“Bob’s Bad Idea” part 4 (the conclusion) A Short Story

Here is the conclusion to the “Bob’s Bad Idea” Short story, Read & Enjoy !

Bob wanted to keep his research idea a secret for the time being, and his adviser agreed, not having the slightest interest in Bob’s research work.  Dr. Hurley was mostly interested in his new research assistant Becky.  Yes, the same Becky that teased Bob so mercilessly about the crabs on his last research assignment with the gazelles. But Bob wasn’t one to harbor hard feelings, forgive and forget, that was his motto.

The first evening at the base camp, Bob assembled his ball and rolled it onto the edge of the savanna with out anyone seeing him.  He was getting pretty good at assembling the device by this time. So it only took three hours, and he ended up with even fewer parts leftover.  That was a good thing.

Bob wandered into camp around dusk and saw Becky walking across the commons.  He waved and strolled over to her to say hi.

Becky waited somewhat distractedly for Bob to come over.

“Hey Beck, get any crabs lately?” said Bob with a playful grin.

All the other biologists walking by at this time stopped and looked directly at Becky…. waiting for the answer.

Becky had apparently forgotten all about the crab fiasco , because she turned beet red and flew into her tent.

Bob felt sorry for her,  she shouldn’t feel badly about teasing him about the crabs.  He had, long ago, forgiven her.

Bob wandered over towards the mess tent.  He saw Gretchen coming out with a new, young,  virginal  researcher in tow.  Bob felt a sudden chill  and remembered something about a harness and something else about plowing or something, he wasn’t sure.  Bob very quickly lost his appetite and went back to his tent to lie down.

The next morning’s work started before dawn, as usual,  Bob hiked over to his giant hamster ball, hidden in some bushes and push it out onto the savanna.  At his chosen spot, Bob opened the hatch and climbed in, locking the hatch behind him. Bob started to walk…. He just started walking across the savanna.  Thank goodness Bob had the foresight to leave lots of holes in the ball for ventilation.  The ball was going to get pretty hot inside. Maybe he should have specified a dark tint to the Lexan.  Oh well we’ll save it for the next ball.  The ball was rolling along quite nicely now, out across the open plain.  This wasn’t nearly as hard going as he had feared.  In fact he was barely breaking a sweat, of course it was only eight thirty five AM.  Bob walked/rolled the giant hamster ball over to a scraggly tree and decided to wait in the shade.  Bob didn’t have to wait long  for his next field test. The test walked right out of the tall grass behind him.  Bob turned very slowly to face his new guest.  There, sitting in front of him was  the largest lion he had ever seen.  This shook Bob up a bit until he remembered that he was still sitting inside his ball.

The lion strolled up to the ball and gazed in like a fortune teller looking into his future. The lion soon left the way it had come.

“ The guys just are not going to believe this,” thought the lion as he ran back to get his buddies.

Soon the whole pride was gathered around the giant hamster ball with Bob  inside, shaking and twitching and scribbling notes as fast as ever he could.  The lions tried to get into the shade under the tree but here this thing was in the way taking up most of the shade.

The largest alpha male lion wasn’t happy at finding this thing here and with one of those pesky research biologists inside.  He hadn’t slept well the day before and the Mate was always at him about going out and catching something to eat , not to mention the cubs where becoming a real pain, with all that wrestling and biting and pouncing on him when all he wanted was to get some rest.  So it is somewhat understandable when the big alpha male lion  walked around behind the ball and started pushing it with his head.

Bob was thrown forward off his collapsible “back pack/stool,,” . The balls motion combined with his weight falling forwards, propelled the ball right out from under the shade of the tree and out in front of a passing heard of elephants. The Alpha  male lion laid down in the grass in the deepest part of the shade, now vacated by the ball, and proceeded to watch the show….

__________.__________

The leading cow elephant dodged out of the way of the ball  as it rolled past and bumped into a young bull that was next in line.  He thought someone had thrown the ball at him on purpose, so he kicked it back out of his way.  A very young bull getting into the spirit of the game gave the ball a whack with his trunk and sent it careening back among the rest of the elephants in the heard….

….The melee which ensued can be better observed from above. Luckily DR Hurley along with his research assistant Becky and the Cessna’s pilot where overflying the herd, taking a census  and filming a segment for an up coming,  National Geographic Society Television Special  about African elephant community dynamics.

They couldn’t believe what they where seeing, but there it was as plain as day!

The elephants below appeared to be playing     …..SOCCER ?

…….DR Hurley smelled an Emmy.

Epilogue:

Bob got out of the hospital in Mombasa two weeks later.  Becky visited often when she wasn’t assisting DR Hurley .

DR. Hurley was nominated for an “Emmy” for the TV special, a “Pulitzer Prize”, for the new book on the leisure time activities of African Elephants, and a “Nobel Prize” for his cutting edge research into spontaneous game learning by elephants.

