My Commonplace Book

September 29 - October 6, 2007 is Banned Books Week.

( What was the most challenged book of 2006? )

I've been putting off returning these books to the library because I wanted to post about them -- I haven't posted about what I'm reading in a long time, and I was determined to post these. I already had to return one because somebody else wanted it and I forgot what it was. (My library doesn't keep permanent records -- once you return a book it's deleted from their computer. Which is a good thing, given the snoopiness of the Bush administration, but it also means I can't look up what I've read.)

But now these are a couple of days past due and they're going back this afternoon, so:

• Words, Words, Words, by David Crystal. Crystal's books for a popular audience have become increasingly broad and shallow, and this one is no exception. This one covers word origins, histories, spellings, regional and social variations, taboo words, jargon, wordplay, and much more -- 25 very short chapters covering 25 topics about words. There's not as much depth as I'd like, but it makes very interesting light reading for a linguistics geek.


• Why Don't Woodpeckers Get Headaches: And Other Answers to Bird Questions You Know You Want to Ask, by Mike O'Connor. A compendium of replies to questions answered by O'Connor, owner of the Bird Watcher's General Store on Cape Cod, in his "Ask the Bird Folks" column published in the local paper and on his website. His style is extremely ironic, which is very amusing when read once a week in the paper or in small doses on the website -- but it gets old when you read page after page in the same tone. The first paragraph of every answer is a smart-ass remark, most often  a put-down of the sender, the sender's town, the question, himself, or something else. He never starts the actual answer till the second paragraph. It's clearly meant all in fun, so it's not offensive -- it just gets really tired.
  
  Other than that, though, it's fascinating. The answers after the first paragraph are lively and informative, O'Connor knows his stuff, and I learned a lot. (Or I would have if I could have remembered all those facts that the book is chock-full of.)


• The 101 Most Influential People Who Never Lived: How Characters of Fiction, Myth, Legends, Television, and Movies Have Shaped Our Society, Changed Our Behavior, and Set the Course of History, by Allan Lazar, Dan Karlan and Jeremy Salter. This was a real sleeper -- I didn't expect it to be as fascinating at is was. It's an unscientific but extremely well researched book about Santa Claus, Jim Crow, Oedipus, Buck Rogers, St. Valentine, Paul Bunyan, Peter Pan, Archie Bunker, and 93 other fictional characters and their impact on society. Read it, you'll be glad you did.

In 2002, New Orleans Times-Picayune reporters John McQuaid and Mark Schleifstein wrote a 5-part series, "Washing Away", detailing how south Louisiana was growing more vulnerable to a catastrophic hurricane. The series covered the science of storms, the particular geographical and environmental issues of the area, and the state of the region's infrastructure -- and the scenario McQuaid and Schleifstein painted eerily foretold the events that unfolded three years later when Hurricane Katrina hit.

McQuaid and Schleifstein have expanded the series into a book, Path of Destruction: The Devastation of New Orleans and the Coming Age of Superstorms. Unlike most Katrina books, it gives us not only factual and eyewitness accounts of the storm and its horrific aftermath, but also provides deep insight into all the factors that led up to the city's destruction.

( Read more... )

All in all, though, it's a truly excellent book. I recommend it highly to not just those interested in Hurricane Katrina, but to anyone interested in natural disasters or in New Orleans in general.

When I was at the library yesterday, I did something I've never done before. I filed a Request for Reconsideration of Library Material -- i.e., a request that the book be removed from the shelves.

For the last five years or so I've been dissatisfied with whoever has been choosing the books. Whenever I peruse the "New Books" shelves, the religion section invariably has a lot of books promoting Christianity, most of them with a very one-sided view. There are always many more books promoting Christianity and Christian living than all the other books about religion -- those about any other religion and those questioning religion -- put together. That bothers me, but I've never said anything. I'd have to do an exhaustive study of books that were added in the last few years to gather enough specific data to show what's obvious to me in a right-brained way.

But the one I looked at yesterday appalled me.

I know librarians can't possibly read every book they order, so most likely (read: hopefully) they didn't realize how offensive this book is. That's why they have forms to request reconsideration, I guess. I've never in my life asked a library to remove a book. I don't believe in censorship -- Charles Krauthammer belongs on the library shelves right along with Molly Ivins. I have an "I read banned books" button. But this book is so egregious that I felt it was beyond the pale.

I took it to the desk and told the librarian what I thought of it. She obviously didn't want to hear about it, and just handed me the request for reconsideration form. I had to fill it out with a pen, so I wasn't able to say as much as I wanted, and once I put something down I couldn't edit it without asking for a new form and starting all over. So I just sat down at a table with the book and the form and did the best I could.

