Election stuff.
I wish Naomi Wolf had e-mailed this essay sooner; people needed to read it before voting.
(Digital image from Messy Mimi.)
Wednesday, November 6, 2024
What I've Learned from Other Long & Short Reviewers
This week's Long & Short Reviews question has an answer that's short and sweet. What have we learned from other L&SR reviewers?
I have a feeling that we're all going to end up saying the same thing. We've learned that, as book bloggers, we have much in common. We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike. (Book bloggers are likely to read that line and instantly think, "Maya Angelou!" though in real life most of us do not instantly think, "...Collected Poems of, page number, line number.")
And probably most of us have either added a few book titles to the library list we carry around, written on paper, slowly crumbling in our pockets, or else read these posts at the library and clicked over to check for the book online, or else added titles to our Amazon or Bookshop Wish Lists.
And if other thoughts come to mind, we're probably not going to embarrass people by publishing them, except for: From Lydia Schoch I learned about the L&SR blog prompts and link-up. It's been fun, and I thank her.
Tuesday, November 5, 2024
Book Review: Needy Little Things
Title: Needy Little Things
Author: Channelle Desamours
Date: 2025. See below.
Publisher: Wednesday (St. Martin's)
ISBN: 9781250334824
Quote: "My mind is an endless loop ofthe immediate or future needs of the people around me. Tangible, everyday items...usually."
(If this book's not been published yet, how can I have read it? I read what's called a galley--a mock-up of a book, distributed to writers, proofreaders, and reviewers. The idea is that corrections can be made to the galley before the book is published for sale, but the book is close enough to its final state for reviewers to start telling people how good it is. I received a galley of this book in exchange for an honest review. As a story about twelfth grade students learning about a grim part of recent history and sharing a dangerous adventure, it's good.)
Sariyah is a psychic, of sorts. She's constantly distracted by the felt needs of people who aren't close to her; she's not too good at recognizing the needs of her family or really close friends. The barrage of "needs" gives her migraines when she spends time around people. Her parents insist on her going to school, despite her obvious desperate need for homeschooling. She's due to graduate this summer but there's some doubt about her being able to graduate.
One of Sariyah's best friends is one of Atlanta's missing children and teenagers. (That's a long-running news story that's largely dropped out of the national newspapers because it's not news any more.) When another friend goes missing, too, Sariyah realizes how little she knows about her close friends.
Props to Channelle Desamours for giving Deja and her stepfather a problem that's more common in real life, less common in fiction, than the cliche of stepfather-molesting-daughter, Props, too, for inventing a fresh psychic talent; Sariyah and her gift/curse don't bother about people's deep emotonal needs, but focus on "needs" like chewing gum, hair gel, and potting soil, Mixing thesee elements gives readers an original story, with the prospect of a sequel or a series, that raises awareness of Atlanta's problem. And extra props for the girl who notices an attraction to a boy and pushes it aside, thinking "I don't need to deal with a silly crush right now.' There are teenagers like that, though for years publishers refused to print books about them.
The plot takes a twist I find hard to believe. A character who's seemed sane suddenly freaks out and goes into psychotic mode. Would that have happened in real life? One should never say never; maybe a similar incident made the local police blotter, but what's not to like about this book is that you might not find the character's mental breakdown, and fortuitous accident, believable.
Otherwise the story is believable and the characters are sympathetic. The content of the story is a little more intense than "a fun read," but family love and friendshp earn the sort of ending they deserve.
Publishers send galleys to reviewers when they think there's a high probability that we'll agree that stores, schools, and libraries may want to order a book in advance. Well, I do. This book is scheduled to be available in stores in February 2025. If you have a store and want to do a Black History Month display in February, order now; I think you'll be glad you did.
Link
After the video, a regular post will appear on this page some time today. It will not be the Petfinder photo contest; that will appear on Friday. You have time to go out and vote. This web site will wait.
Monday, November 4, 2024
Book Review: Ketil and Yitzy's Adventure in the House of Lost Dreams
Title: Ketil and Yitzy's Adventure in the House of Lost Dreams
Author: Team Netherworld Creations
Publisher: Naughty Netherworld Press
Quote: [Yitzy] "had a conical body with a three-eyed head on a stalk."
About a hundred years ago the writer known as H.P. Lovecraft published the very "pulpy" horror stories that made up the Cthulhu Mythos: Horror-fiction monsters, inspired by but not really based on the deep sea creatures oceanographers were beginning to describe and the not-quite-human creatures of folklore and fiction, are the future of humankind. People discover this through adventures narrated floridly, not particularly well, but with a positive delight in long or obscure words and a certain morbid glee.
Literary critics agreed that it was dreadful. Most readers never got into Cthulhu but Lovecraft's work attracted a following of people who read his work as a guilty or rebellious pleasure. Here was nothing educational, enlightening, or inspiring; just delight in gross-outs. For some Lovecraft's sesquipedalian words are part of his charm.
And so, unto this day, when publishers invite manuscripts of speculative fiction, they still find it necessary to state whether they are or are not willing to read any more fan contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos.
This "novelette" is typical. It's set on a world that died before Earth was born, but its characters use recent Earth slang and references. Ketil is a Swedish ghost; Yitzy is an alien who lets itself be called "he" just to fit in, though its species don't have genders. They will soon be joined by a pair of English ghouls who call themselves Robin Hood and Little John, and seldom miss a chance to talk about their taste for decomposing human flesh.
Most people don't get into the Cthulhu Mythos. I don't; I don't like the practice of sending out "sample chapters" instead of complete novels, but in this case the e-book breaking off just where the characters drank the gruesome-sounding potion and divded into the murky liquid came as a relief. I say this in a friendly and supportive way. A Cthulhu story is not an ideal gift to a person you don't know well. For those who do like Cthulhu stories, however, this one seems the sort of mix of gross-out, comedy, and adventure they'll enjoy. Publishers who are willing to consider Cthulhu stories should take a long look at this one. Cthulhu fans? Run don't walk.
Blog4Peace
The biggest blog link-up ever...have I missed it?
Bloggers are for peace.
Kamala Harris is for war.
We know what we have to do. It will not be pleasant. I anticipate feeling disgruntled, disorientated, discombobulated, and bewildered all week.
I can, too, write coherently. About frivolous fiction. Or insects that don't live in any place I've ever been.
Just not about what I'm voting for. I don't drink, y'see. I don't have the sort of consolation the disaster candidate has for being herself.
This is the year I have to vote for destroying the land I love--over destroying the land I love in between the death by inches that is glyphoate poisoning and the ultimate end of thermonuclear war. Wotta "choice"
But. When all the other chices are bad, we can always choose peace over war.
Butterfly of the Week: Chain Swordtail
This week's butterfly's names make sense if we think about them. The Chain Swordtail has a long sword-shaped tail on each hind wing, and a pattern of stripes that curve and form a "chain" pattern just above the tails.
Photo from Science Images / CSIRO.
Graphium aristeus was named after either a legendary character, or an historical one, in ancient Greek literature. The mythical Aristeus or Aristaeus was said to have discovered, and taught the rest of ancient Greece, how to keep bees and how to make cheese, and was sometimes worshipped as a minor god of home food production. The historical one was a mathematician. The name is a form of the Greek word for "The Best/"
Is Graphium aristeus "the best" swallowtail butterfly? It's not the biggest. Its wingspan is typically about two inches, smaller than our cold-weather Zebra Swallowtails. Females are typically a little larger than males.
It's not the best known. Images of adult butterflies of this species are abundant on the Internet, as are sites that traffic in dead bodies. Scienttific information is relatively scarce.
It flits through much of southeastern Asia and Australia. Adults are believed to fly for about two weeks on average. Host plants are tropical species in the genera Milliusa, Polyalthia, Pseuduvaria, and Mitrephora.
Photo from Wandering Butterfly Effect. One of the "butterfly hordes" found in Kaeng Krachang park in Thailand, where its species perch on trees, spreading their wings to catch the sun, in the morning and sip water at ponds in large mixed groups "by noon." Many photos and videos of mixed groups that include Chain Swordtails are available.
Adults are primarily pollinators of several flowers including lantanas, hibiscus, and poinsettias.
Francis Burlingham didn't photograph all the Graphiums shown in this photo essay at one puddle.
