Web Log for 11.7-8.25

Real life continues to bustle with busy-ness but I did find some time to surf on Saturday night.

Baltimore 

White-on-White loathsomeness. 

https://pjmedia.com/tim-o-brien/2025/11/06/he-attacked-elderly-pro-lifers-and-got-no-prison-time-trumps-doj-asked-to-intervene-n4945680

Comedy 

https://www.tom-cox.com/what-will-life-really-be-like-after-the-internet-gets-incinerated/

Decor

Found on the Mirror, not recently, where it was traced to somebody called Justin on Tumblr. Google has no further information. Supposedly nothing in the room had been replaced or updated since 1956.

Somehow I doubt this. Even if nobody noticed that the tiny 1950s television wasn't showing anything but that pale grey test pattern any more, they would've had to replace the light bulbs. The plant could be plastic, I suppose...

Anyway my point is: In the ordinary course of events, things in a house do need to be replaced and updated every few decades. Things get spilled on those lovely fabric-covered sofas. Nobody wants to encourage cigarettes in the house, so if an ashtray is still on the coffee table it's filled with something--useless glass beads, if nothing else. Carpets get downright nasty. The house my mother kept in Kingsport had all the original furniture, including the carpets, from 1967. We walked in and I sniffed the air and she said, "Yes, the carpet's gotta go." We took up the carpets and found patches that were solid black with Stachybotrys mold. It's possible to be too obsessed with keeping a house in perfect historic accuracy, just the way everything was on some day in the past.

But it's a triumph, I think, if even one room in a house looks just about the way it did in 1956, or in 1906, or in 1606. I don't like the idea of replacing things just because people can. Life's too short; there are better uses for money; and also the old things eventually become delightfully historic and interesting even to the visitor's eye. If you've been lucky, if the house and furniture have not needed replacement, I'd try to hold on to that time-warp effect. If anything can be kept, it probably should be kept.

Economics 

If you frame "inequality" as the problem, you can still get an answer that is favorable to socialism! Socialists for Equal Poverty for All!

https://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2025/11/05/g20-report-on-inequality-urges-more-statism-more-poverty/

Glyphosate Awareness 

Syngenta's paraquat is available as a replacement for glyphosate. Don't use it. PARaquat causes PARkinson's Disease. Carey Gillam summarizes the facts in an excellent ten-minute video: 

https://substack.com/home/post/p-178218514?source=queue 

Irony Overdose 

Pfizer wants support from Trump? An appropriate answer might begin with a sound like the beginning of "Pfizer" and end with one like the end of "Trump," with as many onomatopoeic effects as the speaker can do, in between. If Trump doesn't invite Albert Bourla to the White House just for the fun of having the guards literally kick him down the front steps, Trump may reasonably be accused of having made progress in the direction of learning to act like a gentleman. How much deterrent value that will have for Trump remains to be seen.

https://pjmedia.com/robert-hornak/2025/11/07/were-supposed-to-support-pfizer-now-n4945743

Schumer Schutdown  

In Swansboro, North Carolina, a farm offers boxes of fresh produce for people whose food handouts have been delayed by the Schumer Schutdown. This is produce only, not convenience food, and there's no guarantee that people who don't have traditional kitchens will be able to use all of the food in their boxes. They have more produce and will offer more boxes to more hungry people if people sponsor more.

https://checkout.square.site/merchant/1VHSSVMB9YNGB/checkout/PY26WMSAK5ZMG3LB63HZC7QO

Who's doing something like this in your town, US readers?

Trigger Warnings 

Does the Bible need trigger warnings? Absobloomin'lutely. The "sexual violence" label does not really apply to the Gospels, which are all but sex-free, but it most definitely applies to the stories of Dinah and her baby brother Joseph in the book of Genesis. The Gospels contain gruesome violence--they all lead up to crucifixion, which was meant to give whole cities post-traumatic stress. And maybe, knowing students, we can hope that warning students that the Bible contains lots of graphic violence will motivate them to read it. 

https://pjmedia.com/chris-queen/2025/11/07/when-even-the-bible-needs-a-trigger-warning-academia-has-lost-its-mind-n4945745

Women's Issues 

I don't agree that Mrs. Obama's complaints about having a team of fashion experts constantly working on her "look" make her a bad human being. An example of bad timing? Maybe. Not being free to pick one of a set of what we classify generally as "clothes," within a subset of "...that are clean and not in very bad condition," is a nuisance. Other people may be up against more difficult circumstances but it may actually help those people to know that the rich don't necessarily enjoy having a bevy of professionals fussing about every detail from their overcoats to their eyelashes. 

Fashion design is stereotypically a job for men who would rather look at boys than at girls, and prefer to dress boyish-looking girls. I suspect it attracts even more men--and women--who simply don't understand the engineering principles involved in designing clothes that flatter curves. One way or another, although haute couture fashion churns out lots of things designed for tall scrawny women, it is very weak on designs for tall, well-proportioned women. Fashion design also tends to favor blondes. Women who look like Mrs. Obama grow up hearing that people who are not their enemies like them, and like looking at them, well enough but they just are not and never will be the kind of fashion models Diana Spencer was. So they're still told, even today, that personality and character, talent and dedication, are more important than looking like a fashion plate. But still, even today, when young women go to the mall to look for jobs instead of only spending their parents' money, the ones who get the coveted store clerk positions are the ones who look good in the clothes the store sells. Still, if they apply and interview for jobs in which their education is relevant, the hiring decision is often based on looks. And still, even at the top...Americans want our First Lady to be a fashion leader. Mrs. Obama says nothing about her job coming with a team of specialists to help highlight her personality and improve her character. But it came with a team of fashionistas to give her a constant, and annoying, message that might be expressed in words as Why are you not Melania Trump? 

It's a problem a lot of women find relatable, however far below Mrs. Obama's wage level their jobs may be. The male writer who thought it made Mrs. Obama sound like an awful human being might do better to ask his wife how awful the fashion industry has been, for her, in her lifetime. Then he'd know why it's acceptable to express scorn for any "fashion look" that brings high-heeled shoes out onto the street, for any elaborate hairstyle or "makeup" effect, for any assembly of more than a half-dozen pieces including shoes, while affirming that pressure to conform to "fashion looks" harms women in every socioeconomic position. 

https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2025/11/08/michelle-obama-just-proved-again-shes-an-awful-human-being-n4945755

Then there's that video Youtube has been promoting about "vocal fry." I'm not saying anyone needs to watch it. Long story short, the Kardashians called national attention to a speech pattern some women have--no, it's not only rich young women--of speaking mostly in a shrill whiny voice and then dropping at the ends of sentences down into a low raspy sound. Apparently this annoys some people; according to the video it's not the sound they hate so much as the people who make it, which raises the question why the bleep those people watch the Kardashians. They could just turn off the television and talk to one another. Anyway the sound of these women's voices does not make me angry, the way people on the video claim it does them, but it is distracting; it sounds to me as if they have colds. 

