Editors note: Mary is comparing two different books. The Lawn Boy she uses is not the book in question.
Steve MacDonald, editorial partner at GraniteGrok, wrote an article about porn. At least, I think it was about porn. I don’t remember the article, but I remember the photo of two book covers that appeared with it. One was called Lawn Boy, and the other had the word “queer” in it.
We want to thank Mary Maxwell for this Op-Ed Please direct yours to Editor@GraniteGrok.com.
Unrelated to Steve’s item, I get very antsy if I see anything that connects Republican conservatism with, um, the virtue of heterosexuality. I am heterosexual, and I don’t consider it virtuous to be so. Likewise, I don’t consider homosexuality to be good or bad. There can be a gay man who’s a horrendous human being, or he might be just middle of the road or be some kind of saint. It’s not predictable from his sexual orientation. (If it is, please tell me how. Same for gals.)
Let me tell the Lawn Boy story quickly, so I can get Steve off the hook and then get back to my ranting about cultural conservatism.
I ordered, from abebooks.com, the kids’ book entitled “Lawn Boy,” by Gary Paulsen. It was cheap (used, falling apart.) I haven’t yet ordered the other one, the LGBT one, as it’s a bit pricey. The reason for investing in the book is that I got caught red-handed at Granite Grok making a remark in support of the LGBT book, using only Amazon reviews as my source. (I commented under Steve MacDonald’s article.)
Yep, I was mighty embarrassed and thought I had better spring for a copy, belatedly. The book, Lawn-Boy, arrived today. I assumed it would focus on pedophilia. I wondered if I’d get persuaded that schools should teach a 12-year-old boy that if a man invites him to his house, he should be wary. (We tell little girls not to accept candy or get into a stranger’s car, don’t we?)
Examining the Book
I am very aware of child abuse (from working on court cases in Australia). Last week, I posted an article at GraniteGrok entitled “Pedophilia Is Not a Side Issue” or something like that. So if it’s a biggie, maybe — just maybe — it’s OK for a school library to have a book that deals with it.
I go to the back page first — About the Author, Gary Paulsen. It starts out nice: “Gary Paulsen is the distinguished author of many critically acclaimed books for young people.” These include “Molly McGinty Has a Really Good Day,” (you wonder what she was doing?) “Woods Runner,” (OK, maybe the kids had to run away from a pedo) and — wait for it — “The Amazing Life of Birds.” (Surely, surely, Gary Paulsen is not going to discuss bird sex, is he?)
Then I went to the front of the book and found that Publishers Weekly said: “Witty, quick moving… Readers will find this madcap story a wise investment of their time.” Yeah, but that source works for the publishing industry and hardly ever knocks a book, right? (Publishers Weekly praised my first book, Human Evolution, in 1984, whereupon my librarian-ridden family told me that a review from PW is a sales technique.)
Then I view the pre-loved background of this Lawn Boy book: a stamp inside the front cover indicates it was formerly held by “Omaha Public Schools.” Well, I guess you know the child abuse that went on in Boys Town, Omaha. I can see my Dad now, placing a one-dollar bill in the envelope when we were asked to contribute yearly to Boys Town. Quel racket!
Also, Omaha is the stamping ground of David Shurter. In 2010, I went to Nebraska to stamp with him. He made a video to show the walking distance between the Omaha Police Station and the place where he regularly got beat up (sexually) by a club of businessmen. About 80 feet. Omaha is also written up in Nick Bryant’s tome, “The Franklin Sandal: A Story of Powerbrokers, Child Abuse, and Betrayal.” David Shurter’s book is “Down the Rabbit Hole.”
Next, I look at the back cover for a precis of Lawn Boy. Or a little teaser, as the case may be. It says: “The grass grew and so did business [lawn mowing]. Arnold [the likely suspect] invested my money in many things. One of them was a prize fighter. …That’s when my summer got really interesting.” Aha! I get it. A heavyweight champ is going to rape the 12-year-old.
Reading the Book
Remember the context of Steve’s displaying the cover of Lawn Boy is the question of school libraries foisting dirty ideas on children. Luckily for me, this book has only 88 pages. I went through it in order, no cheating, please. (I always cheat on long YouTube videos, don’t you?) It started out sweet and funny, especially about the kid’s grandma, who had actually bought the lawnmower for him.
Not until page 24 was there even the possibility of a lascivious moment. The kid who is writing this, as an autobiography, never reveals his name, but one of the main characters is “Arnold,” a stockbroker, who shows him how to invest his big cash intake from the lawnmowing job. On page 24, Arnold offers to help Lawn Boy employ other men and says “Can you come back after dark?
Oh-oh.
