Bryce Moore's Blog, page 87
June 15, 2020
When Milk Attacks
Look. I’ve never claimed to be the king of cuisine. My palate isn’t some finely tuned instrument, able to detect the subtle gradations between different foods. In a typical day, I eat the same thing for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. When I’m in my groove, I pay about as much attention to what I’m eating as I do to the brand of gasoline I put in my car (back in the days when I actually had to fill my car with gas, which feels about a century ago).
I’m also not a morning person. If all things were up to me, there would only be one 8 o’clock per day, let alone a 7 o’clock or a (gasp!) 6 o’clock. I wake up, have a shower, and get to work. Eating breakfast is a part of that routine, but I only pay enough attention to it to ensure I’m not getting oatmeal stuck in my beard.
What I mean to say is, the bar is pretty low when it comes to breakfast and Bryce.
And so last week should have been like any other. On Tuesday I got up, got going, and got breakfast. 60 grams of raw oatmeal, 10 grams of chocolate chips, 200 grams of milk. Pour it all in a cup and eat it. I was reading something while I ate. Probably email. Halfway through my breakfast of champions, I paused. Did the oatmeal taste a little . . . off? I tried a bit more, actually paying attention to the taste. Maybe a bit strange, but nothing too worrisome.
I finished the oatmeal.
Friends, allow me to pause for a moment for a Public Service Announcement. If you’re ever eating something, and it takes a bit funny, do yourself a solid and investigate the matter more fully. Your spidey senses around food are to be trusted. It’s not like this oatmeal was the last source of nourishment I’d have for the next 48 hours. I had more oatmeal where that came from. But I was lazy, and I’m goal oriented, and goal number 1 in the morning is “Finish Breakfast.”
But by the time I had finished that oatmeal, my stomach was sending up panic signals. All was not well in the digestion department, and they were asking (demanding!) that I take a second look into that breakfast. Oatmeal and chocolate chips almost never go bad. Milk?
Suspect. Highly suspect.
I got the milk, took a quick sniff, and fought by the urge to gag. I had most definitely just eaten 200 grams of spoiled milk. Yes, I hadn’t noticed. (Please refer to the first paragraph above.) But what, exactly, did eating spoiled milk do? I read up on Google really quick. Stomach ache. Maybe food poisoning.
If I were a thinking person, I probably should have just hit the reset button right then. Gone to the bathroom and gotten rid of the morning’s breakfast. But “stomach ache and food poisoning” didn’t sound that bad. After all, it was only 200 grams.
It took me a day and a half to recover, people. My stomach felt like garbage. My skin got all sensitive. I had headaches and nausea. I didn’t get terribly, violently ill, but I was just a notch below that.
So. Now, speaking from experience, allow me to share two pieces of very valuable advice. First, 200 grams of spoiled milk is definitely something to avoid. Second, paying attention to what you eat . . . might be a thing you want to do more of in the future.
Just a thought.
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
June 12, 2020
On Being “Well Watched”
We’re still working our way through the movie list I made for Daniela, but I just wanted to pause for a minute and say again how happy it’s making me. It took away all the stress of “which movie will we watch”, empowered everyone to be able to decide what they wanted to do on their own, and it’s gotten us watching a really wide array of films. Daniela’s been there for all of them, enthusiastically watching them and then discussing what she liked and didn’t like about them after they’re over.
What have we watched so far? Risking some judgement by admitting to how many, here we go:
WALL-ERear WindowHis Girl FridayField of DreamsGhostInterstellarWest Side StoryMy Man Godfrey12 Angry MenRoman Holiday
The best thing is that 4 of those movies are black and white. Almost all of them are quite very old by any modern standards. I don’t know why, but being “well watched” has always felt as important to me as being “well read.” In fact, it’s probably felt more important to me, ironically. Probably because I can knock out a classic film in under two hours, whereas getting through Les Miserables in print took me a good two weeks. (But it was totally worth it!)
The fact that my kids are taking interest in the same sort of thing? Tickles me pink. It’s not different from them watching my favorite movies. I mean, as much as I think UHF is a classic, I don’t necessarily think it makes you a better person to have seen it. (But it might help you understand me . . .) But watching movies that are recognized as important and noteworthy helps you evaluate and understand all the other movies you encounter in the future.
