Animals
Found on the Mirror. Lens says it's a pygmy possum with its teeth and spots digitally enhanced. Pygmy possums really are that tiny and that cute.
Glyphosate Awareness
Glyphosate and other toxins: Driscoll's berries, sold in Wal-Marts and other supermarkets everywhere, are raised by major bitter clingers. Not only do they drench their berries in poisons; they spray poisons on berry fields that are adjacent to elementary schools. You've probably already noticed that these berries are not edible, but people living near Driscoll's farms say it's time to do more.
Yet another study links glyphosate to autism. At this point, I think this is mere cruelty to animals.
Compound "pesticides" showed stronger effects than single chemicals; the body's reaction to one poison seems to aggravate the effects of the others. I could've told them that.
Paraquat is being "'voluntarily" pulled off the market. Now all we need to do is enact laws making sure it stays off the market, rather than being brought back next year, as glyphosate was.
Michelle Perro socks it to Canadian forest sprayers. Well done Perro. Now do spray poisoners here in the US.
A "lawn" fill that might appeal to people who get too much sun to suit vincas or violets, and whose neighbors think ladies-thumb and dayflowers grow too tall, might be what Wal-Mart is callng "strawberry clover." Apparently it's a natural species, though not native to where I live, that forms tough roots and chokes out grass and other nasty weeds. No link; click around to find a seller you like.
Landscaping
Living on a street like this takes planning--of the best kind--and substantial house lots, the kind that allow a suburb to be called sub-urban, as distinct from urban-but-not-quite-slum. The trees don't have to be the Deep South's Grand Oaks or Live Oaks. Elms make loftier canopies, in areas where they survive long enough. White Oaks form canopies. Cedars, yews, hemlocks, even poplars don't usually form real canopies due to growing in narrower shapes, but they do form attractive, pollution-filtering borders between paved roads and houses. (One study that I quoted for a college class once, lost the original reference for, and now have to quote from The Writer Later To Be Known As Priscilla King 1983, found that poplars are the most efficient pollution filters. Of course that's partly because poplars are fast-growing, short-lived trees. Tulip poplars grow easily, have no serious predators, and drop dead limbs all over the place.)
Music
Bad Seed. (Warning: whatever we've read lately about current music being in the punk tradition, this is authentic vintage punk.)
Clocks.
Britain's Count Binface. (Video appears below some paragraphs of explanation of this character.)
Dominic Frisby.
Warner Williams.
Albert Collins.
Ian Drury.
Blatantly fake computer simulation of White House staff, featuring Trump on lead guitar and vocals, singing a rock song. I laughed out loud.
Ghosted By History, with a song that didn't make it into the list below...
See also the separate category for Patriotic Songs, below...
Obits
It's not a particular pleasure, but it is a news item: Ward Churchill, whose book this web site once reviewed under the mistaken impression--which he worked to create--that the man had a Cherokee ancestor somewhere and had prevailed on the Cherokee Nation to adopt him, died (Thursday) night. This web site reviewed Churchill's book on its merits, such as they were. His lifetime oeuvre, which included defending Al Qaeda and leading the screaming to change the name of the Washington Redskins, earned a lot of scorn from the non-Left. The first obituary article I saw w..as downright mean, so no link. Instead we'll remind everyone of the Bad Poetry version of an old Roman saying:
Some writers, like a lion,
Can boldly face the King,
And roar whene'er His Majesty
Has done a foolish thing;
And some are like a mangy mutt
That barks to scare a child,
But fawns on man or woman
With manners meek and mild;
And some are like a loathly worm
That dares not raise its head
To any thing that lives and moves,
But only bites the dead.
Ward Churchill had relatives like everyone else. Let him rest in peace.
Patriotic Songs (US-specific)
Do we need an alternative national anthem? In primary school I learned that we already have two, and both of them are easier for primary school children and their teachers to sing than "The Star-Spangled Banner," so I learned them first. "America" and "America the Beautiful" have historically been our "unofficial" national anthems. They can be sung on any occasion when a patriotic song is indicated and nobody feels confident about leading "The Star-Spangled Banner." Everyone ought to know them.
We've had a few others.
"Hail Columbia" is another eighteenth-to-early-nineteenth-century tune written for amateur musical clubs to show off their practiced musical skills. Like "The Star-Spangled Banner," it builds up to a slowed-down, drawn-out top note on "bro-o-ther-ers J'INED...:" which doesn't have to be quite as high as that E flat in "la-and of the FREE." Of course, few of us are really comfortable with rhyming "j'ined" and "find" these days, and anyway, what about us sisters? I like "Hail Columbia" as a performance piece, anyway.
