Tuesday, November 10, 2026

Web Log for 11.9.26

Still plodding through a long project that's on the computer, but mostly offline...

Electricity 

It's Joe Jackson's turn to repeat these tips for surviving this winter:


Knitting 

I know how to knit socks. With or without seams, even. They have their appeal, as instant gratification projects; even a sweater/blanket knitter like me can make a pair of socks in a weekend if we want to. But there are, in the knitting universe, sock specialists whose socks lay mine in the shade. They don't even have to knit super-fancy socks. I know what Carol Fun's done here: bought two congenial skeins of space-dyed sock yarn and knitted them together. But I'm sure she had more fun doing it than I would've had.


You can buy her socks, and her quilts, if you want them. This is her blog, where she shares updates on her life and work, generally, with no nags to buy. On the blog there are links to her "store" site.


Music 

Neil Finn.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uMmTV4oGaA (Multiple videos, including one featuring the children at the school the song was written in aid of, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JU8ZXkx0c3E .)

John Coltrane.


The Slits.


What do you think? My all-time favorite record album has been reposted on YouTube. It won't be there long, and the person who posted it has mixed up the order of the tunes and shoved in a lot of blather about "crypto," which you will need to click back to YT to skip...but this record is too good not to share. Buy your own copy, I think I'm on my third by now, after sampling. 


Omaggi Musical. Not sure why YouTube shoved this piece at me, how much the composer paid them to do so. It's not music that has to be shoved at people.


The Los Angeles Guitar Quartet. 

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Petfinder Posts: Mastiffs and Large Cats

The name "Mastiff" is used both for a specific breed registry, and as a category for a group of breeds. At dog shows this distinction matters. At animal shelters dogs are described in terms of breed traits rather than actual pedigrees. It can be hard to tell whether a dog's ancestors were Mastiffs or mastiffs. In any case the dog is large.

Mastiffs are oversized dogs. They stand higher than humans, weigh as much or more (show quality Mastiffs weigh 120 to 230 pounds), and would be dangerous if they hadn't been trained to love and serve us. Undoubtedly more mastiffs have saved human lives than have harmed humans. Still, owning a mastiff is a substantial responsibility. Not only can you reasonably be asked how you plan to feed, shelter, and care for the giant dog; you can reasonably be subjected to a police background check and required to take out liability insurance. 

Most mastiffs are gentle giants with calm dispositions, sometimes trained to guard little children. It takes a lot to scare them. Still, a frightened mastiff--say, frightened by the house being on fire--can do a lot of damage just by running. And you can't say he could kill a man in a fair fight, because between a man and a full-sized Mastiff there's no such thing as a fair fight.

Dogs in the Mastiff registry (as distinct from the Great Dane, St Bernard, Dogue de Bordeaux, etc., registries) are brown with black faces. Their humans would not agree that they're ugly but they are a startling sight to people who aren't accustomed to looking at them. They are a very old established breed, into which many weaknesses have accidentally been bred, back when people didn't know about DNA but just wanted to see how big it's possible for a dog to be. Breeders now have about a dozen genetic problems to screen for and breed out. A purebred Mastiff found at a shelter is likely to have one or more of the problem genes, which may shorten the dog's life and complicate its old age. 

Most people don't want to live with dogs who are bigger than they are, and shouldn't try. The market for Mastiffs is tiny. Some think we should just stop breeding them altogether. Others say the breed deserves preservation, but its actual population should stay small. Probably it shouldn't be possible to find a mastiff at a shelter. In reality, large dogs often appeal to people who are not up to the work of keeping them; there are hundreds of Mastiff mixes in shelters.

The American Kennel Club's notes on the Mastiff breed mention that it's normal for these giant dogs to form "cushions" on their elbow joints. Fluid inside these cushions should not be drained. At least ten tests for genetic diseases should be  taken before a Mastiff is purchased. The dog's diet should be monitored carefully since large dogs can die of "bloat" after eating things they shouldn't. The coat needs relatively litle brushing, but the ears and skin folds on the face need cleaning and drying. Mastiffs drool heavily; most owners keep absorbent cloth handy to mop up dribbles. 

Adult Mastiffs can walk a mile or two a day, but letting puppies run, jump, or take long walks can damage their growing bones. If these dogs become hot or tired they are known for a tendency to plop down and silently demand that their humans carry them home.

