Apart from about a half hour stolen by Microsoft, I spent Sunday's online time writing.
Music
Toto.
Billy Joel.
The Clash.
Glen Campbell.
Eric Clapton.
Moody Blues.
Monday, May 18, 2026
Book Review: 2024 Plant Based Diet Cookbook for Beginners
Title: 2024 Plant Based Diet Cookbook for Beginners
Author: Sarah Roslin
Date: 2024
Quote: "In your plant-based culinary journey, accuracy is essential."
And that's why this is not an ideal cookbook for beginners. It has pretty computer-generated pictures in the PDF version only, not in the printed version. Recipes are not well edited and in many cases will not yield results that resemble the computer-generated pictures.
You don't want to do a "plant-based diet" unless you have access to 100% unsprayed plants...and that means free from drifting residues of poison sprays. That's why reading and reviewing this e-book has not been a high priority for me. I didn't want let the file sit until it was totally out of date (calling for products, like specific size packages of tofu, that may have gone off the market) but it's still not ready for the general public to use.
Because you can't really go wrong with clean fruit and vegetables, as long as you have good-quality ingredients, what these recipes produce will be edible and may even taste good, but it may be very strange. Sometimes you can see how the computer-generated picture presupposes chunks of a vegetable where the recipe tells you to shred it. Sometimes you can't see how the picture shows a different size dish than the recipe will make. One recipe makes about a cup of a grain-legume mix, a good snack for the single cook, but the picture shows about a quart-sized pan full.
Additionally, several recipes' lists of ingredients don't match the instructions given. Ingredients are not listed in the order they need to be used, so you'll be reading and rereading, going "Lime juice? It says nothing about lime juice...she must have meant the lemon juice in the ingredients list."
Amounts of ingredients seem to have been copied verbatim from some other source. European cooks typically use postal-size scales and weigh out ingredients American cooks typically measure by volume. There are arguments in favor of either method. You get more precise equivalents of the original cook's recipe by weighing, but atmospheric conditions have a lot to do with the success of some recipes and you may have to spend less time tweaking proportions if you measure by volume. The only trouble is that beginner cooks in the US usually don't have scales. Knowing that a pound equals approximately 455 grams is only a little bit of help in measuring flour out of a 5-pound sack.
For experienced cooks who have access to wide varieties of clean fruits and vegetables, however, here are some classic and some innovative combinations of produce from gardens around the world that are likely to delight the palate...because very few combinations of fruits and vegetables, in reasonable amounts, ever fail to taste good.
"Plant-based" is explained at length in comparison with other trendy names for diet plans in the text. It means cooks use plant products when they can--in some recipes corn oil margarine or soybean sausages, assuming clean corn or soybeans, works just fine--but may use milk or egg products when they feel that they must. No recipe in this book calls for meat but some do call for butter, cheese, or honey.
Most, not all, of these recipes are gluten-free. Most, not all, are sugar-free. All can be made completely nondairy, though some apparently disappointed the original cook when they were. The wide variety of plant products used means it's easy to avoid any specific allergy triggers you may still have even when plant products aren't poisoned with chemicals. (Most people, however, can tolerate clean fruits and vegetables. Most food allergies are sensitivities to chemicals rather than actual food.)
Is it worth keeping a cookbook like this in the house? Meh. If you're going to find it terribly annoying or frustrating, don't buy a plant-based cookbook yet, but I personally like to keep them around as reminders of hope.
Butterfly of the Week: Stresemann's Swallowtail
Stresemann's Swallowtail is found on Seram (Ceram, Serang) island in Indonesia. It has been found only at altitudes above 3,250' (1000m). There is some disagreement as to whether it's really a different species from Graphium batjanensis, or Graphium chironides, so even on species lists this species can be hard to find. However, it's considered vulnerable, and much has been published about it. All this web site knows is what I read so this web site will, in its half-educated way, summarize what's been written about Graphium stresemanni.
It was first described as a separate species by Rothschild in 1915, late even in his career, which is why it was named after a contemporary person rather than a character in literature. Gustav Stresemann was a popular politician in Germany between the wars, credited with the "restoration" of the Weimar Republic government system, which was a failure, but much less hated in other countries than the would-be empires that came before and after it.
What Rothschild wrote about it, when adding this name to the long list of Graphium species, was:
"
3. Differs from w. weiske in the hindwings being much wider and more rounded. Above it diflers from the green 9 of w. weiskei and the 3 w. goodenovit on the forewings by the nile-green patches being sky-blue, and the one below vein | is also shorter. On the hindwing above, the basal green spot and the basal portion of cell and the patch above veins land 4 are densely clothed with long white hairs not present in the 2 other forms: it also differs in having a complete row of 5 medium-sized pale blue submarginal spots. The green basal area of cell is much larger, and at its apical end, together with the 2 spots above veins | and 4, passes into sky-blue. Below on forewing the patches, which are white in w. weiskei, are pale blue, and on hindwing the green patch below cell passes into blue.
Expanse 91 mm. Length of forewing 43 mm.
Hab. Mansuela, Central Ceram, 650 m., 1912 (E. Stresemann).
"
Nevertheless he called it a subspecies of Graphium weiskei. More recent writers think it's distinct from weiskei but may be an isolated race or subspecies of another Graphium species. It does not look very similar to Graphium batjanensis, or G. chironides, to me--for one thing it has "swallow tails"--but, with butterflies, appearances can be deceptive.
A later writer said that the adult butterflies had been found feeding on flowers in the genus Eugenia.
Because many people will never see this butterfly alive, several web sites sell images of it, often taken from photographs by Danita Delimont or Darrell Gulin. Some sell dead bodies, which is an abomination; the best thing to be said for this practice is that people who pay $35 online for a butterfly carcass are likely to get, if anything, a more common kind of butterfly.
It is vulnerable because it's rare. There aren't many Graphium stresemanni even in their habitat.
It is considered "closely related" to Graphium codrus and G. weiskei. It doesn't gleam quite as weirdly as codrus or have the purple color of weiskei, but it has similar spots. The background color of the wings is brown to sable--often a rich cocoa brown. The spots iridesce blue and green, usually more bluish toward the body and more greenish toward the outside edge, but it depends on the light. There are also translucent patches. It is an eye-catching species.
Photo from Biolib.cz.
Females may be slightly larger than males and have slightly less vivid coloring:
Photo from Biolib.cz. The male shown had a wingspread of 3.5 cm, the female 4 cm.
Nobody knows what it lives on or how it lives. Educated guesses have been made that the caterpillar eats the leaves of something in the laurel family, but nobody has confirmed this.
