Lydia Schoch

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

Ten Reasons Why My Rottweiler is Better Than a Gun via jayboshea. Finding humour in unexpected places seems to be the overarching theme for this week. I thought this post was a great place to start.

Why You Are Wrong. It’s important that all of my followers know just how wrong they are every time they disagree with me. 😉

Paying the Piper via fumanchucat. I like the imagery in this poem.

Why Adam and Steve Make the Best Parents After All via PJFoxWrites. Wanting kids to stay in foster care rather than finding a loving, permanent family doesn’t make any sense to me. I’ve seen what happens when a child develops an attachment disorder from being bounced around from one shaky placement to the next. The consequences can be lifelong and severe.

From Blessed Are the Hungry:

Ten generations had come and gone since our Generation Ship left the Earth but the Prelates said we weren’t even halfway to our destination. I was born in space and I would probably die in space. In my heart I knew that I would never see our new home, Gliese 581g — a small terrestrial planet in the old constellation of Libra. I suppose neither my children nor my children’s children would reach planetfall either. But I guess that was okay, it would have been far worse to have been left behind, dying slowly and painfully in the radioactive ruins of our poor, destroyed world.

From Hospice, Inc.:

Allegations like those leveled by Maples’ family against Vitas have become increasingly common over the past decade as the hospice industry has undergone a titanic shift. What once was a collection of mostly small, religious-affiliated nonprofits is now a booming, $17 billion industry dominated by national chains.

Longterm readers of this blog know that I’m a sucker for nonfiction books about animals. As soon as I noticed Until Tuesday: A Wounded Warrior and the Golden Retriever Who Saved Him in the New Books section at the library I knew I had to give it a try.

Luis Carlos Montalván is a soldier who came home with PTSD and a traumatic brain injury from his combat experiences in Iraq.  Tuesday is a service dog who doesn’t always do what he’s told. It isn’t that he’s unable to follow commands – he just gets a little distracted sometimes.

What I liked the most about this story was how brutally honest the author was about his emotional state. His flashbacks are  intense, and he hasn’t always handled himself well when he’s having a bad day. Sometimes books in this genre gloss over the flaws of the author in order to make him or her more relatable to the reader, but this isn’t one of them.

What have you been reading?

Photo by Benson Kua.

My parents and youngest brother visited us for a few days this week.

Yesterday we ate dinner on the picturesque Toronto Island and then watched the sun set before attempting to return to the mainland that evening. It was a warm, quiet, and uneventful ride until our ferry attempted to stop off at Hanlan’s Point to pick up a few more passengers.

Our ferry was the smallest one I’ve ever seen on that particular route. It had a long, narrow, enclosed space for passengers to sit on either side of it, but almost everyone was standing outside in the middle of it when the accident happened.

I was sleepy from a long day of visiting and sightseeing, so mom, my brother, and I were sitting and talking when we were suddenly pitched violently to the left. There was a horrible grinding, crashing noise at the same moment, and then everything was silent.

The three of us seemed to be ok, but Drew and my dad had been standing outside. I was still stunned when mom jumped up to see if they’d been injured. It was a relief to hear that they only had a few bumps and bruises even though they’d both fallen to the ground from the impact of the crash.

Most of the other passengers seemed to act like me right after the accident happened: sitting quietly and making sure everything still worked. A few leapt to action to make sure no one was seriously hurt (and they weren’t. The worst injury I saw was a woman whose knee had been banged up, but someone was able to get her an ice pack for it pretty quickly).

I suspect that some of these differences are inborn. Certain people react much more quickly than others in a potentially dangerous situation just like they’d be the first one to volunteer to try something new or exciting.

But I also think that training has something to do with it. My mom is a nurse who has often worked in settings that require her to react almost before she’s had a chance to think. I’m a writer. Stewing it over for a while is what I do best. 😉

Readers, what do you think?

This week I’ve celebrated or will be celebrating Pride Week, Canada Day, and the Fourth of July. Other than Halloween, the end of June and beginning of July is my favourite time of year because it’s so festive.

