Facing a Cover Up

The timing this month seemed perfect.  I turned on CNN and saw a report about the French government having officially enacted a law to ban hiding the face in public. This report grabbed my attention because I had just spent my first of five days touring throughout Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, where many women wear abayas (long black overgarments)  and hijabs (face veils).  Many, but not all who wore abayas, paired it with the hajib, even at the hotel pool and beach area while their children splashed, swam and played in the desert heat. 

The women I saw covered in black shopped, conversed, texted, dined, mothered with ease in this modern emirate. I found myself paying particular attention to how they ate while their faces were covered.  Though it seemed inconvenient to my American sensibilities, the women showed no stress or discomfort - why would they?  It did strike me when I saw a man and woman dining together on a river cruise, he in western dress and she in an abaya and hijab.  She lifted the hijab slightly to put the forkful of food in her mouth and I just felt uneasy for her.  However the unease was my problem - not hers.   I did notice that often it seemed women dressed in this fashion traveled together.  I don't recall seeing an unveiled woman walking with one who was veiled. Unfortunately I did not get to converse with any Arabic women wearing the traditional garb.  

I did, however, pepper two separate and quite affable male tour guides with questions about why women opt for this way of dressing.  Modesty and tradition were the oft repeated answers. Women are free to choose dressing this way. Often I saw very high heels peeking out of the base of some garments and found myself wondering what style clothing was underneath.   I also noted some extravagantly made-up eyes exposed.  One woman appeared to have tiny crystals decorating the trim of her outerwear. (I, along with other women with whom I was travelling, speculated on how close this was to the finale of the "Sex and The City 2" when designer clothes, shoes and jewelry were exposed from underneath the black garments of Abu Dhabi women). Mostly, however, the garments were plain or had very modest trim, if any. 

 So why the fuss in France? Elaine Sciolino of the New York Times notes several explanations in her article, "The French, the Veil and the Look."  Some are cultural but I believe she comes closer to the real reason when she writes one explanation as, "the deep-rooted French fear, resentment and rejection of the “other” — the immigrant, the invader, the potential terrorist or abuser of human rights who eats, drinks, prays and dresses differently, and refuses to assimilate in the French way."   She also clarifies that the face veil is not a burqa, the garment which immediately brings to mind the cruel, oppression of the Taliban in other parts of the world.  "The face-covering veils in France are different. Even though many here mistakenly call it a burqa, the garment worn by women here is a niqab, an improvised cover in black with no religious or traditional significance beyond what a wearer or observer gives it. "   http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/weekinreview/17BURQA.html

My limited exposure to this style of dress did not raise concerns for me until I heard the CNN report regarding France's restrictive law.  Does this law ironically  objectify women by singling them  out for covering their faces? Estimates in France hover around 2,000 in the number of women who choose to wear face veils.  This is in a country of approximately 62 million people.  How is it that a woman in Dubai can dress with a face-veil and be honored and yet, in France she is breaking the law?  The law says it is illegal to hide the face in the public space, but makes exceptions to allow for motorcycle helmets, traditional ceremonies such as weddings or Carnival costumes. The law never mentions "women," "Muslim" or "veil."

Dubai touts itself as a modern emirate but it made me think about my western notions and what is it that makes a nation modern?  A large segment of the female population dresses in abayas.  Some local women choose to wear a head scarf with western style clothing.  Many men wear the traditional dishasha, a white ankle length robe. Tourism, not oil, is the economic engine that drives this current day Dubai. As a female visitor, I was not restricted in my dress, however, the hotel asked guests to use discretion and honor local custom when walking through the lobby and common areas meaning they did not want bathing suit clad guests strolling around the hotel. 

A few days ago I was channel surfing and stumbled upon the 1991 movie "Not Without My Daughter" starring Sally Field.  Based on the experience in the eighties of American Betty Mahmoody, the film dramatically depicts an impossibly oppressive marriage in Iran and a wife's battle to leave with her daughter.  Criticized for making troubling racial and moral assertions in its depiction of Iranians,  the film shows women wearing all black long dresses and head covers.  It melded the disturbing marriage with these images and was one of many influences on our ideas about life in that country.  Through film, news accounts, documentaries, and novels, dynamic and varied depictions are available as to why many Muslim women cover up.  I realized my ideas were being influenced by the broad spectrum of possibilities and it was mostly negative.  This trip began to tip the scales for me.

