For the past 20 years I have lived in Williamsburg, Virginia, home to Colonial Williamsburg. An excellent time to visit CW (as locals call it) is January and February, especially Super Bowl weekend. It seems that weekend there fewer visitors than any other. The CW interpreters are able to give their few visitors a good deal of attention and take the time to answer questions. I took advantage of the Super Bowl weekend lull to spend a day in CW. In one building I an another visitor enjoyed a leisurely, private presentation.

In the course of the day I became reacquainted with the Bill of Rights and the Constitution of Virginia, adopted in Williamsburg June 12, 1776 and June 29, 1776 respectively. That Bill of Rights, a powerful precursor to the U.S. Bill of Rights, articulated our valued, deeply held intellectual freedom principles. Its 12th item states:

That the freedom of the press is one of the great bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic governments.

And its 16th and last states, in part:

That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence, and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience…

Just as New Yorkers proverbially take the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island for granted and neglect the opportunity to visit them and learn, Williamsburg residents take CW for granted and neglect the opportunity to visit and learn. It is good to be reminded of the provenance of our ideas, especially when they lie so close by.

The August 1 Chronicle of Higher Education reported that “Cambridge University Press announced this week that it would pulp all unsold copies of the 2006 book Alms for Jihad: Charity and Terrorism in the Islamic World, in response to a libel claim filed in England by Khalid bin Mahfouz, a Saudi banker. The book suggests that businesses and charities associated with Mr. Mahfouz financed terrorism in Sudan and elsewhere during the 1990s.” CUP also “also promised to contact university libraries worldwide and ask them to remove the book from their shelves.”

OCLC shows that approximately 325 libraries report owning a copy of the book. OCLC also includes records for electronic versions from Overdrive and NetLibrary. One wonders how successful CUP's recall effort will be and hopes it will be an abysmal failure. This incident hasn't generated so much interest that copies are being offered for sale on eBay.

Early today I finished reading Susan Patron's The Higher Power of Lucky (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2006), Newbery Award winner and the center of a silly controversy–so silly and so well known that I won't rehash it here. Lucky is a 10-year-old girl who shows curiosity, imagination, grit, pluck, vulnerability, and love. Her life in Hard Pan, population 43, in the California desert may seem small compared to the life of an urban child her age, but Lucky doesn't see it that way. In a town with a Cannery Row sort of cast of characters Lucky appreciates each one's quirks while oblivious to her own. She always, but always carries her survival backpack. This would seem odd if she had not lost her mother two years earlier when her mother stepped on a downed power line and was electrocuted and if her father's only contact with her since her birth has been through paltry monthly support checks. She has good reason to feel threatened by the world.

Suffice it to say that this subtly plotted book whose characters win our sympathy is indeed worthy of the Newbery. After reading it one thinks only of them, not of a word that some–many of whom have probably not read the book–have erroneously made the book's focal point. I recommend you read it. You can't help but enjoy it.

Wednesday afternoon in Westwood Village near the UCLA campus I picked up a copy of The Onion, that delightful satirical newspaper founded in Madison, Wisconsin nearly twenty years ago. A headline on the front page grabbed my attention: “Child-Safety Experts Call For Restrictions On Childhood Imagination.”

I immediately connected this to the scorched earth legislative proposals intended to protect children from Internet predators by radically restricting youngsters' access to social networking Web sites. Stifling creative young imaginations isn't the intent of these laws, but that would be their collateral damage to kids. This tongue-in-cheek Onion article advises parents to educate their children about the hazards of exercising their young imaginations. So, like the best satire, it offers a kernel of truth. The danger is not in the childrens' imaginations but in the twisted misrepresentations of online predators. And that is something parents should educate their children about.

