Censorship in Oregon!?

I did not know that a new Oregon law passed in January criminalizes activities that include passing on to minors certain forms of sexually explicit books. The statute is somewhat complicated, but you can read about it here, on the ACLU of Oregon website. The tricky part is that some books for children, including a few classics, might fall under the statute, as might certain legitimate sex education publications.

Now, I thought Oregon was one of those places where censorship was a thing of the last century. We don’t do that here. But the truth is that most of Oregon is not Portland and is governed by the same prudish attitudes that characterize much of American culture. We are immersed in sexual images; our entire culture is sexualized. But we are Puritans at heart. And we also tend to believe that books are the cause of moral turpitude. Turns out Oregonians think that too.

The problem is not ads for low-rise jeans. Or most of prime-time television. Nope. The problem is books. That’s where you find. . .well, ideas.

The problem here isn’t sex. It’s thinking. If people think about their lives, if they ask questions about the society in which they live, if they educate themselves–then they might want to make changes. Americans see themselves as traditionalists, as protectors of a way of life that is mythical in its reach. There was a time, we tell ourselves, when we treated one another with respect, when we loved God, when we did not misbehave–of if we did, punishment, as in movies under the Code, was swift and just. Maybe a bit rough, but it’s ok to rough up bad guys. But then times changed. Hippies were born. Women went on the pill.

The Oregon law seems to be aimed at protecting minors from sexual predators. And it’s a good thing to protect our children from molesters. But the Oregon law is a bit like blaming gays for the abuse of young boys in the Roman Catholic Church: blame books for the apparent rise of sexual predation. (Just to be clear: evidence shows that sexual predators tend to be straight.)

There is an increase of awareness of sexual predation, which has always been a problem, especially for young girls preyed upon by members of their own families. That hasn’t changed. But, acting typically, Americans blame not the nuclear family for sexual abuse but unknown others–who, some people in Oregon appear to believe, are preying on children by giving them books.

Internet chatrooms, anyone?

Some bookstores in Oregon have joined the ACLU in challenging this statute. I hope others in the state will also join. And the publishers? Are Oregon publishers joining in the struggle? (The Association of American Publishers is among the plaintiffs, as is local publisher Dark Horse Comics [definitely a target of a law such as this]). Since publishers are as likely as booksellers to be the object of a witch hunt, I hope there will be others speaking out against this statute, either through the press or perhaps by joining the ACLU in an amicus brief.

Bush to Pope: Awesome Speech!

Ever wonder what one dignitary says to another in those brief moments before or after a speech or photo op? Well, here’s an example. After Pope Benedict speaks to the American people, following his arrival in Washington (to cheers and screams, no less), Bush can be heard to say: “Thank you, Your Holiness. Awesome speech.” Dude. You can see the video, hear the speech, and hear the comment here. Note too the story about Jenna Bush and her (successful, thank God) efforts to control her skirt as she greets His Holiness.

Our friend and author, Greg Mandel, has been following the activities of His Holiness carefully, Each day he gives us another “Useless Pope Facto o’ the Day.” You can read em all at The Edge.

You can also read further adventures of A Pope, perhaps not this Pope–but who really knows–here.

Will We Choose Life?, by David W. Orr

David W. Orr, the Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies at Oberlin College, wrote this “Foreword” to Grounded in Love: Ecology, Faith, and Action, by Nancy Roth, to be published by KenArnoldBooks. It will be available from Amazon.com by the end of May. Professor Orr’s words echo those of the book’s author in summoning us to a deeper understanding of the spiritual roots of the environmental crisis.

The writer of Deuteronomy says: “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live,…” (Deut. 30:19) No generation before our own could feel the full, global, and permanent weight of those words, but we can. The science could not be clearer. The members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2007) say that we have a very narrow window to stop and then reverse the accumulation of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere before we risk the demise of civilization. Nicholas Stern, in the most authoritative report ever on the economics of climate change (2007), similarly warns of thresholds beyond which effective action becomes increasingly unlikely and finally impossible. The thousand scientists who wrote The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Report (2005), also warn of surprises and points of no return dead ahead related to the breakdown of entire ecosystems and the loss of species. We are the generation that will chose between life and death, but now on a planetary scale and for all that will be born or could have been born.

