Monday, May 25, 2026

New Book Review: Murder and the Coffee Bean Betrayal

Title: Murder and the Coffee Bean Betrayal

Author: Andi Cane

Date: May 25, 2026

Quote: "This is not what was ordered."

The coffee beans ordered in big heavy sacks have included sacks of what used to be called Hollow Roast--sacks with inner pockets that concealed smuggled goods, in this case collectible silver medallions. Hattie thinks that was just an historical curiosity until the man who's pronounced a sack "not what was ordered" is found dead. 

This is not the chatty, charming sort of cozy mystery where recipes and cute animals play an important role. Hattie learns a fair bit about coffee, collectibles, and smuggling, and sweats over a plan to make people willing to believe who committed the murder. It's not really a "hard-boiled" story, with only one murder solved by a little old lady and a few friends, but neither is it the kind you revisit after solving the mystery just for the pleasure of the characters' company. 


Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , ,

Web Log for 5.24.26

One of those days when it looked as if it were about to rain, but hardly a drop fell, all...day...long.

Animals 

In Greek literature Calliope was a woman's name. In English it's a musical instrument, but it's also a species of hummingbird found in some Western States. 


Photo from https://roadsendnaturalist.com/2026/05/22/calliope/ , which has more photos and live video of the little guy stretching his wing and tail feathers. 

A flamboyance of flamingos:


Book 

For snark aficionados: A memorable moment in the history of a copy of Andrei Codrescu's book Bibliodeath, which this web site warmly recommended more than ten years ago, and recommends still. 


Christian 

C.S. Lewis fans will remember that, in his writing about the pure essence of friendship, Lewis often seemed to have in mind his admiration for one of the Inklings in particular: a younger Christian writer called Charles Williams, who died before most of the older Inklings did. I've not seen a copy of Williams' nonfiction Christian book yet, though I have read his brilliantly strange fantasy fiction. (Once the background reading's been done the fiction makes sense. Not before.) Here, anyway, is a selection from a US edition of The Descent of the Dove that may still be in stores.


Conspiracy Theories 

A right-wing correspondent reports that people are voluntarily wearing face masks again. Is it a new conspiracy to revive the COVID panic? 

Save your fear energy, right-wingers. Some of my other correspondents are freely discussing their use of face masks. (No link, because nobody needs to harass these people.) It's what's called a dry season. Great for people with mold allergies; not so good for people with pollen and dust allergies. Rain's not dampening down the pollen and dust. Nor is it washing down the chemical pollution that I suspect really causes the reactions that pollen and dust merely trigger. Some people find that by wearing masks they can enjoy more sunshine before they start coughing and sneezing.

Really.

Not that it might not be a good thing to address the pandemic of government dependency, which has reached such dysfunctional depths that people actually imagine that governments should somehow be able to manage diseases. Not that it might not be useful to lock down government offices, reduce the government workforce by two-thirds, raise the cost of regulations to a level where anything less life-and-death urgent than a glyphosate ban could end a bureaucrat's career, and generally bring government budgets down in proportion with the way the COVID panic brought the economy down. Not that non-essential, not-really-even-government organizations like WHO shouldn't go the way of your neighborhood ethnic restaurant.

But what's with this sexist bigotry of blaming (mostly women) for trying to cope with their own allergies in their own harmless way? Isn't that the old coward instinct to attack what appears to be a weak target and never mind whether it has anything to do with the actual threat?

Funny 

Well, I chortled.


Arguably this should go under "Politics," but when the "politician" in question is the bad boy character from a scripted "reality TV" program of years gone by, and the opposition is coming from the sister-in-law of a has-been comedian whose show was cancelled for making groundless accusations of murder...


Memorial Day 

As regular readers know, I don't have a lot of patience with the idea of decorating graves. If people were worth remembering, and of course they were, it was for what they did, for what they gave to this world. Remember that. Carry it on. In whatever tiny, inept, unworthy way, carry on a little of what your departed friends and relatives did.

I'm not claiming that I, personally, have a lot to build on the foundations my departed friends laid while they were alive. I don't. All I'm saying is that I think whatever I can do toward their goals is a better memorial to them than a lot of flowers left on a grave. It's good to maintain some reminder of where graves are, so that people don't inadvertently dig them up; there's no need to be mawkish about it.

But it's worth remembering, too, that Memorial Day started out as a day to remember the war dead. 

This link is to a grim, gruesome, disgusting war story. I think Dennis Santaniello timed this story for this weekend for a reason. I think it's appropriate to reflect on those killed in wars, and how they died, and what they died for. The characters in this story died in what they were told was a war to end all wars. 

What have we done toward that goal?


Music 

Not many music links today, but here's Wings.


John Scalzi...has done much better "covers."


Obituary 

Vince Staten remembers Frank Gibson.


Weddings 

According to actual scientific studies, it may be best for the marriage if a wedding party skimps on decorations and goes wild on invitations. Apparently, the investment that really shows commitment is not the biggest diamond or longest skirt, but the number of relatives who gather to celebrate. 


In line with which, a party idea I've always liked specifies that bridesmaids must wear skirts (provided) and groomsmen must wear bow ties (provided). This allows the bride to pick a color scheme and enforce it without anyone having to spend a lot of money on a dress or suit that the person considers unflattering, overpriced, or itchy. 
Posted by at No comments:
Labels:

Butterfly of the Week: Tabora Lady

Or Miombo Lady, or Tabora or Miombo White Lady, Swordtail, Swallowtail... Graphium taboranus looks very similar to Graphium arisbe, Graphium schaffgotschi, Graphium morania, and others, so some authorities don't even list them as separate species. Some sources list Graphium arisbe taboranus or Graphium taboranus morania or some other combination as if these are only subspecies. This view may be fully accepted some day. Scientists have yet to gather enough facts about these butterflies to  debate intelligently.

There are also scientists who want to split the Graphium genus, which certainly has a lot of species in it, and use Arisbe as the genus name. I only report these things.

