Web Log Weekender: 7.11-13.25

It was one of those weekends when everything else seems more compelling than link-hunting. Fighting Microsoft's self-sabotage-in-doomed-effort-to-sell-new-computers (I would like to see this be the year of the lowest sales of new computers since, say, 1982! Because of self-sabotage!), observing Serena's kitten pass the developmental milestone of excreting solid bodywaste all by himself in the old Samantha Box, noting what a bad year for fleas and ticks this is and trying to shoehorn all-new flea combs for finicky cats who resent a used one into the weekly shopping list, appreciating the dayflowers even if the ones that survived the dicamba vapor drift are the invasive Asian species I've tried to thin away, breathing 90+% humidity while not having gills, calculating that the Cat Sanctuary is due for the first frost on the twelfth of October based on the old saying about the first frost coming three months after the first katydid calls...mostly fighting Microsoft, actually. Though I've also been reading the ARC (advance readers' copy) of a new outside-the-box romance by Emily Dana Botrous (from the Michigan series not the Blue Ridge Mountain series, but I'll take it) and, when able, writing Publishable Things.

Ethical Questions 

One for students to debate: Suppose you are a doctor. Your specialty does not involve giving vaccinations, but you've been ordered to make sure all your patients are vaccinated. You believe the vaccines you've been ordered to use are harmful. Your patients don't know what to believe; some of them want those vaccines. Believing that you're saving the lives of people whom the vaccines might kill, you destroy the vaccine doled out to you and give all of your patients simple saline injections, whether they want the disputed vaccine or not. Do you deserve jail time for this fraud? Or are you a hero who's saved your idiot patients from themselves? 

I don't know about jail time, but I think Dr. Moore owes some of his patients refunds. Of course, some of them may owe him their lives...but I think he should have explained the situation to them and respected their right to make informed choices.

You can Google "Bondi dismisses case against Moore" and pick your news source; if you still read censored news media, it's on NBC, BBC, CBC, etc. I liked the discussion at

https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/what-underlies-the-erosion-of-trust

Music 

Like the butterfly posts here...it's not about glyphosate, or then again, actually it is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwiTxIH4U7g

Book Review: Wedding at the Storyteller's Cottage

Title: A Wedding at the Storyteller's Cottage

Author: Brooke Burton

Date: 2025

Quote: "Kieran?...There's a man here. He told me to drop the charges against Jacob."

He's a clue, of course.

People sympathized with Izzy when her ex Jacob stole her identity and her money...but employers don't want drama (and think Izzy should've known better), and even the police, though they've not said anything to her, think Izzy was smarter than Jacob and probably planned his scams. Izzy may be about to lose her first career-type job.

Kieran, also known as "Officer-Sexy-Pants," befriended the family to get evidence of Izzy's and possibly her siblings' innocence. Or guilt. 

Izzy's impatient Italian siblings, noticing her attraction to the burly Irish policeman, want the two to get together already. But Kieran can't tell anyone he's personally interested in Izzy until he's cleared her name. 

When a friend of Jacob's makes vaguely threatening noises outside Izzy's apartment, she's moved into the Storyteller's Cottage, a cozy little place with a guest book full of couples' stories about how they fell in love, were reconciled, etc., at the cottage. Kieran is sent there too, for security. We see them eyeing each other avidly in the hot tub where he's trying to behave like a guard and she's distracting herself from the lust in her heart by helping organize her sister's wedding. Some body parts are described, but not all, and not in great detail.

I think I might have liked the story better if the baby had been conceived on its mother's wedding night rather than its aunt's. You might find Kieran and Izzy more believable as written. You know they're going to marry each other, eventually; the suspense is finding out how they can clear Izzy's name. 

For me the mix of "slightly sweaty" romance and cozy mystery is good for a short,  frivolous read. It didn't give me a feeling that I must own the other stories of the couples who found or reclaimed True Love at the Storyteller's  Cottage. It might have that effect on you.

Butterfly of the Week: Graphium Incertus, or Incerta, or Incertum

If we were actually speaking Latin this butterfly's name would make sense: incertus is masculine, incerta is feminine, and incertum is neuter, so the correct form would depend on the butterfly we were talking about. Since we're not speaking Latin one form is considered more correct than the others...but by whom, and why? Wikipedia is going with incerta. Inaturalist favors incertus. 

Swallowtail species were traditionally named after characters in ancient literature. Incertus, the Latin word for "unknown," was the name under which an ancient author was cited by other authors. That settles it. The species was named after good old Scriptor Incertus. 

(Incertus was later used as a pseudonym by the late distinguished poet Seamus Heaney, too, when he was young and unknown.)

