Reading and Memory

by Sheila Connolly

As I read my newspaper at dawn this morning (I'm trying to avoid the heat—five a.m. can be very pleasant, I've found, and yes, I still read a paper made of paper), my eye was caught by a short article in the "Be Well" section, with the headline "Reading and writing preserves memory, researchers say."

Briefly: Researchers at Chicago's Rush University Medical Center, where there is a Memory and Aging Project (per their website, still recruiting participants, if you're interested) announced this week that a multi-year study they have conducted strongly suggests that "participants who reported reading and writing throughout their life, especially in old age, were 32 percent less likely to show deterioration in brain regions involved in memory," and "those who reported infrequently reading and writing into old age experienced a 48 percent faster rate of memory loss."

I feel so much better.  Okay, the study involved only three hundred octogenarians and depended upon answers to a survey (and we all know they aren't always accurate) as well as physical observations upon autopsy, but it's encouraging nonetheless.  The old adage "use it or lose it" still applies.

I've been reading before I can remember, and I've never slowed down, as my overflowing bookshelves can attest.  I've been writing for over a decade now (longer if you want to count academic papers in my younger days, as well as grant proposals and reports a decade or two later).  But who knew that I was preserving brain cells all the while?

Carl Sagan is reported to have said, "The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous." How rare is it that something that feels good is also good for us?  And even better, we as writers are performing a valuable service to our readers, by providing them with books that will help sustain their brain function for years.

And now I have another justification for all those books in my To-Be-Read pile:  I'm stockpiling therapeutic tools.  I'm not sure how well that rationale (rationalization?) applies to the thousands of books I've saved over the years, but I might want to reread them.  Would it be a sign of aging if I can't remember whodunnit in some of them?

Memory is a tricky thing.  Sometimes we rewrite our own, or we selectively mask or erase certain parts.  I had an odd conversation with my husband this weekend, when I described in detail a wonderful O'Keefe and Merritt gas stove we had in the first house we owned, and he had no memory of it at all.  (For the record, he used it as much as I did.) Wiped from his databanks.

In return, he accuses me of blotting out the second car we bought together.  Maybe.  I think he drove it a lot more than I did, commuting to work. I had a different car at the same time, and I can tell you a lot more about that one.

Sometimes these days I feel the need to document everything in the house, particularly items I've inherited from four generations of my family, because I'm the only one who knows what they are and where and who they came from, and my daughter won't know what each piece means, when she comes to inherit it.  I haven't done it yet.  But this weekend I sorted through my t-shirt collection, and I can still tell you when I acquired each one, and where and why. Maybe I'm just practicing. (I have a lot of t-shirts.)

But reading is something else.  It seems to be using a different part of our brain.  I'll be happy to sacrifice my memories of my t-shirts if I can continue to enjoy reading and writing.

Still Alive and Well

Elizabeth Zelvin

How do I know my youth is all spent
My get-up and go has got up and went
But in spite of it all, I’m able to grin
When I think of the places my get-up has been.

I didn’t write that. It’s the chorus of a song the legendary Weavers sang in the Fifties. I used to think it was simply funny. But as I get older...and older...and older…it gets more and more relevant.

I wake up each morning and dust off my wits
Open the paper and read the obits
And if I’m not there, I know I’m not dead
So I eat a good breakfast and roll back in bed.

My father used to do that. Literally. If he spotted somebody he knew in the New York Times obituaries, he would read it out to my mother and whoever else was around at the time. He’d start by announcing, in a tone of unmistakable satisfaction: “So-and-so dropped dead yesterday.” He wasn’t heartless. If it was someone he liked who died, he would feel appropriate regret. But his first reaction was to feel reassured about knowing that he was still a survivor.

