Bad Poetry: A Fairy Tale Character

Explication below. First the poem:

[Photo from Disney Villains Wiki Fandom]

Ha ha ha ha! Ho ho ho ho!

I am the Villain, Jacques Lebeau!

Out trapping wildlife in the wood,

I found a dog, a very good

Sled dog, or hunting dog, or pet,

Or fighting dog that people bet

Will last five minutes with a bear

When forced a fighting ring to share.

I know where a young bear's asleep.

Around his den, my servant, creep

And set out meat that I have laced

With poison just enough to waste

The bear's strength so that you can haul

Him in to fight the dog, and all

The people who've come in to trade

To me will have their money paid

To watch the bear rip dog apart.

I have a chip of flint where heart

Would be if I were a real man;

I'm just part of a story's plan.

I drink as much as I can buy.

Some day soon I am sure to die;

No tear will fall from any eye,

And least of all regret will I.

I never heard in any text

A priest read, in this world or th'next,

Hope of good things for one like me.

I am a drunkard, don't you see.

My story in its first edition

Was written during Prohibition.

I've doped the dog, I've doped the bear,

So they'll feel fighting mad, and tear

Each other all to pieces, and

Then I'll get drunk. So I have planned

All winter long, around the fire,

Cursing my land, my luck, my sire--

But what is this that now I see?

The bear and dog are friends? Woe's me!

Can such a stroke of luck even be?--

And now the dog comes after me!

This week's Poets & Storytellers United prompt asked for poems from the point of view of a fairy tale character. 

Can anything new possibly be said about Cinderella, the Sleeping Beauty, or the Beauty and the Beast? 

I thought back to those old Disney movie souvenir books, and remembered that, when reviewers were sharing memories of fictional characters we didn't want to meet, I'd mentioned Jacques Lebeau as seeming like a fantasy character to me.

He was in a movie, acted out with real people and animals, about a brave Husky dog called Nikki who got separated from his humans when they were out in the woods. His humans were a father and son, both called Dupas; they had given names but they hardly came into the story. Winter was coming on. The dog stumbled about, having species-appropriate adventures, learning to survive. He made friends with Cree people (it was Disney, but the story was supposed to have happened in Quebec) and other animals, including a bear cub, Neewa. Then he smelled another French-Canadian's campfire and approached, but he soon realized he'd found a different kind of man. He was soon trapped by a man much nastier than the ones he'd known before. This was Jacques Lebeau, who figured that by keeping Nikki in a cage and treating him badly he could get Nikki to fight and make money off him. 

At the next big gathering, Lebeau tried to get Nikki to fight Neewa. Of course they acted like the old friends they were. Then he tried to get Nikki to fight Dupas. Of course that wasn't happening either. Nikki had missed Neewa and Dupas for months; being around both of them together, fighting was the last thing on his mind. So Lebeau tried to force the fight on which he was taking bets, threatening Dupas with a knife if Dupas didn't kick Nikki. Nikki, of course, surged out...to defend his human. In a Disney movie nice characters never kill nasty characters outright, so Lebeau just cringed away from Nikki in such a way that he fell on his own hunting knife. 

When I think about the story, I think that it might even have happened...but there was just something so Disney about it...and of course it is a Canadian variation on the classic fable of Androcles and the lion. 

Anyway. It's Sunday. This web site is supposed to bring you Christian content. So, although neither Disney nor twelve-step groups ever were exclusively for Christians as distinct from other people...We used to think that, in the case of genetic alcoholics, "First a man took a drink; then the drink took the man," and the alcoholic was just a dead loss to humankind. Now we know that it's possible for many alcoholics to transfer their addictions to fellowship with a group of other recovering addicts. Even Jacques Lebeau might have sobered up and come closer to being a decent human being if anyone had ever taken him to a twelve-step meeting.

People who take the twelve steps seriously are some of the most radical Christians, and most lovable human beings, in this world. 

Unfortunately Jacques Lebeau was just the villain of a fable, and the nicest thing anyone was ever destined to call him was "brutal Frenchman." 

Where Were You on This Day in 2001?

I was in "gorgeous" Prince Georges County, Maryland. It was a Tuesday. We had a Tuesday routine: drive up Route 1 to Laurel, stop and see a massage client, stop at some favorite stores, drive on to Columbia, change the library books, buy take-out meals on the mall, eat and walk around the Centennial Lake Park, stop at other favorite stores. It was an absolutely gorgeous day and I was looking forward to it. I called the massage client and heard, "I think I should cancel. I don't think you should come out today. Did you see the news? Somebody just crashed a plane into the World Trade Center."

"Was someone youall knew on the plane?" 

"I don't think so but they think it might have been some kind of act of war. We're all watching the news. We might want to get out of here."

I put down the phone and turned to my husband. "They don't even know who was on the plane, but they're all in mourning because a plane crashed in New York. Do you want to watch that on the news?"

"It'll be in the Post tomorrow. Let's go on as usual." I spent a lot of time at the library in Columbia because on Tuesdays my husband either took a continuing education course for tutors of disabled children, or tutored one of them, for a good part of the day. We loaded up the books we were taking back. It was not one of the days when I took the Practically Perfect Toshiba laptop. We stopped at the Amvets charity store, a very large store with a furniture showroom and some pay phones. In those days a local phone call cost a quarter, and long-distance calls could be made from a pay phone if you had a lot of coins to feed into it, by ones, or if you had a prepaid "calling card." I had a few of those cards in my pocket along with library cards and store membership cards and my Metrorail Farecard. I went into the store and browsed my way to the aisle where the yarn was, if they had any. They didn't. Behind that aisle was a glass pane enclosing the room with the TV, radio, and stereo sets. All of them were tuned to the news. 

By that time the second plane had hit the second tower and the third one had hit the Pentagon. The Pentagon was designed and built for security rather than as a show of hubris; the section of it that could be hit by the plane was a little-used storage section, but of course people had been on the plane, including Barbara Olson, an emerging author who'd become popular. 

I looked around and saw that I was one of a row of people staring at the row of TV sets. Some of them were making cell phone calls. English was not most of their first language--the Amvets store employed a lot of foreign-born military wives, and was the store where you couldn't always count on finding anyone who spoke even Spanish, but that was the attraction for other immigrants who spoke the other languages the staff used. I didn't yet have a cell phone so I power-walked to the front wall of the store and punched in the numbers from a "calling card." Mother needed to know that I was safe in rural Maryland and wouldn't come home unless civilians were evacuated, as in the Gulf War. So did Aunt Dotty. I didn't use up a lot of minutes but quite a long line had formed behind me when I put down the phone. I didn't buy anything.

