Welcome to The Library
Hello Everyone,
Welcome to The Library, our website’s official “blog.” Its name denotes some historical context worth mentioning here. Back when CCR STUDIOS was first established, in 2006, we published a magazine called Vitality Journal in which our closing OP-ED by the chief editor was under the section heading titled “The Library.”
While the image of a library is often that of old wooden shelves, stacks of books, and folks seated at tables and desks quietly reading, those of us who went to a liberal arts college know the library is also a hub of social activity, discourse, and even debate. Back in the late eighties, when I attended Saint Olaf College, the Rolvaag Library had areas that were extremely quiet and other venues where, at times, it was almost like a party. It was a place for exchange as much as for study.
We hope this “library” will foster that same kind of exchange. With our new release of Operation Somalia Express: The Revenge of the Black Hawk Down, this website has experienced unprecedented traffic and we hope to, at this juncture, take things to the next level. The success of the book in sales shows significant interest in a story rich with details, conflict, and subject matter ripe for discussion.
Recently Ali and I appeared for an interview on Somali TV, along with Ali’s codefendant Emil Moge. I was asked what I hoped would be accomplished with the release and sale of the new book. I tried to stress the need to place value to the attention to details. Ali Awad’s story is complicated to such degree that many within the local Somali community in Minneapolis, fourteen years later, admitted how little they really knew about what was in involved in Operation Somalia Express. It is why we posted the ONLINE APPENDIX with over 2,500 pages of court documents allowing a reader to go and read the raw material from which this story was made into a book. The reader is then able to place those details into context and decide for herself or himself how accurately or credibly the book captured the data of record.
Paying attention is a discipline, and it requires the attention to details. In today’s device culture of click driven social media, where so many can get lost in the chase for the dopamine fix that feeds on “LIKES” and “SHARES,” what suffers first is the importance of slowing down and suffering through the details. The second thing that suffers, in the device culture, is the exchange. Your phone’s apps and algorithms do a phenomenal job of reading your comfort zone better than your own subconscious and it becomes easier and easier to go through life without truly engaging someone who sees the same set of facts from a very different perspective than the zone in which you find solace and comfort.
But we all need to seek perspectives that don’t necessarily make us comfortable.
We hope The Library can be a place where folks can discourse and even be comfortable outside of their own comfort zones. There are only two rules, one involves content and the other decorum. With respect to content, if you would like a subject to be addressed in The Library, send us your request at CONTACT US or email your requests to contactus@ccrstudios.org. We would prefer to maintain some semblance of boundaries around the subject matter within the same geography and terrain about which our two current publications in BOOKS AVAILABLE currently address. We recognized the reality, however, of legitimate tangents and segues and we will, therefore, entertain questions and issues that are reasonably related to the subject matter or those works. The only other thing we ask is that folks be courteous in the COMMENT section. Speak your mind, speak your heart but also be mindful of the hearts and minds of others. Consider seriously the energy you are sending when you hit “SEND.”
And with that, we welcome you to The Library.
Very truly yours,
Douglas Leiter