Lydia Schoch

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

Hunting and Belonging via KSal1958. One of my very few complaints about living in a big city is how disconnected urban people are from the land. Hunting is unfashionable here and very few people garden (well, other than possibly growing a few herbs or a tomato plant if you’re lucky enough to have a windowsill/balcony). Our parks are either immaculately groomed or have strict rules about where people are allowed to roam if they’ve been kept “wild.” I totally understand why the culture is the way it is, but this essay makes me miss my more rural upbringing.

Remorse Pixie. This is so true.

10 Stories About Grandmother via Millie_Ho. It’s funny how much you can learn about someone through anecdotes.

Shipwrecked in Whole Foods. I don’t necessarily agree with everything I share on Suggestion Saturday, but I do think this author makes a good point about the weirdness of marketing sustainability, social responsibility, and genuinely healthy food to wealthy households. Everyone needs nutritious food to survive, and human civilization can only survive for a limited amount of time if we use up our resources faster than they can be replaced. Yet somehow these ideas have become trendy and luxurious. Paradoxically, I also feel like this author is being a little harsh on the environmental and health food movements. You can have a very healthy lifestyle on a tight budget with enough preparation and (informal) education.

The False Memory Archive: Did That Really Happen? via Zorabike. Such an interesting article.

From Hospice Is a Busy Place:

On a warm spring day, Maggie checked into hospice in a nearby town. At the age of 65, she had Stage Four ovarian cancer, and having refused chemotherapy and radiation treatments, her doctors recommended that she enter hospice as soon as possible.

From The Empathy Exams:

Empathy means realizing no trauma has discrete edges. Trauma bleeds. Out of wounds and across boundaries. Sadness becomes a seizure. Empathy demands another kind of porousness in response. My Stephanie script is twelve pages long. I think mainly about what it doesn’t say.

Generation Atheist is the most honest book I’ve read so far this year.

Deconversion can be a touchy topic. While some people are genuinely interested in my story, others approach the idea of a devout Christian gradually shedding her faith with horror. Rather than listening to what actually happened they take one’s words out of context and apply their own interpretation to what actually happened.

What I really appreciate about this collection is its diversity. There are contributors who are still reeling from the often unexpected social consequences of their reconversion to individuals who have long since made peace with their new realities. Preacher’s kids sit alongside ex-mormons, ex-muslims, and members of the LGBT community in an extremely interesting and provocative collections of essay.

If the contributors share one thing in common with one another it seems to be this: in most cases people who retained the love and support of their families – whether biological or chosen – have done significantly better emotionally than their peers who were shunned or disowned.

I know some of my readers are religious, and by no means do I want to dissuade them from their beliefs. But I do hope that by recommending this book I’ll give them a taste of what it’s like to stand in someone else’s shoes.

What have you been reading?

I’ve been thinking about this for several weeks now.

After the Storm is a good story, but the time has come to finish developing it in private before it’s officially released.

Sometimes writing is messy. It can take much more (or less) time to finish a story than you originally thought it would.  I’m getting to the point now where I need to go back, reread the earlier sections, and end it the right way. There is also work I need to do on the independent science fiction stories I’m preparing for release in the very near future.

I’ve delayed this decision because of how much I loved your responses to each chapter as it went live, but I still think it’s the right one.

To end this post on a happy note,  here is a raccoon popping bubble wrap. Watching it made me giggle so much yesterday that I just had to share it with my readers.

My morning laugh.

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

From Mint Tea Crushed via FrenzyOfFlies:

Mint leaves,
From the Chinese restaurant.
Crushed, stirred with sugar, tea,
Poured into plastic cups.

A Linguist Explains the Grammar of Doge. Wow. This is one of those articles whose comment section should not be overlooked. The response to the post is just as interesting as what was originally said, especially for those of us who are linguistic nerds.

100 Famous Movie Quotes as Charts via InlawsOutlaws. Some of these I understood right away. Others not so much, but it was still fun to give it a try.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman Did Not have Free Choice and Neither Do You. A long but excellent blog post about addiction, free will, mental health, and why some people can safely dabble with mind-altering substances while others get hooked on them in a very short period of time.

Monday Goblin via flirtybloomers. I love the imagery in this poem.

One glance at Harry Stamps’ obituary makes me wish I had known him in person:

He particularly hated Day Light Saving Time, which he referred to as The Devil’s Time. It is not lost on his family that he died the very day that he would have had to spring his clock forward. This can only be viewed as his final protest.

Wild Fell is the best ghost story I’ve read in a very long time.

What I love about ghost stories is how tightly they cling to the past. Whether the deceased died 5 years ago or 200, who they were when they were alive and what happened to them still matters. The unfurling of their lives is as fascinating to me as it is to walk through a graveyard or comb through other people’s memoirs.

This particular book is made even more amazing by its prose. The descriptions are so detailed that I honestly felt as if I was walking alongside the characters as they meet their fates. This is a fantastic choice for anyone who has never read a ghost story before because the paranormal elements are so well balanced by the ordinary activities of daily life.

What have you been reading?

Just tuning in? Start here. 

“No, she didn’t ask that,” Wilma said with a shrug.

Daphne sighed. There were times when the girl’s unusually concrete frame of mind made speaking with her difficult. Subtle nuances in the meanings of words or gestures that other kids picked up early weren’t easy for Wilma. Last summer she’d dragged two yowling cats to hide out in the barn after hearing Isaac casually referring to the fact that there was more than one way to skin a cat. It took more time than Daphne cared to remember to convince her that it was an idiom and the pets were safe.

But today Daphne was thrilled that Wilma needed extra prodding in unfamiliar conversations. Rey might know they have moved, but she didn’t know where they’d ended up. Yet.

The stone was still sending and receiving messages when she shooed the girl off to finish her chores before dinner. Wilma’s conversation was exactly how she had described it. There were no surprises, save for the fact that the girl’s spelling was even more atrocious than Daphne remembered. She was a little surprised Rey was able to make out some of the words.

What surprised her even more was how much the face of the stone had changed since it was last activated. The little buttons on it were larger and brighter. A few options had disappeared entirely, and of the ones that were left not all of them seemed to work any longer. The writing tablet section was still functional. The supply and personnel lists were not. Most curiously of all, the button that once included a series of stories about what was happening in the capital hadn’t been updated at all since the last time the stone stopped working.

After spending a long day surrounded by other people it was actually kind of nice to sit quietly and play around with this puzzle. It was like a book whose pages never stayed the same, except that books never needed to be left in the sun to give them energy. An old word flitted around in the back of Daphne’s mind.

Newspaper.

They had been a kind of book she read about once, but she didn’t remember their characters moving around as much as this one did.

“Does Lemon still like cheese?” The message startled Daphne. “I’ll bring some for him if he does.”

She stared at the screen for a minute. The three-letter answer would be so easy to type out, but what little Daphne knew about the soldiers made her hesitant to give them any information. Lemon had unintentionally intimidated them before, and as soon as he recognized their scents she had no doubt he’d try to lick them to death again.

“Wilma?” The screen blinked. Had a real person been standing in front of her it would have been terribly rude to ignore them. Words weren’t people, though, and Daphne’s conscience only stung her a little as she wrapped the stone in a clean cloth and took it inside without a word.

***

Waiting was the hardest part of this chapter in her life. Daphne had routinely gone days – if not weeks – without speaking to anyone in years past. She’d enjoyed the long, quiet days of rest during the worst heat and the short, busy ones when it was time to plant or harvest. Back then there had been few things to anticipate. When she felt restless she went on long walks at dawn or dusk. On the rare occasions she was lonely she’d go on a short visiting tour, only stopping to see those who’d been kindest to her.

