Sunday, October 18, 2026

Web Log for 10.16-17.26, with Even More Bad Poetry

I was expecting to go somewhere Friday evening. I hadn't slept much during the week, though, and right about sundown I leaned over into a comfortable position and went to sleepy-land. Woke up a little before midnight, read a bit of the latest chat on the Meow, realized it was Friday night and I was supposed to be coming in from somewhere further away from the screen porch right about now. It had been raining all evening. 

The person with whom I was supposed to go somewhere (other than sleepy-land) probably hadn't even tried to drive up the road, with the wet leaves all over it. We've had no frost but some leaves turn yellow and drop when the light changes--and this year we've been losing a lot of leaves to fire blight and intentional, criminal, poison spraying. So the road's leafy and the leaves weren't showing any tracks of any vehicles in which anyone had come up looking for me. 

It can take five or ten minutes, but I do wake up if someone's parked on the road, flashing lights and sounding horn regularly. Friends may have to persevere though. This every-gal-her-own-nightwatchman routine does get old.

Animals 

1. This is where cat bloggers get our silly memes and holidays:


I did not check in in time to remember that Friday was Feral Cat Day, but my junior cat Silver observed it by wandering around as if she were a feral cat. I've clarified this with some, not all, of the people who might see her stravaiging about. Silver is not feral. She is a pet. In cold weather she's even an indoor pet. She is loved and missed, but even if she can't have kittens, she likes male company. She has a history of bonding with one tomcat at a time, and has outlived three--one who came to the neighborhood old, one who was poisoned, and, I'm told, most recently one who was forcibly removed from the neighborhood by someone whose property he had marked as his own. We have a resident tomcat, Drudge; Drudge is Silver's nephew. Some neighbors have a tomcat who was chased off by their junior tomkitten. The day they told me they'd decided he must be dead, I saw what looked like him in the wood lot below their house. It's possible that Silver was observing Feral Cat Day by trying to make friends with a cat who's gone feral. Anyway, she missed breakfast, but came home for dinner. 

One reason why cats go feral is that, although they can like and respect their peers, typical cats tend to feel that each one should have its own territory. Even our Bounce and Pounce, the most affectionate and devoted brother kittens ever seen, reached an age when they decided quite amicably to claim territories of their own--if one stayed with me, the other one would stray off. Fighting, as it was for Drudge and Wild Thyme while WT was around, may be a harmless ritual but each cat seriously wants to claim a separate space. 

Anyway it's not true that feral cats never become real pets. They aren't likely to bond with people who trap and neuter them. About that they probably feel very much the way humans would if someone were doing it to us. They do bond with people who feed them consistently, let them go their own way, and may have "tamed" one or more of their kittens. They never become the sort of house pets who totally depend on humans and wouldn't want to stray out of their designated rooms in their humans' homes, but with patience you can hope to be allowed to pet them, pick them up, and help if they're really sick or injured. Each step toward a typical pet/human bond takes a few months...assuming you either don't have pet cats, or have a friendly, encouraging one. If your pet cat tells them to keep their germs and fleas the bleep away from its human, they will. They'll become fond of you but, while that pet cat lives, not come close enough to touch.

If you have a barn you absolutely should adopt feral cats from a shelter that takes them, because otherwise they're likely to be killed. They do not thrive in shelter conditions. And though it may take years to build the kind of trust that can forgive you  for taking them in for rabies shots (some people like to designate a visiting villain the cats can associate with this violation of their purrsons), when a feral cat does start to love you, you know you're loved. Fully domesticated cats may see you as just a source of food; feral cats, who depend on their own skills for food, definitely relate to you as friends and will look for ways to show love and gratitude. 

2. Short video about elephants...


One of the more human traits that could even be disturbing, about our Founding Queen Cat Black Magic, was that she recognized a friend's bones. Right around the time a local jerk shot Magic's foster daughter, Kitten Number Three, Magic's pet Pogo Possum started sitting in the road snarling at passers-by and was, of course, run over after a few days. (Why possums do that I don't know, but I'm glad Pogo was the only one of ours I saw doing it.) For weeks, when we passed Pogo's bones, Magic would squeak softly and slow down as if remembering and missing Pogo.

Magic was not sentimental about other animals' bones. She left a goodly number of them strewn about the yard as possum treats. But those animals had clearly been in the category "food" for her; Pogo was in the category "friend."

3. Why haven't I done any Cat Sanctuary Interviews lately? Possibly because the Meow's taken over that genre? Author Priscilla Ann Bird (no, I've never met her in real life) has been giving the world its daily dose of behavior-observation-based whimsy this year. Her cat family unfortunately has a senior female who does not seem to have what it takes to be a Queen. I think it'd be interesting to see how Serena might deal with those Bengal Brothers, but it's unlikely to happen. 


