Community

Lythcott-Haims

In her Dec. 20 presentation “On Being Black and Biracial in a Country Where Black Lives Weren’t Meant to Matter,” Julie Lythcott-Haims, Stanford University’s first dean of freshmen, explained to the Rotary Club of Los Altos why her trailblazing achievements didn’t seem to be enough.

Lythcott-Haims said her biracial background is a heavy burden to bear and an even heavier one to hide. She described herself as a third-generation college and graduate student, the daughter of a black physician descended from an African slave, whose wife was white and entered the U.S. from England.

Jacobs

Best-selling author A.J. Jacobs is scheduled to discuss his book “It’s All Relative” 7:30 p.m. Jan. 25 at the Los Altos main library, 13 S. San Antonio Road. The event is the first of 10 library programs in the next few weeks focused on the Silicon Valley Reads 2019 theme “Finding Identity in Family History.”

No tickets or reservations are needed for the free discussion, presented in partnership with the Los Altos Library Endowment.

Bremmer

The 51st season of the Foothill College Celebrity Forum Speaker Series is currently underway.

Michele Longosz/ Special to the Town Crier

Anne and Steve Gill

Los Altos residents Steve and Anne Gill are scheduled to present “The 1950s: When Broadway Ruled,” the 17th annual benefit concerts for LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired, 7:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday in Menlo School’s Spieker Ballroom, 50 Valparaiso Ave., Atherton.

Pianist Linda Jordan, a former Los Altos resident, will join the father-daughter Gill team and other singers as they perform highlights from the Broadway musicals “Guys and Dolls,” “The Sound of Music,” “My Fair Lady,” “West Side Story” and “The King and I.”

The following free events are scheduled at the Los Altos main library, 13 S. San Antonio Road. Events are held in the Orchard Room unless otherwise noted. For more information, call 948-7683 or visit sccl.org/losaltos.

• 7 p.m. Jan. 22: A book discussion for adults will center on Francis Spufford’s “Golden Hill,” a novel based in old New York.

Courtesy of Mara Catherine Sippel
Mountain View artist Mara Catherine Sippel, whose work appears above, is among a trio of artists participating in the “Rhythm and Color” exhibition at Gallery House in Palo Alto.

Suej McCall is the featured artist for the month of January at Gallery 9 in downtown Los Altos.

The watercolorist’s exhibition, “Out and About,” is scheduled to run through Jan. 27.