Ellen Kolb

Open Book: choice nonfiction and some NH history

The first Wednesday of each month brings #OpenBook, a blog linkup co-hosted by My Scribbler’s Heart and CatholicMom.com with a roundup of what participating bloggers have been reading lately.

Theodore Rex was as good as its early chapters promised. I’m impatiently waiting for a copy of Colonel Roosevelt, volume three of this Theodore Roosevelt biography written by Edmund Morris.

I’m fortunate to live only a few minutes away from the offices of Sophia Institute Press, with its extensive catalog of Catholic books. One of their titles recently caught my eye: Christianity, Democracy, and the American Ideal – a particularly timely topic. I’ll be reading it through most of this month, resolutely ignoring as many political-campaign phone calls as possible. (Are voters in every state assaulted with so many calls? New Hampshire only has four electoral votes. Lord have mercy on the bigger swing states.) The book is a selection of writings by Jacques Maritain, edited by James P. Kelly III, exploring the theme of how Christianity and responsible citizenship go together. This is a welcome subject to me, in the age of personally-opposed-but.

Stark Decency deserves greater fame. New Hampshire readers like me can find it in any local bookstore or library shelf, while the rest of you must trust to online sources. Allen V. Koop’s book about a World War II prison camp in New Hampshire reveals a bit of American history little-known outside my Granite State. In 1944, German POWs were sent to the small upstate town of Stark to cut pulpwood for a local paper mill that faced wartime production demands.In an unlikely place and an unlikely situation, friendships developed between some prisoners and guards, and later between prisoners and townspeople. Koop sets out the story in just over 120 pages, ending with an account of a 1986 reunion at which five former POWs returned to Stark for a celebration of friendship and peace. “Camp Stark did more for people and peace than for pulpwood,” he notes. I love the book’s calm and undramatic style, which suits the story.

While motoring in the north country on New Hampshire highway 110, I once came across the state’s historical marker describing the camp. I’m glad the marker is there, and I’m glad Allen V. Koop wrote the story of what’s behind it.

stark-pow-camp — Marker in Stark, New Hampshire. Photo by Ellen Kolb.

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Savoring, as St. John Paul advised

A friend and I recently drove upstate on business. We stretched the drive home into a winding trip through two notches (local parlance for a mountain pass) before finally settling down to I-93. After all, it was early autumn. Even if the leaves weren’t turning yet, the crisp air was worth taking time to enjoy.

There were things waiting to be done at home. My friend and I had every reason to scoot back at top speed once the business meeting was over. We decided instead to savor the mountains as best we could from the car. We are both of a political bent, and this is the high season for that. All the more a treat, then, to decide on the spur of the moment to put busy-ness and campaigns aside for a few hours.

At home later, I found these words from Pope St. John Paul II. They fit the day. John Paul understood savoring the right things.

Whoever really wants to find himself, must learn to savor nature whose charm is intimately linked with the silence of contemplation. The rhythms of creation are so many paths of extraordinary beauty along which the sensitive and believing heart easily catches the echo of the mysterious, loftier beauty that is God Himself, the Creator, the source and life of all reality.

Banned Books Week: thanks, but I’ll pass

It’s “Banned Books Week.” The American Library Association rolls out this observance every year to “highlight…the value of free and open access to information” and “draw… national attention to the harms of censorship.” As an American who prizes the First Amendment and who writes and reads what she pleases, I suppose I should be all in with the ALA on this. Something here doesn’t pass the sniff test, though.

I’m not all in, for the simple reason that the ALA conflates the banning of books with the challenging of books.

A government or school agency that prohibits the publication or ownership of a book, and is willing to back up the prohibition with threats of fines or loss of liberty, is in the banning business. Rights of publishers, owners, and readers are denied outright in such a situation.

On the other hand, my right to read isn’t undermined if someone objects to an item on my public library’s shelf. The rights of the kids in my neighborhood aren’t affected if someone challenges the inclusion of one book or another in the local public school’s curriculum. The challengers in those cases aren’t banning a book any more than the people who chose the book for the curriculum or library in the first place were banning alternatives.

Such challenges might annoy me or amuse me or trigger an eye-roll. What they don’t do is amount to a ban. And that is apparently where I part ways with the estimable folk at the ALA with whom I share deep respect for literacy and the freedom to read.

Something else I respect is the power to question authority, including authorities who select media for libraries and schools. Why this book? Why not that one? What are you teaching? To whom are you offering or denying a platform?

A community might be discomfited when a book is challenged. Better the challenge, though, than unquestioning acceptance of what the professionals decide ought to be on our school and library shelves.

Yes, people of all ages have a right to read. They also have a right to know that questioning authority does not amount to censorship.