Palin and the Library Books

Palin and the Library Books

Library Journal finally reveals what the book may have been that Palin objected to, Pastor, I am Gay. You couldn't think of a more provocative title than this one. It is kind like setting a match to a firecracker.

http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6594759.html

On many levels this is quite upsetting to me. There are a lot of potential issues. Separation of church and state, gay rights, censorship, and intellectual freedom are just the tip of the iceberg. There are also questions of freedom of government information. I would like to know what really happened. Palin has a record of tight secrecy.

I think this is a story which will grow and grow and grow because it was not dealt with immediately. The story has spread to various gay groups which makes it truly strange. This is not a story you could have made up in a novel. At first it seemed like a minor issue, but now it has become something else.

The more the issue grows the more it becomes a liability to my profession. Initially, the American Library Association tried to stay out of the political discussion. I am not sure it will be possible to do this for much longer. I also think it may effect public libraries funding stream on a national level because it is effecting the election.

Watching this election and listening to it is the equivalent of stepping into another universe. I have seen some of the worst aspects of American character come out. Sometimes I wish I had a reset button so I could hit it and the candidates could say something completely different than what they are saying right now.

What makes this really interesting is that September 23-28 is banned books week and libraries, publishers, and book people are going to be celebrating banned or censored books. Knowing the way librarians act, this could lead to some very interesting protests or confrontations. I think the full details will come out around then.

Some Light Thoughts, Palin and ALA (American Library Association)

Some Light Thoughts

Yay, there is a link from the Space Vulture book site to my review.
http://www.spacevulture.com/reviews.html

Life cannot be too serious.

Palin and ALA

The American Library Association made a statement that they were not allowed to politically discuss Sarah Palin's librarian issue.

http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6593850.html

Interesting. I wonder who threatened them about their 501c3 status. Apparently, they may lose their status as a nonprofit organization if they discuss political issues. Now, I really know where my bread is buttered.

Good Morning, Poetry, Good Afternoon, Good Evening

The Tyger Poem, William Blake

Good Morning

Sometimes the most surprising things crop up during presidential elections. I thought this article on whether or not Sarah Palil asked to censor books and fired the Wasilla, Alaska city librarian was kind of interesting. This election is turning out to be full of things which are unexpected. Sometimes, I wish it would just go away. Censorship is always a tough issue.
http://www.adn.com/politics/story/515512.html

Last night on the train, I finished reading Groundswell, Winning In A World Transformed by Social Technologies. I will be writing a review of it in a while.

I just started reading Impact, How To Get Noticed, Motivate Millions, And Make A Difference In a Noisy World by Ken McArthur. The book reads like a business guru type book. It reminds me a little bit of Napoleon Hill, however, there is a big difference. Each chapter includes goal setting exercises, self motivation exercises, and direct actions which you can take to make it more likely you will achieve your goals. This is what separates this book so far from most of the other business guru books I have read.

On a side note that has nothing to do with reading, I found an entertaining game beta. It is called Good Old Games. They are selling all the old classics upgraded so they will run on modern pcs.
They should be sending out keys on September 8, 2008. I signed up yesterday.
http://www.gog.com/en/intro


Poetry

Tides

On rip tides forgotten
We swim in the wide green ocean
Forgetting about the shore

Commenting

click, click, clickety, click

One Site, One Comment, One Click

Count the hours going by

We are looking about getting a new microphone for our poetry readings. I think I am going to read the William Blake 1757–1827 poem, The Tiger.


The Tiger

TIGER, tiger, burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?


In what distant deeps or skies

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand dare seize the fire?


And what shoulder and what art

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

And when thy heart began to beat,

What dread hand and what dread feet?


What the hammer? what the chain?

In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil? What dread grasp

Dare its deadly terrors clasp?


When the stars threw down their spears,

And water'd heaven with their tears,

Did He smile His work to see?

Did He who made the lamb make thee?

Tiger, tiger, burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Good Afternoon

There is a real sense of quiet on this blog without Entrecard. I realize that most of my vaunted traffic was ephemeral much like dandelion seeds blowing in the wind. But, there is also a sense of peace. Now, I can start building my traffic up focusing on people who are interested in books.