In view of which, instead of giving young women yet another thing to feel selfconscious about, the expert on the video might have done better to offer help to people who say they hate women with "fried" voices. How can those people feel less envy and resentment of the Kardashians? How can they work on their fundamental dislike of women?

A related question might be how women can have fewer colds, and how, at the same time, they can avoid the chemical pollution that produces allergy-type reactions that look and sound like colds. Neither the partly-blocked-sinus whine nor the fully-blocked-sinus rasp is pleasant to listen to; both are even more unpleasant to find ourselves doing when we're not consciously imitating television characters but actually have blocked sinuses.

Historically the Kardashians' speech pattern spread up from the ghetto, where Black American young women used to be consciously trying to reverse the influence their grandmothers' smooth, melodious, non-nasal, Southern States or Caribbean Island accents had had on them. Where their grandmothers spoke slowly, the "Baby Girls" of the 1990s and 2000s jabbered fast. Where their grandmothers had cultivated a well modulated, non-nasal sound, the Baby Girls embraced a shrill, nasal sound. Where their grandmothers had shown upward social mobility by enunciating consonants, the Baby Girls seemed to be trying to invent a language without consonants. Fads for piercings and jewelry in places where North Americans have not traditionally had them definitely encouraged this way of speaking. 

This speechmode can still be heard on a few rap videos. Only a few--it doesn't sell; nobody likes listening to it. (Young men who liked the Baby Girls usually seemed to want them to stop talking.) Guuurrhh, it dah' slurruh sowngh widou' da congh-si-nunghs da' meg you sowngh so geddo an' so stoobi' an' so easy naw da wanna be arowngh. Your grandmother's voice was probably beautiful. And I'm sorry, but stereotypes do attach themselves to the ways people speak. If you want me to think you're intelligent, you need to practice making it easy for people to hear not only the difference you make between "what" and "would," "when" and "went," but the difference you make between "which" and "witch." There are symptoms of illnesses people would probably not choose to have, which I don't want to allow to annoy me, and then there is a fad for speaking sloppily, which annoys enough other people, as well as me, that I think it's worth advising the young to avoid doing it. 

Lips and tongues are not for hanging jewelry on. They are for enunciating all the nice crisp consonant sounds that allow the English language to have such a wealth of different words. They are for making sure that nobody is ever in any confusion about whether you're saying "crisp" or "Chris's," "going" or "gone," "list" or "lisp." Old speech textbooks used to have lists of tongue twisters, often memorably silly phrases, people used to practice enunciating sounds properly. It's worth working with things like "She sells seashells by the seashore" and "Which white witch was which?" until, regardless of any colds you may or may not have, you can at least make your words understandable. We can't clear our sinuses by an immediate act of will; we can enunciate our words.

Book Review: Moment of Truth

Title: Moment of Truth

Author: Angela Miller Curtis

Date: 2023

Quote: "I like going out with our friends, but I'm looking forward to it being just the two of us."

Memo to young men: When a young woman--at least a desirable one like Allison, a good student from a good family, attending college on a merit scholarship, Most Likely to Succeed, and apparently even pretty on top of it all--says "I'm looking forward to it being just the two of us," she's looking forward to a meaningful conversation about her date's background, his hopes for the future, his "feelings" in general, why he asked her for a date, and what he likes about her. Hand holding is appropriate. A kiss might be indicated. There is no way a girl like Allison means what you might mean by "looking forward to it being just the two of us." 

Allison likes Cameron--what she's seen of him, so far. Her first day at college, when she was wondering whether she'd have friends, he invited her to a party. He was the one who passed around the marijuana joints. Allison passed the box on the first time; the second time she took a puff but, if she inhaled, it didn't have an effect on her. The story doesn't make clear whether marijuana, or smoking it, is legal in their State. (This may be because it's a reminiscence of a time when older people thought one puff was going to drag a person down into heroin addiction by the end of the school term and a horrible death alone in an alley within two years. Marijuana itself does not have that effect, but the idea that you need drugs to enjoy a party can have it, so teenagers beware.) In any case, although she's a Christian and reads the Bible often, Allison likes the way Cameron looks, appreciates that he invited her to the party and has talked to her during the next six weeks, and is interested in him enough to want to see whether he's husband material. That's it. That's all. She's looking for a "boyfriend" in the legitimate sense of the word--one of the people she's getting to know, the crowd from which her lifelong friends are likely to come, who happens to be male. 

There is, of course, a "guy culture" that tells boys like Cameron that they can expect to start making babies at this stage of acquaintance. This is false. If you are a good "boyfriend" to a girl who's going to be worth marrying, in college, at the end of a year of lunch and campus cultural events together, you MIGHT get to meet her family. If that happens, congratulations, you're on the list of prospects she and her parents can keep an eye on while you make your start in life and show whether you really are breeding stock. They may love you for the promising youth that you are, but baby-making starts after the wedding, which can reasonably be expected to occur after you're twenty-five.

Cameron, despite his looks and charm, is not husband material. At least, not for Allison. As soon as they're alone together, he wants to crawl into the back seat. There was a time when young women's prospects in life were poor enough that many of them went out on date after date, haggling about their boundaries and letting young men feel that premarital baby-making merely required them to "touch the bases" of haggling for just a little "progress" in that direction every weekend. Today, thank God and the feminist movement, young women feel free to admit that that's no fun. Allison just says no. No haggling. No groping. No second date for Cameron.

The story hints that if Cameron had been man enough to apologize properly ("I'm sorry I acted stupid and ruined our first date. I've watched too many old movies. Please give me a chance to show that I can behave like a decent human being"), Allison might have given him a second date. That would probably have been a mistake. 

Anyway this is a happy story, though it's not particularly well told. Allison says yes to life, which means no to Cameron, and lives happily ever after. We're not told about her other dates, though presumably she has some; we're told that she graduates from college and goes to work in her chosen field. 

Stories like this one used to be tabooed by the publishing industry. They still encounter prejudice; Curtis obviously didn't find a publisher willing to work with this story and may not have found the editor I think it needs. I think it's awkwardly paced, with three out of six chapters detailing Allison's first day on campus, her selection of wall art making it obvious that she belongs to Generation X rather than being "millennial," and the other half of the e-book consisting of the bad first date, the day after, and the rest of Allison's college career. The slow beginning seems to belong in a novel that would go on to show how Allison's character develops through work and social life, her friends, her community, temptations to pad time and expense reports or boost a friend's career at a more deserving person's expense, all the while she gets better acquainted with the two or three dozen other attractive men in her college social circle, and on through the inevitable disappointment with some aspects of her dream job and how she perseveres, until she meets a man who is at least worth showing to her parents, marries him, is inevitably disappointed, perseveres, has a baby, is inevitably disappointed, perseveres, and lives happily ever after...but this e-book is, after all, called Moment of Truth. It's about the moment when Allison turns back off the wrong road onto the road that leads to happily-ever-after. That being the case, the first three chapters could have been condensed into one. 