Well, it turns out that the need for doing business in the dark has to do with the fact that the men, who will mow lawns as subcontractors for our 12-year-old, could be illegal immigrants, and we don’t want ICE, DHS, or IRS coming around, do we?
Dear Groksters, it’s time for me to put Steve out of his anxious state and make an announcement about the Lawn Boy book (Copyright 2007, Random House publisher). Here goes:
There is not one sentence, not one word, not even a comma, that is pornographic. There is nothing at all in this book, about pedophilia. Also there’s not so much as a locker room joke or a bathroom joke. There isn’t even a slightly suggestive riddle like “What do you call the guy who swam the English Channel with his hands and feet tied behind his back? A clever Dick.”
Nothing, nada, cipher. This book is about the stock market! It shows how the broker took the kid’s summer earnings of $4800 and turned into 48 thousand for him. It teaches a young reader such terms as investment, subcontracting, offsetting your gasoline expenses, and — amazingly — the need to postpone capital gains.
Here’s what we find on page 40 about Bill Gates. Oh, I should warn you, this book really is humorous and clever. Arnold is teaching the boy that the $8,000 he just made by investing the lawn money is not really a big amount at all:
“Everything,” Arnold said, “is relative. Eight thousand dollars is not all that large. If Bill Gates, who owns Microsoft, could hold all his wealth in his hands and he suddenly dropped it, just on the way to the ground it would make over forty thousand dollars in interest.”
(Parents may need to worry that their youngster will get an overly rosy idea about increasing their allowance!)
Back to My Rant, Please
So where was I? oh yes, I was saying that it pains me to think Republicans would reject a person or disapprove of a person based on his/her sexual orientation. I guess the excuse is that “cultural conservatism” means we should go with the norm, as in conserving the cultural past. Oh yeah? Well, it was standard in the past (say, 1905) for women to “sun” on the beach in bathing suits that covered from shoulder to ankle. Is that how you want to spend your summer at Hampton?
As a former candidate for Congress, I’m trying to see how “republicans” would have anything to say about culture. Isn’t it the essence of this Party, especially of the New Hampshire flavor, that we don’t want nobody telling us what to do. No seatbelts, no mandatory vax, no “official guides to true happiness.”
If I recall, in the Supreme Court case about the baker who refused to decorate a gay wedding cake, he made his case on First Amendment grounds. A baker should be able to make wedding cakes according to his artistic inclination type thing.
Also, there is no constitutional scope, per Article I, sec 8, for Congress to legislate about marriage. “The Defense of Marriage Act” is null on the face of it. (Sure, I know that nullification hasn’t really been hot stuff since the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions of 1798, but I can dream, can’t I?)
Anyway my “appallment” isn’t mainly legal. It’s small-c christian. Or maybe it comes from my Australian “fair-go” mentality. All persons have a right to marry the one they love, if it’s based on a long-term commitment. Many lesbians do in fact marry, and live as a couple, but for the little piece of paper at the Registry office. (Nowadays they can get the paper.)
Hey Mary, haven’t you learned that there’s a sinister move to destroy the family? Yes, yes, I do know of it and I oppose it heartily. But think for a minute how that applies to a gay couple. Are they harming family life? No. They are enhancing society’s family-basis by being in a marriage.
Beats me how anyone can not see that.
I also dislike the attack on transgender people. Granted, it’s statistically unusual. Granted most of us have a brain wiring that makes us recognize every individual as being male or female, not “other option” or “customize.” But some persons really do feel that they belong to both genders, or neither. They, too, have a right to flaunt the motto “Live free or die.”
Is transgenderism being propagandized? Yes, Blind Freddie can see that someone is pushing it. But even so, a person who has settled into being the opposite gender from the one they had at birth shouldn’t be punished as a propagandist. Most likely he or she plays no part in that sort of PR activity.
Sexualizing Children
For the record I am strongly opposed to puberty blockers or encouraging any person to change sex before, maybe, age 25. Many years ago, my hairdresser was taking up a collection for a friend who was going “to get operated on.” Probably I contributed, having no clue what it was really about. But by God, no surgeon should do it to a person who feels “mixed up.”
Anyway, I am furious, as I’m sure you are, that schools are teaching sex — of any kind — to kids. Don’t teachers know better than to do that? Perhaps they think that the kid may encounter it online anyway, at risky sites. And thus it’s better for them to hear it in school where it can be criticized?
I don’t know. So I’ll shut up now. I thought I was writing a book review for Lawn Boy but it kinda got outta hand.
LGBT’s, you rock. Propagandists, you suck.
Gary Paulsen, thanks for the delightful and useful book. And for reminding us of that soon-to-be non-existent phenomenon: capital gains.