Sunday, May 17, 2026
Web Log for 5.15-16.26
"If you're reading and reviewing new books," someone may ask, "where are the book reviews?" They're being pre-scheduled. I'm trying to be more conscientious about posting new book reviews on the day the new books land in stores. As a result I've been writing book reviews and scheduling them to appear here in June or even further ahead. (If I die, Google will post those reviews.)
There's a temptation to think "I owe people these reviews! They must be posted! If I'm online all day on Saturday, I don't deserve a day of rest!" That is why, I think, it's in the Bible that we all have to observe a day of rest. Everybody, even the dumb ox in the field, deserves one--not for doing good work all week, not for being "spiritual," so much as just for being alive. I promised to post reviews of these books but I didn't specify a date. Reviews will eventually be visible here. I don't deserve a day of rest but I'm under orders to take one anyway.
Censorship
A "game" being offered to students in some public schools is "You're a prisoner on Epstein's island. Can you avoid being molested for five nights?"
How bad is that?
What I find worrisome in the video linked below is the claim that "because people made a fuss about 'freedom of speech,'" sneer, sneer, "kids can be downloading this on their tablets anywhere."
If parents want to protect a child from downloading or playing a game, it might help for them not to give that child a "tablet."
But I'll say this. Young people, even children, do hear the sensational "news" about Epstein's island and other hatecrimes against women and the young. They are told to stay away from Mr Stranger Danger. They are thinking about what Mr Stranger Danger might want to do to them. They know he doesn't want to dump them out a hundred miles from home merely as a joke.
I read the horror stories about how girls and women were just helpless bait for street terrorists in news magazines and newspapers--as a precocious reader, at age four. By age six or seven a major theme in the stories I acted out with toys was how the doll or the model horse escaped from kidnappers. I didn't have nightmares about kidnappers in grade two. What I worried about meeting in my dreams, that year, was that cartoon of a dead horse lying in the road, just a flat heap of brown ink in a drawing, that had become a symbol for the probable loss of Grandmother and possible loss of Mother--that awful year when Grandmother was in fact dying and Mother was in the middle of a complicated celiac pregnancy. I galloped toys around the mud room and felt that, like them in my games, I could dodge kidnappers. Death was harder to dodge. But the point is that a game of "dodge the molesters around Epstein's island" would not have been likely to put ideas into my head that hadn't already been there, even in the far from innocent Johnson Administration.
I would not have wanted to play any fantasy adventure game at school, with some lame-brained teacher trying to oversee the game. I would, if such things had been invented, have wanted to play it on a computer, privately. And it might even have been useful. There aren't as many kidnappers and molesters in the world as parents (not unreasonably) fear. Parents would rather be safe than sorry so they imagine a molester lurking behind every tree. In real life the closest to a molester I ever got was the public school boys yelling snarky "compliments" out of their car when I was walking home from my student labor job at age nineteen. But that might not have been the case and it might have been useful that I'd started thinking about strategies like distract and run, twist wrist out of hand, screech, bite, gross out, etc., at age seven.
Yes, I think freedom of speech is worth the possibility that a child might play a computer game that admitted it was about escaping from molesters. I think some parents might even want to buy that game for their kids.
Christian
Ali Kaden makes some valid points in suggesting that St Paul can seem like a wolf in sheep's clothing.
Messianic Jews usually say that about the "Apostle to the Gentiles," but it's unusual to see it from a non-Jewish person.
Glyphosate Awareness
The only news here is that awareness is growing, but isn't that good news?
Book Review: Destiny Delayed
Title: Destiny Delayed
Author: Teresa E. Nelson
Quote: "Donald Swenquist didn't want to be a peace officer when he was a child."
Of all the books people have published on Kindle when they must have meant to revise the manuscript again, this is the most obvious I've seen so far. Donald is a child of the Depression with plenty to be depressed about. His father is an alcoholic; his mother may be that, or may also be a schizophrenic, or maybe both. Early in life he's sent to stay with another couple in the country. Local police come out to talk to the new boys (Donald has younger brothers) about stolen bicycles, and Donald convinces them that another boy is stealing bicycles, then catches the other boy and proves his charges. Knowing that he'll need a good job when he grows up, Donald's foster father encourages him to do errands and odd jobs for the police. It goes well; he helps rescue a straying child, and they send him to "police school." Donald has a girlfriend from high school who goes away to nursing school and becomes involved in crime, in a very innocent and pitiful sort of way, but that problem seems to be resolved...when Donald's mother comes looking for him.
So, is Donald adult enough to be kind to his mother while continuing to work for an organization she hates, or child enough to be sucked back into her dysfunctional life? We are not told. The e-book ends with the mother being glad she's found him. Is his "destiny" to be the nice middle-class life he's looking forward to as a "peace officer," or misery in the slums with his parents? We are not told.
This is not a book. It's part of a book manuscript. It should not have been published and should now be withdrawn from publication, finished, and published when it becomes a real, printable book.
It should be worth reading, when it's done. Nelson writes simply but clearly, and handles the specifically Christian scenes well.
Friday, May 15, 2026
Bad Poetry: Men of Action
Prompted by the Poets & Storytellers United, because I've not posted there for a while...
We are men of action;
lies do not become us.
Never say what we are
going to do; let them
fool around and find out.
Web Log for 5.14.26
The second page I opened in the blog feed led me straight to the YouTube channel of a parodist I hadn't discovered before. She's good. Three of her songs are linked below.
Animals
We know this is not Drudge because his coat is longer. (Actually I think Drudge is a pretty contented tomcat, despite his instinct to feel that he's dominant by "herding" me toward the kibble.)
Christians
Protestants sometimes forget that, though there's no record of where she went after Pentecost, Mother Mary was with the disciples after the Resurrection. Here (in Spanish) is a reflection on the last biblical record we have of her life. Tradition says that she sailed away to France with Mary Magdalene, "the other Mary," and Black Sarah, but nothing in the Bible or any official record mentions any such thing.
Glyphosate Awareness
Y'mean after all these years somebody has fiiiiiiinally dared to quantify what celiacs have been telling the world all along? Breaking news...
Want to see how your US Representative voted on the Farm Bill? You can tell who's a sell-out and who's the real deal here:
The ones who voted NO have GOT TO GO!
History
Is there a generation that grew up reading a version of Our Sacred Southern History from which the slaves were erased? It wasn't mine. What tended to be overlooked when I was growing up was the extent to which supposedly free people--and not only women or child laborers, either--were overworked, underpaid, and abused on supposedly paying jobs.
I'm in favor of mentioning the slaves at Monticello, at Mount Vernon, at Colonial Williamsburg, and every other tourist attraction where there were slaves, North or South. (In colonial days all States, or colonies, had slavery. The North only barely managed to free slaves, after two hundred years of enslaving people, because the smaller, poorer farms the North originally had couldn't afford so many of them as the bigger, initially richer farms in the South.) By all means let the tourists see--and learn!--what sort of work slaves did...provided that reenacting the slaves' work, which was valuable and important, doesn't interfere with publicizing the slave owners' writings. Monticello and Mount Vernon should be selling reprints of the Founders' actual words.