Thursday afternoon, after doing some damage to the property he's supposed to be managing for a relative, the Bad Neighbor sprayed it thoroughly with the current form of "Roundup," which of course drifted down on the wind. Friday morning, I went out on the porch and Serena ran to meet me as usual, bounding onto the porch and crossing it with one long jump, seeming almost to float through the air as she ran, effortlessly...not quite. The poison in the air affected her ability to breathe just as it did mine. Serena stood panting for breath and letting me pet her for several breaths before recovering her usual interest in kibble and hurrying me to pour out some of it. Serena is now about as old, for a cat, as I am for a human, and "A little slowing down is normal" for some people at our age, no doubt...but ours occurs only after exposure to airborne chemicals that have been used with evil intentions toward us. Do not be deceived. When the air is clean Serena is as bouncy as ever. Bengal cats run bigger and livelier than more domestic breeds, closer to their wild ancestors, so a pair of adolescent Bengals might out-bounce Serena. But I'd expect she'd still be their Queen.

Having a traditional extended family with a Real Patriarch is not always perfect. Oh yes of course we should be kind and generous and take people's word that, if they can't deny they've done something wrong, at least they won't do it again. Remember when some of us sent that stoned driver to jail, and Dad gave him and his wife jobs, when he got out, to encourage him to stay sober? Well, Dad's last few first cousins are fine Christian gentlemen. They are also in mortal danger from being such. There are no "weed" problems in October but some relatives are having a birthday party this weekend...

We need a law. Good wording might be, "Any open-air spraying of volatile chemicals may be prosecuted as a violent crime against any person affected by it." We need to stop thinking "X sneezed because X has allergies" and shift to thinking "X sneezed because Y, that spray poisoner, injured X's nose." And doling out fines, jail terms, and worse, accordingly.

Censorship and Those Who Want It 

Apologies for the language...Joe Jackson tells it like it is.


I am sincerely sorry...There's a blogger I follow who used to be an active commenter at lots of web sites, and gradually dropped away from them. She blogs about being old. She's not all that old. I noticed her not visiting here, hoped she was well, have been glad to see her blog staying active. Maybe she just had to cut back on reading time because of eye trouble? I read back and noticed that she'd mentioned feeling appalled by one of the Petfinder Posts. The one about the pet-friendly shelters for victims of domestic abuse. Because, as evidence supporting the claim that abused people might reasonably be afraid to leave their pets alone with their abusers, I mentioned things an abuser had done to the family dogs. I hadn't provided any warnings about the violent content of that post and this sensitive soul has never come back here since. 

That is not the kind of "offended" I'm talking about. The purpose of this web site is not to raise cardiovascular patients' blood pressure or make bereaved people cry. It's not always possible to guess what may have those effects; it is easy to guess that some things will. I should have opened that post with a warning about violent content. It won't bring that individual reader back here, but I do apologize to her.

But those who are "offended" by things they read online such as "Trump fans thought the blatantly fake video of Trump tackling the tiger was hilarious," or "Kamala Harris was perceived by other DC lawyers as a lightweight and suspected of having gained promotion from a personal relationship with a married man," or "Democrats need to purge Democratic Socialists out of their party, without pity, and try their very best to reclaim the 'liberal' label no matter how many Trump-haters they have to disown, in order to have a chance of remaining a viable party"...yup. They should loosen up, or stop reading, or both.

Movies 

Not a review, but some historical background notes on The Uprising.


Music 

Roberto Cacciapaglia.



Vera Lynn.


Booker T.


Franz Schubert.


Elijah Bossenbroek.


Tschaikovsky, rendered on drinking glasses with water in them. (Christmas-associated for some.)


Steve Miller Band.


Clay Aiken.


The Wailers.


Bruce Springsteen.


Mark Knopfler.


Rosanne Cash.


Ludovico Einaudi.


Five contemporary Christian songs about mothers. If you like them you might save them to replay on Mothers Day. I post them when I get to them. I will note, however, that a certain type of hippie mother used to say that displays of filial affection meant more when they did not arrive on the Hallmark Holiday. It is Sunday. If you have that type of mother, you can share these songs with her now.


George Winston.



Marty Robbins. 


John Lee Hooker.


"Impromptu piano duet."


Avishai Cohen.


Boogie Belgique.


Poetry 

Yet another outlet for the urge to poem: Rallentanda's Senryu Sunday posts at her blog. She posts pictures and invites senryu about one of each week's pictures.


People love this one
I think: early widowhood
our house, less girly

Details matter; I expect the young woman in the picture has not lost a husband but decided to make her little house, or flat, beautiful without one. But my memories of sitting alone at a pretty little round table, built for four and placed in a corner so that it seats two, in a tidy, cozy kitchen are tearstained ones.

