Too Bad About Joann's

Joann's Fabrics stores are going out of business. Twenty years ago that chain was one of the Big Four retailers that together sold ninety percent of the needlework supplies in the United States, and now...

I was in the local Joann's outlet for the going-out-of-business sale. Would it be a chance to get a great bargain even on really basic yarn, like Red Heart acrylic? 

It would not. Even for the going-out-of-business sale, Joann's demanded more money per skein of Red Heart acrylic than Wal-Mart did. 

I'd have to forgive that, though I might not have felt able to justify buying any Red Heart acrylic, from a locally owned store. Joe's and Ann's General Store (Since 1920), if such a place had existed, would probably have been buying their Red Heart acrylic from Wal-Mart, and marking it up by only 25 cents a skein would have qualified as a sincere effort to keep their business real.

But Joann's was a nationwide, I think even continent-wide store, a serious competitor with Wal-Mart; Joann's had stores as big as Wal-Mart with only the needlecraft department, so Joann's could and should have offered all kinds of yarn Wal-Mart didn't have room for, at competitive prices...the way Michael's and Hobby Lobby have stayed afloat by doing. 

And did they? No. It's sad that Joann's went down but it's instructive to remember that why they went down is, among other things, that all they learned from Hobby Lobby was Hobby Lobby's big mistake. Joann's didn't sell specialty yarns but crammed their shelves with cheap store-brand substitutes...not for luxury yarns Wal-Mart didn't sell and most knitters couldn't afford, but for Red Heart.

Seriously.

At the time of writing, even with inflation, you can still buy enough Red Heart to make a sweater for an average adult for $10 or less. The world does not really need cheaper substitutes for Red Heart; they exist because other manufacturers keep trying to replicate Red Heart yarn and not succeeding.

For most of this winter I've been wearing a tabard I knitted for myself out of the cheap substitute for Red Heart Wal-Mart tried to offer. Whether or not you ever wear acrylic jackets, here's what you need to know: Red Heart acrylic jackets are indestructible. People dig them up from under cubic yards of mud after a flood, run them through the washer and dryer, and wear them again. The yarn bounces back to its original shape. The colors don't fade or run. Nothing made out of Red Heart looks posh to knitters who recognize it, because we all recognize the cheap blanket yarn dime stores sell for kids to learn on and crocheters to make tacky afghans out of, but you just about have to snip or burn Red Heart to make it look any worse than it always did. I'm not a snob; I don't think it looks bad at all.

I wore an over-dress made of Red Heart acrylic when it seemed necessary to run a few miles in heavy rain. It stretched, of course, as it got wet. I was holding the hem up around the waist and it was still a long dress. It looked ruined. I took it to the laundromat the next day. Pop through the washer, pop through the dryer...it was just the right length for me, same as it had been when I finished knitting it.

But I had bought a pound of this cheaper substitute for Red Heart at Wal-Mart for test purposes, so I made myself a tabard. A tabard is a personal blanket with a hole in the middle for your head, sometimes with flaps to extend over shoulders. I knitted it just long enough to pile around me while sitting down in cold weather. I knitted exactly two inches of V into the front neckline. Before it was even knitted the cheap yarn started to pill, which makes it look as if it's been washed and dried many times, but it has yet to be fully immersed in water; it's been worn like a blanket rather than a shirt and has yet to be soiled. And already the hems flap around my ankles and the V is down to my waistline. And the shoulder flaps, knitted to extend an inch or two above my elbows, are forming long sleeves.

Most cheap acrylics will stretch--beyond all imagining, if they're handled while wet--and are not really worth knitting. You can use them to knit itsy-bitsy patches of color, but after your first twenty or thirty knitted projects you have a stash of scrap yarn that you use to knit itsy-bitsy patches of color. Probably the best use for cheap acrylic yarn is as stuffing. There have been other acrylics, most originally made by Monsanto and trademarked as "Wintuk," that will make fabrics whose stretching can be controlled, and I always like to experiment with the new brands to see into which category they fall, but...sad but true...most of them are execrable.

(Caron Dazzle-Aire was probably, of all acrylic yarns ever made, the closest to Red Heart in durability. It was a casualty of people's feelings toward Monsanto. I have Dazzle-Aire sweaters that I still wear, and Dazzle-Aire yarn in my wool room that I'm still knitting for sale, because this yarn really does feel like kittens' fur and wear like iron; Dazzle-Aire doesn't even pill as much as many smoother yarns pill. Caron Simply Soft, which is still made by a company that bought the spinning operation away from Monsanto, will stretch in use, but reasonably--a blanket will stretch enough to tuck under your toes, not enough to become a carpet rather than a blanket. I can't recommend any other acrylic yarn currently on the market. If, however, the color appeals to a small child, I would buy more of Hobby Lobby's "Yarn Bee" acrylic to make a child's sweater; it'll stay cute through one or two wearings, which is about how long it takes a small child either to lose a sweater or to outgrow it.)

So this Joann's store had whole shelves full of cheap acrylic, for which they wanted about as much money per ounce as Wal-Mart wants for Red Heart, and a few leftover skeins of Red Heart, for which they wanted more than Wal-Mart wants for Red Heart. And they wondered why nobody was buying this yarn even on this going-out-of-business sale. Nobody with the math skills to knit would ever have bought yarn from Joann's, because they never offered competitive prices. Even for their going-out-of-business sale their prices aren't competitive.

Joann's primary commodity was woven fabric. I don't buy enough woven fabric to judge, but it didn't seem to me that their prices on woven fabric looked very competitive either.

How did Joann's ever get to be a competitor with Wal-Mart, Michael's, and Hobby Lobby, whose prices are generally competitive with one another? There's only one explanation: Joann's was there first, in places that didn't have Wal-Mart, Michael's, or Hobby Lobby. 

And so, although in some places Joann's may be missed...we can't remember it as a casualty of the economic damage the COVID panic has done. The demise of Joann's looks, from here, like a simple and desirable market correction.

Butterfly of the Week: Euphrates Swordtail

The Euphrates River is in the Middle East. Graphium euphrates is found in the Philippine Islands and Sulawesi. Early naturalists named the Swallowtails after heroes of literature. Rivers were in fact personified as characters in some ancient literature; they were believed to have spirits that could talk if you could only understand their language, and could give or withhold favors for which people asked. However, if the Euphrates was cast as a hero, the story has been forgotten. 

Photo by Chrischafer. The butterfly is a pretty little thing, very similar to some other Graphiums; not all lists include it as a separate species. It can survive a reasonable amount of at least suburbanization. It does not seem to be endangered, or even threatened.

https://pbh-butterflies.yolasite.com/binangonan-shifting-habitats.php

Photo from Hedcentrcp.wordpress.com.

In some lights the pale color on the wings can iridesce light blue.

Photo by Stijn De Win. 

In other lights it can look chalky white.

There are a lot of Graphium species, and from time to time people try to divide this genus into subgenera so that the species can be listed with different genus names. There is some disagreement about whether to call euphrates and its look-alikes Arisbe or Pathysa. 

Sorting out the look-alike species can be a challenge for experts. Per Adam Cotton:

"

One good way to distinguish decolor from euphrates is to look at the bands of the forewing cell. In decolor the 4th band from the base is normally narrower than the second and third bands, whereas in euphrates it is as broad or broader. Also on the underside the outer discal parallel black mark in space 7 is straight in euphrates but slightly bent in decolor.