During an outdoor dinner at a Lebanese restaurant in downtown Dubai on my last evening there, four women in abayas and hijabs sat at the next table enjoying each other's company. While they conversed in Arabic, their actions spoke louder in that it appeared to me these were four friends enjoying a social evening together complete with a table side shisha (a glass based water pipe used for smoking).  I was witnessing the familiar 'girls night out' Dubai style.  I loved the universality of this scene and smiled as I heard the familiar sound of sisterhood. Travel always brings understanding, whether or not we agree with what we see.  I quickly understood that no matter how it looks on the outside, it is vital that we seek the story underneath and settle for nothing less.

Crossed Purposes



Victory Arches sometime in 2004 



Statues. Monuments. Arches.  

Whether made of stone, steel or sand, monuments are erected to honor the good, sometimes the bad, and perhaps the ugly.  To marvel at the ancient wonder of Egypt's pyramids, or perhaps the majestic 19th century L'arc de Triomphe is to witness accomplishment embodied for the ages.  Yet controversy in a recent rebuilding of an overseas monument raises the question of when are symbols worth saving and others worth destroying especially when they have been erected by a despot?  



Victory Arches being restored in 2011. 
Photo: Jehad Nga for The New York Times



The recent reconstruction of an Iraqi monument located on a former Baghdad parade ground inside the Green Zone has draw some quiet attention.  The Victory Arch, (also known as Crossed Swords) erected during Saddam Hussein's regime was built to honor Iraqis who died during the Iran/Iraq war.  Steel shaped hands clutch swords which cross at the tips creating an arch underneath which Hussein rode atop a galloping white stallion after his country proclaimed victory over Iran.   According to a New York Times article,  Hussein ordered the structure to be built "from weapons of fallen Iraqi soldiers."  Conversely, helmets of Iranian soldiers are cemented to the bases of each sword wielding hand symbolically defining the victor and the conquered. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/06/world/middleeast/06iraq.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=victory%20arches&st=cse

While much of the Saddam inspired statuary has been demolished in Iraq, the crossed swords were spared.  They are out of view from most Iraqis because they are located within the Green Zone which continues to be a restricted area.  The parade grounds, according to the Times, have become overgrown and the pommels of the sword bases fallen.  Yet the upcoming summit meeting of Arab League leaders in Baghdad has been the impetus for some in the Iraqi government to spare and repair the Victory Arch. Flowers have been planted across the city where the visiting dignitaries will pass, and even line the road from the airport, once known for being a  "white knuckled gauntlet through insurgent badlands." 

Why, then, does this restoration make me a bit uneasy?  After all, portions of several concentration camps in Germany, Poland and Austria remain standing as distinctive reminders of the Holocaust.  Pieces of the Berlin Wall are displayed around the world as reminders of the post World War II schism in that city. I think I look at the Victory Arch's sword filled hands and can almost imagine the rest of the phantom body symbolically attached to them in subterranean Baghdad threatening to re-emerge, if only figuratively.  Perhaps Saddam's tyranny is still too fresh. The tenuous nature of Iraq's emerging government keeps me leery of this symbol of autocratic rule.

I am reminded, however, that for Iraqis to face the demons which damaged this country and feel strong enough in their own power to retain this symbol of former might, they hold ultimate authority over it.  Colloquially, it could be said restoring the arch lets Iraqis bite the dog that originally bit them.  Split feelings over the arch's restoration naturally emerge in Iraq, from the sculptor who did not want to be quoted in the Times article to various Iraqi lawmakers divided over the over-sized symbol. "We are a civilized people," Ali al-Mousawi, a spokesman for Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki said in the Times article, "and this monument is a part of the memories of this country."

It is, above all, interesting to consider the power of symbols and what might they can lord over us if we allow them to do so.   

(My niece Beth is a US Defense Department analyst who has done two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan.  During her winter/spring 2005 deployment she took some photographs underneath the arch and they show the gargantuan size of the monument.  Below are the photos she graciously shared with me. Note the helmets at the base and the scale of the arch.)

Hello. I'm Listening.

Personal space in public places is a shrinking commodity. 

I understand that the very nature of public spaces makes it difficult to build the case for privacy. And sometimes, while our private bubble seems punctured in the great public arena, we find out more about ourselves as we deal with the world around us. These were my thoughts while taking the train into Philly on Friday night.