Well, that's a fine cheerful thought to share with a friend. Can I do better?


surf's roar, and sunshine
hot on shoulders; the urge to
lie back, float on tide


She's planning to host a senryu linkup every Sunday for a while.

Politics 

Donald Trump can afford whatever security he needs so I'm not terribly concerned about him. I am, however, concerned about the way the Loony Left's hostility spills over onto Trump's relatives and employees. (And would spill over onto his friends, if he had any...few self-made rich men acknowledge any friends, and most 80-year-olds have outlived most if not all the friends they ever had.) Yes, for the safety of the Trump grandchildren, and of ourselves, we must keep the Democratic Socialists from gaining any seats in Congress and we should try to keep them from being elected to any position whatsoever. Even Sergeant-at-Arms (Crossed Mop and Window Pole!) of the High School Band Boosters Club. (The link appeared at a "news" site long enough ago that it's not news, but it never was a news story; it's an opinion piece, still valid.) Real Democrats should be as concerned about this as Republicans are, actually.

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Book Review: The Great Controversy

Book Title: The Great Controversy

Author: Ellen G. White

Date: 1884, 1998

Publisher: Harvestime Books

ISBN: none

Length: 424 pages of text with indices

Quote: "Wherever they sought refuge, the followers of Christ were hunted like beasts."

The Great Controversy was Ellen White's summary of the history of the Christian church. Three editions were published. The 1911 edition, The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan, is the one Seventh-Day Adventist students often distribute door-to-door to explain how the different Christian denominations came to exist and how theirs is like and different from the others. Although the 1911 edition contains a much higher proportion of factual details to rhetorical flourishes than this 1884 edition does, that's because it contains all those long quotes that (acceptably by contemporary standards) were identified as quotes only by the use of quotation marks--no credits. This is the book Ellen White wrote, before she instructed assistants to go back and pad it with long unattributed quotations from other books.

Some say you can tell the unattributed quotations in any White book by the sudden improvement in writing style...Like many Victorian writers, Ellen White helped herself to generous portions of other people's writing; attributing a multi-page quote only to "an early historian" was thought of as flattering the audience with the suggestion that they'd know which historian the author meant, rather than as sloppy research. Ellen White was almost entirely self-taught. Her self-education was rigorous but did not include any noticeable attention to the ideas of shortening sentences or choosing telling details instead of piling up generalizations. And unfortunately for readers, some of the better educated authors she quoted had had some glimmer of those ideas; more had none. 

This edition is shorter than the familiar one by a few hundred pages. Substantial parts of the historical facts are printed in the form of terse charts and tables of data, rather than narrative. Some readers feel that the charts and tables provide valuable resting places in a long slog through Victorian prose. On the other hand, some readers complain that the effect of the text is less like a history book and more like a sermon than the 1911 edition.

If you're not familiar with any edition of The Great Controversy, there's another thing you need to know about it: Victorian Christians were incredibly insensitive, monstrously politically incorrect. I've not found another book from this period that compared different denominations without bashing all but the author's own. Ellen White wrote about other denominations the way people did at the time. It wasn't that she disliked Jews or Catholics; it was that she didn't know any of them well enough to anticipate that their feelings might be hurt by long expositions on themes like, "Prophets had wept over the apostasy of Israel," or "Corrupt and blasphemous priests and popes were doing the work which Satan applointed them."

When I first read The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan, which was given to me for my tenth birthday, I remember that the dominant impression I picked up was of harsh condemnation. (I don't recommend this book for ten-year-olds, no matter how advanced their reading skills may be.) On our last long road trip we'd visited some Catholic relatives; I wondered whether, if my parents kept going to that Adventist church, I'd ever be allowed to see them again. Duh. I would probably have been encouraged to visit them...but that's the way The Great Controversy comes across to people who read it without a mature historical perspective.

To my surprise, later on, the Adventists I met did not seem to have a problem dissociating Ellen White's condemnations of the corrupt priests and popes from the idea of good will toward, and even cooperation with, their Catholic neighbors. While attending an Adventist college I volunteered at Catholic-run missions and went to classes with guest students from a nearby Catholic college. I observed no phobia of other denominations.

Adventists who attend church meetings get guidance on how to dissociate historical judgments from present-time relationships there. For non-Adventists, I recommend The Great Controversy to those who are sincerely liberal (as I use the word) enough to read it with tolerance for a previous generation's intolerant language.

Even the subtitle of the 1911 edition has been controversial. C.S. Lewis later wrote, much more patiently (to suit his historical period), that Satan was usually understood to be the opposite not to Christ but to Michael as chief of the good angels. Ellen White seems to have made less study of the evil angels than, say, Martin Luther did, so perhaps she can be forgiven for seeming to promote Satan a little higher in the scheme of things than he ought to be.