"There were two more planes," I told my husband. "One of them hit the Pentagon. They think it's war."

"Don't panic," my husband said. People were rushing out of the store, with or without purchases, heading home to pack in case they had to evacuate. Since we had our separate homes outside the city, we didn't feel that urgent need to pack; I'd take the laptop, my knitting, and the new batch of library books I intended to check out, but clothes and toothbrushes were waiting at home. "We can go on with the day and hear the news tonight."

The library was closed; we dropped the books into the chute. We bought food, ate, and started walking around the lake as usual. About halfway around we met a couple of park rangers in an ATV. "We're sorry, but there was a fourth plane that crashed into a field. We don't know how many more planes these people may have hijacked. We're closing the park. Could you walk out with us please."

All the stores were closed. Outside a store a teenager was leaning on a wall, fiddling with a cell phone. "When I woke up," he felt a need to tell us, "I thought this was going to be the best day in America. I did not know it was going to be the worst day in America."

We went home and turned on the television. Months went by when nobody turned it on. That afternoon we sat in front of it, hoping for fresh news and not seeing any. "I see Stephanopoulos landed on his feet," my husband said, and I said, "Good for him. That takes care of the list of people I know in New York. You?"I was wrong, of course. A few friends and relatives had been there, and I hadn't heard. At least none of them was hurt in the fire. Everybody always knows a few people in New York City.

"I used to know lots of people in New York," my husband said. 

"Well that's the fifth time they've shown us that woman in the orange jacket, coughing," I said. "We can't do anything for those people but we could at least not watch them." 

"I can watch the little TV set upstairs," my husband said. "In case they start releasing names. I know it's early but I'd like to see the names."

I was starting to feel manipulated. The television set wasn't telling people anything new; only blaring fear, rage, and war. I thought the emotion might have been worth sitting through if the screen had been running a list of people known to have survived or not survived, but that was days away. The coughing woman was flashed on the screen in between images of children dancing in some Middle Eastern desert town. Could even Arabs have trained children to dance joyously, rather than angrily, in celebration of war? (Later we heard that they couldn't; what the children were celebrating was an annual town festival.) People who were normally in favor of peace were suddenly in favor of war. I did not want to be manipulated into supporting war, as were the people who'd always seemed civilized who were out on the streets, the next day, waving signs saying "Reduce Kabul to rubble." Clearly there would have to be some sort of reprisals. I hoped they could be done efficiently. Didn't we have firepower several hundred times greater than the Al-Qaeda fools had? Go in, get them out, and hang them high as Haman, I was praying our troops would do. No modern war. No blowing up hospitals, no incendiary bombs  dropped on babies. In 2001 baby-boomers' mental pictures of modern war included an old video of a little girl in Vietnam, running and screaming, her clothes burned away. She had survived, we'd been told. Not the kind of thing we wanted the young to see on the news.

News highlights of that evening included that generous Washingtonians had asked where to send the money, and embarrassed New Yorkers had declined offers of cash or blood, saying their city could take care of its own. I was glad. People would say awkwardly, off and on all winter, that they felt that "we were all New Yorkers or Washingtonians now," and I'd feel embarrassed for them. A lot of people had died; a lot of people were genuinely mourning. I felt something for them but I didn't think it would help to pretend that I, as a stranger, was feeling anything like their pain. I already knew what grief felt like. It was nice that people outside the family missed the person too, but trying to pretend they felt what the family felt merely made them sound stupid. 

Introverts do feel empathy, but those of us who haven't been taught that the empathy we feel is the "wrong" kind feel empathy for other introverts and express empathy as to other introverts. I felt no urge to hug strangers. I murmured soothingly, a few times, when massage clients found that relaxation released tears of real grief. 

Bland rich-boy W Bush suddenly became a trigger for intense emotions. In Washington we heard some things people in "the heartland" didn't hear. I heard W proclaiming that "they hate us because we are free," saw him signing the loathsome "P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act" (a law that violates everyone's right to privacy), thought he was a hypocrite in the service of the Evil Principle. I went home and heard people saying that he certainly had become a target but they thought he was coping rather well. Yes, Sir. Yes, Ma'am. Whatever. Saying what I thought of W Bush at the time would have been treason. Twenty-five years later I don't know what W was thinking or why he let enemies of the people have the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act, but I still want to see it extirpated from our law. I don't think Trump, or Cruz, or Vance, or Rubio, is the man to do that. Musk has the courage but not the ability to understand why it needs to be done. Massie, DeSantis, and Kennedy together might have enough fortitude and intelligence to do it. Maybe.

My husband listened to the "they hate us because we are free" speech and growled, "Yes, and there's a little matter of our support for Israel against the Palestinians. What about that?" I had no foreign policy. I said, "Hasn't he got the 'blond' act down, though!" 

I'll say this, now, with hindsight. If you or your family are involved with the oil industry, you know Arab-type people and you know Israeli-type people. You might know a few young ones as nephews, nieces, or cousins, on both sides. This causes acute ambivalence when conflicts among the Semitic nations are mentioned. I think W Bush  sincerely felt, as I did, that sense of "I hope this war won't harm my Arab-type friends who really are people of peace--not even defining peace as  'our nation dominant over yours'." It was not a question of loyalty. Bin Laden obviously needed what he eventually got, only maybe in an even more humiliating way; his goons needed to be locked up with a metal key, have the key recycled, and find out whether anybody cared to kick a bottle of water under the door. That had nothing to do with Halla or Feitan or Farouk or anyone else we knew. Most people in Washington in 2001, if they weren't bigots, had Muslim friends. I had an adoptive brother who had rallied the whole Islamic Centre crowd to support my business, and had often said, when asked why I didn't attend any church regularly, that the kind of fellowship that would justify attending church on a day of rest was something I'd only found among Muslims--their sex-phobic culture has encouraged them to take sex-free friendship very seriously--but I was still a Christian.

Anyway...nobody was asked to flee the city, as in the Gulf War, and I was glad. "Show no fear" was the order of the day. Tourists, however, did stop coming to Washington. The city seemed oddly vacant without them. You did not, in fact, hear a visitor squeal with surprise the first time the farecard machine sucked the card out of their hands, scanned it, and stamped the remaining value on it, every day. You did not think of that as something you'd ever miss...but early in the spring, when I finally heard that sound again, I was surprised by how much I'd missed it. 