Music
Anti-Trump parody, very well done.
Technology
We don't need, we don't "get", and we don't like flatphones. Strike a blow for humankind--instead of replacing the wretched thing that doesn't work the same way two weeks in a row, just leave it at the store and enter the post-phone world.
Weather (sort of)
The rogue weather dude known as Diamond has posted live video cameras in Hawaii to show you Mount Kilauea erupting (from a healthy distance). If you want to fly over an active volcano in a virtual helicopter without the chop-chop-chop noise, click on
Book Review for 5.8.26: Just a Role Reversal
Title: Just a Role Reversal
Author: Katie Nelson
Date: 2023
Quote: "I know how to settle this...a role reversal."
When the school receives a donation of money for extracurricular activities, Jade the art teacher and Cam the sports coach each request more than half the total amount. Principal Wesley thinks the way to settle this is to have the art teacher coach a few football practices and the sports coach teach a few art classes. If it wastes the students' time and confuses them, at least it gets the two teachers to feel friendlier toward each other. This is a sweet romantic comedy; by the end of the e-book they're making a date.
Eyeroll.
I was too busy wondering whether there are school principals who'd do that to the students to care about the teachers' attraction to each other. You might not be.
The Obligatory Long Poem About a Greek Legend
Who'd be Achilles? Were not all
the women, except Clytemnestra,
more likable? Ill fates befall
them, true, but surely even extra
ill fate awaits the son of Thetis
in the Greek underworld where ill he's
done will beset him, long as it is.
Who'd ever want to play Achilles?
Apprenticed to physician, he
was offered private life, long, happy,
or short life, long in memory.
"Short life with glory," chose our chappie.
But even so, this gay young colt
hid himself in amongst the fillies
when from the battle he did bolt.
Who'd ever want to play Achilles?
As boy who could pass for a girl
Achilles was the chosen lover
who set Patroclus' heart awhirl,
but, during years spent undercover,
crawled under covers with a maid.
They had two children; but the sillies
let her name from the records fade.
Who'd ever want to play Achilles?
When that first war at last had ended,
Achilles must have been quite a sight
as maiden; muscular and splendid,
he'd give a man both fright and fight.
His parents gave him fifty ships
with fifty soldiers each. To kill he's
ready at last; his troops equips--
Who'd ever want to play Achilles?
But long before his ships reach Troy
some of them wash up on the coast.
Town's army come to attack our boy.
Achilles wounds the chief his host
before misunderstanding's smoothed.
Oracle says he'll cure the ill he's
done. He'll not. Odysseus has soothed--
Who'd ever want to play Achilles?
The wound Achilles gave the chief.
Then they sail on. The men soon grumble.
To quiet them, our boy turns thief,
sacks cities where no gang sought rumble,
takes noble Chryseis as sex slave
even though trying to force his will he's
caught with Prince Troilus, none can save.
Who'd ever want to play Achilles?
Some say Chryseis was a queen;
more say a girl with golden hair.
The richest ransom they'd ever seen
her father brings to reclaim her care.
King Agamemnon, born accurst,
surely gives such a girl the willies;
of her abusers, might not be worst.
Who'd ever want to play Achilles?
Briseis, noble though not royal,
spends the nights in Achilles' tent,
though that was not enough to spoil
his lust for Troilus. When he sent
for Chryseis, to return for ransom,
great love for her's claimed by Achilles.
Later he favors Ag, the handsome.
Who'd ever want to play Achilles?
Nevertheless they're only women.
Chryseis for Briseis once traded,
Achilles sulks, his ships' sails trimming,
lust for fair fights (if any) faded.
He loved Briseis more than life!
He orders faithful silly-billies:
Turn back to his own home and wife.
Who'd ever want to play Achilles?
The war is going against the Greeks!
Odysseus sends to Achilles' truelove,
through all these years and months and weeks
while he's been bedding every new "love":
Patroclus, faithful as a dog:
Can anything cure the ill will he's
wallowing in like a bloated hog?
Who'd ever want to play Achilles?
"I'm off to war," Patroclus says.
"We promised we would fight; let's do it."
Achilles clings to his sulking ways.
Patroclus goes to Troy, falls to it.
He's not too old to go out fighting.
Doing what he's come to do--to kill--he's
felled at last, though tough as a Titan.
Who'd ever want to play Achilles?
Some say we know good things when they're past.
Word that he's lost Patroclus forever
stirs up Achilles to fight at last.
Cowardly yet still strong and clever,
he kills the river-god who complains
entire troops of slaughtered ghillies
choke river bed and block the plains.
Who'd ever want to play Achilles?
Was he impervious to injuries,
or had he learned a way to heal them?
Though he was trained as healer, he's
portrayed as if he just didn't feel them.
Was it heart, liver, or lung, or heel
the arrow struck at the final kill? He's
never a healer, always a heel.
Who'd ever want to play Achilles?
Dante said he saw him down in Hell,
bound in the Circle of Lust forever.
Shakespeare said he didn't fare so well,
claiming a victory while he never
fought, even in the final battle,
but chose another boy to fill his
bed, and would kill him should he tattle.
Who'd ever want to play Achilles?
Socrates said that between two liars,
Odysseus is Achilles' better
because his knowing the truth inspires
him to unleash lies without fetter--
Say what?--What an odd Greek idea!
Apollodorus gives final thrill: he's
seen Achilles in Hell, bound to Medea!
Who'd ever want to play Achilles?
To be fair, most of the sources Robert Graves consulted did say some good things about Achilles, other than that he fought hard and dirty when he ran out of excuses. But not many, and I've never found them very convincing. Many men and women, on both sides, are portrayed as heroic in the Iliad. Achilles is portrayed as, at the very best, a spoiled brat; more often a monster of selfishness, lust, and violence.
It used to be obligatory for all writers to write things that showed that they'd read ancient Greek literature, if only in translations. A simplified, heavily censored, age-appropriate version of Graves' Greek Myths was given to my classmates and me in grade eight; I found the real book in the school library; it was my first real study of "adult" themes of vengeance and perversion, and, as such, not a favorite book but one that fascinated me. I still don't like ancient Greek literature because of the bizarre moral sense, the misogyny, and the preposterous claim that those savages in ancient Greece were the only people "civilized" enough to be "really human." I have, however, read some of it--beyond Graves.
