They're Coming. The Sooner It's Faced, the Better. The Answer Is No.

They were overwhelmed, and I wasn't helping them.

A while ago, I decided to become a member of the Board of Directors of the Friends of Shorewood Public Library. I don't even live in Shorewood, though I'm pretty close. I just came to meetings until they couldn't turn me back.

Not only that, but I also became Advocacy Chair. It became my duty to inform the other Board members of challenges rising to public libraries, including school libraries.

This isn't my latest effort to change the world. But I figured that if it was possible to get involved in the kind of effort Americans need to function properly, I would try to do so on a small, almost unnoticeable level that involved no suits, no flights, and meetings just once a month.

I was nominated for the position by the outgoing president, who noticed (I'm sure others had, too) that my comments at Board meetings were directed toward those who would try to moralize public libraries to the extent that they're becoming apologists for the excessively religiously afflicted. Public institutions aren't supposed to be like that, stupid laws passed in Louisiana notwithstanding (I'm sure you've heard that there they want the Ten Commandments to be displayed in every public school classroom.). They're supposed to reflect a pluralistic, secular society, which we still are, despite the efforts of the excessively religiously afflicted to "fix" it.

By "fixing," that means that things that are considered "sinful," like being or writing or reading about being gay or transgender are condemned and eliminated from notice. Libraries are being attacked for making "sinful" books available, like about transpeople or others of the LGBTQ+ type. The attackers want them taking off the shelves forever, as if either the books or the people they depict don't exist.

It's my task to track articles that are being written about those nefarious (as we see it) efforts. That's where an active Internet comes up. Once you dial up Google and make it clear you're looking for a particular type of article, it's only too happy to send you as many of them as it can find. And it's finding a lot of them.

The articles disappear as other types of things impinge, so I quickly forward them to my personal e-mail address for safekeeping--that is, for exposure in my report, which is expected once a month. But I received a complaint about it recently.

No, nobody on this Board of Directors has turned tail or become a traitor to the things we're supposed to be standing for. They're overwhelmed, that's all. So are many of us. 

Stuff continues to happen in many states, most of which are red in political leanings. Those folks that are excessively religiously afflicted, those with minds that have closed long ago, are leading this charge to the bottom. And, of course, they do it in places that are safe for them, in which they aren't likely to be in the minority and have to personally face the foolishness of their intensity.

Those places are usually small towns, in which an ethos well imagined has been, according to them, previously established. Which is: being gay is a sin. It says so in the Bible. We shouldn't even be discussing this obvious fact. 

Being trans- is worse. Your body is a temple of God, they say, and you're maligning it because you don't like it. Shame on you. No books about it should be within eyesight of any library, because people shouldn't be paying taxes to support these exposes. Books should be about, well, 'normal' things. And 'normal' people. The definition of which they decide.

This branch of the indoctrination plague, the cult, that is upon us has spread like rumors do--haphazardly, quickly, and with a certain taint as time has settled in. There are now selected books that some people are now looking for, and others that have occurred to them now that they think of it. Either way, they sometimes even confess their 'sins' to expiate their guilt, then set out on a holy crusade to rid the rest of humanity of the 'filth.'

Being a small town will get you there much faster than a large one, where there are processes already established to review books and discuss their possible impact. Small towns don't, and still don't, see this coming. They assume that such trouble will dissipate and disappear. They think the otherwise impregnable consensus will swallow up the dissenters. It won't. It hasn't.

Because like in the larger political realm in which we find ourselves, people with bad ideas can get organized just as well. Sometimes better, if they're really angry.

Moms for Liberty is just one example. Deceptively named, they represent a love not liberty but its opposite, a repression of whatever thinking it might oppose. Not opposition, repression: They don't want to talk about it. They don't think they have to. As a result, sometimes, once you pull the Oz-ian curtain back, they can't even tell you what they're against. An interview with 60 Minutes not too long ago revealed that they were actually against the teachers' unions, which, I suppose, protect public school librarians from being automatically fired for having the above types of books on the available shelves without due process. You know, that tacky thing that gets in the way of quasi-religious justice and the will of God--as they and they alone see it.

