By Bob Gaydos
  
 “… I shall send you a copy of the book ” — even O’Brien, Winston noticed, seemed to pronounce the words as though they were in italics — “Goldstein’s book, you understand, as soon as possible. It may be some days before I can get hold of one. There are not many in existence, as you can imagine. The Thought Police hunts them down and destroys them almost as fast as we can produce them. It makes very little difference. The book is indestructible. If the last copy were gone, we could reproduce it almost word for word.”
 
 Imagine if George Orwell had imagined the delete button.
 
 In unassailable proof that Whoever or Whatever Controls This Universe has a keen sense of humor, Orwell’s classic novel “1984,” from which the above quote comes, has become the book and Amazon.com Big Brother’s Thought Police. In about as dumb and heavy-handed a bit of customer service (in Doublespeak, of course, it means the opposite), the internet giant recently deleted thousands of copies of  “1984,” as well as Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” from clients’ Kindles.
 
 Kindles, which also escaped Orwell’s imagination, are those handheld electronic devices that are supposed to replace paper books (and newspapers and magazines), putting all kinds of people out of work as readers upload whatever they want, whenever they want, for a fraction of the cost of the hard copy. Except, of course, if Amazon decides to delete it. With English teachers everywhere relishing the irony of the situation — an invisible, powerful purveyor of thoughts destroying all traces of a book about thought control from the files of unsuspecting consumers — the Kindle’s future has become much less certain. After all, the basic assumption of book lovers is that, if they bought a book, they own the book. Forever. To do what they wish with it.
 
 Of course, Amazon had already voided another rule by prohibiting the sharing of downloaded books. That ought to have been a strong argument against the Kindle, but the convenience of carrying around hundreds of books, bought on the cheap, was apparently enough to overcome resistance for many readers.
 
 But erasing books from what were thought to be private files? Isn’t that a crime? Shouldn’t it be? Can Barnes and Noble come in to my home and confiscate a hard copy of “1984”? Are you listening, Congress?
 
 The “1984” caper has generated a fair amount of commentary in the blogosphere, with defenders of Amazon pointing to the company’s belatedly given reason for the mass deletions. Amazon said the digital editions of “1984” and “Animal Farm” were added to the online Kindle store by a company that was not authorized to sell them. This company used the self-service function of the site. When Amazon discovered this, it said, it rescinded the orders, refunding buyers the 99 cents they paid for each book and deleting the books from those previously believed to be private files.
 
 Kindle owners did not know Amazon could erase stuff at will (heck, apparently no one did) and, despite the company’s claim to the contrary, the sales contract for the device does not appear to inform buyers of the remote delete option. Most customers were upset to learn this, with students whose Orwell files also contained notes on the books being especially angry.
 
 While belatedly admitting the deletions were a bad idea, Amazon did not say it would never do this again. What it did say was, “We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers’ devices in these circumstances.”
 
 A bit vague, no? How about in any circumstances? Will newspaper or magazine articles disappear if they contain an error of fact discovered later? How about a bit of conjecture that turns out to be false or something eventually adjudged libelous? Can Amazon hope to retain the power to unring the bell? Not in any brave new world in which I live.
 
 I’m not interested in any of the techno jargon arguments excusing Amazon’s actions because it did not foresee its machines doing things Amazon geniuses did not anticipate. That’s stuff for Isaac Asimov. Even allowing that Amazon was concerned that it was infringing on U.S. copyright law by allowing the sale of the books, that still doesn’t mean it had to delete the copies of all the people who thought they had bought the digital books legally. The real problems are that its web site was set up poorly, allowing unauthorized sales to occur and then automatically deleting all evidence of those sales, including the books themselves, once they were discovered and the delete button pushed. The problem was Amazon’s not its customers’.
 
 Even more to the point, until and unless Amazon forswears any right, intent or ability to delete content from customers’ Kindles — to remove books from electronic bookshelves — the company can have no credibility among serious readers who look upon their books as, well, their books, digital or otherwise. As Orwell wrote — “indestructible.”

