Lydia Schoch

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

How I Lost My Fear of of Universal Health Care. This essay was written by an extremely politically conservative U.S. woman who dreaded universal health care when she first moved to Canada. She had been taught some incredibly bizarre things about how our system works up here. What I found most interesting about this piece was how readily she changed her mind once she was presented with factual information. Many people won’t or can’t do this and I applaud her for being willing to changer her opinion. It’s not easy to admit that you’ve been deceived!

Test Your Vocabulary. A fun Internet quiz that supposedly estimates the size of your vocabulary. Is it accurate? No idea. My number was, 26,200 and apparently the average adult in America knows 20,000-35,000 words.

Shtetl Days. My mom recommended this short story. Readers, I think you’ll enjoy it more if I let you discover the plot for yourselves. I’m normally someone who figures out what is happening early on but this story truly surprised me.

From Plastic Surgery Doesn’t Make You Beautiful:

To me, “beautiful” doesn’t describe someone’s face or body, but his or her personality.

The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are is a soul-soothing book about self-acceptance. None of us are perfect and as much of a cliche as this is to say…that’s ok. If I was independently wealthy I’d buy copies for all of my readers. That’s how much I loved this book!

What have you been reading?

This was intended to be an anti-masturbation Jehovah’s Witness video created for people who know sign language. Someone decided that R. Kelly’s song Ignition was the perfect soundtrack to it. The results? Pure comedy.

Edited to add: I don’t know how long this will be online. The original video I posted was taken down. I’ve found another copy of it but expect that this one will disappear at some point as well.

Here is a translation of the original video for those of you who are interested.

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

If you don’t have a twitter account yet you’re missing out on some fantastic stuff. There have been times when one friend tweets a funny story, another rants about politics or world events, a third shares a thought-provoking quote and a fourth tweets something that makes me smile. I love the juxtaposition of it all.  A few of my favourites from this week:

Always answer the person who asks you “are you happy?” because anyone who cares enough to ask will probably try to make sure you are.. – Coyote Sings

Just got called a “nice little girl.” Turns out that’s the fastest way to make me into a big, mean woman. Grr. – Zora

If any country really does belief in the future of its children it will do EVERYTHING possible to give them the best education. – A Space Alien

Remembering Mom and Dad. If this isn’t a good reason to get a tattoo I don’t know what would be a good reason.

Amazing Memory. Do you know anyone with this type of memory? It would be wonderful to access more memories of friends and family who have passed away (even if they were of very mundane interactions) but I wouldn’t want to remember that many details about in general.

Skull Flower. It took me a few seconds to see the skull. I wonder how many people walked past this flower before someone noticed what it could resemble?

What Time Is It? Click this link to find out.

This week’s recommendation is actually a book my Dad told me to read. These Is My Words is the diary of Sarah Agnes Prine’s young adulthood in frontier Arizona. The story is fictional but from what I understand certain events and characters were modelled after the lives of the author’s ancestors. I’ve borrowed from real life in my own stories and know how fascinating it is to mix truth with what you think or wish might have happened.

What have you been reading?

Forgotten Heroes is a series of posts about extraordinary men and women who are (probably) not remembered by the average person.  Previous heroes include Charles Loring Brace,  Emily Murphy and Jane Jacobs. 

If you know of a forgotten hero who should be included in this series let me know about him or her in the comment section or via my contact form. 

Time: 1972

Place: China

While out collecting trash one day to recycle or sell in order to support her family Lou Xiaoying heard a baby cry. The infant had been abandoned on the street and was surrounded by garbage.

Lou was already raising one biological daughter in a culture and time when daughters were not considered as socially valuable as sons. A son takes care of his parents in their old age but daughters are absorbed into their husband’s family. It would have been so easy for her to continue walking and ignore what she had just seen or, at most, to bring the child to an orphanage or leave her in a more densely populated area so someone else would find her.

Instead Lou picked the baby up, took her home and adopted her.

Over the next four decades this scene was replayed dozens of times. Most of the babies Lou discovered ended up being adopted by family or friends but several of them, including the girl she found in 1972, became permanent members of her immediate family.

How did abandoning babies become such a common occurrence? In the early 1970s China had a population problem. For decades infant mortality had been declining  and average life expectancies surging. Until the 1960s the Chinese government actually encouraged their people to have large families but as the population grew more rapidly this began to change.

In 1970 citizens were encouraged to delay marriage and have no more than two children. By 1979 a one child policy was set into place to slow the birth rate. It was at times brutally enforced.

One of the consequences of this law was that parents began to abandon baby girls in ever-increasing numbers. If your culture believes that only a son will financially and emotionally support you in your old age and if you’re only allowed to have one child many people will choose to have a son as their only (official) child

I know this isn’t a typical Forgotten Heroes post: Lou Xiaoying is still alive and  her legacy has not yet been settled but this is a story that needed to be told.

Respond

Your challenge today is to look suffering in the face. Those of us living in western cultures will almost certainly never find abandoned babies on our streets and even if we did there are a long list of families waiting to adopt such children.

But there are many other ordinary crises happening just outside your door. We might not know how to solve them  (yet) or what form they may take but so long as there are compassionate people in this world willing to help there is hope.

In my neighbourhood you cannot walk down the street without passing at least one homeless person. I haven’t figured out the best way to help them yet but I do smile and say hello when they make eye contact. Most people refuse to acknowledge their existence.

What will you be doing?

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, photos and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web. For some reason there is quite a bit of humour in the links I discovered over the past several days. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did!

The Wrong Side Absolutely Must Not Win. Every four years  ordinarily  reasonable people transform into frothing ideologues and in the months leading up to the big election it becomes increasingly impossible to steer conversations clear of politics. This article pokes fun at how seriously many Americans take the political process and how similar the parties sound if you listen closely. Can you tell how much I abhor this time of year? 😉

Customer Reviews – BIC Cristal For Her Pen. Recently the pen company Bic released a line of pink, inexpensive pens specifically for women. This link is full of hysterical reviews written by people making fun of this terrible idea. (Seriously – what in the heck does  gender have to do with which disposable pen a person should use?) I’ve linked to the one star reviews specifically but be sure to click through the higher ratings for equally comical reviews.

Man Killed Attempting Bigfoot Hoax. This is such a sad story. It’s also one of the most bizarre things I’ve ever read.

Girl’s Hair-Do Reveals Love Life. Are those of us who avoid fluffy bows at all costs not supposed to fall in love, then?

I have the following questions about A Horse in a Dress:

Where does one find a horse-shaped dress?

Why in the world would one dress up a horse?

Are the other horses jealous?

Somebodies and Nobodies is about social status,  how we treat those “beneath” us and why those “above” us can be so dismissive. Too often wealth, social positions or job titles dictate which people are afforded basic respect and dignity and which ones are treated like inanimate objects. It’s not an easy book to read but it does cover an incredibly important topic.

What have you been reading?