Arcane by Nonni Lumen

I picked up this book at a Rummage Sale.  It says it's "a true account of ongoing paranormal Phenomena".  I found the business card for a local B&B inside.  Since the book is set in rural Ohio, I wondered if there might be a connection.  As I struggled through, it became pretty obvious that this book is, in fact, about the B&B on the card. Unless there's some other B&B a mile from one town and 8 miles from the one it has the zip code of, near Swings Corner-Point Isabel Road, in rural Ohio. 

I say I struggled and that's no exaggeration.  The author occasionally uses the wrong word for one that's spelled similar.  (Gall/gull being my favorite.   I can't believe she had the seabird to publish this.)  The real obstacle is punctuation.  She randomly sprinkles semi-colons throughout.  At one point she quotes the Bible and her semicolon completely changes the meaning.  This change contradicts the point she's making.  

She references often her NDE (near death experience) but doesn't explain that until chapter ten. The first half of most chapters is list of words and definitions, specific to the author's belief system.  The timeline jumps around like a bunny rabbit on crack.  

****

Here's the story summary: We bought land to build a B&B on.  It is haunted by victims of the KKK and of witches. There is a demon infestation, including but not limited to Lillith herself.  At the end of the book, all is not well and a second book is promised.  Not even good fiction, frankly, and it claims to be true.

Meanwhile, she is moving her family into this place.  For more than a decade she moves family members in and out of the demon-infested B&B.  She is renting rooms to strangers.   She brings in priests to bless the place and there's even confusing mentions of an exorcism.  None of the sacraments have a permanent effect. 

Her son-in-law is possessed by one of the demons and/or his mom cursed the marriage because she's a witch. A nearby shop with a black-flamed candle on the sign is run by a coven which curses the author herself.   Any symbolism not specifically Christian is demonic.  

The area is racist and antipapist and antisemitic.  We're talking caricature levels of yeehaw rednecks. No one she asks for information on her property tell her anything, but one told her there was a mill there once.  She never contacts county offices for access to public records on the land.  Yet she somehow learns that this mill was operated by the KKK as a front for lynching people.  Whites on one tree and Blacks on another.

Swings Corner-Point Isabel road is not named for the two communities it once connected, but for a hanging tree and one of the B&B ghosts.  The word picnic is not derived from eighteenth century France, but from the lynching term "pick a nig".  

**** 

The writer in me is repelled.  This book is badly written by any definition.  

The Bethel Girl in me is enraged at her character assassination of the population. 

Oh, and the second book has not appeared.

Money for Babies

One of the reasons I was bullied in junior high?  We were Welfare People.  Why else would anyone have seven kids in the space of a decade?  The more babies you have, the more money Welfare gives you. The truth of the matter? My father was Catholic.  Birth Control was against his religion.  There were other Catholic families around, with a house full, and I honestly can't say if they got this treatment as well or if I was just an easy target. 

As an adult, I worked in stores and restaurants.  My coworkers were prone to making the same assumption about any woman with many children, especially if she was anything less than a fashionista.  Even the coworkers who got government help to supplement their meager income, or the ones who had a house full of kids themselves.  

I never had children, but was often seen with minions in tow.  I once had to stop my grandmother from "boxing his ears" when a man in the grocery store said something snide to us.  He saw an old lady, a young woman, a teenager, a preteen, and two smaller children shopping.  He jumped to the Welfare Mom assumption.  

I'd be a liar if I claimed I never used government assistance.  Hell, the name of this blog comes from the fact that I'm on SSDI and Food Stamps.  I'd also be a liar if I claimed I've never known a woman who gave birth for more benefits, or who simply accepted that if she couldn't support her surprise baby, she could get Welfare.  

I am in no way shape or form standing in judgement of Welfare Moms.  What I am saying is that for my entire life THEY taught me that "having babies for government money" is a vile thing to do.  But now there's talk of stimulating the declining American birth rate by... wait for it...  paying people to reproduce.  With government money.  

The dichotomy blows my mind, especially since it's coming from the same people who refer to "the parasite class".  What is the difference?  Anyone who thinks it's okay to cut every birthing mother in America a check needs to reconsider how they feel about Welfare Mom.  

