I always love Washington State, but today I was reminded of it even more than usual. It's Memorial Day weekend, and I'm not going anywhere because I'm working Monday (and don't have a car). However, I was excited to have today off, and then have today be a sunny day in the mid 70s. I took the bus down to Point Defiance, where I rode my bike all over the park. I had a picnic lunch in the Rhododendron Garden (this was the best week of the year to be there, as far as I could tell [which I was excited about, because in the past I've always gone either too early or too late, and therefore have missed most of the flowers]), and then took off to go around the park. This was a bit challenging at first, trying to make my backpack (which was far too full because I hadn't had time to empty it [it was empty the backpack or catch the bus... The bus won]) fit on my brand new bike rack and STAY. Fortunately a nice biker stopped and helped me out with this. I will admit that my housemate's intriguing ideas about putting AIR in my bike tires was a good idea. I think I'll keep trying that!

So it was such a beautiful day, with so many different shades of green, and a glorious wild profusion of plants everywhere. I love Europe, and they have nice mountains and forests there, but they're so... kempt. One can tell that people have been living there so long that they've tamed everything. Washington forests, on the other hand, are wild. I kept drinking things in with my eyes, not wanting to stop (which I think I will regret tomorrow!), and being so glad to be home again. I even stopped and watched the Puget Sound for awhile, and waded for a bit (although not long; the water still seems to be the same 49 degrees it is in the Touch Tanks at the zoo). I also rode the Five Mile Drive (a very nice ride), and did lots of (fairly gentle) hills; the down ones were too short. All in all, a blissful day. I'm so glad to live here again; I missed my home.

As some of you may know, I've been doing some animal-related research the last few days to help one of my friends with a project; she wants to teach our Romanian orphans (I say "our" because they're the same kids I worked with while I was over there) about animals, and I agreed to give her some background info. (This is, for those of you who are curious, the reason I was searching for moose distribution....) Many of the animals on her list are domesticated animals.

Now, to be completely up-front about the whole thing, part of my problem is that my main resource (a HUGE book called "The Encyclopedia of MAMMALS"*) does not like to discuss  domesticated mammals for whatever reason**. Perhaps some of the same problems would be found with other animals on my list, only I covered them all through the book.

Caveat aside, I was annoyed and disgruntled to find what the internet says about our attitude towards domesticated animals. First of all, I could find hardly anything in the range of what I was looking for. To give an example, I was trying to find the following information about each animal's reproduction: age of sexual maturity, gestation/incubation period, number of offspring, time of year for mating season/birth, time young nurse, time young stay with mom/parents, and perhaps size at birth. With domesticated animals, it was nearly impossible to find this. With cattle, for example, I could either find extremely in-depth information ("What effect does sunflower oil have on the calf's birth weight?") or extremely basic ("A baby cow is called a calf. The end."). Where is the middle ground? Surely there are people interested in learning about more of the basics of animals than this! Who want to learn more than 2-3 quick facts, while not wanting to read up on exotic research.

However, what annoyed me even more than this was what was displayed. Nearly all the sites that I came across looked at domesticated animals purely from a point of view of how we can use them. Information about meat, eggs, milk, wool... this was readily available. Want to know how best to cram your animals into a small space and raise lots of them at one time? No problem; the internet's your friend. Want to talk wistfully or scornfully of days when animals were treated decently by their keepers before being slaughtered (while still pointing out that there is no way possible of going back and treating them that way again)? Still, no problem. Want to learn about the animals themselves, their lifestyles (are they social? living in small family groups? life span? favorite food?), and what makes them unique creatures? Who cares?

I'm not trying to argue against eating meat or getting things like milk, eggs, and wool. They are an important part of our lives, and we can't deny that. Nor would I argue that animals who have spent thousands of years learning to live with humans should be turned back out into the wild. I just want us to have more respect for the creatures who feed, clothe, and carry us around the world. Let's find out what they're actually like, so that the next time I have to do this sort of research I don't have to look up the red jungle fowl*** to find out the size of a live chicken, not just their weight after having been chopped into bits. Perhaps if we were more aware of where these resources come from, we could treat the animals with more humanity.



* The front cover has the word "mammals" in all caps; I'm sure it's a font choice, but it does sort of fit the very "mammal-ish to the exclusion of all others" feel.