Typically these dogs learn simple commands quickly and want to please. If they become bored by repetitious training they may lie down and snore. They don't like being shouted at, either. They can hold eye contact with humans and "say" many things with their eyes. 

Giant dogs are "still growing" for the first two years of their lives and need a good diet with adequate calcium and phosphorus. Muscular and skeletal defects are guaranteed, and can be considered environmental more than hereditary disease conditions, if they don't get enough of the right nutrients. A mature, show-quality male Mastiff can weigh up to 230 pounds. 

Since giantism is a pathological genetic condition I'm glad that there's no true giant cat breed. Our pet cats have been systematically bred to the small end of their size range. Their wild ancestors weighed up to 30 pounds. We're accustomed to seeing cats whose healthy weight is between 5 and 15 pounds and the 15-pound individuals look big to us. (In fact they are the biggest cats likely to be found in shelters.) Once in a while, not always even in larger breeds like the Maine Coon and Norwegian Forest cats, an individual kitten just keeps growing. to wild cat size. It's still a domestic cat, usually socialized as a house pet, only it's twice the size its mother was. It can be a good pet if kept indoors. If it's outdoors, someone may mistake it for a wild cat and shoot it.

The important thing about extra-large pets is your relationship with them. If they are loved and well treated, they won't intentionally harm people and the risk of property damage is relatively low. (Many of us learned the word "mastiff" from biographies of Helen Keller, whose best known dog was a mastiff she called Lioness.) If mistreated, or allowed to stray to where someone may attack them out of fear, their stories are likely to end badly. 

Zipcode 10101: Louie from NYC 


With a healthy weight of not quite 80 pounds, Louie is obviously not a purebred Mastiff, but he has more traits of that breed than of others. He's a big, calm, mellow dog whose favorite thing is to curl up beside a couch-potato-type human on the couch. He's available as a foster pet. You can find out whether you really want to live with even an (almost) 80-pound dog.

Chester from NYC 


In size, color, and purrsonality Chester sounds similar to our Drudge--big but not gigantic, gentle, and a lap cat who loves attention and affection. 

Zipcode 20202: Jafar from South Carolina by way of DC 



He weighs over 80 pounds and is still growing. He can meet you at any of several points along Route 1 from South Carolina to DC or NYC. Jafar is a great goofy pup who likes to run around the yard and play. He needs loving, gentle, tactful discipline before he gets big enough to do major damage. You might want to send them photos of the high, solid fence around the big yard you're offering for him to claim as home. 

Moonie from DC 


Moonie outlived his first human, took some time grieving and getting to know the people who took him in temporarily, and may take some time before he decides your home is his home, but he's a sweet purry pet once he decides to be. (Cameras do funny things. His fore legs look normal in other photos.)

Zipcode 30303: Ridley from East Point 


He was adopted from the shelter as a puppy, then brought back as a middle-aged dog because his human could no longer keep him. He is available as a foster dog. He's over 80 pounds and is most comfortable in a home where everyone else weighs over 80 pounds too--no young children, small dogs, or cats please. He's not a show quality Mastiff; in fact his known ancestors include terriers. He is available as a foster dog. You can find out whether you want to live with him before making the commitment.

Vin from Atlanta


In the 12-16-pound range, Vin looks as if she weighs 16 pounds and would be happier if allowed to shrink gradually back to 12...as if she's been getting treats when she needed affection or entertainment. She is a Queen Cat who prefers to own her humans--more than one at a time--without sharing them with other animals,though at least she won't be having kittens. 
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New Book Review: Rise

Title: Rise

Author: Daniel Kennedy

Date: 2026

Quote: "Rise: How to Turn Adversity into Your Greatest Strength explores how grit, resilience, and our relationship with pain shape success."

Some of us choose to, and some of us are forced to, take Marcus Aurelius's approach to life. There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so. Grab Life by the throat and force it to yield whatever you want it to yield. Acknowledge no difficulties. Marcus Aurelius was not a Christian so I used to wonder why he was so insanely popular at that church college I attended in the 1980s. Well, the 1980s were an era when the genre of books by therapists telling their clients to overpower their neuroses was insanely popular, generally. More than that, though: telling people to pull the power out of themselves to overcome all obstacles is a cheap, easy, feel-good way to tell them you can't be bothered to help. 