Representation and Mexican Mice

Representation in media is important, nobody in their right mind is going to deny that.  We all want to see people like us.  It struck me today that what we find representation in is not always obvious.  I am wearing my Slow Poke Rodriguez shirt as I type.  I don't match any of his demographics, so it may seen strange that I latched onto Slow Poke as a child.  

Because the sloth from Zootopia did not yet exist, you see.  Nowadays I get a lot of sloth jokes.  

I move slowly.  If you sneak up behind me and yell, there is a noticeable delay before I jump out of my skin.  I usually miss (by that much) when I try to catch something that's falling or thrown to me.  I'm not male, Mexican, or a mouse, but boy did I identify with Slow Poke Rodriguez.  

I've opined in the past about whether or not Slow Poke and his cousin Speedy Gonzalez are negative stereotypes.  I've opined about stereotypes in general.  None of that is what I'm talking about today.  At least not directly.  

All of this has got me musing on representation.  It's easy to see that we need to see heroes that meet our demographics.  There's a reason Spock has been arguably the most popular Star Trek character in the franchise's history when none of us are Vulcan.  We see something of ourselves below the surface.  And we need that. 

I'm Scared

 I'm aggressively nonpartisan, as most of you know.  I've got loved ones all over the political spectrum and my feelings about most issues fall somewhere in the middle of the two-party divide.  I have a lot of faith in the checks and balances built into the fabric of our government.  I don't think the havoc currently being wrought is a permanent thing.  

But I'm scared.  I depend on SSDI, Medicare, and Medicaid.  My apartment is HUD.  Even a temporary hiccup in the system could destroy my world.  Large expenses are put off and the money socked away just in case.  Most of my family is willing and able to help me if needed.  But dammit I don't want to need their help.

I do not think Social Security or Medicare are in danger.  Too many politicians on all sides know that would be career suicide.  But what about Medicaid?  HUD?  We already have planes falling out of the sky, possibly because of slashes to FAA.  NPS is barely going to be able to keep parks open (and those generate a lot more money than they cost).  

I try to focus on the good, to look for the helpers (as Mr. Rogers suggests), but my demon is SO rattling her cage.  There is governmental resistance to the overreach by the current POTUS.  Even Americans who are okay with the rights of others being trampled will switch sides real quick when they or theirs is threatened.  We will get through this.  I just hope it's soon and with minimal harm to me and mine. Yeah, I'm selfish, sue me. 

Nomenclature

Recently, the National Parks announced that the name of Clingman's Dome would be officially changed to its Cherokee name.  Most of the signage and news articles refer to it as "Kuwohi (formerly Clingman's Dome)".  That's a good method of helping people adjust to the change.  I like that it nods to the name most of us know the peak as, while reminding us of the new/old name.  

It was hardly the first time a geographical feature reverted to a native name.  A mountain in Alaska was named Mt McKinley from 1917 to 2015.  Its native name, Denali, was reinstated by Barack Obama, for most of the same reasons and to much of the same objections.  

*One of the first things Donald Trump did upon starting his second term as POTUS was change Denali back to Mt McKinley.  (Most of his first term was spent trying to undo Obama's work, so I assume this is just more of the same.)  With an executive order, not a Nomenclature Committee. 

He also decided our southern shore sits on the Gulf of America.  It's been the Gulf of Mexico for at least 400 years.  The gulf is not the exclusive property of the USA and no other nation agreed to this change.  Judging by my Facebook feed, I'm not the only one who finds this laughable.  But I digress.*

Changing or giving an official name to a geological feature is not an action taken lightly.  Nomenclature is important.  There is a long and exhaustive procedure involved.  I'm okay with properly made changes.  That said, I am like most humans in that the names I've always known them as will remain in my brain.  

The Powers That Be can change the official name.  But this conversation will happen:  "I saw a bear up on Kuwohi."  "Where?"  "You know, Clingman's Dome."   As long as everyone involved knows what you mean, I don't see an issue.  

Introspection

 He was born in the summer of his 27th year...  

It's a classic lyric, but it really isn't so far from my truth.  I was in my late twenties when finally prescribed fluoxetine.  