I’m currently sixty-nine, in my last year in the decade that some people nowadays call “the new thirties.” With my contemporaries, I find myself participating in “the organ recital” that inevitably forms part of every conversation. Sure, some of us have good genes and pay a lot of attention to staying fit. But to some extent, there’s no denying the machinery is wearing out. We lose friends more and more frequently, and the famous people we think of as ageless—writers and other creative artists, athletes, politicians—show up in the obits.

On the other hand, what I used to think of as “old” is not the same as it used to be. When I was a college English major in the Sixties, one of my favorite literary novelists (we just called them novelists back then) was Muriel Spark. In her novel Memento Mori, she wrote about a number of interrelated characters who, after they turned seventy, all began to get anonymous and untraceable phone calls. The callers—no two characters heard the same voice—would say simply, “Remember you must die,” the literal meaning of the Latin phrase memento mori. The idea from a literary and philosophical point of view was that the calls weren’t death threats or criminal in any way, but Death itself calling with a simple reminder.

Fifty years later, I’m kind of horrified at the idea that I might have to start considering my mortality at the age of seventy—unless illness or bad luck put me in a situation in which I do. Ninety would be more like it. I’m glad I’ve already done many of the things I’ve dreamed of doing, including publishing my novels, releasing an album of my music, and getting to enjoy my granddaughters. I don’t know what’s next, but in some ways, it feels like I’m just getting started.

Are you ashamed of what you read?

by Sandra Parshall

Sometimes I come across articles about writing, reading, and publishing that seem to be referring to an alternate book world that I’ve never experienced. My reaction is: Huh? Where did that idea come from?

Take, for example, a recent article on the Wired magazine website that examined the “surprising” popularity of genre fiction like sci-fi, fantasy, mystery and romance in e-book form. These forms of storytelling, according to the article, “have traditionally lagged behind literary fiction in terms of sales.”

Huh? Where did that idea come from?

A Publishers Weekly/Bowker study a couple years ago showed literary fiction had 20% of the digital market share, outselling any particular genre. But those sales included classics – the e-books that are dirt cheap (and sometimes free) for downloading. How many owners of new Kindles have bought War and Peace or every Jane Austen novel during an initial downloading spree, then never found time to read them as planned?

When it comes to traditional print publishing, can any of us recall a time when genre fiction didn’t dominate bestseller lists? When James Patterson, John Grisham, Nora Roberts and other genre stars didn’t regularly stomp all over literary fiction? The annual Publishers Weekly report on the bestselling books of the previous year confirm that genre rules. The surprising thing isn’t that genre sells well but that there’s any room at all for litfic.

The Wired article names some all-digital genre lines created recently by major publishers – Hydra (SF/fantasy), Alibi (mystery), Flirt (“new adult”), Loveswept (romance) from Random House and Witness (mystery) from Harper Collins – and says the focus on genre fiction “might seem counter-intuitive according to traditional print publishing sales.”

But it’s not at all counter-intuitive. Genre books, particularly romance and crime fiction in all their many varieties, are big sellers in print, so it makes sense to assume they’ll sell well as e-books. And they do. Some genre books sell more digital copies than print.

Why? Some sensible reasons are advanced in the article, but the first one mentioned is this: If it’s an e-book, you won’t be embarrassed by other people being able to see what you’re reading. That sounds an awful lot like: Nobody can see you’re reading trash.

Antonia Storer, a columnist for The Guardian, is quoted as saying she’s more comfortable reading “downmarket” fiction in secrecy on an e-reader and “keeping shelf space for books that proclaim my cleverness.” In a column last year Storer wrote, “The reading public in private is lazy and smutty. E-readers hide the material.” After you stop rolling your eyes, go read the rest of the column. It’s quite entertaining.

Put a cover on your e-reader to make sure nobody can see what kind of trash you're reading!

The Wired article does make some valid points. Liate Stehlik, senior vice president at HarperCollins, is quoted as saying that genre fans read a lot of books and “the audience that gravitated to e-books first really was that voracious reader, reading for entertainment, reading multiple books in a month across multiple genres.” She's not the first to point out that e-books are replacing mass market paperbacks. Anyone who follows market news is well aware of that.