I've read enough of these articles to tell you that. I also send them along to my board, and they pile up month after month. The previous advocacy chair, now the new president, did that, too, but in much reduced volume.

I decided against that. I decided to show everyone just how much that stuff was going on out there and the various strategies involved in trying to hold back perfectly good books about things that kids are going to think about and discuss, anyhow. They continue in state after state--except for states that are now catching on and whose legislatures are starting to pass bans against book bans, to stop these fools in their tracks.

In any event, the volume has risen in recent months. I think that at least from here to November, it will continue. It may even boil over, especially if ex- is re-elected, which would be an even bigger mistake than it was the first time around. But I also think that these attacks are increasing in anticipation of that re-election, as if righteousness has gained its deserved momentum and will carry this complete idiot back into office with it. It's a different kind of "bandwagon" effect, but I think just as telling.

So to the suggestion that I scale back these articles to five or six a month instead of the couple of dozen I keep finding each month--because you know, enough already, we get it--my response was: Which five or six? Could someone then help me with this? Would this be helpful gatekeeping? Or whistling past a graveyard? And wouldn't deleting one town's troubles about this in favor of another's create a priority that needn't exist?

I know people are tired. Worn down. Fatigued of the endless challenges in the name of the wrong things. But I'm going to keep going. Because the nonsense peddlers do. They are driven by a phony sense of religious mission that guarantees to them and only them that God is on their side. As if God couldn't be on any other.

My goal is to enlighten as thoroughly as possible. Because the library I represent is in a small town, too. And Moms for Liberty, as shown in one of those articles, wants to smother Wisconsin and a few other states with a media campaign connected with the election. That's bad enough, but once it has established that presence, I find it difficult to believe that it will stop there and not try to infiltrate small town libraries--like ours--with frontal attacks. People are often caught off-guard by the intimidation attempted by these people, first with disbelief and then with unpreparedness. I want this library prepared to say one of the most important words in our language: NO.

NO. We really believe in liberty, not disingenuous dolts like you who say they do but actually don't. Nobody's forcing anybody to read anything. What's more, you know that.

NO. We really do think the right to read uncomfortable things matters far more than your idea of morality.

NO. We aren't going to fire anybody or take down any books we now have on our shelves. Ever. Period. They held value yesterday, they hold the same value today and any day you and anybody else happen to be here or anywhere else. Freedom of the press and speech either include the freedom to read or they are empty, pointless vessels.

NO. Forget it. These things will be repeated until you understand, and leave.

I hope that if or when the time comes, the people with the responsibility to do so will stand up and say these things, or words to that effect. That would not be my duty, but I'm not running from it. I'd be very, very happy, in fact, to say these things, if asked, to whomever came out from under their rocks and tried to make Shorewood into yet another MAGA service model.

I'm going to send the Board members other articles, too, in the two months in which they are on summer hiatus; not many, because everyone needs something of a break. But the people undermining libraries seek no breaks. They look for weaknesses to exploit so they can get their way. Anyone who's been watching them has to have assumed that by now. If they win, they won't even know what they're winning until someone else swoops in and holds them just as captive in ways they can't foresee because they're too involved in winning for its own sake.

That's not only sad, it's dangerous. I can't fight them by myself. But I can do what I can where I can. Here I will do so, continuing to remind others that care that these people are coming on and will have to be confronted and turned back. Our very way of life--tolerant, secular, progressive--depends on it.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Would Another Monday Off Be Too Much to Ask?

It didn't totally reach me until the woman yelled to me from inside her van. I had to get it twice.

"It's closed!" she yelled. "The post office is closed!"

It was Wednesday, June 19. Why the hell would the post office be closed on a Wednesday?

She wondered, too. "I don't know why," she quickly added.

Then it hit me. "Oh, yeah," I said, loud enough for her to hear me. "It's Juneteenth Day."

