Author: ktnorlander

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Make a Difference

Make a Difference: Be Kind to Grieving People

Be kind to grieving people

Once upon a time, my mom had a miscarriage. The nurse who attended to her comforted her with the words, “It was God’s will.”

I am not an advocate of violence, but had my mom slapped the nurse, I wouldn’t blame her.

Different people have different beliefs about whether or not everything that happens is God’s will. As fallible humans, none of us knows for sure. But even if you are certain you are right in believing that everything that happens is God’s will — every rape, every act of discrimination, every tornado, every car crash — please consider this before you say “it was God’s will” to a suffering person: They probably won’t be comforted by your statement.

There’s another view on why people suffer that seems equally hurtful: the notion that people create their own reality. I’ve always thought that was a very privileged attitude. I wonder if a person who believes that would dare to say such a thing to a poor person in a developing nation who had just lost everything in a hurricane or earthquake. While I don’t know if anyone has done exactly that (I hope not), it has been said to people in other situations. Grief expert Megan Devine talked about this on Jonathan Fields’ Good Life Project podcast. Her partner drowned when he went for a swim in a river, and people dared to blame her for bringing about his death with her thoughts. (Note: Megan compares this “blame the victim” mode of thinking to Puritanical thought, but from my admittedly imperfect understanding of the Puritans, this is not a good comparison. The Puritans accepted suffering. Megan may be thinking of the modern prosperity gospel, which promotes the idea that suffering comes from displeasing God.)

We humans hate tragedies. We feel fragile and powerless, and we aren’t quite sure what to say to people who are suffering. As Megan points out in her interview, one way we deal with our sense of powerlessness is by blaming the victim. Don’t. Even if the person who is suffering did something to lead to the situation, like accidentally leaving medication where a child could reach it, it’s a good bet that they are lecturing themselves every waking hour, and they do not need you to add to their guilt and sorrow. If you can’t refrain from blaming them, then just keep your mouth shut.

Don’t blame God either, even if, as I mentioned above, you personally believe the tragedy was God’s will. If you want a lesson in how a suffering person deals with God, pick up the Bible and notice the wide range of human emotions it includes.

“Will you never look away from me, or let me alone even for an instant? If I have sinned, what have I done to you, O watcher of men? Why have you made me your target? Have I become a burden to you?” (Job 7:19-20)

“Why, O Lord, do you reject me and hide your face from me? … You have taken my companions and loved ones from me; the darkness is my closest friend.” (Psalm 88: 14, 18)

“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” (John 11:32)

If you can’t tolerate someone crying out, “How could God do this to me?” then maybe you shouldn’t bring up God when you comfort a grieving person.

So what do you say?

How about “I’m sorry this happened to you”? How about “I’m here for you”? How about just being willing to listen and to help out as needed?

I feel like I can’t go on!

“I’m here for you. Let me bring you dinner. Is tonight okay?”

How could God do this to me?

“I don’t really understand everything about God and why bad things happen. But I’m here for you.”

It’s my fault he died. He told me he wasn’t feeling well. I should have suspected he was having a heart attack!

“It isn’t your fault. You didn’t know. I’m so sorry this happened. I’m here for you.”

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Something Wonderful

Something Wonderful: The Chronicles of Prydain

The Book of Three is the first volume of the Chronicles of Prydain

When I was a kid I devoured fantasy novels. I was thrilled whenever I ran across a good series, because then I could revisit my favorite characters in book after book. Among these series was Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain, five books set in a sort of pseudo-Wales. They are, in order, The Book of Three, The Black Cauldron, The Castle of Llyr, Taran Wanderer, and The High King. Two of the books won Newbery awards: The Black Cauldron is a Newbery honor book, and The High King received the 1969 Newbery Medal. Disney combined the first two books into their regrettable animated film The Black Cauldron. Apparently, they plan to tackle the series again, and I have high hopes that they will do a better job.

The books have plenty of fans, but I’m surprised at the number of people who are completely unaware of them. Alexander wrote ripping good stories with believable characters, and he did a marvelous job of developing the main character, Taran, throughout the series. The main female character, Eilonwy, is a strong princess whom I somehow forgot when I was putting together my list of strong princesses. Her only flaw as a female role model is her stereotypical response to Taran when he angers her: “I’m not talking to you.” Beyond that annoying characterization, Eilonwy is exactly the sort of princess who appeals to girls who dream of adventures.

