Otherways- Fiction Fanatics

An encouraging word is perhaps the cheapest medicine in the world, at least it ranks right up there with laughter. Somehow, though, it seems that genuine encouragement is one of the scarcest things on the planet. The people that should be able to give it best are often the ones most conspicuously absent when it is most needed.

I’m not even sure how to tally the cost of discouragement. Degrees that don’t get earned, dreams that get abandoned, novels and art that never get created, and the worst one of all: people who become so discouraged in themselves that they give up entirely, succumbing to depression and suicide.

It may not make any difference, but I feel it is time someone explained what encouragement really is. Some people, and I see this often at horse and stock shows, think encouragement is applauding people when they win. To tell you the truth, there isn’t a damn thing wrong with that. If you’ve met your goals and done something amazing, you deserve to have someone recognize that with you, to celebrate your victories. But that isn’t what encouragement really looks like.

You see, the path to the winner’s circle, whether you are showing horses or writing novels, is very rarely a straight one. It doesn’t follow that if you work hard, you will win, because there are a lot of other people out there that want that prize just as much as you do. Getting good at anything requires incremental progress, daily effort, and climbing back up after a hell of a lot of setbacks. Some days, self-doubt, fear, or simple exhaustion can make it seem like what you want to do is impossible, even for people that don’t suffer from depression or other issues.

That’s when the genuine support of family or friends can make all the difference in the world.

Genuine support doesn’t tell a person that they are already perfect at their chosen field, because that’s a lie. Not even the best of the best are perfect, or you wouldn’t see Olympic gold medalists practicing for hours. Real support is the person that truly listens to your dreams and your fears, and helps you see the progress you are making, even when you can’t see it yourself. However they can, these people will try to help you succeed.They may push you to keep going, even when you’re ready to quit, because they know how much your dreams mean to you. They are present, whenever possible, for your successes and your flat out failures, and they believe in you no matter what.

That said, there are a few things a real supporter doesn’t do, and I mean ever. They do not make fun of your dreams. They do not berate you for failing, or belittle your efforts. They don’t judge you for having dreams that aren’t the same as theirs, or for having goals that aren’t easy to show off to the neighbors. Most of all, they don’t ignore you.

Expecting any person to do this all the time and never fail is like expecting to win every contest you ever enter. It’s foolish and unrealistic, and you set yourself up to be disappointed. People are human, they will have bad or distracted days, and even when those coincide with our low moments, we can’t hold them against others. Fact is, we’re every bit as human as they are.

Everyone deserves at least one person that really supports them. If you can’t find that person, then at least try to be that person.

Cheers,

Michelle

You can tell a lot about a woman from her hands, or so the saying goes. The internet, being the beast that it is, has taken this one step further, advising us that, for instance, if she’s holding a gun she may be angry with you. No doubt true, but not what the saying was originally intended to mean. They were, I believe, referring more to how much physical labor a woman did, and how much care she took of her personal appearance. In the more modern world, most people don’t really have to worry about ‘ruining’ their hands with manual labor. It was a concern of the working class at one time, and I can remember my great-grandmother insisting that gloves and a hat be worn every time we gardened, and advising me to slather either lotion or petroleum jelly on my hands every night and sleep in gloves. I ignored her, and have plenty of callouses to prove it.

Further back than even my great grandmother, though, people read a lot more into your hands than whether or not you could afford servants. Palmistry was a seriously big deal, and seems to have a resurgence of popularity every hundred years or so. If that continues to hold true, then we should be due anytime for palmistry to be back in vogue, so I whipped up a little mini course just so you can feel special.

Modern palmistry really came into its own in the 1800’s, with such notables as Napoleon having their palms read. He even got a special feature named after him, and any very large, long index finger is known as the ‘forefinger of Napoleon’, and denotes a power-seeking personality. Honore de Balzac, famous for his novels that explore human motivations, was a huge fan of palm reading, as was Alexandre Dumas, and his identically named son. They were also supporters of the man that would be later known as the father of modern palmistry, Adolphe Desbarrolles.

Every bit of the hand, palm, fingers and wrist have been ascribed meaning. Obviously, I can’t cover all that in a single blog post, so we’re going to hit the high points, or at least a few of them.

The following seem to be more or less in agreement in the texts I looked at, hope you enjoy. (Look at your hand, palm up, to compare with any of these descriptions.)

