Saturday, October 26, 2013
Covenant House offers booklet on its services for homeless children
Recently I received a “free” unsolicited booklet in the mail
from Covenant House, (link ) titled “Sometimes God Has a Kid’s Face”, by Sister Mary Rose McGeady.
The paperback runs 110 pages and does not carry an ISBN.
The fourteen chapters give the stories of various abandoned homeless
children, many of the in New York City. There was a variety of circumstances,
including having been reared in gangs, sold into sex slavery, or simply left at
shelters. One girl was a promising
writer. One boy, on the other hand, struggled
with image problems over obesity.
The booklet has an epilogue, and a variety of tips, aimed at
parents. They sound like common
sense.
But this booklet comes from a
charity taking care of OPC, that is, “other people’s children”. I wondered, do non-parents share a moral
responsibility for this situation? The
book, however, did not try to take a position on that.
Friday, October 18, 2013
Time's booklet "The Science of You"; ideas about character for people "in the twilight zone", as reflected in my own novel manuscripts
Time offers retail outlets another color, heavily
illustrated primer, “The Science of You: The Factors that Shape your Personality”, edited by Stephen Koepp and Neil
Fine.
The oversized album comprises several sections, called
“Nature”, “Nurture”, “Types”, “Disorders”, and a closing essay by Joel Stein,
“The Theory of Humor”.
The earlier essays would complement the book reviewed on
June 1, “I Am a Strange Loop”, as they try to get at what makes a person “me”,
and have a focus of consciousness that can experience (and take the
responsibility for) free will. It all starts with the introductory piece, “What
Shapes Us”, by Jeffrey Kluger.
The essays, while pondering “nature v. nurture”, don’t delve
into the biological aspects of sexual orientation. But they do maintain (as in a piece “Born to
Be Wild” by Alice Park (as if to suggest the David Lynch film “Wild at Heart”) that
genes account for personality traits only by acting together, and probably by
execution from chemical catalysts in what we call “epigenetics”. The longest piece in this section is “Make
Yourself at Home” by David Bjerklie. In
the book “Oddly Normal”, reviewed here Oct. 1, the author noticed the
intractable paradoxes of sexual orientation.
Sometimes it seems connected to physical developmental issues, but then
you run into a gay make capable of playing professional sports, and all the
stereotypes fail.
Jeffrey Kluger offers a piece, “The New Science of Siblings”,
with more analysis of birth order.
Having opposite sex siblings, especially older siblings, may well shape
personality. Facebook’s Mark
Zuckerberg’s unusual social techniques may have developed because he was
surrounded by three sisters, at least one of whom helps run the finances of
Facebook. Kluger writes, on p. 40, “The
family is a survival unit. Parents agree to care for the kids, the kids agree
to pass on the genes, and they all so what they can to make sure no one is
eaten by wolves.” The second clause is controversial. Maybe that explains why, as an only child, my
homosexuality was so controversial back in the early 1960’s when I was thrown
out of college for admitting it. In
fact, family responsibility, in practice, goes way beyond the requirement to
support and raise the children one sires.
One will wind up with the responsibility anyway. Parents expect older siblings to learn to
take care of younger brothers and sisters, and also expect kids to be prepared
to take care of parents when they age.
That sort of “power” is a perk of having a family within the societal social
structures (children within a legally recognized marriage). People do become responsible for persons who
come into being because of the sexual intercourse and fulfillment of others,
not just themselves.
Further into the book, there is an essay “The Myth of the
Alpha Dog” by Michael Q. Bullerdick, without a a tattooed image of Justin
Timberlake. Social carnivores vary in
social structures, by indeed in some groups (wolves, lions) only the most
endowed males pass on their genes, and the other obey to meet the needs of the
herd. But in humans, leaders are made as
well as born. Generally, larger animals
(like big cats) are not dependable “friends” because they have not been bred to
cooperate with man, but there is no reason that they couldn’t be.