“They’ve made me sleep in beds with goosefeather pillows enough to stifle you; I’m sure the geese needed them more than I did — the feathers, that is, not the pillows. And servitors to bring you exactly what you don’t want to eat. And washing your hair whether it needs it or not. And sewing and weaving and curtsying and all such I don’t even want to think about. I’ve not drawn a sword for I don’t know how long…” (Eilonwy in The High King)

Along with these characters is the bard-king, Fflewddur Fflam; Prince Gwydion, who reminds me a little of Aragorn from The Lord of the Rings; Gurgi, who reminds more than a little of a benevolent Gollum/Sméagol; Doli, the dwarf; Hen Wen, the oracular pig; Arawn, the chief villain (though by no means the only one); and many other colorful characters.

Although I did notice occasional similarities between The Chronicles of Prydain and The Lord of the Rings, the book that Alexander acknowledges as an influence on his work is a collection of medieval Welsh tales, The Mabinogion. For the most part, Alexander borrowed names from the tales, but he made the characters his own. Gwydion and Arawn both play roles in The Mabinogion, but they are very different from Alexander’s characters. Fflewddur Fflam’s name comes from a ridiculously long list of King Arthur’s warriors. Probably the biggest contribution the Welsh tales made to Alexander’s books was the black cauldron, which can be used to transform the dead into an army.

Alexander also borrowed from his own work: You can see the seeds of Eilonwy in one of the characters in his first children’s book, Time Cat.

In addition to the storylines and the characters, Alexander gifts his readers with occasional bits of wisdom that never come across as preachy. Among them is this nugget from The Black Cauldron:

“There is much to be known,” said Adaon, “and above all much to be loved, be it the turn of the seasons or the shape of a river pebble. Indeed, the more we find to love, the more we add to the measure of our hearts.”

Isn’t that enough to make you want to read the series?

Not all of these books are of the same quality. The Book of Three is the weakest of the bunch, but The Black Cauldron is excellent, so if you aren’t enchanted with the first book, please give Alexander a chance and read the second before you make your decision about the series.

There is one more Prydain book: The Foundling and Other Tales of Prydain, a collection of short stories. The book has a very different feel from the novels — reading it is a lot like reading fairy tales — but the stories are lovely. I recommend reading it after, not before, you read the Chronicles.

Alexander was a prolific author, but somehow, even though I loved journeying to Prydain, I only remember reading one other book by him when I was a child: The Cat Who Wished to Be a Man. I read a few more in preparation for this post, and I was surprised to find his work was very uneven. I felt like the characters in Time Cat were flat compared to the well-fleshed out characters in the Prydain series. Likewise, when I read the first book in his Vesper Holly series, The Illyrian Adventure, I found the heroine too perfect. She also was annoyingly cheery, no matter what the circumstances. I had no desire to continue the series.

On the other hand, the Westmark trilogy has everything I loved about the Prydain novels — a gripping story and strong characters who grow and change throughout the book. The trilogy is excellent, but dark — for that matter, the Prydain books can be pretty grim, though Westmark is darker. It represents Alexander at his best.

If you love fantasy and good children’s literature, I encourage you to pick up the first two Prydain books and give them a try. If my guess is right, by the end of The Black Cauldron, you’ll be hooked.

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Make a Difference

Free Study Guide for Lent: Loose the Chains of Injustice

Loose the Chains of Injustice Isaiah 58:6

This week’s “Make a Difference” post is overtly Christian. For my readers who are not Christians, I want to assure you that, while this is a study guide focusing on a passage from the Bible, it is full of ways you can make a difference. You may want to go ahead and take a look at it to see if there are any practical suggestions that you’d like to use.

For my Christian readers, here’s a little background to this study guide:

For several years, I used guides from Alternatives for Simple Living to direct my studies and activities during Advent and Lent. In 2011, I decided to create my own, personal guide for Lent based on Isaiah 58:6-14. I mentioned the guide to a friend, and she expressed interest in it, so I later polished the guide and gave it to her as a gift.

