HomeMy WebLinkAboutAgenda Packet - LB - 1965.08.18 MINUTES OF THE MEETING
OF THE
BURLINGAME PUBLIC LIBRARY BOARD
l July 21, 1965
Trustees Present: ?sirs. Cohendet, Mr. DeMartini, Mr. Lynes, and Mr. Moody
Trustees Absent:
Due to the death of President Harrison, Trustee Moody was appointed chairman Pro Tempore.
Trustee Moody called the meeting to order and suggested that the order of business be
changed in order that the reorganization of the Library Board be the first order of business.
He then called for nominations for President of the Board.
Trustee Cohendet nominated Trustee Lynes. The nomination was seconded by Trustee Dei-iartini.
Trustee DeMartini moved that nominations be closed and that a unanimous ballot be cast for
Trustee Lynes. The motion was seconded by Cohendet and carried.
President Lynes took the chair and called for n6minations for Secretary. Trustee Moody
moved that Trustee DeMartini be nominated for Secretary. Seconded by Trustee Cohendet.
Trustee Moody moved that the n6minations be closed and that a unanimous ballot be cast for
Trustee DeMartini. Motion seconded by Trustee Cohendet and was carried.
MINUTES
The minutes of the meeting of June 16, 1965 meeting were read and approved.
BILLS
On a motion by Trustee Moody, seconded by Trustee DeMartini, bills in the amount of
$4,758.61 were ordered paid.
MONTHLY FINANCIAL STATEMENT
The monthly financial statement was read and placed on file.
OLD BUSINESS
Budget The Librarian stated that the budget was accepted by the City Council as presented.
Capital Expenditure Budget The report of the Planning Commission regarding capital
improvement was read by the Board. They noted with gratification that the commission had
recommended including in in this year's capital expenditure budget the expenditure of
135,000 to construct an addition the the Children's Section at the southwest corner of the
Library.
Trustee Moody asked the Librarian if the basement area could be used to relieve the present
crowded conditions in the workroom. The Librarian stated that it could be used by the
processing staff until such time as an adequate work room was built.
Trustee DeMartini commented on the section of the report dealing with the extension to be
built to the east of the present building. He stated that when Donnelly was made a two-way j
street, he thought a one way passage to Donnelly with parking on one side would be adequate.
After looking at the plans of the proposed extension, Trustee Lynes stated that he thought
there would be room for at least 18 cars. The Librarian said that an estimate had been made that
_ with the building as proposed, there would be space left for 18-22 cars.
Trustee Moody inquired how many spaces there are at present. The Librarian stated 24.
(over)
i
i
i
I
Trustee Cohendet stated that this should be pointed out to the Planning Commission and
to the City Council. The Librarian was instructed to write the Planning Commission _
and the City Council on this matter.
The Librarian explained that the recpmmendations of the Planning Commission with
regard to the addition to the Childrents. Room was not included in this year's
Capital Expenditure Budget by the City Council. He stated that at the Council. Meeting
Monday night, July 19, 1965, it was brought out by Councilman George that funds, must
be set aside for matching funds or for purchase of,property, and that all requests
at this time could not, of necessity, be grantee., but that certainly in future budgets
such requests would be favorably received.
Trustee Moody stated that he felt that the Council would give the Library Board
every consideration, and that he felt that the Council was doing everything ,possible
to improve the city's position., The other members of the-Board concurred in this.
ADJOURIIZWIT The meeting was unanimously adjourned in memory of Mrs. Dorothea Kelly
Harrison, President of the Library Board, who passed in death July 21, 1965.
Respectfully.submitted,
GeorgePaul Lechich -
Clerk of the Board
L"115
CItL
The circulation for Ju1,y Increased 2.1� am- a'uly 19-4,.
TU sliding doom 1±atw+w, the Hoard Rom and tbo A=Aby Plemrial Rom hmm 1ven
zba& oprable. The tm ok had tilted, awl by pu ting lag bolts thrcWh the u811
into the track# it pulled bacl: iLto pl~aoa at, a ovt of atom., w10,00 inch;
-tire, 1 .auE entix:tw, had bay.b o-- MWO w it eras deamd necessary to
remme pat of the va-1 1. The L3.1,wnrinn ueshes to thr rk�k 11r. W. B. -vdbry;cn fm
hia iaateS'eat/ sack geaticas.
