Lydia Schoch

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

Writing About Sex via RoseW007.  I’d love to hear my reader’s thoughts on this topic. Is writing stories about sex more controversial than writing about violence in your social circles?

Curiosity. Fear. Love.  Sometimes I share links here that work better if you click on them without any preconceived ideas about what they might be about. This is one of them.

Workhouse Inmates, A Personal Story via LizanneLloyd. This is one of my favourite kinds of history.

In Defense of Lying. I’m curious to hear what my readers think of white lies.

Always Use Protection via StephNeighbour. There are some people in this world who live out their entire lives based on their fear of what others would think of them. Steph’s approach to them is absolutely perfect.

From Growing Up in Therapy:

My parents are getting worried. It’s hard enough to have a child, much less a child who demands to inspect our groceries and medicines for evidence that their protective seals have been tampered with. I have only the vaguest memory of a life before fear. Every morning when I wake up, there is one blissful second before I look around the room and remember my many terrors.

I don’t normally recommend short stories as my book of the week, but The Lady Astronaut of Mars blew me away.

Imagine being one of the first colonists to move to Mars. You’d see so many exciting changes over the years as humanity adjusted to the idea of seeking out new planets to colonize. It’s hard to discuss the plot in any greater detail than that without giving away spoilers, but I strongly recommend giving it a try to anyone who has a dollar to spare and 20 minutes to sit down and read something wonderful.

This is the kind of story that I find impossible to to put down. While I was immersed in it I actually felt as if I’d stepped into the mindset and body of the main character. It was incredible.

What have you been reading?

Photo by Tomwsulcer.

Earlier this week I came across an insightful link from  Laura L. Hedgecock about why you should write about no good terrible horrible very bad days.

Normally bloggers write these kind of responses to things they vehemently disagree with, but I actually agree with much of what Laura has to say. The purpose of this reply is not to paint a black and white world in which everyone needs to pick one side and stick with it come hell or high water. Anyone who has read more than a handful of my posts knows that’s not my style in the least.

It’s important to find a healthy balance in life, though, so here are my six reasons why you should not write no good terrible horrible very bad days. I hope you read both lists and pick and choose the parts of each one that work best for you:

Some things in life are private.

There are ways to deal with the unpleasant parts of life – whether it’s as trivial as a rude encounter with a stranger or as serious as dealing with a relative who is suffering from an untreated mental illness – without revealing every last detail of it to the outside world.

Once it’s out there, you can’t take it back.

Today it’s even easier for something you wrote to be preserved forever, especially if it ends up online. There’s no way to predict ahead of time where an email, blog post, or note might end up. There’s also no way to erase it if it does go viral.

My maternal grandparents own things that were written by our ancestors many generations ago.  Just because you wrote it down in a diary or on a letter is no guarantee that someone won’t find it valuable. Unless you personally destroy it, there is always a chance that anything you write might still be around in 150 years.

It’s not necessarily your story to tell.

A lot of the rough times in my life have involved the suffering of people I love. I have mixed feelings about discussing this kind of stuff in such a permanent way, so I generally process it either in quiet conversations with those closest to me or by taking long walks instead.

Once enough time has passed, I may change my mind and write about it after all. But I’m pretty protective of the privacy of my friends and family members, and I’d much rather wish I’d said something sooner than regret doing it too soon.

The truth always comes out with time.

I grew up in a family that did not condone gossip in any form. We were taught to look for the good in other people and to say nothing at all if we truly couldn’t think of anything positive to say.

That’s not to say that we ignored the faults in others though. We simply believed that the truth is far too powerful to be held back permanently. They might be fooled temporarily, but eventually everyone will figure out what’s really going on. There’s simply no need to open their eyes before they’re ready to see the truth.

Sometimes emotional reactions can be contradictory or hard to explain.

No two people react the same way to hardship. There are many factors that influence why certain experiences might be much more (or less!) difficult for one person than it is for another. Just because I found experience X easy to deal with doesn’t mean that you will. I’ve also had times when my emotional reaction to something has evolved over time. A topic that was excruciatingly painful 5 or 10 years ago might not be so today.

It can be hard for some people to understand that not everyone feels things the way they do, which leads me to my next point.

Not everyone gets it.

In fact, some of them will go out of their way to take offence at whatever it is they don’t think you’re doing correctly in your life. The more volatile the subject matter, the more likely they are to come out of the woodwork.

I don’t judge those who make other choices, but I choose to give this group of people as little ammunition as possible.  There are a lot of amazing people in my life who do understand. I’d much rather ask them in private what they think instead.