"

(https://collector-secret.proboards.com/thread/2435/help-philippines-butterflies)

Euphrates has been listed as a subspecies of antiphates and as a synonym of moorei. Decolor and euphratoides have been listed as subspecies of both antiphates and euphrates. Real science does not reach a "settled" state readily and seldom stays in one for long.

Some lists include subspecies of euphrates. In addition to decolor and euphratoides, which are more often considered as separate species, subspecies of euphrates have included boholensis, buhisanus, cuyoensis, domaranus, elegantia, nisus, ornatus, and zebraica. Legantia, sometimes included as a subspecies name, is probably a misprint for elegantia. The first four subspecies names refer to places; the meanings of the last four are obvious. (Probably. Nisus was a character in Greek mythology.) 

However, no online source except Funet bothers about subspecies. Separating the look-alike species appears to give naturalists enough of a challenge. Then again, Google's commitment to "force traffic" to paying commercial sites by cutting off searches may be suppressing more detailed academic material from search results. What Google displays on a search for "graphium euphrates" is debased enough, with links to, among other things, a tabletop ornament described as a "zombie house" with these butterflies, and other things, as decoration--though euphrates is not one of the species with eerily gleaming reflective white patches on the wings.

Butterflies' wings are usually transparent and colorless beneath the layers of scales on the surface, but in this species group parts of the wings have a light yellow-green color that shows and iridesces through the pale surface. A microscopic examination is said to show that some of the scales toward the front edge of the fore wings are shaped like hairs, shorter and finer than the furry hairs on the inside edges of the male hind wings. 

Host plants are Annonaceae in the genera Annona, Desmos, and Uvaria. Again, as the taxonomy of this species group remains in an unsettled state, nobody seems to want to say much about the earlier stages--though rearing these butterflies and seeing what they ate, and how they reacted to one another, would be one way to settle the question of which ones may be considered subspecies of which other ones.

Fictional Characters I Would Not Like to Meet

First the status update: The news for the private Internet connection is discouraging. I'm online from McDonald's. The hiatus will still be indefinite.

It's a little late for the Long & Short Reviews link-up, but why not answer the question anyway? Here are ten fictional characters I would not like to meet. Once again, I'm consulting my memory in more or less chronological order, so I will not be surprised if all of these come from children's literature, and forget about "diversity" in publishing--it didn't exist when these memories were formed.

Though the characters are certainly diverse...only a small majority of them are even meant to be human.

1. Maleficent from Disney's Sleeping Beauty

In the original, real version of Sleeping Beauty that made Disney's name, I'm told, parents objected that Maleficent's shift into dragon form was too frightening. They said "for the children" but they meant for themselves. I'm not surprised. I came along in time to learn to read from the four-volume set of printed Disney movie stories, and in the book the still picture of Maleficent in angry-humanoid form looked bad enough...even though a little later I learned that all it took to defeat her and her hedge of thorns was the Bible (Disney garbled a reference to the book of Ephesians). Maleficent is a personification of the Deadly Sin of Envy. She's meant to teach children how we do not want to grow up. She is where the "let's start everyone with equal state-dependent poverty so we can have equal outcomes" line of thought leads. It pretends to be compassionate, just as Maleficent tried to seem pretty and polite in her first scene, and then it turns into the dragon that is a personification, or alien-ification, of the Evil Principle.

2. Aunt Sarah from Disney's Lady and the Tramp

Cruella de Vil was too ridiculous to be taken seriously as a villain. Jacques Lebeau was probably not ridiculous when he was written, but he seemed ridiculous by the time I was reading about him. The villain of Disney dog movies was Aunt Sarah, who moved into Lady's home with her cats and blamed the poor little spaniel for everything the cats, not to mention the stray dogs, did wrong. Even as a preschooler I knew that things like Aunt Sarah happen in the real world and need to be avoided. 

3. Miss Minchin from Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess 

By the time I read the book I'd met many other fictional adults who were just not kind to the fictional children in their stories. Miss Minchin was especially awful because she kissed up to Sara as long as she could send Sara's father the bills. That made her seem easier to dislike than, e.g., Injun Joe in Tom Sawyer, who (1) had understandable motives for the bad things he did, and (2) was safely dead at the end of the book.

4. Rob McLaughlin from Mary O'Hara's My Friend Flicka, and from its sequels, and the prototype published later, Michael from Wyoming Summer 

They tried to sound like my Drill Sergeant Dad and they never seemed as if they'd even earned the right to it. Conceited, bossy, spoiled brats...and their author didn't even seem to realize how unlovable they were.

5. Sterling North's Rascal 

Sterling North convinced me that he liked having that raccoon follow him around everywhere. And that I wouldn't have liked it. All the animal ever did was make trouble. Rascal seemed very similar to Aunt Sarah's cats, who seemed worse than any real cat I ever met.

6. Nellie Oleson from Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little Town on the Prairie

She was literally too unpleasant to have been real. In most ways the books seem to have told the truth about what was mentioned in them--they merely left out a lot of things, and quite properly--but when it came to Laura's and Mary's encounters with other children, they changed things to avoid lawsuits. All the unpleasant aspects of everyone the Ingalls girls knew were compiled into the fictional Oleson family. No one person could have been as annoying as Nellie and Willie and their parents are in those books. The Olesons seem almost to stalk the Ingalls family through the books, although they're annoying in different ways. Simply blurring the details of real stories about different people created uniquely unpleasant fictional characters. 

7. Judy Blume's Deenie

The girl whose biggest concern about having to wear a back brace was not about its sticking to her in hot weather or interfering with anything worthwhile she wanted to do, but about its discouraging boys from groping under her clothes in movies. Ick. None of Judy Blume's characters sounded like anyone I would willingly have talked to twice. Deenie was the worst, until Blume started writing about alleged adults who were as boring as her worst child characters.

8. Antoine de Saint-Exupery's Little Prince

Nobody that naive should be talking to unfamiliar adults without parental supervision.

9. The Health and Safety Brownie in the Brownie Girl Scout Handbook

The fey oldfashioned brownie of my childhood was later replaced with a humanoid cartoon called "Suzy Safety." Either way, simply listing precautions is reasonable, but putting them into the mouth of a know-it-all character is annoying. No one would want to meet a character like that in real life.

10. Miss Lucinda Lark in Mary Poppins and sequels

The voice of stuffy social climbers everywhere, Miss Lark got what she deserved when her spoiled dog started barking back and insisting that she adopt his buddy the stray mongrel, but I can't imagine her ever taking her mind off the impression she's making long enough that anyone could stand her company. 

Bad Sign on the Tennessee Border

I don't cross the Tennessee border on Route 23 very often any more. I walked down that road almost daily, just ten years ago, when I had friends and clients on the Tennessee side.

Now they're all dead. 

They weren't young people; some were only "retired" and some were positively geriatric patients,  which was why they hired help, but although their reactions varied, they all had Bad Days at the same time. They all showed reactions to one thing. For about ten years we had no idea what that thing might be. Then Jeffrey Smith mentioned in an e-mail that it might be glyphosate--and all the pieces fell into perfect place. There was no possible room for doubt. Whether they were celiac, pseudo-celiac, cardiac, diabetic, arthritic, or had some other chronic condition, all of them felt worse, were more "disabled" by whatever conditions they had, and were apt to feel grumpy and disagreeable, after exposure to glyphosate. 