 We will not unremember this.

Bob can be reached at bob@zestoforange,com.

By Beth Quinn

Let me begin by saying that nuns are really none of my business.

I know that.

Anything the Catholic Church does is none of my business because I left it years ago. Over a dog, of all things. When I was 12, a Sunday school nun told me my dead dog couldn’t go to heaven. I decided she could take her heaven and shove it where the sun don’t shine.

I didn’t like that particular nun and formed my opinion of them all, and their Church, and their priests (most of whom were drunks, at least in our parish) based on a very few bad apples.

I’m still not too partial to the Catholic Church in general, for reasons that go far beyond canine afterlife. The Church, I am certain, is not too keen about me, either. Even so, as you might have surmised by now in this lengthy introduction, I’m going to say a few words about nuns today.

And my words are those of praise and righteous anger on their behalf.

Why, you may ask?

Because the Vatican is gunning for them. Rome has ordered an investigation of American nuns, many of whom have joined the real world in the past few decades, since the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. Many nuns stopped wearing religious habits and left the convents to live independently. They went into new lines of work: academia and other professions; social and political advocacy; and grass-roots organizations that serve the poor and promote spirituality.

What gall those nuns have!

In case you missed it, the New York Times carried a story earlier this month about the Vatican undertaking a modern-day inquisition of these wild and crazy nuns. The  intention, it seems, is to reel them in from the real world and force them back into a more cloistered existence.

Full recommendations will be issued in 2011, when the investigation of these terrible Church outlaws is completed. It is expected by many that they will be ordered back into their convents and religious garb so that they may better serve in their historical role as unpaid laborers for the Church’s male hierarchy.

Speaking as a fellow woman (is that a contradiction in terms?), this is both preposterous and counterproductive. The Catholic Church has been hemorrhaging good nuns (and priests, for that matter) over the last several decades. In 1965, there were 180,000 American nuns. Today, there are 60,000.
 
To be honest, my own vision of good nuns is based on Whoopi Goldberg’s “Sister Act” – they are kind, smart, generous, fearless, slightly rebellious women out on the streets in inner-city neighborhoods. They help save people with humor and grace, with hard work and common sense, with love and piety (the good kind of piety, not the kind practiced by the holier-than-thou members of Congress who keep getting caught with their pants down).

They are, in short, of this world and full-fledged participants in the lives of those they labor to educate, serve and save.

My vision of good nuns also comes from those who teach at Mount Saint Mary College in Newburgh – Sister Catherine, Sister Peggy, Sister Ann, to name but a few. They challenge students to think well and to form their own conclusions. They guide their charges through the terrible confusion of adolescence.

And they teach them the proper use of the apostrophe, by God.

My favorite nuns like dogs, too. Labrador retrievers have been known to

One of the burning theological questions of our time: Will this dog get into heaven?

make their home at the sisters’ house on the Mount college campus, where there is a fine choice of  bed linens and couches for napping. Those dogs are already in heaven.

I don’t speak for such nuns – they are all perfectly capable of speaking for themselves, thank you very much – but I will tell you this. Those folks at the Vatican are picking on the wrong crowd.

I’m happy to report that some of the nation’s nuns are fomenting rebellion. They’re urging their sisters not to cooperate with the Vatican inquisition. “The investigators should be treated as uninvited guests who should be received in the parlor, not given the run of the house,” urged Sister Sandra Schneiders, a professor emerita of New Testament and spirituality in Berkeley.

In some cases, nuns are responding by growing more vocal in their call for changes that would help bring the entire Church into the modern world and strengthen its foundation, such as – gasp! – ordaining women and married men as priests.

This ought to be interesting to watch. My money is on the nuns, and I’ll be cheering them on from the sidelines. So will my dogs.

Even though it’s none of our business, of course.

Beth can be reached at beth@zestoforange.com.

By Jeffrey Page

When I was a reporter for the Times Herald-Record during the Seventies, I covered the Sullivan County Courthouse where I met Judge Louis B. Scheinman, a former district attorney, who brooked no nonsense either as prosecutor or as jurist.