Still, there need to be more books like this one. Happy endings can be about staying true to one's beliefs, rather than about the first physical attraction a character feels being "romance." Years ago, novels like Women and Thomas Harrow were lauded for depicting how a rich, desirable man pursued happiness by not marrying any of the unsatisfactory women who threw themselves at him. How brave and honest John Marquand was to reject the fallacy of pop-culture romance! Well, no points for guessing--a desirable woman's pursuit of happiness may also involve saying no to unsatisfactory men. This brave, honest e-book deserves reading.

Bad Poetry: Emilie's Letter to Bertram

This week's Poets & Storytellers prompt invites us to write about edges. One of this week's DVerse prompts invited poems about Mary Cassatt's painting, "The Letter."

Of course I can't see you again

she's written. As she licks the edge

to seal the envelope, a pain

runs through her like a sharpened wedge.

She'll miss him. What would Papa say 

if she did not turn him away

now that he's been demoted down

to private, having been one week

a Sergeant First Class. In a town

a drunken lout, who'd come to seek

a quarrel, said she looked too fat.

He knocked him down. How bad was that?

Status Update: No Web Log for 11.5-6.25

I'm still here. I am deeply disappointed in my State. 

Not that the most stupid handout-dependents voted for the party they think sends them their pensions, while that party was withholding their pensions from them--that's to be expected; these people are not encouraged to use whatever brainpower they have. Not that the stupid men voted for the blonde; that also was to be expected. Not that some men stayed home because they didn't want to elect a woman; that also was to be expected, and is only further evidence for the case that males shouldn't vote. Not that some women failed to anticipate this and inform their men, "You will vote for our Winsome, and I will see you vote for our Winsome, or you will sleep alone for the next four years"; even that was probably to be expected. 

But that, when Our Winsome and the Governor decreed that our emergency funds would be used to ensure that our handout-dependents could eat breakfast before they voted, and then the Trump-stuffed Supreme Court said, no, federal emergency funds would be used, and then Trump screamed that only some handout-dependents would get their pensions, our State government failed to secure the handouts. I went into a supermarket and saw a sign warning food stamp shoppers that their cards  would not have been recharged with money. The next day a disabled man told me that although he still had food in the house, his pension check had not come through. Our honor has been besmirched. 

Party politics are always disgusting. Failing to feed the poor among us is a positive sin.

I'm with Trump in thinking that a large number of people need to be told that, for good and sufficient reasons, they personally will never receive a handout again, not even if they develop quadriplegic paralysis as a result of driving the way they do, so they'd better sober up and get to work. I'd even add that another large number need to be handed vouchers to buy up all the socks, or pencils, or floral arrangements, in Wal-Mart and resell them in the parking lots instead of receiving handouts. But it has to be planned in advance. They have to be warned. Some people who receive handouts are in fact unfit to work, are young children, or nursing mothers, or disabled, or just not called back when they apply even for burger-flipping jobs because too many young people are out of work and the managers owe other unemployed youth's parents favors, or are  the veterans to whom we owe wages and/or the indigenous people to whom we owe rent; their payments should be sacrosanct. We cannot allow the Party of the Stubborn Jackass to hold them hostage, and lie to them about who exactly is holding them hostage, as we have been doing this week.  

Trump well and truly scored an own goal; we'll now have four years to regret that, and who knows what damage it may do. All of us have sinned against our own poor. All of us will bear the consequences.

I've not been too despondent to use the Internet, but I have spent my online time avoiding all news and doing research on obscure languages.  

The Blizzard of'93

(Obviously this was meant to go live in 2023, but why waste it? Maybe it's a good thing to think about winter storms before we start seeing them.)

If you listen to the baby-boomers at the Weather Service, in Georgia and Tennessee the snowstorm of the twentieth century was the Blizzard of 1993.

Pooh. That's like saying the late summer storm of the twentieth century was Hurricane Floyd. If 1993 was Floyd, 1997 was Camille...at the Cat Sanctuary, anyway. Other people's memories differ.

Well...it was March, so people weren't expecting a major snow. In most of the Southern States nobody ever expects more than two feet of snow at a time. The Weather Service saw the Blizzard coming--up from Georgia--and whoever heard of a big snowstorm coming from the south? 

Anyway, Thursday, the eleventh of March, had been chilly but not cold. Some flowers were starting to bud, if not bloom. It had been a long cold winter; we'd seen our usual quota of snow. 

Friday, the wind turned cold, and snow started to fall, and it didn't stop. 

For some reason Gate City didn't get the full effect of the Blizzard of'93. It was Big Snow. We don't usually get Big Snow twice in one year, and we'd already had one, so it was unusual. It wasn't deeper than my boot tops. It was easy to walk through. 

Kingsporters, however, will tell you they never saw such a snow in all their lives. 

Now, the Weather Service admits that all Kingsport actually logged was 14 inches of snow. They'd seen more snow than that at one time before, and they have since. Maybe it was just that the roads weren't salted and froze faster than usual as the temperature dropped faster than usual. Partly it was that most Southerners would rather crawl on their knees than try to drive in snow, and most of the ones who do try to drive in snow shouldn't. Mostly it was that cyclone winds were lifting snow off the ground even as more was falling out of the sky, so people couldn't see the road before them clearly. Kingsporters aren't accustomed to that. They use the word "blizzard" to mean Big Snow. This was a real one.

Anyway, only emergency vehicles were on the roads for hours, and many people who had gone to work on Friday morning spent the weekend at work.

In what are normally called "the higher elevations" in my part of Virginia, which do not include my home, things were even worse. Somewhere in the town of Wise they measured 30 inches of fresh snow; after the blizzard people photographed evidence of 48" drifts. 

The worst inconvenience for most people was, as usual, the power grid. As usual, trees dropped snow-crusted limbs across power lines and power lines went down. Nobody had electricity for many days...

Except the retirees in what had not yet become Bedbug Towers. They had gasoline generators. Big ones, that could, in sequence, keep the building heated and lighted for four or five days. By a peculiar coincidence that was about how long the power outage lasted; it was still possible for the company to direct linemen to reconnect them first, the "grid" mania hadn't made it commonplace for our whole town to be blacked out because a pole cracked in Kentucky. Neighborhoods' grids were still fairly well separated. So the retirees' frozen food stayed frozen, they bathed in hot running water, and most of them had adult children and grandchildren visit them to take advantage of these conveniences.