More than that, some of them had children and grandchildren whose reactions were worse than theirs. The child who never showed any lack  of empathy, but had vision and hearing impairments, seemed "brain-damaged" or "autistic" to other people when exposed to glyphosate. The man who'd broken a knee walked with more of a limp when exposed to glyphosate. The woman who'd wanted a baby lost the fetus when exposed to glyphosate. It wasn't even so much that people my age had cancer--it was that their kids did.

I don't think any of Mother's friends died of COVID. Most of them died before COVID. Most of them were older than Mother was, and although Mother's death at eighty-five was indeed untimely, most of her friends were one step away from nursing homes before they died. They gave thanks if they died before being sent to nursing homes. Glyphosate probably was not the cause of their death, although it may well have been the cause of Mother's death. Glyphosate most certainly was the most conspicuous cause of their illnesses and suffering during their last years--more conspicuous than sugar, or wheat, or even alcohol, even when those were known to be symptom triggers. 

As long-term readers know, it was only in 2018, after standing in a bustling open-air market and watching a whole crowd react to glyphosate vapors in their several ways, that I started taking this concern seriously as a Celiactivist. I realized that glyphosate specifically, not genetically modified foods generally, was the great universal symptom trigger in 2015 but I still had to see to believe how much harm this poison was doing to everybody, from geriatric patients to primary school children. 

So I'm  not writing this post to judge those Tennessee farmers who plan to be spraying "herbicides," glyphosate and even worse poisons, on the land before planting in the next few weeks. You've all heard arguments for and against glyphosate and the other poisons. By chemical companies' salesmen you've been told that you can't expect good crop yields without these poisons.

Would I lie to you, Tennessee farmers? My parents farmed. My parents tried planting fields, the first year after all chemical use was discontinued. Planting acres of soil with perfectly good seeds and getting hardly enough of a "crop" to provide the whole family with a home-grown side dish at meals. Picking the dozen or so ears of corn, finding the earworms in each ear, taking all that hard-won corn to the animals and buying corn at the store from farmers who still sprayed poison. Enduring the kindly meant lectures of people who wanted to cling to their "pesticides." Living on the wages of one part-time job in town, or moving back to a city to do jobs they loathed. No, the first few years when your farm is breaking an addiction to that Vicious Pesticide Cycle are not going to be good years. Yes, you'll be very lucky if you don't hear piteous whines from the children: "If you really loved us you'd stay in the city so we could have nice things like all our friends have."

Deal with it. Because while Kennedy's mission in this world is to clean the poisons out of the food supply and thereby bring those lean years upon you, Trump's mission is to crank up the economy to the point where you can get those part-time jobs to keep the land while it recovers. You've seen the bumper stickers, "Please send us another 'boom'--I promise I won't waste it this time." Keep that promise. Trump's economic plan is not sustainable but, if we don't waste its benefits, it may get us through the inevitable decline that comes with the end of the Waste Age. Within ten years of breaking the Vicious Pesticide Cycle you can expect to see good crops again. 

You had fifty years to choose to heed what my father tried to show you about breaking the Vicious Pesticide Cycle. Yes, there's a cut-off point for everything. Yes, the people demanding glyphosate-free, glufosinate-free, neonicotinoid-free, paraquat-free, dicamba-free, non-GMO food are demanding something similar to bricks without straw from you. Yes, we feel sorry about this...but there are limits to everything, and at least you can deal with the resurgent monster weed problem, in the first year or two after you stop spraying toxic chemicals on the land, by applying hot water to the weeds. Steaming a weed to death leaves nothing on the land but water that actually helps other plants grow. Yes, you should anticipate a total ban on all "herbicides" and go herbicide-free now. No, you can't expect a lot of sympathy for the pressure to switch to safer weed-wilting technology. Breaking the "insecticide" addiction will be much worse, and you need to start that now, too.

But every economic cloud has a silver lining. In this case, we're talking about longer and healthier lives for farmers. Currently, because of contact with chemicals,  life expectancy (and insurance expenses) for farmers are hardly better than for coal miners. Do organic farmers enjoy longer and healthier lives than coal miners? Absoflippin'lutely. So who's bringing the average for "farmers," generally, so low? Would you like to stop being at such high risk for so many horrible diseases? Would you like to stop having many of the diseases you now have? 

Farm women these days...I remind so many of you of a grandmother or great-aunt you had, just a little-bitty thing who stayed slim and active through middle age, old age, even very old age. You wish you'd taken after her, you say wistfully, looking down over your billows of flab. Even before you had the baby you sprouted up fast and then, right away, you started slowing down, feeling that it was better to buy a size larger clothes every year than to force yourselves to exercise. Well, you got some exercise; not all the work on a farm has been motorized and mechanized yet; but your thyroids...it's a gene...

Stop. Please. Yes, there's a specific gene for thyroid dysfunction. Mother had it back when normal women were slim. I have the gene, too. Did you know that even dysfunctional thyroids can be brought under control with the right diet and exercise regimen? The dysfunction actually flips; Mother's thyroid tended to slow down; mine tends to speed up, but people can actually choose whether to run our thyroid metabolism at a fast, slow, or average pace. Controlling that sort of thing becomes much, much easier when you're not exposed to glyphosate.

Some of you have a different gene for a milder thyroid dysfunction that doesn't flip. Good for you--it's even easier to control, without even taking pills, although the pills you might take would be cheaper than the ones Mother used to take. But yes, that too. You too can be trim, strong, full of energy, and as much of a "hottie" as you want to be, at thirty or fifty or seventy. 

Can we talk, Tennessee farm women? Southerners don't have whole different standard vocabularies we use when talking to people of different generations, as some Asian people do; we say "you" to any person of any age, but we say it with different tones and manners. I have heard a lot of you speak to me as if you thought I was the age of your daughters. I am closer to the age of your mothers. It was understandable. You're fatter than I am, you move more slowly, you feel worse more of the time. You needed glasses before you were old enough to fit into standard eyeglass frames. The skin on your faces sags off the bones and wrinkles and wobbles in that way that actually shows ill health, but is often confused with the look of old age. You blame the way you look and feel on your age, so then you look at me and think I look younger than you are. I do not look young. I look fifty or sixty years old. I am what a well-preserved person of grandparent-age looks like. You do not look old, either, really; you look unhealthy. You have no right to be so "old" when some of you aren't even forty years old yet, but you are. You are going to experience reverse aging when that total glyphosate ban goes into effect. You are going to look and feel the age you really are. Some of you have the kind of hair that turns white earlier than mine, and some have the kind that stays black longer, but nature intended the work you do on your farms, with your men and your children, to be fun--and so it will be.

People in Glyphosate Awareness do not want you to be poor and miserable, Tennessee farmers. We want you to be strong and healthy, to enjoy the job of raising food that keeps other people healthy. We want you to look as good as you feel and feel as good as your work is. 

Many of you inherited land that was already stuck in an addiction-like vicious cycle, and you've kept it in that cycle. You've been enabling the addiction when you had a mandate from Nature to break it. You will have to break the addiction. That never has felt good and probably never will, during the withdrawal stage...but it/ll be worth it when the land is healthy again. 

