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Posts posted by Penguin

  1. @Violet Crown I grew up as a cradle Catholic just outside of Baltimore, and lived in Catonsville for a bit. I have been wanting to deep dive into The Catonsville Nine for a long time! I also saw Sr. Prejean speak. It was at Wake Forest University roundabout 2007. I still haven't read her book or seen the movie, though.

    I had to look up Tillich. That's Paul Tillich, I presume. I'm intrigued.

    I need to wrap some other books up before I get to Berrigan. I am currently actively reading seven books, and that is unmanageable for me. It was an experiment and it has failed.

    With regard to my concern about access to LGBTQIA+ books, I was merely referring to the fact that they are so challenged and then lack of access can follow. I don't have any more insight than that. 

     

    • Like 5
  2. @Pen I will try to answer your question, but the best thing I can do is to direct you to the American Library Association's Office For Intellectual Freedom Banned & Challenged Books page. How is that for a run-on title?!

    When we talk about banned and challenged books in the USA, we are usually talking about actions that have been taken by communities rather than the government. That is why books can show up on a banned list but be readily available for purchase. Let's just take Alice Walker's The Color Purple as an example since it was on both that B&N list and the ALA page about banned classics. I mostly see challengers who wanted it removed from high school reading lists and school libraries, but one public library is also mentioned. 

    George by Alex Gino has made the ALA's Top 10 Most Challenged List every year since its publication in 2015, and held the top spot in 2018 and 2019. Why? Here is what the ALA says about it for 2019:

    Reasons: challenged, banned, restricted, and hidden to avoid controversy; for LGBTQIA+ content and a transgender character; because schools and libraries should not “put books in a child’s hand that require discussion”; for sexual references; and for conflicting with a religious viewpoint and “traditional family structure”

    Here are some quotes from the ALA's FAQ page:

    "A challenge is an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group.  A banning is the removal of those materials."

    "Books usually are challenged with the best intentions—to protect others, frequently children, from difficult ideas and information." The ALA continues on to say that while the motivation might be commendable, the Library Bill of Rights states that " Librarians and governing bodies should maintain that parents—and only parents—have the right and the responsibility to restrict the access of their children—and only their children—to library resources.” 

    Banned Books Week happens once each year at the end of September, and it has become quite the celebratory event and a showcase for banned books. 

    Hope this helps. It is a fascinating topic!

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  3. Hi. This is my first time posting in this thread. I'll just introduce myself for now.

    I'm in my mid-fifties and my weight is healthy but not optimal. I'm somewhere between out-of-shape and fit. I eat a WFPB diet but I cheat. Usually with sugar. A bit too often with fats, refined grains, or cheese. Rarely with meat.

    My normal workouts were mostly group classes of various sorts, and I have been through the big adjustment of learning how to work out at home. I've actually lost a good bit of weight since the pandemic started, but now I have hit a plateau.

     

     

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  4. A lot of books end up on the banned lists due to sexual content. The books by Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker that I see on the B&N list have rape or sexual assault content. The American Library Association's List of Banned & Challenged Classics gives extensive detail on the specifics of the challenges to the classics.

    My concern is for access to books that contain LGBTQIA+ content. According to the ALA, eight out of ten of the Most Challenged Books of 2019 were challenged for LGBTQIA+ content. Please notice I said "access to" not "the disappearance of."

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  5.  

    3 hours ago, Violet Crown said:

    Flannery O'Connor was a Wobbly! No that was Helen Keller, wasn't it?

    Fun Fact: Tom Morello is a card carrying member.

    Have you read any Daniel Berrigan? I have lined up this trio for my Good Catholic/Bad Catholic 10x10:

    To Dwell in Peace: An Autobiography by Daniel Berrigan

    The Trial of the Catonsville Nine (play) by Daniel  Berrigan

    The Catonsville Nine: A Story of Faith and Resistance in the  Vietnam Era by Shawn Francis Peters

    • Like 6
  6. 6 hours ago, Violet Crown said:

    ETA2: Actually I also disagree with you that I know more about O'Connor than you do. Most people who read and enjoy O'Connor don't know anything about the IWW. Hey! FO'C trivia! Name a book written by her that doesn't show up in the Library of America Collected Works. Googling permitted.