Those who favor incerta say that this species was first identified as a subspecies of Graphium tamerlana (Tamerlan was a masculine, if not supermacho, character in history but the historically "correct" form was tamerlana) and many scientists consider it to be one today. As a subspecies name incerta might as well agree with tamerlana. 

I found only one source that used incertum, so let's forget that one. 

Photo of tamerlana by Zhangqianyi, who confirmed that this forest-dwelling Graphium shares other Graphiums' attraction to things of a bright sky blue color.

And very little seems to be known about Graphium incertus. It is found in China. It may still be regarded as a subspecies of tamerlana, but not much information is available about tamerlana either. 

This kind of thing will happen more often, Gentle Readers, when we get past the big showy Swallowtails. Many smaller species have received almost no attention at all outside the  United States--and the majority of butterfly species live outside the United States.

Book Review: Scarred

Title: Scarred 

Author: Roe Braddy

Date: 2020

Publisher: Amazon

Quote: "There would  be no fraternizing with anyone of the opposite sex on Sundays--especially a boy like Edward Proctor...that finds it fit to work on Sundays."

Yes. The United States' Great Depression lingered even after the war in some areas, such as the part of Alabama where this story takes place. Even a middle-class family's life was anything but the stuff of which Harlequin or Hollywood "romances" were made. For a really poor family like these fictional Proctors, not only did poverty seem inescapable, not only did some people's frustration turn into violence, but neighbors who might have helped them judged them instead. 

Ed works when and where he can, and Mavis quietly, discreetly, notices his muscles. Mavis's mother wishes Mavis liked somebody more upscale, but the older man who "could almost pass for White" is quietly, discreetly homosexual and the preacher Mavis's mother would love to claim for a son-in-law is a real creep. Mavis could only have gone to public school, so she must have met other boys besides Ed, but none of them stands out in her memory. She has a general idea that Ed's father is abusive, as well as poor, but that only makes Ed's good intentions seem more impressive to her.

They've had enough of a modest, even Victorian, friendship for Mavis's mother to have ordered Mavis to be "cordial, but no more," when she meets Ed in town. Then Ed disappears. Mavis wonders if he's lost interest. Ed tells us up front what he's ashamed to tell Mavis through most of the story: he lost patience and hit his father back, and his father deliberately scarred his face with a knife. He's been told he's ugly because he has a dark complexion. Now, with a deep infected wound on his face, he believes it.

But Mavis still cares about him, and the way she shows it gets both of them packed off to Pittsburgh to marry each other or not--so long as they don't come home. 

The romance genre has historically shied away from real poverty, despite the popularity of "Cinderella." Poverty is not romantic. Rich characters are romantic, or, at most, middle-class characters who are so brave and so cute that readers/viewers can imagine that, if they don't marry for money, they'll earn some in a few years--the young doctor struggling to pay off loans, the teacher with the disabled parents and younger siblings to support. Roe Braddy convinces us that really poor young people can be romantic, too, in a different way. No chocolates or candlelight in this short novel--when food is mentioned, it's authentic period dishes readers will probably find a gross-out--but they're still "in love" and they'll still live more or less happily ever after.

Apart from Mavis's mother's belief that everyone needs to go to church every Sunday, Ed and Mavis are Christians, themselves. They perceive it as God, though they're told that it's a friendly porter, who seats a midwife with medical supplies in her bag near them on a train. They pray. This novel would trigger Christian-phobics...and, although nobody evangelizes in the book, rightly so. It portrays Christians living up to the best standards of their faith tradition.

Elevenies

I ran across a description of one of those novelty verse forms someone invented, usually during the week before someone writes about them. Most novelty verse forms don't get much use. The Elevenie is a word-counting form: five lines consisting of one, two, three, four, and one word in that order. Basically it leaves room for one sentence. The first word/line names a subject; the two-word line is the predicate, the three-word line further describes the predicate, the four-word line describes the effect of the action in the predicate, and the final word/line names the outcome.

Thus:

Elevenies
compress thought
in arcane form,
leave thoughts scant room:
unused.

Some newly invented forms, like the Fib, or newly transplanted forms, like the haiku, catch on and become popular because they instantly suggest potential. Word-counting forms are less popular than forms that rely on rhyme, rhythm, or alliteration. Some word-counting forms do appeal to more than one poet; the dverse.com web site features a weekly collection of 44-word quadrilles, and elementary school teachers have kept cinquains and diamantes alive. Somehow the Elevenie does not seem to be inspiring a lot of people.

Well, it inspired me...but my Muse is sarcasm.