Photo by Barlettsangma, showing G. aristeus with other Swallowtails and some smaller butterflies in a large mixed group. While butterflies of both sexes and all species sip fresh water, males of some species are attracted to brackish or polluted water. Blessed with the ability to filter some potentially harmful pollutants out of water as it seeps through the soil below oil spills and worse, they crave mineral salts and spend days sipping polluted water in order to be able to mate. Females prefer to drink only nectar and clean water, absorbing their minerals from contact with males, though they will drink polluted water if unable to get it from males. They flit around the edges of male groups and sometimes lead a male away from the group. Is that taking place at the left side of the picture?
Subspecies include anticrates, aristinus, bifax, erebos, hainanensis, hermocrates, palasarinus, parmatum, paron, puella, timocrates, and of course Graphium aristeus aristeus. Swallowtails.net may be beginning to prepare a web page showing what makes these subspecies different. Some are found on specific islands. Anticrates.for example, found in Assam and Sikkim, have a shorter or missing dark stripe on the under side of the hind wing. In paron the pale color is yellowish green and the under side of the hind wing shows orange spots.The white crescents around the edge of the hind wing are larger in anticrates than in parmatus. Several of these subspecies were reported as distinct species but ruled to be subspecies because they can hybridize. Graphium nomius, which looks as much like aristeus as the subspecies of aristeus look like one another, kept its species status because it does not "mix" with aristeus.
The subspecies anticrates is protected by law in India.
The life cycle of the Australian subspecies, G.a. parmatum, has been scantly documented. There is believed to be only one brood each year. Along with some other south Asian butterflies, including Graphium nomius, G. macareus, and G. megarus, these butterflies live in places where the weather is always warm. all of their life cycles timed so that they get through the wetter months from May to February as either eggs or pupae, and living their active lives between February and May when they get more sunshine. If you are at school you may be able to read this paper:
Eggs are said to be white at first and turn pink before hatching. They are usually laid in small clusters, indicating one of the more intelligent (and less strictly monophagous) species of Swallowtails.
Caterpillars start out black and, in some instars, have blackish-blue tentacles. Young caterpillars stick together in clusters; older ones separate.
Photo from 123RF.com. The caterpillar has an armor-plated rather than humpbacked look, The osmeterium is long and thin rather than stubby. The caterpillar's use of its osmeterium, to flick and lick and actively exude its odor at a potential attacker, has been compared to the martial arts technique of "snake boxing.'
This species burrows into the soil to pupate.
Sunday, November 3, 2024
Web Log for 11.1-2.24
Cluelessness, Public Displays of'
This is not a patriotic look. This is an "All the makeup I had was either red, blue, or black, and all the brain I had was on vacation" look. Or the person may have let a computer "correct" the way the person started to type "Pathetic looking man...." My guess is that he lost a bet. had to go out in public looking like this, and got drunk first. One should only bet on a sure thing. Pathetic.
This is a patriotic look. (It's also an oldfashioned look; I wanted a young man with auburn hair, to contrast with the pathetic-looking one above, and Google kept pulling up pictures of old men, Black men, or women mail carriers. I think it's been fifty years since I saw one of those hats.)
Education
Trump pledged to offer tax breaks and other forms of support to homeschoolers. Scroll down--it's video clip #1 on a Top Ten List with #10 at the top.
Election 2024
Senator Kaine says his legislation will cut costs and Candidate Cao supports legislation that would raise costs. That's as may be. I don't doubt that it's true for specific bills, but in the overall budget...well, you know how that goes.
What Senator Kaine may not know is that for me, personally, cost is not the main issue. Glyphosate is. Senator Kaine has a good record of having once stood up to chemical companies; unfortunately he's not done that again in the past ten years.
It's too late for my mother, who deserved to be a perky vegan in a glyphosate-free world if anyone ever did. It's too late for my Significant Other, whose cause of death may never be known, but who certainly was tortured, not by pseudo-celiac reactions but by pseudo-strokes, as unmistakable glyphosate reactions in the last ten years of his life. It may well be too late for me to have a long healthy life, or it may not. But anyone who wants my vote had better deliver some serious prospects for The Nephews to enjoy the long lives and good health they deserve.
No link to the lazy incumbent's political ad. He had many chances to lead the call for a glyphosate ban. He and I corresponded about it for years. He did nothing about it. If Cao's going to cooperate with Kennedy and work for a glyphosate ban, Kaine's career is toast.
Mean Girl McTackypants is claiming that a tariff on imported goods will make everything cost much more. Not necessarily. It will make some brands cost more, and bring different brands into fashion. It should not be enough of a problem to justify voting for Tackypants. No links to her political ads, either.
However, this web site will remind readers: Apart from the jeans and coveralls we wear when doing physical labor jobs, there's no reason why women need to wear trousers. For those who want to wear trousers to work or school, what makes them "tacky pants" is any combination of (1) straining across body fat, and/or (2) showing the ankles--trouser hems should touch the top of the shoe when we stand up--and/or (3) inappropriate shoes. With unisex clothing we should always wear unisex shoes.
Glyphosate Awareness
Enough to make you consider a new regulation: "Members of or candidates for legislative positions may receive funds from manufacturers of products known to harm human beings on the sole condition that the manufacturers' representatives present the money directly, face to face, to persons harmed by their products, in the presence of the campaigning official, apologizing for the harm done and providing proof that the manufacturers have made significant changes to any products they want to continue to be licensed to manufacture." And: "Manufacturers who have attempted to censor private citizens' good faith complaints about harm done by their products shall be presumed to have operated in bad faith, with intent to harm human beings, and shall be subject to criminal prosecution for whatever type of harm they have done."
Not only do I want Bayer to make me wealthy. I want Bayer to make other celiacs wealthy. I want Bayer decision-makers who ignored our pain to learn how to live on the minimum hourly wage for hand-picking weeds and insects on organic farms.
Shopping
Pet memoirs and fun stuff:
It's possible to order beautiful hand-knitted wool socks and In the Tenth Year of the Pandemonium at
And watch ysabetwordsmith.blogspot.com and whatever.scalzi.com for their annual holiday shopping link-ups, later on.
Book Review: Lonely Heart
Title: Lonely Heart
Author: Vida Li Sik
Date: 2020
Quote: "Admit it. Having a former jailbird by your side cramps your business style."
Savanna was an impulsive, aggressive girl when she caught her boyfriend (for two years, a boyfriend) in bed with another woman. She didn't intend to kill him but she screeched that she did while whacking him with her esgrima stick. He was fit to go into court and testify against her. Meanwhile, her being on trial for attempted murder had left her mother "hysterical" and triggered a fatal heart attack for her stepfather, and her guilt had left Savanna so depressed she didn't even want to talk to the lawyers her parents had hired. She felt that she belonged in prison since she'd killed a stepfather who had felt like a father to her. She spent five years in prison.
Now she's out, but she's insecure about what people will do if they find out where she's been during the five years she wasn't posting anything on Facebook. (Yet another good reason not to use that site.) She's grown up, but she's not had much practice being an adult. So she feels so insecure about meeting an important contact for her brother's business that, seeing him and his ex quarrel decorously in a bar, she gets drunk and goes home with him for the night.
Well, that's an unusual way to begin a romance. I wonder whether something like it even happened in real life? Anyway, Savanna and Alex have bonded, although they were too drunk even to have sex and just fell asleep in their clothes on that first night. It's a sweet romance; you know where this must lead.
Vida Li Sik has written specifically Christian books, and this one explores a Christian theme, but the religious aspects of forgiveness and reconciliation are kept in the background. There are passing references to God, to doing the right thing, and to Savanna's being tempted to consult a traditional spiritualist in an effort to communicate with her stepfather. (Well, this is Africa; the main characters are South Africans who, for various reasons, meet in Cote d'Ivoire.) The story does not specify the characters' religious affiliation. Unbelievers can read this book without fear.
US and UK readers should also enjoy the Ivorian atmosphere. I think the glossary translates more French and British words than needed translating--does anyone not know that Monsieur is the equivalent of Mr.?--but I suppose Amazon demanded that so that people could read the book using translation software. Vida Li Sik acknowledges the dangers (a character comes down with malaria) while piquing readers' interest in scenic landscapes, modern cities, and a rich diversity of ancestral cultures.