Jeffrey Kluger has an essay “Disorders”, about personality
problems and mental illness. These split
into three areas, the “dramatic”, the “anxious”, and the “odd”. The dramatic includes “borderline”,
“narcissistic” and paranoid schizophrenic, and seems to represent the least
intact people, including those responsible for rampages and perhaps
terrorism. The “anxious” have an “intact
core” but comprise both OCD and OCPD, the distinction between which Kluger
doesn’t clarity. The “odd” includes
“schizoid”, and “schizotypal”, the lone wolves who might become dangerous if
they lose their intactness.
At NIH, I was labeled both as OCD and “schizoid
personality”. When I sat down with
filmmaker Gode Davis (“American Lynching”) for dinner in Providence, RI on New
Year’s Night of 2003, he immediately diagnosed me as having Asperger’s, which
he said he had himself to a mild degree.
You know, the lack of spontaneous body language.
The schizoid personality seems emotionally aloof and
isolated, and disinterred in the social bonds people typically take for granted. It’s hard to separate this from mild autism
or Asperger’s. The OCD can come from the
person’s being concerned about his own performance and a sense that others may
barge in and force him into various forms of social obligation that seem to be
required by the social good. Parents try
to impose that on siblings. The schizoid
sees this as a moral demand from others, not intrinsically necessary for the
self. I think it is possible to relate
all this to the polarity axes in the writings of Paul Rosenfels (April 12,
2006) – masculinity v. femininity, subjectivity v. objectivity, balanced v.
unbalanced. The personalities that
society regards as disordered may most often be unbalanced, but is that because
of society’s need for some conformity?
Kluger follows with an ample piece about self-absorption
(“But Enough About You”), with a picture of a trim, handsome young man. On p. 82, he offers a sidebar on humility, “A
Modest Advantage”. All of this fits into the philosophy of Rick Warren’s “A
Purpose-Driven Life”. Kluger writes
“Evolution suggests that submitting one’s needs is a trait likely to preserved
only in species for which cooperation is necessary for survival.”
David Bjerklie asks if people can change in “Amending Your
Constitution” (is that like being “born again”?) Then Sherry Turkle looks at the impact of
social media and whether it inhabits real world socialization in “Once Upon a
Screen”.
I can recall a Sunday night youth program at the First Baptist Church in the City of Washington DC, in the early spring of 1959, when I was in tenth grade, when a precious teen, a year older, from Florida, gave a talk based on the anagram "YOU".
This may be a convenient place to mention something that
happens in many of my unpublished novel manuscripts, going back to the early
1980s. It’s true that in “The Proles”
(1969) the “me” character starts his purification in Army Basic. But in several documents written in the
1980s, leading up to “Tribunal and Rapture” (1988), the “Me” character gets
sent to a “re-education” Academy in some rural location (whether West Virginia
or west Texas) after losing his job in a minor economic setback. He meets his “ideal man” there, but at the
climax of the novel, when he leaves, the whole world blows up. But what’s interesting is that I regard “someone
like me” not as “disabled” (at least mildly, according to modern values) but as
morally compromised, because “I” am in that gray twilight zone where I can
understand the harm to sustainability of the “common good” if the example I set
if followed by others, which it well might be.
In the novel that I want to present for eventual publication
– and I will get back to it when I get “DADT III” submitted (Oct. 1, 2011 here) – and that book is “Angel’s
Brother”, I have a layering of this idea.
The novel is told from the viewpoint of a male couple, a CIA agent
(married, with a front of being a high school history teacher) and college student,
who develop a relationship. There is a character “Bill” who has an embedded
novel manuscript called “Rain on the Snow”.
That embedded story has an “Academy” which happens to exist in the world
of “Angel’s Brother”. In one subplot,
the college student (“Sal”), who works at the Academy as a language instructor,
approaches Bill, also a student there, and intervenes, giving Bill “what he
wants” so that Bill doesn’t go over the edge and ruin everything. The world approaches a purification (in the
form of a mysterious pandemic) anyway.