    I give up on the trivia question. Is it Mystery and Manners?

    I had some head scratching over the IWW reference. I was thinking Wait. What? Was FO'C in the Industrial Workers of the World union? And then I realized you meant the Iowa Writer's Workshop. Ha ha.

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  7. 15 hours ago, Violet Crown said:

     

    Edit: Re-reading, I realize I'm coming off pretty strongly; it's true I have very strong feelings about the kind of censorship I'm seeing in motion, but I really respect your thoughts, and my strong feelings aren't directed at you. There's such a danger in us hearing only the opinions of people who agree with us. I'd much rather hear the thoughts of intelligent readers like you who disagree or have a different perspective.

    No worries and no offense taken. Lots of thoughts and some questions follow! 

    First, what kind of disappearing are you concerned about? Maybe we don't completely disagree. I already stated my sweeping, general distrust of amazon. When I say that I am unconcerned, what I mean is that I do not foresee all of her books going out of print and becoming unavailable. It's easy enough to buy Lovecraft.  Being dropped from syllabi? That could happen. Pulled off the shelves at Barnes and Noble? Sales drive shelf space, so if she falls out of favor that could happen. I don't even know if she is currently on their shelves! Less fawning over her as a person by Georgetown University and the Iowa Writer's Workshop? That could happen and maybe it should happen. Maybe it already has happened. I wouldn't know. Which leads me to my next thought...

    Nobody much cared and now they do is not the same as scholars and critics have been covering up. Based on the quote that I made from the article, it seems to me that Elie was of the second opinion. I stand behind saying that protectionism is not OK. It appears to me now that protectionism was not what was actually happening in this case. And I am going to say loud and clear that you know far more about FOC than I do. It has probably been twenty years since I read her fiction, and prior to the other day I could have told you exactly three things about her: She was from Georgia, she was Catholic, and she died young. I could not have told you her opinion of James Baldwin. I fully acknowledge my ignorance. Believe me, my knowledge gaps never cease to amaze and dishearten me. Some of my knowledge gaps are irrelevant to me (I'm looking at you, sports) but I would indeed like to be smart about Southern Literature. You have enlightened me with regard to FOC, and I am grateful for that.

    I found this article last night: "On Flannery O'Connor And Race: A Response to Paul Elie" by Amy Alznauer (published on The Bitter Southerner). Again, I have only skimmed it. It was late 🙂But I will read it thoroughly today. The intro says that she "reveals some of the blind spots in Elie's essay," and I would love to hear your thoughts. A quote: "Maybe it shouldn't surprise me that much of the work he misreads or flat-out ignores has largely been done by women and Black Americans."

    Writers get reexamined, and I think that they should be reexamined.  I just finished the biography of Tove Jansson: Work and Love and her arc was fascinating. I'm NOT comparing her with FOC in any way, but TJ provides an interesting V-shaped case study of reputation. 

    Part One. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Tove Jansson published anti-Hitler and anti-Stalin political cartoons in Garm, an anti-Nazi satire publication. According to the biography, "Tove was daring; she defied official policies of the time, never trying to cover her back through silence or anonymity." Garm and similar publications "tended to cause deep offence among Finns" due to Finland's 1940 alliance with Germany. 

    Part Two. After the 1946  publication of Comet in Moominland (which can - questionably, of course - be read as an anti-nuclear war story), she began writing a comic strip for Ny Tid, a leftist newspaper. But the comic strip did not last long in Ny Tid. It was dropped because Moominpapa was deemed to be too borgeouis. "After all, poor Moominpapa read a monarchist newspaper."

    Part Three. In 2017, the Huffington Post publishes this article: "Meet the Queer, Anti-Fascist Author Behind the Freakishly Lovable Moomins." In 2019, Tom Morello (political activist and guitarist from Rage Against the Machine) performed in a video wearing a T-shirt with a Moomin waving an anti-fascist flag. 