Early American patriotic songs borrowed more than one tune from early British patriotic songs. Our version of "The British Grenadiers" was called "Free Ameri-cay." Madly popular about 200 years ago, it seems to have been pushed aside by novelties like "Yankee Doodle Dandy" and "Stars and Stripes Forever" about 100 years ago. It's still a good song.
Speaking of which..."Yankee Doodle Dandy" sounds too much like vaudeville for me, but "Stars and Stripes Forever" is still a good song, too.
Julia Ward Howe's "Battle Hymn of the Republic" was dishonored and defiled...oh, not by all of its early fans. A few impractical idealists in the North really did want Billy Yank to feel that he'd been sent to fight "to make men free." In practice Billy Yank didn't give a flip about whether Black Americans were free or enlaved, so long as they were a good long way from him; he didn't like or trust them as people, and he hated them as cheap competition in the market for heavy labor. In practice Billy Yank was fighting for his own pay packet, and when he encountered Black people he might have fought to kill them. (Black soldiers recruited to fight for the North were promised freedom, then under-trained, under-equipped, under-paid; one troop was intentionally sent on a suicide mission, and survivors from other "Colored Regiments" had difficulties ever getting their pay or pensions.) In practice the Ku Klux Klan survived in the North for decades after it disbanded in the South, and more people died in race riots in Northern cities, too. Still, there were a few exceptional Northerners, General Howard for one, who did want to help free the slaves, so we can sing this song in their honor if we really want to. Many of us do. It is a good song.
"Dixie" is another good patriotic song that can divide some crowds as easily as unite others. The first set of verses written for it, the one we still know today, was silly. The next set, the one written to be the Confederate national anthem, was intentionally divisive. Still, writing better verses than those should be easy, and the only thing wrong with the chorus is that it leaves most of the nation out in the cold. We in Virginia can take our stand and live and die in Dixie, the original ten Southern (Southeastern) States of which Virginia is one. (Even Texas was not "Dixie," because Texas was Texas.) Residents of forty other States never had that option.
"Lift Every Voice" is not so much a patriotic song as a hymn of gratitude for people who have succeeded, with God's help, in a long struggle for a good cause. It was written by Black men, but there's no evidence that those men would have objected to its being used by other activists, as in fact it is. It's not US-specific. Many Black Americans think of it as their national anthem because it's a serious religious song written by and for Black Americans, but it's for everybody...and it's not national. It can be sung anywhere.
"Country Roads" is a great song though, as one of the Plough commenters mentions, it was written by outsiders about the mythic appeal of the Appalachian Mountains, and they got the words wrong. The Blue Ridge Mountains and the Shenandoah River are in Virginia. West Virginia, the Illegitimate State we'd have a right to reclaim if anyone wanted it, should get its own name to reduce what we always suspect is intentional "confusion" Northerners affect just to annoy us. But the Appalachian Mountains include all those other States, and part of Quebec and Nova Scotia and, arguably, the British Isles, so why quibble? So, the speaker passes through West Virginia on his way across the Blue Ridge to the Shenandoah River. "Country Roads," like "Dixie," technically leaves about two-thirds of the United States out in the cold. Many Americans' homeland is flat and, if it does include mountains, for many of us those would be the Rocky Mountains or the Ozarks or the Cascades.
"God Bless America" felt to many people like another unofficial national anthem in the twentieth century. There's no valid reason why that changed. It's a great sing-along song. It was not traditionally sung with the heavy back-beat that crept into pop music in the 1980s, but it could be.
"God Bless the USA" feels to some people like yet another unofficial national anthem. There's no valid reason not to count it as one, either. We've all heard it; it's easy to learn and to sing; it has a catchy feel-good tune. It's new, but probably every generation should have its very own favorite patriotic song and "God Bless the USA" is that for millennials.
Possibly someone else Out There remembers the words to "America for Me" as taught in the schools in California back when I attended one of them. America, America, a land of hopes and dreams: I love her mountains, hills, and plains, her forests and her streams. A nation where all men are free, where strength is built on industry: America, America, America for me. America, America, united may she stand, from snow-capped peaks far in the North to shores of sun and sand. Oh, may we ever faithful be, and guard the torch of liberty! America, America, America for me. I don't think any generation claimed that as its favorite patriotic song, but I've always liked it.
Plough asked readers to propose new "unofficial" anthems. This article reminds me that the Bruderhof was brought to the United States by relatively recent immigrants who didn't learn the official unofficial ones at school. They thought of some songs I left out, and their explanations of why they think those songs could be alternative national anthems are worth reading.