For those who haven't, the unexplained characters in this poem are:
1. Clytemnestra: Married to King Agamemnon, who led a different army to the same war with Achilles, leaving one of his cousins to guard the palace and her. Clytemnestra might, some think, not have turned against her husband until she heard that he'd sacrificed their daughter Iphigenia as a burnt offering. Then she seduced her husband's cousin, offering to help make him king in Agamemnon's stead. When Agamemnon came home they prepared a nice bath to rest his weary feet, and when he was naked and relaxed they burst in and murdered him. Some say Clytemnestra was excused for this, in ancient Greek thinking, because she had to avenge her daughter.
2. Thetis: She was described as a nymph rather than a goddess, but as having Olympian "blood." Some say it was her refusal to have sex with Zeus or Apollo, while living with a human man as his wife, that kept her from being taken to Mount Olympus herself. The Iliad says she dipped the infant Achilles in the river Styx to give him invulnerability; other sources say it was fire. When Achilles was sulking in his tent and praying for Troy to win the war, he was praying to Thetis.
3. Agamemnon, himself: He hoped, by valor in battle, to atone for some part of the curse on his family that was believed to have been incurred by his father and uncle having had a sort of competition to see who could do more of the things ancient Greeks considered immoral. He was a good soldier who killed his share of Trojans. Some even claim that he might not have raped Chryseis or Briseis, though this is hard to believe. Most enslaved Greek women worked in homes or on farms and were supervised by the lady of the house, but the ones taken in war had no female supervisors or companions and no legitimate housework to do; if not being held for ransom they were sex slaves. Some claim he boasted about owning Chryseis and preferring her to his rightful wife. Everyone agrees that he raped Cassandra. In ancient Greek thinking that wasn't considered to be why he deserved what he got; rather, he deserved what he got simply because he was a son of Atreus. It was Atreus, not Agamemnon, who killed two infant sons of Agamemnon's uncle Thyestes and served them to Thyestes as roast pork. (Eating human flesh, especially of a relative, was believed to incur a lifelong curse; cannibals could atone only by dying.)
4. Troilus: A prince of Troy, but he was killed while visiting a Greek city in the company of Tenes, a son of Apollo. Sources differ only on whether Achilles murdered Troilus before or in the process of raping him. The crime occurred in the temple of Apollo. Where Tenes was at the time is not recorded. In ancient Greek thinking this made Achilles merely an "over-enthusiastic lover" and was never mentioned as a cause of the Trojan War. Some, however, say Achilles then fell in love with Troilus's sister Polyxena, because she looked like him, and demanded Polyxena in marriage after killing (or having his troops kill) their father in battle. Others say he demanded her as a bride for his son. There is some dispute about whether Polyxena participated in the killing of Achilles and then committed suicide, or demanded that the Greeks kill her as a princess rather than taking her home as a slave. Anyway she didn't survive.
5. Medea: She came in another story, supposed to have happened earlier. On learning that her husband had cheated on her she killed her own babies and served them to her husband as stew. Apollodorus thought she was the sort of partner-for-afterlife Achilles--why not Atreus?--deserved. In ancient Greek thinking what Medea did was wrong, but only to be expected, since most women were neither moral nor intelligent.
The mother of Achilles' children may have been just one of seven princesses and their slaves, or more than one; her or their names were given as Deidamia, Iphigenia, or Pyrrha. Some say Pyrrha ("redhead") was just a nickname for Deidamia, Iphigenia was an error, and Achilles and Deidamia were married legally, though secretly. Some say Pyrrha was what Achilles was called when disguised as a girl; some say he was called Cercysera or Aissa. Some say that Iphigenia was the mother of the children and Deidamia adopted them when Iphigenia was killed.
The Titans were legendary giants from the past. The ancient Greeks were not exactly midgets--going by skeletal remains, the average height was about 5'6-8" for men, 5'2-3" for women, which put them well ahead of the ancient Egyptians and probably the ancient Israelites--but they wrote as if they all wished they were taller, the way they believed their gods and ancestors were. The "giants" in their legendary past might have been 6' tall, like Greeks who grew up on a modern high-protein diet today. According to Wikipedia one skeleton said to have been a "very tall" man would have been 5'10".
The river-god's name was Scamander. One of the princes of Troy was called Scamandrus. So who knows.
Finally, although Cassandra is not really part of Achilles' story, she's certainly part of the Iliad. She was said to have red-blonde hair, grey eyes, and a "mannish figure" in youth, though motherhood filled out her figure. In the Iliad she has a juicy part a good actress could interpret in several ways, with plenty of nuance. Why Ellen/Elliot Page didn't want to play her, rather than Achilles...well...playing Cassandra would require acting talent, at least to choose a way to play the role and stick to it. Playing Achilles merely requires a person to act like a spoiled brat, and/or liar, coward, traitor, thief, and pedophile depending on how much time on stage Achilles gets.
And such were the foundations of our civilization...but without the Jewish, indigenous American, and Engllish Quaker foundations as well, our civilization would never have come as far as it has done.
Thursday, May 14, 2026
Web Log for 5.13.26
No link log for 5.12.26 because I had a glyphosate reaction and spent the day feeling zombified. On 5.13.26 I recovered more energy by exercising to a lot of music links, but found only two informative links:
Animals
Ronnieooist's photos of "commoner" butterflies:
Tom Cox gets into the fun with moths. He looked up the moths about which this post jokes.
Music
It's taking quite a lot of music to reverse zombification as it's hard to dance when everything's puffy and nothing wants to bend, but I think exercise helps. Eventually. So: Heywood Banks.
Steely Dan.
Scorpions.
Jimmy Buffett.
Rolling Stones.
Michael Martin Murphey, with his one-hit wonder so often mentioned in Dave Barry's Book of Bad Songs. I don't pick these songs--I just stretch, bend, and move to the beats.
Paul Simon.
The crowd at the Kentucky Derby. You never think of this old Stephen Foster song as a state anthem but I've heard real people in Kentucky sing it that way.
Frank Lovato.
Bill Monroe. One of that whole genre of Irish songs where somebody wins a contest of strength and then dies. For a human there was the consolation of knowing that people would be singing songs about your heroics for who knows how long. For a horse...? Do horses care if humans sing songs about them?
Bing Crosby.
Anita Renfroe.
The Mixtures.
The Beatles. (Could baby-boomers get through a day without sharing anything by the Beatles?)
Toby Keith. Content warning: another generation being sucked into war as I type.
Sia. There are good singers in Australia; there has to be a better one they can export. This one does remind me of that meme that's been circulating about the judgmental dog watching its human squawk...
The Hollies. Yes, bad things can happen on public transportation, but so can good things. The able-bodied have the option of approaching public transportation in ways that maximize the possibility of good things happening.
Five Frugal Dinner Recipes, #2
Continuing our series of main dishes that feed two or more people for less than $10...much fun can be had with packaged rice mixes. More advanced cooks work out their own recipes for spicy rice mixes, but here are some easy recipes to get beginners started.
