Drop of Points: The ACO7's Next Literacy Fair

Spread the GIFT of LITERACY! We're going strong in our #aoc7bookdrive and we'd love you to be part of this! #readtolead #bookstokids #eachoneteachone There's 4 book drop off locations for your convenience.

Lincoln Elementary
1175 E. 11th Street

Neighborhood Resource Center
100 Broadway, Ste. 550

The Center Long Beach
2701 E. 4th Street

Mark Twain Neighborhood Library
1401 E. Anaheim Street

Thank you in advance!

Clean Up: 09/26/2015: 17th Street from Gardenia to Orange

There will be a clean up in the MacArthur Park Neighborhood that will get trash off 17th Street. We will be starting at 17th and Gardenia and heading west. Clean ups occur virtually every Saturday at 10am. Volunteers are always welcome. This will be the third time we have cleaned 17th Street.

St. Louis/ Dawson Clean: 14th to Anaheim St

There was an announced clean up of St. Louis Street that followed 14th Street to Anaheim. While originally we intended to get St. Louis, Dawson and Raymond, in the end it was just a little too hot to get all three. We were able to get Dawson from 14th to Anaheim and 14th Street again from St. Louis to Dawson.

Thanks to the neighbors who gave me the bottled water.  Thanks to the volunteers that helped make this cleaning go a little quicker. Because both streets were reasonably clean we were able to get some nasty weeds out of the Anaheim Corridor.

We may finish and get Raymond tomorrow; that kind of depends how hot it gets. We originally planned to get 15th Street, that will probably have to wait until a later weekend.

Update 08/31/2015: Raymond has been cleaned. It helped that the temperature was only 74 degrees today and the humidity was only 63%. That sounds terrible but last night the humidity was 83% and the temperature was 78.

The AOC7's Annual Literacy Fair

Parents lined up with kids to get their book bags.

Today at MacArthur Park, the AOC7, which represents the neighborhood from Orange to Cherry and 7th to Anaheim, held its annual literacy fair. Neighborhood kids walked away with free books, food and some with prizes. 

Set up for the fair actually began at 7am. The fair itself began at 10am and ended at 1pm.

This year, the AOC7 secured donations of more than 8,000 new and used books. Those donations went to students of Lincoln Elementary, Whittier Elementary as well as a few neighboring school children who happened to be passing by during the fair.

Prize give raffles during the AOC7's annual Literacy Fair.

Parents and kids getting their free books and reading them.

The MacArthur Park Neighborhood would like to thank the AOC7 and all the volunteers who brought such a great event to our all the adjoining neighborhoods. Assuming the literacy fair grows, next year they will need more volunteers, more schools and kid's organizations to participate.

The food and prizes were provided courtesy of various organizations like the Long Beach Rescue Mission and the Port of Long Beach, just to name a few.

Anybody who would like to see a full album of pictures of the event, can look on the MacArthur Park Neighborhood Group.

Two Words

It's more effective to change your surroundings than to wish someone would change them for you.

Unannounced Sunday Clean Up On Gaviota

I held off cleaning Gaviota. Since it's my street, I thought that may look a little selfish. Anyhow, I don't care to live on a dirty street so every now and then there will be an unannounced street cleaning early Sunday. In the future to find out where those cleanings will be, if they will happen at all, show up early for the scheduled Saturday cleanings to find out where. 

There will be things to give away to MacArthur Park residents, or anyone who pitches in, on those days.

The two pictures show how much trash was on my side of Gaviota, from PCH to 15th street. I am a little surprised actually as I had o go down 3/4ths of the way down the major street Walnut from PCH to Anaheim yesterday to approach that much trash.