Author: lleachie

I am an associate professor of human services at a regional Midwestern university. I am also a writer of fantasy and romance, hoping to get traditionally published. I have one husband and am owned by four cats.

To Give or to Take

“Don’t try to take something away from a person, because you can’t give them something they need in return.” That was one of the pieces of advice my mother gave me when I was growing up, and the older I get the more I see the wisdom of it. 


Sometimes we take away a person’s culture and meaning. My grandfather told stories of going to a Catholic mission school for the local Ojibwa tribe (my family had married out and assimilated by then) and watching the Ojibwa kids get beaten by the nuns for speaking their own language. The nuns justified it by saying they were “beating the Indian” out of the children and that they would be better for that. I am wary of proselytizing religion for that reason, because it seems to me a manipulation to take away a culture’s gods.

When we take a problem away from a person, we take away their self-determination and initiative, and leave them with another dependency in their life. This is why therapists and case managers believe it’s vitally important for the client to come to them, so that it’s their wish to exchange the problem situation for something better. This is very hard for families and friends of the person with the problem, because the most they can do is persuade their loved one. The person with the problem has to make the decision to seek help.

So our best intentions may be wrong if we try to use them to take away from others what we perceive as burdens. Those burdens may be their culture or their crutch or their curse, but it’s theirs. Hell might be preferable to loss of their culture, and the devil they know preferable to the one they don’t know. Rather than taking away, we should think of giving, and giving in a way that honors culture and struggle and autonomy.





 

Decking the Halls

The halls are decked! Well, actually, my husband decked the living room and left the hall alone. I’d get pictures of the living room, but the coffee table is a bit cluttered as always. No House Beautiful home here.

On the bench next to me we have a display of Christmasy stuffed toys — a vintage Coca Cola stuffed bear, two Ty Monstaz (Holly and Tinsel), Velveteen Rabbits male and female, Hello Kitty with a Christmas present, a sloth wearing antlers and a scarf, and Plum Puddy. If Christmas is a holiday for children, I want to indulge my inner child a little.


I’m working from home for the rest of the semester, with a dead week followed by online finals. So having the house decked out and Christmas music playing helps. Right now “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas” plays on the stereo and, well, it is.

Our Christmas celebration, constrained as it is, may be just what we need right now. The pre-Christmas winter celebrations heralded the passing of the longest night and the slow return to the bright days. The Christians held onto many of the customs, knowing that they needed a celebration to get through winter. We hope for a vaccine for COVID in the New Year, so we turn to the brighter days just as our ancestors did. 

Grateful to write again (short entry)

 I think I have fallen in love with writing again.

I hadn’t written for a while, instead editing several works I have that I haven’t been able to get traction on traditionally. (I still have one that I need serious editing on, given that it was my first novel. I’m lost with that one). But I needed a writing project for NaNo, and I needed a sequel to The Kringle Conspiracy, a Christmas romance. 

So I wrote the sequel I’d been imagining for a while, Kringle in the Night, and I’m editing now. And it has been so fun! I’m writing again, creating something tangible from my fantasy and my memory and my ear for dialogue and all those good things. 

It feels good to create again. 

Our Inner Child and Christmases Past

Do we as adults look for touchstones to our childhood Christmases?


My husband and I spoke about this while we were listening to Little Drummer Boy (Harry Simeone Chorale, 1959 version), the harbinger of Christmas in my childhood. I was born in 1963, but the trappings of those late 50’s still lingered in my house, as we listened to the album (33 1/3) on a 1957 Magnavox Continental console. 

This is the exact make/model of our old stereo. I wish I had it because a restoration would be lovely.



My husband grew up in a town smaller than mine that still managed to have a Christmas parade, unlike mine. Both of us remember captivating displays in local businesses. He remembers church choirs, while my childhood was more secular. 

We both remember Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer complete with the GE tie-in commercials, and we watch that and How the Grinch Stole Christmas and other children’s Christmas TV staples, and we still watch those every year. 

