Title: Katrina
Author: Sally Salminen
Translator: Naomi Walford
Date: 1937 (English)
Publisher: Farrar & Rinehart (English)
ISBN: none
Length: 367 pages
Quote: "'Ay, Sanna--pick flowers always,' she whispered inaudibly."
Back when "Katrina" was a human name and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was considered a great novel, this book was considered worth translating into several languages. Resemblances to A Tree Grows in Brooklyn would seem too many to be coincidental (Sally Salminen's ill-fated young couple are called Katrina and Johan, Betty Smith's are called Katie and Johnny), but Katrina was published first.
The same things happen to both couples; the stories end differently, suiting the cultures in which they were published. Both cope with malicious gossip, resentment of the heroine's energy and intelligence, a foiled rape, a boating accident, lots of untimely deaths, hopeless poverty, and the way the heroine builds up the ego of a man she's able to love only in a compassionate, almost motherly way. Katrina is, technically, a farmer rather than a charwoman (although she does a bit of charring), and Johan is a chatty, happy-go-lucky extrovert rather than an alcoholic, but you get the idea.
However, what made A Tree Grows in Brooklyn a distinct (and more successful) novel is probably the cultural flavor. Katrina stays with the heroine to the end of her life, and although she's earned a few successes and Salminen lets her enjoy them, a novel that fails to end before the main character's life does can be a sad read. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is sometimes considered positively inspirational because it ends with Katie still fairly young and looking forward to happier years.
Then, too, there's the detail that A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is told primarily through Katie's daughter--who is not much of a heroine, but who is able to appreciate her mother's heroic qualities in a way that could become maudlin in an impersonal voice or unbearably self-centered in Katie's own voice. Katrina's daughter dies, and although her sons grow up to have what might have been told as happy stories, their stories are told through the voice of their longsuffering, somewhat self-pitying mother, whom they grow up and leave.
Considering that one novel ends with a wedding and one ends with a death, the emotional quality of the endings is remarkably alike...then again, the whole genre of Socialist Realist fiction was all remarkably alike.
And how realistic was it? Selma Lagerlof was a Swedish farm girl who wrote about the hard times, and the good times, of Swedish farm families. Her books weren't nearly as gloomy as Katrina. Then again, Lagerlof wrote from mainland Sweden, and Katrina is set on a small, crowded, isolated island where poverty might actually have been harder to escape from.
The tuberculosis motif is probably true to life. Every book I've ever read about Sweden at this period (admittedly that's only about a half dozen books) mentions it. Everyone had the disease; the only question was whether they'd resist it long enough to die of something else first.
This book is not recommended to anyone looking for a cheerful read. It might appeal to someone looking for a good cry, or, more likely, to someone looking for insight into the popular appeal socialism had at this period, or the history of Sweden or of Aland island.
Wednesday, August 5, 2026
Web Log Long Weekender for 7.31-8.4.26
When I have been online, I've been "Wrapped up in Books"--e-books--and once again, advance review copies, so another review of an older book pops out of the can for Friday. I've not spent a full day online all weekend long. The Internet's been here. I've been out. And of course, ignoring all the hours when "updates" could have been run without anyone noticing, Microsoft has to hijack the computer when it's in use. I mean, who cares who paid for the computer, who pays for the office, who pays for the electricity, who pays for the connections, or who pays the computer operator? Those are mere mortals! Microsoft is a god!--Microsoft's boyboss thinks. Microsoft is flying too close to the sun and needs to melt, molt, plummet, and drown.
Animals
Honeybees were endangered. Then they were putting native bee species in danger, out-competing the native bees due to the help they get from humans. Now, in North Carolina, they're endangered again, this time by the yellow-legged hornet.
The yellow-legs are smaller than European hornets--about the size of our White-Faced Hornets. If they "invade" my neighborhood, I expect Jimmy Skunk will enjoy them.
Five minutes of puffins just being cute in Maine:
There are still large puffin colonies on the coast of Maine, though their populations have declined in reactions to various threats, including human-caused warming of their water and resultant changes in their food supply, over the years.
Why bears should be walled into nature preserves well away from tourists, with room to breed and forage only in places humans don't go. Live video does not actually show blood.
Glyphosate Awareness
Remember, most females of all species do not show the Seralini Effect, in which the female does not show reactions to glyphosate or various other toxins herself if, and because, her body can store those toxins in a placenta and produce defective offspring. (Women who show this trait think it's horrible and there's no reason to imagine that females of other species feel differently.) In a random sample of the US population it's not really surprising that a large study found a strong correlation between glyphosate and premature birth generally, but not between glyphosate and premature birth caused by major birth defects or between glyphosate and premature birth early enough in pregnancy to amount to abortion. In most of the cases studied the babies were at least born alive; the study didn't follow how many of them lived even one full year.
I live with Seralini cats, so I tend to forget that not all pregnancies always become tragedies when females are exposed to glyphosate and not all females need those tragedies as protection from even worse things. For some females, a baby who survives glyphosate exposure long enough to start eating solid food may not seem like a total blue-eyed Wonder. Serena's kitten ate his first solid meal on Sunday. (With his much older sister and nephew, who, being social cats, had been waiting to show how fond and protective they'd be since he was born.) If he survives this month, Wonder will be his name.
He does seem to have a good chance of surviving. He seems to be having no trouble digesting solid food. He bounces, he pounces, his favorite thing this week is biting everyone but I think he'll outgrow it. When allowed to go out and meet Drudge and Silver, although Silver had obviously been wanting to help nurse him from the day he was born, he and Drudge bonded on sight.
Meanwhile, although I observe that smoke is easier to avoid and less immediately toxic to me than glyphosate vapors in the air, and think of each day's trash fire as relief for the cats and me, some ask whether large-scale wildfires are breaking down glyphosate residues or spreading the poison from Canada to the US...I will say this. Even for good True Greens who have lived for fifty or sixty or seventy years with a sense of guilt about what our pollution's been doing to Canada's forests, there is a verifiable sense that it's payback time.
Should parents of "transgender" offspring be blamed for the anguish these young people endure? Or should the blame go to those who make "endocrine disruptor" chemicals and spray them recklessly into the air? Secretary Kennedy has been saying it's the chemicals for a long time. I agree. Not that there may not be the occasional parent who deserves blame for telling children garbage like "If you don't want to play football and/or fight in a war, you might as well be a girl" or "If you want to accomplish anything in life beyond having babies, you might as well be a boy." But in the absence of these chemicals even parents like that, even teachers and psychologists like that, even whole communities spouting that kind of mental toxic waste, have historically produced very few "transgender" offspring. Hearing stupid talk is not what makes teenaged boys grow breasts...and lactate.
History
Vince Staten reminisces, briefly considering all the history involved, about the centennial of Kingsport's main high school. (When Gate City wants serious competition, this is where the competitors look.)
Music
Belle & Sebastian.
Don Dixon.
Irene Cara. (How is it possible that the girl who sang this song of teenaged energy is dead already?)
Billy Joel.
John McCutcheon.
Boy George.
Cranberries.
