Tuesday, October 15, 2024

Book Review for 9.30.24: Ten-Minute Super-Quick Mediterranean Diet for Beginners

Title: Ten-Minute Super-Quick Mediterranean Diet for Beginners

Authoir: Oliver Sanders

Quote: "The Mediterranean diet shines in its approahc to snackng."

"Mediterranean" has been used recently to describe a diet based on fruits, vegetables, nuts, grains, and ocean fish, as found in countries around the Mediterranean or in places like California that enjoy a similar climate. At least close biological relatives of favorite Mediterranean foods will grow in California and in many of our southern and central States. Gardeners and locavores were therefore delighted when doctors started studying what allows so many people in the Mediterranean to eat so well and live so long. 

Is it only the diet? Probably not. Certainly most of us seem to be better off without the wine people in the Mediterranean countries drink daily. Traditionally people in the Mediterranean countries got a fair amount of healthy natural exercise, walking to most of the places they go, rowing, swimming, gardening, dancing. They get a good deal of sunshine and spend a good deal of time out in it. Traditionally they raised their own locally grown, unsprayed food. The Mediterranean countries are home to Catholic, Jewish, and Muslim communities in which most people traditionally lived by the rules of one faith or another, which involved regular prayer and meditation and a mandate that, as much as in them lies, they live at peace with all. These cultures are sociologically notable for having a strong sense of family, a sense that life is good and happiness is found in family love and work. Economic inequities, though extreme, were palliated by a belief that God put people in different economic brackets for a reason--people whose family businesses were not well paid weren't expected to be rich, so much as to live frugally and work, eat, love, and worship well  Before antibiotics were invented, diseases sometimes reached plague proportions in these countries, but food-borne pathogens were at least reduced by heavy use of alcohol, garlic, and rosemary in food preparation and preservation. 

Rules for a "Mediterranean"-influenced diet are not strict, but emphasize lots of plant-derived foods and ffrugal amounts of vegetable oils in cookign. Basically, have a big vegetable garden and use it as a primary food source. If you don't have a garden, be very nice to someone who does. And don't live near a public road or railroad, because the health benefits of all those plant-based foods depend on their not being sprayed with chemicals used in place of mowing and trimming verges.

The most popular "Mediterranean" recipes came from Italy but French, Spanish, Portuguese, Moroccan, and Middle Eastern recipes use many of the same ingredients:

* Lots of grains--a good variety--wheat, rice, barley, and today often corn (maize), buckwheat, quinoa, amaranth

* Lots of leafy green vegetables, raw or cooked, often topped with oil, nuts, or fish. Arugula, basil, celery, chicory, dill, endive, escarole, fennel, lettuces, mache, mustad, oregano, parsley, radicchio, rosemary, sage, sorrel, spinach, thyme, watercress, and more.

* Asparagus

* Artichokes

* Beans and all the "pulses"--peas, lentils, garbanzos, fava beans. 

* Cabbage and all the cruciferous vegetables, broccoli, cauliflower, rabe, Brussels sprouts

* Celery

* Cucumbers

* Carrots

* Capers

* Eggplant (melanzane, aubergine)

* Garlic, leeks, onions

* Lotus root

* Mallows (the vegetable, not the candy inspired by its texture)

* Mushrooms

* Olives and their oil

* Pickles of all kinds. These cultures invented vinegar.

* Potatoes were introduced fairly recently, but are sometimes raised and eaten in Mediterranean countries. 

* Radishes'

* Sesame seed

* /Squashes

* Tomatoes aren't native to the Mediterranean region but, when introduced a few centuries ago, they were a huge success. Today it's hard to think of Italian food without thinking of tomato sauce. 

* Turnips

* Tree nuts, especially almonds, hazelnuts, pistachios, walnuts

* Peanuts grow further south, but people in the Mediterranean countries sometimes buy and use them.

* Avocado--not native, but sometimes used

*  All citrus fruits

* Carob

* Dates

* Figs

* Grapes

* Melons

* Pears thrive in the Mediterranean climate. Apples usually do better in colder climates but people in Mediterranean countries eat them when they can. Authentic Mediterranean recipes feature pears.

* Peaches, apricots, plums

* Pineapple usually grows further south, but seems to be welcome wherever it's been shipped

* Pomegranates

* Raspberries and other bramble berry species

* Strawberries aren't native to the Mediterranean countries. Nor are blueberries. They are sometimes available in Mediterranean countries and eaten raw or in mixed-berry recipes.

* Sumac (the dried berries, usually ground up, used as a sweet-sour seasoning)

* Tamarind fruit

* Fish and shellfish

* Milk and milk products from cows, goats, and sometimes sheep 

* Eggs and poultry

* Meat, but it's used sparingly; small farms didn't kill even a rooster every day

* Coffee

Recipe books, or even heating up the kitchen to cook, are optional for much of this food. Washed, and arranged attractively on the table, it's feast.

This short book does not have room for a complete collection of what even one person can do with the classic Mediterranean foods when a special occasion, and/or the need to use up less than perfect vegetables, does inspire a Mediterranean cook to invent a fancy elaborate recipe. And it does include some recipes that call for American ingredients not normally found in Mediterranean gardens or recipe books, though bananas, tortillas, and watermelon fit into the general idea of a "Mwditrranean diet" of home-grown or locally grown produce as a primary food source.And, while presenting Americanized recipes, the author uses tediously European measurements and what may be Chinese Pidgin wording. "KCal/serve"? When Americans use "serve" as a noun we are talking about tennis; food comes in servings.

However, if you're new to this way of eating and don't want to recreate authentic ethnic cuisine or adapt its flavors for restrticted diets, but just to learn a few efficient ways of using garden-type food, this small, cheap e-book may be your idea of a real bargain. This is a first book of plant-based, not vegan but fibre-rich, nutritious cooking. If you have a reliable source of unpoisoned plant-based foods and minimal time to cook, buy this book.

Book Review for 9.29.24: Creating a Culture of Repair

Title: Creating a Culture of Repair

Author: Robert Turner

Date: 2024

Publisher: Westminster John Knox

ISBN: 978-1747983773

Quote: "Simply put, reparations are not merely given; they are a matter of justice."

As a minister, Robert Turner was invited to preach in a place called Greenwood, Oklahoma, near Tulsa. Greenwood has an interesting, if deplorable, history. It was part of the "territory" ceded to indigenous people as a reservation, on which White and Black people encroached. It became the Black neighborhood, or town, that was a counterpart to White Tulsa. It prospered. It had what was known as "Black Wall Street"--Turner gives the names and histories of some of his congregation's grandparents who were part of that success story. Then, in 1921, rioters whipped themselves into a froth about a reported crime and destroyed ss much of Greenwood as they could, because it was not about revenge for one man's crime; it was about race hate. "How did we ever let them get all this?" 

But that is not all. Greenwood people were optimistic, energetic, motivated. They built back better. And then, one generation later, Greenwood sustained real economic damage from the construction of a US highway that seemed designed to divide and destroy the town. And then even Greenwood people began to feel bitter. 

Turner is in favor of the kind of melodramatic gestures toward "justice" that are not just, are boondoggles, and are likely to be as divisive as that highway. That's what's not to love about this book.

He is also willing to do the research, identify what was done to whom by whom, and talk sensibly about the kind of specific reparations that would be a very good thing if the law required them to be settled within the complaining victim's lifetime. We need to stop letting offenders stall and play the system. We need no system that, e.g., Bayer can run out before compensating victims of glyphosate poisoning; we need a system in which, on the day glyphosate is proved to have harmed a persn, all glyphosate production stops, Bayer's assets are frozen, and all Bayer is allowed to do is pay damages to victims while we are alive.  And something similar should most definitely apply to any living survivors of what was done to places like Greenwood. Turner makes intelligent cases for specific reparations, not the kind of "pay everybody for being Black even though every other kind of people on Earth have been victims of past injustice too" that would ruin the economy if taken seriously, but the kind of "pay this and that individual for specific material harm done to them" that ought to be the basis of our legal system.

That is why you want to read his book. I don't expect anyone will be able to take all of Turner's 100 suggested acts of reparations seriously, but his list includes more good ideas than bad ones. He suggests things like:

* It's true that most Americans don't know where their ancestors were in 1850; many don't even know, by now, where their ancestors were in 1950. We can do something about this. Trace your own ancestry if you can afford it and it's not already been done. Help other people trace theirs if they can't afford it. Find out, so far as possible, which of us are descendants of slaves or slavemasters. In some cases, descendants of the owners and the slaves on specific plantations may even want to have a reunion. Are the owners' descendants still rich? Are the slaves' descendants still poor? Is it the other way round? If a "legacy of slavery" has harmed the descendants of slaves, what would they suggest, once they know what the descendants of plantation owners have, that the descendants of plantation owners do for them?

* Black schools were historically underfunded. (Turner ignores the fact that being underfunded can actually motivate students to achieve more, given the right kind of teachers.) Individuals could make contributions to equalize funding, or to provide scholarships for qualified students.

