Author Archives: lydias

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

Some People Are Going to Leave. I’d love to hear the story behind this.

Social Consumption Pyramid. If my family lived nearby I’d have a much easier time living this way.

Don’t Call Me Baby. Comedy gold.

We Are Atheism. An “It Gets Better” project for Atheists. It’s amazing to compare the wildly different experience non-theists have depending on where they live. Here in Toronto there’s so much religious diversity that most people don’t make any assumptions about this topic and don’t care what you believe. I have friends living in other communities who are social pariahs because they choose to be honest about their non-theism.

Civilized Politics. Here’s an interesting link for those of you who like debating controversial subjects. This message board was created by the same people who run Etiquette Hell and is designed to be a polite place to talk about politics.

Click Here to Win Autographed Books From Susan Hill. Ok, this is exciting. Susan Hill is the author of my favourite ghost story of all time, The Woman in Black. Until October 31 readers can enter a contest to win signed copies of all of her ghost novels.

The Midwife of Hope River kept me up late reading a few nights this week. Patience Murphy doesn’t know it yet but the U.S. has just begun to slide into the Great Depression. As the economy worsens and public funds for healthcare dry up she finds her role as town midwife expanding rapidly into social and political controversies. The boundaries between her personal and professional life also blur and some painful secrets from her past begin to worm their way into her present day life.

What have you been reading?

In early 2012 I quietly shut down my Facebook profile. As much as I enjoyed hearing about the daily lives of family and friends I was disturbed by how often Facebook’s updates made my experience worse and how difficult it was to find, much less adjust, their privacy settings.

Longtime readers know that I tend to be a fairly private person. You’ll never see me walk up to an acquaintance and tell him or her the story of my life. It’s not that I have anything to hide, I simply prefer to get to know people as individuals before sharing every thought that rattles through my mind.

I’ll be honest – there have been times when I’ve really missed Facebook and have almost signed up with them again. It’s so much easier to log into one website and see status updates from almost all of my favourite people in this world than it is to email or call them individually.

A news story that came to my attention earlier today confirmed I made the right decision last winter, though. Apparently Facebook will soon be charging people to promote their posts to friends. Pay the fee and your post will be bumped to the top of everyone’s new feeds.

This is the opposite of what social media is supposed to accomplish. What I love(d) about Facebook and presently love about twitter is the element of surprise. When I log on and read tweets these days I have no idea what everyone will talk about this time: local or national news, cute animal photos, pictures of my friend’s food, rants about the frustrations of daily life from celebrities and average folks alike.

If I wanted to listen to monologues I’d read a newspaper.

99% of the time I don’t so I use Twitter instead.

Why is this so difficult for Facebook to understand?

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

The concept of physical beauty as a virtue is one of the dumbest, most pernicious and destructive ideas of the Western world, and we should have nothing to do with it.- Toni Morrison

Principles of a Good Relationship that I Wish I Had Learned in Kindergarten. I don’t normally link to the same site week after week but Frankin Veaux had another fantastic post several days ago. Once again this link is work-safe but the rest of the site may not be.

From Darger Family is Because:

For us it is important that we are who we are and we remain responsible for who we are. It often takes courage to be authentic. Courage is to be afraid and to do it any way. Most of us when we are in fear are not in action. Where the action is we are not. We become reactive instead of activists in our own lives.

Would Having an “End Date” Help Marriage? I don’t think it would but this is a great discussion.

The world would be a better place if we had more astronomy raps:

This video makes me so grateful for legal, safe and effective birth control. A few generations ago it was much more difficult for women in industrialized countries to choose whether, when and how often they had children. I hope we live to see the day when all women have this kind of autonomy.

Shadows, the sequel I mentioned really looking forward to reading in last week’s Suggestion Saturday, turned out to be a big disappointment. The tone was much darker than I’d expected and while I’m a fan of dystopian stories I don’t like it when characters I’ve grown attached to sink into total hopelessness.

With that being said I can recommend a much better example of this type of fiction, After the Snow. Willo was born years after the ocean currents stopped bringing warm water to North America.  He’s heard a few stories about life before the climate changed so drastically but right now he’s too busy keeping himself alive after being separated from his family. When he stumbles across two orphans also trying to survive on their own the decision he makes changes everything.
What have you been reading?

