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 Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read
September 25−October 2, 2010

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.

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. »

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."

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...

The Tenth !

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

In Memoriam

Never forget ...

9 11

... what religious hatred can do!

Think!

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

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.

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"!

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. "

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.

Goodbye To My Mama - A.Prairie.Home.Companion.

She wouldn't have needed the strange subtitles, but the sound quality is good, so, one day later, this is for mama's birthday, Rose Tyson Gardner, August 30, 1926 - April 21, 2007.

Divine Destiny is Diabolically Destructive

Anyone claiming his/her country is on a divine mission should be watched closely to prevent him/her from ever achieving any power anywhere or having any influence on anyone in power anywhere!

A good example was the "Restoring Honor" rally on August 28.

Glenn Beck: Televangelist

The Beck crowd ... had all the trappings of a reconstituted, 21st Century Christian Coalition. While political signs were banned from the event, the marshals didn't seem to object to the two
enormous crucifixes some people brought to the front of the crowd. Lots of the people in attendance appeared deeply religious. A Boy Scout troop leader from New Hampshire was wearing a scout hat that identified him as "Elder Delevan," as in Mormon church elder. Joan DeMasi, 79, from Warwick, Rhode Island, told me that she had been drawn to the rally by "God–and Glenn Beck." She said she was tired of "people not saluting the flag and not believing in God." So from her perspective, "Restoring Honor" was simply "incredible." Whether the rest of the tea party movement will share such a glowing assessment remains to be
seen.

Beck on Top
The talk-show host's 'Restoring Honor' rally was about one thing: him.
Almost no one who attended Saturday’s “Restoring Honor” rally on the National Mall seems able to cogently explain what, exactly, took place. Was it a thinly disguised political rally? A triumph of Made in America inspirational treacle? A modern-day religious revival? When probed by reporters, happy participants and skeptical observers alike struggled to make sense of the prayerful parade that saw Tony LaRussa, Sarah Palin, and Eveda King take turns at a podium between prerecorded voiceovers about crossroads, awakenings, and miracles. Yet there was one message that the afternoon’s emotional emcee managed to get across with unmistakable clarity: Glenn Beck is still a major force to be reckoned with, and has every
intention of staying one.

************

*Remember what Mark Twain said about faith meaning to believe in what you know ain't right.

Lighthouse

The lighthouse perched on the Dornbusch rise on our beloved island of Hiddensee blinked us a farewell as our cruise ship sailed off into the night from Rügen to return to Kiel this morning. Now we're home and filled with enjoyment and elation!

Baltic Cruise

The first day out of Kiel was at sea, we roamed the ship and never had a boring moment, are still on Tuesday finding new nooks and crannies to sit or look that we hadn't discovered before.
Riga was covered with a guided walking tour of the old town, and our guide Aja could explain everything. It is a beautiful town, even if the landing was at a lumberyard dock.
Tallin was the third day, and we "did" it on our own. It is even more beautiful than Riga, has a Russian Orthodox cathedral where the worship and standing ceremony evidently never stops. The only thing ugly was a strange concrete bunker like step construction from the foot of the old town's hill out to the harbor. No one wanted to explain it to us, until the vendor of juniper boxes at the ship was willing to talk about it in English. It was an over-dimensioned concert hall built by the Soviets that no one liked and that was abandonned with independence. The massive concrete is too expensive, till now, for anyone to invest in demolition.
St. Petersburg is glorious, if faded at the edges. The first day, with a walking tour, was tiring, as it is vastly laid out. Our guide Anja was an extremely proud St. Petersburger and set a walking pace nearing a trot, but otherwise we would have never covered everything in the allotted time. She was also our guide on the second day for a boat tour through the canals and on the grand river Neva, as well as to the original fortress of Peter the Great, where the Church of Peter and Paul stands with its long gilded spire and all Czars since Peter are buried.
Helsinki is ok, small, we've already walked it, quaint, some nice buildings, a beautiful main square with a giant Lutheran cathedral, but we are already back at 10:30 am local time on the ship and I'm trying to take the time to organize photos for further upload and to make these first notes about our cruise.



To sum it up: WE ARE HAVING A FABULOUS AND LUXURIOUS TIME!
(The photos of the ship scattered in among the sightseeing pix and the sunsets and sunrises from ship board might give you a hint...)