* Black churches historically did fantastic feats of mission work. Often this left little money available to maintain the church or its grounds. People in both churches may want to preserve individual churches' identity and the different liturgical traditions that have developed in segregated American churches, while rejecting rigid segregation, but also White churches could contribute to Black churches' maintenance funds. 

This and much, much more. I may come back to some of his ideas in posts here. I'm not going to try to summarize 100 ideas in a blog post. Read the book for yourselves. Turner is angry, and sometimes he's unrealistic about what a suggestion might actually accomplish, but he's not hostile, and more of the time, I believe, he recommends things that could be good for both sides. Airlines, e.g., might profit by giving away visits to people's ancestral homelands. Why not publicize research and essay contests that award a Black American family a trip to Cameroon, once they've traced their ancestors to that country?

Book Review for 9.27.24: Ten-Minute Carnivore Diet Cookbook with Pictures

Title:  Ten-Minute Carnivore Diet Cookbook with Pictures

Author: Olivia Graham

Quote: "The carnivore diet...consists entirely of meat, fish, eggs, and some dairy."

Cruel joke gift for a tenderhearted vegan, serious response to glyphosate in the food supply, or the cookbook your cat wishes you used? All three. This collection of simple meat recipes, with only a few low-calorie vegetables used as seasoning or garnish, made me feel vegan. It's a total meat overload.

These recipes work, in the sense tht each one is a simple, palatable way to cook half a pound of meat. Im not so sure about the "diet." One meal like these might be palatable road food,b ut it'd leave me with a craving for vegetables. If you want to make yourself crave romaine, watercress, parsle, cucumbers, or spinach, reading this book might help.

The sad truth is that, although meat and eggs contain toxins, possibly including glyphosate, they contain so much less glyphosate than vegetables do that some people will find relief from chronic conditions in a "carnivore diet." It's not a balanced or adequate diet for humans. Deficiency diseases would appear if a human followed a "carnivore diet" for very long. But people report getting a detox high when they eat a "carnivore diet" for a few weeks. They're not cured, but they feel so much better...

God, have mercy upon us.

Book Review for 9.26.24: December on 5C4

Title: December on 5C4

Author: Adam Strassberg 

Date: 2024

Publisher: Nat 1

ISBN: 

Quote: "I remembered many stories from my residency years, some apocryphal, some accurate, of involuntary hospitalizations of various patients with delusions of being either Jesus or Santa. It occurred to me it would be interesting to see what might happen if a patient with similarities to Jesus were hospitalized concurrently with a patient with similarities to Santa. Would they be friends? Enemies? Both?"

/First, Strassberg imagines, they'd get into a quarrel about their different approaches to giving. Then, as men who've chosen to identify with models of generosity, they'd become friends and help each other...In the best Christmas-fairy-tale tradition, Josh N. will give encouraging counsel to the other patients, and Nick K. will hand out trinkets.

/Josh left his Orthodox Jewish family after realizing that they just wouldn't understand that he thought an incestuous act with a male cousin was a kind of baptism. He had since organized other street dwellers into a community who share their skills and resources and help others. He is frequently troubled by mad suicidal urges, which he identifies with Jesus''s temptation to throw himself down from the Temple. Hospital staff want to give him stronger medication that will suppress these urges, but will also cut off what he experiences as a sort of communion with God.

Nick likes the "trinity of coke," cocoa, Coca-Cola, and cocaine. After using a lot of the latter he was arrested for trespassing when he got stuck in an acquaintance's chimney. His purpose was to rescue three immigrant girls, and their parents, from coyote types who were prostituting the girls. Nick seems to think he has a wife at home. His wife has been dead for a long time.

They're homeless mental patients but somehow their giving seems to be touched with supernatural grace. They heal the other patients' emotions; the gifts they make in Occupational Therapy seem magical. Josh prays and preaches traditional Hebrew prayers as Jesus might have done.

Maybe, Josh appears to think, in another incarnation they'll be born in the right time to be Jesus of Nazareth and Nicholas a.k.a. Kriss Kringle. 

This story is funny, sad, and always close to the edge of blasphemy. Strassberg isn't saying that Jesus was either schizoid or homosexual or a street character; He is saying that it's possible for a Christian t see reflections of Christ in schizoid homosexual street characters. 

This is not your usual Christmas story. Josh doesn't even have a Christmas tradition. But it's worth ordering now if you want to read it during December.

Book Review for 9.25.24: Dare I Ask

Title: Dare I Ask

Author: Zoe Adams

Date: 2023

Quote: "I'm sputterng in the lobby of my apartment building as iced coffee soaks into my button-down shirt."

Ann-Marie Smith and Adam Smith (who seems unaware of his famous namesake's work) have been renting apartments in the same building. They've not been friends, but Adam finds himself slipping mail into Ann-Marie's box just so they have something to bicker about. When he learns that Ann-Marie is looking for a job working for "the Blaine Astor," he gives her a reference that lands her the job.

Next thing they know, they've all flown out to Aspen, where Blaine's sister has proposed a temporary wedding to Adam to enable him to spend more of his inheritance now. But when Ann-Marie sees Adam under circumstances that aren't annoying, and sounds ever so slightly friendly, he proposes marriage to her. 

It's a "slightly spicy" contemporary romance, so here's what you don't already know:

(1) It's part of one of those series of mini-books that add up to one full-lenght novel. This is volume one, where the couple admit they're attracted to each other. They'll be married in volume five.

(2) It's one of those books where "contemporary" means "lots of profanity and the girl thinks sex should come before marriage."

If you like that sort of romance, you'll porobably enjoy Dare I Ask

Monday, October 14, 2024

Web Log from the Hurricane Season

This post actually started in September. It's hard to do a Link Log when, for days on end, Google holds only thirty pages in memory in between visits to places that have Internet connections. Nevertheless...

Animals

Some parts of North Carolina reported horrific flash floods while Virginia was getting aaaall...that...rain. (That's Drawling as distinct from Yelling. Drawling is something Southern Ladies sometimes do when things, not people, are exasperating. It does not imply that any of you Gentle Readers is less intelligent than other people.) I heard someone on radio blethering about a hundred or so bodies being found stuck in trees, the way one normally sees stray clothes, shoes, shopping bags, and similar clutter after less disastrous floods. So of course animal shelters were not in a good situation, to put it mildly. Some animals were evacuated to shelters on higher ground and suddenly Petfinder is sending out e-mail and refusing to show the pages I usually search for the photo contest. I have to look at the Jonesborough page. There's a conspicuous link to make online monetary donations to  North Carolina shelters that need rebuilding. Flood refugees are swelling the cat populations in Jonesborough, Johnson City, and other places in Tennessee. Look carefully--this is two very cute kittens currently stuck in the Johnson City shelter:


One of them is called Scout but the staff were too busy to explain which one. Updates may have been posted at Scout's web page by the time you read this:


Books

Authors Kim Griffin, BR Goodwin, and Hannah Hood Lucero are donating all proceeds from their book sales to hurricane relief for our North Carolina neighbors. Kim Griffin wrote that Starry Night devotional that digs deep into doctrine, not just the usual pleasant thought for the day, reviewed here last winter. 


If there's a nondenominational devotional you want to buy in hardcover, Starry Night is probably it. By ordering in October you can not only support hurricane survivors (I mean the ones who are really hurting, not us in Virginia who have merely been inconvenienced) but also be sure of getting the book in time to read it in December.

Censorship

Yop. Ds, you get two options. Either you oppose censorship, or Gina Raimondo's political career is over. If this stupid cow's voice is ever heard in public again, it needs to be saying "Absolute freedom of speech is keeping me out of jail. I support absolute freedom of speech for all people."


Election 2024

Mean Girl O'Dowdypants tells us nothing about fracking, war, censorship, the civil rights of the loyal-opposition party (never mind alternative parties), any attempt to reduce the damage done by chemical pollution of any part of the environment...but she does have things to teach us, here. Her teeth are probably natural, because artificial ones are usually more symmetrical than that, but her mouth really is wide enough to show them as far back as they go; she seems not to have molars. Young children manage to eat without molars so Dowdypants probably doesn't mind. And very very few people look good in purple; Dowdypants is not among them.


Something for Virginia to consider. Remember the Censorship Riot? Remember Mark Warner's tweets during it? Remember that he had the opportunity to let those tweets fade into oblivion, but he chose to write an op-ed amplifying them? Young, strong, healthy-looking man, not even sparing a thought for fellow Senators like Reid, McConnell, Pelosi, Feinstein, just tweeting about how scared he was for his precious self. If you saw the op-ed, didn't you want to fire back... "You're not representing me!" "You call yourself a Virginian?" "Pull yourself together, man! Protect your elders!" I mean, I am glad he was mature enough not to go out and rumble...At the time I tweeted back that I was praying for him, and it was true. Him and every other law-abiding person involved in a riot that could so easily have been so much worse than it was. Afterward, it is hard to respect a big strong man who claims to be so totally intimidated by idiots wielding stolen lamps and yet so unconcerned about those who might need his help. 