** This is the only serious drawback to this book I have come across, other than the fact that it would be awful to drop it on your toes. I mean, we're talking SERIOUSLY  heavy.

*** The wild ancestor of the domestic chicken, and still living in India and SE Asia. Who knew?

This is utterly random, but I stumbled across this earlier when I was researching moose distribution worldwide. I am speechless.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mccreath/1810776262/

This is not the best time to be doing this. I should be researching the life cycle of rabbits and mice right now or something (working on an animal related project at the moment, thank you very much). My brain doesn't want to continue cooperating, however, and so I will choose to write about villains in literature.

This came about largely because of a book that I am reading right now. I'd rather not give any identifying details because I don't want to trash an author or his/her works to the general public, especially when I'm enjoying many aspects of the book. I was annoyed, however, at the way this particular author deals with villains. In particular, I am annoyed with one specific villain.

Why am I so against this villain? It's hard to put in to words exactly. Much of it is that I simply dislike her. That may seem self-evident; one is supposed to have negative feelings for the bad characters in a book. Yet I don't dislike her in the nice clean, "Oh, this is an awful person!" sort of way. Honestly, I find her annoying. She's evil, and does horrible things to the people around her while justifying it to herself in all sorts of ways. Somehow (not sure how, since she's so horribly incompetent [at least if someone is going to be a villain, they should adhere to a certain level of competence]) she has managed to gain great power (come to think of it, a lot of that is due to her looks, which is probably a portion of my annoyance; it gets BORING reading about her obsessing about her looks so much, and wondering why would happen if she were ugly, and carefully dressing and posing in order to get the maximum effect on people, etc.). I ought to be worried about what she's going to do to the protagonists (although there was only one of the protagonists that I liked unreservedly [the others were fine, but they annoyed me sometimes too], and the author just REPLACED that character. At the moment I'm trying to decide whether my level of disgust is great enough to stop me from finishing. I tried to skim ahead to see if the character gets unreplaced without finding out the ending, but didn't succeed). Yet I can't manage to have any belief in her ultimate ability to do anything awful. For that matter, much of her evil is so petty that I get tired of it. I feel this sense of exasperation towards her, an, "Oh, get on with it," and wanting her to disappear not so that the world will be rid of a great evil, or so that the protagonists will succeed in their quest, but because I no longer want to have to deal with her anymore. I don't know if that difference makes sense -- I've been trying to analyze it for a while now as I go through these books -- but my opinion is strong.

All of this made me think about the two types of villains one comes across in literature. From what I've been able to piece together, there seem to be two major categories.

One is the totally evil dark lord that is found so frequently in sci-fi/fantasy (although not, I think, exclusively). The first example would be Satan*. Utterly evil, turned over to the darkness (and bringing it into the world), he is no longer described as capable (or ever even desiring) redemption or change. His very raison d'etre is to work evil, oppression, and domination.

Following in his ignoble footsteps are a plethora of evil characters from various books. Some examples that come to mind are Melkor/Morgoth and Sauron from Tolkien's Middle-earth, the White and Green Witches from Lewis's Narnia, Lord Voldemort from Harry Potter, or some of the evil characters of Robin McKinley and Garth Nix. One does not, as the hero(ine), sympathize with them or try to change them. One merely tries to stop them.

Readers may notice similar characteristics among these villains. For one thing, many of them are not (or are no longer) human. Melkor/Morgoth was a Vala, one of the race of angelic beings Tolkien put into his world. Sauron was a Maia, a lesser angelic being. Lewis's White Witch was otherworldly, and we never learn the origins of the Green Witch. Nix's Orannis is a creature of free magic, uninterested in the world of living beings. Those that have been human (Lord Voldemort, Robin McKinley's Agsded, or Garth Nix's Kerrigor) have changed through magic and a twisted life of depravity and seem to have lost an essential portion of their humanity. Protagonists must seek out their weaknesses to defeat them, but they (and we) are not tempted to relate to their plight.

