Book Review: Healing of the Mind

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Title: Healing of the Mind Author: Pat Brooks Date: 1981 Publisher: New Puritan Library ISBN: 0-932050-00-X Length: 141 pages plus index and ad pages Quote: “[T]he powers of darkness have kept the children of God from knowing of their full inheritance in Christ...The inexhaustible supply of power, authority and joy deposited in their names by Jesus Christ is unknown to thou­sands.” Healing of the Mind is not, as its title may suggest, associated with the “inner healing movement” of its period. Brooks has a different approach to inner healing...I almost typed “unique,” although it’s not unique; it’s from an earlier historical period than Ruth Carter Stapleton’s Inner Healing or the dozens of “Christian psychology” books that came later in the 1980s. A different socioeconomic background, too. This small, cheap paperback, printed for free distribution at small, store-front-type churches, is addressed to people whose problems seem to involve demons. Right...so that’s not most of the people I know. However, in the 1970s, even as we insisted that The Exorcist had been merely a metaphor, society became aware that several drugs (legal and illegal) have effects on the brain that are most easily described in terms of living with demons. Medication prescribed for deadly diseases had effects similar to experiments with LSD and pills. Some survivors of this type of brain injury make up the stereotypical, obvious homeless population; some are able to live near-normal lives. And what Pat Brooks had to offer was one way some of these people have been able to cope. For those of us who’ve not had much trouble with demons lately, Pat Brooks’ way of spiritual life is not especially attractive. For people living with physical psychoses, it’s a best-case outcome. Improving physical health may help, or not. Unwelcome thoughts may keep returning. There may be a permanent mood disorder; life may be, at best, a cross to bear. What Brooks can offer is a way to banish the really nasty “demonic” thoughts, impulses, and delusions. Are there real evil spirits that enjoy and exploit the effects of brain damage? Do the demons have any personal existence outside the damaged brain? Who knows, but some of the things the voices in these people’s heads say certainly support the claim of satanic involvement. No matter how much psychology you’ve read or how rational and skeptical you feel about demons, psychotic patients do have a way of saying things that make everyone wonder. What the Bible says about any independent existence these spirits may have is ambiguous and metaphoric. The best psychological study of “human evil” on the market begins with brief histories of patients whose behavior I can read as evil, then goes off into a detailed account of a patient I can only read as reacting to cultural stereotypes in a hilariously vindictive way...raising the question of whether Real Wisdom might be able to review the histories of Hitler and Stalin and the followers who wanted them as leaders, the house of Ahab and the dynasty of Herod, Jim Jones and Charles Manson, with the same amusement and empathy I feel for the patient Scott Peck called Charlene. Personally I’d go so far as to say that the Bible teaches that there is an Evil Principle that has enough personal existence to “inspire” some of the most hateful, hurtful things troubled souls say, but I don’t know enough about the Evil Principle to debate about it. Let’s just agree on the indisputable fact that, when psychotic patients say things that sound demonic, they’re in a worse condition than they are when they sound “lucid” or merely “dotty.” For many of these patients, a spiritual approach—either a New Age embrace-the-shadow approach or a fundamentalist cast-out-the-demons approach—offers equally effective, and much cheaper and safer, relief than either a physical or a chemical lobotomy. The undamaged part of the brain may remain in control throughout the patient’s life, or not. Some diseases that damage the brain are progressive; some patients who are able to control their demons for a few years have to be institutionalized anyway. Other brain damage is the result of trauma from which patients recover; the relative I’ve called “Aunt Dotty” never stopped hearing, but always controlled, the demons she acquired from cancer treatment, for almost forty years. So the advantages of counselling that helps patients cope with demons, before medication or hospitalization are considered, may be great. What about the theory that some patients are genetically predisposed to develop mood disorders, a few of which may become severe enough to seem demonic, even without using drugs? People with M.D. degrees are still debating that. What has been known for a long time is that physical damage can be done to the brain by prenatal conditions, head injuries, prolonged fever, food intolerance, toxic chemicals, and/or physical diseases. I have an intuitive feeling that most, if not all, mood disorders are going to turn out to be linked to one or more of these factors. People are probably drawn to the side of this dispute that matches their own experience. During the years when I felt depressed, it wasn’t because I wasn’t having sex, or because I wasn’t a Positive Thinker, or because one of my close friends was a Wiccan. It was probably only a secondary complication of my being gluten-intolerant. It certainly was not because my brain was predisposed to have some problem processing serotonin. It was because I’d picked up a nasty, painful liver infection from an unnecessary vaccination; undiagnosed gluten intolerance might have made me more vulnerable than other people, because a few thousand people had the vaccine and only about one hundred developed hepatitis. I needed neither prayer rituals nor antidepressants—just time to recover. But at the time nobody had the benefit of twenty-five years’ further observation of my condition. At the time, luckily for me, a counselling approach to depression was in fashion. A young person with the same symptoms today would probably be offered antidepressants “just to relieve the pain while we look at the other factors,” and, since a serotonin imbalance would not be the primary cause of that patient’s depression, a serotonin boost would be very likely to damage that patient’s brain. And I think it’s reasonable to use the phrase “God’s own mercy” when I remember that, around the time my husband admitted his mood was depressed, a blood test showed cancer—although, by the time further tests pinpointed the cancer in his bone marrow, he’d reached Stage IV. A man I was dating when we met had been diagnosed as “depressed” first. After using Prozac for a few months, he developed a nonviolent kind of Prozac Dementia before further physical symptoms showed that he also had cancer, a less fatal kind. Cancer of the bone marrow, which is rare and poorly understood, caused my husband’s blood pressure and consequently his moods to fluctuate dramatically in his last years. If serotonin boosters had activated demons along with his raging and fainting cycles, there’s no reason to doubt that he would have been one of those murder/suicide statistics...and the most likely targets would have been me and/or middle school children. It may sound easier for the average middle-class American reader to accept the idea, “Your son/daughter/wife/husband probably has a problem metabolizing serotonin, which is likely to cause him/her to be depressed if s/he doesn’t take medication,” than to accept the idea, “Your son/daughter/wife/husband is being attacked by demons and needs to participate in prayer rituals to cast them out”...but I would urge readers to think it through before they accept the more dangerous of these two explanations. Both treatments have helped many people feel better, and prayer rituals are much safer than Zoloft. The physical condition of my copy of Healing of the Mind is a testimony to the way an ordinary couple of friends-of-the-local-library received it. It’s an autographed copy; Brooks visited churches and Christian bookstores, and lots of people turned out to be supportive and buy a book. But it was cheaply bound in a peculiarly oldfashioned way, unfamiliar to young readers in the 1970s: it came with “uncut pages.” My grandparents’ generation remembered reading a new book with a penknife in hand to separate the pages, although selling books that way was out of style even in 1900. And when I found this book on sale, secondhand, after page 50 I still had to separate several pages. The people who’d bought this autographed copy read about one-third of the book and decided it wasn’t for them. But if you know someone who has trouble with demons, Healing of the Mind just might help that person...so I’m not going to refuse to resell or review this book. I am going to say that most people will not thank you for giving it to them as a gift. Not all of us even know someone who will. Brooks’ approach can be a valuable counselling or self-help tool, though, if it’s used with discernment.

