Not Even Most

Saw a meme today that said "Men who say NOT ALL MEN should be locked in a room full of snakes.  Not all of them are venomous."  I'm not sure it I'm supposed to laugh or admit the truth.  I did neither because it's based on a fallacy.   A few fallacies, actually.    

Fallacy 1: Women have to be careful walking alone because a man might attack her.  True statement.  Yet it is also true that a woman might attack her.  Or an animal might attack her.  It's more accurate to say any person walking alone should be careful because they might be attacked.  No one gets vilified, and certainly no entire groups.  (It's my personal experience that an animal attack is far more likely, but I digress.)  

Fallacy 2: Let's talk about those snakes.  Say there are a hundred snakes locked in that room.  Only 10 to 15 are going to be venomous and even fewer prey on anything the size of a human.  Even the deadliest snake does not bite for fun.  The snake that bites for no reason is a rare creature indeed.  

I'm fully aware that people are not snakes.  Some would even argue that we are not animals.  Yet the basic principle applies - how many men  are willing or able to randomly attack a fellow human being?  

Fallacy 3: It kind of leans into blaming the victim.  I understand the man who objects "Not all men".  Nobody likes to be stereotyped, and certainly not negatively stereotyped.  

I suggest "not even most" as the phraseology.  Or a sarcastic "thanks" if you're feeling less intellectual.  The latter usually gets a response of  "Oh, not you.  Other (men, in this case)."  Ask for names if they say that.  

This advice doesn't just apply to the given scenario.  It works with almost any blanket statement. Try it when you find yourself being lumped in with evil-doers  because you share a sex, religion, or political leaning. 

DNA

 My brother took an Ancestry DNA test.  The results are....  interesting.  

Our paternal grandparents were barely removed from the Old Country  (Germany in his case, Ireland in hers).  The majority of my brother's DNA is "Northern Europe".  "Germanic Europe" was a single digit percentage.  Knowing what I do about both DNA and history, I figure our Germans descended from invaders. Celts or Vikings are my best guess.  

Our maternal ancestors have been in this country much longer, so there's lots of cross-pollination potential.  The lines I've traced across the sea almost always go to Germany or Ireland, but so many generations in the Great American Melting Pot make them unpredictable.  

The Parkers having native heritage is one bit of family lore I've yet to prove or disprove, but anyone who has seen my mother or her father sees it.  I hoped my brother's results would help with that, but nothing has come of it so far.  

The way DNA mixes and sometimes gets lost in the shuffle, one of my other siblings could be bearing the genes we expected.  I'm just annoyed he didn't immediately match some Parker relative who knows all about *Great-grandpa the Indian Princess*!  

So far, I've had about a 50% success in proving family lore.  Some are disproven, some are proven, most are half-truths, and one or two linger in Limbo.  But a lot of my Parker lines stop at paywalls or simply peter out.  A lot of natives passed as something else to avoid The Removal.  A lot of births, adoptions, and marriages went undocumented.  

Maybe it's an amazing coincidence that everyone who looks at a picture of my mother asks if she was American Indian.  Scientists use physical traits to identify the racial identity of a skeleton, and most of us have some of those traits.  Logically, it doesn't fit to think my ancestors were lying or mistaken.  

This mystery ancestor is so far back the line, there's no way we qualify for any tribal membership.  Ultimately, it really doesn't matter to the big picture.  I just hate unanswered questions.  It doesn't matter if that one fellow died in a logging accident, either, but I want to know!  

Everything I find about how to research this tells me to start with the tribe.  One of my siblings believes we come from Miami stock, another Shawnee.  Both are indigenous to my area.  Both make sense.  My mother even went to far as to investigate a link to Quanah Parker of the Comanches.  Some of these Parker lines came from Virginia - maybe I'm one of the bazillion descendants of Pocahontas.   

It's quite maddening.  Like a Rubik's Cube.  

*Stole that bit from a book called How To Talk Trash in Cherokee.

My Trigger, My Problem

I broke my own rule this week.  I've often said that I am responsible for how I react to things and I should not expect the world to tiptoe around me.   

That's not to say my family and friends are perfect.  I know the problem isn't always me, but why get mad at Bob for acting like Bob?  Which is what I did.  Instead of taking a mental step back, instead of discussing my hurt calmly, I yelled and stomped away.  Been mad at myself ever since. 