    • Like 8
  8. Harking back to last week:

    I read the Flannery O'Connor article, and found it very though provoking. Thank you for raising the topic, @Violet CrownPaul Elie notes that "as she developed into a keenly self-aware writer, the habit of bigotry persisted in her letters" and then he states that "the particulars have been held close by executors, smoothed over by editors, and justified by exegetes, as if to save O'Connor from herself." That's a problem, and that sort of protectionism needs to stop.

    I am not a fan of putting a writer/artist/musician etc. on a pedestal. The harder they fall and all that. There are some writers/artists/musicians etc. whom I find so personally distasteful that I have no interest in exploring their work. I certainly like to draw that line for myself - I don't want someone else deciding for me where to draw that line. However, I am not in the least concerned about books like FOC's disappearing. I just don't see that as a legitimate threat.

    I don't own or read many ebooks, but I do like Kathy's idea of backing them up with Calibre. I don't trust amazon, and  I won't "buy" movies on amazon Prime. Rent them? Sure. I prefer not to buy books and movies that are really only a license, and that I would lose if and when the platform disappears or decides to be capricious.

    Back to the 10x10s:

    I have a number of perpetual challenges that I want to continue, and some topics that I want to explore as a cluster of three or so, but don't merit ten books. I think it would be fun to look for the patters retroactively. In other words, my intention is to finish my originally stated 10x10 challenge and then move on to a different framework.

    It was great to read your 10x10 updates @Violet Crown @Robin M and  @mumto2

    • Like 10
  9. Is anyone else still pursuing the 10X10 challenge? @Violet Crown You are still doing it, correct? 

    My reading records have been a bit sloppy of late, but I think this is my status:

    If you want to know what I read for a category, just ask. The start date of the project was January 2019. The date listed is the date I finished the category. Overlaps were permitted. 

    COMPLETED:

    Nordic (June 2019)

    Fantasy (January 2020)

    Politics (March 2020)

    Read in Danish (May 2020)

    The American South (May 2020)

    1960s (May 2020)

     

    STILL WORKING ON:

    Non-tropical Islands (five done, five to go)

    Poetry (six done, four to go)

    Good Catholic Bad Catholic (two done, eight to go)

    Add 10 New Countries to my Perpetual Round-The-World Challenge (six done, four to go)

     

    • Like 6
  10. Interesting discussion about the banned books. There is much upthread to think about, but I'd have to think a little more before I would add to the conversation. I do know that I would not like my electronic books being altered without my knowledge. 

    I only skimmed the article about Flannery O'Connor article and will read it properly later. I think this is case of can/should one separate the artist from the art?  Based on my skim, the accusations of racism seem to be less about her fiction and more about her correspondence. Some people are more willing than others to differentiate between the work and the artist. JK Rowling recently caused some Harry Potter fans to search inside themselves and ask that very question.

    I picked up FOC's book of letters, The Habit of Being, in a used shop last year, but have never read it. I see that the author of the article, Paul Elie,  wrote The Life You Save May Be Your Own, which is a study of Flannery O'Conner, Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day and Walker Percy. This book has been sitting, unread, on my shelf for at least ten years. 

    I just the other day went through my 10x10 lists and realized that I have only filled two slots of my Good Catholic/Bad Catholic category. 

    @mumto2 I still have those VHS Star Wars movies, too. But my understanding was that even they are not the films that were shown in the theater. I don't know if that is true or not, it is just what one of my kids told me 🙂 

    @aggieamy I think you are brave to admit that you felt cowardly about being truthful on Goodreads. I bought some books about sex work when I was in The Bluestockings bookstore in NYC in December, and I think at least one of them isn't even in the GR database. I like GR, but I really don't feel like I owe it anything. I wouldn't hesitate to keep something off of there if I felt so inclined for any reason or no reason.  I would not fake my star rating out of guilt, but I have felt that twinge of guilt when I rated something low.

    • Like 6
  11. Pretend that you just moved to a new place. Assume that you are not much of a risk-taker with regard to COVID. How would you go about making new friends?

    I didn't just move to a new place, but I might as well have. My pre-COVID social life is no longer available to me, and I would love to make new IRL friends. This is what I used to do, if it helps. 