Politics, as Practiced by People Who Should Have Gone into a Different Line of Work
After her public pronouncements on the benefits of living among other Black people, Kamala Harris moves into a typical California almost-all-White neighborhood:
Writing, Contests for
Anyone can enter this contest, free of charge, but it is the Society of Classical Poets and they are strict about classical forms. Classical haiku did not always meet the strict syllable count, mention a season, or "make life" if only a brief life (butterfly, cherry blossom, I mentioned a fungus); haiku submitted to this competition have a better chance if they do all of those things. Odds are against even the members of the Society winning the prize. The goal is a beautiful collection of classical haiku.
Note that the senryu, which is about humans, is a separate form. In a classical haiku readers usually don't see humans at all, or at most we see humans as a mass of movement and color seen from a distance, colorful robes, stately movement of a procession. And in traditional haiku, which of course were Japanese, there are traditional lists of words for each of Japan's twenty-some traditional weather phases; non-Japanese poets have a choice whether to use translations of these words, or do the best we can with words that pinpoint seasons in our weather cycles. (Apparently Japanese poets weren't content with "spring, summer, autumn, winter"; their lists were more like "the main heat wave in July, the somewhat cooling storm system in July, the next heat wave toward the end of July, the first chilly nights of August, the heat wave of late August...")
I didn't know these things when I started this web site. Some online poets had the benefit of a free haiku course taught online at the Carpe Diem site around 2012-13. I didn't; I'm passing on what I've learned from them, especially Kim M. Russell, whose notes on her poems so consistently summarize what she had learned and was trying to use in each poem.
This is neither a haiku nor a senryu, though it has seventeen syllables. It just came to me when I was writing the haiku for the contest...
Hard to get feet
out the door
when writing pleasing
haiku--just one more!
Writing, Ethics of
Megadittos.
Reasons I've Stopped Reading (or Watching) a Series
This week's Long & Short Reviews prompt asks why reviewers have stopped reading (or watching) a series.
For me the most usual reason has been inconvenience. If a series seemed worth reading at the public library, and the library had volumes one and two, or volumes 1 through 93 (as in the case of The Baby-Sitters Club), I've often read the existing volumes in order. If, however, more volumes came out later and the continuity of reading the series of library books was broken--maybe the librarian decided not to order volume 94, maybe I'd moved to a different neighborhood where the library didn't have that series--I've not usually made any effort to keep up with the series. Two or nine or ninety-three volumes have seemed like enough.
Then there's the sheer size of some series. I liked Nancy Drew, in grades two and three, but not enough to read all sixty volumes. Just two volumes of The Hardy Boys and three of The Bobbsey Twins felt like enough.
There are series that are generally agreed to have lost their inspiration, the later volumes having been cranked out just to sustain interest in the volumes the author really enjoyed writing. Anne McCaffrey wrote two unforgettable trilogies about her fictional planet Pern, then published another book set on Pern every year for years afterward. Everyone remembered the Dragonriders and Harper Hall trilogies but did anyone remember any of the later volumes?
Some have similar feelings about Piers Anthony's Xanth series. For nine volumes, this quirky fantasy-adventure-comedy series impressed even critics. The philosophical questions raised in Night Mare were even considered seriously in some philosophical and religious books of the 1980s. Perhaps it was just the reputations of their different publishers that made critics feel that later volumes like Vale of the Vole and Zombie Lover contained no serious thought but were just comedies based on puns. Certainly, though, as Xanth became familiar to its readers and its author, its plots have grown thinner. If you like Xanth you don't ask every volume to be as philosophical as Night Mare. Not everyone likes Xanth. I like Xanth and would have gone on collecting all the volumes if I'd had the money to spare.
I suppose all fictional series will become harder to believe beyond a certain length. Readers could suspend disbelief in Lenora Mattingly Weber's Beany Malone and similar children's stories where each school year or term brought a child protagonist a new adventure, even if that meant that Beany Malone belonged to two different demographic generations, being a teenager in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. Readers suspend disbelief in cartoon strip series like "Blondie" and "Peanuts" where the characters never matured noticeably in any way, because a cartoon strip captures a moment rather than a stage in someone's life. If "Blondie" and "Peanuts" had been published as graphic novels I'd imagine that even primary school readers would notice that the characters have stayed the same age for an unconscionably long time. The number of years the Baby-Sitters Club spent being thirteen wasn't even decent. A story worth putting into a book ought to have some effect on its characters. Lord Peter Wimsey stayed believable, and likable, because he and his fellow characters learned from their previous adventures; Agatha Christie's characters seemed to be muddling through the same stories over and over, as Dame Agatha aged, because they didn't.
Tuesday's Book Review: Woven by Hand
Title: Woven by Hand
Author: Ramses Wissa Wassef
Translator: Denis Mahaffey
Date: 1972
Publisher: Hamlyn
ISBN: 0-600-03876-9
Length: most pages not numbered
Illustrations: most pages consist of full-color photographs
Quote: "My wife and I decided to...prove the artistic potential of the group of children."
To prove, yes; to improve, no. That's the trouble with Woven by Hand.
In the village of Harrania, in Egypt, between 1951 and 1971, Ramses Wissa Wassef and his wife set their elementary school students down in front of simple looms and let them weave tapestries. The result was Modern Primitive Art. Primitive Art was very fashionable in 1972. Both the children's original work, and this book about it, sold well to the international art community and helped some of the children stay in school as long as they did.
The children were carefully shielded from any kind of criticism, or any opportunities to study the work of adult artists, Wassef seems to be bragging in his introduction to this photographic retrospective of the children's work. At the time this was trendy...even if the children's work was deliberately, artificially being kept primitive.
The children were, in fact, paid for their work. "The finished tapestry was measured, and the child...received a sum corresponding to the area...The real value of this system is that it frees me completely from the task of checking the hours of work." It also "freed" the teachers to keep the profit if some tapestries turned out to be more valuable than others, and "freed" the students from any hint that this might have been because some tapestries were more pleasing to the eye than others. Wassef does not discuss this interesting ethical wrinkle.
The children are well along in middle age by now. Their tapestries have faded, if not biodegraded, by now, and if any of the children have grown up to be artists, they probably feel that it's just as well. They did quite well at weaving simple geometrics and images like tangled vines and gnarled trees, but my guess is that even ten-year-olds would have welcomed more instruction in how to make representational art more representational than some of the village scenes these children wove into their tapestries.
In Woven by Hand "The Mad Bull" looks as much like a two-toed cat as like a bull. "Women Going to Market" and "Caliph Ali and His Two Sons" have birdlike faces; conversely the people in "Palm Sunday" have no noses at all. I suspect that the child who wove "The Flooded Village" would have appreciated a chance to see how the boats could be made to look more like boats on a river than like cards laid out for solitaire, and the child who tried to weave "The Calves" would have welcomed material in colors other than watermelon red and denim blue as well as a tip that real calves do not have gory fangs. Children do not actually see the world this way. They see the same shapes and colors adults see, only from lower angles, and some children growing up at this period have expressed a preference for help toward making what they drew look more like what they saw, rather than rhapsodies about their "unique visions."
Was the benefit of sales of "authentic primitive art" worth the cost of failing to help the children bring their work closer to what their "unique vision" really saw? The ethical debate Woven by Hand raises is still interesting.