Scheinman was a political realist who understood that district attorneys must show the public a stack of successful prosecutions if they hope to get re-elected. He also was convinced of something more important. The D.A.’s real job – in fact, his single most important responsibility to the law-abiding public – is to seek justice. This far outweighs waving lists of convictions and reciting excuses for acquittals.

There are some prosecutors at work today who could stand a few lessons in this uncomplicated, but apparently elusive doctrine.

Take the case of Lebrew Jones, 52, currently and for the last 22 years, a New York inmate, housed nowadays at the state prison in Otisville. Jones was convicted of the brutal killing of a woman in New York City and sent away for 22 years to life. Several people, including the victim’s mother, don’t believe he’s guilty.

Of course such beliefs are not proofs. And so, as Jones goes before the parole board his week, his lawyers try to win a reversal of his conviction.

So what’s wrong with this picture?

For one thing, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office has rejected a request by Jones’s lawyers to provide them with important evidentiary material about his case. This forces the lawyers to file motions in court to get these papers and adds more time to Jones’s ordeal. Why would the D.A.’s office withhold this information? Because, as the Record reported in a stunning story over the weekend, the material was provided to Jones’s original trial lawyer and he no longer has it.

Read that again. The man’s been in jail for 42 percent of his life – he has no other criminal record – but the Manhattan D.A. won’t hand over a second copy of paperwork that might be key to proving Jones’s innocence. The prosecutor declines to seek justice for Jones after two decades in prison. Which leads to an important question. What is Robert Morganthau afraid of? Running up a high Xerox bill? What could be the real reason for this in-your-face refusal?

It’s important to note that it was after the Times Herald-Record began looking into Jones’s conviction that Morganthau’s office launched a new investigation of it. That was two years ago. The office has yet to finish this examination of a case in which it played a prominent role, the Record reported on Sunday. They don’t seem to move fast at the Manhattan D.A.’s office, do they? But hey, it’s nothing serious – just two more years out of the life of a man who might be innocent.
The case against Lebrew Jones was full of holes. The Record’s story noted that nothing in the glut of evidence at the crime scene connected Jones to the killing. No medical examiner went to the scene.

One of the pieces of evidence against Jones was his often conflicting statements made during a 20-hour grilling. It turns out that Jones, described by the Record as “intellectually challenged,” at one point suggested that the woman killed herself by pounding her own skull with a rock. He renounced his speculation later but this self-pounding story remained part of the record. Did you ever try to make sense after sitting up for 20 hours?

The district attorney’s refusal to provide Jones’s lawyers with the paperwork they need – because he gave a copy to a previous lawyer – is not part of the pursuit of justice. I wonder how Judge Scheinman would describe the prosecutor’s actions in light of his inability to suffer fools well.

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com

Chapter 7

By Carrie Jacobson

The story so far:

When James Dunning lost his job, it meant losing his home and his dog, Zoe, too. He and his wife had to move in with her mother, who’s allergic to dogs. James took Zoe – who is old and mostly blind – to the shelter in Shohola, Pa., and left her there, in the night. He was too sad and humiliated to do otherwise.

Kaja, a big red dog who’s been on her own for a while, found Zoe and freed her. They are tracking through the woods, heading toward the Delaware, to try to find James.

Ashton and Samantha Morrone are pretty well disgusted with summer so far. It’s great to be out of school, that’s for sure. But it’s rained pretty much every day. Rain and rain and rain and more rain. And their mom doesn’t really want them out in the rain. For starters, she doesn’t want them tracking rain and mud all through the inn.

The second thing, the thing they don’t know, is that she really doesn’t trust the river any more.

The Morrones bought this place, the Tow Path Inn in Barryville, in 2001. Pete thought it was a good idea. He would cut back on his work at the law firm in Goshen, the kids would get to grow up by the river, and he and Angie would do what they’d always wanted: Run an inn.