I’m sharing this short film about a man who can’t convince a gigantic rabbit to leave his apartment with my readers for the following reasons:

1. I love rabbits.
2. Storytelling that doesn’t involve words utterly fascinates me.
3. The body language and facial expressions are absolutely perfect.
4. The main character’s journey is a great metaphor for so many difficult things in life.
5. I love rabbits.

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

Question via STBeals. Rude? Maybe. (Although so was the original question). Effective? Yes.

15 Things You Don’t Owe Anyone At All (Though You Think You Do). This is great.

The Witness.  What I liked the most about this article was how it refused to make assumptions about what its readers thinks. A lot of sites would have trouble not making these assumptions based on how controversial the subject matter is in the U.S.

Life Looked Different 100 Years Ago via HistoryInPics. Who else is mesmerized by old photographs?

Tiny Humans Lost in the Majesty of Nature via purewhitemoly. When I was very young my parents used to take us on hikes through a nature preserve called Goll Woods. It’s one of the very few forests in Northwest Ohio that was never cut down by people when the white settlers showed up. Definitely check it out if your’e ever in the area. It’s a gorgeous place to visit, and I thought of how small it made me feel while scrolling through these pictures.

The Future of College. I hope this model takes off. The cost of a college degree is ridiculously overpriced these days.

From This Is Your Brain on Silence:

As the report explained, modern society often seems intolerably loud and busy. “Silence is a resource,” it said. It could be marketed just like clean water or wild mushrooms. “In the future, people will be prepared to pay for the experience of silence.”

Belle is the true story of the daughter of a slave whose white father acknowledged her as his child. She was raised alongside a cousin by her aunt and uncle in high society London.

It’s a short book in large part because history has forgotten many of the details of Belle’s life. What was preserved is incredible. It doesn’t shy away from the brutality her mother almost certainly experienced as a slave or how uncomfortable some people were with the way Belle was treated. This isn’t a book for people who want to forget the ugly parts of history.

For everyone else, though, this is an unforgettable glimpse into the life of a remarkable woman. From what I understand, it’s been made into a movie as well. I can’t wait to see it!

What have you been reading?

I’ve been on Twitter for almost 6 years now. One of the things I like the most about it is interacting with the wide variety of people I’ve met there: asexuals, artisans, atheists, authors, altruists, anabaptists, academics, acrobats, agnostics, and activists.

And that’s just the first letter of the alphabet. 😉

Yesterday J.D. decided to give his followers a homework assignment. Through the magic of the Internet you can see what he told us to do without clicking away from this post.

Do me a favor and yourself one, give someone a genuine compliment today and a smile right now, seriously go do it!

— J.D. (@iownjd) September 3, 2014

I prefer to keep my random acts of kindness anonymous, so I won’t give away specifics of how I participated in this challenge.  I love being spurred on to do more of them by likeminded friends, though, and wanted to pass it along to my readers.

If you’re comfortable talking about what you’ve done, I’d be interested in hearing about it. If you’re not comfortable with that, no worries. It still counts every bit as much as it does for people who are less private.

I have to admit to being suspicious of this film when I first came across it. How on earth do you tell a compelling story in 49 seconds?

The answer made me smile. I think my readers will like it as well.

Photo by Evan Swigart.

I’m sure many of my readers have already read about Uncover Colors, the nail polish in development that is intended to help people detect when their drinks have been spiked with date rape drugs. Someone I follow on Twitter asked me to blog about it for today’s post.

I could very well see it becoming something that’s widely available and commonly used if the creators are able to drum up enough investors in the product. With that being said, I have reservations about it.

My first concern is how that would change western culture. Women are already expected to do a long list of things to keep themselves safe every single day. If a woman is sexually assaulted, the first questions she’s asked are about whether or not she followed all of the rules on this invisible checklist. Why did she choose to be alone with him? Was she wearing a short skirt? Was she drinking? How much makeup was she wearing? What made her think that he was trustworthy? Is she sure this wasn’t just all a big misunderstanding?

(Yes, men are assaulted as well. At this point, though, Undercover Colors is only being discussed as something that will be marketed to women).

The last thing we need is to make this list any longer or blame victims any more than our culture already does. I’m extremely wary of people who are way more interested in talking about what the victim was (or wasn’t) doing than they do on the fact that a crime was committed.

My second concern has to do with the statistics of sexual assault. 80% of  victims are assaulted in their own homes, and 70% of their assailants are people the victim knows: a partner, a family member, a friend. The vast majority of assaults don’t involve date rape drugs at all. If there’s no alcohol or drugs that might be mixed into it, this nail polish won’t help at all.