First, look at the general shape of the finger tips. Spatulate, or flattened finger tips denote people that love action. Broad, square hands typically belong to down to earth people, those interested in the truth, especially scientists. If the entire hand is long and bony, you have a philosopher’s hand. Delicate and long fingered hands denote sensitivity, and are considered to belong to artists. High bumps on the palm beneath each finger means the owner has a lively mind, while having a bump beneath the index finger that is larger than all the others means that you are achievement driven.

What about size? I know we say it doesn’t matter, but apparently the average size for a man is 7 ½ inches, and a ‘size 6 glove’ for a woman. No, I have no idea why the two genders should be measured differently, I’m just reporting what the ‘experts’ said. According to them, large hands meant that a person was analytical, patient, good with details, but apt to be slow. Small hands, on the contrary, typically belong to people with charm, wit, and a perceptive nature, but they aren’t wild about details.

Finally, because they are all anyone ever talks about, there are lines in your palm that can tell a lot about your future. The line closest to your fingers is called the heart line, below that is the head line, and the one that makes a curve near your thumb is the life line. Obviously, the longer that last one is, the longer the palm reader will say your life will be, the other two have a whole lot of different interpretations.

If you’re interested in learning more, try reading The Fortune in Your Hand by Elizabeth Daniels Squire, or, if you can find a copy, Palmistry Explained by Pearl Raymond.

Cheers,

Michelle

In Greek and Roman mythology, a lot of the horrifying monsters that the demigods faced off against were little more than overgrown real life creatures made a bit tougher, like the Nemean Lion that Hercules killed, and whose skin he wore as a cloak thereafter. Others, like the Chimera, were composed of various parts of normal creatures stuck together in a random and scary way. Cerberus kind of straddled the fence there, being a giant dog wasn’t good enough, so they gave him three heads.

Before you go congratulating modern mad on being so much more creative, I did see a video for rent with a three headed shark apparently gunning for Machete, probably should have snapped that one up.

This penchant for taking bits of things and making something new with them isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Medieval cooks loved to take the critters they had lying about to cook, and sew them back together in interesting ways. Sure, the mermaid or whatever they’d just made probably tasted just like everything else, but at least it looked interesting. In a world without refrigeration, most spices, or even a lot of the common ingredients that give food flavor, this was a big deal.

Modern taxidermists have an entire art form based on this, which ranges from combining animals to create flying monkeys or dragons, to combining animals with things. Depending on which artist you’re dealing with, the results vary from fanciful steampunk, to gorgeously romantic, to downright creepy. Whichever direction they go, though, it is all art, and it feels very fresh.

So what do you do when you feel your writing is getting stale? Like you’ve been down this road before, and there are no surprises left?

You could , of course, drown your sorrows in rum, lament the end of your career, and become an accountant.

Or you could shake things up a bit.

If the problem seems to be minor, then perhaps there is no need to stage a major earthquake. Put the piece down, work on something unrelated, or go do something you’ve never done and then come back to it with fresh eyes. Mostly, though, we don’t stop for minor problems, we stop because we’ve dug ourselves so deeply into a rut that we can’t even see out of it anymore.

That’s where the Chimera exercise comes in. Like the Boxdancing exercise I described in a previous post, this is a way to get your subconscious out of its routine. I will warn you, it pushes you out of your comfort zone, so you might not enjoy the activity at first, but the results are usually well worth it.

Let’s say that you are a serious science fiction writer, and you feel stuck. Jot down a quick list of the genres you have nothing to do with, say romance, horror, true crime, and young adult. Close your eyes and drop your pen on the list twice, no cheating. These two are the donors for your chimera experiment. My pen marked young adult and horror, so I will be stuck writing a short story that combines elements from those two genres into something that isn’t either one, but is instead the science fiction that I want it to be. Generally, I stick to 1500 words, because that is a decent enough length to tell a short story, but not long enough to push more serious projects to the side.

You can choose elements from the genres you’ve picked that are clichéd, because they probably aren’t clichés in the new genre. All that matters is that you have chosen at least one recognizable element from each genre you don’t mess with, elements that you would not have previously used, and combined them to tell a story.

Usually one is enough to jolt you out of your rut. You can, however, apply like shampoo: lather, rinse, repeat.

Cheers,

Michelle

Okay, I am officially sick of vampires, and getting pretty darned close on werewolves. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always loved a good vampire story, from Buffy to Lestat, and when Anne Rice releases another one, I’ll be right there in line to buy it, but if we’re going to delve into mythology, why stop at these?

If it’s shapeshifters you want, there are the selkies that shed their seal skins to be men again, only to return to the sea by throwing the hide over their shoulders and returning to seal form. Similar legends exist in various cultures for bears, reindeer, wolves, and even hawks.

