Tuesday, October 13, 2026

Petfinder Post: Japanese Chin, Black & White Cats

Moving through the list of dog breeds the British Bossyboots want to ban, we come to the Japanese Chin breed. This is not a common breed in the US; Petfinder has a page for the breed, but not every city has even one dog listed as a Chin or crossbreed. 

The closest "relative" to the Chin would be the Pekingese. These two breeds have sometimes been considered the same, but in the US, recently, breedrs have selected for different traits. Pekingese dogs average shorter and heavier than Chins.

The Japanese Chin is a terribly cute breed--long-haired, flat-faced, standing up to 11 inches high at the shoulder and weighing up to 11 pounds. Chin is said to mean "catlike dog," referring to these dogs' small heads and self-cleaning behavior. Owners rate these little dogs high on behavior and personality. They tend to get along well with other pets and with children.  However, the short snout is not really a functional trait for a dog, and some additional problem genes have bred in. Breeders are now trying to breed tendencies to health problems out of Chin bloodlines. Meanwhile, though small dogs generally are likely to live more than ten years, these particular small dogs average only ten to twelve years. Their average health is not as good as a Chihuahua's or small terrier's. Improving the breed's average health might mean sacrificing their small, flat, "catlike" faces.

The most disturbing condition a Japanese Chin dog might inherit is gangliosidosis, a progressive, fatal neurological disease that's been compared with Tay-Sachs Disease and with mad cow disease. Affected animals' behavior changes, with gradual loss of muscle control. Dogs who have this condition are usually euthanized. The American Kennel Club recommends having a Chin's DNA tested to find out whether the dog is likely to develop gangliosidosis. These little dogs tend to bond with their humans, so watching the disease develop in a pet is heartbreaking.

More common problem genes are also present--the heart, joint, and eye problems that are common to inbred pedigreed dogs of all types. 

Because their faces are relatively flat, Chins are vulnerable to breathing problems. Obesity aggravates this tendency and must be prevented. Panting being the only way dogs can cool down, Chins can have a very hard time in hot weather. 

Having long silky coats with super-long hair (6-7 inches) on neck, tail, and hind legs, these dogs need brushing at least twice a week and bathing when the coat starts to smell bad. Their floppy ears need cleaning, too.Their toenails are said to grow faster than other dogs' nails and need trimming. If this extra grooming time is likely to be more of an inconvenience than a bonding experience for you, you should adopt a different kind of dog. 

Active, stubborn, and hard to train, Chins like to take rather short and slow walks with their humans and run around a fenced yard. Because they're easy for drivers not to see, vulnerable to predators, and also unlikely to heed instructions like "come back" or "stop," they must not be outdoors off a leash. They enjoy learning to do tricks, and they like to be clean, so some aspects of training may be easy...while other aspects of basic dog training continue to baffle the experts. It is very difficult to get Chins to do anything they don't want to do. They happen to want to stay close to their humans, stay clean, be groomed, and learn to do things that entertain their humans; this in no way implies that they ever signed a contract to consider humans' opinions about what they shouldn't explore. They benefit from half an hour's walking (altogether) with their human every day. During this time, experts say, the trick is for the human to learn to get the Chin to believe that it wants to do the same thing the human wants it to do, and good luck with that.

The current condition of this breed sounds like a regular old mess of problem genes and dysfunctional traits, but those genes have been bred in and can be bred out. Still, along with our general policy that animals with dysfunctional genes should be adopted since shelter and rescue organizations usually demand the animals they place be sterilized, adopters should realize that breeders offer sterilized animals for adoption (directly, or through organizations) when those animals have problem genes. Sometimes that can mean a throwback to some look that isn't "typy" enough to satisfy breeders but may be healthier than the look breeders want. Sometimes, especially with a problem-prone breed, it means the worst form of the breed's distintive genes. Adopters are advised to have a Chin's DNA tested. 

Purebred Chins are two-tone dogs. They come in a range of shades of brown and white, too, but the best known pattern is black and white. (Black and white Chins sometimes have reddish brown markings and might be described as tricolored.) So today the cats we consider are black and white.

Zipcode 10101: Minnie from Middletown 


People who breed and fany animals with dysfunctional traits often seem to me to lose some of their humanity. Minnie, we're told, snores and makes "the cutest little noises" as she struggles to breathe, though otherwise she's quiet. Really. I wonder whether the person who wrote that description ever had COPD, or a relative who did. I wonder how person would feel about someone who described human coughing and wheezing as "cute."They don't mention the results of any DNA test she's had, but want you to fill out an application to pay $800. They specify that, although Chins generally do reasonably well with children, Minnie should not be around children.

Juice from Tennessee by way of Suffern 


Found badly injured beside a road, Juice ran up a big vet bill (probably more than the $150 adoption fee--the organization probably accepts donations). She's cautious about new people, understandably. Nevertheless, her photo gallery shows the attitudes of a kitten who intends to be a Queen Cat. She's friendly once she decides to like you. 

Zipcode 20202: N/A 

There's no Japanese Chin dog or crossbreed currently listed as adoptable within 100 miles from the zipcode 20202. But there is an extra one in Georgia so why not consider...

Extra Listing from Zipcode 30303: Sasha Sam from Alpharetta 


Sasha Sam has been through some hard times. It's affected his pawsonality. Though house trained, crate trained, and leash trained, he's wary of new people; he goes into barking fits if exposed to noise, and he may completely freak out if exposed to anything unpredictable such as children. 

No information is available on whether gangliosidosis could have anything to do with his hypersensitivity. I'd want that DNA test done before I tried to get to know this dog. 

Jessica from Reston 


The $190 adoption fee covers mandatory veterinary care including things, like microchips, you might not agree that she needs. They also stipulate that Jessica must be adopted by someone who's at least 21 years old and together with another kitten. (Kittens are easier to live with when they chew affectionately on each other instead of making an unsatisfactory substitute of your shoe.) They just happen to have a large selection of potential foster brothers for Jessica. Take two, they're small. 

Zipcode 30303: Dior from Dallas 


That's Dallas, Georgia. Dior is a Georgia girl and is available for local adoption only. Just sixteen months old, she's had standard veterinary care, including spaying. She has done well with other dogs, cats, and small children. She is young and full of energy. Her adoption fee is $400.

