Link Log Weekender for 3.6-7.26

Animals 

The British nanny state contemplates banning 67 dog breeds and, to keep you from feeling a need to click on any clickbait links that don't tell you up front which breeds they mean, here's the list: 

Affenpinscher

American Cocker Spaniel

Australian Cattle Dog

Australian Shepherd

Basset

Basset Bleu

Basset Fauve

Beagle

Beauceron

Bergamasco

Bloodhound

Border Collie

Boston Terrier

Boxer

Bracco

Brittany

Brussels Griffon

Bull Mastiff

Bulldog

Cairn Terrier

Cardigan Welsh Corgi

Cavalier King Charles Spaniel

Cesky Terrier

Chihuahua

Chowchow

Clumber Spaniel

Dachshund

Dandie Terrier

Dogue de Bordeaux

French Bulldog

Glen of Imaal Terrier

Grand Basset

Great Dane

Japanese Chin

King Charles Spaniel

Lancashire Heeler

Lhasa Apso

Mastiff

Mudi

Neapolitan Mastiff

Newfoundland

Norfolk Terrier

Norwich Terrier

Old English Sheepdog

Pekingese

Pembroke Welsh Corgi

Petit Basset

Polish Lowland

Pug

Pyr Mastiff

Pyr Shep

Rough Collie

Schipperke

Scottish Terrier

Sealyham Terrier

Shar Pei

Shetland Sheepdog

Shih Tzu

Skye Terrier

Smooth Collie

Spanish Water Dog

St Bernard

Staffordshire Terrier

Sussex Spaniel

Swedish Valhund

Tibetan Mastiff

West Highland White Terrier

They claim that it's because these breeds' genotype can involve dysfunctional genes, or genes for dysfunctional traits. Reality, I suspect, is pure control freaking. Each of these dog breeds has typical health problems, but most of the individual dogs don't have the problems. Or they're not serious--the small and short-legged breeds are automatically considered dysfunctional just because they're small, low-slung dogs, which was a survival trait for cow-herding dogs and is still one for dogs kept in urban apartments. 

Which is the point. The idea of herding people into apartments where they pay rent forever is to break up the whole system of owning and passing on homes, land, farms...and family ties. Including ties to animals. Never forget Wayne LaPierre's infamous assertion that in the future, when "we" as a species (a "we" that excluded himself) are all herded into slums, "we" can just redirect our urge to bond toward the cockroaches we'll all be living with. (Cockroaches are thigmotactic; although they run away from lights and people, once caught they like being held. And they're trainable; they could learn to hide from light in people's clothing.) Think of that as you make the mere suspicion of being soft on socialism a career ender for any politician.

How is this different from my saying that nobody should breed Manx or Rex cats? Saying people shouldn't do something is one thing; calling on government to ban it, which would probably involve mass killing or at least mass neutering of pets, is a very different thing. 

Additionally, the alleged dysfunctionality of these dog breeds does not compare with the dysfunctionality of Manx and Rex cats. Short-legged dogs are vulnerable to a lot of things, long-haired dogs are vulnerable to eye problems, and floppy-eared dogs like beagles are vulnerable to ear infections if and when people don't look after them properly. With the right human companions they're just fine! Yes, collies and poodles need a lot of grooming, and small short-legged dogs need to be close to their humans whenever they're outdoors--and the right humans for them enjoy doing it.

Books 

When Jeanie at themarmeladegypsy.blogspot.com reviewed a novel inspired by the life of Margaret Fishback, and she mistyped the real writer's name as Fishbeck, I confused Fishback (who wrote lots of advertisements, several books of poems, and some children's books and the sort of guides to etiquette that amounted to advertisements) with a different author. Margaret Lee Runbeck was a contemporary of Margaret Fishback. Runbeck wrote more books, and she was the one who wrote mom-com magazine articles that grew into several books about a daughter anonymized as "Our Miss Boo." 

https://www.amazon.com/OUR-MISS-ORIGINAL-PHOTOGRAPHS-LAID/dp/B0007E0KTA

The Miss Boo story that was reprinted in junior high school literature books, which my parents liked to offer to me as storybooks when I was in primary school, was about Miss Boo's love of what was then a new fad food: peanut butter sandwiches. 

DEI Must Die 

It's not altogether bad that employees were asked if they had friends in different demographic groups, including "gay"...but to what extent did the time spent on that sort of chitchat take away from their ability to respond to the Big Freeze?

https://www.dailywire.com/news/exclusive-before-historic-stormCat-embattled-electric-service-asked-workers-if-they-had-gay-friends 

Religious Issues: From Sabbath to Sunday 

For some people, the decision to observe the biblical Sabbath from sunset on Friday to sunset on Saturday is an affirmation of religious liberty, a statement that "we ought to obey God rather than man." But it's possible to read the change, which occurred long after Christ's time, from mostly Jewish-born Christians observing the Sabbath as their day for rest and worship, to the Roman Emperor decreeing that they so observe Sunday, as something other than a statement of arrogance and egotism. (The Roman solar cult really worshipped the Emperor.) It's possible to read it as a shrewd political move.

https://theviewfromladylake.blogspot.com/2026/03/and-on-seventh-day-they-rested.html

Religious Issues: How Groups Acquire Image Problems

Cat Stevens thinks it takes a "monstrous propaganda machine" to turn people against Islam. Meowreally? You don't think little things like ricin gas in the London Tubes and THE ATTACKS OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 have been factors? You don't think the basic tendency for people to dislike a "fellow who came in to sojourn, and now wants to rule over us" may have something to do with anti-Islamic feeling in the US and UK right now? 

Program for Muslims who don't want to find people turned against them when they move to English-speaking, historically Christian countries:

0100 Accept that you are and must remain a minority--that if you become even a large minority you risk expulsion. The more successfully you proselytize, the fewer of your compatriots will be allowed to move here. 

0150 Accept that our culture is Christian. Make NO attempt to change that. 

0200 Accept that we no longer live in a world where God has made souls of equal value, but humans have deemed male bodies to be more valuable than female. Accept that the majority of jobs that are still done by humans today are jobs for which women are better suited than men. Accept that the biological reality, unenlightened by Christian, Jewish, or Muslim religious teachings, is that male humans have become as biologically disposable as most other male lifeforms are. Spend time in basic training courses learning to defer to any female you may meet on any point, to lower your eyes so that you don't know what non-Muslim women are wearing on the street, and to take orders from female superordinates with good grace. Affirm that no man who has touched any female without her full consent has any business being alive.

0250 Affirm that you understand that eye contact works differently here than it does where you came from. Specifically, some parents work hard to teach their children to stare into the eyes of people of the same sex who may be annoyed by them and people of the opposite sex who might feel attracted to them, even though it's probably true that this behavior is unnatural and confusing. If necessary, take a course in breaking eye contact that feels inappropriate to you by looking at your shoes, without blaming or reacting to the local person in any way.

0260 When hugged or kissed by same-sex friends most of us may think that you're overexcitable or that your inferior education never taught you that that behavior spreads diseases, rather than reacting violently, but accept that you're not supposed to hug or kiss same-sex friends. 

0300 Sign a statement affirming that, if you object to any behavior that our culture accepts and yours didn't, your way to express your feelings will always be to go home. 

0400 Accept that sharia law is not the law of the land where you are sojourning and never will be. If not satisfied with the way our law punishes crimes, go home.

