EL SEGUNDO HERALD May 6, 2021 Page 11
Lily Muysa
family or can do well as a single cat.
Toffee is a friendly, energetic, and affectionate
boy that loves to romp and play, then
cuddle up beside his human for some love
and attention. Toffee is confident and not shy
about meeting new people. He loves to chase
the feather cat wand and laser toy. Though he
is not the most graceful when he leaps into
the air and plops to the ground, Toffee has a
ton of fun and that is what counts. He would
do best in a home without other cats. With his
energetic personality, he just needs cat toys to
keep him happy and stimulated. Schedule a
time to meet this friendly, adorable guy and
see if he is the right kitty for you.
These cats and kittens are available for adoption
through Kitten Rescue, one of the largest
cat rescue groups in Southern California. All
our kitties are spayed/neutered, microchipped,
tested for FeLV and FIV, dewormed and current
on their vaccinations. For additional information
and to see these or our other kittens and cats,
please check our website www.kittenrescue.org.
Our Adoption Center is temporarily closed.
In the meantime, we are still conducting contactless
adoptions using all the online tools at
our disposal. To virtually browse our adoptable
cats, please visit our Adoption Gallery where
you can find photos and profiles of all the
cats and kittens we have up for adoption from
our network of foster homes and from the
Sanctuary. At the end of each cat’s profile
is a link to the email address of the foster
parent or adoption counselor, and you may
reach out directly with questions or to arrange
a virtual meeting.
The donations and support we receive from
individuals like you, who share our love and
commitment to helping cats and kittens in Los
Angeles, are the sole reason we are able to do
what we do. We are grateful for your financial
help. By making even a small donation today,
you can touch the lives of the many deserving,
wonderful animals in our care. There are many
ways you can donate and help, and every dollar
means so much. Kitten Rescue is a 501(c)(3)
nonprofit. Your tax-deductible donations for
the rescue and care of our cats and kittens can
be made through our website or by sending a
check payable to Kitten Rescue, 3519 Casitas
Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90039.
Saving one animal won’t change the world, but
the world will surely change for that animal. •
Purrrfect Companions
Why are there so many kittens and cats out
there to save? An unspayed kitten can begin
to have babies at as young as 5-6 months of
age. With kittens themselves having kittens in
a season that lasts for at least seven months,
the birth rate in just one year is explosive. We
will never run out of kittens; what we fight so
hard to end is the unnecessary suffering and
death of those mama cats and babies born on
the streets. Please spay and neuter your pets;
assistance is available! Along with spay and
neutering, if just 2% of the pet-owning households
in America fostered one pet a year, we
could stop euthanizing healthy pets in shelters.
Lily is a sweet, mellow kitten who is one
of two girls in this litter of five. Although she
is much calmer as compared to Aster, Iris and
Indigo, that does not mean she doesn’t like
to have fun! She has some spunk and enjoys
chasing the laser light, leaping high into the
air for the feather wand or running through
the cat tube while chasing her siblings. Lily is
curious yet cautious and loves to stare at her
favorite human with her big eyes letting you
know she wants some chin rubs and cuddles.
Due to her young age and energy level, this
beautiful girl would love to be adopted with
one of her siblings or her Mama. This family
has truly bonded and needs to be adopted in
pairs only.
Kirk and Spock are playful, curious brothers
who are very loving towards each other. They
enjoy napping together and are often found
cuddling and grooming each other. They like
to run around and play with their toys. Like
most teenage boys, they can be troublemakers
at times, but overall, they are good cats. Kirk is
very vocal and likes to leap to high places. He
likes being pet and sitting close to you. Spock
is cuddlier than Kirk. He will sniff your face
and look for your hand until he is pet. He also
likes to sit close to you. Kirk and Spock are
very bonded and need to be adopted together.
Rescued from a dangerous industrial area,
Musya’s life was not easy which is another
reason why she deserves a loving home.
Although she can be shy at first, Muysa is a
sweetheart once you get to know her! She is
an extremely cute girl, petite and loving, with
the most gorgeous fur and coloring. Musya
enjoys playing and is well-behaved. She is
all about belly rubs and loves being brushed.
Musya will be a great addition to your furry
Kirk and Spock
Toffee
Public Library from front page
use the internet computers and get research
assistance. In addition to this, a small number
of seats will now be available for reading in
the library, and study rooms will be available
for one-person, one-hour reservations.”
So now you know the May 2021 ESPL
guidelines; so, you have no excuse not to drop
into the library, right?
Brick-and-(sometimes) mortar libraries have
a rich, worldwide tradition. A little research unearthed
that the first library is accredited to have
been started by some presumed dictator, longdeceased.
“The world’s oldest known library
was founded sometime in the 7th century, B.C.
for the “royal contemplation” of the Assyrian
ruler Ashurbanipal,” the research yielded. It
was in the long-forgotten city of Nineveh in
what is now modern-day Iraq. The site included
“a trove of some 30,000 cuneiform tablets
organized according to the subject matter.”
I did not find that information in dusty Encyclopedia
Britannica volumes, but borrowed
the details from the always helpful internet,
which you can, again, access from the ESPL.