I did not expect anyone to be able to help me through the grief process, when I was at that school. (Not that people didn't invite themselves to try, because "helping" classmates was something they could feel good about doing, and if you were a numbed-out extrovert and moved fast enough you could delude yourself that you'd helped people whenever you parroted the last piece of advice you'd heard, though if you did not move fast enough you'd hear a lot of uncharitable words.) I did report a few problems like burnt-out light bulbs and dripping taps to people who were responsible for doing something about them, and get some misguided advice about How to Be Strong.

Daniel Kennedy is all in favor of the rising generation Being Strong. There are a few things about Being Strong he doesn't tell them, though. When people choose to push themselves to exercise in order to be more successful athletes, study in order to earn top grades, or take cold showers in order to be comfortable in cold weather, the side effects can include arrogance about their own fortitude. When they're forced to push themselves through hardships for no special benefit for themselves, just to recover "normalcy," permanent loss of empathy is to be expected. 

You can't chastise, e.g., me for making fun of somebody who couldn't live on $1000 per month with the sort of squeals of disapproval I've heard from welfare enablers. The only way people can feel any pity for anyone who can't live on $1000 per month is for those people to have never in their lives even had to imagine living on less than $2000 per month. Once we've learned that it's possible to live on less, sorry, welfare pushers, there's no going back. Though you could try a simple bribe of $10,000 per month to stop me writing about it.

It gets much worse than that. I was able to Be Strong because I inherited the gene. My Drill Sergeant Dad, the big strong polio survivor, had buried somewhere in his psyche the ability to want to be loved by children and dogs, appreciate pretty tinkly songs like "Love Is Like a Butterfly," and want his children to be kind and sensitive. He had pretty well destroyed the ability to teach those qualities by example. After forcing themselves to rebuild nerves and muscles destroyed by polio, survivors needed to do a lot of thinking about why yelling at children ("Put your feet on the pedals! Turn the pedals! Hold the handlebars!") is not the most effective way to teach them to ride bicycles, and about what polio survivors wanted to do, instead, in order to be fit for much of anybody to be around.

The world is so full of books about how to Be Strong, and how to tell other people to Be Strong when you're being paid to replace their light bulbs and should be doing that...but I've never seen a book that helped people recover the compassion we have systematically destroyed in ourselves. Admittedly some of the people whining for slack, or getting together in the break room to form a consensus that everyone hates the more efficient co-worker, deserve a good emotional spanking. The trouble is keeping them from scuttling away when someone like Hillary Rodham Clinton or Elon Musk enters a room (even on a screen). They scuttle and spew hate when it'd be good for their souls to be locked in the room and forced to write essays about why they are inferior to those people. Meanwhile those of us who have, not necessarily through any real fault of our own, Become Strong, could benefit from some help to turn down our energy levels to a point that allows us to know how much physical therapy a patient can take, or be able to teach children to read. 

That's not what Kennedy has to offer. This is a refreshingly frank book, more in the tone of a drill sergeant than in the tone of a psychotherapist. It says more and goes further than older self-help books presumed to do. Kennedy goes into details and advises people to build discipline by taking cold showers, unplugging their computers and flatphones, taking morning walks on the sort of days when coaches usually tell us that three good morning walks are all we really need in one week. Pursuing that sort of pain prepares us for the pain of working with a demanding boss. If you are a slacker and would like to succeed on a job with a demanding boss, this book may help you to help yourself in that direction, but it has nothing at all to offer to those of us who have already gone too far.

Toward the end of this book Kennedy, whose writing style is terse because it summarizes the contents of a few hundred self-help books from the 1970s and 1980s, does present a graphic outline of a continuum between the miserable slob who never even exercises, the person who chooses to let discipline build a good character, and the person who has been forced to Be Strong at the cost of all empathy...but he doesn't discuss whether the person who has Become Strong can recover from that. 

He might have done better to stick to discussing the intentional disciplines people use to build muscles and character. So much less emotional damage is done by that kind of "overcoming adversity." 

