Lydia Schoch

Forgotten Heroes is a series of posts about extraordinary men and women who are (probably) not remembered by the average person.  Previous heroes include Josephine Butler and John Howard. 

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: 1930s.

Place: Kitchener, Ontario.

Imagine having eight, ten, twelve children not because you dreamed of raising a large family but because it was illegal for health care providers to teach you about family planning.

When our grandparents or great-grandparents were young this was the reality for many families in the U.S., the U.K. and Canada. (I don’t know enough about the history of other countries to say what their laws were on the subject but I am planning to research this for a future Forgotten Heroes post!)

The U.S. had Margaret Sanger working to change this. The U.K. had Marie Stopes.

And Canada had Alvin Ratz Kaufman. After the Great Depression forced him to lay off workers Kaufman was alarmed to see what the lives of his former employees were like. He noticed that employees with larger families understandably had a tougher time keeping everyone fed and clothed and thought that having access to safe, reliable contraception would help them.

In the 1930s he founded the Parents’ Information Bureau (PIB) and hired health workers to go door to door in poor neighbourhoods explaining how to use certain contraceptives and which doctors were willing to sterilize people (even though it was illegal.)

Between 1935 and 1960 the PIB helped about 200,000 Canadian women take charge of when or whether to have more children. Deciding to send health care workers to women instead of expecting women to line up at a clinic helped the PIB reach women who ordinarily may not have participated in such a thing.

Contraception was not only illegal then but highly controversial as well. Only a few years earlier the Lambeth Conference in 1930 made the Anglicans the first Christians to post a statement supporting the use of contraception instead of calling it a sin.

It would be disingenuous for me to hide the fact that Kaufman was part of the eugenics movement. Yes, some of the other people in that movement grossly violated human rights in the name of improving the human race but none of my research on Kaufman has ever indicated that he forced anyone to have (or not to have) children.

Kaufman simply believe in the power of information.

And for that I am deeply grateful.

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

If You Crave This. I don’t know how accurate this chart is but the next time I have an insatiable craving for chocolate or french fries I will give raw nuts and broccoli a try first.

Save the Words. A locupletative collection of words inches away from being taken out of the dictionary. Adopt one and save a word!

From Just How Hard Should We Try to Remove the “Ugly from Life?:

Separation and unity. Diversity and conformity. Conservatives and liberals. Religion and the absence of religion. Men, women, gays, heteros, children, sages, blacks and whites. Somehow, we need it all. And I think it would be a good idea to appreciate it all for its specific, individual value.

Toronto Scientist Determines that Fiction Can Change Personalities. Wow, what a fascinating study! I wonder if the same thing can be said about reading blogs?

No Problem. It’s so easy to forget that the cool, collected image others project is not necessarily how they feel inside. Everyone has his or her own struggles.

This is well worth the five minutes it takes to watch:

Earlier this summer a friend recommended Sarah Vowell’s Unfamiliar Fishes, a history of Hawaii from the arrival of the first Christian missionaries in 1819 to the fraudulent annexation of it by the U.S. in 1898.

This is a chilling reminder of what happens when religion, politics and profit crawl into bed together.

What have you been reading?

Drew and I recently had a conversation that went something like this:

“Why are those leaves so big?”

“I don’t know! They’re kind of creepy, though.”

Both of us grew up in climates where leaves tend to be about the same size as the hand of an adult. Our definition of the term doesn’t automatically include leaves large enough to wrap around a small child but a quick Internet search has turned up photos of even larger leaves.

This makes me wonder what people who grew up in tropical climates think of pine needles? It must be just as strange to them as extra-large leaves were to us!

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, photos, and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web. (Photo credit – 7thsens from FreeDigitalPhotos.net.)

Spice Market in Old Delhi. Incredible photographs of an open-air market. I love the bright colours! Do people bring their own containers to take purchases home in? How does one keep spices or other light/heat/moisture-sensitive items fresh?

Anger Makes You Forget Other People Are People. Sadly true.

Pour Some Sugar On Me. Not all vices are created equal. It would be better, I think, to eliminate our cultural tendency to label every less-than-perfect habit as a vice. It’s too harsh a term for many of the activities it commonly describes.

Gumption. What it takes to write a book.

Keiko Fuduka Earns 10th Degree Black Belt in Judo. She’s the first woman and only the fourth person to ever accomplish this. Oh, and she’s 98 years old.

Brad Warner’s Sex, Sin and Zen: A Buddhist Exploration of Sex from Celibacy to Polyamory and Everything in Between was an eye-opening read recently. I hadn’t know that Buddhism includes many, often conflicting, “denominations” (for lack of a better term)  or that it doesn’t teach the concept of sexual sin.

What have you been reading?

Thank you to everyone who filled out last week’s survey. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive.

If you missed the cut-off date use the comment section to tell us share your favourite aspects of this site and any advice you have for improving it.

Results

Participants were:

American or Canadian. This was exactly what I expected. Most of my visitors have always been from North America. Hopefully we will hear from people in other countries in future surveys, though.

40+. 75% of participants were 40 or older.  Now this was a surprise! I wonder if there is a correlation between age and willingness to fill out a survey?

Longtime Readers. Everyone who responded has been reading On the Other Hand for at least 7 months. I didn’t know what to expect when I included this question but does make sense that longtime readers would be more likely to participate.

You Wanted

 Pictures. Apparently I have not been including enough pictures in my posts. 😉

More posts about psychology, sociology, religion and philosophy. Done.

Humour. This one will take a little more work. Keep an eye out for lighthearted posts in the future.

A Dear Lydia column. What a fantastic idea! Those of you who receive my newsletter already know this but I’ve decided to give it a try. I’ll need your help, though.

Have you recently de-converted from Christianity and want advice from a fellow non-theist?

Do you want clarification on an old blog post?

Is there something you’ve always wanted to ask me?

Leave a comment on this post with your question or submit it through the contact form.

Questions on any topic other than medical or legal advice are welcome. If you wish to remain anonymous or use a  pseudonym include that information with your question.

Any questions not including these preferences will be published using only your first name.

I’ve been using an awesome WordPress theme called Headway for this blog. What I love most about this theme is that it has a drag and drop visual editor. Don’t worry if you don’t know what that means – the first section of the video below shows someone using one.

In layman’s terms it’s a way to make your blog look exactly how you want it to without using any HTML, CSS or PHP. (And if you do know how to code you can always play around with your theme to make it look even better.)

Headway 3.0 is due to be released later on this summer. I’m excited to see what has been done to improve an already amazing product. Here’s a sneak peek of what is to come:

Why am I bringing this up now?

Those of us currently using Headway 2 have paid a one-time-fee and get lifetime support and  free updates to all future versions. When version 3.0 is released Headway is going to become subscription based. While I’m sure it will be fairly priced, if you purchase it now you’ll get version 3.0 (and all future versions) without ever having to pay for anything again.

Check out the features page for more information.

If you decide to sign up for Headway, please consider doing so through this affiliate link as it will help support my writing.

On an unrelated note, my next post is about the survey I posted last week. In response to it I will be announcing something exciting tomorrow.

Stay tuned!