Bad Poetry: Why Bother?

This poem was the last online writing I did on Friday. It came to mind when I saw the prompt at Poets & Storytellers United, for which the poem is too long. The prompt at Napowrimo.net suggested something much shorter, and is recommended to poets and storytellers with tired eyes. This one is for people who don't mind long intense thoughts.

Sometimes I wake up on a perfect blue-green-gold morning

and know some piece of dreck sprayed poison somewhere

because I feel the way drunks describe a hangover

and I didn't even eat after midday, but who's left to care,

and normally I bolt out of bed, if awake, before dawning

because morning's the most cool and peaceful part of the day

but those mornings I sit up and lie right back down again,

head swimming, nausea, cramps, pulse throbbing the prayer

that the sprayer feels sicker than I do, and longer, and without 

any hope of improvement in this world or in the next.

So, music. Caffeine. Water. The thing about cats

is, if they love you, and mine do, they'll wait six or eight hours

it takes to get back on my feet, feed them, and go back in.

They know that I'd rather be gardening. They sense that that's

a symptom, and wait at the door, exercising purr-powers.

On such mornings society does seem to be in a spin

straight down the abyss, with the proverbial handbasket

sold separately. Choices down to the style of the casket

(who'll be able to pay for a coffin?) our ashes lie in.

The next morning will likely be better, as how can it not.

Meanwhile: I've had to watch as too many lives end,

Seen some cringing and howling in terror, which is the lot

of the bitter clingers to glyphosate and (yes, complain;

in visibility, strength; in hiding, all's over)

all such blights on the face of the Earth. Seen some go

to their end in peace, likewise. You never can know

how people you've known in this world will finally go out.

A strong man huddles with face to the wall, moaning,

"Don't let her GET me!" (They had said his mother was rough.)

An innocent animal's final convulsion's enough

to sober a barroom of drunkards. A woman, that morning

recovering from a stroke, busy with garden and house,

sent me home at midday as usual; at three o'clock,

"I must lie down," and then, "Call the nurse-girl back,

and my children, if any of them can make time to come here,"

and I walked five hundred yards to her house

and as I came in she closed her eyes and died, no more fear

or pain left than shown at her high school graduation.

A month-old kitten, who had been lying beside

my knee, woke up suddenly, reached up to me, and died

in that instant, as if whatever awaited her in the Good Place

looked like the human she'd chosen as hers. Meditation

on the last moments of friends may be sad, but face

it, Priscilla: we die, with a little choice of how we go.

I would rather be one of those who stretch out hands to our Fate

as a child reaches up when you reach down to lift it up stairs:

thank you, Death, for that boost into the good things that await

the end of a life well spent! I intend to have cares

and business and plans left, however old I may be, then,

but if all ends today, I've had more life than most humans do

or ever have done. (I can be greedy. We all can, true.)

I know it is not in the particulars of religion

(though, being a Christian, I wish others were Christians too)

and not necessarily in bodies' final condition

so much as good faith in a Good Place beyond the end.

I don't know whether there's solid fact under the vision

into which some of us stride with a laugh and a song

and others collapse in a final convulsion of horror

at what awaits after life has been lived all wrong,

but, if visions are all that there is, let my last one be good.

Let those who see me dead or dying remark on the peace

and joy of my last dream, or the stern resolve of my last fight.

A gentle passage, or furious, into the night

matters less than that there be little cause left for sorrow

other than that people miss me, after final release.

So I bother. About you, I can't say. You must do you.

No petitions for money without merchandise to trade.

The cats must eat, however long I take to stand on my feet.

The time to review books and manuscripts must (how?) be made.

There's always one more book to write, one more poem, one song.

Sometimes lying still, listening to music, is very sweet;

sometimes moving, if only fingertips, keeping the beat

brings healing. Sooner or later we all get through

these low moods, until the day it's all over.

The sun still shines, and the stars do. The children come in,

now young men and women, and one day not even so young.

Joy, love, even the carnal passions, incline to recover

in time. So I bother. I'm greedy. Don't want it to end.

Bad Poetry: That Snail

On Friday morning, the Poets & Storytellers United site, which links up short writings, posted a prompt that provoked a very long and serious answer. The Napowrimo site, which doesn't specify length except in the sense that finishing a poem in one day tends to suggest starting with a short simple idea, posted a prompt that provoked a haiku.

Well, they asked for poems that respond to our own favorite poems, and then they posted a haiku as an example. The one they chose was a different translation than I've memorized of a classic haiku. It brought to mind another classic haiku I've often quoted, also found in a few different translations:

Doing his very best

the snail takes a long time

to climb the mountain.

My understanding is that in Japanese there's an idea that the snail is seen by a poet climbing the mountain as a Buddhist meditation ritual, so who knows whether in some dim unconscious way the snail's little soul is seeking spiritual growth and enlightenment just as the poet is...

[Image from https://matsuobashohaiku.home.blog/2022/11/28/mt-fuji/ , which also has the Japanese words as written, a phonetic transcription, and a classic Japanese painting. I think the picture may be computer-generated; this is not a science post.]

In English the words are the sort of thing that come to mind when things just aren't working at the speed people reasonably expect and want them to work. Most especially a old laptop computer I treasured, as a gift from a friend, even as the version of Opera it could still run was locked out of more and more web sites...I called it the Sickly Snail. It was slow, but it always seemed to be doing its very best.

Nevertheless.

If the snail lives to

reach the summit, cheers! if not,

he had a good climb.

If you think of the snail in the same way I do, I suppose you might call this haiku a summary of the long poem that should appear here tomorrow morning.

Book Review: The Fourth Hand

Title: The Fourth Hand

Author: John Irving

Date: 2001

Publisher: Random House

ISBN: 0-375-50627-6

Length: 313 pages

Quote: “What if the donor’s widow demands visitation rights?”

That, Irving tells us in the fact-based afterword, was the question his wife asked while they were watching a news story about an attempt to transplant a hand. Thinking about it led Irving to write The Fourth Hand, in which a fictional character gets a successful hand transplant. (In the real world, this had been claimed to have happened in 1999, but people weren't certain...today, some legitimate sources count that first hand transplant as successful and report more of them.)