During the twentieth century I read a couple of other books outlining the way the major denominations in the United States were, but I don't remember another book giving as complete a history of how they came to exist. If you want a less biased historical study of this topic, it's possible that you'll have to go back to the primary texts and write one...and I say the sooner the better.
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Friday, October 16, 2026

Web Log for 10.15.26

the

Banks, Bigotry of 

And here I thought those banks didn't want to handle Paypal accounts because the function of a Paypal-linked bank account is to process pennies and never have a balance worth stealing for 24 hours at a time. We need a law. Money-handling services must not be allowed to display "attitudes" toward customers. Any evidence of personal feeling, good or bad, in handling other people's money should get them shut down. Paypal should not know or care whose transactions it's handling. Nor should your bank, if you use one. People who handle your money should give no room for suspicion that they know if your mother once gave them a failing grade, much less what your religion, politics, or other personal affairs might be. 


Food Service, Lessons in 

Hooters Girl wants her old job back again? Well, cry me a river, Bimbo. News flash: Most people who want to eat in a restaurant want to eat with someone else. Most people who want to eat together in a restaurant go in pairs or small groups that include women. And women do not want our food to have been handled by other women dressed in what look like the gym suits my class protested having to wear in high school, grinning and chattering at our dates, thank you very much. Here's a vote for food servers dressed in black from neck to wrists and ankles, taught just enough English to whisper "Your order, Sir/Madame," and required to wait in a corner for customers to summon them as distinct from interrupting customers' conversations. I don't care how cute or deserving they are, I don't want my dinner date talking to or looking at any other female. Hooters should have known that and not tried to build a brand around having inappropriately dressed women "smile and joke" with male customers.

No link, because the story's at nypost.com, an obnoxious site fouled up with obtrusive ads. But I'm tempted to try to link to an old song about a jealous woman who shot her cheating boyfriend and the "honey," which I used to like, although aunts traditionally hate it, for the line, "She said, 'Stand back, all you cheapies'..." I think that has to be a lot of women's opinion of Hooters Girls. 

Humor, Immature Male Sense of 

In an English wildlife park, a Siberian tiger, which is not an English species and shouldn't have been there, attacked a young man. The attack was fatal. Someone at the White House posted the video of the attack in the President's name. Howls of outrage arose. The White House "Truth Social" consultant then replaced it with a computer-generated video of Trump playing with the tiger. 

Guys will be guys. Guys probably don't belong in the White House, but I did chortle...See the blatantly fake video of Trump hugging the tiger at


Music 

Parov Stelar.


USC marching band. Great workout video.


Estas Tonne.


Childish Gambino.


Herbert Pixner Projekt.


Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike.


Hrdza.


Anne Clark.



Canned Heat.



Akino Arai.


Ludovico Einaudi.



Symbiose.


Pink Floyd.


John Coltrane.


Nick Drake.


Tom Petty.



Blackfoot.


Eric Clapton.


Electronic tribute to Fleetwood Mac.


Prince.


The Black Keys.


"BeautifulCountryHiddenFacts."


Swirling Eddies.


Crosby, Stills, Nash, and/or Young.


Terry Reid.


Incredible String Band.


Boogie Belgique.


Cannonball Adderley.



Bert Jansch.


Passepartout Duo.


George Winston.


Jesse Cook.


Sam Nichols.

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Bad Poetry: Angels' Messages

This week's Poets & Storytellers United prompt is a bit of a challenge, because...

If I knew what the message was going to be,
Why would the angel need to deliver it to me?
Still, the biblical record gives us one clear clue:
If an angel is ever sent to speak to you,
Though light and swift as thought, it carries the weight
Of glory, authority, power, so great
That the first thing it always finds that it has got
To tell mortals, on meeting them, will be "FEAR NOT."


(Graphic from Google.)

What are angels? The word means "message" or "messenger." In some traditions it's used to mean anyone bearing a message from God, which would include even the little donkey that spoke to Balaam in the book of Judges, much less the minister or even a friend from church. However, in the Bible it seems to mean a different kind of thing--a spiritual being that may look human, but is not. The fools in the city of Sodom thought they wanted to rape the angels who came to visit Lot--looking at them from a distance. The angels allowed them to think that to show Lot how vile his townsmen were and confirm that Lot was decent enough to want to protect his guests. People who get close enough to converse with angels always seem startled by them. Even an angel in the form of a child would still be a spirit messenger from God. People tremble at the thought of what an angel could possibly have to tell them. 