The rules of poetry allow anyone to invent a new verse form. Word-counting forms are easy to invent. I confected one for a science fiction poem; maybe, when today's phone addicts are geriatric patients, verse forms based on "Write a sentence, break it into phrases, then repeat the same number of words in the same number of lines in each stanza" will have become popular--who knows? Anyway I thought the effect sounded futuristic because it didn't sound "poetic" to me.

Still, fair and square, if you make a word-counting form recognizable through repetition people can tell that it's a poem not prose. What do you think? How well do elevenies work in batches?

Leaves
are rippling
in the wind,
showing their pale undersides,
pre-storm.

Wind
blows low
through humid air,
a moment of relief,
pre-storm.

Petrichor
is a
name for the
scent on the wind,
pre-storm.

Is that a poem? You tell me. If any elevenies occur to you, please share them in the comments.

Note that "elevenies" are not necessarily connected with "elevenses," which is an aging British name for an early lunch eaten before tea at three and dinner at seven.

Morgan Griffith, Chair of Health Subcommittee

From US Representative Morgan Griffith (R-VA-9):

"

On July 3, I received the appointment to be the new Chair for the Health Subcommittee of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.

Following my appointment, I made some of my first public actions visiting rural hospitals and health centers in Southwest Virginia.

My first hospital visit took place in Pennington Gap at the Lee County Community Hospital operated by Ballad Health.

As the new Vice Chair of the Health Subcommittee, Tennessee Congresswoman Diana Harshbarger traveled from East Tennessee to the Lee County hospital to also participate in a roundtable discussion with Ballad Health leadership and staff.

As part of the Health Subcommittee, Vice Chair Harshbarger and I have the ability to influence health care policies in Congress and policymakers from executive agencies, like the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

Some officials expressed their concerns to us about federal changes to the Medicaid state provider tax that passed in the reconciliation act.

Many want to know the impacts of these changes on rural hospitals and their abilities to serve patients.

The topic is particularly sensitive for Lee County Community Hospital, which closed its doors in 2013, due partly to federal policies in Obamacare.

I was proud to work with Senator Warner, Senator Kaine, the community and Ballad Health to reopen the Hospital in 2021. Further, I am committed to ensuring its operations continue.

During our discussions, I made it clear that I will continue pushing policies that help improve rural health care.

This was a consistent discussion theme throughout my hospital visits.

Following our conversations in Lee County, I drove to Richlands in Tazewell County.

The Clinch Valley Medical Center operates as part of Lifepoint Health. The obstetrics and gynecology department that helps deliver babies is the closest such location for many expectant mothers in the region, and for some the only reasonable location option.

After my discussions in Richlands, I traveled east to Giles County.

Carilion Clinic operates Pearisburg’s Carilion Giles Community Hospital.

I spoke with Carilion officials and staff before heading to Blacksburg.

I concluded my Wednesday hospital visits in Blacksburg, where I visited LewisGale Hospital Montgomery.

Each of these hospitals is part of a hospital group.

The following day, I went to Martinsville and toured the Connect Health + Wellness dental facility.

Connect Health + Wellness is a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC). It is one of 61 FQHCs in the Ninth District, the most of any Congressional district in Virginia.

Aside from Martinsville, Connect also operates separate clinics to provide health services to local residents in Henry and Patrick Counties.

I am committed to using my position on the Health panel to work with Energy and Commerce Chairman Brett Guthrie so we can analyze the status of our rural hospitals and explore improvements to health care access for rural communities.

I appreciate all of our rural hospital providers for their diligent work to administer health care services to our sick and healthy, young and old.

To help them in their efforts, one potential health care policy solution is increased access to telehealth.

Throughout my tenure on the Health Subcommittee, I have been a consistent proponent of telehealth measures that enable faster access to medical care for patients in rural areas.

I will also be steadfast in monitoring the impacts from the reconciliation bill. One particular provision in the bill establishes a $50 billion rural hospital stabilization fund, but how it will be implemented remains to be seen.

It is necessary that we ensure the funds are appropriately allocated to rural areas that are underserved.

One problem for rural health care is the lack of health care providers. One idea to solve that problem is to expand utilization of money to the National Health Service Corps to pay off student loans for medical providers if they move to a rural area and stay for 2+ years. Often when young health care providers come to our region, they fall in love with the region and the people.

As I begin my chairmanship of the Health Subcommittee, I remain dedicated to improving access and costs for better rural health care. In addition, I look forward to continuing a dialogue with all our rural health care providers. I value their perspective, and that is why my first act as Chairman was to meet with them.

If you have questions, concerns, or comments, feel free to contact my office.  You can call my Abingdon office at 276-525-1405 or my Christiansburg office at 540-381-5671. To reach my office via email, please visit my website at www.morgangriffith.house.gov. Also on my website is the latest material from my office, including information on votes recently taken on the floor of the House of Representatives.

