Category: LHA

This makes me pound my head on my desk.

Today’s commentary on the evils of censorship comes from conservative President Dwight Eisenhower. “Ike” was the four-star general who led Allied forces in WWII, and was our President from 1953-1961.

This is what Ike said about people who want to ban books:

“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 … . [W]e have got to fight it with something better, not try to conceal the thinking of our own people. They are part of America. And even if they think ideas that are contrary to ours, their right to say them, their right to record them, and their right to have them at places where they’re accessible to others is unquestioned, or it’s not America.”

I couldn’t have said it any better myself.

(Thanks to Melanie Bengston at the First Amendment Center for the quote. Be sure to read her entire article.)

Jane Yolen has long been a writing hero of mine. She posted a great entry yesterday about the state of children’s publishing today.

What do you think about this?

Yay! It’s Banned Book Week and this is still a country where you can read what you want…. most of the time.

Why should you care about this?

Because these people are organized, well-funded, and trying to take over your school and library. And there are many more where they come from.

Are you going to let them?

My quick weekend update:
Saturday – ran the Mexico Cider Run 5k, in my best time of the year. Maybe I was especially motivated because the run is a fundraiser for our town’s library. I love the village of Mexico, NY. Our volunteer firefighters made sure we were safe was we ran up hill and down dale across town, and a bunch of high school and middle school kids volunteered to keep us hydrated and on course. I ran most of the race behind a little girl who cracked me up because, in addition to almost beating me, she deliberately jumped in every puddle we came across. I saw The Dog again, too. The Dog and his owner have been in almost every race I’ve run this summer. The Dog is a great animal, he’s really fun to watch. But I must admit, it irks me a little that he keeps beating me. My next running goal is to finish within a tail wag of The Dog. Oh, and the shirts that we got at race. Best. Shirts. Ever!!!

Then we watched NOS play soccer. BH played ball boy. I was the wiped out mom sprawled in a lawn chair on the sidelines.

Sunday I spent straining my eyes to read 18th-century newspapers on microfilm at the library of Syracuse University. And last night I had one of the most intense, most horrifying, absolutely freak-out quality nightmares I have ever had in my life. Woke up screaming. And no, I will NOT be writing a book about this one. If I tried, I’d wind up in a padded cell.

Drove into The Big City yesterday for lunch with an old friend and to have my photo taken. The lunch I was looking forward to. Having my picture taken… I’ll choose the root canal, please.

(Lunch was at Phoebe’s. Food was good, not great, but the atmosphere was wonderful. (Nota bene! They have a coffee shop, serve breakfast and have WiFi. Might be a good public writing space.)

After lunch and lots of good chat, it was off for the pain and torture sessions. Background: Syracuse was hatched a wonderful new magazine, Central New York, a few months ago. They don’t have a web presence yet, but it is very much along the lines of Philadelphia Magazine; articles about the region, interesting people, arts calender, etc. It has an outstanding design and extremely high production values and is enough to make a Central NYer proud.

So anyway, they let me write a small piece for it that will come out in November. Which made me very happy up until the moment they asked me to come down so they could take my picture. “You don’t have to do that,” I said, as the hives broke out. “I had a new PR photo taken in May. Really, it’s nice. It almost looks like me.”

It wasn’t good enough.

So that’s how I came to be standing in downtown Syracuse at 2:30 yesterday afternoon (across from the Post-Standard** building which is very cool), wearing a winter jacket and bright orange mittens, holding a bowl of salt potatoes that were nestled in a bed of dry ice (to make fake steam) contorting my face into bizarre expressions of salt potato lust. I’m just grateful that we didn’t cause any accidents.

Once I got over feeling really dumb, it was fun, so a big shout out to Linda, Tim, and Dave for showing me such a good time.

Salt potatoes really are a food of the gods, you know.

**Congrats to the Post-Standard staff for pulling down 29 Associated Press awards!