Oh, there were times as a child that I acted out.  What I learned from that was: I was unimportant, if not an outright burden. Everything was my fault.  I started writing stories as a coping method, even if I may not have realized it at the time.  And I always loved to learn.  Used to sit in the front hall reading encyclopedias.  

As an adult, I did explore specific issues, if they were pointed out in a kindly manner and if my inner seas were relatively calm. I took a few little vacations in the psych ward.  I even asked about medication because I saw how well the others in my group therapy did with it, but my request was dismissed.  I did not ask again.

As I said, I was past the quarter-century mark when yet another episode occurred.  This time the doctor suggested medication.  Prozac was fairly new at the time, and controversial, but it was a godsend for me. I tell people it saved my life.

Pop Culture has gotten better with its presentation of the mentally ill - we're no longer just comic relief or bad guys - but they still seem to get wrong the struggle.  Commercials for antidepressants make it look like you pop a pill and instantly everything is fixed.  A show's very special episode handles the situation in an hour or less.  That ain't how it works. 

Even if a pill could instantly repair chemical imbalances and emotional damage, there's the outer world to consider.  To make another reference, there's an exchange in one of the Harry Potter books that makes my point:  "You were the one who told me to stand up to people!"  "Yes, but not to us."  

Finally, I could consistently apply the coping methods I'd picked up over the years and learn more.  But the patterns remained.  My family still spoke to me as they always had.  I went to college for an associate's degree, but my previous work history was, shall we say, spotty.  The longest I had kept a job was a couple years and I'd been fired often.  So I was still washing dishes and ringing up groceries. 

But I was growing out of my despair.  I learned to separate what I felt from what I knew.  I went low (or no) contact with those who refused to respect my journey and the woman I was becoming.  I embraced myself.  

Now I'm on Disability, but I'm still writing and you can even buy two of my books on Amazon.  Nine out of ten of my personalities manage to keep that tenth one caged.  (Yes, I know that's inaccurate and maybe insensitive to people with actual multiples.  But I find humor opens communication.)  

But I wake up dreading the day ahead.  Once I get up and moving, that passes, but it's a rough way to start every day.   I have bad dreams. My feelings are easily hurt.  I'm not cured.  The commercials are fibbing.  The very special episodes are oversimplifying.  

Now that I'm gotten all this off my chest, maybe I can sleep.  It's almost dawn.  Thanks for reading. 

Fifty Ways To Be A Woman

Okay, that number is way off.  Which direction depends on your definition of woman.  The hullabaloo at the recent Olympics got me thinking about this more deeply than I usually do.    I'm not sure of the details, but from what I gather, an athlete's hormone levels indicated male even though her body (genitals)  indicated female.  Myself, I think the Olympic committee knows their own standards and can make the call.  End of that discussion on my end. 

Typically, females have different hormone levels than males. We have different genes.  We also have different brain functions when under a brain scan.  And, of course, the private parts are not the same.  These are all sex (biological).  And there's the whole gender (social construct) question - what do we identify as?  

But it got me to thinking.  Intersex happens.  It is a rare event, but as we learn more and find new ways of defining sex, it could become simply unusual or possibly even commonplace.  Ignoring gender and focusing only on sex, even now we have cases of genetics not matching genitals and/or hormones and/or brain scans.  

Intersex people are traditionally those whose genes do not match the genitals, or those who have indeterminate genitals.  Suppose there is an as yet unknown biological aspect to transgenderism... the brain chemistry.  This would give us four biological ways to define the sex.  Maybe transgenders, to go back to an archaic and possibly insensitive term, are transsexual.  (Remember, we're defining sex and gender differently.)  

Most people go through life perfectly okay with the sex diagnosed at birth or before.  Finding out your hormones or genes don't match up can cause problems, privately and publicly.  Add to that the brain scan possibility.  Now... Imagine a person with female genes and female anatomy, but male hormones and male brain chemistry.  What is this person?  

I see news articles almost every day reporting a presumed male skeleton having female DNA, blowing notions about ancient societies out of the water, and this could bear on the future.  I'm not trying to push any sort of agenda, except possibly my usual DEATH TO GENDER ROLES.