Kent_Campus_Library

Gay penguins book is most banned

Authors, artists and musicians are due to gather at a library in San Francisco to protest against the banning of books in schools and libraries in the US.
The event, part of the 27th annual Banned Books Week, has been organised by the American Library Association.

Since 2001 bans on 3,736 books and other materials have been requested.
In recent years, Tango Makes Three - based on a true story and centring on gay penguins in New York's Central Park Zoo - has had the most ban requests.
The book's authors are Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell.
Reasons given by organisations and individuals for their requests to get it removed from public shelves, include "anti-ethnic, anti-family, homosexuality, religious viewpoint, and unsuited to age group".

Other works featuring in the most-challenged books list for 2008 include Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials and Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner.
Parents' concern
Pullman told Britain's Guardian newspaper that he was glad to be on the list.
However he added: "Of course it's a worry when anybody takes it upon themselves to dictate what people should or should not read."
The association said the aim of the annual awareness week, which ends on Saturday, is to remind US citizens not to take their freedom for granted.
Among those at the San Francisco Public Library event will be authors and musicians Ben Fong-Torres, Richie Unterberger and Roy Zimmerman.
They plan to stage a number of performances and defend controversial books.
In 2008 the American Library Association recorded 517 ban requests. Seventy-four were successful.
The organisation recorded that the most common reason given was that contents were too "sexually explicit".
Other classic literature subjected to complaints include JD Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.
The Harry Potter series by JK Rowling also feature on the list.
Earlier this week, it was claimed that Harry Potter author JK Rowling missed out on the Presidential Medal of Freedom because some US politicians believed she "encouraged witchcraft

Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read

September 26−October 3, 2009
Banned Books Week (BBW) is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment. Held during the last week of September, Banned Books Week highlights the benefits of free and open access to information while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted bannings of books across the United States.

Intellectual freedom—the freedom to access information and express ideas, even if the information and ideas might be considered unorthodox or unpopular—provides the foundation for Banned Books Week. BBW stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints for all who wish to read and access them.

The books featured during Banned Books Week have been targets of attempted bannings. Fortunately, while some books were banned or restricted, in a majority of cases the books were not banned, all thanks to the efforts of librarians, teachers, booksellers, and members of the community to retain the books in the library collections. Imagine how many more books might be challenged—and possibly banned or restricted—if librarians, teachers, and booksellers across the country did not use Banned Books Week each year to teach the importance of our First Amendment rights and the power of literature, and to draw attention to the danger that exists when restraints are imposed on the availability of information in a free society.

Top 30 challenged books

1. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
2. Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
3. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
4. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
5. The Color Purple, Alice Walker
6. Ulysses, James Joyce
7. Beloved, Toni Morrison
8. The Lord of the Flies, William Golding
9. 1984, George Orwell
10. The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
11. Lolita, Vladmir Nabokov
12. Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck
13. Charlotte's Web, EB White
14. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
15. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
16. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
17. Animal Farm, George Orwell
18. The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
19. As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner
20. A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
21. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
22. Winnie-the-Pooh, AA Milne
23. Their Eyes were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
24. Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
25. Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison
26. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
27. Native Son, Richard Wright
28. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey
29. Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut
30. For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway
I looked at the list and discovered that I had only managed to read half of these. Oh well, there is always time !

As the school year begins, be ready to hear pundits fretting once again about how kids today can't write—and technology is to blame. Facebook encourages narcissistic blabbering, video and PowerPoint have replaced carefully crafted essays, and texting has dehydrated language into "bleak, bald, sad shorthand" (as University College of London English professor John Sutherland has moaned). An age of illiteracy is at hand, right?

Andrea Lunsford isn't so sure. Lunsford is a professor of writing and rhetoric at Stanford University, where she has organized a mammoth project called the Stanford Study of Writing to scrutinize college students' prose. From 2001 to 2006, she collected 14,672 student writing samples—everything from in-class assignments, formal essays, and journal entries to emails, blog posts, and chat sessions. Her conclusions are stirring.