Europe

This isn't even the worst thing about Europe...it's that they still can't seem to settle their differences without killing each other. And that is where most of our ancestors came from (even if we claim Black or Red ancestors, we still probably have some European DNA). If we sink into their levels of population density, government nannyism, and general hopelessness we could sink back to their level of barbarism.


Hurricane Updates

From Brevard, North Carolina, 10.8.24:


Dolly Parton pledged a million dollars to hurricane survivors generally. Kamala Harris offered them $750 per person, like wow, probably not enough to pay for hotel rooms much less food, but it's vote-buying time right? (To be fair, that was the immediate bailout money from the emergency fund; survivors are eligible for more handouts later, if they still want them.) But the emergency fund had to hand out more than Kamala realized...


President Biden went to Germany for the weekend. Meh...Dad went to Germany once and always gave the impression that anyone would rather go to North Carolina than to Germany, so I'm not sure how bad that is. Maybe our Prez just wants to spare disaster areas the inconvenience of hosting his entourage.

Phenology

Belatedly, butterflies. The majority of these butterflies are found on both sides of the Atlantic, presumably introduced from the UK to the US by travellers. Some are still found only in the UK.


Whereas, afaik, all of the moths are UK-specific.


Pun


Google doesn't like McDonald's connection. I found it at How to Meow in Yiddish.

State of the Net

In any weather-related disaster, the role of new electronic technology is to break down. Our local ISP has finally caught up with the times and started taking reports of outages through their web site, a huge improvement. Two full weeks after the hurricane, I saw a couple of supplementary phone/Internet service trucks at McDonald's, and THIS is what their web site had to say:

"All service out...multiple main fiber breaks near (three roads) in Duffield affecting service on up into Lee County...no estimated time of repair.

"All service out...multiple main fiber breaks near Castlewood and Coeburn affecting service through Russell and Wise Counties...no estimated time of repair.

"All service out...fiber break in Yuma...under investigation."

They're not even listing damage to individual houses or neighborhoods' wiring. What happened in my neighborhood was that at least two big trees fell across power lines, under which phone and Internet wires had been strung. All the lines were broken and one pole had to be replaced. The men repairing the power lines apparently strung all the wires back up, but it remains for the phone/Internet company to reconnect those wires to the actual Internet. (WiFi exists in between ridges, not across them--which is as it should be. For example, on the screen porch where I've been working for the past year-plus, I was using a WiFi connection to a wired connection inside the house...but there's no WiFi connection to, e.g., the business district where everybody was supposed to have free access in town.)

And even McDonald's independent, company-owned, generator-powered Internet connection blinked on and off five times in six hours. 

Support This Web Site

It has occurred to me that one reason for the sudden surge of interest in this post...


...may be the link to a Patreon page I used to have. No use. I no longer use e-payment sites that aren't forbidden by law to dip into customers' funds. To support this web site, please send US postal money orders to PO Box 322, Gate City, VA 24251-0322. I currently have no way of accepting non-US payment. Non-US readers are encouraged to support web sites in your country that this web site follows.

If funded, I could do an updated post about the hibiscus caterpillar and the moth it turns into.

Something That Was Better When I Was a Kid

(I started this on Thursday when it was only one day behind the prompt. Then my car pool popped up ahead of schedule. I am still working from McDonald's.) 

In which Long & Short Reviews once again encourages reviewers to reveal our ages...

Something that was better when I was a kid was the town library. 

When I was a kid the town library occupied the building now used by the Historical Society, which is not a large building. It was a ridiculously small library, but then mine is a small town too. All the walls were lined with shelves, in between which there were room for five six-foot-tall freestanding shelves on the right as you walked in, seven on the left. Directly in front of you as you walked in was where a large open fireplace had once been; that fireplace was now filled in with a bookshelf, walled off by two more bookshelves the same size; this was the Children's Room, where the picture books and record albums lived, and where kids were supposed to go in, sit down, and look at picture books until their parents told them it was time to leave. The Children's Room had room for about two children to sit down. This was all right since, if two children were in the library at one time, they were probably siblings anyway.

Read-aloud, sing-along, and even movie hours were aimed at school-age children, held in summer (always at two o'clock on Thursdays), and although at least once every summer all members of the Summer Reading Club packed into the library proper at the same time, traditionally the reading, singing, and movie-watching took place in Sunday School rooms at a large church near the library. After the two hours of entertainment kids were likely to wait for their parents out on the tiny patches of lawn on either side of the steps. The library was twelve or fifteen cement steps above the street.

As children matured they were allowed to explore the big freestanding bookshelves, first on the right where the "chapter books" for children and teenagers were kept, later on the left where books for adults were kept. The librarian may actually have remembered the Victorian Era and was motivated by local community standards to ensure that no books on either side of the building would bring a blush to a maiden's cheek. (I learned how babies are made from the daily newspaper.) "Adult books" were the ones of interest to adults, relatively few boring novels and lots of useful nonfiction books. At the time my parents used to scold me about reading more of those useful nonfiction books and fewer children's stories, and, since I liked children's stories and didn't like being nannied, I used to check out nonfiction books on the most frivolous topics the library offered--party planning, interior decorating, and (the library had at least a dozen serious grown-up books on) the history of clothes and fashion design. 

What occupied the space where the other two bookshelves were, on the grown-up side of the library, was the librarian's office. There was room for just one librarian with a desk, a chair, a typewriter, and a card-punching machine for stamping library card numbers and due dates on cards tucked into little pockets glued inside the back cover of each book. Yellow cards showing only the due dates went home with the books; color-coded white, pink, blue, orange, and green cards stayed in a box on the librarian's desk. Books could be renewed a few times if you called or wrote to request the librarian to move the cards back through this primitive filing system, on the due date. If you failed to call on the due date you could still request more time for the books but you had to pay four cents per book per day.

Food and drink were not allowed in the library. Smoking cigarettes was not encouraged, but enough of it went on that the library smelled of blue mold, which people can learn to like. 

It really was a pathetic little excuse for a library. I had seen libraries the size of a church or even a school building, and wished we had one of those. However, its few books were nearly all chosen and paid for by local people, usually identified by bookplates pasted onto the front page. Very rarely did the library have a book that had been printed during the current year. Someone had to buy a new book, read it, and decide it was worth sharing, often as a memorial tribute to a departed friend. Nobody was yet telling all the public librarians to spend tax money to buy all the same books, most of which would interest nobody in their community and would never circulate. Not every book in the library appealed to me--there was one author-illustrator whose picture books my brother and I used to check out just because we thought we could draw better pictures than that--but each one appealed to somebody. 

Computers had been invented; I think some banks and utility companies even used them, but nobody had ever thought the things would ever intrude into libraries. Computers had to be kept in sterile, climate-controlled offices, and the library didn't even have a vestibule to cushion the transition between heated or air-conditioned air and whatever the weather was doing outside.

In the Carter Administration the library moved into a shiny new county office building. (How much less space the county offices took up, back then!) The number of books in the collection increased by about 500 percent. With eager expectation I fell on these new books and soon discovered that most of them were what publishers call "remainders." Some strange things were being printed in the Carter Administration and, because they didn't sell well in the cities, sold to country libraries by the barrel. I remember a few books (which I didn't discover until I was a college psychology student) about the supposed psychological benefits of LSD, several of the early classics of radical left-wing feminism, and quite a few field guides to British birds, flowers, and butterflies--as opposed to the species local people might actually see in the field. 

Over time the worst of these choices were tactfully discarded and replaced with books the library's patrons were more likely to approve, but the library no longer served as an introduction to the community. Neither librarians nor library patrons chose what went onto its shelves. The expanded library could have only so many "circulating items," including a lot of things that weren't books, notably cheap replicas of famous paintings and sculptures. All the "circulating items" were chosen for us and, if library patrons felt moved to donate books in memory of friends, those books were sold for nickels and dimes, rather than being added to the library's collection. Books that had been literally loved-all-to-pieces were no longer replaced with new copies, but with what some committee in some unknown location had decided every library needed--lots of p.c. propwash. Every year the library had fewer useful nonfiction books and more simple-carbs-for-the-brain. 

As a child, what I liked about the library was that it was a quieter, more interesting place to hang out than the schoolyard. As an adult, what I liked about it was that it was where I could learn and study things like languages without having to pay tuition or commute to classes. 

I worked for a man who could easily keep up conversations with people who'd gone to Radford or Duke or McGill, but he never mentioned his alma mater. Knowing he was a veteran, I guessed he'd gone to a public school on the GI Bill, like Dad, but he must have chosen a good one! One day I just asked whether he'd gone to Virginia Tech. He said no. "I went to a coal camp school where nobody tried to teach us anything, just check us for lice and diseases. I didn't go there any more than I could help and was able to get a job and quit when I was fourteen--nobody cared exactly how old coal miners' kids were, and I looked sixteen. Then I worked in the mine until I could pass for eighteen and join the Army. I got all my education from library books and on-the-job training." 