The movies we’ve been viewing right now have been heavily skewed to “Hollywood classics,” mainly because I’m limiting myself to films we own first, because money. But films like Spirited Away or Seven Samurai are coming. The list is light on international movies, however. (Probably because I drew heavily from AFI’s lists, which are all American, but also because Daniela’s only 12, and I didn’t want to overwhelm her all at once. I wasn’t sure how some of the older movies would go over with her. At this point, I’m pretty confident we’ll do a second list once we’re through with this one. Yay!)
Anyway. I know I’ve posted about this multiple times already, but these days I have to take my victories where I can get them. I think we might add on a few impromptu additions to tackle some of the racial issues that have been coming up in current events . . .
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
June 11, 2020
On Stating Your Opinion Online
Want to know something that depresses me? (There’s a lot, but how about just one thing?) I wrote two opinion pieces in the last week or so. The first was one I thought about for hours in advance. I spent a long time pondering what I would say, and I put in a ton of effort into getting my thoughts down on the page. It turned into my post on racism. The second I rattled off in about ten minutes. It’s my now infamous post vilifying Grape Nuts.
Guess which one generated more discussion, debate, and ultimate more views.
Yup. Grape Nuts.
I’ve been thinking about why that is over the last few days, and there are a few reasons I’ve come up with. I imagine it’s a mixture of these, but I’ll take them one at a time.
First, my blog posts primarily generate views through Facebook. As much as I would love to one day foster a forum where people not associated with Facebook will come and interact with each other in the comments section of my blog, that just isn’t in the cards for now. Facebook promotes posts that people will interact with. The more people interact with one, the more it includes that post in other people’s feeds. The Grape Nuts post generated a lot of discussion, probably because people felt pretty safe expressing their opinion about the topic. There was a lot of banter back and forth, and it was a fun post. Very low risk of feelings getting hurt or of someone saying the wrong thing.
The racism post just couldn’t compete in that arena. There were a few comments and a few likes, but the post appeared and then sunk into the abyss without making enough ripples to get pushed by any algorithm. So why wouldn’t people want to comment and talk about something that many, many people have strong feelings about?
One reason might be they’re just tired of the topic. They’re drained about the debate on both sides, and they’re just not up to defending an opinion for the umpteenth time. While my Facebook posts generally remain civil, you never know when someone’s going to crawl out of the woodwork and say something mean or spiteful or ignorant, and who wants that?
But I tend to think a bigger reason is that people are worried about saying the wrong thing. About being judged by the internet masses, one way or the other. And that’s an area that’s really concerning to me. It’s an area where I believe both sides of the political spectrum could really be helped by changing.
Case in point: JK Rowling. She has said some callous, poorly-thought-out things on trans rights in the past, and she doubled down yesterday by penning a huge long essay saying just where she stands on the matter. I read it, and there are problematic things throughout the post. I’m not going to derail my post today by analyzing it. (I’m both not nearly well informed enough to do so, nor am I remotely qualified to do so.) However, one thing I feel comfortable saying about her post is that the appropriate response is not to pepper her with name calling and death threats. I’d like to think the instances of that are the exception, not the rule, but from what she says, there have been many many instances of that.
Granted, perhaps she’s already had multiple instances of people explaining to her how she’s being harmful in her continued approach to discussing these issues in public, but at this point she also clearly feels like she’s under attack, and that’s causing her to dig in even further.
This isn’t something unique to her situation. The YA scene can be a really thorny one to wade into these days, with a very heavy groupthink mentality. Say something that’s slightly out of line, or inadvertently off base, and the repercussions can be swift and fierce. I’ve spoken to multiple authors who have decided to just never say anything about anything other than writing, out of fear of making a blunder.
That’s certainly their right, but is that a helpful environment to foster? By ruthlessly crushing thought on both sides of the aisle, we perpetuate an arms race of sorts, where the only people speaking are the die hards who have their caps lock key permanently engaged.
I have waded into more a few treacherous waters, discussing religion, gay rights, gun control, abortion, and more. I have yet to have any real repercussions from those posts. Why is that? One reason (likely the biggest) is that I’m relatively obscure. It’s not as if my posts get spread to the winds and reach enough eyeballs to get anywhere near a critical mass of mob mentality going. Another could be that I’m a white male, so that squelches many of the racist or sexist attacks that might be aimed at me otherwise.
What I’d like to think is at least partly due to that is that I’m as open and honest about my thought process as I can be. My posts are almost never written in absolutes. (Except for Grape Nuts. Blech.) I explain what I think and why, but I leave room for others to disagree with me, and for me to be wrong. Ironically, I believe this is also a reason why my posts are not more widely read. People who are more willing to make strong stands end up getting more views. (Which probably explains why that Grape Nuts post resonated . . .) If all I cared about were eyeballs, then I ought to either become an arch conservative or an arch liberal.
But that’s not what I want. I’d much rather encourage people to think about an issue. To maybe see the other side of it, or to help me see why what I already believe might be misguided. I believe that’s the sort of approach that might lead the country toward a more unified populous, and this continued game of “Gotcha!” on all sides is only exacerbating the problem.
Because people still have opinions. Strong opinions on all of the hot button topics. They just have stopped telling people about them online. On the one hand, I miss the days when racist opinions were taboo enough that trolls weren’t ready or willing to state them in public. But I also miss the days when people didn’t regularly sift through people’s old social media posts for anything incriminating. People can and do change.
Sometimes I wonder if this will happen to me at some point. If something I’ve written years ago comes across as heartless or inappropriate in today’s environment, and I’m called to task for it. I’d like to think people would judge me based on the entirety of my work, but I know it’s more likely that the focus will all laser in on the one or two posts I wrote that didn’t pass muster. (Please note: I don’t think I’ve said or written anything that will get me in hot water, but you never know.)
Oh well. This has gone on long enough. I’m not sure I came to any enlightening conclusion. I suppose at the end it’s just a statement that people need to engage in hard discussions if we’re going to make real change. Name calling and silence isn’t going to solve these problems. People need a safe space to state an opinion, but they also need to be ready to listen to what people say back, and (most importantly) to be able to admit when they’re wrong. “I was wrong” can come across as a defeat, but admitting it and growing is one of the best ways of becoming a better person.
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
June 10, 2020
Simple iPhone Hack: Scanning with Notes
A busy day today (and yesterday’s post on racism was so weighty), so I don’t have time for much of a post. However, in this time of pandemic, I’ve found myself in the need of a scanner multiple times. (Go figure.) Getting signed contracts back and forth is difficult, especially when you’re away from your fully equipped office. So it’s been very useful to me to have an easy, free way to scan documents with my iPhone. I hadn’t been aware of it until a few months ago, and it occurred to me today while I was using it that some of you might not know about it either.
Allow me to correct that.
If you open up the “Notes” app on your iPhone (it’s preinstalled on all iPhones. Part of the iOS platform), all you need to do is create a new note by pressing the small paper and pencil icon in the lower right corner of the screen. This will bring up a blank document, along with the keyboard. Above the keyboard are several icons. Press the one that looks like a camera, and then select “Scan Documents.” At that point, it brings up the back camera. You put a piece of paper on a table, center it in the screen, and it will automagically scan it. You can then switch to a new sheet of paper to scan and continue doing that until all the pages you need are scanned. Hit “save” and then you can email it wherever your little heart desires.
I hope that helps some of you. But remember: with great power comes great responsibility.
Have a nice Wednesday!
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
June 9, 2020
My Current Thoughts on Race in America
Forgive the general title of this blog post. I’ve got a lot of thoughts zooming around in my head on this topic, and this post promises to be on the lengthy side as I try to wrestle through all of them. I’ve already said some on this in the past few days, but the more time goes by and the more I dwell on what’s happening, the more I come up with that I feel I need to speak out on.
It’s shocking to me that even this has become a partisan issue. I know, nothing should shock me at this point, but Mitt Romney phrased it pretty well: “I state the obvious, which is black lives matter,” he said. “If there’s injustice, we want to correct that. If there is prejudice we want to change that. If there’s bias, we hope to give people a different perspective and to provide a sense of equality among our people.”
How is that a statement any compassionate person can disagree with? Of course, I already know the answer. They disagree by deflecting. They choose to dwell on the riots that have happened. The damage to property. Never mind the fact that the vast majority of the protests have been peaceful. Never mind the hundreds of videos that have been posted of police responding with brutality and excessive force. I believe there are many good policemen, but I also believe there are some who don’t deserve the badge they wear. Should I judge all police by the actions of those few? Should I judge all protests by the actions of rioters and looters?
Or they’ll deflect with nonsense about “Black on Black” violence. As if that excuses systemic racism and the need for reform. They’ll deflect by talking about “this one article written by an African American” that happens to agree with their point of view. (The same approach used to deny climate change, vaccinations, the fact that the earth is round, etc. If the majority of the facts don’t line up with what you choose to believe, go out and find someone with a veneer of authority who agrees with you, and then listen to that one voice over the chorus of voices that counter your argument.)
I think one of the things that frustrates me the most is the man-splainy confidence exuded by those who continue to deny the plight of minorities in our country. The casual way they dismiss “progs” or “social justice warriors,” smug in the security of their own beliefs. It harkens back to Kipling’s “White Man’s Burden” poem, where he speaks of the racial superiority of his race and their obligation to spread light and order to the world. As if the country and the protesters are wayward children which need to be corrected and disciplined.
“Defund the police?” they cry. “What sort of an imbecile would want to do that?” And Romney echoes that sentiment in the same interview I linked to above: “We need our police. We’re not going to get rid of the police. That’s a silly idea. We’d be nuts to think that we’re going to reduce our commitment to the police.” Props to Romney for speaking out on the importance of the movement, but ten points from Gryffindor for willfully misinterpreting some of the movement’s demands and calling those demands “silly” and the people who argue for them “nuts.” (He still gets a good grade in my book, though, for at least being willing to engage in this dialogue at some level. We need more of that, and if people disparage him even while he’s trying to engage, then the hope of more real discussion dwindles.)
Police reform needs to happen. It can happen by demilitarizing the police. Peeling away responsibilities from them and handing them off to other organizations, reforming laws, or even coming up with an entirely new system altogether. People aren’t arguing that the country should be without laws or ways to enforce those laws. They’re arguing that the current way appears to be broken in many places. The answer isn’t to dump more money on the problem. That’s been tried, and it failed. There are some places that have tried disbanding the police, and they’ve done so successfully. (Camden comes to mind.) Maybe before an idea is just tossed away as silly or nuts, the core of it should be considered and analyzed to see what can be done about it . . .
But even the pivot to focusing on defunding the police and what that entails is just another deflection. Trump would love nothing more than to shift the conversation to that. It’s an area where getting to the root of the argument is harder than looking at a policeman murdering a citizen and recognizing that’s not right. As I’ve racism and its history in our country has been on my mind, several of the things I’ve watched the last week have brought aspects of it into focus.
First, movies. We’re still working our way through our list of 150 films to watch, and this week we went through West Side Story and 12 Angry Men. Both of them are still relevant today. The “America” number encapsulates a lot of the arguments of both sides of the issue in a non-threatening manner:
Last night when we watched 12 Angry Men, I was very impressed with the racism scene. Throughout the film, there’s a character who’s dropped hints of wanting to find the defendant guilty of murder because of the defendant’s race. It goes unchallenged until close to the end of the movie, where that character boils over, enraged that people might want to find the defendant not guity.
So many of the arguments he makes are still being made today. I’d like to think that the reaction to those arguments (people turning their back on him, expressing disgust, until he’s left speechless off to the side of the room, powerless for the rest of the film) is what’s happening through these protests today. It takes time for some people to recognize there are problems. It takes people speaking out and pointing out the need for change.
Yesterday I also watched John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight episode focused on police brutality. It aired Sunday. I really enjoy this show. It’s well-researched and well-written, it makes compelling arguments in an easy-to-understand format. (My biggest critique is the constant need of the show to use very foul language. There are so many episodes I would like to share with people, but I know the language will make those people refuse to listen to the message the way they’d need to. I’m against censorship, but I wish people would recognize that when they package their argument in profanity, there’s a good chunk of the country that will never unwrap that argument, no matter how well-reasoned it is.) With a big warning about the language, here it is:
It’s a very powerful segment, and it ends with one of the best speeches on why people are protesting, rioting, and looting that I’ve heard. (This one also has bad language, but in this one, I believe it’s more than earned.) If you watch none of the other videos I just linked to, you should watch this one.
Interestingly, before I watched the whole speech, I was already planning on using a Monopoly analogy to explain this. It’s spot on, and it does it in a way I think most people can directly connect with.
In the end, my voice on this issue doesn’t matter nearly as much as the voices of those who have been directly affected by this. I’m a straight, white, middle class male who lives in one of the whitest parts of the whitest states of the country. In many ways, I hesitate to speak up at all, but this blog has always been about my take on everything from movies to politics to religion to my everyday life. This topic is dominating all of those areas for me right now. How can I not speak up about it?
Anyway. That’s where my mind is right now. I really hope some lasting, real change comes out of this. I worry that Republicans will use the “defund the police” argument to scare voters into supporting them come November. I hope people can see past the first glance of that argument to what lies beneath it. I hope we can begin to have some real solutions to these problems that are woven throughout the history of our country.
But in many ways, I’m struggling to hope at all right now. So much of the world feels bleak and grim. Between the pandemic and the protests and the riots and the economic unrest in the country, my state, and at my work, it’s very hard to press forward. I was finishing the Book of Mormon for the umpteenth time last week, and this passage really connected with me:
40 And again, my beloved brethren, I would speak unto you concerning ahope. How is it that ye can attain unto faith, save ye shall have hope?
41 And what is it that ye shall ahope for? Behold I say unto you that ye shall have bhope through the atonement of Christ and the power of his resurrection, to be raised unto life ceternal, and this because of your faith in him according to the promise.
42 Wherefore, if a man have afaith he bmust needs have hope; for without faith there cannot be any hope.
43 And again, behold I say unto you that he cannot have faith and hope, save he shall be ameek, and lowly of heart.
44 If so, his afaith and hope is vain, for none is bacceptable before God, save the cmeek and lowly in heart; and if a man be meek and lowly in heart, and dconfesses by the power of the Holy Ghost that Jesus is the Christ, he must needs have charity; for if he have not charity he is nothing; wherefore he must needs have charity.
45 And acharity suffereth long, and is bkind, and cenvieth not, and is not puffed up, seeketh not her own, is not easily dprovoked, thinketh no evil, and rejoiceth not in iniquity but rejoiceth in the truth, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
46 Wherefore, my beloved brethren, if ye have not charity, ye are nothing, for charity never faileth. Wherefore, cleave unto charity, which is the greatest of all, for all things must fail—
47 But acharity is the pure blove of Christ, and it endureth cforever; and whoso is found possessed of it at the last day, it shall be well with him.
48 Wherefore, my beloved brethren, apray unto the Father with all the energy of heart, that ye may be filled with this love, which he hath bestowed upon all who are true bfollowers of his Son, Jesus Christ; that ye may become the sons of God; that when he shall appear we shall cbe like him, for we shall see him as he is; that we may have this hope; that we may be dpurified even as he is pure. Amen.
It’s an epistle by Mormon toward the end of his life. He’s witnessed the total destruction of his people, and he can still speak of the need for faith, hope, and charity. I believe those are as needed today as they ever were, and that we have to continue to hope and have faith that things can and will change.
My grandfather, the composer and organist Robert Cundick, used pieces of these verses in his work The Redeemer. I listened to it again after reading the passage and being reminded of it.
That’s the sort of thing that continues to give me hope. Thanks for sticking with me this long. Here’s hoping tomorrow looks brighter than today.
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
June 8, 2020
Podcast: Encouraging Teens to Read
Today’s post actually isn’t about my typical library podcast. Rather, this is one I did with my Bryce Moore hat on, as a guest on a podcast run by my cousin over at Pulling Curls. Here’s the description she gives for it. If that sounds like something up your alley, give it a listen. It was a fun discussion, and I got the chance to recommend some great books.:
Elementary aged kids LOVE to read, but that love seems to wane as our kids get older. How do we get teenagers to read, and what are some good books to suggest if you can’t seem to get them interested in reading?
In this episode we’re going to talk about:
Why the love of reading lessens as kids get olderThe things we’re doing wrong with our teens that makes them not read.Emphasize that reading shouldn’t be approached as a punishment.Why teens need to keep reading
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
June 5, 2020
Last Day of School: 2020 Edition
Yes, it’s the last day of school today, about two or three weeks before it would normally come around, and yet somehow feeling like it’s about two and a half months after the last day of school actually happened this year. In fact, MC didn’t really believe me today when I told her that school was officially over after today.
So what will a post-school quarantine life look like in comparison with what we’ve experienced already? Honestly, I’m not all that sure. Typically the kids’ summers are full of camps and activities. This year? None of that is happening. We need to have some sort of structure. Tomas has applied for jobs (no word back on that yet). Other than that . . . We’ve always got those 150 movies to watch, I guess.
Up until this year, I’ve always used one event as my measuring stick for “stuck at home with nothing to do.” It was the ice storm of 1994, where we got about an inch of ice. The whole area ran out of salt for the roads, and we had no school for quite some time. I think I always told people we only had around 10 days of school the entire month of January. It was the winter I learned how to juggle, because why not?
So up until COVID-19, that was always my tried and true story to break out whenever the kids had school canceled for a particularly long stretch. I was a sophomore in high school, and I still remember it all very well.
Tomas is a sophomore in high school. So now he’s got a permanent “you think that’s bad?” story to tell anyone he might have to about canceled school. (Him along with all the youth of the world right now, pretty much.) Daniela’s in sixth grade. I’m sure she’ll remember this well. MC in first grade? It’s pretty hard not to remember this. I still have some recollections of first grade, and none of them involved a pandemic.
So this experience is changing who our children are. It’s definitely affecting an entire generation. I wonder what things will be like in a year or two once this is behind us, but I also wonder how it’s changing the future, when the current generation grows up and becomes more and more in charge of things.
So that’s where my mind is at the moment. I hope you all have a lovely weekend, and I’ll see you on Monday!
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
June 4, 2020
Groundhog Defense
No matter how many times I’ve tried to tell Denisa that the fates have decided we shouldn’t have a garden, she doesn’t seem to want to listen. I mean, the blackberry bushes keep trying to take over the spot she’s used since we moved here. We have a whole colony of groundhogs hellbent on eating anything that even sounds like a vegetable. We haven’t gotten much in the way of rain this season so far (more hard frosts than hard rains, really). And the fates even conspired to make this thing called a “grocery store,” where you can go and buy all the vegetables you want. No need to even lift up a shovel, and you *definitely* don’t need to roto-till anything. And even if you’re more into the whole organic thing, there’s always the wonderful arrangement where you can buy vegetables from other people who grow them for you.
What a world we live in!
But instead of doing any of that, she wants a garden. It boils down to something about “enjoying watching plants grow,” which doesn’t make any sense at all, seeing as how I subscribe to a ton of digital streaming services, which I’ve always found to be way more entertaining than watching plants. But in the end, what else am I supposed to do? If she wants a garden, she should have a garden. I’ve just made it very clear that I personally plan to have very little to do with the upkeep of said plant factory.
That said, every now and I recognize the importance of supporting my spouse in endeavors that might not be the ones I would choose to participate in, should the option be available to me. And when she’s been working on a garden for thirteen years and bemoaned the groundhog menace that has continued to eat any and all things that aren’t potatoes (they don’t like potatoes), then even I can see the need to do what I can to help.
A fence had to be built.
But before you can build a fence, you must buy a fence. That’s something that takes a good deal more time than you’d normally expect, speaking now from experience. There are a lot of different kinds of fences, for one thing, and you have to make up your mind about so many small details. What size do you want the fence to be? What will it be made out of? How big should it be? Do we need boiling oil added to the ramparts, or do you think the groundhogs will go gently into that good night?
