Author: kathie

Wasilla, Alaska Library Banned Book List (Librarian Refused)

This information is taken from the official minutes of the Wasilla Library Board.
When the librarian refused to ban the books, Palin tried to get her fired.

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle favorite author
Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner I had to read this in high school, Falkner was praised for doing something we weren’t allowed to do, I think it was run-on sentences or maybe incomplete sentences.  That must be what gets this book on these lists.
Blubber by Judy Blume standard tween fare I’m suprised “Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret” isn’t here.
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley frequently required reading
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson  Didn’t Disney make this into a movie?
Canterbury Tales by Chaucer again had to read it at at school
Carrie by Stephen King
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller  Had to read it at school until it got repetitive and professor let us watch the movie “Dr Strangelove” to get the gist so we could move on to the rest our syllabus
Christine by Stephen King
Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Cujo by Stephen King
Curses, Hexes, and Spells by Daniel Cohen
Daddy’s Roommate by Michael Willhoite
Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck required reading in many English classes
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller AMERICAN CLASSIC
Decameron by Boccaccio
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Fallen Angels by Walter Myers
Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure) by John Cleland
Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Forever by Judy Blume  you didn’t need to read the whole book, the page number where they had sex was marked on the copy of the book that was passed around my 8th grade
Grendel by John Champlin Gardner
Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam This is a picture book!
 Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling  can you imagine telling kids you don’t have these books in your library?!
Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
 Have to Go by Robert Munsch  THIS IS A POTTY TRAINING BOOK!!!!
Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell a chapter book for 7 to 10 year olds
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain always a classic always on the list, required reading
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Impressions edited by Jack Booth
In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak IT’S A PICTURE BOOK!
It’s Okay if You Don’t Love Me by Norma Klein
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl I LOVE THIS BOOK!
Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman Whaaaa???
Little Red Riding Hood by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm Whaaaa?
Lord of the Flies by William Golding frequently required reading
Love is One of the Choices by Norma Klein
Lysistrata by Aristophanes again required reading…
More Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
My Brother Sam Is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
My House by Nikki Giovanni
My Friend Flicka by Mary O’Hara it’s a kid and a horse!
Night Chills by Dean Koontz
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
One Day in The Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez  “a literary conceit, to wit: that it is vitally important for people to remember their history, otherwise they will suffer for it.” 
Ordinary People by Judith Guest
Our Bodies, Ourselves by Boston Women’s Health Collective maybe if Bristol had read this…
Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy Isn’t this just a beach read?
Revolting Rhymes by Roald Dahl !
Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones by Alvin Schwartz
Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
Separate Peace by John Knowles required reading
Silas Marner by George Eliot
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain required reading
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain Classic
The Bastard by John Jakes
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger  Classic, frequently required coming of age reading
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
The Color Purple by Alice Walker  Hello!?
The Devil’s Alternative by Frederick Forsyth
The Figure in the Shadows by John Bellairs
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck required reading
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson one of the best children’s novelists working today
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Snyder
The Learning Tree by Gordon Parks
The Living Bible by William C. Bower Whaaaa?
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare Huh???
The New Teenage Body Book by Kathy McCoy and Charles Wibbelsman Bristol Palin maybe coulda’ used
The Pigman by Paul Zindel required reading when I was in 8th grade
The Seduction of Peter S. by Lawrence Sanders
The Shining by Stephen King
The Witches by Roald Dahl again a favorite children’s author
The Witches of Worm by Zilpha Snyder
Then Again, Maybe I Won’t by Judy Blume favorite upper grade and middle school author
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee classic required reading
Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare don’t get it
Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary by the Merriam-Webster Editorial Staff If I remember correctly this is the only dictionary in which you can look up the word “F#*K” Remember when you didn’t really know exactly what this word meant and how hard it was to find out?
Witches, Pumpkins, and Grinning Ghosts: The Story of the Halloween Symbols by Edna Barth one of a series of books for early grades about holidays

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First Team Sports Blow

I’m afraid I made a parenting error.

Every year I ask My Kid if she wants to play soccer and every year she says “no”.

But, this year she said “yes” because we thought she could play with her friends.

At the end of the last school year, I was talking on the playground with the mothers of two of My Kid’s best friends in her class. Their girls were on the same soccer team and really enjoyed it. My Kid was interested in playing soccer with her friends. So I paid my money and I signed my kid up and I requested that she be with her two friends. Their mothers they signed up their girls and each requested the other two.

Well, we’ve gotten the team rosters and none of our girls are on the same team.

I think the family with the dad who volunteered isn’t even assigned to his own kid’s team. Now I understand the concept of not coaching your own that in theory, but I don’t see how that is going to work in logistical family Saturday morning get out of the house reality if the dad and the son and the daughter are all on separate teams with separate schedules.