Each of these recipes costs less than $10. You can afford to add at least one of the options suggested in the recipe. If feeding a multitude, add another box of rice (it could be plain brown rice) and add all the options; this will cost more than $10 but it's still a frugal way to give everyone a rich, hearty meal with some recognizable meat on the plate.
Frugal Dinner Recipe #6: Sweet & Savory Rice
1. Great Value Canned Chicken Breast is actually canned chicken; in some cans you get mostly dark meat. Pick this out, along with the visible fat, and give them to your pets. While your pets are eating outside the kitchen, close the kitchen door and proceed. Put the chicken and its broth ($2 to 2.50) in a saucepan.
2. Stir in 1 box of Zatarain's Pineapple Coconut Rice mix. Sometimes I substitute Cilantro Lime or Yellow rice mix. Each of these costs $2 or less. Stir well and turn on the heat.
3. Open 1 can of Del Monte Pineapple in Heavy Syrup. If you're a baby-boomer you will note right away that it's not heavy syrup, which was viscous and tended to scorch. It is light syrup. Anyway, drain the syrup into the pan. If you have bite-sized pieces of pineapple, dump them in. If rings, cut them into bite-sized pieces, then dump. Add water and/or fruit juice and/or fruit soda to make a total of 2 cups of liquid. (If you don't know what that looks like in your saucepan, drain the chicken broth and pineapple juice into a measure and fill it.)
4. Time cooking for 20 minutes after it boils.
5. Pass salt or soy sauce. Great Value canned goods tend to be undersalted.
6. You can substitute leftover chicken or turkey from your own cold roast, if you have one. Depending on how local the suppliers are you may be able to get fresh chicken or turkey, or chicken or turkey sausages, for $2 to $2.50
7. You can add an onion and/or bamboo shoots, horsechestnut slices, or sliced radish or jica fama for a more savory meal, and/or a can of mandarin oranges, peaches, or pears, a little fresh peeled or preserved ginger, kumquats if you have a tree, and/or almonds, cashews, or litchis, for a sweeter meal.
Frugal Dinner Recipe #7: Spanish Rice
1. Start with about a cup of cooked, boned, defatted meat of whatever kind appeals to you. In Spain it could be a leg of lamb or goat kid, hare or rabbit, pork, or beef, probably more often than chicken, which is what I usually use. Pick it off the bones of a rotisserie chicken, or use a can of chicken chunks as above. You could also press, marinate, slice, and fry some extra-firm tofu for a vegan meal. Or use a can of mackerel or tuna. Depending on your protein, add it to the rice before cooking or cook separately.
2. For the rice heat 1 pound of Great Value canned tomatoes and 1 cup water, or a 24-ounce can of tomatoes, as available (or use tomatoes from your garden).If using meat cooked in water, add that water, which has now become broth, to the tomatoes. Stir in 1 box of Zatarain's Spanish Rice mix. You can also chop in an onion, shallot, or a spoonful of garlic, and/or any parsley or cilantro stems you have lying about, and/or olives, either sweet or hot peppers, a carrot, even celery if you have some celery that you know is unsprayed. Heat rice and vegetables.
3. When it boils, cover the rice and cook for 20 minutes. Spanish Rice is supposed to be on the soupy side
Frugal Dinner Recipe #8: Packaged Rice and Beans
1. You may have noticed how many recipes advise you to rinse and drain canned beans. Do this if you are on a low-sodium diet. Otherwise, it's not necessary. Bean broth thickens slightly as it cools. This thicker liquid contains protein and nutrients from the beans and is safe to eat in dishes where, like this one, it soaks into the rice anyway. Measure 2 cups of bean broth and/or leftover meat and/or vegetable broth from the refrigerator and/or plain water.
2. Stir in 1 package Tony Chachere's Red Beans & Rice mix (under $2).
3. Add 2 to 4 cans Great Value beans (less than $1 each), depending on how many people you want to feed and/or how many servings you want to freeze. If using a large enough pan you can chop in any clean carrots, celery, peppers, and/or tomatoes you want to add, and garlic and/or onion to taste. Chop carrots as finely as possible so they can cook in 20 minutes.
4. Let it simmer for 20 minutes after it boils.
5. Pass chopped sweet onions, parsley and/or cilantro and/or other herbs from the garden, tomatoes, chives, radishes, even cucumber slices, as available, with bowls of hot rice and beans.
6. Rice and beans are a complete protein but you can serve meat with them, on the side fresh from the grill, or reheated and simmered in with the rice and veg, if you really want to.
Frugal Dinner Recipe #9: Dirty Rice
1. Zatarain's Dirty Rice mix is seriously "dirtied" with pepper and spices and must be cooked with meat and vegetables, I think, to be edible. Tony Chachere's is milder but still benefits from cooking with meat and veg. Pick a package. Either one costs about $2.
2. Pick a protein. In the same way Spanish people eat Spanish Rice with almost any protein, Cajuns eat Dirty Rice with almost any protein. If using Zatarain's rice, read "plain ground meat" for sausage--it will absorb salt, pepper, and sage from the rice mix. If using any meat that is not fully cooked leftovers, brown until all red or pinkish color is gone.
3. Stir in 2 cups of water, the rice mixture, and any tomatoes, sweet onions, sweet bell peppers, clean celery, or other savory vegetables you might want to use up.
4. Let it simmer for 20 minutes after it boils.
5. To feed extra people or freeze extra portions, serve small bowls and fill up with fresh cut lettuce, onion, tomato, cucumber, radish, sunflower seeds, pecans, parsley, cilantro, wild garlic, or other raw vegetables and/or nuts as available.
Frugal Dinner Recipe #10: Poverella
1. This web site is not going to advise eating any freshwater or saltwater shellfish, although a quick harvest of just a few of each kind that is locally available is traditional in Spanish paella. Many people like shellfish and they're often loaded with nutrients; they're also susceptible to bacteria and parasites. It's your choice, If you don't want to worry about shellfish, buy a can or package of fish and flake it. A can of tuna or mackerel costs about $2.
2. Boil water to cook 1 package of Zatarain's or Mahatma yellow rice (less than $2). While the water boils, cut up onion, garlic, tomatoes (you can use tomato juice as part of the water), drain a can of black beans (less than $1), and shell or open a can of green peas (less than $1), as wanted.
3. Add rice, veg, and fish to boiling water, Cover and cook about 20 minutes after it boils.
Wednesday, May 13, 2026
Something I Wish I Knew More About
This week's Long & Short Reviews prompt is "something I wish I knew more about."