    Regular road trips to my previous state where I have a super group of friends (that state is a current hotspot)

    A steady stream of house guests from other cities and states - nobody is traveling and I wouldn't feel safe welcoming them anyway

     A regular volunteer gig - the center is closed for the foreseeable future

    Hanging out with our musician friends (DH is the musician not me) within the local music scene. That is obviously not happening.

    Group dance classes. Lots of sweating and hard breathing. Nope. Not going back anytime soon, which is a bit of a shame because I had just started at a new studio and I really liked everyone.

    It's all gone and I can't figure out where to begin. I've moved A LOT as an adult, and am usually quite skilled at untangling this knot. I have great friends all over the world. What I don't have right here in THIS TOWN are close friends. The kind that you can sit outside with in a socially distant manner. I see this now as a glaring absence in my social life. I kind of knew it was there, but its absence didn't feel crucial. 

    I might be feeling too gloom-and-doom currently to see my way out of this. Or maybe it really is just unrealistic to try to do anything about it right now, and I need to work on adjusting to the quiet and enjoying my (quite good) online social life. 

    • Like 4
  12. On 6/16/2020 at 11:02 PM, aggieamy said:

    This might be the dustiest book on my dusty shelves. I think it's been sitting there for ten years waiting for me to read it. Maybe it'll get read this year. 

    Only ten years? I surely have some TBRs on my shelf that have hit the twenty year mark, but I have moved so many times that they never get super dusty! Glad to read that the nanny situation is giving you more time to read. Enjoy!

    • Like 5
  13. 8 minutes ago, Quill said:

    Any not-raining day, if you want to walk around your city and just chat, I am game. I’ll wear a mask if you prefer it that way. 💜

    Thank you, and I will take you up on that...soon. I have to admit that I would at this moment feel guilty hanging out with a friend before my DH and son get the same opportunity. They are both suffering more than I am from the isolation, I think. 

    • Like 1
  14. My reading time is currently diluted by podcasts, movies, YouTube, and any number of distractions. Looking at my Goodreads account, I think I finished the following since I last checked in:

    The Last Shift by Philip Levine. Levine is one of my favorite poets, and this was his final book before he died. But it was not my favorite book by him. 

    The Goodbye Girl by Neil Simon. I hated it! The characters, the dialogue, the storyline...yuck. LA Theatre works, as always, made a fabulous audio production but that is the only nice thing I can say. I never saw the movie, so I can't compare the two. Neil Simon is now 50/50 for me because I loved Lost in Yonkers. But he was so prolific that I don't think I can fairly judge with just two plays.

    Tove Jansson: Work and Love by Tuula Karjalainen. This was a fantastic biography about the Moomin author. It is a beautiful book, filled with her paintings and sketches. And there was a lot of detail about art history in Finland from (roughly) the 1930s through the 1950s, because Tove Jansson was primarily a painter in those years. 

    What's Your Pronoun: Beyond He and She by Dennis Baron. This is a great book if you are a grammar geek, or are into linguistics or the history of language. I learned SO much about pronouns! There was a section on pronoun usage within the LGBTQIA+ community, but there is way more to this book then current pronoun usage. For example: Jane Austen used the singular “ they” 75 times in Pride and Prejudice.
     

    The suffragettes argued that if the inclusive HE meant both HE and SHE when a woman was charged with a crime based on a statute written with the inclusive HE, then the inclusive HE should also be applied this way with  voting laws.
     

    I must temper my enthusiasm for the book by saying that it could have used A LOT of editing. Parts are repetitive and only worth skimming.

     

    • Like 9
  15. I'll just say count yourselves lucky if you have IRL friends who will make these sorts of accommodations. My local IRL friends have stopped behaving like the pandemic exists, so I am not going to see them any time soon. Phone calls and Zoom is all I've got until I can travel to NC where I have a group of friends who are using current best practices. But that would mean traveling from a state that is doing well to a state that is on the rise. 

    Blech.

    • Sad 2
  16. I really have not known how to come back to this thread, as it seems too lightweight and even frivolous now. 

    I would like to say that I hope that your city gets whatever changes it needs to become a good place for everyone who lives there. 