Or you could go all out creepifying, and explore the doppelganger. Literally a “double goer”, the word generally gets used to mean someone that could pass as your twin, but in some of the oldest stories, the doppelganger was a death omen, a spirit that actually became the person it copied, stealing their life and killing them in the process. Not going to work for a Doublemint gum commercial, but it might be fun for a novel.

The Fey get their fair share of press, though generally people stick to those of the Fair Folk that live in the courts, leaving the Wild Fey to their own devices, perhaps a wise decision. Those powerful, humanlike, immortals aren’t the only creatures that belong to the Fair Folk, though. Brownies, pixies, sprites, all those creatures called the wee folk, they rarely appear on the printed page. What of the red caps, that live on old battlefields and dye their hats in the blood of the fallen?

Where are the Litches, the demons, the earth spirits?

Blood sucking is all well and good, I suppose, I’m just advocating adding a little variety to your paranormal life. So, in the interest of encouraging you to find something a little different, here’s a list of books with a paranormal theme and not a werewolf or a vampire in sight.

1. The Woman Who Loved Reindeer by Meredith Ann Pierce (changeling)

2. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (lots of ghosts)

3. The Chronicles of Chrestomanci by Diana Wynne Jones (Wizards, among others)

4. Frankenstein series by Dean Koonts (um…Frankenstein)

5. The Enchantment Emporium by Tanya Huff (various)

6. The Goblin War by Jim C. Hines (goblins)

7. The Hallowed Hunt by Lois McMaster Bujold (Fey)

8. The Mist-torn Witches by Barb Hendee (witches)

9. The Lord of the Isles by David Drake (demons, etc.)

And of course, if you haven’t ever read The Witches by Roald Dahl, you really should. Yes, it’s a kids book. No, it isn’t boring.

There’s no order to these books, I’m not implying that one is better than another, or that one I didn’t list isn’t better than all of these combined. These are just the first batch that popped into my head that I’ve actually had time to read, didn’t primarily involve vampires or werewolves, and that I enjoyed. A couple of them are meant for younger audiences (2 and 3), but are fun reads. The Chronicles of Chrestomanci is one that I read aloud to my kids and they still love. (The youngest is now nearly out of college.)

These range from light hearted fun, in the case of The Goblin War, to really serious epic fantasy if you’re looking at The Lord of the Isles.

Anyway, just some ideas on things you might enjoy reading if you also find yourself overstocked with vampires.

Cheers,

Michelle

No one can really talk about modern horror fiction without at least mentioning Stephen King. Even if you are one of the giant mass of people who do not read, and are therefore dead to me, you’ve probably heard of Stephen King. Carrie, Cujo, Pet Semetary and others all made plenty of movie-goers scream in their time.

Readers, on the other hand, are often polarized on the subject. I don’t think there are many horror fans that really dislike him as an author, but I’ve met a few that are pretty mad. There are things you just don’t do, you know, like killing the kid or the dog. Cujo pretty much broke both taboos, and taboo breaking has a way of riling some people up.

Personally, I prefer books where at least the occasional character survives.

Rose Madder is probably my favorite of the Stephen King books, though I do have to send the man some serious kudos for actually pulling off a gypsy curse in Thinner.

It occurred to me a few months ago, that a lot of the Stephen King novels are based on mainstays of horror: cursed items, evil clowns, gypsy curses, etc., which really violates the ‘be original’ commandment for any creative endeavor. Yet, people turn out to read him in droves, myself included.

We do this not because the theme is original, but because the man is a damned good writer. Even if you know he’s likely to butcher every bloody character in the book, you find yourself drawn in, caring about these people and the short violent lives they are about to lead.

Plus, there is a reason these things are mainstays of horror. Take clowns for example, even though we all know they’re supposed to be funny, there’s a high percentage of people that are creeped out just by the sight of one. Before you give them a hard time there is some basis to their fear. The forefather of all modern clowns, Grimaldi, lost his first wife to childbirth, his clown-son to alcoholism and himself suffered from depression. His famous line was that “He was GRIM ALL DAY, but made you laugh at night.” He died a penniless drunk. Charles Dickens used him as the basis for the Pickwick Papers, which some say invented the ‘scary clown’ character.

Psychological tests on children as young as four, who probably haven’t actually read Dickens yet, show that the vast majority dislike, or even fear clowns. So maybe we shouldn’t be too hard on poor Charles.