So are the tapestries. Despite the shortcomings of the ones that try to suggest real-life pictures, the more abstract tapestries are appealing. They all have a "definitely different" look that might inspire a needle art project today.
Author: Ramses Wissa Wassef
Translator: Denis Mahaffey
Date: 1972
Publisher: Hamlyn
ISBN: 0-600-03876-9
Length: most pages not numbered
Illustrations: most pages consist of full-color photographs
Quote: "My wife and I decided to...prove the artistic potential of the group of children."
To prove, yes; to improve, no. That's the trouble with Woven by Hand.
In the village of Harrania, in Egypt, between 1951 and 1971, Ramses Wissa Wassef and his wife set their elementary school students down in front of simple looms and let them weave tapestries. The result was Modern Primitive Art. Primitive Art was very fashionable in 1972. Both the children's original work, and this book about it, sold well to the international art community and helped some of the children stay in school as long as they did.
The children were carefully shielded from any kind of criticism, or any opportunities to study the work of adult artists, Wassef seems to be bragging in his introduction to this photographic retrospective of the children's work. At the time this was trendy...even if the children's work was deliberately, artificially being kept primitive.
The children were, in fact, paid for their work. "The finished tapestry was measured, and the child...received a sum corresponding to the area...The real value of this system is that it frees me completely from the task of checking the hours of work." It also "freed" the teachers to keep the profit if some tapestries turned out to be more valuable than others, and "freed" the students from any hint that this might have been because some tapestries were more pleasing to the eye than others. Wassef does not discuss this interesting ethical wrinkle.
The children are well along in middle age by now. Their tapestries have faded, if not biodegraded, by now, and if any of the children have grown up to be artists, they probably feel that it's just as well. They did quite well at weaving simple geometrics and images like tangled vines and gnarled trees, but my guess is that even ten-year-olds would have welcomed more instruction in how to make representational art more representational than some of the village scenes these children wove into their tapestries.
In Woven by Hand "The Mad Bull" looks as much like a two-toed cat as like a bull. "Women Going to Market" and "Caliph Ali and His Two Sons" have birdlike faces; conversely the people in "Palm Sunday" have no noses at all. I suspect that the child who wove "The Flooded Village" would have appreciated a chance to see how the boats could be made to look more like boats on a river than like cards laid out for solitaire, and the child who tried to weave "The Calves" would have welcomed material in colors other than watermelon red and denim blue as well as a tip that real calves do not have gory fangs. Children do not actually see the world this way. They see the same shapes and colors adults see, only from lower angles, and some children growing up at this period have expressed a preference for help toward making what they drew look more like what they saw, rather than rhapsodies about their "unique visions."
Was the benefit of sales of "authentic primitive art" worth the cost of failing to help the children bring their work closer to what their "unique vision" really saw? The ethical debate Woven by Hand raises is still interesting.
So are the tapestries. Despite the shortcomings of the ones that try to suggest real-life pictures, the more abstract tapestries are appealing. They all have a "definitely different" look that might inspire a needle art project today.
Petfinder Post: Bulldogs and Manx Cats
Today's "Censored Dog Breed" is Bulldogs. Some people think they are excessively ugly. For some people they are phobia triggers. From the humanitarian point of view they're not a very functional breed, unless you actually need help to herd bulls; those flat faces and stocky bodies accompany a set of breed-typical health problems that need routine care, add to veterinary expenses, and shorten the dogs' average life expectancy.
As with Manx cats, existing bulldogs can be good pets, but there are valid reasons to breed the special Bulldog genes out of the pool.
Those short noses breathe heavily and "snore" loudly. Some people say Bulldogs snore even when they're not asleep. They really do tend to be short of breath, and it's horribly easy for them to overheat.
Those wrinkly faces trap moisture, dirt, bacteria, and fungi. Though dogs don't sweat through their skins, Bulldogs' wrinkly faces retain enough water and saliva to produce rich crops of pathogens. They need daily grooming to prevent painful skin infections.
Those short coats don't look as if they'd shed a great deal...but they do.
Some Bulldogs have hip and leg joint disorders. A show-quality English Bulldog stands no more than 15 inches high at the shoulder (and can't raise its head much higher) and weighs 40 to 50 pounds. Though most of this weight is muscle, and the dogs can usually move well on those stubby legs that look as if they were always out of joint, sometimes the trait goes too far and the legs really are out of joint. Even when the dogs walk and run well, they can have unusual difficulty climbing stairs and swimming--they're not able to paddle as naturally as other dogs.
Many Bulldogs have surprisingly delicate digestion and pass a lot of stomach gas.
Bulldogs who are kindly treated are usually described as friendly, loyal, calm, brave, reasonably good with other dogs and children, easy-going, and even snuggly. As the American Kennel Club says, "They might weigh 50 pounds, but that won't stop them cuddling up in your lap, or at least trying to." They are not the most intelligent or trainable breed. They are generally considered stubborn and hard to train. They love to chomp, pull on things with their strong jaws, and play tug-of-war, even with their leads on walks.
Still, if you don't mind a little extra work and aren't put off by the look of a Bulldog, why leave a good, deserving dog to languish in a shelter?
The cats...I've ranted about Manx cats here before. They can be excellent pets. They tend to bond with one person, and if you are that person, you'll know it. Often they have wonderfully laid-back, mellow, friendly purrsonalities, tolerate petting by their person's friends and relatives, and may even make good visiting cats in nursing homes. The ones who live to grow up can have as long, healthy lives as other cats. (Some Manx cats do live with horrible-sounding disabilities.) The trouble is that so many Manx kittens don't live to grow up. If you love a cat who has a defective tail, have it sterilized.
Zipcode 10101: Cokey from Massachusetts
Cokey is available as a foster dog. That means you can get to know her well and feel sure that she fits into your family before you shell out $575. About a year and a half old, she's been a pet who's lost her human. She is said to like demonstrations of affection.
Maria from Allentown
Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/maria-1a3323d7-dccd-4a9e-93d8-f919c6aff1ff/nj/allentown/lucky-lives-cat-rescue-nj934/details/
Some Manx cats' digestive systems don't develop normally. Regular readers will remember the one who starved to death, not because he wasn't offered Kitten Chow and cooked chicken, but because he couldn't digest anything but cat milk. It happens. Maria digests food but is imperfectly litter-box-trained, which in her case they think may improve as she grows bigger and sronger--she's still just a kitten, the smallest of the litter, a bit developmentally delayed. Apart from that they say she's friendly and sweet and very good with other cats. They hope to find her a home where she'll have another kitten, or kittens, to play with.
Zipcode 20202: Lincoln from DC
This organization places all adoptable animals in foster homes--they don't have a shelter--so if you want to adopt him, you might as well start building a collegial relationship as a foster human. Lincoln is said to be clever for a Bulldog--house-trained, crate-trained, understanding a few commands. At age 3 he weighed 48 pounds. They warn that he may be friskier than most Bulldogs. He likes walks and games.
Sasha from Herndon
They warn (?) that she knows she's beautiful, but she's a friendly, affectionate pet.
