The privacy of book shelves

I have nothing to hide, I lead a quiet law abiding life. If anyone wants to know what is on my book shelf, they can just ask, but to sneak around to find out what others are reading seems like the actions of a dictatorship, not a democracy.
Freedom of speech and thought are everything in the book world, and it saddens me this was attempted.
I may not agree with what a person reads, but I fully support their right to do so…there must be other ways to track down those with evil intent. Also, who defines what would be considered a dangerous book?
All books are inherently dangerous to some view, doctrine, value system…so where would you draw that imaginary line, and how would you know you crossed it?
So I shall continue to read what my heart leads me to, and hope others follow. Those with nefarious goals never succeed in the end anyway.

The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing- Edmund Burke.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20071127/D8T68B4O1.html
MADISON, Wis. (AP) - Federal prosecutors have withdrawn a subpoena seeking the identities of thousands of people who bought used books through online retailer Amazon.com Inc. , newly unsealed court records show.

The withdrawal came after a judge ruled the customers have a First Amendment right to keep their reading habits from the government.

“The (subpoena’s) chilling effect on expressive e-commerce would frost keyboards across America,” U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephen Crocker wrote in a June ruling.

“Well-founded or not, rumors of an Orwellian federal criminal investigation into the reading habits of Amazon’s customers could frighten countless potential customers into canceling planned online book purchases,” the judge wrote in a ruling he unsealed last week.

Seattle-based Amazon said in court documents it hopes Crocker’s decision will make it more difficult for prosecutors to obtain records involving book purchases. Assistant U.S. Attorney John Vaudreuil said Tuesday he doubted the ruling would hamper legitimate investigations.

Crocker - who unsealed documents detailing the showdown against prosecutors’ wishes - said he believed prosecutors were seeking the information for a legitimate purpose. But he said First Amendment concerns were justified and outweighed the subpoena’s law enforcement purpose.

“The subpoena is troubling because it permits the government to peek into the reading habits of specific individuals without their knowledge or permission,” Crocker wrote. “It is an unsettling and un-American scenario to envision federal agents nosing through the reading lists of law-abiding citizens while hunting for evidence against somebody else.”

Federal prosecutors issued the subpoena last year as part of a grand jury investigation into a former Madison official who was a prolific seller of used books on Amazon.com. They were looking for buyers who could be witnesses in the case.

The official, Robert D’Angelo, was indicted last month on fraud, money laundering and tax evasion charges. Prosecutors said he ran a used book business out of his city office and did not report the income. He has pleaded not guilty.

D’Angelo sold books through the Amazon Marketplace feature, and buyers paid Amazon, which took a commission.

“We didn’t care about the content of what anybody read. We just wanted to know what these business transactions were,” prosecutor Vaudreuil said Tuesday. “These were simply business records we were seeking to prove the case of fraud and tax crimes against Mr. D’Angelo.”

The initial subpoena sought records of 24,000 transactions dating back to 1999. The company turned over many records but refused to identify the book buyers, citing their First Amendment right to keep their reading choices private.

Prosecutors later narrowed the subpoena, asking the company to identify a sample of 120 customers.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Graber dismissed First Amendment concerns in an April letter to the company. He said D’Angelo - not Amazon - was the seller and prosecutors needed proof he sold books online.

Crocker brokered a compromise in which the company would send a letter to the 24,000 customers describing the investigation and asking them to voluntarily contact prosecutors if they were interested in testifying.

Prosecutors said they obtained the customer information they needed from one of D’Angelo’s computers they seized early in the investigation. Vaudreuil said computer analysts initially failed to recover the information.

Still, Crocker scolded prosecutors in July for not looking for alternatives earlier.

“If the government had been more diligent in looking for workarounds instead of baring its teeth when Amazon balked, it’s probable that this entire First Amendment showdown could have been avoided,” he wrote.

The company asked Crocker to unseal the records after D’Angelo was indicted last month. Crocker granted the request over the objections of federal prosecutors, who wanted them kept secret.

“Shining some sunlight on the instant dispute reassures the public that someone is watching the watchers, and that this district’s federal prosecutors are part of the solution, not part of the problem,” he wrote.

I dream utopian dreams

I don’t understand war. I was born at the end of the Vietnam war, lived through several wars now with powers that be in the middle east and yet still I don’t understand war.

I’m sure the first war involved a caveman clubbing his neighbor over the head and stealing his food, and retribution soon followed. Wars since have often resembled to me fights over who has the right to play in a sandbox, in other words territory and who feels entitled , right or wrong.Were I to have one wish though, it would be for my utopian dream of conflict to be realized.