…..And the “National Geographic Society” was trying valiantly to keep it’s association with the “ Giant Hamster Ball” as quiet as possible.

Thanks for reading along, & Share this story with your friends. I’m

trying to get this blogging and networking thing going for real

Thanks,

“Broke Bob” Leiby

The End.

“Bob’s Bad Idea” part 3 – A Short Story

I’m “Broke Bob” Leiby. I’m a singer / song writer – located in Schuylkill County in Central PA. I write and play original folk /rock / country acoustic music. I also do covers by the likes of Cat Stevens, Jethro Tull, Bruce Springsteen, Peter, Paul & Mary, Tom Petty  and many, many more. Check out my web site for a full play list and recordings of some of my original music & for down load and sale & to see if I would be right to play at your Central PA. venue! Oh and by the way if you need any construction done here in Schuylkill County please contact me through Summer Hill Building & Contracting.

“Bob’s Bad Idea” part 3

Bob strode into base camp, an Alpha Male.  All the other field biologists would be jealous.  Bob looked upon these lesser biologists with disdain. He was lord over all he surveyed.  Bob strode up to Becky, who was talking with some other lesser biologists.

Bob thanked her, in his most manly voice for her thoughtfulness yesterday, and strode away without even a glance backwards.

Becky stopped talking to the other biologists in the group when Bob strode up.

He was different, somehow. More manly.

“Well,” she thought, “he had nowhere to go but up.”  Becky couldn’t help but feel that she had, somehow miss-judged Bob.  That there was more to him than he let on.

But, in the final analysis,  he was still a very odd boy.

Bob started to copy all his field notes.  There were quite a lot of them.  He didn’t realize he had taken so copious a quantity of notes. Bob, being out of practice, took a long time transposing them into “Biological-Science” English, annotated with foot notes, and collated to boot.

He was feeling good. He was feeling fine. He had looked a lion right in the puss and not flinched.  Then the full realization about the lions came back  to him like the Newfundlandian tide….  He had to figure a way around the lions.

“You just can’t keep walking up on them and expect to get away with it,”  he thought. Having faced these fearsome predators and prevailed, he figured he knew as much as anyone, (still alive that is) on how to do research on them.  YES, that is it!

He would apply for a grant to study the lions on his next rotation in country.

Since this was the last full day of research in the field, and since he had had such a great field trip today, (except for the part with the lions).  Bob decided to take the evening off and enjoy himself a little.  So after handing in his superbly fashioned field report to his supervisor, Bob strolled on over to the mess tent.  It didn’t bother Bob one bit that the field report received only a cursory glance and a grunted “its about time”. from his supervisor. No doubt the poor man was overworked having to hold the hands and wipe the noses of all those other, lesser biologists whose work was barely fit to line a parakeet’s cage.

Upon entering the Mess tent Bob looked around for Becky.  He thought he saw her leaving the tent, with another  research biologist….. by the back door….. in a hurry.

“I guess she was tired and wanted to make an early night of it before heading home tomorrow,” Bob thought to himself.

Bob sauntered over to the food bar to grab some grub. There wasn’t much to choose from; some stale trail mix, some old bread from four days ago, a little gazelle jerky, and some very questionable looking melon.  Bob opted for the trail mix and jerky.

The African guy behind the bar handed him a bottle of “Perrier” that he had just finished refilling from a rusty, fifty five gallon drum standing behind the bar.

Bob looked around the almost deserted mess tent.  There were a few scrawny looking female biologists, crouching over a table in the corner in very deep conversation.

A group of noisy male biologists making a display for this one hot botanist named Jasmine something or other.

At a table in the center of the tent, all alone, sat the German Bio-physicist Gretchen.  Now, Gretchen was a large woman.  Not the fat and flabby kind of large from eating junk food and watching “Jerry Springer” all day long    She was the “twelve generations of pulling Papa’s plow” kind of large .

“Zo, I heard you vinnaly got your gazelles,” Gretchen said with a twinkle in her eye.

Bob, still feeling he was master of his universe, strode over and sat down in the offered chair beside Gretchen.

“Yep Gretch, you should have been there, there were gazelles everywhere. I guess its ‘all good things to those who wait’,” said Bob around a mouthful of stale trail mix.

“I zink you are right” said Gretchen with a knowing smile.

Bob was, just then wondering what it was that she knew, when she said.

“Vhy don’t you come back to my tent und tell me all about it, I have zome schnitzel  und zome ‘Jagermeister’, Ve should zelibrate.”

So, seeing the writing on the wall, and not having many other options open to him just then, Bob said, “Sure, why not.”   That schnitzel was starting to sound really good!.

