Turn on the light

 

A two-minute video produced by Bookmans, an Arizona bookstore, is helping launch a national read-out from banned and challenged books that is being held on YouTube in conjunction with Banned Books Week, the national celebration of the freedom to read (Sept. 30-Oct. 6). 

The video presents Bookmans' customers and staff urging people "to turn on the light" by celebrating freedom of expression. With light bulbs burning brightly above their heads, each of them reads a single line from a banned or challenged book that testifies to the importance of reading, books and freedom of speech.

"It is a wonderfully creative and inspiring video," said American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression President Chris Finan. "We hope all supporters of Banned Books Week will use social media to share it with their friends and the rest of the world, giving a big boost to this year's read-out.

More than 800 people posted videos on YouTube during Banned Books Week last year. More information about the read-out, including updated criteria and submission information, is available here.

Bookmans, which has stores in Tucson, Phoenix, Mesa and Flagstaff, has been actively opposing censorship for 36 years. It celebrates free speech throughout the month of September. Harrison Kressler, Bookmans' media producer, created the video. Rebecca Ballenger, the digital media supervisor, suggested participating in the read-out after reviewing videos from last year's Banned Books Week.

 

And now for something completely different

Monty Python has been on my mind a lot lately.

I heard in September that Terry Gilliam is to "godfather" 1884, an animated steampunk parody of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (another banned book!), with several former Pythons lending their voices to the project.

"Nudge, Nudge, wink wink, Say no more."

Then I realized Monty Python's Flying Circus first aired on Oct. 5, 1969.

I have to tip my tiny top hat to those comic geniuses now!

Monty Python was a British comedy group who created Monty Python's Flying Circus, a British television comedy sketch show that first aired from 1969 to 1974 on the British Broadcasting Corporation. The television series was conceived, written and performed by members Gilliam, Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin. 

Their innovative stream-of-consciousness approach (aided by Gilliam's animation), pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable in style and content. Forty-five episodes were made over four years, but spawned touring stage shows, films, numerous albums, several books and a stage musical as well as launching the members to individual stardom.

Dead Parrot Society

All are still alive except for Chapman, who died on Oct. 4, 1989 - the eve of the 20th anniversary of the first broadcast of Flying Circus. Jones jokingly called it "the worst case of party-pooping in all history."

The five surviving Python members stayed away from Chapman's private funeral, to prevent a media circus and to give his family privacy. (They sent a wreath in the shape of the famous Python foot.) They held a private memorial service on Dec. 6, 1989. Cleese's eulogy began as follows: 

“Graham Chapman, co-author of the Parrot Sketch, is no more. He has ceased to be. Bereft of life, he rests in peace. He's kicked the bucket, hopped the twig, bit the dust, snuffed it, breathed his last, and gone to meet the great Head of Light Entertainment in the sky...."

Cleese later said that Chapman would never have forgiven him if he had not taken the opportunity to reference the sketch.

In June 2011 it was announced that most of the surviving Monty Python members will perform in a 3-D animated version of Chapman's memoir A Liar’s Autobiography: Volume VI. The voices of Cleese, Gilliam, Jones and Palin will be spliced into commentary recorded by Chapman reading from his memoir and taped shortly before his death. The film is expected to be released in 2012 with a running time of approximately 85 minutes.

Not to be irrelevant, but I always wanted to be a Lumberjack, and you know what? Momma is!

"She's a lumberjack, and she's okay.
She sleeps all night and she works all day."

I do my little turn on the catwalk

Today was the Big Day for the American Girl Fashion Show AZ and I am exhausted.

As previously mentioned, I was NOT selected as an "official" model, but Momma and I had our hands full anyway with my Big Sister and her two cousins, as well as Felicity, Kirsten and Nellie.

But first I must say that Big Sister's godsister did a fantastic job modeling the Everyday Play Outfit for Girls. Well done!

During the intermission I hopped up on the catwalk to show the others how to properly model.

Felicity developed stage fright and kept swooning, requiring a helping hand.

