Banned Books Week

We're in the midst of banned books week, sponsored each year by the American Library Association. Read a "banned" book this week! You can choose from many authors -- including Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, DH Lawrence, James Joyce, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, Salinger, Shaw, Twain, Marquez, Faulkner, Hemingway, James Joyce, Jack London, Zora Neale Hurston, Vonnegut, Lewis Carroll, Roald Dahl, Anne Rice, Anne Frank, Thomas Paine, Stephen King, Shakespeare -- the list goes on and on. Most religious texts have been banned somewhere by somebody. Even dictionaries have been banned for containing "dirty" words!

Here are a few well-known titles that have been often banned or "challenged" (in no particular order): To Kill a Mockingbird, Gone With the Wind, Lady Chatterley's Lover, The Lord of the Rings, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Alice in Wonderland, Little Red Riding Hood, The Color Purple, The Bridge to Terabithia, The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, The Great Gatsby, Lolita, The Call of the Wild, As I Lay Dying, Their Eyes Were Watching God, The Invisible Man, Native Son, Slaughterhouse Five, Heart of Darkness, All Quiet on the Western Front, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, All the King's Men, The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, In Cold Blood, Catcher in the Rye, Catch-22, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, 1984, Heart of Darkness, Naked Lunch, Tropic of Cancer, Women in Love, The Decameron (written in the 14th century), Lysistrata (written in ancient Greece), Portnoy's Complaint, Rabbit Run, Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, James and the Giant Peach, In the Night Kitchen, A Wrinkle in Time, The Handmaid's Tale, Henry and June, Ulysses, The Satanic Verses, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Song of Solomon, Beloved, The Bluest Eye, Howl by Allen Ginsberg, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451. If you've never read Fahrenheit 451, it's about burning books. The author, Ray Bradbury, said his novel wasn't about censorship but rather about how television destroys interest in literature, which leads to a perception of knowledge as factoids without context or critical thought. So get off the internet and go read a book!

Now for something completely different

Alright, for those of you who don't share my fascination with mythology and religion...

here is something on a much lighter note. Just for fun. I can't tell if this cat is having fun or not...

The Birthday of Mary

In honor of the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary...

a beautiful holy card from our Victorian Religious Ephemera collection.

In the apocryphal Gospel of James from the 2nd Century AD, the names of Mary's parents are Joachim and Anna. St. Anne is traditionally honored as the mother of Mary (and the grandmother of Jesus). The Feast Day of Mary's birth (exactly nine months after the Immaculate Conception on December 8) probably began in 5th Century Jerusalem and has been widely celebrated since at least the 8th Century. There is also an apocryphal Gospel of the Nativity of Mary, translated from the Hebrew by St. Jerome in the 4th Century, in which an angel visits Anne to tell her of the birth of a daughter, Mary.

Ann (Anna) is the oldest name still used in the west, already an ancient name when used by the Hebrews. It is usually translated as "grace," but the original meaning is something difficult to translate, closer to "goddess." I believe I once read that it is the oldest name ever found for divinity. How appropriate that in Christianity this is the name is given to the grandmother of God.

September 6: The Feast of Artemis

Artemis is known as the Greek goddess of the hunt and the new moon, daughter of Leto and sister of Apollo. She is most likely a very ancient Anatolian goddess, one of the ancient goddesses of the near east much older than the Greek civilization.

She was a virgin goddess ~ which meant she was unmarried, free, untamed, wild ~ whole unto herself. One of her titles was 'many-breasted' because she nurtured animals and humans, and she was the protector of women in childbirth. Although she is usually associated with the new crescent moon, in her more ancient guise she was not only Maiden but also Mother and Crone, associated with all phases of the moon.

Things sacred to Artemis include: animals, especially bears, wolves, deer, dogs, birds and all wild animals; young girls and unmarried women; silver, pearl and moonstone; forests, woodland sanctuaries; artemisia, moneyplant, cypress, cedar, laurel; unplowed fields, blank pages, potential and possibility