Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Better Literature

Strange, isn't it, that the best literature is most often the target of attempted book banning. If you have not yet read any of the classics on the list of English-language works challenged, you have missed some of the greatest literature of all times. Then go on to read works in other languages and be happy that your native censors cannot decipher them. People attempt to ban books because they fear ideas. I fear iconoclasts and people who seek to perpetrate violence against ideas and the people who have, read, or share them. Read a banned book today: it's good for you.




Banned and/or Challenged Books from the Radcliffe Publishing Course Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century


The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Catcher in the Rye, by JD Salinger
The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
Ulysses, by James Joyce
Beloved, by Toni Morrison
The Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
1984, by George Orwell
Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov
Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck
Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
Animal Farm, by George Orwell
The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway
As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner
A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway
Their Eyes were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston
Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison
Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
Native Son, by Richard Wright
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey
Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway
The Call of the Wild, by Jack London
Go Tell it on the Mountain, by James Baldwin
All the King's Men, by Robert Penn Warren
The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair
Lady Chatterley's Lover, by D.H. Lawrence
A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess
The Awakening, by Kate Chopin
In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote
Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie
Sophie's Choice, by William Styron
Sons and Lovers, by D.H. Lawrence
Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut
A Separate Peace, by John Knowles
Naked Lunch, by William S. Burroughs
Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh
Women in Love, by DH Lawrence
The Naked and the Dead, by Norman Mailer
Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller
An American Tragedy, by Theodore Dreiser
Rabbit, Run, by John Updike

Source: American Library Association; follow the link to see how recent some of these moves are and how alarming the reasons given.





Sunday, September 26, 2010

How Old Are You?

The year of your birth gives NO information whatsoever about your age ; so many of those born in years chronologically following my own are, despite their misinformed counting of years, older than I will ever be. Think, and you are young. Be, individually, and you are young.

Philippe Sollers once again hit the nail on the head. Look at the self-proclaimed "young man" seated opposite him, compare both, and you, too, will realize how senile that youngster is and how much younger Sollers remains.

« Qui est quelqu’un dans tout ça, voilà ma question. S’il y a quelqu’un, quel qu’il soit, c’est vraiment quelqu’un de jeune. »

Friday, September 24, 2010

Perhaps Before It's Too Late ?



REINVENTING FIRE
"Reinventing Fire™ has two main goals: to create a clear and practical vision of a fossil-fuel-free future for the United States, backed up by quantitative analysis, and to map a pathway to achieve that future, led largely by business."

Sunday, September 19, 2010

How Beautiful Is Liberty !

Happy is he who as Ulysees has traveled and recognized how beautiful liberty is.


Georges Brassens : Heureux Qui Comme Ulysse

Heureux qui comme Ulysse
A fait un beau voyage.
Heureux qui comme Ulysse
A vu cent paysages

Et puis a retrouvé
Après maintes traversées
Le pays des vertes années

Par un petit matin d'été
Quand le soleil vous chante au cœur
Qu'elle est belle la liberté, la liberté

Quand on est mieux ici qu'ailleurs
Quand un ami fait le bonheur
Qu'elle est belle la liberté, la liberté

Avec le soleil et le vent
Avec la pluie et le beau temps
On vivait bien content
Mon cheval, ma Provence et moi
Mon cheval, ma Provence et moi

Heureux qui comme Ulysse
A fait un beau voyage
Heureux qui comme Ulysse
A vu cent paysages
Et puis a retrouvé
Après maintes traversées
Le pays des vertes années

Par un joli matin d'été
Quand le soleil vous chante au coeur
Qu'elle est belle la liberté, la liberté

Quand c'en est fini des malheurs
Quand un ami sèche vos pleurs
Qu'elle est belle la liberté, la liberté

Battu de soleil et de vent
Perdu au milieu des étangs
On vivra bien content
Mon cheval, ma Camargue et moi
Mon cheval, ma Camargue et moi...

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

What are we fighting for?

On Religion - Muslim Prayer Room Was Part of Life at Twin Towers - NYTimes.com

...
Over the next few days, noticing some fellow Muslims on the job, Mr. Abdus-Salaam voiced an equally essential question: “So where do you pray at?” And so he learned about the Muslim prayer room on the 17th floor of the south tower.
He went there regularly in the months to come, first doing the ablution known as wudu in a washroom fitted for cleansing hands, face and feet, and then facing toward Mecca to intone the salat prayer. On any given day, Mr. Abdus-Salaam’s companions in the prayer room might include financial analysts, carpenters, receptionists, secretaries and ironworkers. There were American natives, immigrants who had earned citizenship, visitors conducting international business — the whole Muslim spectrum of nationality and race.
Leaping down the stairs on Sept. 11, 2001, when he had been installing ceiling speakers for a reinsurance company on the 49th floor, Mr. Abdus-Salaam had a brief, panicked thought. He didn’t see any of the Muslims he recognized from the prayer room. Where were they? Had they managed to evacuate?
He staggered out to the gathering place at Broadway and Vesey. From that corner, he watched the south tower collapse, to be followed soon by the north one. Somewhere in the smoking, burning mountain of rubble lay whatever remained of the prayer room, and also of some of the Muslims who had used it.