That would be just about any topic I have or have not posted anything about here. Well, there's a small set of topics I don't feel a need to know any more about, like the stock market, or commercial sport statistics. Other than that...I've done the research, read the books, lived the experiences, but I could still stand to learn more about topics including but by no means limited to...why not a Top Ten List?
1. Butterflies
2. Cats and Dogs
3. Interesting Things to Read on the Internet
4. Poetry
5. Roses (the topic of the last Substack poem)
6. Violets (the topic of my forthcoming Substack poem)
7. The twenty or thirty species of Tent Caterpillars, worldwide
8. Communication and personal charm
9. Education; how to teach
10. Music
And that's not even everything I've mentioned in this week's blog posts. I have things to share that I've learned about these topics because I'm still learning about them.
Tuesday, May 12, 2026
Web Log for 5.11.26
Animals
Yes, it's an animal. I've never seen one, but it exists in my part of the world; it's the sort of thing that could become a serious nuisance if people tried to "control insect pests" with poison sprays. Apparently our Slug Caterpillars, which are mauve-taupe in color, have a cousin species that are colorless and semitransparent, called, for obvious reasons, Spun Glass Caterpillars. This one has, obviously, been photographed crawling on a mirror for its fullest dramatic effect.
The fleshy tentacles that mimic the stitched ribs of a cushion are covered in venomous spines; more spines stick out along the bottom edge of the body. It doesn't really have legs with clawed feet; more like suckers for feet, attached directly to the body. So there's no airspace between feet and bristle and, unlike stingingworms, this one can't crawl onto your hand without stinging. Stingingworms will eventually sting if they walk over your skin very far because they waddle and roll when they walk, but this baby leaves traces of venom wherever it goes.
It does show some color, in most light--a faint icy blue in the shadows, and icy green along the center of the body. The body is transparent enough that you can actually see leaves in the digestive tract as a greenish dorsal stripe.
More information is where the photo came from:
Now, a more appealing kind of animal...While working out of McDonald's, earlier this week, I saw lots of cars come and go in the parking lot below the trees. And during a slow period in the evening I saw a large, apparently well kept, tailless calico cat walking around the picnic tables. A stray foraging for scraps? Maybe--but it wasn't interested in scraps. It was looking at the parking spaces. It went around the parking lot as if looking for a specific car. Then, not finding the car, it ran off in the direction cars take leaving the parking lot, as fast as it could go.
Had it been dumped? Animal dumpers do sometimes dump animals behind stores and restaurants, in order to sneak away while the animals check out food waste.
That cat looked capable of finding a home for itself if ever a cat could; tailless Manx-mix with an appealing three-colored face. It did not look likely to want to move into Serena's territory, or be allowed to. (She's nice to kittens and to polite, respectful males, but the last time she saw another calico Queen Cat, the other cat suddenly remembered an urgent appointment in Pittsburgh.) I went out into the parking lot and called "Kitty, kitty, kitty," in case the cat wanted help; it didn't. So it's not my problem. I hope whoever's found it can appreciate it. I hope it's a spayed female, and I hope it's still able to bond with you.
Charm Course
This meme was on the Meow a few years ago, and it still makes me laugh every time...
"
"I've shaved half my head, and dyed the rest of my hair green. I'm up to thirty five tattoos, and fifteen piercings. I've changed my pronouns three times now, and still the boys won't give me a second glance. What could possibly be wrong?
(AI anxiety coach)
You're obviously a victim of the sexist patriarchy. Have you considered joining antifa?
"
For those of The Nephews who are in literal fact nieces...Lack of male attention has never been a problem for any of the women in our family. It might conceivably be seen as a problem by a baby-faced girl, in which case the solution would be to age a little; I started looking old enough to vote, drive, or date grown-up men, around age 25. I think there were benefits in starting dating at 25 actually. At 25 a man has reached his full height and is finally starting to develop emotional maturity. Before that you don't even know what they're going to look like when they grow up.
For those who want to attract a specific man, or woman for that matter...years ago a book sold with a money-back guarantee was called How to Marry the Man of Your Choice. Its instructions were simple: First pick a man you want to marry, because it's cruel to use this technique if you don't. Then, get him talking, and really listen. As I recall, the contract under which the book was sold said that women had to use it for two years. We were young then, believe it or not, and had short attention spans just like the young people of whom we now complain, so the question was raised whether anyone ever did write to the publisher and demand that refund. I just checked that for you. Google says used book sellers on Amazon and EBay do offer refunds if the physical condition of the book isn't satisfactory, within two weeks...but nobody's ever publicly claimed the two-year refund.
Did I try it? you may ask. I did not. That is, I did listen to my husband, and to my Significant Other, and to my official boyfriend, and to my parents, friends, relatives, and customers, because what they had to say was (generally) interesting. I did not set out to marry anybody. Listening is also a valuable technique for keeping a relationship together once it's happened. More relevant to our family's needs, listening is a way to turn the off-putting label "smart" (with its undertones of "selfish and conceited") into nicer labels for intelligence like "deep" and "understanding."
For the nephew with special talents for math and computers, listening is the difference between the math-head as old-school drill sergeant who couldn't keep students or employees, and the math-head as expert teacher everyone wants to work for and learn from. You have the ability. The world is yours.
Education
I am not a mother. I don't have a mother. So when Mothers Day posts popped up in my blog feed yesterday I thought, "No need to open those!" Joe Jackson put a lot of other good things under the Mothers Day cartoon rerun, though. What I wanted to call attention to was the one about how the cost of education has gone up. How do we get it down again? What administrative flab do colleges need to trim?
Gossip, Local
I let myself be seen while in Puffball Mode last week. Sure enough, word trickled back around that local idjits thought I was pregnant. I think I'll try to be seen cuddling someone else's baby (no, it does not make us baby-free adults want to give birth), some time this summer, just to see how badly idjits can confuse themselves. Maybe a year-old baby would make the idjits most ridiculous; and definitely a White-looking one. According to Mendel there would have been a 25% chance that, if I'd married a blue-eyed blond, I might have given birth to a blue-eyed blond baby--if there'd been a baby at all. Many undiagnosed celiacs' pregnancies end before they produce a recognizable baby.
Anyway I told the person who relayed that information that person looked old, and after 48 hours we were on speaking terms again. I take this to mean that old is approximately as undesirable a way to look as fat. Though I would look old, as well as fat, if glyphosate poisoning weren't making my white hairs fall out again.
Music
4 Non Blondes.
Linkin Park.
Salt N Pepa.
The Animals.
John Baldry.
Politics
Strange idea of "democracy" in the Democratic Party these days.
Religion
The position of this web site is, as regular readers know, that our President violated his covenant with those who elected him, first by encouraging more production and use of glyphosate, then by declaring war. Is he capable of sincere repentance? Was he capable of sincere faith in the first place?! I'm glad I'm not the Judge.
