Category: Arts & culture

Way more books were challenged in 2023

The American Library Association (ALA) issued a press release on Thursday about the rise in attempted book bans last year. The ALA tells us: “The number of titles targeted for censorship surged 65 percent in 2023 compared to 2022, reaching the highest levels ever documented by the ALA. The new numbers released today show efforts to censor 4,240 unique book titles in schools and libraries. This tops the previous high from 2022, when 2,571 unique titles were targeted for censorship….”

Not surprisingly, about half the books that were targeted for banning are about LGBTQ+ people and/or non-White people.

The ALA is offering a number of resources to fight back against book bans. They have teamed up with the New York Public Library to create the Teen Banned Book Club and other programs to get banned books into the hands of young people. The ALA has also created a website called “Unite Against Book Bans” offering resources to help you if (when) book bans come to your community.

The ALA also maintains lists of the top ten challenged books for the past quarter century. I love the fact that in 2019, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale made the list, ostensibly for profanity, vulgarity, and “sexual overtones.” However, I suspect the real reason The Handmaid’s Tale got banned was because the people calling for the ban didn’t want to admit that’s the society they desire.

Singing after COVID

The annual Western Massachusetts Sacred Harp singing convention is being held this weekend. The organizers are requiring a same-day COVID test for all singers, and with that public health protocol in place I decided I felt safe going to sing today (but not Sunday when I have to be at church).

These Sacred Harp conventions are a bit of an endurance test. The singing starts at 9:30 or 10, and continues to 3:30 or 4 with an hour for lunch. It’s a whole-body immersive experience.

Before COVID, the Western Massachusetts convention reportedly got as many as 400 singers. COVID seems to have reduced the numbers somewhat. Today, I did a rough count and came up with about 175 singers in the room at one time.

Only about a dozen of us were wearing masks. I had my N-95 mask on the whole time. I skipped the potluck lunch because it would have meant sitting at close quarters with more than a hundred other people for most of an hour with my mask off. The post-COVID world is all about calculating the odds, and determining what risk you’re willing to tolerate.

I enjoyed singing in the morning. But after lunch, I realized to my surprise that I was beginning to feel a little bit anxious. It was no problem to control my anxiety. But after about an hour I had a further realization: controlling my anxiety was taking enough of my attention that it wasn’t as much fun to sing.

So I left early.

A panoramic view of the singing, with over 150 people visible in the photo.
What it looked like from the back row of the bass section

Why I need to get rid of Microsoft products

Microsoft no longer supports Office for Mac 2019. They no longer sell or support anything under the Office brand. No more standalone software. They want you to buy a subscription to Microsoft 365. So now every time I open an MW Word document, I get this little error message telling me that the software “needs updating” — an error message that now will never, never go away. They really want to annoy me into buying an MS 365 subscription.

But the subscription model for software doesn’t work for everyone. It most certainly doesn’t work for me. First of all, subscription software costs more — way more — for low-level users like me. MS 365 costs $100 a year. I bought MS Office 2019 for something like $125 and used it for 5 years, so MS 365 is about four times as expensive. Second, even though MS 365 uses an open file format, I don’t trust Microsoft. It would be all too easy for them to decide to emulate Adobe — when you stop subscribing to Adobe’s software, you lose access to all your work. Third, I actually don’t want my software constantly upgraded to the latest version with all the bells and whistles, I just want to use the same software version that I know and with which I’m comfortable, and with which I’m most productive. Fourth, I have subscription fatigue: I. Don’t. Want. Any. More. Subscriptions.

And finally, the only part of Microsoft’s office suite I really use is MS Word. So if I want to escape Microsoft’s evil clutches, all I need to do is find an alternative word processing program.

I’ve been working down the list of word processors. I’ve tried Scrivener and Nota Bene, but both products are too specialized for my needs. Both Google Docs and ApplePages both strike me as not quite ready for prime time; they certainly don’t meet my needs. I skipped over many other word processors, including Nisus Writer and Apache Open Office, because they appear to have such a small user base that I don’t trust them to be around for a long time.

I’ve finally gotten around to LibreOffice. So far, it does what I want it to do. It has an installed user base of about 200 million (small compared to MS Word’s 1 billion, but still…). There are some things about LibreOffice that annoy me, but so far it’s less annoying than MS Word. I like that it’s free and open source, and because I’m a regular user of GIMP and WordPress I’m accustomed to the quirks of open source software development communities.

I think I like LibreOffice enough to invest the hours needed in order to become as productive with it as I currently am with MS Word. I’m actually relieved at the prospect that if I can get fluent with LibreOffice I’ll never have to use MS Word ever again. I’ve always hated Word, I just felt stuck with it.

