"Niche" is the name of the game! For December, we spoke with small business owner Noel Michael, CEO of Bello Boopie, Inc., who shared his insights on owning a niche business. Bello Boopie's humble beginnings began in 1970 with the establishment of Things Very Special, an appointment-only, home-based business. When the business changed ownership in 2015, Things Very Special went under a major transformation.
Have you completed the 2023 Jax Stacks Reading Challenge?! Throughout the year, we've been giving you suggestions for each* category in the challenge via email and blog every month so that you would always have a great library book waiting for you if you needed it. If you've missed any of these recommendations, check our blog archive! If you want a prize, you've got until December 31, 2023, to cross off at least 12 of those categories. In the meantime, free to share your progress and recommendations on social media using #jaxstacks.
The Red Hill Cemetery Project documents an African American Cemetery in Waycross Georgia with more than 1000 burials dating from the late nineteen century. Researchers from UNF and the Okefenokee Heritage Center are documenting the site, digitizing death certificates, collecting oral histories, and scanning additional documents (photographs, funeral home records, etc). The project is multi-disciplinary and includes contributors from Archaeology, History, and Geography. UNF professors David Sheffler, Felicia Bevel, and Michael Boyles will speak about the project and its importance to local history.
We're closing out the year with some very cool programs and a ton of great book clubs! Get caught up in a good book with "Tangled Webb," a brand new Book Club meeting at Webb Wesconnett Regional Library. If you're interested in local history and memoirs, don't miss the Lit Chat Interview with Nat Glover. At seventeen, he unknowingly headed into an angry white mob and the Ku Klux Klan attacking young black protestors staging a sit-in at a downtown whites-only lunch counter. Known as “Ax Handle Saturday,” this harrowing encounter with racism would commit him to a lifetime of fighting for justice. December is also the last month to check off 12 books and win a cool prize for the 2023 Jax Stacks Reading Challenge. A new challenge (and new categories) start January 1, 2024!
The holiday season is here! With all the parties and get-togethers, it can be a busy time. Plus, there's all that shopping, cooking and decorating! You should definitely reward yourself for all of that hard work by taking the time to read a good book! If you're looking for ideas about what to read or looking for the perfect gift for the book lovers in your life, join us at Library Book Club!
If you're cold, they're cold. Don't forget about the critters this winter! Join us for some DIY gardening projects that will help your native wildlife weather the season (and prepare for the coming spring). Learn these tips and more from Master Gardeners and our friends at the UF Extension Office! Plus, there's another "Entrepreneurship Basics" workshop with our partners at EY. Measure your entrepreneurial mindset for FREE at the Library!
Nat Glover was born in 1943, in segregated Jacksonville, Florida. At seventeen, he unknowingly headed into an angry white mob and the Ku Klux Klan attacking young black protestors staging a sit-in at a downtown whites-only lunch counter. Known as “Ax Handle Saturday,” this harrowing encounter with racism would commit him to a lifetime of fighting for justice. He joined the Jacksonville Police Department in 1966 where he was promoted to detective, rose to sergeant, and was appointed the city’s first hostage negotiator. In 1995, Duval County voters elected him the first Black sheriff in Florida since Reconstruction. Hear more about his incredible work and his new memoir, Striving for Justice: A Black Sheriff.
In November, we're thinking about "Black Friday" and how you can leverage it and other big shopping days this holiday season to boost your retail sales. What deals are you offering at your small business? Are you offering your products for sale online? Are you promoting your small business during Small Business Saturday? With free resources from the Library, you can learn everything from how to build a small business website with Shopify or how to start a side hustle by selling on Amazon or Etsy. We also have some community partners offering some great workshops for anyone thinking of starting up a new business!
For National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), we asked a few of our recent Lit Chat and Writer's Lab alumni to answer a few questions about their writing process. Our second guest blogger is Sohrab Homi Fracis. Our second guest blogger is Sohrab Homi Fracis. True Fiction, his new book of North Florida (and elsewhere) stories, won the 2023 International Book Award for story collections. Fracis was also the first Asian American author to win the Iowa Short Fiction Award, described by the New York Times Book Review as "among the most prestigious literary prizes America offers," for his first book, Ticket to Minto: Stories of India and America.
Released in 1926, The Flying Ace was a classic silent film that featured an all-African-American cast, with principal photography shot right here in Jacksonville. Made in the South during a period that arguably represented the height of "Jim Crow," it was one of many films by white filmmaker Richard E. Norman that challenged the stereotypes about Black people found in the overwhelming majority of the films of that era. In 2021, The Flying Ace was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