Winston & Yurman from Chattanooga  


Despite having different coat types these two "Tuxies"have decided they are brothers. Winston has long hair and is more sedentary. Yurman has short hair and is bouncier. They like to nap together. Social cats like to nap with other cats of similar colors, possibly for camouflage. They can be adopted together for $300. 
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Monday, October 12, 2026

Book Review: My Luck

Title: My Luck

Author: Melisa Todd

Date: 2020

Publisher: Bad Ash

Quote: "I didn't get nervous calling emergency services anymore. That might be a bad sign."

This fantasy series is set in the Ternion Universe, a world that's like ours down to having famous people with the same names in the same roles, except that many people now have magical powers and this has changed history a bit. Mostly it's changed contemporary reality. Education, employment, and "the draft" are now based on the kind of magic that becomes apparent when someone "emerges," within ten or fifteen years after puberty. 

Cori, the narrator, is pre-emergent. She is also presexual. People accept this, for the moment, because she's still a student. Cori doesn't think she's going to have magical powers, though according to the logic of the story all indications point to her having magical super-powers. For now, she's training as an emergency medical technician. We see her going to classes, taking tests, and actually working in hospitals and in accident scenes. Part of the plot is how Cori decides that EMT is her vocation.

Another part is how she deals with rejection by her parents. Cori has very weird luck--readers are being set up to guess that it's a sign of her magical powers. Even before enrolment in EMT training she's been drawn to scenes of accidents and emergencies. In the first scene in this book, she's reporting a death, only the thirteenth body she's mysteriously found. Accidents have a way of finding Cori, too, although most of them are the harmless funny kind; in one scene the ingredients from someone's shopping bag all blow up in her face in order, so that she's covered in all the makings of blueberry muffins. But then, what's been the burden of Cori's last ten years is the accident in which her twin brother died and she's still not sure exactly how. This has caused her parents to rent a separate apartment for her and stop speaking to her in the hallways. In the course of this story, Cori's baby brother wants to get to know her--and when their parents find out, they take out a restraining order and move to a different city.

So, genre: fantasy, with enough weird bits for Halloween reading, but strong undertones of coming-of-age literary fiction. No romance, though somewhere in the next (at the time this edition was published) twenty volumes that's likely to change. Some comedy, especially in the thumbnail biographies of Edison,Tesla, Churchill, Roosevelt, and other famous people as magic users. For a story about an EMT there's not a great deal of gore--people are bleeding or have ominously stopped bleeding, in a realistic, all-in-a-day's-work sort of way--but there's an element of horror: To draw on magical powers takes a sacrifice of some body tissue. People can intentionally cut off hair, fingernails,sometimes a finger, or they can activate their magic powers or fail to stop their magic powers self-activating and lose parts of their bodies. (And Cori doesn't know why her hair won't grow long and she's constantly scratching at dandruff that mysteriously disappears in the way sacrificed body parts do. That part is hard on the reader's suspension of disbelief.)

"Cori Catastrophe" is an appealing fictional character. Her asexuality, though probably temporary, makes her more interesting than most teen heroines. With inflation still dampening American spending habits, is that enough to motivate anyone to start a series that had twenty volumes in 2020? It just might be. If you like an active protagonist who doesn't want to be a writer and isn't silly about the young man she admits is attractive and a good friend, you might be willing to laugh your way through twenty more books about their crazy-mixed-up fantasy world.
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Butterfly of the Week: Heraclides Erostratus

This week's butterfly, Heraclides erostratus, is also called the Pale-Spotted Swallowtail or the Northern Black Kite with Pale Spots. It is found in Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize. It's big enough that its always apparently having been rare seems a good thing, but it is now a threatened species.

There are three subspecies. The nominate subspecies, H. erostratus erostratus, is found from Chiapas south to El Salvador. 


Photo by Johnvandort, Honduras, August. Fore and hind wings can move independently.

H.e. erostratinus is found in eastern Mexico.


Photo from Butterflies of America.


Photo from Josesgh, Mexico, August.

Veins can stand out clearly, giving the wings a pleated or ribbed appearance.


Photo from Torres-Sebastian, Mexico, October.

H.e. vasquezae is found in western Mexico.


Photo from Butterflies of America.

None of the subspecies has ever been very common, anywhere, in recorded history. Males, however, don't seem to make themselves hard to see. They are said to roost along the shrubby edges of trails, about a meter above the ground, and fly up as people pass by. 

The Swallowtails were supposed to be named after heroes of ancient literature. Possibly someone who read a reference to Erostratus, or Herostratus or Eratostratus, quickly thought the best known man who used this name was a hero; or perhaps there are other less known men by the same name, one of whom was a hero. The best known Erostratus in ancient Greece was an arsonist who burned a temple for no good reason.

The butterfly has never been all that destructive. It has not been studied in depth, although it appears on many lists. The Citrus it favors are wild trees that grow in forests, typically an an altitude of about 5000 feet (1500m). 

It is a large, dark Swallowtail with only one band of spots around the eds of its wings. Males' spots are sometimes red and yellow; females' are usually white and pink. The butterflies fly all year, with a peak in one month followed by a trough inthe next month suggesting that there may be six generations each year. The highest peak month is August. Males do some composting and are easily photographed at puddles. Both sexes pollinate flowers. 

Caterpillars are said to travel in groups and eat the leaves of trees in the genus Citrus, but do not seem to be a pest or even a nuisance to farmers. These butterflies keep to themselves and give no one else any trouble. Humans should only take a similar attitude to them.
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Sunday, October 11, 2026

Web Log for 10.9-10.26

Most of the weekend was spent either away from the computer, or actively writing, not link hunting. Steady progress through the to-listen-to list was made anyway. 

Music

Avishai Cohen.


Kate McKinnon (on "Saturday Night Live," dressed to suggest Hillary Rodham Clinton).


Johannes Bornlof.


Disney.



Chequerboard.


I'm not sure that "Excelsior" is theband name; the video's not clear.


Aaron Gold.


Bing Crosby. (Christmas lyrics.)


Emancipator.


Light-O-Rama. (Christmas lyrics, rock beat.)



Ludovico Einaudi.


Kristen McNamara. 


Steve Winwood.


Gerry Rafferty.