Digital-first publishing allows publishers to take more chances on new authors and work that might not make a profit in print. Novellas, for example, have more chance of being published profitably (or published at all) as e-books. As Stehlik says, e-books have liberated publishers from the profit/loss limits of print – and they have freed writers and readers as well.

But it appears we still have a long way to go to free ourselves of prejudice against genre fiction. I’m not ashamed of what I read. I’m not ashamed of what I write. If you see me reading on my tablet, it’s not because I’m hiding something. It just happens to be a convenient way to carry around a ton of books so I always something to choose from.

Post-flood timing . . .

. . . or how we know it's not over yet.

Sharon Wildwind

Flood update

The state of emergency for Calgary was lifted at 10:16 AM, Thursday, July 4. It is estimated that 1,200 people will be out of their  homes for at least 6 months, while repairs are made. Between 550 and 900 people will be out of their homes for 12-18 months, possibly forever. We have no idea which category the elderly people in three downtown subsidized buildings fall.

Some buildings have already been demolished because they unsafe for human habitation and not able to be repaired. Engineering assessment teams are far from finished in determining how many more buildings will have to come down.

The city is building temporary neighborhoods, using trailers. Best guess is that this temporary housing will accommodate between 40% and 50% of the Calgarians who will be out of their houses for months or forever. The amount of rental accommodations available in the city was about 1% before the flood; for now and the foreseeable future, it is zero.

In animal news, firefighters rescued a cat from underneath an undermined sidewalk. The cat had been missing 5 days. 

One (or maybe two) female meerkats, rescued from flood waters at the Calgary zoo, have given birth to five pups. It’s hard to tell who the mothers are because meerkats tend the young communally.

In less-happy animal news the zoo laid off 287 seasonal, full-time, or part-time employees. They have retained 185 staff to rebuild the site and care for the animals. It will be November or December before the zoo is completely open, and repairs are expected to cost $50 million.

Saturday morning I did errands to do in three previously-flooded neighborhoods, including downtown. It was a weird experience. That weirdness wasn’t just the closed businesses, the constant sound of electric saws and power tools, and the sad spectacle of flood-damaged goods piled in yards, waiting to be hauled away.

People did normal things: catch busses, sell bus passes, sell coffee, walk down the street, but the timing was off. So was what constituted invading other people’s body space. People were over-friendly where they would normally be reserved and vice versa. It was as if we hadn’t quite regained Calgary timing.

I saw a lot of tired-looking people, a lot of unsure faces. More people than usual were taking public transit. Normally at stops people pretty much ignore one another. This time there were always lots of questions. “Is this the right stop for the 302?” “Is the fare three dollars?” “Do you know how far down 9th Avenue this bus goes?”

I thought, yeah, this is the difference between researching something and living where it’s happening. It’s important for a writer to realize that there are some details no amount of research will provide.

I came home Saturday in a quirky mood, and I think that contributed to finding this video stunning. Not that it’s not stunning in its own right. This week, instead of a quote, you get a video link.

The Soniferous Æther of The Land Beyond The Land Beyond is a 35mm film installation shot at the northernmost settlement on earth— ALERT Signals Intelligence Station— as part of a series of fieldworks looking at remote outpost architecture, military infrastructure and the embedded landscape. Shot using a computer controlled time‐lapse tracking camera during the winter months, the military spy outpost radiates within a shroud of continuous darkness under a star-pierced canopy harkening an abandoned space station.

The sound track (intentionally, I think) has crackles, pops, and part of it may be in Russian. I can’t hear it well enough to tell. If the sound bothers you, watch the visuals with the sound off.

At least on my computer, between 2:34 and 2:51 there is one stop for a few seconds and some jerky movements. I suspect both of those things are intentional as well.

http://www.stankievech.net/projects/aether/trailer/index.html

Will Your Book Become a Movie? Hollywood Trends Say No.

by Julia Buckley

Even cats like being entertained (in this case by a feather).