We remember the iconic outdoor displays of our home towns — me, the industrial pipe frame-and-lights tree on top of the Nabisco carton factory, and he the star on top of the grain elevator. I remember a whole era of my life where I could look out the dining room window and see the tree lit in green or red across the neighborhood, waiting for my father to get home from his job 30 miles away, waiting for Rudolph to come on TV, worried about my father traveling through the snow.

We’ve made our own traditions — one of those being going to Starved Rock State Park in my hometown area to visit my dad and my sister’s family every year. Starved Rock Lodge was also a piece of my childhood, a massive log construction that existed since the 1930’s. To me it’s the epitome of Christmas, which its Great Hall sporting Christmas lights and families getting together there to open their presents. Again, a part of my past. We will not go there because of COVID, and I will miss that.

This makes me wonder if other people have this sentimentalism for the past when it comes to Christmas. Are we touched by our childhood Christmases and clinging to the traditions to keep our adult selves buoyant? I wonder this especially for this year, when we can’t have those big gatherings because of the contagion, when we put our Christmas trees out early for the colorful lights of hope. 

The Relief



I finally have a break! I’m tearing up with gratitude.

This has been the most exhausting semester I’ve ever had. Not necessarily the hardest, although teaching both live and on Zoom at the same time was somewhat difficult and gave less than stellar results. But long and exhausting, waiting for students to drop in on Zoom, sitting in a empty office, scuttling from office to restroom with my mask on. 

The sunny days out the window seemed so distant from where I sat, even though I have the best view on campus out my window. Then the leaden skies came, and at least they matched my moods.

There was the constant threat of COVID. There was a point where 9 out of 60 students were out over either isolation (COVID positive) or quarantine (contact with a COVID positive). The virus swept through peer groups and Greek life, and although I taught social distanced and masked, the random trips through hallways and in bathrooms worried me.

I focused on the task, knowing that thinking about any of this, much less all of this, would break me. And so I became an automaton, checking off each finished class session, each office hour. Not waiting for break, because that seemed too distant. 

Now I’m here, at break, and I want to cry. After this week, I have a week of waiting for students to ask questions over Zoom (and they never do too much of this) and finals week, where their exams are essay and take home. I will be at home, comfortable, during all of this. So, in effect, I have survived the semester.

And I feel like crying. 

 American Thanksgiving is fraught with a misleading mythology. In the great American myth, the first Thanksgiving was a dinner held jointly between Native Americans and the white settlers, bringing them together.

There are several problems with this scenario:

  • It assumes the Native Americans had no thankfulness rituals, when indeed they did.
  • It assumes that the white settlers and Native Americans lived happily ever after, when in actuality the Indians were systematically killed and driven into successively smaller parcels of land, all in the name of Western expansion. 
Americans are indoctrinated into the myth at an early age in our schools. We cut out Pilgrims and Indians and learn about the myth  of the First Thanksgiving. Although that dinner actually happened, we are kept away from its aftermath. We are told (or at least we were in my time) that the Indians don’t really exist, but we are not told why.

The myth and its originals are personal for me. I am a child of the white settlers and of the Native Americans. I count Michel Cadotte and  Ikwesewe of the Lake Superior (now Lac du Flambeau) Ojibwe as ancestors. Mostly white but for the stories of my family, where we remember ancestors with long black hair and almond-shaped eyes. 

For me to celebrate Thanksgiving, I have to separate the thanks-giving from the mythology, and at the same time remember the thanks that my ancestors gave to their Maker. 

Stages of Writing

 I have just gone through the first proofreading pass of the second book in the Kringle Chronicles, Kringle in the Dark. In the book, Brent Oberhauser, self-professed nerd, falls for Sunshine Rogers, who keeps the books for Yes, Virginia, a Christmas charity. Her boss, Jack Moore, receives blackmail letters in the mail and Sunshine finds significant mysteries in the paperwork buried under the category of “miscellaneous”. In a clash of wills, Sunshine and Brent break up to avoid heartbreak later. The two must find a way back together to try to stop the blackmailer and solve the puzzle of Yes, Virginia.

