Some of y’all may recall the post From My Mail a while back, requesting votes to get a grant from State Farm for Camp Mariposa in Nashua, NH.
Camp Mariposa is a mentoring and addiction prevention program for youth (ages 9-12) who are impacted by the substance abuse of a family member.
Well, today’s news is that Camp Mariposa is indeed one of the recipients of a grant. So, to those who voted, thanks. Good job.
Because the people who want to control what the rest of us read just don’t ever stop.
(Confession time here. I’m a First Amendment purist, of the stripe which, if we were talking the Second Amendment instead of the First, would undoubtedly get me labeled a “free speech nut” and have the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms searching my house. And I regard with a cold and fishy eye the sort of statement that begins, “Of course I’m in favor of free speech, but….”)
Judging by the American Library Association’s Top Ten Challenged Books of 2016 list, children’s and young adult books tend to get hit the hardest — unsurprising, since everybody agrees that Protecting the Children is important, as is Molding Young Minds.
This year’s top ten list is mostly full of books that were challenged by people who wanted to protect the children from LBGTQ characters and issues. Presumably, they’re afraid that reading about such things will cause their offspring to “turn gay”, which is unlikely (as Mayor Jimmy Walker of New York observed about a censorship issue of an earlier day, “I have never yet heard of a girl being ruined by a book”) — or maybe they’re just afraid that said offspring will find validation in those books for something about themselves that they already know.
Support your local library, people. They’re fighting the good fight to keep books on the shelves for the readers who need them.
Over at his site, Jim Macdonald is having fun with words:
The news lately is full of the word “dotard,” and all of the news sources feel compelled to add a definition. As if everyone didn’t already know what dotard meant. In the small fishing village whence I come, “Dotard” is constantly on every man’s lips.
Seriously, I’ve known it since I was eight or ten, on first looking into Chapman’s Homer The Lord of the Rings. Who can ever forget the scene where Saurman says to Theoden, “Dotard! What is the house of Eorl but a thatched barn where brigands drink in the reek, and their brats roll on the floor among the dogs?”
You have to admire the wizard’s command of invective. (I also admire his use of the word ‘but,” but that’s for another post.)
Still, Saruman should have been a bit more careful with what he withdrew from his word-hoard since “dotard” shares with “wizard” the…
View original post 521 more words
Every once in a while, I run across something that makes me wish for a moment that I’d stayed in Academia.† Like this call for papers:
Inside Out: Dress and Identity in the Middle Ages, the 38th Annual Conference at Fordham University’s Center for Medieval Studies.
Not that I’d have anything to present — material culture was never my field — but my word, the papers should be fascinating.
†Not often, though, or for very long. I got out at just about the same time as Academia started devouring its own young.
Dr. Doyle's Blog 