0500 Use your opportunity to study what our laws actually say, and what the Bible actually says, so that you know your rights and can lawfully claim what's due to you. Accepting that you're in a minority in no way implies encouraging bigotry, which does our native-born bigots even more harm than it does you.

0600 Accept that, if you bring children here or stay here long enough to have children, those children will have a legal right to flout your cultural and religious rules. Try to surround yourself with people of different generations who can encourage your children to respect those rules. Jews and Christians don't have to fast for Ramadan or wear tunics outside our belts, much less study Arabic and the Quran, but many, perhaps most, of us do believe that it's honorable for children (even adult children) to follow their parents' rules while living in their parents' houses. Some of us will say to our children, "If your school friends are fasting, don't eat in their faces."

0700 If you come here as a bachelor and want to be married, marry someone from your own country. Although we do, in practice, have "temporary marriage," we don't have a tradition that accepts and respects it. We require ourselves to pay lip service to the ideal of marriage for life; we associate marriage with love rather than obligations. There are American women who could probably be satisfied with a "temporary marriage" to a guest worker if our culture honestly said to them, "Look, you're not a virgin, you're not planning to give this man sons and bring them up as Muslims--you don't want a permanent marriage to this temporary resident. You want to play house with a cute boy for two to five years. Just don't complain when it ends." But no. When you leave our cultural perception is going to be that you USED and DUMPED and BETRAYED a woman who, we want to believe, wanted you to be part of an American or British Christian marriage for life. Why go there? Marry a nice hometown woman for life.

0800 There are things you have to teach us, by setting a good example. Show us what loyalty, honor, hospitality, generosity, friendship, and even relative freedom from color prejudice look like. 

0900 It IS One God. There is only One God. To whatever extent people perceive a difference, they perceive human misunderstanding. Wa Salaam Alaikum.

https://pjmedia.com/robert-spencer/2026/03/07/yusufcat-stevens-complains-of-monstrous-propaganda-machine-that-makes-people-dislike-islam-n4950370

Women's Issues 

Tacky human beings take credit for an idea when it seems to be working and blame other people for it when they have to deal with unpleasant consequences. Trump reassigned Secretary Noem because Trump is a tacky human being. The alarming thing is Trump fans' willingness to play along with this tacky game. How else is it possible to account for anyone calling this woman ugly?

And why, after all these years, should it have mattered if she'd been uglier than a warthog?

(Photo by Alex Brandon.)

"Do they mean that she did ugly things?" The confrontational quality of last winter's INS raids was ugly all right, but Trump took credit (in his mind it was credit!) for that and it does seem more Trump's kind of thing than any woman's. Nobody's claiming to have any actual "dirt" on Noem. If they're saying she did ugly things, they're passing judgment on her speeches or gossipping about her teamwork with another federal employee (the old "If a woman and a man support each other on the job, they're undoubtedly a couple" line of slander). 

To me Secretary Noem looks as if she's trying a little too hard to copy more of Melania Trump's styles than she can copy effectively, but she's certainly not ugly. At the very worst she might be called a fashion victim.

Writing Life

 Shared by Mona Andrei. Google says this one is actually for sale on Zazzle, and so are several other "Writers' Clocks" with more helpful timetables. Buy the one that features "Drink heavily" (which I don't do) at 

https://www.zazzle.com/writers_clock-256978240498008203. 

Buy one I consider more relevant, although it doesn't mention things like "Read Pbird's blog so I can exercise to her favorite songs," "Network," "Go into town to use phone to negotiate ways to schedule bill payments, fending off poorer people begging for help to pay their bills approximately every third of a mile," "Try to think of different ways to cook beans that don't cost more money," or "Generate Monthly Fluffball," which might be why this month's Fluffball was so late, at 

https://www.zazzle.com/writers_clock_humorous_writing_humor_in_aqua-256229033879932749.

Book Review: Facing Death

Title: Facing Death and the Life After

Author: Billy Graham

Date: 1987

Publisher: Word Books

ISBN: 0-8499-0474-9

Length: 265 pages plus 6 pages of endnotes

Quote: “Only about one in everry five adults has made a will...Such situations create needless hardships and heartache for loved ones.”

Yes, of course Billy Graham’s book on Facing Death has a lot to say about the Christian doctrine of judgment and reward. “A Christian funeral should be a coronation.” I chose to quote the section on wills because Christians need to know that this book was meant to do more than endorse their religious beliefs, or some debatable variant form of their beliefs. It really is meant to help people prepare for their parents’, their mates’, and their own illness and disability as well as death, in practical more than emotional ways.

In 1987 Graham was only 69 years old. In the picture on the cover, he hardly looks that. Still, this is a book only a senior citizen could write, full of the kind of insights that come to people as their friends grow old and die. Billy and Ruth Bell Graham would remain active for several years after Facing Death was printed, but the book shows that they didn’t take their longevity for granted. Both of them had considered the possibility of widowhood, and taken steps to make things as easy as possible for the survivor.

Young people don’t like to think about such “heavy stuff.” “I’m only twenty, forty, or sixty years old. I hate funerals. If I die unexpectedly, just donate the body to medical science.” Even if the body is donated to medical science, the family will probably want some kind of memorial service. If you want to keep people who loved you from being exploited, you might as well plan something simple and sensible while you have some say in the matter. Dying costs money. Whether you pay into a life insurance policy or a savings account, your family will appreciate any financial preparation you can make, during the crisis.

Should you make a will, a living trust, or some other arrangement to ensure that your estate is transferred to the right people? Different states recognize different ways of directing the transfer of property. Graham discusses a few possibilities, but encourages readers to get legal advice about what works in their state (or country).

What is your position on life support devices? Are there medical procedures you want to refuse in advance? Are you willing to risk a transplant or transfusion? If these risky and expensive procedures seem “indicated,” hospital staff are not going to make it easy for your relatives to reject them on your behalf. If you want a Living Will that rules out certain treatments, Graham recommends obtaining legal advice, reading and signing your Living Will on videotape, and having your primary physician as one of the witnesses identified on that tape (or disk or whatever).

Usually, before facing our own death, most of us face the death of several other people. Facing Death contains some counsel for the bereaved, and for those who want to help them, too.

Shortly before writing the first draft of this review, I’d received a comment on an AC article that mentioned “excessive” grieving. By now everyone has probably heard that there is no timetable for grief. If the family really grieved for their loss of Grandpa when he became disabled, and empathized with his pain for several years, his death may seem like a merciful release for all concerned. If Grandma always seemed more like a 50-year-old than a 90-year-old and was actively involved with the things younger people were doing, they may think of her and shed tears every day for a year. If, however, you are still feeling overwhelmed by grief after a year, there is some possibility that your feelings of grief may be covering other feelings, e.g. guilt, and counselling might help. Facing Death contains some counsel for people in this situation.

Facing Death and the Life After was written primarily for Protestants, but it’s the sort of book that could be helpful to anyone who is alive. 

Link Log for 3.5.26

I do like men...mine, anyway. I'm not supposed to like other people's men much. The trouble is, my men (father, grandfathers, uncles and great-uncles, brother, husband, 16-year fiance because I didn't meet anyone else I liked in all that time) are all off doing manly stuff and being buddies in the Good Place, and other people's men are still here! 

Sorry, Nephews, those of you who literally are nephews. You're still here. By now you're men. But the majority of men, as a group...well, consider this batch of links.

