Dear Sisters, Brothers, and Kin,
The East Side Freedom Library family joins you in welcoming the new year. We are glad to see 2020 in our rear view mirror. We all learned a lot—about the deep-rooted inequities in our society, the weaknesses in our political system, and the ways we are all connected. Here at ESFL we’ve made quite an effort to learn how to use social media tools to maintain our connections with you. A grad student consultant from the University of Minnesota’s Management and Technical Assistance Program (MTAP) has helped us better understand how you are using our social media tools.
As a result, we are making some adjustments, and we’d like to use this first e-newsletter of the new year to let you know about them:
We have changed the title of the e-newsletter to “What’s Happening at ESFL,” and we have added a table of contents. We hope this makes it stand out in your inbox and be more user-friendly. We also want to encourage you to “click through” the newsletter and see what’s on offer in the coming weeks.
You can watch videos of our programs well after they have aired “live.” We began streaming and recording some of our programs before the pandemic, and now, thanks to collaborators Carla Riehle and David Zierott, all of our programs are being recorded and saved. View them on our YouTube channel.
Many of our programs are available as podcasts. You might want to listen while walking or jogging, or driving in the car. Maybe you don’t need to watch talking heads talk. But you can listen here.
We want to involve you more directly in the production of knowledge and in the weaving of connections between and among you. With these goals in mind, we have expanded the place of blogs on our website and we invite you not only to read them but also to write them. We currently have two blog categories: “Book Geek Shelf Talker” and “Research, Experiences and Reviews.” Our blog site is intended to provide you with outlets for your ideas and space to be in conversation with other voices in our community. To read already posted blogs and to learn more about how to submit a blog, visit our blog page.
We urge you to suggest program ideas to us. Email us at [email protected] and let us know of authors, artists, issues, topics, you would like to see us address.
We are working hard to curate programs for the weeks ahead. Please join our e-newsletter list to learn “What’s happening at ESFL.” And stay safe and well.
Love and Solidarity,
Beth Cleary and Peter Rachleff
Co-Executive Directors