A final delight is the resolution of Savanna's :depression." Depression is a symptom of more kinds of health problems than not. (There are some disease conditions that produce euphoria; increased immune system activity associated with beating off disease germs can provide a "high.") Savanna, we're told, picked up some serious eating problems and some post-traumatic stress, and she'd be unusually lucky if infectious diseases couldn't be added to the list, in prison. It happens. Savanna's depression is no longer overwhelming but it's a persistent little reminder that she needs to pay attention to those other things. Those conditions are not addressed by serotonin boosters, which apparently didn't even give Savanna the intended "high" but probably left her with yet another imbalance. So the author blesses her with a doctor who may not be familiar with Prozac Backlash but does know that depression is a complicated symptom, that Savanna can't just pop a pill and feel better, that she will need to work through her real health problems one day at a time. We need more of this message in pop culture;
(No, the paragraph above was not censored out of the Goodreads review. I didn't write it in. I was thinking something like "Unusual plot, fresh setting, Christian themes in a secular story anyone can read, that's three things to like." So I posted the review, but it felt unfinished, and after a few hours I recognized what needed to be added.)
How Christian Individualism Can Help Our Country
Here are some thoughts, as they occurred to my mind this week: some for an author and his readers, some for all descendants of Sarah Hill- and Josiah Lassiter and of people who worked for the Lassiter Mills in the 1850s, and some for everyone...The train of thought is easier to follow, I think, through all three sections, but the questions are for those in a position to answer them.
1. Questions for Robert Turner and His Readers
What kept post-Egyptian African kingdoms from flourishing for long? Why, when slavery was global, were Africans seen as "by nature slavish" in a way Europeans, Asians, and Americans were not? (Somebody had a hope when they linked our word "slave" to the enemy tribe's name "Slav," but it didn't work in practice.) The African climate has been blamed for some things, but these slaves were no longer exposed to it. Tropical diseases deserve blame for some things, but valuable slaves were immune to those. African slaves were probably easier to recognize in Europe and America, but if that were the reason why they were considered "slavish," why did it not apply equally to European slaves sold in Africa--as some were? I think it had to have been the group consciousness. One of the African proverbs that seems to have been most widespread, and longest remembered, was "Because we are, I am." In other words, I am worthless apart from a group of other people; the group comes first, the group's chosen leader has the right to make life choices for me, if I've been sold as a slave then I have to be a slave no matter how unethical the terms of sale were...
We'll never really know to what extent this is true, but to some extent it is indisputably true that when African slaves in the United States claimed their freedom, they ceased to be African tribesmen and became Black Americans. They didn't want to go back to Africa, at least not just then; they wanted their own land and their own piece of the American Dream. And, as described in precise historical detail in Creating a Culture of Repair, in surprisingly few works of fiction and even fewer of the history books where it belongs, when people tried to cheat Black Americans out of that dream even after 1900, racial hostility escalated--but that's not the thought I wanted to bring up today.
"Conservative" writers have argued that a fundamental reason for some cultures' being more successful than others has always been individualism--a clear sense that the individual comes before the group. In order to be born we had to have fathers, but we can survive if they died before we were actually born. We had to have mothers, but we can outlive them, too, after we're about a year old. In the absence of biological mothers we needed mother-surrogates up to age five or six or so. Then, like other lifeforms, we might have been younger and smaller than others but were able to survive on our own. After that point, "Because we are, I am" becomes "Because I am, and you are, it's possible that we can agree to form a 'we,' to agree on some common goals and interests--such as defending ourselves from hungry wolves and bears, having babies, maybe even building houses that are more pleasant to live in than caves..." We instinctively crave social circles, but we can live without them. Some of us even choose to live happily, successfully, productively, without them; this has generally been recognized as something close to a super-power, and has often been feared and hated for that reason.
Yes, solitary humans who've written anything have written about their instinctive craving for company, and usually mentioned the ways they've found to meet that need--writing and reading that gave them mental companionship, talking to occasional visitors through a window, living in a "silent" monastic order where they saw other people regularly but didn't converse, bonding with animals or with employees to whom they didn't talk...We all loved that primal bond with our mothers, when we were babies. We all want to recapture reminders of it after we no longer depend on it. We can reproduce without pair-bonding, as so many other mammals do, but most of us will put up with vast amounts of abuse and injustice to be able to depend on some sort of pair bond. Yet people outlive every social bond they have, and they survive. Christianity teaches that some people may be saved, in the Final Judgment, without any of the social bonds they had, and they will rejoice. We can live without social bonds.
(We can live without fresh sun-ripened fruit. We can live without music. People even claim to live without feeling gratitude or worshipping God, though I'm not sure I believe that.)
Certainly what I was consistently aware of, reading every single page of Creating a Culture of Repair, was that some of Turner's hundred suggested actions recognize the primacy of the individual (and are likely to make sense to most or all readers), while others don't recognize the primacy of the individual (and are likely to seem ridiculous to most readers). Most Christians and many Humanists would feel moved to help maintain a lovely historic (Black) church or pay a deserving (Black) student's tuition. People who can spare a little money might feel rewarded by the mere sight of the church or the student but no reasonable person supports a demand that everyone else be taxed to pay every Black American a large amount of tax-free money.
Everyone should read Carter G. Woodson's Mis-Education of the Negro, because Woodson was modest and polite about saying it but his findings apply to all disadvantaged people. As J.D. Vance said last night, what he observed about the poor "hillbilly" families who moved to industrial cities is also applicable to Black and at-the-time immigrant families who moved to the same cities. People who recognize themselves as a disadvantaged group can benefit greatly by connecting with and supporting others in the same group. Even at schools this principle works. It doesn't need to be "freshmen against sophomores," but good things can come from thinking in terms of "freshmen in support of freshmen."
The level of group consciousness and loyalty that helps individuals enjoy the bliss of social connection also tends to be profitable.. But it can get out of hand and become unprofitable when individuals forget the primacy of the individual. Defining people as primarily members of groups promotes prejudice and causes conflicts. Someone who believes that "every Black man is my brother, every White man is my enemy" does not automatically become violent, but does cut off all possibility of social or business benefit from the majority of the people he meets, and also, as the old saying goes, he might as well change his name to Abel.
People who became slaves according to the law of Moses sold themselves, for up to seven years at a time, to pay their debts. Other people became slaves because their tribe lost a war, or because their relatives didn't pay a ransom. In many cultures people sold themselves, also, for five or seven or ten years, to masters of a skilled trade, in order to learn their skills. But it's also well documented that several cultures historically allowed some people to sell their relatives as slaves, just for extra money. Rules differed; an Englishman could sell his wife with her consent and co-operation, a Chinese man could sell his children--and in some parts of Africa a tribal leader could sell the rest of the tribe, and often they did. If ethnic groups owe money, as groups, or are entitled to money, as groups, this means that Black Americans owe reparations to themselves.
All people have ancestors who were done wrong by somebody. Most people, if we examine the matter, have ancestors who were done wrong by other ancestors. If we take the idea of groups owing "reparations" to other groups seriously, for a start, all German-Americans owe money to themselves. Most of us will, in fact, owe money to ourselves. Group "reparations" are nothing but a pretext for a few people, most of whom will probably not be Black Americans, to "redistribute" the wealth of everyone else, Mostly, of course, to themselves. The British Isles were historically a mess of tribal wars before the British became Christians, so the redistributors, mostly of British descent, would need a lot of money to live on while trying to work out exactly how much they owe themselves for what.
We as a nation need to think of criminals as owing "reparations" to those they have harmed. If someone steals a purse, feeding and sheltering him at public expense does less good to "society" than making him work to repay the owner of the purse does. We needed to be, in 1921 and today, governed by a law like the law of Moses, under which trials for property crimes focus on how much money or property the criminal owes to the victim. We also need to understand that crimes are committed by individuals, against individuals, and criminals have to be made to pay during their own lifetimes if they are going to be made to pay at all.
The difference between the Old and New Testaments, in the Bible, is that the OT was written for a group, a tribe that grew into a nation by obeying the laws God gave their group. Their food and hygiene rituals worked better than other tribes' rituals did. Their civil law code taught people how to behave toward other people. God knows and judges their individual souls. But the NT was written for individuals. Salvation is offered to individuals. Individuals knowing themselves to be saved can think for themselves and subvert governments. In the ancient world no nation really liked any other nation; ancient Israel was attacked and often oppressed, but early Christianity was hated, persecuted, and martyred because it liberated individual souls from whatever was happening to and among groups.