Anyway Graphium taboranus, which for our present purposes we shall accept as a species, is found near a mountain called Tabora, and in and near a forest called Miombo, and in several places in sub-Saharan Africa. Is the species endangered, or is it just that some local populations have declined sharply? How could you tell? Even experts who dissect dead butterflies aren't too positive about identifying the White Lady species. They're not exactly alike, but casual visitors to nature parks can't be sure which is which when the butterflies are flapping their wings.

Graphium taboranus is reported from Zambia to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It has a wide range. It's not uncommon or thought to be endangered, but is believed to be less common than the look-alike species that share its range. In Angola, Malawi, Tanzania, and Zambia, it is probably active for most or all of the year. It is believed to live on trees in the genus Annona, small trees that typically have toxic leaves but bear edible fruit. 

As a result of this confusion, there aren't a lot of photos of living Graphium taboranus on the Internet. It's popular--it's featured on postage stamps--but all people know for sure is that it looks like other butterflies that share its range. There are no photos of this species on sites like Inaturalist. Of 189 links  Google pulled up in a search for this species, over 150 were just checklists of all the Graphium species.


At the time of writing, one of these Botswana stamps was for sale for $7 on EBay: 


Taboranus means "of or from Tabora" and doesn't sound like either of the two English words it can be broken into. When words Caesar never heard are "Latinized" there's room for legitimate differences of opinion about how they ought to sound. Not this one. In English, at least, it's ta-BOR-an-us. 



Photo by Adalbert Seitz, 1924, public domain.

Photos ofa female museum specimen, top and bottom views,are at the bottom of page 19 of


Graphium taboranus could and may hybridize with look-alike species arisbe, endochus, morania, ridleyanus, and schaffgotschi. Filling in the records of how these butterflies are alike and different, how they live, and whether they are especially valuable to humans or merely an important part of the ecosystem, are still wide-open opportunities for Africans to become famous.

The life cycle is currently undocumented. By now regular readers can guess what the egg, caterpillar, and chrysalis will be found to look like. It remains for Africans to confirm or disprove our guesses.
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , ,

Sunday, May 24, 2026

Web Log Weekender for 5.22-23.26

I didn't spend much time link hunting this weekend. Too much reality kept going on.

Advertising, Vile


Found on the Meow, credited to Look magazine, 1966. Thank goodness I never saw THAT ad. Mother was just about to purge white sugar from the house. I minded. Even in 1966 I was capable of planning a campaign of intolerable brattiness...

Some people undoubtedly planned such campaigns and succeeded. They're the ones still telling farmers that the farmers need "pesticides."

Music 

Another Schneeman bowed psaltery demonstration.


The Beatles.


Jakob Longfield.


Politics 

The majority of Americans are not, never were, and never will be Loony Left globalists. The majority of politicians' biggest donors are Loony Left globalists. That's why it's important that even the Bright Young Things lapping up the attention to their petty fights need to stop with the in-fighting. We can disagree; we don't need to attack one another.


Shared by Robert L. Malone, whom some of us need to stop attacking. He's not perfect, he may be wrong about some things, but stop with the hysterical leftist language about it. If you don't agree with him, state your case without any screeching about how he's a traitor, he's a horse thief, he probably molested your grandmother when she was ten years old, blah blah blah on--no doing the haters' job for them. Anyway Lens traces the meme to somebody called Curejoy Inspirations on F******k.
Posted by at No comments:
Labels:

Book Review: The Strong-Willed Child

Title: The Strong-Willed Child

Author: James Dobson

Date: 1978

Publisher: Tyndale

ISBN: 0-8423-6661-X

Length: 240 pages

Quote: “Most parents have at least one such youngster who seems to be born with a clear idea of how he wants the world to be operated.”

It’s James Dobson, so you know what to expect, right? Religious Right? Right! Dobson may be remembered as an advocate of physical correction for children.

I personally believe that parents have a right to use reasonable physical correction on children. I was spanked as a child, by other older people as well as my own parents, and I don't think it did me a bit of harm. In fact one of the more loving things my father ever did for me, as a child, was to knock me down flat...before I could step on a venomous snake. I'd hope I'd be able to do that for a child today. However, apart from a few obvious correctives like "Don't step on that snake" or "Don't play with matches" or "You're not allowed to hit other people," I don't remember spanking doing me any good, either. It didn't leave physical or psychic scars but it completely failed to teach me what adults wanted me to do instead of whatever I'd been doing. Before trying to justify slapping a little hand, adults need to consider what we want the child to learn. If it's "Keep the house clean," then instead of slapping the child who carelessly spills food on the floor, it makes more sense to direct the child to clean up the mess. Venting emotions at children may or may not scare them; it does distract them from absorbing information. It teaches them "Teacher doesn't like me" instead of "Kicking the back of the seat ahead of me is rude."

If you have a reasonable level of tolerance for Dobson’s school of thought, there’s still room for doubt about how useful a book about rearing children can be. Dobson can’t even claim extensive firsthand experience with being the parent of a strong-willed child; according to him, the member of his household who best exemplified this trait was a dog. Dobson is an expert on applying Bible teachings to family matters, but in this book he is admittedly out of his field, and it shows. Strong-willed children can be introverts or extroverts and this is one case where the distinction is crucial: the way adults relate to an introvert child’s will needs to be almost opposite from the way they relate to an extrovert child’s will. Dobson’s approach is geared only toward extroverts.

Dobson’s dog was never very well trained, but it did eventually learn to obey “a few simple commands.” One day, after years of obeying “Go to your bed,” the dog defied Dobson and wanted to spend the night on the fluffy toilet lid cover near the heater. It growled, snapped, tried to bite. “That tiny dog and I had the most vicious fight ever staged between man and beast” before Dobson moved the dog into its bed. The next night, when told “Go to your bed,” the dog went. Dobson reports that during the next four years it didn’t challenge Dobson again.

Strong-willed children, Dobson is saying, are like his little “alpha dog.” They challenge adults. A young father whose idea of quality time with his child was to take a three-year-old to a basketball game told the kid, “don’t go past this line.” “He had no sooner returned to his seat than the toddler scurried in the direction of the forbidden territory...and deliberately placed one foot over the line.”