Politics 

A Green Party candidate for the U.S. Senate from North Carolina became agitated during a congressional committee hearing and was told to leave, or the police would remove him. So he didn't and they did. Something in Candidate McGinnis went snap. It was a bone in his left arm, which he had shoved into a crack behind a door to make it harder for the police to carry him out. Senator Tim Sheehy, Republican from Montana, helped the police subdue the candidate. Exactly what they were arguing about, my sources don't say, but they do mention that McGinnis is Marine Corps and Sheehy was Navy. Google says McGinnis is currently 44 and Sheehy is currently 40 years old. Boys will be boys...

Women's Issues

We can count on male bloggers to misreport the fact: Most men know by now that they should not expect to get their own way twice in the duration of the marriage. 

It may happen, when and because we love our men and want them to be happy, but they shouldn't expect it ever to happen. 

Also, we need to be proactive in training little boys from infancy that they don't sit down, nor do they play games, as long as there's housework to be done. And vacuum cleaners are big, expensive, noisy power tools that fit into male hands better than female hands...instead of buying little boys pieces of plastic junk that make a noise when pushed around, sensible women tell them that if they're very good they can run the cordless mini-vac. 

https://theviewfromladylake.blogspot.com/2026/03/survey-says.html

New Book Review: The Forest Is Forever

Fair disclosure: I've been one of the beta readers of all of Priscilla Bird's books, as they were written and posted, chapter by chapter, at howtomeowinyiddish.blogspot.com. So it's not occurred to me to post reviews of them. So I searched for the Amazon page to recommend one of them to someone I know in real life. The Amazon page to buy The Forest Is Forever is messed up; the book was written in the US, for US readers, about a place in the US, but searches show only the pages to buy the British or Australian editions. Say what? When Americans want to publish things that may mention or allude to people who may not like what we say about them, e.g. novels in which characters have parents or spouses who are Bad Examples but we're not positive that we've made those parents or spouses different enough from our own, we have traditionally told our agents "Just publish it in England.' Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. But The Forest Is Forever is available in the US. You just have to search for the author, not the title. You can buy it at 

https://www.amazon.com/Forest-Forever-Collected-Ralph-Stories/dp/B0GP8SN6ZL/

--but oh well search engines are saying Amazon's server is down, intermittently, today anyway. If you search for "books priscilla bird" they show you books by other people called Priscilla and books about birds. And if you search Google for "priscilla bird book forest is forever," the algorithm, no doubt attracted by our using the same half of a screen name, will--as of this morning--put a Link Log in which I showed the terribly cute "The late Albert Einstein recommends PBird's books" graphic designed by e-friend LoneStar Neanderthal, in between links to buy the book in England and to buy it in Australia.

Well. If they're going to do that, and maybe Google has more respect for this blog now that our daily page views are growing, then I ought at least to post a full-sized review of The Forest Is Forever.

Title: The Forest Is Forever

Author: Priscilla Ann Bird

Date: 2026

Publisher: Amazon

Length: 486 pages

ISBN:  979-8248948628

This is the third volume of stories about a magical place in the Baker National Forest in Washington state. Humans, even the fictional ones in the book, can find the settlement where the wolves, pumas, ravens, Neanderthal Men, and only a few other Sasquatch (they spread out), and other living things recognize Ralph the Sasquatch as their king--but only if the Sasquatch let them. Harmless but alarming pranks deflect unwelcome humans. A few select humans like reporter Millie, Ranger Rick, and restless student Marge, become friends and, whether by keeping the settlement secret or writing about it in such a way that hardly anyone believes their stories, are allowed to visit the Sasquatch family often.

Sasquatch believers are divided on the question whether Sasquatch are more like giant humans or more like giant gorillas. They agree that the creatures, if they still exist, would be a separate species but don't agree on which genus that species would belong in. In these stories the Sasquatch are clearly more like humans.

Sasquatch believers also disagree about whether Sasquatch bodies have never been found because the creatures intentionally destroy bodies that might lead researchers to their dwelling places, or have the ability to disappear (and dispose of bodies) into alternate dimensions, or are demonic delusions that exist only to lead people astray. In these stories they have the ability to pop in and out of interdimensional portals, and other super-powers, and they are good though not perfect creatures. There are different tribes and clans of Sasquatch. Some, Ralph admits, may be hostile to humans. His clan are benign.

In fact, Ralph, his wife Ramona, and their son Twigg and daughter Cherry, are generally smarter and nicer than the average human. Stories about them often include solutions to human problems, though sometimes the Sasquatch family solve problems by using their super-powers.

In this book Twigg grows up, likes young females he knows he's not meant to marry, finds and marries his beshert, and moves out on his own. 

There's nothing else quite like this series. The general concept reminds me of Kipling's children's stories, but the perspective and philosophy, the author's voice, and the characters themselves are altogether different from Kipling's. If you like whimsical, goodhearted, very gentle short fiction, you'll like the Ralph Stories, and you'll want to collect them all.

Web Log for 3.4.26

I have been just a bit under the weather. Actually the weather's been very nice. I've been under some silly little infection. The main symptom was that I kept feeling tired, lying down, dozing for ten minutes, and waking up feeling completely unrefreshed, and after one of these little cat naps I woke up thinking, "I feel as useless as a computer with Windows updates running on it!" 

For humans there are remedies like drinking extra water and taking extra vitamins. I did a simple at-home test this web site's contract won't allow me to explain and identified a minor bacterial infection that shouldn't require prescription medication. For computers, there really ought to be a law.

Animals 

Lovely Malaysian butterfly photos including three similar-looking Graphiums:

https://ronnieooist56.blogspot.com/2026/03/butterflies-in-february-2026-peninsular.html

War 

By Bill Watterson. Shared by Joe Jackson. Graphics displayed here because nobody seems to have much trouble viewing them any more, and many people like them, and I agree with this one. But I promise not to embed videos.

Ramadan happens this year to coincide with Purim, the Jewish celebration of the right to self-defense. Unlike Simchat Torah and unlike Christmas, its historical tradition is not about peace; Muslims aren't supposed to eat during the daylight hours of Ramadan but they are allowed to fight.

https://pjmedia.com/rabbi-michael-barclay/2026/03/02/why-this-month-of-ramadan-is-the-perfect-time-for-war-with-iran-n4950155

Bad Poetry: If Death Were a Woman

(This poem is "heavier," more "sombre," than Bad Poetry usually is. Depressive readers, please go to my Substack and read the cute cat shadorma instead. Today's book review will be "light" in every sense, and goodhearted and fun, because I just discovered that Google has been using this blog as a primary link for a book I've not even reviewed yet--only mentioned--and that book deserves a full-length review.)

Years ago, when Dame Helen Mirren was cast as Death in a movie, some online poets wrote answers to the prompt "If Death were a woman, what would she be like?" 

For example, Kim M. Russell, whose collected works I've been reading:

https://writinginnorthnorfolk.com/2016/09/15/death-wears-it-well/ 

Up here near the Cat Sanctuary, it brought to mind memories of our long-gone Queen Cat Graybelle's kittens. Whether cats are resurrected in a "real" afterlife, who knows--but all of Graybelle's kittens left this world, unmistakably, as if they were going to be with someone they loved. 

I thought it was cute to give all of them "gray" names, since they were gray cats, distinguishable by size and tails. I had not learned that if two cats' names begin with "Gray" I'll probably call both of them "Gray" for short and then I'll never know whether they really know their names. The male kitten was first called Grayham but, when his eyes opened, I told him (in front of somebody whose name was Alfred) that he was being so difficult I could almost mistake him for Alfred. Alfred thought that was funny, and after that the kitten was Little Alfie. Graylin was the biggest kitten, and took over the "mother" role, as best she could, after they lost their mother. 

