New Options!

[semiotic_pirate]

Just added a new friend to my feed (we found each other via Twitter - Hi ann_mcn!) and noticed that LJ has a bunch of neat new options. Like "contact me thru X if "this LJ User" does Y" and I was all o_0 because that's AMAZING.

Because of this, and my laziness in not wanting to learn all the ins and outs over on WordPress, I'm going to go grab the stuff I wrote there and put it over here. Basically about 7-8 posts of me writing Flash Fiction based off of a slew of Word of the Day sites. My own personal Micro Story Challenge. Loved all of it. It exhausted me and made me sad because I was eventually overwhelmed by workplace work and bits of drama, and I REALLY ENJOYED the writing.

That same feeling is what pulled back the reins on my enthusiasm to continue submitting my poetry out there, regardless of all the positive feedback I was getting in my "we need to reject you for now, because your stuff doesn't fit the theme we're going for this time around, even though I really liked your stuff" rejection emails.

I think I'm in a mild doldrums state this hour because I was up at 4:30 this morning and in by 6:30 to work nine hours today, in order to finish up the rest of a bunch of quarter-end reports that I worked 11 hours on yesterday. Plus, I must mention the fact that - due to some pesky uterine fibroids - I was suffering from extremely painful cramps yesterday and moderately painful cramps today. What fun!

Deep breaths scallywags, today's tale has been told. And to think, I almost used "reigns." *horrified look*

Comments

[ann-mcn.livejournal.com]

~waves~ It's been years since I posted at all. I comment on some old friends' posts, but mostly lurk.

Been thinking about your last two posts and about writing. One big problem in US society is how ignorant so many people are about people who have less or who are thought to have less. Race and immigration status are also factors, but I think a lot is discrimination against people who are poor. It's messy and muddled.

During the Depression, there were writers and film makers who told stories (Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men, for example), and in the 1800's Charles Dickens and Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Les Miserables. Now, we have lots of reporting and blogging, but they mostly speak and disappear in the next Internet wave. We need somehow to get truthful stories that excite and teach and stick with people. Stuff that starts conversations, like Breaking Bad did.

Anyway, your posts reminded me of that.

Oh my stars and garters.

[semiotic-pirate.livejournal.com]

Every book I've read about recent poverty have either been sociological/historical texts or books written by journalist types, where they are telling a group of someones' stories for them, through interviews or via "I went undercover in this group and this is what I learned." The problem with the latter is that it only sees a slice of those lives and cannot encompass all the elements/variables in the equation. It's a type of problem that would require millions of inputs and a very well written regression analysis program - which I learned the basics of doing in econometrics class and I am so not worthy of doing that.

The prior example are sometimes very well written, but the average person isn't going to come across them in the ordinary course of their lives, unless they get introduced to it via a very specifically focused history professor. My favorite of the bunch is The Other America (http://www.amazon.com/Other-America-Poverty-United-States-ebook/dp/B007BP3VLW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1420681781&sr=8-1&keywords=the+other+america). I first was introduced to it in a summer session American History course and I identified with it deeply. It has a great description of not only the structural underpinnings of poverty in the U.S. but also points to why some people pull themselves out of it and how, the more generations are caught up in it the harder it is for an individual to get out without a great deal of support nets, education, and outreach. My initial reaction upon reaching the last page was to set the book carefully down and think about how it BLEW MY MIND.

Where was I? Oh yes. People's personal stories about poverty and hardship. The stories, when they are shown as episodes of someone's life instead of an overall arc with redemption and triumph at the end (if it even occurs) can be a real downer and I don't know if there's a "market" for it. Maybe someone needs to write poverty's Silent Spring. But the biggest issue for the prospective writer of said book would be that there would have to be a groundswell, a movement inspired by it, and change engendered by it, just like with Silent Spring. And there is no guarantees of that.

Have I written a blog post's worth of thought in my reply to you? Why yes, I believe I have! *grins*

Re: Oh my stars and garters.

[ann-mcn.livejournal.com]

Yeah, no guarantee of a movement and change, but damn. I haven't been at the level of poverty you were in, but I have teetered on the edge, both as a child and as an adult, and it gives a completely different point of view. Even there, though, I can look back and see a boatload of white privilege that helped me. People I follow on Twitter have sharpened my awareness of that.