"

I wrote back.

"

Congratulations on the new position! It's a position from which vital changes can be made, not only in keeping a hospital in Lee County but in restoring real health to thousands of people--in Virginia and perhaps around the world.

My online identity is "Priscilla King, Celiactivist." There was a time when my mother and I defined that word in terms of showing people how active and healthy it's possible for us Irish-American celiacs to be. Then in the Obama administration glyphosate went generic and was overused. Chronic digestive disorders, which had been increasing steadily ever since this chemical came onto the market, skyrocketed. By now more people have died from glyphosate-related celiac-like disorders than from COVID--or even from aberrant reactions to the COVID vaccines, some of which are known to be contaminated with glyphosate too. But glyphosate reactions are not limited to gastrointestinal disease. Individuals react differently but, as they pay attention, they find that their consistent reactions may include almost anything. Glyphosate may or may not be a primary carcinogen but its irritant and immune-blocking antibiotic properties obviously promote cancer growth. It can cause neurological and psychological reactions. I've been asked sarcastically if I think glyphosate causes divorce, and answered that I know for a fact that it can cause bursts of bad temper! I've spent much of the last ten years helping to build people's Glyphosate Awareness. 

I have been deliberately poisoned with glyphosate and "New Roundup," which is worse, sprayed near and even on my property at night. I know who did it. If I went up to him and clawed a 3x1/2" bleeding strip off his face, I'd go to jail for assault, and rightly so. Nevertheless the law allows this sociopath to use chemicals to tear a 3x1/2" bleeding strip out of my colon and not even go to trial for assault. 

As everyone should know, FIFRA regulates pesticides in a loose way that allows anyone to buy and use sufficient quantities of chemicals to commit homicide or suicide, so long as those chemicals are properly registered as "pesticides." The EPA's regulation of glyphosate has been particularly revealing. At epa.gov it's still possible to find documentation that this chemical caused some adverse reaction or other in the majority of animals studied, but since reactions varied widely the mostly corporate-sponsored studies concluded that glyphosate was "safe". It's possible to find documentation that glyphosate raised horrific bleeding lesions across most of the upper body of a laborer who spilled some on himself, and caused another laborer to be paralyzed for more than a month. On the grounds that farmers wanted--had been forced to want--"herbicides" to maintain crop yields (without having to rotate crops as the Bible teaches) and "other herbicides are worse," the EPA used these documents to support the claim that glyphosate is "safe and effective." 

The real challenge to this claim has been the increasing evidence that, in the inevitable vicious pesticide cycle, glyphosate has ceased to be effective. It can now be seen to promote the growth of kudzu, Spanish Needles, and jimsonweed, and induce aggressive regrowth in dandelions and chicory, while effectively destroying food plants that have not been bioengineered to tolerate exposure. 

In "New Roundup" glyphosate is replaced by a mixture of known carcinogens, neurotoxins, endocrine disruptors, and "vapor drift" crop killers. Glufosinate produces especially nasty reactions in the tiny minority of people who are celiacs and the thousands of people who are not genetic celiacs, but have had celiac-like reactions to glyphosate. Glufosinate is chemically similar to glyphosate and was expected to do even more damage to the human digestive tract. It does.

A quick Google search will show that interest in legal penalties for neighbors who spray pesticides outdoors is rising. Yet FIFRA has been construed as giving these evildoers some sort of "right to spray," and the EPA's pledge to review chemicals faster now has not removed deadly poisons from every Tractor Supply, Rural King, or even Wal-Mart store. In fact they're even sold in "dime" or "dollar" stores. No procedures are in place to keep angry or even prankish fifth grade students from spraying pesticides on "pesty":classmates--or teachers--in sufficient quantities to kill them.

As a result of this I've found it necessary to warn people in the Glyphosate Awareness movement that they should be over age 50, with no children in their homes, before they make public statements about this poison or similar ones. 

As everyone remembers, Secretary Kennedy threatened to split the "conservative" vote by making that statement loudly and clearly. We need conservative Congressmen who are willing to conserve our environment, and our health, by making the same statement. They don't need to make it loudly or conspicuously; FIFRA can be revised as quietly as it was written--but it must be revised. As it stands it is a travesty of ethics and justice, legalizing murder if the murderer has done a little research and paid a little money. 

You can't call me on the telephone; those things never did work well where I am, and I no longer pay to maintain one. But I would like to meet you, Congressman, or any of your staff, in person the next time you're in Gate City." 

Actually I'd like to meet the whole Subcommittee.