PSA 

During the weekend I saw the furnace man lying around in front of a television set. It's nice if he has a bit of rest now and then, but this is OCTOBER. Check your heating system while it's still warm outside. If there's a problem, you will feel much less miserable getting it fixed before the house is actually cold. So will the furnace man.
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Sunday Post: The Green Mile

One of the non-computer things I did over the weekend was to watch the movie version of Stephen King's Green Mile. It happened to be offered on somebody's streaming service this weekend, and I remembered that a departed friend had been moved by it, while living, and urged me to watch it. Watching the movie was like reading a last letter from this person--someone who was brave and strong, while living, but had to have been in pain even when the film was in theatres.

Horror fiction has traditionally justified itself by tapping into religious beliefs about the afterlife and the supernatural, even though this has meant that it's contradicted other religious beliefs about those topics. In some faith traditions people linger in between life and death as ghosts, so ghosts can be completely benign; in others people are either living or dead, and what appear to be ghosts of departed friends are deceiving spirits, so even if someone reports that the ghost of his old dog led him safely around the washed-out bridge, the deceiving spirit was only setting him up for confusion and temptation later in life. In some traditions Jesus was unique and it's blasphemous even to speculate about what might happen if some other person was able to emulate His love and sacrifice; in some traditions emulating Jesus in every way is what everyone is meant to do, and it might even be virtuous to imagine a contemporary man or woman who could be the "Christ figure" in a work of fiction.

The Green Mile is one of those stories where a contemporary character is a "Christ figure." If this offends your beliefs, don't read the book or watch the movie.

I'd read the book before watching the movie, so I don't think knowing the ending spoiled anything. 

The movie opens in a geriatric care home where a healthy, handsome man, apparently about sixty years old, goes out for a walk, comes in and watches a movie with his housemates, and runs out crying during a harmless dance scene. One of his housemates goes after him,guessing that there has to be a story to explain his reaction. There is, of course. 

In 1935, he says, he was a prison guard. The man who plays the senior prison guard, not young in 1935, doesn't look like the man who plays the protagonist in the care home in 1999, but movies traditionally use different actors to play the same person at different ages; let it pass. The passage from where a convict was imprisoned to where he was executed was traditionally called his last mile, irrespective of the actual distance. The prison's concrete floor was painted green so they called the corridor that led from the convicts' cells to the electric chair the Green Mile. A co-worker nobody liked, who kept his job because of family connections, led in a new convict squawking "Dead man walking!" The protagonist, Paul, told him to be quiet and try to help keep the convicts calm. The co-worker, Percy, had a hard time being quiet and calm; he was a classic coward-bully blend. The new convict was about eight feet tall and could speak, but not very well. He obviously wouldn't have been able to learn much at school if he'd ever attended one, which he probably hadn't. His name was John Coffey (there's a sort of tradition where fictional Christ figures' initials are J.C.). He had been found clutching the heads of two murdered children.

But somehow, as the main plot of the movie starts moving, Coffey doesn't seem the murderous type. Another convict has been making a pet of a mouse. Percy stomps on the mouse. Coffey takes the body in his hands, breathes on it, and coughs out a cloud of dust while the mouse scampers away, healthy as ever. The other men on death row shake their heads. Did they see what they thought they saw? Paul shakes Coffey's hand. Paul has had a painful illness all year. Coffey coughs, and Paul is well again. Another guard's wife has an inoperable tumor people have avoided telling her about. Coffey is smuggled out to the guard's home, inhales the woman's breath, coughs, and accepts a St Christopher medal she was wearing when she wakes up healthy.

The mouse's master's execution date approaches. To comfort the man, someone tells him the mouse can be sent to a special mouse circus in Florida where people will pay to watch his tricks. Percy, seeking promotion to a better paid job, wants to "be out front" during the execution, which is public. Being a jerk, he takes this opportunity to tell the convict that the mouse circus does not exist. Despite having been taught that, just before the electrodes are applied to the convict's scalp, the scalp must be wetted down with a sponge so the convict will be electrocuted rather than burned alive, Percy takes the sponge, reaches down into a bucket provided him, but places the sponge between the scalp and the electrodes completely dry. He claims he didn't know that the sponge needed to be wet. Nobody believes this. The guards don't file a complaint about Percy because they want him to be promoted to a job outside the prison.

Coffey has been completely non-judgmental about the other convicts--all but one. This one acts mouthy and obnoxious in prison. He might merely be young and scared, but no, Coffey says, he's a bad man. The man's badness disturbs Coffey so badly, for no obvious reason, that Paul ends up holding Coffey's hand through the bars and letting Coffey project a memory to him through telepathy. The young convict was a hired helper who murdered the two children. "He killed them with love," Coffey keeps mumbling, transmitting the memory of how the man told each child "Be quiet or I'll kill your sister instead of you." There is, Coffey says in his clumsy way, too much of that in the world. Too many people are killed by evildoers manipulating their love. 

In the book the other characters explain at length that Coffey's role as a Christ figure seems to require him to be a very slow thinker. He seems to feel so much empathy that, if he were able to think intelligently about it, he wouldn't be able to live with it. The movie manages better, I think, by not belaboring this point, though perhaps I feel that way because I already know that a room-temperature IQ score is part of Stephen King's vision of his character. Though Jesus was a rabbi and claimed royal blood, as a Jew He was part of a despised minority group in the Roman Empire. Coffey has a black-coffee complexion but, to get the "despised minority" vibe going in 1999, Stephen King had to throw in that the man can barely put a sentence together. One of those cases where gigantic size and intellectual deficiencies seem to be part of a genetic syndrome. I'm not sure why King believed that a person who was able to act as a Christ figure might not have been given the spiritual capacity to understand what he was doing, might not have been a genius; I suspect he just wanted to ensure that everyone in the audience has their face rubbed in the idea of the Christ figure being someone they'd find hard to like, trust, or respect. 

Coffey was found holding the children, trying his utmost, howling in the pain of his effort, to draw life back into their bodies, but he couldn't. That was why, on the few occasions when anyone asked him what had happened, he could only blubber that he was sorry he "couldn't put it back." He didn't know the name of the murderer; he didn't expect anyone would pay any attention to his testimony if he accused the murderer. He feels bad enough about being unable to revive the children that he's ready for his strange life to end, anyway. But he's glad the murderer was convicted of another murder and is on death row.

The plot proceeds to blow up in the sort of violent confrontation Stephen King's primary audience of young men demand, while its social and philosophical implications seem to be weighing on King's own mind. Paul realizes that, having encountered a Christ figure, he is going to be required to be "out front," in the presiding role, during the sacrifice of that Christ figure. He is going to be cast as Pontius Pilate. He won't have to throw the switch, but he will have to apply the sponge. He doesn't think he can do that with Coffey, no matter how many other convicts he's done it with before. So, like all Christians who believe that whatever harm we do or good we fail to do to others has been done to Christ, Paul has to seek guidance and consolation from Coffey himself. Maybe Coffey would like to escape from prison?

