REPOST FROM 2008 (APPROPRIATE TODAY)!

(This may not work because I am sick and should be up in bed, but I did feel it necessary to at least get something posted.) An employee where I used to teach recently filed a complaint about John Irving's Hotel New Hampshire. She didn't think it was appropriate to read, so instead of returning it and saying something to the librarian, she initiated The Book Challenge Procedure to try to remove the book from the library. Sad!

This current week through October 4th is Banned Books Week. The concept of banning books is a big No-no in my world! Interestingly, while I am against censorship, there are things I believe should be censored - go figure.

Here's my issue - if a student's parent don't want him or her reading a book, fine, but don't you dare tell the rest of the class what they can or can't read or me what I can or can't teach! I checked one top 100 list of challenged books, and I taught at least 14 of them! I mean Lord of the Flies, Of Mice and Men, Flowers for Algernon, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and To Kill a Mockingbird???? What was I thinking? Maybe they were okay because no one challenged them. All it takes is one person.

The following ten quotes are to ponder. I didn't create them - I found them. If anyone asks, I will create and post a better look at censorship and find at least ten quotes I would have picked. There are a few good ones here!

(10) "We all know that books burn, yet we have the greater knowledge that books cannot be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and no force can put thought in a concentration camp forever. No man and no force can take from the world the books that embody man's eternal fight against tyranny of every kind."
—Franklin D. Roosevelt

(9) "What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist."
—Salman Rushdie

(8) “Imagine books and music and movies being filtered and homogenized. Certified. Approved for consumption. People will be happy to give up most of their culture for the assurance that the tiny bit that comes through is safe and clean. White noise.”
—Chuck Palahniuk

(7) "Damn all expurgated books; the dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book."
—Walt Whitman

(6) "Every burned book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side."
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

(5) “It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creeds into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics.”
—Robert A. Heinlein

(4) “Intelligence is the capacity to receive, decode and transmit information efficiently. Stupidity is blockage of this process at any point. Bigotry, ideologies etc. block the ability to receive; robotic reality-tunnels block the ability to decode or integrate new signals; censorship blocks transmission.”
—Robert Anton Wilson

(3) “Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime.”
—Potter Stewart, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court

(2) "An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all."
—Oscar Wilde

(1) "There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist/Unitarian, Irish/Italian/Octogenarian/Zen Buddhist, Zionist/Seventh-day Adventist, Women's Lib/Republican, Mattachine/FourSquareGospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme."
—Ray Bradbury

(These were found on Alternative Reel.com)

Hearing a Different Drummer...

When I was younger (waaay younger), I thought I was pushing the envelope when I wore pointed black leather slip-on shoes with heel taps, white socks, and "pegged" pants (tapered and tight with slash pockets in front (horizontal). The shirt was a standard Oxford with a loop on the back that girls used to target. Gives the standards of the time, that was pretty far out of the norm. Today, I have a small gold hoop in a pierced ear.

The United Kingdom's Daily Mail online carried a story today that caught my eye in a big way! From the paper: "As obsessions go this has to be one of the weirdest known to man - someone who would voluntarily file his teeth, split his lip and undergo extensive facial surgery - to turn himself into a 'human tiger'. Dennis Avner, 50, is descended from American Indians, and has spent 'an uncalculated amount' of money on making himself look like a big cat, after a discussion with a Native chief who inspired him to 'follow the ways of the tiger'. Avner's body modification operations have included bifurcation (splitting) of his upper lip, surgical pointing of the ears, silicone cheek and forehead implants, tooth filing, tattoos, and facial piercing - to which whiskers can be attached. Avner, from Tonopah, Nevada, likes to go by his Indian name 'Stalking Cat'. 'I am Huron and following a very old tradition have transformed myself into a tiger,' he says on his website stalkingcat.com. The tiger aficionado - naturally - enjoys climbing trees and must eat meat 'every day, just as a tiger would.' This should be 'as close to raw as possible, or at the temperature that an animal would be if it had just been killed,' he told The Sun. But Cat can't live the tiger's life 24 hours a day - he has human needs too. These he meets by working in an office - 'the only difference is I look like a cat' - or by making personal TV appearances, which have included Larry King Live, VH1's 'Totally Obsessed' and Kerrang! His latest public appearance was at the new Ripley's Believe It Or Not! museum, which opened this week in London's Piccadilly Circus. "

Every generation pushes a bit more and more - black nail polish, pierced tongues and, uh, other parts, tattoos, etc. These people, usually teenagers, were once described as trying on one face after another until they find their own. One lesson to remember and take from this small offering is from something Henry David Thoreau wrote: "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away." Here is a man who exemplifies the idea expressed in the quote. There is little I can add except, "March on, Stalking Cat. March on!"