The archetypal, or Archie-Bunker-typal, right-wingers in Dobson’s intended audience clearly believed that parents and others who work with children need to be “tough enough to make [the children] obey.” Those who believe that humans should “obey” other humans only in the sense of respecting others’ rights and boundaries, that the way to teach children math or manners or morals is to call their attention to our examples when necessary, may not like this book.

The strong-willed or Type A personality trait is sometimes considered basically an extrovert trait—the only functional personality trait that is correlated with extroversion. That may account for Dobson’s neglect of introvert children. However, the trait is independent of extroversion. In fact Type A’s who don’t show the more fully developed neurological “wiring” of true introverts still tend to be high-functioning extroverts, who “like to get things done, whether with others or alone,” and while they like to take control of their environment they don’t compulsively clamor for control of other people’s attention. To assume that “the strong-willed child” is an extrovert is probably a mistake. 

Introverts are not shy so much as inner-directed; if what they want to do can be better done with a group, they can organize and lead the group without showing any interest whatsoever in maintaining “social leadership” as a form of ongoing control of other people. The “natural leader” of one activity may, in the absence of personal hostility, prefer to let someone else be the “natural leader” of another activity. It’s possible for Type A’s who identify as extroverts to be survivors of twentieth century America’s cultural war on introversion, during which we were told things like “You aren’t, or don’t want to be, an introvert—you’re not shy, you’re attractive, persuasive, a natural leader when you choose to be...” Neurological tests might quantify how many Americans who consider themselves to be extroverts are, in fact, no such thing. It would be interesting to know the results of neurological studies on many celebrity politicians, movie stars, athletes, and business leaders. Successful musicians are typically introverts; I suspect successful people in other fields may be strong-willed introverts too.

Little introverts may or may not be particularly strong-willed, but when they are, it’s unlikely that even the human version of a “vicious fight” will do them much good. Unlike dogs, children grow bigger and stronger, and see that adults grow less strong, every year. A strong-willed introvert child who is subdued for the moment by forcible correction will eventually hit back. On the other hand introverts have that inner sense of “rightness” that, if the child is not battered, will naturally teach the child that hitting other people is as wrong as singing off key, coloring outside the lines, or leaving a mess on the floor. Parents can recruit the strong will of an introvert child. This is the child who may need occasional correction, but generally behaves reasonably. Misbehavior is usually best corrected by addressing the reason for it. Attempts to “break” a strong-willed introvert child can be physically dangerous to the adult, or to a younger or slower-witted child on whom a child like Charles Schultz’s “Lucy” may dump emotions. This child must be reasoned with.

Practical rewards and punishments for these two types of children are almost mirror images. Almost all children perceive candy as a reward and beating as a punishment, but obviously neither candy nor beating can be used every day. What introverts want in social relationships is the kind of respect that backs off and allows them to do things by themselves; they don’t particularly want attention, and may perceive group attention as a punishment. What extroverts want is control of as many people’s attention as possible; they like to be liked or respected, but they’d rather start a fight and lose it than be left to do something by themselves. Parents can use their attention to reward and punish specific behavior. Introvert children respond well to directives like “When you’ve accomplished X, you earn points toward (money, computer time, etc.).” Extrovert children may need directives like “When you’ve been completely quiet for one hour, then I’ll listen to you for five minutes.”

Confusion is understandable since strong-willed Type A’s are the ones who invented the idea of “ambiverts.” Either they have introverts’ neurological assets or they don’t. Mostly they don't but, given adequate motivation, they can be comfortable either working alone or organizing groups of people to focus on the tasks of their choice. Usually they’re intelligent enough to see the advantages of working well with others, so after the toddler tantrum stage they develop good, often charming, social manners. Their strong personalities can easily seem to have both introvert and extrovert “personality strength.” They tend to like this idea; they like to think they’re in full control of their own personalities. However, for purposes of behavior modification, it will help adults to know which a child really is.

While Dobson is probably right about it being good for young children to know that their parents’ wills are even stronger than theirs, the image of a “vicious fight” may still be inappropriate. Type A’s can perceive their ability to laugh off punishments as desirable enough that they actively invite punishments. While some Type A’s internalize the idea of not only strict but harsh physical discipline, and grow up to be child abusers, others convince themselves that they’ve been martyrs for their “cause” of sloppiness, irreverence, profanity, sexual self-indulgence, or disrespect of their elders. The prudent adult will use insight into their temperament to reinforce desirable behavior with positive rewards. Type A’s respect a firm consistent stand longer than they do a “vicious fight.”

By overlooking neurological differences, Dobson produced yet another twentieth century book that may be useful to parents of extroverts, but drifts in and out of touch with reality as introverts know it. By 1978 the world didn’t need any more of those.

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , ,

Saturday, May 23, 2026

Book Review: Death at the Hargrove House

Title: Death at the Hargrove House

Author: Blossom Cole

Date: May 22, 2026

This is a full-length, tersely written murder mystery with lots of clues and plot twists. Even more than a mystery, though, it's a novel about the way we think of people.

Mystery stories can be told in different ways that suit different readers. When a clue is found, I'm more likely to pay attention and get into solving the mystery if I'm told what it is. "The dog smelled something" is a clue in itself; if I were there in real life I probably wouldn't know what the dog smelled either. "She picked something off the floor" might be a clue if we're watching "her" from outside the window, but if the story's being told from "her" point of view, I tend to lose patience with the detective who doesn't tell me what she picked up and why. If I were there in real life and didn't see the object first, I'd have a good look at that bag! If you enjoy the micro-mystery of trying to guess what amateur detective Mari (short for Marigold) has spotted, you will enjoy this book and want to buy the author's other published book about her, too. 

If you enjoy a study of how emotions creep in and distort our most logical thinking...I would have preferred a counter-stereotype study of how this works for a man, but that dynamic is easy to observe in the real world after all. This is an excellent study of how it works for a woman. 

Some readers will also appreciate that only one character is murdered in the time frame of the story. There's a second murder, but it occurred a long time ago. I like detectives who can do something with the evidence from one murder and not wait for another one.

