More toxic than chocolate?
Yes, and it’s everywhere.
Please visit my guest blog post on 4Knines blog “One common thing that is more toxic than chocolate for dogs” Then please comment! Of course, after you comment, I’d love it if you would share far and wide for the love and lives of dogs. After working on this post for about a month I shared it as a guest post so that it may reach a larger audience of dog lovers, beyond my WordPress blog.
If you missed my first guest post on 4Knines blog, then go see my guest blog: “3 tips that could save your dog’s life”
As a writerly treat and encouraging read, I’m sharing Ursula Le Guin’s famous acceptance speech and noting the context. Not a single writer of science fiction nor fantasy genre were honored before her award in 2014. She states that all her fellow authors in those genres were over looked for fiction that fell within the category of “realistic” or “realism.” Enjoy.
National Book Foundation Medal
Speech in Acceptance of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters
To the givers of this beautiful eward, my thanks, from the heart. My family, my agents, my editors, know that my being here is their doing as well as my own, and that the beautiful reward is theirs as much as mine. And I rejoice in accepting it for, and sharing it with, all the writers who’ve been excluded from literature for so long — my fellow authors of fantasy and science fiction, writers of the imagination, who for fifty years have watched the beautiful rewards go to the so-called realists.Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom — poets, visionaries — realists of a larger reality.
Right now, we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximise corporate profit and advertising revenue is not the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship.Yet I see sales departments given control over editorial. I see my own publishers, in a silly panic of ignorance and greed, charging public libraries for an e-book 6 or 7 times more than they charge customers. We just saw a profiteer try to punish a publisher for disobedience, and writers threatened by corporate fatwa. And I see a lot of us, the producers, who write the books and make the books, accepting this — letting commodity profiteers sell us like deodorant, and tell us what to publish, what to write.Books aren’t just commodities; the profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable — but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.I’ve had a long career as a writer, and a good one, in good company. Here at the end of it, I don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river. We who live by writing and publishing want and should demand our fair share of the proceeds; but the name of our beautiful reward isn’t profit. Its name is freedom.
Thank you.
Ursula K. Le Guin
November 19, 2014
This text may be quoted without obtaining permission from the author, or copied in full so long as the copyright information is included:
Copyright © 2014 Ursula K. Le Guin, Ursula K. Le Guin Website
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Readers you will find a video of her Speech in Acceptance of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to Amercian Letters by clicking this link: Ursula Le Guin National Book or paste this link into your browser: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Et9Nf-rsALk
Happy New Year 2016
to writers and readers, may your be blessed by art and publication of work written from freedom to freedom.
May all beings be happy.
Deborah Taylor-French
The Daily Pip (@thedailypip) says
Great post! I just left a comment on the other blog.
dogleadermysteries says
Thanks The Daily Pip for leaving a comment on my 4Knines guest blog post “1 Common Thing That is More Toxic Than Chocolate for Dogs!” The more visitors, readers and commenters on my post raises my value and perhaps can get me a paid blogging job. After five years at Dog Leader Mysteries I must find ways to pay for my costs and some living expenses. Passion as a writer feels great, I still feel a thrill writing fiction and poetry. But blogging for me is a service to dog lovers. For that service, I wish to receive pay. Happy New Year to you and yours. Hugs, Deborah