Kirsten did well but kept standing too close to Felicity who had a bad habit of collapsing into her arms - and taking them both down in the process.

Nellie had a real knack for it as well as a definite sense of style, but I shall have to talk firmly to her since I have discovered she was not wearing her unmentionables! 

(Hey, wait a minute. I just realized All Three Dolls have been archived! I read Banned Books and hang out with Archived Dolls. What does that say about me?) 

I'll have more in a day or two but I need to help Momma with the chores before bed. Let's just say I discovered ma chère amie Cécile's Deep Dark Secret ... and have photos to prove it!

I'm a model you know what I mean
And I do my little turn on the catwalk
Yeah on the catwalk on the catwalk yeah
I do my little turn on the catwalk

Right Said Fred

Banned Beauty

Just when you thought you'd heard it all.

I thought I'd end Banned Books Week with the 10 (plus my two) most farfetched (silliest, irrational, illogical) reasons to ban a book according to the American Library Association. 

1. “Encourages children to break dishes so they won’t have to dry them.” (A Light in the Attic, by Shel Silverstien) 
   
2. “It caused a wave of rapes.” (Arabian Nights, or Thousand and One Nights, anonymous)
   
3. “If there is a possibility that something might be controversial, then why not eliminate it?” (Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, by Dee Brown)
   
4. “Tarzan was ‘living in sin’ with Jane.” (Tarzan, by Edgar Rice Burroughs)
   
5. “It is a real ‘downer.’” (Diary of Anne Frank, by Anne Frank)
   
6. “The basket carried by Little Red Riding Hood contained a bottle of wine, which condones the use of alcohol.” (Little Red Riding Hood, by Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm K. Grimm)
   
7. “One bunny is white and the other is black and this ‘brainwashes’ readers into accepting miscegenation.” (The Rabbit’s Wedding, by Garth Williams)
   
8. “It is a religious book and public funds should not be used to purchase religious books.” (Evangelical Commentary on the Bible, by Walter A. Elwell, ed.)
   
9. “A female dog is called a bitch.” (My Friend Flicka, by Mary O’Hara)
   
10. “An unofficial version of the story of Noah’s Ark will confuse children.” (Many Waters, by Madeleine C. L’Engle)

And my two additions?

1. Black Beauty, by Mary Sewell, was banned in 1965 (without being read) in South Africa by the Publications Control Board, as "its title seemed to suggest beauty existed outside the white race, and was therefore deemed offensive."
   
2. Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? was banned in Texas in 2010 because the author Bill Martin Jr., happened to have the same name as an obscure Marxist theorist, and no one bothered to check if it was the same person.

Sigh.

I'm gonna go read....

E ≠ mc²?

Whoa.

I got so shocked by this news (as well as Banned Books Week) that I forgot to write about what might be the most amazing scientific discovery of ... of ... dare I say it? All time?

Einstein is shocked, too.

A team at CERN, the world's largest physics lab, has published results that suggest subatomic particles have gone faster than the speed of light.

The team has published its work so other scientists can determine if there are any mistakes.

If there aren't, one of the pillars of modern science (E=mc²) may come tumbling down.

A lot of science-fiction literature is based upon the idea that, if the light-speed barrier can be overcome, time travel might theoretically become possible....

It's nice to know what I am doing is possible.

Theoretically.

 

Harry Potter and the Banned Books

Be warned.

I am armed and dangerous when it comes to my Harry Potter books.

I shall Petrificus Totalus anyone who tries to take my books from me.

Any books.

As I wrote in July, "...I do have the time to Be Amazed that some still think Harry Potter and his Worthy Friends are Evil. 

Let Me quote from my favorite Modern Theologian:

"But the Glorious One bent down his golden head and touched my forehead with his tongue and said, Son, thou art welcome. But I said, Alas, Lord, I am no son of thine but the servant of Tash. He answered, Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me. Then by reasons of my great desire for wisdom and understanding, I overcame my fear and questioned the Glorious One and said, Lord, is it then true, as the Ape said, that thou and Tash are one? The Lion growled so that the earth shook (but his wrath was not against me) and said, It is false. Not because he and I are one, but because we are opposites, I take to me the services which thou hast done to him, for I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath's sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted. Dost thou understand, Child? I said, Lord, thou knowest how much I understand. But I said also (for the truth constrained me), Yet I have been seeking Tash all my days. Beloved, said the Glorious One, unless thy desire had been for me thou shouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek."