______________.____________

 

On the plane ride back to the States, Bob put together the grant proposal for his next research project. The one with the lions.  It felt good to still be master of his universe even with what happened with Gretchen.  The memory was still kind of foggy , what with all the schnitzel and “Jagermeister.”  He remembered something about a harness and something  else about plowing the lower forty, or something like that. He just couldn’t remember  it, clearly.  He woke up this morning, in his own tent, with the mother of all hang-overs. Like the time  when he and some of his grad school buddies went down to Tijuana for the day,…. He couldn’t remember much of that day either.

Bob wanted to try to observe lions at close quarters, in safety. Bob thought that the safety part should be important, so he  thought up and designed a “manually operated observation vehicle” , or MOOV.   Basically it was nothing more than a giant hamster ball.  The idea was to climb into this spherical Lexan ball  through a hatch, lock yourself in and  just walk around inside this ball right up to the predators without worrying about ending up as some lion’s lunch.   It all looked great on paper, now all he needed to get was research funding and he was off.

Bob sent the grant application to the National Geographic Society along with his drawings and funding request, and sat back to wait.

At the National Geographic Society’s offices in Washington DC. Bobs request landed on the desk of Manuel K Lutz.  Manuel, being  prone to nearsightedness and constantly being the butt of all manner of practical jokes perpetrated by the pranksters  in the back offices at the National Geographic Society , decided to get a little pay back.  These goofy funding requests pranks where getting  out of hand, So Manuel forwarded the request for funding approval to his supervisor who, being half in the bag at the time due to a three martini power lunch, signed it and promptly forgot about it.   Manuel chuckled to himself,  “Pay back was a bitch.”

Bob was amazed when his grant approval arrived in the mail a few days later along with a hefty check.

“Those fellows at the National Geographic Society where really ‘on the ball.’” Bob would later be overheard saying.

Bob ordered his “giant hamster ball” ,That’s what he was calling it just then, from an obscure expedition outfitting company in  Jersey City, New Jersey.  After a few Emails back and forth and some initial reluctance on the part of the fabricator to warrant the device , not to mention the threats of legal action if the harassment didn’t stop.  The project was finally sorted out and the device was delivered to his home.  It was amazing how a six foot clear plastic hamster ball could fit into a such small case.  Bob unpacked the parts along with the assembly instructions, (in Korean) and started in to building the ball……

…..Seven hours later, he finally completed the entire frame work of one-full-panel, only eleven to go. But he felt he had a handle on the process now so it only took another eight hours to finish the entire ball. Bob wasn’t entirely happy about all the extra parts left over, but felt that was to be expected, considering his history with assembling Christmas presence.

When Bob had disassembled the Giant Hamster Ball and packed it away into its original “Official Giant Hamster Ball Carrying Case,” Bob found he needed two more  suit cases and a smallish trunk to hold all the rest of the parts.  However, packed was packed so Bob called his post doc. advisor , DR William S. Hurley and set up his research schedule.

It was a fortuitous turn of events that allowed Bob’s advisor to be present in Africa at the same time doing research out of the same base camp. Dr. Hurley’s sub-specialty was African Elephant behavior. His sub-sub-specialty was African Elephant behavior as a function of communication and leisure time activities.

So biologist Bob and his research advisor Dr. Hurley winged their way back to deepest darkest Africa.

Thanks for reading and following along on this web site and don’t forget to stop by & say Hi on the comment section below &  Face book .  Please click the “Like Button and share my stuff with all your friends ! I’m trying to get this networking thing going !

Broke BoB Leiby

Bob’s Bad Idea: A Short Story, part 2

I’m “Broke Bob” Leiby. I’m a singer / song writer – located in Schuylkill County in Central PA. I write and play original folk /rock / country acoustic music. I also do covers by the likes of Cat Stevens, Jethro Tull, Bruce Springsteen, Peter, Paul & Mary, Tom Petty  and many, many more. Check out my BrokeBoB .com web site for a full play list and recordings of some of my original music.

For down load and sale cick the discography tab above & to see if I would be right to play at your Central PA. venue!

Here is the next chapter of my “never published” short story:

Bob’s Bad Idea

The next day’s work started well before dawn with a meeting of all researchers with their supervisors.  Bob stood at the back of the group getting his  assignment, it was gazelles ….. again.  Bob walked off to fetch his backpack with his lunch, notebook, water, and lots of sun screen.  He imagined  the gazelles all knew him by sight now, and probably laughed  and made cheap gazelle-researcher jokes behind his back.

Bob wandered off through the bush as the dawn glowed with new promise.

Bob was moving quietly, (for him) to his assigned area. The same area where the day before, he was trying to sneak up on the , up until that point, oblivious gazelles.  By all the documented research he had ever read, gazelles where the “Forest Gumps” of the antelope world.  His research supervisor had given him the gazelles to get his “feet wet .” After three weeks he still hadn’t got an accurate count on the gazelle population in his area, let alone doing any real cutting edge research.

