Serena had some more kittens today. She and Drudge have been trying to civilize some dumped-out, probably feral-born adolescent cats I've been calling Wild Thyme and Wild Rose, and yes, small short-haired kittens with long tails indicate that a wild time's been had with young Wild Thyme. The babies are probably only Seralini kittens; viable kittens tend to arrive in spring, so no commitments can be made at this time. The ones I've seen are all tiny, as if premature, but their instincts and reflexes seem normal. This is no guarantee that they'll live through their first day.
I don't know Wild Thyme's temperament yet. What I know is that he and Drudge are still scuffling; neither of them seems to mind it enough to try to avoid it, but sometimes Drudge shows a surface wound. Whether this indicates that they're bonding and Drudge is delighted to have someone he can play with roughly, after all these months of being gentle with smaller kittens and respectful of his grandmother, or that Wild Thyme is a suicidal violent idiot, remains to be learned. Drudge is not reporting any concerns. If Wild Thyme is suicidal, Drudge feels confident about being able to deal with him.
There were three dumped-out kittens, originally. I've never had a close look at the other one. I don't know whether it's still alive, or, if so, where. It was not exactly delivered. The kittens were dumped into the yard of someone who tried to shoo them toward the Cat Sanctuary. None of them has, so far, taken a step toward me, or the yard, or food, when I've been outside.
Anyway: lots of time was spent being on call for Serena. Lots of time to ruminate on these links.
Animals
Dorahak found a snapshot of three little barn owls peeking out from a quatrefoil window.
Andrew Wilson imagines the story a butterfly might tell if it could talk.
Archetypes
Jamie Wilson raises a valid point of Jungian psychology, the psychology of art and literature...but she overlooks Jung's larger point. While Jung did see adventure as developing a "masculine" and suffering as developing a "feminine" aspect of the self, Jung also observed that in real life we all have the "masculine" or "animus" AND the "feminine" or "anima" sides to our personalities. A woman can enjoy leaving "the home" on a quest that may involve slaying dragons. A man can mature through the loss of loved ones.
Upward/outward and inward/downward stories, in fact, intertwine, both in myth and fiction, and in historical stories that linger in people's minds. Odin wanders, fights, overcomes, and ends up paying an eye for the "privilege" of hanging on a tree for three days to gain wisdom through suffering. Theseus goes deep underground to slay the Minotaur. Draupadi loses everything it seems an ancient Hindu woman would want to keep, dances away from an attacker, and vindicates herself. Demeter spends the winters mourning for the loss of her daughter and the summers working beside her daughter again. Huckleberry Finn grows and learns from his adventures, then becomes a man through a dark hour of spiritual wrestling. Jane Eyre leaves what she has in the way of "The Home," wanders off on her own, slays her own dragons, and returns to "The Home" as a mature woman making her own choices. The Bible has more to offer than its stories, but it too tells stories that mix yang and ying movement for either male or female characters; Sarah and Esther make bold decisive upward/outward movements; Moses and Job rise from periods of passive, inward/downward, spiritual suffering into periods of active, upward/outward success.
The Gospel of Jesus can be classified as the ultimate example of a man who ascends in a triumphant upward/outward direction from a period of inward/downward suffering. This is why many find it unhelpful to associate yang and ying movements in stories, or biographies, with masculinity and femininity. Jesus was clearly recognized as male throughout the Crucifixion and Resurrection. Nevertheless many Semitic tribes that had recorded prophecies of a savior who would be killed and resurrected had visualized that savior as female; those stories were what Jung characterized as the feminine spiritual journey of suffering.
In fact, Jung recognized, people may be unhappy or neurotic because they've neglected to develop the sides of themselves that have been stereotypically identified with the opposite sex. Jung vented some very nasty thoughts and feelings about people who he thought were "ridden by" an unsatisfied and therefore harmfully dominant aspect of their personalities. On the whole he encouraged patients to embrace the "shadowed" aspects of their personalities that they had associated with the opposite sex; this is where twentieth century psychologists got the idea that men needed to cry and women needed to yell, swear, and bash at pillows.
I've always felt, since I was old enough to notice, that children suffer from being brought up by an "angel in the home" who's not developed competence and independence before having babies...and if Little Miss Soft-And-Pink-As-A-Nursery happens to become a widow, it's a miracle if the extended family can make it possible for the children to survive, a tragedy if they have to depend on government. My mother had a business when I was a wee tot, even a baby. It was one of the major privileges life handed to me. "The Home" is where both heroes and heroines return in the happy endings of stories, but it's where both have to leave in order to have stories.
Excuses, Pathetic
Angry Abby Spambucket blames sexism for her dropping in the polls?