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
Two books on self-publishing
In anticipation of a formal release of my third “Do Ask, Do
Tell” book, I picked up two recent short books on self-publishing.
The larger book is “The Fine Print of Self-Publishing:
Everything You Need to Know About the Costs, Contracts and Process of
Self-Publishing”, Fourth Edition, by Mark Levine, published by Bascom Hill, in
Minneapolis, 2011, with ISBN 978-1-935098-55-3, 274 pages, paper.
The Amazon link is here.
The book classifies various self-publishing companies as to
their reputations with authors. I won’t
go into repeating these here, but I can make some general observations.
Self-publishing support companies have a variety of business
models. Some of them offer an enormous
range of services, charge a lot, and tend to pay low royalties. Authors have been particularly concerned that
they can’t claim the publisher galleys to take to other publishers, at least
without paying a lot more. However, some
authors may need the extensive services and may have a low sales expectation,
and be publishing more as a “reference” for cultural or political impact on debate of
some issue. But some try to push sales
promotion packages onto authors.
Other publishers charge less, pay higher royalties, and
allow publishers ownership of galleys. But these publishing companies are more
selective. They do not accept titles
that they do not expect to sell well, because these companies derive more of
their profit from actually selling book copies than from just supporting
authors. They are more like traditional
publishers, and the right word might be “cooperative publishing” than
self-publishing. This model may work
better for fiction than political or technical writing, and may suit only authors with established public relations contacts in other fields. Examples of these companies include BookLocker and BookPros. As of the time of publication of this book, BookLocker considered five copies sold a month the minimum acceptable transaction volume for an author. It's hard to see, at least from any reasonable math, how this setup would support a business model really based on selling books. It would seem to appeal only to authors who could get published (maybe even with an advance) from traditional publishers, but really are motivated by short-term "profit". It sounds improbable for most writers, even relatively established authors. The question brings up the idea of being hired as a ghostwriter or to assist with someone else's work or life narrative.
I would seem that whether a publishing service is "selective" or "non-selective" would have a big impact on whether the service would have a good rating with authors, a point that the book glosses over -- but that cuts both ways.
I would seem that whether a publishing service is "selective" or "non-selective" would have a big impact on whether the service would have a good rating with authors, a point that the book glosses over -- but that cuts both ways.
A few of them are faith-oriented, and only accept content
agreeable to their religious beliefs. These
companies might appeal to authors who benefit from a publisher brand name
associated with evangelical or other faith.
The early part of the book explains all the general
principles of self-publishing, and gives some advice on what kinds of books do
sell and others do not.
The book explains the publishing contracts in detail. One controversial issue is the
indemnification clause, which gives the publisher the right to sue the author
for legal expenses should there be a tort claim (like libel) against the
publisher. These are quite standard in
the industry, and shocking to authors.
In practice, they are rarely invoked-- although I can imagine that an unscrupulous plaintiff (and attorneys) could file a frivolous SLAPP suit against a self-publishing support company on the "deep pockets" theory, forcing the author to defend the company (and this is a good reason we need a federal anti-SLAPP law). I didn’t see any mention of media perils insurance,
but I wonder if that could become an issue in the future (although it has never
gotten far off the ground in the “amateur” world, as discussed in my main blog
in the fall of 2008). Most publishers
allow the author to keep ownership of the work and move to other publishers,
but they don’t own the actual galleys.
Most don’t appear to care if the author places content on the web, but
some could see that as potentially driving down sales.
The smaller book is “Self-Publishing
Books 101: Helping You Get Published and Noticed”, by Shelley Hitz, with
imprint by the same name, 2012, ISBN 978-1475104592, 48 pages, paper. This booklet covers the mechanics and basics
(like getting an ISBN). It pays
particular attention to the self-help process provided by one particular
company, Create Space. The website for
the book is here.
