Lydia Schoch

This is great.

I wonder what serious poetry would sound like if no one read it with the poetry voice?

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

From Why Do I Write?:

 “I’m a writer,”  I said, scarfing my own little stash of meatballs.  Guy lifts eyebrow.  “Oh? So waddya write?”   “Words, words, words…..” I cleverly parry, borrowing from Hamlet.

Why dance, why paint, why blow notes and air through a tuba…because we have to.  But what does that really mean?

Dear Bruised Fruit. I loved this.

From Rewilding Etiquette:

Imagine a future where the most revolutionary changes in our world have not come from nanotech, genetic engineering, artificial intelligence or even space development–but from cognitive science and a deepening understanding of how humans function (or not) in groups.

How Babies Get Out. One of the funniest stories I’ve heard in a long time. It’s hard to believe there was ever a time in which this sort of thing was possible.

Carol Tavris’ Mistake Were Made (but not by me) is one of the best nonfiction books I’ve read this summer. Every single one of us justifies our prejudices or dumb choices by filtering out what we believe about those decisions. Tavris explains how and why we do these things and what we can do to uncover our blind spots.

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 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!