It still felt odd sometimes to wait for the world to come to her. Had the sheriff visited Henry yet to see how serious his threats were? How quickly would Rey and her soldiers track down their new home? Or would she assume they’d died off like so many others? Was there any recent news about the resistance that Avery had told the Reeds since the last time she’d seen them?

Would the baby ever grow into her name? Daphne knew her opinion didn’t count, but she thought it was silly to give such a long one to someone so small. Better to start out with something simple and change it once the kid was old enough to warrant so many syllables. Of course, what else would she expect from a woman who decided that Rosamund was a good name for a burro?

One of these days she would have to start using it, though. The baby was beginning to recognize it as something that belonged to her and her only.

Isaac went back onto the road soon after Wilma’s conversation with Rey. He was never happy in the same location longer than a few weeks. There were only so many places to visit in the valley, though, so Daphne knew she’d see him again soon. The baby grew. Paige shrank even further into herself. It felt like winter would never end.

And then one day the sheriff came walking up the path to Mariposa’s house. He carried a grim smile on his face and a worn satchel over his left shoulder.

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

How Fruit Juice Went From Health Food to Junk Food via StoryRoute. What I find most interesting about this article is how our notions of what is (and isn’t) healthy are influenced by trends. Yes, new research occasionally does show that certain foods are much more (or less) healthy than what we had originally believed, but a lot of it boils down to hype.

Neptune Memorial Reef – An Under Sea Cemetery. I’ve been fascinated by cemetery art and architecture for many years. Some people are amazingly creative when it comes to designing their final resting place, and the people profiled in this article are no exception to that rule.

Yellow Pills and Green Pills. It’s so hard to comment on this comic strip without inadvertently giving away the ending. All I can really say about it is that it reminds me of something my parents used to say about the downside of intelligence.

When You Can’t Be Trusted to Hurt Yourself via dorsalstream. The best line from this piece is: “Sessions are like getting your hair cut, only your hair is broken and it hurts.”

From What I Saw:

He slumped against the gym wall and slammed his head back. The act was met with a sharp reprimand from a bystanding aide. And I know what they saw.

They saw defiance. Headbanging behavior. A tantrum.

I saw a student trying to block out external input. I saw. Everyone else gawked and chattered as the other kids did the warm-ups. I stood by helplessly.

I saw a humiliated man sitting against a wall in a corner, helpless and outnumbered, with no way to communicate.

From Wendel’s Tips for Travellers via Skelemika:

What to seeThe Extravaganza of Personalities.  This is my favorite.  Admission is free, and you can stay as long as you like.  You can watch the Turning Worm grow razor sharp incisors right before your eyes (rarely after).  Or hear a Grand Tirade by King Sneer as he leans out across the Barrier of Insolence to address the crowd (sometimes spelled cowed).

If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to live in a fishbowl, Diary of a Stage Mother’s Daughter is the perfect book for you.

I watched occasional reruns of Little House on the Prairie as a kid, but I knew nothing about any of the child actors who illuminated Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books. Celebrity worship was never something that my family encouraged. It would be really interesting to hear from any readers who were big fans of Melissa Francis when she was young if there are any reading this post!

Melissa definitely didn’t live a charmed life, and what I liked most about her story was how completely different her actual childhood was from the image she portrayed. We rarely know what’s really going on in other people’s lives.

What have you been reading?

Just tuning in? Start here. 

“Mariposa, we need to talk.”

The room was all but empty now. Sometimes they stuck around to socialize after less contentious meetings, but several hours of bad tempers flaring in a room far too small for the number of people crowded into it left almost no one interested in making small talk.

“Henry said something as he was walking past me. Did you hear him?”

Mariposa shook her head and she reached for her baby. Daphne stretched her arms in relief. It felt good to let her muscles relax after hours of cuddling.

“I heard him say, ‘I guess I’ll have to bury the bodies myself, then.'” The younger woman froze for a second before offering up a weak smile.