That's the one excuse neither of the candidates can make in this election. Well, actually, their not being natives of Virginia, much less old-line Virginians, would be another excuse neither of them can make. The qualified one was born in Jamaica, the blonde in New Jersey. But mercy, Angry, you don't think it might have had anything to do with
a. your annoyingly repeated ads,
b. being really bad ads that repetitiously called attention to
b(1). Mrs. Sears' skin holding up better than yours, which a woman of fortitude might have tried to chalk up to melanin but we know you're showing stress,
b(2). Mrs. Sears' saying elective abortion is wicked, which most Virginia voters agree is true,
b(3). Mrs. Sears' saying that convicted sex offenders should not be allowed to expose themselves in high school girls' bathrooms at school sports events, which most Virginia voters agree is true,
b(4). your whining that disagreement angers you, which many Virginia voters believe shows mental immaturity and weakness of character,
b(5). your hiding from the camera in your own ads, which might be perceived as showing dishonesty even more than it shows fear of acknowledging your current physical condition,
b(6). Mrs. Sears' opposition to raising taxes, which voters everywhere like even if they don't trust it, which in Mrs. Sears' case they probably do,
b(7). your perception of voters as being naive enough to think that taxes on "billionnaires" are ever enough to appease the greed of an out-of-control bureaucracy without extending into taxes on anyone "rich" enough to pay taxes, which voters are not,
b(8). your lack of understanding of what Governors do, as shown by your grandiose talk about being able to reverse "Bidenflation" all by your pallid little self,
b(9). your bigoted obsession with Mrs. Sears' lips being fuller than yours, as if refusing collagen injections were the bravest thing you've ever done, which may even be the case,
b(10). your belief that teenagers benefit from radical gender-change treatment in high school, which we all know by now is not the case,
b(11). your belief that Governors are meant to oppose rather than to work with the President,
b(12). your general contempt for voters if you thought anyone would not notice these things,
c. your failure to reply to a question about any positive talking points you had, in July,
d. which drove me to your social media pages, where I not only
d(1). found no positive talking points
d(2). but found the infamous picture of your rally where obviously none of the White people in attendance saw anything insensitive about the "Black People Can't Use My Water Fountain" sign,
d(3). and abundant documentation that you, Angry Abby, had no problem with that sign until Republicans commented on it,
e. and, meanwhile, your loyalty to the indefensible Jay Jones, which a stronger personality might have made into an extreme libertarian position that would have won respect if not the election, but you completely failed at that,
f. and, meanwhile, your SCREAMING display of contempt for a blogger,
f(1). who appeared to be considerably older than you,
f(2). who is not even known to be unfavorable to you, it's not as if he were Tucker Carlson or Glenn Beck,
f(3). who scared you into hysterical yowling just by asking you civil questions, O Pallid Baby Sister to Kamala Harris,
g. and your visible tremors and speechlessness in the debate, when you're at least thirty years too young to get any sympathy for possible cardiovascular syndrome or Parkinson's Disease,
h. and your having been endorsed by Barack Obama,
i. and your association with the Biden Administration we all want to put far behind us,
j. and your failure to defend the right to privacy, the right to choice about things other than abortion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, property rights, or the environment,
k. and the three rogue policemen in your worst ad, claiming you as a fellow policeman
k(1).when your own Wikipedia page denies that you ever were one,
k(2). and the actual police organizations are supporting your opponent,
k(3). and Officers Porter, Ross, and Jenkins then don't say anything good about you but implicitly threaten voters with their corruption,
l. and, on top of that, your association with the Schumer Schutdown, which may well compromise some Virginia voters' food supply, on Election Day, if your fellow Burros don't smarten up fast?!?!?!
People might be going to the polls without breakfast, having your party to blame? You don't see those as factors in your sagging poll numbers, Abigail? (Not even to mention the promise of corruption made by the three rogue policemen who appeared in your worst ad, apparently on the grounds of your claiming to have been a policeman, which seems not to be true unless it was a cover you used while working in some very junior capacity with the very unpopular CIA...) Not to suggest that all or even very many Northerners are that thick, but...Yankee, go home.
Fiction
If people seriously confuse renting a painting for "20,00" pounds with renting the scene painted for 20,000 pounds, how do they imagine that that would work? Much fiction has its origin in writers' attempts to imagine what goes on in differently able brains.
Nostalgia, Good and Bad
Like most people who've been around for a while I like to reminisce. (Actually, my mother positively encouraged all of her children to start reminiscing--"What do you remember of this time last year? What do you remember about this place?"--around age two. My natural sister held on to a few accurate memories from before age two, into early adulthood; this is clearly a special gift though it doesn't seem to have added a great deal of happiness to her life.)
I think all this reminiscing is valuable. It's good to preserve good things from the past; it's good to record why other things weren't worth preserving.
But nostalgia can become positively toxic.
As people who've always identified as "the young" become unmistakably "the old," there is a temptation to bog down in toxic nostalgia.
"Oh, there's the house, that dear little house where we lived in the year...and I was so happy!"
You weren't, the listener thinks. Don't you remember? Your dog died; you cried every day for a month. You were ill most of the year. You deliberately aggravated your symptoms because you were so miserable at school. You were bullied continually at school, especially after Nasty Natasha told people about having found you crying, the day after the dog died. You wanted a bicycle and your parents refused to buy one...
"Well...I didn't have the kind of childhood babies cry for, actually. But once in a while when Daddy took me out fishing, or Mom took me to the library, I was happy! Of course now my parents are gone, the library's closed, and there's a big new store where the fishing hole used to be...but still...I think I want to sell our house and move my whole family back here!"