Other stories have different sorts of villains, who fall more into the category of antagonist.** Judas is one example of this.*** His actions are terrible, and have consequences both horrifying (both for Jesus and for him) and wonderful than he could possibly have imagined. Yet he is a normal person that we can feel pity and sympathy for even if we also experience anger, disgust, or revulsion. Another example is Shakespeare's Shylock. His murderous desire is to be condemned, but at the same time his speech about the similarities of Jews and Christians shows powerfully what has brought him to this point. Readers must ask themselves if they would avoid his feelings and actions if they were in his shoes. Javert from Victor Hugo's Les Miserables is my last example.# His obsession and lack of flexibility lead both him and Jean Valjean to lifelong suffering; yet we can understand him.

This category is more likely to be composed of regular human beings that head down the wrong path. They provide a necessary plot device, but they do so much more. In their failings and human weakness, they show us the fallen side of humanity. We watch them, perhaps sickened or angry but still knowing that, "But for the grace of God, there go I."

Each type of villain is necessary. Those who are mostly or wholly evil show us that evil must be resisted, it must be stopped whatever the cost to us. Frodo, Aslan, Harry Potter, Aerin, Sabriel, all suffer greatly to save others because they know that someone must make sacrifices to protect the world from evil. Those who are weak and fallen show us what we could possibly become, and help us have more compassion for those encountered in the real world who have similar traits. Now we have seen inside the mind of someone like them, and we understand how it could happen that one would act in such and such a way. Each category calls out a certain kind of reaction in us for a certain, specific reason.

It is my belief that this is messed with at a book's peril. Authors do not need to have a villain; plenty of wonderful stories have been written without one. Yet if one is introduced, the author has a certain responsibility to use that villain wisely. The world of literature leaves much more openness for variety than what I have suggested here; throwing this out the window entirely is another matter.




*Note: I am a Christian and do not believe that Satan is a mythical being, except perhaps as Tolkien defined Christianity as myth (because on a grand, mythological scale) that is also true (as opposed to the view that all myth is by nature false). I mention Satan here because especially for many authors who are heavily influenced by Christianity (Tolkien, Lewis, etc.) he is one of the main inspiriations for their villains.

**Merriam-Webster dictionary online defines "villain" as someone who is "a deliberate scoundrel or criminal", as opposed to an antagonist, "one who contends with or opposes another". The first has more of the flavor of someone who is deliberately bad or evil, while the second is someone against the main character but not necessarily bad in and of him/herself.

***See first note for my opinions on biblical characters; I use Judas here because he is well-known.

#I realize that all of the examples in my first category [besides Satan] are fantasy, as opposed to NONE in the second. This is not a necessary division (although I do think that the absolute evil characters are more likely in fantasy than non-fantasy); it's just what I happened to think of when making my list.

For a long time, Sherryl Jordan has been an author that I've felt is underappreciated (at least in the US; I have no idea how readers in her native New Zealand respond). I first became acquainted with her writing through a contest years ago in which I won a copy of "Winter of Fire". I greatly enjoyed it, but hadn't quite figured out yet the joys of reading multiple books by the same author (unless they happened to be a series), and so it took me awhile to come up with the idea of hunting her books down. My personal favorites are "Winter of Fire" and "The Raging Quiet", although I have recently enjoyed "Time of the Eagle" as well. Having thought about how sad it is that more people haven't heard about her, I decided to do my small part in making her known.

One of the things I love most about her is her protagonists. Her heroines in particular are very headstrong, stubborn, determined young women who actively choose their future. While sometimes this gets frustrating -- I have had moments of wanting to shake most of them and say, "You CAN back down a little more, you know!" for the most part I enjoy them. They often start from a position of relative powerlessness, but still do their best with what they have and often manage to make a significant difference in their worlds.

The books also explore different topics that I find interesting. For example, as someone who has studied sign language and Deaf culture, I appreciated the interaction between Marnie and Raven in "The Raging Quiet". While it's hard to believe that NO ONE figured out that he was DEAF before she came along (it seems that his parents, or caretakers when he was younger [I don't remember if he was orphaned or not, but his family isn't around in this book] would have noticed something), I enjoyed their ways of creating language together and learning to talk with their hands. The frustrations they experienced were similar to those I've heard of with others teaching deaf adults language for the first time, and their friendship was fun to watch. "Time of the Eagle" had something that I've often missed in books. I've noticed that a large number of books about people with special powers (healing, magic, etc.) tend to fall into one of two categories: main characters who have already been trained before the story begins, or main characters who are thrown into a situation knowing virtually nothing of how to use their abilities, and are forced to learn it as they go along. I've often wished for more writing about the training the characters undergo. Thus I was thankful to have a number of chapters that went over this in what I felt was a good amount of detail: not so much that I got bogged down, but enough that I felt I genuinely understood what the protagonist was learning.

