Official Portraits



 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife and they shall be one, and they shall be one flesh.
- Genesis 2:24

 

Kenny and Shannon Plunk

The official announcement is posted on DiamondBarPatch.com announcement page.

Full disclosure, this publication is on my client list. However, this feature is completely open to the general public, free of charge. It publishes daily "patching " communities such as Diamond Bar, under served by the  traditional media outlets with everything from history to real-time breaking news.

When I set sail for the wedding cruise; Sun, moon and stars appeared aligned. The Cheshire smiles on staff at City and County created in my journalist's heart the healthy expectation that the same weekend Los Angeles County Supervisor Don Knabe and the City of Diamond Bar would announce that they had come to terms on how to build a better library to serve our community. 

Don Knabe



For those who don't know our  County Supervisor, my impressions over the years is this is a man who is both extraordinarily kind- and no one's fool. Many politicians are one- or the other. Knabe is both.  

The issue between those more concerned with expanding library facilities and those more concerned with preserving the public treasury has been a long festering splinter in local friendships.

The catalyst for "why now" was the recession- when the City's fiscal responsibility allowed it to take advantage of the recession. It was able to purchase a commercial building large enough to hold both a City Hall (good-bye rent) and with space enough left over to add a library. If they could get the Supervisor's to buy into the plan. Which if you've ever worked with a bureaucracy- even when the parties are in basic agreement, until the ink  where the signatures go is dry on the contract- do NOT hold your breath.

However, when a city with a healthy cash reserve has the opportunity to fund a city hall and a library for less than half of the cost of just what a library was estimated to cost just a few years ago. Only fools would sit on the bags of money while a community of over 50,000 is served by a facility with 35 parking spaces.

Knabe is also a long time supporter of  our annual wine soiree in support of our library. The following are the Supervisor's thoughts  forwarded by Dick Simmons for a light  article penned on the history of the soiree.

"For the past 18 years, our community of Diamond Bar has enjoyed the wonderful support and dedicated efforts of a cadre of volunteers known as the Friends of the Library. From humble beginnings to the extravagance of the past few years events, the Wine Soiree has been and continues to be the "Event" of the year for Diamond Bar Friends of the Library. It is the Friends of the Library's showcase event, all for the wonderful cause of supporting our Library and the many facets of programs that form the basis library services to the community. BasicallyBOOKS, a FOL operated bookstore, helps to improve literacy and the love of reading."

  My original intent was the statement  would wrap historical data into real time in what is known in the trade as a "sidebar".  The end decision was the article was too bulked up.

However, journalism research is like French country cooking- nothing goes to waste. Everything for head to tail eventually gets used.  The Supervisor's words live here. Additionally, they will provide an outline for a future article. One which will delve more heavily into hard records. The result will be a record of how different years came with different challenges to literacy and how the FOL set to surmount the obstacles of providing literacy to a growing community with a decidedly multicultural population.