He might, also, have had more to say to the slackers who just hate the people who have Become Strong. Over the weekend someone steered me past the web site of Angela Stanton-King (https://www.auntieangieshouse.com/about). Here was a pro-lifer doing it right--not sitting around in a luxurious house, scolding women who didn't feel able to afford babies, but giving birth under horrible circumstances, telling those who are interested what she'd done, and helping other women find a slightly less horrible way to give birth to babies they may not be able to keep but don't want to abort. I like what I saw...except from the inevitable whine that Auntie Angie was making abortion survivors feel bad. Hello? This was on X. On X this year, the D moles trying to make Rs look bad were especially in need of whacking. They'd pop up on irrelevant discussions wherever women or women's issues were mentioned and screech about how abortion survivors had "killed more babies" than male murderers had killed living people. And this person found time to whine at Auntie Angie? Yes. That's the way wimps are. They don't turn to face the people who actually have been, and are, bullying them. They project their emotions onto people who are quietly trying to help--and/or showing them up. It's not the irresponsible boyfriend or the subcultures that expect premarital sex in open-ended "relationships" or the woman-haters on X who were making this miserable little cow feel bad. It's the beautiful shining role model. Well, somebody ought to be saying something to those who hate a person who has Been Strong. This is a good role for the psychotherapist, whose language is likely to be less heated than other people's.  

But if you are a Millennial who found it hard enough to get a minimum-wage job (yes, older people, it is hard these days) and now finds it hard to live on the minimum wage, this book can help you. You are going to have to Be Strong--just a little bit. You may benefit from some guidance and encouragement while you, too, discover that beans taste fine, and a board under a quilt is more soothing to the spine at night than a featherbed is, and when you eat the right food you can carry more than the professional baggage handler can easily lift.

Then, have a good time finding anyone to remind you that intentionally lugging in luggage the professional baggage handler will find hard to lift is not promoting girl power or displaying the benefits of the right diet. There are other ways to accomplish those things. Risking the baggage handler's ability to keep his overburdened body fit to do his job is just plain uncharitable.
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Monday, November 9, 2026

Web Log for 11.8.26

More than halfway through a long non-Internet project...

Music 

Christine Lavin.


Tom Lehrer.


Technology 

Be the change, Gentle Readers. Just say no to any "AI" program...or any program whose manufacturer tries to "update" it by infesting it with "AI" for you. (Those programs aren't about adding what passes for intelligence, in a computer, to your intelligence. They are about gathering information to be used against you, at least in the sense of undermining your sales-resistance, and potentially much worse.) Oppose, oppose, oppose, oppose, for free Ameri-cay!

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Music Moves Me: Shopping

November is winter shopping season; this week's Monday Music Moves Me prompt is songs about shopping. Well, there's "My Favorite Things," but it's not really about shopping.


And there's "The Bargain Store," but it's not really about shopping, either. (Actually, when it was new, there was some controversy about exactly what it was about. Google indicates that the video's been pulled down a few times.)


So I turned to Google. Lots of new songs are about shopping. How many can I listen to before it's time for this post to go live? Squeezing them in between what comes up on my own to-listen-to list? Any music links I listen to on Sunday that don't relate to shopping will be in the regular midday link log. Here's Macklemore. (Warning: foul language.)


Usher. (More foul language. Actually, before adding this to the link-up, I think I'll delete this link.)

Fergie. 


50 Cent.


Ariana Grande. 


Fabolous.


Shania Twain.


De La Soul.


Madonna.


Patti LaBelle.


Bruce Springsteen.


Nicki Minaj.


Patti Page. (Her style doesn't appeal to me as much as it did when I was three years old, but at least this song contains no bad language.)


Wiz Khalifa. (Some nasty words here.)

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Book Review: Hometown Forgiveness

Title: Hometown Forgiveness

Author: Lucy Light

Date: 2026

Quote: "Childhood friends reunited on live television? The viewers are going to love this!"

Harper and Noah were a couple. Then she left town and became a TV celebrity. When she comes back to her hometown, he's still single, though miffed because she disappeared. And someone's still sending her vaguely intimidating anonymous notes. 

