Grandma Bonnie Peters' Gluten-Free Recipe: Garbanzo Salad, Soup, or Spread

Garbanzos are most often planted, in the United States, as cover crops in between wheat growing seasons. Because wheat is the hardest of all crops to weed, the one that gave people the idea of trying just to poison the field so weeds couldn't grow, garbanzos tend to be loaded with pesticide residues. 

Before glyphosate many people formed a prejudice against garbanzos, thinking they were allergic to these "chick peas" themselves. Since 2010 a different set of people may have thought we were allergic to garbanzos and to so many other things. The good new is that the majority of those people aren't even allergic to wheat. They have been reacting to glyphosate. 

When garbanzos have not had chemicals sprayed on them, and not grown in chemical-poisoned soil, they've always been a good healthy food, full of nutrients, to which very few people are allergic. They do need to be fully cooked, which takes a few hours, and used in a diet that includes plenty of water. Like all legumes they react with the acid in our bodies to form gas bubbles that are harmless, but annoying, if we're not well hydrated.

Grandma Bonnie Peters started cooking gluten-free vegan food before 2010, and never adjusted to the horrible new reality that the diet that had restored her health had become toxic in its own way, with glyphosate. All the vegetables in this recipe tend, even today, to be full of glyphosate. 

We still need a ban on this poison. Chemical companies are still fighting tooth and nail to prevent our getting one. We need to fight back. Identify farms that use glyphosate. Publicize where those farms are located, so that everyone can refuse to buy anything from those farms. In the local area, everyone should also avoid speaking to, or touching, or working with, or trading with, or meeting in any social group, the farmers who are still bitterly clinging to glyphosate. If people agree to do this consistently there will be no need for violence or for additional government regulations. 

The Bitter Clingers to Glyphosate are not decent human beings. We stop treating them like human beings. They have become things--walking vats of toxic waste. They have no place in human society. Make them know it, and within a year they should be begging people to accept payment for holding their "farms" for the seven to ten years the land will need to recover from the Vicious Pesticide Cycle, while the Bitter Clingers move to basement apartments in cities and do menial work that feels penitential to them, and pray daily that people will show more empathy toward them than they have shown toward other people. 

If and when this strategy works, then this recipe will stop being a sad memory and become an actual recipe we can use, as it used to be.

Gluten-Free Vegan Garbanzo Salad, Soup, or Spread all begin with the same ingredients:

2 heaping cups cooked garbanzos (2 15-16-oz cans)

1 bell pepper

2 carrots

2 celery sticks

2 T chopped parsley, or more

½ cup chopped English walnuts

Optional seasonings: salt, pepper, lemon juice, onion, garlic, etc., as you like, but taste the dish before seasoning. It’s flavorful all by itself.

Method for Gluten-Free Garbanzo Salad

Clean and chop the raw vegetables. Toss with nuts and garbanzos. Serve on plates lined with lettuce. Garnish with radishes when they’re in season. Pass salt, pepper, lemon juice, and/or mayonnaise. 

Alternatively, break up green leaf lettuce, romaine, or other salad greens; toss them with the salad, and serve in bowls.

Method for Gluten-Free Garbanzo Soup

Heat the garbanzos in a generous amount of water and/or broth, adding the chopped peppers, carrots, and celery while bringing the liquid to boil. Simmer until the vegetables are soft. Sprinkle in parsley and nuts.

Method for Gluten-Free Garbanzo Spread

Cook the garbanzos, but leave the other vegetables raw. Grind everything, including the parsley and nuts, with a few spoonfuls of broth in a blender or food processor. Season as you like. Lay a piece of rice bread or corn bread, or lettuce, on a plate. Carefully spread the vegetable mixture thickly over the bread, and eat with a fork.

Truly gluten-free bread, by definition, doesn’t make the kind of sandwiches you can hold in one hand and eat while doing something else. Some gluten-intolerant people can use bread thickened with potato and tapioca starch; some breads of this type can be used for sandwiches. Gluten-tolerant people can, of course, spread the mixture on wheat bread. 

 

GBP advertised vegan meals, and she herself was one of the people who thrived on the no-added-fats school of vegan cuisine. She would never have added even a teaspoon of oil to any of these dishes. I don't think they need oil either, but some people might  want to add a teaspoon of flaxseed oil for essential fatty acids or sesame oil for flavor. Some gluten-free people might even spread this vegetable spread on a piece of boned and flattened chicken.

New Book Review: The Lingering Dead

Title: The Lingering Dead (formerly Souls of the South)

Author: Philippa Wozniak (formerly Louise Philips)

Date: 2026

Quote: "Sometimes...a house chooses its owner."

Although it's a reissue, what I received was an advance reader's copy of a shiny new edition of this book. 

This is a ghost story. The humans who are alive in the 1930s, when the story takes place, are being moved around by the humans who died during or after the Civil War. If that kind of stories completely destroy your suspension of disbelief, read something else. That's what's not to like about this book

Otherwise it's a classic Southern Gothic story with a sweet, sassy heroine who's in danger of various kinds, sometimes rescuing herself, sometimes being rescued by a handsome hero, and a present-time Miss Louisa who is benign and a ghost Miss Louisa who the present-time Miss Louisa insists is up to no good, and a tangled line of inheritance. Is Ted a Yankee with more money than good sense, who might buy the cotton mill but won't be able to run it, or is he the long-lost rightful heir? The living characters don't know. The ghosts do. And what about the woman who may or may not have been killed before she was placed on the bed beside Ted in the hotel room? 