How much have we personally discovered for ourselves of the liberation that comes from thinking of ourselves and others as individuals? How does individualism promote healthy relationships among people who might be classified as different demographic groups? How do we move beyond "liking X kind of people," which is very hard to put into practice, into "liking the best qualities of humankind as I find them expressed in people of my kind and other kinds"? How much progress have we made beyond the legalism, tyranny, and bigotry the OT's focus on groups can promote, into the liberating individualism Christ offered His disciples?
2. Questions for the Lassiter Families of North Carolina
Thinking of relationships among slaves and slavemasters in the past, I thought, as so many times before, of Grandma Bonnie Peters' family of origin, the Lassiters of North Carolina. My real name is "of" Virginia, but I'm related to some of these Lassiters too.
There is exactly one record of a Lassiter who immigrated from England. He and his wife are, so far as was known when the genealogy was published in 1980, the ancestors of all White people by that name. (The only Lassiter many Americans ever heard of, one of Louis L'Amour's characters given an unusual family name, was a fictional invention.) There are records of how his descendants respected the indigenous population, prospered, and acquired slaves, up into the generation before the Civil War. At that point the heir married the daughter of one of the last European slaves sold in America, who had earned his freedom and prospered in his trade. He became very conscious of the evils of slavery, such that, upon inheriting the right to do it, he sat down and emancipated three hundred slaves--reportedly "in one day," probably having prepared for that day for years.
It cost money both to record the emancipation of a slave and to send that slave away with enough money to start an independent life, (In Virginia each emancipated slave had to be given a thousand dollars in cash, which was why landed poor people, like General Lee, failed to emancipate their slaves at once too. One of the Randolphs was considered extravagant for emancipating two slaves each year.) So this Lassiter was seen as a big stupid show-off and, to show how much he didn't care, he told all of those ex-slaves that if they needed work, they could apply for paid jobs in his businesses, and if they needed to register surnames, they could call themselves "Lassiter" after their employer. And there are Black and Lumbee people in North Carolina who use the name Lassiter, and affirm that they're not related to one another or to the White Lassiters, unto this day.
The one who emancipated the slaves ended up going west; the businesses did not survive the 1860s. The English-American Lassiters are still proud of their "blue blood" and their unique family name and story, but they're not millionnaires. Not, in fact, necessarily richer than the Black and Lumbee Lassiters. But it's always seemed to me that it would be proper for the Lassiters to get together, compile the history of all six or however many families share the name, find out how one another are doing, and set up a scholarship fund for the most deserving student in the families in any given year. It would just show some other Southern families.a thing!
I shared this thought with GBP, back in the 1990s. I could see on her face that she liked it. Whether she liked the idea of going to North Carolina to meet more Lassiters, or the idea of showing up the Jeffersons (whose cringeworthy behavior gave me the idea), or whatever else, she never said. Then she said, "But none of the Lassiters I know is all that rich."
Meh. Enough living people use the name that they wouldn't have to be all that rich. It wouldn't have to be a full scholarship at Duke, or not in the first year, anyway. If the idea had ever got off the ground GBP would probably have scraped up twenty or fifty dollars; if it gets off the ground, now that she's gone, even I could probably scrape up twenty dollars in her memory. Well, do the math; it wouldn't take a great number of living Lassiters to make a dent in somebody's educational expenses, even at twenty dollars apiece. But family pride would probably motivate someone to chip in $500, someone $1000, and so on, as far as they could afford. And the name of the families that did that would deserve to be represented at a big-name university, every year, wouldn't it?
Questions for the Lassiters: How? When? Where? Should a Lassiter Fund support, or wait until after, the restoration of Asheville?
Would a fund created by individuals who voluntarily contribute what they can spare be a good example of how "many hands make light work,: provided that all of those hands are there to work and nobody is engaged in "social loafing"?
3. Questions for Everybody
We usually hear the word "individualism" applied to some extreme idea which is then denounced as a bad thing. Has this interfered with our sense of the primacy of the individual?
All individuals need to spend time alone regularly, even though an unfortunate minority have mental deficiencies that make them hate and fear solitude. In the twentieth century some influential people tried to deny the need for solitude. We all need to reverse this denial, to recognize that failure to enjoy "quiet time" is dysfunctional and a warning that an individual may not make good decisions, much less be a good role model. We need to recognize that although we've read and heard a great deal more about individuals' desire to connect, much of that has come from social pressure.
A major reason why people divorce, for example, is that one spouse does not leave the other spouse private time and space. "S/He is not a bad person--we're still friends--I just fell out of love and realized how much I missed having time to think." These people thought they wanted to spend their lives together. If they spent adequate time alone, not chatting with bachelors on the Internet but doing some sort of creative work in their rooms or gardens, they might discover that "falling in love" is a hormone cycle and that they do love each other.
When people respect each other's privacy, they can live under the same roof in peace. When people are crowded together, they lose the ability to appreciate one another.
Do we need to spend time alone, forming our real selves separately from other people, in order to from the connections we all want? Does anyone want to work with, or marry, or talk to, "just one of the crowd"? Don't we want to know individual men and women we don't meet every day?
How do solitary activities, and friendships outside any demographic categories into which we may be put, help us build healthy independence from groups?
Christianity is often supposed to remind Christians to recognize all the people with whom we interact as children of God. Has it had that effect?
How do relationships with other people suffer when people fail to maintain enough time and space for themselves?
Whether or not we notice it, being around other people is a source of physical stress. Failure to notice this stress is probably a reason why extroverts tend to age faster than introverts. How do we reduce this stress when we want to from "we" relationships? How do we reward respectful, friendly behavior and discourage pushy, outgoing behavior?
How does respect for others' privacy help build healthy relationships?
Hoe does respect for others'' property help build healthy relationships?
Even if people could be said to begin doing anything at the same beginning point, differences of abilities and priorities will always cause them to reach different end points. Once people learn to read, some choose to spend their lives in the world of books, and other read only when they have to read. When people are doing a paid job, not only their different abilities but also chance guarantee that they'll get different results much of the time. This is why so many people, not necessarily either White people or people who are generally regarded as privileged, oppose the idea of anyone trying to ensure "equality of outcome." Schemes to do that usually violate privacy, always violate property rights, and ensure unequal rewards for the work people have actually done. Then, on top of that, even if the workers who started at four o'clock p.m. get the same payment for the day's work as the ones who started at four a.m., by the next day their own choices will have produced even more different outcomes; one worker goes home, gets a good night's sleep, eats a good breakfast, and reports to work bright and early the next day, while another one goes out, gets drunk, sleeps late, and drags into the workplace late, feeling miserable. Moses said nothing about equality of outcomes or incomes, but merely told people to have fair, universal system of measurements they could use to agree on what things are worth. How does respect for individuals' differences help us overcome envy of the different sets of advantages and disadvantages that add up to some people's earning more money than others?
When people have, historically, treated each other as enemy tribes rather than individuals, and whole groups of people have had to live with the knowledge that their neighbors wanted them to be and remain disadvantaged, people in the victim group may grow up with twisted perceptions of differences. Suppose you, understand why it's fair and reasonable that Apple-Polisher Paul got a merit raise while Sluggish Sal got his hours cut back. Suppose further that, having reached this understanding since being born in the year 1900, you have always worked with your parents in a little general store in Greenwood, Oklahoma. Every morning as you rotate the stock and dust the shelves, you remember how at least one of your parents has been in this store for twelve hours a day for as long as you've been alive. You watched them expand and modernize the store. It has grown up along with you. You now hear people on the street pointing to your parents as an example of success. People come into the store and ask whether you might be planning to move away and let them take your job. You and your family earned this success; you deserve it; you fee good about enjoying it. You also hear some people muttering that your family have no right to be so successful when you're all Black. One night some of those people, and some of them don't even look particularly White to you, come out and set fire to the store. One day you were successful and prosperous; the next day you're waiting in line, with your overcoat buttoned around your pajamas, for a small dish of soup and a cot in the church basement. You had finished three years of a four-year degree program, and you know you're not going to be able to afford another year at college. You had nice new winter clothes you've never even worn, and if any of them survived the fire, you're trying to sell them. What happens to your sense of having earned what you have, now?
