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Archive for the 'I Learned Something' Category

Index Librorum Prohibitorum

Saturday, October 3rd, 2009
A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it, or explore an explosive idea without fear it will go off in your face. It is one of the few havens remaining where a man’s mind can get both provocation and privacy.

~Edward P. Morgan

Today ends Banned Book Week.  Can you stand just one more rant from yours truly?  I know I already did that yesterday; but it’s important because it speaks to our basic and most beautiful right to not only express ourselves but to seek out kindred hearts and thinkers.  It also happens to speak to our human right to learn and grow and self-actuate.  So lets have at it just one more time … what do you say?  And then I’ll exercise my First Amendment rights tomorrow (or maybe the next day) to write you something really dirty and juicy.

So once upon a time & a few years back, when I was writing regularly for Sex Kitten (and I may be doing so again … so stay tuned), I wrote the piece below.  Most of you here haven’t seen it and I think it stands the test of time, so here you go:

Banned in Boston, Condemned in Cleveland

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the Library: My 451 on Freedom of Speech, Libraries, The First Amendment and Banned Book

In a perfect world, those who screw with The First Amendment would be sentenced to careers-without-parole as testers in ball gag factories. And why not? Why not let them see what it feels like for a change. Just a thought. Or maybe they want to take that away from us too?

Sadly, when it comes to Freedom of Speech, sometimes the last place we’ve been able to find it is in our libraries.

Which seems kind of weird, don’t you think? Shouldn’t at least The Library be hallowed ground? A quasi-church for those of us who actually know how to think on our feet and our knees? And even in between? For those of us who believe that truth is earned, truth is fluid, truth is personal? For those of us who know we will bleed more than we will ever learn, yet pick up the gauntlet anyway?

Because we know that apprenticed truth is the very marrow of all that makes us human. That suffraged truth is ours to keep forever. And that these self-learned truths are what truly sanctify us, make us whole, make us real. Because we know that human-ness and sanctification are one and the same.

Because we know that to keep truth you need to earn it. You need to fight for it, sometimes even die for it. Because borrowed truth just doesn’t stick: Won’t stick to you. Or inside of you. Or up for you.

But some people try to do just that, over and over again. Unable to find the path, unwilling to pay the price, looking for an easier, softer way — and missing the irony of their very own actions — they cling to their cookbooks, their bibles, their leaflets, their doctrines, their scrolls, their index cards, their cheat sheets.

Forsaking the wisdom of their very own hearts, ignoring the axiom No Guts, No Glory, they take the easy way out (instead of the harder way inside), looking to some Petrarchan authority to tell them what to think, what to believe, how to act. And they know they are right: Because they’ve got the rules now. They’ve got the rules, and by golly the rest of of us better start living by them or else.

And so they set about the business of minding everybody else’s business. What else can you do when you’ve finally got the rules? What else can you do when you know better than everybody else? What else can you do when you’ve been born again in the stagnant waters of vainglorious superiority, carved anew from the petrified rock of pseudo-enlightenment?

And the dirty little rat bastids just won’t leave our books alone. Forgetting that the very reason they know they are right and we are wrong is because they read it somewhere and that makes it true. Imagining some knighted prerogative to “go forth and cleanse,” they slither into our libraries unannounced (but always invited) to bite the hand that originally fed them.

I’m just kind of sick of it. Books of all types, sizes, shapes and subject matter have repeatedly disappeared from the hallowed shelves on this most-American of institutions time and again. Thanks to the blessed and all-knowing storm troopers, we have to repeatedly fight for the right to read.

So let me ask you this: If someone takes a book away from me, do I get to take one away from them? Do I get to decide for them, like they want to do for me, what they shall read? Because I am the moral conscience for the world? Because I know better than you and them and him and her? And do we do this—tit for tat—until there are no books left? None to be found anywhere, every last shelf picked clean?

Just something to think about as Banned Books Week draws to a close. And I do hope you think about it. Think about it all year round. Think about a world stunted by intellectual pygmies who want to steal every idea ever found in a book, because they’ve never had an original one of their own, and it scares the hell out of them.

Think about a world without music, without poetry and even without prayer, because original thought is original sin…and we can’t have that, now, can we?

Think of a world, of all the worlds, contained inside the covers of each and every single book.

Think about all of this when…

…you visit the library, walk into a bookstore, join a book club, attend a book fair and your heart thrills at the banquet of possibilities.

…you catch the musty scent of aged paper and pulp when entering your grandfather’s den and remember his smile, the way he held you on his lap and read to you.

