Today's walk to the library and back.

Week 47.2/52: November 21st - November 27th 2022 | Sotteok Sotteok 🧡

After eating brunch, I walked around Calgary Central Library with Angela before I had to head into work (tragic). Took some new library photos........ it’s so nice there as always. She came back to bring me bubble tea and food near the end of my shift! Finally got DON’T YELL AT ME again (love that logo) - honey wintermelon tea, and tried sotteok sotteok from The Apron (was eying it for so long on doordash). THANKS FOR THE FOOD IT WAS SO YUM!!!!!!!! 

The Central Library in Calgary is gorgeous. I love the Indigenous section

obsessed with the calgary central library

Calgary, Central Library, Alberta

Excerpts from the article:

Because it’s clear that being “the last public space” isn’t a privilege. It’s a sign that something has gone terribly wrong.

At the time, countless articles asked if new technology meant “the death of the public library.” Instead, the institution completely transformed itself. Libraries carved out a new role providing online access to those who needed it. They abandoned the big central desk, stopped shushing patrons, and pushed employees out onto the floor to do programming. Today, you’ll find a semester’s load of classes, events, and seminars at your local library: on digital photography, estate planning, quilting, audio recording, taxes for seniors, gaming for teens, and countless “circle times” in which introverts who probably chose the profession because of their passion for Victorian literature are forced to perform “The Bear Went over the Mountain” to rooms full of rioting toddlers.

In the midst of this transformation, new demands began to emerge. Libraries have always been a welcoming space for the entire community. Alexander Calhoun, Calgary’s first librarian, used the space for adult education programs and welcomed “transients” and the unemployed into the building during the Depression. But the past forty years of urban life have seen those demands grow exponentially. In the late 1970s, “homelessness” as we know it today didn’t really exist; the issue only emerged as a serious social problem in the 1980s. Since then, as governments have abandoned building social housing and rents have skyrocketed, homelessness in Canada has transformed into a snowballing human rights issue. Meanwhile, the opioid crisis has devastated communities, killing more than 34,000 Canadians between 2016 and 2022, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada. And the country’s mental health care system, always an underfunded patchwork of services, is today completely unequipped to deal with demand. According to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, from 2020 to 2021, Canadians waited a median of twenty-two days for their first counselling session. As other communal support networks have suffered cutbacks and disintegrated, the library has found itself as one of the only places left with an open door.

When people tell the story of this transformation, from book repository to social services hub, it’s usually as an uncomplicated triumph. A recent “love letter” to libraries in the New York Times has a typical capsule history: “As local safety nets shriveled, the library roof magically expanded from umbrella to tarp to circus tent to airplane hangar. The modern library keeps its citizens warm, safe, healthy, entertained, educated, hydrated and, above all, connected.” That story, while heartwarming, obscures the reality of what has happened. No institution “magically” takes on the role of the entire welfare state, especially none as underfunded as the public library. If the library has managed to expand its protective umbrella, it has done so after a series of difficult decisions. And that expansion has come with costs.

CTrain 2004 emerges from the light rail transit tunnel under the Central Library in downtown Calgary, Alberta, summer 2018. Photo by Daveography via Skyrise Calgary

2004 is one of the original Siemens-Duewag U2 light rail transit vehicles purchased by the city of Calgary for the start of CTrain operations in 1981, and has been retired since this photo was taken. The new Central Library opened in November 2018 and sits within walking distance of the City Hall CTrain stop.

Calgary Central Library, Canada

Finally finished this piece after about a year.

You can see it on display at Calgary's Central Library through the month of August

I have the privilege of facilitating a short drawing workshop at Calgary Central Library on March 26✏️

Our time will examine negative space as an added way of seeing the subject and applying it as a tool to tighten up proportion, gesture and spacial awareness in drawing. We will explore both the figure and objects as subject matter. Please bring your fave drawing tools.

You can sign up for this free event on Eventbrite. Thanks to the @panel_one Sketch Sessions team for planning help. See you at the end of March! 🖍️🍊 (PS. The lil colour charts are not course material, they're just there to get you jazzed about negative space🪐)

Week 11.3/52: March 13th - March 19th 2023 | The Next Page 📖

Day off and went exploring with coworkers again. First stop was The Next Page in Inglewood. Super beautiful bookstore imo. Got such nice photos AHHAHAA. Absolutely did not touch a single book... LOL but I really love the ladder and reading corner. After the bookstore, we went to visit the Calgary Central Library (it’s literally my 4th time there HAHAHAHAA that’s what happens when I spend 1/3 of my life in Calgs lmao). Got some more solid photos. It’s been fun playing around with my phone... especially with the vintage film camera apps. They really do look so nice. 

more of the Calgary central library

A shooting in downtown Calgary on Wednesday sent one person to the hospital with serious injuries, according to Calgary EMS. Police originally told Global News that officers had sealed off a downtown Tim Hortons due to an ongoing incident. They later described the incident as an altercation involving weapons on a bus on 3 Street S.E. and said shots were fired. They said a tactical unit was inside Tim Hortons at 4 Street and 8 Avenue S.E., east of the Central Library. In a news release, police said they were called to an altercation on a bus as it moved. When the driver stopped the bus, the incident escalated and shooting occurred, injuring one man. Police said bystanders attempted life-saving measures for the man, who was transported to a hospital in a life-threatening condition. Police said bus occupants fled the area during the shooting, including those involved in the altercation. Officers then tracked suspects throughout the downtown area and at a nearby restaurant but nobody was located during the search. Staff and customers at Tim Hortons were kept outside the coffee shop. Shortly after 1:30 p.m., police said the area had been cleared but was still a “very active scene.” Police said two people were taken into custody on Ninth Avenue near Fort Calgary. A third suspect has not yet been found. Officers are trying to obtain CCTV footage to determine if one of the people arrested was responsible for the shooting. “It’s very disconcerting… Our folks have been on the transit lines and will continue to be,” Calgary Police Service Chief Mark Neufeld said at an unrelated news conference on Wednesday afternoon. “This is actually happening on all over the city… It’s a pretty rare event but impactful.” Calgary resident Louis McCleuskey regularly visits the Central Library and said he isn’t surprised that a serious incident happened in the area. He said public transit needs more security measures and infrastructure, such as guard rails on train platforms. “I’m not surprised (to see this level of police presence),” he told Global News. “It’s not safe… It’s unbelievable the amount of violence taking place.” Anyone with information about the incident is asked to call the police at 403-266-1234 or Crime Stoppers.