If you are in fact Black, or Cherokee, or Jewish, or Irish, or if you're a woman, how do you reconcile the fact that some individuals have treated/you or your ancestors unfairly with your own need to deal fairly with individuals here and now? What if you were qualified for a merit scholarship at a big-name university, but were not even admitted to the university because you're an introvert? What if you did a great job on the Republican campaign a few yers ago, and today you were passed over for a job without consideration because the boss is a Democrat? What, if anything, keeps you from becoming enmeshed in prejudice against a whole group of people where some people have treated you unfairly? Do you even want to be free from bigotry? If so, why?
Can anything be done to help people who want to spend their lives stuck in resentment of the bad things done by people who are now dead?
What are some ways we might want to choose to support members of our own demographic group, e.g., buying things from local independent businesses even if similar things may be cheaper at a big-chain store?
What are some ways group loyalties have led us to make decisions that were not in our best interest, e.g. trusting the word of a member of our group over the word of a member of some other group?
What are some ways thinking of the people around us as individuals, rather than groups, has contributed to healthy relationships with them?
If that's not already happening, what are some ways thinking of people as individuals, rather than groups, could contribute to healthy relationships with them in the future?
Friday, November 1, 2024
Pris's Problem
Gentle Readers, I want your advice about an unanticipated problem.
It seems that some people who came to blogging late did not want to work through those first few months when, no matter how many e-friends you have from other sites or even from real life, it takes people a while to remember where to find your blog, and so your hosting site tells you day after day that your last post has been read by two people, which is how many people the hosting site assigns to check on new blogs. Or they didn't trust sites like Blogspot, Live Journal, Weebly, Wix, etc., not to suppress their blogs for political reasons. So they put their blogs on Substack, which e-mails blog posts to followers.
In addition to some publishers, here are five writers I follow on Substack: David B. Clear, Tom Cox, Wu Fei, Robert Reich, Naomi Wolf There are others. Those are the first five that come to mind.
For those who don't know, a few words about each of the five:
David B. Clear: Young, hardworking, not rich. Laugh-out-loud funny. He and his wife have been living on a shoestring to pursue their dream of owning a building they can rent out as apartments. They had bought a building and started work on it when they were told that Fabi (the wife) had to keep on alone while DBC left the country due to visa regulations. They are a little older than The Nephews/ I recommend his blog to The Nephews because, in my twenties, I always liked to read about people in their twenties doing adult things successfully. No traditionally published books, records, or films so far. Web site.
Tom Cox: Middle-aged, "voicy" novelist with an eye for the details of the British landscape. Wrote a novel about a village from the viewpoint of the oldest living "villager," a tree. Witty. Probably hard to read if you don't remember the pop culture Britain exported in the 1960s; tremendous fun if you do. Owns a nice house in the country, near his parents' nice house in the country. Goodreads author page.
Wu Fei: Writes quirky innovative music mixing Chinese and other traditions, and blog posts about all the places to which she's subsidized to travel and perform it. Old enough to write good English, young enough to seem to enjoy a busy schedule. Doesn't sound rich (no whining about travel) but obviously has no financial hardships. Recorded music here.
Robert Reich: At 78, the oldest writer on this list, and rich. Retired from the Clinton Cabinet. Became BC's buddy in university, specifically on the ship to England when both went to Oxford as Rhodes Scholars. Almost always writes about politics as a traditional, sane Democrat being dragged by party loyalty into supporting Loony Lefties. Web site.
Naomi Wolf: Middle-aged, middle-class, comfortable enough to write about ideas rather than soliciting for work or writing about frugal life hacks. Has been known to post video of her reading the Bible aloud. Writes about women's and children's health issues with enough edge to be snubbed by Ds, but writes about hurt feelings not poverty. Goodreads author page.
So now you know I have a nice diverse reading list that represents different countries, ethnic groups, ages, sexes, religious identities and so on. This is not a problem. The writers my age or older have impressive lists. The one who's young enough to be my son will undoubtedly have an impressive list in another twenty years. All five of these writers send out one or more real original posts per week, free of charge. All also publish posts Substack sends to paid subscribers only. None of this is a problem.
The problem was this morning's e-mail: "Substack has gifted you with a free subscription to Robert Reich."
Why him? He's not the first writer I followed onto Substack, nor the one whose posts I'm most likely to share or discuss.
Because, of the five, he's been publishing longest and sold most books?
Because, as the oldest and richest of the five, he can afford to offer freebies to bloggers who are likely to link to one of those paid-subscribers-only posts and thus tell the world how good they are?
Because, as a teacher, he found one or more of my comments on his Substack "intelligent but uninformed" and thought I needed extra reading? Or listening--his subscriber-only posts include video conversations.
If I knew Reich ordered the offer himself, either to me or to his non-paying followers generally, I'd feel grateful, accept the offer, think "How nice," and have no problem.
My problem is that I suspect Substack thought free content from the biggest-name writer on my list would entice me to pay for things online, which is banned by contract, so don't even think about asking, and free content from a younger, needier writer would not. And that's the total opposite of how I work.
If someone wants to make a gift to me of a subscription to a paid Substack, which is nice, and recommended,,,it should be the Substack of a young, struggling writer who needs the money. Of the five on this list, it should be David B. Clear. No question.
Likewise, if someone wants to make a gift of a subscription to a Christian literary magazine--although I'd take The Christian Century or Sojourners willingly enough--it should be Plough. They all publish some jewels, some kernels, and some chaff, but like the young struggling writer Plough does more with less than the more establilshed magazines do.
What would you do, Gentle Readers? If "gifted with" a subscription to the writer or magazine on your list that needs the money least, would you just take it? Or would you try to change it and get a subsidized subscription to the one tht needs the money most?
Web Log for 10.31.24
Just a couple of quick, serious links...
Election 2024
Voting information for counties still affected by the hurricane:
Glyphosate Awareness
I don't think I've ever met Anna Lappe, but her parents, Marc and Frances Moore Lappe, did the research my parents presented to our neighbors, between 1967 and 1971, to make my neighborhood the healthy environment in which it was possible for me to survive even as "the Weepy Weed" I cheerfully called myself. I was one of the baby-boomers who had melodramatic asthma attacks as reactions to chlordane, a pleasant-smelling carcinogen people used to spray in the ludicrous hope of controlling roaches; it did not noticeably discourage roaches but did it ever make us ill. The senior Lappes were the pioneers who told people like my parents that chlordane was what was killing their children. And PARaquat was what was giving "Great-Uncle Park" PARkinson's Disease. And, generally, we'd all be better off if we just wrote off farms as a source of income for a few years, planted cover crops and regarded any actual crops as a party gift from Nature, took jobs in town, and just waited for organically grown crops to start growing again. And So It Was! For years every ear of corn seemed to have an earworm; we picked the corn, peeled the ears, cut off the bits with the caterpillars sliming around on them for the chickens and took the rest to the pony, or the cows after we'd all outgrown the pony...but every year, more and more of those years of organically grown, heirloom-breed corn were fit for human consumption. I know the horror with which farmers think about going organic. Been there, done that. And here I stand to testify that if you pay off any old loans and don't take out new ones you do, indeed, get the trophy.
But here's Anna Lappe's horrified lifelong Democrat's reaction to the news that...she can't bring herself to type it...during the Trump administration that corrupt EPA of Then cheerfully collaborated with the chemical industry to make an official enemies list, and yes, the Biden administration has maintained that list and added data about us for our enemies to use AT THE PUBLIC EXPENSE. But she can only bear to mention the Trump administration's role. My heart goes out to this stricken woman.
Only people whose children are grown and on their own should be publicly advocating a ban on spray poisoning. It really is that bad. Public pressure to stop funding this list won't keep our enemies from remembering our names. Young readers can still support Glyphosate Awareness...privately, by talking to friends offline, by buying clean food, by writing to your elected officials, and by voting for the candidate who's publicly promised to put RFK in charge of public health in the second Trump administration. I don't like the idea of voting for Trump any more than Anna Lappe does, but a vote for the Mean Girl is a vote for four more years of having poison deliberately sprayed at our windows from the road and not even being able to prosecute this violent crime. Trump is our only hope for making the companies wish they'd stopped producing paraquat the day Michael J. Fox was diagnosed and stopped producing glyphosate the day NIH posted the Samsel-Seneff report to their web site.