Even though I’ve always hated Word, I’m mightily resentful that I’m being forced to learn how to use a new word processor. For no good reason except that the corporate executives at Microsoft need to support their lavish lifestyles on the backs of their customers.

Seiji Ozawa

Seiji Ozawa, long-time music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO), has died.

From 184 to 1987, I had subscription tickets to the BSO — Thursday nights, the so-called “jump seat” in the second balcony, one of the cheapest seats in the house. I remember several transcendent experiences with Ozawa on the conductor’s podium.

The Mahler symphonies; as I recall I heard the second, third, fifth, seventh, and the ninth. Although I can no longer remember the specifics — I have a terrible musical memory — I remember the emotional and spiritual effect Ozawa’s Mahler symphonies had on me.

Three Tableaux from Messiaen’s opera “St. Francis of Assisi,” complete with bird song written into the score, had a tremendous effect on me as well. I hadn’t realized that music could do that — could draw directly on the natural world, could bring the non-human world directly into the concert hall. Messiaen was in the audience that night, which added to the magic.

I mostly remember Ozawa conducting twentieth century music. I had little interest in music from the Baroque, Classical, or Romantic eras. But that’s what Boston audiences wanted: Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Mozart, over and over again. I still remember attending one of the Friday afternoon concerts (I must have gotten a day off from work), and watching as the rich old blue-haired ladies deliberately stood up and pushed their way out of their seats five minutes into some piece of new music, their nasty way of stating to the whole world that They Did Not Approve. And the hell with the concert-goers whose toes they crushed on the way out.

The self-proclaimed cognoscenti in Boston were exactly like the rich old blue-haired ladies in that they never approved of Ozawa. Take Richard Dyer of the Boston Globe — he seemed to hate Ozawa, and never missed a chance to badmouth him. Sometimes my father and I would attend the same concert, and we’d read Dyer’s review and wonder if he went to the same concert as we did. Even after Ozawa’s death, Dyer couldn’t resist taking potshots at him in the obituary he wrote for today’s Globe — if you only read Dyer’s obit, you’d wonder why in hell the BSO kept such an incompetent socially awkward idiot as their music director for so many years. (I wish I hadn’t read Dyer’s obit; it only served to sully the memory of a brilliant, charismatic, dynamic musician.) Why did the Boston cognoscenti hate him so much? Probably because he was dashing, charismatic, exciting, innovative — all of which are character traits which Boston has historically despised. Plus he wasn’t White. I still say Boston is the most racist city I’ve ever lived in, and hating on Ozawa seems to me to be yet another manifestation of that racism. God knows why Ozawa put up with it for so long, but I’m grateful that he did.

I’ll end with a brief memory of the most memorable concert I ever experienced.

It was Thursday night, November 29. On the program: one of the greatest of all symphonies, Mahler’s Ninth. I took my seat at the back of the second balcony in Symphony Hall, excited to hear the Ninth live for the very first time in my life. The orchestra was much larger than usual, filling the entire stage. Ozawa entered to the usual applause.

The first movement was mind-blowing — I just didn’t realize how huge the sound of a Mahler orchestra was, and I didn’t realize how deeply moving Mahler’s music got towards the end of his career. Looking back, I think my brain was being rewired by what Mahler was saying. The movement ended, and Ozawa stepped off the stage. And we waited. And waited. For nearly twenty minutes. Ozawa’s brother Katsumi had died of a stroke the day before, at age 56, and Ozawa must have been crippled with grief. But he came back on stage. He finished conducting the Ninth, and somehow all the emotion and grief and feelings of love for his brother came through. No doubt Richard Dyer wrote a scoffing review of the performance, but it remains one of the most memorable musical experiences of my life. Ozawa had created music with the deepest feeling possible.

Ozawa wasn’t able to conduct the performances of the Ninth on Friday or Saturday; the BSO had to bring in a substitute. We who were there on that Thursday were the only ones to hear music from Ozawa’s deepest soul; at what cost to him I cannot imagine. But I’m eternally grateful to him for that gift he gave us that night; I’ve never forgotten it; it change me and made me a better person. What more can we ask of the arts?

Noted without comment

It may not surprise you that the data show that people who regularly participate in faith communities are likely to live years longer than those who do no. People connected to communities of shared purpose are less lonely, more motivated, more hopeful, and more fulfilled. Even still, I don’t know anyone who ever joined a church because of advanced metrics.

— Rabbi Sharon Brous, The Amen Effect: Ancient Wisdom To Mend Our Broken Hearts and World (2024), p. 41.

Teacher of the year

De’Shawn Washington, teacher of the year in Massachusetts, came to Cohasset at the 20th annual breakfast honoring Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Washington is a fourth grade teacher at Maria Hastings Elementary School in Lexington, Mass.

