This week, read a book. Any book.

The last week of September is, in addition to an exciting time in baseball, also an exciting time in bookworld, because it's Banned Books Week. What does that mean? I'll just cheat and let the ALA start:

Banned Books Week (BBW) is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment. Held during the last week of September, Banned Books Week highlights the benefits of free and open access to information while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted bannings of books across the United States.

Intellectual freedom—the freedom to access information and express ideas, even if the information and ideas might be considered unorthodox or unpopular—provides the foundation for Banned Books Week. BBW stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints for all who wish to read and access them.

It means that opinions should be allowed to be heard, and not suppressed because they're inflammatory or uncomfortable. It means that libraries should be a place where a member of the community, any member of the community, should be able to go and get information, whether it's biased or not (and there should be librarians to help them work through which is which).

Books are constantly being challenged in this country, in both school and libraries. Some of them are new kid's or YA books; some are time-honored classics. Some come with understandable controversy (Of Mice and Men, Lolita). Some controversies come with a heavy dose of irony (almost any children's book about non-heteronormative families), some are completely missing the point (1984, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451). And some are just completely inane (Charlotte's Web, Winnie The Pooh).

The common thread is that all of them have come under attack by people who think that they should be able to control what you or your child has access to, or should read in class. These people skip right past 'I'd prefer my child not read this' and 'I personally find this objectionable, so I'll return it to the library and be done with it', and leap right into 'this is wrong.' They speak in moral absolutes and strive to impose their morality on everyone around them. They insult everyone around them by assuming that they know better, or that you are unable to safely judge what is best for yourself or your child.

The problem isn't likely to every go away, sadly. People will always be reactionary and judgemental. But there's a simple way to counter this particular effect: read. Read books. Get a library card and use it. If a book is challenged within your community, check it out for yourself before passing judgement. Be involved, and point out that youdon't want someone else deciding what you may or may not read. You're an adult living in the self-proclaimed land of the free and home of the brave, so be brave and work for your own intellectual freedom.

And also, be nice to your librarians, be they in a stuffy academic library, corporate library at your workplace, or the public library in your town or county. They work for you, they want you to have as much information available as possible, and they're often faced with people who specifically want to keep information locked away and unavailable. So give 'em a smile next time you're in the library - it'll be appreciated.

Happy 09/09/09!

It's not quite as cool as Pi Day or Mole Day, but today's still pretty nifty!

It's also nifty because of this. Picture number three in particular is neat. The Globular Star Cluster Omega Centauri may not have the most poetic name, but - well, it gives me the excuse to say with complete honesty, "My god, it's full of stars!" which is worth a lot.