I saw MAN OF STEEL yesterday with my sons.  While they loved the movie for its endless action and explosions, I disliked it for the same reason.  It started out well enough, with some interesting back story and some human relationships I might have cared about--but then the movie blew it all away in special effects and never really returned to those stories.  In addition, they employed any number of cliches, perhaps because they knew that people had responded well to the same hackneyed visuals (see: line of people looking up at the sky in various stages of amazement; one of them slowly taking off a pair of glasses); or the same ridiculous lines (see: Jor-El's dragon creature wounded in a battle in outer space, and his response is "Easy, Boy").

I was thinking about the fact that Hollywood hasn't given me a summer of movie magic (in which I literally want to return to the theatre again and again, watching five or six movies in a two month span because there's SO much good stuff out there) in very long time.  But what they DO give me is the sense that they are out of ideas and that they believe the only way to make money is to re-make something or create big-budget sequels.  Don't agree with me?  Check out Andrew S. Allen's blog post from 2012, in which he shares a chart showing the top movies of 1981 compared with the top movies of 2011.  What an eye-opener.  Allen breaks down his chart into the categories of originals, adaptations, and sequels.  Guess which year had mostly original films?  Guess which year produced mainly sequels?

Allen suggests that it isn't Hollywood putting out good stuff these days, but television and other mediums that care about quality over profit.  And he suggests that artists who want to create good film might have to shift their paradigms away from warped Hollywood, whose myopia might be permanent.

It seems that at one point Hollywood was about dreams, talent and money.  Now it's about money.

There are writers out there who have written fantastic stories that I would LOVE to see on the big screen.  Some of the writers I've met have gotten movie deals--thank God, and good for them--but so many other writers have told terrific tales that would transfer well to the screen, and yet those stories will stay forever within the pages of their books.  That's fine; I love reading books.  But if I'm going to be faced with a movie theatre that is destined to play the same old junk--the same explosion movies, the same robot flicks, the same glorified gangster gore, the same constantly-swearing dialogue that they now call comedy--then I will retreat permanently into the books, and some carefully-selected television and Internet innovation.

I don't need you, Hollywood, and neither does anyone else. You might want step away from your profit machine for a moment and have a little foresight.  Your viewers aren't as dumb as you hope they are, and they're going to start leaving you for better, cheaper fare.  Oh, and here's the part you'll care about:
they'll take their money with them.

So why not shift the paradigm now, while you still have a chance?  Start mining for good, original material.  Find those treasures of books that no one else seems to have noticed.  Make them into terrific, original movies.

Only then can you become what you once were: the land of entertainment.

On Self-doubt

 
by Tammy Kaehler
Author of the Kate Reilly racing mysteries

A really amazing racing blogger I follow—someone I'd read if he was writing about toilet-seat manufacturing, because I enjoy his writing that much—recently posted a general sigh of self-doubt about his writing ability to social media. I, like many of his friends and admirers, jumped in to reassure him. The whole time I wrote my "of course you’re amazing!" note, I thought, "Please, please, please, be ready to say this to me."

Because he was right when he said we all go through this. All of us creative types. All the time.

Now, this post isn't meant as a plea for assurances that my writing is amazing, my plots are epic, or my concept is ground-breaking. I want to talk seriously about self-doubt for a minute. Because I think (and this won't be ground-breaking either, but it can't be repeated enough) that how we handle our inevitable self-doubt is what separates the pros from the amateurs—the women from the girls, if you will.
If you let that nasty inner critic stay in your head, it’ll keep whispering "maybe you're not very good" and "that sentence really sucked." If you allow that critic to keep seducing you with thoughts of the new book on your TBR pile or that episode of Dance Moms on the DVR, you're not going to reach your creative finish line. If you give in to that voice, you're not going to get it done.

