I Read Banned Books

As it is an ancient truth that freedom cannot be legislated into existence, so it is no less obvious that freedom cannot be censored into existence. And any who act as if freedom's defenses are to be found in suppression and suspicion and fear confess a doctrine that is alien to America.
            - Dwight D. Eisenhower

Alien, and yet disturbingly common.

Every year around this time, the American Library Association declares Banned Books Week as a way to commemorate the struggles that go on in this country between those who truly believe in freedom and American values, and those who merely say they do.

I read banned books.

This is not all that surprising to those who know me - I read all sorts of books pretty much all the time, and I cannot be expected to keep track of what is and is not on somebody's petty little list. More importantly, even if I could keep track I do not see why I should have to determine whether some loudmouthed few are offended by a particular book before I start reading it. I am often surprised, in fact, to discover that something I read and thought highly of - or, even more surprising, something I read and didn't think much of one way or the other - has raised so much noise beating on the outside shells of closed minds that their possessors have taken steps to make that book go away.

Those people and the horses they rode in on are hereby cordially invited to amuse themselves with other tasks.

It astonishes me that here in what is constantly and presumably without irony referred to as "the land of the free" there are so many braying jackasses eager to tell me what I can and cannot read. Who are thrilled to limit the ideas that I and my children should see, know and believe. Who feel that they have such a corner on Truth that their version of it should be the only one out there.

But you know, folks, we have in this country something called the Constitution. Those people may have heard of it, but after the last eight years it would not surprise me if they hadn't. Despite the best efforts of the previous administration to portray the Constitution as an anachronistic inconvenience to those in power, though, it does still carry some weight around here, at least with me.

Now, the Constitution is not perfect. But the glory of that document is that those who wrote it understood that fact, and they provided a way to fix it. And the first thing they added to it was the idea that free speech was a worthwhile goal in and of itself, and that the proper duty of a well-constituted society was to protect it, preserve it, and let the ideas fall where they may.

It is disheartening to me, as a historian of that document and that period, to see how little credence many Americans give to what they loudly claim are their own values.

There are people out there who think that their religion gives them the right to tell me what not to read.

Here is a hint: it does not.

There are people out there who think that their being offended by a book gives them the right to tell me not to read it.

Here is a hint: it does not.

There are people out there who believe that they are being more careful than I am with my own children, my own values and my own soul, and that this gives them the right to tell my nation, my state, my town, and my library what it can and cannot allow to be said, purchased, stocked, published or distributed.

Here is a hint: it does not.

But such efforts continue anyway, most often it seems by the very same people who insist that this is "the land of the free." This is why satirists will never lack for material. It is also why they will never make any money at it, since so few people in this country understand the point.

The first time I ever deliberately went out and read a book that was under challenge was in 1989, when I read Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses. It wasn't banned here at the time, but there was such an outcry about it around the world that I felt it had to be interesting to read. Where there's smoke, there must be fire, right? And you know what? It was okay. Not great. Not life-changing. Meh. If the book banners had ignored it, it would have gone away on its own without making much of a mark at all. Since then there have been people in the US who have tried to ban it as well, and I'm sure Mr. Rushdie is laughing all the way to the bank when he is not shaking his head in awe at the utter stupidity and moral bankruptcy of those people.

I have discovered since then that quite an array of books I've read have been banned or have had nitwits attempt to ban them here in the good old US of A. The Great Gatsby. The Catcher in the Rye. To Kill a Mockingbird. 1984. Catch-22. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Slaughterhouse Five. Cat's Cradle. Rabbit Run.

And those are just the ones that I have read from the Radcliffe Publishing Course's list of the top 100 novels of the 20th century. Forty-two of those hundred books  have been challenged or banned in the land of the free at one time or another.  Most of the challenged books don't make that list, though.

Of those, the ones I've read that have made the ALA's Top Ten Most Challenged or Banned lists for the last two decades include the His Dark Materials trilogy. And The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Captain Underpants. In the Night Kitchen. The Harry Potter series. Arming America. Go Ask Alice. A Wrinkle In Time. The Stupids. The Handmaid's Tale. James and the Giant Peach. A Light in the Attic. The Dead Zone. And a couple of the Where's Waldo books. All of which the close minded and the fearful have tried to keep out of my hands.

