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Looking for your Childhood

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I used to have a wooden plate from when I lived in Germany. Around the rim it said

Wo do als Kind gespielt and gesung der Glocken der Heimat sind nicht verkglungen

Word for word translated, where you played and sang as a child, the bells of homeland never stop ringing.

It’s an interesting concept, contrasted to “You can’t go home again,” because after a speaking at a conference in Ohio (talking about medical mistrust and rural rage) I went out to my grandparents’ old farm. It’s not a farm anymore. The pond has been filled in and the dirt driveway that led to their 80 acres of cows and trees was now paved drive shared by three houses going back into the former pasture. Another big beautiful pre-fab aluminum sided house that screamed “we’re retired” had gone up across the street, on top of the ridge for the best view.

We grew up in innocence. Nanny’s house was amazing because it had curtains instead of walls. It had light in daylight and after dark you saw thousands of stars and lightning bugs, and you got to work an oil lamp. Handling matches at eight years old was so cool. The music came from whistling and singing – although Nanny had things to say about whistling girls and crowing hens.

This is the second time I’ve been back there since we all moved away for good, and it’s kinda funny that both visits have been after some milestone of professional accomplishment. In 2018 I was writer in residence at Lafayette Flats, an amazing artistic opportunity that resulted in one of my books (Bad Boy in the Bookstore, my first full-length fiction). This time I was the established expert on rural rage and medical mistrust–something NPR put an interview out on in their THROUGHLINES podcast the same day I spoke.

And both times, I was looking for something that wasn’t there, at the old home place. My childhood. That innocence of how sweet it was to be loved in this weird and wonderful house where my grandparents didn’t have enough money to fill in their framed walls with lumber and hung curtains instead. Best hide and seek games ever. We could run over those hills and nothing but a skunk would harm us. Sweet freedom, happy blissful ignorance of why people lived on borrowed land and took part of their garden produce to that rich guy in town.

Forty years later, drove along Nanny and Grandpa’s old road, which didn’t used to have a name. It was just Rural Route 40, and their house sat between Big Hill and Little Hill. So we called the road that ran out front–the same road–Big Hill Road if you turned right and Little Hill Road if you turned left. And we loved riding our bikes between them very fast. Nanny’s house was the center of this small, safe universe.

Reconciling what I know now with what I loved then made for a bittersweet drive as my Prius went down Little Hill and up Big Hill. The road is called Bethel now, and it has a post office address in New Plymouth–which is still a wide spot in the road. You went out Little Hill Road for the airport, which was a great place to ride bikes. They would shoo you off the runway if a plane was coming–which never happened.

Vinton County Airport still does small planes only. And my heart still lives, at least part-time, between Big Hill Road and Little Hill Road.

You can go home again. You just have to be prepared to fold the truths into the innocence and take it in as part of adulting. It doesn’t negate the memories. Perhaps it even sweetens them. Here’s to you, Vinton County.

Customer versus Crop

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When I was working on the conspiracy theory book that came out in late 2020, I interviewed a couple of internet specialists, professors of sociology and business who talked about social media.

One of them, Daniel Ray, said to me, “Anytime you are being given a free platform online, you are not a customer. You are a crop.”

Meta proved this over the past week. I was hacked on Thursday evening a week ago. Facebook finally sent me a notice this Thursday that my page violated their policies for fraud and impersonation. This was after friends in the non-profit world and people who were fans of my books all sent report after report to Meta.

Word on the street is it takes 500 reports for Facebook to pay attention. Make that a thousand, because that’s at least how many times my friends went to bat for me.

The hackers will put their email into the list of emails getting codes and updates. When you try to update, they will change the password again because you can’t get any farther than password changes; they have changed the two factor authentication number. Well, masked it. Facebook will have your number but there is a device on your phone that forwards the codes it sends to the hacker.

So you keep asking FB for new ID, and FB sends it to the hacker. And then Meta broke, quite literally, on Monday past. Every time you try to get a code, you will put it into the recovery page Meta keeps sending (to you and the hacker) and the code will be “wrong.” But it isn’t; it’s number perfect. Check out the frustrated people on Reddit talking about this. (And the astounding fact that at any given moment in America more than 3 million people are experiencing some form of hack/data breach.)

I assumed the code trouble meant the hackers were scrambling the codes, but it turns out Meta rolled out AI on “services” to hacked accounts and it’s broken.

All that tech stuff above to say: you are literally one in 1.6 billion to Meta, and you are not going to get your account back. A friend who works in cybersecurity spent three hours with me Thursday morning trying to get in some back doors, and the back doors were locked.

So, my account is gone. 2200ish people, some of whom I never met, who liked my books and wanted to read other stuff and keep up with me casually. Just good clean fun.

My friend Susan was hacked right after me (same guy; used the same email umswczre@telegmail.com). And she runs some cancer sites, moderates some forums for people with serious illnesses. People rely on her like a rock for her medical knowledge and personal experience. Her stuff is gone too.

That’s a pity. That’s a real pity.

I’m not in a hurry to get back into any social media. Because of writing, I’ll need some form of online presence, but perhaps this blog will become more of a website presence, and that will be that.

The police in Wytheville were very kind in helping me report some compromised documents related to the hack, just in case the identity theft went deeper. They were so very helpful.

I say that to preface saying that being hacked is like having your house robbed, but you’re walking around inside it and the robbers are still in there making themselves cups of tea and you can’t get them to leave and the police don’t care. The hackers start selling your stuff on eBay while you scream for help and everyone, hackers and law enforcement included, ignores you.

You will also find out who your friends are. Getting hacked feels emotionally like getting COVID. It’s not a moral failing of course, except people act like it is. A few friends go out of their way to help you, and a bunch of others stay the hell away so you don’t infect them.

Many thanks to Elissa, who knew I would lose the site and began downloading the photos from it for me. She saved about eight years’ worth of memories. And to Julie, Tamra, and Ashley who offered various technical help. That nothing worked doesn’t negate how much time and care you showed in this very strange situation, or how deeply it was appreciated.

My account is suspended and I have 180 days to appeal. But since I can’t get into the site to appeal, methinks my FB presence is gone for good.

Okay. :]