    • Like 1
  17. 10 hours ago, Patty Joanna said:

    I'm not one to live into regrets--at all.  I have always thought that, with a few exceptions, we don't decide on things in order to screw up.  We are, in general, doing the best we can...AND it is impossible to say what WOULD have happened had we done "the other thing."

    THAT said...I wish I had not lived so much into fear of all the things that would happen if I wasn't 100% responsible every single second of every single minute.  Being a little afraid all the time has had too much shaping power in my life...still does.  But I'm working on it.  :0)

     

    I don't dwell in the land of regret, either. Nostalgia is OK but I really try to live my life looking forward as I just don't find the look-back super helpful. I don't even find that what I learned from my mistakes is particularly useful info for passing on to the next generation since they are living under different conditions.

    Except for music. I am definitely stuck in the past when it comes to music 🙂 

    • Like 1
  18. Most of my reading this week has been with a self-imposed deadline, but I really don't like the pressure. 

    I finished Maya Angelou's I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings as an audiobook right before the library took it back. My previous exposure to Maya Angelou was miscellaneous poems and video clips, and some general knowledge. But this was the first book by her that I read. Honestly, I did not know until after I finished the book that she had written SEVEN autobiographies. I'm not sure that I want to read all seven, but I would certainly like to read more. 

    I don't love all memoirs about childhood, but I usually love memoirs about childhood by poets. Earlier this year, I listened to Soldier: A Poet's Childhood by June Jordan which was also wonderful. Since June Jordan isn't as well known as Maya Angelou, I'll give her memoir a little shout-out here.

    This week, and this morning, I am binge reading a book for my Danish book club Zoom meeting: Hvor Taler du Flot Dansk! by Abdel Aziz Mahmoud. The title translates to Wow, you speak good Danish! and the subtext is "Wow, you speak good Danish... for a Middle Easterner." Abdel Aziz Mahmoud is a journalist, and has been in Denmark since he was a toddler. Born in the UAE, his parents were refugees from Palestine. It is a reasonably interesting memoir about integration and Danish society.

    I also, with no deadline (!), listened to another play from LA Theatre Works. This time it was The Graduate (play adaptation by Terry Johnson). Now, I have to admit that I have never seen the movie, so I can't make the comparison. But I know the premise and the song! I don't know what I expected, but none of the characters were likeable. That doesn't mean that I didn't like the story - I did. I just mean that there was no one to root for. Kathleen Turner was Mrs. Robinson - she had the role in the West End Production and reprised it for LA Theatre Works, and she was the perfect Mrs. Robinson. 

    Another reason that I like these productions is that there is usually a short interview with either the playwright, a performer, or the director included. An interview with Kathleen Turner was included at the end of this one. 

    • Like 8
  19. I'm not unhappy with my 20s. I had a lot of fun and did a lot of traveling. I finished both undergrad and grad school. I got married at 24 and had Kid #1 at 27, Kid #2 at 29. I worked full time until I was 32, so I was not home with my kids in my 20s. That was complicated, but I think it was the right choice for that time, especially since I stayed home for the next 20-some years!

    Considering that I didn't really plan my life in my 20s and it just unfolded while I muddled along, I can't complain.

    If I could change one small thing, I wish that I would have started dance and/or yoga then. My 20-something body would have been able to do all the things. 

     

    • Like 1
  20. 17 hours ago, Margaret in CO said:

    This thread is like looking at a different world for me! People LIKE living in the city???? 😉 I'm annoyed if two cars go by on the road in front of my house when I walk a mile. Too much traffic!

    Margaret, we rented a lovely cabin in a rural area for Thanksgiving. When we went for a "country walk" the road was flanked by either woods or Amish farms. The scenery was nice, but that walk wrecked my nerves! When walking by the woods, there were always gunshots - it was hunting season. When walking by the farms, dogs would come rushing forward toward the road. Since the farms were Amish I presumed that there were no electric fences, so if I could not see a fence I felt very scared of these dogs. And then there were the horse droppings in the road to watch out for. I just wasn't fun or relaxing for me.

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