As I quickly found my seat on the fairly empty car, I revelled in the one hour I would have to read alone.  The revelling ended by the next stop.  Interpreting the unwritten rules of cell phone etiquette on public transportation is tricky, but I daresay they are stretched unevenly.  I shared a three seat bench with another female passenger, who conducted several phone conversations in full voice.  This could have tainted my one hour of "me" time.  Interestingly, it didn't. The woman spoke an Asian language. (I apologize because I really had no idea which language I was hearing and I immediately wondered about how I could have figured out if she was speaking Chinese, Korean, Japanese etc.)  I did learn some things throughout her multiple, and quite animated conversations.  

First, hearing a language that gives me no cues as to what is being discussed provided unquestioned privacy for the speaker. I kept thinking if she spoke Spanish or French I would have been more distracted because I would have been unwittingly listening for familiar words or parts of words.  (I don't speak either language but studied them years ago.) Hearing a decidedly foreign language created something like white noise for me because the words/phrases/sentences could not distract my reading.  Only when the woman said "Trader Joe's" and "Facebook" did my ears prick up.  Second, hearing a foreign language spoken in rapid-fire progression is brain crushingly incredible.  I could not understand an iota of what was being said, yet the speed at which it was being uttered drew me closer.  What an attractive/repulsive force!

The gentleman two rows behind me conducted his phone conversation in English as he gave every possible location marker he could muster, minus the longitude and latitude, for giving the train's movable whereabouts to whomever he called.  I'd like to invoke the royal "we"  when I say, "we were not amused." His seat partner did ask him to tone it down and, thankfully, he did.  

As I sat in a tire repair station awaiting what turned out to be a lousy diagnosis for my car tire(s) on Saturday, a fellow customer, whose burly, verbose comportment dominated the small space, made multiple lengthy phone calls regarding his situation.  It was 9 AM. His car repairs were leaving him stranded there until noon.  I empathized with his bad news as I tried to read.  He then used his cell phone endlessly to conduct what seemed to be a maintenance business that he managed.  Just as my empathy was melting into irritability, the man ended his final phone conversation by sending a quick kiss into the mouthpiece.  Apparently the "boss" he referenced an interminable number of times over many calls was his wife. He then looked across at our wee community of problem automobile owners and sighed, "My wife; she's the greatest."

Yes, to paraphrase Renee Zellwegar, he had me "the greatest."

Here is what I unearthed from these unwelcome cell phone encounters: 
-I can never have too much patience;
-chances are good that I have committed most cell phone transgressions in public;
-burly guys can have soft dispositions;
-being both a participant in and observer of life serves my blogging efforts.

I chuckled as I remembered watching Kelsey Grammer's psychiatrist character, Frasier, in the same titled TV sitcom, greet his radio show listeners with the endearing phrase, "Hello this is Dr. Frasier Crane and I'm listening."  Sometimes I think his character was only hearing instead of listening and wondered how much of each we do in a day.  

One thing is certain: when speaking on our cell phones in public, someone may be listening, but everyone hears.

Update: Author Ted Gup Discusses "A Secret Gift" at BMFI

Michael Smerconish (l.) interviews Ted Gup at BMFI

Serendipity is a delicious word since it is most often used to describe a delightful and unexpected moment or set of moments.  I enjoyed some serendipity last night.  Bryn Mawr Film Institute was the setting for Michael Smerconish's first installment of his 2011 Book Club and the guest author was Ted Gup.  On November 9, I posted a blog entry (One Good Deed) about the author and his book, "A Secret Gift." To be sitting in a theatre full of book enthusiasts hearing Smerconish interview the author was something just dripping with, well, serendipity. 

Smerconish bubbled with enthusiasm as he introduced the author. He conducted an interview that really allowed Gup to expand on the book and the very personal journey he made to uncover the generosity and fractured beginnings of his maternal grandfather, Sam Stone.

Gup tried to put into context the very real feeling of loss and misery in 1933 when the nation's unemployment rate was 25 percent and, in Canton, Ohio, it soared to 50 percent.  "It is hard to imagine living in an America where there was nothing in place to catch you," Gup remarked. Acknowledging the current difficult economic times, Gup offered a perspective about the psyche of Canton residents which mirrored that of Americans during the Great Depression.  "Entitlement was not in their language let alone in the Federal budget," Gup noted.  "People were raised to believe that resourcefulness and determination would see you through."  They came to discover these attributes were often sadly not enough.  "The quality of human dignity is what defined this generation," Gup stated.  To write letters in reply to an ad offering no-strings attached financial assistance showed the level of need and despair in Canton. 
   