You'll laugh at the cliches. You'll like Savannah and, as it becomes clear that she's not who she seems to be, enjoy her quest to find out who she really is. You might even manage to like Ted, who seems less conceited than many heroes of romance. If you're not put off by the active ghosts, you'll probably enjoy this book.

Web Log for 3.17.26

I was seeing green yesterday morning...and then by evening I was seeing white. This post will try to bring greenness to all those who are still seeing white: 

[photo from Google]

Books 

A golem story for adults. Warning: it'll be more intense than the golem story for kids this web site recently reviewed, which was pretty emotional. 

https://www.amazon.com/EMET-Roger-Simon-ebook/dp/B0GNX8X9YW 

To my surprise, it's not published by Raconteur, a new, apparently digitally based, press with a mission of reviving the tradition of entertaining books written for men by men--clean adventure stories and comedy and so on. I don't expect to write for Raconteur myself, unless they open a women's division for realistic romances and historical novels, but I do follow their Substack. So many other publishers are still intentionally discouraging White men who aren't willing to write about sexual kinks, I think male writers should be aware that there's still a publisher just for them.

Food 

Shared by Neithan Hador.  Lens says the "Veggiewise Floats" vegetable tray was designed by Jennifer Guerrero, who once, in the past, had a blog post explaining exactly how to assemble a mosaic of vegetables that resembles Pennywise the Clown in Stephen King's It. Oh well you can figure it out. What I find so creatively horrible about Veggiewise is that he's made of all of people's least favorite vegetables--little hot peppers, fading cauliflower, olives, yellow squash; not a tangy tomato or crunchy bell pepper anywhere. At that party he was never nibbled down into harmlessness. He kept floating on the table, reminding people of a movie that was designed to put them off their feed for a week. A person who took this tray to a party would never be asked to bring a veggie tray again...the question is whether the person would be asked to attend a party again.

Sexuality and Mental Illness 

Y'know, although the point being illustrated here is about men who claim to be making or have made a "transition into womanhood," these three sorry excuses for humans are so similar to a certain type of men who want to make sure that the first and last thing everyone notices about them is their being heterosexual males. (I have C-cups, so I would know.) Having babies, or not having babies, really is an important choice to make, though one that normal people discuss only with their mates. Other than that, thinking that the state of your parts and hormones is the most important thing about you, or the most interesting thing, or of any interest at all to most of humankind, seems to be a symptom of fairly well advanced psychotic conditions. 

https://thompsonblog.co.uk/2026/03/world-of-womanliness.html

Spring Break 

Forty years ago I observed that, although Florida is a traditional destination for spring break and the beaches are packed with attractive people from other colleges, something--maybe it's only the crowding, maybe it's also the mosquito spray, likely both--makes those people show the worst sides of themselves to anyone on whom they are not actively hitting. The situation does not seem to have improved.

https://theviewfromladylake.blogspot.com/2026/03/and-you-thought-i-was-kidding-about.html

Some of the problem came from Black students, specifically. Stirring up bitterness and stereotypes and another occasion for me to observe that, in fact, at least one woman who was famous primarily for her beauty came from south of the Sahara Desert. P.J. O'Rourke went to a town in Somalia with some Army guys and reported that the streets were full of people who looked like models. A web search for "Somali-American woman" will show what he meant...I personally would not hire author Ayaan Hirsi Ali as a model. Most of the others whose photos have been published online, I would. Including US Representative Ilhan Omar, who I don't think is working out very well in Congress, but who does have a cute baby face. Not to mention supermodel Iman Bowie.

Anyway, if I wanted to go to Florida, I would avoid doing so during spring break. Usually the homicides are blamed on drunk driving, drunk sailing, and/or other recreational drugs rather than shooting, and get less attention in the commercial media because the People of the Burro aren't hoping to use them for yet another doomed, counterfactual attack on the Second Amendment. Spring break in Florida has always been dangerous. And prices are higher. And public beaches are nastier.

Virginia Legislature 

Our man. 

https://pjmedia.com/tim-o-brien/2026/03/16/virginia-legislators-literally-exempted-themselves-from-their-own-gun-control-law-n4950686

Meanwhile? Fellow Virginians, did you bother to go to the polls and vote for Our Winsome? How many lazy slacker voters did you drag along in the car pool? Those of you who did not bother to vote, voted for this mess, and deserve it. 

Book Review: Crazy Love

Title: Crazy Love

Author: Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Date: 1977

Publisher: William Morrow & Cmpany

ISBN: 0-688-03178-1

Length: 192 pages

Quote: “Didn’t Ted’s background give me pause...? No. Seventeen is the time when life is eminently conquerable.”

In this memoir Naylor, best known as a writer of children’s stories, makes a plea for acceptance of insanity as grounds for divorce. Since most states and even most churches now accept insanity as grounds for divorce, who else needs to read this book? Readers of the magazines that printed Naylor’s short pieces, or of novels like The Agony of Alice, The War Between the Boys and the Girls, or The Witch Herself, who have grown up and would like to read what Naylor had to say to adults?

Definitely not children. This is not a children’s book. Marital relations are discussed, not in gross physical detail but with clinical precision, and they do belong in this story; sexual behavior reveals clues in the diagnosis and treatment of psychoses. The rest of the story is about the adult world of business, money, teaching, college textbooks, hospitals, prejudice, and the Cold War. Nothing in Crazy Love would interest a child. This is not a complete autobiography (Naylor’s memoirs of her own career have been published as a separate book), but strictly a memoir of a brief, painful marriage.