There’s not much complexity in the plot of this novel. The protagonist has been into one-night stands. The novelty of the widow who’s more interested in her late husband’s hand than in the body to which it is now attached catches his attention. In order to preserve some suspense about the outcome of this romance, all I’ll say is that the significance of the title, The Fourth Hand (the man counts the transplanted hand as his third) is more sentimental than ghoulish.

Along the way, there are many complaints about the news broadcasting industry, and that’s about all Irving has to tell us. He’s told us a lot of what he knows, believes, and feels in other novels; in this novel he seems to have been absorbing and reacting to research about organ transplants, and there’s a good deal of white space on the 313 pages. Most of the moral, ethical, philosophical, and psychological elements in this book are carefully understated and expressed in explicit sex scenes.

I’m tempted to wax censorious about the number of detailed sex scenes in this book. Instead, I’ll say what some of you have been longing for a censorious type to say: anybody can write down the details of who kissed whom where and who then touched what, but organizing such details in such a way that they tell readers more than the obvious about a character really is an art. I think writers who can do sex scenes as well as Irving could do “manners” scenes with equal skill if they tried; not that Irving could actually be Jane Austen, but who knows how close he could get to her standard. Writers who can’t do sex scenes as well as Irving, which means most writers, are hereby advised to try writing about forthright people who reveal their characters by saying what’s on their minds.

Men have traditionally underrated women’s novels because they didn’t feel that the women did male characters well. I can understand this reaction; I tend to avoid men’s novels because I don’t feel that men write female characters well. In this novel the female characters get more lines than the males, but although I can believe that this is the way women look to the shallow, spoiled protagonist, I can’t believe that it’s the way living women are.

Nevertheless, this book is recommended to novel readers in search of a story that contains a believable romance but also contains something more.

Web Log for 4.15.26

And what some readers have been waiting for...a link!

Family Nags 

On his new Substack, Garrison Keillor posted his very first "Note" to the site's social page, calling attention to a full-length blog post about a handwritten letter from a departed aunt. 

His fans, mostly baby-boomers or older, didn't whine about being neglected by the young the way some older people did when I was "the young." (Most older people I knew were not withering away in assisted care places, back then, but they'd sit in their own homes, in their own gardens, and carry on as if they were--as if they weren't able to get out and enjoy the weather all by themselves. We should appreciate what we have.) But a few plangent notes were struck. Someone's young relatives wouldn't be able to read cursive. (We should all try to write letters that will make people WANT to learn to read cursive, or whatever some of us call what we do to a helpless piece of paper.)  Someone's young relative had stopped speaking to person because they disagreed about a politician. (What is wrong with a person who lets a politician come between person and per relatives?) 

Then there's this...

https://writinginnorthnorfolk.com/2017/04/15/a-walk-on-the-cutting-edge/

I am aware that some people still use phones and, for them, a phone conversation may be the way they visit their elders, who may be Peace Corps volunteers in Lebanon or who knows what. But I hope the behavior described in this poem has gone completely extinct by now.

There were times, when I had elders I visited often, when they'd take a phone call from some other elder I did not visit often, and make it a three-way (or more-way) conversation. There were times when I'd check my cell phone and say "There's my car pool!" and text "OK" before picking up my coat and saying goodbye. 

But generally, I would recommend to "the young" that, when visiting people who don't neglect you in favor of a blinking box, those who still use phones shut them off for the duration. Or pick up a call and say with dignity, "I'm at my grandmother's house. I'll call you back," and switch off the phone. 

Napowrimo 16: Each of the Ten Lines Is a Lie

At least, after a harrowing day of cyber-attacks, today's National Poetry Writing Month challenge is a soft ball. "Write a ten-line poem in which each of the lines is a lie." 

The Principal burned down the school.

A dog, head of the senior class,

Denounced to the police this fool,

Then bit till blood flowed from his rump.

And still that ceiling made of glass

Denied Ms. Merritt his old job,

And gave it to Bus Driver Bob,

Who chose to give the kids a bump

By driving through the gym--that slob!--

So every student now must pass!

(Process note: I thought of Shel Silverstein's "April Fool" poem, which contains obvious, ridiculous "lies"...This poem does contain one big bad lie: the lie that if it's the school's fault that the students aren't ready for the next grade, the school should pass them on to the next grade anyway.)

Book Review: Kathy Sue Loudermilk I Love You

I'm sorry, Gentle Readers. Microsoft ate up my reading time today. You get reviews of vintage books this weekend. I hope to bring in some reviews of new nonfiction next week.

Title: Kathy Sue Loudermilk I Love You

Author: Lewis Grizzard

Date: 1979

Publisher: Warner / Peachtree

ISBN: none

Length: 336 pages

Quote: “There was something special about Kathy Sue Loudermilk. Even at eight, she made a tight sweater seem much more than a woolen garment.”

Fun fact about this book: “Loudermilk” is a family name actually used by real people. Not all of them live in Georgia.

Kathy Sue Loudermilk I Love You introduces several repeating characters Grizzard caricatured in his comic columns over the years, giving them unlikely names like Weyman Qanamaker and Cordie Lou Poovey. It also introduces real people, some of whom are known to history only through Grizzard’s serious columns. For many readers, the publication of this book also introduced Grizzard.

At the time of writing, Grizzard was still supporting the railroad industry against the trucking industry, supporting Jimmy Carter against anybody, and, he claimed, sincerely shocked that anyone could question anything General Lee ever did.

Women were extremely touchy about anything that sounded sexist. Grizzard wrote some columns that deliberately stated, exaggerated, an unenlightened point of view, apparently to generate controversy, attention, and sales. (Women who worked with him said he didn’t act that way in the office, nor did he write that way in his serious columns.) On the other hand, his ex, Kathy Lewis, wrote a comic expose about “life with Lewis” called How to Tame a Wild Bore. The book did not portray Grizzard as either especially wild or as especially boring, but as your basic selfish, immature young man who is not really ready for a serious relationship.

Whereupon women who feel that there’s nothing wrong with being an immature young man—only with sharing any serious activities with one—took Grizzard’s books to our bosoms. The books, not the aging boy who wrote them. He died young, apparently without a bosom on which to lean.

In Kathy Sue Loudermilk, Grizzard claims that he was threatened with bodily harm after writing a column that blamed refrigerated biscuit dough for divorce and suggested that wives should get up in time to mix biscuits from scratch. Bodily harm? Well, yes...you see, it was still 1977; due to discrimination, women did not yet have the more feminine and empowering option of writing their own syndicated newspaper columns suggesting that husbands who wanted to stay married should get up in time to mix biscuits from scratch too.