So open up the pearly gates, cause if we keep on as in recent weeks, then Arlo Guthrie was right, and "we're all gonna die."

A Way for Two

There is a way, a way for two,
Who hold each other's hands.
There is a dream, a dream for two,
Who, blue-eyed, count the stars.

When time has come, and years have gone,
They wander through the night.
When storms have come, and rivers flood,
They smile through rain-pearled lips.

Where bells have rung, and bombs have sung,
Their souls merge with their hearts.
Where whores have tricked, and muggers won,
Their cheeks and faces touch.

Lovers sing and lovers cry and lovers sigh,
But hearts still sing and mouths can laugh, when love is in their eye.

-Richard Gardner

Saturday, September 11, 2010

In Memoriam

Never forget ...

9 11

... what religious hatred can do!

Think!

Friday, September 10, 2010

Restored Colonnade at Alte Nationalgalerie




CORRESPONDANCES
La Nature est un temple où de vivants piliers
Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles;
L'homme y passe à travers des forêts de symboles
Qui l'observent avec des regards familiers.

Comme de longs échos qui de loin se confondent
Dans une ténébreuse et profonde unité,
Vaste comme la nuit et comme la clarté,
Les parfums, les couleurs et les sons se répondent.

Il est des parfums frais comme des chairs d'ènfants,
Doux commeles hautbois, verts comme les prairies
– Et d'autres, corrompus, riches et triomphants,

Ayant l'expansion des choses infinies,
Comme l'ambre, le musc, le benjoin et l'encens,
Qui chantent les transports de l'esprit et des sens.

-- Charles Baudelaire

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Jewels !

LES BIJOUX

de Charles Baudelaire

La très-chère était nue, et, connaissant mon coeur,
Elle n'avait gardé que ses bijoux sonores,
Dont le riche attirail lui donnait l'air vainqueur
Qu'ont dans leurs jours heureux les esclaves des Mores.

Quand il jette en dansant son bruit vif et moqueur,
Ce monde rayonnant de métal et de pierre
Me ravit en extase, et j'aime avec fureur
Les choses où le son se mêle à la lumière.

Elle était donc couchée et se laissait aimer,
Et du haut du divan elle souriait d'aise
A mon amour profond et doux comme la mer,
Qui vers elle montait comme vers sa falaise.

Les yeux fixés sur moi, comme un tigre dompté,
D'un air vague et rêveur elle essayait des poses,
Et la candeur unie à la lubricité
Donnait un charme neuf à ses métamorphoses.

Et son bras et sa jambe, et sa cuisse et ses reins,
Polis comme de l'huile, onduleux comme un cygne,
Passaient devant mes yeux clairvoyants et sereins;
Et son ventre et ses seins, ces grappes de ma vigne,

S'avançaient, plus câlins que les anges du mal,
Pour troubler le repos où mon âme était mise,
Et pour la déranger du rocher de cristal
Où, calme et solitaire, elle s'était assise.

Je croyais voir unis par un nouveau dessin
Les hanches de l'Antiope au buste d'un imberbe,
Tant sa taille faisait ressortir son bassin !
Sur ce teint fauve et brun le fard était superbe !

— Et la lampe s'étant résignée à mourir,
Comme le foyer seul illuminait la chambre,
Chaque fois qu'il poussait un flamboyant soupir,
Il inondait de sang cette peau couleur d'ambre.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Freiheitstrunken !

Do NOT burn books anywhere any time. NEVER burn ANY book anywhere. Between the covers of a book are word-thoughts on paper; you can burn the paper and the covers, but to burn the thoughts you soon will go after the people who think, and that leads to the horrors of mental enslavement and physical torture and extermination.



DO NOT BURN BOOKS !



Berlin's Bebelplatz, between the State Opera and the Law School Building of Humbold University and across Unter den Linden from that university's main building, was the site of one of the most horrifying book burnings, on May 10, 1933. Nazi Propaganda Minister of the Third Reich, Joseph Goebbels gave the "ceremonial" speech as a crowd of mostly student (!) followers tossed heaps of books into a bonfire in the middle of the square. At at least 21 other universities (!) there were simultaneous book burnings that evening. The Nazis had plastered cities and towns with posters calling for the burning of books on their "black list": Thomas Mann, Karl Marx, Heinrich Mann, Hegel, Alfred Döblin, Heinrich Heine anything they considered "ungerman". The declared purpose was to rid the country of the "dangers" of "Jewish smut" and other "improper" literature.



A certain pastor in Gainsville, Florida, should receive an all expenses paid trip to the memorial now in place at Bebelplatz, be forced to read ALL the books on the list the Nazis created (see the site Verbrannte Bücher), and reminded of the all-too-true statement on the plaque at the memorial:


"Das war ein Vorspiel nur, dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen." In English: That was only a prelude; where they burn books, they end up burning people.