I want the corporations to stop manufacturing these poisons. I want public funding to be used to buy back these poisons and store them in lead-lined vaults as the weapons of war they are. I want the corporate executives to have to get down on their knees in court and sign over the controlling shares of stock in their corporations to those of us they have done grievous bodily harm; I mean, specifically, the individual shill who pooh-poohed my testimony about glyphosate with "So, you threw up," as if making people vomit were not a violent assault even if no internal bleeding was involved, gets to sign over his share of the company and his salary, to me, personally, and thank me for agreeing to let him sign on for heavily supervised work release picking insects off crops on a newly organic farm. I want those things enough that I can even watch the Orange One spewing disgusting orange rhetoric about border-jumping criminals, even when he's calling them "immigrants" which is the last thing they should ever be, and think...well, y'know, he has the courage of his convictions. Donald Trump was never known for physical courage before his reported religious conversion, so I suppose that conversion is real. He took a bullet and stood up again and promised to clean up our food system. Not only do I intend to vote for him; I would, by now, shake his hand.
Book Review: Sword of the Dead
Title: Sword of the Dead
Author: Morgan Rice
Date: 2023
Quote: "I want to do something important."
In the Greek myth, Persephone started out as the embodiment of springtime, child of the harvest goddess. Persephone was still an innocent child, kept away from humans to play at making flowers grow, when Pluto, the lord of the underworld, dragged her down into the land of the dead.
In this opening volume of a serial story, Princess Meredith is eighteen, and has fallen in love with Lance, a commoner who has fought his way into the king's guard, when Zander, the evil king of the underside of her fictional world, drags her down into his kingdom of nastiness. Lance is the first of the knights in the king's guard to volunteer to rescue her.
Meanwhile, a gang of thieves are plotting to attack Meredith's father's kingdom, two thieves are starting to think about rescuing Meredith, and Meredith's father himself may be dead. The last thing he knew was that a tree was about to fall on him; we're not told whether he was hurt or killed, Lance[s classic hero's journey has just reached the stage, relatively early on a full hero's journey, where the mentor is lost. And then the book ends, abruptly. You have to read at least one and probably more full-length novels to find out whether this story is going to resolve the way the Greek myth does or in some other way.
I like each volume in a series to end with a resolution of its own section of the plot. You may like books that end with a cliff-hanger, If so you're likely to enjoy this one; it's reasonably well written apart from what I call the major fault of endng in the middle of the story.
Thursday, October 31, 2024
Web Log for 10.28-30.24
There's no real reason for running three days' links together. I just forgot to publish them one day at a time. First the horrific Halloween meme...
Christianity, Fads in
Seriously: For my generation, the virtues of modesty and frugality were often attacked in the name of the virtue of tolerance. Now, Jake Meador says, the virtue of tolerance is being attacked in the name of other things--apparently, in the case of support for certain ideas that aren't even good for those in whose behalf they're advocated, in the name of tolerance. So the trend-victims don't say "tolerance"...
Election 2024
No, Rick Moran. Hillary Clinton doesn't have the crown for the worst presidential candidate. Some think Lyndon LaRouche took it, some think Warren G. Harding borrowed it, but it truly belongs to John C. Calhoun, who campaigned on the virtues and benefits of slavery. Even in Georgia people could see through that.
Mean Girl O'Dowdypants doesn't have a claim on the title to Worst Vice-President With Worst President, although people who've not read much history might think it's hers. Breckenridge and Buchanan may or may not have been boyfriends but they precipitated the Civil War.
This was the year I wanted to vote for a D who had a platform, too. Blast. Platform summary ganked from MichellesMirror.com.
Trump endorsed by one of the last survivors of that dead lunatic Tackypants just can't stop comparing Trump to, shared by Small Dead Animals:
Glyphosate Awareness
Wouldn't you like to know what this "private" website is telling chemical corporations to use to discredit and potentially harass you? If you have young children living at home, Glyphosate Awareness needs for you to maintain a low profile about encouraging our government to ban glyphosate, altogether, forever, also ban other "pesticides" known to be toxic, ban ALL pesticide spraying, and limit the use of chemical oils or powders applied directly to crops. We think it's safe for everyone to (1) promote more awareness of the benefits of eating the "weeds" from a kitchen garden, and (2) call for more research and development of boiling water as a genuinely safe way to kill "weeds." But the real scandal is that the US government has been implicated in supporting this nefarious "doxing" campaign that promotes attacks on the credibility, and potentially on the homes, families, and persons, of people who want you to know how much healthier you could easily be by making the food you love, and regard as "healthy," actually safe and healthy for use as food.
KAMALA HARRIS AND HER "CENSORSHIP PARTY" ARE PART OF THIS ABUSE. VOTE AGAINST HARRIS, IF YOU HAVE TO WRITE IN "BROCCOLI."
No, paraquat is not the answer. We have to accept that spraying poisons is not, ever, a real answer. Some chemicals may be less ridiculously far from "safe and effective" than others. No chemical will ever be "safe and effective" for very many years in a row. We have to kill the lifeforms we want to kill by ones, in ways that don't affect other lifeforms. Never, never, never spray anything on plants you want to get rid of. Cut, dig, if necessary burn plants--or, in some cases, you might just want to apply lots of rich compost to feed other plants, which will kill some "weeds" with kindness, or at least make them send their rhizomes somewhere else. You can even kill plants with boiling water, which, when it soaks into the soil, stops boiling and promotes growth for plants you don't want to boil. "Gramoxone" harms people even faster than "Roundup" does. We already knew this. Glyphosate Awareness never needed to tell informed people not to turn back to paraquat. This article explains how long we've known that PARaquat causes PARkinson's Disease.
Some may think, "Fruit flies will never be missed." Well, they would, by students preparing for a career in genetic science. But, for those who wonder why they're seeing fewer butterflies...yes. Virginia's butterfly populations are struggling to recover from efforts to slow the spread of spongey moths, but they're struggling with more than the natural caterpillar diseases from which their populations are expected to rebound.
Hurricane
"Love is a road."
"Asheville needs tourists." This person is saying it's okay to be a disaster tourist! Things to pack: flour, cooking oil, non-perishable proteins like canned meat and cheese, baking supplies, cleaning supplies, new bed linens, space heaters, shiny new toys for children, and lots of garbage bags. While strolling in parks you may still find enough trash to fill bags. and people you visit may want some. No need to overburden vehicles--call local businesses, see what you can buy locally. People are buying some things as far north as Virginia but the word is that you can find a lot in North Carolina now.
Does anyone Out There have a trailer for sale or rent? Someone was griping about the FEMA trailers growing mold post-Katrina. After a major mold-boosting event like a flood, all trailers will grow mold. So will houses, schools, churches, museums, libraries, stores, and office blocks. Spores will be in the air whenever it's not actually freezing. I'd be interested in comparing results with that stuff Norb Leahy recommends versus bleach. Trailers are not built to survive much scrubbing. Well, they lose value every year anyway; might as well let'm go down where they can be useful.
If visiting friends I'd try to take some clean fresh fruit. In a normal year they have plenty, but this year anything that was still in a garden was marinated in badly polluted water.
The cheerful deliveryman who supplies Serena with her favorite brand of bottled water, Pure Life, came up on Sunday evening and said, "We can't keep those bottles of water in the store. People keep buying them to take to North Carolina." He offered me a lift to a bigger store to see if they had any acceptable alternative. They didn't, really. All they had left were rip-off packs of baby-sized bottles that cost as much as the full pint size. I bought some of those, anyway. The cats don't know what things cost, and humans in North Carolina need pints or litres of good water.
Phenology
Photo essay from Illinois documents that their autumn is proceeding just a day or two ahead of the Cat Sanctuary's, which is a day or two or three ahead of the town in the narrow valley below.
Poetry
I'd expect that translation software will make this one reasonably accessible to those who don't read French. All North Americans ought to read French, anyway.
Women's Issues
On another forum I watched Melania Trump discussing her new book.Melania's a little different from the other Republican First Ladies. Younger. Foreign. Not afraid of the word "feminist." She presents herself as an intelligent liberal feminist. As such she's pro-choice, and she says, regretfully, that she thinks this has cost her "sisterhood."
Not with me, it's not.She's about the age of my sisters. She can be another sister if she wants to.
DANG she's good. How many native speakers of English can speak it so well for so long?!
