Bowl Drips

Smiling Bats

How to Defend Books and Why

Danny Caine

Listen on Audiobook

You're invited to the book revolution!

Fight back against censorship and empower your community with this close look at the book banning movement.

In a moving, compulsively readable call to arms for readers everywhere, Danny Caine, bestselling author of How to Resist Amazon and Why and How to Protect Bookstores and Why, offers an expertly-crafted confrontation of far-right, Christian nationalist attempts to reshape American culture through ban campaigns targeting schools, libraries, bookstores, and prisons, with the aim to silence marginalized identities in life and in literature.

From the first-ever banned books display at San Francisco's City Lights in the 1950s to the rapid rise of so-called Moms For Liberty during the COVID-19 pandemic to attempts to silence Palestinian authors, Caine charts the course of repressive censorship campaigns, along with the creative and sometimes unlikely activists who've stood up against them.

Each chapter is based on a particular book banning episode, bolstered by research and legal precedent, and concludes with helpful takeaways for further reading or resistance.

Throughout, Caine approaches these heated issues with gentle openness harkening back to his work as a public school teacher and a bookseller.

He emphasizes our collective responsibility towards art, free speech, and each other.

"After they overheard that ICE was at the courthouse to arrest someone, they improperly accessed court databases to determine who was not born in the United States," a DOJ detention filing says. "They then snuck every suspected illegal alien who was at the courthouse out a back door, where ICE, who was waiting in the parking lot for their target to leave the building, could not see them."

Adults with Down Syndrome fuck. Adults with Down Syndrome SAY fuck. Adults with Down Syndrome watch porn. Adults with Down Syndrome drink. Adults with Down Syndrome do dangerous things for the fun of it. Adults with Down Syndrome do stupid things.

Autistic adults fuck. Autistic adults SAY fuck. Autistic adults watch porn. Autistic adults drink. Autistic adults do dangerous things for the fun of it. Autistic adults do stupid things.

Adults with Cerebral Palsy fuck. Adults with Cerebral Palsy SAY fuck. Adults with Cerebral Palsy watch porn. Adults with Cerebral Palsy drink. Adults with Cerebral Palsy do dangerous things for the fun of it. Adults with Cerebral Palsy do stupid things.

In hopes of curtailing some of the inevitable confusion about Loki and July/Sirius before it gets out of control, I decided to do a brief outline of what we know about it and where it comes from to answer some of the questions that surface every year.

Lokabrenna in Folklore:

In Part I of Loke i Nyere Folkeoverlevering (“De Vestlige Nybygder”), Axel Olrik details some of the folk traditions involving Loki or figures with similar names in the Faroe and Shetland islands, as well as the UK and Iceland.

One of the words he cites in this study is a term reported by Finnur Magnússon from Iceland: Lokabrenna, which translates as Loki’s (Loka) Burning/Bonfire (brenna). Olrik suggests that his best assumption regarding this name is that “it stands in connection with the extreme late summer heat,” which he goes on to relate to the “dog days” of high summer in other European cultures (204).

He connects it to his discussion of another word, lokadaun, which refers to a sulfuric odor, and points out how both of these relate to heat, warmth, and fire. However, he concludes by mistakenly linking Loki’s name to flame, suggesting that the word might simply mean “burning like fire.” Later, in his discussion of continental Scandinavian Loki folklore, he hints that Lokabrenna may simply be read as the summer heat, and thus might be more easily discussed alongside Danish folklore about Lokke and the shimmering summer air.

While this article and the work of folklorists like Finnur Magnússon shed light on how Loki has been perceived in later Scandinavian folk beliefs, they are not an effective way of discussing how historical heathens may have thought of or honored Loki. Unfortunately, however, during the late Romantic era scholars were not so careful to distinguish between historical Heathenry and later folk customs, and thus the word Lokabrenna made it into the Cleasby/Vigfússon dictionary even though it is unattested in Old Norse sources. While it is very likely that the Loka in Lokabrenna does refer to Loki (as the fire etymology is linguistically unsound), this should not be read as an authentic heathen belief because we have no evidence from the period to support it.

July for Loki?

The practice of setting aside the month of July as a time for honoring Loki began (as far as I know) during the summer of 2012 with a blogging project started by Galina Krasskova. It was summer during which the Lokean community saw an influx of new members (yes, because of the Avengers) and the Troth heatedly debated but eventually decided to keep their ban on Loki during the Trothmoot sumbl. During this first July for Loki project there was a push to set an official date for a Loki holiday, which was meant to coincide with the rising of Sirius.