At any rate, Stephen King is always a good bet for a horror read, and he has a new novel, Finders Keepers, out now in hardback, paperback and electronic media. This is book two in a trilogy that started with Mr. Mercedes, which I hate to admit is still in my ‘To Be Read’ pile. Both books have gotten rave reviews, so I guess I’d better get with the program and get them read.

I didn’t feel like sleeping anyway.

Cheers,

Michelle

Normal people don’t spend a lot of time thinking about eggs. You go to the store, complain about the price, check them for cracks, and then just shove those buggers in the back of the fridge for the next time you get a wild hair to make cupcakes. I was normal, once.

Then I discovered that I really like breeding animals, and showing them. Goats, horses, rabbits, and poultry are what we show, though it is just the poultry that make eggs such a big deal to me. The breed I focus on is called a Self-Blue Bantam Old English, which is a very long name for a very small, fancy, blue bird. As one might expect, birds, even show birds, come from eggs. What you might not realize is how much trouble it is to get a show quality bird out of an egg.

If I want a show quality goat, I start with two show quality goats of opposite genders and appropriate ages, feed them really well, and stick them in the same space at the opportune moment. Then you just feed them really well for five months, keep them healthy, and see what happens.

Birds are strange. Yes, you still need two very well fed, high quality birds of opposite genders and the appropriate age. That’s where the resemblance ends. Not only can things like snakes slither in and eat the eggs before you even have a chance to gather them, the hen can decide that she simply doesn’t like the rooster she’s with, and eject his sperm. She’ll still lay the egg, but it without his contribution it can’t hatch.

Running out of water, even for a very short time, can make them stop laying altogether. Stress can cut back their egg production, and drastically reduce their fertility. Of course, eggs are also famously fragile, so even if your prize hen has successfully laid a fertile egg, you still have to get it safely in to the incubator area.

Still not that simple. Chicks will pick on birds of different ages, often actually killing the younger birds, so it is important to hatch batches of birds at the same time. That means storing the eggs, big end up, and turning them twice a day. If you wait more than ten days, very few of the eggs will hatch. Oddly, waiting less than two days also seems to adversely affect the hatch rate.

Incubation is only 21 days for chicks, but a million things can still go wrong. Temperature and humidity have a huge effect on hatching. Eggs not turned twice a day result in lower hatch rates, higher infant mortality, and increased deformities. Fungus can invade and ruin your eggs in a most vile and explosive way.

Even then, after all this work, you can’t be assured of a show stopper. Most of the birds that hatch will just be birds. Good examples of their breed, maybe, but not the amazing specimen you are hoping to produce.

Why? Because eggs are potential. Just like every other endeavor, from writing to mountain climbing, potential isn’t the same thing as actuality. If you want to achieve those goals you’ve set yourself, then you don’t shirk, not for a single day. You turn those eggs of potential, you watch them diligently, and feed them the very best way you can. Once the whole thing is out of your hands, then you have a choice.

You could, of course, wait to see what happens. I’d understand that, wanting to see how your effort pans out.

Or you could already have another batch of eggs, another set of potentials, slowly developing in the incubator, and a set behind them waiting their turn. Weird as it is, that’s what chickens taught me about writing. Each piece has potential, and you should give it everything you have, but once it is out of your hands, say waiting for a publisher to consider it, the only way to increase your chances of success is to keep writing, to develop something different, in this way, potential eventually has to become reality.

Don’t stop until it does. Hell, even then, don’t stop.

Cheers,

Michelle

Once upon a time, when I was just a child, teachers told their students that man was different from all other animals because he used tools. Then we found that a lot of other animals went for the whole tool-using thing as well: otters, gorillas, birds, even dogs and horses have exhibited some ability to manipulate tools.

So we’ve tried other ways to set ourselves apart, like language. Turns out that at least whales and elephants are big on language, and primates are even capable of learning sign language, so nix that difference as well.

Now researchers on three different continents have decided that chimpanzees have entered the Stone Age, so I think we can officially give up on setting ourselves apart from the other animals. Personally, I find this pretty darn cool. I still hope to find intelligent life on other planets, but given the huge distances involved, there are major challenges to developing a relationship with that intelligent life if we do find it. Even were distance not an issue, the possibility that that life would be so foreign to us that we could not understand each other is very real.

Here, though, is intelligent life in our own backyard.

We share 98% of the same genes, we eat a similar diet, and we grew up in the same neighborhood. Odds are pretty good that we will be able to really communicate, though it may take a little time.