Some will like the mix of Mari's hardheaded logical approach with the cozy atmosphere of her small-town bakery and cute dog. Ginger is a "goldendoodle," a "designer breed" produced by crossing golden retrievers with poodles. Some people might enjoy and draw out the lovable goofball side such a dog probably inherited from its retriever ancestors. Mari appreciates and draws out her pet's sensitive, quietly observant side. 

Some will enjoy the slow progress of Mari's friendship with a police detective she still calls by his family name, Cross. He might have been a bit "cross" with her, even seeming to work at "cross purposes," in the first volume of what feels like a building series. He respects her and Ginger now. "You work well together," someone tells Mari, who bristles: "He does his job and I do mine." "That's what I mean," she's told. Will they become a couple? Will they become a role model of sex-free friendship? Keep reading...
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , ,

Friday, May 22, 2026

Bad Poetry: Dead Tree?

Almost every year I think
"That peach tree's gone to come no more."
I turn my back on it, I blink,
and it's borne peaches by the score.

This herky-jerky winter, mild
days coaxed it into early bloom
the night before a hard freeze. Wild
trees mostly fall to such a doom.

The Feral Peach Tree's blossoms clung
on through the freeze, and bloomed still more
when it had passed. The first fruit hung
before Memorial Day. There's more

where that fruit came from. It's a tree
not seen before, nor seen again.
An evildoer slipped out free
from those who said they'd keep him in,

sprayed poison on the Feral Peach.
The branches that the spray could touch 
look dead now. Dormant, all and each.
Men have been hanged for half as much.

"The peach tree's dead," a visitor said.
Don't count on it. I think, like me,
that tree has vowed to keep its bed
and watch until the night we see

the evildoer on the ground,
by his own poison felled at last,
condemned to lie as he is found
till ninety days and nine have passed.

The tree will drop a rotten peach
to draw ants to where he did fall
and he will lie there and beseech
that someone come out, help to call,

and as he's made air so unpleasant
those who believe we should forgive
this vain, presumptuous, cringing peasant
stay in the houses where they live,

and I will call the notary,
the lawyer, and policemen, too,
to see our common enemy--
he can't repent, but how he'll rue!

And he'll learn, as his victims learned,
that doctors are no use at all
when glyphosate is what has burned
the skin that's doomed to rot and fall.

And I don't doubt the peach tree, too,
in its own way, will laugh to see,
unfailingly, the poison do
more harm to him than it or me.

Optional cut-off point for tired eyes.

The Famous Feral Elberta Peach Tree currently has three high branches, each loaded with more peaches than they look as if they could bear. Once again it's hurt, but I don't think it's dead. It has more life in it than all the other peach trees in the orchard had, together. 

That stubborn sell-out everybody loves to hate, you know, the old man who looks a bit like our late founding member Oogesti but has lately started looking "older" than Oogesti ever did, has put some obstacles in what looked like the clear path of Glyphosate Awareness. This week a local case involving pesticide vapor drift was judged in favor of the poisoner. 

So? I said to the Bad News Bear who drove up to bear this bad news. Is it not said that, when the pretty girls line up on one side of an issue, that side is about to win? All the young, pretty female Congressmen voted the right way on the Farm Bill. Spraying poison should be recognized as a violent crime against persons in another year or two. Meanwhile, even that judge who's about to retire reportedly said "Spraying on someone else's property is a different matter." I don't think my neighborhood is going to have a Bad Neighbor for very many more days. 

About the old man in Washington, I don't know. I hope he does have a soul that is capable of real repentance. I think people should be praying that he has.

As for the peach tree...you probably have to be local to appreciate this. Peach trees do not usually live long, this high up the Blue Ridge. The long hard freeze killed most. The sudden late freeze killed most that had survived that. The poison spraying? Hah. It's bearing fruit. 

Some trees are super-fertile the year before they die, but this one's been super-fertile for ten years in a row already. I think it thinks it's an apple or persimmon tree, something that's supposed to be strong and hardy. It did not get the memo that peach trees are supposed to die if you look at them the wrong way.

I doubt that anybody will get the full, rich flavor of an Elberta peach off the famous tree this year. It wouldn't be fit to eat, this year, anyway. Next year I won't be surprised if that tree is bowed down to the ground with sweet, ripe peaches, as so many times before. It does not rest for years in between crops, as other peach trees do.

Somewhere, one of the pits of one of its fruits will sprout into another tree like it. One, but probably not two. 
Posted by at 6 comments:
Labels: , ,

Web Log for 5.21.26

It rained off and on all day. Cleaned the air, good for the land, good for any crops that may manage to grow this summer after the crazy winter and spring weather. A lot of things that would normally be starting to bear fruit have yet to bloom. I spent a good part of the day sleeping, because there were good reasons to stay awake all night, and most of the rest waking myself up with the mad mix of music e-friends had posted. Lots and lots of links came in today! And almost every one of them was to a book somebody wanted me to buy or sell!

Camping Weekend

The Bruderhof confirmed: it's free of charge. Three days in Walden, New York, good food, lots of Christian seminars and discussions, aimed at the Millennial Generation. They respect non-Christian beliefs. Of course, this weekend is especially recommended to those who think they might be interested in joining a Christian community, pooling resources and working for the good of the group. This is the real experience socialism tries (and fails) to replicate: people freely choose to live like an extended family. Each one has per own immediate family and personal paraphernalia. Other resources are pooled, so nobody has to buy a car and every licensed driver has the use of any of the cars the group agree that they need. The groups become very close-knit. Young people who want to stay in the group naturally want to meet people their own age who don't feel like cousins. If you ae young and think communal life might be for you if you found the right people, here is a chance to find out more about the lifestyle and a group that's ready to expand. You will not be asked for money. Poor but talented people can join. You should take a nice guest gift anyway.

It should perhaps be emphasized that a Bruderhof community is not for slackers. You will be assigned a job. You will be expected to work as long as you're physically able. The Bruderhof are best known for furniture factories. Some groups do other kinds of work, like looking after people with massive brain damage. You can drop out of the corporate rat race but you will be spending a good part of each day doing something that other people find useful. 


