THE MOST IMPORTANT FURNITURE IN YOUR HOUSE

I loved them all.

It’s the bookcase, of course. The most important furniture in a house is the bookcase. Some people don’t trust folks who don’t have a dog. I don’t trust people who don’t have a place for their books. 

People without shelves stuffed to the brim with actual, physical books are quite possibly soulless droids. Oh, they'll comment on the dust that books gather or the space they take up, but in the end, the clicking of their circuitry gives them away. 

I grew up in a house with bookcases crammed with actual, physical books. It was the age of book of the month clubs, Reader's Digest Condensed Books, and the golden age of the public libraries. There were three television channels . . . And books. I loved those books.

My youngest son wants to read a thousand books in his lifetime. I already have. He doesn’t believe me, but then he didn’t grow up when I did, or how I did.

At Oviedo High School, I wandered into the library and didn't leave. I discovered the Salem Witchcraft trials through Miller's The Crucible and then read all the non-fiction versions of the same event. I disappeared into the inspiring, horrific accounts of war written by Leon Uris, the mysteries and histories, and romances of Victoria Holt, the horrors of Edger Allen Poe, the absolute mastery of Shirley Jackson’s writing. And I devoured all the science fiction I could put my hands on. Ray Bradbury made me believe in Martians and rockets and dandelion wine. Pearl S. Buck made me believe in faraway places on the library globe.

I read and read and read. I read books I can't remember the titles of, but their characters still live in my head. There was a funny book about a girl who worked in a bridal shop, a sad book about a girl who worked at the carnival as the snake woman, the story of a housewife who claimed to remember her past life as an Irish woman named Bridey Murphy, and so many more. 

In college, I knew things the other students did not because I had read hundreds of books. 

For a lonely girl born in the fifties to a family with its overly fair share of dysfunction and growing up in the tumultuous sixties, books in bookcases were better than friends. They were lifesavers. 

Today, I’m boxing up hundreds of books to make room for more books—some of which I wrote myself.

Linda (Dust Jacket) Zern

 

 

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2018 - The World As It is

Color me done.

I’m done with non-judgment, co-existence, and moral grayness. Done. If I wanted to live on a typical American college campus, I’d go live in a dorm and buy a gas mask. Why a gas mask? Come on. Take a guess.

In 2018, I plan to judge, exist, and live in the light of truth.

The Golden Globes are tonight. It’s a big party thrown by Hollywood’s most sparkly rapists and shiniest victims. You’ll know the victims because they’ll be wearing black. 

PLEASE NOTE: I do not now nor have I ever believed all men are rapists, and I’ve known of quite a few predatory women in my day as well.

For forty years, Hollywood has been attempting to shape our attitudes and judgments about home, family, God, country, men, women, boys, girls, sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll. And we’ve lapped it up. The same Hollywood that stood silently by while big, fat, crusty, star-makers ejaculated into potted plants in public restaurants.

It isn’t just that Harvey Weinstein abuses people and plants. That’s a question for police and legions of lawyers, and I hope that they answer it by slamming the cage door shut on him. It’s that Harvey Weinstein has been “green lighting” some of the most watched, awarded, and popular movies in the industry. This is the nasty man that bought the rights to that guy’s book or passed on her story. Things that make you go . . . hmmm. What books didn’t this creepy old man decide to throw the weight of his power and money behind? Which stories will never get told? And how many stars will never get made? Because they were not morally gray.

And get this! Hollywood is one of the biggest champions of the notions of coexistence, diversity, and unconditional acceptance. I bet.             

COEXIST? How? How does one coexist with rapists? Or those whose moral compass is so broken they would make excuses for rapists? A society without judgment is quite simply a dangerous place to live.

I grew up in the freewheeling, free-loving ‘60’s. If it feels good do it. That’s what society told the rising generation, and they did. And now the world doesn’t like the results when the feel-good hipsters became the scummy power brokers of the 21^st century.

But it feels good, and they want to do it. And why shouldn’t they? “Because it hurts others,” we shout, “that’s why.” Careful. That smacks of old-fashioned morality and no one likes a prude.   

There were those who tried to tell the world. They were mocked and insulted and ignored. It puts me in mind of that scripture in our sacred texts that says something along the lines of beware to those that mock for they shall mourn.

Linda (Hands Off) Zern