My father had just moved into his dimly lighted, easily accessible flat, and set up a new radio to listen to the weather news on WJCW, which put the usual ball games and talk shows on "pause" and broadcast Blizzard reports all weekend. He spent much of the weekend sitting by the radio. He called what he was doing "rooting" rather than praying, because it was neither a formal prayer service nor a mystical contemplative kind of prayer; I'd call it a kind of praying. His opinions of most people were low, but he did care about them and want hardship conditions to be relieved. Most people had land-line telephones back then; many of the telephones worked when the electricity didn't, so Dad was buzzing all his cousins on the phone, checking on their families and relaying reports about situations that might be alleviated. 

There were a lot of those situations. People who weren't in any real danger, but were just unprepared, kept calling WJCW and wringing their hands. "We're stranded without heat" was the usual wail. Instead of playing pop songs the radio DJs were broadcasting, "Another report of a household without heat in  This town on That road," and people were calling in, "I have kerosene if someone can deliver it," "I have a Coleman stove," "I have a spare generator," and emergency responders were delivering these things. It was a once-in-a-lifetime weekend. Thank goodness.

Rebecca Solnit has written books, one titled Paradise Built in Hell, about weekends like that one. There's a "high," an actual measurable adrenalin rush akin to what people feel in battle or fighting fires, and akin to what they feel on learning to swim or ride a bicycle. You open your eyes, realize you're still alive, and start noticing all the things you can do. 

"Where're you going?" your grumpy old relative growls as you start to leave the building.

"Out to clear a path!" you carol. Normally the retirement project has people who clear the paths and mow the grass and so on. Today it's obvious that those people won't get in for some time, so you shovel. 

Part of what makes this so memorable for baby-boomers is that, in 1993, nearly all of us could still enjoy shovelling snow. We knew we'd wake up with stiff muscles in the morning, but most of us didn't have rheumatic joints or bad backs or bad knees to worry about.

You go out and shovel your snow. You see Neighbor A. A can't get to work and would like to get paid for shovelling snow. You refer him to B, who can afford to pay. B knows of a way to get to where you had planned to spend the weekend. You get into the truck of the person B knows, and soon come to a house where a tree has fallen across the driveway. B's friend C has a saw so you get out and stack up wood while C saws...You are healthy and strong and alive. The blood tingles through your veins. You feel fine. You feel so fine that, when you come to a store that someone has dared to open, you go in and buy oranges for C's children. And so on. All weekend long.

Nature didn't intend for this "high" to last very long, yet some religious people, medical people, and emergency responders feel a vocation to live according to the insights the "high" brought them. Solnit documented that whole, viable intentional communities have formed as people worked to recover from natural disasters.

If not intentional communities, at least neighborhood spirit tends to rise after people have been through hard times together. Kingsport, Bristol, and Johnson City are the "Tri-Cities" for which the airport was named. For people in Gate City, Kingsport is almost (but not quite) home; many of us never walked into Kingsport but, in the twentieth century, that was only because walking ten miles takes time. Bristol is a place we visited occasionally, not necessarily in every single year. Johnson City is further into Tennessee than most of us have any reason to drive--an exception, of course, being students who used to go to East Tennessee State University rather than UVa or Virginia Tech because it's closer to home. During the Blizzard, though, Johnson City was where the radio station broadcast the reports that helped people help each other. A family there might have something a family here needed, or vice versa. Suddenly people in Johnson City started to seem like neighbors, in the extended or New Testament sense of people who may not live on an adjacent lot but who are near enough to help or to be helped.

In its way, the Blizzard of'93 was fun. "The perfect storm," someone told a newspaper reporter, because, in about as much time as it took people to enjoy helping each other repair the damage, the snow melted away. During the next week the early-blooming flowers started to bloom. Anyway, although some trees were lost and there was a report of a roof caving in, the Blizzard of'93 did very little lingering damage to Gate City or Kingsport.

Every winter has a storm. Some are worse than others. The awfulness of different storms in different neighborhoods varies, but everybody can always count on at least a few days of inconvenience.

We can't always afford to be as well prepared as we'd like to be...Be prepared, Gentle Readers.

Book Review: Me and the Cute Catastrophe

Title: Me and the Cute Catastrophe

Author: Jessie Gussman

Date: 2021

Quote: "[M]y name is Claire Harding and I'm a home nurse, divorced with two girls."

And with gray hair. We meet one of the three narrators of this romance hiding from Trey, the man she used to have a crush on, because she's halfway through dyeing her hair. Trey, who used to have a crush on Claire, too, is getting flabby around the middle but decides to fight it, while he's back in Good Grief, Idaho, coaching the boys' basketball team. Claire doesn't really coach the girls' team so much as lead the girls in community service projects, and the girls love her, they tell her at one point in the story, they really do, but they'd like to win a game some time. Trey comes to their rescue.

It's a romance. Trey doesn't care that Claire's hair is gray. Claire didn't really notice Trey's flab. Gussman delivers reader's money's worth of family-friendly rom-com scenes with kids, dogs, and social life, but the main goal of the story is to get Trey and Claire into the church. (They're Christians; they don't talk about it much.) Getting Claire's sister, who is also divorced and who gets to narrate some of this first-person present-tense story just to make it a little more of a challenge to read, happily remarried will come in the next volume. 

If you like a romance whose characters probably liked Charles Schulz (and act a bit like his characters, Charlie Brown and the Little Red-Haired Girl, grown up) you'll probably want the whole series of stories about how the population of the town of Good Grief get married. 

Web Log for 11.4.25

Well, I voted. And although too many of my townsfolk sat this election out, those of us who came into town voted like good fellows, more than 80% red on all four lines on the ballot.  Tragically a lot of ballots were cast in the Swamp and we lost. The whole State lost. Those swamp creatures could not resist the blonde. 

They will soooo regret this. Somebody Out There needs to record an independent folk-processed version of "I Hate Myself for Voting Blue" for them to sing along with. For one thing, have they been watching her face aging, her hair thinning, her muscle tremors? Ghostface is quite likely to have a nervous breakdown before the first legislative session's over. When electing our first female governor we might have had one who was already safely through the Change of Life, but noooo! Angry Abigail is all set to show the world how ugly a Change can be! 

Wait'll the Schumer Schutdown wipes out the emergency fund, Swampies, and your D favorites do the only thing their party ever thinks of doing, and the taxes on your homes rise to the point that you have to move into the slums the Ds have been so carefully building and maintaining for you. You thought you were middle-class? Sorry, the Democratic Socialist agenda calls for more huddled masses to be miserable enough to think they want the DSA's "Great Reset." Maybe you'll form emotional bonds with the roaches.