Bob moved out onto the savanna.  It struck him as rather odd that he hadn’t seen any ungulates of any kind yet.  It wasn’t until Bob was quite far out onto the plane when the reason finally became apparent. That reason slowly scratched it’s way to the surface of his mind like the way a mouse scratches to get out of a cellophane package of crackers, lost at the back of the pantry. There, under a lone and very desiccated tree, was a very attentive pride of lions, watching him intently.   Bob froze.

“Be-the-bush…Be-The-Bush… BE-THE-BUSH,“ was all his panic stricken mind could shriek.

The lions, for their part, had just finished a rather large brunch of gazelle, so they had no intention of leaving the shade to chase down another “Forrest Gump”.  They all just laid there in the shade and watched the field biologist sweat and twitch.

“He must have something in his eye,” one lion thought, the way it was twitching like that. One of the younger and therefore slightly less comatose lions winched himself from the ground and started to saunter, nonchalantly, in the general direction of the, by now completely freaked out biologist.  The young lion meandered over to where the biologist stood frozen in place.  It occurred to the young lion that the biologist was rather good at this being frozen in place business.  He must have had allot of practice.

So, with what could only be described, (for lions), as a very mischievous grin, he put his nose into Bob’s crotch and took a very large sniff.

Now, the panic that Bob felt exploded beyond any normal, every day kind of terror to that place where that calm acceptance of ones fate endows a sort of objective reason.  Bob had never heard of this kind of behavior in lions before.  He had read that when confronted with lions, (if you survived the initial encounter), chances are sort of good that you may live to tell the tale.  Since he was still standing and the lion was only reconnoitering his nether-regions, he figured he had at least half a chance of coming out of this, at least mostly alive.  However, this new found confidence was badly shaken when the lion perusing his private parts suddenly became noisily ill and threw-up  half chewed gazelle, all over Bob’s new field biologists boots.  Bob could have handled even this until the same lion started into retrieving his lost lunch like  a rat terrier on a pair of flip-flops.

Bob fainted dead away…..

____________.__________

.                                                                                                                                                           ….Bob awoke from a dreadful dream ,

that a rat terrier was busy eating his flip-flops while his feet were still in them.  Bob opened his eyes very slowly and gazed around. He was lying flat out, on his back, in some tall grass and all around him where gazelles. Hundreds and thousands of gazelles. Large gazelles and small gazelles; huge male gazelles with long spiral horns and with lots of girl gazelles hanging around and gazing at them….. longingly.  Many more smaller, wimpy looking male gazelles hanging around the edges of the herd, gazing in towards the butch gazelles at the center….. longingly. He had hit the mother lode of gazelles.  Bob eased out his official field biologists note book from his day pack lying on the ground beside him and started scribbling down observations furiously.  Bob took notes like he never took notes before.  After about three hours of Bob’s hi-speed note taking the herd moved off in search of more interesting grass to eat.  Bob got up off the ground and headed back to base camp. …..Triumphantly!

Check out my original music on this site  (Above) and If you need any new construction done like an addition or remodeling job or even thinking about buying a new sail boat check out my other sites (Linked Below) .

@  I’m hosting a residential construction blog at: Summer Hill Building & Contracting, Inc.

My New Home Construction web site is : Summer Hill Building.com

&  My Adventures aboard my Beloved Sailboat ( which is for sale): Formosa 43 “Meander”

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“Broke BoB” Leiby

Bob’s Bad Idea, A Short Story

I’m “Broke Bob” Leiby. I’m a singer / song writer – located in Schuylkill County in Central PA. I write and play original folk /rock / country acoustic music. I also do covers by the likes of Cat Stevens, Jethro Tull, Bruce Springsteen, Peter, Paul & Mary, Tom Petty  and many, many more. Check out my BrokeBoB .com web site for a full play list and recordings of some of my original music & for down load and sale & to see if I would be right to play at your Central PA. venue!

I know …I’m a musician…and lots of other things…. but a writer? Well we’ll see.

As follows is the first chapter of my very (un-published) short story about a dull witted Biology grad student doing field work for his Doctorate.

Bob’s Bad Idea

Bob was holding his breath.  Being frozen in place wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.  He remembered from his field training to “be the bush”  … “be the bush,” that was the mantra.  He knew if he moved now all this day’s hard work would be lost,  what with just about every animal in the whole herd watching him now and he with this nasty little tick that showed up whenever he got  nervous. By now he was very nervous. As luck would have it, By this time the whole herd of gazelles were watching the bush Bob was hiding in with laser beam intensity.  They had never seen a bush with a twitchy eye before, so of course they where curious.  They knew the bush couldn’t be hiding a predator.  No predators: lion or leopard that they had  heard of ever showed up with a nervous tick, except maybe the hyenas….. You just never knew about hyenas.