And speaking of protecting children from their imaginations–nothing can stimulate anyone's imagination, regardless of age, as much as a good book. Maybe that is the real motive behind the controversy about Susan Patron's Newbery Award-winning book, The Higher Power of Lucky. Perhaps concern expressed about the presence of the word “scrotum” in the book is merely a fig leaf covering its critics' true concern. If they can keep the book out of kids' hands, the book cannot stimulate kids' imaginations. So, if the kids hear about the controversy, that will stimulate their imaginations and curiosity about “that word,” a word that to Lucky, the book's young main character, sounds “like something green that comes up when you have the flu and cough too much.” Wouldn't it be fascinating to find out what it sounds like to kids who don't have the opportunity to enjoy the book? Lucky herself “could never ask about the story of Roy, since she had overheard it. If she asked about Roy, then he [Short Sammy] would know she had been eavesdropping at the anonymous twelve-step meetings” alcoholics, gamblers, overeaters, and smokers held on different days on the patio of the Found Object and Wind Chime Museum and Visitor Center in Hard Pan, California. Surely some kids have overheard adults discussing the controversy and heard “that word” said in a way that has inspired them to come up with their own ideas about what it means. But were they to ask what the word means, they would out themselves as eavesdroppers.

Hard Pan's Found Object and Wind Chime Museum and Visitor Center, mentioned in the book's second sentence, should be enough to stimulate any reader's imagination and make him/her eager to read on. Of course, then the reader will encounter “that word” in the second paragraph and would want to read on to find out how Roy, Short Sammy's dog, fared after being bitten by a snake. (Roy vanquishes the attacker and Short Sammy's wife gets him to the vet in time to save him.) The Onion may be on to something–maybe childhood imagination can be dangerous!

I have read only the first chapter of The Higher Power of Lucky and am looking forward to getting to know Lucky, the colorful characters of Hard Pan, why Lucky has a French guardian named Brigette, and more.

American Libraries Online reported on Wednesday, February 21:

Hasan Elahi, a professor in the Department of Visual Art at Rutgers University, recently visited the University of Richmond and gave a fascinating, thought-provoking presentation. As his academic affiliation suggests, he is a visual artist. But he is also a performance artist. And, one can say, he has transformed his life into an unfolding serial work of art.

Like any complex work of art, I don't know what to make of Elahi's media ankle bracelet. I know I am not ready to join him in shackling myself in that way. Nor am I sure about what it all means other than that it is a needed and brave protest against groundless suspicion and intrusiveness by government.

This morning the Chronicle of Higher Education's educational technology blog, The Wired Campus, reports that China has stopped blocking access to the Chinese-language Wikipedia. This could be an interesting test of its open editing model. Will government employees go in and edit articles to reflect the government's interpretation of events, movements, individuals, and ideas? If so, will others edit those? If this scenario plays out, will all of the editors do their work anonymously? This could be an interesting test of the theory that the knowledge and wisdom of the many will present human knowledge accurately and completely.

The Campaign for Reader Privacy has made available a streaming audio file of the September 28 National Press Club program that included Barbara Bailey, George Christian, Peter Chase, and Janet Nocek, the four “John Doe” librarians from Connecticut. They took a valiant stand for the freedom to read and they prevailed!

Protecting Privacy, Challenging Secrecy, and Standing Up for the First Amendment

In the face of a government increasingly intruding into our private lives while it hides its own actions behind a veil of secrecy, courageous individuals are taking a stand. Come and hear some of their stories!

WHAT: Forum on Protecting Privacy, Challenging Secrecy, and Standing Up for the First Amendment

WHO: ABC News Reporters Brian Ross, Richard Esposito, Journalist/Author Mark Feldstein, New York Times reporter James Risen, John Doe Connecticut Librarians

WHERE: The National Press Club First Amendment Lounge 529 14th Street, NW Washington, DC

WHEN: Thursday, September 28, 200612:00 p.m-2:00 p.m.

The Campaign for Reader Privacy–a joint initiative of The American Library Association, the American Booksellers Association, the Association of American Publishers, and PEN American–presents this program in celebration of the 25th observance of Banned Books Week, an annual reminder that we can never take our freedom to read for granted.