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, comic strips and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web. It seems that this week’s theme is mental health! 🙂

On Falling Apart. A first-person account of one woman’s mental illness.

You’re Just Depressed. A comic strip about what it feels like to be depressed. It complements the first link in this post beautifully.

5 Reasons Life Actually Does Get Better. I also thought this was a good reminder for all of us who have bad days but who aren’t actually depressed.

Benchmarks for Good Relationships. A conversation about the types of questions you should ask yourself to determine if a relationship (platonic, romantic, work, or otherwise) is healthy. I’d like to see something added about how people respond to others setting boundaries with them. Someone who doesn’t respect them isn’t an individual I’m going keep around for very long. This link is work-safe but the rest of the site may not be. 

40 Things to Say Before You Die. The less I tell you about this list the better.

From The Past:

I had no sooner entered the house than I knew something was wrong. Thought I had never been in so splendid a place before – it was one of those big houses just off Fifth Avenue – I had a suspicion from the first that the magnificence  covered a secret disturbance. I was always quick to receive impressions, and when the black iron doors swung together behind me, I felt as if I were shut inside a prison.

Earlier this year I recommended Ashes. If you haven’t read it yet (or no longer remember the names and back stories of all of the characters), start reading. The sequel just came out and next Saturday I’ll be sharing a short, spoiler-free review of it.

I’ve been looking forward to the continuation of this series for close to a year now. It should be really good.

What have you been reading?

I just finished watching this gorgeous short film about a creature who is given a short period of time to create a companion for himself and breathe life into her. There is music but no dialogue in this piece. You can watch it with the volume turned off if necessary. I don’t want to give away spoilers but I will send a short private message to anyone who requires a written description of what happens.

Done watching? Let’s talk.

It’s amazing to me how accurately a five-minute film can capture the dull ache of loneliness, the pinch of overdue anticipation, the slightest whisper of hope. I’ve seen feature length films take two hours to cover the breadth of emotions this piece touches on in the first two minutes. Lately I’ve become jaded when it comes to watching fictionalized stories on a big (or small) screen. I’d rather not watch anything at all than know at the beginning of a TV show or movie exactly how the plot is going to unfold. Surprise me or I’ll stop watching.

The Maker was so good I thought I’d make it the subject of today’s post.

What do you look for in a good story? Have you found yourself growing pickier about the TV shows or movies you watch? What are the best shows you’ve seen lately?

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

From Why School Should Be More Like Summer Camp:

 Right now, students are spending nine months stressed, going through drills, memorizing things before an exam and then forgetting it. Then, they go to summer vacation. Some of the most affluent or motivated kids might be able to pull off having a very creative summer vacation, but most don’t. For most, it is just kind of lost time.

When people say, “Summer vacation, those are my best memories. That is when I actually got to do creative things. That is when we actually got to travel,” I say, yeah, exactly, that is what the whole year should be like. Make school year-round, but also make it much more like a creative summer camp.

What Your Favourite Colour Says About You. I still wonder why they left out orange. The rainbow isn’t complete without it.

Suspended Red Thread Coils Reflect the Idea of Soul Mates. This is a beautiful work of art regardless of what you believe about soul mates or the ancient Chinese legend about the red threads of our lives.

Sand Rabbit. There’s no educational merit to this link. I just thought it was cute.

Spreading the Word About the Mini Free Library. What a fantastic idea! Has it spread to your community yet?

A Raining Room You Can Walk Through. Years ago my brother’s then-girlfriend ( now-wife)  lived with our family for a while. One warm spring night a gentle rainstorm struck our small Ohio town. My brother convinced her to stand in the backyard with him and feel the rain on her face. I sat on the back porch and watched them for a few seconds when suddenly, boom. An angry peal of thunder rattled our bones as lightning lit up the evening sky. Poor Jeni shrieked and ran back to the house. I wonder if she’d ever want to visit a gentle rain room? Even though we can’t control the weather I feel like the Schoch tribe owes her a little peace and quiet to make up for that night. 😉

Two decades ago a fifteen year old girl named Tara disappeared in the woods near her parents home. One Christmas afternoon she reappears on their doorstep looking exactly the same as she did the day she vanished. Now her brother Peter must unravel the mystery behind what happened to his long-lost sister. Are the stories she tells about faeries true? Read Some Kind of Fairy Tale to find out.

What have you been reading?