Speaking of blog traffic, Darren Rowse of Problogger has a book, Problogger, Secrets For Blogging Your Way To A Six Figure Income by Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett. It is a relatively short book 220 pages. I have it sitting here next to me.

I also have a little more time to get things done, I wrote two rough drafts for film flyers.

Good Evening

On the train home tonight, I read Problogger Secrets For Blogging Your Way to a Six Figure Income by Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett. It is one of the books which I ordered for the library. On page 179 of the book, they list their twitter addresses http://twitter.com/chrisgarrett and http://twitter.com/problogger.com I may comment on the book tomorrow. It was a book that was short and fairly easy to read. It is only 229 pages long.

I am trying out a new advertising card exchange, SPOTT, it looks a lot simpler than Entrecard.

Morning Thoughts

La Censure by George Lafosse c 1874

Morning Thoughts

I am not happy with the publisher Chelsea Green's decision to limit sales of the book Obama's Challenge: America's Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency to Amazon.com for the first week of the release. This shows a disregard for openness in competition in the book industry. It also restricts people's choices of where to purchase books. In some ways, I am not a fan of Amazon's practices in selling books. I think it was a bad decision on the part of the publisher.

http://news.bookweb.org/6245.html

In a similar vein, September 27- October 4, 2008 is banned book week. There is a site up for booksellers and libraries http://bannedbooksweek.org/ . It shows one of my favorite books on the site, Maurcice Sendak In The Night Kitchen.

We have six of the ten Most Banned Books of 2007. Most are young adult titles or classics. I don't know why they want to ban teenage books so much. I put up a small display of the six books. I am going to try and get the other four as we go forward this month.

I am up to page 200 of Wikinomics. It is getting even more complicated. Wikinomics is writing about mashups, combining two or more sites to create a third sites. For example, you might combine google maps with the location of vacation rentals to create a new kind of information-- maps to vacation rentals.

I also took a break again and started reading Sly Mongoose by Tobias Buckell. I especially like Pepper, the main character who has been in all the novels. Pepper is the essence of being beat down and still going. I also like the new enemy, space zombies. They are a lot of fun to read about. I also like the continuity of setting. The Azteca even though they lose their alien masters, still remain a coherent culture in the novels. They proclaim that the aliens were false gods and become a democracy led by a council.

Today, I plan on doing some weeding of the business books. I still have quite a bit more to do with this.

The Ten Cent Plague -- David Hajdu -- Review

The Ten Cent Plague The Great Comic Book Scare and How It Changed America by David Hajdu is about comics book censorship in America. Comic book censorship occurred at about the same time as McCarthyism. This is a book about morals and aesthetics. Specifically, it talks about how and why comic books were challenged. We get to read arguments against teaching criminal stories to childen, as well as sexual impropriety, and grotesque horror. Only superhero comics and funny stories seemed to be unaffected by this short period of censorship.

It was not uncommon for patriotic organizations, school organizations, and civic organizations to have comic book burnings during this time. Police would also raid the newspaper stands to confiscate comic books with sex, crime, or terror. Even Archie was considered salacious by the Catholic church. Many police organizations viewed comic books as encouraging juvenile delinquency. The comic books of the time often portrayed how crimes were committed and told cops and robber stories.

There seemed to be a cycle where first crime comics were challenged and many were removed from the newsstands, then romance comics were challenged and removed from the newsstands, and then horror comics were challenged. Romance comics were challenged because they represented a chance to escape from parental control and in some cases attempts at sexual freedom.

A classic claim about juvenile delinquency was that if a child saw someone rob someone in a comic book they would do it. Or if they saw someone attempt to hang someone, they would hang themselves. It is no different than saying if a child reads Superman, he might put on a cape and jump off the roof.

There is quite a bit on the famous book, Seduction of the Innocent by Fredric Wertham, a German emigrant psychiatrist who spoke out against comics. He claimed that Batman was homoerotic, Superman was fascist, and Wonder Woman was kinky. The last bit about Wonder Woman was actually true. William Moulton Marston, the creator of Wonder Woman was into sexual dominance and submission and believed that the United States was drifting towards an Amazonian matriarchy. He was a classic crackpot like many of the people for and against comics.