And Southern Ladies, even those of us who were only ten years old at the time, just laughed and laughed. I mean, biscuits, people. Baking-powder biscuits were invented by people who didn’t have time to cook,. Baking-powder biscuits do not require the cook to have his or her eyes completely open. Just dump a reasonable amount of self-rising flour into a bowl, add milk until it feels like biscuit dough, press it onto a pan, cut out biscuit shapes, and bake it for fifteen minutes in a hot oven. Making biscuits from scratch is actually quicker than making them from refrigerated dough, since by making biscuits from scratch you can avoid getting biscuit dough on your fingers and taking the time to wash it off. Men can make biscuits. If you have a gas or electric oven, biscuits take no more energy or intelligence than cereal.

It’s this kind of confusion that makes Kathy Sue Loudermilk more than a nostalgia trip. Oh yes, there’s plenty of nostalgia in this book, with detailed inventories of the kind of traditional Southern-fried convenience store that still exists, in some communities, even now, and columns about the great ball games and Nashville songs of yesteryear, and bleeps. Does anybody over age 35 not miss bleeps? (Bleeps were electronic sounds used to protect the ears of the upper class from any trashy language uttered within range of a live broadcast; hence “bleep” could be, as on three pages of this book it is, substituted for any rude word.) Part of 1970s pop culture was missing 1950s pop culture. But Kathy Sue Loudermilk is not merely a sentimental look at the 1950s; it’s the way the 1970s actually were. Some things were nicer back then, and some were not.

This book is fondly recommended to anyone who’s not already read it.

Wal-Mart, What's in the Corn?

"Roundup Ready" corn, I was glad to learn, is a stupid mistake of the past. One of the most deservingly detested GMO crops of all time, this strain of corn was produced by splicing genes from Escherichia coli, bacteria often blamed for "food poisoning," into corn so that the corn plant survives heavy spraying with glyphosate. 

How was it possible not to know that this was a bad idea?

In the 1990s US-based Monsanto held a patent on glyphosate. However, the first "Roundup Ready" corn was tested overseas, on poorer people who had less legal recourse than US citizens. The corporation knew the corn was likely to make people sick. Well, it did. E. coli is more often fatal to a larger minority of the population than COVID-19 ever was. The company kept testing, sickening whole towns in the Philippines and elsewhere, until they found a strain of E. coli that seemed relatively weak. The genetically modified corn was then drenched in glyphosate from before planting right up to harvest time, and it made people sick, though usually not as acutely as E. coli itself did. 

So-called corn allergies weren't common before the 1990s. They became common in the 2010s, when the original patent expired and chemical manufacturers were selling glyphosate at competitive prices. Most of the "allergies" were probably glyphosate sensitivity. By 2020, food producers were looking for corn that was neither sprayed with glyphosate nor bioengineered to be sprayed with glyphosate. Corn-based foods became relatively safe to eat. Southerners rejoiced that we could safely make cornbread with Martha White, White Lily, and similar beloved corn meal brands, once again. Those of us who were gluten-intolerant (probably fewer than a tenth as many Americans as went gluten-free and found that not eating glyphosate-soaked wheat relieved their chronic conditions) were getting tired of rice being the only grain we could eat, and started buying canned and frozen corn again. Because stores had had a hard time selling canned corn in the 2010s, it had become very economical. 

A large amount of the corn raised in the United States is still Roundup-Ready and still treated with glyphosate. It was so treated even when Bayer, which now owns Monsanto, released a glyphosate-free brand of "Roundup" herbicide spray "for farm use." In 2024 and 2025 customer complaints caused the formula for this chemical disaster to be changed. Some small farmers, unaware of the changes, bought Roundup-Ready corn, sprayed it with Roundup, and got a small part of what they deserved as the glyphosate-tolerant plants died of exposure to diquat, dicamba, or other poisons. This year, bitter clingers are getting their glyphosate back, and we must all try to laugh when they describe their wives and daughters giving birth to babies with useless eye stalks flopping out of bare sockets in little bare skulls. 

(One of my cat Silver's Seralini kittens was born like that. Mercifully it never breathed. I pickled it in alcohol with the intention of exhibiting it in the Friday Market that summer; the next strain of COVID kept the market from reopening and eventually I burned the body.) 

Those still clinging to glyphosate know by now that even the US government has agreed that the stuff promotes cancer and aggravates just about every chronic condition known to humankind, including the ones that ought to be fully controllable by merely modifying our lifestyle in such a way as to give up all social eating for as long as we live. They know, although they may try to pretend otherwise. The more arrogantly they bray about "the (outdated, disproven) science," the more certain we can be that they know. They deserve no pity. Real farmers, who have been struggling to do without glyphosate and other poisons since at least 2018 or 2020, deserve sympathy and support, as do the old people who are now dying from cancer after years of trying to believe that glyphosate was safe and effective and the symptoms they had after spraying it were unimportant, but the bitter clingers to glyphosate deserve to be denied treatment when they develop cancer.

But the corn monocroppers are clinging, and they are getting away with it, because the majority of the corn grown in the US is either not used as food for humans, or else processed in ways that seem to eliminate most glyphosate residues. Before it has soaked into plants or plant parts glyphosate is pathetically soluble, easily washed into the water supply where it does no "good" to the lazy farmer after just a little shower of rain; when corn is made into high-fructose corn syrup or monosodium glutamate, those processes apparently get rid of the glyphosate inside the kernels.

Photo from New York Animal Agriculture Coalition, by way of Google.

Corn meal is made from "field" corn, which is less sweet than "sweet" corn even when fresh. Hard corn ("field" corn or popcorn) is not usually eaten fresh, because everyone would rather eat sweet corn on the cob. Hard corn contains niacytin, a "bound" form of niacin that should in theory be nutritious but isn't. Niacytin not only fails to be digested as niacin but makes it harder for the body to digest niacin from other sources. Traditionally Southerners loved our cornbread because corn, unlike wheat, grows well in the South and because most of us got enough niacin from other sources that the niacytin was not a problem. By the twentieth century, however, severe niacin deficiencies were appearing in poor people who ate cornbread alone or with cheaper, fattier, less nutritious meat. A campaign was launched to sell the idea that cornbread should always be made with at least half wheat flour, to reduce the niacytin content and add digestible niacin to the bread. 

Researchers now know that an even better way to use hard corn is to process the dry, hard corn kernels in ways called "nixtamalization," which break down and unbind the niacytin. Traditional nixtamalization involved soaking dried corn in a mix of water and wood ashes, which loosened the outer layers of the kernels and produced grits. 

Sweet corn, however, needs little processing. In addition to containing more sugar, sweet corn contains a rich variety--and variety is the word, because the mix varies widely among different ears of corn, but in any case there's a lot--of B-vitamins, including niacin, not niacytin. 

