Author Archives: lydias

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, poems, and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

Neil deGrasse Tyson on Children and Adults via lilylayer4. Great stuff.

I Just Ate Fruit for the First Time and It Kind of Sucked. This is one of the funniest things I’ve read so far in 2014.

When Plastic People Say We’re Dead via brudburg. Isn’t this a fantastic title? As soon as I read it, I couldn’t wait to find out what it could possibly be about. I won’t spoil it for my readers  – go check it out for yourselves!

There’s No Such Thing As a Dumb Question. Or is there? This reminded me a little of all of the questions my brothers and I used to ask our parents on long road trips. Sometimes they would pay us to sit quietly and count every animal we saw alongside the road. At $0.01 per animal it was a pretty cheap way for them not to answer a million questions. 😛

From The Amish Closet – Growing Up Gay in a Closed Community via SensaNostra:

“Dad I’m gay.”

His reply?

“You had better join the church and get a wife.”

“D-a-a-a-d!”

From At the Market, Very Late:

Last night in a supermarket about 3 AM, I saw a woman have a serious breakdown. She was buying some items — not a lot, maybe $35.00 worth of cheese, meat and cereal. A basic shopping list. The checkout clerk rang her up, she swiped her credit card —

— and it was declined. No good. Not accepted.

The End of Eve is the true story of the final illness of a woman who exhibited many of the classic signs of narcissism. Her daughter Ariel documents Eve’s final months and recalls painful memories from both of their childhoods.

It’s easy to grieve for someone who was good and kind. Figuring out how to make peace with someone you have mixed feelings about is much harder. The author does a wonderful job describing how and why love is sometimes mixed with anger or resentment.

This wasn’t an easy book to read. Eve made a lot of terrible choices in her lifetime and isn’t someone I would have ever wanted to meet in person. Yet Ariel’s ability to reach out to someone who has burned so many bridges is admirable. It isn’t necessary the choice I would make if I were in her shoes, but I understand why she did it.

What have you been reading?

It is easy for us to criticize the prejudices of our grandfathers, from which our fathers freed themselves. It is more difficult to distance ourselves from our own views, so that we can dispassionately search for prejudices among the beliefs and values we hold.

–  Peter Singer

I’ve often wondered which social attitudes that are seen as perfectly ordinary in 2014 will make people wince a hundred years from now.

Here is this week’s list of blog posts and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

What Michael Did. This is the true story of a severely mentally ill man who killed a family member and how the rest of his family coped with it in the years to come.

Cats. Sometimes people act a little like cats. I think I’m one of them. :O

At Least He Didn’t Hurt You via SwiftInkEditor. This is quite the story.

Someone Is Going to Say “I Have to Go to the Moon” in a Bored, Defeated Tone One Day. It’s really only a matter of time. It seems to be human nature to quickly acclimate to things that were extremely rare or impossible a generation or two ago.

On Creed Fatigue, Souls for Sale, and Defying Gravitas via danariely.  My favourite answer was the one about buying and selling souls. Too funny!

From The Private Lives of Public Bathrooms:

Even for the rest of us, who don’t suffer a clinical level of anxiety, the public bathroom is a place that has ingrained behaviors and social rituals—leaving space at the urinals, avoiding conversation even with people you know—that we’ve all experienced, if not daily at an office, than out in the world, at restaurants and ball parks and airports.

Not all protagonists are good, likeable, or safe people. What I enjoyed the most about Alphabet was how little care was taken to soften Simon’s horrendous past. There are good reasons why he turned out to be such a violent, callous adult, but in no way does the author use them to excuse his crimes.

The book starts out with him finally learning how to read and write in prison. What he does with this newfound knowledge kept me on my toes until the final scene.

What have you been reading?

Photo by Jens Buurgaard Nielsen.

While I was working on this blog post, I attempted to look up a story I remember hearing as a small child about a city mouse and a country mouse who take turns visiting one another. The country mouse is as unnerved by the fast pace of city life as his urban cousin is by what it’s really like to live in a old farmhouse surrounded by fields and hungry cats.