Zipcode 30303: Renita from Decatur
Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/renita-eb7fb511-2409-4c33-9066-ea0c31a01afb/ga/decatur/doggie-harmony-ga627/details/
Renita is a mixed breed and weighs over 60 pounds. She is described as house-trained, crate-trained, knowing at least a couple of commands, and willing to "be your shadow."
Storybell from Newnan
Just another alley cat who was trapped and "rescued" by the Humane Society from the horrors of family life. Storybell was left behind as her kittens were adopted. She is described as a cuddler.
Monday's Book Review: Dog Handling
Title: Dog Handling
Author: Clare Naylor
Date: 2002
Publisher: Ballantine / Random House
ISBN: 0-345-46539-3
Length: 319 pages, plus an excerpt from the author's next novel
Quote: "She was getting married in a few weeks and the strain was wreaking havoc with her brain and hormones. In short, she wanted to have mad sex with every man who walked past her desk."
With this line on page 2, Naylor gives readers fair warning: The protagonist is not what most romance readers would call a Nice Girl. Actually she's pretty trashy.
The level of the comedy in this allegedly comic romance is consistently trashy; on page 171 the author actually gets away with a joke about a stage being "surrounded by hordes of seamen, or semen, whichever." Since my relatives are Army and my ex-brother-in-law is Navy, I felt no overwhelming urge to throw the book into the nearest incinerator, but you might.
I have bought other allegedly romantic alleged comedies that I thought had no redeeming social value, and discarded without trying to sell them. So this one does, in my opinion, have some redeeming social value...but not much. Specifically, it suggests, more tactfully than you might have expected from the perpetrator of the "jokes" above, that women in search of romance might find more of it if they'd try thinking about something else now and then. You know, back off, stop being so needy, give men a chance to do some of the pursuing...Grandma told you that, but perhaps reading it in a romantic comedy is more fun.
Of course, for the Idiot Girl protagonist of this novel, thinking about something other than her mad crush on one guy (not the long-dumped fiance who made her want to have mad sex with every man who walked past the desk) means thinking about another guy. Which means flopping into bed with him. And although she has a few supportive male friends, some of whom are even heterosexual, all the guys with whom she flops into bed impress me as being inconsiderate, rude, conceited, to the point of being funny but very anti-erotic.
The question that comes to mind is whether today's real twenty-somethings treat each other this way and continue speaking to each other, in London or even in Australia. (In Washington, they'd probably end up taking each other to small claims court.) I hope there is no place on earth where the dating game is played with as much hostility as Dog Handling suggests.
Despite Naylor's courageous, possibly even groundbreaking, introduction of a Fundamental Rule of Practical Feminism into a romance novel, Dog Handling cannot be given full marks for uplifting womankind; the girls are about as obnoxious as the guys. On the other hand, if you're over age thirty, this book will probably help you feel better about being too old to date anyone the age of Naylor's characters.
Author: Clare Naylor
Date: 2002
Publisher: Ballantine / Random House
ISBN: 0-345-46539-3
Length: 319 pages, plus an excerpt from the author's next novel
Quote: "She was getting married in a few weeks and the strain was wreaking havoc with her brain and hormones. In short, she wanted to have mad sex with every man who walked past her desk."
With this line on page 2, Naylor gives readers fair warning: The protagonist is not what most romance readers would call a Nice Girl. Actually she's pretty trashy.
The level of the comedy in this allegedly comic romance is consistently trashy; on page 171 the author actually gets away with a joke about a stage being "surrounded by hordes of seamen, or semen, whichever." Since my relatives are Army and my ex-brother-in-law is Navy, I felt no overwhelming urge to throw the book into the nearest incinerator, but you might.
I have bought other allegedly romantic alleged comedies that I thought had no redeeming social value, and discarded without trying to sell them. So this one does, in my opinion, have some redeeming social value...but not much. Specifically, it suggests, more tactfully than you might have expected from the perpetrator of the "jokes" above, that women in search of romance might find more of it if they'd try thinking about something else now and then. You know, back off, stop being so needy, give men a chance to do some of the pursuing...Grandma told you that, but perhaps reading it in a romantic comedy is more fun.
Of course, for the Idiot Girl protagonist of this novel, thinking about something other than her mad crush on one guy (not the long-dumped fiance who made her want to have mad sex with every man who walked past the desk) means thinking about another guy. Which means flopping into bed with him. And although she has a few supportive male friends, some of whom are even heterosexual, all the guys with whom she flops into bed impress me as being inconsiderate, rude, conceited, to the point of being funny but very anti-erotic.
The question that comes to mind is whether today's real twenty-somethings treat each other this way and continue speaking to each other, in London or even in Australia. (In Washington, they'd probably end up taking each other to small claims court.) I hope there is no place on earth where the dating game is played with as much hostility as Dog Handling suggests.
Despite Naylor's courageous, possibly even groundbreaking, introduction of a Fundamental Rule of Practical Feminism into a romance novel, Dog Handling cannot be given full marks for uplifting womankind; the girls are about as obnoxious as the guys. On the other hand, if you're over age thirty, this book will probably help you feel better about being too old to date anyone the age of Naylor's characters.
Monday, August 3, 2026
Butterfly of the Week: Ruby-Spotted Swallowtail
(This link-and-photo-loaded post may overload some browsers. If I receive reports of problems in the e-mail, I'll break it up for you.)
Arbitrarily I'm going to call an end to the genus Graphium, although we spent enough time there for scientists to propose reclassifying and renaming, meaning that there are valid Graphium species names we have yet to study. The article on Graphium wenlinga was frustrating to write and, no doubt, to read. In a few more years, as Asian scientists and naturalists publish more about the newly named species, it should be possible to write better articles about them.
Photo by Tania102, September, Veracruz.
Same butterfly, showing his gorgeous underside.
The next genus in the Swallowtail group is Heraclides, "Sons of Heracles." Heracles was said to have been the strongest man in all Greek history. He was not described or portrayed as a giant, though he was usually drawn with massive muscles. The Heraclides aren't always the biggest Swallowtails in their range, but they run large; they include Florida's "Giant Swallowtail."
Photo by Danisoroldani, September, Ecuador. Wings are often held away from the body and can even have a cut-away look, like the wings of some sphingid moths.
The first butterfly on the list is Heraclides anchisiades, the Ruby-Spotted Swallowtail. It is found from the southern tier of the United States to Chile. A fair bit of what's been published about it is written in Brazilian Portuguese. In the US it lives only in the southern point of Texas, but strays have been found as far north as Kansas and along our southern border.
Photo by Jeffharding, November, Peru. Like some of the tropical Asian Swallowtails, Heraclides can move their fore and hind wings independently.
Anchisiades means "son of Anchises." A few different characters in ancient literature were called Anchises. The best known character called Anchisiades was Aeneas, the Trojan warrior in the Iliad. Heraclides anchisiades is not very toxic to predators and looks very similar to Parides anchises, which is very toxic. Some scientists think Parides anchises, which moves slowly, also gains some benefit from resembling Heraclides anchisiades, which can lead birds a merry chase.
Basically a tropical butterfly, Heraclides anchisiades looks huge to North Americans, with wingspreads often over 4 inches and caterpillars often 3 inches long. It doesn't look much like the Giant Swallowtail but gets mistaken for it, anyway, because if it's not a swallowtail of giant size, what else could it be? It is also confused with India's "Mormon" swallowtails, some of whose color patterns it really does resemble, and with Hyalophora cecropia, which is just ridiculous.
