OK, now to the OTHER side of the street...

Michael Schaub of Bookslut regularly cracks me up; right now it’s his take on people who don’t have books in their houses. Here's what he says on Bookslut today:

"I can't imagine living without books. If I go out to dinner at someone else's home, and they don't have books visible, I wonder if I want them as friends," said Barbara Farnsworth, an antiquarian bookseller in West Cornwall, Conn.
OK, so I'm not the only one. Thank God. I was beginning to feel like a total snob (which I am, I just don't want to feel like one).

Whew! I also breathe a sigh of relief. I often have this feeling. If I am in someone’s house and there are no books, I immediately begin to wonder if I really ever want to hang out with this person again. However, I *am* comfortable admitting that I am a book snob.

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When I'm done parenting, what I'll have is a human being every bit as complex and flawed as I am but in new and surprising ways.

Read the whole article, especially if you are a parent; it’s terrific. It’s from one of my favorite magazines, Brain, Child.

This reiterates what my beloved therapist has always told me: "Val, you will fuck up your children in completely different ways than your parents fucked you up. So try to stop worrying so much."

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Ergh. The Patriot Act tussle continues. I’m a librarian *and* a liberal – I realize that pretty much puts me in the terrorist-loving camp. Sigh.

One provision of the Patriot Act makes it possible for the FBI to obtain a wide variety of personal records about a suspected terrorist -- including library transactions -- with an order from a secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, where the government must meet a lower threshold of proof than in criminal courts.
Under the House change, officials would have to get search warrants from a judge or subpoenas from a grand jury to seize records about a suspect's reading habits.

Fine, go get a subpoena. You have to have some proof that it is necessary. It’s working within the laws of this country, not stepping out of bounds because you CAN, in your big bad fight against terrorists. If I felt one iota safer or more secure in this country now than I did four years ago, perhaps I’d feel differently. I doubt it, but I suppose it’s a possibility. But the fact remains that the US has abused the civil and human rights of any number of “suspected terrorists,” and lied to its citizens. It has waged a “war against terror” using the most feeble of trumped-up excuses to justify satisfying what is essentially a personal vendetta. I don’t trust this government not to trample on my or anyone else’s civil rights; I don’t trust them at all. And I believe it’s the gradual erosion of “little” civil liberties that put us at risk ultimately.

I leave you with this oft-quoted thought:

“Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.” -- Benjamin Franklin

(Of course there’s this version too:
They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security.

Either way, you get the idea. And he’s right. )