Grateful, she thanked me. "I was wondering," she said.

It says a lot about the state of mind of mostly white people, both of which we were, in a small suburban town with lots and lots of them. We weren't the only ones, either.

A poor gentleman who needed a walker started getting out of his van with some difficulty, needing I suppose to mail something himself. I caught him as I drove out of the nearly vacant parking lot. I rolled down the window to deliver the same message. He looked a little disturbed and annoyed.

We shouldn't be annoyed about this, of course, and once we think about it, we should celebrate. Juneteenth is the day on which the last slaves in then far-off Confederate Texas--some would still think of it as far-off, at least in the thinking of some of its residents--discovered that, some months before, they had been freed by the Emancipation Proclamation and the Union's victory in the Civil War.

Last year, President Biden had signed a document declaring June 19 to be the latest federal holiday, allowing federal employees, such as post office workers, another paid day off. 

That sounds like a complaint, but it isn't, really. I mean, I wanted to drop a paid bill, with the check enclosed, inside the post office itself, instead of a federal mailbox. Why? Because a couple of years ago, there had been a spate of robberies by felons who had somehow gained access to corner mailbox keys, and who of course rifled through the boxes for checks from unsuspecting patrons. Some of them were caught and nailed with federal charges, for which I hope they serve a decent amount of jail time. 

In the meantime, though, some payments for bills never got to their intended destinations, and the prices for time and fee penalties for the hassles involved must have been staggering. I was trying, and will always try, by the way, to avoid those hassles by dropping off the payments inside the building into the nicely available slot provided.

That's why I didn't just put it in the greatly available (at least in my neighborhood) post office box. I was in the vicinity of a post office, had brought the envelope this far, so I thought I might as well complete the journey. But no--I hadn't thought about the post offices being closed in mid-week.

In fact, it's been a long, long time since considering that for anything other than Christmas or New Year's Day or July 4 had been observed. That, we absorb easily. There's an overwhelming consensus about that.

It's not like this newly declared celebration isn't warranted; it certainly is. But will it also stand as an annoyance if it's constantly shifted around during the week? Or would it be okay if it becomes, well, normalized and moved to the, let's say, 3rd Monday of June, where there are no other interruptions?

I hope it isn't racist to suggest that. I wouldn't think so. In fact, it might be seen as a bulwark of support to get it to a place people are used to as the years pass. I highly doubt that it would change the number of people who would give it serious thought as each celebration passed, one way or another.

That way, we could all show up at the post office on a Wednesday that isn't the Fourth or Christmas or New Year's and be assured that it was open. Not that it wasn't silly to suppose that, since the parking lot was empty, something wasn't up.

Now that we've made space for it, maybe Juneteenth Day can take its rightful place in the pantheon of Mondays Off. It'll be just as justified as, say, Presidents' Day, which compresses Washington's and Lincoln's birthdays to honor among others, ex-, even though he will never deserve honoring other than as a felon, rapist and mentally deranged liar. Or perhaps how stupid the country has now become. But I digress.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Three Things About Willie (Wait--Four)

Three things stand out in my mind about the late Willie Mays, who died recently. One of them demonstrate, in an odd way, just how good he was and could be.

Warren Spahn was unquestionably one of the all-time great pitchers, and it was my luck that he played in Milwaukee, not far from where I lived. It was additionally my luck that our next door neighbor, Ed Schumacher, was an admirer of his (being left-handed helped), and would occasionally pile the Schumacher and Cebulski boys into his station wagon to County Stadium to watch Spahn pitch.

One of those nights was called Spahnie Night, concocted to honor Spahn upon his winning of 300 games earlier in that 1961 season, which practically later guaranteed his entrance into the Hall of Fame. It wasn't timed that way, but Spahn was the starting pitcher that night against the San Francisco Giants.

Maybe it was the hype surrounding it that threw Spahn off, and maybe, as pitchers do, he simply had a bad night. But the Giants tore him to shreds, and that included his old nemesis Willie Mays.

