By Scott Sullivan
Editor
Heat Wave
The book “Ban This Book” has been banned by the Indian River County (Fla.) school board. Members voted 3-2 to ax Alan Gratz’s 2017 children’s tome after Jennifer Pippin, local Moms for Liberty chair, complained it was content-inappropriate (What follows may be too; you’ve been warned.)
Gratz — not to be mistaken for U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R. Fla.), who stumped last week in Michigan with another Florida man seeking retribution — follows fictional fourth-grader Amy Anne Ollinger as she tries to check out her favorite book from the library.
Sorry, says the librarian. It was banned because one of your classmates’ mothers deemed it content-inappropriate.
Amy could have asked why three grown-ups concurred but, hey, she’s a fourth grader. So she does something inappropriate: creates her own secret banned-books library.
The Liberty-loving trio accused “Ban” of “teaching rebellion of school-board authority,” i.e. them, ergo banning “Ban” was the appropriate thing to do.
Also last week, state Rep. Brian Begole (R-Antrim Township) pitched naming the AR-15 State Rifle. We have a State Bird, Flower, Fish, Mammal, Reptile and Fossil, no?
Next day another Michigan man — Mike Nash, 42, of Shelby Township — shot nine people at a Rochester Hills splash pad with a Glock .9m pistol, fled home to 11 more guns at his and Mom’s trailer and killed himself.
Mordant humor bubbles in our self-made cauldrons. Begole’s bill may be gone for a bit but folks forget fast and lose track as bodies mount.
Last week’s solstice and strawberry moon had to herald something, so I steered south down Blue Star Highway to South Haven thinking I had to shake free of something.
Orchards, wineries, junk shops, broad-lawned estates, the Ganges ashram, here and there between hardwoods the liquid forever glinted.
Dirt Beethoven Street looked to dead end at the horizon; I made a note to explore it later. Here was Pinnacle Drive, its homes and clay canyons gated, where I’d lunched with a friend and another part of my world opened.
Here was a roundabout — get ready, one will soon be unleashed in Saugatuck. Compass West followed North Shore Drive to a North Beach infinity loop where I found myself lost, turning round and round amid sun-bleached homes like Havana, I imagined.
At last out via South Street east to Black River, winding inland north past marina docks and green-Stanley Johnston Park. Scrapbooks of seaside lore keep unfolding.
South over the Black on the Dyckman Bridge and west hugging the river through town. Near the Friends Good Will Splash Pad.was place to park on this midday Friday. A walled Coast Guard fortress rose inland from it.
There was no sense except taking pictures. “Would that be appropriate?” I asked parents of Splash Pad kids. No need for names, bar or QVC codes, just a reminder of innocence again.