They’d be busy in the summer, and probably in the fall, too, but they’d take it easy in the winters, and probably close down for a month or so and take a vacation. Go to Italy or Spain, some place warm and exotic, take the kids out of school and give them whatever lessons they’d need. It would be great!

Angie leans on the edge of the kitchen sink, and watches the raindrops hit the river, and remembers Pete’s face when he’d come up with the idea. He’d looked like a kid. He’d looked like he’d looked when he was 12, and he’d come over from next door to show her a bird’s nest or a snakeskin or a glittering rock. Looked like he’d looked when he’d gotten into Brown, and when she’d gotten into Brown. Looked like he’d looked when she said of course she would marry him.

And now he’s gone, and has been gone for three years, and she’s left with the inn, the kids, the insurance money, and a life’s worth of memories. She rubs her eyes and empties her coffee cup and talks to him, silently. She only talks aloud to him these days when the kids are asleep or she’s alone in the car. There are almost always guests at the inn, and the kids are getting old enough now to remember. She doesn’t want them looking back and remembering her as a crazy mother who spent her days talking out loud to her dead husband.

She steps out on the deck and peers down toward the river. The kids are still in the screen house. She can see the tops of their heads, and can hear their voices going up and down. She can’t hear what they’re saying, but they’re talking and laughing about something, and she thinks that’s all she needs to know.

It’s not.

Ashton, who’s 7, and Samantha, 9, are plotting. They’ve started building a fort, at the very edge of the Delaware. It’s anchored in a thicket of fallen trees there, trees that the most recent flood wove together. It’s hidden from the inn now by vines and leaves, and so Angie doesn’t know about it.

Ashton and Sam have built a sort of raft of twigs and branches, balanced on the fallen trees’ larger limbs. They’ve put some walls up, too, but these are just to hide their fort-raft from prying adult eyes.

Now, in the screen house, they’re plotting. The fort is great as a fort. But it needs a place where they can cook, a fire ring or a grill or something. And it needs some places where they can sit. And it also needs some short walls, sort of edges, so that when they take it out on the river, their stuff won’t fall off.

Sam is making drawings and planning. She’s being pretty bossy, but for once, Ashton doesn’t mind. It’s a great plan, a fort that’s also a raft, and it was all her idea. He can hardly wait to finish it and try it out.

Carrie can be reached at carrie@zestoforange.com

Photography by Rich Gigli

THE THREE TENORS - The baby robins seem to be singing "O Sole Mio" composed by Eduardo di Capua, or simply waiting for their mother's return with a zesty worm. (Photo was taken in the North Jersey area.)

Shawn’s Painting of the Week, July 20, 2009

“Benedict Farm” (Montgomery, NY) this park is the outdoor classroom of the Wallkill River School. We can often be found dotting the landscape with our easels and painting almost any day of the week. Come paint with us at www.WallkillRiverSchool.com

By Shawn Dell Joyce
Many of us watch the stock market with dismay as our investments take a nose dive. Most Americans rather would invest in Main Street than Wall Street, but the current economic system tends toward globalization instead of localization. Local economist and author Michael Shuman points out that “outdated federal securities laws have left Main Street dangerously dependant on Wall Street, and overhauling these regulations turns out to be a hidden key to economic revitalization.”

Shuman, author of “The Small-Mart Revolution,” cites a recent study showing that small local businesses, which usually start out as sole proprietorships, are three times more profitable for investors than C-corporations, which are large, global corporations. Rising fuel costs and a fall in the value of the dollar are part of the reason for this new trend. For example, small family-owned vineyards in New York can retail wine at or below the costs that large corporate vineyards in California do because of the costs of carting bottles of wine across the country. This is starting to “even the playing field” for small producers.

There is also a growing consciousness among consumers that small businesses really are the backbones of our communities. These businesses spend more of their incomes locally, which creates a multiplier effect, further boosting local economies. They also add “local color” to villages, which attracts tourism, and they encourage walkable communities, entrepreneurship, community building and the revitalization of our downtowns. “Every dollar spent at a locally owned business generates two to four times more economic benefit — measured in income, wealth, jobs, and tax revenue — than a dollar spent at a globally owned business,” Shuman says.