“He’s always been hot-tempered. He didn’t mean it.” One of the benefits of growing up in a community as close-knit as Peoria is that you quickly learned who was truly dangerous and who simply craved a captive audience for their temper tantrums. Mariposa was certain Henry belonged in the latter category. True, he’d always kept to himself and what family he had left had long since scattered to faraway towns, but he wasn’t dangerous. Not really.

“Are you sure? He sounded like he meant it.”

“There’s no way anyone could hide something like that in Peoria. We’re not like -” Mariposa stopped. She’d been brought up to view Mingus with a tinge of fear due to their extremely punitive social customs, but she didn’t want to offend the only living grandmother of her child. “We don’t live like that,” she finished weakly.

Her community was known for many things, not all of which were necessarily positive. But murder was most definitely not one of their collective flaws.  Daphne was just about to speak when her daughter-in-law opened her mouth again.

“Look, I know Henry can take some getting used to. He’s not the friendliest person you’ll ever meet in this life, Oma, but that doesn’t mean he’s actually killing people. He just likes to blow off some steam sometimes and shock people he hasn’t met yet.”

“That’s not what it sounded like to me. Can’t you have someone check on him?”

Mariposa sighed. Technically this wasn’t in her job description. All she really needed to do was cajole her neighbours into sharing their precious water sources and refrain from stealing livestock, spouses, or tools from one another.

“I’ll ask the sheriff to stop in on him the next time he’s sober.” Knowing the sheriff this might take a while, but it was better than nothing. Daphne nodded and started walking slowly to the exit. She could hear Rosamund stamping her feet in the courtyard. The burro had grown accustomed to these trips and knew that the humans should have untied her and headed home by now.

*****

Wilma had never quite caught up from the long, hungry summer when she first joined Daphne’s family. She was unusually short for her age and had learned to read and write much later in life than her older brother. Felix was small for his age, too, but he seemed to understand numbers and letters much more easily than his baby sister.

Every curve of the brushstroke was a triumph for the girl. When traditional teaching methods failed to take root in her mind, Daphne had been forced to find other ways to explain abstract concepts to her adopted granddaughter. More than once Daphne had wished her own grandfather had still been around. She’d forgotten much of what he’d taught her about how children learn, and she would have loved to pick his brain about some of Wilma’s more unusual challenges.

Which was part of the reason why Daphne was so surprised to see the girl hunched over the strange, silent rock when she arrived home. It had stopped working so long ago that Daphne assumed Wilma had forgotten all about it. Even if she had remembered, Daphne didn’t understand how a child who learned so slowly could figure out more about the strange object than a house full of quick-witted adults.

“r u alone?” the message read on the flat portion of the rock. It shimmered for a moment before the reply appeared.

“No, I’m travelling with my platoon. Do you still live in the flat, empty area beyond The Three Sisters?” They were left behind from a time when the ones who came before could build something many times higher than the tallest man. No one knew what they were, exactly, only that there were three of them standing in a row beside one of the roads that lead to nowhere and they weren’t made from wood or stone. To be honest, Daphne didn’t live anywhere near them other than in the sense that they shared a valley.

But they were the only landmark of Mingus. To claim you didn’t live near them was to admit that you didn’t really belong.

“Wilma, what are you doing?”

The girl looked up at her with bright, shining eyes.

“I made a friend,” came her cryptic reply. “Her name is Rey and she can’t wait to meet us for dinner.”

Daphne dug into memories she had long since ignored.

“Who is Rey?”

“She said she knew you, but she thinks you still live at your old house.”

Another memory puffed past Daphne’s vision. She wondered if her old house was still shut up tight waiting for her or if it had long since smouldered into ruins. A lot of occupied houses in Mingus had been burned to the ground when their occupants refused to cooperate with the crowds who gathered outside of them. It seemed unlikely that an abandoned one would have fared any better. This was one of many reasons why they hadn’t returned yet.

“Wilma, this is important. Have you told her where we live now?”