Brilliant, Terry!! I'm sure MT would approve heartily! Ben Wise ----- Original Message ----- From: "Terry Ballard" <[log in to unmask]> To: [log in to unmask] Sent: Thursday, January 6, 2011 11:01:55 AM Subject: Re: a new Adventures of Huckleberry Finn I'm not a Twain scholar either - just a Twain enthusiast. Looking over the = messages from the past few days, I can't help but wonder what Twain would s= ay if we could magically transport him to our world. May it would go someth= ing like this: "I see that Professor Gribben has succeeded in improving my book so that pe= ople will not be offended when they read it. I will grant that the professo= r did this project with the best of intentions - just as the Good Lord did = when he created black widow spiders, electric eels, cobras, mosquitoes and = the Human Race. The professor thinks that the Human Race has evolved into s= omething more genteel than what we had in the 19th century. If he feels tha= t way, he should spend some time watching the news. If your modern humans m= ust be protected from my book, who is to protect them from seeing the misad= ventures of Mel Gibson and Lindsey Lohan? What a world you have created her= e - it goes far beyond anything I could have ever predicted, but it must be= protected. Congress should pass laws. People should Tweet about this. Look= around you - America needs me more than ever. Today's youth can read Huck = Lite and come away with the idea that slavery was a darned bad thing and we= were better off without it. Maybe that's enough for a nation where 50 perc= ent of the population believes that the world is six thousand years old in = the face of all scientific knowledge to the contrary. I must go now - I'm c= atching up on American Idol." Terry Ballard Assistant Director of Technical Services for Library Systems New York Law School, Mendik Library 185 W. Broadway New York, NY, 10013 Telephone: 212-431-2106 Web: www.terryballard.org Blog: librariansonedge.blogspot.com Tweets: twitter.com/terryballard