It is well represented on social media, with many photos and videos available free to admire online. Here are some pretty videos.
This one's not so pretty but it does document how peaceable the caterpillars are. Subjected to all sorts of threatening, harassing behavior, most don't fight or flee, but freeze. One seems to be the designated osmeterium-waver for the family.
This family seems to have two osmeterium-wavers but most of the caterpillars will let themselves be picked off their perch in a solid sheet:
Papers have been published describing the parts of each section of its body, and its caterpillars. Google didn't do well translating this article into English, and the photos didn't show properly, but those of The Nephews who have tried to stay in touch with their grandmother's friends from Brazil may enjoy reading it in Portuguese.
It is fairly common in the places it frequents; sometimes its size, gregarious habits, and taste for ornamental shrubs and citrus trees, can make it a nuisance.
Male Heraclides are often observed pollinating, but they spend some time composting. They are sometimes found at puddles and occasionally, as shown above, lick sweat off human skin or clothes.
In South America Heraclides anchisiades is sometimes called Rosa de Luto, the Mourning Rose. Among North Americans who like fanciful names it has been called the Ruby Black Phoenix, or Ruby-Spotted Cattle Heart. (Like a good composter, Heraclides anchisiades may be found among cattle, fanning its wings, sometimes into a position like a Valentine heart. Or some might see a resemblance between the shape of some individual's spots and the shape of an actual beef heart. Whatever.)
Currently five subspecies are recognized. Each has been given a few other names.
H.anchisiades anchisiades may or may not have a white spot in the middle of the forewing. The size and shape of the reddish spot on the hind wing may vary. Their hind wings show short tails or none. Females tend to have slightly larger wings with slightly larger spots than males, though the size ranges of wings and spots overlap. They are found across the wide northern section of South America.
Photo by Joao_Pedro01, January, Brazil.
They are not nearly so abundantly documented as the subspecies capys and idaeus.
H.a. capys are less likely to have a white spot in the middle of the forewing, and are found further south, southern Brazil to Argentina. The forewing pattern may be better described as solid black toward the body, with lighter, sometimes translucent, grayish or brownish black toward the tips, and sometimes a border of paler spots between the two sections. (Capys was the name of one of Aeneas' friends, and also of his grandfather.)
Photo from ButterfliesOfAmerica.com.
Photo by Belweyermanns, April, Brazil.
Photo by Andressaultravioleta, April, Brazil.
Photo by Negromonte_Ion, August, Brazil. Caterpillars have that humped back all Swallowtail caterpillars have, but may be more likely to stretch out their necks ahead of their humps and make the humps less conspicuous. Some Swallowtail caterpillars seem to curl down into their humps and present themselves to the world as cones. (And yes, if you could say to any Swallowtail caterpillar, "You're ugly!" would it say, "Thank you, I try," or "Thank You, Lord"? Caterpillars don't get any prizes for beauty.)
H.a. idaeus are found from the US to Colombia and Venezuela. They may have fewer, smaller, or no white spots on the forewings and more red spots on the hindwings. (In the Iliad, Idaeus was a messenger and mediator between the armies.)
Photo by Ag18, November, Mexico. The color is produced partly by the angle at which light hits the butterflies' wings; nevertheless, individuals can fade to brown and orange rather than black and red.
Photo by Harlin20, January, Honduras. Some photos of egg-laying females show black and pink colors, but in this case the female shows that tendency toward more faded, lower-contrast, browner coloring than the male. But it's only a tendency. She's not exactly hard to see.
Photo by Felipecastilla, October, Colombia. The female's abdominal section normally looks black, but shows rings of yellow underskin when she stretches to lay an egg. To predators, at this vulnerable moment she may look more like a wasp they don't want to eat.
Photo from ButterfliesOfAmerica.com. The second instar is yellowish green. Working efficiently as a family, they are munching up these leaves. They can be quite alarming, even threatening to a young or damaged tree.
Photo by Luisguillermomx for INaturalist, July, Yucatan. Instinct tells them that collectively they can disguise themselves as a knothole. These are "maturer" caterpillars.
Photo by Juancruzado, May, Nuevo Leon. One caterpillar in this group has been provoked to show his osmeterium.
Photo by That_Boy_Gustavo, July, Honduras. Parides anchises caterpillars have that hard-to-swallow-looking texture with lots of little bristles all over. Heraclides anchisiades are comparatively almost smooth, at least pebbly rather than branched, but there's a resemblance. Subspecies idaeus sometimes show a vestige of the girdle effect Parides, Battus, and Atrophaneura caterpillars share.
H.a. lamasi are relatively little known. They are found from western Ecuador to northwestern Peru. (Lamas is the name of a place in Peru.)
Photo by Marleenc, April, Ecuador.'
Two perfect museum specimens and a few more live action shots of H.a. lamasi:
H.a. philastrius are found on Trinidad island. The spot on the forewing may be yellow. (Philastrius was a fourth century author, the Bishop of Brescia; for a while he was remembered as a saint, but few remember him at all now.) INaturalist doesn't even have a page for them.
Museum specimen from ButterfliesOfAmerica. Scallops are consistently irregular, with the inner section of the hind wing being shorter so that the next section looks like a short "tail," as if these butterflies were trying to grow "tails" and not quite succeeding.
Adult butterflies are pollinators, especially attracted to flowers in the genera Hamelia, Igna, Ixora, Lantana, and Senecio.
Photo by Andres Hernandez for smithsonian.com. The flower is Ixora chinensis.
Eggs resemble round yellow beads. This is one Swallowtail species that seems to know the benefit of safety in numbers. Although the caterpillars eat their own eggshells and shed skins, they don't eat those of other caterpillars. Female butterflies are thus free to lay up to seventy eggs at a time, all on one leaf, and as the caterpillars hatch out, they line up side by side, touching one another, and munch munch munch until they burst. Though good for the survival of the caterpillars, this is not always good for their host plants. They can be very efficient feeders.
Generally they rest during the heat of the day on a trunk or root, usually of their host plant, and eat at night. Litters may mix.
Photo by Stevenw12339, January, Yucatan.
Clumps of full-sized caterpillars found on one tree have included over 100 individuals. Full-sized Heraclidd anchisiades caterpillars are the size of adult human fingers; these clumps look massive and can do as much damage as they look as if they would, though the trees recover.
They're also quite good at the gross-out as survival strategy many large caterpillars use. There are subspecies variations; all tend to be yellowish and can manage to resemble both tiny snakes, and large unhealthy bird droppings, at the same time. Like all Swallowtail caterpillars, they have humped backs that conceal osmeteria, which in this species are orange.
Individuals separate from the crowd to pupate; pupae are camouflaged as short thick broken twigs.
Photo by Pedrosantoss, August, Brazil.
Photo by Macelocosta, April, Brazil.
Although the caterpillars hatch and molt more or less in synchrony, with most of the litter maturing and pupating at the same time (sometimes a few are still side by side), they don't all emerge from the chrysalis at the same time. For no obvious reason some eclose in a few days, and others wait for months, one or two butterfly generations. Anyway, adults find mates, and the whole thing starts again...