"I think we're in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven't seen since Greek civilization," she says. For Lunsford, technology isn't killing our ability to write. It's reviving it—and pushing our literacy in bold new directions.

The first thing she found is that young people today write far more than any generation before them. That's because so much socializing takes place online, and it almost always involves text. Of all the writing that the Stanford students did, a stunning 38 percent of it took place out of the classroom—life writing, as Lunsford calls it. Those Twitter updates and lists of 25 things about yourself add up.

It's almost hard to remember how big a paradigm shift this is. Before the Internet came along, most Americans never wrote anything, ever, that wasn't a school assignment. Unless they got a job that required producing text (like in law, advertising, or media), they'd leave school and virtually never construct a paragraph again.

But is this explosion of prose good, on a technical level? Yes. Lunsford's team found that the students were remarkably adept at what rhetoricians call kairos—assessing their audience and adapting their tone and technique to best get their point across. The modern world of online writing, particularly in chat and on discussion threads, is conversational and public, which makes it closer to the Greek tradition of argument than the asynchronous letter and essay writing of 50 years ago.

The fact that students today almost always write for an audience (something virtually no one in my generation did) gives them a different sense of what constitutes good writing. In interviews, they defined good prose as something that had an effect on the world. For them, writing is about persuading and organizing and debating, even if it's over something as quotidian as what movie to go see. The Stanford students were almost always less enthusiastic about their in-class writing because it had no audience but the professor: It didn't serve any purpose other than to get them a grade. As for those texting short-forms and smileys defiling serious academic writing? Another myth. When Lunsford examined the work of first-year students, she didn't find a single example of texting speak in an academic paper.

Of course, good teaching is always going to be crucial, as is the mastering of formal academic prose. But it's also becoming clear that online media are pushing literacy into cool directions. The brevity of texting and status updating teaches young people to deploy haiku-like concision. At the same time, the proliferation of new forms of online pop-cultural exegesis—from sprawling TV-show recaps to 15,000-word videogame walkthroughs—has given them a chance to write enormously long and complex pieces of prose, often while working collaboratively with others.

We think of writing as either good or bad. What today's young people know is that knowing who you're writing for and why you're writing might be the most crucial factor of all.

Email clive@clivethompson.net.

http://click.mail.bfwpub.com/?qs=71705af312b80d405d984277bf3e80a7f4d760f43fcbc5d412bdc696df6676bc

Celebrate Literacy Month

September 2009 will feature the third annual Literacy Month at each of Florida’s 160 state parks.

In conjunction with International Literacy Day on September 8 and National Library Card Signup Month, day-use entrance to all of Florida’s state parks will be free the weekend of September 11-13 for visitors who bring a library card, library book, or who donate a new or gently used family-friendly book.

Promoting literacy at Florida’s state parks creates an appreciation for both reading and the environment that visitors can take back to the classroom and community. September’s Literacy Month is the perfect time for all park visitors, including families and schools, to experience resource-based recreation while enhancing the mind through literacy events.

Florida’s state parks, along with local libraries and schools, will host a variety of events during September including book readings, author appearances and book exchanges.

Flag Day

Flag Day, annual observance in the United States to celebrate the national flag. Flag Day is observed on June 14, the anniversary of the official adoption of the American flag by the Continental Congress in 1777. On Flag Day, public buildings and many individuals display the American flag as a gesture of patriotism and national pride. Some schools hold ceremonies and educational programs that promote reverence for the flag.

The first annual celebration of the U.S. flag is believed to have been introduced by Bernard Cigrand, a Wisconsin schoolteacher. In 1885 he arranged for his pupils at Stony Hill School in Waubeka, Wisconsin, to celebrate June 14 as “Flag Birthday.” Over the next several years, Cigrand advocated the observance of Flag Day in numerous speeches and magazine articles.

