE LIBRARY GROUP can designate some of the funds that are earned through volunteer driven book sales be used for buying books that librarians at that branch prioritize. Librarians in general are NOT HAPPY WITH THE POPULAR LIBRARY MENTALITY OF LAPL...
"Popular Library" means that if a book is NOT TAKEN OUT FREQUENTLY it will be targeted to be taken off the shelf and make it to a free book cart, twenty five cent buy-a-book shelf, at a Friends sale, be donated elsewhere, or even make it to the Garbage Can. "Popular Library" means that if a book is a best seller there may be dozens of that title purchased, distributed among many branches.
Thus Pulitzer Prize winning South African writer Nadine Gordimer, who early on revealed herself to write political protest fiction as she plotted her characters through apartide, because she is not 'well read' by library patrons, got the boot based on not being well known among the general public of Los Angeles, while classic Mark Twain remains.
I have a suggestion to those of you who have library accounts at LAPL and favorite authors who are not 'well read.' Take out that author's books from time to time just to send a signal to a system that may well be more computerized than based on the knowledge and wisdom of expensively educated and intelligent librarians!
The library's funds have been so cut that according to a librarian I spoke with very recently, there HAS WAS NO BOOK BUYING BETWEEN JANUARY and JUNE 2008.
If you go to the LAPL start page you can follow the links to suggest a book purchase. This is something I do frequently. I was frustrated that not a single book I suggested had been purchased.
ON THE BRANCH level, any FRIENDS OF THE LIBRARY GROUP can designate some of the funds that are earned through volunteer driven book sales be used for buying books that librarians at that branch prioritize. Librarians in general are NOT HAPPY WITH THE POPULAR LIBRARY MENTALITY OF LAPL...
"Popular Library" means that if a book is NOT TAKEN OUT FREQUENTLY it will be targeted to be taken off the shelf and make it to a free book cart, twenty five cent buy-a-book shelf, at a Friends sale, be donated elsewhere, or even make it to the Garbage Can. "Popular Library" means that if a book is a best seller there may be dozens of that title purchased, distributed among many branches.
Thus Pulitzer Prize winning South African writer Nadine Gordimer, who early on revealed herself to write political protest fiction as she plotted her characters through apartide, because she is not 'well read' by library patrons, got the boot based on not being well known among the general public of Los Angeles, while classic Mark Twain remains.
I have a suggestion to those of you who have library accounts at LAPL and favorite authors who are not 'well read.' Take out that author's books from time to time just to send a signal to a system that may well be more computerized than based on the knowledge and wisdom of expensively educated and intelligent librarians!
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