The sneeze just came out of nowhere,  like that snowball thrown at the back of your head from behind the dormitory. One moment your minding your own business, watching some girls – I mean gazelles,  and WHACK your head  explodes… just like that.  Of course no girl – I mean gazelle, was going to hang around and wait for you to pry yourself off the ground, so they could figure out whether you where harmless or not, so off they all scattered in every direction.

Bob started back towards the encampment, defeated.  He still had the memory of ice trickling down his neck, but of course there was no ice; it was one hundred and fourteen degrees  in the sun.  He hadn’t seen any ice for three weeks. Some would have gone down real nice about now.

Back at base camp the other field biologists had already returned  and were at various stages of report writing.  As Bob trudged into camp, all the other biologists turned to watched him plod by.  One of them, a little female named Becky came over to Bob and asked how his observations had gone.  Bob mumbled something about a twitchy eye or something about the sun being in his eyes, or something… and crept into his tent slamming the flap behind him.  Becky just stared at the tent flap a moment longer then went back to finish collating her field notes, already copied in triplicate…. with foot notes.

Bob sat on his cot, thinking.  Why was this field work so hard?  The other biologists didn’t seem to have problems counting their animals.  They seemed to be able to sneak right up on their wildebeests or warthogs or whatever it was they where watching at the moment.  But Bob was always having problems approaching his target animals. They would inevitably see him or smell him or hear him lurking about in the undergrowth.  It just wasn’t fair. He could understand it if he moved around a lot – well he did have that nasty twitch.  OK, what about smelling him? Well, it had been three weeks since he had a shower, but none of the other biologists had bathed either.  So somehow, that made him feel a little better. What about hearing him?  He always tried to be as quiet as a mouse pissing on a cotton ball. What about that sneeze today?- You know,  sometimes a sneeze is just a sneeze. So with nothing else for it, Bob resolved himself to try even harder….

to be the best dammed  “Field Biologist” he could be!

There came a soft, muffled knock on his tent flap.

“Come in,” said Bob, with a renewed sense of purpose.

Becky stepped in through the tent flap.  She was carrying a tin dish with what could only be described  by the legumes ensconced thereon as… ‘bean hell’.

“I brought  you something to eat,”  said Becky .

Bob hadn’t realized it before but he was famished. Scaring  and traumatizing gazelles all day long was, after all, hard work. Becky sat down beside Bob on the cot and handed him the plate of  “Pinto Purgatory.”

Bob dove into the plate like Greg Lugainus.  His score for technical merit would have been higher but for the large off center splash of his entry.  Never the less, Bob hoovered the plate clean  and set it down by his feet.

“Oh, and here,” said Becky proffering one of two, cold, glistening beers. Bob was awe struck.

“Where did you get these ?” asked Bob, with not a little wonder.

“Oh, well, the supply truck arrived and they had brought a cooler with these in it for the Uber  Meister,  and when I said I wanted the beer to cook some Maryland blue crabs in, the porter just smiled and handed these two over and waved goodbye.

“…..So where are the blue crabs?”  asked Bob looking around the tent.

The baked beans being ,now, only a fond memory.

Becky paused and looked at Bob in  utter disbelief. “What?” she managed to say.

“The crabs,  you said something about crabs, right?” said Bob getting a bead on  the crux of the matter.

“Bob,  there are no crabs.” said Becky.

“Are you sure, because I’m sure I heard something about crabs”.

“Bob,…..Forgedaboudit”, said Becky, taking the still unopened beer from Bob’s hand and storming out of the tent.

Bob gazed at the still fluttering tent flap and wondered if she was going off, to get the crabs.  When Becky hadn’t returned after some minutes,  Bob came to the slow realization that he wasn’t going to get any crabs that night.

Well that was the first chapter of Bob’s Bad Idea, Stay tuned , same time, same channel for the next installment

Thanks for reading along.

Broke Bob Leiby

Censorship in the Arts

I am a singer / songwriter / guitarist. Music is at the heart of my life ( & I guess my daughter’s as well )!

What follows is a re print (re-post) of an award winning essay, by my daughter: Rebeccah S. Leiby

It was written for the Fifth Annual Undergraduate Student Essay Competition, sponsored by the LHU Philosophy Program & Ethics Center.

What They See is What You Get:

The Battle of Censorship in the Arts

As a classical pianist-in-training, I have rarely had reason to pause and discover my own attitude towards the concept of censorships in the arts. Mozart’s piano sonatas are not obscene; Chopin’s nocturnes are not scandalous; I have never been booed off stage for shocking an audience from its seats (nor have my professors nor studio mates, to my knowledge). Classical music exists in a protective shell of light, as it were, a glass casing which reduces its reception to matters only of taste. If it pleases or offends, it does so only within a narrow context – while music critics can be cruel, no one ever wrote of Gould[1], his playing was fine, but that Bach partita really should have come with an announcement asking minors to leave the hall. The era of Le sacre du printemps is over. The public no longer makes it a particular point to throw riots over ballets.