Imagine relaxing by the river with a rod and reel...and catching full-sized fish that are fit to eat, instead of knowing that your river barely supports sunfish and carp and they never grow to eating size. 

Imagine feeling romantic rather than exhausted at the end of a long day of farm work with your Partner for Life.

Imagine Junior without the learning disorders, Princess without the eating disorders, and The Teenager growing strong biceps, a manly chest, a deep voice, and rejoicing in young manhood instead of fretting that it might have been meant to be a girl.

Chemicals have done you a lot of damage, Tennessee farmers. When you stop exposing yourselves (and other people) to those chemicals, it is going to feel like the Kingdom Coming and the Year of Jubilo. You too will feel like singing along with George Harrison, as an e-friend's got me doing when I recover from a glyphosate reaction: "All (I've) got to take is (a walk) to make it blow away, blow away, blow away!" Goodbye and good riddance to those chronic disease conditions!

There may have to be a year or two when we have to buy our plant-based foods from more sensible farmers in Mexico, and they may cost ounce for ounce as much as gold...but then will come the years when Tennessee farmers are raising and selling "gold," too, before the land recovers completely and the prices of things like strawberries and tomatoes stabilize.

You too have a right to live to be 90 or 100 years old, Tennessee farmers, and you too have a right to enjoy every one of those years. You have a right to grow old without hearing that anyone you know personally has cancer--such a rare, bizarre disease. You have a right to live in a world where the normal end of life is that people's hearts stop in their sleep some time after age 95. You have a right to do as well by doing as much good, and enjoy as much good time in this life, as Jimmy Quillen or Dolly Parton.

But where there are drugs, there are pushers. The pushers of American farmland's addiction to the Vicious Spray Cycle are out there, putting up signs like the bad sign currently disgracing the Tennessee border on Route 450--you know, the one urging farmers to "Stand with glyphosate."

Stand with cancer?

Stand with Crohn's Disease?

Stand with autism?

Are any real Tennessee farmers so glyphosate-damaged you can believe that kind of idiocy?

I know, I know. I've seen it on Twitter--where I also know that it was coming from chemical company spokesmen, because Real Farmers do not waste sunny summer days on Twitter. "Agriculture isn't gardening, Priscilla, dear.  We don't have time to hand-pick weeds and insects away from crops."

Well, if you don't have enough respect for the ecology in which you're raising crops to deal with weeds and insects in a mindful way, without causing harm to anyone but the nuisance species, you may not be the ones who need to be doing agriculture. There's nothing really wrong with selling farm land to someone who cares enough about farming to do it in a mindful, sustainable, natural way. Agriculture must become more like gardening. It must get back to its roots. Abundant crop yields are good but the essential goal of agriculture is healthy crop yields.

Stand with strawberries, Tennessee. 

Stand with corn.

Stand with potatoes.

Stand with tomatoes.

Stand with beans.

Stand with peaches.

Stand with cherries.

Stand with milk.

Stand with eggs.

Stand with turkey.

Stand with quirky little artisanal crops like "wild" persimmons, watercress and land cress, pawpaws, morels, and dandelion shoots.

Stand with the fuel that runs bodies through the kind of lives you want your children to have.

Stand with eating the "weeds"--most unsprayed native plant species are edible, some quite tasty, and many are at their best when they pop up in the places where you don't want them.  Glyphosate positively encourages, through the Vicious Pesticide Cycle, the most unlovable weeds--kudzu and Spanish Needles, Bermuda grass and jimsonweed--but nature intended Tennessee to be blessed with such "weeds" as land cress, dock, dandelion, spring-beauties, ground-ivy, chickweed, chinquapin, catnip, pennyroyal, boneset, queen-of-the-meadow, ladies-thumb, ground cherries, cleavers, clovers, millet, and (at worst) smilax. Native "weeds" are not to be wasted, much less to be poisoned. Most of them belong in salads; the rest are valuable as medicines. They are meant to be received with gratitude, used, and enjoyed. 

Stand with solid bones, strong muscles, vigorous hearts, and generally with bodies that are built to last through ninety years of good hard work that feels satisfying, not debilitating, every day..

Stand with good health and good life, Tennessee.

Stand with a total ban on all "herbicide" sprays this summer, with bans on all poison sprays soon to follow and strict limits on use of "insecticide" powders and oils.

Tell the chemical salesmen to go and drown themselves in vats of glyphosate.

Petfinder Post: Mutually Amplified Purring

Cat Sanctuary cats have generally stuck with a simple two-cat ying-yang when they don't escalate to a total purr-pile, but here is a...

Photo from Tomthebackroadspoet.  

And here are some photos of cats, and dogs, who can be adopted as families or foster families if you have room for multiple pets. Personally I think cats who are at least semi-social, having a noticeable bond with a favorite sibling, mate, or parent/kitten, are the most interesting kind. Typically you can enjoy a real bond with one of the complete purr-unit while the others may be free to bond with other humans in the household...the alpha cat's social status seems to be boosted by its ownership of what the cats regard as the alpha human...but other configurations are possible. Sometimes social cats have a relatively egalitarian family structure where each cat has its special job to do. It's fun to observe what the animals work out among themselves. 

Zipcode 10101: Stunner from Saudi Arabia via NYC 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/stunner-sa-turkish-angora-75395004/ny/new-york/zanis-furry-friends-zff-inc-ny606/

Shelter buddies Lucy, Angelo, Boo, and Prince were all rescued from the same alleys in Riyadh. Not known to be relatives, they are friends. All but Prince are half-grown fluffballs, "small" under the fur, and all have extra-long, extra-soft coats. The shelter insists that you adopt at least two of them together unless you're looking for a companion for another last spring's kitten. They are alley cats without pedigrees but even experts will believe they're the lost heirs of Persian and Angora cat royalty. For the breeds they're said to be friendly and lovable. I'd be surprised if they purred when turned upside down and tickled, but that's generally an impulse nice people resist when they meet long-haired cats. 

Zipcode 20202: Thing 1 and Thing 2 from South Carolina by way of DC

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/thing-2-75852890/dc/washington/final-victory-animal-rescue-sc497/

This is Thing 2. These bright young Things don't have enough of a photo collection to show how easy they will or won't be to tell apart. You will know which one's which, but other people may not. Anyway they're bouncy-pouncy kittens who won't make a total Cat in the Hat mess of your house if you set up a cat playroom where they can bounce freely, and close the doors to the rooms where they can't. Thing 2's face sort of reminds me of what I've been seeing around the office these days, having given Serena office privileges. It is a sweet face. She's the owner. You're the pet. She will be patient and gentle because she likes you. Open the door, or fetch the kibble, or do something useful or at least entertaining now. Guided by carefully doled out displays of affection, you'll soon learn how to tell what's expected of you. It's easier to live with two of this kind of kitten than with one, because they'll grow up doing the rough games with each other and the snuggles with you. 

