BOOK BOOSTER: Library backers are trying to...

BOOK BOOSTER: Library backers are trying to drum up support for three November tax initiatives through a variety of means, including sales of T-shirts signed by Beatrice Wood (B1). . . . The Ojai artist, who at 102 is the same age as Ojai’s library, was gracious about her participation. “I was happy to do anything that would help learning. If we don’t have learning . . . how can we have great engineers, great inventors, great artists?”

SOUNDLESS SCRIMMAGE: So you’d like to get out and do something tonight, but your spouse wants to watch the game? Todd Winokur, owner of Ventura’s Cafe Voltaire, has one answer--silent football. . . . On Mondays, he fires up a small television on the patio while blues artists perform. “It’s not football with blues on the side,” Winokur says. “It’s blues with a little bit of football.” . . . Tonight’s artist is guitarist Bob Jones from Ventura.

PRIX MED: Dr. Fu-Kuen Lin, leader of the Amgen team that developed a drug used by four out of five kidney dialysis patients, is back from Washington, D.C., after being honored by a national pharmaceutical group. . . . Lin joined the Thousand Oaks company in 1981, when it had fewer than 10 employees. Now it has 3,800 worldwide and is best-known for Lin’s Epogen and for Neupogen, used to decrease infections in chemotherapy patients. . . . Lin, who is now studying blood-vessel formation and immune system regulators, spends his leisure time hiking and gardening.

POLICY JOKES: There’s nothing like a bit of bureaucratic banter to lighten up a humdrum council meeting. . . . As the Camarillo City Council continued a routine re-examination of city policies last week, City Manager Bill Little dryly noted that it is municipal policy to review its policies every three years. “How often do we review our policies on policies?” Vice Mayor David Smith jokingly asked. . . . No easy answer there.