My idea of a good library is one that can prepare a coal miner to pass trade certification tests, become a skilled laborer, and socialize on equal terms with "educated" people. I liked one where I could find the books I needed to test out of boring college classes like sociology, too. But I soon learned that those committees deciding what libraries ought to be did not want them to be places where people could educate themselves and save either time or money. If people could read sociology at libraries and pass exams in the subject, how would sociology teachers survive! My answer to that "question" would be that maybe we don't need so many sociology teachers, maybe they should train for a different job. The committees' answer was that libraries should move away from stocking books at all, especially from stocking informative books, primary texts of history, foreign language books that went beyond tourist phrase lists, music books with actual sheet music in them, anything that might have been taught in a high school or college course. If people insisted on checking out real books rather than "items" like movies everyone who wanted to see had already seen, stuff those shelves with genre fiction! And "people" didn't need quiet places, anyway--libraries could be re-purposed into more of those "community centers" that had been opened, and closed, in the mid-twentieth century! Never mind that people had not used the "community centers," while people were still using the libraries.

In the 1990s Virginia had an unpopular Governor who, among other things, cut back funding for libraries. At the time I wanted a T-shirt with "Libraries will get us through times with no Governor better than Governors will get us through times with no libraries" on it. Today, seeing the messes that have been made of my home town library and so many others (I first saw the rot set in at the Takoma DC branch library), I think we'd be better off without what now claim the name of "libraries." It's a sad and disgusting thought, one I usually prefer not to think about, but it's true.

I'm all in favor of children using libraries--being taught to wash their hands, sit down quietly, and read books, which is what libraries are for. I think day-care programs where children are encouraged to run about, eat and drink, scream, make messes with paste and finger paint, and sing off key, are also fine and should take place outdoors, if possible, or in a separate room walled off from libraries. 

I'm in favor of public computer centers, and since libraries' "card catalogues" are now databases rather than actual cabinets full of cards I see no reason why libraries should not have small computer centers where the card catalogues used to be, but anyone who tries doing serious research online will see why libraries must not be allowed to fill shelves with genre fiction "because people can get up-to-date information on the Internet now." No. They can't. They can still get a limited amount of legitimate scientific information on strictly academic topics like butterflies and dead languages, but the information the Internet offers on topics related to profitable businesses is controlled by corporate financial interests and not to be trusted. Libraries need to offer printed books that represent the points of view the corporations want to filter away from Google, Bing, and Yahoo. 

(We all have bias...I'm the one who grew up having things like Velikovsky and The Hollow Earth handed to me and being told, "Well, if you don't know enough to judge, read some more and learn, and then we can talk about what you think of this fellow's point of view." I think my Drill Sergeant Dad's way of presenting that way of thinking was pretty strong meat even for educated adults, but libraries can and should present it in a slower, friendlier way for the general public. By stocking books whose authors believed LSD had potential benefits, or that the Earth's core is hollow and contains an earthly Paradise, or that the Old Testament miracles were produced by the destruction of a planet that became the asteroid belt, libraries were being courteous and inclusive of dissidents as people, sending a message of "You're probably in error but we don't think you're 'weird' or 'non-persons.' Stick around; let's talk and read more." We desperately needed more of that attitude during the COVID panic, and even more desperately need it now that the Biden administration's point of view is what's being proved to have been in error.)

I'm in favor of frivolous fiction...but I don't know that public funding needs to be spent on it. Libraries should invest in the minority of really good novels, in serious nonfiction that people can use not only to pass exams but to learn languages and repair their property and qualify for advanced courses for which they need to pay teachers, and let the frivolous fiction be donated and shared among those who enjoy it.

I think, as a general rule, tax funds should be relied on only to maintain library buildings and reference collections, and library patrons should donate the circulating books and any other "items" the library stocks. I'm in favor of libraries stocking "items" other than books that people want to take home, use, and return--cameras, why not, and lawn mowers, and all those toys children want to play with once or twice!--but I'd like to see more of the spirit of those old bookplates: "This book (or "item") was donated by X in memory of Y. Patrons are requested to use it with the care that such a generous gift deserves."

Thursday, October 10, 2024

Book Review for 9.24.24: Guardians of the Palace

Title: The Guardians of the Palace 

Author: Steven J. Morris

Date: 2021

ISBN: 978-0-578-84133-5

The Guardians of the Palace are a contemporary "A-Team" of military veterans plus three friends from outer space. When one of the veterans hires the others to provide security to a new building called the Palace, they soon notice something very strange inside the building. That would be the friendly space aliens, who bond with them through combat training in which they receive mortal wounds that are instantly healed. What they're training for is war against the hostile aliens who will be noticed next. This species, charitably called the Infected, have depopulated planets with stronger sources of magical energy but, because our Sun is considered "dead" as a source of magical energy, humans may have a chance to defeat the Infected. But complications set in. The general public "can't" be told what's going on, lest they panic, and the federal government moves to interfere and do it all their way. 

More action-adventure fantasy than witty satire, this novel opens a series. There  will be more bloodbaths before the story's over. There's more than enough carnage in this volume to suit some readers, e.g. this one. However, if you like a fantasy with lots of fights in it, this is a clearly and tastefully written one.


Monday, October 7, 2024

Status Update: Hurricane Helene Hits

Well...it was still only an Edge. People in North Carolina reportedly got their first look at a real hurricane. Here in the Point of Virginia we got, mostly, rain. Lots and lots and lots of rain. Then the wind finally blew in, first one way and then the other, and as the ground was now soaked, trees went down left and right. 

I'm told that the Cat Sanctuary actually had electricity longer than some parts of town had. Some houses down in the valley were dark on the Thursday night. I was online for an hour on Friday morning before all the lights in the neighborhood went off. 

Something told me that it wouldn't be worth the trouble to report the power outage on Friday or Saturday. By Monday I ventured out to ask a neighbor whether his family in town had electricity. He confirmed that nobody had. Wires were lying across the road every half-mile or so, trees closer together than that. It wasn't that he, and other neighbors who'd been in town, weren't able to get up my road; it was that on Friday and Saturday they hadn't been able to drive on the roads in town. He had been in the neighborhood on Sunday afternoon and again on Monday afternoon. Trees had been across our private road. I had seen, and broken, a little one that had been growing on my property, so it seemed my responsibility, on the Thursday night. After that, the neighbor wanted me to know, the big trees had gone down across the road. Big oak trees, a couple of them. He had finally got the wood sawn and stacked beside the road before his son-in-law came up to help a little. He is about eighty years old. 

He did not say "And some lazy lady writers and Young Grouches of fifty, who might have been out clearing the road for their elders, were nowhere in sight." That is not his style. He liked doing the work, though he felt tired afterward. He wanted his energy and enterprise to be admired. Well...he has a chain saw in his truck. I don't. It took me about half an hour to break up a maple tree about the size of my leg with hand tools--with a little help toward the end. It would have taken me half a day to break a big oak tree, and I would probably have had to break it in more than one place to get it out of the road.

On the Tuesday the cheerful deliveryman delivered Queen  Cat Serena's usual 35 pints of Pure Life water. All six cats still enjoy sharing a bottle of water with me, though the weather's not been all that warm. It's about the sharing. A slurp of water still seems to mean as much to the cats as a piece of meat. 

Anyway, the deliveryman had a phone. I begged a ride down into town where I could call the electric company. On the way down the hill we saw that the power line where the White-Faced Hornets had built their nest was lying in the flooded creek below; the nest was gone. It had been warm, so maybe the hornets escaped. I hope so. They were the nicest hornet family I ever saw or heard of. Then, below that point, we saw where a big old oak tree had taken a little buckeye and a maple sapling down, and taken a chunk out of the road, making a hole, three or four feet deep, five or six feet long, covering the quarter of the road near the long steep bank. When we got into phone range I told the company they would need to make a detour to get to the power lines, which had snapped under at least three fallen trees. 

They said, giving themselves plenty of time (they thought), they expected to have all the lights back on by Thursday night. My lights were on for a few hours on Friday morning; then they went off again until six o'clock on Friday night. 

There was, of course, no Internet. I came to McDonald's today. In town I heard that some of the businesses, and a few houses, were connected to the Internet as of today. Most are not. So far I'm not seeing a mob of people inside the restaurant using the Internet. I am seeing a lot of people out in the parking lot in their cars. Nobody's even trying to guess when my privately funded connection on the screen porch will come back online. 

Oh well...at least the hurricane also delivered unreasonably mild weather. A few sycamore leaves are just starting to color. Everything else is still green, green, green, and overnight lows have dipped down as low as 55 degrees Fahrenheit. Nobody's had any reason to miss either electric heat or electric air conditioning during the week without electricity. The Kingsport Times-News reported that people evacuated from flood zones in North Carolina were able to enjoy camping at nice nature parks in Tennessee.

It will be interesting to see the comparisons between Hurricanes Helene and Camille, Virginia's Official Standard of Awfulness in Weather. I was in California when Hurricane Camille hit the Swamp and don't remember its awfulness firsthand. I was in a different part of California, later, when primary school children were shown an educational documentary film about the awfulness of Camille. But I've read some estimates that Helene was wetter. 

