It’s National Library Week, so I’ve been thinking a lot about knowledge and the idea that knowledge should be readily available – for all. An informed populace is crucial to the health of the nation and a bulwark of democracy. The ability to think, to reason, to avoid being fooled, all these notions are tied to reading and easy access to the wisdom of the ages.
And this is exactly why libraries – and their contents – are under siege these days.
HuffPost’s Jennifer Bendery recently told readers:
“Librarians are living in constant fear. They have become the targets
of Republican politicians and far-right groups like Moms for Liberty
Liberty that are hellbent on burning books about LGBTQ+ people,
people of color and racism. Some librarians are quitting their jobs
because of constant harassment; others are getting fired for
refusing to clear shelves of books that conservatives don’t like.”
If that’s not bad enough – and it is – Bendery informs us there’s another evil twist in the tale: “The GOP’s censorship campaign has shifted from book bans to legislation threatening librarians with jail time.” Idaho’s tried several times to enact such legislation; this February, West Virginia passed a bill “making librarians criminally liable if a minor comes across content that some might consider obscene.” Idaho, Iowa, Alabama, and Georgia are also considering various means of keeping books they don’t like off the shelves...and they’re not alone.
The American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom shared some frightening statistics: “The number of titles targeted for censorship at public libraries increased by 92% over the previous year, accounting for about 46% of all book challenges in 2023; school libraries saw an 11% increase over 2022 numbers.”
Given these ever-more-frequent, ever-more-strident attacks, what can a concerned reader do to stem the tide of book-banning?
PEN America, an organization whose mission “is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible,” offers a number of ways to make one’s voice heard. Whether you’re a student, a parent, an author, or a librarian, PEN America provides advice, assistance, and resources to keep you informed and ready to push back.
The need to support the nation’s libraries is more urgent than ever. In Bendery’s HuffPost piece, American Library Association President Emily Drabinski draws a chilling conclusion: “What gets lost in conversations about book banning is that it’s really about eliminating the institution of the library, period. It’s not about the books. Well, it is about the books, but the books are the way in to gut one of the last public institutions that serves everyone.”
“You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture,” Ray Bradbury once said. “Just get people to stop reading them.”
Bradbury was one of the 20th century’s finest fabulists, the author of The Martian Chronicles, Something Wicked This Way Comes, and the worldwide blockbuster Fahrenheit 451. Published in 1952, the novel Fahrenheit 451 is set in a future where books are illegal and firemen don’t put out fires – they start them. Printed matter is what they burn.
Bradbury was writing in the tense, paranoid early years of the McCarthy era. But he might as well have penned those words last Thursday.
Support your local library. Speak up for the voices the hate-mongers would shut down. Before – as history’s proven again and again – they try to shut down yours.
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Students fight a book ban by giving away free banned bookswww.youtube.com
The New York Public Library has also weighed in on the matter, you can find its suggestions here.
What Water Holds – on memory, perseverance and action
A mother's reflection in the wake of yet another school shooting.
Several months ago, I heard an interview on NPR with a woman who said that water carries memory. When the water freezes, the memories it carries are held in place, and when the ice melts, those memories are released. I don't remember which NPR show this was, nor do I remember the woman's name or what she was being interviewed about, except that she was in the arts, perhaps theater, or music, and she was talking about her most recent project. But, I remembered this one thing she said; that water carries memories, which are held and released, and held and released with the cycling of seasons.
I took a walk this morning. The biting chill in the air was giving way to a cooling thaw, and it felt as if spring might be coming early this year. At Bear Mountain park, near where I live, a grayish white vapor rose off of the frozen surface of the man-made lake, hovering, stretching out like an altostratus cloud. It was early, and I was the only person on the trail. It was so peaceful – the sounds of the breeze through the still bare trees, their fallen branches reaching out from the underneath the veil of ice like giant hands and the smell of the wet earth, ready to release new life.