The horror of life with “Ted,” as recounted by his ex-wife, does not involve domestic violence. Ted tries to protect his wife from the “They” he imagines stalking the couple. His efforts to defend his loved ones from this “They” may become dangerous, but Ted always means well.

What was it in Ted’s background that should have made his bride, young Phyllis, think twice? That his Italian/Jewish parents were more likely to express emotions, including frank self-appreciation, than Phyllis’s English/German relatives? This cultural difference generated the sort of hostility among in-laws that wasn’t as funny in the real life of this period as it’s made to seem in contemporary comedy. In some ways Phyllis’s relatives seem to be right, although, of course, they’re the kind of bigots of which Archie Bunker was a parody. The cultural difference kept Phyllis from recognizing what a contemporary reader may recognize as important clues to Ted’s diagnosis and treatment.

Ted’s half sister, who died in a mental hospital, was diagnosed as schizophrenic. Ted’s mother was legally sane, but obese, and obsessed with her irritable bowels. After praying for success on the toilet, “she once remarked to Ted that her excrement, miraculously, had no odor.” In 1949 Phyllis mistook this for a cultural characteristic; even today a nineteen-year-old bride could be excused for mistaking it for the kind of eccentricity that was then called “neurotic.” Odorless excrement is, however, neither a miracle nor a neurosis. It is a symptom. Probably Ted’s mother has one of the genetic digestive disorders that cause the malabsorption and malnutrition associated with some paranoid-schizophrenic psychoses. 

Ted does not have what Freud insisted was the “true” schizophrenia. True schizophrenics don’t have orgasms; this observation was responsible for Freud’s, and to a much greater extent his followers’, overemphasis on sex. Ted enjoys sex.

His behavior is classic “paranoid-schizophrenia,” a different disease according to Freud, and fits the general description of paranoid-schizophrenic disorders associated with enzyme deficiency. First there is general anxiety and tension, superstitious ritualistic behavior, nightmares and sleep disturbance., Then there is the chronic fear that his food has been poisoned—the recognition that something is badly wrong with Ted’s digestion, which is true. Then the brain really starts to break down, and it becomes impossible for anyone, least of all Ted, to predict what Ted may do next.

Ted’s tragedy is that he developed this disease thirty or forty years before doctors began to have a hope of treating it. Today not all, but some, people like Ted can be helped. But, by the time research had worked up to the point where insanity could even have been forestalled for a few years, Ted’s brain would have deteriorated beyond the point at which even a temporary return to sanity would have been likely for him.

Meanwhile Ted’s story illustrates the flaw in the otherwise sound thinking of counsellors like Wayne Dyer or Jay Addams, who believed that the problems people brought into psychologists’ officers could be solved by straight talk and thinking. Many people who consulted psychologists in 1977 could solve their problems with a little straight thinking. But coping with psychosis is not as simple as Addams made it sound in some of his writing. Simple neurological disorders that cause one or two simple, persistent distortions of perception are not psychoses; people do learn to adjust their interpretations of their perceptions to allow for misperceptions like ringing in the ears or “floaters” in the eye.  People who have psychoses like Ted’s don't necessarily misperceive the same thing twice, and since the common denominator among all their delusions is anxiety, they don't just sit back and watch the delusions like a movie (as Lauren Slater, being aware that an antidepressant she used can produce delusions, apparently did).

The young bride Phyllis wants to be a good wife to Ted, but she can’t cope with his disease. In the end she leaves him in a hospital, remarries, and becomes Mrs. Naylor, the successful author. For her this seems to be the right solution, yet it remains tragic and continues to give her pain. Knowing that her tragedy was to some extent a matter of timing makes the happy ending Crazy Love has for Phyllis—but not for Ted—a sad read.

Audiobooks I've Enjoyed

This week's Long & Short Reviews prompts asks which audiobooks reviewers have enjoyed.

I haven't, really. 

I like the idea that the technology now exists to allow people who can't see books to have computers read books to them. Any book they want to hear...at least until the computer "updates" and won't read the book they left off "reading" last month, any more.

I, personally, prefer to read books the good oldfashioned way. I read a lot of books online these days, but I greatly prefer printed books.

There was a time, before publishers almost automatically released audiobook versions of everything and if the publishers didn't bother to hire readers your computer would read almost any book aloud for you, when blind people had to recruit friends to read books on tape for them. I read a few books onto tape for my father and his blind friends. Their tastes were surprisingly compatible with mine.

They always said that the existing library of books-on-tape for blind people contained too many bestselling novels. They wanted more nonfiction--history, biography, travel, health news, the books that grew out of breaking news stories. Regretfully they said that although charts and numbers were good in serious nonfiction books, they made boring tapes. They liked books that were funny and informative. They liked sound effects and hated when the author relied on pictures or visual effects to convey information. Most of them had liked reading once, and had liked Readers Digest as a guide to further reading. (They'd agree with those who said that Readers Digest was bland and superficial, but they appreciated its monthly selections of a bland, superficial first story about something people might or might not want to learn more about, every day.) Cleveland Amory's Ranch of Dreams was one book, new at the time, that I enjoyed reading and they enjoyed hearing. 