It has become easy to think of my small sliver of the artistic world as somehow removed and exempt from the battle of rights to expression. But the more time I spend in the world of the arts – be it as a musician, a philosophy student, or a mere lover of aesthetics – the more frequently I encounter the societal push-and-pull of what is to be permitted artistically, and what is to be shied away from.

Through the following exploration of censorship’s relationship to the arts, I hope to shed some light not only upon the value of art as it stands in Western culture, but also upon the sagacity of imposing upon it limitations of content and form.

I.       What is Art?

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines art as “the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects”[2]. But is the definition of such a multi-faceted, ever-evolving institution really so easily captured? Is the dictionary explanation of the phenomenon of art really anything more than a halfhearted assignation between what the mind struggles to label and the heart labors to define? The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which possesses a lengthy and almost frustrated entry on the definition of art, offers a particularly poignant citation on the subject: ““It is not at all clear that these words – ‘What is art?’ – express anything like a single question, to which competing answers are given, or whether philosophers proposing answers are even engaged in the same debate…. The sheer variety of proposed definitions should give us pause.[3]”

Have we any hope, then, of defining art to a suitable degree of specificity? Perhaps not in a universal sense, but we might agree, in light of the fact that art itself is such an amorphous institution, to establish our own definition to art for the purposes of this exploration. Namely, we may consider art in this context to be a visual or auditory extension of – and projection of – human emotions into the physical world. The matchless Leo Tolstoy perhaps said it best in his 1897 essay, “What Is Art?”: “To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced, and having evoked it in oneself, then, by means of movements, lines, colors, sounds, or forms expressed in words, so to transmit that feeling that others may experience the same feeling – this is the activity of art.[4]”

II.    What is Censorship?

As citizens of a nation which – in theory – cherishes the “freedom of speech” afforded in its first amendment, we are nearly conditioned to flinch at the mention of censorship. The word itself conjures up images of ruthless dictators, memories of our old and often demonized political opponents from yesteryear (Fascist Germany and The Soviet Union, for starters); it is interwoven into every worrisome portrait of the future, every Orwellian nightmare. We tend to link censorship with the ultimately unjust political goals of an iron-fisted government – but is it ever permissible for a government to participate in censorship? More to the point, should we ever be willing to censor ourselves as a society?

Simply defined, censorship describes the act of suppressing or deleting “anything considered objectionable”[5]. Within itself, this definition of censorship sounds rather less threatening than we generally conceive of it. To diminish our contact with objectionable material seems perfectly acceptable on the surface. But in an effort to face this dilemma in a more rigorous manner, we must approach the question of censorship with one paramount inquiry in mind. We must do more than discern for what reasons the work has incurred censorship; it is our ultimate, social responsibility to decide whether or not such censorship is beneficial or harmful to the society at large.

III. The Argument for Censorship in the Arts

In his keystone work, Republic, Plato described his ideal society and – within that society – the ideal Man. Published in 380 B.C., the Republic was born into a society thoroughly out of its Golden Age. Plato suggested that Athenian society had been corrupted by its art and religion, and describes at length the sort of art work worth censoring from the ideal society.

First, he states that art is nothing more than glorified imitation: art is a vapid, shallow copy of a copy (the physical world) which itself serves only to mimic a Form (the universe’s pristine and rational original). Art is a shadow on the cave wall[6], if you will, pale in comparison to the truth and useless by nature.

Second, Plato offers that art possesses a dangerous degree of power. At best, this ability to capture the mind and influence action is a distraction; at worst, it can become a positively harmful force in society. Art, being an extension of human emotions in the physical world, often depicts individuals acting emotionally, when the Platonic ideal is rational self-control. Plato goes on to suggest that the amoral acts frequently portrayed through art encourage emulation of those acts by the audience.

Plato was clearly a proponent of censorship in the arts, but not as a result of some ulterior motive: he is genuinely attempting to protect humanity from its own, fragile self.

The view that certain works of art are worthy of censor due to the potential influence of the subject matter has a strong foothold even today in contemporary Western society. Its most voracious defenders have historically been moral and religious conservatives, who hold the viewpoint that works of art which include negative, unconventional and explicit material are both morally corrupting and socially destabilizing. The voice of this portion of our population is by no means a meager one. Consider, for instance, the many battles fought by and against the National Endowment for the Arts on this score. The NEA – established in 1965 to facilitate the bloom of artistic excellence in the United States – has frequently fallen under pressure to avoid funding offensive works of art (primarily by conservative members of the federal government).      In 1989, this pressure resulted in the NEA adopting the Helms Amendment, which permitted the foundation to establish an “obscenity pledge”: that is, a legal agreement which required artists to refrain from using government money to aid in the production of obscene or indecent art. A year later, suffering from severe backlash and legal action against it, the NEA repealed the “obscenity pledge” in favor of the tamer, though nearly identical, “decency clause”, which requires award recipients to guarantee that their works meet pre-determined standards of acceptability of content.

