By Gig Conaughton, County of San Diego Communications Office

Photo: Alpine Branch Library, courtesy Jonathan Goetz

December 9, 2020 (San Diego County) - With the state’s new COVID-19 Stay Home order in effect, the County of San Diego’s 33 libraries have moved to door-side service to help county residents practice social distancing and still enjoy all the library books, digital magazines, music, movies and other fare they love.

People can still check out all library materials and safely pick them up right at their library’s door. No appointments are necessary.

East County News Service

December 8, 2020 (San Diego) - San Diego native Arden Pala, who was recently awarded “Best Child Actor” by the Los Angeles Film Awards, writes about celebrating cultures and similarities in his new book series benefiting San Diego COVID-19 Community Response Fund.  

Source: Thinking Purple

November 27, 2020 (San Diego) – The Purple Project, a San Diego nonprofit organization that provides aid and support to  domestic violence shelters in need is excited to present a children’s book, Penny’s Adventure in San Diego. The book follows Penny the Butterfly during her visit through various cities in San Diego County  as she migrates to southern Mexico to see her friends and family.

In each chapter, Penny performs acts of kindness. The fourteen San Diego County mayors who each contributed a chapter include Matt Hall, Richard Bailey, Bill Wells, Catherine Blakespear, Paul McNamara, Serge Dedina, Racquel Vasquez, Alejandra Sotelo-Solis, Peter Weiss, Steve Vaus, Rebecca Jones, Jewel Edson, Judy Ritter and Jill Galvez.

East County News Service

October 28, 2020 (San Diego)- - The reading public, starved for material in which technology is integral to the story, can now turn to Orofino Press LLC to fulfill their desires.  Orofino Press LLC's fiction focuses on mystery and young adult genres.  Non-fiction focuses on history and travel.  All transport the reader to the new and novel.

Technology to Orofino Press LLC extends far beyond computer science.  Examples include robotic gold refining, forensic accounting criminal detection, overhead cranes, energy maneuverability theory, and dissolvable substrate micro-electronics.  These, and other, technologies exist but may be unknown to the general public.  

Orofino Press LLC is a full service publisher.  To date it has published works by it founder, Don Lake of San Diego, but the company aspires to work with “excellent story tellers” who are “well-grounded in a technology,” according to Orofino’s press release.

The San Diego based Orofino Press LLC team aides and supports its authors throughout the rest of the successful publishing process.  All Orofino Press LLC's books are available in print and electronic form.

East County News Service

September 19, 2020 (San Diego) – After months of closure due to COVID-19, San Diego County has reopened in-person service at all 33 branches, on a limited basis. In addition, walk-up door-side services are also available. 

Below are full details.

East County News Service

July 26, 2020 (San Diego’s East County) – Although San Diego County libraries remain closed except for curbside  pickups, the library system is offering a Summer Learning Challenge. This year, all ages are being challenged to read, learn and create online.

By Larry Johnson, President, Mountain Empire Historical Society

July 16, 2020 (San Diego's East County) -- Have you driven down scenic Highway 80 through its eastern stretch of San Diego County and noticed a lone chimney standing like a silent sentinel in a field, or a very old building that appears to date back to a previous era and wondered about their history?

If so, a new book written by historian and author Cherry Diefenbach called Renegades, Rock Houses and Resorts…the Stories of Jacumba Hot Spring and Surrounds may be just the ticket.

This nearly 500-page book provides a comprehensive history of the area using more than 1,200 photos, hundreds of old newspaper articles, and personal accounts from the descendants of early settlers. Many of the photographs have not been published elsewhere.

Finished after nearly five years of research, the book chronicles the colorful history of local mountain and desert comunities including Bankhead Springs, Boulder Park/Desert View Tower, Boulevard/Manzanita, Hipass/Tierra Del Sol, Jacumba Hot Springs, Live Oak Springs, Mountain Springs, and Oasis.

By Darryl Littleton

March 30, 2020 (San Diego) -- Stand Up Comedy is dead!   Official cause of death – Coronavirus with Trump complications.  After a lengthy illness due to the politically correct sanctions, and despite recent signs of resurgence (thanks to Netflix), Stand Up finally succumbed this month from the prescription of no public gatherings over 10 people.  That dose was barely enough for a club staff, much less a show.   Not a Stand Up show, anyway.   Not a real one.