Their playlist is on Spotify. That's no good for those of us who don't spend money online! Free YouTube videos, if available, for songs in the order mentioned above:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXbbEA26Ec4 (all four verses, with the bonus verse by Oliver Wendell Holmes! It's not altogether clear whether Francis Scott Key intentionally recognized that Maryland slaves had been recruited into the British army with the promise of freedom, when he mentioned "the hireling and slave," or just thought all subjects of monarchs were slaves...anyway, Holmes added a verse specifically about the emancipation of the slaves.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfm83adyxz8 (I can't say much for the rendition, but in historical fact a flawed treble voice with fiddle, spinet, and drumming was probably pretty sophisticated entertainment. But she's tweaked the lyrics a bit with that "we're freemen here, and such will ever be" froth. They should be "The world shall own we're masters here, and such will always stay." In the eighteenth century a critical life milestone was passed when a young man had served his apprenticeship and become "his own master." "Freemen" written as two distinct words was neutral; written as one word it implied people who had been not merely children and apprentices, but slaves. Dang, woman, you
said the song's here for historical information and not to endorse a political position...)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyCxOKP_q7o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iE3pSpZkKc4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSIy0wq_-8A (I figured Woody Guthrie's son was the most accurate performer of his song, but yes, Woody wrote some words that have been cut from this version. Many audiences don't like the verse my brother and I found in an old copy of John Lomax's
Hard-Hitting Songs for Hard-Hit People...When I sing it, just for laughs, it goes like this:
And as I was walking, I saw a green field
With a big ol' sign that said "No Trespassing,"
But on the other side, it said nothing, nothing at all!
That side's the side for you and me!
There is also a strictly 1930s verse that just wouldn't have been credible for baby-boomers to sing, though in the Biden administration..."Ree-lief" was the older word for welfare.
Well, in the bread line I saw my people.
By the ree-lief office I saw my people.
And the sun was shining, and the wheat fields waving.
This land was made for you and me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQNRKX8GwPo (No way this could ever be an anthem, nor is there anything patriotic about it, but for me it
is the song to remember some departed friends by. One of their cars was named "Free Bird.")
Politics, Applied
The Southern Poverty Law Center...funded hate groups? Real hate groups, not merely churches that preached against various forms of sexual self-indulgence? Apparently so.
Why would they do a thing like that? Because real Americans may laugh at "jokes" that invoke hateful stereotypes, but they don't fund serious hate. Because there used to be a man in my town who liked that the Ku Klux Klan told him his fair hair made him "better stock" than his more successful black-haired brother, and he liked parades, so he signed the KKK's petition to have a parade here...but his regular fishing buddy was Black. Because I used to know a young man who insisted, "It's no worse for me to tease other people about being Black than it is for people to tease me about having red hair," but he claimed a Black man as an old school friend and actively promoted the man's business. People like that may enjoy yanking liberals' chains but if anyone seriously proposes anything worse than chain-yanking, they tell him to get out of town and seek help somewhere else. So the real hate groups who provided SPLC's pretext for harassing churches and censoring election mud-throwing...er, well...wouldn't have lasted this long if somebody weren't giving them money. So, allegedly, SPLC sent them money.
Only sixty years ago they were a legitimate charity that helped minority-owned churches and businesses...and now it's come to this.
Not much shocks me any more so I'll not pretend I'm shocked. I will say, instead: This is the absolute quintessential depth of what Southerners mean when they say something is Yankee-ish. They don't run across such depths often. Mostly "Yankee-ish" describes abrasive accents or rough manners. But it invokes the idea of scams like this.
Politics, Personal
I'm sure it's strictly a coincidental resemblance...
Seniors Behaving Well
Garrison Keillor celebrates being 84 by committing to an old-style insane tour schedule.
Technology
Shared on Robert Malone's Substack. Yes, it is ironic that the same corporations that whipped up the "global warming" ideology are now the ones proposing to build technology that's guaranteed to cause
massive local warming.
Trump, who just happens to own and be owned by pieces of those corporations--especially Microsoft--spouts a line of rhetoric about how we have to compete with China. I say #JustSayNO. If China is determined to jump off a bridge, why should we race them for it? Let China find out for itself that, just as Maoism didn't work, "social credit" and surveillance and strip-mining Mount Hiei and bullying Hong Kong and now these "data centers" aren't going to work, and they'd do better for themselves to look back into their own tradition and make progress slowly toward things that can work. We should already know these things. We're a Judeo-Christian-Humanist nation, thus more enlightened than a nation still suffering from vestiges of Maoism.
Tom DeWeese's vlog offers encouragement for those who have half an hour to listen to something a more courteous author could have written down so that we could read it in five minutes:
Writing, Even More Difficulties in
Can you prove your writing's not computer-generated? If you don't want to use spyware that tracks your hand movements, the best system is probably to save drafts as documentation that you wrote your own book.