Imagine this if you will:

All weapons in the world are gone, and even rocks and knives can only be used for peaceful purposes. All weapons would consist of nerf plastics or utilizing water. Just imagine, squirt guns, water cannons, water balloons, and in major conflicts…tennis balls as weapons.

Picture carpet bombing with water balloons, retribution would consist of guerilla attacks, sneaking in with a super soaker when your opponent least expects it. We’d wage war for fun! The only possible injuries would be bruised bodies and bruised egos…truely, it would be poetic and silly at the same time.

The U.N would contact other nations by asking the ambassadors” Can Iraq come out and play?” . We’d look FORWARD to declarations of war! Our kids would learn to fight fair, or take a time out. If it works on the playground, I think it can work globally.

Instead, we follow in the footsteps of the first war…taking what we want from our neighbors and clubbing them over the head. Simplistic? Yes. Correct? Perhaps not, but wouldn’t it be wonderful to send our kids off to war, knowing they’d come home smiling…instead of battle worn, or worse…not come home again.

I don’t pretend to understand politics, policies or global issues, but I try. I often want to just thump people over the head and tell them to play nicely or take a time out. But in my quest to understand, I have purchased several books in an attempt to understand the insanity of war and conflict. Join me, maybe someday we can raise our grandkids to wage war utilizing proper super soaker techniques, and carpet bombing with water balloons.

True horror

I do not see the world as black and white…there are so many variables and voices that to say some things are absolute can be ridiculous.

There is however one thing I am passionate about; Criminal Justice. Sure our system is good, but it is far from perfect, otherwise there wouldn’t have been a need for post-conviction DNA testing.

There are two justice cases I feel very strongly about, and they are in some ways polar opposites, and in other ways parallels.The first is the case of the “West Memphis three” out of West Memphis Arkansas, and the second is the case of the “Oakland county Child Killer”. Both cases, while one has been prosecuted, have ended up with few answers and even more questions.

I was introduced to the West Memphis Three case by the film “Paradise Lost” by Bruce Sinofsky and Joel Berlinger which seems to be the prevailing way 90% of America and the world discovered the case.

On May 5th, 1993, the lives of many people were changed forever when three young boys disappeared in the hills of West Memphis Arkansas….and life will never be the same. Those three beautiful lives were lost at the hands of a murderer and the town and nation wanted justice. Three misfit teenagers were rounded up and convicted of the murders based on character testimony and circumstantial evidence. Call me crazy, but the 3 boys who died deserved better then just to have someone arrested to clear the case, they deserved justice.

The three teenagers, now young men, were convicted, two are serving life in prison, one is on death row…and time is running out, but this case is not about the three in prison. It is about Christopher Byers, Michael Moore and Steve Branch…who will never see another Christmas, go on a first date, or drive a car. They DESERVE justice.

The films and subsequent books document the case well. Had I not been shown these films and the books written on the case I probably would have assumed what everyone else did; three teenagers out of control stepped over the line of humanity to something horrifically evil. Having read the case materials though, my only conclusion has been that the true horror is that three young men are locked away yet innocent, and three other young lives were lost and have never recieved justice.

Post conviction DNA testing has concluded, and the results are what I and many others suspected…the DNA does not match any of the three men behind bars. Interestingly enough, a hair found in a rope at the scene belongs to the stepfather of one of the three boys murdered.

So now we wait for answers, wait for justice, and pray for those caught up in the aftermath with no clear answers to give them.

That is true horror.

West Memphis Three info

Jane Austen alive and well

In the hearts of fans….Please read the article at this link

http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/story?id=3740964&page=1

I Will Find a Mr. Darcy’

Jane Austen Alive and Well in Hearts of Fans Around the World

By NICK WATT

HAMPSHIRE, England, Oct. 17, 2007—

Nearly 200 years after her death, Jane Austen is bigger than ever.

The annual Jane Austen Festival in Bath, England, is a celebration of all things Austen, from walking tours and lectures to a bonnet-making workshop and a chance to be photographed in full Georgian costume. The festival’s Web site describes the weeklong gathering as “a veritable feast of delights for all Jane Austen fans.”

“I like the fashion, the culture, the manners, the whole ambience,” said one attendee at the Regency Ball, the climax of the festival.

The ball is the sort of social event Austen and her characters frequented. It’s the sort of occasion at which a suggestive fan flutter is considered flirting, and where, as one attendee said, men and women “treat each other with respect and manners, and I think that’s sadly lacking in our society today.”

“I still remember when I first read ‘Pride and Prejudice’ and said, ‘I will find a Mr. Darcy,’” said one person at the ball, referring to the leading man of Austen’s best-known work.