After I started this blog, I realized that other people might appreciate having the guide for their own Lenten practices, so I updated and revised the guide for a broader audience, and I am sharing it here with you. Note that, while I encourage you to use Ash Wednesday to reflect on and memorize the passage from Isaiah, this guide has a heavy emphasis on activities. This reflects a personal preference I have for finding ways to apply what I learn as I study the Bible. I assume that you will accompany these activities with prayer and possibly even additional Bible study.

Should you decide to use this guide during Lent, I would value you your feedback.

Enjoy!

Loose the Chains of Injustice

Categories
Something Wonderful

Something Wonderful: Amanda Palmer’s Music Videos

I took an oblique path to Amanda Palmer’s fandom, though I know I’m not the only person to have done so. I had admired Neil Gaiman’s work for some time. When he mentioned her book on social media, I asked for it for Christmas. I read it a little over a year ago and was impressed with the way Amanda approached her art and fan base, so I decided to follow her on Twitter (warning: she occasionally swears) and become one of her Patreon patrons. I was interested in observing the way she approached the business side of her art. I’ve also wanted to be a patron of the arts since I was a young teenager, and since I’ve never become a fabulously wealthy woman who can donate thousands of dollars — or more — to artistic organizations, being one of Amanda’s patrons was an affordable way of attaining my dream.

Amanda creates beautiful work for her patrons on a regular basis. I’ve been treated to her cover of “Purple Rain,” her humorous dance song “On the Door,” and many other things. In one of her posts to patrons, she included a link to a song she had performed several years ago with Jason Webley: “Evelyn Evelyn.” As soon as I’d seen it, I decided that one day I would write about the beautiful videos that sometimes accompany her work.

Amanda enjoys collaborating with other artists — both musical and visual. As a result, some of the most gorgeous music videos I’ve ever seen have come from artists she has worked with to illustrate her songs. Not long after I became a patron, she released the video “1952 Vincent Black Lightning” with art by David Mack.

The song comes from an album she recorded with her father, You Got Me Singing. That album inspired more than just the David Mack video. Amanda released not one but two videos for “Wynken, Blynken & Nod.” The official video stars Amanda and Neil’s son, Ash, and involved a nightlong shoot while he was sleeping. The other video is a stop-motion animation done by Chiara Ambrosio, who also created the video for “Evelyn Evelyn.” It reminds me a little of In the Night Kitchen.

For Christmas, Amanda sent patrons a video for the Basque carol “The Angel Gabriel.” It was filmed in Havana and was created with a host of actors, dancers, and artists. I know that my readers have different religious views and different sensitivities to things like nudity. Amanda is not at all shy about nakedness, and that definitely shows up in this video: there are lots of bare breasts. Some people may find that offensive in general or may simply be bothered by nudity in a video with religious references. Although it’s not the best analogy, I’d say if you saw Jesus of Montreal and were uncomfortable with it, you may want to skip this, but if you were moved by it, you’ll probably enjoy this video as much as I did.

Amanda is generous with her work, so it should be no surprise that she has a robust YouTube channel that includes music, spoken word performance, interviews, and more. I feel bad about sprinkling warnings throughout a post about an artist’s work, but because I want to be sensitive to my readers’ viewpoints, I need to be clear that Amanda is very frank about sex and sexuality. For example, in the discordantly cheery “Oasis” she plays a young woman who was raped and had an abortion. I found it thought-provoking; other people might be disturbed by her approach. I certainly wouldn’t advise anyone to sit down with their six-year-old and roam freely over the site. If you would rather not view what you would not share with your child, then Amanda’s work is probably not for you. And that’s okay. But if you are intrigued by what I’ve shared with you, check out more of her work, and consider joining me as a patron.

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Make a Difference

Make a Difference: Write Love Letters

Write love letters

No, this is not another Valentine’s Day post. This is about love letters for strangers that you can leave to be discovered or send to be bundled up and delivered to a hurting person. While I’m posting about this in February, it is something you can do at any time of year.

If you decide right here and now that you want to leave love letters for strangers, you could sit down, write a letter telling the recipient that they matter, go out and leave it on a bus seat or a table at a coffee shop, and not even bother to read the rest of this post.

But if you’re intrigued about sending a letter that will be given to a specific person, or if you want to hear a little bit about the story behind these love letters, read on.