Mays' first major league hit was one of his 660 home runs, back in 1951, against none other than Warren Spahn. He followed that with a deep slump which drove him, apparently if legend has it, into some despair. But his manager then, Leo Durocher, comforted Mays with his belief that Mays was the best center fielder he had ever seen, and that his presence in the Giants' lineup was still secure. That reportedly jolted the young fellow out of his slump, and the rest, as we know, is history.

But part of that history was messing up Spahn's night, big-time. Mays crushed a grand slam home run that night, and I was there to see it. I remember thinking that, if anyone was allowed to do that, it had to be Mays, who was well-established as one of the greats of the game ten years into his career.

Earlier that same season, back in April, Mays became one of the few players ever to hit four home runs in one game--and he did it in County Stadium against the Braves. The first two were off Lew Burdette, also one of the National League's best pitchers at the time. As they say in sports, Mays wore the Braves out.

Spahn had one great year left in him in 1963, when he won 23 games at the age of 42. He struck out few people, relative to those with blazing fastballs back then, but had a nasty, tantalizing screwball that baffled hitters and often made them ground out. Spahn and the Giants' Juan Marichal squared off on July 2 of that year for what has been called the greatest game ever pitched (starting pitchers are now almost always relieved by the 7th or 8th innings, so the following scenario will probably never be repeated). Both the Giants and the Braves had plenty of power hitters, but the pitchers' duel went scoreless into the 16th inning--when, wouldn't you know it, Spahn hung one of those screwballs to Mays and Mays launched it over the fence for a 1-0 win.

But even that wasn't the most remarkable thing about Willie Mays in my experience. Does anybody remember Strat-O-Matic Baseball? It was a combination of dice, cards, and someone's calculations about what hitters would do in certain situations. The ultimate in respect was given to Mays.

Why? Because room was given to great players to have hot streaks. When Willie Mays was hot, he was ridiculously unstoppable. In fact, the game allowed a Strato player opposing the Giants to let Mays, if he was on one of those hot streaks, walk with the bases loaded, because there was a good chance you might allow fewer runs than if you let him hit. In real life, the only other player who was afforded that kind of respect was Barry Bonds, Mays' godson, after it was clear he had juiced himself up on steroids.

Willie Mays never needed that kind of artificial assistance. Besides those homers, he had over 3,000 hits. He made 24 All-Star teams, several at the end of his career just because people wanted to watch him play. He made amazing plays in center field, including The Catch during the 1954 World Series, when he ran down a sure triple by Vic Wertz of the Cleveland Indians while running with his back facing the plate, then getting the ball back into the infield in time to keep a runner who had tagged at second base from coming all the way home. 

I saw him in Milwaukee three times. He's still the greatest player I've ever seen, and I saw Hank Aaron play far more often. Hank was my favorite player, great wrists and all, but Willie Mays was the best. He made the amazing seem routine. Like Aaron, he was not a large man, which made the power in his bat all that more remarkable.

Whenever anyone mentions Willie Mays, I think about those three things. Oh, yes, there's one more: A book called Willie's Time, written by Charles Einstein, who covered the Giants for the San Francisco Examiner and then the Chronicle in Mays' heyday, 1958-70. If it was to be seen, it was seen by him--and he blended the civil rights' revolution (or, I might say, the attempted revolution, because it really hasn't worked very well yet) into that time as well. Probably because of the notoriety of Mays' passing, it's pretty expensive right now, but give it a couple of weeks and it'll be back down. But it's well worth your while.

Another great one has passed. Plenty of us who followed baseball back then, and now, will miss knowing he's still around. He might just be the greatest five-tool player (run, hit, throw, field, hit for power) ever. His like might never be equalled. Maybe the young Ohtani, now with the Dodgers? Okay, possible. But it'll take a whole career to match Mays' numbers, and I seriously doubt I'll live that long. Besides, I'll have to see Ohtani have a season like Mays did in 1957, when he had at least 20 doubles (26), homers (35), stolen bases (38) and triples (20)--which few people around here noticed because that was the only season a Milwaukee baseball team went all the way and won the World Series. Let's see him match that, in eight fewer games, to boot.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Why I Am A Recycled Deacon

We all have drop-everything films, those which we choose to watch because we have nothing better to do, which is every time it's on. One of mine is The Magnificent Seven.