Ted Gup, author of "A Secret Gift"

Being financially crippled by the Depression, Americans dug deep to find ways to support themselves and their families only to find the odds insurmountable.  Understanding hardship firsthand, Gup's grandfather, Sam Stone, anonymously offered the financial help. "Touching those letters and reading their contents, you see there is an inherent eloquence regardless of the writer's place in the world," noted Gup, who heads the Journalism School at Boston's Emerson College. "It is what defined this generation which came of age during the Depression."  Comparing the articulate quality of writing and thoughtful tenor of the letters to current efforts, Gup wryly commented, "you can see the death of grammar today." Gup added that every one of the 150 people who were helped responded with thank you notes shortly after receiving the money.  They often identified specifically how they used the funds with repeated requests to either pay back the gift or imploring the unknown giver to allow them to work in some fashion to compensate one so generous in a very dark time.

Gup spoke with eloquent ease, ever aware of the uncanny nature of how the events unfolded to bring him to this story of generosity.  Gup is a natural storyteller. Gaining further insight into his beloved grandfather's psyche became a poignant result from his research.  Asked why his Orthodox Jewish grandfather would refer to Christmas in his ad as the appropriate time for giving, Gup knowingly replied, "My grandfather was very ecumenical in his beliefs.  Sam was moved by the notion of justice and of giving with no strings attached. The highest form of giving is doing so and wanting nothing back."


In 2010, three Canton residents repeated Sam Stone's generous efforts, using his anonymous name, B. Virdot (an amalgam of his three daughters' names, Betty, Virginia and Dotsie). They pooled  $15,000 of their own money so 150 more families could each receive $100 to help allay today's weighty economic problems.  As news spread of their efforts the total pot of money increased to $52,000; this included a donation of $15,000 from a donor who was a child recipient of Stone's original 1933 gift. Gup acknowledged that generosity is nothing new to Americans and humbly understands Sam's story is but one of innumerous anonymous efforts that occur daily.  Giving voice to Sam's has been "one of the most moving and important things to occur in my life," Gup mused.

I also learned about Gup's life as an investigative reporter. He worked for The Washington Post and New York Times.  His controversial 1992 report on the existence of a large underground bunker created below West Virginia's posh Greenbrier Resort to house US Congress members in the event of nuclear fallout continues to make headlines.  Smerconish ended the evening peppering Gup with questions about the topic, which in no small way intrigues the ebullient talk show host. Here is the link to the Post article. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/local/daily/july/25/brier1.htm

There is nothing more illuminating than hearing an author share their journey, live, about the contents of their novel. It simultaneously humbled and delighted me to connect with Ted Gup.  There is a series of book club events planned in the next months at Bryn Mawr Film Institute (BMFI). http://www.brynmawrfilm.org/ Smerconish's web site lists the dates and scheduled authors with bios.  http://www.smerconish.com/book_club.php
The original letters of request and thank you notes that serve as the basis for "A Secret Gift" are being donated by Gup to a library in Canton Ohio.  Relatives of the letter writers and community members can have access to a painful, yet powerful period in their history, when one man's good deed stretched beyond even his wildest imaginings. 

Here is the link to my original post about "A Secret Gift:" http://asubjectforconsideration.blogspot.com/2010/11/all-for-one.html

The 3 Ps: Pen & Pencil to Paper

CBS Sunday Morning's top feature story today focused on penmanship.  I was delighted about the topic, entertained by the musings of youngsters learning to write in cursive, and a little melancholic about the waning of what I believe is a magnificently primitive art form used every day around the globe. Well, perhaps I am being a little too optimistic about the suggested frequency.  In a world where 294 billion emails and 5 billion text messages are sent daily, (yes you read that correctly - daily) is penmanship teetering on irrelevant?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nONgyP43Lo&hd=1

 Learning to write in cursive is one of those childhood thresholds that looms large.  Forming letters with rounded shapes that perfectly connect to make words is a milestone of early education.  According to the CBS report, penmanship legibility "peaks at about the fourth grade."  Yikes!  It seems as we increase our writing speed, we often do so at the sacrifice of letter clarity.  I learned to write using the Palmer method in parochial school.  Cursive writing was taught, practiced, graded as seriously as any other school subject.  I liked forming letters and having what was often called, "nice handwriting."  I think it is what led me to try calligraphy after graduating from college.

As I noted in my last post (1/14/11) about viewing letters and notes written by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the decline in handwriting is nothing new, but it seems to be happening with little concern. Will children suffer critical thinking skills due to reduced time spent morphing letters into words?  "Probably not," noted Steve Graham, a literacy expert at Vanderbilt University, who was featured in the CBS report.  "You want to be able to make your text legible, and you want to be able to do it quickly, okay? It also can help you learn new words if you trace them or write them out. But if you're asking, 'Does it help you become a better thinker?' there's no evidence that that's the case."