Music 

Sandy Denny.


Beethoven.


Tom Petty.



The Mighty Sniper.


Avishai Cohen.


Barcelona Gypsy Klezmer.


The Beatles.


Jack Soref Trio.


Fairport Convention.


Jesse Colin Young.


B.J. Thomas.


Bach.


Etienne de Lavaulx.



Elton John.


G.E. Schneeman demonstrates an instrument called the bowed psaltery.


Shirley Temple.


Ludovico Einaudi.



Neil Young.


ZZ Top.


Politics 

Maybe some people can follow the concept better in a video.


Word 

Although this web site has favorably reviewed novels by Lyssa Lund, this web site always wonders about people who name their daughters Lyssa...

In Greek the prefix A- meant "not." Alyssa, a traditional human name, means the opposite of Lyssa. Freedom from Lyssa. Alyssum, a fragrant plant that was supposed to deliver people from Lyssa's power.

So who was Lyssa? In Greek the word meant hatred, rage, fury, frenzy, even rabies. It was written with that letter that was transcribed as either U or I, apparently spelling the sound in between them as used in modern French and German; not "lissa" but "luessa." Wolves, lykoi, were noted as susceptible to rabies and lyssa was what drove them to attack humans, which they would not normally eat, as well as sheep. The ancient Greeks recognized that this was not a normal human emotion. It's not even mentioned in the Greek New Testament, which advises believers to resolve situations that provoke normal healthy human anger. Christians received spiritual deliverance and protection from Lyssa.

The Greeks thought Lyssa was a demon--in the modern sense of an evil spirit, as distinct from the classical sense of a spirit of place, person, mood--and a disease. In the Iliad, Lyssa was what brought Achilles out of his monumental sulk and drove him to kill men, and some say women, children, animals, and whatever else he saw, in an insane excess of revenge for Patroclus. 

Lyssa was also what Odysseus or Ulysses' father lamented his son's being subjected to by envious relatives, as an island king. Odysseus' mother had given him another name but he was always called "the hated one." In the Odyssey he lingers too long with other island queens, rather than hurrying home, because he anticipates having to deal with those relatives who feel lyssa for him, who present themselves as "suitors" for Penelope's hand while blatantly just wanting her husband's title.

In modern Latin-English, Lyssavirus is the genus of virus that includes rabies: 


If you want your daughter to know you were wishing her well when you named her, call her Alyssa, or Melissa, or Elissa, or Lisa, or Lucia, or some other name.
Posted by at 4 comments:
Labels:

Book Review for 5.12.26: Spell if I Know

Title: Spell if I Know 

Author: Elle Wren Burke

Date: 2025

Quote: "Okay, Page. What book does my soul need today?"

People walk into the sentient bookstore, place their hands in circles on the counter, and wait for the book their soul needs to float out to them. In this hilarious fantasy the bookstore helps a team of witches, fairies, and familiars stop two spell-cursed books snapping and snarling at people, while the host witch's familiar, a cat, keeps nagging her to get a dog. 

Too silly for some readers, this over-the-top fantasy will delight others. I chortled.
Posted by at No comments:

Book Review for 5.11.26: Love's Harvest

Title: Love's Harvest

Author: Linda Shenton Matchett

Date: 2018

Quote: "[Y]ou will lose your family's farm if you don't bring the outstanding loan up to date in sixty days."

Basil Quincey's father died and left Basil a mortgaged farm. Basil accepts the 1940s wartime offer of employing a bunkhouse full of "Land Girls," women who were sent around to do the chores of farmers who had gone to war. At their best the women are less efficient laborers than men. A Mrs. Hirsch is the slowest of all. Basil considers sending the whole troop back but there's something about Mrs. Hirsch...

What I received breaks off there. It's meant to be a trailer for a longer novel. This web site officially disapproves of the practice of sending people fragments of books. This book is not so delightfully written that anyone would want to linger over every word of Basil's impending romance with the widowed Mrs. Hirsch.
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , ,

Book Review: The Grumpiest Fireman Next Door

Title: The Grumpiest Fireman Next Door

Author: Maggie Blume

Date: 2025

Quote: "I'm not even supposed to be here...inches from colliding with the rear bumper of a fire engine."

Luke, whose name apparently flashes into Emilia's mind before he's told her it, has reasons not to fall in love with Emilia the minute she steps out of her car and admits she's been distracted while driving. It takes a few days. But this is a sweet romance with some kissing, so you know how it's going to end. 

It's a short, cute, wholesome small-town romance with not room for much beyond the progress of the couple's attraction to each other. They have time for her to decide to stay in the small town and get to know him. 

Maggie Blume's e-mail about a new romance in her "The Grumpiest" series caught me during a phase of resolution to cope with the e-mail. I agreed to read an advance reader's copy of the book that's due to launch next week. The advance readers' copies ran out before I got to the e-mail with the link to open mine. No worries. I expect they're all more or less alike. If you can forgive the misuse of "grumpy" to mean "polite, even when the person has reasons not to be, but not instantly infatuated with Wonderful Me," the series should be nice stories about nice, reasonably cautious, levelheaded people finding each other.
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , ,

Thursday, May 21, 2026

Book Review: Rug Hooking Made Easy

Title: Rug Hooking Made Easy

Author: Charlotte Kimball Stratton

Date: 1955

Publisher: Harper & Row

ISBN: none

Length: 214 pages

Illustrations: many photos and charts

Quote: “If I were to teach an inexperienced pupil, the first lesson would be entirely on the technique of making the loop.”

Nevertheless, possibly guessing that most of her readers will be experienced rugmakers (she keeps calling them “hookers”), Mrs. Stratton begins with chapters on design, dyes, and materials, and gives the lesson in making the loops only on pages 48-49. After that, pages 51 through 207 give geometric patterns, shaded picture patterns, and tips on making a variety of elaborate design.

Rug Hooking Made Easy provides an intermediate step between the blind-follower stage, in which crafters buy beginners’ kits and try to make something exactly like the picture on the package, and the advanced-crafter stage, in which crafters design their own projects.

Stories of old-time rugmakers fill out the back of the book.