There are folks who see self-publishing as
controversial. I don’t know if it’s true
now, but Author’s Guild used to accept for members only those authors would
could get advances from publishers and actually make a living from writing.
Ponder why that would be.
Tuesday, October 01, 2013
John Schwartz: "Oddly Normal": a memoir by a father about raising a gay son
Title: “Oddly Normal: One Family’s Struggle to Help Their
Teenage Son Come to Terms with this Sexuality”
Publication: Gotham, ISBN 978-1-59240-728-8, 300 pages,
paper
Amazon link Available in many formats, including
Kindle.
First, a note on contents.
The book includes an illustrated story by the son, Joseph, titled “Leo”
The Oddly Normal Boy”, and a short essay by Joseph, “July 4th, or “A
Treatise on the Courtship of the Awkward”, as well as a new Afterword by the
author (the father).
The book is an account by the author of his third child’s
coming to terms, as he grew up, not only with his sexual orientation, but also
with being “different” in some ways that other people, especially in school
systems, find challenging.
This other difference is hard to pin down. It sounds related to milder forms of autism
like Asperger’s syndrome, but that isn’t exactly correct. It seems to relate to a physiological issue
in the way the central nervous system processes sensory information and
attaches significance to sensory impressions, and the way these in turn connect
to motor skills, like those necessary in playing sports or manual labor. I experienced the same issues as I was
growing up, as I have explained often in these blogs and in my own three books
(check Aug. 20 and June 27, and May 30, 2013
on this blog, for starters). From a
purely medical point of view, there has never been a clear explanation. I am seventy years old now, and had to deal
with these issues at a time when they were viewed through a moral lens, like
that of mooching or getting out of physical challenges that other men have to
face. The world looked at sexuality this
way when I grew up because in part there was a belief, maybe partly founded in
religion but not entirely, that for a society to survive, men had to protect
women and children according to gender roles. Having grown up in the 1950’s and early 60’s,
I did not have the benefit of a social climate willing to tolerate open mention
of homosexuality.
The father notes that in his experience many gay men grew up
perceived as gender non-conforming, and sometimes exhibiting “The Sissy Boy
Syndrome”, actually the title of a controversial 1987 book by Richard Green
(Yale University Press”. The subtitle of
that book was “The Development of Homosexuality”. I certainly did fit that stereotype. But in general the stereotype often does not
apply. A few gay men have played
professional sports, even football. I
have known a few who might have played had there not been quasi-military
aversion to their presence in team sports – let’s say, one in a particular a
pitcher would not want to hang a changeup to. In fact, the author notes that his son appeared to develop physically a little earlier than average. There is practically no correlation at all between sexual orientation and aspects of physical appearance or secondary characteristics.
Schawrtz does discuss immutability, although not to the point of explaining "epigenetics", which would give a biological explanation of why a gay man could indeed win an MLB batting title. The question that remains is, if it were a "private choice" rather than innate, why does society make it other people's business? I've never thought that the immutability argument was enough/
Schawrtz does discuss immutability, although not to the point of explaining "epigenetics", which would give a biological explanation of why a gay man could indeed win an MLB batting title. The question that remains is, if it were a "private choice" rather than innate, why does society make it other people's business? I've never thought that the immutability argument was enough/
The parents were quite supportive of their son’s exploring
his own individuality, and they found the school systems, in northern New
Jersey, less so, not out of ill will, but simply the lack of program and
coherent response to students with hard-to-assess special needs.
Nevertheless, the boy, in his tween years, made a suicide
attempt, and wound up in psychiatric care.
This is understandably a difficult episode for a parent to write about
publicly. The son had a good experience with a special summer camp and high
school was much better than middle school (as it was for me, too).
The author does give some synoptic history of “gay rights”,
with a discussion of the history of sodomy laws, gays in the military, and especially
same-sex marriage. He also discusses
the difficulty school systems have with bullying, and the fact that “curriculum
neutrality” policies, like one tried in a Minnesota school district, don’t work
in practice.
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