Just as Plato stood against uncensored art in all of its forms, many contemporary proponents of censorship fling their focus further than merely the visual. The Parents Music Resource Center is a prime example of this. Formed in 1985 by four wives of powerful Washington D.C. politicians and businessmen, the PMRC stood in firm opposition to popular music which depicted violence, drug usage and sexual promiscuity. The PMRC ultimately succeeded in having certain albums of questionable more content marked with a warning sticker reading “Parental Advisory: Explicit Content”. Tipper Gore, an original cofounder of the society, described their objection to such works succinctly: “This change in popular culture co-existed with the breakdown of the nuclear family. When the nuclear family started to decay, there was also a breakdown in the immunization system to evil. Since children today lack the stable family structure of past generations, they are more vulnerable to role models and authority figures outside established patriarchal institutions. I see the family as a haven of moral stability, while popular music – e.g. rock music – is a poisonous source infecting the youth of the world with messages they cannot handle.”

Nor does literature escape the threat of censorship. Particularly with regards to the content of school curriculums and libraries, concerned parents frequently write formal complaints seeking to have unwholesome content banned. Roberta Stevens, President of the American Library Association, stated that, “[s]ince 1900, the American Library Association’s (ALA) Office for Intellectual Freedom has recorded more than 11,000 book challenges[7]”; presumably all the result of distressed parents attempting to shield their children from the messier aspects of human nature and society.

IV.  The Argument Against Censorship in the Arts

Aristotle, together with Plato and Socrates, is widely considered to be one of those fundamental and influential forerunners of modern Western thought. Despite being Plato’s prize pupil, Aristotle’s philosophies differed frequently from those of his teacher. Where Plato saw art as the pale shadow of pointless mimicry, Aristotle was of the opinion that art imitates broad and noble universal truths. The artwork itself was not the copy of a decaying copy which Plato saw, but rather an invaluable light cast upon the real world.

Aristotle responded to Plato’s criticism of art as incitement towards dangerous emulation by depicting it as a healthy catharsis: art can help us to be more in control of our emotions by offering us a safe, vicarious outlet through which to purge them. Moreover, art often depicts the negative consequences of negative conduct and therefore inspires audiences towards restraint and the avoidance of such imitation. Without this emotional leavening agent, this surrogate release, negative emotions such as anxiety, outrage and sorrow will remain suppressed and therefore unpredictable. Aristotle roundly disputed Plato’s aesthetics: the healthiest society, he suggests, is one which uses art to its full potential – not only as an emotional vent, but also as a vehicle whereby to shed light upon the great universal truths.

Nor was Aristotle the last man to rail against Platonic limitations upon art. John Stuart Mill, an influential British philosopher of the 19^th Century, seemed to take particular fault with Plato’s motivations. It is not enough to desire to protect man from himself, says Mill in the 1859 publication, On Liberty. “The only principle for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinion of others, to do so would be wise or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him, must be calculated to produce evil to someone else. The only part of the conduct of any one for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute.[8]”

The primary argument for censorship offered by both moral conservatives and disquieted citizens is Platonic in its fundamental form: we are acting not from a sense of judgment nor condemnation, they seem to say, but rather from a desire to protect and preserve our society from the degenerating effects of art left uncensored. Mill’s response to this brand of argument is clear – no man has the right to impose his own private convictions upon another, no matter what the projected justification.

More contemporary dissidents of the right to censorship seem to echo Mill’s sentiments. In her September 2010 article in The Huffington Post, Roberta Stevens denounces efforts at book banning primarily because they “are not simply an expression of a point of view; they are also an attempt to remove materials from public use, thereby restricting the access of others. Even if the motivation to ban or challenge a book is well intentioned, the outcome is detrimental. Censorship denies our freedom as individuals to choose and think for ourselves. For children, decisions about what books to read should be made by the people who know them best — their parents or guardians.[9]”

This assertation directly disputes much of the argument for censorship in the arts, which often builds from justifications of prevention of negatively influencing the youth. If the responsibility of the moral molding of children belongs primarily to their parents, why should art suffer because parents are unwilling to guide their children informatively through the hazardous waters of unfortunate but omnipresent realities?

V.     Conclusion

The permissibility of the censorship of art has been an intellectual issue argued over since the time of Ancient Greece. It often seems a battle which defies the victory of any one side, if only because the battleground itself is so very uneven and a solid, universal definition of art lies so utterly out of our grasp.

