UNMENTIONABLE

HAVE YOU WONDERED ABOUT THE BOOK MARKET RECENTLY?

I’m not privy to the entire story, only my part. There must be several different things going on. I can talk about what I know. Bookstores are happy to publish news stories on self-published books because it’s good for their business; because the local library refuses to add them to their collecttion.

I can empathize with the flood of local authors’ donations (much of it admitted crap) and their (our) expectations for sharing with the public via our local library. When I donated my book Fallout, A Survivor talks to Incest Offenders to a library staff member she said thank you and I discovered it went directly into our Saturday Library Sale. Thinking that I had not made myself clear, I submitted another copy for the library stacks to another library staff member. I never checked into it further, believing it had been made available in the stacks.

Later I discovered that Picking Fleas, Writers Grooming Writers, a 299-page book by the library’s writing group in 2002 and whose proceeds went to Friends of the Library itself, was not available in the stacks. When I asked, first it was that books without flat bindings carrying title and author info could not easily be displayed. Over the years (since at least 20 years ago), self-published books are assumed to be inferior.

I think I understand the problem. Local “authors” of self-published books include some doozies that would diminish respect for the library’s holdings. So a broad spectrum of the public might be alienated, while a much smaller untamed slice of self-published authors might be gratified. Drawing up guidelines for what’s acceptable would be setting such a big fracas in the face of the world’s other causes so as not to be worth it.

So why did I happen to blab about it here? Because I’m a stickler for hidden truth, I guess.

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After decades of efforts to change a provision of state law shielding people who rape their spouses from prosecution, the Ohio Senate has voted unanimously to remove that loophole. Sen. Stephanie Kunze (R-Hilliard) said the gap in the law has suggested that either spousal rape isn’t taken as seriously as other sexual violence or that it doesn’t ever happen. “This is especially concerning, as a spouse should be the most trusted person in a marriage,” Kunze said on the Senate floor. “And it is even more egregious to think that in our state in 2024, it is lawful to to rape your spouse.” The only “no” vote was from Rep. Bill Dean (R-Xenia). https://www.statenews.org/people/karen-kasler.

According to Google, Dean is married.

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UNITED METHODIST CHURCH REVERSES BAN ON GAY CLERGY

In a meeting on Wednesday, church leaders also voted to allow L.G.B.T.Q. weddings. __n.y.times

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Quote for the Day:

As Robert Morgenthau, a former Manhattan district attorney, liked to say, “You cannot prosecute crime in the streets

without prosecuting crime in the suites.”

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REFLECTIONS

Inside, nestled into a corner of the brain, lies a chapel tucked away just in case we need it. Tear ducts have been installed for weeping. We have fingers for painting and sometimes pointing. When ecstasy or glee overtakes us, we are provided outlets for dancing or singing. On those long dark days of need, there is our inner chapel, the God gene. “You wish!”

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SERENDIPITY AND SYNCHRONICITY

Since I was alerted to something by Word Press (Maybe my pages were all going Private), I read through to see what we would be missing, and was reminded of my first recorded: