The Invisible History of the Human Race

I just finished The Invisible History of the Human Race: How DNA and History Shape Our Identities and Our Futures by Christine Kenneally.  Kenneally examines how recent advances in science have changed our understanding of history and of people.  While DNA and genetic genealogy play a prominent role, they are far from the only subjects covered in this book.  One topic that caught my attention was economists' Nathan Nunn and Leonard Wantchekon's research on how the slave culture in Africa caused a climate of distrust that had lingered for centuries and was still stifling economic development to this day.  I couldn't help remembering all the times I've heard Mississippi people say they couldn't trust someone enough to go in business with them, and I wondered if a similar study had been done on how a similar culture of mistrust might be inhibiting economic development in the South.

Lit Crit: Welty, Salinger and Lovecraft

My husband is continuing to catch up on his literature.  He thought Welty was nice, but she waited until her very last story to say anything substantive.  Salinger, while technically a better short story writer than Welty, bored both of us to tears.  Like far too many Modern writers, he assumes that his "universal" experiences will continue to be so for every future reader, when in fact neither of us knew what he was talking about half the time.

Needing a break he turned to Lovecraft's fantasies, which are flawed but more substantive than I first gave them credit for being.  The very first Lovecraft story you read tends to be intriguing, but unforuntely they're all just rewrites of the same story, and only a couple stand out.  There's many writers I can say that about, but Lovecraft is the only one I know where you could take entire paragraphs from one story, insert it into another story, and not even disturb the flow.

Lovecraft's stories always made me want to give the writer a good swift kick in the shins for the way he glorified the fear of "things man was not meant to know/do".  As a child growing up right after the Civil Rights Movement I heard my fill of "things man was not meant to know/do" before I learned to read.  The "don't do thats" always hid a deep well of racism, sexism, homophobia, or some related form of good old identity hate.  It was not worthy of the least amount of respect, let alone the histrionic levels of terror it was supposed to engender.

But I was wrong and Lovecraft was right.  Demolishing the old justifications for institutionalized hatred did indeed cause a grotesque, shambling monstrosity to crawl out of the sewers and threaten to destroy all life on Earth if we don't immediately stop all progress and worship at it's hideous feet.

It's called the Tea Party.

Odd Squad

Fans of surrealist comedies like Gilligan's Island and The Addam's Family should check out PBS's new kid show ODD SQUAD It's about a department full of diminutive detectives who handle X-Files-style cases with tons of surrealist humor and a dollop of math/cognitive thinking skill. It's like a cross between the Sarah Jane Adventures, the original Electric Company, and a 70s comedy show like Rowen & Matin's Laugh-in or early SNL. There's plenty of jokes aimed at grownups, like a recent 80's flashback episode featuring Agent Oprah and her partner Agent O'Donahue (and their big hair).

And then there's the guest stars.  Last month the Kids in the Hall showed up for a hilarious British Manor House mystery.  Yesterday Henson Studios was on hand for an insanely funny "people turned into puppets" storyline.  Just don't get between the kids and the TV when it's time for a new episode to air.

The Price of Questing

I stared angrily at the scale.  Where had all my hard work gone?

Four years ago I started an exercise program to get my body back in shape.  Two years of steady, constant exercising later, I was feeling fit and fine -- so fit, my subconcious deemed me able to handle a huge heap of repressed childhood horror.  The next two years were taken up with nothing but repairing damages done to my mind and my soul.  The work was so intense I could do nothing else.  Some days just making it out of bed was all I could manage.  In the process I've lost all the fitness progress I made over the previous two years.  My weight is back up and my stamina is nonexistant.  Physically I'm right back where I started.  I've got all this psychological stuff seen to  but -- I know the metaphor of life being a great big spiral but I don't need it to play out so literally, darn it.

At least there's nothing else hidden in the recesses of my mind.  There are still things I have trouble talking about, and one thing I can't out of respect for the privacy of another, but I doubt there's any more long-repressed unpleasantness waiting to erupt.

Unfortunately it wasn't just my body that suffered.  It was also two years out of my relationship with my children.  Now I have to sync up with them and repair that.  That  hurts.  Even the parts of it that aren't difficult still hurt.

Quests of self-discovery have a higher price tag at my age.

Lit Crit

My husband is catching up on Southern Literature right now.  He commented on the "morose nostalgia" of most of the stories.  I agreed, the glumness is one of the things that puts me off so many of them.  There's an attitude not of "can do" but "shoulda done", and the "shoulda dones" usually happened long before we were born.  It's easy to see why there was a tendency to experiment with magical realism even before Garcia Marquez invented it, and for the same reason; the fantastical elements (or in Faulkner's case, ornate verbiage) entertain you while the characters go to such great lengths to shoot themselves in the foot, and you later find out in flashbacks were doomed before they even got started.  In too many writers it's a glumness only alleviated by "dumb redneck" jokes, and how many of them does a person want to read?  A body needs a few cautionary tales to tell them what mistakes not to make, but there is a greater need for tales where problems are shown to be solvable with the right mental tool set.

Small Fritters For Small Fry

The kids were pestering me for snacks while I was deboning chicken for supper tonight, so I threw the skin in a skillet and made cracklings. First time I've done that, but the kids liked it and it can't be less healthy than the chemicals they put in junk food.

Local Color

Four years ago we moved to Scooba, MS, population 600 or so.  It's in Kemper County, next to the Alabama state line.  Not much has happened in Kemper County.  It's all farmland.  It used to be cotton and corn, owned by white farmers and worked by black sharecroppers.  When farm profits crashed, the white farmers sold their land to the timber companies and moved away.  The black sharecroppers were left with no work and no way out except for a degree from the old agricultural high school, now turned into a community college.  The farm houses were torn down and what used to be a landscape dotted with the lights of tiny family farms is now mile after mile of blank pine plantation, it's paved roads torn out and replaced with dirt to discourage traffic.  The buildings on Main Street are being torn down for bricks; there's only two left intact.  The rest are piles of rubble being wrapped in plastic and shipped out.

The biggest thing that's happened locally took place about half an hour from here, right outside Philadelphia.  Fifty years ago last Saturday night three civil rights workers were murdered in the cause of defending state's rights against those who would help the state's citizens register to vote.  It's hard to find the exact spot these days.  There's no marker.

It happened just down the road from the Neshoba County Fair, a teeny-tiny gated vacation community for second-tier rich people out in the middle of nowhere.  It's not what you usually think of when you hear the words "county fair", more like a miniature Jackson's Hole (without the scenery) than an amusement park.  You find it by looking for the tiny pastel houses enclosed in a huge, black iron fence.  Sixteen years after the murders, Ronald Reagan would kick off his first Presidential campaign with a rousing speech defending state's rights.  Not one word did he say about the blood spilled on the ground just beyond the gates.

I remember Mississippi folks being surprised, and quite a few of them disturbed, by that omission.  Some people defended him, saying he was incompetent, not amoral.  "He's an actor.  He doesn't know the context."

It was 1980.  The world did not yet know that Reagan was a supremely competent political campaigner who always knew the context.

But we would learn.

Book Pushing 2

The girls are watching Dark Shadows with their father.  He's using the opportunity to point out the structure and limits of the old daytime soap opera format.  Also, to re-watch Dark Shadows.

Last night they told me they were up to Victoria's witchcraft trial in the 18th Century.  Seizing the opportunity, I said, "Those scenes are based on a play called The Crucible.  It was written around the same time as The Mouse That Roared and was about the Salem Witch Trials.  Let's read it next week when this sequence finishes so you can see how they're alike."

"Yay!"

Whew!  I thought The Crucible was going to be a harder sell than that!

They wanted to talk about their current book, Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class.  They're up to the fashion chapter, which, alas, time has provided even more glaring examples of how conspicuous waste generates ugly clothes since Veblen's death than before the book was written.  We talked about the similarity of purpose between Leisure Class and Darwin's Origin of the Species.  I began pitching Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century as the modern update.

Not bad for the first part of the supper conversation.

Book Pushing

I found some Pyrex banana boats at an antique store (vintage kitchenwares are my therapy shopping) and served banana splits in them yesterday.  The girls wanted to know why in the world there were so many kinds of dishes and utensils.  It was the perfect opportunity to introduce them to one of my favorite books, Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class.  Today they're going around exclaiming, "Wow, that finally makes sense!" twice an hour.

Last week I snuck up on them with The Mouse That Roared, but that one didn't need ice cream.  All I had to mention was some of the sillier plot twists and they were all over me to produce a copy.

What's Wrong With Her? She's Gifted.