His was one of the best talks I’ve heard in a long time. He spoke about how Martin Luther King’s message continues to inspire and inform his own teaching practice. But he really shone during the question and answer period after his talk. Of course you’d expect a fourth grade teacher to be able to think on their feet. What I really appreciated, though, was that he kept his focus on children and their families. His worldview is both humane and child-centered.

Washington is speaking frequently across the state this year. If you get a chance to hear him, go. We’re luck to have him representing the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as our teacher of the year.

Washington’s talk was sponsored by the Cohasset Diversity Committee and the Cohasset Clergy. The hosting congregation this year was First Parish in Cohasset.

Man standing at a podium draped with the Pan Afrian flag.
De’Shawn Washington at the podium

(I had this post written then got caught up in work responsibilities and forgot to post it on Wed. So the post is dated Wed. but was actually posted on Sat.)

Christians against Christian Nationalism

You’ve probably already seen this, but I just discovered the Christians against Christian Nationalism website. The tagline of the website is “We believe that Christian nationalism threatens our faith and country.” Amen to that.

For my co-religionists, and any other readers, who are Christians: you can read and sign their statement against Christian Nationalism. It’s just so refreshing to see Christians standing up against this pervsion of the Christian faith.

For everyone: that website has great printable resources you can share with your Christian friends. Plus there’s a related TikTok account, @EndChristianNationalism, which might also be worth sharing.

Noted without comment

“‘Of course, I did it!’ she blazed.’And why not?… It’s all right to talk about respectability if you’ve been educated so you can get by and be respectable, but when you have nothing back of you, you have to take things as they come….”

A character being interrogated by the fictional lawyer Perry Mason, in Erle Stanley Gardener’s The Case of the Rolling Bones (William Morrow, 1939).

Intersectional

Christian Cooper, a self-described gay Black nerd, writes:

“Some African Americans — some of the ones who aren’t LGBTQ — dismiss the gay experience because, unlike Black folk, gays can blend in at will…. Being Black and gay, I find the ‘Who’s More Oppressed?’ sweepstakes exasperating. There can be no winner, and it creates the false impression of a stark divide between communities. (It also ignores a special case where the gay and Black experiences are remarkably similar: the situation of light-skinned African Americans who hide their heritage to ‘pass’ as white, which maps closely with the experience of being in the closet.) The reality is that these experiences live together in the brown-skinned, queer bodies of hundreds of thousands of people, including me.” [Better Living Through Birding, pp. 25, 26-27]

As a gay teenager, Cooper found refuge in the nerd worlds of birding, and of science fiction and fantasy. (Coincidentally, he and I were both at Noreascon in 1980 worldcon, which is the only worldcon I ever attended.) Which is kind of interesting, since both birding and science fiction fandom are astonishingly White.

Police departments vs. labor

Starting with the George Floyd protests in 2020, we began hearing calls to defund police. Police departments, so the thinking went, mostly served White interests, and thus tended to support White supremacy. This argument may have been valid, but it ignored other interests that have controlled police departments in the U.S.

“On May 28, 1937, a strike of seventy-eight thousand steelworkers spanned seven states in the Steel Belt from Homestead to Chicago. The Little Steel Strike of 1937 showed that business would not accommodate unionization even in the face of federal directives. Little Steel companies came prepared. They each bought tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of tear gas, gas grenades, pistols, and rifles to supply to local police and corporate guards to stop a strike. A congressional investigation found that the companies together had purchased $178,000 worth of such armaments. Bethlehem Steel had directly paid the policemen’s salaries. In Chicago, on Memorial Day, came the climax of the strike, when a thousand strikers took American flags and began to walk toward the steel mill. When told to disperse by police, they refused. The police fired on the crowd in what was reported as the Memorial Day massacre, killing seven and wounding ninety. Most of the injured were shot in the back. The strike fell apart soon after….” (Louis Hyman, Temp: How American Work, American Business, and the American Dream Became Temporary [Viking, 2018], p. 35)

That’s just one small example of how police have always served the interests of corporate employers over the interests of working people. Police departments are still serving corporate interests over worker interests. I’ve never heard of a police department protecting striking union members from corporate security. I’ve never heard of a police department raiding a company’s premises to stop unsafe and exploitative work practices. You will never, ever hear of a police department shooting and killing CEOs. Police departments get paid to support bosses, not workers. (And please notice that I’m referring to “police departments” and not “police” — many police officers are ethical people working a tough job; but, like other workers, they have to do what their bosses tell them.)

The key point is that police departments serve the existing power structure. If the existing power structure includes systemic racism, then the police departments will support that systemic racism. If the existing power structure wants cheap labor to maximize corporate profits, then the police departments will suppress workers who go on strike.

Which raises an interesting point: It might be that the interests of Black and other non-White people, and the interests of working class people of whatever race, have some significant overlap.