Hannah Brencher, founder of The World Needs More Love Letters, was almost certainly not the first person to leave a positive note for someone to pick up. People have been leaving kind messages in books or on sticky notes placed where people will find them for years. But when she first drafted a letter and left it on the subway, she was unknowingly starting a movement. She felt pulled to leave love letter after love letter for strangers, and then she asked the readers of her blog if anyone would like her to send them one. The requests poured in, until it got to be far more than she could handle. Now her website encourages visitors to leave love letters for others to find or send letters to people who have been nominated to receive a bundle. College students can start a Campus Cursive chapter.

If you want to inspire yourself with the story behind Hannah’s project, pick up a copy of her memoir, If You Find This Letter. I was amused that the book is called “a memoir,” because Hannah is not yet 30 years old. Nevertheless, I enjoyed her story, and I certainly understood her yearning to make a difference. Hannah has found her purpose, at least for now, in The World Needs More Love Letters. Given her age, I wouldn’t be surprised if she found more to do that will touch others’ lives.

This week, take a look at the website for The World Needs More Love Letters. If a letter request moves you, or if you feel inspired to leave a random love letter, take some time to write your letter, and send a little love into the world.

Categories
Something Wonderful

Something Wonderful: The Comfort List

Sometimes you need comfort.

There are several reasons why I blog about two wildly different subjects: wonderful things and making a difference. First and foremost, these things are both very much a part of who I am. I have always been what one friend described as “an evangelist” for things I love. But making a difference is also important to me. I believe that my purpose on earth is not to live just for myself. I’m here — we’re all here — to embody God’s love for the world.

But I also write about these subjects because I believe both are important for a balanced life. If you spend all of your time consuming culture, no matter how wonderful it is, and no time reaching out to others, you’ve wasted your life. But if you are a very earnest person who is always driven to make a difference and who can never simply relax and have fun, you are in danger of burning out or becoming self-righteous. We need to work hard to make the world a better place, and we need time to rest and play.

This post was born from that need to rest. The world seems darker lately, and it can become easy to be overwhelmed by all of the bad news. It is important to be informed. It is important to stand up for what’s right and to work toward change. But we also need to take care of ourselves. Some of that self-care involves eating right and getting exercise and spending time with loved ones. But sometimes we just need to escape.

I was reflecting on this last week, and I asked my friends on Facebook to let me know what they watched or read when they needed comfort. I hadn’t been thinking about a blog post when I asked, but as the answers came pouring in, I knew I had to share them on the blog. This is my first post that will include references to things I have not sampled at all, but I can assure readers that one or more people told me that they found comfort in these.

Light nonfiction TV

More than one person has told me that they find the old Bob Ross painting shows relaxing, but his are not the only nonfiction TV shows you can turn to. Consider The Great British Baking Show or The Great British Bake Off (the name had to be changed for American audiences), Antiques Roadshow, even car shows (one friend watches Top Gear and The Grand Tour). You might also consider watching some of Norway’s “slow TV” shows, though I wouldn’t want to watch an entire episode in one sitting. The important thing is that you choose something light — shows that are depressing or that raise your blood pressure are out.

  • Sources for Bob Ross shows included PBS, Netflix, and YouTube.
  • The Great British Baking Show is not currently on the air, but public television supporters can stream it online, or you can purchase it on Amazon.
  • You can watch Antiques Roadshow on public television, or it can be purchased on Amazon.
  • You can watch Top Gear on BBC America or Netflix, or you can purchase it from YouTube, the BBC Store, iTunes, or Amazon.
  • The Grand Tour is available on Amazon.
  • Eight different slow TV shows are available on Netflix, including “Train Ride Bergen to Oslo,” “National Knitting Night,” “Salmon Fishing,” and “National Firewood Night.” “National Firewood Morning” is only two hours and five minutes long, but the remaining episodes range from just under four hours to more than 11 hours.

Sitcoms and funny movies

Many people brought up sitcoms and funny movies when they talked about what they watched for comfort. The sitcoms included older shows, like Cheers (that one was mentioned more than once), and current series, like The Big Bang Theory. Among the movies mentioned, Fried Green Tomatoes, which has both comic and tragic moments, came up twice. One person mentioned Jackie Chan movies, and another brought up The Full Monty. The key is turning to things that make you laugh and that, as one friend mentioned, are worth multiple viewings.

