The Americal Library Association’s Banned Book Week starts on 09/25. This week emphasizes the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one’s opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them.

Celebrate your freedom to read by reading a book from the Independent Booksellers Book Sense Picks of 10 recommended banned books for 2004, the Top 10 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2003, or the Top 100 Challenged Books of 1990-1999.

I’m happy to note that I’ve read 5 of the 10 Book Sense Picks, 5 of the Top 10 of 2003 and a goodly number of the Top 100. Now I just have to read my way through the rest!

In honor of Banned Book Week, I’m having the Listen/Read/Watch section rotate through the Book Sense Picks and the Top 10 of 2003.

History professor Juan Cole over at Informed Comment has written a short, but gripping piece on what America would look like if it were improving in the same way that Iraq is reported to be improving. It’s well worth the few minutes it takes to read it.

#1 Son walked out the front door last night on an errand. He was soon back, and calling, “Mom, mom… come here!” So I hurried over to see what was up.

And there on the side of the house was a little froggy visitor. He was poised under the light by the front door. I imagine it was probably a great place to catch bugs. Probably warmer than the rest of the garden, too. It’s been chilly at night.

I think it’s the little frog that’s been croaking in the butterfly bush all summer. I don’t mind. In the summer we always have frogs croaking and owls hooting up the mountain. Far from keeping me awake, instead I sleep well listening to the non-urban sounds I grew up with.

But I haven’t heard the little frog for a couple of weeks — not since the weather got cooler. I thought he was gone for the year. But there he was! Catching bugs by the front door. You go, frog!

It all started in the summer of 2003. The Portland City Council (bless their pointy little heads) decided that covering the city reservoirs in Washington Park and Mt. Tabor would be a good idea and directed the Water Bureau to make it so. The Water Bureau purchased what are really enormous swimming pool covers. The cost to city taxpayers was $398,000 for the covers, plus $27,000 for piping.

A year later, the City Council yielded to public pressure and decided that perhaps there were better ways to spend the cities funds. The Water Bureau was left holding the bag… er, covers that is.

Now, what do you do with 221,000 square feet of custom-made material, masquerading as two reservoir covers, plus an odd pipe or two? Hey! Let’s sell it on eBay! They’ve got everything there!

So that is what the Water Bureau did. But, mindful of the need to spend money carefully, they opted not to set a minimum bid. That costs more, you see. The Oregonian reports that Bureau Chief Morteza Anoushiravani said he knew there wasn’t a big market for the covers and it was difficult to estimate a fair salvage price without risking the loss of a decent bid.

The bidding started out slowly, then picked up steam. The ending bid, however, was a paltry $18,100 for the covers, and $5,100 for the pipes. Bureau Chief Anoushiravani felt that was an unacceptable loss for the city, and he wanted out.

Backing out of eBay sales is a big, big no-no. A complaint from the buyers would net the state (whose eBay account the Water Bureau used) a big black mark. But, the state does offer an out if a “bona-fide requirement for the property develops or exists prior to the actual removal” of the sold item by the buyer.

Bureau Chief Anoushiravani grabbed on to that alibi like a raven with a shiny bit of tin foil. Thinking outside the box, he now proposes to use the reservoir covers as (drum roll please) reservoir liners. Then, if the Feds tell the city next year to cover the reservoirs, I guess they can just pull the liners back up to the top of the water. Sure! Said Anousiravani:

“I had to make a quick decision,” he said, “and, at the end of the day, my issue was, what am I going to do to be protective of public ratepayer dollars and interest?”

Nice thinking, Chief!

But wait… there’s more…

What, you may be asking, happened to the buyers who bought a couple of extra-large pool covers for a bargain price? Well, it turns out that they are Water Bureau employees.

Do they have really big swimming pools? Were they going to resell them at a profit? Did they just want the city to make something out of the auction? Nobody knows, and they ain’t talkin’. Nor are they getting the covers, since the auction was cancelled.

And now, to add insult to injury, the Water Bureau is investigating whether they had inside information that would have given them an advantage in reselling the covers, and whether they bid on company time. It does appear that none of the employees were in a position to have any advantageous information not available to the general puplic. And they do have a right to bid on auctions, just like everyone else. So they only question is whether they were bidding on company time or their own time.

But City Commissioner Dan Saltzman, who oversees the Water Bureau says that if the employees had some notion of how to make money with the covers, “It would have been nice if they would have come forward with that.”

The Water Bureau proves the veracity of the bumper sticker seen around town: “Keep Portland Weird.”

Except, if they did, the damn manuals would probably be written by someone who had English only as a (very poor) second language.

Like whoever it was who wrote the instructions for a baby changing table that my ex and I bought before the kid was born. It had to be assembled. The instructions used English words. Or they appeared to be English. I can’t at all reconstruct it now, 17 years later. But the flavor was something like, “Now part A. Place B to left side tight. Set down like up side.” You get the idea. The exploded-parts chart didn’t even help. At the end, I had a frazzled temperment and a pile of left-over parts. The instructions ended by saying, “Now, wasn’t that fun!”

Having a resident teenager is rather like that. My whole world is set down like up side. I find myself doing things that I didn’t think I would ever do. Sometimes I wonder if I’m anything even approaching an adequate parent.

When this stage ends, will I have a pile of left-over parts? Or will I say, “Now, wasn’t that fun!”