(Does listening to an audiobook count as reading? some ask. I say, if people are seriously studying something and listen to audiobooks while they commute, exercise, even eat, until they can recite the information along with the reader, that counts as reading. If they listen to audiobooks as background noise, shout conversations over the recorded voices, fall asleep with the narrators running on, that counts as, well, who's never fallen asleep over a book? The question is whether people get information or insight or entertainment out of audiobooks. Obviously they do. But most people who are not blind or severely dyslexic can get the information or insight or entertainment more efficiently out of real books.)

Web Log for 3.16.26

And a happy St Patrick's Day to all of you who are and are not Irish, even if you're reading this at home, looking out at Big Snow. I felt so much better, this weekend, I did some serious spring cleaning--emptying and scrubbing down a shelving unit, rearranging the shelves, rethinking what to store on them. All the rest of that wall needs is an opportunity to take down, launder, and rehang the curtains. I now have only 35 walls and the floors left to spring-clean. When I get seriously into spring-cleaning I can make it last into July. 

One link and a couple of rants...

Communication, Serious Problems In 

This one was prompted by something posted on a forum, long enough ago that, if you think you know the family, you probably don't. Here's the problem:

You are well over age 70, maybe 80 or even 90, and married to a person with advanced dementia. Your spouse does usually remember who you are and where things are in your home. New memories of who other people are and where other places are don't seem to take. When, for example, you take your spouse to see the dentist next week, you know your spouse will not recognize the dentist but will take your word that this person is a dentist, and will forget, on the way home, having just been to the dentist, and may mumble something like "My teeth feel funny. I should see the dentist." 

Your spouse has a sister who is the bossy type and would be delighted to declare that you're no longer competent to care for your spouse. You don't have children, so sister would be the next candidate to be your spouse's legal guardian. Sister is not very patient and would probably shove your spouse into one of those nursing homes where you've heard senile patients wailing "Help! Take me out of here!" when you've visited friends. Your spouse does not have all that much money, but sister would just love to find a way to get what your spouse does have willed to her.

Sister was not told when the dentist's appointment is, but sister issued one of those invitations that really amount to orders or even threats. You and your spouse must come to dinner and see their new furniture.

"Maybe on Friday?" you say. "Allowing a day to recover from the dental operation? The dentist is thirty miles in the opposite direction from your house. On Wednesday and probably even Thursday we'll both be tired."

Sister says, "No, I insist! You must be the first guests to have dinner in the new dining room!" with a grin like a shark.

You are a Christian, so dropping something into sister's tea, hiring someone to make sure your spouse inherits from her rather than vice versa, or even setting fire to the new curtains is not an option. What do you do?

Logic, Male 

I know it's meant to be funny. Is it funny? How often do things like this actually happen?

https://dmdb.org/lyrics/religion.and.politics.html

Weather 

So far it's not Big Snow, but it's wet snow, freezing and clinging to the pink petals that had just started to cover the Feral Elberta Peach Tree. A feral peach tree that bears fruit that can be identified with a commercial variety is a freak of nature few people live to see--usually, if a peach pit that rolls where gravity takes it sprouts into a tree at all, any fruit it bears are little green knobs--but even the Feral Elberta Peach Tree will have a hard year. 

Book Review: The Changeling

Title: The Changeling

Author: Zilpha Keatley Snyder

Date: 1970

Publisher: Atheneum / Scholastic Book Services

ISBN: none

Length: 232 pages

Illustrations: drawings by Alton Raible

Quote: “[A] changeling comes when some other creatures, gnomes or witches or fairies or trolls, steal a human baby and put one of their own babies in its place...when the babies are just a few hours old...Aunt Evaline and I think I might be a wood nymph or a water sprite.”

Martha is the shy, quiet baby sister in a family of high achievers. Ivy is the creative, idealistic baby sister in a family of tough guys and alcoholics. The Changeling is the story of their friendship, which lasts all through their school years and culminates when the girls have to find out who really committed a crime (a mean girl in their class has accused them).

It’s chick-lit; what Snyder’s son categorized as a “sad story about girls” when he demanded that she write Black and Blue Magic, a funny story about a boy. It doesn’t really fit into the stereotype of what children in any particular grade ought to be reading; too slow-paced and emotional for most middle school readers, too chaste and simply told for most teenagers. (Even in grade ten, Ivy and Martha don’t seem to think their lives need any romance.) It can be read as Snyder’s reaction to the elitist bigotry of which some Americans hadn’t even become ashamed in 1970: adults think Kelly, who belongs to a “nice” middle-class family like Martha’s, would be an appropriate friend for Martha, but Kelly is thoroughly hateful; adults think Ivy would be a bad influence, but she’s as good a friend as a little girl can be.

It is, however, the reality-based story behind Snyder’s venture into fantasy, a few years later, in Below the Root. Some readers may find these stories interesting enough to compare and contrast and consider how Snyder had developed as a writer during the years between these two novels. In The Changeling Ivy invents, Martha co-writes, and they act out as a dance, the story of the Tree People; in Below the Root the story reappears as an independent fantasy adventure. Both novels contain embedded anti-drug messages. Which way of embedding an anti-drug message in a story works for you?