If I'd known then what I know now, the kittens might have survived. If the Young Grouch had known then what he knows now, Graybelle would have come home and reared them. But in a sweetly sad way, the kittens' last moment gave me hope for all of us wretched clueless humans. Wherever they went was clearly a Good Place, and at least one of them seemed to be saying that humans will be there.

All three of them had been so ill

they turned to Death as to a friend.

Alfie went first, and made it plain:

that Death looked motherly to him.

Death looked like Graybelle, a big Manx

mix cat, long blue-grey coat, stub tail,

almost the classic Persian face,

alarming size, and heart of gold.

Then Graylin went, and made it plain

that Death to her was Alfie, loved

and tended in a motherly way.

Then Grayce, who clearly would have been

my own Manx cat, bonded for life--

Grayce turned to meet Death with a look

of love and joy. She turned to me.

Death was a woman for young Grayce.

I was that woman, and young Grayce

put up her paws and begged a lift

from Death, and turned to kiss her face.

Meet the Blog Roll: Cantos y Oraciones

Cantos y oraciones is Spanish for "songs and prayers." That is what appear at this quirky little Spanish-language blog. 

https://cantosyoraciones.blogspot.com/

Over the years, different people seem to have taken turns contributing posts, blogging their way through hymnals, prayer books, meme collections and even video Bible readings. This blog has had dormant seasons but even during those, it's always been a reliable source of Christian content.

In Spanish.

Which I expect all of The Nephews who can hear words to speak, even if some of you did attend that church that set out to make Mandarin Chinese your second language. Spanish is too easy and too ear-pleasing a language not to learn. 

Which Loretta? Clarification...

The computer says a lot of people are reading a post in which, a few years ago, I reminisced about a pet chicken...my beloved companion Loretta.

https://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2021/04/beloved-companion-loretta.html

I enjoyed having a pet hen called Loretta. If people are enjoying reading about her, that's fine. But the timing is suspicious. I wonder whether those readers are looking for the review of the new Loretta Lafayette mystery. The individual book is called Murder on the Deck.

https://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2026/03/book-review-murder-on-deck.html

I'm guessing that more people want to read about a fictional amateur detective who talks her way through the mystery than about a chicken.

Fictional Things I'm Glad Are Not Real

This week's Long & Short Reviews prompt asks which fictional things in the books we've read reviewers are glad are not real.

It would be easy just to list ten dystopian "worlds" (Huxley's Brave New World, the world of 1984, the Republic of Gilead, Camazotz, the world of Harrison Bergeron, Planet Abba, any human settlement on any planet like Venus (or otherwise unable to support human life), a fictional world invented by a writer I've forgotten where all women died in childbirth, the hypothetical future Earth in Native Tongue, and the Socialist Realist writers' nasty vision of Earth, and a few hundred more that were as nasty, or nastier, but not as memorably written about) and be done with it.

But let's stick to specific features of the fictive worlds of different books, if I can...

1. Telepathy in the fictional sense of actually reading other people's thoughts--as distinct from reading nonverbal communication and recognizing pheromones, both of which are real, and which allow us to guess each other's thoughts

Douglas Adams made a  brief reference to a planet where, as a punishment, the population had been cursed with "that most cruel of social diseases, telepathy." As a result people didn't dare to think when other people were nearby and kept themselves from thinking by chattering. Adams did not actually force any of his characters to visit such a horrid place.

2. Vampires

If they existed vampires would be like any other predator species: The occasional occurrence of a friendly, likable individual would only make it more unpleasant that the species can't be allowed to live where humans live. 

3. Dragons

Well, actually large reptiles whose breath may not flame, but whose body secretions are corrosive enough to "burn" on contact, do exist. I'm glad that's as far as nature has gone in that direction. (The telepathic dragons of Pern aren't reptiles, as we know reptiles, but they wouldn't fit in on Earth anyway.)

4. Marriage between humans and mythical creatures

Seriously. In my e-mail yesterday someone was looking for a review of a story about a woman marrying a dragon.

5. Lifelong happiness

We feel emotions in contrast to one another so, although we can look back and say things like "The year I was twelve (or thirty or seventy-five or whatever) was a happy time," we're not wired to feel happy for even a day at a time. We can spend a day or two at a time reminding ourselves "S/He loves me back," or "S/He's home again, safe and well," or "This is what I worked for for so long." Then we adjust. "I wanted to be a doctor. Now I am a doctor! Hurrah! Now...I am a doctor with a broken tooth. I am a doctor who wants to do a study that will need funding. I am a doctor whose grandfather's disability just worsened." Future happiness comes from further moments of discontent that motivate us to further achievements. We can be cheerful people. We can live with people, in places, doing things and having things, that are perpetual sources of good feelings. But we're not wired to feel happy all the time. By accepting that, if we want nothing more in life than we have now, we've reached a plateau from which we soon will want something else, we can enjoy many hours of good feelings, in which we like our homes, jobs, co-workers, families, states of health, etc., and we want to write another book, or remodel the kitchen, or win the tennis club trophy, or whatever.

6. Classy people

It is true that money buys a lot of solutions to life's tedious little problems, such as what we can eat when nothing's growing outside our homes, or where we can sleep if we don't have homes, and so on. It is true that people whose material needs are met enjoy more freedom to think and create and contemplate their ideals. It is not true that any level of wealth and status creates a whole class of people who are creative and spiritual and idealistic and enlightened. Not only are some rich people still petty, greedy, envious, and ignorant of anything that was not positively beaten into them at big-name schools; some rich people intentionally use wealth to do worse things than the average person ever considers doing. A good friend is probably as hard to find among the rich as among the poor. Or, to put it in a more pleasant perspective, the more rich people you know, the easier it is to appreciate the good character a poor person may have.

7. Any future "improvement" of existing computer technology that is currently being proposed, other than "block all uninvited input from other computers while a computer is in use"

We don't need more Plagiarized Intelligence. We don't need more surveillance. We don't need "smart" household appliances, especially if, as has been observed in existing "smarter, more efficient" devices on the market, their working lifespan is hardly a tenth of older "stupid" appliances that did the same thing. We certainly don't need silicon inside even the biologically disposable ears of domestic animals. We need to be training computer technicians to focus on maintenance and suppress thoughts of innovation.

8. People whose emotional problems can really be addressed by any form of "reparations" to a group

Let's take this idea to its logical destination: Women's property rights were denied for a long time, so by way of "reparations," only women can own property. There. Now women don't care how late men stay out or how much of a mess they make in our homes, right? Wrong. Redistributing money to all Black Americans wouldn't make them less bitter, better educated, or more qualified for promotions, either. If anything, more recognition of Black Americans who are free from bitterness, well educated, and amply qualified for promotions would be more likely to have that effect.

9. Space colonies 

In the real world, space travel is not fun.

10. Men who are more logical than women

Some men do try to think logically, detached from their hormonal moods, but the question must be asked whether it's possible to imagine detachment from our hormonal moods in the absence of a dramatic hormone cycle that routinely reverses all the merely hormonal moods we feel. Men often make decisions so illogical that only hormonal moods could possibly explain them, and don't realize it because they stay stuck in those moods longer than women do.

