Bill Lee, slow your roll.

photo by Phyllis D.K. Hildreth

This one grieves me to write, but I think I have to. Some of the best years of my life were lived within a community that includes the families of Bill Lee and Marsha Blackburn at Christ Presbyterian Academy. The friendships I entered into there remain mostly alive and kicking and unchanged. I’ll always be grateful for students, faculty, administrators, and parents who nurtured and encouraged me in those days as I tried to find my way as an educator and a writer. I have a story about a time it looked like my job was in danger and how morally serious, cool-headed people looked after me. You can read it here.

“If you confuse, you’ll lose,” Donald Miller tells me. By declining to honor the alleged divisions of “business” and “religion” and “politics,” I know I risk the charge of courting confusion, but I believe I have to if I’m going to keep it country simple. As most Tennesseans will know, Bill Lee and Marsha Blackburn now make up a big part of our representation. Bill is my governor and Marsha is one of my United States Senators. They’ve also recently locked arms with John Rich and “Moms For Liberty” to target librarians, educators, authors, and student readers. These are my people. I used to think they were Bill and Marsha’s people too. All available data indicates that this is not the case. All available data also indicates that the figures and institutions that abide and thereby normalize Lee and Blackburn’s abusive behavior (Bill Haslam, Michael W. Smith, Ford Motor Company, Christ Presbyterian Church) have decided to leave them to it and sit this one out. I hope they change their posture soon and very soon.

The photograph above features Anna Caudill, Kevin Riggs, Elizabeth Madeira, Andrew Maraniss, my son Peter, lots of new friends, and little old me. I made a sign to communicate the situation and the threats we face (see below). The Tennessean covered much of the story, but I’d especially like to highlight Anna Caudill’s words. She and I taught at CPA together with Tennessee’s First Lady, Maria Lee. We never dreamed that her husband would get bullied into bullying his own constituents, caving to someone like Speaker Cameron Sexton, and betraying his oath and baptism so completely. I never dreamed he’d target my family and friends. Here’s Anna:

No matter what made up controversy legislators seize on next to scare hard-working Tennesseans into thinking our kids are in danger, it will not answer for the failure of moral responsibility this legislature has shown our children…[Speaker] Sexton would have you believe our school librarians are the predators, and not that this supermajority’s complete failure to care for the children of the Volunteer State is a problem. Will the 10-12 members of that politically appointed state textbook commission review the millions of books in Tennessee schools? Will they comb through the online library applications our schools use? Will they have the training to discern why an online library such as Bookshare is invaluable for disabled students, or why Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library partners with Bledsoe County Schools and Sweetwater City Schools and Lewis County Schools to give children more books than their parents could hope to afford?…

I’m grateful that Anna makes more visible the connection between our supermajority’s aggression and the humanitarian effort of someone like Dolly Parton. Perhaps a figure like Parton (or Taylor Swift or Ann Patchett or Jon Meacham) can persuade Bill Lee to veto this ungodly legislation. We live in hope. Here’s Anna’s complete text. It’s worth sharing and discussing.

We need not ask what we’d do if elected officials tried to forcibly limit what books trained librarians are permitted to share with students in consultation with parents in Tennessee? Today, we know.