I wrote so much that my wrist was hurting by the time I finished! Here's what I put on the form:

Author: Richard Ing
Title: Spiritual Warfare (in New Book collection, 235.4I)

1. What brought this title to your attention? Browsing

2. Have you examined the material in its entirety? No. If not, what parts have you examined? Chapter 4, Satan's Rights, plus leafing through other parts

3. Please comment on the resource as a whole as well as being specific on those matters which concern you. This book is virulently anti-Catholic. I am not a Catholic (or even a Christian), but I was offended by it. E.g., on pp. 103-104, it cites Catholic beliefs as being literal demons, and refers to Catholics as being in "demonic bondage." On p. 85 it says that "statues and idols are ... contrary to Christian teachings."

It treats Buddhism (and all religions other than fundamentalist Protestant Christianity) similarly. On pp. 112-113 it refers to Buddhist beliefs and customs as being demonic, as it does on pp. 30-31.

Possibly worst of all, it claims that people with schizophrenia are possessed by demons, and that schizophrenia is "Satan's way to imprison and control minds. ... These individuals will be given to sexual lust, filthy conversation, lawlessness, ... corruption, adultery, ... cursed children, greed, living in darkness, and wantonness." (p. 69). It continues, claiming that schizophrenics can be cured by prayer and casting out the demons. It claims that women with schizophrenia have "invariably suffered deep rejection and hurt, most likely from her father." (p. 70)

I don't object to books that espouse beliefs other than mine. This is the first time I have ever asked that a book be removed. But this book is so offensive and vicious that it does not belong in the library.

5. For what age group would you recommend this material? NONE

6. In its place, what would you recommend that would convey a valuable picture and perspective of the subject reated? Almost anything! Seriously, any rational treatment with corect facts would be fine. This book is neither rational nor correct (schizophrenia is not caused by demonic possession!)

7. What would you like your library to do about this material? Put it in the paper recycling bin. These beliefs don't even deserve to be promulgated by selling the book.

I asked the librarian to make a copy for me, and she did. I also asked if I would be notified of the decision. She seemed surprised, so I guess it's not standard procedure (or maybe she was just new -- she looked young). But she did write a note and clip it to the form. If they ever contact me about it I'll post what they said.

What do you think about this? Does any book a library can afford belong on the shelves? Once it's there, should it never be withdrawn just because of its content? Or do books that contain grossly incorrect and hateful "facts" need to be removed? If you had happened to glance through a library book and found the quotes above, what would you do?

After an inauspicious start, my day yesterday got much better when I went to see phoenix_glow's new baby, Brianna!

Phoenix is always fun to be with, and Bri is absolutely gorgeous! She's four months old already, but I hadn't seen her yet because Phoenix and the rest of the family have been passing around to each other all winter.  I gave Bri a matching hand-crocheted set of a baby blanket, jacket and hat that I got for her last November at our church's silent auction. I didn't know what on earth to get for a third baby -- I figured Phoenix would already have everything she could possibly need! -- so I thought something handmade from the church we both attend would be more special that something store-bought.

Unfortunately Bri was sleeping most of the time I was there, but I did get to see her (and hold her!) for a little while before I left. What a beautiful little girl! She's a very happy, easy-going baby with a gorgeous bright cornflower-blue eyes and a knock-em-dead smile. And she smiles often! I played peek-a-boo with her and she loved it. Every time I said "ahhh, boo!" she'd startle, and then give me a huge, cockeyed grin. And then she'd stare at me waiting for the next one. It was so cute!

Also cute, but not nearly in the same league, is Phoenix's Roomba! I'd never seen one in action before, so Phoenix turned hers on for me so I could watch it for a few minutes. It is so cool! She has it on a timer and it cleans the living room and dining room every morning from 10 to 11. The floor was quite clean, so it must do a good job! She also has a Scooba, which she says does a great job in the kitchen and bathroom. Now I'm dying to get one of each!

After I left Phoenix's house I went to the library to return a book. I got three more, and did something I've never done before -- I filed a "request for reconsideration" of a recently purchased book.

I took out one bird book and two travel books. The bird book is Songbird Journeys: Four Seasons in the Lives of Migratory Birds. It looks really good, and I'm looking forward to reading it!

The travel books are Insight Guide: Alaska and Cruising Alaska: A Traveler's Guide to Cruising Alaskan Waters & Discovering the Interior because I'm going on a cruise to Alaska this spring!!!

I'm really starting to get excited! I'm going with my kids, woofiegrrl and her partner A, on an inside passage cruise. The main stops are Juneau, Ketchikan and Skagway, and for our obligatory foreign port our last stop is in  Victoria, BC from 6 pm to midnight, where I'll get to meet ms_interpret and her family!