Zipcode 30303: Diana Ross Who May Be From Atlanta, or Tennessee, They're Not Clear 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/diana-ross-75856544/ga/atlanta/your-local-fur-mama-tn1052/

What is going on, Georgia readers? I'm searching the Petfinder page for cats who are known to get on well with other cats...Oliver the handsome orange tabby is still there. Mirabel and Bruno, the fluffball siblings, are still there. Waldorf the dappled gray tabby is still there. Marilyn the Mew-Model (I can't seem to force myself to type "mewodel," because they didn't say her "mew" sounds like a yodel) is stillthere. Mama Flo the unusual two-tone lady cat is still there, languishing alone, kittens adopted years ago...presumably her foster humans just love her and can't scrape up the money to adopt her for themselves? Penny, Lilith, and Vera, the Weird Sisters, are still there...ditto. All on the front page, all known to be at least semi-social, all cute as can be, and I refuse to post the Weird Sisters' photos again this year. Youall need to share these photos with people who need cats. I cannot believe that anyone who enjoys my social cat stories would not want to adopt the Sisters, or at least sponsor their adoption by the foster family who probably don't want to part with them. "Ordinary" tabby cats? Maybe, but they are pretty tabby cats, and have extra toes.

Maybe there's been a monster adoption campaign to place shelter pets who've survived Hurricane Helene, and Atlanta shelter pets are just being left behind?

Anyway, this little Diluted Calico wins the cute photo contest, no contest at all. Though you notice how she's being held in a way that practically forces her to display some less than ideal kitten behavior, and she doesn't look distraught about this. And you notice that she doesn't look like the legendary soprano,  few if any cats do, so the resemblance has to be...You have been warned. Her shelter buddies are Marina, a classic calico who's resisting the temptation to hold on with her claws even when posed the same way DR's being posed, and Hermione, a dark tortoiseshell who's clever enough to pose adorably all by herself. They're all about the same age and about equally fluffy so they probably have a three-sister thing going on. They would be ideal for a family with three humans because, no matter how devoted to one another they are, every calico cat sister deserves her own human lap to curl up on.

10101: Princess Apricot from NYC 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/princess-apricot-ny-75347581/ny/new-york/rescue-dogs-rock-nyc-ny1274/

You can see what the trouble with this dog was. She's a Pomeranian...mix. Poms are supposed to be smaller than cats. Princess Apricot just kept growing and her humans' landlord made them choose between their home and their puppy. She's still a puppy; she may eventually be bigger than this. She still identifies as a Pomeranian and likes to snuggle on any available lap. If you don't mind snuggling a dog who is big enough to walk at your heels for a few blocks, Princess Apricot is for you. 

20202: Chloe from DC 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/chloe-75878332/dc/washington/chaos-to-the-rescue-md563/

If "black-mouth cur" sounds to you like an insulting way to describe an unwanted stray dog, then it's time you at least visited Chloe's web page. It's an actual breed name and Chloe appears to be a cross between that breed and German Shepherd. Curs are serious dogs, as are Shepherds, so there's no need to waste their time if you're not prepared to offer the big yard with high fence, trail time, training, and substantial meals a dog of this size needs. However, she came to her foster home all by herself, eager to join a happy multi-species family with other dogs and even a pet rabbit, and they say she fit right in and got on beautifully with everybody. All but evildoers who might annoy you when you want to walk alone through a local park. She might be nice to them, too, for all that's likely to be known, but one look at her will probably send them scurrying away like roaches when the light's turned on. 

Zipcode 30303: Butterfingers from Texas by way of Atlanta 

His web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/butterfingers-75851750/ga/atlanta/waiting-under-the-willow-foundation-wuwf-rescue-tx2467/

At the time of posting he weighed just fifteen pounds. Do not be deceived. He will grow into those paws. He's a puppy. If you enjoy the challenge of having fun with a happy-go-lucky, clumsy, cute little fellow while gently and firmly bringing him up to be a civilized, responsible dog, this Young Yeller type is for you. It would also be ideal if you enjoy road trips and would like to see some of Texas, because although he's advertised for adoption in Atlanta, the adoption fee almost doubles if they have to drive to Atlanta. 

Status Update: I'm Alive, the Internet's Dead

The only interesting thing about this half-week's news is that the first thunderstorm of the year zapped the Internet in an unusual way. I'd closed and covered the laptop when lightning appeared to be striking a tree up in the woods; the hot-air fan wasn't running but I'd pulled a blanket up around my face and made a bid for some sleep at a normal time of night, about 4:30 a.m. Minutes later, when I'd got deep enough into slumberland to think "Whatever" instead of bolting up in shock, lightning appeared to strike something closer than the woods. Either it went down with a loud, lasting rumble or it was close enough that the thunder and lightning occurred at the same time. 

Then I peeked out from under the blanket and saw the surprising thing. The laptop's little running lights were steady red, one staying on and one blinking in rhythm--not blinking fast to tell me the flow of electricity had been disrupted. Not even by the computer's draining and recharging the battery, as Microsoft's sinister machinations have finally got it doing. The electricity was on! Nothing had been touched, on the screen porch, by this near miss with The Storm and Its Fury. 

But the Internet was completely dead. No "emergency only" connection was available. Not on Monday morning. Not this morning, either. So I packed up the laptop and came into town, where I find even McDonald's connection limping along on "emergency only" wireless hardware. Apparently the storm took out all of the regular Internet connection-ware. I e-mailed the company to report the outage and then noticed that, funnily enough, their web site wasn't working properly either.

So this web site is in for another hiatus. How long this one will last, or how much private Internet connection owners' rates will increase as a result of it, I have no idea. I'm taking it as another reminder that we're all better off with just a few public-access computer centers, all connected up to the teeth with multiple servers and generators and all, instead of private connections that take so much more wiring and repairing. 

I had written the blather for this week's Petfinder post. I don't know whether I'll be able to find current Petfinder links on Friday. So this week's Petfinder post should appear, if McDonald's emergency connection lasts, this evening. A few more thought pieces and butterfly posts will appear on schedule. The next Status Update will let you know when I'm online again.

The Link Log Weekender You Missed: 3.28-30.25

(This post was on the laptop for editing when the laptop was quickly closed and moved indoors, before the Internet went completely dead, during the big storm early Monday morning.)

Actually I spent a large part of this weekend in bed, half awake, with complications from a chemical reaction that were uncomfortable enough to prevent real sleep while I still felt too sleepy to do much of anything useful; nothing life-threatening but nothing remotely like enjoying the lovely spring air. The only spring flowers I had a chance to enjoy were the ground-ivy and the first few daffodils in the not-a-lawn and the Fantastic Feral Elberta Peach Tree out on the property line. (Nothing ever gets that little tree down; despite the cold nights of winter, which have guaranteed that most local peach trees won't produce fruit this year, it is covered in bright pink blooms.) Grump grump grump. I was so grumpy I even yelled at Serena-cat, who was so perturbed by being yelled at that she didn't even show me the mouse that got into the office, although she caught it. Link hunting on Sunday afternoon feels like a step toward full recovery. I expect to be fit for yard work by Monday.

Serena, however, says I'm still below par and need careful observation. Humans are a frail, nervous, rather tiresome species, she says, apt to make loud noises when exposed to mundane annoyances like fires, insects, and wet shoes, but when they shout at cats their condition must be extremely bad.

Animals 

For those who've been enjoying the butterfly posts, which the computer shows people are doing, but wondering...Yes, considering all the species in alphabetical order does mean that the majority of the butterflies we've discussed aren't even found on your continent--whichever one that is. (Yes, the butterfly posts are read on all the continents where butterflies live. So far the computer has not reported this web site's being read on Antarctica.) Yes, because science is global and legislation is local, "Well that's nice that we're informing African readers about African butterfly species, but what the bleep does that have to do with glyphosate?"