For me The Changeling is also useful as a study of the two healthy introverted traits that frequently appear in females. The physical traits that produce LBS and HSP personalities hadn’t been scientifically identified yet, but it’s obvious that Martha, who is neither stupid nor hypothyroid but consistently “slower” than her siblings, has a long brain stem and Ivy, who tells stories and becomes a dancer, has high sensory perceptivity. By now my sister has managed to find educational picture books about introversion for preliterate children. Verbally talented introverts may still prefer to read a story about the adventures of two school-aged introverts, rather than a picture book aimed at younger children. So, although The Changeling was among Snyder’s slower-selling books and may not be easy to find, it’s still worth buying for an introverted little girl. 

Or for yourself, if you were once an introverted little girl (or boy) and still enjoy a simple story that’s not about adultery or murder. Like most novels aimed at child readers, it’s not complex enough to draw adults back again and again, but the plot takes enough turns to get an adult through a few hours of down time. 

The Prescheduled Petfinder Post

It's Monday afternoon and big, fluffy flakes are falling outside. Schools are closed. Businesses are closing. The US Congress has closed for this snowstorm. This web site made it through one Big Snow and Freeze with never a blink. Can we be so fortunate again this winter? With God all things are possible. Can people in the vicinities of zipcodes 10101, 20202, and 30303 be so fortunate? Probably not all of them will be. So, on the probability that all three Petfinder lists of animals seeking homes won't be updated tonight or tomorrow, and having prescheduled a batch of butterfly posts, I might as well preschedule tomorrow's Petfinder post. 

Petfinder's dog pages seem to have been programmed to scold me about warning people to avoid phishing scams by not giving out personal information. Dog rescuers want to know they're sending dogs to people who can keep them and work with them, all the dogs' web pages said today. Do would-be adopters even have fenced yards? So, fine. Send them a snapshot of your fenced yard, dog pen, doghouse--that's relevant. If you ever took in a dumpster dog, trained him, and sold him as a working dog, send before-and-after pictures of the dog. Do not transmit information that identifies private individuals through the Internet. If people in these organizations want to feel that they're not sending dogs they have spent some time petting and vetting and socializing and de-flea-ing to a total stranger, that's reasonable. Get to know them in real life. Do not type any private person's real name, including your vet's real name, into a computer that connects to the Internet. Do not even suggest that people still have phones, now that so many of us think e-mail is quite enough to have--much less ask for a private person's phone number. Organizations can give out office phone numbers if they still use phones, but should anticipate that if private people call their phone lines, these days, it'll be from a store. 

Organizations should, meanwhile, disclose when and where animals came into the custody of the organization. That information may help people track beloved pets who've been lost or stolen. One dog mentioned below was found "by a river" somewhere near some headquarters of an organization that has headquarters in half a dozen places. People want to know not only which river, but which was the nearest bridge. That information does not identify a person whose identity could be stolen; it only helps people locate missing pets.

And organizations that seriously want to place pets should make sure the people they're asking for money feel like honored patrons, not like petitioners--or like victims of scams. If you want to meet people face to face, why don't you give them directions to your home? Exactly. Don't ask potential adopters where to find their homes, either. Organization headquarters are a good place to meet.

Zipcode 10101: Encore from NYC 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/encore-dfdb9314-a9dd-4542-b8dc-67795839dc3b/ny/new-york/linus-friends-fl1765/details/

There are Queen Cats who rule with an iron claw, but the most effective Queen Cats are the sweethearts who are so lovable, when they're pleased with their subjects, that everyone wants to please them. Encore is that kind of cat. Thought to be about five years old, she charms--and dominates--other cats and dogs as well as people. She is a "talkative" cat with a pleasant little meow her humans say they like to hear. 

Hero from New York or Canada or Maybe California 

His web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/hero-6d1fe639-ed23-491b-9259-c1406cee06bd/ny/new-york/furry-smiles-international-rescue-ca2510/details/

The organization has bases on both coasts. They don't say exactly where Hero comes from. They say he's "simple-minded," that it's always a new adventure for him. He follows better trained dogs' examples, though, and wants to please everybody. He is a stray or abandoned dog who may have had no training or not made much progress. Though he's not extra-large the organization stress how much fun he is outdoors and want to be sure he's going to a home with a big fenced yard. 

Zipcode 20202: Malcolm from Virginia by way of DC 

His web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/malcolm-118404ad-d224-4358-b238-d2f840b9960c/dc/washington/furever-home-animal-rescue-va931/details/

Neutered early and still only about a year old, Malcolm is described as shy at first but affectionate when he gets to know people. He may bump his head against your leg as a signal that he'd like to be petted. He is described as clean, at least for a tomcat. He behaves well with other animals and they think he'd behave well with children, too, if they're taught to respect his boundaries.

Kim from Mexico by way of DC

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/kim-a559a76e-2ac7-4d6f-bf7b-8e3bf22c64bb/dc/washington/alianza-por-los-derechos-de-los-animales-de-coahuila-ac-mxcoa01/details/

The web page tells it like it is. Kim is a stray. She was sick, in mortal danger; they took her to a vet who pulled her through. She's had vaccinations against further diseases. She's not been trained, not even house trained. They want her to be adopted by people who can rescue a dog, not merely shop for a pet. You should send photos of the big fenced yard and roomy doghouse where you can keep her. (She weighs about 32 pounds and is only a year old, so she might grow bigger,) She's super-photogenic, thought to be a mix of clever Border Collie and lovable Labrador Retriever, but she has a lot to learn.