Honestly. Where's Waldo.

I'm not sure if reading those has made me a better person, but I know for sure that it hasn't made me any worse. Plus I'm a lot better educated and more thoughtful because of those books. I, at least, think that's better.

It occurs to me that you could make a pretty good required reading list out of the things that idiots have tried to ban.

This past weekend was a long one. I spent most of Saturday morning watching larval lawyers fight their way through the LSATs, only to come home to discover that a friend had died (obviously not a close one, but still) and that there would be a memorial service at my old museum in ... what was it? ... twenty-eight minutes. I made it to the service - you should always go to such things, even if some traffic laws have to suffer for it. It's respectful. But afterward, I needed a break. Kim suggested that we go out to eat and then head over to the nearby Huge Chain Bookstore for a looting and pillaging expedition.

Sorry, gents. She's mine.

Tabitha and Lauren are now old enough that we can park them in the children's section and go off to look at our own things without worrying about them. We'd go over to check on them from time to time, but mostly they were happy to look around on their own.

I never once worried about the books that they were looking at, despite the fact that several of the ones listed above were plainly visible on the shelves. I never once worried that they would be exposed to some horrible idea - they get exposed to horrible ideas all the time. It's called an education. You look at those ideas, figure out what's so horrible about them, and learn from the experience.

Someday they'll read Huckleberry Finn and they will run into the word "nigger" that runs through that novel, and we will have a discussion about racism and how Mark Twain deliberately made Jim the moral center of that book as a way to show how stupid it was to call people names based on the color of their skins.

Someday they will read one of the many banned books that deal with homosexuality and they will wonder why books about their uncles cause so much fuss. They are too sensible to fall for the apocalyptic hype that comes out of the far right wing of the culture wars, and this gives me hope for the future of this nation.

Someday they will read some or all of the other books that people get all up in arms about. Some of them may offend them, and when that happens I hope they will stop and ask themselves why, and learn from that. Some of them will strike them as hopelessly boring, and I hope they will ask why such things raise such a fuss when they don't seem all that big a deal to them. Some of them will hit a nerve and they will see their imaginations fired up in the way that good books do to their readers.

But the important thing is that they will read those books. They will see those ideas. And they will learn who they are by how they react to them.

I read banned books. I do it for myself. I do it for my children. I do it for my country.

And I don't intend to stop.

Interjections! Show Excitement! And Emotion!

I went and got my flu shot today.

This was quite a concession to the world on my part, I think, given that I really hate shots of any description. For me to do this voluntarily, without being ordered to do so by authority figures in white lab coats, is just not my standard operating procedure.

Then again, Kim owns a white lab coat. And she was the one who insisted that I get this shot. So perhaps this wasn't all that far removed from the normal run of things after all.

The flu is going around, in any event, and based on what I've heard from friends who've had it, I do not wish to get it. One friend simply called in dead to work - "post my position," she said, "I'm never coming back." This is not a flu to mess with. And it isn't even the swine flu, which has yet to make serious inroads around here although I hear cases have been reported. I'm trying not to think too hard about H1N1, since I can still remember the stories my grandfather told me about the Spanish Flu of 1918, which was the last serious H1N1 epidemic. One crisis at a time - that is one of my many mottoes.

It's no fun being sick when you're not in grade school.

The ideal time to be sick is third or fourth grade, preferably with the kind of cold that makes you cozy and warm and contagious but does not actively make you miserable. Then you get to stay home from school and eat toast and soup and wrap yourself up in blankets and watch inane television shows while your parents hover around taking care of you. I remember doing that a few times, way back when. It was great.

If anything, daytime television shows were even more inane then than they are now, too. At least now there is the Discovery Channel, or the possibility of Law and Order reruns, or - be still my beating heart - even old episodes of Northern Exposure. Back then? Wall to wall soap operas and game shows. I got good at The Price Is Right for a while, and in a sneaky sort of way I do miss Match Game. But if it's a choice between that and Dirty Jobs or Mythbusters, well, no time like the present, I say.