For knitters, like this reviewer, rugmaking can become a source of frustration. It’s another textile craft that can be done with the same material (heavy wool yarn), so supplies are usually shelved together in stores, and books are usually shelved together in libraries... and almost everything that’s right for one craft is wrong for the other. Rug patterns can be fun to knit, but they won’t look right. Yarn that makes comfortable socks and sweaters is always too soft, and nearly always too thin, for rugs. Rug yarn can be made into caps or sweaters, but few people want to wear them.

The good news for knitters is that rugmaking is easy to learn, and rug hooks, rug yarn, and either pre-stamped or unstamped rug canvas (backing material) are quite cheap. If you’re a knitter or a practitioner of some other needlecraft and would like to expand your horizons, Rug Hooking Made Easy will take you as far into rugmaking as you want to go, whether that’s the plain doormat, or the stair carpet with fifteen different detailed landscapes between the sixteen steps. (Yes, Mrs. Stratton hooked such a thing, and patterns are included.)
 
Posted by at No comments:
Labels:

Web Log for 5.20.26

Another day of drought even in Virginia. The artesian well still wells up, but the stream is low in its bed. Again the land seems dry enough that I have qualms about burning the trash. In California they think they finally got one fire under control. Most of California, even livable parts like Sacramento, can't count on another rain before late September. They will have more fires. The last summer I was in California was the rare summer people told me to tell my grandchildren about--the year it rained in high summer in Sacramento! Can't remember now whether it was July or August, but I hope it happens again this year.

Camping Weekend 

Weekend camp in beautiful rural New York for twenty-somethings. Trigger warning: Bruderhof. Be prepared to interact with people who live in small close-knit radically Christian groups, who respect Judaism and Buddhism and look forward to contact with the outside world, but don't approve of drugs or extramarital sex or greedy careerism. The Nephews, if any of you choose to go, should have a good time; generally the same rules you respect when you visit your Auntie Pris. You do you in your house and don't raise the blood pressure of your hosts in their house. I wish that could be said for a majority of twenty-somethings. It definitely could not be said for a majority of people my age when we were twenty-something.

I looked for some indication of how much this will cost you. It costs the Bruderhof to host the weekend, but their web page doesn't mention a fee. If they don't specify one, at today's prices I'd think $500-1000 would be a nice guest gift. (It's one thing to read their magazine in the e-mail without paying, since adding names to e-mail lists takes so little time or money...but this weekend is a serious investment for them.)


Film 

It's an educational documentary film, but it does have Selleck in it.


Frugal Food 

Jill and Robert Malone discuss basic frugal/prepper meal planning. They start with an overhaul that's ahead of where simple $10-makes-dinner-for-two recipes start, but worth making if you can do it--a Prepper Pantry will start to pay off in a week or so.


Music 

Woo-hoo! This web site has been invited to join the Music Moves Me Monday link-ups. Apparently some readers like our music links. I am honored by and grateful for the invitation.

The ironic part is that, although I've tried to remember to look up links for the tunes that start playing in my head as I read or write things, I've not found enough of them to solidify the habit; I get most of these links from the Mirror, the Meow, some of the poets at the poem sites I frequent, and the Music Moves Me Monday link-ups. 

The idea was just to share what I was stretching/dancing to on days when I stayed at the computer all day and didn't go out for exercise in the real world. It started with the COVID panic and people saying they lived in cities that banned walking, jogging, or going to the gym. I suggested that we make a habit of moving to every musical beat we encountered while surfing the'Net. Fast and slow, loud and soft, familiar and weird--stretch our bodies, stretch our minds--on the Internet nobody cares whether you're warming up for practice with the Ballet Russe or retraining your toe muscles in physical therapy; just pick a muscle and bend, stretch, or shake to the beat.

This web site has a commitment not to embed videos, because they foul up printers and even some browsers. On the surface that violates the 4M link-up rules. If the hosts of the 4M link-up are willing to allow links instead of embedded videos, however, we can have theme music posts on Mondays.

Yes, Gentle Readers, you should feel free to post music links in the comments or e-mail. They will probably reappear in the Music section of a link log in a day or two. 

Perhaps unfortunately this happens to have been one of the days when the laptop's speakers were mostly taken up with talk videos...I don't recommend that anyone ever make a talk video unless physically incapable of writing down the words, but I give people the benefit of the doubt if recommended by e-friends.

So today's music link is The Clash. (Warning: link will play the whole album if you let it. Real workout music.)


Poems 

Cutest moth metaphor I've seen in a while:


School, End of Term at 

Robert Reich's farewell address to students at Berkeley. 

"

I used to tell my students, the best way of learning anything is to talk with people who disagree with you.

"

I've disagreed with Bill Clinton's old school friend on a lot of things, over the years, beginning with why anyone would ever have claimed Bill Clinton as a friend. Some may be shocked that I've agreed with him on anything...oh, come onnn, like chicken soup tastes good? Like grandchildren are adorable? Like Substack is fun, if your computer time is not already chock-full and you keep forgetting to squeeze your Substack in somewhere, which Reich hasn't done? News flash--people who disagree with our political opinions are still people. Anyway, I completely agree with that sentence. If you think their opinions and practices are truly loathsome, you can still gain intelligence by listening.


(And if he can write out his words, at his age...)

X (Twitter) 

Latest scam: When you post on X, you're followed by total strangers whose profiles are either empty, or all reposts of other people's posts, including yours. Those people then send other people phishy DM requests. When you recognize someone who tried to phish your account before, and report the account to X, the system demands an offensive post and takes the one at the top of their profile page. Might be yours. Then your account shuts down while X investigates the false flag.

I see a clear pattern. I don't see yet whether these people are primarily about attacking the people whose posts they repost, or primarily about phishing accounts of people who aren't onto their game yet.

