scottybonner

Let me just say, on behalf of the library and Ferguson, THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

Fault in Our Stars. City of Bones series. Books that were in our gay pride display. Books that were in our grahic novel display. Scifi/romance crossover stuff.

Dinocalypse trilogy is fun. Some of the classics of sci-fi or fantasy could be considered YA, like LeGuin's Earthsea trilogy. One of my staff recommended Alienated.

When protests and police response are happening in the middle of the night along one half-mile stretch of West Florissant, or by the police station, the media makes it sound like all of Ferguson is a war zone, all the time. It's not. It's safe during the day. Businesses are open. People walking around, chatting with each other, just normal town stuff.

It's so much more complicated than the media shows us. Sometimes I think it is infinitely complicated, and no one could every explain what it is really like.

Also, people come together when they have a common cause. At the library, when the kids needed us, people came from all over, from all sides of the situation, from all raced and economic strata, to help.

Because the people of Ferguson are willing to wrestle with their problems seriously, I believe we can, and WILL, come together in the end. We have to.

Angie Manfredi, @misskubelik on twitter, has been putting together purchase lists via Powell books for the library. They are phenomenal, and exactly what we need. They are books on civil rights history, civic engagement, and recovering from trauma/dealing with emotions. She covered kids' books and YA back when we did the week-long ad-hoc school in August, and she's covering adult books now, in the same areas. If you are looking for what to donate, check out her list at http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/wishlist?email=booksforferguson@gmail.com&list=Books%20for%20Ferguson%20IV

As far as I can tell, we don't have one. I can look again Monday and see what I can find. I know I've had to thread some needles in trying to determine things like how to pay staff when library is closed, how to handle it when staff call in to say they won't come to work because they are scared, that sort of thing. By the way, we have only had to close one day, August 11th, and I paid the staff. When staff call in, we treat it like sick day. We did a half day last Tuesday, closing at 4pm, and I offered staff the chance to work earlier hours as well as paying per our "library suddenly closed" policy.