You Can’t Read That! Banned Book Review Lookback: Montana 1948

You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring banned book reviews and news roundups. YCRT! News Wisconsin man banned from libraries. All libraries, that is. On the earth. “Carter was out in the open, not trying to conceal his act.” I wish I could report that his act involved a banned book, but alas, it did […]

Tuesday Bag o’ Surveillance

That’s a speed enforcement camera. The reason you can’t see it is because someone put a bag over it. This rebellion against the police state happened in England; click on the photo to learn more. Here in Tucson we have speed enforcement and red light cameras: they’re not yet everywhere but we’re getting there. Just […]

Thursday Bag o’ Embarrassment

Yesterday one of my Woodford nieces posted an arresting image to Facebook: a photo of a woman wearing a hoop earring from which was suspended a severed human ear. Fake, I hoped, but it looked real. The way my mind works, I immediately thought of a passage from Peter Heller’s The Dog Stars, a post-apocalyptic […]

Facebook Common Sense

A friend posted this to Facebook yesterday: Like you, probably, I didn’t recognize the guy in the photo. Is he the head of some teabagger group calling for the impeachment of the President? Out of curiosity I clicked the “See More” link. Turns out the guy’s a respected reporter named Charley Reese. The link takes […]

You Can’t Read That!

YCRT! is a periodic post featuring banned book reviews and news roundups. Is your child’s teacher thinking about sex? Right this minute? Smutty-minded parents in Ohio clamor for a high school teacher to be fired after she writes a novel with sex in it Same thing (Pennsylvania, last year) Michigan educators stand firm against removing Jeannette Walls’ memoir The Glass […]

How Many Personalities Does One Person Need?

I write three blogs, and it’s a bit like having multiple personalities. Okay, not really. But sort of. Anyway, I mentioned on one of my other blogs that I had to miss an event because of the bicycle race I volunteered to help out with last weekend, linking to a post on this blog. One […]

Thursday Bag o’ Smirk

I didn’t fully see it until Romney started smirking during his press conference yesterday, but now I do: he’s another George W. Bush, and judging by his self-satisfied, uninformed comments on the administration’s actions during the attacks on our embassies in Libya and Egypt two days ago, every bit as smug and stupid. Well, all […]