I can only think of one significant thing that I feel takes away from the excellence of Jordan's stories. She isn't afraid to tackle hard issues, such as slavery, hatred, misunderstanding, and abuse. I applaud this. However, in many of her stories the protagonists begin with virtually no power in their society (as mentioned earlier): Elsha from "Winter of Fire" is a slave, Marnie from "The Raging Quiet" is an outsider in her unfriendly village and suspected of witchcraft, Jude from "The Hunting of the Last Dragon" is a peasant who from near the beginning of the story is without home or family, Avala from "Time of the Eagle" has grown up in a small tribe that is being hunted to extinction by the Empire that has stolen their lands and killed most of them already. Each of them have great personal strength in one way or another, it is true. Yet it still feels unbelievable to have all of the stories end with what seems like a utopian resolution. SPOILER ALERT!! Elsha has managed to almost singlehandedly do away with slavery in her country and is on her way to drastic climate change (for the better).  Marnie and Raven leave their unfriendly village and are headed for somewhere else that we are informed is going to be much better. Avala has managed to unite everyone in her land, including her small tribe, two neighboring enemy tribes, AND the residents of the Empire. Now, she does this in a way that seems believable. I do find it hard to believe, however, that after the end of the story, everyone is going to continue getting along. She focuses on forgiveness and caring about those outside of your people group. I agree: forgiveness is the answer. I'm just not sure that so many people who have grown up considering each other enemies are going to overcome it all so quickly. I WANT it to work that way, I'm just not sure it does. And that's sort of my feeling with the others as well.

Barring this, however, I have loved reading her books. For those of you who love fantasy, I would encourage you to give her a try.

This is a much heavier topic than my last few postings have been. However, I read the cover article from the March 3, 2008 edition of Newsweek (“What Addicts Need”)*, and longed for someone to discuss it with. None of my friends presented themselves (the one friend I have who would probably rather enjoy this conversation is currently in the sleep-deprived haze of having a newborn), and so... lucky blog readers can enjoy it instead!

The basic premise of the article is that scientists are trying to develop a vaccine against substance addictions such as alcoholism, smoking, and other drugs. Besides this, they are also trying to figure out ways to treat those who are dealing with addictions through medical means; some of the ideas listed were medicines that would make the user's drug of choice no longer have the same effect as it normally did (i.e., they would no longer get drunk off the alcohol, no longer get high from the cocaine, etc.).

Some of the ideas sound good. For example, we know that alcoholism and other addictions often have a genetic link; for those people who are predisposed to this sort of addiction, a vaccine might save them a whole lot of pain and anguish further down the road. For a number of drugs, quitting cold turkey can cause some pretty severe reactions; lessening those would make that period a whole lot easier to survive.

One thing troubled me, however. The author seemed to be in favor of using this method of drugs and vaccines to cure addictions, to the exclusion of other programs like AA and its child organizations. While she never stated this in quite those words, her attitude towards AA tended to be condescending; it used to be the “only legitimate option”, but now its outdated theories are holding addicts back. Instead, “[a]ddicts, like the rest of the public, need to recognize the fact that we are entering a new era in addiction treatment.” Talking about a recovering addict, the author says, “Looked at that way, the 'social' and 'spiritual' aspects of her problem seem insignificant compared with the contribution of biology. If you weigh advances in neuroscience over the last few decades against social and spiritual progress, it's clear which field is more likely to produce the next breakthrough in treatments.”

Now, I'm not against new breakthroughs. I've watched people struggle with the horrors of addiction, seen their lives destroyed, and I'm in favor of helping them move on. Yet I think that ignoring those “social and spiritual aspects” in favor of a purely biological approach using neuroscience is going to lead ultimately to failure.

Someone in my family who is a member of AA told me about the AA term “dry drunk”. For those of you unfamiliar with this term, it refers to someone who has given up drinking but not changed anything else in their lives. While this is an improvement – not consuming alcohol is a huge step for an alcoholic – the rest of their lives continue to have problems because they aren't dealing with the underlying issues that caused them to become alcoholics in the first place. Many of them don't manage to stick to it. Others may stay away from alcohol, but find other addictions. Either way, their life is still to some extent being controlled by whatever caused them to self-medicate with alcohol in the first place.