Usually it's not quite that obvious. But it's close. This person is not enjoying (let's say it's "his") Now very much. He actively hated most of his Then, but he's remembering moments of Then that felt good by contrast to most of the rest of those years.
Demographic generations have romanticized entire decades to the point where people feel a need to debunk...These stereotypes come from US history. Other countries have different ones.
* /The wide-open 1820s, when American pioneers pushed westward, blazing new trails, clearing the land, bringing civilization...
...Western European immigrants, that was. Filthy, plague-carrying immigrants on a mission to destroy existing civilizations. They rented fishing rights to a place for a year and claimed they'd bought it forever, for a handful of glass beads.
* The romantic 1850s, when real Southern Belles wore dresses that were actually shaped like bells and didn't have to do anything but flirt, dance, and go to parties...
...and grab the richest possible husband before they were old enough to vote, which of course they weren't yet allowed to do anyway, because men pursued Southern Belles for their money and, though married women had no actual property rights, a rich husband was more likely to let his wife enjoy some small portion of her inheritance than a poor husband was.
* The "gilded" 1890s, when Americans made millions, were as rich as European aristocrats, and tried to revive "Society" traditions that re-created Europe's...
...and blamed poor people for the diseases that were starting to kill them by dozens and hundreds...and \invented segregation...and didn't let women vote...and tried to make it a crime to join a labor union...
* The "roaring" 1920s, when everyone was young and feeling frisky...
...except the ones who weren't. The thing about what was called the "fast" or "sporting" life in the 1920s was that people weren't living very long. Crowding and lack of sanitation...
* The friendly 1950s, when everyone could afford a nice house in a nice suburb, white picket fence, yardman to maintain the grassy lawn, cook who came in every day and cleaning "lady" who came in twice a week to do the housework while Mom maintained her supply of little white gloves and beamed angelically oveer her 2.75 perfect children...
...and antibiotics seemed to have ended the plagues at last, but nobody felt confident enough about this to want to get too close to someone from a poorer neighborhood. And instead of never being alone with a young man because she might be raped, young women were now expected to spend time alone with young men and agree to a shotgun wedding after being raped....By the way, those suburbs were planned to replace overt segregation against ethnic or religious groups with overt segregation by income. In smaller cities the small, cheap houses weren't necessarily bad, but some jobs and schools weren't available to people who lived there, and some people didn't want to know them. In big cities the neighborhoods that had small, cheap houses became slums.
* The swinging 1960s, when everyone revelled in sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll...
...and the sex and drugs killed enough of us that some of us wanted to say no even to the rock-and-roll, which admittedly did hit a lot of the genre's high points in the 1960s.
* The awesome 1980s, when everyone could admire President Reagan and get rich on an easy job...
...and people hated and wanted to kill President Reagan because people feared that his policies would heat up the Cold War, or were even meant to lead to "Armageddon" after he made a speech referring to the Last Battle. And many of the jobs that were so easy for young people to get involved heavy physical labor. And let's not forget that measles vaccines, which had been controversial for years, were suddenly made mandatory and a few contaminated batches of vaccine left hundreds of young people too ill to do even easy jobs.
I'm not saying I didn't have fun in the 1980s, or for that matter the 1960s. I probably would have had fun in those other decades if I'd been alive during them. So would you, I hope. But they were not actually golden windows of time when everything was wonderful.
It's good to be able to remember that the year when you were bullied at school because someone saw you crying when your dog died did contain those moments of joy at the fishing hole, but it's not so good to spoil Now with distorted memories of Then.
As a writer I've always tried to remember it all, and how it all fitted together, and remember that nice and nasty things mixed in the same general way in the times and places I don't remember firsthand. How much I enjoyed the swing set, until the chain broke. What fun it was to go around shovelling paths during the Big Wet Snow, and the whole school term with bronchitis that followed. What a great speaker President Reagan was, and how people used to revile him.
Photography
Photo by Martha DeMeo--read on:
Believe it or not, this could be a recent photo. Although the last image of my part of Virginia posted at this web site commemorated the extraordinarily colorful autumn foliage in 2016, although the Cat Sanctuary is far enough up the mountain that we did have a light frost and are now watching red and orange leaves fall, lower elevations in Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina are still green. Riding through Duffield yesterday, I saw some older-growth woodlots where all the trees' leaf color is tied to temperature rather than light...still bright green, with only an occasional bare shrub...
Anyway, regular readers will remember that Martha DeMeo is a grandmotherly blogger I started following back in the days of Bubblews and Blogjob. Her blog always features big splashy pictures. This blog always shrinks pictures. Click through to see the photo in its full glory:
MDeM wondered whether this post would "go viral" because, although the photo is simple, the subject is so pretty (and, at this time of year, unusual). It lacks the vulgarity of most "viral content" in cyberspace, but let's see...how many links and shares can her post get?
Content that "goes viral" is ganked and reposted all over the place so I hope Martha DeMeo won't mind that I pasted the photo into a set of silly limerick-y things at Substack, too--properly attributed, of course, with the link.
