From the Main Library

In the latest issue of The Live Oak, the East Bay Genealogical Society's newsletter, Kimberly Powell clears up a some key questions genealogists present to library staff. In the article, "Understanding Cousin Relationships," she explains that second cousins have the same great grandparents as you, but not the same grandparents. With a third cousin, you'd share the same great, great grandparents. A "cousin once removed" means that the cousin is one generation older or younger than you, for example, your mother's first cousin would be your "first cousin, once removed." 

Learning about family relationships and about one's own family history used to be a daunting task. But with the ready availability of genealogy databases, video apps like Skype, TV programs like PBS' Finding Your Roots, and easy-to-use DNA kits, genealogy research has become more popular than ever. The Oakland

The Ebola virus has been in the news. The current outbreak in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea has killed thousands. Despite the frenzied commentary of some journalists, there is no danger of an outbreak in the United States. Drug resistant bacteria and motor vehicle accidents kill more people in the United States than this Ebola outbreak (current statistics from the World Health Organization show that 4,500 people have died so far).

Yes, Ebola is a serious disease that kills between 60 and 90 percent of those who contract it, but it is not highly contagious. The host is the fruit bat. People get the disease when bodily fluids (blood, saliva, feces, urine, semen) enter the body through broken skin or mucous membranes. The disease is not airborne. It can only be transmitted via direct contact, which is why health care workers are at high risk if they do not take proper precautions.

The symptoms are similar to many common infections such as the flu: fever, weakness, muscle aches, sore throat, so unless the patient tells his/her health care provider about possible

Throughout history, from the early consorts of the European Renaissance (fourteenth through seventeenth centuries) to the rent parties of the Harlem Renaissance (1920s and 1930s), having “house concerts” has been a way to introduce an audience to new chamber music compositions and play for an appreciative audience in an intimate space. The rent parties that flourished in New York, Chicago, and Detroit (among other places) in the early to mid-twentieth century were just that: a way to help pay the rent! And let’s not forget the tradition of folk music house performances and sing-alongs that are also part of the house concert’s long and varied history.

Today house concerts—albeit in a more refined form than the rent parties—are once again gaining in popularity. Performing artists in the current generation are looking to find not only creative approaches to reaching new and appreciative audiences but also ways to make a living doing what they love.

The Oakland Public Library is delighted to present a program—“

Thinking of having an old fashioned Halloween Party, but find you "must sigh vainly for farmstead kitchen and big new barn"?  Marion Harland published a few suggestions on how to "retain the spirit of the time-honored festival" in the San Francisco Call in 1905. When planning your costume remember that "a fine chance is offered here for the display of jaunty aprons and short-sleeved blouses." And for diversions, you can simply bob for apples or have your fortune told through a cabbage stalk, a goblet of vinegar, or a flaming raisin!

Read all of her suggestions in the newspaper images below.