W Bush had proposed, unsatisfactorily, that we could "be tourists in our own town," which showed it wasn't his town. His money came from oil. A lot of people's money came from our city's very own economy, which dived down in 2001. Cartoonists, at least, had fun with the idea of spending money to boost the economy. "What did you do in the Gulf War, Daddy?"--"I charged!"I paid cash, and that winter I didn't have much of it.

Scattered through the city were people going through real grief. Everyone was trying to respect those people and their feelings. I suppose I still am. I shed a few tears when I met the people who'd lost parents or children on those planes. Mostly I felt tired of the endless emoting in what passed for the news media, and the way it was being manipulated to drum up support for "modern war," and the grief piled on grief as the Post started to report young people being injured or killed in the war.

What I lost twenty-five years ago, what all of us lost, was a substantial chunk of our natural pre-constitutional right to privacy. We need to be demanding that back, while we still can.

The fire fighters running into the burning, crumbling buildings, to remove injured people if they found any alive...I think the best thing W said about the whole war was that we could direct some of the emotion toward supporting and encouraging fire fighters. That, at least, is a good thing. Most people are not built to be professional firemen or police officers but all of us could benefit from some training to be able to cope with emergencies when they are not available. All of us could appreciate the special skills and training the professionals have. 

Where were you on this day in 2001?

Web Log for 9.10.26

Cheers! Microsoft is now trying to peddle "extended service" for computers with internal storage drives. I think we should just say no. Keep up the pressure. When we've bought a thing, we've bought a thing, and the company must not be allowed to imagine that we're renting it. However, the corporations are recognizing that "the cloud" isn't going to fly. 

You did this good thing, Gentle Readers. We need to keep it going. Don't let anyone think "oh, this is just a 'setback,' we can have what we want next year," the way Verizon did when it destroyed the formerly useful cell phone network. NO. The corporations cannot have a "cloud-based" Internet as an excuse to build "data centers" in Ohio, or Georgia or North Carolina or any other place where people live. If the Internet can survive, it MUST be on cloud-free computers with internal AND external data storage. Our data belongs to us, not to Microsoft...and Microsoft must be put and kept on a very short leash, not allowed to snoop around our data, much less feed it into plagiarism-ware. 

I really think Microsoft needs to be broken up--allowed to exist, if at all, under all new management with a mission statement that includes things like "When people pay for computers, places to operate them, electrical and electronic connections for them, then those computers belong to those people and we must keep our hands and eyes to ourselves," and "The service must always wait on the customer's convenience; the service must never keep the customer waiting. If Microsoft slows down any computer's obedience to any keyboard command, this must be reported to the FCC and Microsoft must pay," and "One computer per person per lifetime," and "Individuals must be 'gatekeepers' for what corporations are allowed to do, NOT the other way round," and "The Internet must connect only people who want to connect with each other and transfer only the data people want to transfer. Privacy is a fundamental pre-constitutional human right, for which the Internet must maintain absolute respect OR BE SHUT DOWN."

We should tell Microsoft that if their "extended service plan" isn't FREE and AUTOMATIC, we can still go with Linux. The gold rush is over, Microsoft. You're not being paid to keep downgrading our computers. A second of wait time means you're a bad service and your corporate existence is in danger. All computers must obey all keyboard commands BEFORE THE FINGER LEAVES THE KEY. All third-party input, e.g. Microsoft's spyware and "updates," must WAIT. No third-party input should ever be receivable while a computer is in use. Microsoft should be paying us for the option of allowing Microsoft to protect its "security" by running "updates" when the computer is turned off or in "sleep mode."

And by the way, even a functional computer from before 2015 is only a machine, capable of "working," "running," or "reacting," but not a living creature that can ever "respond" to anything. If a computer displays any kind of "wait" message, it may report on what is malfunctioning, but it should never whine that the computer or a program or a page "is not responding." Of course it's not responding. It's not capable of responding. It will never respond to anything. It's not a living creature! It can never love us back! Computer owners can deal with this, Microsoft. If you can't, get help somewhere else and don't depend on us.

Actually, I think "wait" messages should consist of things like "[MICROSOFT] is probably the guilty party interfering with your computer. [MICROSOFT] owes you..." and a clock adding up $100 for the first second or fraction of a second and every second thereafter. Wait time is not acceptable. People who use computers every day may find themselves typing faster than the computer can process data and getting an occasional flash of a "wait" graphic after inputting more than 1000 characters in a minute, but even I didn't get that on an everyday basis...before Windows 10.

Animals 

A loveliness of ladybugs.

https://x.com/JoJonocomply/status/2096393883064098920

Music 

Bela Bartok.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DKuzKnkIro

Steppenwolf.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4WiyxXpyZc

Droids.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-sZIMzdQEY

Poems 

Everyone remembers (or should remember) General Lee's brave horse Traveller. Many remember Colonel Sheridan's horse Rienzi. War horses that survived wars deserve to be remembered--horses were the primary targets, so the surviving horses were smarter, tougher, and much luckier than most. But have we forgotten George Washington's horse Nelson?

https://www.classicalpoets.org/nelson-and-george-a-poem-by-david-filpula/

Bad Poetry: Douglass Howard

A prompt at dVerse this week was a quote from the late Gloria Steinem: "When you're lucky enough to have lived a long life, as I have done, your role is to remind us how far we have come."

I thought of one of those ancestors people traditionally used to spend a lot of time and money to find out they can claim, and then even more to try to avoid having to claim. Talk about awful women...women who had the excuse of being denied legitimate opportunities to reach positions of power, but probably would have used illegitimate ones if they'd had legitimate ones, because they were awful. At one point, when her awfulness had been discovered, Douglass Howard pled insanity and spent a short time in a hospital; she was not insane, at least not in the legal sense, and soon got out again. What she had was the kind of tunnel vision that shut out considerations of ethics, or proprieties, or the possibility of getting caught, when she had devised a plan for getting what she wanted. 

Drawing from Wikipedia. 

Despite having a mannish name, apparently a mannish look, and a mannish thought process that got her into trouble, Douglass Howard was the mother of five children.

When she was only seventeen

She went to court to serve the Queen,

As, in that unenlightened day,

Was quite the most accepted way

For sons and daughters of the wealthy

To find mates who at least looked healthy.

Within a year fair Douglass wed

John, Baron Sheffield; shared his bed,

And, just five summers later on,

They had the necessary son.

But Douglass still hung round the court,

Apparently to be a sort 

Of  chaperone to her shameless sister,

And stole the young man who had kissed her.

His wife had died. So soon? The answer

May have involved a case of cancer,

But likely she was pushed--she fell

Down just an ordinary stairwell

And broke not hip, not even knee,

But neck. The husband was ambitious.