…you read a Shakespearian sonnet to the woman you love and see the look of love in her eyes.

…you grieve the ending of the best book ever as a last chapter looms ahead.

…you run across an old school book and remember how autumn always smelled so new, so full of promise, back then.

********

About Index Librorum Prohibitorum.:  Well, shame on me!  I grew up a Catholic gal and had never heard of this.  And wouldn’t have, unless a thoughtful commenter on my last post brought it up.  (Thank you, very much and I hope you visit often.)  Of course, I googled it and there it was all over the place.  I’ll just send you to the Wikipedia page, where you can read all about it. 

And I just had to use it as a title, ‘cuz it makes look smarter than I am.  *wink*

One more thing:  "Google" is officially a verb now (and has been for a while), which makes "googled" a real word ( a past tense verb, to be specific).  So why doesn’t my spell checker recognize it?  argghhhh. 

Spank Ur Monkey with a Banned Book

Friday, October 2nd, 2009

It’s banned book week and I just gotta say that …

… I’m a self-confessed and unapologetic bibliophile.  I’m a sucker for books:   good books, bad books and everything in between.  I love the smell of books, the feel of books.  I collect books and like looking at them all nestled together on my book shelves or piled here, there and everywhere in the corners of my life.  There is always a book in my purse.  There is always a book beside my bed.  I never ever go to sleep without reading at least a page or two of my current read … and there is ALWAYS a current read.   I  generally avoid bookstores because once I step through the door, I’m doomed to spend hundreds of dollars. 

… I often give books as gifts.  Because, honestly, I can’t think of anything better than to share a book that has thoroughly entertained me or taught me something new or made me laugh or caused me to weep or even perhaps changed me in some deep and fundamental way.  Is there anything better than being in the middle of a book that you can hardly put down, that you can’t wait to get back to?  If I care about you, why wouldn’t I want to give this experience to you?

… It follows that  with my liberal “brattiness” I am indeed passionately opposed to the narrow-minded minority who would attempt to ban any book, because they think they know better than you or me.   And so a few years ago I wrote the following.  I think it’s worth repeating …

Get Your Rocks OFF With a Banned Book

A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return.

~Salman Rushdie

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Won’t you join me in championing free speech this week by observing Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read. Do it anyway you want, I don’t care: Take a book to lunch. Or dress it up in stockings and stilettos–then fuck it silly or jerk off and cum all over it. But most of all, hold it to your heart and keep it safe. 

Great Book Quotes

  •  To be a book-collector is to combine the worst characteristics of a dope fiend with those of a miser. ~Robertson Davies
  • There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. ~Oscar Wilde
  • The man who doesn’t read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them. ~Mark Twain
  • A room without books is like a body without a soul. ~Cicero
  • Never judge a book by its movie. ~J. W. Eagan
  • Don’t join the book burners. Don’t think you’re going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don’t be afraid to go in your library and read every book. ~Dwight Eisenhower
  • This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force. ~Dorothy Parker
  • I first read books to survive my life; then I read books to live my life; now I read books to celebrate my life. ~Angela St. Lawrence 

Most Sacred First Amendment

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble , and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Books from the Hit List

  • To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
  • The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
  • Cujo by Stephen King
  • Beloved by Toni Morrison
  • The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
  • Native Son by Richard Wright
  • Lord of the Flies by William Golding
  • Ordinary People by Judith Guest
  • The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
  • Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
  • The Color Purple by Alice Walker
  • Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
  • I Know Why the Caged Bird Sing by Maya Angelou

***Researching and putting all of the info together for this entry, I’ve had tears in my eyes more than once; fell in love with power of words–over and again; was struck heart-deep by the weight of truth which those who write always bare; and fell in love with my beautiful country all over again. If you even find your way to one of those things…I will be profoundly humbled.

***********

One more thing:  Between you and me, I sincerely believe that books saved my life.  Once upon a time I was a little girl in a bad situation — the world was ugly and there was no physical escape.  But there was the local library, just a few blocks from my parochial school.  And so I would go there to read and read and read.  My library card was my only prized possession, and with it I would borrow as many books as was permitted and read in my room, on the school bus, on the porch, in the yard.  And eventually all that reading got me from there to here.

So, yeah … spank your monkey with a book.  Fuck it, hump it, cum all over it.  Do it for me.  Do it for you.  Do it for those who read their way into their own selves.  Do it for all the little girls and boys who not only found a way out, but up, up, up …

Because books are that powerful.  And so are we.  If you don’t believe me, read a book.  You’ll see.