Banned Books Week

As some of you may already know, this is Banned Books Week.  Some folks mention that we should gather together and read aloud from publications which have been questioned at some time in history.
The HCC Student Library Advisory Committee has gone all out to make sure that folks walking by in the halls are ‘in the know’ about this week’s great celebration for freedom of speech. 

I must admit that the chains really caught my eye, so I did have to stop and investigate.

Of course I did see that our Librarian is on a WANTED poster for committing the crime of promoting books which have been put on the ‘banned’ list.

Wonder what reward I would get for turning her in to the book guardians.  Oh, wait, she is one.  Yet she’s in trouble?
Who watches the watchers?

In the cafeteria is a very unusual sight.  Men wearing business suits.  I do believe this is my first sighting of the phenomenon.  Even the college president was wearing khaki pants the last time I caught a glimpse of him.

Something is definitely afoot.
One of these was thrust towards me.
The Gideons are among us.

A whole bunch of gray-haired men promoting reading material.
I took the little book that was offered because I have a young friend who might be interested.  Then I told the man that every time I hold one of these in my hand, I remember the scene in the movie Lilies of the Field when Sidney Poitier and the strict Mother Superior Nun were having a Bible verse contest.

She has a big old pulpit Bible, and across the table there’s the man turning pages and squinting at the tiny print, yet they matched verse for verse.

The older gentleman said he had never seen the movie.

Why, it’s one of the Classics!  Sidney Poitier won a Best Actor Oscar, the first colored guy ever!  I slipped up and said ‘colored’ like that, then had to look around to see if anybody noticed and thought I might be a racist or something worse.  It didn’t seem like I was going to get knocked down or anything.  Which is good, because I’m getting old and set in my ways and I don’t want to lose friends because I talk like I don’t know any better.
Cuz I do know better except when I have righteous indignation under my shirt.

Well, anyway, I dropped the little book into my bag and walked on down the hall.  All the while wondering how someone could be passing out little Bibles yet not have seen one of the best ‘love thy neighbor’ movies of all time.

And not that a man should notice, but Sidney Poitier without a shirt, glistening with sweat, muscles moving nicely because he was carrying adobe bricks to the top of the wall of the chapel……SMACK me up against the side of the head, why don’tcha?

This post is about Banned Books.  But you might want to go rent the good movie, too. 
It celebrates the same theme.
When it came out in 1963, some theater managers refused to show it.
Freedom of Speech.  Thank You, Internet.

~~love and Huggs, Diane