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Pressure mounts on White House in drone attack aftermath
California Today: Why the L.A. Public Library acquired a book publisher
It's Monday. Why the Los Angeles Public Library acquired a book publisher. Plus, more on why the editor in chief of The Los Angeles Times resigned this month. I'm a longtime fan of the Los Angeles Public Library. After I learned to read, my mother and I would walk nearly every day from our apartment to the Brentwood branch to check out picture books to add to a growing stack on my night stand. And throughout my 20s, I was a regular visitor to the charming Los Feliz branch, where I would, of course, borrow books but also sometimes work on my laptop, print documents or drop off my ballot on Election Day. (Fun fact: The Los Feliz library sits where the actor Leonardo DiCaprio's childhood home used to be.) Libraries are changing; they're adapting to shifts in technology and expanding their services to help communities in need. Los Angeles Public Library staff members are now taught how to respond to child abuse and threatening behavior, trained on how to use Narcan to revive overdose victims, and have panic buttons at their desks, The Los Angeles Times reported last year. The library system is "a place where John Lithgow can be found reading next to an unhoused person in the North Hollywood branch," Jeffrey Fleishman wrote in that article. In this moment when the Los Angeles library system is redefining itself, it has taken an unusual step. The library system, which manages 73 branches and houses more than eight million books, announced last month that it had acquired a local book publisher, Angel City Press, which had been run by a married couple. I spoke to John Szabo, who has been the city librarian of Los Angeles since 2012, about the acquisition and the library's changing role in the community. Here's our conversation, lightly edited: Why did the library acquire a printing press? A few years ago, Paddy Calistro and Scott McAuley, the owners of Angel City Press, approached us and said they were retiring and wanted to donate the press to the library. While it's certainly a small business, the press also feels to me like it's an institution in Los Angeles, and one that has had a wonderful mission of publishing these just incredibly high-quality, wonderful, well-researched books about Los Angeles and Southern California. We really thought long and hard about it, and also thought about our mission and the library's role. And it really seemed like a great fit, and like something that would help us do what we already do, and that is preserve and tell stories of Los Angeles and Southern California. This may be a silly question, but what will it mean, exactly, that you have a press? Does it mean that the library is publishing new books?
We will be publishing books — it will be Angel City Press at the Los Angeles Public Library. We will have an editorial director who will handle acquisitions and oversee the press. We certainly aren't going to look at the press as solely a platform for just Los Angeles Public Library things. Angel City Press is focused on the art and architecture and culture and personalities and stories of Southern California, and we want to do that going forward. There's this expanding universe of things that the library system now touches on. Do you see acquiring the press as another way the library is adapting to our current environment? I do. Public libraries — whether in big cities, small towns or suburban areas — are very dynamic, relevant places today, doing really important work. Whether it's the social workers that we have on staff, mental health services that we're providing, podcasting studios, maker spaces, emerging technologies available for everyone — the poorest in the community and everyone else too — all of these things are ways in which libraries are addressing the big issues in their communities. The press is something that helps the library be a voice for everyone in the community. It's so important to us that our collections reflect the incredible diversity of Los Angeles. I get excited when I think that a book that we publish here at the library through Angel City Press might tell a story or open a window onto a world that otherwise might not be discovered, or a voice or a story that otherwise wouldn't have an opportunity to be amplified. I hope the fact that it's the library doing that will help those stories travel even farther.
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Tell usToday we're asking about love: not whom you love, but what you love about your corner of California. Email us a love letter to your California city, neighborhood or region — or to the Golden State as a whole — and we may share it in an upcoming newsletter. You can reach the team at CAtoday@nytimes.com. And before you go, some good newsPassion fruit, which was once hard to come by in the United States, is now surging in popularity. The fruit, a longtime staple in Latin American and Asian cooking, has made its way to the aisles of U.S. supermarkets, the menus of in-vogue restaurants, and even the videos of Instagram influencers.
But passion fruit's new prevalence — and allure — is perhaps best exemplified in Los Angeles, where both farmers and backyard gardeners now grow the fruit abundantly. Hannah Goldfield, a food writer for The New Yorker who says she is a devotee of passion fruit, recently took a trip to L.A. to learn more about the fruit and its many creative applications. Among the memorable dishes she sampled were a lime and passion fruit icebox dessert, a passion fruit pie and a chicken liver mousse with passion fruit pulp. "To follow the scent of passion fruit around L.A. is to discover some of the city's most interesting and quintessentially California cooking," Goldfield writes. Thanks for reading. I'll be back tomorrow. — Soumya P.S. Here's today's Mini Crossword. Maia Coleman and Briana Scalia contributed to California Today. You can reach the team at CAtoday@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.
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