Flag Day celebrations gained in popularity throughout the late 1880s and the 1890s. George Balch, a kindergarten teacher in New York City, organized Flag Day ceremonies at his school in 1889, inspiring the New York State Board of Education to adopt Flag Day as an annual holiday. In 1891 Flag Day celebrations were held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at the former home of Betsy Ross, the reputed designer of the first American flag. In 1894 the governor of New York ordered that the American flag be displayed at all public buildings in the state on June 14. Thereafter, many state and local governments began observing Flag Day.

President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the first nationwide Flag Day in 1916. In 1947 President Harry S. Truman signed legislation requesting that National Flag Day be observed annually. Although Flag Day is informally observed throughout the United States, it is a legal holiday only in Pennsylvania.

The Great Books Program builds on the renowned Great Books Movement. The Program was founded in 2000 AD to provide opportunities for young Americans high school age and older to participate in the enduring "great conversation" about the most influential ideas contained in Western civilization's best masterpieces of literature, history, philosophy and science. 37 colleges and universities offer great books programs ranging from one to four years.

The Great Books Program is a purely distance education program with only minimal technical support staff needed to assist its professors who moderate our weekly, online, live-audio (i.e., not recorded, no delayed "chat" rooms) classes from their homes or offices around the country. This enables more students to attend and complete these high school/college level courses who would otherwise not be able to do so.

Our method of teaching by conversationally discussing questions and answers in a spirit of mutual inquiry and discovery dates back to Socrates and is at the heart of the Great Books and classical traditions. It leads students to develop and practice the liberal arts of listening, speaking, reading and writing as well as the habits of reflective, critical thinking. In this environment students begin to develop their thoughts and insights with care and confidence and learn how to express those ideas in the naturally delightful and liberating experience of genuine learning. In this way students gain understanding of their own natures and the nature of the world in which we all live. This makes for a better life, a point on which all the sages who wrote the great books agree.

If anyone would like further information on this program then please see David Hopcroft

For more complete information please visit:

http://www.usmemorialday.org/backgrnd.html

Memorial Day, originally called Decoration Day, is a day of remembrance for those who have died in our nation's service. There are many stories as to its actual beginnings, with over two dozen cities and towns laying claim to being the birthplace of Memorial Day. There is also evidence that organized women's groups in the South were decorating graves before the end of the Civil War: a hymn published in 1867, "Kneel Where Our Loves are Sleeping" by Nella L. Sweet carried the dedication "To The Ladies of the South who are Decorating the Graves of the Confederate Dead" (Source: Duke University's Historic American Sheet Music, 1850-1920). While Waterloo N.Y. was officially declared the birthplace of Memorial Day by President Lyndon Johnson in May 1966, it's difficult to prove conclusively the origins of the day. It is more likely that it had many separate beginnings; each of those towns and every planned or spontaneous gathering of people to honor the war dead in the 1860's tapped into the general human need to honor our dead, each contributed honorably to the growing movement that culminated in Gen Logan giving his official proclamation in 1868. It is not important who was the very first, what is important is that Memorial Day was established. Memorial Day is not about division. It is about reconciliation; it is about coming together to honor those who gave their all.

General John A. Logan
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, [LC-B8172- 6403 DLC (b&w film neg.)]

Memorial Day was officially proclaimed on 5 May 1868 by General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, in his General Order No. 11, and was first observed on 30 May 1868, when flowers were placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery. The first state to officially recognize the holiday was New York in 1873. By 1890 it was recognized by all of the northern states. The South refused to acknowledge the day, honoring their dead on separate days until after World War I (when the holiday changed from honoring just those who died fighting in the Civil War to honoring Americans who died fighting in any war). It is now celebrated in almost every State on the last Monday in May (passed by Congress with the National Holiday Act of 1971 (P.L. 90 - 363) to ensure a three day weekend for Federal holidays), though several southern states have an additional separate day for honoring the Confederate war dead: January 19 in Texas, April 26 in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and Mississippi; May 10 in South Carolina; and June 3 (Jefferson Davis' birthday) in Louisiana and Tennessee.