I'll go first. I'm with her on women's right to choice, with the caveat that I think we should choose responsibly. The time to choose not to have a baby is before we make a date. It's not my place to judge women who feel that it's come to the fetus's life against theirs, which can happen. It is my place to say that people shouldn't take chances with unwanted babies. If she's not ready to give up being a model, or he wants to be free to travel, they should not deceive themselves about what that means they need not to do.
Can "conservative" women agree with that?
Can Melania find "sisterhood" after all?
Book Review: Dead Witch on a Bridge
Title: Dead Witch on a Bridge
Author: Gretchen Galway
Date: 2019
Publisher: EtonField
ISBN: 978-1-939872-19-7
Quote: "As soon as I saw the body in the middle fo the bridge, I knew I was too late."
Alma Bellrose arrived too late to save an older man with whom she once had a "short fling," whose daughter ("Birdie" Crow) is now the closest thing she has to a friend. Apparently he died before a careless driver ran over his body. The coroner clears Alma of suspicion, but someone was driving Birdie's car...
Alma has to solve the mystery. Not in the usual way, because this is not a real suburb of San francisco. It's a suburb of a San Francisco in an alternate world where fairies, gnomes, demons, and witches are real. In fact, Alma, her ex-boyfriend, and most of the people she knows are witches--not in the sense of practicing an alternative religion, but in the classic TV-movie sense of having inherited magical powers and studied how to use them. Even awkward half-grown Birdie has inherited unsuspected magical powers. And the dog who adopts Alma is not a natural dog, either.
All who enjoy this kind of silliness are in for a treat. Galway mixes hilarious fairy-tale tropes with the rules of a good, clean mystery story: only one murder, some danger to adults who can defend themselves, no harm done to children or animals, no explicit sex or even Formerly Unprintable Words. I laughed out loud more than once.
There is a series. One or more of these books would make a nice Halloween present to someone who's outgrown all interest in sacks of candy.
A Superstition I Secretly Believe In (Belated Wednesday Post)
Guess what? Summarizing the information that's available about an animal that's been the subject of intensive scientific study takes longer than summarizing the information that's available about an animal that is so pretty everyone wants to snap a photo of it. I spent so much time with the horrid Hemileuca oliviae yesterday, I didn't have time to look up this week's Long & Short Reviews prompt. And I have yet to pick a new spooky e-book for those who celebrate Halloween.Oh dear oh dear it will be late.
But the prompt is an easy one: Is there a superstition you secretly believe in?
Some old superstitions did have a base in the real world. I don't know if the person who asked the question thinks those count. Here are five superstitions it's reasonable to believe in...sort of. As far as they go.
"Evening red and morning gray
Sees the traveller on his way!
Evening gray and morning red
Brings rain on the traveller's head."
It's not 100% accurate, but the way the light shines through clouds and dust in the air does correlate with the humidity in the air, which, combined with heating and cooling patterns, does tend to indicate the likelihood of sunshine or rain. Not that we in the Blue Ridge Mountains get to see a lot of red sunrises. Our mornings are usually foggy, and on rainy days it's usually already raining when the sun would have appeared behind the mountain if rain clouds weren't in the way. A red sunrise is a lovely sight, though rare--and it is sometimes seen in a dry season, not followed by rain. As for sunsets, we learn quickly that there's a shade of red that usually does promise a sunny day, and another shade that usually indicates a storm is near. So it's not settled science, but the pretty colors of the sky are worth looking at in any case.
"Night air is bad air."
The air is fine. What our ancestors noticed about people who went out in the night air was that they were vulnerable to diseases carried by night-flying mosquitoes.
"If you see a four-leafed clover, a pin, or a penny, and pick it up, it brings good luck."
If you see any of those things, you already have the blessing of clear short-range vision. So you have good luck. If you see a four-leafed clover, you also have a lot of clover, which is even better. If you pick up a pin, you will probably find a place to put it where nobody will step on it, which is good luck for everybody. And if you pick up pennies, you can pay for things with exact change, which is also good. So it's true enough that all of these objects are lucky, although picking them up does not mean that you'll meet your beshert or win the lottery or even have the good luck of the afternoon commuter bus meeting its connection on time. The secret to enjoying this superstition is to have reasonable expectations.
Does failing to pick up the lucky object bring bad luck? Well, obviously, failing to pick up a pin means that someone is likely to sit or step on it. Failing to pick up a penny indicates that you aren't very frugal, which is likely to lead to seriously bad luck. I've never heard of anything unlucky happening to anyone who chose to leave a four-leafed clover alone.
"Black cats bring good luck of other kinds, and three-colored cats attract money."
Three-colored male cats were worth money in the recent past, when people were trying to find a three-colored breeding male cat. Three-colored females were likely to give birth to a three-colored male kitten. Now that we know the genetic reason why three-colored tomcats are sterile and usually unhealthy as well, nobody's offering big prices for them. However, both black and three-colored cats make excellent pets. Isn't having a good pet lucky?
"When you see a car with only one headlight working, shouting 'Padiddle!' brings good luck."
It does, it really does, if the driver pays attention and gets that light replaced before receiving a ticket. I don't know why "padiddle" was chosen as the code word. Possibly because it's a really easy word to lip-read when the car windows are rolled up and you don't hear conversation outside the car.
Hemileuca Oliviae
In the genus Hemileuca, the "half-white" moths that are so easy for humans to hate, the species oliviae may be the most hated. The caterpillars eat grass. When inadvertently ingested by grazing animals they may make cows and sheep sick. On contact with human skin, which they don't particularly try to avoid, they raise an unpleasant rash. And the moths aren't even pretty.
Photo by Arturoc.
Google has a lot of material about this moth. Unfortunately for those who like the pretty photo essays, the majority of what Google is willing to show is about the history of humans' efforts to kill it. This is the Hemileuca that was officially ruled a pest. Its population surge about a hundred years ago may have been a direct consequence of early efforts to spray it to death; spraying poisons that eliminate most of the target species, the first year, always breeds more resistant individuals in the target species faster than it breeds resistant predators. This moth has taught us a lot about the importance of working with natural predators rather than trying to poison lifeforms we don't like. Nature and public spirit may still tell us to apply a stout stick to any specimens of this species we meet, like good natural predators, fully reintegrating the body into the soil, but we do owe them thanks for the lesson they have taught.
In fact, the irruption of this species in the early twentieth century may have been caused by a temporary decline in populations of the microscopic parasite species, Anastatus semiflavidus:
A full-grown Anastatus semiflavidus looks, under a microscope, like a sort of four-winged wasp, except that the largest known individual reached a length of a quarter of a centimeter. It lays its eggs inside the eggs of H. oliviae and ensures that most of them will not hatch. Humans aren't likely to see these little animals. Other tiny wasps and flies parasitize caterpillars and pupae. Some larger animals were also observed to eat these caterpillars when they were abundant, with skunks, which normally pig out on ground-nesting wasps, ingesting heroic numbers of caterpillars. All we need to do is avoid spraying any kind of "pesticides" anywhere ("herbicides" do indeed kill insects), and allow Anastatus to follow its natural food source....
...Well...the other natural predators also help. So, in addition to the stick method outlined above, does catching caterpillars in a narrow, relatively high-walled container and pouring in boiling water or alcohol to cover. Then there's always collecting the moths: If you find a young female and enclose her in a box covered in fine mesh, you may be able to catch a dozen or more male moths. Each one pinned to a board soon means fifty or a hundred fewer in June...
How many fewer, exactly? Nobody seems to be rearing the moths to count how many eggs each female lays, but one study determined that, of 100 eggs, fewer than 40 caterpillars would live long enough to shed their third caterpillar skins. Most wild animals die young. Though stingingworms seem underpredated to normal humans whose ideal population count would be zero, the odds are against any individual egg becoming a moth, just as they are for luna moths and monarch butterflies.
Why oliviae? It means "of the olives," but olives aren't its food plant, nor are they a major crop in New Mexico, the species' home base. Many of the Hemileucas were named after goddesses, but Olivia seems to have been the name of real women, but not of a major goddess, in ancient Rome. This could be because olives were important enough that prayers and offerings for their success were offered, not at a special temple for Juno of the Olives, but at the main temples of Juno and Jupiter. Anyway Hemileuca oliviae was probably named in honor of some nineteenth century American.