Book Review: Forever My Favorite

Title: Forever My Favorite

Author: Roxie Clarke

Date: 2023

Quote: ""Say 'last day of chemo'!" Monica says, aiming her phone at me."

 At 33, Darcie is a cancer survivor. She's also a single mother, because her husband wimped out on her. She thinks there's no room for romance in her future. 

She is, of course, wrong. This is a sweet wholesome romance, and the man who helps with the project she throws herself into to take her mind off cancer, whose daughter also becomes her daughter's friend, still thinks she's cute. 

Everyone can dream, can't we? Dum vivimus, vivamus!

Petfinder Post: I Just Got Here So When Can I Leave?

Shelter animals have usually spent some time in cages that were not displayed to the public before they're actually put up for adoption. This means that, by the time they get into the public cages or foster hom...es where they wait to be adopted, they've already spent some time in a place where they almost certainly don't want to be.

Adopting the newest animal in a shelter can be a good idea, especially in the case of city shelters where diseases circulate and animals may even be doped so that they seem calm and adoptable. The sooner animals come out of those shelters, the better off they are. 

And in another post, we'll consider the noble souls who want to adopt the animal who's been in the shelter longest, the one who may be the biggest challenge to keep...

Meanwhile, if you've guessed that it's still hard to get off that snow schedule even though the weather feels like spring, you're right. Actually it was a rainy night. I kept lying back and telling myself, "It should be safe to sleep tonight! Enjoy it!" I kept not falling asleep. Then between the hours of 6 and 9 a.m. I kept ot waking up. I'm caffeinated by now, but it's been a slow start to the day. It's a good day for a very easy photo selection--just pick the newest picture.

So immediately upon opening the first page, I find that the next to newest picture is exponentially cuter than the first one. The second photo on the Petfinder page for NYC shows a social mother-and-daughter team. Cats who have buddies are so much more interesting than cats who don't...to me, anyway, and this is my blog.

Zipcode 10101: Minnie & Missy from NYC 

Their web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/missy-minnie-903116f6-754b-41ef-9437-3ba6a2628d8f/ny/new-york/linus-friends-fl1765/details/

"Rescued from outside" can mean stolen from a good home, though often cats who clearly are not feral take to the streets when their humans are hospitalized or die. Minnie, the black and white cat, is the mother. Missy is the daughter. Their purrsonalities are described at their web page. Let's just say that they've been somebody's pets, they're generally nice to people and other cats and even children, and they could be good pets for somebody new.

Tuckin from NYC 

His web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/tuckin-27f97e3c-59f6-4f46-a97a-e56c0c581e4f/ny/new-york/linus-friends-fl1765/details/

Their best guess at his breed is a name this web site is not going to display, even as the name of a registered dog breed. The breed was produced by crossing something else with poodles. Since Tuckin weighs 40 pounds, people aren't likely to guess what his smaller ancestors were. I'd call him a poodle mix if he were my dog. He is thought to be seven years old. He is a polite house pet, very friendly and fond of snuggling beside his human, but trained not to bark (if he can help it) or climb on beds. He gets along well with other animals. He really likes playing in snow.

Zipcode 20202: Pea & Daisy from DC 

Their web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/pea-daisy-8d3055d5-306d-4c15-9f9a-3728729b0d3b/dc/washington/furever-home-animal-rescue-va931/details/

These sisters have a sort of "at least we can trust each other, if no one else" loyalty that's caused the shelter staff to put one price on the pair of them. They'll take their time about deciding they like you, but will purr and cuddle when they do. One's darker gray than the other but both can be fairly described as gray cats, or even "blue." 

Morris from Texas by way of the Other Washington You Know the State 

https://www.petfinder.com/dog/morris-acfc97c5-1139-41df-b704-b760d2c02fba/wa/washington/who-saved-who-tx2918/details/

Someone mixed up the city and the State. Duh! He's not in either place but Huskies are cold-country dogs who generally do better in places that get a lot of snow. He might prefer Puyallup to Potomac. He is friendly and well trained, and in Texas they say he loves to lie in front of the air conditioner.

Zipcode 30303: Mel B from Atlanta 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/mel-b-e0cdf0d9-2669-43c0-b9fd-6997f2a22c16/ga/atlanta/catz-4-life-inc-ga1138/details/

Last spring's kitten...was she the one the humans decided not to keep? Did her mother tell her she was getting too big for her britches and needed to find her own home? Did she just decide, all by herself, that it was time to go out into the world and seek her fortune? Anyway, though already as big as some cats get and likely to grow a little bigger, Mel B is still a kitten. One minute she wants to bounce and pounce, next minute she wants to purr and cuddle. She has already been spayed. She would probably get along well with a senior cat, and would probably be happiest with another kitten to play with. The organization advertises that the fee is $150 for one cat or kitten, $250 for two, or $300 if you have room for three.

Mo from Massachusetts by way of Atlanta 

His web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/mo-6aa9303b-c7a4-4dee-8b07-5e62587b0832/ga/atlanta/joyful-pets-animal-rescue-ma499/details/

It's sad when dog crossbreeding experiments go wrong. Mo is half Chesapeake Bay Retriever, a breed developed specifically for having a gentle touch and friendly, loyal yet sociable, pawsonality. Too bad the half of his ancestry that shows is the phobia-triggering Pit Bull Terrier, and on top of that, a trait he did inherit fom his retriever ancestors was size. At 75 pounds, he's pretty large even for a retriever. 

Mo has neither the calm confidence of a happy, healthy, well-adjusted retriever nor the tough attitude of a stereotypical Pit; he's described as a nervous dog who needs to be the only pet of a calm, disciplined person who's had some experience training and managing difficult dogs.

For those who don't feel up to the challenge of adopting Mo, here's...

Amelie from Massachusetts by way of Swannanoa 

Her  web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/amelie-24031be9-e57f-41e6-b232-e1a6933bcf57/ga/atlanta/joyful-pets-animal-rescue-ma499/details/ 

Dogs can look clever and be hopeless so it's pleasant to read that Amelie is described as having learned basic commands and even a few tricks. Part black Labrador Retriever and part police dog, she's compact for those breeds, only 40 pounds (and she's certainly full-grown, at eight years old). She was probably brought to Atlanta in the same truck with Mo, but because different people set up their web pages she's still showing as an out-of-state dog and he's not. 

Amelie has some issues but, for the right person, they're trifling. She gets sick in a car but is comfortable in the back of a truck. She needs a daily vitamin pill. She's frightened by fireworks. She loves being outdoors in the cool mountain air. Her ideal family are country people who like being where they are, are usually at home, and don't mind that, once Annie decides she likes a human, she can be clingy. (The Northerners who failed to find a home for her called her "The Shadow.")  truck.

Web Log for 3.2.26

Glyphosate Awareness 

California lawmakers seek a badly needed ban on paraquat, which has been heavily used on California nuts and pomegranates. Though richly deserving of support, the ban is likely to be used as another way to allow Bayer and Syngenta to market glyphosate in California, thereby poisoning most of the fruits, vegetables, and nuts sold in North America.

https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2024-04-08/california-moves-to-ban-use-of-the-weedkiller-paraquat

 

Book Review: The Power of Leadership Skills

Title: The Power of Leadership Skills

Author: David Hathaway

Date: 2025

Quote: "What sets this book apart is its unique approach."