For us, at least, the Stone Age wasn’t exactly the express lane. Looks like we spent about 3.4 million years hanging out, learning to control fire, cook food, keep dogs as pets and make pointy things so we would have more meat to toss on the grill. Granted, it may not take the chimps quite as long, since they have older siblings to watch, but we aren’t talking about a Planet of the Apes scenario any time soon.

What we are talking about, though, is a whole new level of humanitarian questions. If we can prove that the chimpanzees are in the Stone Age, then there can be no denying that they are an intelligent species. Some changes, like whether or not chimpanzees could be experimented on, or kept as pets, should be fairly obvious. We’ve pretty much determined that owning people is bad, and I should think extending that rationale to non-humans that are demonstrating even developing level human intelligence is a no brainer.

But there are other programs where the intentions are pure, but the morality gets a lot grayer. Take for example, the very successful Species Survival Plan. This is a program that has saved several species from extinction. It is well supervised, carefully run, and entirely meant to protect the species for the future. All good stuff, right?

It is, if you aren’t a sentient creature.

Were we to practice the same standards on humans, it would be called eugenics, and very illegal.

So assuming the chimpanzees really are entering the Stone Age, the question of how to ethically preserve them while maintaining their autonomy becomes very important. Do they have a right to choose their mates, even if that choice is deleterious to the gene pool as a whole? What about keeping families together? Birth control? Medication for diseases they can’t understand yet?

How we choose to answer these questions will say a lot about us, and our readiness to meet intelligent species from other planets. Let’s face it, if we can’t treat an intelligent species we should be able to relate to with dignity, consideration and respect, then how can we expect to do so for the truly alien?

Cheers,

Michelle

As John Gardner’s incarnation of Grendel said, “Balance is everything.” In writing, it is the balance between action and character or setting that keeps the reader enthralled, perhaps, but real life tends to be a bit more complicated.

I know Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter is a classic, and I’m not saying it doesn’t have its good points, but the man lost me when he went on for about nine pages describing a dress. There are people that probably found that fascinating, I’m just not one of them. There is no ideal length of description, though, because each reader is different, some will want more, some less, and some will wonder why she’s wearing clothes at all. Trying to please all those people isn’t possible, nor should an author try.

Balance in life should be easier to achieve, since the only “reader” is yourself, and presumably you know when you’ve had enough of any one thing. Judging by the number of self-help books on the subject, though, I’m going to hazard a guess that even if you know, you aren’t really that great at keeping the balance up. I’m not. Neither is anyone I know.

One of the main reasons is that we try to please far too many “readers” in our lives. It is true that some people are important to us, and their needs should be addressed, but we tend to forget that they are our lives, our goals, and that our happiness requires keeping a balance we can live with. Worse, we often allow complete strangers, or people we don’t even like, to call the shots on how we balance our lives.

Do they think you spend too much time writing? Too little? Do they criticize your choice of profession, constantly pushing you to become a ‘respectable’ person like themselves? Or have you actually allowed their words to keep you from doing what you know will make you happier in the end?

Stephen Covey, guru of the business productivity world, wrote a famous book called The 7 habits of Highly Effective People. I’ve read it at least half a dozen times, but one of the things he said never really made sense to me when I was young. He called it maintaining the P/PC balance. Here P is production, and PC is Production Capability.

Partly, I understood. I mean, I live on a farm, so I know that things need to be maintained if you want them to keep producing. Watering the garden in August is the only way to continue to get vegetables in September. Failing to feed the animals, while cheaper, would of course have disastrous results. I thought this was what he meant, and to some extent that is true.

Bodies require sleep, food and general maintenance to keep doing the work we need to do to achieve our goals. Minds and hearts require maintenance as well, though, and that is the part that I missed.

I can’t tell you what balance you need, because I am not you. For each of us, the amount of time spent playing, dreaming, conversing, reading, or relaxing to recharge ourselves will be different. Achieving those dreams of yours will require your full energy, it is important to recharge your batteries, and not waste power on what random other people think you should be doing.

They have their lives, you have yours.

Strange as it sounds, you actually produce far more when you take the time to recharge. I’d never actually finished writing a novel until I took that time to reorganize the way I balanced my life. I still struggle with workaholic tendencies, and the desire to please everyone, but I’ve made my own desires part of my schedule, decided I was important enough to merit some of my own time.

I now have three completed novels, two short stories, and two more novels in process, all in just over a year’s effort. There is no reason you could not do the same, or better.