A richer prospect he could see.

Some said the wife's death looked suspicious,

Like many others, some did say--

But he'd always been far away

When "what really happened" did.

Douglass, bored with her spouse and kid,

Wrote to the man her sister chased

That it would suit her noble taste

If Baron Sheffield were to meet

The sort of accident, complete,

Though fatal, that had swept away

Those others, out of Leicester's way.

(Cut-off point for tired eyes--although the Bad Baroness is only warming up.)

This awful letter then was seen

And brought to court before the Queen.

"I must have been out of my mind!"

Douglass screamed. "Memory cannot find

Any basis for such a letter!

Send me to Bedlam till I'm better!"

And there, indeed, she found a room.

But not even postpartum gloom

Suggested she'd ever gone mad,

And so I doubt she ever had.

She had no conscience. Was she crazy?

No more than she was ever lazy...

Though languid luxury might have served

Her better than the schemes she nerved

Herself up to. Sheffield, meanwhile,

Drank water dirty folk defile,

Caught dysentery, passed away

While staying many and many a mile

Out of the Earl of Leicester's way.

Fair Douglass, widowed, hardly'd play

At mourning, but threw all her charms

(Such as they were) at Leicester's arms.

"I cannot marry you," he wrote,

"It would strike a discordant note

In my romance with England's Queen!"

No shame on either face was seen.

Douglass sighed, "Just a chance there may be

That you and I could have a baby."

So, Leicester: "All think it befits

The king to have his share of fitz,

But 'illegitimate' sons of others

Are persecuted, and their mothers.

I'll do the honorable thing,

A secret midnight marriage bring

To friends' house. Don't tell anyone!

Then you and I can have our fun,

But if the Queen will have me, I

The marriage publicly deny;

As king, I'll do right by my fitz,

And you, too, custom then acquits."

Likely they were a well matched pair,

Except their times were more unfair

To women. Douglass faced more shame

Though both were equally to blame.

The secret wedding, all benighted,

Produced a son. Both were delighted.

At christening, the little cuddly

Child was recorded "Robert Dudley,"

The same name Leicester had at birth.

Like every child of wealth and worth,

The boy called Robin was cared for

Mostly by servants, but given more

Advantages than other boys.

The Earl, whom Oxford now employs,

Made sure that Oxford took young Robin,

His heart with navigation throbbing.

Quite uninclined to leave her throne

For childbirth's hazards, so well known,

Elizabeth knew what her friends 

Were up to, though, for her own ends,

She seems to have tactfully ignored

Behavior otherwise deplored.

In any case, a rich knight offered;

Douglass ditched Leicester for Stafford.

He was Ambassador to France,

Where she was free to party, dance,

Spend Stafford's money as she'd like,

And Leicester's--though their little tyke

Lived in his father's house, adored

And pampered like a little lord,

And always absolutely free,

When she'd let him, to go and see

Douglass wherever she was staying,

Though she preferred to spend time playing

With Catherine de Medici.

Some ask: how horrible was she?

She was consort, not ruling Queen.

The Medici-Valois machine

Did its worst work before the hours

When Catherine had gained real powers,

But she had hardly taught her son

To do better than his father'd done.

In any case, Douglass's role

Was to encourage and console

The "Italian Serpent's" last few days;

Some say, in wicked witches' ways.

Back in England, Elizabeth,

Who feared childbirth as certain death,

Left Leicester to her plump cousin,

Set England's gossip mills to buzzing.

Now Robin's hurried off to college,

Quite young, though quick at gaining knowledge,

To hide him from the Countess Leicester.

From France now Douglass writes: "At Esher,

A house in Surrey, wintertide,

There Leicester made me his bride,

Though it was never my idea.

I only said yes out of fear..." 

Elizabeth and court all shout,

"Throw this liar and her letter out!"

At Oxford Robin had been styled

As Robert Leicester, the Earl's child;

Now, thanks to Douglass, ruled a bastard,

The art of navigation mastered.

He travelled, wrote, was married twice,

And found Italy's climate nice,

Compared with England's. He lived long

And well. The Stafford babes died young.

So did the Queen's first cousin's child,

Named Robert Leicester, from birth styled

The Earl of Denbigh, prone to fits

And never thought quite in right wits.

Catherine died old. Stafford confessed

Douglass always loved Leicester best.

The French sent Douglass back to Britain

To die. In Douglass' will was written:

Robin, "mine honourable son."

If he was, he's the only one

In this lot. Stafford also lied;

In England's court he testified

That Robin terrorized his mother

Into writing a statement other

Than all the facts they all knew well.

How Queen Bess managed not to yell,

"Ye pack of liars! Out the door

And never see my face, no more!"

Is unrecorded. She was strong.

And if this tale's run on too long,

So did the lives of all these rats

That England had for aristocrats.

(Cut-off point for those who duon't think poems should end in "morals")

Always prepared to fight and quarrel,

They seem to've hardly had one moral

Among them all. But if you want

A moral, have one: Women aren't

Improved by injustice and oppression,

Except they need not claim "depression"

As a pretext for awfulness;

We might as well have our redress--

Responsibilities and rights,

To use, as men do, by such lights

As conscience may give. If not all

Have consciences, then let them fall.

Some do have conscience; let those stand

As fittest to rule o'er the land.

As witch, as conspirator, liar,

Douglass prepared for judgment's fire.

If she'd lived when young women heard

They might stand out above the herd

By accomplishments instead of schemes,

She might have chased ambitious dreams

As diplomat, as  president,

In her own right and government,

Rather than using all those men

And children with them. She might then

Have done her job, and done it well;

Bigotry fitted her for Hell.

(I don't claim to know whether Douglass Howard really was a Christian, or repented of her sins, or may go to Heaven. But it would be a great surprise to all who knew her.)

Web Log for 9.9.26

Music 

Lindsay Stirling.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHjpOzsQ9YI

Jesse Welles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_Een4soAtU

Glen Hansard.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jUVp243_g0

Lee Child.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OObaQ17VSj4

Ali Handal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHz--F32UVc

Infamous Stringdusters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DH7__-9A7yc

Undertones.

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

Bon Jovi.

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

Women's Issues 

The case for permanent confinement for males. One of the millions of cases. Warning: detailed memory of a murder.

https://hopelesslysane.blogspot.com/2024/05/15-acres-cotton-gin-and-two-bodies.html

Yes, women have been known to hunt down and kill their exes. Case in point: Jodi Arias. But that's very rare, every turn of the case made headlines because it was so bizarre, and nearly all women who become homicidally insane are on drugs. Nearly all of the handful of humankind who've been killed by women deserved it.