This proved to be a complicated task, however, as Sirius rises at different times in different latitudes.Last year, for example, Sirius rose in the Northern half of the US around August 8th. It looks like this year in my latitude (39.1 N) it will first be visible at dawn around August 10th.

But is it a bad idea to honor Loki in July?

No. Absolutely not. It’s never a bad time to honor a God to whom you feel close or wish to show respect, and I can understand the desire to have a Loki-oriented holiday. Some of the most helpful, most detailed posts about Loki I have found on the internet were written during July as part of this celebration, and I think that is a very positive thing.

However, as with all things, it is important to keep in mind and be honest about the fact that this is not an authentic heathen practice. Pretending it is only serves to spread misinformation, and misinformation is never good, regardless of the results.

We will never know if the Loki folklore discussed by Olrik and others has any basis in how Loki was perceived in the heathen era, and, unfortunately, we cannot assume much about it because of that. That being said, I don’t think late summer is a particularly bad time for honoring Loki. Although I do not buy into the “fire God” discussion, it is undeniable that many natural features of this season play into the way Loki is generally perceived by the Lokean community.

"oh, that's easy! it's because they're fundamentally Bad people who want to hurt others and choose their beliefs to justify that! :) hope this helps"

or

"they just don't have access to the same information we do. look at this person who was raised in a cult! don't you feel sorry for her?"

and like, yes, fine, some people were in fact raised in cults, but what i wish people would understand is that the bulk of it is just normal human flaws, like:

they want to believe stuff that makes them feel smart and cool and like they've figured everything out (you also do this)

they want to believe stuff that makes them feel like their emotions are justified and grounded in reality, and that the people they want to hurt deserve to be hurt (you also do this)

they form conclusions before they've processed all the relevant information, and cling to that first impression even when new info comes to light (you also do this)

they pick up beliefs from the people around them because they want to be liked and fit in, not because the beliefs are good or true (you also do this)

they come up with reasons that the stuff that benefits them (and the people they like and identify with) is actually overwhelmingly best for everyone and obviously the right thing to do (you also do this)

they pay more attention to stuff that supports what they already believe and avoid looking in places that might show them otherwise (you also do this)

they listen to people who talk like 'one of them' and ignore others (you also do this)

they come up with reasons to dismiss people with conflicting viewpoints as obviously in bad faith or ignorant or a shill or evil (you also do this)

they fail to take their own beliefs seriously sometimes, and take their beliefs way too seriously other times, in a selective way that lets them do the things they already wanted to do (you also do this)

the very ways they construct the ideas of 'knowledge' and 'wisdom' and 'belief' and 'understanding' are biased so that what they don't want to believe comes under lots of scrutiny and what they do want to believe receives less (you also do this)

you, dear reader, are presumably right about everything and were correct to die on every hill you've ever died on, but the difference between you and someone who's wrong about important stuff doesn't look like "well they're inherently evil and i'm not", it probably looks like a combination of:

natural environment (they would have been exposed to different information than you regardless of their choices)

being in the right place at the right time (your particular profile of flaws and virtues happened to be what was needed to lead you to the right conclusions, they had the opposite experience)

random luck (you doubled down on what felt right to believe but wasn't, but it turned out to be inconsequential, or even right for different reasons, while they doubled down on what turned out to be a horrible mistake distorting their entire worldview)

you do less of the things in the previous list, and over time the difference between you and them adds up

and, look, i also do these things. the nicest and most thoughtful people i've ever met do these things. if you meet someone who never does any of these things, i dunno, give them a fucking medal or something.

People Without History Are Dust

Queer Desire in the Holocaust

Anna Hájková (Author), William Jones (Translated by)

Queerness remains one of the most stigmatized and overlooked aspects of Holocaust history, often erased due to the lingering homophobia of survivors. People Without History Are Dust challenges this silence, weaving together compelling stories of German, Dutch, Czech, and Polish Jewish Holocaust victims and survivors - including Anne Frank, Molly Applebaum, Margot Heuman, and Gad Beck - whose experiences help illuminate the hidden history of queerness in a time of genocide.

Drawing on extensive archival research, this groundbreaking book uncovers the lives of those who were doubly marginalized, not only persecuted as Jews but also as queer individuals. In doing so, it confronts the ways in which history has excluded or minimized their experiences, urging us to question normative accounts of the Holocaust.

By shedding light on these long-overlooked stories, People Without History Are Dust deepens our understanding of identity, survival, and memory, reminding us why an inclusive and complex approach to history is essential - not just for the sake of the past, but in service to the present and the future as well.