Banned....Really?

2011-09-26

This week is banned book week, and to celebrate I wanted to pick a poem that has been banned. I never quite understood the whole thought process behind banning - or, more realistically - trying to ban something. Because, more often than not you just give extra incentive for people to acquire the “banned” item to see what all the fuss is about.

You Had Me At Darkling Plain

2011-09-19

On my way in this morning I was trying to figure out what poem to share and the gloom and cold rain conspired to help me pick Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold. I first encountered this poem back in the early 80’s; there is a scene in *Fahrenheit 451 *where Guy Montag reads a fragment of this poem to his wife to try and convince her of the importance of literature. As I recall, it didn’t quite resonate with her or her friends but it did with me, and so I tried to find the poem in the school library. I asked for help from our harridan librarian, but she tried to dissuade me by telling me that it was - I’ve never forgotten this - a more advanced poem that I should wait until I was in high school to read. Looking back on it today, I’m amazed that any educator would go out of their way to try and prevent a child from learning. Of course, maybe she was trying to keep me out of the local Victorian-Poetry Reading gangs. Who knows.

Holden Back the Years

2011-09-12

I like to read. Quite a bit. Our house has books in every room, including the stacks that sit in the bathrooms. Growing up, reading was always the perfect escape when life got to be a little too much to deal with. Because of this, I’m always amazed when I hear people complaining about having to read or making fun of someone because they want to read. Maybe I’m just getting crotchety in my old age, but I still believe pretty heavily in the whole “knowledge is power” theory that Schoolhouse Rocky was always going on about.

Slipping The Bonds

2011-09-05

I have a strange relationship with flying. Well, to be totally honest a staggeringly larger percentage of my relationships can be described as at least being somewhat strange. With flying it’s a bit of a love/hate thing; I loved the idea of flying but didn’t like the whole ancillary airborne experience - airports, rental cars, hotels, and eating alone while my family was anywhere from 500 to 2,500 miles away got old really fast. Back before we went completely ape-shit with our security theatre which brought us to where we are today, they would randomly pick a few passengers who would get patted down and have their luggage dug through. I managed to win that “randomized secondary security scan lottery” at least once per trip. Which called into question if anyone doing the screening knew what “random” meant. But I digress……

Passing Through Avalon

2011-08-29

One thing that I’ve always found rather amazing is how pervasive the Arthurian Legends remain in our culture. One of my favorite series of books, Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising Cycle, is heavily based on Arthurian myths. The Once and Future King gives a history of Arthur from boyhood on, and he appears in a whole slew of other books. There are references in music - from Led Zeppelin’s Battle of Evermore through Roxy Music’s Avalon. Then you have all the movies about Arthur - the best of which is, of course, Monty Python and the Holy Grail.