I was adopted anonymously by parents who wanted a normal, healthy baby.  For a while it looked like they'd got their wish, but by early elementary I started to show signs that something was wrong.  I'd had good grades briefly, then they had crashed.  I'd soon become inattentive and withdrawn.

In fourth grade, around 1975, the experts went looking for an explanation for my straight-D grades, inattentiveness, and poor social skills in school.  The suggestion that I might be gifted was made by my reading teacher, who noted that while I didn't pay attention in class and always had my head stuck in a book, it was a different book every day.

Her suggestion was met with universal derision.  How could a very smart child be such a failure?  But upon reflection it was decided that I might be retarded (the term was still used clinically at that time), and that I should be given an IQ test to see if I qualified for Special Education.  So I was abruptly pulled out of class and sat down at a bewildering exam the likes of which I'd never even imagined.

To the amazement of most, I barely squeaked in as "gifted".  Something had gone wrong!  I had cheated, or there had been a mixup involving the grading of the test.  So I was pulled out of class and given the test again, and the tester made to score the test on site in front of a committee of teachers.

But this time the test was not a complete surprise to me.  I had been through it once before, and knew what to expect.  This time I scored 20 points higher, over one standard deviation, easily clearing the "highly gifted" mark.

Oh, the consternation!  Such hooting, hollering, and carrying on you have never heard in your life!  I'm told the administration wanted to test me a third time with even more rigorous anti-cheating measures in place.  "You want to see how much higher she'll score next time?" snarked the gifted ed teacher.

(The answer, when another school system tested me four years later, was 30 points or 2 standard deviations higher than the second test.)

The testers tried to explain that only half of high-IQ students perform well in a regular classroom.  The other half become bored and disengaged.  That explanation only made the administration resent me for not being a team player.  However, with so much documentation staring them in the face it was felt that they risked a lawsuit if they didn't put in me in the gifted program (they didn't know my adoptive parents very well), so I was grudgingly allowed in on probation.


Of course, once I had access to people like myself doing things that actually interested us, school became a lot less boring and more engaging.  I paid more attention, and my grades improved.

It makes me angry that regional schools no longer have gifted ed programs.  Those schools have undiagnosed gifted children in them who are starving for the companionship of their peers and for an IQ-appropriate learning environment.  That doesn't do them any good, and by adding to their burdens instead of lightening them we take away their ability to do our country any good.

Running Up the White Flag

After almost a decade of fighting it, I finally got a Facebook account.   Y'all can friend me if you like.

Who knows, in another decade I might even make it to Twitter.

First Book

My husband and I have begun turning the material he worked up for his junior high and high school science classes into a curriculum. Here's the first e-book:

Earth and Space

This is nine weeks worth of lesson plans and quizzes. We're planning to put out something more comprehensive at a later date, but this was what we could get out right now.

If you're interested in this sort of thing, please look it over and tell me what you think.

ETA:  Fixed the link.

Progress

There's been a breakthrough on finding my biological parents.  I don't want to say anything more right now -- I'm almost afraid to breathe for fear it will all blow away -- but progress has been made.

Right now I've got a whirlwind of emotions swirling around inside me.  I'm trying to process them now so they don't get in the way later on.  Cry now, be calm later.

Late to the Party, Brought the Jello

Among the foods Mom never made was anything fancier than plain Jello, and that was very seldom.  It made me uncomfortable to realize I was missing out on something.  Years later, when I was grown and everyone thought fancy Jello was just so uncool I was too embarrassed to admit that I had no idea what they were talking about.

But darn it, just because I missed out is no reason for my children to miss out.  Especially since when I was moving our dry foods to the new house I came across a small mountain of Jello I had stored back "for emergencies".  Time to experiment.

With the bigger kitchen I'm able to store the ice cream sundae glasses inside the kitchen (instead of in a storage building) where they can be pulled out and used much more frequently.  It turns out fruits and berries go down kids much easier when they're encased in Jello, topped with whipped topping mix, and presented in a sundae glass.  I bought some old copper-tinted molds at flea markets and started playing around with them, although so far nothing's come out perfect.

And for the first day of Spring Break, I've the makings of Blue Skies Jello set back.  Things are looking a bit jiggly right now.

House Update February 10, 2014

We installed the kitchen drawer pulls, drawer facings and the lower cabinet doors.  Yay, I have drawers now!  There's an actual place for cutlery, as opposed to the used plastic tubs it was dumped into.  With more room to spread things out we were able to put the dinnerware and silverware at preschooler height, and turn over the job of setting the table to an excited 5yo.  An excited 14yo got promoted to cook's helper/dryer, and a not-very-excited 12yo got promoted to dishwasher.

Now I can bring down some of our nonessential cookware, like the John Wright decorative cast iron muffin pans and cookie molds I bought at Service Merchandise (back when that store existed) 30 years ago.  After 3 years exposure to humid Southern weather, their Victorian-era curves were hidden under a thick layer of rust.  Repairing and re-seasoning them are giving my arms a workout.

I don't even know where you can get John Wright now.  Someone said Williams-Sonoma, but there isn't one around here.  I went in a Williams-Sonoma store once on vacation.  It reminded me that there is a dividing line between "elitist" and "snob".  My nose doesn't tilt high enough to shop there, and they didn't have any John Wright.

With a bigger kitchen I can also round out my Lodge collection.  Cooking just got a lot more adventurous.

Dh is building a table for the arts-and-crafts shop with built-in storage for oversized art papers.  After that it's on to the kitchen island.

Update:  Today also begins the pre-spring gardening, with moving a willow sapling that had grown up too close to a building to a boggy spot in the backyard.

Ulterior Motive

In order to understand my biological mother better I just got in a copy of The Girls Who Went Away:  The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children For Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v.Wade.  My 14yo daughter immediately asked to read it. 

I can't imagine a better prophylactic.

The Dark Day Has Arrived

Brighteyes (14) has two papers of more than one page in length due at the same time.  Oh, the End Is Nigh!  The weeping, the wailing, the screaming, and the gnashing of teeth went on for over two hours yesterday.  (Time that could have been spent finishing both those reports.)  You'd think the Apocalypse was on us.

Her father was less than impressed.  "I've got freshman college students just encountering that for the first time who are having the same reaction.  Best to go on and get it over with now."  I agree.  Best get this explosion out of the way before the child is old enough to have a driver's license.

Comfort Food

My emotional heart is undergoing surgery right now as ancient barbs are being moved about none too delicately and certainly not painlessly.  It's led to all sorts of misadventures, such as running out of the room and collapsing on the floor crying during yesterday's episode of My Little Pony (409).  One of the coping mechanism's that's come out is a mild obsession with comfort food.  Not so much eating it (although there's some of that) as making it for my family.

Evolving Into High School

As my older children enter their teenage years our homeschooling is evolving to keep up with them. Their reading requirements have skyrocketed, and for that we got a Nook Glowlight for Christmas.  It's our first modern "handheld" and has quickly become the most fought-over item in the house.

Unfortunately it doesn't make the increasing length of the reports any less intimidating.  I try to tell them it's the mental equivalent of learning a cartwheel, but so far all that's got me are glares.

We're also adding more DVDs into the mix.   They're watching The Standard Deviants series and practicing note-taking with it.  It would have seemed grossly unfair to my teen-self to start learning note-taking with a series you can start and stop yourself and take as long as you want to write things down, but you have to start somewhere.  Besides the SD series manages to pack half a college-level Biology 101 course into a two-hour lecture interspersed with jokes, so they must have intended it to be stopped.

Christmas Season 2014

Actually got my husband to make his annual step inside a mall the week before Christmas.  We went to the Riverchase Galleria in Birmingham, which was --- okay, but am I the only one who remembers when malls were for everybody?  That newfangled "exclusivity" has a lot to do with why I can't get my husband to set foot in one more than once a year.  It also isn't helping their sales; all we could find that interested us were a couple of used video games and a block of cheese.

Stopped at a Chinese buffet.  The food was a bit dry, and two days later the girls and I came down with raging intestinal bugs.  Thank goodness it didn't get the youngest.  Not eating there again.

Got my very first e-reader for Christmas.  It's a Nook Glow Light.  Now I have to learn how to use it.  So far all it does is show me different pictures of trees.  I could use some light reading.  I've had to ingest too many searingly difficult psychology books lately.

Before my insides crashed I was using the video game Walk It Out to help with my insomnia.  Most other exercise games require a modicum of coordination, but I can stomp around this thing bleary-eyed at 3am and actually make some progress.

Here's hoping we all get better in time for New Year's.