By "unique approach" is apparently meant that this book won't tell you one dang thing you've not read before. And it reads as if it was written by a computer, though, to be fair, general advice on how to frame a dreary middle management job as "leadership" read very much as if it had been written by a computer before word processors were invented. All of its sources (except for a painting, cited as a source of inspiration but not reproduced in the book) are online.

Usually books of this type can at least boast of a few new stories but the closest this book comes to telling new stories is to mention the names of people and companies that have been in the news recently.

And, before the end of the book, the author seems to have realized that the audience would be drifting away, adding a sort of intercalary chapter urging readers to "Take a Break and Write a Review."

This e-book is recommended to students in business management courses who want to list it as a book on corporate "leadership" that they've read. Since its advice is unoriginal and Delphic, it won't tell you how to succeed in business, but it could be fairly described as a summary of several cubic yards of similar books for which too many trees used to die.

Book Review: Murder on the Deck

Fair disclosure: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an advance review...which I failed to post on Friday because I didn't schedule enough reading time. Although it came through Book Funnel, this is a full-length book, with lots of possibilities and plot twists and cozy-mystery-solving fun. It went live over the weekend. You can buy it now.

Title: Murder on the Deck

Author: Avery Kent

Date: 2026

Quote: "This is the Oceanic Emerald's first Alaskan cruise."

Have you been on an Alaskan cruise, Gentle Readers? I never have, but Avery Kent has convinced me that it would have been fun. If you enjoy travelling you will want to see the sights the characters in this book are seeing while they're plotting, committing, and solving a murder. Apart from a scene in which a police detective called Brooks grills a suspect called Dunn, adding inappropriate music to my mental image of the scene, that's the worst thing about this book :-)

(Some mystery buffs think a murder mystery needs two bodies.  This one has two bodies found on the deck, but one's only stunned.)

Loretta Lafayette is taking the cruise with her friend Alistair, his niece Amy, Amy's friend Liam, and Chester the Chihuahua. Loretta is a confirmed amateur detective but she doesn't solve murders alone. She talks through the clues with her trusted friends. Though Alistair hopes for a peaceful cruise, after two other cruises on which Loretta found murders to solve, soon a man who's been easy for a lot of people to hate is found dead on the deck. Several of the people who had reasons to hate him turn out to be on the ship, and the cozy family group are soon playing Loretta's favorite game.

If you like traditional close-mouthed detectives, Loretta's technique may put you off. If you lose patience with complicated mystery novels because you don't want to memorize the details of who was where when, you'll love Loretta and her friends. I give the novel bonus points for having Chester make an important discovery...that does not solve the mystery.

This is a delightful detective novel, and if you like it, there are many more where it came from. Kent is the author of four other series, including the two other volumes (so far) about Loretta Lafayette.

Butterfly of the Week: Graphium Ramaceus

Moving down the list of Graphium species in alphabetical order, we come to Graphium protensor, an old name now considered to describe the same thing as Graphium sarpedon, and to Graphium pylades, an old name now considered to describe the same thing as Graphium angolanus. These names still appear on some checklists but are no longer given pages at the science sites. The next species name still in active use is Graphium ramaceus, also known as Pendlebury's Zebra. It is sometimes also called the Malayan Zebra, but its claim to this name is more debatable since other Malayan butterflies have black and white stripes.

Photo by SL Liew.

It does not resemble the species Americans call Zebra Swallowtails. It is one of the species that are classified as Swallowtails, because of the structure of their wings, but that seem to mimic some of the more predator-toxic Brush-Footed butterflies. There are scientists who think it deserves to be classified in a separate genus from the Graphiums and want to call it Paranticopsis ramaceus, but so far this step has not been taken by the scientific community as a whole. (Paranticopsis refers to their resemblance to the Brush-Footed genus Parantica.) But Pendlebury's Zebra does have black, or brown, and white stripes on its upper wings. On its under wings, which are more often visible, it may have white stripes or only white spots.

Which species mimics which, exactly? Graphium ramaceus looks very similar to some tailless Swallowtails in the genus Papilio, as well as to various Paranticas and other Brush-Footed Butterflies. One observer wrote that butterfly species can sometimes be said to form "rings of Mullerian (reciprocal) mimicry." One species' habits may make it most vulnerable to one predator against which it has evolved a chemical defense. 

It is found in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and Burma/Myanmar. Never really common, it may be most easily found in March and September, with some of each generation sometimes appearing in the month before or lingering into the month after their generation's seasonal irruption. Families may occupy the same territory for several seasons; a spot where these butterflies were found last season can be a good place to look for them. 

http://nlliew66butterflies.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-pendleburys-zebra-pathysa.html

Its wingspan is typically about 3 inches.

It is a popular species, and has been commemorated on postage stamps: 

https://www.postbeeld.com/scj32208-butterflies

Several different scientists described what seems to be this species as a new species discovered by them. It was first placed in the genus Papilio, from which the genus Graphium had not yet been separated, and was named Papilio schoenbergianus, P. leucothoe, P. dealbatus, and P. interjectus. 

Why does one kind of butterfly have so many names? Individuals' wing markings vary. The meanings the names may have had for the scientists who gave them to this species may never be known. 

Ramaceus is not recognized by Google as the name of a character in literature. It is Latin and means "branch." It was proposed as a name for this species in 1872, about twelve years after another Graphium had been named after Rama, or Ram, a hero of Indian literature. The name must have seemed like an especially neat choice since it can refer to the now abandoned name Graphium rama, or to the branchlike pattern of Graphium ramaceus's stripes, as well as being, Westwood wrote, "an anagram of the name of" the similar-looking Graphium macareus.

Pendlebury is the name of several scientists, none really famous and none remembered for work done before 1872, and of a place now described as a suburb of Manchester in England. Homesick Englishmen did sometimes name Asian and African species after their home towns.

Leucothoe, from Greek words meaning "white" and "quick," was the name of several real and fictitious people in ancient Greece, including a princess and a goddess in literature.

Interjectus means "thrown in between," in Latin, like the words called "interjections," which are thrown in between sentences to expres emotional reactions like "Oh!' or "Aha!"

Dealbatus means "having the white taken away" in Latin.

Inayoshi, Yuka, and Sachiyo are people's names, as is Schoenberg. 

There are subspecies; for this species, typical specimens of each subspecies are easy to recognize on sight. 

A subspecies Graphium ramaceus leucothoe is no longer listed at new science sites, but specimens of leucothoe are still identified in some museums.

Photo from The National History Museum, nhm.ac.uk.

A subspecies interjectus was also described in 1893, but this name also seems to have gone out of use.

Apparently the subspecies most often observed is Graphium ramaceus pendleburyi.. 

Photo by SL Liew, February 2022.

Photo by Antonio Giudici.

Graphium ramaceus ramaceus, the nominate subspecies, has not been so well documented as G.r. pendleburyi. 

Photo by Dhfischer, Sarawak, March 2012.

In addition to G.r. ramaceus and G.r. pendleburyi, most scientists recognize the subspecies Graphium ramaceus inayoshii, but it is even more poorly documented than G.r. ramaceus. It has been given the English name "Obscure Zebra." It coexists with G.r. ramaceus. Its name honors Yutaka Inayoshi.

Photo from wingscales.com.

Subspecies yukae and sachiyoae were described in 2020. 