This time, Harper gets it right. Instead of fleeing for fear the note sender will attack Noah, she tells him what's going on. As a teenaged volunteer for a church project Harper noticed that money was being stolen from church funds. She didn't know who was doing it, but the guilty person knew she was trying to find out and started threatening her. Now she and Noah are adults. (This is the point where she's taking a big risk; at this point a man who was not her beshert would probably disappear from her life.) It doesn't take them long to find out who the embezzler was. They can even publicize the story on television.

This is a short, sweet, lighthearted romance. Readers who like the genre will probably enjoy it. 
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Butterfly of the Week: False Giant, Little King...

This week's butterfly seems to be best known for its near misses. It's called the False Giant and the Little King; its scientific name, Heraclides homothoas, means that it looks like H. thoas; and it just missed being chosen as the national butterfly of Venezuela. If ever a butterfly had an excuse for moping and sulking, "Why not me?", this is the one.


Photo by Kj1453, Costa Rica, December.

Butterflies do not, however, mope. Their fluttering is actually often purposeful and effortful--they are trying to get somewhere, and may not be able to reach their goals easily--but they look as if their lives were all about having fun.


Photo by Jeirortegagalban, Colombia, August. Swallowtails can mate in several different positions, some of which suggest that they may take the time to think about what they're doing enough to enjoy it.

Possibly they knew that anyone who started out looking like this


(Photo from the Museo del Instituto de Zoologia Agricola Francisco Fernandez Yepez)

...and now has fans who like looking at it, has come a long way. 

Heraclides homothoas is fairly common across the northern tier of South to South Central America, from Costa Rica through Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, and Trinidad island. It can eat several species of citrus leaves, or leaves of rue or pepper plants. 


Photo by Amydeacontt, Trinidad, September. The yellow sections of the wings usually look light yellow, but in some lights some individuals look almost white, while others...


Photo by Joseorlando, Colombia, August.

Rothschild, listing it as a new species in Novitates Zoologicae, described it entirely in relation to H. thoas, while also allowing that it's easily mistaken for North America's H. cresphontes:


The life cycle seems continuous through the year. 

Caterpillars have humps, like other Swallowtail larvae, and osmeteria, though they don't seem willing to display their osmeteria. The humps can resemble tiny lizard heads..


Photo by Bellbird20, Trinidad, December. (Bellbird20's attribution highlights a peculiarity of these islands' version of English. Islanders teach their children to give their country's full name as Trinidad AND Tobago even though a city, like Port of Spain, exists on only one island, in this case Trinidad. "Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago" is technically correct though it looks odd to the rest of the world.)

Pupae look a little more like twigs than like bird droppings. A little, not a lot.


Photo from Butterflies of America.
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Sunday, November 8, 2026

Web Log for 11.6-7.26

I didn't even listen to a lot of music on these two days. Here's what I did find.

Animals 

Butterfly fanciers, meet Gabrielle Marsden, whose love of Zebra Swallowtails has reached the point of hand-rearing the little stinkers. She's even written a song parody from a Zebra's point of view (see below).


Music 

Gabrielle Marsden. This is the link to the lyrics and explanation; the page also includes a link to the video of her performing the song as a solo. 


Dara. 


The Edsels, for comparison purposes with Dara. They are American. They speak English better.


Gabriel Faure. Mad Mix R Us.


Rod Stewart.




Keith Wallace. (Christian content.)


Someone else may recognize this gospel singer. I don't. Shared by Juanita Broaddrick.

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New Book Review: Where Hope Begins (Now with Music Links)

Title: Where Hope Begins 

Author: Beth Adams

Date: 2026

Quote: "[T]hat cabin gets quieter every day, and some mornings I'm not sure I've got anything left to give."

Pastor Jerrod works on a mission--building a church in mostly secular Australia, out among rural "stations" surrounded by oceans of red dust desert. It's lonely work, even before his best buddy dies. Then, before that loss has even had time to sink in, a churchgoing couple die and their four children must be taken back to the sponsoring church, in Alabama, to find adults willing to rear a teenaged girl and three little boys. 

Jerrod doesn't realize that his younger sister's college roommate has wanted to go to Australia ever since she was five years old. Hearing about the red dust at church fired her imagination. She might have liked to have been sent out on Jerrod's mission. 

So when they meet and find each other attractive...they quickly apply the brakes and filters recommended by some "conservative" churches. No "romance." No "feelings." They have to talk and think rationally, pray, and decide whether it's best for the mission if they go back as a couple and adopt the four children. 