Ten Books About My Part of the World

0. First of all, The First Book of Bad Poetry (TM) by Priscilla King doesn't count, although most of the poems are about my part of the world. It's available through this web site (and it is locally printed, so you may specify the type size you want). It's a chapbook containing the poems that used to be available, free of charge, on my Substack and have now been sent out into the real world to earn their living.

Mention should also be made of some books, usually coffee table books, found in local gift boutiques that market their merchandise to visitors. I'm looking at a beautiful black-and-white photo collection, with memoirs and recipes, called Grazing Along the Crooked Road, on my own shelf now. There's the bookstore memoir, The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap, and something with terribly trendy recipes by a chef who married into the Carter Family, and What Would Dolly Do, and so on. These books aren't meant to be Great Literature but they are primary sources for the history books of the future. If you visit, I recommend buying them. Local people have probably already bought a few copies.

1. Rita Sims Quillen, who has also written a few books of poems (The Mad Farmer's Wife, Some Notes You Hold), really hit the ball out of the park with the novels Hiding Ezra and Wayland. These stories come from old family diaries and describe an otherwise scantly documented period in local history. The facts are true and full of adventure, suspense, and surprises. 

2. "Addington's History of Scott County, Virginia" most often refers to an old book by Robert Milford Addington, considered authoritative on our history from frontier days to the 1850s. There are newer books by that name, written by R.M. Addington's dscendants and some of their neighbors. If you're familiar with my home town, you may want to collect and compare other books with "History of Scott County" in their title as written by members of the Addington and Peters families. They agree on facts; each one just had more access to a different set of facts. 

3. Mark Zwonitzer's Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone is an insightful, well told history of country music as it was shaped by the Carter Family. It forms a sound track in local readers' minds. That sound track really ought to be available as a set of CDs. 

4. Joyce Dyer edited a collection of 35 "essays on place" by different Appalachian writers, including Jean Ritchie, Lisa Alther, Sharyn McCrumb, Rita Sims (not yet Quillen), and many more. It's called Bloodroot (not to be confused with a recent novel by that name) and was printed by the University of Kentucky. 

5. None of Jean Ritchie's songbooks was really complete! She gave readers a few songs here and a few songs there! Very frustrating to song collectors. However, she sang a lot of old pre-copyright songs (and she wrote some good new ones) that some local people still sing and love. Any of her songbooks that you find is worth having.

6. Sharyn McCrumb's novels, like She Walks These Hills and Saint Dale, are always a mix of tradition and history and suspense and falsehood. They have to be. In order to put fiction into real places you have to change those places--no murder was committed in the real restaurant local readers will think of when they read the story, no time warp was reported at the real building,and so on. It's frivolous genre fiction and great fun to read.

7. Lisa Alther, who has lived in and written about other places, wrote a novel called Kinflicks that used to work well as a guide to walking tours of Kingsport, Tennessee (Hullsport in the book)...and it was banned in Kingsport. In defense of the story Alther said that, like Flannery O'Connor, she wrote about "freaks not folks" and tried to make it obvious that her outrageous fictional plots and characters were not to be confused with any real people's real stories. Hullsport is Kingsport but the things that happen in it may never have happened anywhere. Among other things, what some consider the funniest scene involves lesbians wasting garden produce. (Hillbillies of that era did not waste food. There were people who needed that food, we were told.) At least that scene was set in the North, but still, in the 1970s many Kingsporters took the book as a personal insult. By the 1980s, when I had a Kingsport library card, they had lightened up about this.

Alther later wrote a book about the Melungeon tribe who used to live in Hawkins County, the border of which is straddled on one side by Kingsport, and called that book Kinfolks. As she noted in the book, anything about the Melungeons is still likely to be controversial. Alther identifies with the group and wrote about them with due respect. I'm no expert and can't endorse or refute any statements of fact. In my town, in 1910, some people with known Melungeon ancestry were ruled legally White and intermarried with White families, including mine. I grew up knowing these people as individuals, not knowing that there was a special name for them beyond the family names, Gibson and Collins. Kinfolks seems an appropriate title for a book that takes an appropriate tone.

8. Harriette Simpson Arnow wrote about Kentucky a long time ago. Well, different lengths of time ago, from frontier days in The Kentucky Trace to the 1930s in The Dollmaker and even the 1960s in The Weedkiller's Daughter. Between the Flowers, a sensitive study of where a marriage went wrong, was suppressed because it was about real Kentucky people of the author's generation and it didn't fit the ugly old stereotype of poverty, filth, and violence in "Appalachia." Arnow also wrote two historical studies, Seedtime on the Cumberland and Flowering of the Cumberland, that among other things gave a name to a town festival that is still celebrated today. 

9. I started to mention Adriana Trigiani's Big Stone Gap, which  was loved by the town in which the story is set, and down-rated by critics partly for that reason. It's not a badly written novel, as novels-for-adults go. It just fails to insult the bourgeoisie. But although I think his best books are nonfiction with a more general appeal, in which he refers to Kentucky mostly for anecdotes, I had to include Wendell Berry, one of the clearest-thinking men of our era. Berry's philosophy is based in love for The Gift of Good Land, and although flatter land seems easier to farm, mountain people have always been the ones who loved their land most.

10. Barbara Kingsolver's books are all well written, mostly set in my part of the world. I find some of them annoying and some delicious. Animal Mineral Vegetable is probably the most uncontroversially delightful book she's written. As documented at this web site, I liked Flight Behavior too; the science on which the fiction is based turned out to be wrong--sea level isn't rising fast, if at all, and butterfly populations have been decimated in the Blue Ridge Mountains--but the story's still well told.

Web Log for 9.6-8.26

I didn't spend most of these days online and the computer is showing that youall didn't either. We will have a Butterfly of the Week, though, and a Petfinder Post. 

Animals

Your daily cuteness overload. 

(I hope being shorn doesn't feel like an Alpacalypse to them...if the weather stays warm long-haired animals seem to like a haircut. Anyway, all that gorgeous, undyed, colored, fluffy yarn! Lens says the words were first added to the photo on Pinterest, and that on Reddit someone replied with a photo of llamas marked LLAMAGEDDON.)

Cartoons 

Like, one thing leads to the other...

From Dr. Malone's Substack. Lens traces the cartoon to Instagram but makes no guarantees that it was original when posted there.

For those who are not testerical young men and would like to break the let's-go-outside-and-fight thought cycle, this web site continues to attempt to cite Canadian content and give uneducated US residents a general sense of where e.g. Saskatchewan is, relative to e.g. New Brunswick, on a map. International cooperation and empathy are appreciated.