It was surprising when I realized that the traditional version of this tale is quite different from how I remember it. I thought it taught its audience to appreciate the differences between people and realize that what you or I see as an acceptable risk or drawback might cross the line for someone else. It turns out that this fable actually teaches that accepting a simple, modest existence is better than living in fear.

Too funny!

It makes me wonder what was really in the little book that made such a strong impression on me. None of my searches have turned up anything similar to it. This is one of those mysteries of early childhood that will probably never be solved.

I was originally planning to use today’s post to talk about finding the value in other ways of looking at the world. To be honest, though, I’m far more interested in how much memories can change over time.

What have you misremembered lately? How did you discover that your memory of what happened (probably) isn’t actually true?

The Gift from BLR_VFX on Vimeo.

This is why I love science fiction. I can’t say anything else without giving away spoilers!

Photo by Greg Willis from Denver, CO.

“Can I hold your baby?”He was a skinny kid who was all legs and arms. His last growth spurt must have ended five minutes ago. The cracks between the fence were big enough for him to peer through into the backyard, although I assumed the smell of meat sizzling on the barbecue was what first snagged his attention.

The rest of the baby’s extended family ruffled their feathers. Of course we weren’t going to hand over our youngest relative to a stranger.  Harrumph. The very idea of it was absurd.

Sometimes rhetorical questions beg to be answered though.

In my mind he has a much younger sibling. He was about 10 when his little sister was born, and the excitement of  no longer being an only child has never fully worn off. It probably helps that they only live in the same household half of the time. No sooner does it grow a little vexing to live with a preschooler than the custody schedule dictates that it’s time to head back over to his quiet, orderly home.

School was frustrating before he was diagnosed with ADHD. He’s on the honour roll now! His new medication really helps, but he doesn’t take it on the weekends. Sometimes that leads to him saying the first thing to pop into his mind or bouncing from one activity to the next. Luckily he’s had the same core group of friends since Kindergarten. They’re used to his quirks, though, and ignore most of the dumb stuff.

Is any of this true? It probably isn’t, but these are the things I think about when strangers do or say something bizarre for two reasons:

1) It helps me feel more compassionate in situation where I’d otherwise be annoyed, frustrated, or confused.

2) As a writer, it’s interesting as hell to come up with plausible reasons to explain why people act the way they do.

Everyone has a backstory. You just have to discover it.

Whose backstory have you imagined recently?

Here is this week’s list of blog posts and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

One Cup of Coffee Is Better Than Two. I start feeling the affects caffeine much sooner than this cartoonist seems to do so. I drink a fair amount of tea during the cold months, but due to how poorly I metabolize caffeine all of it is herbal.

We Regret to Inform You via jdubqca. J. Matthew Waters writes thought-provoking poetry. I know I’ve linked to his stuff in the past, but this is one of the best ones he’s released lately.

Why Everyone Should Write Poetry via thisisEJKoh. And this is why poetry is so important.

A Night of Inspiration via phillipsauthor. I really liked how kind the author of this post was to the teenage girl who peppered her with questions about what it’s like to be a writer.

What I Learned Co-Managing a Retirement Community. Many years ago I once heard someone theorize that we become more concentrated versions of ourselves as we age. (I wish I could remember who said it!) For example, someone who is kind and helpful at 20 will be even more wonderful when they’re 80. That memory came to mind due to what this blogger has noticed about the types of people who adjust best to life in a nursing home.

From Why it Makes Sense to Bike Without a Helmet:

But a broader look at the statistics show that cyclists’ fear of head trauma is irrational if we compare it to some other risks. Head injuries aren’t just dangerous when you’re biking—head injuries are dangerous when you’re doing pretty much anything else. There’s ample evidence showing that there’s nothing particularly special about cycling when it comes to serious head injuries.

Leave of Absence is a must-read for anyone who has a loved one living with mental illness.

I was very impressed with how clearly it explains what it’s like to experience certain symptoms, and I think anyone with even a transient interest in this topic will really enjoy this book.

What have you been reading?