Zipcode 30303: Harvey from Chattanooga 

His web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/harvey-487f7ba3-04e2-4665-9d9c-12106b3eed84/ga/atlanta/your-local-fur-mama-tn1052/details/

Here's another case where the organization is in Atlanta but the animal is in Chattanooga and can be delivered to other places for the right person. Harvey is described as cautious until he gets to know a place and its people, then showing a personality modelled on a Queen Cat's, as if there were such a thing as a king cat. (He is not, technically, even a tomcat. Neutered male cats can be called gibs, with a hard G as in Gibson, or as in gift.) He's gracious, sociable, purry, and cuddly. You'll want to please him. You'll need to watch closely for ways to please him other than overfeeding him. And someone has already sponsored Harvey for adoption! They don't say what the remaining adoption fee will be. It should be in two figures.

Before discussing this week's winning dog, I should mention that it's the second place winner. The first place winner would have been a bonded team of dogs, but www.joyfulpets.com is a weird site. The organization actually said they DON'T want their animal pictures shared or reblogged. Funny things happen in cyberspace and it's possible that a blog post brought them a lot of spam...but it's more likely that they're up to something of which some blogger, possibly I, disapproved. 

Nadia from Mississippi 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/nadia-the-underdog-of-underdogs-efccfd3e-2fe3-4119-b150-db91079a4725/ga/atlanta/misfits-underdogs-ms273/details/

Where she's really from, who knows? She'd be coming to you from Mississippi. People who are too cheap to have their terriers spayed dump the poor things out, pregnant and scared, at crossroads in any old place that's farther from their home than they believe a dog can run. I've seen it done when the dog was so close to term she couldn't even jump over the drainage ditch. The dogs are even more afraid to go to strange people for help than people are to get close to a strange dog, so in many cases they just run till they can run no further, for days, months, having things thrown at them, being shot at, "bumped" by cars (often run over), bitten by other dogs, maybe trying to rear their puppies and not being able to feed them...There's a place in the afterlife, no doubt, where the humans who do that get to live the dumped-out dog experience. Their ancestors look down on them and yell, "Hit'm again!" 

Nadia is thought to be more Staffordshire bull terrier than pit bull terrier. There are differences, but dogcatchers chasing a stray who's been reported annoying other people's pets don't see them. Nadia's lucky she wasn't shot. A foster family who have worked hard to help her recover from wounds, starvation, and fear think she could still be a wonderful pet for the right people. (Staffordshire terriers are often listed among the most lovable dog breeds, usually a few slots down below Boston terriers.) They show some anxiety about making sure they do send her to the right people. They recommend that she be the only pet in the family. They are willing to bring her to where you are, even up North, if convinced that you're the right person because this dog's profile is not the most adoption-magnetic, but they want to feel that they know you first. Send them a photo of your big fenced yard, and an indication of your plans for what happens to your pet if anything happens to you, if you want to take a chance on this dog. If I wanted to adopt her, I'd go out to Mississippi and meet her. 

Book Review: The Seven T's

Title: The Seven T’s

Author: Judy Collins

Date: 2007

Publisher: Tarcher (paperback)

ISBN: 978-1585424955

Some books are so lyrical that they suggest song lyrics by way of a review. Judy Collins, whose son had died long before my husband died, wrote two books on the grief experience that I read during my own grief experience. This one is recommended; the other one is not.

Many people have appreciated this book in the last twenty years, and this year the paperback edition is available as a "purchase" for thirty days with free returns.

When I read this book, a summary of its contents popped out in verse form:

Judy Collins

long bereaved

gives seven T’s

to those who’ve grieved:

Tell the Truth

yes, he was fine

but wasn’t perfect

or divine

Trust good friends

this too will pass

light a candle

say a Mass

Get Therapy

don’t have to pay

for the best, but get

some anyway

Treasure the memories:

good times gone,

unlike the dead,

live on and on

so don’t drown memories

stay alive

care for yourself

stay sober, Thrive

Treat yourself well

get food and rest

a good turn daily

and all the rest

Transcend the grief

that never dies

but it can brighten

not dim eyes

 