Some of history’s greatest works were created during past epidemics

By Miriam Raftery

Photos: Playwright William Shakespeare and physicist Isaac Newton are among those inspired to creative endeavors while in quarantine (public domain images via Wikipedia)

March 24, 2020 (San Diego’s East County) – Creativity can blossom out of hardship. As you’re hunkered down at home due to the COVID-19 epidemic, consider this: during historic epidemic eras, some of the world’s most famous writers, artists and scientists drew inspiration for their greatest works. We've provided a few of their stories, along with some links to free online classes in writing, art, science and music to spark your own creative impulses.

March 20, 2020 (San Diego) - The County of San Diego’s libraries are closed due to the coronavirus crisis to protect safety of customers and staff.

County Library Director Migell Acosta said library patrons can still access all the Library’s e-books and e-magazines around the clock — 24 hours a day, seven days a week — by downloading the Libby app for e-books or Flipster (under e-books and e-magazines) for e-magazines like Sports Illustrated, People, Time. The New York Times and other reference resources are available on our website.

All of the library’s online resources can be accessed here. Residents who do not have a library card can sign up for an Instant Digital Card and use their mobile phone number as their library card. To download the Libby app, San Diego County residents can go to sdEbooks.org. Library patrons can even order books and materials that are available at any of the County’s 33 branch libraries and have them delivered to their own branch library for them to pick up.

The Sounds Of Silence Are The Loudest, by Cortina Jackson (CoLAB Creative Group, LLC, 2018, 207 pages).

Book Review by Dennis Moore

March 4, 2020 (San Diego) - Cortina Jackson, with a background in criminal justice and law enforcement, follows up her initial publication; On Earth As It Is In Hell, with her latest fiction novel of a similar genre; The Sounds Of Silence Are The Loudest. As a matter of fact, this latest book borders on the macabre. It is thought provoking and has elements that can have the reader on the edge of their seat.

The Sounds Of Silence Are The Loudest, admittedly by the author, has stories within it that are not scary, but this writer begs to differ! Jackson states that the reality of it is. Jackson says she decided to call the book The Sounds of Silence are the Loudest, because people’s silence about abductions, trafficking, mind-control, and organ-harvesting is deafening. She further states that it is time to make some actual noise, for these issues are no longer a secret for this fiction writer.

Just Mercy: A Story Of Justice And Redemption, by Bryan Stevenson (Spiegel & Grau, New York, NY, 2014, 349 pages).

Book Review by Dennis Moore

“Bryan Stevenson is one of my personal heroes, perhaps the most inspiring and influential crusader for justice alive today, and Just Mercy is extraordinary. The stories told within these pages hold the potential to transform what we think we mean when we talk about justice.”

• MICHELLE ALEXANDER, author of The New Jim Crow

January 24, 2020 (San Diego) - It is ironic that the aforementioned Michelle Alexander would give praise for this book by Bryan Stevenson, as both authors and their books are winners of the NAACP Image Award for their similar takes on justice and redemption. Actually, Michelle Alexander won the NAACP Image Award in Literature shortly after this writer interviewed her in San Diego for my review of her book The New Jim Crow.

Another author giving praise to Bryan Stevenson and Just Mercy is Susan Neiman, author of Learning From the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil, who was recently interviewed on our “East County Magazine Live!” radio show and references Stevenson in the interview here.

Only in America: An Immigrant’s Success Story, by Wadie P. Deddeh, as told to Linda E. Sheridan (AuthorHouse, Bloomington, IN, 2019, 138 pages).

Book Review by Dennis Moore

January 11, 2020 (San Diego) - The late Wadie P. Deddeh, as told to Linda E. Sheridan, has written an insightful book that speaks to what America is all about; Only in America: An Immigrant’s Success Story.

Every book and story has to have a beginning and ending, and in the words of the author(s) of this book it states: “As I talk about being born and growing up in Iraq, I think it is important to describe and distinguish who the Chaldean people are and what challenges they have encountered. Chaldeans are an ethnic minority of Iraqi Catholics and one of the oldest Christian communities in the Middle East. Their native language is Aramaic. Throughout the centuries, Chaldeans faced varying levels of discrimination and persecution, and were compelled to travel to other parts of the world, where they established new communities.”