However, possibly as a gesture of loyalty to our Israeli allies, as we leave them to deal with Hamas while we hold off Iran, Trump has taken it upon himself to proclaim a National Sabbath--not the traditional day of prayer, but the Sabbath as observed by Jews and by whole-Bible Christians. He has made this an invitation, not a command. He has left it to the individual to decide which set of Sabbath rules, if any, the individual may choose to follow.
(Orthodox Jews don't use the telephone or other electronic communication devices on the Sabbath. Some un-Orthodox Jews, like Andrei Codrescu, blog primarily or only on the Sabbath. I generally abstain from blogging on the Sabbath, though I'm not fanatical about it and will make up for lost time if I have to. Then there's the question of whether Sabbath dinner is to be cooked fresh from the garden right after church, or left simmering in an earthen pot through the night and the temple services...and so on. The Bible gives pretty specific guidelines for keeping the Sabbath but leaves quite a few of these details up to the believer's conscience.)
Bradley Burnham expresses the Seventh-Day Adventist reaction:
Petfinder Post: Beagles and Two-Color Cats
Next on the list of dog breeds the Busybodies of Britain want to render extinct: the beagle.
Americans love beagles. They're by far the most popular breed in the "hounds" category; some surveys put them on the top ten list of popular breeds in all categories. They rate high on most of the traits Americans are likely to want in a canine companion. Beagles typically:
* Live long enough to grow up with children
* Don't run up big vet bills
* Don't need a lot of care
* Love to walk, jog, or run with their humans
* Don't need to go farther or faster than most humans can walk, jog, or run
* Like to be close to their humans
* Don't need much grooming
* Are smart, sensitive, and loyal
* Can track and dig out rabbits if that's what you want them to do, but don't mind not doing that
* Announce visitors or intruders loudly enough to get your attention
* Don't actually bite anyone
* Behave pretty well even without being formally trained
* Behave well with children and other pets
* Seem calm and well adjusted
* Don't shed hair very much or for very long
* Greet their humans enthusiastically, but aren't big enough to knock most people down
* Don't eat a lot, or cost a lot to keep, or take up a lot of space
* Can be identified as one family member's dog while being polite to all family members
* Are almost always up for any kind of game their humans enjoy
Standing a foot to a foot and a half high at the shoulder, less than knee-high to most adult humans, Beagles live about as long as cats and sometimes land in shelters because they've outlived their humans--or their humans have gone away to school. Before adopting what sounds like the perfect first dog for a child, adults should make sure they can care for the dog while that near-adult child is not at home. It's not unusual for Beagles to live fifteen years or even longer.
There is a wide range of coat colors, including "blue" and "blue tick," and some real Beagles are black and white like Snoopy, but the most common patterns are light brown and white or light brown, white, and black.
While Bassets are basically big dogs on dwarf legs, Beagles are simply small dogs. Hereditary disease conditions are occasionally found in this breed but are much fewer and less common than in Bassets. Perhaps the worst disease condition Beagles inherit is epilepsy, often controllable by medication. A few also tend to develop eye or thyroid disorders, often preventable by mindful care. Hip dysplasia is sometimes found in Beagles but is much less common than bone and joint problems in Bassets.
Healthy Beagles usually weigh 30 pounds or less. They're easy to carry when it becomes necessary; they usually like a hug. They shed noticeable quantities of their short hair for a week or two in spring, and may drop a hair here and there throughout the year. Weekly brushing is recommended, and their nails need to be trimmed, but these are generally low-maintenance dogs. Most of the time their humans spend with them can be spent just hanging out and having fun.
Beagles do need a good bit of exercise and play time. They usually enjoy being kept in packs and amusing each other with their own games. If you keep only one Beagle you wil need to spend enough time running and playing with him to fill in the gap. Bored Beagles may dig their way under fences and get lost, or burn off their surplus energy chewing and tearing up things. It is their humans' responsibility to be intelligent enough to think of ways to stimulate these cheerful, clever dogs' minds.
Beagles can be stubborn and benefit from kind, firm training from an early age. Instincts tell them that being dirty makes a dog smell more interesting, that their humans ought to follow them wherever anything that smells like food may have gone, and that they can sing. Their opinions on these subjects don't really change but they usually are motivated to behave like Good Dogs, so they can--eventually--learn to behave according to their humans' unreasonable opinions rather than their own.
Why would anyone want such lovable pets to become extinct? For the same reasons they've given with regard to other breeds. Small, short dogs are hard to see in traffic. (Do you let your dogs run around in traffic?) Floppy ears can foster infections. (Don't you lift those floppy ears when you pet the dog?) And then there's always plain old jealous envy. Beagles are lovable. Busybodies are not.
Though popular, Beagles aren't always easy to find in shelters. People don't usually give them up and, when Beagles are in shelters, they tend to be adopted fast. Sometimes shelters list dogs as Beagles without knowing their actual ancestry, if the dogs are small but well proportioned, have floppy ears, and seem easy to like. While these shelter dogs may actually be mixes of other breeds with or without any pedigreed Beagle ancestors, they are likely to be satisfactory pets.
Zipcode 10101: Ringo from Madison
Not much is known about Ringo except that he's a calm, friendly mixed breed who gets along well with other dogs.
Meadow & Spots from NYC
Meadow's web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/meadow-5604f601-be08-46a6-af51-1e67df8b0a80/ny/new-york/anjellicle-cats-rescue-ny488/details/
Spots's web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/spots-09e17a0a-01d4-4af5-b86b-bb8fa4697e63/ny/new-york/anjellicle-cats-rescue-ny488/details/
They were found outdoors, crying to be fed and taken back indoors. The experience of abandonment seems to have left them desperately clingy. Described as "Velcro cats" who want to be close to their human all the time, they are a bonded pair and would probably prefer to be adopted together, though they've been given separate web pages.
Zipcode 20202: Frodo from DC
His web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/frodo-20f3efd4-4c7f-4f16-ba76-a4a771d0f04e/dc/washington/k-9-lifesavers-dc19/details/
Though believed to be about ten years old, Frodo still likes plenty of walks. He's mellow and calm, though, and likes to lie beside his human too. He needs a good reliable human to lie beside. He is said to get along beautifully with other dogs.
Jinn from DC
Jinn had a home and a human of her own for more than eight years before her human decided person was unable to care for Jinn. Shelter staff's emphasis on Jinn's distress suggests that you should be prepared for her to be slow to settle in or bond. She's grieving. But she's polite.
Zipcode 30303: Fish Stick from Peachtree City
His web page: http://petfinder.com/dog/fish-stick-0fcd017c-df75-4a69-b627-889326603e17/ga/peachtree-city/cocos-cupboard-ga787/details/
Fish Stick has not been in the shelter long. They insist that he must have a fenced yard. He looks like the type to dig his way out under the fence if he had nothing better to do.