It’s really cool to walk down the street and see so many other LGBT people and straight allies enjoying everything that Pride Week has to offer. Sometimes it gets a little corporate and commercialized, but as someone who grew up in a community where it was most definitely not ok to be open about your life if you existed anywhere outside of the heterosexual, cisgendered bubble it still amazes me sometimes to see how things have changed and continue to change.

As a dual citizen, I love celebrating the birthdays of both of my countries. There’s no such thing as too many fireworks. 😀

If you observe any or all of these holidays, enjoy them!

I’ll be back on Thursday with a regular post.

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

Old Farm Equipment and Scrap  Metal Turned Into Stunning Sculptures via FairfieldJen. I love the creativity of these sculptures.

My Life Is Perfect Hell via LorcaDamon. Ack! Everything I want to say about this link would give away spoilers for it. Go read it, and if you like it as much as I did we can discuss it in the comment section. 🙂

Valentine for Sally Hemings. This is the kind of poem that burrows into your skin.

But the Daisies via Jessicajots. So is this one (for entirely different reasons).

From Taming the Mammoth: Why You Should Stop Caring What Other People Think:

Your Authentic Voice, somewhere in there, knows all about you. In contrast to the black-and-white simplicity of the Social Survival Mammoth, your Authentic Voice is complex, sometimes hazy, constantly evolving, and unafraid. Your AV has its own, nuanced moral code, formed by experience, reflection, and its own personal take on compassion and integrity. It knows how you feel deep down about things like money and family and marriage, and it knows which kinds of people, topics of interest, and types of activities you truly enjoy, and which you don’t. Your AV knows that it doesn’tknow how your life will or should play out, but it tends to have a strong hunch about the right step to take next.

From Scenes From a Life in Negroland:

Are We Rich?

Mother raises those plucked, deep-toned eyebrows that did such excellent expressive work for women in the 1950s. Lift the penciled arch by three to four millimeters for bemused doubt, blatant disdain, or disapproval just playful enough to lure the speaker into more error. Mother’s lips form a small, cool smile that mirrors her eyebrow arch. She places a small, emphatic space between each word: Are. We. Rich? Then she adds, with a hint of weariness: Why do you ask?

The Purity Myth made me shake my head so vigorously I thought it might fall off. 😛

On a serious note, this is a well-rounded critique of all of the myths about what it means to be a “good” girl. The author discusses virginity, modesty, slut shaming, and what happens when girls and women break the unwritten rules about what we are (and aren’t) supposed to be doing.

I heartily recommend it to anyone in the mood to think critically about the way western society treats women.

What have you been reading?

A few weeks ago I blogged about my realization that I’m not that good at keeping in touch with friends and family members who live far away and aren’t active online.

I decided to try being more conscientious about occasionally reaching out to them this summer.  I’m not a fan of talking on the phone, so I decided to use other methods of communication instead: cards, postcards, and email.

It’s been so long since I regularly sent out snail mail that doing so felt about as ordinary as taking your cat on a walk. Sure, you can do it (and the cat might even love it!), but it’s one of those things that’s never been part of my routine.

The response has been warm though. Getting mail that isn’t a bill or useless advertisement is nice, and I suspect that it’s even better for people who grew up before the Internet changed so many of the ways in which we communicate with one another. When I’m old I hope my nephew and niece understand my love for texting and emails even if they’ve moved on to something else.

I’m much better at responding to emails, but even there I sometimes get a few weeks behind. (Although I do reply to everything eventually!) It’s not that I don’t love hearing from people, it’s just one of those tasks that’s very easy to put off until tomorrow.

My goal for the next month is to respond to every email in a week or less. Eventually I’d like to cut that down to a day or two at most, but I thought I’d tackle my response times in stages.

What about you? How have you been keeping up with your loved ones so far this summer?

Photo by Miniaturelop.

Over the weekend this blog received a large influx of new visitors. Many of you followed links from Facebook, but I still haven’t been able to figure out what exactly lead everyone here.

Welcome!

My name is Lydia Schoch. I’m a science fiction author who was born in Ohio but now lives in Toronto with my spouse.

On the Other Hand is an eclectic mix of topics. I’ve spent a lot of time talking about writing, ethics, and my deconversion from Christianity here, but I also have been known to go off on tangents when the right mood strikes.

Sometimes I answer reader questions. You can submit new ones here.

Definitely check out the Link Love on the righthand side of this page while you’re visiting. I follow a wide variety of bloggers – from Mennonites to Atheists – and I highly recommend every single one on that list.

Oh, and I love rabbits. If my better half and I weren’t so allergic to them, we’d no doubt have a few hopping around our apartment. Since this isn’t possible, I occasionally surprise my readers with them here instead. 😉

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

Guard against cynicism. The truth of the matter is, for all of the problems we face, if you had to choose any moment to be born in human history, not knowing who you were going to be, you’d choose this time. The world is more tolerant than it’s ever been, more educated than its ever been. The only thing that stops that is people thinking they can’t make any change. – President Obama

Fairy Tales Are Women’s Tales. I was obsessed with fairy tales for several years during my childhood. The  darker ones disturbed me sometimes, but they somehow seemed more true than the later versions of the same tales that were heavily sanitized.

I Watched Three Killer Whales Eat Some Sea Lions via JuliaRBarrett. The pictures are what make this such a fascinating post. No, they aren’t graphic.

Your Questions, Please via brucegerencser. Once a year my friend Bruce answer any questions his readers send to him. If you have any interest in Atheism, deconverting from Christianity, politics, living with a disability, or photography, I highly recommend checking out what he’ll be posting in the near future. (This isn’t an exhaustive list of the types of stuff he talks about, but they are a good cross-section of his interests).

Reasons Why I May Change My Opinion. This is great.

Over the River and Through the Woods. So is this. But everything I want to say about it will give you major spoilers, and it’s so much better if you start reading without any hints about the ending!

“Mom, I’m Bored.” Now What? via CarlgrodyliswS. My parents used to agree with us when my brothers or I told them that life was boring or unfair. We’d then talk about possible ways to make it less boring or unfair, but I always appreciated their willingness to be so honest with us.

From Masters of Love:

Social scientists first started studying marriages by observing them in action in the 1970s in response to a crisis: Married couples were divorcing at unprecedented rates. Worried about the impact these divorces would have on the children of the broken marriages, psychologists decided to cast their scientific net on couples, bringing them into the lab to observe them and determine what the ingredients of a healthy, lasting relationship were.

Missing Microbes made me think of all of the deliciously morbid* stories I read and heard growing up about distant relatives who died or were seriously injured by things that we rarely fear these days: severe food poisoning, farm accidents, birth defects, childbirth, prematurity.

The world we lived in before antibiotics were invented was heartbreaking and dangerous. A scraped knee or sore throat could heal up without a problem. They could also kill you. What makes this book even better, though, is that most bacteria are harmless or beneficial to humans. We wouldn’t survive without them.

So what happens when overusing antibiotics begins to snuff out the strains that might be doing us the most good? Mr. Blaser has some very interesting theories about this. I don’t know enough about the topic to say if I agree or disagree with him, but I’d love to sit down and pick his brain one day.

*Yes, I was an odd kid. I found this stuff utterly fascinating, not scary. 😉

What have you been reading?

One of my favourite things to do while brainstorming  is to scroll through the search terms that lead new readers to this blog. Someone recently ended up here by typing Can social skills be ruined? in a search engine, and I thought it would make a good topic for today’s post.

Social skills are like muscles.

If you exercise them regularly, they’ll make daily life a little easier.

Some people are born with conditions or into circumstances that make it more difficult for them to do certain things. This isn’t an excuse for bad behaviour when it comes to social skills, but it is an explanation for why certain things happen. (Perhaps one of these days I should blog about the difference between excuses and explanations?  🙂 )

It’s much easier to criticize how someone else is doing them than to improve your own weak spots. Every year I become less willing to tell other people what to do unless they seek out my advice. Figuring out the best choices for myself is challenging enough.

A muscle can atrophy if it’s injured severely enough, you’re bedridden,  or if you have a degenerative disease.

I’d argue that the same can be said for social skills. Most people are capable of improving, but there are rare cases when this isn’t possible. Listing them would require much more space than I have for this post.

If you’re self-aware enough to ask this question, though, there’s always hope.