At its core, however, the discourse on censorship boils down to one, cardinal question. Is it better for mankind to face its own demons with head held high, or is it more beneficent for those darker representations of human expression to be repressed from their very outset? For my part, I believe that little defines the dexterous human spirit better than our ability to learn through observation, discovery and learning. Without the light of knowledge, we are savages. To discover deeper truths not only about ourselves but about our world is one of the rarest joys afforded us. The journey may not take place within our comfort zone, or conform to our overall ideals of morality and esteem, but nothing could be more worthwhile than reaching the destination of greater understanding. Never more than after having read the most heart-rending tragedies, after having seen the most unabashed and uncomfortably honest films, have I felt so wise, so insightful! Nothing could be more detrimental than hindering that experience from motives of underestimation and fear: art must always have the option of brutal honesty for it to remain relevant. Censorship in the arts locks the only gate to that garden, and I for one will never feel content in a world where none of the roses have thorns.

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[1] Glenn Gould (1932-1982) was a renowned Canadian pianist whose specialty lay in the repertoire of the Baroque Era, particularly the keyboard music of J.S. Bach.

[2] Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary: “art (n)”.

[3] Walton, Kendall; 2007, “Aesthetics—What?, Why?, and Wherefore?” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 65.

[4] Tolstoy, Leo; 1897, “What Is Art?”

[5] Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary: “censorship (n), censoring (v)”.

[6] Plato, “The Republic: Book VII” – The Allegory of the Cave.

[7] Stevens, Roberta; 2010, “Yes, There Is Still Book Banning the United States” The Huffington Post

[8] Mill, John Stuart; 1859, On Liberty

[9] Stevens, Roberta; 2010, “Yes, There Is Still Book Banning the United States” The Huffington Post

Thanks fro reading

Broke Bob Leiby

The Espn Murphy Benefit

The Espn Murphy Benefit

This Friday March 18, 2012 I’ll be helping out by playing a few songs at the Espn Murphy Benefit hosted by: Reiley Lonergan At the Sovereign Majestic theater Pottsville, PA. The Show starts at 6:00 till ? who knows. You can contact Reiley Lonagren on face book for more info, & you can buy tickets atthe Lazy Dog Coffee House, Thursday evening the 17th
(St. Patty’s Day ) So wear your Green !

Here is the email I got from Reiley!

Hi!

I am sure many of you know of 3 year old Espn Murphy of Pottsville. He is a little buddy of mine that has an inoperable, malignant brain tumor. I am hoping to host a fundraiser for Espn to be held at the Sovereign Majestic Theater to be held on Friday, March 18th at 6:00 p.m.

I am hoping some of my singing friends can get involved to help with this event. I am looking for about 10 people who really care about helping Espn… and his family and want to help make this fundraiser a BIG SUCCESS!!!

I am mainly asking my adult singing friends to take part. While I ask that you share your musical talents, I also ask that you help with the actual fundraising as well with each Performer selling at least 8-10 tickets for the show. Tickets are $15.00 each. Ticket orders (which must be pre-paid) are due by March 10th.

Please let me know if you are able to help out with this event for Espn. It would be greatly appreciated! This little boy and his family need our help!

I would need to know by Tuesday, February 22nd. You can contact me by Inbox or you can email me at reiley@comcast.net. Or you can call my mom or Aunt Sandy at 449-1293.

A Love Song For Us

Here is one of my favorite songs. I wrote it for my Long suffering wife Susan.

Here are the lyrics:

A Love Song for Us

By R. H. Leiby   12// 2010

[Verse]

Every time I come home ….you say I love you

Every time I go away…..You say I love you

You call me in the middle of my day….just to say I  love you

You send me carrier pigeons with notes that say I love you.

[Chorus]

When I wake up in the morning

The birds all sing I love you

When ever I look up into the sky

The clouds spell out I love you

[Verse]

Ever time I close my eyes …. I dream about you

When I open them again…… no day’s without  you

When I pass you in the hall …I reach out to touch you

And when I’m next to you in bed…. I long to hold you.

[Bridge]

…And when I dream…

[Verse]

In the middle of my day …I day dream about you

And when I’m out with all my friends …I think about you

And when I pick-up my guitar and play…I sing about you

I can’t imagine any day…..without you

[Chorus]

When I wake up in the morning-

The birds all sing, I love you

When ever I look up into the sky-

The clouds spell out, I love you

[Repeat first verse & chorus ]

Hello, cruel world!

[Testing, testing, one, two, testing.]

Welcome to the new brokebob.com! Up above you can find links to Biography, Discography, Contact Information, Upcoming Shows and Song Lists… and down below, you can find links to Summer Hill Building & Contracting, the best custom home builder around. At least in Schuylkill County, PA.