Regular posts will resume when the Internet connection comes back. I have FINALLY been able to open and read, offline, a review copy of a book the publisher tried to send me about a year ago. It's still a good book. I may post the review in two pieces, the Fiscally Conservative Review that jeers at Robert Turner's bad, overpriced, untenable ideas and the Socially Liberal Review that applauds his excellent ideas. Or you could just get ahead of me, read Creating a Culture of Repair yourselves, and tell me what youall think. I think the good ideas outnumber the bad ones and there's an important piece of history in the book, too, that youall probably missed. 

One more thought...Here in McDonald's, the manager was complaining that the McHelp aren't supposed to wear long-sleeved T-shirts under their official McDonald's shirts. No jackets, either, unless they are official McDonald's jackets. I observe that the air conditioning in this building is fantastic. If you're sitting down in here on one of those 90-degree, 90-percent-humidity days in summer, in a few hours you could start shivering. The McHelp are supposed to keep moving, and stay close to the heat sources in the kitchen, which helps--but I wouldn't quibble about their undershirts. 

Butterfly of the Week: Angolan White Swallowtail

Graphium angolanus is another butterfly that, due to having the same general type of wings as the White Lady Swallowtail, has been called a White Lady. Its wings are white, but with wide borders of black, brown, or red dotted with white, and its body is mostly black.. It is found in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa and is named for the country called Angola. 
 

Photo from Reiman Gardens. The color is black or nearly black above...


Photo by Oddb in Benin. The colors are dark brown, yellowish brown to orange, and reddish brown to red, below. Only about half of each side of each wing is plain white. Some observers call it a black butterfly with white spots.


And while the genus as a whole is sometimes called the Swordtail, this--showing about as much as Graphium angolanus ever show in the way of "swallow tails"--,might be called nail-scissors-tails. Photo by Stefaneakame, taken in Yaounde, Cameroon, in July.


Photo by Gwili.

If the scientific name currently seems simple and straightforward, it was arrived at after no less than 21 other names had been used for this species (or some of it). All the Swallowtail-type butterflies were originally placed in the one genus Papilio, so it was Papilio angolanus and P.a. spoliatus. It was also called Papilio or Graphium pylades, a name that is still sometimes used, and P. corinneus and P. anthemenes. Each of those names fitted into the tradition of naming Swallowtails after characters in ancient literature, but angolanus had been recorded first. Several variant forms used to be listed as subspecies of Papilio pylades. Finally, this butterfly was also named Graphium calabar. The species name pylades has been used recently enough to be found on the Internet, but mostly on lists, sites that claim to sell butterfly carcasses, and pages that redirect to the species name angolanus. Pylades has been placed on an Official List of Rejected Species Names. And now some want to break up the genus Graphium and call this species Arisbe angolanus. And some quibblers about a fine point in Latin grammar say it should be angolanum.

Proposed subspecies names addenda, anthemenes, blariauxi, calabar, corineus (corinneus), dawanti, deficiens, houzeaui, howelli, hypochroa, jottrandi, jouani, kitungulua, lapydes,pylades, spoliatus, and wansoni have gone out of use; they appeared to describe individual variations rather than distinct subspecies, and some of the variations seemed to belong to other species anyway. 


"Graphium pylades" has also appeared on postage stamps, as has "Angola White Lady."


Graphium angolanus is popular enough to appear in arts and crafts:


(You can buy a kit to cross-stitch this design onto a refrigerator magnet: https://embroidery-kits.com/products/e/4/9/bat25-belaya-ledi-angoli-graphium-angolanus-magnit-artsolo-nabor-almaznoy-zhivopisi.html. I'm not sure why the crafter chose to show the underside in a wing-spread view, which is usually seen only when the butterfly is dead, but it's certainly more attractive than a box of dead butterflies.)


You can buy photos of these butterflies as wall art, too. Artflakes.com has a photo I found striking enough that I tried to include a small image and a link here, but since the site blocked copying the photo I see no need to include the link. But it's on the site if you look.

It is one of several species that are classified in the Swallowtail family, because of the general shape of their wings, although  only a few of them show even vestigial tails. With that extension on their fore wings, their wingspan is up to three inches. Females are more likely to reach the full three inches than males are. A few sources document measuring individuals over three inches, but not so much as three and a half. 

This species flies all through the year, with most activity in November and February. Caterpillars can eat the leaves of wild plants in any of four genera: Annona, Landolphia, Sphedamnocarpus, or Uvaria; but of every species in any genus. Friesodielsia obovata and Hexalobus monopetalus are also reported as host plants. 

The caterpillars are known to like Annona senegalensis, the Senegal custard-apple, whose fruit humans eat. It is said to taste like a mix of pineapple and apricot. In some places people have even been hungry enough to eat the leaves and flowers of this plant. They have been known to perceive the butterflies as competitors for scarce food resources and spray poisons on the bushes, probably doing themselves more harm than they do the butterflies in the long run. (Actually, although caterpillars do eat leaves, they repay the plants when they grow up to serve as pollinators. I'm not finding reports that Annona senegalensis has alternative pollinators or could survive without these butterflies; many American Annonaceae are totally dependent on their Kite Swallowtail symbionts to survive.) Though the plants and butterflies do well together in the wild state, in every part of the continent where the soil and climate support them, they are said to be hard to rear in commercial farm conditions. It may be crucial to the reportedly delicious custard-apple's survival that people learn not to spray poisons on this plant. 


Photo by Micoltanzania, from (no points for guessing) Tanzania. Adult butterflies pollinate several kinds of flowers. 


Photo by Lc_Three, from Ghana. 


Photo by Yasalde, from Mozambique.


Map generated by GBIF. Yellow dots show places where these butterflies are found. 

There are two subspecies, Graphium angolanus angolanusi, found in the southern corner of the continent (Angola, Botswana, Comoros, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eswatini, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe), and G.a. baronis, found northward, closer to the equator (Benn, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopa, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sao Tome & Principe, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda). The name of Baronia brevicornis commemorates a naturalist called Baron, but the name of Graphium angolanus baronis commemorates a place in Ethiopia called Baro.

For those who travel, a short but relevant link: There's more to Nigeria than e-mail scams. Though a friend who went there said "I don't mind paying twice as much as a local person pays for the same thing, but they asked for twenty times as much." They do love those funny old greenish pictures of our famous buildings and people.



Photo by Tonyking. The northern subspeies, Graphpium angolanus baronis, are good at finding water in dry country.


Photo by Glynlewis, from Zambia. The southern subspecies, Graphium angolanus angolanus, can have bright amber rather than brown patches on the underside and on the abdominal section of the body.

Graphium angolanus looks very similar to what are currently classified as five other species: Graphium endochus, morania, ridleyanus, schaffgotsi, and ridleyanus

Generally, this species is not believed to be in any danger. It is not rare, and often forms or joins large flocks of its own species and others at shallow puddles. However, in Guinea, Togo, and Angola, habitat destruction, "pesticide" spraying, warfare, and excessive carcass "collecting" threaten local populations enough that the species has been listed as endangered.

It does not migrate regularly, but group migrations of Graphium angolanus alone, or with other species, are recorded. Generally it prefers to live near woods where females can find host plants for their eggs; males follow females. Unmated males also like to claim territories at the tops of ridges, and also, of course, gather at puddles where they are most easily photographed. (Males and females look pretty much alike; in some photos of couples one is clearly larger and shows less color contrast, in some there's no clear distinction.) The search for food and water may bring it into grassy fields.

It is considered a bold species, often flying at human eye level and sometimes willing to pose for selfies with humans. (Probably it likes the salt taste of sweat.) Its boldness may be due to mimicry. Though not highly toxic to birds, it resembles a more toxic species called the Black Friar, which is thought to be "related to" our Monarch, enough that birds tend to leave it alone.

The star of this short video is probably bolder than most individuals. No butterfly species could be this bold and survive. This little fellow is trying out for the "Jackass" show.


I didn't even see whether any other butterflies were watching and being impressed, though males of this species do seem to show off to impress one another with their boldness. They're one of the species that play "chicken" with one another and fly at people entering what they're claiming as territory.

It's all part of the mating cycle. They mate back to back, side to side, or some compromise between the two, but there's a set of web sites that claim to be about "flowers of" various African countries and then show pictures of this species mating aerobatically, as they sometimes do, with one butterfly hanging upside down from the other, holding on by some of the mysterious internal parts of the tail tip. You'll find those if you search. I'm not sure I want to reward them with links. A photo of butterflies mating amidst other photos of butterflies doing their thing is useful for illustrating differences, if there are any, between male and female wing patterns, but a site that only shows pictures of butterflies mating would have to be called butterfly pornography. We don't endorse porn!

This one, feeding more normally from a sponge in a dish of sugar-water, is joined by a couple of Clearwings. 