Sunday's Book Review: Prayer

Title: Prayer Author: George Arthur Buttrick Date: 1942, 1970 Publisher: Whitmore & Stone (1942), Abingdon ISBN: 0-687-33361 (sic) Length: 345 pages text, 22 pages endnotes, 14-page index Quote: “Those who pray are the real light-bearers in any age Perhaps by these pages some may be added to their bright company.” This book is a classic. It doesn't really need a review, but it deserves a few remarks... British-born George Buttrick, a Presbyterian minister, finished his distinguished career at Harvard. He was editor-in-chief of The Interpreter’s Bible (which is, like Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s Woman’s Bible, neither a translation nor a revision but a commentary on the Bible). He wrote several books that were successful in their time; the one that’s been reprinted, and cited by contemporary writers such as Richard J. Foster, is titled simply Prayer. Perhaps the best way to describe Buttrick’s writing style is to remind readers that he was a Late Victorian, contemporary to George Bernard Shaw, G.K. Chesterton, Rudyard Kipling, C.S. Lewis, and H.G. Wells. Although the Scopes Trial took place while Buttrick was a relatively young pastor, he doesn’t debate about evolution, or challenge the psychoanalytical theories that, in their crude and extreme form, reduced all religious faith to projections from the subconscious mind. For him Freud and Jung, and even Hitler and Stalin, were living men—men to be prayed for. Authors that are seldom read or cited by the present generation, Ménégoz and Masefield, Santayana and Sidney Lanier, were the trendy and even bestselling authors he quoted. So, he came of age in a period when religious writers were expected to risk a little high-flown rhetoric. What topic could be “worthier” of the highest-flying rhetoric than prayer? Buttrick even says that public prayer “should not be ancient or modern, but...the language of a devotional poem,” and in Prayer his language is sometimes really poetic and sometimes just delightfully archaic. “Prayer, far from being superfluous, is the proper air of thought and labor. For man’s toil without prayer is finally meaningless, unrenewed, undedicate—a treadmill drudgery or a suicidal snare.” Buttrick quotes poems, and flights of poetic language, from other writers, and offers as many memorable, quotable, poetic lines of his own for others to quote from him. The twentieth-century misbelief that a Real Man should be ill at ease with abstractions, emotions, or words of more than two syllables, had no hold on him. He was not at all afraid that someone might think he was venting his own emotions rather than giving readers data or showing them pictures. Venting and directing emotions is, after all, one of the purposes of praying—and, for Buttrick, it seems also to have been one of the purposes of writing about prayer. Prayer is very much a product of its time. As such, it sheds light on its time that may surprise the contemporary reader. Were Americans really solidly united in supporting “The Allies” in 1942? Americans were pretty solidly united in supporting U.S. troops and giving no visible aid and comfort to the enemy...but let Buttrick testify: “Letters pour in upon Amer­ican Christian agencies to urge special days of united prayer for peace,"”he says on page 136 of the 1970 paperback edition. “Several suggest prayers for Brit­ish victory, though a few hint that God this time may be on Germany’s side.” And he asks “whether the hasty assumptions in the proposed prayers can ever be upheld...It is assumed, first, that certain nations are almost black in character and others almost white, and that we have power to read the inmost character of nations.” Historians now agree that things going on in Germany, and in Russia, at this time were morally intolerable. In 1942 it was possible for American Christians to suspect that what information had leaked out to us, about the war crimes of either country or about our own, was partisan propaganda that real pacifists were best advised to ignore. Note also that a victory for “The Allies” was still seen as “British victory,” rather than “our victory.” Even in 1942, and even though he was born British, Buttrick couldn’t bring himself to agree “that God’s purposes are wrought through the mass killings of war.” Prayer is not a “Progressive” political tract, but it reflects the “Progressive” sense of morality, the perception “that we must build a better world.” It also reflects the psychological fashions of the early Advertising Age, the fear of “the dangers of introversion.” In the early twentieth century many people accepted some version of an idea of the primacy of the collective. “[P]sychology now assures us that our consciousness was not first individual and then by deduction social. It seems likelier that we were first social—that we became aware of ourselves only by...the friction and cooperation of other wills,” as Buttrick puts it on page 109. By the 1970s even avowed collectivist philosophies would come to admit that “we are born screaming ‘Ow’ and ‘I’,” but many of Buttrick’s generation were prepared to believe even in telepathy as a possible means by which infant humans could be “first social.” Buttrick was one of those Christians who accept the trendy ideas of the period, without question, in their eagerness to formulate Christian responses to the trendy ideas. His book is dated by his desire to be trendy. Few would now argue that we are “first social”; what previous generations called “telepathy” most of us now chalk up to subtle communication via “body language” and pheromones, and we now recognize a clear difference between true introversion, an hereditary trait with a physical basis, and the withdrawal and alienation produced by psychotic conditions. Meanwhile, he seems to be addressing both a literal-minded and barely literate audience who imagined that prayer ought to enable them to do anything, and another literal-minded and barely literate audience who had concluded prematurely that if God didn’t answer their prayers with an audible voice God didn’t exist and prayer was useless. Buttrick could not have anticipated that neurologists would locate a “spiritual center” in the brain, that by now atheists would be arguing that religion was a disturbance of the spiritual neurons and Christians would be arguing that animals who keep the use of their eyes are animals that sometimes see light. And introverts in search of a respectful, appreciative spiritual teacher won’t find one here; Buttrick writes as if he came closer, in his lifetime, to being a self-hating introvert than to being a self-actualizing one. All this can, of course, be understood in its historical context. What Buttrick has to offer is encouragement to Christians praying privately (with emphasis on the psychological benefits of regular prayer to those who pray), and clear instructions for Christians, such as ministers, who are called to pray aloud for a group. Preferring that prayer leaders and ministers recite or even read other people’s prayers rather than offer the “irreverence” of an awkward ad-lib, he then offers an outline for group prayers in church. Anyone who has ever been embarrassed into awkwardness, or avoided a religious meeting from fear that some clumsy extrovert will demand that everyone pray aloud, will be helped by Buttrick’s advice that public prayers be planned, outlined, and “wrought” into a form that will be uplifting, rather than boring or distracting, to the audience. He even supplies a few examples—not too long to memorize. And how do we know whether the “working” of a prayer is merely a performance, or an act of real worship? By the experience of regular private prayer, of course. I started to type the list of seven prayers Buttrick recommends for a church service and the page on which the short list of five appears, but the younger self who used to be dismayed by the demand that everyone pray aloud for the group said, “No! Young Christians need to read the whole book.” In order to understand exactly what Buttrick means by the list of five you need to have absorbed the chapters that explain these forms of prayer, and practiced each form of prayer in private. Prayer is an interesting book, well written, and worth the attention of any Christian. I think it will be most useful to Christians who need some preparation for public prayer. One can pray privately without reading any book on prayer, but in order to pray publicly many of us need guidance.