I started mixing Wal-Mart's store brand of canned corn with canned beans and peas. This added variety, fibre, and flavor to what I'd been eating through most of the 2010s, which was rice, onions, and garlic, and sometimes for variety rice, garlic, and onions. Not all beans were safe to eat after 2020; garbanzos, which I particularly liked before 2010, were especially likely to contain glyphosate residues, even if the beans hadn't been sprayed themselves, probably because they were raised in between crops of wheat, in glyphosate-saturated soil. Being a walking glyphosate detector, I found that Bush's pinto beans were reliably safe, as were Bush's butter beans. Black beans and crowder peas were less reliable. Wal-Mart's store brand of green peas, pinto beans, corn, and tomatoes seemed glyphosate-free, or close enough not to trigger my hair-trigger reactions. 

Various combinations of any of these legumes with corn and/or tomatoes and/or some sort of meat made satisfactory meals for me between 2021 and 2025. The corn could be store-brand canned corn, or cornbread made with Martha White or White Lily corn meal, or corn chips. (The Wal-Marts near me all stocked both brands' "self-rising corn meal," with salt and baking powder added, and "self-rising corn meal mix," with salt, baking powder, and a generous share of white wheat flour added. In practice, people who have learned to distrust wheat usually snapped up the wheat-free corn meal so that, nine times out of ten, I didn't find it on the shelf.) I usually bought a case of a dozen cans of canned corn and one or two bags of chips on each shopping trip to Wal-Mart and felt that that yielded a good mix of hard and sweet corn in the diet. I also bought vitamin supplements with all the B-vitamins.

But in 2025 I started to notice that after eating Wal-Mart's canned corn, my tongue felt sore and swollen. That is, of course, an early warning sign of a B-vitamin deficiency or imbalance, including niacin deficiency...if it becomes chronic. But it didn't become chronic. Nor did the vitamin supplements affect the symptom. My tongue, and mouth generally, felt irritated for about twelve hours after eating the canned corn--not at other times. Drinking water helped. Vitamin supplements didn't help.

Regretfully, I stopped buying the canned sweet corn and replaced it with more cornbread (other stores did better at keeping wheat-free corn meal on their shelves). Cornbread with a can of chicken chunks drained in around the edges of the pan, and a can of pinto beans and a can of tomatoes warmed on top of the bread, makes a delicious panada, everyone I ever feed agreed. Children love the sweet undertaste in a bowl of cornbread and milk. Corn chips also soak up the juices from the canned goods, and/or whatever raw vegetables go into a taco salad, in a satisfactory way.

But the last couple of times I've done a taco salad with Wal-Mart's store brand corn chips, the "Original" kind that look like Fritos, I've had the tongue and mouth irritation. I didn't have it before. And don't try to tell me it's because I've eaten too many corn chips in the last five years--I may have done that, but the "White Corn Tortilla" chips did not have the same effect, nor did the cornbread made with Martha White corn meal. What's being sprayed on the corn, Wal-Mart? 

* * * * * 

A primer on why we never need to spray anything on corn...Corn was actually the first crop that rebounded when my family broke the Vicious Pesticide Cycle. Strawberries were close behind.

This is how we eliminate weeds from cornfields. It costs about $15 at Tractor Supply Company. Cheaper and more expensive versions are available, there and at most other hardware stores or department stores that have a garden department--including Wal-Mart.

(Photo from Walgreens by way of Google.) This is how we eliminate corn earworms. We can buy knee-high stockings or use the washed foot ends of laddered tights. We tie the foot part of the stocking around the bottom of the developing ear of corn. When the baby corn earworm tries to gnaw its way in through the corn shucks, it gets a mouthful of nylon and decides to go somewhere else. Its chances of starving or being eaten by a bird, or wasp, or bigger insect along the way are high. Although aggressive (not strong enough to do any damage to a human, it will bite and kick with all its puny might when picked up; it will also eat another corn earworm if it can) the corn earworm has no effective defense against predators, and would never have been much of a nuisance to farmers had the farmers not fallen into a Vicious Pesticide Cycle that destroyed the corn earworm's natural predators.

(Photo from Wikipedia.) This is how we eliminate corn borers (cobworms). All of these little beetles, and a few dozen other species, can be called ladybirds, ladybeetles, or ladybugs, because monks who noticed how useful they were in the garden dedicated the whole genus to Our Lady Mary, the Mother of Jesus. (You can identify the one plant-eating species in the family, the Mexican Bean Beetle, because it is yellow-green instead of orange, amber, or red.) Ladybeetles and their larvae are best known for eating aphids but they eat other nuisance insects too, if the other insects are small enough, which corn borers are. Stop poisoning your insects and watch your corn borers disappear.

(Photo from the Audubon Society by way of Google.) This is how we eliminate corn cutworms. They like to hang around near my home so I think of them mostly as mosquito eaters, but they'll take just about anything to feed their babies, which often happen to hatch at the time of year when corn is vulnerable to cutworms. (The one photographed above appears to be bringing home a beetle--not a ladybird, possibly a Soldier, Net-winged, or Burying Beetle.) Lots of other birds like cutworms, too. Again, stop poisoning the insects and watch the cutworms disappear.

And when we eliminate the borers, we automatically get rid of the worst kind of fungus that infests corn, too...although glyphosate actually promotes the growth of human-toxic Fusarium mold.

Napowrimo 15: Love, but Not Romance

[Photo from Google, which credits pet-clinic.gr]

Coconut oil,

they say, is safe for cats

with skin rashes

of unknown origin.

If it fails, go to the vet.

Before a rash can spoil

the long soft coat that's

the color of ashes

and the young tomcat's

biggest asset,

I tried the all-

purpose disinfectant that's

safe, though irritating. Crushes

die hard. My sweet pet's

claws flexed, but he let

the alcohol-

based stuff, through pats,

soak into his skin; made dashes

to air-dry his skin,

came back, good pet.

This failed to foil

the rash. Coconut's

Plan B. It mashes

delightfully on skin,

then starts to set

 

up greasy. Royal

indignation! Cats,

lacking ability or wishes

to sweat through their skin,

hate anything wet.

Licking all

of the spots

his tongue reaches,

he calls in

each older cat:

"Don't let this oil

form greasy mats

and spikes! All creatures

will sneer and grin

if this stuff has a chance to set!"

Nothing can foil

the social cats'

licking where he itches,

taking in

whatever's harming the tomcat.

The social

animals, birds, dogs, cats,

horses, love at all prices,

resist quarantine

like COVID deniers, firm-set.

Is there a moral?

Mortal love hurts

in thoughtless rushes

to ease pain.

The cats need the vet.

Web Log for 4.14.26

Medical Care Rip-Offs 

On Reddit I actually found a page where people were griping because people know Windows 11 stinks and aren't buying it. 

It contained the following confession. I apologize for the language. I actually think the guy's attitude is even more obnoxious than his language, but people need to know...how their medical expenses are being forced up and up, to glut Microsoft's greed.