Meanwhile this web site officially grants permission to Northerners to call the worshippers of the lemony locks Nazis, racists, and fools, provided that they recognize that we on the Point of Virginia have shown the common sense and the moral sense the Swamp so regrettably lacked..

Animals 

The great gray owl in the Western States typically stands taller and has a greater wingspan than the great horned owl in the Eastern States, but the great horned owl is typically heavier. Both are big enough that they can--and do--eat cats or small dogs, as well as poultry. Neither is intelligent enough to be scared away easily. Both are easy to shoot by daylight; unfortunately neither is exactly easy to move to a wildlife preserve where it won't do any harm, like the one photographed below, but, if you want to be Truly Sporting, you can try. Some people claim to have trapped these owls in raccoon-sized box traps. Others say you have to buy and set up the more elaborate bal chatri trap. A trapped owl is an angry owl, and an angry owl can lock its talons into a man's arm so stubbornly that the only way the man can reclaim his arm is to cut off the owl's feet, so the trap must be handled with care.

https://roadsendnaturalist.com/2025/11/04/gray-ghost/

Obituary 

Former Vice-President Cheney, age 84. I think he was our only Vice-President whose name has been censored for non-political reasons.

https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2025/11/04/former-vice-president-dick-cheney-dies-at-84-n4945586

Politics 

Seriously, this is what it's starting to look like...Obamacare is not viable. For anybody. The Party of the Stubborn Jackass are so committed to making this racket pay off (does anyone have any data on how much they're invested in insurance companies?), they don't even care if the people who can't pay their own medical bills all starve. 

The party's Democratic Socialist leadership are, collectively, a piece of work. Wodehouse's description of socialists a hundred years ago still applies: They work for the abolition of private property, and start by grabbing all they can and sitting on it. Though Angry Abigail Spambucket's spamming was lavishly funded by out-of-state donors many of whom have become very vocal about wanting to break our longstanding alliance with Israel, for example, Spambucket also took money from the pro-Israeli lobby:

https://pjmedia.com/chris-queen/2025/10/23/caught-on-camera-spanberger-staffer-drops-a-36-second-bomb-on-her-own-campaign-n4945174

Salesmen, Reliability of 

I looked up the temperature in Kingsport before leaving the house. Google, of its own volition, churned up extra questions and answers. "What is the nicest neighborhood in Kingsport, Tennessee?" 

Answer: "Some of the best neighborhoods in or around Kingsport, Tennessee are Lynn Garden, Borden Village and Highland Park."

https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-search/Kingsport_TN/overview

Lynn Garden was nice...once. Before the construction and stocking of the slum. I used to walk through it at any time of day or night, my worst concern being tedious conversation. Now people I know prefer not even to drive through Lynn Garden. Now it's where to buy prescription drugs, including methamphetamine, without a prescription. Some call it "Meth Mountain." Very nice, Realtor.com.

Book Review: Green Dolphin Street

Book Review: Green Dolphin Street

Author: Elizabeth Goudge

Date: 1944, 1973

Publisher: Coward McCann & Geoghegan (1944), Pyramid (1973)

ISBN: 0-515-02886-X (Pyramid)

Length: 640 pages

Quote: “That a man who had emigrated to the New World should after the lapse of years write home for a bride, and then get the wrong one because he had confused her name with that of her sister, may seem to the reader highly improbable; yet it happened. And in real life also the man held his tongue about his mistake and made a good job of his marriage.”

That’s basically the plot of Green Dolphin Street. Sisters Marianne and Marguerite lived on a small island where marriage prospects were scarce. William, an off-island bachelor, appealed to both of them. The one he warnted was Marguerite; the one to whom he mistakenly addressed his proposal was Marianne. Marguerite became a nun. And after forty years they all made peace with one another.

If you like tastefully written historical romances, you’ll like this one; it’s full of history and adventures, with some mortal danger but no risk of anything sordid happening. It’s unfortunate that Goudge had never actually been in New Zealand, but she wrote the story as best she could from the historical data she had.

If you’re a real novel reader, you may even appreciate this story stretching on for 640 pages. I’m not, and my feeling is that 320 or probably even 160 pages would have been enough. 

A Strange or Useless Talent

What does it mean to call a talent strange or useless, as the Long & Short Reviews prompt does? If it's a talent, how bad is it for people to call it useless?

I'm not sure but I suggest, Gentle Readers, that if someone else tells you your talent is strange or useless, you maintain a good healthy distance from that person. For their kind of contagious mental illness a hundred miles is a good distance.

People used to tell women that any talents we had were, if not useless, if in fact what was keeping our children alive, at least strange. It was strange for women to be able to live, much less bring up children, without depending on some man. As technology made even labor jobs accessible to women, we just stopped listening to this toxic idea, and everyone's much better off without it.

Men, however, may now be getting messages from envious fellow males that it's "strange," or "White" or "girly," to have talents that involve communication. Lowest-common-denominator groups of guys can't claim that math is a "girly" talent (though they can claim that it's "White") because a real talent for math is genetic, and almost always found in men. When consistent differences in the IQ scores of different demographic groups persist after the poverty factor has been eliminated, the differences correlate nicely with the incidence of "the math gene" in different groups. "The math gene" is more often found in Asia than in Europe, more often in Europe than in Africa, but it is global. In fields that involve communication, however, John Adams was right. He feared that "On the day women are our equals" (under the law) "they will be our masters," that if women had equal access to education and publication and such we'd dominate those fields...as we did, and do. 

For anyone who's read the writing of women of past generations it is at least funny to see how quickly and completely the tables have turned. Many of the greatest writers in English were men; but the majority of English-speaking men never were writers. Isn't there something delicious about \the number of publishers who are still calling for manuscripts by women and members of minority lobbying groups (as distinct from real minorities that aren't big enough to do so much lobbying)...but won't read manuscripts that are admittedly by White men? 

There is, but it's still not right. It's a scenario that belongs in "revenge porn." In the real world White men deserve their chance to use their talents, just as everybody else does. Christians who show what Freud would have called a revealing obsession with other people's sex lives may need to be reminded that Jesus is not recorded to have preached on that topic at all, while He told a story that was recorded three times--which means He may have told it three hundred times--about the punishment of someone who, through cowardice, didn't use his talent for profit.

There are, of course, abilities like double-jointedness for which humanity has yet to find very much use. I don't usually think of things like double-jointedness, or sleepwalking, or the ability to grow hair more than three feet long, as talents. I think of them as quirks, but they may be talents. Super-long hair, for instance, tends to be strong durable hair. It didn't do much for Absalom but, if nothing else, it can be harvested every few years to make wigs. 