Old favorites

Another theme among the responses from my friends was finding comfort in favorite books and movies. In some ways, the category above overlaps with this category, since in many cases my friends were returning to shows that had made them laugh before. When we feel uncertain about the future, it makes sense that we seek out things that have given us pleasure in the past. I’ve done that with the original Star Trek (one of my friends also mentioned that series), as well as with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings (the books, not the movies, though Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings is stunning). One of my friends did mention all of Jackson’s Tolkien movies. People told me that they found comfort in Andy Griffith, The Green Mile, Return to Me, the Twilight series, Casablanca, Dirty Dancing, and Maeve Binchy’s books. One person mentioned The Chronicles of Narnia, a couple mentioned L.M. Montgomery, and someone else noted that any favorite book from childhood was comforting. Like sitcoms and funny movies, this is a very personal category. Whatever feels “comfortable” to you, like a pair of jeans worn to softness, is worth turning to in difficult times.

Jane Austen

Jane Austen came up often enough that I decided she needed her own category. My friends frequently turn to her books and to movies about her books for a comforting escape. The 1994 version of Pride and Prejudice (you know, the one with Colin Firth) came up more than once, and some of my friends also love the 1995 version of Persuasion with Amanda Root. But overall, the feeling seemed to be “anything Austen.”

Relaxing games

When my daughter was going through a difficult time at the beginning of high school, she ran across Ferry Halim’s collection of games at Orisinal. The games tend to be cute and positive; her favorite, Casanova, involves kissing giraffes. She frequently turned to these games when she was feeling anxious, and while she doesn’t play them much now, she still loves them. I’m not much of a game player, but the game Constellations, in which you use jellyfish to catch stars, brought a smile to my face. The games require Adobe Flash to play.

 

This week, let’s all — myself included — make a commitment to limit our exposure to the news. Consider restricting both the number of times per day that you tune into some sort of news source as well as the amount of time you spend consuming news. Take time to think of how you can respond to what bothers you; take time to take care of yourself; and make sure you take a little time this week for some sort of escapist comfort. We’re human beings with human limitations, and we need to honor those limitations by allowing ourselves time to relax.

 

 

 

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Make a Difference

Make a Difference: Shake Up Your Valentine’s Day Spending

Shake up your Valentine's Day spending

 

Last week I suggested shaking up Valentine’s Day by moving the emphasis from romantic love to love in general. I also made it clear that I am not against celebrating romantic love.

If you are in a romantic relationship, you and your loved one may choose not to celebrate Valentine’s Day. But some people love flowers, candy, and romantic candlelit dinners, and that’s okay. If you want a traditional Valentine’s Day celebration but would like to use your celebration to make a difference, consider these options.

Chocolates

If you really love the idea of a heart-shaped box of chocolates, make it slave-free. You’ll pay more, but you’ll know that you aren’t benefiting from slave labor in the cocoa industry.

Lucky Chocolates offers several options, including boxes of truffles and a box filled with toffees, cherry cordials, and cocoa almonds.

Mama Ganache offers half- or whole pound boxes of truffles. You can pick from several truffle collections, including vegan truffles.

Lake Champlain has three different heart-shaped boxes, one with just truffles and two with an assortment of chocolates. There’s also a heart-shaped box intended for giving to children.

Flowers

Those bouquets you buy for your sweetheart are often shipped over a long distance from countries like Ecuador and Colombia. Many women and children work in the floral industry, and the women are frequently subject to sexual harassment. In addition, workers are exposed to harmful pesticides. Fair trade certifications are awarded to farms that provide fair wages and good working conditions for their employees.

You can find fair-trade bouquets at Whole Foods stores and online at One World Flowers and 1-800-flowers.com. You may also want to see if locally grown flowers are available where you live.

Jewelry

An estimated 20,000 children work in the gold mining industry, and child labor, including forced labor, is a problem in the diamond industry as well. End Slavery Now notes that boycotting diamonds is not an ideal solution to labor problems in the industry, because some national economies depend heavily on mining diamonds. The organization suggests specifically looking for conflict-free diamonds if you plan to buy diamond jewelry.

You may also wish to consider purchasing fair-trade jewelry. Two possible sources for jewelry are Serrv and Ten Thousand Villages.