Photo by Fabiobabi, February, Brazil.
This blogger claims to have reared one living butterfly from an egg surgically removed from a dead female butterfly:
As the timing of these photos shows, these tropical butterflies are active continuously throughout the year. The life cycle takes a few months. There are local generational cycles, but there are always anchisiades at every stage of life, somewhere. The life cycle of tropical plants takes place at a similarly furious pace. Caterpillars may seem to be killing a plant when they are actually pruning it back to a rate of growth that allows it to survive.
Still, a phalanx of caterpillars who instinctively form part if they can't form all of a knothole shape, when they're on a plant you are trying to cultivate, can be an alarming sight. They may be part of the Creator's plan for the way tropical rain forests work. They are not part of the chemical agriculturists' plan for the way a factory farm should work. They can't possibly be good for immediate crop yields.
There is a Green strategy that actually benefits individual butterflies as well as farmers: stopping monocropping.
When it's easy for butterflies to overpopulate, never having to travel in search of the caterpillars' next meal or the butterflies' next host plant, they often do overpopulate. An unthinking appetite for dead skin keeps many large butterflies and moths from overpopulating--by producing inadvertent, and in some species it's not even always inadvertent, cannibalism. This control mechanism does not operate in Heraclides anchisiades. Siblings get some safety benefit from lining up side by side, so they stay in close-knit families, even merging with other families in heavily populated areas.
So Nature rolls out a different control mechanism. Heraclides anchisiades are vulnerable to infestations by mites and fungi. There is, D. Lewis observed, abundant documentation of these parasites. This recent paper seems to have been first published online.
You can find individual butterflies that look "crusted" or "rusted" with layers of parasites covering large sections of their wings or bodies. From citrus farmers' point of view this may be a lovely sight to behold. Papers have been published about rearing the butterflies in laboratories to cultivate more virulent strains of parasites.
Or just getting control of their population, thinning it down, in order to exploit the butterflies commercially. So many of the Asian Papilios, Parides, and Atrophaneuras that look similar are rare or endangered. Couldn't anchisiades wings be exported for use in making junk jewelry in Taiwan?
A Colombian community farm-reared the butterflies successfully for use in junk jewelry.
For the butterflies it means death, and probably discomfort that the butterflies can't do anything about. Individual butterflies are probably happier when their populations are sparse enough to keep parasitic infections down.
Humans can help by planting, instead of acres of solid citrus trees one after another, mixed orchards where trees planted next to each other don't host the same butterfly species. Keeping Heraclides populations sparse helps maintain a healthy distance among butterflies, reducing infections and also reducing the number of caterpillars feeding on any specific tree.
Sunday's Book Review: When God Doesn't Make Sense
Book Title: When God Doesn't Make Sense
Author: James Dobson
Author's web page: http://www.focusonthefamily.com/
Date: 1993
Publisher: Tyndale House
ISBN: 0-84323-8227-5
Length: 250 pages
Quote: "'Why would God permit this to happen to me?' is a question all believers--and many pagans--have struggled to answer."
When God Doesn't Make Sense is probably the least popular book the founder of "Focus on the Family" ever wrote. To some extent it deserves to be. For instance, the opposite of "believers" is "unbelievers," not "Pagans," who are, technically, subscribers to a different system of belief.
In the 1980s, Dave Hunt claimed that Christians had been "seduced" by the "positive thinking" movement. Not only did positive thinkers claim that people could simply tell ourselves how to feel (and cure diseases, including AIDS and cancer) by "choosing to be happy"; they also claimed that people needed to tell God how to smooth and straighten out our lives. Even if the focus of a positive thinker's prayer was trivial, positive thinkers preached that it would inevitably be granted if the positive thinker wished hard enough, or "visualized" in enough detail.
James Dobson wrote this book as a corrective. In his long active ministry, he said, he saw many situations in which prayers seemed to be miraculously answered. The book includes a color photo in which a partial rainbow appears oddly inverted in the sky, like a smile or like a cradle supporting the small airplane for which he hoped prayers were being answered with protection. On the other side of the page is a photo of Dobson in a group of four friends, taken shortly after all four friends died in a plane crash despite Dobson's prayers for their safety.
Dobson's reasoning about how God can allow good people to die young, while people who would never be missed live on and on, is biblical. People whose questions have to do with deaths and natural disasters may find some comfort in this book.
My objection to When God Doesn't Make Sense is that it barely touches on what I believe to be its more valuable theme. Most human suffering begins when humans violate a law of nature. The Bible teaches that we have been given the gift, and the burden, of consequentiality; things we do have consequences. We don't always know the consequences of an act. Marrying someone you love, in spite of the person's genetic physical quirks, and trying to raise a family ought to have better consequences than "hooking up" with strangers, but either choice can cause children to be born with horrible diseases. Not only does reality seem to ignore our prayers; often reality makes no moal sense whatsoever.
I wish Dobson had had more to say about this idea, and less in support of the positive thinkers' "crutch" argument that, if something wasn't going well, at least some good could be brought out of bad things if people would try hard enough.
I remember sitting in a Sunday School class where ignorant people were trying to convince themselves that everything was working for the good of two absent members of the class, sisters I'll call Rachel and Leah. Rachel was a beauty queen who had done well in college, found a good job, married well, and had two adorable babies. Leah had suffered damage to the skull and the brain during the birth process, had never gone to school, had never done a job, had never walked all the way across a room, could hardly speak, and had spasms of the facial muscles that continually distorted her face. Leah's parents had built her a wheelchair-accessible house of her own, with a large and luxurious room for entertaining friends, which she often used for church gatherings. "Maybe God needed for Leah to have cerebral palsy," a young man gushed, "so there'd be room in her house and life for our church!"
I've never gone back to that church; so far as I know Leah never did either. There may be times when it's easy to believe that God is a sadist who "needs" for people to suffer, but I've not observed any good results coming from anyone's attempt to love a Cosmic Sadist...or even to bond with "friends" who assume that able-bodied people never open their homes to the church.
I could wish, further, that Dobson had been more biblical about what we can sometimes do about suffering. We are never told to sit around, like Job's comforters, trying to defend God's honor by blaming the sufferers, or like the people James chastised, passively murmuring "Depart in peace, may you be warmed and fed [somewhere else]" to the homeless and hungry. We are specifically told that the first of these bad choices is a sin and the second is an exercise in futility.
When the Bible writers address people whose friends are suffering, they are less likely to offer any abstract "spiritual" thoughts than they are to use active verbs in the imperative mode. "Bear one another's burdens." "Divide your substance with" those in need. "Be a father to the fatherless, and in place of a husband to the widows." Or, in a modern paraphrase, "Give until it hurts."
In order for human suffering to become a means of grace, Christians need to rediscover what the Bible plainly tells us to do about human suffering. Not say--do. Those tempted to utter "positive thoughts" when they ought to be offering time, money, or labor to relieve suffering should go to someone who understands the Bible better than they do (click here to contact me) and request Duct Tape Therapy.
