The Appalachian Mountains never touch Mexico, but a concert tomorrow at Alexandria’s Beatley Central Library (5005 Duke Street) will manage the geographically impossible and bring them together.
The musical group Lua Project combines musical styles from Chattanooga to Veracruz, with a narrative storytelling approach similar to the Scotch-Irish style prevalent in Appalachian music but with instrumentation and musical traditions from Mexico.
(Updated 10:15 a.m.) One month after the Alexandria Library was crippled due to a “data incident,” the library is still recovering services and won’t say more about what caused the outage.
For weeks in early July, many of the library network’s digital services were completely inaccessible, including audiobooks, wifi and signing up for a library card.
With heat index temperatures expected to reach upward of 107 degrees today, Alexandria is offering cooling centers at recreation centers and libraries.
The National Weather Service issued a a hazardous heat forecast today, in effect from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Temperatures are also expected to be more than 100 degrees through Saturday.
(Updated 7/19) Celebrating the 54th anniversary of the moon landing, the Alexandria Library is also attempting a seemingly impossible feat: putting together a 1,000-piece puzzle of the moon in under two hours.
The James M. Duncan Jr. Branch Library at 2501 Commonwealth Avenue is hosting an all-ages race to put the puzzle together. The race is scheduled to run from 3-5 p.m. on Thursday, July 20.
In the Alexandria Gazette’s newsroom is a wall filled with archives of the news organization dating back to the early 19th century.
It’s an invaluable resource and a chance to look back at Alexandrians describing the city in their era in their own words, from local advertisements to gossip at the port. As more news is reported exclusively online, the Alexandria Library is hoping to recapture that sort of archive for the digital age.
Personal security cameras, speed cameras in school zones, summer youth employment programs and eviction prevention funding are just a few of the final additions included in the fiscal year 2024 budget by the Alexandria City Council on Tuesday.
Council approved funding a $20,000 program to encourage businesses and homeowners with a “small incentive” to set up security cameras to deter crime, as well as increase their coordination with the Alexandria Police Department.
Anyone that’s a sucker for a good book sale might want to head to the Beatley Central Library (5005 Duke Street) at some point this week.
Covid cases are on the rise as Alexandria heads into the December holidays.
There were 69 reported cases today (Wednesday) in Alexandria, the largest amount of new cases in a single day in more than four months. The number of reported cases now stands at 43,429, and the seven-day average of new cases is 42.7.
With the holiday season approaching, a prerequisite for some family gatherings could be a negative Covid test. With Curative shutting down its testing kiosks throughout the region that might get slightly harder, but there are other resources.
The kiosks have provided around 195,000 Covid tests, the City of Alexandria said in a release, but demand for kiosk testing has dropped off dramatically since 2021.
There are a number of event celebrating this year’s 85th anniversary of the Alexandria Library with discussions on the history of its branches.
The first public library in Alexandria, the Kate Waller Barrett Branch Library (717 Queen Street), opened in 1937, and is named after suffragette and philanthropist Kate Waller Barrett. In recognition of the anniversary, the Alexandria Library is conducting a number of events at its branches in the coming days.
The Duncan Library in Del Ray is planning to host a conversation next week with a former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine about her experience in the country and the current crisis.
The event with Marie Yovanovitch is scheduled for Monday (May 9) at 7 p.m. in the Pat Miller Neighborhood Square (2311 Mount Vernon Avenue). The discussion will also be live-streamed online.