Someone did a remake of it a few years ago, with Denzel Washington, and it was a nice try. But for my care, I watch the one with Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Charles Bronson, and a few others, fashioned loosely from The Seven Samurai, a film by Akiro Kurosawa.

I'm guessing you know the base story: A bunch of otherwise ne'er-do-wells, down on their luck and seeking new adventures, agree to be paid not much money for a daunting task: Defending a small Mexican town (it's a regrettable aspect of the story that Hispanics are stereotypically depicted so weakly, an awful comment on white supremacy) from a bandido and his dozens of minions, who have a history of gaining a steady income through expropriating whatever the poor citizens have gotten from the soil through their back-breaking work--turning it into something of a company town.

There's a scene in the middle where, after descending upon the town as crusaders of a sort, the Seven are betrayed by the locals, who have been promised things that can't be delivered in order that the bandidos will reign supreme (sort of like ex- promising rich businesspeople huge tax cuts, which he can't guarantee, in order for giving him $1B for his campaign. But I digress.). They are ambushed, but not murdered, a gratefully naive moment orchestrated by the chief bandido, played with otherwise gnarly rottenness by Eli Wallach. "The guns, they stay here," he says to them, tapping the table, allowing them to escape with their lives.

But before they go, he wants to know why these otherwise very savvy men, men who have been around the block a few times, men who take guff from no one, ever wanted to take on such a ridiculous, hopeless, hapless job in a fit of righteousness. McQueen provides the answer.

"Once knew a guy in El Paso who took off his clothes and jumped into a pile of cactus and I asked him why," McQueen says. "Know what he said?"

Wallach leans in. "What?"

McQueen says, "He said, 'It seemed like a good idea at the time.' "

I can relate to that. That, in summary, is why I've decided to serve my congregation as a recycled deacon. I also did it some quarter of a century ago. The world, my world, has changed, and not particularly for the better. Someone thought they needed me to serve again, though. I had no idea they remembered my previous service. But okay. I'll accept this opportunity, this second chance as it were, to do good.

I am not unlike the Seven: I've been in a few places where I ruled the day, emerging as something of a risk-taking gunslinger, inspiring both admiration and fear. But that was long, long ago in a universe far, far away: At least it seems like it now. I helped a few people, as I meant to from the start, but I also served myself quite nicely. The emphasis this time will be on the former and reducing the latter.

Becoming a deacon makes you make a promise that you, yourself, always come second, always and every time. If there is some discomfort that comes from that, well, that's part of what you take on, too. But people in need never go away, be it just for some company and acknowledgement of their humanity. You give them what I now know I lack in large amount: Time.

I've been through some discomfort lately. Hoo man, have I ever. And deacons reached me. I felt the caring. I mean to extend it. I'm lucky, in my unluckiness, that my medical issues have brought it about just as I enter my second round of service.

As devotees of the movie know, the Seven return to save the day at the cost of some of their lives. I now have no idea how long I'll last: my triple by-pass has needed to be buttressed with a pacemaker. The clock ticks. Though I don't think I was bad at being a deacon way back when, I'll be better at it this time. I'll be better at self-care, too. This will be one way to do it.

I am not holy. Not even close. My maladies have prevented me from being in church a lot lately, too. But I can still be helpful. I'm grateful for this chance. Contrary to the film, there will be no dynamic music resonating in the background. Showing up will be the point.

The service of humanity is the service of God. That much I know. I recall back in the day, I was asked to lead a prayer prior to one of our monthly deacons' meetings. I thought it would be good to point out Kennedy's final statement of his famous inauguration speech: "Here on earth, God's work must truly be our own." I'm all for that, before I ride into the sunset.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark