Lydia Schoch

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

“I Am an Aunt No Longer.” In early 1911 a teenage girl named Helena Muffly started a diary that she kept until the end of 1914. Two lifetimes later her granddaughter began blogging each entry on the 100th anniversary in which it was written. The entire blog is fascinating, but this entry is especially poignant because Helena’s older sister gives birth to a baby who only lives a few hours. He’s buried before Helena even knows of his existence. What an awful day that must have been for the entire Muffly family.

It Doesn’t Take Much to Make Me Happy via Zorabike. This will be funnier if you start reading it without any clues about it’s subject matter.

Yes, I Buy Ice Cream with My Food Stamps via Youngmomsmusing. I completely understand wanting to encourage healthy eating patterns (especially since the standard American diet is so lopsided), but stories like this one reinforce my belief that people using food stamps shouldn’t be treated like children. There’s nothing wrong with buying treats.

Crisco Candle. My cousin sent me a link to this blog a long time ago when I desperately needed to be cheered up.  Too often people – especially women – feel like we’re in competition with one another, that our worth as human beings depends on maintaing a perfect image. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with enjoying traditionally “feminine” pursuits like homemaking, but I love the author’s snarky, self-deprecating take on cooking, decorating, being beautiful (in a consumeristic, insincere, plastic-y sort of way), and entertaining.  This is one of her funnier updates so far.

Zero Hours via AbiWilks. Imagine bidding on the Internet to work extremely low wage jobs with zero guaranteed hours per week. There are no other positions available and there’s no such thing as a minimum wage or worker’s rights.  I wouldn’t be surprised if this is how a lot of people live in the western hemisphere in the near future.

An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments. Common logical fallacies in cartoon form.

If you can spare 20 minutes this weekend, I highly recommend this TED talk about how IQ rates have changed over the last 100 years. I’m intrigued by James Flynn’s hypothesis.

Quick, what’s the silliest thing you ever thought or did as a kid? As I’ve mentioned here earlier I was homeschooled for grades K-3. Almost all of the other kids who lived in our trailer park attended public school, and when I was about 8 a neighbourhood girl attended a mysterious something called Saturday School. I was so naive and geeky that I thought she got to attend an extra few hours of school as a reward. It took several rounds of me knocking on her parent’s door before I understood that a) it was a punishment, and b) she wouldn’t be expected home again until late afternoon.

Self-Inflicted Wounds is the hilarious account of Aisha Tyler’s long list of embarrassing mistakes. I highly recommend it to everyone who wasn’t beamed down onto earth as a fully-formed human adult. Sometimes what one needs more than anything is a good laugh, and this book provides it in spades.

What have you been reading?

Picture by Thamizhpparithi Maari.

Just tuning in? Start here.

Daphne knew her supplies would be stretched thin by this point in the summer, but her cupboards were suspiciously bare. She had three weeks until autumn and enough food for a third of that time if everyone agreed to skip the already scant noonday meal.

It wasn’t mice. Daphne hadn’t found their telltale black, segmented droppings in her house for a year or more now, and none of the remaining food containers were in any way nibbled or gnawed upon.  Lemon’s enthusiasm for chasing mice was nearly as vigorous as his urge to bound after wild rabbits on his daily walks. Before he had come to live with her Daphne had had a serious mouse problem. She was nearly as grateful for his pest deterrence as she was for his company back when she lived alone.

“I’m hungry,” said the small, thin girl standing by Daphne’s feet. Wilma’s painful shyness has slowly been easing up, although she still preferred talking to and bickering with her brother over making eye contact with anyone else in the house. Neither of Daphne’s children had ever been afraid of her when they were growing up, and her memories of her younger brother were so dim she couldn’t say what he had been like at that age.

“We have bread,” Daphne said as she continued to rummage through the cupboard. Even the black beans were gone, and Daphne had purposefully been sparing them until the end of the summer. Bread and water wasn’t the most filling meal, but it was all she had to offer until she sorted out where the rest of their food had gone.

Ephraim had disappeared again, this time taking his brother with him. Daphne made a mental note to ask him if he knew what happened to the food when they returned. It shouldn’t be taking them quite so long to round up the other members of the council.

Only two ombudsmen appeared that afternoon: Sean Reed and Gerald Perez, the latter looked a decade older than he had the last time Daphne had seen him. A few years beforehand his beard sprouted a few solitary grey hairs, but now Gerald’s chin curtain was peppered with them. His eyelids drooped and he walked as if he was carrying a pack mule’s burden. Neither one mentioned where Daphne’s sons were or when they might be expected to come home.

They exchanged greetings and gathered around Daphne’s worn kitchen table. Lemon let out a yip of joy before curling around Daphne’s feet and settling in for a long discussion. Paige was bathing the children in the backyard, and while they spoke the solemn atmosphere was occasionally punctuated by giggles and the sound of splashing water.

“Aunt Lucy is very ill,” Sean said once everyone settled in. The visitors had politely turned down Daphne’s offer to feed them, although they did accept water after their long and dusty hike.  The site of her vaccination had become badly inflamed, and in an attempt to draw out the infection she had accidentally pulled something out of her body. It was the the width and length of a child’s fingernail, black, and could be bent but not broken. No one knew what it was, but soon after she discarded it Esther Penn made another visit to her farm.

Her second vaccination hadn’t healed her sore arm. If anything it seemed to make the infection grow worse. Sean’s second wife had brought her to the Reed homestead when she became too ill to look after herself. Aunt Lucy had no living family members in the Mingus Mountain area that Daphne had ever heard of, so if she didn’t survive her land would automatically be inherited by those who had taken care of her while she was alive. The land Aunt Lucy owned wasn’t particularly valuable in and of itself, but it included a small, stable creek and several caves that were rumoured to be storage facilities for rare goods that occasionally became available from faraway traders. No one knew exactly what she had squirrelled away, only that the oldest woman in the valley suddenly obtain access to desperately needed supplies like salt or nails when the right people requested them.

Daphne felt her stomach clench as Sean described how quickly his new border’s health was going downhill. No one knew why some wounds got infected, but few of her grandfather’s stories about this kind of disease ended well. If Aunt Lucy died Daphne would be the oldest member of the council. Traditionally the oldest ombudsmen would be deferred to in cases where a consensus could not be reached, and Daphne had no interest in assuming that kind of responsibility for her community.

Gerald had been hearing rumbles in the community about Ms. Penn’s vaccination project. Aunt Lucy wasn’t the only person who had a poor reaction to it, and Ella Graber’s son had even reported being held down and forced into treatment when he changed his mind at the last minute. Ella had always been fond of stretching real events into slightly more exciting or traumatic experiences with each retelling, but when the Harris family reported a similar problem Gerald knew something strange was going on.

The discussion slowly grew more serious as the children’s bath ended and Paige began washing herself. Little did she know how much Lemon loved soaking in water or how difficult it was to get him out of the tub.

“Help! Help!”

The younger members of the council rushed outside at the sound of Paige’s shriek. Daphne walked to the backyard as quickly as her bum knee allowed and collapsed into giggles when she saw what had the older woman so frightened.

Paige was sitting up stark naked in the shallow tub beneath a few scraggly trees, Lemon curled up on her lap with a blissful, toothy grin. His fur had soaked up so much water and he was so adverse to being moved that Paige found it impossible to get out of the tub.

“Get him off of me!” she yelled as she grabbed her tunic and slipped it over her head. Her right shoulder had slowly grown more stiff with time and Paige couldn’t cover up as fast as her modest temperment demanded.

“Lemon, come here,” Daphne said, the corners of her mouth twitching. Lemon lifted his head, twitched his ears, and then lay down again. He’d been blisteringly hot for far too long. Even the call of his favourite human couldn’t rouse him from the slightly cool water.

Sean laughed and averted his eyes as Gerald called the dog to no avail.

“He won’t listen to you,” Daphne said. “You’ll have to either leave him there,  turn the tub on its side, or wait until he gets hungry.”

“Could I lift him out?” Gerald asked.

“He’ll only leap back inside as soon as you set him on the ground.”

“He can have the water. I just want to get out,” Paige said. Her hair was greasy and her skin coated in several layers of dried sweat and desert grit, but she had no interest in bathing with an even dirtier dog.

No sooner had Paige been ushered inside to change into dry, cleaner clothes and Lemon hopped back into the tub to cool off than a stranger yelled hello in the front yard.

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

The Child Exchange. A series of 5 articles about the practice of “re-homing” adopted children in the United States. This is a long read, but despite the sensationalistic titles of certain entries I think it did a fairly good job explaining the kinds of issues that can lead to adoptions being disrupted. There aren’t a lot of good options for people who adopt a child only to later realize that he or she needs more help than their new family can provide.

A Love So True via StoryRoute. I dare you to watch the video embedded in this post without crying. Cathryn’s blog is always excellent, but this particular story is going to stick with me for a very long time.

Putting Time in Perspective. As a species we aren’t very good at measuring large amounts of time. These graphs make this topic a little easier to digest.

Cassandra’s Legacy. At this point you’re probably wondering why I’ve included two links with such similar themes in the Suggestion Saturday roundup. “Putting Time in Perspective” provides a birds-eye, purely scientific understanding of time and the probable fate of all life on earth. This link eventually splits off into two different paths, both of which are creative guesses about what might happen to earth based on whether or not humans are able to slow down their consumption of natural resources and temper the release of carbon into the atmosphere.

A Ghost of My Own via JohnJGeddes. This short story reminds me of my favourite “Start Trek: The Next Generation” episode of all time. If you don’t want 20 year old Sci-Fi spoilers, skip the next sentence. 😉 In the episode Beverly, the ship’s doctor, travels home to attend her grandmother’s funeral and meets a mysterious entity living in a candle who just wants to love her. I don’t know if John’s story was influenced by this episode, but I strongly prefer his take on this type of storyline.

“I Put Algernon’s Body in a Cheese Box and Buried Him in the Backyard. I Cried.” The title of this post comes from the novel Flowers for Algernon. I don’t have any personal experience with Lyme Disease, but the author’s description of how it’s affecting him cognitively is chilling.

From Spent via jdubqca:

You’ve spent a lifetime,
trapped by the four walls
of a bedroom world.

What if mythical creatures like satyrs and mermaids once really existed? Dr. Spencer Black, The Resurrectionist,  is convinced that they are very old versions of what the first humans looked like, and in the mid-1800s he scours circuses, hospitals, and graveyards for proof of his convictions.

Medicine in the 1800s had just begun to make major progress in diagnosing diseases and figuring out what might have caused them. Some of the theories that were formulated during that time ended up being true while others have since been discredited. What I loved about this book is how realistic it felt. Dr. Spencer Black’s deep-seated prejudices, hunches, unshakable belief in science, and determination to discover the truth rang true for everything I know about medical advancements in that century.

What makes it even better, though, are the anatomical diagrams and brief descriptions of mythological creatures in the second half of it. I loved seeing the physiology of the mermaids in particular.

What have you been reading?

My responses to September 2013  Search Engine queries.

Is Lisa Scottoline an Atheist?

I have no idea.

Why do I have to automatically respect elders?

Some people believe it’s important for cultural or religious reasons. I think behaviour and our common humanity should influence the respect we give to one another. Age is just a number.

The Wizard of Oz, Sat. Aug. 24 at 11pm.

I did not attend. Was it fun?

My brother-in-law doesn’t acknowledge his nephew.

So much depends on the age of the child here. A baby likely won’t notice or care, but an older kid could be quite hurt. It’s totally ok to not be a baby/child person, but  the brother-in-law should at least say hello to his nephew. I do not think he should be pressured to hold or play with the kid, though.

Is there a book written about Lou Xiaoying?

No, but if you pay me I will happily write it!

How do you get quiet patients to talk?

What would work for me:

• Shut the door for privacy reasons.
• Allow my spouse to stay with me.
• Introduce yourself.
• Explain slowly, in detail, and a little more than you think is necessary.
• Give me lots of chances to ask questions.
• Understand that silence is ok.

Do non theists have morals?

Yes, of course.

Mentally ill people who yell at strangers.

They highlight the gaps in our current healthcare system. Yes, some people were once institutionalized who could have been successfully integrated into the community had they been given the appropriate support. But a lot of those support systems either never fully materialized or were very poorly funded when old institutions were emptied out.

100 years from now I think we will have very mixed feelings about how the severely mentally ill  were treated in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Our intentions as a society were good, but we basically dumped a whole lot of people who were not capable of taking care of themselves onto the streets.

My energy is charging.

My first thought when I read this search term:

Via Head Like an Orange.

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

Meet the New Anti-Adoption Movement, the Surprising Next Frontier in Reproductive Justice. A really interesting article about people fighting back against coercion and corruption in the private adoption industry that my husband shared with me recently. What it boils down to is that the social safety net for poor and marginalized people is in tatters in the U.S.

Dude, I Don’t Talk Religion or Politics. I’m really curious to hear how (or when, or if) my readers broach these topics with their friends and family members. As I said in my comment to this blogger, I’m cautious about discussing this stuff until I get to know people well. Debating isn’t fun to me, so I try to figure folks out long before controversial topics. It’s fine if we disagree, I just hate being cornered by argumentative people. Frankly that kind of social interaction stresses me out and gives me a bad impression of people who get that excited about “winning.” I’d much rather focus on why we think the way we do than on trying to change anyone’s mind.

Romancifying Vincent via SufiJohn. A humorous break from all of the serious links this week. It takes a lot of talent to write a limerick that balances good storytelling with the silliness inherent in this style of poetry.

Hiding in N. Virginia, A Daughter of Auschwitz via OpaRide. The woman profiled in this piece has hidden her true identity for decades for fear that she will be punished for crimes her father committed. What amazes me the most is that some people actually blame her for atrocities that happened when she was a preschooler.

Stay As Sweet As You Are – Sugar Seduction. This blog post claims that in the 1950s corn syrup and dextrose were considered healthy. I find that hard to believe, but the post is so well written I’m sharing it with my readers anyways. The entire site is full of fascinating historical information. Some I’ve heard before and believe to be true, other stories I’m not so sure about. Maybe one of you will know!

From Oh…September via @ConfusedPoet00:

Oh… September.
Not on the mend at all
Are you?

From The Enemy is Religion:

So no, religion is not the common enemy of atheists. I’m an atheist (in the sense that I withhold belief on the God claim, a category which some people prefer to call agnostic) and religion is not my enemy. I object to religions only to an extent that they harm people or promote cruelty to others. And the last few weeks in the atheist movement has really shown me that theists don’t have a corner on that market.

How would you react if you found a strange, mute child sleeping on your porch? The Boy on the Porch starts off sounding like a traditionally sentimental story about a small town, a lonely childless couple, and an abandoned boy who desperately needs a safe place to stay for a while. I actually almost stopped reading a few chapters into the plot because I was sure I knew how it would end.

I was wrong.

Longterm readers know that I’d never recommend something cloying or mushy to you. There’s nothing wrong with liking sentimental fiction, of course, it’s just not a genre that appeals to me. I can’t divulge any more of the plot without spoiling it for you, but trust me when I say it’s well worth a try.

This is not your typical orphan story by any stretch of the imagination. Modern day fables are few and far between, but I suspect this book will become an instant classic.

What have you been reading? What modern fables do you love? Have you ever judged a book by it’s beginning and been completely wrong about it?

Just tuning in? Start here.

Then

One of the first things Carl did once his granddaughter settled into her new home was enrol her in school. The Mingus Valley Primary School had finally been assigned another teacher after several years of sitting empty. Finding someone to teach the local children basic arithmetic and how to read and write was Carl’s biggest accomplishment as Head Ombudsmen so far.

The last 15 years had brought such unpredictable weather patterns that the population had fallen sharply and most of the surviving families were more concerned with their next meal than teaching their children to read, write, add, and subtract. With several years of good crops and a new alliance with Peoria Carl knew his community was headed for prosperity. If enough lambs survived the summer  he might even be able to bring home a kitten or puppy for Daphne the next time he went to market to barter for everything their little farm couldn’t produce.

She was such a quiet, timid little thing. It had been years since Carl had been so intimately involved with raising a child, but he didn’t remember Jose being this withdrawn when he was her age. Of course, her father had grown up with  half a dozen noisy siblings, a barn cat who produced kittens at an alarming rate, a rotating assortment of hunting dogs, and a mother who lived.

The house was so still now that  it only sheltered a tired old man and his youngest surviving grandchild. Carl had such high hopes when he sent Daphne off to school. In the few short weeks since she had come to live with him he had occasionally seen flashes of what her life must have been like before her mother died.

She knew how to light a fire, knead bread, and cook a simple stew. Once when she thought he had gone out to the shed to collect more fire wood he heard her sing softly as she chopped the vegetables.

Down in the valley, the valley so low

Hang your head over, hear the wind blow

Hear the wind blow, dear, hear the wind blow;

Hang your head over, hear the wind blow.

In thirty seconds he’d heard her say more than he did in the previous week, and as Carl listened stood in the entryway and listened to her sing even the verses no one understood and few bothered to memorize he wondered how she would react to learning something new. Most folks wouldn’t have bothered memorizing obscure stanzas about creatures few believed in and even fewer had heard of these days.

Which was why he was so surprised when her introduction to school was a disaster. Daphne lasted two hours the first morning before sneaking away on a bathroom break and running all the way back to her grandfather’s cottage. She liked running her fingers over the musty pages in the books the community had accumulated over the years but hated being separated from her grandfather all day almost as much as she did standing in front of a room full of strangers and answering questions about her lessons. The thought of being surrounded by that many people staring at her made Daphne’s teeth hurt. Their stares weren’t unfriendly so much as they were intrusive. Daphne felt like she walking down the road in bare feet in the middle of winter every time her teacher asked her to speak louder and enunciate her answers.

He walked her back to the school, of course, but when she proceeded to run away again every other day that week he relented. Carl had never enjoyed the prospect of being the centre of attention himself, and he thought that it was more important for the girl to learn than it was for her to conquer her fear of being noticed at such a young age. Under her grandfather’s quiet tutelage Daphne absorbed everything he could think to teach her except for geography.

She never did quite understand the importance of learning how all of the territories fit together now that people were remembering again, but eventually she learned everything he could remember from his own school days. For a few months a teenage Daphne even worked as a substitute teacher at the little school after her predecessor died and before it was shut down for another generation.

Now

Esther Penn

District 3

Arizona Terrority

1 August 2113

Highway Letter

District 6

Henderson, Nevada

Dear Esther:

Enclosed you will find a new batch of trackers for District 3. This version has been modified to require longer intervals between adjustments and the first round of testing has shown far fewer adverse outcomes than the first prototype.

Please submit your log at soon as each tray has been installed so that we can activate them ASAP.  I know your access to the cloud is spotty in such a remote location, but the success of this experiment relies on meticulous attention to detail before we begin stage 3. We must ensure it is safe before the legislature will officially approve human testing.

Yours, etc.,

Highway.

“So as you can see it’s very important that you agree to listen to the judge,” the woman said with a relaxed smile.

Daphne hadn’t recognized all of the words she’d read – spelling and vocabulary had always been more difficult to master than most other subjects for her-  but she understood enough to realize it was something other than a direct order.

“I ought to bring this up with the council first,” Daphne said as she slid the wrinkled, olive paper off of the table. Esther’s smile tightened as she slid the paper back over to her side of the table and tucked it into her pocket.

“That’s not necessary, our judge has jurisdiction over your affairs. It’s all here in the paperwork. ”

“I think the other Ombudsmen can help me figure out if that’s true.” Whatever a judge was or wherever jurisdiction might be found,  Daphne assumed they were something similar to the volunteers who metered out justice in her own community. And in Mingus Valley justice was decided by majority vote in a small group. It was nearly unthinkable for one single person to accumulate that much power over his or her neighbours.

Photo by Wiggy.

Longterm readers know I’m not a very romantic person, so it may come as a shock to you to hear that I’ve started reading romance novels.

My role models growing up had warm, healthy relationships, but my parents were far more likely to walk around the neighbourhood picking up trash as a “date” than they were  to do traditionally romantic things. The only time I ever know of my dad buying flowers for my mom is when she found out she was pregnant. Somewhere there is a picture of her beaming as she holds them.

They loved one another very much, but they rarely if ever expressed it the way people in romantic books or movies did. Love in my family was shown in practical, thrifty ways: fixing cars, unclogging sinks, defrosting our vintage refrigerator, cutting out holes in the walls of dark rooms in order to install a window, hiding money behind picture frames for a rainy day, stocking up on a favourite food when it went on sale if there was extra money in the grocery budget, telling your spouse (and kids) how much you cared about them.

So when I became old enough to develop crushes I was mystified by the behaviour in the romance novels my friends read. None of the adults in my life acted anything like the men and women in those books. The idea of my father sweeping mom off her feet after she came home from a long, hard day taking care of patients was, well, kind of silly. What she really needed was a peaceful house, a hot dinner, and as little sweeping as possible. She had to go into work the next day after all.

My personality also played a role in it. I value simplicity and quality time and think what you do is way more important than what you say. There’s nothing wrong with other people enjoying flowers, chocolates, and jewelry, but those aren’t the things I look for when I want to know how my spouse feels about me. Our idea of a fun date is pretty non-traditional. Like my parents we do a lot of walking and talking.

Earlier this summer a story came into the queue at the book review site I write for that immediately piqued my interest. The only problem was that it included a romantic element.  All of the other subplots touched on issues that I normally love mulling over. I wondered how I’d react to a mixed-genre story and decided to give it a try. In a worst case scenario I’d hate it and ask for another reviewer to be assigned to it.

I’ll admit it: I changed my mind. If there are other genres swirling around the subplots I don’t mind a little romance in the books I read. In the future I suspect I’ll remain picky about the types of romances I request, but I’m also picky about other genres. There are certain themes I’ve never learned to enjoy…and that’s ok.

But I’ll still keep an open mind about it. 😉

What have you changed your opinion about lately?

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

From Life and Death in Assisted Living:

During a tour, a salesperson gave Myron and his two sons, Eric and Mark, a brochure. “Just because she’s confused at times,” the brochure reassured them, “doesn’t mean she has to lose her independence.”

Here are a few things the brochure didn’t mention:

Just months earlier, Emeritus supervisors had audited the facility’s process for handling medications. It had been found wanting in almost every important regard. And, in truth, those “specially trained” staffers hadn’t actually been trained to care for people with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia, a violation of California law.

Steampunk – Hybridity and Fantasy. I’ve never quite figured out why the Steampunk subculture annoys me so much, but this article gives a good explanation of why it bothers other people.

How to Disagree. I couldn’t agree with this more. A lot can be learned about someone’s character by observing how they handle disagreements. We all have bad days and sensitive topics, though, so I look for behaviour patterns over months or years if it is at all possible.

The Kindness of Beasts. These kinds of stories make me wish animals could talk. I’d love to know what’s going through their minds when they risk their own safety to help others.

The World Religions Tree. A map of every religion known on earth that shows how how they are all connected to one another. I could spend all morning zooming in and out again to discover new similarities between denominations and religions that I never would have imagined. And just think – had any of us been born at a different time or place  we very likely would have ended up believing in an entirely different religion!

Letter to a Drive-By Antisemite via AutistLiam. What a humorous reaction to what must have been an incredibly frustrating interaction! I’ll admit to feeling quite curious about the outfits some people wear for (what I assume are) religious reasons, but I’ve never had the urge to ask such personal questions. It makes me wonder about how the antagonist in this blog post grew up. Was he bullied about things beyond his control? Did his grandmother/teacher/neighbour ask him incredibly inappropriate things? Did he grow up in a family that ridiculed empathy? I believe people are born good. Emotional callousness is something that develops later on for some folks.

The Trouble with the Poor. If the first sentence of this post doesn’t make you want to read it, nothing will:

The trouble with the poor is that they are messy.

Pets are weird. My Dog the Paradox explores all of the reasons why this is so.

What is even odder is how attached humans get to the cats, dogs, rabbits, reptiles, rodents, birds, and other creatures that burrow into our hearts. Our ancestors originally domesticated them for practical reasons in many cases, but we live with them because we love them.

For several years during our childhood my oldest brother, Jesse, had a constant companion named Cubby. Cubby was a small, mixed breed dog who wasn’t the sharpest crayon in the box.  He believed that bubbles were the biggest threat to our family and attacked every one that magically appeared in the house to keep us safe. You don’t have to be intelligent to love and protect your humans.

If you gave him a carrot he’d gnaw it all the way to the stub, find a quiet corner of the house and then vomit up everything he had eaten. In the summer he’d lick one side of a popsicle while my brother licked the other. He had the most terrible gas ever known to mankind (possibly because he lived with a houseful of children who fed him strange things because they didn’t know any better).

What have you been reading? What is the weirdest thing one of your pets has ever done?

Photo by The Mighty Tim Inconnu.

Just tuning in? Start here.

“Shhh!”

Isaac quietly latched the front door as Ephraim winced his way to the kitchen table. Lemon was the only member of the household awakened by their late entrance. So far. He whined and limply wagged his tail as his humans gathered up medical supplies and began cleaning their wounds.

“Are you sure we lost them?” Ephraim whispered. The jagged cut on his thigh was beginning to congeal, but he knew it would heal faster if he cleaned the dirt out and washed it with something alcoholic.

“No, it was too dark to tell. And Aunt Rachel told me we’d be safer here than anywhere else.” Isaac gingerly dabbed his forehead. There would be a nasty bruise to explain away tomorrow morning, but at least the skin wasn’t broken. The limited medical training he’d absorbed from his brother’s studies was beginning to kick in. He wasn’t dizzy or nauseous and so far his sight seemed normal. Isaac knew these were good signs after a head injury.

“Caca.”

“They don’t know this valley the way we do. I’m sure we lost them.”

Ephraim frowned at his brother as he finished wrapping his thigh in a clean bandage.

“Did you see where the kids ran?”

“No, we’ll have to search for them again tomorrow. Aunt Rachel can’t possibly take care of them herself in her condition, and you know how useless Bernard is in a crisis.” The husband of Rachel’s and MacArthur’s second daughter had bolted as soon as the soldiers attacked, leaving the remaining members of the family to gather up the children and make a dash for it. What had been truly bizarre, though, was how easily the soldiers were able to track him down. Bernard was an expert hunter and sheepherder, and he knew of small, hidden caverns in this valley that were a mystery to even to his most adventurous neighbours.

In the middle of the night he should have easily been able to slip through the fingers of men and women who had virtually no knowledge of the terrain. Long after Ephraim and Lemon fell asleep Isaac lay quietly next to them wondering what exactly had happened a few hours earlier.

The house was dull the next morning. Daphne struggled to extract even the most cursory information from her sons over breakfast once she’d noticed the wound on Isaac’s head.

Isaac had been secretly sharing food and water with the Eversons. When his brother found out what was happening Isaac had bribed Ephraim into keeping his secret.

The Eversons had abruptly moved camp since Isaac’s last visit, though, and it had taken longer than they expected to find them yesterday. Their near-relatives had recently been visited by the public health nurse, and Bernard’s suspicion of the humourless soldiers who accompanied her lead him to seeking out a new place to sleep as they slowly rebuilt a new home for the family.

No one had expected the soldiers to find their new camp so quickly or for what was supposed to be a simple debriefing to turn ugly. Bernard was charged with moving without a license, and when he gave a snarky reply to the officer who fined him all hell broke loose. Isaac didn’t mention how easily she found Bernard once he ran away or how close her soldiers came to following Isaac and Ephraim home. None of it made sense to him and he didn’t want his mother to worry.

“Moving to a new home or helping somebody else move is a crime now,” Ephraim said. “We’re supposed to stay put until the census is finished and everyone has been vaccinated.”

Daphne’s arm still twinged now and again, and she reflexively rubbed the spot where she had received her vaccination.

“Speaking of which, you two need your vaccinations. The public health nurse said she’d come by again to see you when she had time in her schedule.”

“We can’t, we have plans today.”

“It really is important, boys. Their medicine is so strong it can cure you before you’re sick.” Daphne still found it hard to believe, but she was grateful for any help the strangers could offer. Her grandfather was the community’s doctor until shortly before his death. She’d seen too many young, healthy people struck down in the prime of life even when Mingus Valley had a doctor. The death rate rose sharply each time the previous doctor died or moved away.

“And my ions have never felt better!” Paige said as she hobbled into the kitchen. True, her knees and hips were as stiff and painful as ever, but she could still feel the warmth of the vaccine coursing through her veins. It was only a matter of time before she regained the strength and agility she had been known for years ago. Maybe she’d even wake up with the thick, brown hair she had been so well known for as a young woman!

“We have to let the other elders know what happened at any rate,” Ephraim said. He normally found his brother’s stubborn streak annoying, but he didn’t want anyone else to get hurt and didn’t trust the soldiers to spread the word effectively. Neither he nor Isaac had known about the new rule after all! Their luckily minor injuries were proof that the soldiers weren’t going to be patient in the future.

“And the council should meet to discuss their own punishments for people who break it,” Isaac said. “Folks will listen to you faster than to strangers.”

Daphne wasn’t sure about that. Her short time as an ombudsman had been one of her most frustrating experiences in recent memory. It was difficult enough to get your children to listen to you, never mind other adults who were always looking out for their own best interests.

“I think they should do it,” Paige said. “We can mind the farm while they’re gone.” There was very little to do during this time of year anyways. A few tools needed to be sharpened or repaired and the tool shed had a leaky roof that should be fixed before winter, but most of their days would be spent watching the children and resting after a long, difficult spring.

This was how Ephraim and Isaac managed to yet once again to avoid the exasperated public health nurse when she showed up again that afternoon, this time with soldiers in tow.

“Look, I have a court order,” Esther said as she waved a faded piece of paper around.

Daphne stared at her with a blank expression.

“A judge decided that everyone in this valley must be vaccinated,” Esther explained as she set the paper down in front of Daphne. Did these people know nothing about how the legal system worked? Esther knew they were isolated down here, but her preparation for this assignment indicated that they at least had a rudimentary justice system. “You’ll go to jail if you don’t.” Daphne frowned. She’d never heard of a city by that name before. It must be far away.

What Esther’s research hadn’t indicated, though, was that Daphne was literate. And the paper in front of her said nothing about vaccinations, court orders, or jail.