Not exactly sure what cuneiform tablets
were, but I will venture that the information
on those tablets was riveting, and those local
“common folk” who could view the tablets
with the OK from Ashurbanipal felt like they
may have hit the knowledge lottery. Now,
like all information gleaned from impeccable
sources regarding events a billion or so years
ago, take my research with a grain or two of
salt. I think the Greeks claimed that they had
invented the library way before Ashurbanipal,
but it seems the ancient Greeks took credit
for the invention of many things back before
anyone could verify anything.
In what was to become the good old U.S. of
A. the iconic Benjamin Franklin, he of the kite
flying adventures, inventor of “bifocal glasses,”
and relevant in the start-up our country, is
credited by many for starting the first stateside
library in 1731. Of course, that factoid is also
in dispute; not sure if the Greeks are also
claiming that they started the first library in
America. My research uncovered the nugget
that Franklin, like the long-deceased ruler
Ashurbanipal, also wanted us “common folk
to have access to books.”
Julie Todd is the ESPL senior librarian and
oversees cultural development and communications,
and community services. She figures
that she has worked at the library for about
15 years. As for most of us, the COVID-related
shutdown in the Spring of 2020 forced a gameplan
change for the ESPL. Todd said the library
had to pivot to curbside services and make
available virtual content to its customers. “The
staff was challenged,” she said while noting that
the library workers were open to embracing a
different way of operating during the advent of
the pandemic. Todd said that she and her team
worked closely with the City of El Segundo to
utilize the library to provide timely pandemic
information to citizens while also enhancing
their digital contents, including audiobooks,
and refreshing their website offerings.
Now that the ESPL is opening up to its
customers, Todd again sees the building as a
“community hub” to citizens, providing the
traditional library services, plus live-music
offerings, author events, book discussions, and
senior internet class usage, while continuing to
ramp-up educational and cultural opportunities
for those who may also like to take advantage
of library services virtually.
“We want to offer experiences that enhance
people, and that will encourage people to want
to be here,” she said. Of the soft reopening in
April, Todd said that “people are really happy
to have the library access again. People are
still cautious, hesitant about public spaces,”
noting that the library has reconfigured some
of its interior furniture to comply with social
distance parameters, and encourage patrons
to take advantage of available services, but
not hunker-down for a full-day at the library.
One of the services now offered again at
the library is that computer access. “It is nice
to be able to offer internet access,” Todd said,
“because there are a lot of people who rely on
the library for (it).”
The library’s value does not just include
what takes place inside the building or online.
The ESPL, the department that oversees
El Segundo’s cultural development program,
has helped shepherd the efforts of Manhattan
Beach’s Jack Crawford, a 17-year-old Mira
Costa High School student and Hermosa Beach
troop Eagle-scout-to-be, to design and install
a viewing station on the North side of Grand
Avenue across the street from the stunning
Department of Water and Power tank mural
that was the brainchild of El Segundo graduate
(class of 1959) John Van Hamersveld.
The Van Hamersveld mural, which replaced
to some a “rusted and paint peeling eyesore,”
looms 32-feet into the ozone, with a circumference
of 510 feet. The design pays homage
to the South Bay surf culture, which is fitting,
because the designer, among his other
works, is credited with creating the poster for
the iconic surf film, the 1960’s release, “The
Endless Summer.”
For his part, Crawford, who became familiar
with the DWP mural while making multiple
trips to El Segundo to visit his grandparents, and
team, which included Hermosa Beach scout troop
leaders and members, installed the viewing
station in mid-April. It consists of a surfboard
built as the bench, a sign with a QR code that
directs interested folk to the library’s webpage,
which shares details about Crawford’s project,
and includes a link to Van Hamersveld’s website.
Van Hamersveld, who was inducted into the
El Segundo High School hall-of-fame in 2017,
has a long history of iconic graphic designs. He
was the art director at Capitol Records in the
mid-’60s and designed album covers, and was
an integral component of devising worldwide
ad campaigns to promote the bands his work
helped to put on the pop culture map.
You may have heard of some of the bands
that Van Hamersveld worked with: the Beatles,
the Rolling Stones, KISS, the Grateful Dead,
and the Beach Boys, to name a few. Too bad
most of us off-loaded most of our albums from
the ’70s and ’80s when we were coerced to buy
8-tracks or cassettes. I believe that some of
those vintage covers, possibly designed by Van
Hamersveld and the vinyl encased between said
covers, might be worth a nickel or two in 2021?
For his part, scout Crawford emailed that he
was “very appreciative of all of the people who
came together to support my project. I especially
enjoyed exploring my creativity and working
on blending technology with art to create a
more meaningful experience for the community.”
Upcoming events sponsored by the library
include a Story Walk in Library Park, book
discussions, and the annual summer reading
program launch in mid-June. If you are interested
in future library events, you can access
their website at www.elsegundolibrary.org, or
call 310.524.2729.
Time to get back to a semblance of literary
normalcy, right? •
Van Hamersveld DWP Tank Mural