I understand why this story has generated so much press. It’s exciting to think that such a small change in one’s daily habits could prevent something horrible from happening, but it’s not that simple.

What I would like to see happen as a result of this product is a shift in our attention. What if it lead to serious social (if not legal) consequences for people who assault others as well as for those who defend them? What if other cities copied Vancouver’s highly successful Don’t Be That Guy campaign?

There are ways to change public opinion and reduce the number of people who are being assaulted every year. We’ve discovered a few of them. I have a hunch that there are much better ones yet to come. It won’t happen overnight, but I can see it shifting slowly from one generation to the next.

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

28 Magical Paths Begging To Be Walked. Wow, these are incredible!

Moonrise via RHMustard. This is a shining example of why I love poetry so much. I’ll be tempted to whip it out the next time I meet someone who has yet to meet a poem that they love.

When “Race” Wasn’t About Skin Colour. Fascinating stuff. It makes me wonder how our definitions of race will change as DNA tests for heritage become more widespread and accurate.

Nariya’s First Beer. When I was about this girl’s age a family friend offered me an ice cream sandwich. I turned them down in polite horror. The only bread my family ate was the extremely healthy whole wheat kind. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would slather ice cream on something so dense and chewy. To me it made about as much sense as pouring chocolate syrup on steamed broccoli.  I can’t remember if I’ve shared this story before, but it came to mind while reading about Nariya’s funny misunderstanding.

On the Beach via fridayam. I thought this was a very appropriate poem to share as we say goodbye to August.

From An Unexpected Inheritance via Funny_Matters:

I carried on walking, behind my friend. I commented on something. My voice cracked. We continued along the hill-path.

There’s something wonderful about knowing she’s still very much ‘there’. In ways I’d never imagined. In other people’s memories of me. In hill-top walks. In my behaviour. My strengths. Even in my weaknesses.

How would our species change if we no longer had the ability to speak? The Silent History imagines a chilling answer to this question that kept me up way past my bedtime.

One of the things that fascinates me about babies is how they figure out language. Sometimes it’s weird to cuddle an infant who is too young to speak. I wonder what they’re thinking about and what they would have to say about the world around them if they had the ability to start talking right away. The idea of interacting with a child who never gains this ability is really interesting.

I’ve purposefully avoided the terms science fiction and dystopia while discussing this book. I know some of my readers are gun-shy around those genres, but this is something I strongly recommend to anyone with even a passing interest in the premise.

What have you been reading?

Photo by Infrogmation.

For anyone just tuning in, this summer I’ve been attempting to be more diligent about keeping in touch with friends and family members who live far away. It’s been an interesting experiment. Today I’ll be sharing my thoughts on the process as we get ready to say good-bye to August.

I’ve learned that I really dislike preprinted greeting cards. The companies that produce them tend to make a lot of assumptions: sick people always recover, birthday cards must either be mushy or raunchy, and  condolence cards must be religious.  It makes me wish that one of these companies would hire me to come up with new ideas for them. There are a lot of holes in their coverage.

I wasn’t a big fan of the types of things that they tended to make jokes about. Boob and beer jokes work for some situations, but after a while they became repetitive. While blank cards are always an option, it sure would be nice if they had better competition.

Postcards don’t seem to have this problem. Almost all of them are neutral enough to suit any purpose.  For the time being I’m not planning to give Canada Post quite so much business, but the next time I do need to buy something like a greeting card I think I will be checking the postcard section first.

The reason why I didn’t use e-cards during the course of this experiment is that most of the people I was communicating with aren’t at all technologically savvy. I’ve already switched to e-cards for everyone my parents age or younger, but there are some older people in my social circles who can’t make that adjustment. Maybe someday!

Last month I mentioned wanting to improve my email response times. To be honest, I’ve only shortened the amount of time it takes me to clear through my email by a little bit. I think the problem is that I try to do it all in one sitting, so this autumn I’m going to try to break it down into much smaller amounts of time. If I can spent 2 minutes a day archiving and deleting old emails I think it will be much easier for me to keep on top of it.

The care package has been pushed back to this autumn. I’ve decided to include Canadian chocolate in it and want to make sure it doesn’t melt while in transit. It’s going to be exciting to see who likes what!

How have your summers been? What have you done to keep in touch?

See also:

How Do You Keep In Touch?

Keeping In Touch Update #1

Keeping In Touch Update #2.