I have the quirk of extra-flexible hands. I have two visible tendons in each wrist that flex independently when I type and allow my middle and ring fingers to move independently. I also have the ability to touch the inside of each wrist with at least some of the fingers on the same side hand. Whether this has actually helped me type, I don't know. Back when there were typing competitions, I used to win them. That might be called a strange talent I have, but I suspect it's not been altogether useless. I suspect most of the quirks people inherit have some sort of use, whether people use them or not.

The Peace Post

Blog4Peace, the biggest link-up of all...I almost did miss it, this year. I've been busier offline this year. 

Nevertheless.

Even for Israel...This web site has no foreign policy. This web site believes that people in other countries look like adults, from here, and should settle their differences like adults. However, we have to say: Hamas terrorists have no reason to live, but seriously, Mr. Netanyahu, primary schools? 

Trump claimed to want to be the peace president. With Hamas he succeeded in removing the primary obstacle to proper police action, but not in securing peace, because a legitimate elected official's pledge of peace means nothing to terrorists. Now even Trump is making ugly Republican noises about war and this web site has to say: Please, Republicans yammering at Trump to do the Republican thing and declare war on a small harmless country. There has to be a better way.  

There is a hilarious movie about Republican warmongering. Everyone should watch it. It's free.

https://tubitv.com/movies/306923/canadian-bacon

Republican friends should know that warmongering is the primary reason why I and a lot of other people have never joined your party. The Republican Party successfully dumped segregation but it has yet to dump the idea that a big, rich country's declaring war on some small, poor country is a good way to stimulate the rich country's economy. There have to be other ways to stimulate the economy, and other causes to rally people around...Trump tried (give the devil his due) to use border-jumpers, but he self-sabotaged by confusing border-jumping criminals with legal immigrants. Trump is not the best person to rally people around the cause of ending hatecrimes against women, long overdue for national attention. Trump could try freedom of speech and/or privacy, as issues around which most Americans would rally, but he doesn't seem to want to try that...which, in view of his history, is a bad sign; he is still only a baby Christian. I'm downright eager to rally around Kennedy and go to war on chemical pollution, myself. But Nigeria? Has money even been tried in Nigeria?

"But war on chemical pollution wouldn't stimulate the economy! It would sabotage the chemical companies!" someone might say. 

To which I say: bosh. Very simple boiler/steamer technology would eliminate most need for "herbicides," but it wouldn't work on wheat. Natural botanical science might be used to find ways of growing weed-free wheat (without splicing genes). Robotic technology might be used to protect wheat in traditional fields. So-called scientists who are dragging their heels, not leaping enthusiastically at the problem of eliminating poisons from commercial farming, are weak and poor-spirited old men who need to be replaced. If visions of new technology aren't already dancing in their heads, that's their fault, not mine.

The young need their "New Frontier"...I propose this one. At the very least, building robots that can identify and destroy tares, and boll weevils and spongey moths, has to be more rewarding than war.

Book Review: The Improbable Adventures of Marvelous O'Hara Soapstone

Book Review: The Improbable Adventures of Marrvelous O’Hara Soapstone

Author: Zibby Oneal

Date: 1972

Publisher: Viking

ISBN: none

Length: 128 pages

Illustrations: drawings by Paul Galdone

Quote: “Lemon and Iris Soapstone lived in an ordinary square white house. They raised pigs in the garden.”

Children whose own names are as unusual as Lemon and Iris have to be even more creartive in naming their pets. Hence their white pig’s name is called Marvelous O’Hara. When christened, the pig runs away and starts having comically improbable adventures designed to explain why, in most suburban neighborhoods like the Soapstones’, children are not allowed to raise pigs.

As a Weekly Reader book, this one was intended to amuse middle school students for about a week. It’s recommended to anyone looking for comedy on that level. It doesn’t pretend to be great, but it’s not bad. It would amuse any number of elementary school-aged children if read aloud on a wet day. 

Book Review: Mariana

Book Review: Mariana

Author: Monica Dickens

Date: 1940 (U.K.), 1968 (U.S.)

Publisher: Michael Joseph (U.K.), Penguin (U.S.)

ISBN: none

Length: 283 pages

Quote: “Mary sometimes heard people say: ‘I can’t bear to be alone.’”

The heroine of Monica Dickens’ Mariana is called Mary. There’s a reason: people her age were not actually named Mariana. The name was well known, but it was considered unlucky, associated with the lovelorn character in Tennyson’s poem: “‘He will not come!’ she said...‘I am a-weary, weary, I wish that I were dead.’” Just in case anybody didn’t recall the poem, it’s quoted in the novel.

Mary is alone. Her husband, an officer in the British navy, was on a ship that has just sunk. She’s never minded being alone while he was out, but this is a real crisis, and her whole life flashes before her eyes...forming a novel in the biographical mode. My feeling is that Mary’s life has been commonplace, but somebody out there may find her interesting.

Although Charles Dickens’ great-granddaughter was young at the time of writing, Mariana was not autobiography. Her husband was an officer in the U.S. navy. (Interestingly, the preface to the 1968 edition calls her “Mrs. Dickens” before mentioning, further down the same page, that she was actually Mrs. Stratton, formerly Miss Dickens.)

Petfinder Post: American Bobtails and Boston Terriers

This week we look at a breed/type of cat and a breed/type of dog that can be considered fancy, but that are fairly easy to find in shelters. American Bobtail cats and Boston Terrier dogs have some features in common: a tendency to have naturally short tails, sturdy body shapes, short low-maintenance coats, and normally friendly, loyal, lovable personalities.  

The American Bobtail gene is sometimes described as a different natural mutation from the Manx or Japanese Bobtail gene. Japanese Bobtail cats may have a different gene, since the "bobtail" trait is recessive in Japan. It would be harder to prove that American Bobtails, whose "bobtail" trait is dominant, aren't just throwbacks to a Manx ancestor. The effects of the gene are similar. The cats have a chunky build and a stubby tail, can grow larger than people expect domestic cats to be, and tend to be friendly to everyone while bonding with one particular person. People who live with American Bobtails say they like to climb trees and may bring toys to you so you can throw the toy for them to chase again. However, American Bobtail cats normally have either stubby or normal tails, rather than being completely tailless. 

In some cases shelter staff know whether a shelter cat is Manx, American Bobtail, or Japanese Bobtail. Sometimes they either look at a whole litter of kittens and guess that, if some or most of the kittens are tailless, their ancestors were Manx, or just guess that chunky stump-tailed cats are Manx since that's the most popular short-tailed breed. It's all about the cats showing traits associated with a breed since, in any case, shelter cats aren't going to have kittens.