Cards

As I mentioned last week, I’m all for homemade valentines, and I don’t think they have to be stunning to be worth giving and receiving. But not everyone feels up to making a valentine. If you want to purchase a valentine for your loved one and also want to make a difference, consider looking for a card printed on recycled paper. This valentine can even be planted; it contains wildflower seeds. Of course, if you write a heartfelt poem to your sweetie in the card, they may not want to part with it!

 

While I believe in making a Valentine’s Day a celebration of love for all, I can’t say this strongly enough: giving people who love Valentine’s Day a guilt trip because you view it as a commercial holiday just comes across as self-righteous and puritanical. If you are married or dating and you and your loved one enjoy celebrating the day together, by all means, do it! Perhaps some of the suggestions above will inspire ways you can celebrate your love while also promoting justice and caring for the planet.

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Something Wonderful

Something Wonderful: Casual Cosplay

Casual cosplay for work
Wonder Woman casual cosplay

Some days, you have to channel your inner Wonder Woman. Or Batman.

You can, of course, do this without changing a thing about your external appearance, but sometimes dressing the part helps.

Enter casual cosplay.

When you cosplay, you want people to know you’re dressing as a character, and ideally people recognize it. Anyone who has done cosplay at a sci-fi convention knows the thrill of someone shouting out your character’s name, or asking to take your picture because you did a great job with your costume.

If you are an adult doing casual cosplay as you go about your daily life, you don’t want to look like you’re wearing a costume. I don’t want a coworker to know I’ve gone to work as Sherlock unless I let them in on my secret. When I indulge in casual cosplay, it’s just for me.

I have four casual cosplay outfits I’ve worn at work, and, no, I won’t tell you what they are. Some days I wear them because I’m feeling playful. Some days I wear them because I want to feel powerful. Some days I wear them because I feel like I have nothing else to wear! I’ve also worn superhero socks under my trousers, my nerdy little secret, but I have the most fun with my clothes when I arrive at work dressed as one of my fictional heroes.

If you’re the sort of person who can put together fabulous outfits with ease, you may already have some ideas about how you could casually cosplay a character. If you, like me, are a little less skilled in the fashion department, you can find all sorts of inspiration on the Internet if you search for “casual cosplay,” “everyday cosplay,” or “closet cosplay.” You can throw in a character’s name if you have someone specific in mind. You’ll find a lot of far-from-subtle outfits, but some people put together wonderful cosplays that capture the essence of a character perfectly without looking costume-y. It helps if you pick the right character. It’s hard to cosplay Kiki from Kiki’s Delivery Service without looking exactly like her. On the other hand, many Pokemon are easy to cosplay in secret, probably because they aren’t human. Unfortunately I don’t really feel the need to express my inner Bulbasaur.

There are bloggers who specialize is casual cosplay ideas. The Nerdy Girlie is one of the best; she does cosplays on everything from Doctor Who to the Harry Potter series.

There are also some good articles on the subject. Jada Young put together some of the best work-focused cosplays on the Internet. I especially like her Deadpool and Loki outfits. Geek and Sundry has an article with some Force Awakens cosplays that are beautifully subtle.

This week, I challenge you to get creative and think of a way to secretly dress as someone else for a day. You may enjoy it so much that you’ll make it a permanent part of your work wardrobe!

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Make a Difference

Make a Difference: Shake Up Valentine’s Day

Celebrate all kinds of love on Valentine's Day

Certain holidays seem to be particularly painful for many people. Valentine’s Day is one of those days. The emphasis on romance has caused a bit of a backlash in the form of “Singles Awareness Day,” but plenty of people in relationships are unhappy on Valentine’s Day, too.

I’m not about to tell you to stop celebrating Valentine’s Day if you are in a romantic relationship. If you love Valentine’s Day, you don’t have to stop celebrating out of guilt. And if you don’t love it but your significant other does, it’s important to remember that you are a team and to figure out a way to make Valentine’s Day work for both of you.

I am going to suggest that, single or not, you shake things up this Valentine’s Day. Fight the notion that the holiday is all about romantic love and start celebrating all kinds of love — love for your family, love for your friends, love for humanity in general.