When God Doesn't Make Sense is recommended to those who may still be tempted by positive thinking. I think it's better read and absorbed before grief has caused a person to doubt his or her faith. The truth it contains may be too harsh for the sick, the recently bereaved, or the unjustly punished to read...if this book is handed to them by anyone who has not met their physical, material needs in humble silence first. Those who have seen Jesus living in their fellow believers will at least have something on which to base their faith when inappropriate verbiage threatens to blow away the remaining shreds of it.
Author: James Dobson
Author's web page: http://www.focusonthefamily.com/
Date: 1993
Publisher: Tyndale House
ISBN: 0-84323-8227-5
Length: 250 pages
Quote: "'Why would God permit this to happen to me?' is a question all believers--and many pagans--have struggled to answer."
When God Doesn't Make Sense is probably the least popular book the founder of "Focus on the Family" ever wrote. To some extent it deserves to be. For instance, the opposite of "believers" is "unbelievers," not "Pagans," who are, technically, subscribers to a different system of belief.
In the 1980s, Dave Hunt claimed that Christians had been "seduced" by the "positive thinking" movement. Not only did positive thinkers claim that people could simply tell ourselves how to feel (and cure diseases, including AIDS and cancer) by "choosing to be happy"; they also claimed that people needed to tell God how to smooth and straighten out our lives. Even if the focus of a positive thinker's prayer was trivial, positive thinkers preached that it would inevitably be granted if the positive thinker wished hard enough, or "visualized" in enough detail.
James Dobson wrote this book as a corrective. In his long active ministry, he said, he saw many situations in which prayers seemed to be miraculously answered. The book includes a color photo in which a partial rainbow appears oddly inverted in the sky, like a smile or like a cradle supporting the small airplane for which he hoped prayers were being answered with protection. On the other side of the page is a photo of Dobson in a group of four friends, taken shortly after all four friends died in a plane crash despite Dobson's prayers for their safety.
Dobson's reasoning about how God can allow good people to die young, while people who would never be missed live on and on, is biblical. People whose questions have to do with deaths and natural disasters may find some comfort in this book.
My objection to When God Doesn't Make Sense is that it barely touches on what I believe to be its more valuable theme. Most human suffering begins when humans violate a law of nature. The Bible teaches that we have been given the gift, and the burden, of consequentiality; things we do have consequences. We don't always know the consequences of an act. Marrying someone you love, in spite of the person's genetic physical quirks, and trying to raise a family ought to have better consequences than "hooking up" with strangers, but either choice can cause children to be born with horrible diseases. Not only does reality seem to ignore our prayers; often reality makes no moal sense whatsoever.
I wish Dobson had had more to say about this idea, and less in support of the positive thinkers' "crutch" argument that, if something wasn't going well, at least some good could be brought out of bad things if people would try hard enough.
I remember sitting in a Sunday School class where ignorant people were trying to convince themselves that everything was working for the good of two absent members of the class, sisters I'll call Rachel and Leah. Rachel was a beauty queen who had done well in college, found a good job, married well, and had two adorable babies. Leah had suffered damage to the skull and the brain during the birth process, had never gone to school, had never done a job, had never walked all the way across a room, could hardly speak, and had spasms of the facial muscles that continually distorted her face. Leah's parents had built her a wheelchair-accessible house of her own, with a large and luxurious room for entertaining friends, which she often used for church gatherings. "Maybe God needed for Leah to have cerebral palsy," a young man gushed, "so there'd be room in her house and life for our church!"
I've never gone back to that church; so far as I know Leah never did either. There may be times when it's easy to believe that God is a sadist who "needs" for people to suffer, but I've not observed any good results coming from anyone's attempt to love a Cosmic Sadist...or even to bond with "friends" who assume that able-bodied people never open their homes to the church.
I could wish, further, that Dobson had been more biblical about what we can sometimes do about suffering. We are never told to sit around, like Job's comforters, trying to defend God's honor by blaming the sufferers, or like the people James chastised, passively murmuring "Depart in peace, may you be warmed and fed [somewhere else]" to the homeless and hungry. We are specifically told that the first of these bad choices is a sin and the second is an exercise in futility.
When the Bible writers address people whose friends are suffering, they are less likely to offer any abstract "spiritual" thoughts than they are to use active verbs in the imperative mode. "Bear one another's burdens." "Divide your substance with" those in need. "Be a father to the fatherless, and in place of a husband to the widows." Or, in a modern paraphrase, "Give until it hurts."
In order for human suffering to become a means of grace, Christians need to rediscover what the Bible plainly tells us to do about human suffering. Not say--do. Those tempted to utter "positive thoughts" when they ought to be offering time, money, or labor to relieve suffering should go to someone who understands the Bible better than they do (click here to contact me) and request Duct Tape Therapy.
When God Doesn't Make Sense is recommended to those who may still be tempted by positive thinking. I think it's better read and absorbed before grief has caused a person to doubt his or her faith. The truth it contains may be too harsh for the sick, the recently bereaved, or the unjustly punished to read...if this book is handed to them by anyone who has not met their physical, material needs in humble silence first. Those who have seen Jesus living in their fellow believers will at least have something on which to base their faith when inappropriate verbiage threatens to blow away the remaining shreds of it.
There is a base for faith. Our prayers do change us. Other people's prayers, if sincere, change them. People who pray and believe are guided to help one another. There are even times, and some of us may live to see one of them, when the answers to prayers can be explained only as either supernatural, requiring direct intervention by God, or extraordinary coincidences. (Nor does this mean that God is not involved when what happens seems normal and natural.) But although there is a God, and there even used to be a Bishop Nicolas of Myra in whose memory people still give presents to children, there is not and never was a Santa Claus.
Friday, July 31, 2026
Web Log for 7.30.26
Music
Pat Boone.
Politics
Calvin's figured out how political "discourse" goes these days...
Meme-ified by Joe Jackson.
Book Review: Mrs. Sharp's Traditions
Title: Mrs. Sharp's Traditions
Author: Sarah Ban Breathnach
Author's web page: http://simpleabundance.com/
Date: 2001
Publisher: Scribner / Simple Abundance
ISBN: 0-7432-1076-X
Length: 256 pages, mostly illustrated
Quote: "It gives me great pleasure to introduce my first book to the admirers of Simple Abundance. You see, the seeds of my simply abundant life (and yours!) were lovingly sown in Mrs. Sharp's Traditions, which was originally published in 1990."
Sarah Ban Breathnach is a multilayered, semi-fictional character in her own right. In an earlier, more ordinary life, she was married to Ed Sharp, who became mayor of Takoma Park, Maryland. Takoma Park is one of the suburban towns around Washington, D.C., each of which tended to attract different demographic groups. Takoma Park was "developed" in the 1890s; its first buildings, other than farmhouses, were a hospital, schools, and office buildings brought in to create the world headquarters of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. This global church was founded in New England, so the community that hosts its headquarters was, naturally, a mix of New England and total multicultural madness.
Later, cheap housing attracted students and artists as well as Adventists. The real Mrs. Sharp, not an Adventist, liked collecting antiques and adored presiding over the historical pageants, re-enactments, folk festivals, craft shows, and flea markets her husband's electorate staged almost every weekend. Much of this pageantry commemorated the 1890s, when a few of the older houses had actually existed and some of the antiques in their attics had been new.