Anyway, butterflies find mates and lay eggs. Eggs are placed by ones on the upper sides of leaves the caterpillar will be able to eat. They are greenish white and have the usual Swallowtail bead shape.

Hatchlings are brown with four pairs of harmless bristles, three along the hump behind the head, two at the rear. They immediately eat the shells from which they hatched, then proceed to gnaw small holes in leaves, doing little damage to the host plants.

In the first molt they acquire a brown, yellow, and white pattern.


Photo by Magdastlucia, taken in South Africa. 


Photo by Magdastlucia, taken in South Africa. Yellow and green markings appear on later skins.


Photo by Leani. The last caterpillar skin is light green with a few subtle markings. Only mildly toxic to most predators and about two inches long, it needs to be well camouflaged, and it is. It has a squared-off, almost conic shape with its humped back concealing a green osmeterium. It takes only about two weeks for the caterpillars to reach this relatively large and hungry stage, during which they eat whole leaves. Fortunately there's only one to a plant or tree limb, so the host plant can usually afford their depredations. 


Photo by Magdastlucia, taken in South Africa. The pupa looks like a stiff, brittle leaf with two horns at the top and a "keel" ridge down one side. 


Photo by Magdastlucia, South Africa. Before eclosion, the pupal shell becomes translucent, showing colors of the crumpled-up butterfly wings inside. 

Thursday, October 3, 2024

Hemileuca Nevadensis

Hemileuca nevadensis is also called the Nevada buck moth. Much attention has been given to its relationship with H. maia, the Eastern buck moth. It is not always possible even for experts to tell by looking whether an individual moth is closer to the typical pattern for Hemileuca maia, H. lucina, H. nevadensis, H. peigleri, H. slosseri, H. menyanthevora, H. latifascia, H.. artemis, H. diana, or H. grotei.


Photo from Idaho Fish and Game.

All of these species can be described in almost identical terms:

* Medium to large moths
* Gray wings with a wide white band across each wing
* Kidney-shaped spot about the middle of each fore wing
* Roundish spot about the middle of each hind wing
* Very thick furry thorax
* Long, flexible, often striped, furry abdominal section
* Small flat head; from some angles they may look as if they didn't have heads
* Fly in autumn rater than spring, usually in the daytime rather than at night
* Lay eggs in clusters around stems of trees or plants that will put forth the appropriate kind of leaves in spring
* Eggs hatch into little black bristly caterpillars about the time leaves appear
* Caterpillars molt through five skins as they grow, each skin showing more color and more elaborately branched bristles; color patterns and bristle shape patterns vary
* Each bristle tip contains about as much venom as a bee sting; if tips break off and stick in human skin they may form tiny bleeding wounds that heal only when the bristle tip is removed
* Before pupation caterpillars hide under dead leaves and/or dry soil; they may or may not spin a little silk across this material but don't build complete cocoons
* Pupae are often found with cast-off caterpillar skins still attached to the back end
* Moths live entirely on fat stored as caterpillars and not used up in pupation

Species differences have usually been described with pictures of typical individuals showing that, e.g., Hemileuca nevadensis typically has smaller spots on the hind wings and wider white bands than Hemileuca maia. But in practice there is enough variation among individuals that individual moths have to be dissected and examined under a microscope to be positively identified, and even then some individuals found in places where both maia and nevadensis live are too close for even experts to call. 

So what makes them distinct species? Behavior does. The caterpillars choose different food plants when given a choice. Their choice is not a matter of individual whim; each one may nibble on the other species' (or types') foodplant as survival food, but will be healthiest on its own proper food. Diet seems the most influential factor in determining their color. Diet probably also determines the scent the adult moths exude. Humans don't smell the moths themselves, although humans have analyzed some moths' scent and found that it may contain chemicals that can be used to synthesize "clean, fresh" scents used in things like hand lotion. The moths, however, can follow each other's scent half a mile away. They can tell the species, age, sex, and reproductive status of one another. Normally they show no interest in mating with the other species that look just like them, though maia and nevadensis occasionally hybridize. They behave like distinct species even though they look like local variations among one species.

As regular readers will know, H. latifascia, that looks very similar to nevadensis and has been classified as a subspecies of nevadensis for a long time, but it does not hybridize with nevadensis as easily as it does with menyanthevora. H. menyanthevora has been counted as a subspecies of maia but does not hybridize with maia and does with latifascia. I listed menyanthevora as a separate species because enough has been written about its distinctions to make a full-length blog post. I will here consider latifascia as a subspecies of nevadensis because that's how almost all writers have considered it; H. latiascia is not listed as an endangered species. Enough has been published about nevadensis to make two articles but few writers distinguish nevadensis from latifascia. Being both found in California and occasionally found from coast to coast, nevadensis may be our most abundantly documented Hemileuca, yet no online source that Google wasn't hiding attempted to explain what originally caused it to be recorded as a separate species from latifascia.

Some experts, like Alpheus Packard, originally classified menyanthevora as a subspecies of nevadensis, rather than maia. They seem to have been overruled, possibly because menyanthevora has been confirmed only in New York and Ontario. A family group may have strayed into Wisconsin but is not being reported to have established the species as native there.

I will, however, make a correction. Earlier I said that DNA and hybridization studies suggested that menyanthevora and latifascia are more "closely related" to each other than to maia and nevadensis. Legge et al., in this document that Google did not pull up--how recently was it digitized?--in searches for maia or menyanthevora, state that DNA studies did not find a clear genomic difference between maia and menyanthevora, that menyanthevora's close relationship with latifolia showed clearly only in the hybridization studies. This makes the menyanthevora story even more interesting and also shows the difficulties built into writing articles from online research when search engines are allowed to hide 90% of the results of a search. Legge et al. concluded that there seem to be consistent differences in animal populations that are not explained by genes.


Alpheus Packard, who thought it was a subspecies of maia, nevertheless wrote a few pages about nevadensis


It was recognized as differing from maia mainly in having smaller spots on the hind wings, and by the different look and behavior of the caterpillars. Specimens from New Mexico were much bigger than maia but specimens from further north were not. Some nevadensis have a wider white band than maia normally have, and some don't--it's a continuum. 


Photo by Howell C. Curtis. All Hemileuca species are variable. Individual nevadensis can have wider or narrower bands across the wings, lighter or darker gray color, more or less orange fur on the body, and also their wing scales can fray off and leave the wings looking transparent. (Packard called the color "Indian red," referring to a kind of dyed cotton that used to be imported from India.) Males have big plumy antennae on their heads; females have smaller, less conspicuous antennae and, though the antennae don't have a knot at the end, are often mistaken for butterflies. Nevadensis have wing spans between two and three inches, and usually fly in the daytime.


Photo by Nutsaboutkitties. Variations in the sizes and colors of older caterpillars, as well as adult moths, seem to depend more on diet than on heredity or general environmental conditions. Because of this variability, it's hard to distinguish species by looking. The list of Hemileuca species named and described has gone above seventy, with most of those species being quickly demoted to subspecies or variant forms. When I wrote that 2013 blog post, there was disagreement about the precise number but most sources agreed that there were "more than twenty" species of Hemileuca. Now DNA and hybridization studies suggest that there may be only six. Or seven, counting H. menyanthevora. Well, the horrid caterpillars (the word "horrid" came from a Latin word for bristles) have always made most people want to leave this genus alone, but they are an interesting genus, from a biologist's point of view.


Photo by Mlodinow. Usually clear gray and white, nevadensis's wings can also be tinged with brown.

And James Lofton even found one that looks as if it were trying to be an understudy for the Acherontia moths in Silence of the Lambs:


The conservation status of this variable, wide-ranging species is patchy. According to Nature Serve, H. nevadensis is believed to have coexisted with H. maia as far east as Pennsylvania and to have been extirpated in Pennsylvania. It's not missed. However, nevdensis is protected by law in Indiana, in Idaho, and in central Canada. Though not protected, it still occasionally strays into New York.

Some, apparently concerned that most of Ontario is free from Hemileucas, believing that Ontario needs more stingngworms, have seriously proposed importing latifascia to crossbreed with menyanthevora in hopes of increasing the range and numbers of the Hemileuca population there:


Meanwhile, across the lake, US scientists have worked on a formula for preserving bacteria culture in a methyl compound, supposedly to control nematodes, happily noting that it kills Hemileucas as well. In view of the Vicious Pesticide Cycle, adding that stuff to the Ontario breeding effort might make Hemileucas a real pest in Ontario. Could the frail menyanthevora, whose adaptation from desert to northeastern wetland habitat seems shaky, such that most female moths are believed to live only one day, become a real pest? With pesticide sprays, stranger things have happened. The main natural predators on Hemileucas aren't easy for humans to see, but with any nuisance species, when you kill the predators, you get a population explosion. Any Hemileuca that shares human habitat is a major nuisance.

Of course, if your feeling is "They're not interesting; they're all disgusting stingingworms and all we need to know about them is how to get rid of them," you're not alone. No Hemileuca is a major threat to crop yields but all Hemileucas go through a caterpillar stage in which they're covered in venomous bristles that cause acute pain on contact with human, All of them are apt to drop off their host plants with all their bristles facing out and sting anyone on whom they happen to land, or even crawl in under the edges of clothes or shoes. More about the caterpillars below.

