I'm getting a ton of "Failed to Publish" messages and they are all on
blogs with embedded comments. I leave a comment and will continue to
try to publish throughout the day. It's been like this since Friday.
Before I share my calendars this month, it is never too early to start your Christmas list. If you live in the USA, there are now over 3000 books on the banned book list. Many of these are geared for young children in grade/grammar school, middle school, and high school. Someone, most likely from Florida or Texas has imparted their own twisted morals on the rest of us and decided we should not be allowed to read these books, or even be exposed to them. Last week was Banned Book Week. Although Banned Book Week has been around since 1982, the current culture, skepticism, and censorship makes it even more difficult for city/town libraries, in addition to school libraries and classrooms to know what they are allowed or not allowed to teach. For example, this year officials edited a textbook to remove a passage on George Floyd's murder and the protests that followed. In Georgia, after a children's book author who was giving a lecture to fifth graders mentioned that a historical figure was gay, school officials canceled the author's remaining speaking schedule.
As a reader, can you imagine life without Ernest Hemingway, Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Mark Twain, Daniel Keyes, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Margaret Atwood, J.K Rowling, Truman Capote, Roald Dahl, Upton Sinclair, D.H. Lawrence, J.R.R Tolkien, Norman Mailer, George Orwell, Kurt Vonnegut, Toni Morrison, Harper Lee, John Grisham, Henry Miller, and James Baldwin? Check out the most commonly challenged books in the states, as listed by Wikipedia here. PBS's Masterpiece and Masterpiece Mystery have their own list of banned books. Authors include Edgar Allen Poe and Dan Brown. I suggest using your discretion, then buy a banned book for someone on your Christmas gift list.
Now for my September completed calendar and my very boring life. I had a ball working in my Cats altered book most of the month.
Neet from
Hickydorums is our host this month at Art Journal Journey. Since her theme is In Gear, I drew some gears and tried to stamp a gear that didn't stamp well. However, I will be joining her today. Thanks for joining Bleubeard and me. We appreciate it. And PLEASE remember. If your text is embedded, I am unable to leave you a comment until Blogger decides to play nice.
Dollar Exchange Rate
20 thoughtful remarks:
Banning books is so very wrong. Happy October.
You really have banned books???
I have one right here.
If you like me to share, let me know.
How can books, knowledge be banned? Those people must be afraid to their bones - for a reason, likely...
Sad. Ummm.. and... do the book-banners know of a thing called "internet"?
Good idea to buy those books for Christmas (sadly I have no one to read them in English here... I even failed with "Charlotte´s Web"...
Love the second running down :-)
Sad I had nothing to add to the cat´s theme...
Gears, hmmm, maybe?
Blogger likely won´t play nice ever again...
But it´s for free...
Looking at the challenge from NEET, I realized how gears and steampunk have become a unified theme. So interesting!
best, mae at maefood.blogspot.com
Don't get me started on the "do gooders" who come up with all these things like banning books. So many little characters I enjoyed as a child are now banned, even some from my son's "tiny tot" era.
Thanks for including some gears in your calendar this month, sorry you had problems stamping one of them.
Hugs, Neet xxx
...and time flies.
I get so tired of people who believe their morals are better or more important so everyone else needs to follow them. I don't know why they are so small minded to think what they believe means more than what anyone else believes. Perhaps it is some genetic flaw in humans as it seems to happen more often than not. Sadly. Speaking of dates, (since you mentioned xmas), I left a note over at our admin blog for AJJ. It might be time for some usual fall chores...and you know I'll be glad to help out when it is time. (Sorry, a bit cryptic, I know.) Happy start to the week, and I'll see you this evening for T. hugs-Erika
No on banning books
Didn't September fly by and October seems to be half over. Banned books. I saw a meme that said before a person could put a book to be banned forward, they needed to actually read the book and write a paper on it as to why it should be banned. The paper would then be critiqued and graded by a professor of literature. I suspect that most of the people on the book banning wagon have never read the books they want banned.
Book banning is a terribly scary thing. The premise of it is that people are so stupid and gullible that they will believe anything they hear or read without question. That they are not capable of discernment or critical thinking or logic or having their own sense of right and wrong...or any mind of their own at all. That they are not to learn about how someone else thinks or lives or believes who is different from themselves and it is dangerous for anyone to know anything about other people or cultures or ideas. Next thing they will want to ban the entire internet and control what is sold or what people can watch. That truly IS the next step. It has been and is being done in places around the world. I thought we were better than this. Obviously not. We can never take freedoms for granted.
Nice calendars! Hugs, Valerie
Coming form a country that burnt books in its darkest years of history, I am scared of what is happening in some states of this country. People who do this must be very insecure and frightened, intolerant of anything that is different from their point of view.
Your calendar was full!
I understand the desire to make sure grossly inappropriate reading material isn't assigned to kids, and as a library only has so much space I don't object to librarians selecting the most appropriate works for inclusion for certain grade levels. That said the current practice of a single parent or group of parents having the ability to restrict teacher/librarian selections is ridiculous. Such easily offended parents should homeschool or place their kids in schools with like-minded views.
Yes, the banned book situation here is sickening. If you speak to youngsters they believe everything they are taught in school and if you try to explain to them that the teaching is incorrect they will battle you to the end. My youngest grandson, who is very intelligent and at the top of his class will tell the older generation that we are wrong on facts that have been changed or left out all together. He was taught that the Holocaust didn't happen. (He lives in Florida) I can't even imagine what my great grand daughters won't be taught. Or allowed to ask questions or resist against the lies. Speaking of George Orwell, "1984" coming true before our eyes. As well as Harry Harrison's "Make Room Make Room" which became the movie Soylent Green. Steven King is one of my all time favorites. If we allow this to continue we will be living in a world like the movie "Equals" A story by Drake Doremus, the screenplay by Nathan Parker. Interesting that it is taken from "1984" OK, I guess that is enough. I think your idea of sending someone a band book is brilliant. To some one that won't turn you in.....
It really is silly banning books. sigh.
Wow, banned books! How sad and small minded some "leaders" can be!
Nice postcard from Jackie.
I can hardly believe Christmas is just around the corner, I haven't even started planning for it.
Even though you got an error message your comment was published Elizabeth.
Thank you.
So sad that some people seem to think they have this right to affect others in such negative ways and even more so that gullible folk are taken in by them. Love the cats on September's page and that you are 'In Gear' for Neet's AJJ theme this month, hugs, Chrisx
Blogger has been doing strange things. Did you try a different browser?
I see we have both been blogging since 2005.
Banned books? In the 21st century? In the land of freedom? I was shocked. I quickly googled banned books in my country ( Netherlands) and found that the law doesn’t allow book banning. There is one book not for sale though: Mein Kampf - This book is unofficially banned for obviously being Adolf Hitler's manifesto. As Dutch law does not allow for the ban of the book, the government has since claimed its copyright. While it is illegal to print, sell or buy the book, the ownership of it is still legal.
Lisca
I think I have recieved all your comments. I don´t knw if my comments are embedded, but I see your coments :) Thanks!
Your september was busy :)
Fabulous calender pages! Looking at September you have been so busy, loving the gears that you added to October's page 😊. Happy wishes! Hugs, Jo x
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