"
Guerrilla shadowbanning: create bogus accounts to generate obnoxious DMs, while accounts' profiles consist of reposts. You get blocked because they reposted your posts.
"

Unfortunately X doesn't have a live, responsive help team, as Twitter had, so it may take a while to fix this. I can say that "Official Mel Gibson," as distinct from the verified account with a screen name like "private Mel G," is an egregious example. (Some time ago I reposted something Mel G posted on some hot topic of the day. Apart from The River I'm not a fan of his movies, but I respect the man for saying he's a Christian in mostly anti-Christian Hollywood. Anyway this impersonator had, at the time, what looked like a credible fan or publicist account for Mel Gibson. His account was shut down after I posted about its phishiness. He's back on X, following me. It's a grudge fight.)

Let's say this. I could believe that Mel Gibson has developed some Glyphosate Awareness, which would be great news, but if that were the case he could have told the world about it on X and he would probably have been more interested in chatting with a demographic "peer" like Neil Young. I don't believe there is a married movie star who spends time online chatting up a woman who doesn't even post a human face image but does publicize the fact that she doesn't even date divorced men. Men still annoy me in real life, regularly enough that I can imagine a "celebrity" flirting with me if we'd met in real life, but not from some foreign country where if he is visiting he's surrounded by platoons of would-be starlets. I'd love to discuss a legitimate remote writing job with someone working for Mel Gibson or Elon Musk or any number of other rich and famous non-writers, but I'm ticked off by people phishing from foreign countries and pretending to be famous non-writers. (EM is the male "celebrity" that they recognize on my following list, so a good half-dozen Phake Phollowers pretend to be Elon Musk.) Worst of all when what prompted my original complaint was not even overt phishing, which was where I thought the DMs were going but they didn't get there, but the impersonator trying to flirt with me in the name of somebody who is not, in any conceivable version of this world, going to flirt with me. How desperate and pathetic a fool is person openly saying he thinks I am?!?!?!

Are there people on X who fall for this?!?!?!?!?!

Clustered toward the bottom of this page, with white buttons that show I'm "following" them, are the long-term Tweeps whose posts, from legitimate free accounts, I miss and look for. Clustered toward the top, with black buttons that show I have nothing to do with them, are these nuisance accounts. I think X should check them for a history of requesting DMs and block the ones that have. 


For all I know some new followers post content as good as or better than my old familiar Tweeps, may actually be my old familiar Tweeps with new screen names, and I'm sorry, but so many new followers' profiles have been such a total waste of time that I don't even check out new followers' profiles any more.

And I think X should verify claims that anyone's "content appears to be automated" before annoying anyone with that messages--someone may have an acoount with a similar name, and apparently someone does, but my content is 100% hand-typed except for the titles and links to articles, books, etc. Nobody likes everything so some people undoubtedly hate my posts, but there's nothing automated about them.
Posted by at No comments:
Labels:

A Word I Totally Misread as a Kid

We've seen a lot of memes and blog prompts about the song lyrics we mis-heard as children. Did I miss the ones about the words we misread?

A lot of people misread "misled" as "mizzled"; this may even be the origin of the word "mizzle," meaning to slip away quietly, as in "They still went to church, but now they sat in the back row through the song service and mizzled out before the collection was taken up." 

What popped into mind this morning was "rendezvous." It came in one of the horse stories I liked as a child; the older man who was helping the boy hero train his horse referred to a meeting as a rendezvous. 

I sounded it out. I figured it had to be the same sort of word as "nervous." What would "rendezve" mean? Maybe it was an adjective, "rendezive"? What would that mean? I asked an adult who, of course, had no idea what I was talking about, but eventually I showed the adult the book. All was made clear.

My after-school sessions with French language records started that autumn.

I still can't claim to speak French. I do, however, read books in French.
Posted by at No comments:
Labels:

Wednesday, May 20, 2026

Web Log for 5.19.26

Animals 

Dusky grouse fight. (Grouse are considered a chickenlike bird; like chickens, the males fight for status, showing off their moves and bodies to any females who may or may not be watching, occasionally making physical contact, seldom doing each other any harm.)


Sea otters.


Business

It's a novel idea, but could it only ever work in Japan? Shiro Oguni visited a memory care home where patients were encouraged to exercise their brains by doing jobs around the place. He ordered a meal in the cafeteria. He was served a different meal than he'd ordered. And he thought that the surprise factor, having a restaurant where ordering tuna might get you tuna or Vegans' Delight, might launch a restaurant. He employs people with early-stage memory loss. All the food is cooked by competent adults but it's served by people who may or may not remember who ordered what. The elderly servers say that they feel better about life, having jobs.

I couldn't eat there. Could you?


(Bonus feature: below the main story linked is the video clip from another weird news story about a French tennis star who decided to "cool off" his temper by pulling down his white shorts. Although he was wearing shorter black shorts underneath and didn't expose any forbidden skin, he was fined anyway. While playing tennis people are supposed to pretend they are gentlemen.)

Communication 

When the boss demands that you carry a phone in your car and doesn't want to spring for a proper no-hands phone mount...


Found on Messy Mimi's blog. Lens traces it to a social media account called Vietnamemes. 

Music 

JC very kindly shared: 

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=jjTI4VRX39Y 

Jesse Butterworth attempts "What a Feeling." I suppose it takes courage to release a recording where your voice breaks the way his does. 


Elvis Presley--relatively modest, because this is a patriotic medley, not his usual lame-brained song of Young Hormone Surges. Not that his idea of "modest"...well, you can see.

Posted by at No comments:

Book Review: Sweet Revenge

Title: Sweet Revenge

Author: Regina Barreca

Date: 1995 (hardcover), 1997 (paperback)

Publisher: Crown (1995), Berkley (1997)

ISBN: 0-425-15766-0 (1997)

Length: 292 pages

Quote: “A little revenge, we should remember, goes a long way.”

Regina Barreca painted herself into an unusual corner before writing this book. She belongs to the “Women Are ‘Relational,’ Therefore Nicer” school of feminism. Hence the selfconscious tightrope-walking quality of Barreca’s connective writing in this book. Revenge isn’t Nice, she seems to be saying, and I have to pay lip service to Niceness but...

It’s easier to enjoy this book if you abandon the ideal of Niceness and reclaim a belief in Justice,. Then you can acknowledge that personal revenge, although obviously less desirable than formal justice, is what’s supposed to happen if formal justice fails. Forgiveness is a beautiful thing. Forgiveness begins with repentance.