Butterfly of the Week: Acraea Swordtail

Graphium ridleyanus should logically be called Ridley's Graphium in English, but its standard English name is Acraea Swordtail. It does not belong to the genus Acraea. It does not have sword-shaped tails on its wings, either. The tailless African Graphiums are sometimes called Ladies, and this species is sometimes called the Red Lady.

Photo by Jakob, May 2014.

Acraea was the name of a minor character in Greek mythology, a water spirit who worked as a servant to Hera. It also meant "from the heights" and was used as a name for shrines and temples built on hilltops, and for the goddesses worshipped there; there were Hera Acraea, Aphrodite Acraea, Artemis Acraea, and Athena Acraea, and probably more. The Acraea Swordtail is, however, so called because it mimics some butterflies in the genus Acraea, and they mimic it, in Mullerian or reciprocal mimicry, where each species is somewhat toxic to predators in a different way, and each gets some additional protection from resembling the other.

Acraea egina and A. perenna are the Brush-Footed Butterfly species Graphium ridleyanus most resembles. In this series I try to show only one butterfly species per post, but you might want to visit

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acraea_egina

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acraea_perenna

Ridley was the name of an entomologist who collected several African butterflies for study by Europeans, before succumbing to a tropical disease. Colleagues who named this species in his honor said that he "fell victim to the climate of western Africa." 

Photo by Rogerio Ferreira, February 2019, Angola.

Graphium ridleyanus lives in central Africa. Countries where it's been found include Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Malawi, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sao Tome e Principe, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. It has been reported in Benin and Sierra Leone, but these reports are now considered to have been erroneous--either the butterflies were misidentified or they were not where they were supposed to be. Graphium ridleyanus is found in the borders between forests and savannas. 

It looks very similar to, and as if it might be able to crossbreed with, Graphium angolanus, G. endochus, G. morania, G. schaffgotschi, and G. taboranus.

A popular species, Graphium ridleyanus has inspired many arts and crafts designs, including postage stamps.

At the time of writing this stamp was for sale on Etsy. By the time this post goes live it won't be there any more.

Sites for carcass traffic are abundant. This web site runs over and drips with scorn for the sort of butterfly "collectors" who would rather buy carcasses of big showy exotic butterflies than learn anything useful about their own local species. We collect butterflies in a more tidy and sustainable way now, with cameras--and photos of Graphium ridleyanus for sale are also abundant on the Internet.

Spots and colors are variable. In some individuals the base color of the wings can be described as black, in some as brown, in some as pale sepia. Some have pink, red, or orange patches on the wings and some have yellow or off-white. Both sexes can be darker or more pinkish. Wings can be scantly scaled and translucent. Males and females have slightly different patterns of spots, and some variations have been given subspecies names: infuscatus, fumatus, fumosus, rosa, semivitreus, describing wing coloration, and njami and hecqueti, referring to places. A gallery of color patterns is available for viewing at 

https://www.gbif.org/occurrence/gallery?taxon_key=5141245

Photo by Sudheer Kommana for https://www.tanzaniabirds.net/butterfly/Graphium_ridleyanus/gr.htm#gsc.tab=0

Both males and females have been found but males are much more easily found. They like to hang out at puddles, alone or in groups, often with other Graphiums. Males slurp up brackish or polluted water, storing mineral salts in their bodies and returning filtered liquid to the soil. Though not common they can seem excessively "friendly" to humans, willing to perch on our skin and slurp up sweat. 

Photo from the African Butterfly Database at https://abdb-africa.org/species/Graphium_ridleyanus

Its host plant is thought to be Monanthotaxis laurentii

There is still room for African students to become famous by learning the basic facts about this species' life history.

Web Log Weekender for 3.13-14.26

With a silly meme and a burst of Bad Poetry,,,

Mothers Day 

Worth printing and saving for Mothers Day...Mothers don't need costumes. They all fight crime as superheroines.

As usual, thanks to Joe Jackson for a Calvin & Hobbes cartoon.

Writing 

All whose brains are not in comas

Know the uses and merits of commas.

Even theatrical performers

See that the little things spare us dramas.

This web site favors Oxford Commas

Without which some sentences are alarmers...

No need to be commie about commas.

Help yourself to all you need.

Each item in a list gets a comma

Unless they're numbered, one-two-three'd,

Though not all pauses for breath require commas.

(Some fear these marks of punctuation breed.)

Commas are common in English writing

Because they so often come in so handy.

Not quite in every sentence alighting,

They're sprinkled about like bits of candy.

Use them precisely, to enlighten,

So that they always look fine and dandy.

Commas separate phrases and clauses

(For clauses, they also need a conjunction).

They spell out the subtle little pauses,

As when names are spoken with due compunction.

A leap from "I want" right off "Santa Claus" is

A sign of an ethical dysfunction:

Dere santa claus I want a REAL racing car not just a Toy & 

& ALL the Boxes of Legos in the Store

& a Thorobred Horse not just a Pony &

hey I'm not finish I want a lot more

Comments, if short, may be marked by commas:

Interrupting a quote to say "he said";

Annotating: "They eloped, as in Shakespeare's dramas,

When her parents advised them not to wed";

Though if items are long phrases like a farmer's

To-do list, use semicolons instead.

Commas make our communication

Easier, though this poem, for one,

Was written less for clarification

Than for five minutes of chortles and fun.

If you need further education,

Grammar sites show how commas' 

Pretty little tricks,

Clever little tricks,

Easy ways to fix

A sentence, should be done.