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Another Good Member Event!

It has been so great to be with the CMLE community of library people!! I truly love being part of such an interesting community of library people, from all over the place, who share ideas about the cool and interesting things they are doing.

And it was THREE YEARS AGO last week that we had our first member event – going to dinner. You guys have built on that first try, and continued to grow with all kinds of good opportunities to connect and share ideas.

We are continuing to have all sorts of fun events!

Tuesday evening, members went to an author’s presentation at St. Ben’s college. The author was poet Sally Wen Mao. Her latest book is called Oculus: Poems.

This was so interesting! I am not a “poetry” person, but I so enjoyed listening to Ms Mao talking about her process of finding information for her poems. I had never heard of a process of developing poetry like this, and it was really fascinating!

(And on a side note – I was so tired last night after a couple of really stressful/busy weeks, and though I had been looking forward to it, if this had not been a member event I would have chosen to go home and to bed. I am so glad I went!!! All the happiness research says to push yourself into these kinds of events – so if you are feeling uncertain about trying a new thing: try it! Hopefully you will have fun too!)

From Amazon.com: “In Oculus, Sally Wen Mao explores exile not just as a matter of distance and displacement but as a migration through time and a reckoning with technology. The title poem follows a nineteen-year-old girl in Shanghai who uploaded her suicide onto Instagram. Other poems cross into animated worlds, examine robot culture, and haunt a necropolis for electronic waste. A fascinating sequence spanning the collection speaks in the voice of the international icon and first Chinese American movie star Anna May Wong, who travels through the history of cinema with a time machine, even past her death and into the future of film, where she finds she has no progeny. With a speculative imagination and a sharpened wit, Mao powerfully confronts the paradoxes of seeing and being seen, the intimacies made possible and ruined by the screen, and the many roles and representations that women of color are made to endure in order to survive a culture that seeks to consume them.”

From the St Johns/St Bens press release:

“Many people might not recall who Anna May Wong was.

Wong was considered the first Chinese American movie star, and through her films, public appearances and prominent magazine features, she helped to humanize Chinese Americans to white audiences during a period of overt racism and discrimination. Following her death in 1961, Wong’s image remained a symbol in literature as well as in film.

That’s where poet Sally Wen Mao picked up the trail. Mao wrote a book called “Oculus,” published in 2019 by Minneapolis’ Graywolf Press, with a series of persona poems in Wong’s voice.”

And, it may not seem like a big deal – but the event served nice little desserts and fruit. The moderator of the event invited everyone to enjoy our experience a little more by getting a dessert and coffee or tea. What a nice idea!!

It was already a special event, and a lovely evening. Add in some pineapple, lemon cake, and nice tea – and it was just great. We sat together, enjoyed our cake and beverages, and had a lovely time listening to a very interesting author!

Do you want to have a fun evening with us??? Great!

Our next member events are here:

Join us! We will be so happy to see you, and it will be great to have time with your colleagues!