Coffey would not. He's spent his whole life roaming around "where God leads" him, channelling healing energy in a way that costs him pain, and he's eager for it to be over. 

Is there anything he would like?

Well, Coffey says, he never has seen a "flicker show." 

Which is why Paul can't watch that particular movie without crying. He leads his sympathetic housemate out for a short walk and explains that people Coffey healed have extra long lives. He chose that particular home because it's near to an abandoned house where he's still visiting the mouse. After Coffey's execution, Paul resigned from the prison and tried being a teacher, preventing crime, instead of punishing it...

Not even Stephen King could imagine how that might have been said to work but, at this point in the movie, I didn't care. I was thinking of friends who were ready for their mortal lives to be over, when the time came. I don't usually mourn for people who were ready to go so much as I do for people who die young. A school friend's father, a member of the community I hadn't known well but had respected, died just last week. I cried.

I don't know that real people ever have all of the traits of fictional "Christ figures." I know that real people do have the traits of what some Christian traditions call saints; I can easily imagine people whose faith tradition taught them such praying to the departed spirits of David Peters, or Mitch Snyder, or Zahara Heckscher, and the thought has crossed my mind that--oh no you don't, God, I am too old to be of any use as a martyr. I don't want Greta Thunberg or Rachel Parent or any other young person to be a martyr for Glyphosate Awareness, either. Movements benefit from martyrs but I hope we can succeed without one.

I do know that any person, perhaps especially a person you find hard to like or trust--someone with intellectual deficiencies, someone with a repulsive-looking disease, someone obese--can be the Christ figure in any scene in anyone's life, any day. 

Last week some social media discussion was about people who choose to have no contact with their parents. I do understand that in some cases that's the best either the parent or the child can do, and one reason why boarding schools exist--and why, before boarding schools were invented, in some cultures teenagers were "fostered out" to live in different families--is that some parents and children can't be in the same house. Occasional contact, greeting cards expressing a hope that things may get better, may be an optimal outcome. Sometimes things get better; sometimes addicts sober up, sometimes abusers at least notice when you become stronger than they are, sometimes the way you grow and change stops reminding them of someone else, sometimes your own independence stops parents trying to control your life and stops you mentally letting them. I think most families where parents and children are not friends can benefit from family counselling, and old books like Peoplemaking and The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense can be worth more than their weight in gold. But some people were never meant to be close friends with their parents, or with one or some of their children. Sometimes, even where the family obligations are carried out in an exemplary way, even when separation is not caused by resentment so much as by personality difference, people aren't friends. I think that if more young people tried harder to love and stay close to their parents, this would be a better world; but it doesn't always happen. Well, when the parent who is not physically dangerous to the child but is irredeemably annoying starts to need the child's help, it may help the adult child to think of the parent as a Christ figure.

People who have less than you have are always such a drag. I know this because I'm probably one of them. People who might be willing to eat your food or ride in your car, once, but they're probably never going to invite you to eat their food or ride in their car, and if they did you might be inclined to refuse, may be even harder to take if we have talents you need or even looks you fancy. The Bible very specifically says that anyone who has less than you is likely to be a Christ figure in your life's story.

People whose ethnic identity turns you off...let's be anti-p.c. and consider White people, White men, Jewish White men. Jesus Himself did not try to persuade His disciples that foreigners were the Christ figures in their stories. For them it was enough of a step to imagine that a foreigner like the Roman centurion or the Samaritan woman at the well might be a fellow disciple. But when they had received the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit, then they welcomed foreigners into the new Christian movement. If you have a strong preference for one side or the other in an international or intertribal conflict, it is possible that someone from the side you don't favor may be a Christ figure for you..

The people who serve as Christ figures for us may offer us guidance, or consolation, or correction, or opportunities to practice mercy and charity, or any combination of these things. 

I think it undoubtedly added something to my experience of The Green Mile that it came as a posthumous message from a friend. Nevertheless I think it might be helpful for others to find a time to sit through all three hours of the movie, and reflect on the Christ figures in their personal stories.
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Friday, October 9, 2026

Web Log for 10.8.26

It's the fifty-year anniversary of the day my parents and siblings and I came back to the house now known as the Cat Sanctuary as full owners, nomads no more. What a joyous occasion that was for me at the time, and how I've enjoyed my home since then. 

Funny 

Actually, "Mosquito Defense," beginning with "Poison sprays always aggravate outdoor insect problems and are no longer considered as a possible defense," should be a mandatory course in all US schools.


Good News 

Actually it's no longer  news, but CHEERS! anyway. Those two did not belong in prison.


Links 

Add this blog to your blogroll if you want more links. (And, of course, post share-worthy content at your blog. No computer-generated junk.)

Mental Health 

I did not know this. My generation heard a lot of misguided blather about how marijuana was the "gateway drug" that was sure to lead to disabling addictions. By and large it didn't. We all knew it didn't. Not every one of my generation intentionally smoked marijuana--many of us did not enjoy the sensation of getting stoned on secondhand smoke, and avoided parties and even work sites where  joints were passed around--but we all thought of it as if anything an obnoxious drug, a nasty smell, triggering coughs and headaches and disagreeable moods rather than "highs." Most of us did not have bipolar mental illness. For people who have bipolar mental illness, Dave Paulides explains, the biochemicals in marijuana can push them down into profound depression and cause suicidal thinking...and bipolar patients tend to be the ones who are intelligent enough to succeed if they attempt suicide. The condition seems to settle down after people are about 30 years old, but sharing a marijuana "high," if you get "high" on that stuff, just might kill one of your 15-to-30-year-old friends. 


(Seriously? A pot party is a lame party anyway. Your friends should be getting natural dopamine "highs" from talking, flirting, games, pinatas, maybe doing some kind of task that needs lots of hands, sharing records, sharing food, dancing, even winning silly souvenir prizes for pinning the MAGA hat on Senator Schumer or whatever induces laughter in your friends. If you can't make a party rock with some wholesome combination of music, chocolate, and hand-printing all of everybody's seasonal greeting cards, or similar, you need to upgrade your hospitality skills, your friends list, or both. I don't ask whether any of you Nephews have "experimented" with pot, perhaps unintentionally, as it might be by riding a Greyhound in Florida. That's your business. But I would be mortified if you weren't able to throw a booze-free, drug-free party.)