I'm not telling you if you ignore that voice, all will be unicorns and rainbows. Just getting it done isn't a guarantee it'll be GOOD. But you're never going to have a shot at your work being good (or great) if you don't have any work in the first place. As they say in auto racing, "To finish first, first you have to finish."

And let me assure you, EVERYONE feels self-doubt. Sue Grafton has said she's never sure she'll be able to write another book (and she's closing in on the last letter of the alphabet). Danny Elfman (composer of music soundtracks and the Simpson’s theme) doubts himself at every project. My racing blogger friend worries about his marketing writing and his racing analyses.

So when I’m in the throes of self-doubt, mired what I call the “hot mess middle-muddle”—as I am now—I start by consoling myself with the thought that even successful artists doubt themselves. This only helps a little bit on the day I end up curled on the bed, crying and telling my husband, “I’ll never be able to write another book.” (He loves that part of the process, by the way—insert heavy sarcasm.)

But when the “even famous people feel this way” pep talk doesn’t get me past the tears and paralysis, I try a mantra I’ve developed in my fledgling fiction-writing career: Butt In Chair.

You see, I’m not someone who’s stumped by the blank page. After nearly 20 years spent as a technical or marketing writer in my day job, I have no fear of the blank page. If I sit down at the computer and open the Word document, I’ll write something. It’s the sitting down that is the problem. I tell people I don’t have writer’s block, I have butt-in-chair block.

Yes, my mantra has become “Butt In Chair.” I’m thinking of having it printed up on a mug or a sign—maybe a dozen signs to post all over my house and get my behind over to my desk. Because I’ve learned if I simply spend enough time at my computer in a day, I’ll write something. Enough days of enough time at my computer, and I’ll write a book (at least that crappy first draft).

But it’s hard, right? I mean, we know carrots and broccoli are better for us than doughnuts and chocolate. I know that future-me will be happier with myself if I go for a walk now instead of sitting in a chair and reading a book. But it takes willpower to put off the tasty—indulgent?—item now for future gain or happiness.

Even though I know I’ll be happier in a month if I sit down and write—if I work past the self-doubt right now, rather than avoid it—it’s still hard to put my butt in the chair.

So ultimately, how do I do it? I slap my inner critic quiet, look my self-doubt in the face, and banish both of them. I put my head down, ignore the mountain range ahead, and focus on the next steps in front of me. It always works.

Now if I can only remember that for the next time….

But hey, I’m always looking for more tips and strategies. How do you all cope with bouts of self-doubt?
**************************
Tammy Kaehler’s career in marketing and technical writing landed her in the world of automobile racing, which inspired her with its blend of drama, competition, and welcoming people. Her debut, Dead Man’s Switch, was praised by mystery fans as well as racing insiders, and she takes readers back behind the wheel in Braking Points, the second Kate Reilly Racing Mystery. Tammy works as a technical writer in the Los Angeles area, where she lives with her husband and many cars. Find out more at http://www.tammykaehler.com/.

You Want Me to Pay For This?

by Sheila Connolly

I belong to quite a few writing-related loops (or whatever they're called now), not that I read all of them regularly.  But I enjoy keeping tabs on what other people are doing, which gives me some insight into what other writers believe are the most current and best marketing tools in this very competitive and quickly-changing business of writing and publishing.

But a week ago I read one post that rocked me, although I suppose it was inevitable:  a writer has set up an account on Kickstarter to pay for the production of his next book.  Yes, he want his "friends" to subsidize the design, printing, marketing and promotion for his latest book.  He offers a menu of rewards for the investment.

Now, this is a writer (who I don't know personally and will not name) is not a novice.  He published two books (both mysteries) less than a decade ago, and he has published two more since as ebooks only.  He admits they were modestly successful, and received some positive reactions from reviewers—things we all hope for.

