Book banning 102323

The speaker, Dan Flannery, greets his audience from rainy Wisconsin and introduces his Sunday column post for October 23, 2023. He mentions a blog post by his friend Laura discussing the issue of book banning. He highly recommends her blog, Another Slice, which offers a positive perspective on life in Appleton. Laura's post addresses the book ban movement in Wisconsin and emphasizes the importance of books in providing knowledge, perspective, and challenging one's thinking. Dan shares his personal experience with a book called Ball Four, which had a profound impact on him. He questions why people are afraid of knowledge and why they try to keep it from others. He concludes by expressing his intention to post more on his Facebook page. Happy wet Monday from northeast Wisconsin where rain is in the forecast all week. I am Dan Flannery and welcome to the Sunday Column Post for October 23, 2023. That's 10-23-2023 which might be interesting if you think numerical curiosities are interesting. A link to today's blog post is another blog post by my longtime friend and former sports department colleague Laura Kostelnik Biskupic discussing the topic of book banning which I had hoped was an issue we'd laid to rest decades ago but has been brought out for another disappointing examination over the past couple years. I highly recommend Laura's post today and her blog in general. Her blog is called Another Slice and it can be found at anotherslice.life, anotherslice.life. It is an unyieldingly positive look at life in Appleton through the eyes of a new grandmother, a four-time mom, a wife, a public relations professional and former teacher, a writer, a daughter, a citizen of Appleton and the world. Laura posts several times each week. That's more prolific than I ever hoped to be so if you ever find yourself in need of a pick-me-up subscribe to it at anotherslice.life. So as mentioned Laura's post today speaks to the ban the book movement that has hit several Wisconsin communities. So please let me say this about that. Books make a difference. They bring knowledge and perspective and context and ideas and some will challenge your perspectives and others will confirm what you were already thinking and they can push you in directions you might not have thought possible. A book, Ball Four by Jim Boughton changed my life when I was 13 or so. It exposed Major League Baseball players and coaches for what they actually are, deeply flawed people like the rest of us. It was Boughton's diary of his 1969 season with the Seattle Pilots. Ball Four tells it as it was so much so that my dad objected to it in a big way but after I'd read the paperback version he read a few pages maybe a chapter or so and when Boughton told of language and personal habits of his teammates in sometimes vulgar words that was enough for the old man. He threw the book in the wood-fired stove that heated our log cabin. The definition of book burning. I couldn't wait to buy another copy which I did and hid it in my bedroom until I moved out of the house and went to college a few years later. Truth-telling subversive that I was at that point. In the Leona Public Library which was part of the high school that I attended I later found Boughton's follow-up book titled I'm Glad You Didn't Take It Personally which was equally vulgar and eye-opening and provocative. In reading those books in my early teens I found freedom. I found a calling. I found a reason to keep writing which I had dabbled in by that point. I heard the meaning of that old saying the truth shall set you free in an honest and intentional way. Learning how other people lived and made mistakes and said disappointing things and misbehaved didn't make me a bad person but it absolutely opened my eyes to the realities of life and that helped forge a career path that I might not have had. To this day 50 some years later I'm not sure why people are afraid of knowledge. You don't improve your life with less knowledge. I'm even less sure why people think they can keep knowledge from people even our youngest people who are determined to learn about the world around them. That's the Sunday column for today Monday October 23, 2023. Thank you very much for listening and reading. I'll have a few more posts this week I think, I hope, all ripped from the previously empty spaces of my Facebook page. Have a great week. Thanks again and we'll talk to you soon. Have a great day. Bye.