For several years now I’ve been making homemade valentines for friends and family. When I say homemade, I’m not talking about the beautifully handcrafted cards that your friend with the cool rubber stamps makes. Anyone who truly knows me knows that I am “craft challenged,” so my valentines tend to be hearts cut from construction paper, glued to a doily, and decorated with stickers. They may not be works of art, but I believe they demonstrate love better than a generic card that I can purchase at a drugstore in five minutes. (Sorry, Hallmark. I do buy cards… just not for Valentine’s Day.)

I have a list of people I like to send valentines to every year, but for the past couple of years, I’ve invited Facebook friends to request a valentine from me as well. It’s my way of letting them know that, if they’re not feeling the love this year, or if they just really like receiving valentines, I’d like to be there for them.

Last year I decided to take things a step further with 14 acts of kindness on Valentine’s Day. I spent the morning doing things like bringing flowers to a friend, putting a love note under someone’s windshield wiper, leaving a used book with a “take me” note just outside the library, and handing a lottery ticket to a stranger. It was one of the best Valentine’s Days I’ve had in years — and I mean no disrespect to my husband when I say that. I just really enjoyed finding ways to give love to others.

I also considered asking my local female friends if anyone wanted to have dinner together that evening. My hope was that dinner with a friend would be a welcome distraction for someone who was dreading Valentine’s Day. My sister did something like that for me when I was in high school, and I’ve always cherished the way she looked out for me on a night I had hoped to be going out with a certain boy. I didn’t end up extending the dinner invitation, because when I talked to my husband, he said he would like to go out with me — something we don’t always choose to do. It may be something I will do in the future, but only if he’s on board.

The concept of devoting a day to love isn’t a bad idea. The problem is that it has become a day piled high with romantic expectations. There’s no reason to stop celebrating romantic love on Valentine’s Day… but consider expanding your celebration and showering love on others, too.

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Something Wonderful

Something Wonderful: Character Creators

Dwarf
Here’s the dwarf I made on Azalea’s Dress up Dolls.

Having read the title, you may be thinking, “She’s lost her mind. It was fine when she recommended books, music, and even a tea shop, but now she’s recommending character creators?”

Yes, I am. Before you write them off, check out these three websites.

HeroMachine

More than a decade ago, for reasons I no longer remember, I decided I wanted to create a superhero for someone. Somehow I ended up at HeroMachine, where I had so much fun that I took the time to make more than the one hero I’d originally had in mind.

HeroMachine has been around since 2001. It’s designed for non-artists who want pictures of the characters they think up. When I decided to revisit the site late last year, it had been a while since I’d played around with it. This time it felt frustrating — perhaps because it is more complex than it used to be. Go to HeroMachine 3 and start looking at standard male bodies. Adding legs alone took me far longer than it should have. In the end, I got tired of messing with the options and never completed my superhero.

In order to be certain that the problem wasn’t just me, I asked my artistic teenager to visit the site and create a hero. She completed her character (and it looked pretty good!), but she agreed that the process was clunky, and she felt that the options, at least for female characters, were too limited.

That said, HeroMachine is a true character creator, and it probably will appeal to males more than the other sites in this post. My guess is that, if you put in the time to play around with it, you can make some pretty decent characters.

Doll Divine and Azalea’s Dress up Dolls

I’m willing to bet that both of these sites have an audience that is largely young and female. That’s not to say there aren’t options males might enjoy, but most of the characters are female.

Both sites include character creators from a variety of sources, so the interfaces change from one game to the next, but all of the ones I’ve tried are easier to manage than HeroMachine. Some doll makers are exclusive to one site or the other, but there is overlap between the two sites. Both sites have different categories of characters, including animals, historical characters, characters from pop culture, and fashion dolls. Almost all of my play has been in the sci-fi/fantasy realm.

The really fun doll makers are the ones with lots of options. Given enough variations in skin tones, hair styles, and clothing choices, you can make drastically different characters. Both characters below were made on the “Sci-fi Warrior” doll maker exclusive to Azalea’s Dress up Dolls. One I deliberately created to look like Princess Leia; the other I just made up as I went along. Although the poses and body shapes aren’t variable, pretty much everything else is.

Princess Leia dollFemale sci-fi warrior doll

I don’t spend much time on these sites; I’ve probably created no more than 10 characters over the past three years. But I do find that playing these dress-up games from time to time is an enjoyable way to relax. Consider taking a break this week to visit one of these sites and see what you can create.