'rho :Lk�odar Gedar at tho ecenetr of the Children's Wing dropped a huge Limb mi a
quieA, day. The limb naarly hit an elder7,y pedestrians n1 w part Dqpartmnt VM
lzme book all the; Mr;e limbs.
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1:1 h on1,y one week rsmaining 3n the Eld ulo Sumer Neading 01doa, 5 �3hll*va
bavo J ol.ned at the i 18,3 n Lihmry' and 298 at -the 11ranob, making an inmn)we o f
about, 100 Chi.ldmn. Ear vera in camitrust to previow years when a xaeldi = oma;
children did not, coraplata the club, tbis -,mar it appears that alauyt 500 ohil.dron
Vill finishp and mrcnnd 40 trill attond i;he pa-ty cn Augmt; 23 at t�he Asamoit1cm.
Center, I*bm 01' the DOM! are Cordially IM-.ted '�;c attend,
:Che 1re-School. Stc = Lr- discmtinwd at tha ea*i of July with attendance
averag°$ fiZ'CYf nc!, Uttv-t y:,
i.sss T.IoUy Reg= bei har dirties in tht C°ixi. tIran's lkxasaa rm Amita 2,1 19654 and
aJxeady she seed quite at home v-IU 'both the e!Aldrat and the boots. She and
' rs. Powell and Urs. Berpi ng rce alra ady &WrIV- ara--3ng plow and loo1king foroerd.
t o ar, a 9.tIng frA.11 Pr it Iva the Ch ldren$n Rom.
RespeatfuD,y sa.*Wtt*6v
Geores P ,l Lechl ch
City Li„bvrir n
GF vJHAT USE IS POETRY?
By Dame Edith Sitwell
From time to tine, mainly in England, an outcry arises on the subject of
the use of the arts in general, and of poetry in particular. This strikes me
as very odd. :,hy should everything in the world, necessarily, be "of use"?
And yet, although poetry has the beauty of the lily, it is as unseeing to ask
what is the use of poetry as it would be to ask what is the use of religion.
The uses of poetry are many. The poet should stand beside the priest in
his work of restoring to mankind faith in God and in the heart of ian, in this
terrible age when the only faith seems to belong to the gray ane murderous creeds.
Emerson said of rlato: "He, from the sunlike centrality and reach of his
vision, had a faith without cloud." This is true of the great poet. It was
true in the past, it is true now, in this age U;hen so many, because of the outer
circumstances of the world and their lives, suffer from a tragic weakening or
total loss of faith. Poetry will help to keep us immovably centered.
Seeing the immense design of the world., one image of wonder mirrored by
another image of wonder - the pattern of fern and of feather echoed by the
frost on the window pane, the six rays of the snowflake mirrored by the rock-
crystal's six-rayed eternity - I ask myself, "idere those shares molded. by
blindness? Jho, then, shall teach me doubt?"
the poet speaks to all men of that other life of theirs which they have
smothered and forgotten. The poet helps his brother .«en to be more merciful to
each other, remembering the words, "Little children, love one another." To
Shakespeare, for instance, even the meanest thing that lives is worthy of the
light of the sun.
Poetry has many uses. It is the deification of reality. Such poetry as
: ordsworth's, for instance, teaches us that God is in everything, in a stone,
in a straw. reason and tranquillity were the companion angels of .:ordsworth
as he walked through an everyday world made splendid by the light of a genius
which illuminated: but did not transform. Common speech and common experience
were here, but all made radiant and unforgettable by inspiration. For ,%ordsworth
had the warmth of the earth and of the human heart; and that genius which was of
the heart rather than of the soul had taken all the chill from Reason.
The earth and every common sight
To me did seem
Gppareled in celes-ial light.
Poetry ennobles the heart and the eyes, and unv,:Ils the meaning of all
things upon which the heart and the eyes dwell. It discovers the secret rays
of the universe, and restores to us forgotten paradises,
As Walt :Jhitman said, "all truths lie waiting in all things— .They unfold
themselves more fragrant than. . ..roses from living buds, whenever you fetch the
spring sunshine moistened with summer rain. But it must be in yourself, It
shall be love."
OF ,THAT USE IS POETRY - 3y Dame Edith Sitwell Page 2
I wish that everyone could share the rapture of the poet. In some ways -
I say this with all humility - the experience of the poet in creation is akin
to the experience of the saint. I do not believe that anybody who loved poetry
could have an ugly soul. Human faults, yes. But the soul would still have
radiance.