The Walled City

When I first arrived in this wonderful city of Berlin, my destination was only one half of the city, West Berlin, technically belonging to no country but comprised of the three occupation zones of the Western Powers, France, Great Britain, and the United States. The inhabitants of West Berlin were actually not citizens of any country, were provided diplomatic services abroad by the government of the Federal Republic of Germany, its "provisional capital" in Bonn.

Having heard of the Wall before arrival, having even seen pictures of it, I went to see it within my first few days here, specifically at Potsdamer Platz. The picture from the postcard of that time shows a view of the Wall, begun on this day in 1961, from there across no-man's land and Leipziger Platz to the eastern part of the city.

In East Berlin, technically the fourth occupied zone under control of the USSR, but made capital and part and portion of the German Democratic Republic with Soviet approval despite Western Allies protest, the inhabitants were citizens of the GDR, although this actually violated the occupation status of Berlin as a whole, and were subject to all provisions this entailed. They had to serve in the draft army, the Volksarmee, and could "watch" the government of the country with all its ministries and offices in East Berlin.

Inhabitants of West Berlin were not allowed to be in the Bundeswehr, the army of West Germany, and many West German boys "fled" to West Berlin to avoid the draft there. When, for example, elections to the presidency of the BRD were held in the Reichstag in West Berlin, the Soviets protested loudly, even sending jet fighters to razz the assembly in low-altitude flights or to break the sound barrier overhead.

My husband Detlef grew up on the "east" side of the Wall, and we would probably never have met, certainly not have been able to establish a common life, had that wall not come down in November of 1989.

The little red chip standing below the picture is the one piece of the Wall I hacked out at precisely the location of the photo, at Potsdamer Platz. Its color is from the graffiti that covered the western side of the wall, in stark contrast to the blank white of the other side, to make it easier to see any who might attempt to get over it. Don't forget that there were TWO walls: the "outer" or "western" one here in the foreground and the "inner" or "eastern" one on the far side of the mined and patrolled no-man's land in the distance on this picture.

The Wall was an attempt to separate people for ideology; its fall an example of people overcoming barriers; its absence is the presence of my life in love with Detlef.

In Berlin I feel and relish the absence of that Wall every minute of every day. That absence is a freedom hard to describe if you never experienced the hassles trying to "cross" at the checkpoints; hassles nothing in comparison with what the inhabitants of the East faced, usually not allowed to cross at all!

And now Detlef and I simply ride the number 200 bus across Potsdamer Platz, right through what was no-man's land, piercing both "sides" of the now absent Wall. Here, too, was where I first walked across after the opening of the Wall in November, 1989. The first place I saw the Wall with my own eyes is the first place I crossed back and forth once a makeshift opening was created there. It is now one of the central points of our life in Berlin.



Ironically, Detlef's mom's birthday is also August 13th; and thanks to the Fall of the Wall 21 years ago after it had stood for 28, Detlef and I along with his brother and his wife and kids and some of her friends will celebrate Edith's birthday in a riverside restaurant in the Köpenick district of Berlin this evening. There is family unity and no wall to hinder celebration, as she once experienced when she was not allowed to attend a celebration of her sister's in Bavaria. So then, this is a lesson in birthdays!

The birthday of a Wall is to be commemorated only now that it has fallen as a reminder never to allow infringement of freedom. And the birthday of my dear mother-in-law is a celebration of the joys of humans able to love and overcome boundaries.



Never forget!

Courage Campaign: RIGHTS are Right !

A fundamental right is to be upheld for all!
Listen to the idiots fascists from Fox try to maintain securing rights is some sort of dictatorship and Ted Olson set them straight. The MAJORITY may NOT deny RIGHTS to any MINORITY. Perhaps FOX, too, will one day learn that SUCH would be dictatorship; guaranteeing rights to minorities is the sine qua non of democracy.

Courage Campaign Sign our "thank you" card to Ted Olson, David Boies, and AFER

Good News for Germany = Bad News for the Tigerente!

The Button Merkel and the Westernwave have finally, with their impossibly incompetent and socially cold policies, moved their parties down into the basement of public opinion as the German electorate awakens to the fact that neoliberal economics may help bankers and the rich, but not the population in general or the country as a whole. The shift in the polls holds out great hope, as state elections loom next year!

Sonntagsfrage ‹ Bundesweit ‹ Umfragen & Analysen ‹ Infratest dimap
05.08.10
Union: 31%
SPD: 31%
FDP: 5%
Linke: 10%
Grüne: 17%
Sonstige: 6%

Which would provide a parliamentary majority for SPD-Green and perhaps nudge Germany into the Twenty-First Century again!