In 1915, inspired by the poem "In Flanders Fields," Moina Michael replied with her own poem:

We cherish too, the Poppy red
That grows on fields where valor led,
It seems to signal to the skies
That blood of heroes never dies.

She then conceived of an idea to wear red poppies on Memorial day in honor of those who died serving the nation during war. She was the first to wear one, and sold poppies to her friends and co-workers with the money going to benefit servicemen in need. Later a Madam Guerin from France was visiting the United States and learned of this new custom started by Ms.Michael and when she returned to France, made artificial red poppies to raise money for war orphaned children and widowed women. This tradition spread to other countries. In 1921, the Franco-American Children's League sold poppies nationally to benefit war orphans of France and Belgium. The League disbanded a year later and Madam Guerin approached the VFW for help. Shortly before Memorial Day in 1922 the VFW became the first veterans' organization to nationally sell poppies. Two years later their "Buddy" Poppy program was selling artificial poppies made by disabled veterans. In 1948 the US Post Office honored Ms Michael for her role in founding the National Poppy movement by issuing a red 3 cent postage stamp with her likeness on it.
Traditional observance of Memorial day has diminished over the years. Many Americans nowadays have forgotten the meaning and traditions of Memorial Day. At many cemeteries, the graves of the fallen are increasingly ignored, neglected. Most people no longer remember the proper flag etiquette for the day. While there are towns and cities that still hold Memorial Day parades, many have not held a parade in decades. Some people think the day is for honoring any and all dead, and not just those fallen in service to our country.

There are a few notable exceptions. Since the late 50's on the Thursday before Memorial Day, the 1,200 soldiers of the 3d U.S. Infantry place small American flags at each of the more than 260,000 gravestones at Arlington National Cemetery. They then patrol 24 hours a day during the weekend to ensure that each flag remains standing. In 1951, the Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts of St. Louis began placing flags on the 150,000 graves at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery as an annual Good Turn, a practice that continues to this day. More recently, beginning in 1998, on the Saturday before the observed day for Memorial Day, the Boys Scouts and Girl Scouts place a candle at each of approximately 15,300 grave sites of soldiers buried at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park on Marye's Heights (the Luminaria Program). And in 2004, Washington D.C. held its first Memorial Day parade in over 60 years.

To help re-educate and remind Americans of the true meaning of Memorial Day, the "National Moment of Remembrance" resolution was passed on Dec 2000 which asks that at 3 p.m. local time, for all Americans "To voluntarily and informally observe in their own way a Moment of remembrance and respect, pausing from whatever they are doing for a moment of silence or listening to 'Taps."

The Moment of Remembrance is a step in the right direction to returning the meaning back to the day. What is needed is a full return to the original day of observance. Set aside one day out of the year for the nation to get together to remember, reflect and honor those who have given their all in service to their country.

But what may be needed to return the solemn, and even sacred, spirit back to Memorial Day is for a return to its traditional day of observance. Many feel that when Congress made the day into a three-day weekend in with the National Holiday Act of 1971, it made it all the easier for people to be distracted from the spirit and meaning of the day. As the VFW stated in its 2002 Memorial Day address: "Changing the date merely to create three-day weekends has undermined the very meaning of the day. No doubt, this has contributed greatly to the general public's nonchalant observance of Memorial Day."

History

The Jacksonville Film Festival was conceived by Joan Monsky and Karen Sadler in the spring of 2002. They assembled a small advisory group of community leaders and arts advocates to create a mission and a template for the event which was ambitiously scheduled for May, 2003.