"

Medical industry sucks ass and I get to stress out on a daily but one benefit is that none of them actually know HIPAA compliance theyre just scared of it so I get to say "this is a security risk, in order to maintain HIPAA compliance for the foreseeable future we need to..." and they listen to me on any security topic. The fact that HIPAA can fine not only the organization but also the individual scares them into compliance much more than any other industry. Ive had zero issues moving people from windows 10 to 11 aside from the Constantine whining about it while they let me do it, which i just say "ya I hate it too, HIPAA though man"

" 

You'll need to scroll down to see:

https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1sbcoje/windows_10_officially_hit_eol_6_months_ago_still/

We need a law. Windows 11 is inherently insecure, inherently impossible to secure, and should never be used to store medical information!

Book Review: Ring True

Title: Ring True 

Author: L. Darby Gibbs

Date: 2020

Publisher: Inkabout / Amazon

Quote: "[T]here's a chant, and it's said that the singer will enter the woods and find a beautiful castle."

Kambry, who has done some archery and some weaving before training as a scribe, lives in a nice middle-class village in a fantasy kingdom with just enough magic to have an enchanted portal through the woods to the castle where, unsuspected by her, the prince is looking for a trustworthy companion. She just happens to find a chant and teach it to some friends, who just happen to decide to chant it with her to see if she's drawn into the woods. She is.

Prince Russal seems nice, except for having become impossibly suspicious. Kambry is told she can never go home--either she'll be banished for treason, or she'll stay. She feels like a prisoner, though the castle is pleasant enough. Will she and Russal ever be able to trust each other enough even to notice that they're attracted to each other? Is someone trying to make Kambry seem untrustworthy to Russal? 

Of course they will. Of course he is. This is a romantic fantasy. Even after the quarrel and reconciliation, at least one more novel-length adventure lies between them and happily-ever-after.

If you like this kind of story you'll probably like Ring True. It's well enough written to make good bedtime or hospital, commute or down-time reading. I don't think it's meant to be as funny as it occasionally is. It's a frivolous fun read.

Unusual Hobbies and Interests

I don't know that any of my hobbies and interests are all that unusual. Minority, yes. 

What might be unusual are the things that don't interest me. Most people are interested in television. I find it soporific. Masses of people read books about money. I don't. Maybe it's because I went to college when I should have been in high school, where talking about "boyfriends" was cringe-inducing...all the other girls in college were interested in having "boyfriends" and talking about them, sometimes constantly, to the exclusion of other topics. I'm interested in people and in personal relationships, who isn't, but I'm not interested in chattering about the people you or I know best--especially not the little details of family life that those people don't particularly want to have chattered about. 

I think all of my hobbies and interests have been discussed on this blog if you dig back:

Textile crafts; the one I practice regularly is knitting. 

Animals. The main ones who share my home are cats. I learned as an adult that my mother started out not only sharing the revulsion I felt toward most insects but feeling revulsion toward snakes, but she managed to teach me to feel more curiosity and empathy than revulsion. I became interested in the paper wasps, which Mother always persisted in seeing as enemies, after learning that they could just as easily be made friends. Later on I became interested in showing people what the little creepy-crawly animals are really like after learning how many people still think an earthworm is trying to bite them, a butterfly is going to eat their fabrics, or a toad wants to be kissed. 

Books. I'll read almost any book once. I like selling books, playing matchmaker between books and people, finding a mix of books for all tastes. I like the idea of a library or bookstore, not as the clunky kind of "community center" that excites extroverts, but as a place where people can look for what they want, as individuals, whether that's only relaxation or education or psychological transformation. 

Politics--the practical kind--what some people might call law and government more than the "our man rules, your man drools" blather. You can't take all the Washington out of a person. Washingtonians aren't usually interested in shrinking government but they see enough elected officials come and go that they cultivate the skill of being able to work with all of them, D, R, G, L, or I. 

Music; especially music that goes back further than the modern music industry, but I listen to new music too. I've not kept up any skills in playing any instrument. I'd like to find a way to make more time for that, but I'm so far out of practice, it's embarrassing.

Houses. I'm not as wild about building or remodelling houses as many of my extended family have been, and are; never considered architecture as a major or construction as a career, but I do like improving a house. From plumbing to decorating. I'm not keen on two-storey-high rooms, a way some contractors used to deal with burnt-out floors; that look was distinctive once, but no more, and those rooms aren't fun to use in winter. I like wheelchair ramps, all-around porches, and creative shelving. 

"Environment" is probably a better word than "gardening" because I'm more likely to be interested in appreciating what grows in a place than in putting a lot of effort into making something grow where it doesn't grow easily and naturally. I do introduce plants, prepare soil, weed, and prune, but the iris is my favorite flower not only because it has pretty colors and a lovely scent. The iris likes to be plopped down in what others consider "dry, thin, poor" soil and left alone. 

The science of not only preserving the simple pleasures of my life, but keeping them sustainable for future generations, interests me. When I was a kid, "going back to the land" stereotypically meant buying a place in the Appalachian Mountains and, usually, although the mountains are a very human-friendly environment, not having the clue one about how to live on the land, not doing very well at it, and crawling back to the city in a few years. I was blessed with actual roots here. My parents had clues; they even had elders. So had I. Now the challenge is weeding out truly sustainable ideas from ideas that only bring urban sprawl further up the mountains. Possibly my most serious interest is biomass. 

Possibly my most frivolous interest is dolls. Not the oldfashioned collector dolls, either. I'm not particular about the brand but I always have liked making models at a scale of two inches to one foot, which fits Barbie and Ken and similar dolls. 

Web Log for 4.13.26

Censorship 

I listened to a song about somebody's grandfather on YouTube, and without warning YouTube shifted to a "song" parody by Brian Coyne. I put the word "song" in quotes because it wasn't much of a song. We all produce some gems and some clinkers, and this one struck me as a clinker. The lyrics consisted of "Climate hysteria spreads like malaria," which isn't even true; a little cold weather cools that fever right down. But Coyne has done some brilliant parodies. This one, which was censored for months, has been brought back with new video effects. (Warning: video effects include an anatomically inaccurate cartoon drawing of an abortion.) I think it's one of the great parodies in English literature. Even if you vote "blue," you have to agree the lyrics work and the song rocks. (Well of course...it sounds like, though it is not, Joan Jett.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wc-Y1ZkTVyw

Concerns of the Web Site 

This web site is growing. We have repeatedly asked Google to block various foreign bot armies that have artificially inflated our numbers. (They're not hard to spot! They don't actually visit any specific page, so the page view count shows two thousand extra views of the site but only the usual numbers of views of actual pages.) Google has gone after the bot armies with splendid efficiency. And the traffic coming from actual people keeps growing. I always knew this would happen. This web site is doing waaay better than my Associated Content corpus did.