I don’t know. I’m disappointed for my kid. But, I’ll keep my mouth shut and see how it plays out. Maybe she will be fine. Maybe she knows some of the kids I don’t know.

But, as a family unaccustomed to being dressed at 8:00 am on a Saturday, much less outside and ready for athletic activity halfway across town. This does not bode well.

Nailing Jello to A Tree

Here’s the postcard for our show:

nailingjello1of2.png

nailingjello2of2.png

2008 New York Clown
Theatre Festival Cabaret
Thursday September 11, 10:30 p.m.
Brick Theater, 575 Metropolitan Avenue
Williamsburg, BKLYN (info@bricktheater.com)
(L to Lorimer G to Metropolitan)

Without a shop…

Today Lorraine is building the shadow puppet frame.

We just got back from the hardware store where Lorraine had planned to have them cut the wood she selected her, but it was $2 a cut, and she needed about four cuts so it would have cost more than the lumber which was only about $3. It’s New York City and we live in an apartment so we’re being nickel and dimed to death.

Lorraine is down on the front stoop right now with My Kid watching her cut the wood. She has her own tools, but we don’t have space. Thank goodness it’s not raining.

It would be so much easier if we lived in a whole house somewhere like my home town where my father and brother both have houses with full basements and shops with table saws. The Husband is not the only person in this family who would enjoy a shop in the basement.

But, if we lived in a whole house somewhere I wouldn’t be able to get myself safely to a theatre space in Williamsburg to perform in a late night cabaret and then get home in time to sleep a few hours before getting My Kid off to school.

After rehearsal

I’m starving and exhausted.
We had a little production meeting, the two of us, while walking home from the studio. We’ve got a 2 hour rehearsal tomorrow and a 4 hour rehearsal on Wednesday and 2 final hours for our “dress rehearsal” on Thursday when we also expect to have our tech at the theatre. That’s going to be a long day: rehearsal in the studio at 10:00 am and a performance in the theatre at 10:30 pm. I need to make sure that I eat breakfast and all those other meals and get enough sleep or I’m going to make myself sick. I just remembered a meeting I have on Wednesday morning at 9:00 am and there are all the after school pick-ups at 3:00pm every day. The school day is not very long. I really only have 6 hours to deal with each that I can fill with rehearsals, and music, and costumes, and writing (which I usually have to do after 11:00pm which is why it often doesn’t get finished (I’ve got 40 unfinished drafts in my queue). Lorraine is the puppeteer. She’s taking care of the props.

Falling Behind

I am exhausted and completely frustrated and my head hurts from clenching my jaw because My Kid did not go to school today. The lines were drawn and I lost the battle. She stayed up too late after we got home from the barbecue in New Jersey and I don’t know what happened but she was dressed and we got as far as the front door of our building where we then spent about 45 minutes of me being patient and using all my parenting skills not wring her neck.

When I finally told her through my clenched teeth that I was all out of patience, she sobbed; “You’re only out of patience, but I’ve got nothing!”

It’s not like she’s a toddler. I can’t pick her up and strap her in a stroller and take her anywhere I want. We don’t live in the suburbs or a small town, I can’t lock the door behind her so she can’t get back in the house has to make her way to school by herself. I don’t have a car I can force her into and let her cry it out on the way to school. Life is lived publicly and politically in New York City.

I gave her the choice of going back upstairs going back to bed and having a sick day with NO TV AT ALL or going to school. At this point she was going to be so late, a visit to the office would be required before going into her classroom and all the other little kids would be asking where she was, why was she late. Eventually Lorraine (who used to teach) came down and talked to her and we started towards Brooklyn Heights but first she was going to go with us to the bank. After that she said she didn’t want to go to school and I let her win, because I only have so much time before the performance on Thursday. So we’re on the way to the studio and she is coming with us.

Aghhh!

I have finally confirmed and made all the phone calls including to the school office regarding the neighbor who will pick up my kid along with hers after school so I can be in rehearsal in a studio for maybe 2 hours if I’m lucky.

The Summer is Over and I am Overwhelmed with Guilt

Yesterday, all the places I didn’t take my child, all the time we didn’t spend going to the beach or making art together… All that time I spent acting like a frazzled distracted mom and not at all like an enthusiastic 19-year-old camp counselor. (Who am I kidding, we remember those camp counselors–so distracted by the 19-year-old boys they barely knew which kids they were watching.)

I’m really only talking about the last 2 weeks and how we have not done as much as I had hoped, (But we did go to Fire Island, and we did go to Coney Island to see a Cyclone’s game, and we did paint some pictures…) holding out hope until the end, until the very last day of summer vacation that we would get to all those things, even though, as we may recall I looked at the calendar right after school got out in June and knew we wouldn’t get through all our Mommy Camp plans.