 Naturally, there is disagreement with Mr. Graham's comments by those who assert that penmanship helps stimulate memory and language skills. Mr. Graham is not writing off penmanship altogether, however, he is clear that students are not less served by less time spent on penmanship. As long as there are schools and homes that do not have computers, and as long as paper and pencils are more portable than their larger electronic counterparts, the case for penmanship has staying power.

The question of clarity and quality of handwriting does rise, but not with the stringency I experienced in my grade school education. Handwriting does not have to be beautiful or ornate with multiple flourishes.  I believe it has to be personal and say something about whoever is forming the letters.  I feel connected to the writer when I see his or her handwriting; this results in my saving short notes I receive. It is this very attachment that makes me especially soft on the all too infrequent letter that arrives in the mailbox at the end of my driveway.  The correspondence is the tangible result of someone's hand touching a pen or pencil, which touched the paper, which wound up in my hands.  This physical form, along with its intangible sentiment, softens the sometimes too harsh world.

Listening to Frank Sinatra croon, "I'm gonna sit right down and write myself a letter," I wonder if that is going to be the only way we receive any handwritten correspondence in the all too near future.  Even the ultra smooth, uber cool Old Blue Eyes can't soften that uncanny possibility.

A "Write" of Passage

During an informational tour of Boston University taken by my family a couple of years ago, there was an inevitable stop at the school's library. It was here I first heard of one of the school's more famous alums.  I strayed from the tour to get a closer look at some glass top tables filled with journals, photos, handwritten and typed documents generated by this individual. 

I recall a feeling of peace as I viewed the scribbled notes, lengthy letters, and deliberate imprints made from a long ago manual typewriter. Handwritten documents immediately give off a personal quality that invites you in.  I often feel melancholy over the popular decline in handwritten notes and letters - there is something so identifying and creative about forming letters by one's own hand instead of typing them, as I do here. 

I have dabbled with calligraphy since I was in college.  A course instructor once noted that calligraphers have a love for handwritten alphabets and their work helps restore the art form.  That statement resonated so strongly with me.  I do care about letter formations and how they relate to one another.  It was liberating to hear someone express those thoughts out loud.  I love viewing the work of calligraphers - it is high art made from low forms.  Handwritten notes rank the same for me. They are exquisite because they directly link the author and thoughts in a one-of-a kind manner.  We show more of ourselves when we take pen in hand.

Wistfully viewing the personal papers in the BU library that day, I thought about the cultivated work of the author and momentarily felt connected to it.  The papers were written well before he became a household name. They supplied a sliver of perspective into his thoughts before his world renowned status would emerge.

The items belonged to Dr. Martin Luther King.

Dr. King received his Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1955 from Boston University. Years later, in 1964 between the time when he was nominated and awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace, he contacted BU to donate his papers to the university as a way of protecting and preserving the work done up to that point.  The tumultuous times that surrounded his notoriety foretold the possibility that the papers would not be safe in Dr. King's  care. He had seen enough of the world and how his work resonated with supporters and detractors to know he was a lightening rod for both.

The following You Tube video made by BU briefly provides insight into how catalog of work made it to the school and how the the university makes it available to the public.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yfzvVNajTM

A few months after our initial visit, we returned for a second look at BU.  Coincidentally it was the day the university had a planned celebration to mark the completion of the digitization of Dr. King's work, making access that much easier for those seeking firsthand knowledge of the civil rights leader's early writings.  His sister and only living sibling, Professor Christine King Farris, was honored by the university that day and spoke at the ceremony.  As noted by the university, "Professor Farris’ talk was a moving discussion on the importance of education in the development of her brother’s work and career and an inspirational call to uphold the ideals of social justice and public service. She also spoke on her very personal memories of the King family."

Asked how he wanted to be remembered, it is said Dr. King insisted that no mention of his awards or honors be made at any funeral service for him.  All too soon, in 1968, that request was honored.  Instead, Dr. King was memorialized as a man who helped "feed the hungry, clothe the naked, be right on the [Vietnam] war question, and love and serve humanity".

I was deeply touched to see some of Dr. King's handwritten work.  Even after all that I had read and seen regarding his extraordinarily full, yet brief, thirty-nine year stay in this world, nothing was as powerful as looking at his penmanship and expressions first hand.  He was not perfect.  He just wanted to serve.