For young men, this web site observes that, of the two toons, the clean-shaven Canadian looks much better than the messy-faced bloke disgracing our flag, because as a general principle a man can look good with a full beard or no beard, but even a man we know and love cannot look his best with a three-day beard. Yes, men with certain kinds of ancestors are likely to have only a three-day beard if they let the mess alienate potential friends all winter long. Deal with it. (A phrase which, in this context, means "shave it.") Little or no facial hair is part of the Native American mystique.

Funding 

The basic problem is that decent people expect other people will be able to earn money all by themselves, whereas horrible people are in the habit of handing out money every time the daughters of the horseleech cry "give." (Whom do I mean by "daughters of the horseleech," someone asks in a place where they don't read the Old Testament much. According to the Book of Proverbs "The horseleech has two daughters, crying 'Give! Give!'" That's all we're told, though meditation on this proverb has led Americans to identify the horseleech with tax-and-spend politicians.)

We all know $42,000 is not going to pay for a lot of time in the burn unit at Johns Hopkins. So why didn't people shell out for Hero Mom the way they did for Mad Murderous Mom? 

The graphic comes from the Mirror. Lens says it's viral, but the photo of Hero Mom Emma Schols can be traced to Facebook, 2019, when the fire happened--in Sweden. Lens says her story has been documented. One thing Ms. Schols forgot to do was be in the United States, a big boost for fundraising sites.

Otherwise? Meh. Long black hair has a special appeal for men. Long blonde and red hair have, too, in different ways. Clancy's hair is not black but can look as if it were in digital photos; it certainly is long. Maybe Emma Schols needed a wig. 

People.

Music 

Tom Petty. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZm-qe4-EfY (Shared at the Meow, dedicated to kittens.)

Anna Calvi.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ur5gQLhAiY

Matthew Halsall.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSTI6vFcu-0

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

Joan As Police Woman.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPqVig-ggMw

Ludovico Einaudi.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgS-Lq_pUGk

Teddy Thompson.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_O9l0qL2wLQ

Dolly Parton.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbxUSsFXYo4

Florian Christl.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SN6VI5_JGrc

Mid Mod Music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paT-3W7NUQY

Jerry Lee Lewis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fw7SBF-35Es

Neil Young.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kbga0fe5iMg

Newsboys.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_OTz-lpDjw

Henry Mancini.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9-8Wxv6m2k

Probably the computer of "Meta Ronin" on Substack, with a song about Substackers' attempt to evolve a slang of their own, as Twitter did...Some language in the song is rude.

https://metaronin.substack.com/p/it-do-be-like-that-mr-bismarck

Traffic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdFS2Ep3faY

John Prine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0EiV423j0M

The Kingsmen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKt75jUuKJY

Loretta Lynn.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JE6yXyaxssQ

The Sonics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFzeG7e4CT8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SV9N7TbIzcE

Names 

Some people have risen to the challenge of living with names like Clive Staples Lewis, Revilo Pendleton Oliver, Campbell Bascom Slemp, Hermione Ferdinanda Gingold, or Spiro Agnew. 

(You may have heard that Spiro changed his name; I heard that, too, but according to Wikipedia that was his father, Theophrastos Anagnostopoulos, who changed his name to Theodore Agnew and named his son Spiro Theodore Agnew. The first name means "I breathe" in Latin and is said to be a short form of Spiridon in Greek. The future Vice-President sometimes answered to "Ted" in youth but kept his odd given name as apparently his only tie with his ethnic-minority culture. In all other ways Spiro Agnew was remembered as a conformist's conformist, a 1950s "square" squared, a TV watcher before it was cool who liked Mantovani, Lawrence Welk, the Baltimore Colts, and Readers Digest--and didn't like baby-boomers.) 

Some people have been able to tweak names like Alisa Rosenbaum, Paul Harvey Aurandt, or Helen Mironoff into things the average American can pronounce--Ayn Rand, Paul Harvey, Helen Mirren. Then there are people who just collapse under their names...Richard Leroy Trickle coped, but Randon Sprinkle totally flaked out, letting himself be caught distributing what appeared to be child pornography. Whether actual children were harmed, or plagiarism-ware was  used, was unreported. 

Sprinkle was, of course, a Democratic Socialist. At least that may help him survive prison.

Pictures 

Someone e-mailed that her husband thought a drawing of a person sitting in a field, apparently conversing with crows, looked creepy. Everyone has different associations to pictures, but seriously?

Google traced this one to The Dodo.

This one came from Reddit.

This one was posted by the University of Washington; I think Pbird may have met the man. 

There's nothing creepy about the fact that some humans like and befriend crows. Some people even like and befriend vultures, the black species of which are often confused with crows. If you slowly and patiently share food with an animal, it will probably start to like you. 

There are different kinds and levels of affection for animals, as there are for humans. Crows don't have to like everyone whose attention they call either to good news, like food, or bad news, like something recently killed beside the road. They simply want other animals to break open the box of food that fell off the truck, or skin the dead animal, so they can get a bit of what the other animals leave. Crows and ravens have not generally been treated well by humans. Most of them don't like any of us. However, a few crows and ravens do bond with humans. They know one person from another and recognize friends (and enemies). They have been known to give humans shiny trinkets such as they like to play with, which have included keys and coins. They have brought food to human friends and guided hunters to game. 

They have also guided other predators...to join the hunt, thinking that, the more bigger, stronger predators are stalking one deer, the sooner the crows get a few bites of raw venison? Or in hopes of killing the hunters, who may have been conveniences rather than friends to the crows all along? Or in the belief that wolves and bears aren't usually interested in human meat when they can get deer, which is usually true, so why not watch them fight over the prey and let the best predator win. Who knows? Crows and ravens can learn to say words in human languages, even with some understanding--but we'll probably never really understand crows.

Crows also harass and may even bite people they have special reasons to dislike.The problem with making pets of crows is that, as Jean George described in a poignant novel, a crow who bonds with one human is likely to have lost its crow family--possibly to other humans, possibly to one of its human's friends and relatives. What happens if your crow knows you are its friend, knows your brother killed its brother, and so, when your brother visits, your crow goes for his eyes?

The corvid family of birds love fresh meat (unlike vultures, they can't eat rotting meat) but aren't built to be able to tear into a freshly killed animal unless someone with fangs or a knife removes the skin. So there is a reason why they're associated with death. If you think a wounded rabbit dead beside the road is bad news, the probability is high that a lone crow flapping, squawking, and calling to you beside the road is bringing you bad news. But they are natural animals, not spirits come to lead anyone to the grave. 