All true spirituality beckons us to fullness of life and hope, but that is not the drift of the present conversation about sustainability. Mostly, it has been about how to devise a smarter economics and better technology. Certainly we need a smarter economics, which is to say one that includes all the costs of what we do. And certainly we need better technology to harvest current sunlight and eliminate pollution. These, however, are necessary, not sufficient changes, and they are grounded in the faith that we might become smart enough to make end-runs around natural constraints imposed by entropy and ecology, as well as the limits imposed by our own ignorance. In no important way does this discourse challenge the deeper sources of our plight which have to do with human desires and intentions now warped by a century of sybaritic commercialism and militarism. The point is that we will have to want to do better for deeper and more profound reasons than those of self-interest alone. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who had good reason to know, once observed that there was no such thing as “cheap grace.” The same applies, I believe, to the effort to make the human presence on Earth sustainable. In contrast to a great deal of the happy talk of our time, I think it wise to assume that the transition ahead will be a demanding and perilous journey that will ask a great deal of us and those who will follow. We face nothing less than a struggle for life over death now on the scale of the whole Earth, and we will have to reach deeper to go higher.

There can be no technical solution to what is at root a spiritual problem, but there is an interesting convergence between our self-interest in survival and ethics. The journey to sustainability requires us to do what the wisest have always said that we ought to do, but now the same argument holds for more mundane reasons of self-interest as well. We will have to thirst for righteousness and justice if we wish merely to live. America represents the future that much of the world still aspires to, but our manner of living cannot be sustained either physically or spiritually. So, there is serious and necessary talk of global bargains that would level our carbon emissions to perhaps two tons per person per year. By contrast the average in the United States is twenty tons of CO₂ per person each year. But by the remorseless working out of big numbers, that level cannot be sustained. Nor should we wish that it could, for that number conceals the cold reality of wars and injustices required by a culture of mass consumption powered by ancient sunlight. Are we up to the challenge? Will we choose life? That is THE question of our age and there is no other remotely as important.

The POD People Are Coming! Shoot them!, by Ken Arnold

When I stared KenArnoldBooks earlier this year, I chose to print digitally–or, to use the vernacular, print on demand. As a publisher of many years, I thought it just made sense to print books as they are needed and to sell them through Amazon and stores that really wanted to carry them. My colleagues warned me that POD is a bad word in the publishing industry because of its association with vanity houses. But, I said, surely reviewers, booksellers, and industry professionals will look at what we are publishing not at how we print.

Wrong. Can you believe it? There are review media that categorically refuse to consider a book printed digitally. What does the mode of printing have to do with the quality of a book’s content or the validity of an author’s argument or the effectiveness of a poet’s words?

But there you have it. Several review media, including on-line sites, explicitly exclude POD books. Kirkus refuses to review them. When I tried to sign up for Cataloguing in Publication, the rejection stated that subsidy publishers are ineligible for CIP. But there was nothing in my application that indicated KenArnoldBooks is a subsidy operation. IT IS NOT. The CIP office has not yet answered my inquiry about their reasons for declining our application, but the only aspect of it that might raise a question is the small size of the initial printing. Ah-HA! screams the CIP bouncer. A POD publisher! The back of me hand to ye, publishing scum. You’re not dressed well enough for this club. No CIP for you. What if a library actually found out about one of your books! No, the public must be protected.