I'm a bit confused about what exactly a trigger is, psychologically speaking.  Google says it's anything that negatively affects your emotional state.  Maybe I'm showing my age - I was diagnosed and did most of my research back when dinosaurs roamed the earth - but in my mind,  a trigger isn't something that makes you uncomfortable.  It's something that makes you think you are in actual physical danger. 

But I'll accept that things have changed.  If my usual feeling of inadequacy gets inflamed, I suppose that is a trigger. I won't, however, change my opinion on who is responsible for it.  I should have walked away and calmed myself, maybe even had a good cry.  What I should  not have done was verbally attack the poor guy for asking a question.  

BTW:  "Bob" accepted my apology.  

Small Town

Jason Aldean may not be the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but I don't believe he's advocating lynch mobs.  I'll clarify. 

First:  Pairing footage from a BLM protest gone bad with those lyrics?  Incredibly ignorant move.  Small towns, particularly in the south, have historically dealt with black "troublemakers" by way of a noose.  Jason Aldean may not have made that connection because he isn't and never was black.  He didn't grow up being warned about Sundown Towns or Emmet Till.  But ignorance is not malice, people.  

Second: Jason, dear, they do have a point.  A simple "Oh crap I didn't realize" could have gone a long way to defuse the situation.  There should be no shame in admitting your ignorance or your error.  I've said and done a lot of things from in my straight white ignorance - and usually been forgiven when I admitted it.  

Third: It's more reasonable to believe the entire thing is a publicity stunt.  The song has been out for a while, but few seemed to notice until the video was released. Jason Aldean just happens to be opening a bar/restaurant the same summer.  I'm more inclined to think he's greedy than ignorant or racist.  

Fourth: Jason Aldean is a city boy.  He's got no idea about small towns, especially the ones with a church on every corner.  The list of people who died because they tried something in a small town is growing every day.  There is a tragic drive in small towns to conform.  Especially in towns with strong political or religious leanings.  That's what killed Brandon Teena and Matthew Shepard.  That's what got the West Memphis Three convicted of murder. 

How Is She Hearing Us?

The boys were here last night.  A medium sized invasion, three of them with two gaming systems and a laptop.  The evening passed as usual.  They played "annoy Jeanie but don't actually make her angry" and GTA  and some music.  They told me about their new YouTube channel, in which they make me seasick by playing Minecraft while verbally abusing one another, and picked on me for needing the captioning.  

You know, just regular hanging at Jeanie's fare.  They like it here because, for the most part, they get to do whatever they want. That's how I lure them in and make them my minions!  Anyway... this morning I was talking to them as they were packing up all their stuff to go.  Suddenly one of them stops, stares at me for a second, and turns to the one who is my actual kin.  He says "How is she hearing us?" 

A lot of people seem to think hearing loss is like the world's volume has been turned down 24/7 to the same level.  That might be true for some, but not anyone I know.  It's more like the world's volume is turned down to varying levels throughout the day - and for a glorious moment after my ears pop, the volume is almost normal! 

The best depictions I've seen are both episodes of The Walking Dead.  Season 9, episode 11 features a (silent) scene from a deaf character's POV.  Season 10, episode 5 opens with the POV of a character with hearing loss... volume fading in and out as she hunts a boar. (And I know some of y'all are groaning because I'm talking about that show again.) 

There are certain pitches I can't hear at all.  One friend of mine thought I was joking when I said I can't hear cicadas.  Or maybe I can hear them, faintly, but I think the sound is part of the tinnitus.  I pretty much constantly hear that, at varying levels - right now it's like what you hear when you put a seashell to your ear.

I could hear the boys today because my internal noise and their external noise (games and music) were largely absent.  The ones I was responding to were facing me, so quasi-lipreading helped.  

FYI, I did have a hearing aid.  It broke twice in a year and is no longer covered.  My Medicare supplement does give me 500 bucks a year toward ears, eyes, and teeth.  Hearing aids tend to start at four digits.  

I'm Published!

 I finally did it.  Self-publishing in my day was expensive and, to my thinking, kind of a cheat.  I always wanted the validation of a publishing house telling me I was good enough.  But my terror of rejection keeps me from submitting and digital publishing is, to quote a friend, "how it's done now".  Oldest Sister has done it and she showed me how, so there I am on Amazon.

My first ever Beta Reader was Oldest Sister.  Her gentle critiques guided me, and for a long time she was the only person to read my stuff.  Eventually some of my other siblings read and told me what they thought - one time I had a red front porch light in a story and had to be told about Red Light Districts!  