Music 

Robert Gromotka.


Gene Rutt.


JJ Cale.


Subhumans. True punk--I would rather not have seen the graphic.


Roberto Cacciapaglia.



The Ruts.


Traffic.


Wasted Youth.


Ernest Ranglin.


Innocence Mission.


Spin Doctors. (Link is to an album.)


Pretenders. (Link may open a Youtube playlist.}


Alanis Morrissette.


Ed Sheeran.

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Book Review: Garden of Graves

Title: Garden of Graves 

Author: VL Giles

Date: 2020

Publisher: Vandelso Press

Quote: "Maeve, who had just turned five, was allowed to be out of her grandmother's sight as long as she stayed within the garden walls."

In the garden little Maeve first began to commune with the standing stones and Agnes the ghost. But an unpleasantly pushy man began trying to get an old book away from her grandmother...and now, as a young adult, Maeve is about to havee to deal with the book and the pushy man again. 

This is not really even a short story, though it is short in word count. It's the prologue to a novel, sold separately. I don't approve of that kind of marketing-ploy writing but, if you're in the mood for an amusing Gothick tale, you'll want this ;rologue and the series of novels into which it leads.
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Bad Poetry: Noise

This piece of Bad Poetry was produced by thinking about three things at one time: (1) the Poets & Storytellers United prompt, and (2) "The Noble Stinky Sestina" by Roland Caton, Scop Shop, 1984, and (3) the primary topic of noise in the news these days.

Let's consider the prospect of mind-numbing noise
coming out of the "data centers" the rich boys
would like to inflict on us all. It annoys
those who like to think, or want to sleep, that these joys
may be sacrificed merely to power the toys
that they don't even play with. The marketing ploys 

engender resistance. "We CAN'T stop it?" Ploys
that serve their causes worse than unbroken white noise
are the efforts the rich make to market these toys.
If the rich boys can't stop it, we can, you rich boys!
What made you think that we'd give up all the joys
of quietness, coolness, and green? It annoys

us to be told we can't just say no. It annoys
us to be told we can't think, write, count, vote. Such ploys
are what cost Silicon Valley's party the joys
of Election Day. And will again. Useless noise
and the idea that we'll pay for what the rich boys
want to peddle, when we still have plenty of toys

of our own, if we want to waste time with mere toys.
Microsoft's marketing itself with what annoys
those who've not bought the latest junk that the rich boys
try to sell us. "Pay more for MORE wait time"? Such ploys
only could be conceived in a brain full of noise,
a mind that has never known quietness' joys.

People need space. Need sunlight. Need starlight. The joys
of the natural world aren't replaced by the toys
that spin, pop, beep, flash, and break down. All the noise
that the flatphones can offer still merely annoys
those who see right through silly and insolent ploys
that occur to the minds of the lazy rich boys.

They believe they are gods. They forget they are boys.
I look at them and picture them pleading for joys
they get by giving up, taking breaks. Frantic ploys
to extend every buzz are what inspire their toys.
They'd live longer by calming down. So it annoys
those who live longer to hear their furious noise.

I reject all the ploys that the stupid rich boys
make to market their noise while destroying our joys.
I reject all their toys. Don't care how that annoys!

Have you mailed any flatphones in your home back to the store, yet, Gentle Readers?
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Thursday, October 8, 2026

Web Log for 10.7.26

I've been pre-scheduling some butterfly articles to get us through the anticipated transition. 

Crime, Hate 

Note the double standard: Male murderers are hardly even news any more, whereas female murderers are instant celebrities...


Music 

Casting Crowns. (Christian lyrics, rock sound.)



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIZitK6_IMQ


"Maggie the Afterlove Voice."


Foghat. The lyrics aren't considered inappropriate for daytime radio, but perhaps this would be a better world, where people of different sexes had more respect for each other, if they were.


Diamond Rio.





Nirvana.


Everclear.


Guntbert Markefka, a German songwriter trying to break into the US market by writing a soft-rock tune to go with a US poem.


Natasha Bedingfield. Warning: link opens one of those endles Youtube-generated playlists. Must turn off manually after listening to Natasha.


Hollywood...no individual composer credit for this "epic fantasy music."


Peter Crowley.


Craig Miller Productions.

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Book Review: Witch Way After Forty

Title: Witch Way After Forty

Author: Jennifer L. Hart

Date:  2021

Publisher: Elements Unleashed

Quote: "If I'm so awful, why not just go file for divorce like a decent human being?"

Alys Silver walked in and found her husband in bed with another woman. He's not much loss; he's wasting a lot of her money on drugs while she's running a business with an attractive contractor. But he's hired an evil lawyer to squeeze every possible drop out of her.

Her sister Maeve is happily married with two children and two dogs...and a medical condition she has yet to tell them about.

Her other sister Siobhan is single and attracted to Alys's disgusting ex's lawyer. 

And their Aunt Jess has just left them all a house, which Alys intends to move into...with a drink called "empowerment brew" waiting for them.

When they drink it, each of them develops a magical talent. Now they have to hide from the Dark Fae who hunt novice witches and consume their powers. 

This is a full-length novel with all the trimmings. I laughed out loud more than once.
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Fiction: The Unluckiest Day

This  bit of fiction was prompted by Isabella Peralta, who must be making a lot of money,  sending out prompts for short stories and asking people for twenty dollars to read them. No deal, Iz. Real writers don't pay readers.

1

It was a cold, wet day. Marisol was awakened early. Something was scrabbling about in the closet. Lowering the window immediately, to shut out the chilly wind, she opened the closet door and saw movement; her clothes rustled as if something ratlike were scrabbling up the wall. She picked up a reusable Walmart bag, reached in, and bagged a little fat bat. She raised the window again and threw it out. It flew. 

Glad she hadn't injured the bat, Marisol decided  she might as well stay up and get an early start on the day. The chilly kitchen needed to have a coffee cake baked in it. A nice long preheating of the oven felt so cozy. She brewed coffee and poured herself an extra cup with cream and sugar. 

In came her mother-in-law. Marisol took a quick sip of coffee to hide any disappointment that might show on her face. Teresa, full of superstitions, wanted to know why she was up so early. "Not sleeping is bad, bad luck, bad for the baby." 