They are one of the few species that have English names other than "stingingworm," though their names also describe only the caterpillars. They are Range Caterpillars or Grassworms in much of their habitat (New Mexico, contiguous States in the US and Mexico, and they have been found in western Oklahoma).
The problem the Range Caterpillars were presenting was vividly stated, indeed overstated, by V.L. Wildermuth in a 1916 US Government pamphlet on The New Mexico Range Caterpillar and Its Control. Wildermuth and his young assistant, D.J. Caffrey, who went on to write more scientific studies of this species and described some things he and Widlermuth said in the pamphlet as "harmful" errors, estimated that in much of New Mexico's grassland the overpopulated Range Caterpillars reached a population density of thirty million to a square mile. The caterpillars were obviously overpopulating their food supply and may actually have tried eating "wheat, oats, barley...corn and alfalfa," none of which they normally eat. During this period when they became a positive plague, they may also have left behind enough cast-off skins to "poison the plants" they didn't eat. Pastures may well have looked like mown lawns, in which the caterpillars then died of starvation after eating all the grass. The caterpillars may have been active from June through September, and the caterpillars may well have been "greedy" and "wasteful eaters," gnawing on plants they could not digest and leaving the rest of the plants on the ground, excreting great quantities of undigested wasted grass. Dusting with arsenic, as Wildermuth recommended, may have seemed necessary to panicky ranchers who had already given up trying to feed cattle. Obviously, dusting any usable crop or pasture land with arsenic would have bene a Very Bad Idea.
Over time, as the ecology returned to a more nearly normal balance, the caterpillars have become a less serious problem, though like all stingingworms they are still a considerable nuisance. By 1987 a population count recorded a maximum of 24 or 25 caterpillars to 100 square meters, or 250/km, or 400 to a square mile. They reduce the amount of grass available for cows and sheep. They can eat lawn grass, and may infest lawns, where contact with humans can make lawn work a real pain.
Some people are determined to make lemonade out of every "lemon" they encounter. Range Caterpillar eggs on grass may upset cows' digestion because they contain protease inhibitors, which interfere with enzymes breaking down proteins. Protease inhibitors can also interfere with the activity of disease virus. Extracts of biochemicals from these moths' eggs have been tested, but so far not used, as possible ingredients for a cure for cancer. I am not making this up.
In the same spirit, some authors note that native woodland mice will eat the caterpillars. Apparently mice in the genus Peromyscus are immune to the toxic biochemicals the caterpillars seem to be made of.
Others observe that the moths lay their eggs on stems of grasses the caterpillars can eat. They normally lay eggs about eight or ten inches above the ground. If there's no long grass in your neighborhood and you keep your grass well mown, you might be able to have a grassy lawn without attracting these vermin. If there is any possibility that a grass stem within a mile of you will be allowed to grow more than four or five inches above the ground, maintaining a grass-free desert garden might be a good idea within this species' range. Other stingingworms can and do eat other native plants but oliviae must have grass.
Are there people who might find them pretty? Well, they are pale, uninteresting Hemileucas. Like the rest of the genus they have very thick thoraxes, in which they store most of the body fat on which they live, and little flat button heads; they can look headless. They do have heads but, since all their heads have room for are eyes and antennae, no mouths, their heads are very small. The fur on the thorax is longer and shaggier than the fur on most Hemileucas, hanging over the little black eyes. The most obvious difference between oliviae and hualapai is that hualapai have faces while oliviae have antennae sticking out of a mop of hair.
Photo by Jcook91. In the shadows behind all that fur, it does have eyes.
Photo by Smellyturkey. This is one of the species most likely to have wings so pale that it takes a second look to see the standard Hemileuca wing markings, although they are there. (Tilt the screen if you don't see it.) The off-white scales can fray off the wings, too; the wings can become translucent, with patches that can be transparent.
It's not hard to entice a silk moth to climb onto your hand, or a more suitable object for moving it, if you want to move one. Place the target object against its foot while it's resting, and the moth will probably climb sleepily onto the object and wait to find out what the object was when it feels livelier. Silk moths don't eat so they need to save their energy for their one purpose in life: mating. However, while people say it's "safe" to handle other Hemileuca moths, who look "cuddly" to some eyes, there are complaints that even the shed hairs and scales of the adult oliviae can be irritating!
Photo by Deeanne.
Freshly eclosed moths have thick capes of fur covering the thorax; older moths tend to lose hair and may show bare brown chitin.
Photo from BugGuide.net, showing a faded and worn individual.
The pluminess of the antennae, on the other hand, indicates gender. Males have feathery antennae all their lives, and females have simple flat antennae.The pluminess of the antennae is thought to give the male moth a fantastic ability to recognize and track scents. The scent of greatest interet to these moths is the odor released by newly eclosed female moths, who are full of eggs and eager to get those eggs fertilized and placed on twigs.
People have tried to identify how the caterpillars choose the grass they eat. Their findings were not conclusive. One problem for Westerners is that stingingworms don't spend all their time on their food plants, anyway. They like blue grama grass, but when the ground gets hot, stingingworms crawl up whatever plants they find, and may be found anywhere. They need fields of grass to live on, but if mice and other woodland animals wouldn't eat them they'd take their siestas in the shade of trees.
While most Hemileucas fly in the daytime and some fly at night, oliviae is most active toward the end of the day. They don't fly a great deal. Male moths are a bit more active, but one study found that most female moths lay their eggs within ten yards from where they pupated,
Richard S. Peigler compared the behavior of Agapema dyari, which is another big silk moth that doesn't look much like Hemileuca dyari, with the behavior of Hemileuca oliviae, which does look similar to H. dyari. He observed that oliviae caterpillars eat relatively short grass in the morning. As the sun rises higher and the ground gets hotter, the caterpillars climb up higher plants. They seem to feel cooler when hanging out on higher plants with their heads downward, as if preparing to crawl back down to the plants they actually eat.
Photo by Gracefli. Later in the day, the caterpillars do indeed crawl back down to eat more grass.
This species normally flies at dusk and mates after dark, which partly explains the absence of photos of couples online. Another part of the explanation is that silk moths like to enjoy mating, taking it slowly with lots of cuddle time, and humans who know what these moths are know what that means an opportunity to do.\
Nobody seems to have bothered photographing eggs, either. According to drawings, they are placed around a grass stem in rings like other Hemileuca eggs, except that the smaller size of the host plant produces more smaller rings in a longer, thinner cluster.
Hatchling caterpillars are about a quarter-inch long, already prickly, and black or sable in color. Though they hatch from eggs laid on grass stems rather than tree branches, and the egg clusters form unusually thick ring shapes, the caterpillars manage to live in clusters on grass stems at first. Their color gradually lightens with more whitish and yellow spots and hairs replacing brown or black on each new skin. Like other Hemileucas, the caterpillars typically grow about two inches long but can get closer to three inches.
The caterpillar has some branching bristles, but more of its venomous bristles grow in a flat rosette shape that puts more bristle tips in contact with your skin if it happens to touch you, delivering more venom for a more painful sting.
Photo by Meganbunker.H. oliviae is different from other stingingworms in ways that are not yet fully understood. Athough our stingingworms and their venom are obviously similar ("related"!) to Brazil's Lonomia genus, whose venom is known to have killed human adults, ours usually cause only "minor" stinging rashes; venom does continue to seep slowly out of any bristle tips that remain in skin for several days, and does have anticoagulant properties preventing these tiny surface wounds healng until the bristle tips are removed. Repeated exposure to other stingingworms' venom tends to build a sort of resistance to the venom, but repeated exposure to oliviae and to brown-tail moth venom tends to aggravate sensitivity, making each reaction nastier than the one before. Nevertheless, hospitalization from anaphylactic reactions to Hemileucas are rare.
Photo by Willjaremkowright.The caterpillars are very vulnerable to fungus infections if the weather is not very dry, and they can also be killed by hailstorms.
Normally there are five caterpillar skins. Reportedly oliviae is one of the species that can go through seven caterpillar skins, and some say more, but nobody has confirmed more than seven molts or identified factors that cause extra molts.
When pupating, these caterpillars look for a few leaves and stems that are close together and use silk to bind them together into a lttle tent in which to morph. As with other Hemileucas, the pupa manages to wriggle out of the caterpillar skin, then lies down and tries to look like a pebble. The moth probably emerges in autumn, but nobody seems positive about whether this species can pupate for a full year and eclose next year.
Photo by Miguel1958.
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