Zipcode 10101: Tulip from Houston by way of NYC 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/tulip-79029390/ct/rocky-hill/lears-legacy-tx2906/

There is a New-York-based organization dedicated to helping place surplus shelter cats from Houston, Texas. Tulip is one of them. Her web page indicates that she's the last of a litter to be adopted. Tulip is still a kitten and is said to be friendly and cuddly. Her adoption fee is high in New York because it includes transportation; if you can drive to Houston it might be more reasonable. As always, research the history of "out-of-town" shelter animals; the idea is benign but it's also easy for petnappers to exploit.

Zipcode 20202: Bobby from Kentucky by way of Frederick 

His web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/bobby-78069116/md/frederick/bourbon-county-rescue-ky395/

There is also a Frederick-based organization dedicated to helping place surplus shelter cats from Bourbon County, Kentucky. Bobby is one of those. His ancestors are believed to include Bombay cats as well as American Bobtails, so he may be less thickset than a purebred Bobtail. He is reported to have been abandoned by a human who couldn't stay in one place.

Zipcode 30303: Jesse James from Ball Ground

His web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/jesse-james-77884066/ga/ball-ground/semper-fi-legacy-rescue-ga1079/

There are four of these little fellows, all named after popular characters from "Western" movies. They are at the most active stage of their lives and will need another kitten to play with--why not adopt two of the brothers? 

Zipcode 10101: Apple from Manhattan 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/apple-78461878/ny/manhattan/social-tees-animal-rescue-foundation-ny835/

Three-year-old Apple is a mix of Boston Terrier and some other things, thought to include French Bulldog and Pug and ???. She is available as a foster pet, so you can confirm for yourself that she's as good a pet as they say she is. Despite a look that can be a phobia trigger, Boston Terriers have a history of being popular pets for children. They are strong and stubborn but normally calm, gentle, and teachable.

Zipcode 20202: Jake from Westminster 

His web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/jake-76659678/md/westminster/reach-out-rescue-resources-md356/

Being part Beagle gives Jake an unfair advantage over other dogs on Petfinder's Boston Terrier page. He's an older dog, but said not to know it. He is described as having a beagle personality, calm, friendly with everyone, and "wise." 

Zipcode 30303: Athena Jade from Social Circle 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/athena-jade-78894954/ga/social-circle/pound-puppies-n-kittens-incorporated-ga163/

Athena Jade is an extrovert dog--"super friendly" with people and fast-moving. That is why she was picked up as a street nuisance and has apparently not been claimed. If you can keep up with this type of dog, AJ might be the dog for you.  

Web Log for 11.2.25

Halloweenery, Belated 

Five hilarious ghosts, any of whom you might want to dress up as next year. Bad news: dressing up as Rude Words Woman will require some attempt at late eighteenth century costume; good news; the late eighteenth century costume of the working class was easy.

https://www.tom-cox.com/some-ghosts-i-have-known

Politics 

Actually the face of the handout-addicted in my part of the world is a little older than that--it's not a youth problem; it's a problem of lifelong handouts having prevented people from ever building a work ethic or a sense of community. It's done horrible things to their characters.

Found at the Mirror. Google credits an Xer called Robert W. Hall.

But let's all put a brake on the spin machine. 

This one also seems to have originated on X. The source has a screen name that uses fancy characters to write a word this web site does not allow. 

Yes, that's what the Party of the Stubborn Jackass intended to do. But it won't happen. The White House did not specifically call out the role of Virginia's executive branch in this policy statement, but the time line it was still possible to follow on X did go like this: 

1. Senator Schumer refused to end the Schumer Schutdown for the thirteenth or maybe fourteenth time.

2. The federal office warned food stamp recipients that "the well had run dry" on their emergency benefits.

3. In Virginia, New York, and New Jersey, as this web site pointed out, this meant that handout-dependent voters were likely to be going to the polls without breakfast. Having the Democratic Party to thank for their breakfast-less condition.

4. In New York and New Jersey Rs didn't seem concerned about winning THAT way, but in Virginia Candidate Earle-Sears and Governor Youngkin announced that our emergency fund would be used to ensure that handout-dependent voters would be able to vote their consciences on the kind and amount of breakfast to which they are accustomed. Because this is Virginia. We win honestly or not at all.

(Oh of course Virginians can cheat, and some of us do...but the rest of us do jollywell shame the ones who cheat.)

5. The Supreme Court notified the federal office that, legally, they had a mandate to use federal emergency funds to ensure breakfast for all voters, even in states that aren't having elections this year.

That would be the Supreme Court that, Democrats whined and wailed and kicked and screamed a few short years ago, was packed with Justices appointed during the first Trump administration. So handout-dependent voters still have Winsome Earle-Sears to thank for the original push to guarantee that they'd have breakfast on election day...but they have Friends of the Donald to thank for the actual funding. 

Butterfly of the Week: Spotted Zebra

Graphium megarus is black or dark brown and white, so some people wanted to call it a Zebra. "It looks more spotted than striped," someone must have said. "Well, there we are...a Spotted Zebra!" 

Photo from Thai Butterfly Trips.

Most often associated with China,  also found in several Asian countries and even in Australia, the Spotted Zebra is not believed to be endangered. It's called common in China and rare in India. In India it is protected by law.

Megarus was a character in ancient Greek mythic history, said to have been the founder of the city-state called Megara and its surrounding territory, Megaris. The most logical reason for naming this butterfly after him is the tradition of naming Swallowtail species after characters in literature. 

Photo from Thelittleman. Males do some composting, but both sexes pollinate.

Photo by Janmar, taken in March in Thailand. Males sip water from shallow puddles, alone or in large mixed flocks.

Some instructive photos of Graphium megarus at puddle parties with look-alike species are at:

https://butterfliesvietnam.blogspot.com/2017/05/trip-to-ba-be-national-park.html

https://ronorenstein.blogspot.com/2014/07/thailand-butterfly-portraits.html

These butterflies live in damp tropical forests, where they fly high among the treetops. They like evergreen forests with red sandy soil and a good deal of rainfall. Caterpillars eat leaves of small trees in the Annonaceae family.

They most often fly in March and April. Adult wingspans range from two to three inches. Though large by North American standards, this is the smallest species in the Graphium subgenus Paranticopsis. The Paranticopsis species are thought to be mimics of the Danaid genus Parantica; thus, aside from their Swallowtail wing structure and iridescent pale blue to white spots, in some ways they look more like our Monarchs than like our Swallowtails. 

Males and females look alike; if there are consistent visible differences they are slight and have not been documented.

Different subspecies have been identified including Graphium megarus megarus, G.m. megapenthes, G.m. fleximacula, G.m. martinus, G.m. mendicus, G.m. sagittiger, G.m. tiomanensis, G.m. tistaensis. G.m. similis, and G.m. marthae. Not all sources recognize any or all of these as distinct subspecies. Rothschild, for example, recognized only megarus and fleximacula as distinct subspecies:

https://archive.org/details/novitateszoologi02lond/page/460/mode/1up?view=theater

Differences in wing patterns certainly exist, but how consistently they are found in specific places is debated.