I can't wait to read the books! I started the cruising one last night but I haven't gotten to read any more of it yet.

Via lkeele

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open it to page 161.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don't search around and look for the coolest book you can find. Do what's actually next to you.


"Someone in my neighborhood feeds the squirrels, and all this does is encourage the squirrels to bury the nuts -- in my garden."

From Outwitting Squirrels: 101 Cunning Stratagems to Reduce Dramatically the Egregious Misappropriation of Seed From Your Birdfeeder by Squirrels, by Bill Adler, Jr.

I had the best time last night!

My friend Wendy and I had plans to go out to dinner, and had decided to go to a Thai place. She was supposed to come over around 6:00 so I could sho her some of the rocks I've picked up -- my special rock with the seashell and fossil from the Poconos, and all the rest from the streams right around here. Wendy picks up rocks too, so I wanted to share some of my more interesting ones.

Before we even got to the rocks we were sitting and talking, and got onto the topic of Israel and Palestine. I said that I was totally on the fence about the situation, because of the chicken-and-egg problem about who was there first: The Arabs were living there before the Jews came to reclaim it ... but in a way, the Jews really were there before the Arabs. On the other hand, the Jews got it originally by murdering every single one of the original inhabitants and stealing it from them -- but the indigenous tribes aren't around to claim it any more, having been totally wiped out by the Hebrews -- and the Arabs are not their descendants.

So we got to talking about how Israel and even Palestine were not historically places, but just lines drawn by the Europeans, and both of us were trying to visualize exactly where the lines are, so I got my Atlas out and we looked it up. Then we wondered what it looked like before Israel was established -- was Palestine a country, or just part of Syria, Lebanon and/or Jordan? I had a brainstorm, and ran to get my old atlases -- in addition to a more-or-less current atlas (2000), I have one from 1956 (post WW-II) and one from 1935 (between the world wars), and it's really interesting to see how the borders changed and the countries came and went as a result of the wars and the independence movement in the 1960s.

We pored over those for awhile, comparing and contrasting the maps, and then we started wondering what it looked like before WW I. Suddenly I realized Oh! I have maps of that era, too, and ran to get my 1895 Encyclopedia Brittanica! At that time the whole area was still part of the Ottoman Empire, and we ended up with four or five encyclopedia volumes and three atlases strewn around the sofa where we were sitting.

We studied the various maps of the area and read pieces of the 19th century version of the history of the region, and it was just so cool! I love maps and history; I love reading maps; I love research; I love being able to actually use my old books for reference; I love sharing my treasures; and I love discussing interesting topics with intelligent people ... so I had a really terrific time!

There's something about looking things up in books that is just different from looking them up on the Web. It's not as handy or as information-rich, but it's richer in other ways. And it's especially wonderful to use contemporary references of the time rather than reading historical accounts, few of which are truly neutral.

Finally after more than an hour of looking things up, we managed to put the books aside and I brought over some of my rocks. Wendy took a semester of geology not too long ago, so she was very interested and was able to tell me what a number of them were. She pronounced my mica rock "collection quality," and was fascinated with the natural chalk rock I found -- there isn't supposed to be any around here. (I wish I could remember exactly where I found it, but I know it was local.) There were a number of others she liked, and studied each one.

I've shown my antique books to a number of people, and I've shown some rocks to a few people, but nearly everyone just says they're very nice and lets it go at that. This is the first time someone has been really, truly interested in the books and the rocks, so I was really happy.

It was after 8:00 when we finally tore ourselves away from the rocks and went to the restaurant. The food was marvelous -- everything was cooked exactly right, nothing was overcooked or undercooked. I had a coupon for 50% off one entree, so we saved some money, too!

It was just a great evening all around!

Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.
                    —Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), German philosopher, Parerga and Paralipomena

I picked up the Corolla on Friday after getting the new brakes. In addition to the rotors, the piston in one of the calipers was rusty and needed to be replaced. A new piston was less than $40, but would take four or five days to deliver. I wanted to wait, but they said they couldn't leave the car disassembled on the lift that long, and got the entire caliper assembly instead, which cost almost $100. (They took ten bucks off because of my complaint -- whoopie-doo.) I also had an oil change done, which it was needed, but only the basic oil change. With tax, it came to about $770.

So what did I do? The remainder bookstore is only one block from the mechanic shop, so the obvious mood-lifter was to go over there. I spent more than I should have, but just being around all those books made me feel better, and indulging my addiction and getting a fix was what I needed. I ended up buying seven books and two CDs (all heavily discounted!).

( What I got )

I'm in the middle of a fascinating book that I found in the library: Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human by Michael Chorost.  woofiegrrl, eyes_of_cyrene, and anyone else who is interested in deafness, I think you'll want to read it.