Foolish people say that the poems made simply for the love of beauty are
useless, they are butterflies. They are spivs. (Perhaps "spiv" is a word not
used. in America. It is a slang term used by the English to describe a useless
person - a being; who will not work.) And yet I cannot but remember that when
the great 17th-century naturalist, John Ray, was asked, "'.that is the use of
butterflies?" he replied., "To adorn the world and delight the eyes of men,
to brighten the countryside, serving like so many golden spangles to decorate
the fields." And he added, of those butterflies made by the hand of God:
"'Aho can contemplate their exquisite beauty and not acknowledge and adore the
traces of divine art upon them?" At least the poems of which I speak, those
butterflies made by the hand of man, have the traces of human art upon their
wings.
I must at this point consider a question that will be asked by many:
afhy do not more people care for modern poetry?
I have two answers to that question. The first is that a great deal of
cull rubbish is being written at this time, and is encouraged recklessly by
reviewers. The unfortunate reader brought face to face with this feels a lethal
boredom, and says to himself, "If this is poetry, I will have none of it." So
he never comes to the poetry that is real, and will make the world more beauti-
ful to him.
Another reason is that many people have an inherited way of seeing and.
hearing, and have, toot a certain deafness as-to rhythm.
In my youth, I and my young fellow poets derived a considerable amount of
amusement from the writings of our uninstructed elders on the use of rhyme.
",Jhy, "they inquired, "could not the young poets rhyme like Tennyson?" If we
asked what particular poem of Tennyson they would wish us to emulate, they
replied, almost invariably, "`!'ears, idle tears" - in which no rhyme occurs.
They judged us by hearsay only, without reading us. All skillful un-
rhymed verse runs so smoothly that, in the case of familiar poems, it is almost
always taken by the uninstructed for rhymed verse. Consider these lines from a
modern poem*:
Such are the clouds -
They float with white coolness and sunny shade
Sometimes preening their flightless feathers.
Float, proud. swans, on the calm lake
And wave your clipped wings in the azure air,
Then arch your neck, and look into the deep for pearls.
Now can you drink dew from tall trees and sloping
fields of Heaven.
Gather new coolness for tomorrow's heat,
And sleep through the soft night with folded. wing.
*"Doctor Donne and Gargantua" by Sacheverell Sitwell, Gerald Duckworth
4 Co., Ltd.
OF 'wHAT USE IS POLTRY? - By Dame Edith Sitwell Page 3
Is not that as molodious as any rhymed verse?
Rhythm, as I said in the preface to my Collected Poems, is one of the prin-
cipal translators between dream and reality. Rhythm might be described as, to
the world of sound, what light is to the visible world. It shapes, and gives
new meaning. Rhythm was described by Sehopenhauer as "melody deprived of its
pitch." "Every Ureat poet" said Shelley,*:"must inevitably innovate unon the
example of his predecessors in the exact structure of his poculiar versification."
There is a great deal of opposition to the revivifications of rhythmic
patterns. But then, even the greatest of all rhythmic patterns, those not made
by the hand of man, have been misaonrehended. Lr. Phomas 3urnet, who died in
1715, was so disturber? by the unsymmetrical arrangement of the stars that he
rebuked the Creator for His lack of technique. "'"hat a beautiful hemisphere
they would have made," he said, "if they had all been disposed in regular
figures. . . .all finished and made up into one fair piece, or great composition,
according to the rules of art and symmetry."
^then a certain kind of person is not grumbling about lack of symmetry, he
is grumbling; about symmetry. Gne English critic, for instance, F. It. Leavis, has
decided that there is little, if anything, to be said for :Milton. The sound of
a great deal of axilton's verse affedts him as the sound of a motor bicycle
affects my less sensitive nervous system. "We find ourselves," he declares,
"flinching from the foreseen thud."
illy ardent hope is that readers will go out and find poetry for themselves,
and will not be dismayed by certain critics who tell the reader he must not ask
for delight in poetry, but for instruction, and who read into every poem some-
thing that is not there. A good deal of clean, healthy fun without the slight-
est trace of vulgarity can be gained, however, from reading these critics, if
we do not take them seriously, or allow their self-complacency to irritate us
beyond endurance.
F. '.i. Bateson, an Lnglish critic, declared that Gray's "An Elegy '.liritten
in a Country Churchyard" is a "plea for decentralization." The same gentleman
wrote that Tennyson suffered from schizophrenia. And, also, that we should not
"insist on the presence of delight" in poetry. "To insist on its delighting
us. . . .is a kind of perversity."