This response from review media and other publishing bigots is simply empty-headed, to use a phrase milder than the one in my head. Guess what, guys: the landscape is changing. The Espresso Book Machine is around the corner. We do not have to kill every tree in the forest when we publish a book. What is the point in filling the warehouse with books that usually do not sell in anything like the printed quantities? Just because the American way is to Supersize everything–more fries, cheesehead?–is it really true that the size of a printrun is an indicator of quality? My book is bigger than yours? Go back to your office, retrieve your brain, and then we’ll talk.

I called a bookstore here in Portland and said that our books can be ordered through Lightning Source. The bookseller practically leapt through the phone line and ripped my throat. “I don’t deal with Lightning Source,” she snarled. Well, excuse me.

Now, we know that many main-stream publishers use POD technologies. They use them to keep old books in print. Some, such as Wiley, do a huge amount of POD business. My publishing offense is that I dare to use these technologies for trade books. Nope. Sorry. Uh-uh. That’s against the rules.

Our company was the subject of an article in The Oregonian yesterday in which Jeff Baker, the book review editor, supported our efforts. “Local Publisher Saves Trees,” was the headline. Thank you, Jeff. I am glad there are still some open-minded people in the biz.

POD is like Rock and Roll. It’s here to stay. A lot of smart people thought the Internet was a passing fad. A lot of publishers still think it’s just a place for foolishness. Nobody reads books on line or on cell phones or on Kindle. Except in places like Japan.

The old media that pretend the world is not changing are welcome to their prejudices. I just want to know why they have to stigmatize all publishers who use POD for trade titles, regardless of the books and their merit. Can anyone tell me that?

Why perpetuate a wasteful system?

Must have something to do with profit and the corporations that benefit from warehouses full of really dead trees.

Tree of Heaven, by Ken Arnold

Last week, a tree that had stood for seventy-five years in the Isamu Noguchi museum garden in Long Island City, Queens, was taken down. It was the centerpiece of the garden; despite its name, it was a tree known as a noxious weed, an invasive species, the Ailanthus altissima. Those of you who have read my book, Circle of the Way, will recognize this tree. It has an important place in my emotional and spiritual history. Soon after I heard of its demise, I attended the screening of a video on invasive species. The result was the poem I reproduce below.

Tree of Heaven

We were watching a video about

invasive species, plants and animals

we don’t want here in Oregon,

to be aired in April on public

television, soon after Earth Day.

Massed at our borders, the zebra

mussels, yellow star thistle, red-

eared turtles, English ivy—

we put on our gardening gloves,

wade into the waters, point

accusing fingers at the invaders.

 

And I thought about the Tree of Heaven

that had stood in Queens across

the river from Manhattan

for seventy-five years and

was the Tree that Grows in

Brooklyn, book and movie,

and then the heartbeat of the garden

Isamu Noguchi made in this

industrial neverland outside

the warehouse he converted to

a museum for his sculptures,

massive many of them, struck

from basalt, marble, rock, almost

as natural when he got through

as when he found them, dragged

them in, and eased the insides out.

 

The tree was cut down on the weekend.

It was diseased, a threat, a tree

I’d sat with one long winter of my own

disease, not knowing it was just

a stink tree, as it’s sometimes called,

Ailanthus altissima or China-sumac,

Varnishtree,: a weed, or as the books

describe it, an invasive species

to be pulled up by its roots as soon

as possible or it will spread, take

over all the other shrubs and trees.

It has, some say, no landscape value.

Its flowers stink. It reproduces aimlessly.

 

Because it grows so fast so high

it came to be called The Tree

of Heaven, so I knew it, though in

Philadelphia our alley was choked

dead by these same weeds, we hated

them and wished them gone.

Once sixty feet in height, this one’s

reduced to stump, its wood to be

recycled into benches for the garden.

 

Noxious weed of my memory,

my desire, of a place where I was quiet

when there was no quiet for me

anywhere, the only heaven I could

hope to know, right there in that

improbable oasis where the very stones

would talk, the greenery transform

the air, and I was able once again

to breathe—is gone, but in its stump

stir shoots, the gardeners say. They say

the things just won’t lie down and die.