In the Bible, water is mentioned over 700 times. It symbolizes cleansing, but also creation and God's awesome power. In Genesis, before there is light, sun, earth, plants, leaving creatures, there was water—it existed before existence itself. In Chinese Taoist philosophy, water is home to our essence. It represents wisdom, and great force, as well as perseverance.
Everywhere I looked this morning, ice was melting, becoming liquid. Bubbles formed underneath the surface of the frozen water on the rocks, sliding and turning over and around the bumps and crevices like tad pols in a stream. The sound of the melting release was everywhere. The applause of the filling streams running down off of the mountain, the rain storm of the current under my feet. In the distance, there was the crack-crack sound of something breaking --- a giant tree falling, or perhaps the roll of a machine, clearing a path Today, however, it reminded me of gun fire.
I often work from home on Thursdays and Fridays, partly to give myself a break from a grueling two-hour commute to work, but mainly to be home to drop off and pick my daughter up from school and to be present. My child is the most important thing in the world to me. Her infectious laughter, the feel of her cheek against mine when I kiss her goodnight, the furrow in her brow when she's worried, how proud I am of all she has achieved and my hopes for all that is yet to come --- this, and everything else about her is part of me, like the heart in my chest or the soul that lives someplace even deeper.
Six years ago, when she was in second grade, I watched images of grieving, broken parents of Newtown, Connecticut on CNN. I lived in a small town very much like Newtown, and I had a daughter who was exactly the same age as those children who were murdered with an assault rifle. Not a day has gone by since when I don't, at some point, worry that I might drop my child off at school in the morning, and not see her alive in the afternoon. After February 14, 2018, I watched CNN again, and, again, the same images of broken and grieving parents as they endure what no parent should ever have to; the senseless murder of a child.
It is said that everything is cyclical. There are some cycles that ground us; nature, aging, good times and bad. Some that challenge us; sickness and health, success and failure. These can't always be controlled – we just have to go with it. And then there are the cycles of another sort; violence, insanity, corruption, dishonesty, dereliction of duty. These are the kind of cycles that, if not controlled, if not broken, will break us. These are the cycles that Lori Alhadeff, the mother of 14-year-old victim Alyssa Alhadeff inveighed against when she pleaded into the camera, "President Trump, we need action. Now!" It's the cycle that sophomore Isabella Gomez took on when, in response to President Trump's declaration that We are here for you. We are here to ease your pain, that "He really needs to take into consideration gun control."
Memories are our foundation. This is one of the things that is so cruel about Alzheimer's --- it robs a person of their past, and with it, their identity. After Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, and the rest of the now over 150 mass shootings*, as a country, it is tempting to say that these horrors keep happening because we are suffering from collective Alzheimer's. But that's not it. We do remember. Who could forget? But what does that matter? Is that the point? We'll never forget you? I am reminded of Susan Sontag's brilliant post-9/11 piece in the New Yorker; "Our country is strong, we are told again and again. I for one don't find this entirely consoling. Who doubts that America is strong? But that's not all American has to be." Who doubts that we will remember mass shootings? If our thoughts and prayers are really with the victims in Parkland, Florida, we need to offer them a lot more than a place in our memories.
Water, like life itself, is full of contradiction. We develop and thieve in a watery womb, yet once we are born that same water will drown us. Rivers and oceans are sources of peace and tranquility, but also of flood and devastation. Of the many qualities water has, perhaps the one that most comes to mind after this latest mass shooting is reflection. In the words of 17-year-old survivor David Hogg, "This is a time for our country to take a look in the mirror and realize there is a serious issue here."
Note: *This is an approximate number, at best. As pointed out in a recent piece in The Atlantic, "The lack of reliable information on school shootings and other gun-related mass violence isn't just a matter of inconsistency in definitions; political factors have also played a role in limiting access to information. Under pressure from the National Rifle Association, Congress in 1996 prohibited the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from funding public-health research on issues related to firearms. These prohibitions have largely persisted, and there is still no comprehensive federal database on gun deaths, let alone on school shootings."