Right now, I rather like the book, being amazed that I could produce something that good in less than 30 days (aka NaNoWriMo project). But that’s just a stage in my writing. Here’s the stages of my writing:

  1. Beginning: Look how effortlessly I write!
  2. After a quarter of the way through the book: I’m just slinging words onto pages. This book is going to be a mess.
  3. Finishing the first draft: Thank goodness it’s done.
  4. Proofing the first draft: This book is actually good!
  5. Finishing the first draft: There has to be something wrong and I can’t wrap my head around it.
  6. Receiving document back from my in-house editor (i.e. husband): No, look it over again. What’s WRONG with it?
  7. Second draft: This book is a mess.
  8. Fast forward to book in hand: This is MY book. Don’t you hurt my little book!
I guess this means I’m a writer. 

About Time

 


Maryville, MO is under an emergency order which limits gatherings to ten people or less and enforces the mask ordinances because of an upswing of COVID. (It does not shut down local businesses or enforce shelter in place.)

And it’s about time. Many residents of the town have proven that they can’t comply with the existing mask ordinance, thinking that their legal rights are being impinged upon.

Hint: No, your rights are not being infringed upon; you’re being asked to do what’s good for America and your fellow human beings. Don’t you want to do what’s good for America and your fellow human beings? Then we’ll make you wear the mask because the governor is calling the National Guard out to help in the overwhelmed hospitals and morgues.

It’s not like I’m not suffering as bad as the anti-maskers are. I will not be spending Christmas with my family. I will not be in Kansas City for Thanksgiving to watch the lights. I have ZOOMed my entire semester of classes. I feel lonely and would feel more lonely if I wasn’t married. But I adhere to the rules because I don’t want to be responsible for contagion. 

I’m angry right now at all the people who should have refrained from meeting in large groups with strangers, who have gone about without masks and with a bad attitude, who have ruined Thanksgiving for all of us because they kept the contagion going.

Thankful for my Burdens

I make a habit of being thankful for the adversity in my life as a way to make peace with it. This year is no exception:


  • I am thankful for the social isolation I’ve faced with COVID-19, because I have had to learn to be patient and to wait for those vacations and writing retreats to be scheduled in an unforeseen future.
  • I am thankful for my bipolar disorder because I’ve had to learn to take care of myself.
  • I am thankful for my learning disability (the inability to visualize) because it has made me work harder on my writing.
  • I am thankful for every argument I’ve gotten into with my husband because we’ve both learned from them.
  • I am thankful for not being rich because I haven’t lost my sense of perspective.
I know that it’s an odd thing to be thankful for adversity, but to me it’s more powerful than to be thankful for one’s blessings. I have many, and I could go on about those. It always feels to me, though, that being thankful for one’s blessings is rubbing it in to others who don’t have those blessings. It’s easier for me to be thankful for my burdens. 

I guess I’m busy.

 I ordered eight paperback copies of The Kringle Conspiracy to sell after my book signing party requested copies. And do you know what? I lost the list! AAAAAAAGH someone threw out the piece of paper I’d written them on. I can’t believe it!

So now I’m asking my Facebook friends again who ordered copies. I think I’ve found most of them anyhow. Just missing two or three. 

I feel like such a flake sometimes! Maybe most of the time, but with all the stuff going on (teaching, grading, writing, rewriting, emotional meltdown over Trump’s scary refusal to concede the election.) maybe I can’t be blamed for being a bit flaky.

What is left to do before January 1st:

  • Grade Case Management final case files
  • Grade exams in Case Management and People Money and Psych (in a couple weeks)
  • Meet with classes Monday via Zoom
  • Edit (first round) Kringle in the Night
  • Set up my pitches for PitMad December 3
  • Narrate 8 presentations for Personal Adjustment (i.e. Positive Psychology)
  • Finish setting up Personal Adjustment, Case Management, and People Money and Psych for spring classes
  • Get those books out
  • Rest (I don’t do that very well)
I guess I am busy. Busy is not necessarily a good thing if it stands in the way of accomplishment. Perhaps I need to learn to do things more efficiently. If I had time, I’d study that.

But today is Sunday, and I’ve finished grading a major assignment. Now to edit another chapter of Kringle. Ahh…