Mrs. Sharp's first fictional alter ego was a hypothetical ancestor, Victorianna Sharp, who liked to reenact Victorian entertainments using the Victorian paraphernalia the real Mrs. Sharp collected. Paper dolls, May baskets, and magic lanterns naturally suggested daisy chains, flower "fashions," and terribly cute things made from pine cones. Mrs. Sharp found that children loved these pastimes. Parents loved them, too, because they're cheap and wholesome.
So the first edition of Mrs. Sharp's Traditions was published, and sold well, especially in the Washington Metropolitan Area where people knew Mrs. Sharp. It wasn't a bestseller, but it encouraged Mrs. Sharp to write other books, including Simple Abundance...which sold so well in the 1990s that Scribner named a whole division of its publishing operations for that book.
By the time Simple Abundance came out, the author was no longer married to Mr. Sharp, and chose to write under her Irish Festival name (pronounced more or less like "Bonn Brannock"). By 2001, the daughter with whom she'd shared all those Victorian games, crafts, and poems had grown up. Other people entered her life. She moved to Britain. As she summarized in this 2001 edition of Mrs. Sharp's Traditions, she hardly felt like the same person who had written the first edition. "While aficionados of the original volume begged me not to make any changes, I couldn't help but indulge in revising and redesigning it." Most of the same poems, recipes, and projects are in this book, but it looks completely different from the 1990 edition.
It's also "more sensitive" to single-parent families (less interest in Daddy's role in the fun and games).
Mrs. Sharp's traditions mostly come from the British Isles. This was not a problem in multiethnic Takoma Park, where neighbors re-created their own cultural traditions; the idea was to keep your own little display of ancestral art, music, cuisine, etc., as pure as possible when you were displaying it to the public, and also appreciate everyone else's. If your heritage isn't British or Irish you'll probably have a lot of traditions of your own to add to Mrs. Sharp's. She wouldn't mind. She would have been a nice guest at your special celebrations.
Some of Mrs. Sharp's traditions actually fell out of favor because they were historically linked to Celtic and Saxon Pagan traditions. How bad is that? You decide. The book is arranged in calendar order. Each month of Mrs. Sharp's year includes something that's completely secular, sensible, and accessible to everybody.
Mrs. Sharp's Traditions is warmly recommended to anyone looking for ideas for simple family fun and wholesome alcohol-free parties.
Author: Sarah Ban Breathnach
Author's web page: http://simpleabundance.com/
Date: 2001
Publisher: Scribner / Simple Abundance
ISBN: 0-7432-1076-X
Length: 256 pages, mostly illustrated
Quote: "It gives me great pleasure to introduce my first book to the admirers of Simple Abundance. You see, the seeds of my simply abundant life (and yours!) were lovingly sown in Mrs. Sharp's Traditions, which was originally published in 1990."
Sarah Ban Breathnach is a multilayered, semi-fictional character in her own right. In an earlier, more ordinary life, she was married to Ed Sharp, who became mayor of Takoma Park, Maryland. Takoma Park is one of the suburban towns around Washington, D.C., each of which tended to attract different demographic groups. Takoma Park was "developed" in the 1890s; its first buildings, other than farmhouses, were a hospital, schools, and office buildings brought in to create the world headquarters of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. This global church was founded in New England, so the community that hosts its headquarters was, naturally, a mix of New England and total multicultural madness.
Later, cheap housing attracted students and artists as well as Adventists. The real Mrs. Sharp, not an Adventist, liked collecting antiques and adored presiding over the historical pageants, re-enactments, folk festivals, craft shows, and flea markets her husband's electorate staged almost every weekend. Much of this pageantry commemorated the 1890s, when a few of the older houses had actually existed and some of the antiques in their attics had been new.
Mrs. Sharp's first fictional alter ego was a hypothetical ancestor, Victorianna Sharp, who liked to reenact Victorian entertainments using the Victorian paraphernalia the real Mrs. Sharp collected. Paper dolls, May baskets, and magic lanterns naturally suggested daisy chains, flower "fashions," and terribly cute things made from pine cones. Mrs. Sharp found that children loved these pastimes. Parents loved them, too, because they're cheap and wholesome.
So the first edition of Mrs. Sharp's Traditions was published, and sold well, especially in the Washington Metropolitan Area where people knew Mrs. Sharp. It wasn't a bestseller, but it encouraged Mrs. Sharp to write other books, including Simple Abundance...which sold so well in the 1990s that Scribner named a whole division of its publishing operations for that book.
By the time Simple Abundance came out, the author was no longer married to Mr. Sharp, and chose to write under her Irish Festival name (pronounced more or less like "Bonn Brannock"). By 2001, the daughter with whom she'd shared all those Victorian games, crafts, and poems had grown up. Other people entered her life. She moved to Britain. As she summarized in this 2001 edition of Mrs. Sharp's Traditions, she hardly felt like the same person who had written the first edition. "While aficionados of the original volume begged me not to make any changes, I couldn't help but indulge in revising and redesigning it." Most of the same poems, recipes, and projects are in this book, but it looks completely different from the 1990 edition.
It's also "more sensitive" to single-parent families (less interest in Daddy's role in the fun and games).
Mrs. Sharp's traditions mostly come from the British Isles. This was not a problem in multiethnic Takoma Park, where neighbors re-created their own cultural traditions; the idea was to keep your own little display of ancestral art, music, cuisine, etc., as pure as possible when you were displaying it to the public, and also appreciate everyone else's. If your heritage isn't British or Irish you'll probably have a lot of traditions of your own to add to Mrs. Sharp's. She wouldn't mind. She would have been a nice guest at your special celebrations.
Some of Mrs. Sharp's traditions actually fell out of favor because they were historically linked to Celtic and Saxon Pagan traditions. How bad is that? You decide. The book is arranged in calendar order. Each month of Mrs. Sharp's year includes something that's completely secular, sensible, and accessible to everybody.
Mrs. Sharp's Traditions is warmly recommended to anyone looking for ideas for simple family fun and wholesome alcohol-free parties.
Bad Poetry: Books with Intriguing Titles
Prompted by Poets & Storytellers United. Fellow poets should know that Google is failing to post comments on Blogger/Blogspot blogs in a desperate bid to clutter my computer with even more cookies, and I won't back down. For now, that means I can't comment on your poems where they're posted. If you really want me to, I'll post comments and links to them here.
Anyway, some rhymes:
One hundred years of solitude
had left Macondo weird and crude.
Witty, concise, and on the mark is
the prose of G. Garcia-Marquez.
The author always said that he
heard people mutter "Can it be?"
then wrote his book as if it were.
The book created quite a stir.
It's mostly gross-outs, as we've seen,
desde el principio hasta el fin,
yet memory will long retain
the grandfather who tried in vain
to bring with him a little loam
from the old graveyard back at home
so that he guarded bones, each night,
of his ancestors, as was right,
and so preserve some sense that he
was still where he'd been born to be.
Rainforest photo from Audley Travel, by way of Google.
Desde el principio hasta el fin = from the beginning to the end.
This is the beginning of a series. There'll be another book title poem on my Substack in an hour or two.
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