Poem 

Graybelle wasn't that bad--I suppose because she'd never actually lived with Her Human. Graybelle was the cat heir to a big house on a big farm on a big hill. When her mother's human died, Graybelle's mother disappeared into the woods. After chickens were restored to the farm by those remodelling it, and scraps of lunch were left out for the chickens, Graybelle and her sister started coming back to the house. The remodelling crew all set out food for "our ghost cat" or "our mythical cat"--cats, as it turned out--but Graybelle let herself be seen first by the big, loud bulldozer man, miffing the catpeople on the crew. (Possibly because he lived with a tomcat.) She only ever bonded with him. She and her sister allowed the rest of us to see them when he presented us to them--by ones. Both allowed me to touch them after a week or two; Graybelle moved away when she'd had enough, her sister bit, so we decided Graybelle had to be rescued and the sister left to her fate. I asked Graybelle, "Would you like to come home with me?" She jumped away. She was at her home, she nonverbally said. Poor kitty. Her chosen human said, "Will she sit in the truck with me?" She would, and he drove the truck to the Cat Sanctuary. And there Graybelle loyally stayed. And on days when I'd been on that job and ridden home in the bulldozer man's truck, she snuggled. She just kept putting her fore paws on my leg to be picked up, and after a few months I noticd that her fore paws weren't even reaching up to my belt any more, but up to my..bra band?! Graybelle was growing up to be one of those ancestral-size Manx cats. She was still a hollow-boned growing kitten but she looked, from a distance, like the atypical gray bobcats in the local nature park. She clearly thought I, and the Cat Sanctuary, and even the hill on which it sits, were small emergency backups for her human and her home. She was a nice, polite, patient cat but she never loved me.

https://www.gyroscopereview.com/2023/04/origin-stories-stellasue-lee/

Politics 

Cruz, Rubio, or Vance in 2028? I'm not happy about that line-up, frankly. Not because they're all used to being the smartest man in the room. Not because, even so, they lack Trump's peculiar extrovert genius--there will never be another Trump, and in 2028 he'll be too old to run, thank goodness, and people will just have to deal with that. Because I don't feel old enough to vote for a presidential candidate who is younger than I am. 

When there's a choice among qualified candidates, and I'm not voting on a single issue, which I probably still will be doing--anyway, assuming I consider the candidates qualified, my preference is to line'm up on the ticket by age, oldest first, on the premise that the younger ones are more likely to have a chance next time. There is a slight problem with this. The problem is not that all the likely Republican presidential candidates for 2028 are close enough to the same age that lining them up by birthdays is a technicality. (However they look, Cruz is only one year older than Rubio and DeSantis is actually younger.) The problem is that Cruz is the oldest and, on another technicality, he's ineligible to be President. Trump offered, but Canada doesn't want to be a State and, until it is one, we can't have a President Cruz. 

Trump is too old. Carson is too old. Ron Paul is too old. Rand Paul is the right age to be President but has failed, even as a US Senator, to become presidential. Rubio, DeSantis, and Vance are old enough to preside over a younger nation but, to a critical mass of US citizens, they're children. As Cruz's gray beard shows, this is not a matter of actual age. It's a matter of having grown up with television. 

I think we should probably move beyond the tendency to look at men as presidential candidates, in nay case. Conservatives desperately need to appeal to women voters. We can't advocate censorship for the morons squawking that the existence of Lindsay Clancy's supporters proves that women shouldn't be allowed to vote. But we can demonstrate distance from them by nominating and backing women candidates. 

Never mind that the charges of anything worse than ordinary adultery against Trump are about as credible as a three-dollar bill. Never mind that, when we sorted through the whining to find the facts in what Congressman Massie's ex-girlfriend said about him, she said he was a lousy lay but he was still the decent ethical young man she called on to protect her from the guy who really was a creepy stalker. Any male can be accused of sexual misconduct and there will be a high probabillity that he's guilty of some form of it. Never mind that, actually, a lot more men are guilty of not listening and not doing their household chores than are guilty of even ordinary adultery. They are male. Therefore there is a 99% chance that somewhere there is a woman they've mistreated in one way or another. They should get out of politics and go home and clean the bathroom floor.

Marsha Blackburn, Deb Fischer, and Susan Collins have senatorial experience. Young Oak Kim, who isn't really young but looks as if she might be, has congressional experience. Condoleezza Rice has experience, and class, but probably wouldn't run. Tulsi Gabbard was serious presidential timber, but doesn't have to go back to work by 2028. Kelly Loeffler and Linda McMahon have Cabinet experience. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Kay Ivey, and Kim Reynolds have experience as Governors. We should be looking harder at qualified women candidates...who were born before 1970.

https://pjmedia.com/scott-pinsker/2026/09/07/dont-laugh-dont-smirk-dont-count-him-out-ted-cruz-could-beat-jd-vance-in-2028-n4956974

Scams 

Familiar scam moved from writing sites to social media to Substack...Robert Reich joins Elon Musk and Mel Gibson as people scammers impersonate in pleas for private chat, usually using newer and less secure sites, asking for bank information. He should at least feel flattered. Reich is one D who knows that criticizing and questioning the Federal Reserve has nothing to do with hating Jews, is in fact something some Jews, including Reich, have been willing to do, and this demonstration of simple clearheadedness has won him friends Left and Right. He has enough credibility that creeps are trying to capitalize on it.

"

It has come to my attention that scammers are continuing to impersonate me online, preying on people in the comments of my posts here on Substack. Apparently, the fraudsters create fake profiles and suggest that the conversation move to a different messaging platform, such as Signal. And they use generative AI to craft very convincing text messages. Please know I will never ask you to chat back and forth with me in a one-on-one, personal capacity

"

Just because we would...I didn't like Bill Clinton and, for that reason, I still feel sympathy and good will for many of his staff. The King of Tacky used staff like toilet paper. Though it worked for them in the long run--the ones still looking for jobs did seem to get good jobs.

See the Blogroll

This web site's reading list is not updating this morning. I hope this is temporary--that errors in the reading list are being repaired, so that it shows all new posts in chronological order again.