Luckily, delight in beauty has not yet been made a crime in law!
Cne of the purposes of poetry is to show the dimensions of man that are,
as Sir Arthur Eddington said, "midway in scale between the atom and the star,"
and to make all the days of our life each moment of our life, holy to us.
In an apocryphal letter ,published originally in a iloscow paper, Picasso
is supposed to have said, "There are painters who transform tAle sun into a
yellow soot, but there are others who, with the help of their art ane their
intelligence, transform a yellow snot into a sun." Which is the greater and
more important work:' Yet many are angered when the yellow spot is transformed
into a sun. It is Deception, we are told. The artist is not using a great
subject. - hy ennoble the commonplace? :Thy show our common life as if it had
some purpose beyond tho grave?
?oetry is the light of the Great Corning wherein the beings whom we see
passing in the street are transformed for us into the epitome of all beauty, or
of all joy, or of all. sorrow.
GI i Y 0� 11�iiT�II."►lL�:
,LIJTfiC•L'T i 7lpl�1,:11Ti.m
1= XT TMT-1961-5
17177"T I3ALA: CV
S-1 Salaries 10,458.55 20,197 .43 121#0- 03.00101,705.57
II-11 Supplies 37935 308000 10G00000 10231.40
1.1-12 F'rIntin;; s_. Fosta�-;o 21206C.) 0'77095 28450,00 18772,0
13 U,.hts lleatg Powor b. gator IG5475 40,3,90 28900«00 28490010
:Y-14 Telephone 73.Ui 130,74 730,00 x10- 02G
' A1C I4aildin- C. 'rounds
vlaintenanco 36f,50 156131 2j0500,00 2,34.3,69
.7-17 Looks :.aps 1023G031 2$9�v0,57 269000.00 232000,A3
:1^17,A Periodicals 53049 102::1,04 12900„00 670,9I,ti
1.2-17D Binding 85.35 455.75 28800000 29344,25
1.3 Q Convention (Librcri.an) 200,00 2001000
IIS'MA Auto AJ lowanco 11,:.;5 11055 2:50,00 23£345
"-19.P Convo tion 3:30000 1501)00
:.1-19. TConvention (Ta:studs ) 125000 125,00
::-20 Duos to Library :assns, -�--- •�--� 150,00 150,00
".I-21 *Ascollaneous a.Aowa+ a,.noew 3.00800 100000
1.1-24 T;Tpowritnr Ilapai,, 1.7,£35 1001300 82,15
1v27 CompB Inst. ranu . 21000,00 2t000,OO
,1-28 Jontracts 2300,00 570.00 3,480000 2*910.00
C•90 Capital Lxpdnd2t-,,res G9 55,G') 4,00000 18144„33.
TOTAL I:11 FORT SAIARiai 20510054 7,,0538x93 0'.8965;0003 410586.05
`FO`i'AL AFTER SALARE..S 12,768.89 27,266.38 170955£3,01) 143,291.62
STAT
M Xj2L5-
U11911 M&C-11
Books: !daft Ilm-action 1,9350
i"hild "Col-Zliletim 19406
A&A 7!,.ct!cxi 45,4 178 2,0968
Fictica 1794
TW_ Book Girculatior. 198733 8
B P40 0,668
21. 11 99668
Total Citc.,LLatlon Z,P%4
Zetal, BM-Adh
(1964* 30,*589)
for 798
fcw Bmich:
�Gl�ID TOTAL
!lavrbmThlip June 30, 1965 1 2s,3 7 39437 159
12
liAklilio ns Jul y, 333466 4.00
lllth(b��. l 227 _lP
PUC,
-15 qT-7 4
AS C.P. Q Mm
khat lion-Fictior, 83 r p02 0, 359 380 �5 9,000
ClAld llon-Flatian 2-el, 14072'8
M 1IM-Fictiorl 19 50:3 6 3 1
A&at Fiction 311.j471 f3 44 349,10
HS action- 3,.62 2 5 3,559
Child Fiellon _121 _X il"Cl
TOTAL BOON 'OF
01.314_1= 1'520821 "59 505 1529.875
lziorawoo 'Ui 3ook SotocIn. 54
4 hMJJWWS
vided 1 on, 0
Dionarclod.. 260 7:Mns Llsctanlra6. 9
G,I ULT M
DISCIL D ITTV Al,
Tiq 19327
4.5 Ton
JZw-
TOT& Mf,-ORD S-
2 r,�?
2 9 5r,
1-77-cii-JE