But now he's ready to quit his day job and try a different strategy for his new thriller, and he wants his past/future readers to finance it.  And he thinks this will give him more exposure and reach than either finding a traditional publisher or publishing it directly himself. He wants the money up front to pay for marketing, copy editing, book design, formatting, printing, audio, website updates, launch parties and a tour.

This person wants to raises $18,000 through Kickstarter for all of the above expenses. Please wait until I stop laughing.

Now, I consider myself a modestly successful writer.  I have something like 15 books out there, two of which were NYT bestsellers.  I've been writing full time for nearly a decade now.  And $18,000 exceeds my personal promotional budget for all my books in a given year—and for the past few years I've published three or four each year.  Heck, it exceeds most of my net annual income from writing over the past few years. Yes, my publishers cover a lot of the tasks on that list above, which are not free—and they take a hefty cut of the sales proceeds to cover them. Do those numbers add up?  I have no idea, but they come with the package of being published by a major publisher, who gets my books into a lot of bookstores.

But I manage my own website; I produce my own newsletter; I buy ads in appropriate publications; I travel to conferences (with promotional materials that I design and pay for myself) and library and bookstore signings. I have never had a formal launch party, and I certainly haven't gone on a sponsored tour (my main publisher seems to reserve those only for the famous and well-established authors in its stable). My publisher does not pay for any of these—I do. I don't expect strangers to pick up the tab.

Is this author naïve?  Arrogant? Does he have a lot of friends with deep pockets? (Apparently he's already found one who was willing to pony up $1,000, the top sum, although it could be his mother.) I suppose he thinks it's worth a try, and it's an interesting experiment.  I will watch to see how well he does.

But I'm still troubled by the overall tenor of his pitch.  He considers $18,000 a "lean and mean" (his words) budget for this.  He's willing to let his backers do the editing for him if they chip in at least $80. That sounds like a recipe for disaster to me—editing by committee is never a good idea. As far as I know, neither splashy (expensive) launch parties nor national book tours are standard for a mid-list (at best) author.

If this author went the traditional route, he would need to sell a whole lot of copies to earn $18,000.  Yes, the publisher would earn more. I think I'm missing part of the equation here. Maybe I'm just too mired in the traditional way of doing things. (As an aside, I think Kickstarter is a great concept and can do a lot of good—I just don't see how it fits here.)

What do you think?  Is this the wave of the future, or a waste of time?

The Fourth of July

Elizabeth Zelvin



When I was growing up, the Fourth of July was not a holiday that my family felt passionate about celebrating. For one thing, in the Fifties, the American flag had been coopted as a symbol by—hmm, how can I say this without discussing politics?—folks whose definitions of patriotism, civil liberties, and civil rights differed from those of the people we knew.

On the other hand, thanks to an elementary school principal whose pet project was making sure every kid who passed through the doors of PS 164 in Queens studied what he called “documents”—the great works of oratory and law that expressed the American vision at its most noble—I had a working knowledge of what it was that actually changed the world on July 4, 1776. Not only did we memorize and declaim these documents, but we also studied their vocabulary and answered excellent discussion questions about their meaning.

To the best of my recollection, the documents we studied were, in chronological order:

Patrick Henry’s “Give me liberty or give me death” speech
The Declaration of Independence
The Preamble to the Constitution
The Bill of Rights
The Gettysburg Address
Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address

One of Roosevelt’s great speeches, perhaps his First Inaugural Address (“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”), might have been included, but with hindsight, I’d guess the principal was not a fan of FDR, whose memory was still vivid among both those who loved and those who hated him. As for John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address (“Ask not what your country can do for you”) and Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech, neither had yet been written, or they might have appeared on the list.

But the documents he chose are all remarkable words that expressed remarkable ideals, especially in the context of their times: the first four in a world that hadn’t seen a republic since ancient Rome took Julius Caesar as its emperor and the latter two in the midst of an indescribably bitter civil war. However far short the founding fathers (all white males and men of property) and those who followed them fell from the vision of a perfect America, they did have a dream.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

So let’s have parades and grill hot dogs and enjoy fireworks as we take a day to celebrate these great ideas. Let’s go pursue some happiness.