The Robin Shepherd Group designed the turtle logo and creative graphics, the city and the Times-Union declared their support, Preston Haskell contributed wisdom and encouragement (and more), and Erik Hart offered space and services at the Florida Theatre. Sponsors also took a leap of faith, and volunteers were generous with hours and hours of time and effort. Joan Monsky was elected president and brought in programmers to help guide the artistic vision. After long, arduous planning sessions, the First Annual Jacksonville Film Festival made its successful debut.

The mission of the Festival was threefold: to connect Jacksonville to its early “Hollywood of the South” moviemaking roots, to focus attention on independent film and filmmakers, and to contribute to the revitalization of downtown Jacksonville.

The first film shown at the Festival was The Flying Ace, made in Jacksonville in 1926 by the Norman Studios. It had been recently restored by the Library of Congress Motion Picture Conservation Center and had not been seen in 75-years. It was warmly received at a packed house at the historic Ritz Theatre.The list of independent films that first year was also impressive: Secret Lives of Dentists, Burial Society, Camp, G-Sale, A Decade Under the Influence… and many more.

Six urban venues hosted films, parties and special events including the popular Entertainment Law Panel and Viva Cinema. Downtown was also alive with movie buffs, movie stars and movie guests.

Bill Murray’s appearance highlighted the second year and a film that was previewed – Napoleon Dynamite - was the season’s biggest hit. The world-wide press discovered Jacksonville and its small, fresh, new Festival.

In 2005 – 2006, the Festival became a non-profit corporation, Jacksonville Film Events, Inc. and added new initiatives: Books Alive!, a monthly program in partnership with the Jacksonville Public Library, celebrating family films derived from literature and REEL People, the film festival “fan club” offering year-round screenings of diverse and unique films never before seen in Jacksonville.
In 2007, the Jacksonville Film Festival celebrated its fifth year. The festival has been embraced by the city and is gaining increasing recognition in the Southeast as an important destination for the independent film community. A key to the success has been the festival commitment to offering “Something for Everyone!”

2008 will be known as the year of significant change. Jesse Rodriguez took the helm and along with the board of directors, extended the festival to a full week incorporating programs such as A TASTE OF ASIA, EUROPA EUROPA, HIP HOP FOR THE MASSES, as well as A MOMENT OF SILENCE PLEASE, a film program for the Deaf. The concept for a FILM FESTIVAL VILLAGE was also realized making all of the venues and hotel within walking distance of eachother. Now as an international film festival, over 15 countries will be represented through cinema.

Children’s Book Week

Children’s Book Week is an annual event that began in 1919.

This year it is celebrated on

May 11 – 17 2009

According to the Children’s Book Council

“A celebration of he written word, Children’s Book Week introduces young people to new authors and ideas in schools, libraries, homes and bookstores. Through Children’s Book Week, the Children’s Book Council encourages young people and their caregivers to discover the complexity of the world beyond their own experience through books.”

Origins of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month

A national celebration established in 1977

by Ricco Villanueva Siasoco

May is Asian Pacific American (APA) Heritage Month—a celebration of Asians and Pacific Islanders in the United States. Much like Black History and Women's History celebrations, APA Heritage Month originated in a congressional bill.

Congressional Bills Establish Celebration
In June 1977, Representatives Frank Horton of New York and Norman Y. Mineta of California introduced a House resolution that called upon the president to proclaim the first ten days of May as Asian/Pacific Heritage Week. The following month, senators Daniel Inouye and Spark Matsunaga introduced a similar bill in the Senate. Both were passed.

On October 5, 1978, President Jimmy Carter signed a Joint Resolution designating the annual celebration.

APA Becomes Month-long Celebration

In May 1990, the holiday was expanded further when President George H. W. Bush designated May to be Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. May was chosen to commemorate the immigration of the first Japanese to the United States on May 7, 1843, and to mark the anniversary of the completion of the transcontinental railroad on May 10, 1869. The majority of the workers who laid the tracks were Chinese immigrants.

Asian Pacific American Heritage Month is celebrated with community festivals, government-sponsored activities, and educational activities for students. This year's theme is "Lighting the Past, Present, and Future."