In order to tell the story, the author writes a lot about the the history of comics. He tells the story of Bob Kane, Will Eisner, and many other famous comic book artists. This story is centered on New York where comic books were first created. Comic books were started as an original American art form much like jazz. One of my favorite pieces in the book is the story of the first "picture novel", a book length comic called It Rhymes With Lust printed in 1950. With titles for stories like "The Laughing Sadist" n Crime Does Not Pay, we can almost understand why parents would object to some of the material.

In the 1940s and 1950s comics were sold to children at a dime apiece. They were not marketed to adults. At my library, we separate the comics for adults, and the comics for teenagers. We don't buy a lot of comics for very little kids. Most are simply too violent or sexy. A lot of what was written for teenages like Tales From The Crypt, and Haunts of Fear we would place in the adult section. A lot of the EC comics can be bought as repritns. Some of the EC science fiction titles are really fantastic and include stories from writers like Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov. A comic book with a picture of severed head and a man holding an ax is not appropriate for little kids.

The book describes legislative hearings where comic books are derided as smut and legislation is encouraged to put criminal, sexy, and immoral comic books out of the hands of children. Between 1954 and 1956 more than half of comic books disappeared from the newsstand. The number of titles published dropped from about 650 to some 250. In 1956, EC Comics closed its doors. Bill Gaines revamped his business keeping one title, Mad Magazine.

An earlier step had saved the industry, the introduction of a censorial governing body by the industry, the Comics Code Authority. Artists were no longer able to show things like hypodermic needles, pools of blood, drugs, racism, disrespect to policemen and teachers, broken families, and other things.

We sometimes forget that this period in the history of comics still affects us today. DC stands for Detective Comics, it produces mostly superhero comics. Most of the comic books produced today are still superhero comic books and funny books. I rather like the revival of comics lit and slice of life comics that has happened recently.

There is a black and white picture section in this book. They even have a picture of people burning comics. There is also a 15 page appendix of comic book artists that no longer made comics after 1956. The book is well researched; it includes extensive notes, acknowledgements, a bibliography, and a comprehensive index. The website for this book is http://tencentplague.com

Thoughts On Censorship

My first experience with censorship in library settings was in library school. I had gone to the public library in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I was looking through some books to read and I found several books in the section had words blacked out. I looked at the book carefully in the upper right hand corner of the cover of the book were the words, this book is safe to read. Someone had gone through the book and crossed out all the objectionable words. They left it on the shelf for others to read. I put the book back at the time.

I had an even more odd experience in a childrens room of a public library. There was a religious sect where I was working, I'm not going to reveal exactly which one, and they would go through the childrens books sometimes and draw little black suits and hats on the pictures to make sure that the pictures of men and women were completely covered. You could see faces, but no bodies. At first, I thought it was amusing, until I really thought about it.

These are two examples where people defaced books. This happens occassionally. What happens more often is that the library patrons steal the books or take the books out and never return the books that they find objectionable. It is quite hard to challenge a book in a library setting. You have to bring in a complaint form about the book. Then the library board and the director will review the title to see if it should be removed. Quite often it is not removed.

We have a really hard time keeping certain titles. The hardest books to keep aren't the books on sex, but the books on politics that people find objectionable. We have trouble keeping Karl Marx Das Kapital, or Hitler's Mein Kampf. They disappear quite quickly from the adult room. Other subjects also disapear like books on abortion, birth control, and sexuality. But, it is the political books which disappear most quickly.

Another problem is that people revere certain people and really want to be close to the books about them. Or, they prefer to own than rent the item. We put certain books as reference to limit thievery. This in a way is a kind of censorship. It is book protection. We have copies of books on Marcus Garvey or Haile Selassie in both the reference and the circulating sections. The books in the circulating section tend to disappear very quickly.

We also keep most of our books on the music business, and the law dictionary behind the reference desk as well. They will leave quickly and never come back if we don't do this.

I think protecting books is a kind of self censorship. Librarians also do self censor. I honestly do find some of the material on a personal level objectionable, but I know people want them. We have to be careful considering ordering books for teenagers and children. The idea of "community standards" sets the tone sometimes for what we are ordering.

A thing to consider is that a person might be reading it for other reasons than supporting a particlar viewpoint. A nurse might ask about how abortions are performed along with pictures of the operation. I've had this question asked more than once. For a while we had a person asking for every book on prostitution which we could possibly get. I have no idea what he was doing with them.