Meanwhile, here are the latest posts at each blog I follow via Blogspot, if the latest post was posted during the year 2026. (What a lot of blogs have gone inactive and are lingering on the reading list in the hope that they will become active again.)

https://alicewalkersgarden.com/ (There's an obituary post for Gloria Steinem, but it doesn't seem to  have been indexed by date yet.)

https://barbtaub.com/2026/08/30/dusk-ahoy-the-birthday-sail-jellzilla-and-other-bad-ideas-dog-humor-sailing/

https://blbooks.blogspot.com/2026/09/week-in-review-37.html

https://cantosyoraciones.blogspot.com/2026/09/recuerda-que-te-amo.html

https://curiousasacathy.com/lost-in-the-70s-again/

https://dversepoets.com/2026/09/08/poetics-tuesday-to-maam-sir/

https://eastsussexwanderer.blogspot.com/2026/08/some-moths-during-august.html

https://everydayglutenfreegourmet.ca/

https://gravyfromthegazebo.blog/2026/09/09/reading-from-my-poetry-collection-tree-climbing-red-ceilings-press/

https://www.magalyguerrero.com/2025/03/we-bite.html

https://www.hillfaith.org/faith-of-the-founders/faith-of-the-founders-george-washington-on-patriot-christians/

https://howtomeowinyiddish.blogspot.com/2026/09/just-note-from-ralph-himself.html (Chapter from volume 4 of an ongoing story series. The best memes and music links will appear in the comments over the day.)

https://independentbookreview.com/2026/08/31/september-2026-book-releases-discover-the-unkown/

https://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2026/09/09/the-united-states-vs-europe-part-vii/

https://itsjustlife.me/another-fama-and-poppops-camp-in-the-books/

https://catsofruatha.blogspot.com/2026/04/carving-from-scrap-first-project-of-2026.html

https://goudsmit.pundicity.com/31512/a-battered-president

https://www.livingwithloulou.com/laborious-day/

https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/2026/08/one-poem-by-ray-whitaker.html

https://lydiaschoch.com/wednesday-weekly-blogging-challenge-books-set-near-where-i-live/ (Yes, of course there'll be a post on that topic here.)

https://www.mochasmysteriesmeows.com/2026/09/happy-birthday-mommy.html

https://messymimismeanderings.blogspot.com/2026/09/beccas-coolest-new-shoes-ever-wordless.html

https://www.michaelmoore.com/p/live-with-michael-moore-his-first (No, the blogroll hasn't been displaying his posts properly lately. With non-Blogspot blogs the default assumption is that Blogspot fails to catch their posts, rather than that anyone's censoring any views.)

http://www.michellesmirror.com/2026/09/dont-worry-ive-got-this.html

https://www.moxie-dude.com/2026/08/07/who-even-am-i-asking-for-younger-me/

https://noisyroom.net/2026/09/06/trappers-quote-of-the-week-09-06-26/

https://notesfromtheuk.com/2026/09/04/the-right-to-vote-in-19th-century-britain/ (Do not read while eating or drinking.)

https://ntlconsulting.blogspot.com/ (Last updated in March.)

https://pjmedia.com/sarah-anderson/2026/09/08/live-results-new-hampshire-determines-who-will-replace-shaheen-and-much-more-n4957006

https://poetsandstorytellersunited.blogspot.com/2026/09/friday-writings-243-by-numbers.html

https://problogger.com/jobs/ (The blog section hasn't been updated in this calendar year and was recycling/updating old posts before 2020, but the jobs section was updated...in August, two whole jobs, no doubt two thousand applications.)

https://publiushuldah.wordpress.com/2024/01/30/help-google-has-locked-me-out-of-my-gmail-account/ (I think something fishy is going on with this site. I've seen content from her in this year but the last post showing at the site, today, is from 2024. She's not an agitator; she's a clearheaded constitutional scholar who warned me about the hazards of something I was about to support, in July. So lemmecheck...Gmail opened for me. I've only ever used it for Quora, and don't often use Quora. I deleted a Quora query of no interest to me; no problem. Gmail then asked me to add a recovery e-mail address, which seemed reasonable given that the original one I used was held up for ransom by Yahoo in 2020. I started to add one. Gmail asked for the password. I didn't remember the password. I don't know whether Gmail will work for me again. Nor do I know whether the reason why it worked for me is simply that I was signed into Google. Wordpress is a whole different kettle of worms.)

https://ramblinwitham.blogspot.com/2026/09/cuddly-corn-wordlesswednesday.html

https://roadsendnaturalist.com/2026/09/04/the-living-lake/

https://ronnieooist56.blogspot.com/2026/09/butterflies-in-august-2026.html

https://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2026/09/09/white-people-need-not-apply/

https://www.classicalpoets.org/nelson-and-george-a-poem-by-david-filpula/

https://somediurnalauralawe.blogspot.com/2026/09/bird-head-music-6.html

https://stardreamingwithsherrybluesky.blogspot.com/2026/09/wild-woman-on-aging.html

https://stiltonsplace.blogspot.com/2026/09/nobodys-perfect.html

https://stopdraggingthepanda.com/2026/08/20/the-doggerel-days-of-summer-revisited/

https://thebookofbarkley.blogspot.com/2026/08/this-world-was-never-meant-for-one-as.html (Warning: dog obituary.)

https://theintrovertedreader.home.blog/2026/03/13/more-than-words-by-kirsten-anderson/

https://irresponsiblereader.com/2026/09/08/hc-chats-with-k-r-lockhaven-about-all-of-his-books-and-some-other-stuff/

https://themarmeladegypsy.blogspot.com/2026/09/postcards-from-lake-more-from-art-camp.html

http://themarthareview.com/the-end-of-the-july-2026-ubc/

https://thepolkadotchicken.blogspot.com/2026/09/try-try-again-and-tangents-slow-sunday.html

https://scottiechronicles.com/2026/09/02/watercolor-wednesday-136/

https://theviewfromladylake.blogspot.com/2026/09/winding-down-time.html (There's a more recent post; its title uses a phrase this site doesn't use. It's not a bad post. It has the original "Happiness is a warm puppy" cartoon in it.)

https://whitemail.blogspot.com/2026/09/how-women-lose-right-to-vote.html

https://ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com/ 

https://thompsonblog.co.uk/2026/09/that-elusive-utopia.html

https://www.tom-cox.com/old-litkinov-4/

https://toolsofrenewal.com/?p=23250

https://dsnake1.blogspot.com/ (Warning: There may still be some problems with Blogspots updated from Singapore. I trust Dsnake1 but I have observed assorted cybernasties interfering with his blog. Like today.)

https://vincestaten.blogspot.com/ (Top post still features an old drawing of Dolly Parton with what may have been her own, fair but no longer truly blonde, hair in a beehive. Linked here before.)

https://wendy-welch.com/2026/09/09/the-view-from-here/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/09/08/the-big-idea-amanda-j-mcgee/