Do I believe in angels? Well...if you believe in a Creator God for whom all is possible, you can't believe there may not be angels. I have no personal knowledge of the subject. Angels can probably take any form. In the Bible some of them appear as strange, symbolic alien creatures, and some look like mortals from a distance. However, though contemporary artists love to paint and sculpt women and children angels, in the Bible all the angels who take human form appear as young men, and Jesus describes them as an army. That doesn't mean that the ones who protect children might not appear in female or child form...but we are clearly told that they have no family lives. Angels are created, not born. Some think that makes their gender masculine. Some point out that in nature, when living things work but don't reproduce--like worker bees--their gender is feminine. I say neuter...expecting that in Heaven we shall all be surprised, and have a good laugh at the things we believed when we were only able to try to imagine a spiritual plane of existence with mortal, material brains.
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Book Review: Magic, an Introduction

This was one of the first book reviews to appear at this web site. It didn't get much attention when the site was getting ten to fifteen page views a week. It has been revised and updated.

Book Title: Magic: an Introduction

Author: Betty Kobs

Date: 1976

Publisher: Raintree Publishers

ISBN: 0-8172-0057-6

Length: 48 pages

Illustrations: photos by Robert L. Miller, drawings by Barbara Ericksen

Quote: "Someone who does magic tricks is called a magician. A magician tries to surprise people."

Betty Kobs' introduction to magic tricks is intended to be easy enough for first and second grade readers. It might sound stilted and patronizing to third grade students.

The sleight-of-hand and distraction stunts explained in this book don't require expensive equipment or extensive practice. How does one soft foam ball become two? It was two balls all along, squished together in the magician's hand. Paper clips jump off a folded strip of paper when the paper is spread flat. Water in a glass will magnetically "hold" a piece of cardboard across the top of the glass, holding the water inside while the glass is upside down...for a few minutes.

Then there's always the reliable "magic" properties of the Afghan Band or Moebius Strip, a long strip of anything twisted just halfway round and joined into a circle. Cutting, twisting, marking, and otherwise playing with this circle produces many surprising and amusing results. Kids can work up a fifteen- to thirty-minute act using the special properties of the Moebius Strip, with just one sheet of construction paper, a little sticky tape, and a pair of kindergarten scissors.

Magic, an Introduction will allow eight-year-olds to entertain six-year-olds. Older audiences are unlikely to be impressed, although a ten-year-old sibling might claim to be surprised that the eight-year-old is able to perform for half an hour. But one must begin somewhere, and all these tricks are cheap and safe.
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Island Snapshots: Assateague and Chincoteague, 1986

I sent three poems about places to a contest for poems about places. Two were Bad Poetry (TM); one was Free Verse. The poems didn't win so the Bad Poetry (TM) has been scheduled for publication on my Substack, while the Free Verse is here. 

Assateague and Chincoteague islands are off the Maryland/Virginia coast. Assateague is the wildlife preserve where visitors camp in tents and observe wildlife; Chincoteague is the town where visitors stay in hotels or B&B's and shop. My ideal three-day weekend would include the Friday or Monday afternoon on Chincoteague, weekend alternating between woods and beach. The islands are best known for the "ponies" (horse people say they're small feral horses), who run wild on Assateague for most of the year, then are herded over to Chincoteague (they have to swim) where people buy enough of them to manage the population in July. The ponies are accustomed to humans, though not tame; in 1986 people weren't afraid enough of lawsuits to keep them from walking right up to tourists, but signs did warn that they might just accidentally nip or step on you. But that didn't happen. For wild horses they're incredibly calm, patient, and friendly. (Intelligent enough to live in an apartment with a human? That's known to have happened once. Misty of Chincoteague was a once-in-a-lifetime pet.)


(Photo from Google. The ponies can be any color including palomino, but brown and white spots ("skewbald") are more common than in most breeds.)

The sign said
campsites six dollars for a weekend in July
mosquitoes and sand fleas, free
and they weren't joking.


(Photo from Google. Sand fleas are small, young mole crabs. They jump when startled and can bite when handled; some bites are harmless and some raise an itchy rash, probably depending on what disgusting thing the animal has been eating. People rake them up and use them as fish bait.)

The eight-person tents
were pitched only when
a voice interrupted the slapping and scratching
to remind everyone that tents
gave some protection from the mosquitoes at night.

We thought of mosquitoes as small, black, smooth;
saltmarsh mosquitoes, a different genus,
are yellow and hairy, and eat tourists
even and perhaps especially
the ones inland mosquitoes leave alone.


(Aedes sollicitans in the attitude in which she is most often seen. (Males bite plants.) People who don't know the story about the deformed, outcast human boy have nicknamed these things "Jersey Devils." If you ever feel like killing something, this is a good species to pick--nothing seems to make a dent in the population and people wish something would. Just don't try poison sprays, which are what have raised the mosquito population to the appalling heights it reaches on these islands. Photo from Keithpetrosky for INaturalist.)