So, monetizing the blog is an option. At last, at long-awaited last! It probably won't bring in much money but it could bring in enough Amazon giftcards that I could read some of the sequels to some of the first-novels-in-series people have sent me..even, eventually, fund the web site's Internet connection.

How do we do that while keeping what this web site is all about? To rake in top advertising dollars, you have to sell out and let the corporations dictate that all photographs of women have to make it clear that they're using lipstick, and other slimy, disgusting policies. We don't want top advertising dollars right? We want ads for things we actually encourage people to buy. Books, first and foremost. Clothes, when people need clothes. Furniture, if they need furniture. Computers, cars, tools--y'know, legitimate merchandise, as people choose. We want no drug ads, no ads that pop or blink, no ads that distract readers from actual posts, no ads with sound tracks, no ads for porn or gambling or similar "vice" sites.

Do we want Google ads if they're quiet and unobtrusive and stay at the bottom of the screen? We've all seen some sites where the Google ads were obnoxious. Google says that's the blogger's choice, but if you don't let the advertisers screech and fling like monkeys you don't get the top advertising dollars. Google would use the site to advertise corporate products, most of which I don't endorse and you probably wouldn't either. Google would allow corporations to try political censorship on topics like climate change. 

Do we want to try Amazon ads, again? Or do we want to let Joe Jackson run with the Amazon ads, which did not exactly rake in the cash here when we had them, but seem to be working for him--so I use Amazon to market actual books? Amazon ads pay bloggers commissions on things readers buy from Amazon. It used to be that you had to buy the same edition of the book to which I'd posted a link, but now you can click on a link to a book, browse around, buy clothes or reconditioned car tires or whatever, and still shoot commissions to Joe Jackson. Would you readers use Amazon links here to buy things you want, whatever those may be?

Do we want more Zazzle? Would any of you readers pay $20 or $25 for a T-shirt if you really liked the graphic on it? I had started thinking that Zazzle was basically dead, and then I checked a page--new to me--that compares how many people click on a product page with how many actually buy the product. For most of my Zazzle designs the number of buyers has been zero, but the number of views is reasonably high. Zazzle has also started rating designers from one to ten, giving me a score of four, which is eligible for a higher commission on any actual sales. (The last commission I made on a postcard that took hours to design was three cents, Gentle Readers. That's why you've not seen Zazzle links here lately.) Do you ever buy things online--which I don't recommend doing--or know people who do? Would you or they ever buy Zazzle merchandise? Do all of you live in places where a local shirt shop can do similar designs for a much better price?

Please use the comments or the e-mail, Gentle Readers.  

Fashion 

That Brian Coyne song steered me back to his YouTube channel. For most of the day, with liberal use of the "pause" button, I listened to his song parodies.

"She Comes in Colours" might not be the song Melania Trump brings to mind, considering how well she wears those "Spring" tans and khakis, creamy whites, and smoky off-black. But she does also own all the bright colors most of us find so hard to wear...the pale smoky blue, the tomato red, the yellows and bright greens...For those who can enjoy exotic beauty for what it is, the Rolling Stones song has been spliced into a video highlighting some of Melania's most memorable looks. This is not a parody; it's a "cover" of the original song in a new video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgC_ij3LO9Y&list=PLgoJxosALACUyup2WqykjgbILze4mA4Vt&index=32

Napowrimo 14: Technological Advances

[Photo from Google]

Once upon a time Microsoft Office was reliable.

This morning, Microsoft's wasted more than two hours

On its endless "updates" that seldom change anything

And, if they do, you didn't want it changed.

That Microsoft is getting full of itself is undeniable.

We need to reassert: we pay enough, our tools are ours.

Microsoft is a service, and must accept that little thing

Before the whole relationship is permanently estranged.

When you touch a key on a typewriter, it works, instantly

(If it doesn't, something's broken; mostly that's easy to fix).

If computers can't keep up with that, they're on the wrong side of history.

Keystrokes must not need repeating, nor should even mouse-clicks.

When it's running a computer must not hiccup, must not cough.

Services must run all "updates" while computers are turned off,

And they must not change a thing that's ever worked for us before,

And if they force obsolescence, we should show them out the door.

The computer fad can go the way of buttonhooks and cigarette lighters.

Personally I made more money when we all used typewriters.

I don't think this one has the rhythm and verve of a true Nashery, so I'm not sure what the form might be called. I hope everyone else enjoys the rest of their morning. Growlgrowlgrowl, hiss, and spit.

Book Review: Realm of Dragons

Title: Realm of Dragons

Author: Morgan Rice

Date: 2019

Quote: "There was no doubting the realness of this. This wasn't some joke...This was a dragon."

In the magical kingdom of this novel, dragons mate, lay eggs, and die. King Godwin and his Knights of the Spur find the dead mother dragon in chapter one.  

Then we meet his family. Eldest son: eager to take over, willing to start a war while the King is trying to avoid one. Middle son: a sadist; you'll hope he dies, but in this book he doesn't. Youngest son: small, teased about looking girlish, fully heterosexual, love-starved, and vulnerable to a female spy. Eldest daughter: in love with love, engaged to an unworthy man. Middle daughter: stricken with Scale Sickness, which means she's either about to die or about to turn into a dragon unless she smashes a dragon's egg. Youngest daughter: wants to be an armored knight and fight duels.

This is volume one of a series so none of the six gets what he or she wants in this book. They're all taking the first steps toward their goals when a neighboring king declares war on their kingdom. 

If we learn anything from this book it's that war is never a good idea. Most of us already knew that. But if you like magical kingdoms you may want the whole series you'll have to buy to find out how the six royal offspring's stories end.

Petfinder Post: American Cocker Spaniels, and some Birds

The control freaks who want to render sixty-some dog breeds extinct also disapprove of the American Cocker Spaniel, one of the most popular breeds in the United States. That is, when Americans pay for pedigreed dogs, one of the breeds for which they are most likely to pay is a Cocker Spaniel.

The American Cocker Spaniel is a descendant of the English Cocker Spaniel, but the breeds have evolved different traits due to selective breeding. American Cocker Spaniels are smaller, with rounder heads and shorter muzzles. English Cocker Spaniels have longer legs. Weights can overlap--20 to 30 pounds for a show-quality American Cocker Spaniel, 25 to 35 pounds for its English cousin--but those longer legs are supposed to make all English Cocker Spaniels stand up to six inches taller than any American Cocker Spaniel. American Cocker Spaniels can be up to 15.5 inches tall; English Cocker Spaniels should be over 15 inches tall.