If you have trespassed against somebody and not repented, confessed, and made some effort to compensate for what you did, you can’t be forgiven. Whatever the offended person does will qualify as revenge. The person might choose to ignore you; in that case you’d never know how long it would last, and you’d have to spend the rest of your life looking out behind you. The person might choose to be kind to you; in that case you’d have to spend the rest of your lifer knowing yourself to have been morally inferior to him/her. I recently read a book in which a minister described how he was unable to collect payment on a loan for years, until he wrote to the borrower that he had decided to repay the debt to himself in an attempt to forgive the borrower’s trespass just as God had forgiven him; the borrower made several efforts to repay the loan, but the minister refused to take the money...and he seemed to think that he wasn’t exacting revenge.,

Revenge, we see, is not a social problem but a fact of life. Trespassing in the first place is the problem of concern to society. And impenitence.

But why argue about the philosophy of revenge? What readers want to know, before deciding to read 292 pages on the subject, is whether the revenge stories in this book are good ones. Yes, there are several previously unpublished stories of creative, proportionate, even legal revenge.

Also a few stories of revenge that was disproportionate and unethical. A vindictive younger sibling sneaks into a boy’s room and turns all his pet turtles over on their backs. For me this act is out of bounds, because who knows how much or how long those inoffensive turtles will have to suffer? Now, if the guy had been a few years older, and the younger sibling had managed to turn his car upside down...

I’ll leave readers to pass their own judgments on the ethics of accidentally-on-purpose burning (a) the offender’s food or (b) the offender’s favorite record. I will offer this subjective judgment: when dissatisfied employees walk out and start a competing business that submarines their former employer’s business, I think that’s absolutely splendid.

Sweet Revenge is recommended to anyone sane enough to recognize that the Poe character in “The Cask of Amontillado,” whose revenge for a minor offense is to bury a trusting friend alive, is pure fiction.
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , ,

A Typical Day in My Life

This week's Long & Short Reviews prompt is "A Typical Day in My Life."

That's not much of a topic. My life borders on being monastic. It doesn't sound very exciting, but it's my vocation and I enjoy it.

Prayer is part of every day, as is basic self-care. Seeing and communicating with other human beings is part of most days. Time spent out in the not-a-lawn, on the porch, or in the orchard, with the cats, is part of most days. That's all I need to write about that. All the Internet needs to know about living human beings who are neither "celebrities" (who can afford a lot of security measures) nor criminals (who deserve what they get) is that they exist.

Typically I spend the small hours of the morning with this computer. Sometimes I fall asleep at the computer. Sometimes one or more of the cats follow me to the screen porch,

Sometimes I eat a solid breakfast. Sometimes a caffeinated drink is breakfast. On cold days I try to cook in the morning, using an electric skillet as an oven. 

Sometimes I go into town to send or collect mail or buy groceries. It's about two miles each way, a nice morning walk. Sometimes I catch a ride with the odd jobs man. Most days I stay at home. 

If I didn't sleep at night, I plan on making up for lost hours of sleep during the day.

Some days I do odd jobs for real people in the real world. Some days I do my own housework or yard work. Some days I write on one of the reliable computers,  not fouled up by the Internet, at home. Some days I come back online during the daytime. Some days I'm online in time to connect with link-ups, social media, and other fun'n'games, and some days I'm not.

On cold days the female cats are likely to be indoors with me. On warm days they are likely to be outside, usually on the porch. 

Most days, if it's not too wet, I burn the day's trash in the afternoon. On hot days I might add wood to the fire and cook in a Dutch Oven over the coals. Or I might eat something convenient and unheated.

Reading, knitting, and some sort of exercise fit into most days, somewhere. 
Posted by at No comments:

Tuesday, May 19, 2026

Web Log for 5.18.26

That feeling you get when you try to be virtuous and read your e-mail...and all of it seems to be "Read my book! Take it! It's free! Read it! Review it! Help me sell it!" and now you have 50 e-books open in one window and the e-mail is shoving a hundred more in your face...

Oy. Oy as in Yiddish--woe! Also oy as in Cockney--hey! Non-reviewers! Youall should be reviewers too! Share the FUN!

I love books. I love a good cold glass of water, too, but I don't want to be dropped into the river to drown.

Animals 

British butterflies. Two also exist in North America (most of the continent); the ones photographed could probably crossbreed with some butterflies here.


Books 

Melissa Dowland, half of the Roadside Naturalist blog team, has a book coming out:


Glyphosate Awareness 

No link, but Steve Milloy just died, as far as I'm concerned. 

Anyone who talks about "scientific" studies of glyphosate needs to produce studies of samples from patients with chronic bleeding conditions that vary from day to day. If ANY significant number of such patients, including the SSRI victims, don't lose more blood when their blood contains glyphosate, I'd like to know about that. Meanwhile, "the science" has yet to be done because Bayer Science has consistently ignored what all the studies show for all species studied: A majority of individuals exposed to glyphosate never have shown one consistent reaction, because they've all shown different ones, but a majority of individuals in all species show adverse reactions. 

It may still be worth the time to explain this to a newly hired yardman, but if any of the technorati pretend not to understand it already, we need to declare them dead and treat them like zombies. Milloy is a bitter clinger who needs to walk into stores and see the storekeeper lock the cash drawer, retreat into a locked office, and call the police to throw him out.

Music 

Wu Fei.


John Scalzi won't back down either.


Roger Waters and what survives of Pink Floyd...still rock.


Art Garfunkel. (Warning: lots of lullaby-rock sound. This is a "playlist," apparently not published as an "album," not that you can see any difference online. And listening to the whole thing may cause drowsiness and is NOT recommended for listening in cars.)


Little Big Town. (Warning: bad diction.)


Kodaline.


Dan & Shay.


Needtobreathe.


Peace, the Hope of 

War is our species' traditional solution to what happens when men are allowed to get what they want and, as a result, too many women have too many babies. The feminist solution is so much more elegant...

Posted by at No comments:
Labels:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)