The baby was due in June. Marisol really wished Gabriel hadn't told his mother. It was not as if the baby even showed, yet.

"A bat got into the closet," she said, "un murcielago. I  let it out. Then I was awake."

"Un murcielago!" Teresa repeated, and began gabbling in Spanish. "They are the devil's animals! They bite, they carry diseases..."

Marisol listened patiently and was glad when it was time  to dress for work. Gabriel came in, as usual, minutes before she went out. Umbrella, overcoat, pair of dry shoes in her bag, and six blocks to the bus. 

Turning at the end of the second block, she almost stepped on a dead sparrow on the pavement. She was glad it was only an Engllish sparrow, an invasive nuisance species. She had a good idea what it was doing there. The landlord never fixed anything because he wanted people to leave; he'd been seen in the parking lot at night on nights before people woke up to unpleasant surprises. The bat might have been one of them, though Marisol didn't think the big ladron could have made the bat fly in through her window, specifically, instead of someone else's. 

Maybe God, Whose eye was on the sparrow, had sent the bat into her window because she wouldn't be afraid of it. Marisol smiled to herself. Bats ate mosquitoes. If that little one stayed in the neighborhood, everyone would be better off next summer. Marisol ran for the bus and settled into the window seat beside a familiar stranger, another commuter. 

She woke up again when the woman's knee bumped hers. "Seventeenth and K!" the woman said loudly, naming the end of the bus ride. Marisol stood up and walked two and a half more blocks to the building. She changed her shoes downstairs and wrapped the wet ones in three layers of plastic shopping bags.

Someone had the radio on. People were listening. The President's haters had found someone to claim the President had molested him when he was a little boy, Marisol had already heard. The case had seemed unlikely to go to court as of yesterday, when it was pointed out that the man said the President had molested him regularly when they lived in Chicago, and as a matter of record the President had never lived in Chicago. Marisol went to the lounge and made coffee again. The usual box of a dozen mixed doughnuts lay on the table. Marisol virtuously ignored them and carried her coffee mug to the office. 

Eighteen of the first twenty e-mails were spam. She was batch-deleting her way down  the list when she heard the screams. Only a few screams from the break room; footsteps, hurrying away. 

She went to the doorway. In the corridor she saw Ryan from accounting. "There was a thumbtack in one of the doughnuts," he said. "It just plopped onto the table with a glob of jelly after Cho bit into the doughnut. Something's not right."

Marisol shivered. If she hadn't made that coffee cake, she would have had a doughnut with her coffee. She went back to the computer, giving thanks.

2

At lunch break she went with Caroline from layout to a restaurant they both liked. On the way a ginger cat walked up to them and meowed.

"We don't need any more bad luck!"Caroline said vehemently. Marisol always enjoyed her British accent; her "luck" sounded almost like "look." 

"Go home, kitty," said Marisol.

"Meow," the cat insisted. He turned--the back view showed the cat was male--and walked a few steps away. He turned back to them. "Meow."

"I think it wants us to follow it," said Caroline. "It's a sign."

"You don't think that might be the bad luck?"

"Too late." Caroline tightened the belt of her raincoat, which had not been loose. "Might as well face it--whatever it is."

They followed the cat down an alley, to an open door, up a staircase. "Meow." The cat scratched at one of the doors. "Meow. Meow!"

Caroline knocked at the door. No one answered. The cat rubbed against her ankles, against the door frame, against her ankles again; it turned and clawed at the door. "Meow. Murr-row-w-w!" 

Marisol knocked timidly at the door across the hallway. "Who is it?" someone said around the door.

"My name is Marisol..."

"Do you know anything about this cat?" Caroline said loudly.

The door opened. A young man looked out. "I don't really know the lady that owns it," he said. "Nice to meet you, Marisol. I'm Wayne. I can call the building manager to check on her for you. Do you know her?"

They both denied knowing anything about the person.. 

"I can feed her cat, anyway," Wayne decided. "Um, thanks for telling me. I think."

They hurried out. It was too late to enjoy lunch at the restaurant. They stopped at a convenience store instead. On the way back they saw an ambulance turning into the alley.

3

Back at the office the news was that someone had found evidence that the President had been in Chicago at least once, fifty years ago; however, the President had been twelve years old at the time, and his accuser had apparently not been born yet. Police had confiscated the doughnuts as evidence. "Don't go to the doughnut shop," Pierre the sales manager warned them.

The only place Marisol wanted to go was home. Not even to the apartment she shared with her husband and his mother-in-law; the home of her childhood, in New Jersey, where her parents took care of things and probably knew how to deal with days like this one. At five o'clock she pulled on her coat, went downstairs and changed back to the shoes she'd been able to air out during the day, and took the bus back to her apartment.

"It's the twenty-eighth of December," someone was saying on the bus. "It's been called the unluckiest day of the year for thoousands of years."

Walking back from the bus, she saw another cat, a small one, playing with the dead sparrow. She quickened her pace and didn't look back but, when she walked into the apartment building, the animal had followed her. 

At least it hadn't brought the bird. It was a young cat, a kitten really, black with a white bib. When she paused to look at it, the cat looked at her with wide amber eyes, then closed its eyes in a long blink. 

She hurried up the stairs, not looking at it. She hurried to let herself into her apartment. 

"Santa Maria!" Teresa exclaimed. "No sooner did I see that we need a cat, than a cat comes in! How fortunate we are!" She said it in Spanish. She always spoke Spanish to Marisol, who preferred English, saying that they needed to remember Spanish. 

Marisol looked at the shelves. Teresa made hand craft items all day. Sometimes she sold them online, sometimes at the Eastern Market. It always pleased her when Marisol noticed the newest pieces. "A sailing ship! How intricate," Marisol said. 

"You like?" Teresa was in the kitchen. "Here, kitty..." She put down a dish. "I had just cleaned up where a mouse had been!" 

"We'll need a litter box." Bowing to the inevitable, Marisol put her wet coat and shoes on again and went to the convenience store to be cheated out of ten dollars. She bought a bag of cat food, too. Maybe it would be good for Teresa to have a pet. 

Maybe black cats were the ones who brought bad luck. Had the day's luck been really bad? The bat was unharmed; the thumbtack had dropped out of the doughnut, onto the table, with a blob of jelly; the ginger cat's owner had apparently been found in time to be taken to a hospital. Maybe the really bad luck had come in with the black cat, was waiting to pounce on her in the apartment...