They're called "Cocker" because they were especially good at hunting woodcocks, a game bird species humans used to like to eat in times when chickens and turkeys were less widely available. They're called "Spaniels" because, although it's not documented, the breed was said to have originated in Spain. Both breeds were originally developed for hunting and are now usually kept as pets because of their docile, eager-to-please pawsonalities and long fluffy coats, with lots of fluff on their long floppy ears. They have "big hair," with a mix of straighter and wavier hairs bulking out their ears and feet like a mid-1980s wig.

So, of course, the pretext for a plan to render Cocker Spaniels extinct is that humans, horrid species that we are, aren't going to groom the coats and lift up the ears enough to check for, discourage, or treat infections. 

Consider the Cocker Spaniel owners you've known. How many of them let their dogs be infested with fleas, ticks, mites, or fungus? How many turned grooming their lovely fluffy dogs into daily meditations?

Many people don't want to spend time grooming Cocker Spaniels and should adopt short-haired dogs, but if you're the right human for a Cocker Spaniel you love to comb and brush its long, thick coat. I do mean you love this daily ritual. Wouldn't miss it for anything. A day without combing can be enough for clumps of hair to felt together and form unattractive mats.

Cocker Spaniels usually live ten to fifteen years, like cats. They tend to be good with other dogs and children. They are notoriously affectionate, sometimes even fawning on abusive humans, and motivated to please and stay close to their humans. They like to catch and fetch toys. They don't need a lot of walking; disabled humans sometimes keep two spaniels and let them get their exercise by playing together, but Cocker Spaniels kept as only pets do usually need daily walks to prevent their becoming fat, lazy, and unhealthy. They are about as likely to become couch potatoes as their humans are; they typically like to lie at the feet of an idle human. There can be genetic problems in this breed, but they're seldom seen because breeders work to keep them out of the pool. Spaniels' main health concerns are obesity and infections. Fur needs to be trimmed away from their eyes. 

Show-quality Spaniels seem hairier than they used to be, to me, and I think the change has not been an improvement, but people who love Spaniels still think their pets are the prettiest dogs in the neighborhood. 

Few people put Cocker Spaniels in shelters and, if they stray, these dogs are usually claimed from the pound, but, being so popular, Cocker Spaniels and crossbreeds are fairly often available for adoption. They are often crossbred with other hounds and with poodles (producing a registered hybrid breed called the Cockapoo). 

On the cat side of things, once again we will consider long-haired cats...and, in memory of all those poor little woodcocks, why not some birds?

As always, Petfinder photos are for sharing. We want to Picture Them Homes if possible. If you're feeling munificent you can even sponsor an animal for adoption by people who are nice but don't have the full adoption fee in their pockets.

Zipcode 10101: Vallie (Valentina) from Haskell, New Jersey 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/vallie-713f851b-0d91-4cf6-aedc-c3385cf43a1c/nj/haskell/tibetan-terrier-club-of-america-rescue-nj580/details/

Her full adult weight is 17 pounds. She was the smallest puppy in the litter. She's learned several commands and had all the standard veterinary care.

Sonata from NYC 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/sonata-6f1c563d-514e-4518-80a5-6de258da60b8/ny/new-york/anjellicle-cats-rescue-ny488/details/

Long-haired cats are often aloof. They're not cold and they just finished grooming their coats--why would they want to let anyone mess up their coats now? Sonata is not like that. Dumped out on the streets of the Bronx as a kitten, she might even be described as clingy. She likes to snuggle and even seems to like being groomed by humans.

Keelie and Haku from New Jersey

Their web page: https://www.petfinder.com/bird/keelie-and-haku-349032ba-6ac5-4482-aa27-88aebc524d4c/nj/belford/for-the-love-of-birds-nj825/details/

Tame budgerigars. You'll need to get to know the humans before you can meet the birds; Keelie and Haku are living in a foster home.

Zipcode 20202: Sasha from Hollywood, Maryland 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/sasha-7d954393-c1a6-4eba-8a27-fd50b5704f3c/md/hollywood/animal-relief-fund-md84/details/

Sasha may be wary of new people. She's still in the process of learning that treatment for eye irritation and ear infections is helping, not hurting. You'll need to trim the hair away from her eyes and clean and dry her ears. 

Ellie from DC

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/ellie-e29efcd6-4f58-42ea-90bf-92de6dd438b9/dc/washington/lucky-dog-animal-rescue-dc20/details/

In transition from a city shelter to a foster family in Maryland, Ellie is thought to be seven years old and weighs a little over twelve pounds. 

Ollie from Fairfax 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/bird/ollie-020ba30e-9fad-4cd4-9f9e-af07a80d11cd/va/fairfax/phoenix-landing-foundation-nc676/details/

Parrots and even parakeets aren't for everyone. The organization will ask you to attend a class on parrot care and spend some time with experienced parrot handlers to find out whether Ollie, or perhaps another adoptable bird, is a good match for your family. Parrots are intelligent birds who can go feral, but are in danger, both of being harmed and of becoming a nuisance, if they do. They live a long time and have opinions about humans that...there's a reason why so many parrots seem to like to learn to say very rude words. Adopting a parrot is a long-term, sometimes multigenerational commitment. If that introduction doesn't scare you off, you might be someone Ollie wants to meet. She will let people she trusts pet the back of her head. She likes to fly.

Zipcode 30303: Cruella from Anniston

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/cruella-745c7522-47a9-41d1-891d-683266911d4d/al/anniston/annas-angel-rescue-al515/details/

This retired breeding dog probably shouldn't have been used for breeding. She's deaf and has some loss of vision as well. She does well with other dogs and can't get enough human attention. She's only four years old; might have been retired when the breeders noticed she was less than ideal breeding stock, despite that adorable black-and-white face.

Sebastian from Atlanta 

His web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/sebastian-3a3b2358-cb6f-4a1f-b71e-f5815a071a86/ga/atlanta/the-last-litter-project-al565/details/

"The Last Litter Project" sounds ominous. You might want to support another organization. Anyway Sebastian is a big furry cat whose purrsonality gives rescuers ideas. Is he part Siberian? Norwegian Forest Cat? They think he has the presence of a Norwegian Forest Cat, though that breed tend to be oversized and Sebastian is only on the large side of normal. 

Rah Rah Rasins from Locust Grove 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/bird/rah-rah-rasins-7f88a112-24d0-43a0-9b35-1764328d6445/ga/locust-grove/street-paws-inc-ga830/details/

She's a Conure, one of a bird species in the parrot family that is less often chosen as a pet. Frankly I know very little about Conures and it sounds as if the organization aren't familiar with them either. They are not familiar to North Americans. They can be described as small parrots or large parakeets; the extinct Carolina Parakeet was one of the Conure species. Most species naturally live in large flocks and can be a bit of a nuisance to humans, in their homelands in South America or if they manage to go feral in North America. But such exotic, distinctive pets. If you want to adopt this Conure, please learn what you can about the species and try to be sure you can treat her right.