The quotation is from Heinrich Heine's Almansor. Eine Tragödie, 1821. In his play, these lines are a response to the burning of the Koran by Christian Crusaders during the conquest of Granada;they are later used by Heine himself to refer to the medieval nonsense at work at a book burning at a Wartburg festival in Germany in 1817.



PROTECT FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION!
STOP BURNING BOOKS!
STOP BURNING PEOPLE!
THINK AND DISCUSS INSTEAD OF BLINDLY "BELIEVING"!


Friday, September 3, 2010

Iran is Officially Murdering Gays !

Iran must STOP !
stop stoning "adultresses"
stop hanging homosexuals
stop curtailing human rights
stop censoring speech and all other means of expression

Stop NOW !


Il a 18 ans et il va être pendu - Prochoix, la revue pour le droit de choisir
Après Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, condamnée à la lapidation pour adultère, l'Iran persiste et signe en condamnant à la pendaison un jeune homme soupçonné d'homosexualité. Les écrivains Philippe Besson et Gilles Leroy publient cet appel, rejoints par Jonathan Littell, Camille Laurens, Dominique Blanc, Alfredo Arias, Chantal Thomas, Arthur Dreyfus, Claude Lanzmann, Viviane Forrester, Marie Ndiaye, Atiq Rahimi, Isabelle Gallimard, Paul Otchakovsky-Laurens, Catherine Cusset, Benoît Legemble, Christophe Girard, André Glucksmann, Caroline Fourest, Alain Jakubowicz, Mathieu Vidard, Valentine Goby, Stéphane Bern, Christophe Hondelatte, Marilù Marini, Colette Kerber, Pascale Kramer, Arnaud Cathrine, Clara Dupont-Monod, Vincent Josse, Bertrand Delanoë.
Ebrahim Hamidi a dix-huit ans et il va mourir. Dans son pays, l'Iran, il a été reconnu coupable d'un crime abominé, de ceux qui condamnent à la pendaison. Ebrahim Hamidi serait homosexuel. Donc il doit mourir. Car si les juges de Téhéran n'hésitent pas à vouer à la lapidation une femme accusée d'adultère, ils livrent également au bourreau l'homme soupçonné de dormir dans le même lit que son semblable.
Cette seule perspective suffirait à nous horrifier, tant elle est contraire à la notion même d'humanité et nous laisse imaginer la terreur dans laquelle vivent les homosexuels iraniens, obligés de se taire, de mentir, de nier leur identité.
L'accusation aurait été montée de toutes pièces à la suite d'une rixe banale, les dénonciations faites par des tiers emprisonnés l'auraient été au prix de promesses de remise en liberté, les aveux d'Ebrahim extorqués sous la torture. Au cours de son procès, l'accusé n'a pas eu droit à la moindre représentation légale. Quant au verdict, il a été prononcé par un magistrat qui s'en est remis à son propre jugement, procédure utilisée lorsqu'il n'existe pas de preuve formelle. Le mois dernier, en un rebondissement spectaculaire, la « victime » présumée d'Ebrahim Hamidi a reconnu avoir porté contre lui de fausses accusations sous la pression de ses parents.
On pourrait croire que cette rétractation a entraîné l'annulation de la sentence. Pas du tout. Ebrahim Hamidi est toujours coupable, d'un « crime » qu'il n'a pas commis. Est-il homosexuel ou non ? Qu'importe. Il doit mourir.
Il le doit, pour que tous les « vrais homosexuels » continuent de se dissimuler et de subir la terreur en silence. Il le doit, pour qu'on comprenne que la justice iranienne ne peut pas se tromper. Et il va mourir, si nous ne nous mobilisons pas. Si nous ne réveillons pas les consciences. Si nous ne crions pas haut et fort et partout que cette condamnation est insupportable et qu'elle doit être cassée.
- jeudi 2 septembre 2010
-- Reproduction autorisée avec mention de la source : © http://www.prochoix.org/
Teen Faces Execution in Iran
By Michelle Garcia
"An 18-year-old Iranian is facing execution after being sentenced for sexually assaulting another man.
The sentence was handed down for Ebrahim Hamidi on June 21 by a provincial court, despite two rejections from the Iranian supreme court for the sentence. Gay Middle East calls the case against Hamidi "vague" and "unspecified" and says there is no evidence that Hamidi is gay, nor that he committed the crime.
According to the report, Hamidi's attorney has gone into hiding after a warrant for his arrest was issued. The execution has no set date and can happen at any time. "

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Brief Tribute to a New Citizen of the Planet Earth



Kaeden Christopher Price was born yesterday at 5:oo pm, weighs 8 lbs. and is already 20 inches tall.

May his world know ever more peace, ever more tolerance, ever more justice, ever more thoughtfulness, ever more humaneness, ever more hope and charity and love.