Peace was found only waist-deep in
the shallow inlets and tidepools
where we wound up, dancing the sun down
to our own unaccompanied voices.


(Photo from Google, which seems to have been warned not to show pictures of people enjoying the island beaches in the only way they can be enjoyed in July. It was this octette or the Beatles. Searches for things like "people waist deep in water" or "humans wading in water" yielded pictures of people walking on wet sand, standing in indoor pools, or--oddly, given that boats drift out further and are more dangerous than simply wading at the beach--paddling in boats and on rafts, always below warnings about sharks here and jellyfish there. Surprise--if you take a boat or raft into the water off Assateague in July, you will have mosquitoes on board. Determined campers will get their clothes wet. We do not live in a safe world.)

We stayed in the tents as long as possible
growling and snarling when anyone went out
and let mosquitoes in.

The smoke from the grill
discouraged humans; mosquitoes,
not noticeably.


(Assateague also has the only North American population of Japanese Sika deer. They are less human-friendly than the horses. They know they can be, and in season will be, hunted. Photo from Google.)

Everyone saw several little island deer,
clams, mussels, and horseshoe crabs
while wading waist-deep around the island's edge.
There were said to be birds and butterflies.
No one saw any of those.


(Horseshoe crab from Ocean City. Horseshoe crabs are not true crabs and, despite having a shape that reminds people of sting rays, they're harmless; at worst the shells might be sharp and rough. Desperate people have eaten certain parts of them and survived but they're not generally considered edible.)

The second night, the moon rose full and clear.
We swam in the sea under the moon.
The mosquitoes waited till the moon went down
and we straggled back to the eight-person tents.

The second day, we went into town.
No one had brought money or wanted to shop
but mosquitoes didn't go inside the stores.
We thought that's how the island economy works.

Back then the island's peculiar ponies,
feral horses actually, walked the streets
and helped themselves to tourists' food, if they saw any.
Shaggy, gentle, mostly spotted beasts,
some three-colored.

Would I go back? I have; many times
but never again in July.
The island landscapes are less colorful
but easier to enjoy in winter.


(Assateague attracts thousands of birds. Some people have wanted to maintain it as a bird sanctuary and get rid of the horses and deer! Visitors can expect to see big showy waterfowl like herons, egrets, and sometimes pelicans, and lots of different kinds of gulls, terns, and sandpipers, and some songbirds. I've always liked these buffleheads--little wild ducks that bob in and out of the water. Some call them popcorn ducks because a family will pop in and out of view, raising that "buffalo mane" of white feathers, like popping corn. Buffleheads are most often seen in Maryland, and on Assateague, in winter, sometimes staying only for the midwinter thaw. Photo from Google.)

October, even November, are the optimal time for camping on Assateague. Very "easy" camping--you can drive right up to the camp site, sleep in the car if something's wrong with the tent, get drinking water and probably showers by now, drive into town for meals if you don't feel like "camp cooking," shop and watch movies if it rains. The heat is milder; the urge to wade out neck-deep into the ocean, or actually swim, is more resistible. Many trails were already wheelchair-friendly, though not yet advertised as such, in 1986 because small islands tend to be flat and smooth. Chincoteague's little tourist shops have that post-tourist-season quiet atmosphere that makes shopping more tempting for introverts, too. The February and March thaws are also lovely, but often rainier.


There are now actually places to trade regular wheelchairs for beach wheelchairs, temporarily--free of charge. There are dog-friendly beaches, too. The whole island is child-friendly, after the mosquitoes subside. Photo from Google.
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Thursday, October 15, 2026

Web Log for 10.14.26

Well, laptop, is this the day you turn into a pumpkin? Apparently not. So far it's running Microsoft "security" garbageware, which is about as annoying as Microsoft "Edge Updates," but it is running. Let it run while it will, I suppose. 

Books

Bogus book covers remind me of Love's Reckless Rash, a hilarious romance by "Rosemary Cartwheel." I read it and thought of a series, starting with a teen romance called Love's Acne Angst and ending with a blue-collar one called Love's Zippy Z. (Datsun, of course...say what you like about the Camaro Z28, those cars were overpriced.) If you'd like to read these stories, let me know. Meanwhile, for these parodies, the covers are probably enough...



Music 

Tom Petty. (There've been days when nobody at the Meow posted a link to a TP song, but so few and far between that I'd forgotten that they'd existed...)




Avishai Cohen.


The Cure.


Ella Mai.


Red Clay Strays. (Rockabilly sound, Christian lyrics.)



Beatles.


Ray Charles.


Fairport Convention.


Glimbus.


B.J. Thomas.


Etienne de Lavaulx.



Steve Miller Band.


Elton John.


Dire Straits.


G.E. Schneeman.


