The news about Trump dominates everything. It's a shame that he is such a con man and a liar ( it's a PROVEN FACT the guy LIES- not misspeaks- LIES) that people think this is another of his misdirections. I feel bad about questioning his health status, but not too bad. Time will tell. The most interesting thing is all his minions, when announcing their infection status, don't call it the boss's preferred sobriquet, "The China virus" suddenly, it has become "Covid-19" as if by infecting Trump, it gained real status and is no longer a hoax that will miraculously disappear should they decide to try to postpone the elections.
It's been a bad week for the Trump camp anyway. His tax returns show him in hock up to his eyeballs and hemorrhaging money. No way to sugar coat this. The returns either show he is a broke and bad businessman, or he filed fraudulent returns- which even for the President of the United States- is a crime. While his lapdog, Bill Barr won't bring charges, I wonder if the all powerful IRS will. They should.
It's Banned Books Week, and every year, I look at the list of books and shake my head. No one should have the right to decide what I read. If YOU don't like a book, and don't want kids to read it then by all means, forbid your children from cracking it open ( fun fact about kids, they will read a "banned " book quicker than one you recommend)
I keep going back to books and authors whose long ago written works are now getting a modern morés. Laura Ingalls Wilder got taken down as being a beloved children's author for ACURATELY QUOTING her mother's view on native Americans. The current take is that we should not expose children to Ma, I suppose. Was Ma wrong?- well yes of course. Was it the prevailing thought of settlers?- yes again. Do we take this opportunity to talk to children about how people felt 150 year ago and how things have changed and why Ma might have said what she said in the first place? You would THINK so, but instead, now Laura and her family are OFF the list of books to read and Laura herself is being disparaged. Put what you don't agree with in a box, never again to see the light of day.
It reminds me of the story of Sleeping Beauty. Cursed at her christening that on her 16th birthday, she would prick her finger on a spinning wheel and die ( which was later amended by a fairy to fall into a hundred year sleep) He parents overreacted. Instead of TEACHING her that the darn thing might be dangerous to her, they hid ALL of the spinning wheels in the kingdom ( how anyone got clothes made in that place is another thing to ponder, but I digress) so when she was confronted with one- or a roomful of them depending on which version you read- she touches it and , well, the rest is history. ( the original story of Sleeping Beauty, written by Basile of Naples is far more horrible and the Grimm Brothers Fairy tales in the original also would have wound up on the Banned Books lists)
Banning books and putting out false news narratives do not "protect" us. Instead, they make us skeptical of anything coming from a certain source and while questioning is the best way to learn, having to challenge EVERYTHING is exhausting.
Well, as a former children's librarian, I coould not decide whether it was worse to ban some titles of note, or just rewrite them to make them more palatable for modern sensibilities. The two that spring to mind first are Mary Poppins - YES! AND the Doctor Doolittle books, which is even worse, as they got his son to do it for them. And yet, I loo back on, say, Little Black Sambo - I got no racist overtones from it as a child. I was more impressed by how the tiger ran so fast it turned into butter for pancakes. And the kid wasn't even Black (not, African American) but from India. But it wasn't racist to lump all the "dusky races" into one?
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I always thought as a child reading it that Sambo was so clever t run the tiger that way.
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