The Sociopaths Among Us

by Sandra Parshall
 
Crime fiction writers – like most people, I suspect – tend to think of sociopaths and psychopaths as criminals.

They’re all violent, or on the verge of becoming violent, right? This spectrum of mental disorders is rare, but most prison inmates, especially the repeat offenders, are sociopaths, and the worst of the lot are psychopaths. Right?

No. Wrong on all counts, according to mental health experts.
A number of books, notably The Sociopath Next Door (2006) by Dr. Martha Stout, have examined the prevalence of antisocial personality disorders in our society. The most intriguing, though, could be the latest (May 14), Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight by diagnosed sociopath M.E. Thomas (a pseudonym for the female author).

The book has received widespread attention in the press, is excerpted in the May/June issue of Psychology Today, and the author has spoken freely in interviews. She hasn’t revealed herself as the culprit in unsolved murders or other crimes. Her whole point is that, like most sociopaths, she functions well in the everyday world. She is a respected attorney and law professor. She teaches Sunday school for her Mormon congregation. She has friends she claims to love, and she says they love her in return. (Almost everyone she knows is, by her account, in awe of her.) But she can be breathtakingly cruel – leaving a baby opossum to drown in a swimming pool, abandoning a friend whose father is dying because the friend isn’t fun anymore – without the slightest twinge of guilt, an emotion that is foreign to her. Her blog, SociopathWorld.com, explores the inner workings and outward behavior of people like her. “We are legion and diverse,” she writes, and it feels like a threat.

Experts in the field estimate that one out of 25 persons is a sociopath. But only about 20 percent of prison inmates are sociopaths. Most are living ordinary lives. We (those who give ourselves the debatable label of “normal”) encounter them all the time, and they might make us miserable in myriad ways, but because they aren’t violent or engaging in criminal activity, we dismiss them as “difficult people” we have to avoid or work around.

How is a sociopath created? Thomas describes a chaotic childhood with a violent father, whom she loathed, and a weak, sometimes hysterical mother. But they didn’t necessarily turn a normal baby into a sociopath as she was growing up. By her own account, she had all the markers for the disorder quite early in life, including a lack of fear that led her to taunt her father rather than cowering. Her parents’ indifference to her welfare allowed her sociopathy to flourish in the form of relentless manipulation, bullying, lying, minor theft and vandalism, and contempt for authority.  She was a good student, not because she loved learning but because “it meant I could get away with things other students couldn’t.” She has never killed anyone but admits to fantasizing about it many times. She wonders whether she might have crossed that line if her home life had been even more abusive.

Although she spends a lot of pages praising her own extraordinary talents and achievements (grandiose thinking is a hallmark of sociopathy), she occasionally produces an insightful statement about something outside herself, such as this observation about society’s expectations of women: “When you grow up as a girl, it is like there are faint chalk lines traced approximately three inches around your entire body at all times, drawn by society and often religion and family and particularly other women, who somehow feel invested in how you behave, as if your actions reflect directly on all womanhood.”

While Thomas has a remarkably clear-eyed view of herself as a high-functioning, nonviolent sociopath, she feels no fellowship with all the “stupid, uninhibited, or dangerous sociopaths out there.” She tries to avoid them, and she advises the rest of us to do the same.

Accompanying the excerpt from Thomas’s book in Psychology Today is a checklist of traits that mental health professionals use to diagnose people with antisocial personality disorder. Although “failure to follow any life plan” and “incapacity for love” are listed, Thomas proves (if her account is truthful, and how are we to know?) that it’s possible for sociopaths to have successful careers and form loving relationships. Other traits are among those she recognizes in herself: untruthfulness, insincerity, lack of remorse and shame, superficial charm, unresponsiveness in general interpersonal relations.