Abba.


Shirley Temple.


Cyndi Lauper.


Ludovico Einaudi.



Donna Sumner.


Boogie Belgique.



Billy Joel.


Chequerboard.



Elvis Costello.


Neil Young.


Kid Rock. Christian lyrics. Seriously. He and Eminem are doing a Christian album.



Alexandre Desplat.


Pisk.


Technology 

Why we do not want household objects with chips in them. Not ever.

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Book Review: Hired Luck

Title: Hired Luck 

Author: Melisa Todd

Date: 2020

Publisher: Bad Ash

Quote: "Why don't I see your stomach contents anywhere?"

In the first volume of her adventures, when she became an emergency medical technician, Cori saw a lot of gore. In the first scene of volume two, what she sees is worse. The policemen to whom she reports the scene think it's suspicious that even an EMT as young and nice as Cori seems to be can bear the sight of what she's reported. The body has been killed in a ritualistic way. In a world where some people have magical powers, some use them in unacceptable ways. Death is the only way to stop them. The murderer of this body will kill again. Cori will have to help hunt him down. 

The reversal-of-fortune for which we've been set up takes place in this volume. Cori never noticed when she developed magic powers, we're told, because it happened just after her brother died and she instinctively "cloaked" her powers. Her dandruff and brittle hair were evidence of her unconscious use of her magic. When she's taken in for testing she's pronounced one of the strongest magicians on Earth.

Which is what it takes to stop the murderer. Even untalented people, Cori learns, can do ritual magic if they know the right procedures. Ritual magic can take a lot of energy. This rogue mage's plan is to kill first one person, then 27, then 81, then 243...

In this parallel world, the most powerful magicians acquire "familiars" from other dimensions. Nobody has ever survived a trip to one of these dimensions. "Familiars" choose their human friends, and in this volume Cori finds a creature like a kitten, only with long fingers, opposable thumbs, and a fully prehensile tail, sitting on her chest projecting the thought "Mine." His name is Carelian and his power seems benign. The murderer's spells are intended to draw magical creatures through what appear as rips in the planes of interdimensional reality. They're less benign. 

This fantasy is more adventure and comedy than horror, but the gross-out level is still fairly high. Sex and profanity levels are low. We know Cori's roommate and "best friend forever" is a lesbian without a steady girlfriend; we still don't know whether, when Cori finishes "gaining weight" as a college student, she'll ever feel attracted to anybody. 
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Public School Math Class Burlesque

Some years ago a high school math teacher in Hawkins County, Tennessee, who moonlighted as a strip dancer was dismissed from her teaching job, but not prosecuted for a crime, after admitting to a consensual sexual relationship with an 18-year-old student. The teacher was only four years ahead of the boy in school, and reportedly hardly even three years older. This was before the newspapers went online; Google shows no reports of the incident.

The year after this item made the news, two of The Nephews were pulled out of (a different) public school in Hawkins County, an elementary school, and enrolled in schools out of state. 

The story gets stranger over the years. In 2015 a 44-year-old Hawkins County teacher was prosecuted for running the strip club in a way that promoted prostitution. In 2019, even after that teacher was banned from school premises and the club was shut down, another Hawkins County public school teacher, who would have been 25 years old at the time, was prosecuted on several criminal charges after admitting to a consensual sexual relationship with a student who was not yet 18 at the time. 

The author of this document thinks the penalties for the teachers were fair. The author also thinks that more might be said about any personal relationship between any teacher and any student...even in university, where students pursuing "continuing education" or "second careers" are often older than the teachers. It is unfair to the entire class for a teacher to do anything with or for one student that s/he can’t do with or for the others. True Love would wait until the student had finished the course. 

So this stripper/teacher deserves a little vignette...a burlesque...I’m not familiar with strip dance acts; strip dance fans will have to forgive me for imagining this woman’s act as a less artistic version of one from toward the end of Gypsy.

(Bell rings. Teacher slinks up the middle row, sliding a lacy shawl across her shoulders. Her rhyming lines form some sort of a tune. At this period the idea of a "twelve-tone row" that used all the keys on the piano, rather than forming a traditional harmonic arrangement around a single key note, was in style so notes that are technically right, but sound wrong, are appropriate. She is wearing what appears at first glance to be a long skirt with a lot of ruffles but is, in fact, a bundle of skirts in different lengths, shortest outside. She is not pretty enough to have been offered a receptionist job but she certainly is firm and fit, from the job she currently does.)

Teacher: Take your math books out, pay attention and learn.
I’m hot! I’m on fire! Oh, how I burn!
Turn to page two hundred and eighty-three.
How many items of clothing can you see?

Girl: Nineteen.

Teacher: How’d you guess?

Girl: You wore the same outfit last week.