After an hour or two online, we ordered the fence. Green vinyl coated wire, two feet tall. 100 feet long. It being the pandemic, it took some time for the stuff to arrive. When it did, it took even more time for me to decide I actually wasn’t going to be getting out of this fence building, no matter how much I wished it might spontaneously build itself.
When you have a task in front of you that you’re not crazy about doing, the knee-jerk reaction is to want to do it as quickly as possible. How hard did this have to be, after all? Pound some stakes into the ground, hook the fence to the stakes, and then dust your hands off and walk away. That’s what I wanted it to be like, at least. But Denisa had thought this through. She had analyzed the tactics of her enemy, and she knew groundhogs were big on digging holes in the ground. (It’s right there in their name, I know, but maybe we had lazy groundhogs.)
Instead of just pounding some stakes into the ground, a trench needed to be dug. We’re not talking a moat or anything, but this was quickly turning into Not an Easy Project. Especially when you consider that Maine fields are filled with so many rocks, you wonder if the groundhogs didn’t put them there on purpose. (Seriously. I would make a terrible groundhog. I’d start to dig a hole, find a rock, and give up.) To make matters worse, mosquitoes and black flies were out in force, and they look upon a Bryce as a rare delicacy. Something to be devoured as quickly as possible whenever he makes a rare outdoor appearance.
In the end, the fence was made. I’m not going to say it was made without me losing my temper, but I think the end result seems fairly groundhog averse. If the critter decides to dig down very far, he’s going to find a pretty easy go of it, but I’m just hoping for the best. (Just like I’m hoping he doesn’t figure out he can climb that fence with no real difficulty. It seems a tactical error, basing your entire defense system around a hope that your enemy is chronically stupid . . .)
There are less than a handful of people in the world I would build a groundhog fence for without being paid a ridiculous amount of money. Now having actually built one, I think that number is down to about one. Anyone else wants one built, and I’ll happily chip in some money toward a GoFundMe or something. So it’s high praise indeed when I say that I hope this fence is permanent, but that if it ever needs fixing, I love my wife enough to say I’m still open to going out to repair it.
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
June 3, 2020
Small Town Protests and Racism
On Monday evening, about 150 people turned up as a sign of solidarity for the Black Lives Matter movement. It was an effort organized by some students in the middle school, and you can read a more full report in the local online paper here. I think it was an admirable effort, though I did not attend personally. However, what I’d like to focus on is the fallout from that demonstration.
For one thing, two white men (one holding a Trump sign, one holding an American flag) took it upon themselves to show up to the rally against racism to . . . show that they are racist. You would think surely no one would be that brainless and callous, but you’d be wrong. As the crowd chanted “Black Lives Matter,” they called back “F*** black lives.” I’ve seen the video. Read the accounts. This happened, no matter how much some on Facebook wanted to call it into question. And in the Facebook fallout from the depiction of their actions, some commented saying they were in the crowd, heavily armed, waiting for someone to confront the Trumpites.
I’m speechless. Just read that paragraph above one more time and process it.
Then in the comments section of the article I linked to above, you have the typical sampling of people showing up to proudly crow about how “All lives matter” or talk about how much “black on black” violence there is. It’s incredibly discouraging to see these events and these comments, people so confident and set in their opinion that racism doesn’t exist, exists only elsewhere, or that they themselves aren’t part of the problem, because it’s far away, and why should they worry about it?
I would like to think much of this is just done and said out of ignorance, but in the end, how much better is that? The fact that people felt entitled enough to show up to rally against people rallying against racism is the biggest argument I can’t think of in favor of small towns having rallies against racism.
Why didn’t I attend personally? I was torn on this one. On the one hand, I wanted to go and show my support. On the other, I was worried about what might happen at the rally, and I wanted to keep my kids out of it. So in the end I stayed home. I guess that means I stayed home out of cowardice. Would it have been more helpful for me to go in person? I’m still not sure. If more people aren’t willing to speak up and speak out, I’m not sure how this problem gets solved. I will say I’m glad in hindsight that I kept my kids out of this one, but I’m still conflicted about the balance between public protest and personal safety. (I have the privilege of being able to choose to go protest or not. People of color don’t have the privilege of going out in public or not. Subjecting themselves to racism or not . . .)
