Donald Allison

I cant wait to hear the stories to be told about the effort to build the new Seaside Public Library that is opening at 10 a.m. on Saturday. Ive had a peek inside recently, and it is amazing to see how much bigger the new one is and how beautifully it is designed. I think its great there will be local nature photographs displayed through the month.

Im interested to know what books Book Warehouse and Beach Books donated, and to see how everything is organized. I remember when I first moved to Seaside I spent a lot of time in the library as it was usually raining, and I love to be inside reading when the wind is howling and winter is in full force.

One thing that cracked me up about the library was during one of my first visits, when I was looking for somewhere to sit down in the magazine section and I couldnt find an open seat, sans one occupied by a large, white sleeping cat. It seemed to sense I was looking at her, because she lifted her head and glared at me with a look like, Dont even think about it, buddy. I soon learned that Neo is quite a fixture at the library, and she doesnt have to worry about where her next bowl of kitty chow is coming from as many people in the community give money to feed her. How cute!

I always enjoy my trips to the library, and us Yesteryear fans would be out of luck without the microfilm of the old Seaside Signal issues for everyone to peruse. Sadly, our archives are missing a few issues, and I recently found two months missing from 1908 that would have made doing Yesteryear nearly impossible without our trusty little library. Now its going to be a big trusty one!

Ive always had a library card, and one of my favorite things to do when I move to a new city is to look through their librarys history section to see what books look interesting and figure out the order in which I want to read them. Out of all the public libraries Ive been to, one of my favorites is the Flamingo library in Las Vegas, the biggest one in the city. It always seemed funny to me that a town that is famous for gambling and partying would have such an amazing selection of history books, in addition to many other great subjects.

Mayans had always seemed so mystical to me, and I remember discovering about 20 different books about them during one of my first visits to Flamingo library, and happily began researching the progress that has been made to decipher the amazing glyphs they produced. I learned that the Mayan calendar and their intimate knowledge of the suns solar flares were derived from monitoring the transit of the planet Venus.

I couldnt count all the great books Ive read from different libraries over the years, what a great public resource. You know what they say, you cant fake intelligence! Its funny how you remember parts of your life by which books you were reading, and I am looking forward to making some more memories in Seaside as I curl up with some good books as winter sets in.

Ive taken a pretty good dent out of reading books in the history section at our library, and I am eager to see if there are new ones that have been added to the collection. Thank you to everyone who helped in making the new Seaside Public Library possible. This Saturday will be a historic one and I hope you all will be there. Im excited to see Neo again, too. I hope she lets me sit down this time.