The Last Battle, 1956
C. S. Lewis
(banned)

Or, as J.K Rowling herself wrote in the front of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,

For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

Matthew 6:21
King James Version
(banned)

The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.

1 Corinthians 15:26
King James Version
(banned)

Hmm. All these books have been banned, too. I'm starting to wonder what I read that's not controversial.

The Banned Adventures of Captain Unmentionables!

I decided to go for ridiculous ("Riddikulus!") today.

I stand with Captain Underpants Unmentionables!

Have you read The Adventures of Captain Underpants by Dav Pilkey? You should. It's a hoot.

I first read it because my Big Sister was reading it in her third grade class. It's a series of eight (so far) books about two fourth graders, George Beard and Harold Hutchins, and the superhero they accidentally create by hypnotizing their principal, Mr. Benny Krupp.

The Captain Underpants books were reported by the American Library Association to be the 13th most frequently challenged books between 2000-2009. However, the series won a Disney Adventures Kids' Choice Award in 2007.

According to the ALA, Captain Underpants was banned in some schools for insensitivity and being unsuited to age group, as well as encouraging children to disobey authority.

Honestly, do these people who are banning books even talk to kids anymore? Unsuitable? What do they want? Union suits?

(P.S. I have to put in a plug for one of my favorite books by Pilkey, The Paperboy. Thankfully it doesn't seem to be banned anywhere and I adore the peaceful nature of it.) 

The Banned Adventures of Huck Finn

It's no wonder Mark Twain laughed at people who read (or claimed to have read) his classic book, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and wanted it banned.

Like many of his works, it's a satire.

sat·ire [sat-ahyuhr]
noun 

1. the use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule, or the like, in exposing, denouncing, or deriding vice, folly, etc. 

2. a literary composition, in verse or prose, in which human folly and vice are held up to scorn, derision, or ridicule.

3. a literary genre comprising such compositions.

Twain was an ardent abolitionist who said, “Lincoln's Proclamation ... not only set the black slaves free, but set the white man free also." 

He deliberately wrote Huck Finn to illustrate the evils of slavery and racism. (Huck Finn was published 20 years after the end of the Civil War. Slavery was gone but not racism.)

One example was both Huck and Jim run away: Huck from an abusive father and Jim from slavery. This parallel was to draw attention to the fact that while some thought Huck's running away was perfectly justified, Jim's was not.

Huck Finn was banned shortly after its 1885 U.S. publication in many locations. As usual, Twain fired back at his critics,

"I am greatly troubled by what you say. I wrote 'Tom Sawyer' and 'Huck Finn' for adults exclusively, and it always distressed me when I find that boys and girls have been allowed access to them. The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean. I know this by my own experience, and to this day I cherish an unappeased bitterness against the unfaithful guardians of my young life, who not only permitted but compelled me to read an unexpurgated Bible through before I was 15 years old. None can do that and ever draw a clean sweet breath again on this side of the grave."

When his book Eve's Diary was banned in 1906 from the Charlton Public Library Twain said,

"the truth is, that when a library expels a book of mine and leaves an unexpurgated Bible lying around where unprotected youth and age can get hold of it, the deep unconscious irony of it delights me and doesn't anger me."

What's funny is that the use of the now controversial N-word was not what made Adventures of Huckleberry Finn controversial back in its day. What made it controversial was Huck actually sweated!

And scratched!

(The proper word would have been "perspired." Uh huh. Obviously the critics hadn't spent much time by the Mississippi River!)

Oh, and as for the above dictionary listing? Did you know the dictionary (the dictionary!) has been banned in some places because it contains words not appropriate for young children?