“We do look to her novels for truth,” observed another attendee. “We do look to her novels to understand why people do what we do and what we should do next.”

“Nothing’s so beautiful nowadays,” explained Chris Northey of the Jane Austen Center in Bath. “It’s like, ‘Do you want to go out for a drink?’ ‘Yea, all right then.’ And then a quick snog.”

That means a kiss, by the way. When she’s not drinking or kissing, Northey is a guide at the center.

The Austen Adaptation

The city of Bath is where a young Jane Austen socialized, and on an average weekend 600 visitors of all ages and nationalities come to breathe it in, buy trinkets and visit the Mr. Darcy tearoom.

Women from around the world can be transformed, at a small price, into Elizabeth Bennett acolytes.

“It’s not books that are about sex and violence and all that kind of thing, like modern books. It’s just very real, genuine,” said a visitor named Christy, visiting all the way from Zimbabwe.

“We have to thank, I think, the films and the television series,” said Terry Old, who also works at the center, of the continued interest in all things Austen-related.

The Austen adaptation is nothing new. Laurence Olivier played Mr. Darcy back in 1940. But recently there have been a spate of big-budget, big-name adaptations, with smoldering men in tights and little hearts beating fast in tightened corsets.

Keira Knightley received an Oscar nomination for her role as Elizabeth Bennett in 2005’s movie version of “Pride and Prejudice.”

And Austen keeps the BBC’s costume department very busy. For some, Colin Firth will always be Mr. Darcy, thanks to the BBC mini-series, and more recently the BBC produced a version of “Sense and Sensibility.”

Gwyneth Paltrow’s “Emma,” released in 1996, earned more than $20 million at the U.S. box office. That story was conceived 192 years ago in Jane Austen’s dining parlor.

Austen’s nephews and nieces remember Aunty Jane disappearing for hours. They thought she was writing letters. Actually, she was writing “Emma,” “Persuasion” and “Mansfield Park.”

Before breakfast, Austen would play the piano, and after breakfast she would write. The house where she spent her later years is now a literary shrine.

“She did change the English novel,” says Louise West of Jane Austen’s House Museum. “Characters were three-dimensional, and there is a lot of psychological depth, which you don’t get in earlier novels.”

‘The Rules Were Simple’

Austen captured a simpler time, when, as the opening line of “Pride and Prejudice” states, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”

“I think the feeling is it was uncomplicated, the rules were simple, and if you stuck by them then maybe you would get your Mr. Darcy,” West said.

Darcy is indeed embodied, for British fans at least, by Colin Firth. His picture graces the museum window. Firth also starred in another Austen-inspired movie, “Bridget Jones’s Diary,” one of many modern works that uses Austen’s romantic template, including 1995’s “Clueless,” which sticks closely to the plot of “Emma.”

The film version of the best-seller “The Jane Austen Book Club” is now in theaters, and it’s just one of many Austen-inspired books. Alexandra Potter is the author of “Me and Mr. Darcy,” in which she writes, “I open my eyes to see a man over by the fireplace: Tall and broad, he has thick hair curling over his collar and black eyebrows that look like smudges of charcoal.” “Her characters are really, really strong, and I think you see that today in TV and in books, and she’s pretty much the mother of chick lit, really,” said Potter.

Potter sees Austen’s tentacles all over films like “When Harry met Sally” and TV shows such as “Sex in the City.”

“That’s pretty much what Jane Austen was writing about,” said Potter. “Feisty, strong, opinionated women looking for love.”

The irony: Austen herself looked, but never found. She never met her Mr. Darcy & if she had, she might never have left all this behind. Love and marriage might have gotten in the way.

I can’t stop reading

I have two books and a cup of coffee in front of me. The coffee was made when I finally tore myself away from my book long enough to actually accomplish something.

So far today I have done nothing but feed my pets. You see, the doorbell rang, looking out the window I saw our mail lady, and with giddiness I flung open the door and found two packages, each with a book waiting for me.

They are used volumes, well cared for, which either means someone loved them greatly, or didn’t care for them at all, which I try not to think about as it hurts in a “How could you not love this” way of incredulity that always happens when I find a lovely used volume.

Add to all this that both books that arrived today are about books, and it’s official, I am a Bibliophile.

My husband buys me books as gifts usually, this year he bought me a toy for my birthday. Does he not realize the level of my addiction? Perhaps I can trade with a kid…the toy he bought me for some book the kid will never read.

So here I sit surrounded by yet more books, that are about books, sipping coffee. Life is good.