Can even missionaries from "conservative" evangelical churches do romance as levelheadedly as Clara and Jerrod? I don't know, but this book certainly offers good role models for those who want to try. While reading I kept comparing Clara with Rebekah, the Bible character whose story might have inspired hers. To prevent romance going wrong, Rebekah's people arranged marriages, and Rebekah had to make a levelheaded decision to rush out at once and marry the kind of man she wanted to live with. Clara and Jerrod at least have a chance to base their decision on the way they see each other interacting with their parents and the children.

This is a second edition of a book published in 2011. While reading, I wondered whether the manuscript could have been tightened a little. Maybe not. This is a novel for readers who like to linger over the very words people would have said, the landscapes around them, the recipes for the meals they share and the principles of construction they use on the job, and of course the full text and context of the Bible verses they quote. For its intended audience the pace and length may be just right.

Edited to add a new feature: This is still in beta mode, I may not keep on doing it, but the technology exists to add playlists for books reviewed here. Where Hope Begins mentions three songs.

It Is Well with My Soul:


Footprints of Jesus:


Great Is Thy Faithfulness:

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Friday, November 6, 2026

November PAD Chapbook Challenge: Fresh

There's a new verse writing challenge for November, over at writersdigest.com. Yes, it's a very commercial site. Yes, they demand payment to read poems submitted to the serious contest with cash prizes. So? The challenge was to write chapbooks. Chapbooks are traditionally self-published anyway. 

The first prompt was "fresh." 

What came to mind was a sort of follow-up to the longer poem on today's Substack...

A sight to refresh my old screen-weary eyes:
The sight of Mark Zuckerberg scooping French fries. 
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Bad Poetry: Glass

Prompted by Poets & Storytellers United.


This is, of course, a senryu from a cat's point of view. Some animals seem to recognize their images in mirrors. My current Queen Cat Serena does not. 

Behind all glass live
large aggressive queen cats who
mock what I do. Why?
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Web Log for 11.5.26

Actually I've been doing something else on the computer, not mourning about the election. However, the Internet is full of gloating and grieving about the election this week. Two links I did find ought to be enough of that for anybody...

Election 

Lots of things bear part of the blame. Including decent, public-spirited people who still think they have any influence on what currently calls itself the Democratic Party, as if its policy weren't completely determined now by the Democratic Socialists. This web site's job is not to make decent, public-spirited people feel like fools; the Democratic Socialists can take care of that, and they will. 

However.


Found on the Mirror. 

Socialism comes to a big, rich country where poverty has never been much of a concern, if only because they have to be fairly well outfitted even to try to survive their weather:


If we allow the midterm-election-as-show-of-dissatisfaction to accomplish anything beyond petty emotional gratification for the Ds, until that party eliminates its Democratic Socialists and gets back into touch with its base, it can happen here too. I say this with deep regret. I would like to vote D again.
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Book Review: Kay Ann

Title: Kay Ann

Author: Grace & Harold Johnson

Date: 1951

Publisher: Whittlesey House / McGraw-Hill

ISBN: none

Length: 221 pages

Quote: "Of course, she'd had a grand summer around home, playing tennis, swimming and riding...but...there wasn't much thrill in going out with Jerry."

This was actually the sort of girls' school story I would have liked when I was fifteen...old enough to have felt a hormone surge, sensible enough to know I didn't want to have sex that year, and very much interested in reading anything written by anyone who was aware that people could ignore their hormones and survive.

Unfortunately, I wouldn't have discovered it when I was fifteen. Probably afraid that high school girls wouldn't read a story about a girl who actually busted a crush and got a life, the publisher made sure to supply a blurb about Kay Ann's "new appreciation of Jerry." You have to read all the way to the end of the book to learn that Kay Ann comes to appreciate Jerry as a friend who shares her interests, not as a "boyfriend." There's no swooning, spooning, or June-ing anywhere in this book...but it starts out as if there will be. That means the book puts off readers who don't want a romance and disappoints readers who do, even though, taken for what it is, it's a satisfactory story.