Kinda makes me want to go read the dictionary next....

Let's be Frank: Diary of a Banned Book

I simply can't imagine modern life without Anne Frank's, The Diary of a Young Girl.

Anne Frank

Sadly, Anne Frank's diary has been banned on multiple occasions - most recently in January 2010 when the Culpeper County, Virginia school district banned it because the book was "sexually explicit" and had "homosexual" themes.

It's also been banned because "it's too depressing."

Sigh.

It's a diary. Written by a young, teenage girl. One who was locked in a confined environment for two years with no one to really talk to other than HER DIARY.

And yes, she died. What would be really depressing is if we permit this book to be banned.

I seem to have a theme going here.

See yesterday's comment about white-washing the past (future?) to make it more acceptable - or politically correct.

Philosopher George Santayana said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Do we really want to repeat the shameful chapters of our past?

I, for one, don't. Even with a time machine.

I especially don't want a repeat of the Holocaust.

Little Banned House on the Prairie

Original artwork by Garth Williams.

It simply boggles my imagination that anyone, ANYONE, could ban Laura Ingalls Wilder's classic Little House on the Prairie.

I mean, yes, some of the characters don't like Indians and say so, but what they overlook is that Pa and Laura both like, admire and respect them.

Yes, there are a couple of tense chapters where Indians consider going on warpath but they don't. And Pa salutes the leader who saved them all.

Even when forced to leave their home, Pa is (understandably) furious at the government - not the Indians.

See yesterday's comment about white-washing the past (future?) to make it more acceptable - or politically correct.

Philosopher George Santayana said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Do we really want to repeat the shameful chapters of our past?

I, for one, don't. Even with a time machine.

To Ban a Mockingbird

"Remember it's a sin to ban a book."

It's Banned Books Week. A week where I read at least one banned book a day.

I think I shall start with my all time favorite: To Kill a Mockingbird.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee was published in 1960 and won the Pulitzer Prize. The book is loosely based on Lee's family and neighbors, as well as an event that occurred near her hometown in 1936, when she was 10 years old.

So why is it banned? Usually because it "contains profanity and racial slurs."

Duh. So does life. Especially life in a small town in the South in 1936. We can't white-wash the past (future?) to make it more acceptable.

"Remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird." That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it. 

"Your father's right," she said. "Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy . . . but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."

And it's a sin to ban a book.

So ... what to read next. So many books and so little time.

Wait! What am I saying?! I'm a time traveler - which gives me all the time in the world!

I think I shall "Scout" ahead and find another banned book to read and defend.

Free people read freely

I don't know about you, but I plan to dedicate my week reading extra banned books.

Banned Books Week is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment. Held during the last week of September, Banned Books Week highlights the benefits of free and open access to information while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted bannings of books across the United States.

For more information on getting involved with Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read, please see Calendar of Events, Ideas and Resources, and the new Banned Books Week site. You can also contact the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom at 1-800-545-2433, ext. 4220, or bbw@ala.org.

Banned Books Week 2011 will be held Sept. 24 - Oct. 1.

Keep calm and read on

Clinton Corners, N.Y.

I read about The Most Wonderful Library this weekend, and if Miss Sparrow and I weren't so firmly committed to our floating bookmobile I'd make one myself!

A TARDIS* library! (Well, sort of.)

It's actually a recycled K8 English Telephone Box in Clinton Corners, N.Y.

The good citizens of Clinton Corners got an old Telephone Box, installed shelves and put in a light powered by a solar panel.

Coed-y-Paen, Wales

Northumberland

I have since discovered they got the idea from a similar library in Coed-y-Paen, Wales (but a scoundrel stole all its books!), and a Northumberland Telephone box contains a heart defibrillator!

Now that's what I call living green! 

The very thought of a TARDIS library makes my heart palpitate. (It's a good thing the one Telephone Box has a defibrillator in it!) Just think how I could save banned books!

*A TARDIS is a time machine and spacecraft in the shape of a 1960s-style London police box in television's Doctor Who.