A word about electricity and a lot about book bans

 

I may be the last person in the world you would suspect of doing scientific investigations, but I sort of did today. When I found both my teakettle and my can opener weren’t working, I unplugged them, moved them to another plug—and voila! They worked. Just when I was on the verge of calling the electrician who has worked on my house for years. When I told Christian this, he (much more practical than I), said, “It probably just needs to be reset.” And he did. And tonight they both work in their original spots. I also read the troubleshooting directions for my garbage can and decided what we hadn’t done was to unplug it and leave it for hours. That was less successful. It still doesn’t work. Still, one savors the small victories.

I am overcome tonight with the hate in the world. A lengthy article on a bookseller’s newsletter this morning details an Arkansas law that bans almost every good book I’ve ever read and jeopardizes not only the jobs and income but the freedom of librarians, teachers, and booksellers. Can you spell Nazi? The law, signed by the odious Governor Sarah Huckaby (yes, I used a pejorative adjective) provides that anyone can challenge the ”appropriateness” of a book in public libraries, but it does not define “appropriateness” nor does it provide a standard by which to judge books. Those who support the law say anyone under eighteen should not have access to books that include racism, sexual activity, or LGBTQ topics. They call such books indoctrination. I call such laws suppression of knowledge. Seventeen organizations, including booksellers, librarians, publishers and parents and some international groups, have brought a lawsuit. I wish the Godspeed.

I did not raise my children in a vacuum. I remember when one of my daughters read Flowers in the Attic, about four children struggling to survive as they are hidden in the attic of a mansion. Scary stuff but intriguing to a fourteen-year-old mind. We talked about it. When she moved on to books by Danielle Steele, I did read a couple of them, because I wanted to know what my child was reading. One of her brothers was devoted to the Dungeons and Dragons series and was the kind of a kid who read by flashlight under the covers at night. I never had a complaint about that, except that he was hard to wake in the mornings. None of my four grew up to be a sex maniac, racist, or bigot.

The Arkansas law means booksellers can be liable for displaying “questionable” books but does not define questionable. That means booksellers can display only innocuous titles—cookbooks, maybe?—or they have to forbid children to come into the store. If there was anything my son Jamie loved, it was a trip to the bookstore where he would beg and plead until I bought whatever caught his fancy. And I remember a nephew who at fourteen or so was fascinated by Anne Rice’s vampire fiction. He’s a successful physician today, father of four, a good guy.

Locally, I am not over my disappointment in Mayor Mattie Parker of Fort Worth. The Fort Worth Public Library prepared a big publicity campaign—print materials, etc.—for its annual Mayor’s Summer Reading Program, with a special Pride Badge for youngsters who read one book with an LGBTQ theme. A splinter group—with “Liberty” in its name, of course (such words have become red flags to me)—complained to the mayor and she caved. Gave the library an ultimatum: withdraw the Pride Badge or she would withdraw her endorsement. The library felt it had no choice and withdrew the badge. So wrong. I wished for just a moment there that I were director of the library because I would have, I hope, told the mayor to go fly a kite. And she did this at the beginning of National Pride Month. Bad call, bad timing, Mayor Parker.

Today I read that Texas and Florida (of course) have passed stringent laws that forbid immigrants from certain countries to buy land except under certain circumstances—proof of citizenship or a green card and then only land not close to a military installation, etc. The laws in large part are aimed at Asians and decisions are often made on facial structure. Is this really the land of the free?

There’s a meme on Facebook that says if you have to pass laws punishing certain minority groups to prove your faith or morals, you have no faith or morals to prove. So true.

I cannot fathom people with so much hate and fear in their hearts, but I know that they are a slim minority, and we must all fight back, each of in whatever way we can, to keep them from changing the face of our land, the way we live and raise our children. My moral standard may not be yours—as long as neither of us infringe on each other or commit a crime against society, that’s fine with me. How about you?

No sweet dreams tonight. Dream instead of every good book you want your children or grands to read.