Cheers,

Michelle

Even when she doesn’t seem to mean it, Anne Rice’s writing is luscious. If she describes places, you ache to visit them. Strangely, this is true even when those places are as familiar as New Orleans, or as unreal as the kingdoms in her Beauty series. I consider this a rare enough gift, but she can also do the same for people. Once a character of hers gets under your skin, they feel like real people, and you miss them once they’ve gone.

Lestat, of course, is the best known of these. Fitting I suppose, that a vampire should have such a magnetic personality, and I loved the entire series. Aside from Bram Stoker, who deserves a lot of credit for the whole vampire mythos, Anne Rice is the one to read if you are wanting to read a good vampire novel. Of course, she has plenty of those to choose from, my personal favorites being Pandora and Violin.

I really can’t say anything against any of these books, and I wouldn’t want to, but I have to admit, they aren’t my favorite Anne Rice novels. Yes, I’ve read the entire Beauty series, which quite honestly is far better than Fifty Shades of Grey, and I enjoyed them, but they still aren’t the ones that I keep coming back to reread.

My all-time favorites are actually two of her less wildly popular works. Not that they weren’t best sellers, they just aren’t what people think of first when they think of Anne Rice. I read the Mummy in one sitting, years ago, on a night when I should have been sleeping. I spent the rest of the day in a book-hangover, but it was well worth it. Every few years, I have to go back and read it again. Given that I have extremely limited time, that is high praise indeed.

Still, the very best of the bunch, as far as my tastes go, is Servant of the Bones. I fell in love with Azriel, in a way that only rarely happens. Beautiful and flawed, powerful and damaged, I find I can’t go a year without missing him enough to read the novel yet again.

In one of our many moves, I lost my treasured copy of the book. True, it had become somewhat ragged, as most loved things are, but I really missed it.

To put this into perspective, we are a family of bibliophiles. Practically every wall space in my home has bookshelves. There are books in all of our cars, books in every room in the house, and I never leave home without at least two. I own hundreds of books, some of them far more technically valuable.

Still, I missed this single lost book terribly. I missed Azriel.

The hunt to replace it led me to several more of her works, including The Mummy, as well as the largest used bookstore I’ve ever seen. Once I managed to find Azriel again, I bought two copies, just in case.

Cheers,

Michelle

Finding a job in the current economy isn’t always the easiest thing, even if you aren’t a writer. There are some jobs that you just won’t find anymore, no matter how hard you look.

For instance, you won’t be finding any listings for a Resurrectionist in the want ads. Just like sanitation engineer is a euphemism for garbage collector, resurrectionist was the 1800’s euphemism for a grave robber. Yes, the job was illegal even then, but it paid well and there was a pretty steady demand for cadavers for medical or scientific research. Of course, not all of those bodies would have gone for such elevated endeavors, it appears that some of them may have been destined to undergo “mummification”, or a crude alternative, and be sold to the Egypt-mad populace as curios.

Another time honored job you don’t see in Europe or the United States anymore is the rat-catcher. Once pretty much every village had one, but sanitary sewers, landfills, and those pesky sanitation engineers seem to have cut down the population of feral rats. It is also a lot more economical to deal with the remaining problems with chunks of poisoned bait than it is to actually pay someone to spend their nights hunting rats. Not such a great loss, I suppose, I can’t think of anyone that I know that actually aspired to be a rat catcher, but I will miss the whole Pied Piper theme.

How about a more modern one? I’d never even heard of a Bowling Pin Setter before, but it used to be an actual job. Naturally, this was before the advent of automated pin setting machines, and child labor laws, but at one time kids actually stayed at the far end of every lane, and manually reset all of the pins each round.

Then there was the infamous “Knocker-Upper”. No, no matter what it sounds like, it was not this man’s job to ensure the cradles were full. Really he was a human alarm clock armed with a long stick and a big voice. His job was to make sure you got up in time to be at work, generally shift work in a factory, by banging on your window and shouting really loudly. This was far more common in apartment dense city blocks, of course, and makes you wonder how the neighbors that didn’t have the 4 AM shift felt about it.

My personal favorite, though, is the Lector. Sure factory work was tedious, the shifts were long, and the pay wasn’t that great. Many factories found that their production improved when the employees were at least somewhat entertained, so they hired professional Lectors. Unlike the famous face-eating psychiatrist, these were professional readers that kept the worker’s minds occupied with literature while their fingers were busy assembling whatever widgets the factory needed made. These guys were replaced by radio and podcasts, of course, but I love the idea of bringing real literature to the factory workers.

Cheers,

Michelle