When I got to high school, I eagerly signed up for Creative Writing.  The teacher hated me even before I walked into the classroom. (My family's reputation preceded me - Mother, for all her faults, went full Mama Bear if she though the school was wronging her offspring.  She once went to war with an English teacher for punishing use of "ain't" as improper.) She allowed Destructive Criticism and even engaged in it herself.  That class devastated me.  

I did meet a peer who wrote and we became fast friends.  We planned and wrote parts of an entire series.  We went through the "Diversity for diversity's sake" stage together.  We even got picked up by a local company, but the publishing branch folded before we hit print.  

She and Oldest Sister coaxed me into a local writer's group.  I was terrified, remembering that class in high school.  I was stunned by the encouragement and advice.  They helped me in ways I cannot articulate.  I learned there, from them, that writing can be a goal in and of itself.  I joined another group, this one online and largely focused on fan fiction.   When my world collapsed around me (for non-writing reasons), some of the members of both groups were there with me, helping me through.  They celebrated with me when my muse came back.  

The two books I've published through Amazon were written after that, but the characters have roots all the way back to that disastrous class in high school.  Bits and pieces of everyone who touched my writing life are scattered throughout the stories.  I'm not going to try to name anyone, because I avoid names in this blog to protect privacy of others and also because I know I'll forget someone!  

Oldest sister set me on this road, but there are a myriad of others who kept me on it.  Some of them cheered, some corrected my course, some just loved me and never read a word.  

Oh, yeah....  Amazon search P.J. Schmidt Stillwater Farm.  That's me!  (And Oldest Sister is R. Collins My Dubois.)  

Sequel Series

 I've noticed a couple of trends: First, the number of television shows getting not so much spinoffs or reboots, but sequels.  Second, a lot of fussing about older shows that haven't "aged well".  So I'm dusting off my Entertainment Soapbox. 

A casual list I threw together while pondering this blog post includes:  Roseanne/The Conners, How I Met Your Mother/How I Met Your Father, Boy Meets World/Girl Meets World, Full House/Fuller House, That 70s Show/That 90s Show.  In the case of Big Bang Theory/Young Sheldon, we have a prequel series.  Many of the complaints I see from viewers are along the lines of "they're pushing a liberal agenda" or "they've betrayed the original".   (All writers are pushing an agenda, whether we know it of not.  See my previous rant on that subject.)

I think, at least in certain cases, these complainers are wrong.  The Conners seems very much in the spirit of the original - only the political climate has changed. It was okay for Roseanne to encourage young DJ not to be racist, but now that he's married to a black woman, that's offensive.   The character of Gina has a history with the family and seems to be as well written as any secondary sitcom character. 

A sequel series that does seem to be guilty of "pushing a liberal agenda" is That 90s show.  There's been a lot of talk among fans about timeline inaccuracies, but I don't let that bother me much because the original show's timeline was wonky as hell and because some of these questions might be explained eventually.  My problem stems from Ozzie.  The rest of the gang is as well written as the original in the first season, and are racially diverse, but poor Ozzie seems to exist simply as "the gay boy".   I'm all for diversity, folks, but I don't want it to be the entire character!

Now let's talk about the aging problem.  Personally, I think the entire sitcom genre is based on less-than-perfect characters.  We laugh at the character's faults, which are of course blown out of proportion for comedy.  We should keep this in mind when discussing what is or isn't offensive.

One that hasn't aged well and does have a sequel in How I Met Your Mother/Father.  The character of Barney Stinson alone gets a lot of the "not aging well" press.  Some viewers note that Ted was an unreliable narrator and had reasons to paint Barney badly. I stopped watching HIMYM when Robin and Barney divorced, and I've not seen HIMYF at all, but I hear that Barney has appeared - so maybe they can redeem him somewhat.  

The sitcom I loved that gets hate for not aging well is Friends.  Homophobia in particular is rampant in the show, but a lot of it comes from Chandler's own insecurities (remember, exaggerated for comedy).  Now, suppose they were to make a Friends: The Next Generation.  The offspring of the original gang - Erica, Jack, Emma, and Ben were all born during the run of Friends.  On his spinoff, Joey mentions that Phoebe and Mike had at least one child.  If we want racial diversity, Joey could have married or adopted any ethnicity.  If one or more of the core group is LGBT, that gives Chandler a chance to deal with his issues and redeem himself.  

I guess what I'm getting at is that these sequel series, if done well, can correct some of the problems with older shows.  But, again, these are sitcoms and by definition shouldn't be taken too seriously.