As in many other Swallowtail species, the males are often found in large mixed groups sipping water, preferably brackish rather than fresh water, at puddles. They are composter species; their bodies absorb excess mineral salts from water and excrete purer water, more beneficial to most plants, back into the soil. This is one of their minor services to humankind, along with helping to feed predators that remove pest species from crop fields and returning nutrients to the soil in the form of frass. Their major service is, of course, pollinating flowering plants, sometimes as the only regular pollinator of some plants whose leaves are mildly toxic but whose fruits humans can eat.

Photo by SL Liew. These drinking buddies get some survival benefit from being part of a big mixed crowd. The minerals they ingest make it possible for them to mate, and sometimes females flit about the edge of a group, waiting for a male to feel ready to flit off with her. Female Swallowtails tend to eclose from their pupal shells full of eggs, eager to get their eggs fertilized and begin laying them. In species where males and females look alike it is possible to identify the female in a couple by her egg-stuffed shape. 

Although butterflies are among the animal species that most vividly illustrate genetic gender confusion, they have a strong division of sex roles. Generally only male butterflies compost; females get their minerals from contact with males. (Occasionally an unmated female will sip brackish water, apparently in the hope of starting the biological cycle that unburdens her of all those eggs, but in the normal course of events female butterflies drink only pure water, flower nectar, or fruit juice.) Female Swallowtails spend most of their lives finding suitable places for each egg, which in many species needs to be deposited several yards from any other eggs. Many live in the treetops in dense forests and are still unknown, or barely known, to science. Graphium ramaceus is one of the species in which the female and young have yet to be described. 

Male Swallowtails' appetite for salt, however, can make them a little too friendly with humans.

Photo by Jaceyc, March 2025. 

Sunday Book Review: Living the Overcoming Life by Richardson George

Title: Living the Overcoming Life 

Author: Richardson George

Date: 2015

Quote: "This book presents practical principles for overcoming life's many challenges drawn from the life of Jesus Christ."

Of the making of inspirational sermons and Bible study books about how to lead a good Christian life, there is no end. Nor should there be. Christians love writing them, and Christians love reading them. This book is a good example of its genre.  Richardson George discusses overcoming rejection, fear, personal attacks, and other obstacles to leading a good Christian life. 

What you'll like about this book: Solid outline, focussed presentation of the author's points, and a good sound scriptural foundation all the way. 

What's not to like: I found one thing. The author does not parrot the too common advice Christians get to "Be a people person!", in defiance of the neurological fact that being "a people person" seems to be mostly a defense against a defect or damage to the brain that keeps a person from developing a healthy conscience or, usually, any other talent that involves a healthy cerebrum. "People persons" seem to live in a torture chamber of envy, resentment, and fear of other people that comes out as an obsession with getting control of other people's attention. They probably do like, and may try to reward, those who encourage their antics but their attitudes toward people who have talents and vocations, and don't reward the "people person's" demands for attention, give them away. The Bible doesn't say that they're not going to be resurrected at all, since they don't have fully human minds, but the arguments for that interpretation are credible. The way twentieth century society devolved into a support group for these wretched extroverts was one of the major obstacles that people with spiritual consciousness have to overcome..I could not recommend a book that specifically advised Christians to try to imitate these puppies in human shape, and I'm glad to report that this book doesn't do that. But it does include in its bibliography, and thereby recommend, a book with the actual title Be a People Person.

In view of the fact that the most convincing way a person who has a conscience can pass for an extrovert is to have a blood alcohol content beyond the legal limit for operating a motor vehicle, it's encouraging to note that the author is in favor of sobriety and offers sound advice for those tempted to backslide into drinking alcohol, taking drugs, shoplifting, and all the stupid little sins that tempt the very young.

The function of books like this one is not primarily to teach people things they didn't know, but to remind them of teachings they may have been tempted to overlook. Living the Overcoming Life is likely to offer a good reminder to almost any Christian in almost any situation. That means it's also a good choice to give as a gift.

Praying for You

People posting on the Internet often request prayers.

Reading these posts, I used routinely to type "Prayers said." It was true. I would in fact bow my head over the keyboard and silently pray, "Dear Lord, please help this person, whoever and wherever the person is." 

Many times, that was all I knew about the situation and all I ever thought about it afterward. I would park the computer in town overnight, and by the time I turned it on again the next day, I might remember that a long-term e-friend was preparing for surgery but I would have forgotten the strangers with the sick children, the need to find lodging in a new city, the employers going out of business, and so on.

Some people began to complain, not to me specifically but to the Internet generally, about the routine typing of things like "prayers said" or "you will be in our thoughts and prayers." They didn't believe these things were even true, they didn't believe it would do any good if they were, and what if the people being prayed for had a different religious identity and thought our prayers were idolatrous?

Considering the matter, I decided that those momentary prayers that didn't take longer for me to think at God than they took for me to type "prayers said" were not worth mentioning on the Internet. I did not stop thinking those prayers at God. I recognized that typing the phrases did not necessarily send moral support to the strangers for whom I entertained fleeting thoughts of good will, and might even be seen as trying to claim some sort of credit from other people for having thoughts of good will, which seemed absurd. Christianity itself is hard enough to understand without having to try to understand things that aren't Christian at all, like a person claiming credit for thinking kind thoughts, as if they had anything to do with Christianity. So I stopped retyping the words.

During the past week I felt a very strong urge, more than once, to pray for a specific e-friend who had not requested prayers or even directly expressed a need.

In real life I've had only a few friends who identified as Neo-Pagans, the catchall category that includes several unaffiliated groups of people of different types and outlooks. The few were especially congenial people, when we were forty years younger. They wanted to express their spirituality in lively and practical ways, without going back to churches where they had been spiritually, emotionally, or even physically abused. They wanted to affirm what many classified as feminine aspects of the spirit and of the Great Spirit--peace, tolerance, love of Nature, acceptance of the body, nurturance of the environment--and to replace the nasty baggage some people had placed on femininity itself with an awareness of the feminine qualities even the Bible ascribes to God.

They were easy for me to like, and the writings of Neo-Pagans like Isaac Bonewits and "Starhawk" (Miriam Simos) were also easy to like. I myself, however, never felt rebellious enough toward God or Christ or Christianity to feel a need to worship Juno or Kwan Yin. (A lot of cultural appropriation went on in Neo-Pagan circles.) When I read The Spiral Dance I always thought, "What's missing from Christian practice today that people are finding here? What in this book properly belongs to, and ought to be reclaimed by, Christianity, and what is mere self-indulgence?"

At the time, in the churches I attended, about the most charitable thing that would ever have been said if someone had come in saying "Well I'm 'gay'; I've been happily living with the same person-of-the-same-sex for ten years and think I'm committed to person for life, I only want to let people know that we don't need to meet your single relatives," would have been "Let's all pray that God will heal you of THAT!" In contrast to that, the Neo-Pagans would say "That's cool! You know the virgin goddess Athena had a very dear friend, Pallas, whose gender the Greek writers disagreed on, whom she accidentally killed in a game. In real history the cult of Athena must have destroyed or absorbed what started out as a friendly group, possibly the cult of Pales. In Greco-Roman religion Athena adopted Pallas's name, never married, and ritually mourned for her beloved friend. She would understand how you feel about your girlfriend," or "The Greek gods replaced Hebe with Ganymede as their cupbearer because Zeus preferred the view when Ganymede bent over. He would sympathize with your feelings for your boyfriend." Sexual diversity was welcome in Neo-Pagan circles, as were other deviations from social norms. There were even Neo-Pagans who accepted asexuality. That was nice to know during my ace phase.