We all know people like that – people who have hurt us and felt no guilt for it. In childhood, they’re the schoolyard bullies and the teachers who seem to hate kids. In adulthood, they may be our bosses or co-workers, our neighbors or casual acquaintances. In fiction, they are the characters we love to hate, even when they don’t turn out to be killers.

Do you remember a sociopath from your own childhood? Do you have one in your life now?

Flood into Art: Part 2

For those of you who missed my blog last week, parts of southern Alberta recently flooded. Calgary remains in a state of emergency.

The weather has turned hot, muggy, hatching bumper mosquito crops. They are only one of the bad bugs that Alberta Health Services is warning us about. Good bugs, the ones that enable the water treatment plants to work efficiently, were wiped out by the flood, but the waste treatment plant workers started new batches. They’re pleased to report that a splendid proliferation of good bugs are making our water safer every day.

River flows have returned to normal, but the river banks are eroded, undercut, and precarious. We have been warned in no uncertain terms to stay away. A man sitting on a bank a couple of days ago tumbled down inches from the river; the Fire Department rescued him.

8,000 to 10,000 people will be out of their homes for months or forever. 140 buildings—single family homes, apartment buildings, and businesses—are undergoing secondary assessments to see if they are damaged enough to require demolished. The people from those buildings include high-risk elderly people from three downtown apartments. Many of them have been bussed to Olds College an hour-and-a-half away, which offered their dormitories as temporary living space. Thank you, Olds College.

There is no way to say enough thanks to the volunteer YYC Flood Angels. (YYC is the code for the Calgary Airport, and it’s used on Twitter as well). Thousands of volunteers continue to show up every day at work parties, some in self-organized groups who are bussed into the most damaged neighborhoods from a transportation hub at one of the local universities, some with organized clean-ups like the 250 people who spent Sunday on Prince’s Island, doing incredible manual labor to remove tons of silt and mud from the island.

Parts of the Calgary Zoo remain without power, but structural engineers have okayed all of the habitats as being safe for animal return. In good zoo news, two giraffes that became ill from stress and refused to eat, have stabilized and are eating again.

In other good news, Sheldon the turtle and all the other school animals, were safely rescued from an elementary school in a flooded evacuation area. Repair crews working at City Hall have taken it upon themselves to feed the employees’ fish, water their plants, and removed all spoiled food from staff refrigerators so that people won’t return to rotten food odors.

The mayor had no idea there were so many pet fish in his building. He said there were certain questions he learned not to ask.

There was a misprint in information for people doing cleanup. It read, “Please read proper books.” It should have read, “Please wear proper boots.” The mayor says it’s important to read proper books, too, but maybe later.

Speaking of books, library checkouts have resumed, at 10 items per patron, “even for the mayor,” according to one librarian. The main library remains closed with two feet of water in its basement that can’t be pumped out until the groundwater table drops. The oldest library in Calgary, a beautiful 1912 Carnegie building, is also closed indefinitely because of flood damage. (Update July 2, the library in the Carnegie building opened this morning.)

Many people, me included, feel betwixt and between. The worst has happened; the worst is still to come. Those would be different kinds of worsts, of course. Today I wrote a scene where one of my characters was just fired. His wife asks, “How are you?” He says, “You know how when the dentist pulls a tooth, you’re fine until the anesthetic wears off. I’m waiting for the anesthetic to wear off.” So are a lot of people in southern Alberta.

The art project this week is a Between mobile. So if you are between yourself—between books, between ideas, between life changes—or know someone who is, here’s a mobile for encouragement.

Go here for a .pdf of the mobile line drawing. Copy it, decorate it, and write yourself or someone else encouraging messages on the back. Put it together with thread or fishing line and hang it some place that it can gently sway in the breeze.

Quote for the week

Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don’t give up.

~Anne Lamott, writer and journal keeper