Epic Word Choice

Epic.

That is the 2010 People’s Choice word as reported in The Hot Word blog on the dictionary website,  www.dictionary.com  I did not vote for this word – well, truth be told, I did not vote at all. I was a little disappointed with the victorious choice. Hearing or reading about someone having an epic adventure or seeing an epic concert rings with a teenage or twenty-something feel in its current use - sort of a Wayne’s World word. I find I rarely use ‘epic’ which may speak more to the lack of “epic-ness” in my life. 

I am good with it.

I favor synonyms such as colossal, monumental, huge.  Scanning Dictionary.com’s thesaurus I found ginormous to be a synonym for epic.  Who knew that was a real word! It sounds so contrived. And, once again, it seems like a generational adjective – something someone under twenty would say.

Ironically, epic poems are those written in ancient times.  Homer's poems, The Iliad and The Odyssey were written somewhere in the 8th or 9th century BC; Dante's The Divine Comedy, was written in the 1300s.  Epic indeed.

There seems to be little middle ground with epic. 

This got me thinking about words that are used in the extreme, which led me to the announcement that an altered version of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is soon to be released.  The author, Alan Gribben, a professor of English at Auburn University, at Montgomery, Ala., has replaced the word nigger with slave in Twain's novel.

I first find it ironic that just around the time the first volume of Twain’s autobiography is released, (100 years after the author’s death – talk about a farsighted marketing strategy!) another author opts to significantly change Twain’s word choice.  Professor Gribben is not the first, but he is the latest author to tamper with Twain.  There is no middle ground with the word nigger. In a way, it is epic.

In her Salon.com article, “Huckleberry Finn loses the N-Word,” author Mary Elizabeth Williams cites that Twain uses nigger 219 times in his novel.  She writes, “Mark Twain's novel has for years endured an uneasy relationship with the reading lists and libraries of children. Is it a classic work of young adult literature, or a racist tract? Should it be removed from school curricula, pulled from the shelves of libraries? It's one of the most banned books in print.  It's also one of the most beautiful.” http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2011/01/04/huckleberry_finn_cleaned_up

In a recent interview with Publisher's Weekly, Professor Gribben’s apparent intention is “not an effort to render Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn colorblind."  From his office at Auburn University, where he's spent most of the past 20 years heading the English department, Professor Gribben notes that, "Race matters in these books. It's a matter of how you express that in the 21st century."
http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/45645-upcoming-newsouth-huck-finn-eliminates-the-n-word.html

Co-founder Suzanne LaRosa of New South Publishing Company, the publishing house printing this newest version of the text, interestingly notes in the same article that, “he's (Gribben) so compassionate, and so believes in the value of teaching Twain, that he's committed to this major departure. I almost don't want to acknowledge this, but it feels like he's saving the books. His willingness to take this chance—I was very touched."

I am not African American.  Hearing the word nigger is offensive to me nonetheless.  I grew up in a home where it was not part of the vocabulary.  However, I did have relatives who bandied the word about easily.  It was odd to feel the all-encompassing warmth of a dear uncle who also could thoughtlessly and regularly use the word nigger.  It was such a mixed message.  We are complicated beings.

I disagree with Professor Gribben’s choice to update and remove the raw language in Twain’s work.  I don’t appreciate someone playing the self-appointed role of protective parent when it comes to literature.  Why do we run from the complicated, uncomfortable conversation?  Reading the work as intended, and providing age appropriate conversation about racism, slavery, and other issues that arise creates an environment where thoughts are valued and protected – not only words.  I applaud the teacher who takes on this challenge because there is nothing easy about it.  And that is okay.  Discomfort in learning is good.  How else can we possibly nurture critical thinking?

Students learn to discern and come to their own conclusions by hearing discourse all around a subject.  Socrates based his method of discourse and questioning in airing out opinions on a subject and using the conversation as a tool. 

Making pabulum out of literature because it does not seem “current” is dangerous. Altering authorship is wrong.   

In 1907, three years before his death, Mark Twain was no stranger to the uproar his books caused.  Book banning was nothing new in his time.  He chuckled at the uneven ethics taking place when a library would ban his work and keep others.  I think his sharp wit and refusal to take life seriously make the following quote sing.

"But the truth is, that when a library expels a book of mine and leaves an unexpurgated Bible lying around where unprotected youth and age can get hold of it, the deep unconscious irony of it delights me and doesn't anger me."

Letter to Mrs. F.G. Whitmore, February 7, 1907