Toward the end of my ace phase I was even invited to a Neo-Pagan spring gathering by an older male friend who was entering his own postsexual phase. We went to a large public park, where we were greeted and handed cookies. Mine was the sort of coconut walnut macaroon Mother used to make, and I was glad it didn't have the overpowering taste of the honey Mother used to buy from the old neighborhood beekeeper. I didn't pay much attention to the cookie because I was noticing, as a freshman-class baby-boomer, that every other person there appeared to be a senior-class baby-boomer except for a few people with (yikes!) white hair! Someone kept walking around asking "Who got the cookie with the whole nut in it?" and I finally had the presence of mind to ask, "Was it an English walnut?" Apparently everyone else's cookie was plain coconut. Having got the walnut half, I had been selected by lot to impersonate the goddess of spring. Body language suggested that whatever good will some other women in the group had been prepared to extend toward a stranger had just evaporated--they might have wanted to take that role. In some close-knit covens this would have been altogether inappropriate for a stranger and unbeliever, but at this public gathering, where all I had to do was stand in the middle of the circle and exchange fresh strawberries with one of the older men, it didn't seem like a bad thing so I played along. I didn't think I was all that gaunt, jaundiced, and haggard, after two or three years of being able to work and live a normal life, but I took it as a reality check that someone said, "Inanna would be a good spiritual name for you." For a small group of people in Maryland it may still be my name. I avoided those people, after that. Inanna's best known attribute was not the part of myself with which I wanted to be identified. Fortunately they seemed content to be avoided.

It was a nice day in the park but on the way back my friend and I felt that, although nobody seemed to take the notion of "worshipping" randomly chosen fellow mortals seriously, although the crowd were mostly nice sober employees of the federal government who thought that, if anything, asking people to stand around symbolizing the cosmic principle of springtime and new life was too theatrical and silly, nevertheless we'd participated in something that was not appropriate for non-churchgoing Christians to do. ("Though it was suitable that they picked you," he said thoughtfully. "I mean a lot of the other women are prettier than you are, but you're so young..." We remained friends.) 

I never tried to worship any attribute of the Holy One in fellowship with a Neo-Pagan, ever again. The experience wasn't traumatic; it felt more like having put my shoes on the wrong feet. And I never seriously tried to cast a spell, although I did once try to psych someone out with the surface trappings of one. Christians pray and trust in God. I wondered whether God withdrew support from me, in the conflict with that person, because I was meant to give the person a solidly Christian message rather than appropriating a message from the person's non-Christian culture.

In the church of which I'd been a full member, for a few years, anything to do with Neo-Paganism was considered idolatry. I should have repented, burned all those Neo-Pagan books, and shunned the friends who weren't willing to burn theirs. In the church whose college had finally accepted me as a student, Neo-Paganism was seen as a valid path to spiritual understanding and could be practiced in a Sunday School room, if not in the sanctuary. If I'd wanted to worship Wicca or Artemis or Sarasvati, with the Unitarians that would have been cool. I never have taken either position. It's seemed to me that the strictly Christian path my family set me on was better, but that the Holy One knows each of our hearts well enough to know whether Neo-Paganism is a valid spiritual path for one person or an infantile show of rebelliousness for another person. I am not qualified to judge. 

The Old Testament prophets had an easy job. Their religious group was defining itself in opposition to groups that had not fully rejected human sacrifice. The various cults of Baal (which was a general Semitic word for "lord and master," and was sometimes used by devout Israelites to mean the God of Israel, and is still used in Hebrew to mean the owner of a house or business) still encouraged people to produce too many babies and get rid of the babies whose fathers didn't want to rear them, whether by "making them pass through the fire" and burning some of them alive, or by "exposing" them to the care of the general group in a public place where some babies were adopted and some starved. The questions we debate today about how bad overpopulation is, whether it's justifiable for people who can afford multiple children and think their DNA deserves to be preserved in extra copies, etc., don't seem to have been raised; only the question whether a baby's parents were willing to rear it, as in our abortion clinics today. The Old Testament prophets could repeat, "Thou shalt not kill! Thou shalt not commit adultery! Thou shalt worship our God who has made these Commandments, and our God only shalt thou serve! All other forms of worship are idolatry and abomination!" And so for them it was.

The New Testament church had, however, a more difficult time. The Pagans they knew were more or less civilized. Paul said that if you were enlightened enough to have lost all fear of the idols of the Emperor's ancestors to whom most of the meat in the markets had been ritually dedicated before it was sold, then no guilt for "worshipping" those idols adhered to you. Paul even found a Greek temple dedicated "To the Unknown God," and cheerfully told an audience, "Whom therefore you ignorantly worship, I declare unto you. That's the God I'm here to tell you about." Sincere believers in the Pagan gods who embodied ideals like Justice, Health, and Public Spirit were worshipping attributes of God and were to be further enlightened, not chastised. It was the people sitting in the Jewish Temple and worshipping Money who deserved to be whipped. 

So I did not think it was my business to tell Neo-Pagans that they ought to be Christians. 

I do think, from what those few Neo-Pagans I knew told me, that reconciliation with Christianity would have been the best thing for them. I've never felt called to oversee that process. If in your mind "Christianity" really means "the Catholic Church where the priest molested me and the nun whipped me for telling her," then I don't know whether God demands that you become what you believe a Christian needs to be; I certainly don't demand that. If in your mind "being a Christian" means "not making my mother, in whose home I live and from whom I regularly receive material benefits, weep over my apostasy and pray that I'll repent, because I enjoy torturing my mother," then you are not a friend of mine. Either way, I believe that God can send you a Christian vision when God knows you can benefit from one. That is between God and you. If you have been living in rebellion against the form of Christianity you knew in the past, and would like to hear more about a different kind of Christianity, then talk to me.

In cyberspace I've found far more Neo-Pagan e-friends than I've found Neo-Pagan friends in real life. In cyberspace as in real life, they are congenial people--although they tend to vote blue, which has reduced their congeniality to Independent thought in recent years. I wish them all well, even if I wish them the great blessing of seeing how unhelpful socialist ideas are before they have a chance to aggravate the socialist ideas that are already doing us damage today. 

It surprised me that the thought kept popping into my mind last week, "Pray for X." Why X? Well, X is not a Christian. I've never asked why not. If I'd made a more diligent study of X's published writing I'd probably know. I've saved several of X's blog posts to files for printing, but printing costs money and those files are still languishing in cyberspace, unprinted. But X is older than I am, and may have some Christian people to seek reconciliation with, this spring, while X is still healthy enough that reconciliation with them might mean home nursing care. 

I've prayed for X. I don't want to burden X with even a private message that "by X, I mean you." I have had these thoughts about one older writer who's often been mentioned here, more than the others; I don't know that it matters, to readers, which one that is. All of them are nice cyberspace entities and good writers. I think some of them are ex-Christians, some are ex-Jews, and some may be ex-Scientific Humanists who have dared to reclaim spirituality as part of their humanity; that doesn't matter here. I don't know that it even matters that the need to pray for X felt urgent to me because X is older than I am. At any age people can lose loved ones with whom they need to be reconciled. At any age people can become ill. 

This much I do know from personal experience: Grief is cleaner when we were reconciled with people while they were alive. Spiritual feelings tend to seek reconciliation with the first true things we learned about God. Facing the Great Unknown is easier when we have accepted that feelings of guilt can have valid causes, and are most easily put behind us after those causes have been addressed. For anyone. At any age.