In some African countries glyphosate is a very serious problem; remember, one of the glyphosate e-books I recommend everyone read comes from Africa. The sovereignty of individual nations has given some people blessed relief from glyphosate and other mistakes a majority of humankind have made. That's one reason why we should not grant any global organization any authority to do anything beyond offering mediation services as an alternative to war. (And of course, if the global organization bogs down in an outdated, discredited ideology that has become a substitute for religion for those who bought into it, and fails to offer viable answers to countries that seek mediation services, then we have the current UN mess, with the would-be global dictators issuing their diktats on topics they should know they have nothing to do with, while the globe erupts in wars, and the Trumpistas' call for defunding the UN does sound like a reasonable business decision...but I digress.)

In other countries glyphosate may not even be an issue relevant to protecting local butterfly species. In some countries glyphosate is already banned. In those countries butterflies are presumably more threatened by other things. As we're seeing, some butterflies seem to be in great danger, either because changes to their environment are threatening their existence or because they're so rare that the local subspecies' survival may depend on twenty individual insects. Other species seem to be well adjusted to their environments, even as those environments change; some species have been thriving in suburbs for two hundred years. This web site can't judge or advise readers on what else may or may not be needed to protect every butterfly species on Earth. 

You, the individual reader, must use information about your local butterflies to protect them from threats to their existence. All we can say about butterflies generally, worldwide, is that they're not pests; they are beneficial to sustainable agriculture, because they're composters or pollinators or both; and nearly all of them are totally dependent on "weeds" to survive. So the first consideration, wherever butterfly populations decline, is making sure that people aren't spraying pesticides that kill those "weeds" even when the "weeds" are in their proper places and ought to be appreciated as native plants. 

It goes further. As we've seen, in many places beloved butterfly species live in total symbiotic relationships with vines that grow in deep dark forests. What happens when forests are lost to excessive logging or urbanization? Right. The last thing people living on Nicobar island need is American keyboard warriors telling them what to do. I respect that. Readers on Nicobar island are adults and can work out for yourselves what you need to do. This web site only reports information.

But here, from the analytical and teacherly mind of Elizabeth Barrette, is a summary of what readers can be doing on behalf of butterflies--generally, nationwide or worldwide, wherever you are:

https://ysabetwordsmith.dreamwidth.org/14821137.html

I'd posted comments before the last big browser crash, which means I'm retrieving the link after EB's had time to post informative replies. So the link is not as new as it should have been when it appeared here, but it's been enriched with extra facts.

Communication 

I saw it on Joe Jackson's blog. Google traces it to somebody called Lanhdanan on Imgur.

New Book Review: Cursed Kingdom

Title: A Cursed Kingdom

Author: R.A. Lindo

Date: 2025

Quote: "Prepare your openings and understand that every word will count."

The students who "win" a creative writing competition find themselves acting out adventures in the world of their stories. Their preparation for each stage in their journey involves dreaming or writing more of the story they're about to live out. 

Their first big adventure reaches a kind of resolution, at the end, but lots of loose ends are waiting to be tied up in a series. This is the author who gave us the long series about Kaira Renn and this short novel gives every indication that another long series is on its way.

Will you want to read the series? Maybe. How much do you want to find out whether Lena will choose Tom or Jack, what's wrong with unfriendly Hayley and how she'll get over it, whether she'll pair up with one of the boys, how their parents will be involved, what happened to Tom's father's friend Sleeping Bill in the years he's spent in the collective fantasy world...The concept is interesting; it should be fun to find out where Lindo takes it.

Butterfly of the Week: Andaman Swordtail

Graphium epaminondas, the Andaman Swordtail, is a rare species found only on India's Andaman islands. In fact, it may be resident only on one island, South Andaman. The question is whether to classify it as vulnerable, threatened, or endangered. It has only ever been reported on the islands and has been numerous only in a few specific places. Its population, never very large, is clearly decreasing due to human activity, but how much protection does it need?

Photo by Evannazareth, taken in September on South Andaman.

Americans see it as beautiful; it looks like a Zebra Swallowtail, only bigger, with more orange than blue undertones in its colors. It's described as black or brown, white, and orange, rather than black, pale blue or green, and red. (Funet.fi has both Oberthur's and Wood-Mason's detailed descriptions, so precise that a person who had never seen the butterfly could color in an outline and achieve a reasonable likeness.) Its wingspan is typically about four inches. Males and females look similar.

Photo by Minla8, taken in March on South Andaman.

Photo by Parthasarathy Gopalan, taken in September on South Andaman. This was the only photo of a living butterfly showing its upper wings that a Google search pulled up. It loaded very slowly for me. If it's not showing up on your screen, you can try right-clicking on the space where the photo should be and clicking on "Load image" when the menu shows up.  Alternatively, you may be able to see it at https://www.ifoundbutterflies.org/graphium-epaminondas ,  but that site did not load for me on the first try, either. 

It has been given a few different names. The genus was originally lumped into Papilio; some now split it into Pathysa, which is currently listed as a sub-genus name. The species has been lumped in with antiphates and has been called laestrygonum or laestrigonum or laestrygonium. It was described in 1880, when naturalists were starting to run low on names of heroes of literature to give to Swallowtail butterflies. The naturalist who called it laestrygonum, J. Wood-Mason, explained that because it looked like Graphium antiphates, which was named after an ancient king, he called this species after Antiphates' territory; before publishing his description of the butterfly under this name, he had read Oberthur's description of Graphium epaminondas and was sure it was the same butterfly, but he wasn't sure which description had been offered to the world first. Nineteenth century naturalists determined that Oberthur's description was written first, so the species has been properly known as epaminondas ever since.

Some of us are familiar with a twentieth century picture book character called Epaminondas who was our best known version of a character found in folktales around the world--the very young or foolish person who manages to do each task wrong by following instructions he was given for the previous task. This week's butterfly was, of course, named for an ancient Greek character, a defeated war chief of the city of Thebes. This historical Epaminondas was recognized by his victorious opponents as smart, brave, tough, and the "lover" of another Theban war chief, Pelopidas. 

The most obvious threat to Graphium epaminondas's survival is habitat loss. It lives in forests, where it  is known to eat only one host plant, Uvaria rufa. Its life cycle has not been fully documented but it is believed to be monophagous, like Zebra Swallowtails, living in symbiosis with one plant species. As increasing human populations eat away the forests, the butterflies and their host plants are in decline. 

This species is popular; despite its threatened status, allegedly old carcasses are still being traded, and it has inspired artists. It has been portrayed on postage stamps.

2018 stamps available from https://www.surinamestamps.com/stamp-issue-programme-2018/ The printed sheet places epaminondas among the Birdwings and Bhutan Glories.

This photo from Indiabiodiversity.org is said to include three caterpillars of different ages, showing that this is not one of the Swallowtail species that are prone to cannibalism.  No other source described the eggs, caterpillars, or chrysalides of this species.

Book Review: You Lied to Me about God

Title: You Lied to Me About God 

Author: Jamie Marich

Christians should read this book. It tells us so much about what not to do. 