Mackerel & Anchovy from Atlanta
Mackerel's web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/mackerel-bonded-w-anchovy-ea4a131c-f3ea-482d-bf0f-f676f7fdbc72/ga/atlanta/catz-4-life-inc-ga1138/details/
They like fish. They like cardboard boxes. They like being together. Mackerel and Anchovy are mother and daughter. The shelter recommends you adopt both together. Mackerel is described as a majestic, mesmerizing Queen Cat who will sit beside you but not on you--let's not get carried away. Anchovy is the docile, dutiful daughter.
Monday, May 11, 2026
Web Log for 5.10.26
In which the blogger attempts to pull herself together...Last Wednesday's post is long and will be out of sequence. Other posts? I'll focus on the new book reviews first because some people are waiting eagerly. Barring further cyberattacks, this Monday's butterfly study, Tuesday's Petfinder post, and Wednesday's book reviewer chat should be right on schedule.
Animals
Behold our Official Icon of Those Who Want More Babies Now:
Tent caterpillars, all ten to thirty species of them worldwide (there's debate about their classification too), have some features in common: They're furry, and (to some eyes) cute. They're very social; in fact they depend on regular grooming by siblings to survive their furry juvenile days. They spin threads of silk almost constantly, usually building multilayered shelters in which they spend their first four caterpillar phases, always building at least temporary carpets and sunroofs, and congregating in these "tents." They use the threads to communicate--silk produced just after chewing up fresh healthy leaves smells appetizing and makes a trail for other caterpillars to follow--as well as to make tents and lower themselves cautiously from high branches to lower branches or the ground. They move faster, and seem more perceptive and curious about the world than most caterpillars do. They're peaceable, inclined to act on the theory that whatever is touching them is a friend and return its caress, which is actually an effective strategy to stop (most) tachinid flies from parasitizing them as well as to form some sort of bond with siblings. As if those features didn't give them enough survival advantages, most species are also naturally adapted to eat toxic leaves.
(The ones shown here are Forest Tent Caterpillars, photographed by Carly Brooke, so full of cyanide their skins form blue spots. Though harmless to touch, they'd definitely make you sick if you ate them--so nature has conveniently provided humans with instincts that tell nearly all of us that we'd prefer not even to look at them while eating.)
So tent caterpillars have very few natural predators and their populations just grow and grow. About every ten years it seems as if they're about to take over the world. They strip their host trees bare and cover the trunks with silk as they prowl about looking for one last leaf to eat, then start laying silken trails across the ground as they look for a new tree. This migration causes many caterpillars to separate from their families before they're ready and eat poorer quality food, resulting in unusual behavior like resting on walls instead of tree branches...(See photos documenting the behavior at Carly Brooke's post:
...and in fungus infections, diseases, and death. The caterpillar plague years are distressing to watch even for species, like humans, that don't care much about the caterpillars and, if we do, want to see fewer of them. They keep the caterpillars from becoming serious pests, but at a horrific price.
Many humans find these individual caterpillars cute. You can actually pick them up and stroke them and, if you have a steady hand and gentle touch, they like being stroked. They are pets. (Though they don't have any instinct to stay near you; after enjoying being pets for ten or twenty minutes they'll wander away.) Nobody, however, finds a mass of overcrowded tent caterpillars cute. (Probably the heightened crawling, scratching, and squirming behavior in the clump is motivated by hungry caterpillars sniffing at siblings to see whether anybody has found food yet.) If you're not fond of caterpillars, the mass is disgusting. If you are, you can see the little animals' distress, which makes a ball of squirming tent caterpillars even harder to look at than it is if you see them as something to throw into the nearest trash fire.
This much has to be said for tent caterpillars: They do show an increase in violent behavior, within the limits of their species' abilities, in plague years. They're just not capable of being very violent. A tent caterpillar dying miserably from fungus infection may bite, but, as it can't bite through human skin, only the caterpillar's body language shows a difference between its biting behavior and its friendly grooming behavior. Anyway tent caterpillars don't progress into sexual aberrations, domestic violence, cannibalism, or war. They just lie down and die young.
If we rush to start having more babies, to keep a Social Security system working forever in the way it can only work when there are a lot more workers than retirees, or just to feed the toxic greed some people seem to feel for grandchildren, then we're no more intelligent than tent caterpillars. So let's use images of overpopulated tent caterpillars whenever and wherever we come to "more babies now" whines in cyberspace.
(If you're in a place where tent caterpillars are "swarming" in a plague season this year, please remind yourself and neighbors that the local population is in the process of CRASHING. It's just nature's way of reminding us not to have too many babies.)
History
No link because I did not like the bloke's condescending tone, but something on the Mirror does bring the legend of Mansa Musa, the Richest Man in the World, into historical perspective...
Mali was not a kingdom in the sense that England, France, or Poland were kingdoms. It was like, well, Western Africa. People lived very simply on the land, cultivated food, slept in simple shelters (not rondavels, they had simple houses for the whole extended family group), and didn't have a lot of things to spend money on. They did, however, have so much gold in the ground that the stuff frequently washed up in streams, as in California in the 1850s. So they didn't bother to mine gold but some of them had noticed that, if they held on to a few nuggets long enough, eventually they might find someone who would take their gold in trade for something useful.
So, Mansa Musa was the "king" of a small tribe of people who literally had gold they didn't know what to do with. He enthusiastically embraced Islam and donated gold to start schools, but he did not personally preside over those schools and, if they lasted through his lifetime, most of them closed when the gold was gone. Other tribal "kings" who saw the benefits in gold and trade made alliances with him; those also lasted about as long as he did. Toward the end of his life Mansa Musa did load up gold on as many of his loyal subjects and their animals as he could muster (actual numbers are hard to substantiate, but there really was quite a parade) and go to Mecca, taking all the gold they'd been hoarding and splashing it about like people who were glad to get rid of the shiny rocks that, although pretty in the light, were heavy to carry across the desert. And then they all went back to cultivating their gardens all day and sleeping in their shacks all night, even if they did adopt the ideas of wearing clothes and studying the Koran. "I'm an honest man! Work's all I know!" might have been their theme song.
This accounts for the sudden disappearance of Mansa Musa's "empire" after the dear old man was laid to rest. Still, the story is nothing to sneer at. If Musa was more of a patriarch than a monarch as we use those terms, he was still a great one. The story does teach us that wealth is relative.
Information That May Be Helpful
Someone Out There needed to know...
Posted by Pointman 12 Deplorable Garbage on the Mirror. Lens traces it to Carla Brown on Facebook.
Music
"Green Onions."
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