Graphium megarus megarus: 

Photo by Milind_bhakare, taken in April in India.

Graphium megarus megapenthes:

Photo by Oleg Sartorin, taken in March in Thailand.

The early stages of this species' life seem undocumented in cyberspace. 

Cat Sanctuary Update, Good and Bad

"Is that your cat?" asked the odd jobs man, looking down the road from his truck. I was out at the gate, having told him I was out of money and didn't have any errands to run. 

"My cats are right here beside me," I said.

"It seems to know where it's going," he said. 

"It does," I said. "It looks almost like the one we lost last winter."

Last winter, when Pastel died and Serena was very ill from eating poisoned meat, Silver seemed to be affected too. Serena didn't want anyone else seeing that she was ill. Silver didn't want to displease her mother. Meanwhile a neutered male cat I called Trumpkin, because he was orange and he didn't go home when told to go home, kept meowing around the house. Our Crayola, who eloped with him some time ago, had died and he wanted another wife. (It seems probable that Crayola was one of the casualties of the Bad Neighbor's setting out poisoned meat, and Trumpkin, though he didn't die, ate enough to be ill too.) 

Silver is a complaisant beta cat, the sort of social cat whose main goal in life is to please other social cats, with humans at the end of the list of the people she wants to please. That is: she behaves well, but when there's any question of whom to please, as it might be sharing someone's lap with another cat or posing for a picture with another cat's human, she invariably wants to please the other cat. Serena was telling her, "Go away." Trumpkin was telling her, "Come with me." I would have preferred to keep her here but, between Serena's and Trumpkin's demands, my wishes meant nothing to Silver.

So, with my reluctant permission, Silver let herself be petnapped and moved in with Trumpkin's humans. I never was sure who his humans were, but I became fairly confident last spring that they were the ones who'd moved away. They were new in the neighborhood and didn't stay long. I believe Trumpkin was theirs because, after they left, he looked and acted like a homeless cat. He became ill. Then he stopped coming around at all. 

What had become of Silver? Well...when she'd been making her decision to leave me, she'd come back from another house where she was obviously pampered. Having her very own lap to sit on might have meant a lot to her. She'd stopped traipsing back and forth through the neighborhood. Knowing that she'd been ill, I thought she might have died, but I'd cherished a hope that she'd moved away with Trumpkin's humans and become their indoor pet. 

But this cat looked like Silver...only smaller. Older. Sicker. 

"Some people in the neighborhood had a cat that looked a bit like mine, only with different spots--but I think it was a bigger cat, male," I said, considering the cat who was now shivering at the gate. "This one looks smaller than mine. Might be a cousin or a half-sister."

The cat limped up into the not-a-lawn and sniffed at Drudge and Serena. They were polite, but didn't want to get too close.

"That must be your cat, or the others would be fighting with her," the odd jobs man laughed.

"Social cats make friends," I said. "Something's wrong with her, anyway." 

I brought out kibble for all three cats, although mine had already had breakfast. I put the dish for the cat who looked like Silver in a cage; she went in for isolation. She seemed very hungry. I tried to remember exactly how Silver's spots had looked. I needed to look at old pictures of Silver to let myself believe that this wretched shivering stray was our cat princess come home.

She let me pick her up, accepting but not returning any displays of affection. (Serena doesn't like to see other cats acting as if they thought they were my pets. Silver always was a Secret Snugglebunny.) She knew where the kibble was kept. She knew where to scratch the door to get me at least to shout at her to stop. She didn't really answer to her name, but when I said, "Aren't you Silver? Are you another cat who looks a bit like Silver? Is your name Spot? Gray Lady? Miss Kitty?" she walked away looking offended.

She did not have a fever, or visible wounds. Maybe she was only shivering because she'd become accustomed to being indoors? It was a damp, chilly day. 

I didn't want to upset Serena or Drudge by making too much fuss over her; she'd been here for two days before I had a good look at her underside. 

The thing I'd hoped wouldn't happen to Silver, because she's shown the Seralini Effect...had happened.

Somebody had trapped, spayed, and released a cat whose health depends on her being able to flush toxins out of her body through the bodies of stillborn or short-lived kittens. You know, that sort of blithe assumption that they know best that some people love to make..."Three days after her hysterectomy, Jane went on safari hunting lions." 

She was limping because the shaved patch on her underside had barely had time to form a scar. She was weak, but irritable, with reactions to anesthetics and antibiotics, and to chemical vapors against which she's lost her primary natural defense. 

She did not belong to the person who had her spayed. That person had very likely found her on the road as she made her way home, having decided she didn't want to be the only cat in the family. 

That person needed to be told in very strong terms: If you don't own a cat, if you don't know it well, if you can't keep it in your house after the operation, don't bother your head about having it spayed. In some cities feral cats may still be a nuisance. In my part of the world we need more, not fewer, free-roaming farm cats and there are waiting lists for kittens whose parents had the mental capacity to be real pets. And we still allow wholesale poisoning of humans and animals by spraying chemicals into the air everyone has to breathe...poisoning that I've watched kill many animals outright, but that Silver has been able to resist because her body has sequestered toxins in non-viable kittens. Silver has had exactly one kitten who lived to adulthood. 

Silver did not come home to die. She is a loving and lovable cat. She came home to be with her friends and family. They know and like her, though they're still making it clear that she smells disgusting and they don't want her to be close to them yet. But now every time the Bad Neighbor sprays poison, claiming he's trying to clear farm land, having no intention of farming but wanting to make other people feel bad whenever they are doing outdoor work or gathering to celebrate occasions in the neighborhood, I'll wonder whether I'll find Silver's body...where I found her adoptive uncle Traveller's body? Where I found her sister Swimmer's? Where I found her sister Pastel's?

Sometimes I feel that I could positively enjoy the job of pumping glyphosate into convicted spray poisoners and watching them die. 

Federal law now provides legal measures for people who have been harmed, or whose animals have been harmed, by the fools and deliberate evildoers who are still spraying poison on their gardens. We can sue those individuals for damages. The more lawsuits, I think, the better; anyone buying "herbicides" to maintain a tacky fake-Astroturf "lawn" deserves to lose his shirt in court, but money paid to a human is not likely to give much comfort to an animal who has been ill. Or died.

Silver is on the screen porch watching me type this. Her eyes are half shut. She does not look comfortable. She eats hungrily enough--she looks as if she might have picked up worms this summer--but then afterward she looks as if she may not be keeping food down. But her facial expression (cats don't have as many variations of facial expressions as humans do, but their eyes and ears do express things) looks grateful. I think she's glad to have found that her home is still here.