Jamie Marich, Ph.D., is a multitalented success story you can look up online. Go ahead--read the long list of her achievements now. But don't envy her; in this memoir she tells us she's also a recovering addict. And also, she says, "Queer," self-identifying as plural in this book because sometimes she's writing for her wounded inner children. And they were wounded, she says, by spiritual abuse when her father quarrelled with her mother's church. The acrimony only seemed to increase through the messy divorce and the years of split custody. 

Spiritual abuse? What's that? Many little things, Marich says, but most memorably, it's the toxic sermon her father preached at her when her favorite teacher died. (She cried more loudly, rousing her younger brother to come out of his room and order their father to "leave my sister alone.") Their mother was Catholic; their father had become a Protestant and looked for Catholic-influenced behavior to correct when the children were with him. He even subjected them to Jimmy Swaggart's sermons and Rush Limbaugh's radio show. (Little Jamie still seems to think Limbaugh used "feminazi" to mean "feminist." In The Way Things Ought to Be Limbaugh defined "feminazi" as a woman who is glad when abortions are performed, and estimated that there were fewer than two dozen feminazis on Earth.) The brother, Paul, became a Catholic priest. 

The ill-timed sermon was unforgivable, indeed...in merely human terms. When we presume to tell people how God is going to judge other people, that misfortunes are punishments, that their lives are sure to get worse than they are now, we're lying to them about God--claiming that we know something about God that we don't know. This is a great and terrible sin. Jesus said that a man who does it to children would be better off "having a millstone round his neck, to be cast into the sea." But Christians can ask God for help to forgive such things, when God makes forgiveness possible by leading the offender to repent. Marich's father was active in his new church, and his faith seemed to bear fruit; his children had enjoyed spending time with him, mostly, and their friends enthused that they had "the best dad." And then one night in a moment of hubris "the best dad" said a few stupid words that made his children reconsider and distrust everything else he said. Had he really shared little Jamie's body image concerns as a loving parent, or used toxic body-shaming for more Freudian reasons? Had his "dates" with his children really been as wholesome as, at the time, they'd seemed?

(Tip for those who used to have "dates" or "play dates" with adults in your family: If it felt wholesome and sweet at the time, it was--at least as wholesome as fallible mortals could make it. Elders will probably always seem to the young to have defective senses of humor; that does not make us pedophiles.)

But funnily enough, Marich's symptoms of "spiritual abuse" sound exactly like the symptoms of which so many of Generation X complain. They are or feel fat. They feel depressed. They self-medicate with drugs and sex. Especially and tediously sex, because they want to believe that "sexuality" is the most important thing in their lives. They want to believe that any attempt to control their bodily urges just might kill them, that the only reason why anyone should ever fail to act on a physical attraction would be rejection, for which they'd probably need lots of expensive, addictive prescription pills to make sure they didn't (oh, the horror!) become "sexual anorexics," such as Marich claims to think St. Paul was. 

When I was young I used to think it came from being teenagers, and they'd outgrow it. Now that some of Generation X have grandchildren, I confess, friends, I am puzzled. They could outgrow it any time now, but when?

I think one of the worst abuses that was practiced on Generation X, generally, as a demographic, was allowing them to believe that "sexuality" controls people as they seem to think it does. People are meant to control their sexuality, just as we do the other body functions that are essential to our own individual survival and not merely the survival of the species. You have no control over whom and what you're attracted to, but you have full control of what you do about that attraction. Nobody has a right to blame anybody for having an appetite for food, but people can and do blame those who display bad table manners. Nobody has a right to blame anybody for feeling attracted to an act or a person, but people can and do blame those who voluntarily behave unchastely or indiscreetly.

And so...when people insist on talking about their sexual behavior, some behavior is judged more harshly than others. Marich tells us she's "Queer." Not in the sense that some woman thought she looked like a man and she responded favorably to that woman; in the sense that people carrying around resentment of their opposite-sex parents don't show the "body language" that attracts the opposite sex, and they want to blame their body shape or color or clothes when the fact is that their reactions to the opposite sex are off-putting, so things go on and on and get worse and worse unless, until, someone offers a homosexual experience. The offer might reflect the fact that an individual looks like a "boi" or simply that the person does not show all that emotional conflict every time person looks at someone of the same sex. Anyway, they accept the offer, and then they let that experience define them. They were not "born gay"; they're settling for a same-sex relationship because they're letting their damaged emotions spoil the heterosexual relationships they actually want. 

Emotional healing, like physical healing, happens at its own pace. God loves people who are seeking healing. But it would be very hard to make a case that God's will for anyone's best life is to stay stuck in this quagmire of anger, pride, and lust. 

Marich tells us that she was attracted to boys. But although high school boys may admire the girl who's at the head of every class, it's a rare high school boy who thinks he can hold his own in a conversation with that girl. Later she realizes that one of the boys on whom she had a crush had a crush on her, and they act on that attraction, but he's married someone else by now so they can have only occasional...At this point I would probably have closed the book if I hadn't been reading it on a computer. Anyway, Marich goes on to say, there were two short-term marriages, and then a woman made herself available and Marich realized that she could feel attracted to women too. 

Is that a sin? It's certainly not God's perfect will. I believe our, as in most humans', physical nature is currently discouraging us from reproducing because we live in a crowded world. Still, when that complex of old anger, guilt, resentment, shame, and fear is what's coming between you and someone you want to be with, so you're settling for someone else, I don't think it's true to claim that God made you just the way you are. You also contributed something to the way you are...something you don't like, something you would do better to clean out of your life, no matter what social pressure you may feel to "join the 'gay' community." When you've rebuilt a vibrant relationship with both of your parents and with as many parent-surrogates as you still have in this world, then you have something worth telling the world about how you have really grown up, all the way, to relate to other people.

Marich correctly says that the farce of instant one-way "forgiveness" that only functions to prevent bad situations being corrected, where people are told to accept abuse and move on, is not good for anyone and has nothing to do with what Jesus taught. That's true. What her father said, probably like some things she said to him and some things the other members of the family said to one another, is unforgivable until the one who said it repents. Only then is it obligatory, or even possible, to forgive the offender. Any people, whether connected by DNA or by "choice" or by accident, will get into this situation if they spend enough time together. Lingering resentment, refusal to forgive the person when the person has repented, gives otherwise attractive people an off-putting affect. You're not to blame if the person you find attractive thinks person is only interested in a different body type than yours, or if you're not asked for dates because young people in your community can't afford to date, or for any number of other reasons, but you are partly to blame if you lose dates by radiating resentment. 

Marich has a right to resent the people who say "I'll pray for you" with a clear implication of "...to change and be like me." I'm not so sure that she has a right to claim that her "Queer" voluntary behavior is what God wants for or from her. This is not a tell-all sex memoir, but the book does make it clear that Marich has flopped into bed with men, plural, and women, plural, in the absence of any commitment to a Partnership for Life. We call that promiscuity; the KJV calls it, well, a word that's become too rude for this website to quote, or in more detailed terms selling themselves as slaves and not even having enough sense to pick up the money. It's forgivable--the Old Testament prophets portray God begging for a chance to forgive it--but it is sin.

Should Christians be able to talk to Marich without hitting her with the message that "you just published a BOOK about how you're an open and notorious sinner!"? Of course. Should Marich be able to talk to people without saying anything about her sex life? That, too. Instead of pretending that everything is okay, even sexual abuse of students--which Marich very properly calls out, in this book--we might do better to rediscover the truth that not everything needs to be publicly discussed.