I've learned, over the years, not to watch anything having to do with the actual shot. Right around the time they begin rubbing down my arm with alcohol my eyes slam shut and they stay that way until I am absolutely sure that the needle has been removed, discarded, and at least partially biodegraded. I don't mind the pain - really, they don't hurt all that much until long after you get home, when there isn't anything you can do about it anyway except drink tumblers full of whiskey - but the visuals and the anticipation I can do without.

The shot went well, and I was on my way in a few minutes. So far, so good.

But if I get sick anyway, I'm going to be really annoyed.

Yes, It's One, Two ... Wait, How Many Strikes Again?

The Phillies are trying to kill me.

I've been paying more attention than usual to the Phillies this season. I suppose you could call that being a bandwagon fan, since their winning the World Series last year probably had something to do with that, though in truth I've been a Phillies fan since the Nixon administration and have never really stopped. But it's always easier to pay attention to teams when they're winning, just as it is easier to pay attention to entire sports when teams you like are winning.

Not that the Phillies winning seems natural or even comfortable to me. I know they're close to a playoff spot for this year's World Series run, but in my head I'm still coming up with ways they can lose last year's. As much as I like the idea of my team being the champions, it just doesn't strike me as the sort of thing an orderly universe would produce.

That's why I finally broke down and got a mug.

Things are more real when they're on mugs.

I've even been trying to watch them play now and then, and it's been fun. You forget, after a long absence, how enjoyable a game baseball is - the rhythms, the spikes, the long intervals where nothing much happens. It's a much calmer game than football or hockey.

But I have to stop watching, because every time I turn on the game the Phillies manage to find a new way to lose. They're getting good at it, and this late in the season is not a good time to get good at that. They have a four game lead with five to play - down from an eight game lead not a week ago - and every true Phillies fan knows exactly what's coming.

So I'm trying to ignore them again, in the hopes that this will turn the tide in their favor.

It's a hard thing, being a Phillies fan.

Feets Don't Fail Me Now

It's been two days now, and my feet have finally forgiven me.

On Friday evening I participated in my second "Walk a Mile in Her Shoes" event, which is designed as a fundraiser for the local YWCA's domestic violence programs. It was a rather grey day here in Our Little Town, rainy and grim, but the rain cleared off by the time the serious action began as if it knew that it stood little chance against us. We were wearing high heels - we already looked goofy. A little rain and a few umbrellas wouldn't change a thing.

There were about 120 local men who showed up in their heels, including a number of the more influential guys in town - the president of the City Council and at least one other councilmember that I saw, the police chiefs of both Our Little Town and the one just north of us, the City Manager of that northern town, bank presidents, firefighters in uniform, and a good portion of the minor league hockey team that plays here, just to name a few. There was also a contingent of Harley dudes riding about as well, resplendent in their heels, because nothing legitimizes actions around here like the participation of Harley dudes. The local Harley dealership even donated the pavilion space this year.

I was there too. Somebody has to pad out the house a bit.

Just as last year, there was a short introductory ceremony that started off with all of the camp and humor that you would imagine an event featuring nearly a gross of men in high heels - some of them in drag - would entail. And then the police chief got up and reminded us of why we were there: that domestic violence was not just a private problem but a community problem, and that it needed to be Stopped and the perpetrators Killed With Fire. Although I might just have interpolated that last bit.

And so, filled with an odd mixture of righteous wrath against scum-sucking lowlifes and high spirits to match our stylin' heels, we set forth.

Do you have any idea how long a mile is when you're wearing high heels? Particularly if your normal footwear is a pair of black sneakers? Quite long, in case you're wondering.

We cruised up to the highway, cut across the K-Mart parking lot and ambled down the next highway, carrying our signs and displaying our complete lack of fashion sense to an appreciative and generally supportive traffic flow, many of whom honked and waved. They know a good cause when they see one.

We finally staggered back to the pavilion and that rustling sound heard throughout the county was the sound of dozens of men frantically getting their normal shoes back on before diving headfirst into the nearest adult beverage.