But when she opened the door light, heat, and cheerful television noise surged out to meet her. Gabriel was awake; he kissed her and asked how the day had gone. Teresa had a chicken in the oven, rice and beans on the stove. The President's accuser had attempted suicide and was in a hospital. Things semed to be returning to normal. 

4

As Gabriel walked out to the bus, a hooded figure sprang out at him with a knife. "Give me all you got!"

"I don't think so," said Gabriel. His left hand crushed the other man's wrist. He was lefthanded.With his right hand he pushed the man backward. Knife and man dropped, separately, to the pavement. Gabriel kicked the knife away, pinned the man's skinny arms under his knees, and beat his head against the pavement. Short and muscular, like his indigenous ancestors, Gabriel was used to surprising taller men by being stronger than they were. His preference was to surprise them on construction sites; but it was winter, and he'd been offered steady work as a nightwatchman for a reason. "What you need money for, anyway? Drugs?"

"Yeah. Drugs." The man coughed. "I give up, man."

"Where' you from? Why here?"

"Southeast," the man said. "This is a pretty nice neighborhood."

"It is," Gabriel agreed. The man had a wallet in his hoodie. Gabriel checked. He had another wallet in his pocket. "You already robbed somebody tonight."

"Yeah. I did."

Gabriel inspected the wallet from the hoodie pocket. There was not enough light to see the name on the cards but the cash was still in the wallet. "Who was it?"

"An older man."

Gabriel put the wallet in his left hip pocket. "Did somebody pay you to come here?"

"No."

"Dime la verdad. Tell the truth."

"He didn't pay me." The man sniffled. "Told me it'd be all right, that's all."

"Who was he?"

"I don't know." Gabriel waited. "I don't know! He's White, he's about forty or fifty years old, he wears glasses with black rims."

The landlord wore glasses with black rims.

"He was wrong," Gabriel said. "It's not all right. You want money, you find a job. Even if it's a night job like mine. See?"

"I see." The man shivered. "Can I go now? I'm poz, man. I'm about to catch pneumonia out here."

A car rolled up. 

"Don't shoot, I'll go quietly." The man swore. 

"Police." Gabriel saw a card in a hand in the dim light. He stood up, freeing the mugger. "We were just taking a report from a man who was robbed by..."

"It was me." The man stood up, unsteadily. "I was trying to rob him too. I got greedy. He's got the old guy's wallet."

Gabriel handed it over.

The officer examined the wallet under his flashlight. "That's his ID all right. Okay, bro. I need you to step into the car here." Instinctively, Gabriel moved toward the car, but another policeman was patting down the criminal. "Where's the knife?"

Gabriel pointed. The first policeman pulled his sleeve over his hand to pick up the knife.

"I'd like to talk to you, too," he said to Gabriel.

"Sure. No problem. Is there any way we could talk at my job site? I just missed the last bus. I'm the night watchman at..."

"No problem." The officer was imitating his voice. "If you don't mind getting in the car beside him, we can give you a lift." But nobody patted Gabriel down or helped him buckle his seat belt in the back of the car.

5

Marisol heard a police car out on the main street and gave thanks that Gabriel would surely have been on the bus by now. On television people were winning thousands of dollars for answering trivia questions. Teresa was making another lace doily. Marisol brushed paint onto wooden pieces for a puzzle game, helping her mother-in-law. 

The kitten scampered in from the kitchen, playing with a mouse. 

"What a lucky day this has been," Teresa said.
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Wednesday, October 7, 2026

Web Log for 10.6.26

Oh the busy, busy, busy. So many cyberchores and it doesn't help that one of Microsoft's fits saved the version of a document before I'd spent six hours adding the other three-fourths of the document to that first bit. Growlgrowlgrowl...and a bill must be paid, and I've no idea with what to pay it, and I'm not sure that this laptop can be converted to Linux, and I'm not sure how to fit another laptop that is running Linux into the budget, and so on and so forth. 

Quiet people usually spare you this kind of information overload. When you ask people how they're doing, and instead of chattering with you for half an hour they say quietly "Not too well" or "You don't want to know" and go back to work, they are being kind. Agreed? If you started to disagree, you were probably brought up by extroverts and you need to reprogram yourself. The mere sight of you did not make those other situations disappear. If you believed it did, you're an idiot and people are taking advantage of you. And you really don't want to know all the reasons why people don't drop everything else and grin and gush merely because you stumbled into a room. And if you needed to feel that the mere sight of you was distracting people from the entire rest of their lives, you should talk to a therapist about why you have such a sick, excessive emotional need.

However, in my peculiar case, 99.999% of things that perturb me involve money, of which no Internet writer has very much. So you can give me something to smile about by simply crossing my hand with a few Benjamins, if being smiled at is all that important to you.

Music 

Steep Canyon Rangers.


The Beatles. 


Patsy Cline and Jim Reeves. This link came from an article about fake recordings not requiring "artificial intelligence." Both Cline and Reeves sang this song before both died in separate plane crashes. Their fan bases overlapped considerably. They never performed together while living, though they'd considered it. Since their fans had been eager to see these two share the stage, would they buy a posthumous recording, remixed in the studio from old tapes, in which they seemed to sing duets? The fans would not. The fans did not like the idea. I remember the contemptuous tone in which my parents reminisced about this recording. It was seen as exploitation.


Diamond Rio.


Casting Crowns.

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Book Review: Spell Don't Tell

Title: Spell Don't Tell

Author: Amy Boyles

Quote: "I first realized my sister and I would never be friends the night she confessed to stealing money from the mob."

Paige's extrovert sister was in love with a Mafia man, though they'd split up and sister Cammie had lost no time in finding another man. In fact, until Newmie the Mafioso came after the money Cammie took from him when she left, Paige was having to play chaperone. Nevertheless, when the sisters return the money to Newmie, Cammie whines about wanting to get together again, and seems grief-stricken when Newmie is suddenly roasted alive in his car. 

Paige knows a magical creature  must've done it--one of the creatures that attack witches, which seem to be escaping from a magical book--and sets out to help her friend Grim, the monster hunter, find and destroy the creature. Along the way she finishes the novel she came to Willow Lake to write before realizing that it was a magical town and she had magical powers. She also finds out what happened to her ghost friend Snow. Technically the story that began in Witch's Block is finished. But what's happening to Grim? Has the monster they destroyed infected him? Paige likes him, but does he really deserve love?There's another trilogy. If you've been amused by this trilogy, you'll want the next one. 
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A Profession from a Book I'd Like to Try?