We might rediscover that, when celibacy is not something people inflict on themselves by unconsciously signalling hostility toward the opposite sex, or something caused by psychotic conditions (like some of Freud's patients) or psychopharmaceuticals (like about a third of all users of serotonin boosters), but is chosen as a spiritual discipline to be followed until a person finds a Partner for Life, celibacy is good. 

We might even let ourselves ask whether the wholesale dumping of estrogen into animals being fattened for our consumption has something to do with the increasing incidence, in each generation, of that overgrown, overstuffed capon look. A capon is a male fowl who has been neutered, and these days probably fed estrogen as well, to alter his metabolism so that he grows bigger, fatter, less muscular, than normal males of his species. As the popularity of "growth hormones" has grown, genuine childhood obesity, often combined with early puberty and also early cardiovascular diseases, has become more common in each decade; the majority of graduating classes at many schools now look like what would have been the lonely fat kid at schools my generation attended. That is one known effect of unbalanced surplus estrogen; the other is that it seems to generate estrus cycles in females that may be abnormal, unhealthy, even associated with cancer as estrogen promotes abnormal growth in all types of cells. 

Estrogen-fattened meat marinated, around the time of slaughter, in antibiotics. Chemical preservatives and processing agents in food. Glyphosate in air, food, and water. Atrazine, known to aggravate and un-balance estrogens in all bodies, on suburban lawns. Motor exhaust fumes in the air. Drugs, legal or not, prescription or over-the-counter. Formaldehyde in most non-food items. Chlorine in water. Other chemicals that have not traditionally been ingested by humans popping up in places where we're not looking for them--last year the FDA allowed food companies to market foods, from main dishes to whipped "cream," made with antifreeze as an ingredient. Propylene glycol antifreeze, the kind blamed for killing an occasional pet or toddler who finds and drinks it, as food. It's no wonder that ever increasing numbers of young people grow up fat, depressed, and addicted to sex and drugs. And, because psychologists used to be consulted by parents to "cure" children's behavior, so much of traditional psychological literature has been about what those parents could do, it's no wonder that these young people blame their parents first. Some blame is due to the parents, and some to the schools and some to the doctors and therapists and so on. Still, here's the proof, a few obnoxious words seem to produce the same effect on an adult child who was never beaten, raped, or starved that beating, rape, and starvation seem to produce on those who survived them. We have to start asking how much of the blame is due to the physical effect all this pollution has on the brain and body.

Still, Christianity keeps leading us back to the core of our faith, which is forgiveness. Any liar can say "Your sins are" (or are not) "forgiven"; in the KJV even the apostles said "Thy sins be forgiven," using "be" as the subjunctive form. We would now say "May your sins be forgiven." We should say that, perhaps more often than we do, but we are told that God's willingness to hear this prayer depends on our willingness to forgive those who repent of their sins against us. The process of forgiveness does begin with repentance. Ongoing abuses need to be addressed and stopped even in order for repentance to have meaning. 

The best memoirs are not always happy. Some writers leave the harrowing parts in. Readers seem to find Aristotle's "catharsis" in reading about chatty little Anne Frank's having to be silent all day or Richard Wright's nightmares after having killed a stray kitten. The best memoirs do, however, leave the reader with hope. Richard Wright stopped torturing animals and grew up; Anne Frank didn't grow up, but from the fact that she volunteered to work in the prison camp we know she thought she would grow up. I don't know what God's will for Jamie Marich's life may be, whether she might be called to marriage or solitude or even a lifelong bond with a girlfriend. I do know that she's about forty years old now, maybe (books aren't usually published on the day the writing is finished) fifty by now, old enough to start preparing for the half of life that comes after the sex-ridden years. 

That's a major misconception that Marich perpetuates in her book. Even Freud recognized that voluntary celibacy could "sublimate" sex energy into better things, and St. Paul was one of the world's leading examples and exponents of this truth. Marich claims that Paul disliked women; the Bible doesn't tell us whether he did or not. Only "tradition" says that Paul's marriage was unhappy and he was glad to be widowed. Paul himself tells us that he recognized a woman as his teacher, saluted other female missionaries (at least one as a full-fledged "apostle"), proclaimed that "in Christ" race and gender didn't matter, and then warned women in the church not to push the envelope of social convention too far. Marich goes so far as to diagnose Paul as a case of "sexual anorexia," which only shows how young she is. Paul was asked to write so much because of his seniority. With seniority hormone levels subside; carnal commotion quietens down. Older couples may love each other more than ever, may still allow memory to lead to a few more moments of passion, but generally feel less need to consummate that love the way they did when they were in baby-making mode. Older widows, I know firsthand, may have been passionate in youth and may now be glad that we've "been there, done that," and don't feel compelled to play the dating game again. Sexual opportunities become ways to reminisce; lack of sexual opportunities becomes, well, just the way things go. It's not anorexia. It is satisfaction. We've done what people do when they're twenty years old and moved on to what people do when they're fifty or sixty or seventy.

I wish Marich the ability to find satisfaction, and recognize it, when sexuality stops providing it even in the short-term way it does. Generally humans get about twenty-five years to enjoy being "hot." After age fifty, if we still catch the eyes of the "hot" the resulting conversations tempt us to laugh rudely rather than to flop into bed. Age forty is a wake-up call. One may look and feel as young as ever, at forty, and many people have that one last serious infatuation that might lead to True Love in their forties, but at forty one has to start preparing for the postsexual years.

All this is not to deny the value of Marich's work with addicts, or her creative work--but this book has little to say about her work with addicts or even about her recovery experience. Those were the topics of other books. This is the book about how angry she still feels at her parents and how badly she allowed that to affect her young-adult life. 

It affected her faith, too. Though she still confesses belief in Jesus, Marich also left the Catholic church and then left a few yoga groups. She quotes an American "yogi" who taught that the spiritual truth is the part all the different religions have in common; everything else is "just details" and may or may not be true. And since the Bible doesn't claim to contain all the truth there is in this world (think about it: the Bible says nothing at all about raising tomatoes!), maybe some things the Bible plainly says are untruth, too. And so when asked to serve as a mediator between homosexuals and their conservative Christian families, she always demands that the Christians concede the demands of the homosexual lobby first...

Ah, yes. "Whatever we do not forgive, we are doomed one day to live," counsellors used to say in the 1970s. Marich probably would feel indignant if her demands that traditional Catholics celebrate homosexual behavior were compared with her father's demand that the rest of her family stop praying to Mother Mary. People with that sort of emotional complex usually do. Madeleine L'Engle had a character, though drunk, realize what she was doing and scream at her long-dead father's picture, "Pa, I'm just like you, damn you!" 

I think Marich needed to write this book, and to discuss every chapter with her family in family counselling sessions. Her parents need to express penitence to her. Based on personal experience (I had grievances with my parents, too, and know the benefits of reconciliation) I'd guess that Marich has some repentance to do, too. If Christian families sincerely ask for the grace of reconciliation and not the selfish pleasure of scoring points off one another, reconciliation will be given them. Marich should give that experience five or ten years to happen and bear fruit in her life. Then she should publish the story of how that worked. Then she'll probably recognize that this book has value...as an indicator of how far she's come, how far she's needed to come.