Whether you believe we should not allow any of God's or Nature's creatures to go extinct, or believe the whole genus Hemileuca should go extinct and the sooner the better, modern science has learned a few things about Hemileuca populations. 

1. They generally increase when the species' host plant is abundant and especially when host plants or trees grow close together. 

2. All nuisance species populations increase steadily after an initial drop if people try to "control" the pests by spraying "pesticides." Killing most of the first generation sprayed also kills most of their natural predators. Prey species reproduce faster than their predator species, so in the next generation more pests have fewer predators, so the pest species are now reproducing faster than their predators. The local pest species population are, at the same time, evolving resistance to the "pesticide" although increasing levels of exposure make it increasingly toxic to longer-lived animals like humans. This is known as the Vicious Pesticide Cycle and the only way to break it is to live with a lot of the pest species for a year or two. Then nature will start to restore its balance.

3. When a Hemileuca population increases due to an increasing food supply, at first they're under-predated. Then natural predators move in. The primary natural predators on Hemileucas are insects, fungi, and virus--lifeforms smaller than the caterpillars are. The most efficient way to restore natural predator species to balance is to stop using "pesticides." It won't happen overnight, but where the pests are, their predators will come. 

4. Meanwhile, humans can help speed up the process by applying sticks to caterpillars and by "collecting" moths. An easy way to collect a variety of male Hemileucas is to find a newly eclosed female, crawling up away from her pupa with her wings still wet and wadded up, and let her stretch out and dry off in a cage covered with window screen mesh or cheesecloth. Males will then gather on the outside of the cage, and can be collected and euthanized. It's not hard to fill a display case with different-looking specimens. Or the collection can simply be burned.

People who want to make sure Hemileuca populations don't rebound keep plants and trees they can eat well separated. Humans cannot easily pick the egg clusters off the upper- and outer-most twigs of live oak or even cottonwood trees, but in most places they can separate those trees from one another by a few different kinds of trees in which birds can perch. A female moth who can crawl from treetop to treetop, hardly even having to fly, is well camouflaged and has a good chance of avoiding predators and producing three or even four egg clusters. If she has to fly past a few other trees to find the next suitable tree, the moth is much more likely to become bird food. 

5. There are those who will reintroduce Hemileucas to a place where they have been extirpated. And they'll admit it. Are they humans? Is this a thing humans would do? Well...we are the species that invented pollution, rape, and war. As a way humans harm one another, reintroducing stingingworms to a neighborhood actually seems minor. But very ill advised.


There are those who rear them as pets.


"I felt mild stinging while cleaning their cage," the propagator of stingingworms confesses. Yes. Those brittle bristle tips wear off as the caterpillars go about their business, It may not be only your imagination if you feel prickly at the mere sight of a stingingworm.

Scientists classify the Hemileucas as members of the giant silk moth family. Though far less "gigantic," the structure of veins in their wings is similar to the Luna and Polyphemus. The Hemileucas also share another feature with the big silk moths: they don't eat after pupation. This accounts for the shape of their little flat heads, which contain only eyes, the bases of antennae, and the minute moth brain. The caterpillars are large and extract a good deal of nutrition from relatively hard and dry leaves, but they use most of this nutrition to pupate. Moths store only enough nutrition to allow them to fly for a few days. 

Giant silk moths could easily become overpopulated and wipe out their host plants if nature had not stacked the odds against any individual silk moth's ever finding a mate. Lunas typically fly for about as long as the moon is in the sky. Some of the other big silk moths may fly for five to seven days if nothing eats them during that time. Hemileucas have been known for fly for as long as ten days, but they are very vulnerable to predators and very unlikely to survive for ten days 

Hemileuca nevadensis caterpillars are most often found eating willow leaves, though they're not monophagous and also thrive on cottonwood and other host plants. Calscape has a list, with photos, of plants they're known to eat in California:



That little flat head contains very little flat brain. When this moth was a caterpillar, dropping out of a tree, curling up with his bristles out, made any possible predator reconsider eating him. (It also made life miserable if he happened to drop down someone's neck, but he belongs out in the sagebrush country and knows nothing about humans.) Now, as a moth, his idea of self-defense is showing any possible predators the part of him they want to eat first. (How do we know he's male? Body color is not always a reliable guide, though the rule is that males have tufts of red fur on the tail end and females have none, but if you enlarge the picture you can see his plumy antennae.) He has no idea how much more touchable, or even edible, his fur is than his bristles used to be.


Photo by Aaron. There may be some justification for this mostly counterproductive reflex. It may make the moth look more like a hornet, or advertise its presence to predators who are not interestd in it. It may even, according to Aaron, help the moth to froth; Aaron notes that they may secrete white froth if really perturbed.

Who would want to perturb a moth? Possibly a scientist whose substitute-for-religious faith was perturbed by it. The taxonomy of Hemileucas is baffling. No matter how much faith people have in Creation and Intelligent Design, they can't deny that populations evolve in adaptation to environmental conditions. Students studying fruit flies can control the fruit flies' environment and cause their population to evolve within the limits of their species--from a group with mostly red eyes to a group with mostly orange eyes, and back again--over the course of a school term. Selective predation, dropping individuals with the trait the students want to breed out into the tadpole tank, will do it. But getting fruit flies to evolve into a different species, e.g. gnats, is not possible. Could one species of Hemileucas be nudged to evolve into a different species? For closely related species that can share the same habitat, that might be possible. The difference between H. maia and H. lucina is that maia caterpillars thrive if they eat oak leaves during the early stages of their lives, and about five percent of a group can survive if they eat other kinds of leaves. Over twenty or fifty years, could a group of maia be coaxed to develop a tendency to thrive on meadowsweet leaves, or a group of lucina be coaxed to develop a tendency to thrive on oak leaves? No one seems to have made the experiment, but it seems unlikely to work. H. artemis, also often considered a subspecies of nevadensis, will crossbreed with nevadensis but the resulting caterpillars don't show "hybrid vigor." Hybrid hemileucas can produce offspring but so far no hybrid family has kept going for even ten years. 

John F. Cryan studied the Hemileucas extensively and wrote an extraordinary short book about what he called Hemileuca iroquois and believed to be a natural hybrid between maia and nevadensis. His ideas of how the species evolved were discarded as quickly as his name for menyanthevora but, in honor of his study of these moths, they are sometimes called Cryan's Buck Moths. His book is worth reading, especially his fantasy about how the young space explorer crries her pet stngngworms around in her pocket  Now that's a "what not to do" and a half.


In fact there are a few aberrant people, like Alpheus Packard, who claim to have handled stingingworms without being stung. A careful researcher can, of course, handle insects without touching them; generally our touch does insects no more good than their touch does us. Any contact with Hemileucas stings, but the sensitive skin on our hands can grow callous very quickly. Packard's hands just might have been callous enough to have touched his stingingworms with only completely dead skin...but don't try that at home. In any case, caterpillars carried around in pockets tend to be crushed and make ugly green stains on clothing. 

In Wisconsin, where their ranges overlap, even experts aren't always positive about whether a Hemileuca is maia or nevadensis or a hybrid between the two. 


By the time the caterpillars start wandering about alone (see below) maia and nevadensis caterpillars normally look different. Nevadensis are more likely to have clearly marked stripes along the sides and rosette-shaped bristles on the back, but the main difference seems to be that maia caterpillars thrive on oak leaves and nevadensis do better on willow and cottonwood leaves. Even this is not a hard-and-fast rule. In the central States and provinces where maia and nevadensis have a chance to hybridize, they can. But it may be that the crossbreed caterpillars were the ones Henne and Diehl observed looking like nevadensis, eating oak leaves, and maturing more slowly than nevadensis found eating cottonwood leaves in the same general area. (They wrote from Manitoba.) The hybrids do not become menyanthevora.


Considering the theoretical question of how H. menyanthevora evolved, whether they evolved from maia or nevadensis or both, Rubinoff and Sperling seem to be suggesting that menyanthevora  shouldn't be protected as an endangered species.since, if they went extinct, they might be re-created by reintroducing maia or nevadensis to the same environmental conditions that produced them in the first place. The position of this web site is that theoretical appeals to a theory of evolution won't answer this question, but a long-term experiment in selective breeding might. At least scientists who did a long-term experiment that would involve rearing stingingworms would have earned their fame. No scientists seem interested in trying the experiment. 


Just to make things interesting, while adult nevadensis look so much like maia and the other mostly gray-winged species, the caterpillars look remarkably like burnsi, which grow up to have white wings with black markings. I imagine that the Hemileucas were Intelligently Designed by a Creator with a sense of humor: "One day these humans are going to evolve a civilization advanced enough that they can afford to sit around studying moths, and what a time they will have with THIS genus!" And, of course, the caterpillars' bristles were meant to be prickly but harmless like most caterpillars' hairs and bristles, and acquired venom as a consequence of sin. Nobody else has to believe that. It just seems the most logical explanation for the Hemileucas. Or, as Nature Serve puts it, "species concepts in this group are unstable." And Funet, usually a reliable source of history on how our knowledge of a species has developed, seems to throw up its collective hands; it currently offers no links for nevadensis or latifascia, though it is holding a data field for them.