Green jobs tend to be locally based, creating a whole new genre of local business. Already, half our economy comes from small local businesses. Factor in nonprofits, such as the one I run, and that figure jumps up closer to 60 percent of all economic activity. As we begin to transition toward services instead of goods, more money will stay in our communities.
For example, when we buy weatherization services instead of fuel oil, more of our money goes to the local contractors who do weatherization instead of to the multinational corporations that refine oil.

Local businesses are our future and the only viable economic solution to our current economic crisis, yet very little of our investment dollars are staying locally, at businesses we frequent every day. Instead, all our pensions and 401(k) funds go to Fortune 500 companies. Shuman suggests that simple reforms to antiquated trading laws would allow local businesses to participate in the stock exchange. He says, “One easy reform would be for the (Securities and Exchange Commission) to allow low-risk public ownership of locally owned microbusinesses.”

Shuman is suggesting that small companies be able to sell shares to people in their home states, with no one owning more than $100 worth of a single stock. This would lower the risk and spread the opportunity and investment to more small businesses. If we were to enact this reform, trillions of dollars would begin to flow into small mom and pop businesses across the nation. This move would encourage new businesses to reflect the needs of the community shareholders and encourage investors to keep their money within their respective regions.

Unlike the current economic stimulus plan, Shuman’s suggestion would cost nothing to implement and would create immeasurable local jobs as investment money flowed toward local entrepreneurs, who would generate millions of new businesses and jobs. The result would be a stronger nation, with a vast network of interdependent local economies. This would be a far more sustainable and stable economic system than our current one, which is dependent upon using up dwindling resources, generating mountains of waste, and intensifying poverty and poor working conditions around the world. Shawn can be reached at shawn@zestoforange.com

By Michael Kaufman

It is a good thing I will never get nominated to be a Supreme Court justice. My meltdown would come early in the hearings. Just listening to some of the comments of the Republican yahoos during the Senate confirmation hearing for Judge Sonia Sotomayor got my blood boiling. And I’m not even a wise Latina woman!

And no one heated up my corpuscles more than Jefferson Beauregard “Jeff” Sessions III, the junior senator from Alabama and the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania used to be the top Republican but he switched parties recently when he saw the GOP’s big tent shrink to the size of a lean-to occupied mainly by right-wing extremists and Christian fundamentalists. Those folks think Specter is “too liberal,” which is scary to anyone of the progressive persuasion who remembers the hatchet job he did on Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings or, for that matter, who is aware of his current anti-labor stance regarding the Employee Free Choice Act. (Speaking of stances, is Larry Craig still in the Senate?)

Alas for progressives, Sessions is a worse spectre than Specter. Sessions has become the darling of Rush (Big Fat Idiot) Limbaugh and other loudmouths of his ilk in attacking Judge Sotomayor’s involvement with the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund. After helping to create an atmosphere in which Limbaugh, et al, have been repeatedly calling Judge Sotomayor a “racist” for weeks, Sessions demagogically, albeit wisely, distanced himself from the epithet as the hearings began.

After all, he said, he knows what it is like to be wrongly called a racist. Only in his case it is not so wrongly. As Ian Millhiser, a legal research analyst for ThinkProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, writes, “Sessions’ decision to embrace the right-wing attack on civil rights law says a lot more about Jeff Sessions than it does about Sonia Sotomayor.” Millhiser notes that it was precisely because of his deeply rooted “hostility to the very notion of civil rights” that the Senate rejected Sessions for an appointment as a federal judge in 1986.

Millhiser cites three examples, at least two of which would qualify Sessions as racist in my book. As a federal prosecutor, Sessions conducted a “tenuous investigation” into voting rights advocates seeking to register African-American voters. The investigation ended in an unsuccessful attempt to prosecute an aide to the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Sessions referred to the NAACP and the ACLU as “un-American” and “Communist-inspired” organizations that “forced civil rights down the throats of people.” Millhiser notes that when recently confronted with these quotes, Sessions conceded they were “probably wrong,” however, he continued to stand by a statement that the Voting Rights Act is “a piece of intrusive legislation.”