Actually it's a pretty realistic portrait of a tenth grade preppy-type's life. Kay Ann just might end up married to Jerry. He's a nice normal sixteen-year-old boy, still growing, not troubled by hormone surges yet; give him time. Or she might end up married to someone else. Meanwhile, she indulges in a few strictly secret swoons over the new teacher, but refuses to embarrass herself by making any noticeable moves toward him, so when his wife joins him in town she does not want to die of embarrassment. Meanwhile, she keeps on doing the things she's always enjoyed, with friends and relatives and the things that will be part of her adult life (especially if she marries Jerry). She throws all that adolescent energy into the family business, and has a bang-up year.

Not many years after Kay Ann, McGraw-Hill published Eloise Jarvis McGraw's Greensleeves, a realistic but much more sophisticated novel, with some erotic moments, about an older girl who decides to postpone romance while going to college...after discovering that she feels about equally passionate toward a good friend, and toward a man who may not be quite "a jerk" but is definitely an "arrogant, unmitigated, beastly blob of glup." Greensleeves was an easier sell than Kay Ann; it was still circulating in all the libraries into the 1980s. Kay Ann was, apparently, considered dead by its own publisher, because prior to about 1980 one authentic girl-power book was enough of a risk for a publisher to promote--McGraw-Hill couldn't have afforded two.

Too bad. Kay Ann is an accessible, believable heroine for a high school girls' story. The heroine of Greensleeves was not only college-age, but a multilingual European movie star's daughter. I enjoyed Greensleeves very much, in grade ten, but its protagonist is a little too aspirational to be an immediate role model for high school students.

In theory more girl-power stories are being written and published now. Still, for high school girls who might enjoy a blast from the past, here is a nice, wholesome, non-preachy, chaste novel about the real pleasures of tenth grade life. When this book review went live for the first time, fifteen years ago, people remembered Kay Ann and searched for this book. It could become a favorite for anyone who reads it at all.
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Thursday's Book Review: Big Red

Title: Big Red

Author: Jim Kjelgaard

Date: 1945, reprinted in 1956

Publisher: Holiday House

ISBN: none

Length: 254 pages

Illustrations: black and white drawings by Bob Kuhn

Quote: "The bear, with his customary cunning, had put a safe distance between himself and the dangerous rifle in Danny's hands."

Seventeen-year-old Danny and his father work on one of the farms that make up the Haggin estate. One of Mr. Haggin's interests is dogs. While Danny's father judges dogs only as "varmint dogs" who hunt anything, Danny thinks of "Champion Sylvester's Boy," whom he renames Big Red, as strictly a bird hunter. After roaming the hills with Danny and building up muscle, however, Big Red proves to be up for almost anything. Older readers may remember the Disney movie about their adventures.

This is one animal adventure story that ends before the animal's relatively short lifespan does. Children like my brother (and like the characters in a whole novel about this issue, Gordon Korman's No More Dead Dogs) have loved Big Red for a long time for this reason. They need to know that most humans outlive several pets, but they hate the parts of novels where the dogs die.

The blurb on the jacket of my copy of Big Red says that it's for readers "from sixth grade up." My brother put a lot of wear on this copy in grades four and five, and had generally outgrown "boys' adventure stories" by grade six. Much depends on a child's familiarity with grown-up words like "inevitable," idiomatic phrases like "hounds bayed thunderous encouragement," dialect words like "get clawed or chawed"...and the maturity with which the child can be expected to learn about the correct use of the word for a female dog.

Although Danny's wholesomeness and consistent triumphs make adult readers suspect that Big Red was one of Kjelgaard's boyhood fantasies rather than one of his adventures, Kjelgaard had spent a lot of time with dogs. Some parts of the story are based on information about dogs that will be helpful to young readers. There's a woman character who might bring the B-word to corrupted adult minds, but the word is properly used of "Sheilah MacGuire," the mate the humans choose for Big Red. Danny innocently expects that Big Red will fall in love with Sheilah on sight--she's so beautiful! To Danny's chagrin, Big Red hardly notices Sheilah's charms but goes into a sulk because his human patted that other dog. He'll come around, but only after Danny has fussed over him enough to show that he's still the Favorite Dog.