Teacher (very very sweetly): Take this (throws shawl at student), and a zero!
I need a good man, a true lover, a hero!
Down to eighteen things, number eighteen is goin’! (Drops glove on boy’s desk.)
How much will I take off? No knowin’! (Drops other glove on another boy’s desk.)
Which of you boys solved the first equation?

Boy: X equals 5.

Teacher: Aren’t you glad you’re getting a good education!

Girls: (snores)

Teacher (shimmying out of the outermost skirt): 
Edu-mony—matri-cation—is my de-si-re!
I’m hot! I’m burning up! I’m on fire!

Boys: Teacher Teacher I declare
I can see your underwear!

Teacher: Not yet, you don’t!
(Picks up a ruler and beats time on a desk.)
The second equation, who solved it for Y?

Boy: Y equals 72.

Teacher: You can learn anything if you try!
Ooh! There goes a garter! Well, I’ve got another.
You can take this one home and show it to your brother. (Tosses garter across the room.)
Third equation?

Boy: X equals fourteen.

Teacher: A college degree sure improved my cavortin’!
Go to college! Get some knowledge! Then you can see,
In the fourth equation, X is five and Y is three!
(Slaps boy on wrist with ruler, picks up garter, and hands it to him.)

Boy (very young for his age): Uh, Teacher, if X is five and Y is three, how can 2 X + Y be 26?

Teacher: Oh! Stop asking inappropriate questions!
Can’t you ever think of any kinky suggestions?

Girls: Teacher Teacher I declare
I can see your underwear!
I’ll tell Ma! Ma’ll tell Pa!
You’ll lose your teaching job! Ha, ha, ha!

Teacher (starting to dance her way out of another skirt): That’s too kinky!

CURTAIN
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Wednesday, October 14, 2026

Web Log for 10.13.26

Last day of laptop functionality? Where is my Linux? Meanwhile I sorted through 5000 e-mails and learned that (big surprise here!) Microsoft recommends I buy a new computer, the "cloud-based" kind without a hard drive, and sign the contract to let Windows 11 plagiarize my unpublished content! 

Gentle Readers, please be sure all computers you use have hard drives and none of them has Windows 11. Don't feed the monster. Those "end times" Seventh-Day Adventists are always worrying about may indeed be near...but don't you be the ones to bring them closer. 

(For those who came in late, Seventh-Day Adventists believe that, shortly after everyone alive on Earth has had the opportunity to hear the Gospel, the warring tribes of Europe will unite for once, and then the United States will cease to be the Promised Land of religious freedom and will instead become the most oppressive tyranny the world has ever seen. Jesus will then return to Earth in the flesh to stop the new American Inquisition. And everyone agrees, the sooner the better--but nobody really wants to live through the total destruction of what these United States have been, and meant to humankind. Seventh-Day Adventists do not claim to have a precise time line for how long that will take, either. All they claim to know is that it will be a long, hard time.)

Books 

It's early to call the Best of October, but the best non-Christian book of October just might have been reviewed right before this post went live. Scroll.

Coloring Pages

I could wish these butterfly pictures to color were more scientific. There is actually a system that allows scientists to describe butterflies' color patterns in words and visualize what those dry old descriptions in Novitiates Zoologicae mean. These are just fantasy picture printables, but they can keep a primary school class occupied for a few hours. 


Ecology 

West Virginia claims to have a grove of 50-year-old American Chestnut trees--the only such grove known to exist on Earth. Fifty years ago American Chestnut trees were still sprouting from the roots of dead trees but everyone "knew" they didn't live even fifteen years. But in the Illegitimate State, reportedly, they did. Now the ingrates are proposing to try to uproot 50-year-old trees, which everyone knows you don't do, so they can put in a "data center."

This site is set up as a petition to the Governor of WV, who doesn't want to hear from people outside his State, but the rest of the world can use it. I recommend posting links to it on blogs and social media with comments like "THIS is why friends don't let friends use flatphones" and "THIS is why my next car is going to be chip-free, I don't care how old it is." 


Music 

Bob Ferguson.


Sons of the Pioneers.


Toto.


Earth Wind & Fire.


Deep Purple.


Indigo Girls.


Technology 

Why "conservatives," including the real private citizens in Trump's voter base, oppose the unsustainable "data centers" that are going to kill the Internet if we let them come to exist. (Not to mention the alleged American Chestnut trees. Not that I've ever trusted the Illegitimate State's claim to have American Chestnut trees, but whatever they do have that's close enough to look like American Chestnut trees will be worth more to them than the "data center.") No, we're not receiving money from China. We're willing to let China learn the hard way about using robots to create a gossip-and-spy "social credit" system, just as China apparently had to learn the hard way about Mao...and, just as in Mao's time, we are still the United States. We can still do better.

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