Finally, Millhiser cites comments from an African-American lawyer who said Sessions referred to him as “boy” and admonished him for speaking critically to a secretary, saying, “Be careful what you say to white folks.” Oh, and Sessions also told the lawyer he had thought the Ku Klux Klan was “okay” until he found out that some of the members were pot smokers. What, did he see them smoking pot while going about their more acceptable behavior like cross burnings and lynchings? This man is questioning Sonia Sotomayor about whether she can be impartial in cases that involve racial issues? Are you kidding me?

Judge Sotomayor has remained polite and gracious throughout the baiting questions asked by Sessions and other Republicans on the committee. She has to do this because if she has a meltdown it might jeopardize her confirmation. So, on her behalf and my own I say to Jefferson Beauregard “Jeff” Sessions III, junior senator from Alabama and ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee: Shut the hell up!

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.

By Jeffrey Page

We need a new State Senate, and we need 62 principled Conservatives, Liberals, Libertarians, Working Family party members and independents to make it work. Democrats and Republicans need not apply, having proved themselves not up to the task.

Never again can we allow a gaggle of quacking Republicans and Democrats to conduct a public temper tantrum as they did in Albany – all in the name of “reform.” That display, which lasted a month, was no more about “reform” than it was about ice hockey. It was about the exercise of political power and we all suffered for it. Important recurring bills, such as renewal of state permission to impose local sales taxes, were not acted on in a timely manner. Additionally, the future of mayoral control of the New York City Board of Education seems to be up in the air.

The issue of gay marriage seems to be a casualty of the impasse. Think about that: A measure to grant equal rights to a segment of the population – whether you support it or oppose it – is a casualty of the so-called fight for “reform.” 

We witnessed Governor Paterson legally issuing order after order for the Senate to convene, resolve its differences, and work for the people. And we witnessed the 62 senators telling the governor to butt out. The senators gaveled themselves to order and then adjourned. That’s not “reform.” That’s lawlessness. That’s the Gang of 62 informing the people they represent, “You’re dismayed? Let us tell where you can stick your dismay.”

Reform. What a joke. In the end, the not-especially-principled Democrats were so happy to get their majority back that they made Pedro Espada Jr. their majority leader. Of course, it was Espada’s jump to the Republicans a month ago that precipitated this sudden push for “reform” in the first place. How nice that Espada has a title. He’s happy. The Democrats are happy. The Republicans have to live with it. But there’s another group, hasn’t been consulted.

No one asked New Yorkers – the real ones, the people who struggle to pay taxes so that members of the State Senate can draw a salary – how we feel about Espada’s being in a position of power. We weren’t asked because, let’s face it, no one gives a damn what we think.

Senator Bill Larkin, the Republican from Cornwall-on-Hudson, handed The Times Herald-Record one of the great straight lines in the history of standup comedy.

“Almost certainly, we should have done this before,” he said about the push for “reform.”

If by “we,” he means the Republicans, it’s amusing to note that until Jan. 1, the Republicans controlled the Senate for 40 years.

If by “we,” he meant the entire Senate, it’s amusing to note that Larkin has been a member for 18 years.

We should have done this before? We should have done what before? Quick, can anyone name the card-carrying Democrat or Republican who ever made serious noise about “reform” of the State Senate?

There exists a path to real reform, but it takes a raging fury to carry it out. It takes determination. It takes an unwillingness to be played for the fool any longer. Most of all, it takes an understanding that such reform won’t happen quickly but could take years.

It won’t be easy to ignore the Gang of 62 when they start littering our mailboxes with campaign crap next year, but we can do it. It takes the time to sit down and inform these incumbent characters precisely why they won’t get our votes. It takes a clean sweep.

The Senate won’t be spotless after one election. But let 2010 be the start.

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com.