As I said in a previous post, to make lasting change, we need to do more than protest and rally now. We need to make changes in November. Vote out racists and vote in people who will actually serve to help. In the meantime, it’s important to recognize these problems aren’t isolated to big cities or someplace far away. They’re all around us. We can make a difference on a local level by calling out racism or intolerance when we see it. Speaking up when people make a comment or a joke they shouldn’t.
Do what you can, as you can. Every little bit helps. Sometimes I think people feel like if they don’t do something huge, then they might as well not do anything. If we could get more people to make small changes every day, that would go a long way to making changes on a big level. We need a sea change, not an isolated storm, though isolated storms can help people see the need for a sea change.
Here’s hoping the tide keeps coming in. For now, I’d settle for getting to the point where people don’t feel comfortable standing on the steps of the post office and spewing hate. (Not that they were all that comfortable. They wore hoodies and masks so you couldn’t see their faces.)
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
June 2, 2020
Fighting Quarantine Doldrums: Making a Movie List
Here we are in June, and things have long since blended together into one everlasting day. We’ve all done things to try and break it all up a bit. I started the family sprint challenge. Daniela worked her way through all the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies. MC has been reading anything in print in the house. But there comes a time when you have to keep pushing yourself to figure out a way to keep yourself occupied.
Daniela had been feeling kind of restless ever since her MCU binge was over. We just got KK Slider to join our Animal Crossing island yesterday, and it’s as if all the big “To Do” items were getting crossed off the list. I was feeling pretty blah in the evenings as well.
Necessity is the mother of invention, and I had a bolt of inspiration hit me out of the blue. Daniela had been really good to go when I gave her the list of MCU movies in order. She happily went down the list, checking them off one at a time. What if I came up with another list? A list of great movies she should watch?
I didn’t want to go through the trouble of making a list if I didn’t have buy-in, so I approached Daniela with the idea. She loved it. The two of us sat down with IMDB’s top 250 films, as well as many of AFI’s film list, and we ran through them. We wanted variety, and we wanted movies Daniela hadn’t seen before, and we wanted them to be age-appropriate. After about an hour, the list was done: 150 movies all told.
I printed it off and failed to save the file (because I’m a bonehead, I guess), so I can’t easily share the list here, but I actually think the act of creating the list was an essential part of the equation. Most of the movies on the list are ones I’ve already seen, though there are some on there that I have yet to come across. (I’m very weak in Miyazaki movies, for example.) Sitting there selecting the movies from a pool of films was a fun thing to do, and it makes the list seem more personable than one you just cut and pasted from online.
Why 150 movies? Why not. At least we’re pretty future-proof for the quarantine. If we finish all 150, then . . . I guess I’ll make another list. But so far, things have been going swimmingly. We watched WALL-E, His Girl Friday, Field of Dreams, and Rear Window. It’s a pretty broad list, which is good. We debated making it genre specific, but it’s more fun to mix things up. Tonight Ghost is on the slate. (Oh, and I alphabetized the list to remove any sort of preconceived ranking or genre grouping.)
The biggest problem so far has been deciding what movie on the list to watch next. Daniela solved that by having me mark down which of the movies we had access to for free right now (41), and then she had our Amazon Echo pick a random number between 1 and 41. Let me tell you: when you already have a list that’s agreed on, and you pick a random movie from that list, then all drama over what to watch next ceases. You announce to the family what’s on the slate for the evening, and they decide if they want to watch it or not.
Beautiful.
So if you’re trying to come up with something to do, might I suggest this as an option? I’m also having Daniela rate the movies as we go through. So far her favorite was Field of Dreams, followed closely by His Girl Friday. She’s going to be so well versed in film history by the time this is done! (Because of course I can’t help but give her a bit of an overview of the movie’s history and why it’s important before and after we watch each one. She’s learning about classic film stars and genres, directors, techniques. The works!)
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
