Today I’m interviewing Minnesota uber librarian, Steve Harsin. He’s fought in the trenches of Book-Banning campaigns since the beginning of his career— and has fascinating observations from what it’s like in the stacks.
Of course, Madonna and ice-fishing figure into it. It’s the Great North after all.
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Weston La Barre, from The Ghost Dance: The Origin of Religion:
“It is astonishing how massive clinical paranoia can be, and yet go unrecognized by the ordinary observer — or even the self-supposed ‘expert’ for that matter. Hence many retrospectively ‘false’ messiahs achieve in their time a cult of weighty cultural proportions.
“At times the paranoiac disrupts history with the violence of a Caesar or a Hitler. More commonly the crisis-cult messiah obtains credence only among the dispossessed and the ignorant, those with insufficient knowledge and ability to manipulate the Great Tradition which throughout remains in power.”
Thanks to poet linguist Dennis Holt for the tip.1
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Talk about Cassandra Revisited — Here’s Bobby Seale speaking in 1972, in Toronto before a VERY consequential American election.
Canadian television didn’t censor him. Seale is prescient on political doublespeak, the racist origins of fascism, and geez… just substitute Palestine for every time he says the word Vietnam.
Ding Dang Dong.
Dennis Holt is an old friend of mine, and my father’s, who puts out a great handmade newsletter every month called “Quincunx”. His poetry, quotations, anthropological insights, and language love are always a welcome visitor! He’ll send you one if you email him at:<dionisio77@yahoo.com>
The Librarian V. The Censorship Brigade