A little wine cures a lot of hurt.

Tabitha and Lauren walked with me. Some of that was just because it was fun, but some of it was also because domestic violence is an issue they should be aware of and they should know that people care enough about not tolerating it that we'd march through the streets in ridiculous footwear and wave signs at passing motorists. They're still young enough to look up to me, and I want them to know these things. You take it a bit more personally when you have daughters, I find.

Why do men get up in high heels and march through town?

We march because we, as men, will not put up with domestic violence against our wives, our neighbors, our sisters or our daughters. We march because we, as men, will not stand idly by and watch the innocent get hurt, mostly it must be said by other men. We march because we, as men, declare thus - not in our families; not in our town; not in our land.

My feets is tired, but my soul is at rest.

Where Is That Confounded Teapot?

This month has just felt all wrong. I blame the weather.

We didn't have much of a summer here in Baja Canada. Oh, it got hot a couple of times here and there, but a startling percentage of our photographs since June 1 show people in jackets. Maybe that's fine in places where they're used to it not being summer, like Stockholm or Seattle, but around here that was a bit odd. Wisconsin gets the worst weather in the world. The temperature swing my first year in this state was 142 degrees Fahrenheit from top to bottom, and while we certainly had a fair amount of bottom last winter, there just wasn't a whole lot of top to be had of late.

Now, normally I would like that. I have no real use for hot weather. You can always add clothing, but in these United States there is only so much they let you take off, and even then you are still too hot. So a cool summer is something I look forward to. Something to which I look forward? Whatever.

[Just as an aside, the Microsoft Grammarian What Lives In My Computer is cool with the dangling preposition, but festoons the theoretically correct translation with The Green Wiggly Line Of Disapproval. I'm not a great fan of the MGWLIMC - its default level is set for "Stupid" - but somehow this just tickles me.]

But if the summer is going to be cooler than usual, I think it shows markedly poor taste to have September be hot.

No, no, no.

September is fall. They play football in September. School starts up again. The leaves are supposed to start turning. Teapots are supposed to come out of their long summer storage and once again begin dispensing the nectar of the rather quiet and bookish sorts of gods.

I think the lack of tea has made me grouchy.

It couldn't possibly be anything else. No, just don't go there. Nothing to see there. Move along, that's right. Oh, look! An eagle!

So I'm waiting for the weather to go back to its proper channel so I can have my tea in peace. And I'm sure everyone around me is doing likewise.

Glamour At Home

Lauren has decided that she wants curly hair.

I am not sure why she has made this decision - her hair seems perfectly lovely to me as it is - but apparently she has thought long and hard about it and has made her decision and That, My Friends, Is That.

Bear in mind that she is six. This house is going to be a very interesting place to be in eight or nine years, let me tell you.

You have to hand it to her, though - when she makes a decision like that, she is willing to deal with the consequences of it. And really, what more could a parent ask? It's her hair. As long as she's responsible enough to do what she wants and accept what comes with it, well, there you go.

So she persuaded Kim to get her a set of curlers.

These are not the mil-spec hard plastic combat curlers of yore. No, yer modern curlers, they're made of foam, see, and they come in a pleasing assortment of pastel colors, each color denoting a different size curl. They even have their own clear plastic carrying case, roughly the size of a lunchbox.  And that's progress.

The only down side to them is that Mithra eats foam, so Lauren has had to be fairly careful to keep her curlers locked away in their case lest the cat's litterbox become much more visually interesting.

Most of last week Lauren would dutifully pull out her curlers and get Kim to set them up - get her hair wet, curl the hair around them, lock them into place, and so on. And then she would go to sleep with them, which I thought was quite a commitment to the whole thing. I know that would drive me nuts, anyway.

Even Mithra left her alone, which is more than most nights. You know you're onto something when even the cat respects your space.

But in the mornings Lauren would take out her curlers and there it was - the hair of her dreams.

A Stray Thought

Today at the grocery store I found myself walking behind a man who stood at least seven feet tall and was dressed entirely in camouflage, and I thought to myself, "Dude - it's not working."