Veering somewhat, I'll tell you a book that blew my mind. In a university library, I ran across a collection of letters from the colonists in what became Georgia -- their letters back to London. Fabulous stuff. No connecting material, just the plain unornamented letters. Did you know that when Georgia was founded, slavery was forbidden? Oglethorpe disapproved of it, so they used Irish indentured servants, and treated them like dirt, but the indentured servants plotted together, and many escaped into the coastal wilderness and got away. So now there are letters saying, "All the other colonies have slaves, and we can't make a success without them."

And then it hit me -- they wanted black slaves ONLY so they couldn't run away easily. They couldn't speak English and they were visibly different. Yeah, they looked down on them, but they looked down on the Irish just as much.

Oh, and all the letters saying that making money was impossible? There were others from a young man from trade or farming who had one servant/employee who he worked alongside, and he wrote his mother that he was making tons of money, but you had to be willing to work. He didn't want slaves.

I can see so many of those attitudes now. Even the young man, although he was admirable, I can see his descendants saying that all it took was willingness to work, and not understanding that he had said that against the rich people. Not the poor.

I've rambled, and need to go to bed.

Re: Oh my stars and garters.

[semiotic-pirate.livejournal.com]

I've been hearing more and more about all the Irish that were pretty much sold into "indentured servitude" - basically serfs/slaves that were abused just as badly as any other slave population - all over the UK, the multitude of Colonies, Australia, the Americas, the Caribbean islands. They were a much abused people for quite a while. You see all the serving class in stories with Irish brogue accents because they were the long-time go to for the underclass, downtrodden, masses that were ground up in the gears of industry and mercantilism.

MY PEOPLES! Well... I'm, at most, a quarter Irish (I think) with a mix of Scots, English, French, Dutch, and likely a pinch of Viking thrown in for good measure making up the balance.

I had this big back and forth discussion on Twitter not that long ago when I asked if there was some sort of historical compendium of slavery (in its various forms, whether called serf, indentured servant, or slave, and various hierarchies) across the ages - from earliest civilizations onward (not just concentrated on Hellenistic / Western European cultures, either.) One that discussed the cultural/societal/economic underpinnings and justifications for its use/existence/proliferation/continuation. NO SUCH THING EXISTS, AND IT SHOULD.

The best you'll find are mostly less than thorough analyses and historical overviews of specific time periods tied to only small portions of what has always been a global, endemic trade of flesh and misery for profit.

There's a fantastic song that I've got on one of my regular playlists that always makes me think of this historical divide between rulers/owners and subjects/workers/slaves. It's called "Ceylon / A British Subject" from the 2013 musical production of The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

And speaking of hierarchies reminds me of the ones that are talked about the both real and perceived layers of privilege in feminism, racial , and ethnic driven politics and reform. How outsiders in power can so easily reach in and twist, turning the groups and factions that should be standing together against both themselves and each other.

Re: Oh my stars and garters.

[ann-mcn.livejournal.com]

A very simplistic answer is that nearly all societies have had a despised lower class. Says everything and nothing. Slavery in the Americas, consisting of taking people from one continent and selling them into a lifetime of no-personhood and being owned by someone that was inherited eternally is different from the the Indian caste system which de-humanized people and was inherited -but weren't owned. Medieval serfs.

Indentured servants (according to my magpie learning) reminds me of Biblical slavery -- you could choose to enter into it, but it had a definite ending date. Oh, gosh -- just checked Wikipedia:
" About half of the white immigrants to the American colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries were indentured. During the late 17th and early 18th centuries poor children from England and France were kidnapped and sold into indentured labor in the Caribbean for a minimum of five years, but most times their contracts were bought and sold repeatedly and some laborers never attained their freedom.[1]"

What we have to deal with in the USA, is the history of slavery based on easily identifiable skin color, and the excuses made to justify it. Yes, there are other very bad things that have happened all over the world, all through history, but this is our bad thing that we have to face up to.

And yeah, your last paragraph. You can see that manipulation in the media. Nasty.