This, in my opinion, is exactly why programs like AA are crucial. Now, I won't say that AA is perfect. It and its members have made many mistakes in the past (as many of them would agree), and have sometimes gone down the wrong path, to the detriment of those seeking help. However, their focus on changing one's life is essential for dealing with most cases of addiction.

Taking medication for the disease of addiction is not the issue, at least not for me. Assuming that medication is the only thing necessary to treat the disease of addiction is the issue. In general, people have a reason for turning to chemical substances to deal with life. Unless they face the cause, they will continue self-medicating. Perhaps they will turn to other addictions that are less obvious. While addictions to things such as exercise, role-playing games, or horse-racing, to pick a few random examples, do not have some of the devastating effects of chemical dependence, they still control the lives of those who use them for self-medication. AA (and NA, etc.) is not the only way to deal with this, but it is something that does need to be faced.

I also find myself concerned about the modern belief that everything can be dealt with through medicine. Having aches and pains? Take medicine. Are your kids hyperactive? Give them medicine. Anything else is wrong? Take medicine. Modern medicine is a wonderful thing that has saved many, many lives, including most likely my own. I have no problem with using it in theory. Unfortunately, we have become so attached to it that we believe it will solve all of our problems. If it doesn't manage, we still try to use it.

This is a good approach to many problems: a ruptured appendix, broken arm, or heart attack all need medical treatment. Other problems may not have a medical root. Your hyperactive child may have ADHD, in which case medication may be helpful. Or perhaps that child has an allergy to food coloring, or needs more time outdoors running around, or is dealing with some serious life issue that is making concentration impossible. Some may require a combination of treatments. Anti-depressants can be the only necessary treatment for someone dealing with a chemical imbalance of the brain, but someone dealing with something like grief will need something else (counseling, good community, or maybe just more time). The point is that we have become too dependent on the medical world to fix everything, even in those areas where the social and spiritual (along with mental and emotional) solutions are more appropriate. I would hate to see drug addictions swept up in the same fever of “medicine-only fixes” that other problems have faced.

*Note: This is the date given by their website; some of the comments on that site, however, come from before March 3, so I'm not sure if it was posted earlier on the web or if the date at the top is wrong.^

^Those of you who recognize these footnotes will know where my first significant blog influence came from!

I finally came up with entertaining quotes that I thought readers (at least those who enjoy kids) might appreciate. These all involved one of my nephews, who was just over 2 at the time. I am living with him and his family right now, so I get a lot of these.

1. His mom couldn't find him, so called, "Where are you?" He responded, "Jumping in my bed with my shoes on, on my kitty's head." (It must be mentioned that Kitty is a stuffed animal)

2. Another time his aunt (who was also one of our housemates) couldn't see him, and so asked, "What are you doing?" Always truthful, he told her, "Playing with the blender." (thankfully it was NOT plugged in)

3. I heard his mom saying to him, with that weary tone of voice that implies that this conversation has already been had many times, "What did I tell you about the lawnmower and the stairs?" (I will add that it was a play lawnmower.)

Okay, that's all for today. Short but sweet.

I'm not really sure where to start with this, so I'm going to go ahead with blackbear88's suggestion, and share 7 weird things about me.

1. One of my favorite things to do in the world is dance, particularly folkdancing. I was in a semi-professional folkdance group for 2 years (yes, we got paid; I love being able to say that I've been paid hundreds of dollars to teach people to do the chicken dance, although of course there was more to it than that).

2. One of my other favorite things to do is learn languages. The only other languages I'm fluent in are French and Romanian, but I've studied a handful of others as well.

3. I have an attack platypus.

4. If I could move anywhere in the US besides where I'm living now, it would be Anchorage (if I could move to another country besides where I'm living now, it would be -- of course -- France or Romania).

5. I enjoy rain. Particularly drizzle.

6. Books are one of my biggest passions. I read like I breathe.

7. I can bend my thumb all the way back to touch my wrist (or at least I used to be able to; I had to stop because it was messing up my wrists to bend like that).

That's all for now; not a particularly exciting first post, but at least respectable.