Chorost's mother had rubella while she was pregnant, so he was born severely hearing-impaired. With two powerful hearing-aids he was doing fine until one day, when he was 35, his remaining hearing inexplicably vanished within hours. He got a cochlear implant, but had to endure a period of complete deafness for a period of time before it could be implanted and activated. In the book he describes his experiences and explores his feelings about his lack of hearing, about abruptly going from hard of hearing to completely deaf, and about the implant.

The book includes extensive factual information about cochlear implants -- how they work (including verbal explanations, diagrams, and even photographs of the inner ear), their history, and even the implant surgery.  Chorost also describes in great detail what it's like to hear with an implant -- with the two different software programs he was given, before and after an upgrade to the software, and as he gets used to using it.

He also explores his feelings through the whole experience -- a little overdramatically for my taste, as he considers himself a cyborg and compares himself frequently to Steve Austin, the protagonist of Martin Caidin's book Cyborg. (Steve Austin was also The $6 Million Man, but Chorost feels more in common with the character portrayed in the original book than in the TV show.) Although he doesn't -- at least in the part I've read so far -- say so, it's obvious that the book was undertaken at least as much to help him work through his feelings as to educate the public. Still, if that's how he sees himself then it's valid to include it, and he doesn't pull any punches about any of his feelings, including what it's like for a man with an implant to have sex (where do you put the belt-mounted processor unit when you're naked?).

All in all it's a fascinating book with a pretty good balance of factual information about hearing and cochlear implants; subjective information about what he hears with and without an implant; and descriptions of feelings about the impact of deafness and the implant on his life.

ADDED: As I read further, I was pleased to see that Chorost is very positive about signing, and regretful that he didn't learn ASL himself as a child. He devotes an entire chapter to the conflict between the Deaf community and the oralist movement, including a nonjudgmental treatment of the views of some Deaf people who want their children to be Deaf, and discusses the future of ASL as technology improves and more and more deaf people get cochlear implants at younger and younger ages.

My alma mater was books, a good library. I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.
                      —Malcolm X (1925-1965), American Black leader and activist

No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor is any pleasure so lasting.
                    —Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762), British society woman

I'm determined to catch up what I've been doing for the last few days!

Thursday was a really good day! eudyptes had a job interview in northern Virginia but no way to get to it. It was supposed to be a beautiful, warm day, and I told him I'd take him down there if we could then go birding in one of the great parks or refuges in the area. ( Thursday continued )

Friday was nice -- I went to lunch with my friend Carol at a vegetarian place called Great Sage (the company was great, the restaurant was disappointing), and then we went for a walk. ( Friday continued )

Saturday was going to be a quiet day all alone. I figured I'd catch up with LJ and freecycle and hibernate, but then momomom called and asked if I wanted to go to the warehouse store with her. ( Saturday continued )

Sunday morning was busy, with four activities in a row! ( Sunday continued )

So it's been a pleasant few days. A cold front came in yesterday afternoon and it was "only" 46 degrees today, but the forecast for the next week is highs in the 40s and 50s, so there should be lots of good walking weather coming up.

Four days ago, on January 2, a Townsend's Warbler was seen at Noland's Ferry on the C&O Canal, which runs beside the Potomac River. The TOwnsend's WArbler spends its life west of the rockies, and this is the first time one has ever been recorded in the state of Maryland! As you can imagine, the state birding listserv is all abuzz over it.

( Exciting expedition )

I just called my rheumatologist to make an appointment. He was in a very large corporate practice, owned by a medical insurance company, that was broken up during the past year. Something like a third to a half of the doctors remained in the building and incorporated into a new, smaller group practice with the same initials as the old one. So it still feels like I'm calling the same place when I call.

But what you get when you're on hold is very different. As annoying as the old commercials for the medical plan interspersed with indefinable Muzak-style music were, it's now much worse: what I was forced to listen to was poorly played, overdone cool jazz. At least I think it was supposed to be cool jazz. It was obviously supposed to be some kind of jazz, but it pretty much failed to achieve the status of being music at all. To make matters worse, someone apparently tried to make up for the extremely poor reproduction by making it extremely loud. It almost sounded like a 78 rpm record on an old-fashioned Victrola would have sounded if you were sitting inside the trumpet and listening to it with a hearing aid turned up to maximum. The tinny sound and bad music were downright painful. Mercifully, my hold time was relatively short.

Although the book I'm reading has nothing to do with hold music, I can segue into it as its title is Your Call Is Important to Us: The Truth About Bullshit. I got it from the library, and I'm only on page 28 so I can't recommend for or against it yet, but it looks like it's going to be interesting.