The things we did together… Well, summer is over now. It wasn’t enough!

from someone i’m connected to;

Dear classmates –
>
> As an Alaskan, I am writing to give all of you some information on
> Sarah Palin, Senator McCain’s choice for VP. As an Alaska voter, I
> know more than most of you about her and, frankly, I am horrified that
> he picked her.
>
> The most accurate description of her is red neck. Her husband works in
> the oil fields of Prudhoe Bay and races snow mobiles. She is a life
> time member of the NRA and has worked tirelessly to allow
> indiscriminate hunting of wildlife in Alaska, particularly wolves and
> bears. She has spent millions of Alaska state dollars on aerial
> hunting of these predators from helicopters and airplanes, dollars
> that should have been spent, for example, on Alaska’s failing school
> system.We have the lowest rate of high school graduation in the
> country. Not all of you may think aerial predator hunting is so bad,
> but how anyone (other than Alaska wolf-haters, of which there are
> many, most without teeth), could think this use of funds is
> appropriate is beyond me. If you want to know more about the aerial
> hunting travesty, let me know and I will send some links to
> informative web sites.
>
> She has been a strong supporter of increased use of fossil fuels, yet
> the McCain campaign has the nerve to say she has “green”
policies. The
> only thing green about Sarah Palin is her lack of experience. She has
> consistently supported drilling in ANWR, use of coal-burning power
> plants (as I write this, a new coal plant is being built in her home
> town of Wasilla), strip mining, and almost anything else that will
> unnecessarily exploit the diminishing resources of Alaska and destroy
> its environment.
>
> Prior to her one year as governor of Alaska, she was mayor of Wasilla,
> a small red neck town outside Anchorage.The average maximum education
> level of parents of junior high school kids in Wasilla is 10th grade.
> Unfortunately, I have to go to Wasilla every week to get groceries and
> other supplies, so I have continual contact with the people who put
> Palin in office in the first place. I know what I’m talking about.
> These people don’t have a concept of the world around them or of the
> serious issues facing the US. Furthermore, they don’t care. So long as
> they can go out and hunt their moose every fall, kill wolves and bears
> and drive their snow mobiles and ATVs through every corner of the
> wilderness, they’re happy. I wish I were exaggerating.
>
> Sarah Palin is currently involved in a political corruption scandal.
> She fired an individual in law enforcement here because she didn’t
> like how he treated one of her relatives during a divorce. The man’s
> performance and ability weren’t considered; it was a totally personal
> firing and is currently under investigation. While the issue isn’t
> close to the scandal of Ted Steven’s corruption, it shows that Palin
> isn’t “squeaky clean” and causes me to think there ay be
more issues
> that could come to light. Clearly McCain doesn’t care.
>
> When you line Palin up with Biden, the comparison would be laughable
> if it weren’t so serious. Sarah Palin knows nothing of economics
> (admittedly a weak area for McCain), or of international affairs,
> knows nothing of national government, Social Security, unemployment,
> health care systems – you name it. The idea of her meeting with heads
> of foreign governments around the world truly frightens me.
>
> In an increasingly dangerous world, with the economy in shambles in
> the US, Sarah Palin is uniquely UNqualified to be vice president. John
> McCain is not a young man. Should something happen to him such that
> the vice president had to step in, it would destroy our country and
> possibly the world to have someone as inexperienced and inappropriate
> as Sarah Palin. The choice of Palin is a cheap shot by McCain to try
> to get Hillary supporters to vote for him. when McCain introduced her
> today, Palin had the nerve to compare herself with Hillary and
> Geraldine Ferraro. Sarah Palin, you are no Hillary Clinton.
>
> To those of you who, like me, supported Hilary and were upset that she
> did not get the nomination, please don’t think that Sarah Palin is a
> worthy substitute. If you supported Hillary, regardless of what you
> think the media and the democratic party may have done to undermine
> her campaign, the person to support now is Obama, not Sarah Palin. To
> those of you who are independent or undecided, don’t let the choice of
> Palin sway you in favor of McCain. Choosing her shows how unqualified
> McCain is to be president. To those of you who are conservative, I
> guess you have no choice for president. But please try to see how the
> poor choice of Palin tells us a great deal about McCain’s judgment.
> While the political posturing inherent in the choice of Palin is
> obvious, the more serious issue is the fact that the VP is, literally,
> a heartbeat away from the presidency. Sarah Palin is totally and
> unequivocally unqualified to be vice president, let alone president.
>
> I know this is a lengthy and emotional email, but the stakes are high.
> I thought it might help for all of you, regardless of political
> affiliation, to know something about Palin from someone who has to
> live with her administration in Alaska on a daily basis.

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