The real "giant" silk moths often rest with their wings spread out, like butterflies. The Hemileucas don't they can fold their wings as the Noctuids and Tineids do, which seems appropriate. The Noctuid moth family includes most of the garden pests and the Tineids include the grain-eating and clothes-eating species that are pests indoors. 


Photo from sandia.net, showing a Nevada Buck Moth in New Mexico with his wings folded. In this position the darker specimens look like giant Meal Moths. 

Like most Hemileucas, nevadensis fly in the daytime, between September and December.


Photo by Finatic. Once her wings expand, and again if she lives long enough that additional eggs are ready to be laid, the female moth actively signals for males to help her do something about all those eggs. She does this by extruding the scent organ at her tail end, which releases a scent humans don't smell but have analyzed and synthesized. According to McElfresh and Millar: 

"The major and possibly only component of the sex attractant pheromone of the moth Hemileuca nevadensis (Lepidoptera: Saturniidae) from southern California was determined to be (E10,Z12)-hexadecadienal (E10,Z12-16:Ald). Detectable quantities of the analogs (E10,Z12)-hexadecadien-1-yl acetate (E10,Z12-16:Ac) and (E10,Z12)-hexadecadien-1-ol (E10,Z12-16:OH)."


Paul Tuskes observed that a male nevadensis was induced to mate with a female H. lucina only when the moths had been both reared and caged together. He didn't experiment with H. maia, but they are believed to hybridize with maia, occasionally, where their ranges overlap. 



Photo by Ispoon. The larger of two Hemileuca moths is usually the female. Some pairs of H.nevadensis have been photographed mating back to back, as most moths do, taking care not to touch wings, but some pairs positively embrace, the larger moth enfolding the smaller one between its wings. For about an hour they adore each other. After that they'll probably never see each other again and, if they do, will show no sign of recognizing each other.


Photo from sandia.net. Mama Moth lays her eggs in a tidy cluster on a food plant. The eggs expand and harden a bit after being laid but you can see why the female looks fat and feels eager to unload these things. All the eggs a moth will ever lay are in her body from the beginning; as some eggs are laid, more have room to develop. A Hemileuca may live long enough to lay three clusters of eggs. The biggest brood, with the most viable eggs, is always the first,

Most moths mate back to back, quickly before anything can see them, and, obviously, try to avoid making contact with their wings. Silk moths, whose wings don't have to last as long as most, are more likely to make time to cuddle. The Hemileucas are far from holding the title for prolonged cuddling; some of the bigger silk moths spend the whole day, if they do find mates, smelling and touching. Some photos of nevadensis show them mating back to back, but some couples mate face to face around a twig. Either way, before and after the act of egg fertilization they typically spend up to an hour snogging. Then they separate and show no further interest in each other.

Since the male, likewise, produces the most viable offspring in the first mating, Hemileucas are most attracted to young moths who have not mated before. Males have been known to ignore older females, who were real, nearby, and exercising their scent organs to let the males know they had fresh eggs to fertilize, while the males were busy searching for a younger female whose scent had been applied to some inanimate object. Female moths have not been shown to be quite that stupid but they, too, lose all interest in their first mates if they get a chance to mate a second time with a younger male who has not mated before. "The selfish gene" overrides whatever affection the moths felt during their hour or so of passionate romance.


Photo by Davidemartin. The first caterpillar skins are black. Later skins show different amounts and arrangements of yellow. Generally yellow seems to increase, in proportion to black, as caterpillars mature, but actual patterns vary. At this age they are quite active but seem to know that they're safest from predators when predators see them as one great big bundle of bristles.


Photo by Mathewlbrust. Young Hemileucas like to stay in a cluster after hatching. Each one's bristles protect it from its siblings' bristles, and anyway they don't pack much venom at this age. If they have to move to a different host plant they may move in a procession. As they grow bigger, they avoid constant relocation by separating.. 


Photo by Hasfitz5. I thought this was a photo of one caterpillar molting but, on closer examination, it's a bigger sibling following right behind a smaller one. Here is a video, with the time-lapse photography considerably speeded up, making the caterpillars look spastic.


Photo by Cheiris. Shorter rosettes of bristles, as found on older caterpillars, allow more bristle tips to touch skin and are likely to cause more painful sting wounds than longer branching bristles (like those still found at the back of this specimen's head).


Photo by Cchapin. The first rule of not being stung by stingingworms is not to do this. Avoid contact. The bristles are pre-loaded with venom; the caterpillar does not have to make an effort to sting, its cast-off dead skin will remain irritating. A friendly relationship with a young Hemileuca is a distant one. The way I recommend approaching these caterpillars is with a stick. If for some reason you want to keep the animal alive, put the stick down in front of it. Curiosity about a stick that suddenly pops up in their path usually motivates caterpillars to climb onto it, at which time humans can move a caterpillar who is still peering nearsightedly down at the stick, no doubt thinking "don't see anything about this stick that makes it different from other sticks"

It is not perfectly clear whether Hemileucas know they are venomous. They are social creatures and seem to like one another. Even when caterpillars seem to quarrel and try to prod each other with their bristles, they don't actually sting each other, so they have no way of knowing how nasty they are to everyone else. They are probably not "hateful" and "evil," the words that usually occur to people who meet them in real life, so much as they are numb, dumb, crawling digestive tracts just like the harmless caterpillars. But they are under-predated. What natural instincts usually tell humans to do when we encounter a stingingworm is healthy and appropriate. Instincts say to get them between a firm, solid substance and a solid, heavy stick, and apply enough pressure to flatten the skin among the bristles. Bristle tips break off easily and continue to leak venom for days, so it's good to use caution in disposing of the stick.

Understanding how the bristle tips work is the basis for what is known about first aid for accidental contact with a stingingworm. They all cause pain. How many bristle tips touch your skin, and how many may have stuck in the skin, seems to make the difference between a brief "sting" like touching nettles, or nauseating pain radiating from the site of tiny wounds that continue to seep blood for weeks. Stingingworms' bristles work like bees' stingers. The wound starts to heal, and the pain to clear up, after the tips are out of the skin. Most sources recommend touching duct tape or something similar to the skin, because that usually lifts out any bristle tips that are sticking in, and washing the skin with cold water. Applying an ice pack and whatever else the person uses to distract perself from pain may also help. In theory a person who was violently allergic to insect venom could go into anaphylactic shock from making contact with a stingingworm, but in practice it almost never happens. Anyway those people have usually been advised by doctors to carry Epi Pens.


Photo by Hanslaske. Yellow and white bristles above are good camouflage for a large caterpillar crawling through dry grass. A cow, sheep, or horse might inadvertently ingest this caterpillar and be sick. Fear of this danger ran high, about a hundred years ago. In practice the caterpillars usually seem to coexist with nicer animals.


Photo by Eknuth, who offered this brown-topped individual a stick to crawl onto after confirming that it was following him. Stingingworms aren't known for following people in a deliberate attempt to crawl up anyone's leg, but if the ground is hot enough to be uncomfortable most caterpillars will crawl up whatever is available. Most of the caterpillars we find crawling on the ground are looking for a place to pupate, deliberately seeking something that's not their food plant and not where predators will look for them--but stingingworms pupate in the ground, so thermoregulation is their most likely motive for crawling up things other than food plants. Anyway they fit into Edward Lear's pseudo-scientific species name, the Nasticreechia Krorluppia. Few of the creechia that want to krorluppia are nastier.



Photo from BioRxiv. Latifascia is Latin for "side bands" but not all caterpillars with side bands are necessarily latifascia.

In the final instar some can be described as yellow-green or yellow-orange. They may make some gesture in the way of a cocoon, or just try to hide in leaf litter, in order to pupate through the summer, typically June to September or October. Cage-reared specimens don't even seem to require leaf litter, although people trying to rear Hemileucas in the Eastern States, where the air is damp enough to aggravate their susceptibility to fungal infections, have reported success from encouraging them to pupate in a layer of finely shredded toilet tissue above a layer of kitty litter. Apparently the absorbent soil, like the hot sand and dry air in their native habitat, help keep them dry enough to resist attacking fungi. The absence of leaves to hide in does not seem to bother cage-reared individuals, who just pupate where they are, bare, trusting the mysterious beings who have supplied them with food to protect them while they are morphing. Since there's not much of a cover over the pupa, if there's any, their eclosion is easy to watch and has been documented in videos. 


Photo by Omarfpena. Newly eclosed (hatched from her pupa), the young moth climbs to the top of a plant stalk to stretch out her wings. It takes over an hour for these moths to "get pumped" up to their full size, at which time, or sometimes before, the female starts pumping her scent gland to summon males, and the cycle starts again.