This week's Long & Short Reviews prompt asks reviewers to describe a profession from a book (or movie or TV show) we'd like to try.

It's been a long time since I thought about choosing a profession. As a child I had the usual fantasies about things I thought I'd like to do...horse rancher, ballet dancer, ice dancer, brailler (someone who translated books printed on paper into the usual way into books printed as holes punched into plastic to be read by touch), teacher,soldier, nurse, actor, singer, astronaut, bus driver, carpenter, architect, fashion designer, missionary, secretary, World's Most Accomplished Polymath who did most of those things in the same lifetime, all the things marketed to children by popular books and TV shows. Funny how things like storekeeper, seamer, cook, factory laborer, lineman, were never marketed to children. There was this assumption that jobs that are learned by doing them would be learned from children's parents. My parents didn't do those jobs and my education about how they were done was limited. But I got lots of ideas about possible jobs from books. Most of those books are no longer available but there were...

* My Friend Flicka by Mary O'Hara (not the first book about horse ranches I'd read, but the one I reread over the years)

* Little Golden Books called Little Ballerina, Little Skater, Little Horseman, and there may have been more; madly popular, but most copies were probably loved to death by children and puppies by 1980

* Helen Keller's Story of My Life and all those other books about her and Anne Sullivan

* These Happy Golden Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder

* The only book besides the Bible ever displayed on my Tennessee grandmother's coffee table: a Boot Camp Yearbook featuring Dad's younger brother and a lot of other "boots" climbing on big, exciting frames, running races, shooting targets, and winning awards. It didn't bother me that they were all men because I knew there were boot camps for women too. Anyway the young men all seemed to be having fun, and probably all their mothers loved reading the books about them; Grandma surely did.

* I don't remember the name of the picture book about Nurse Nina, but I remember liking the book and fantasizing about being a nurse for a whole evening. The fantasy didn't recur often over the years, though. Being a nurse was something I learned from my parents. It was not a fun job. You missed out on things with your family to be with some boring sick person, and then the sick person died. Well, sometimes the sick person got better, but as they were all eighty or ninety years old they couldn't be expected to stay very well for very long. Mother kept herself motivated (1) by being so hypothyroid she wasn't fit for more exciting jobs, and (2) by thinking of each patient as a test for something she was learning about wholistic health. As an adult I have worked with younger patients who had better prognoses and were more fun to work with, but I've not looked for jobs where my Geriatric Nursing Assistant certificate was relevant or displayed it on any walls. 

* All the publicity stories about actors and singers

* Between 1965 and 1975 there was a real barrage of mostly bad books about astronauts and space travel, often suggesting that the job might some day be done by children, which was the attraction. But the books that suggested that kids would be astronauts weren't very credible and, the more I learned about real space travel, the more I realized it was not for me.

* The Bingety Bangety School Bus

* I don't now remember a book about carpentry, specifically, so much as I remember that all my male relatives and several of the female ones did carpentry and construction jobs. For one aunt building houses was her weekend "fun" job that she did to relax after working in a factory all week. But then there were all those Sunday School books reminding children that Jesus was a carpenter. The trade to which my tall, broad-shouldered relatives gravitated might be an especially virtuous profession. And I grew fast, until the celiac gene kicked in around age five or six; the first few times I met other children my age, I was bigger and stronger than they were; according to a chart my pediatrician believed in, I was going to be about six feet tall. I am, of course, 5'4", but still I've done a lot of light construction work and enjoyed it. I might have enjoyed being married to Bob the Builder, who was invented after I grew up.

* The Childcraft Encyclopedia, "new" edition, with its biography of Frank Lloyd Wright. I didn't like his main influences on modern architecture. I liked his iconoclastic attitude. 

* The Barbie doll catalogue. Barbie was mostly a model but she did some designing, according to the catalogue. One of her most popular outfits was the pink Chanel-style suit she wore while carrying the portfolio of her designs to meet with the garment production staff. I liked the idea of designing. I never fantasized about being a model, though in my twenties that was an odd job I did. It wasn't that I thought models had to be especially beautiful, or even tall, thin, or blonde; a quick look at any catalogue showed that they didn't. Decent-looking was usually enough, and decnt-looking I could do. I never thought that would be an interesting job. Nor was it. Modelling was strictly for quick cash. But design does interest me, still.

* Lots of Sunday School books about missionaries

* Typing for Business, which came with my first typewriter, and The Efficient Secretary, which I found at a thrift store later

I think the field of children's books could do with a few more realistic books about careers, including the ones that don't market some sort of special educational program. Children are not the ones who decided bricklaying, electrical engineering, or assembly line work were boring jobs. (Actually, when I worked in a factory at university, that too-efficient-for-the-human-body school of management had already been phased out--during the Reagan Administration--and laborers changed positions now and then to work different muscles on different tasks, which I thinkwas a very good thing.) Children can stand and watch people do quite laborious work, on construction sites, in garages, wherever, and be fascinated. The Nephews, their grandmothers, and I all liked Bob the Builder when that series came out. We could do with series about Mike the Mechanic and Cathy the Cashier and Bo the Busboy, too. (Robby the Robot Replacement for all of those jobs is not sustainable and is likely to have a short life.)

Another picture book I saw and liked, as an adult, was called A Day in the Life of a Rock Musician, and seemed like a useful corrective to all those promotions of the toxic "star" system. Illustrated with good clear color photos, that book showed how a few nice normal people who had day jobs and families and nice houses in the same neighborhood had formed a successful local band. The featured member of the band had a soundproofed basement to practice and compose in during the week. On weekends he rehearsed with the band and performed at local venues. No crazy excesses of "young money"--this band was relatable, real, and wholesome, even if they liked loud music with a heavy beat. 

Finally a shout to some nonfiction books I read in the early 1990s...May Berenbaum's books didn't make me want to be an entomologist. I didn't want to be one until, as a professional writer, I noticed that this is an ample field for niche writing. I read entomology to show a professor who worried about "feminization of the sciences" that I wasn't going to be scared off psychology by the idea of doing neurological experiments on insects. But Berenbaum did reassure me that being an entomologist was possible--that other universities might not indulge insecure, envious males as badly as Berea did.
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