Urban animal lovers can still appreciate the subtleties of this dog romance, but they may be less comfortable with the idea of an animal villain...a "native species" animal villain at that. Although the big bear has earned a name, Old Majesty, there's never any question of the basic assumption that he needs killing, and any man, dog, or combination of men and dogs who can kill him will be heroes. The reaction adults have to this part of the plot is a fairly reliable indicator of how much they know about the habits of bears. Ignorant people want to believe that humans can just live with bears.

The absence of likable female characters in this story bothers some girls more than others. It does not seem to bother boys...and no, a boy's ability to enjoy stories without heroines does not affect either his ability to appreciate stories with heroines, or his ability to bond with girls as friends.

Big Red is recommended to middle school readers, perhaps especially those whose fathers remember having enjoyed it.
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Wednesday's Book Review: Picture Book of Musical Instruments

Title: Picture Book of Musical Instruments

Author: Marion Lacey

Date: 1942

Publisher: Lothrop Lee & Shepard

ISBN: none

Length: 55 pages including index

Illustrations: drawings by Leonard Weisgard; more drawings than text

Quote: "Originally all the wood winds were made of wood. Now, however, metal is often used."

This thin little book was written for adult symphony-goers. The drawings are recognizable and clever, but don't really show children what the instruments look like as clearly as photos would. There's not much text, and lines like "The English horn is half again as large as the oboe, and is pitched a fifth lower" are obviously addressed to people who know how big an oboe is and what a fifth sounds like.

This book was discarded from my local library because it wasn't circulating. I can see why. It was mis-shelved with the picture books written for kindergarten and first grade readers. It had no business in their corner of the library.

Marion Lacey didn't even consider the musical instruments that get most use today. One might understand the claim that the bang and twang of much popular music wasn't what she would have called music, but where are the wood blocks, triangles, tambourines, autoharps, and recorders that first grade students actually play? What about the organ or piano they might hear at church? What about the guitars, harmonicas, keyboards, and miscellaneous "folk" instruments their parents might play for fun? The Picture Book of Musical Instruments is written from the viewpoint of a Music Snob who admits only symphonies as "music." This attitude has probably done more than any other single factor to reduce Americans' interest in symphonies.

So, as a first book for music-loving children, this is a bad choice. As a souvenir for symphony lovers, however...it's not as good as From These Comes Music, but it might be treasured as a souvenir of an occasion or a person.
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St Martin's Little Summer Haiku and Nag


Photo from Wikipedia; supposed to be a forensic reconstruction of what St Martin de Porres would have looked like when he was younger and healthier than when his official portrait was painted. (He died, looking very "old," before age 60.)

There is a special word-nerd name for a short prose piece interspersed with, or ending with, one or more haiku (or variations on the haiku such as tanka). It's called a haibun. I suppose this post might be a haibun.

There is also an old Washington, DC, tradition whereby one particular company used to advertise its services with a weekly haiku, or senryu, in the Washington City Paper. Their poems always had the same last line, "call us we can help." 

There is a special name for the kind of weather we're having here, too. Normally the Appalachian Mountains see first frost toward the end of September or beginning of October. 

The October thaw, which is normally the ideal time for leaf peeping, has been called "Indian Summer." When Europeans started immigrating to what became the Eastern States, they would offer the people they met something in trade for the land they wanted to own. Most of the people they met belonged to some group or other of Algonquins, a general category for the ethnic/language group that included Wamponaug, Powhatan, Yuchi, Lenni Lenape, Anishinabe, Shawnee, and many other tribes, each with its own language and customs but with some things in common. One thing many Algonquin groups had in common was a belief that nobody could "own" land: what was inherited or traded was the right to use land without being disturbed by other people. So they would happily sell the rights to enough prime hunting and fishing land to build a city on, for a sack of beads. Throw in a tin cooking pot and they might sell a lake to go with it.  This was how Manhattan Island was "bought" for what was estimated, when I was in school, as twenty-some dollars' worth of beads. And then, since the immigrants had paid for the land like good friends and neighbors, after they'd set up houses and hunted, fished, or farmed for a while, like good friends and neighbors these Algonquins would come back, expecting either to have kept the right to share the land or to be able to buy rights to it back for some of those beads, shells, and other trinkets they used in trade. It had not been just a poetic phrase when they'd said things like "You  may hunt all the deer that run there," meaning "during this season." So, when summer weather seemed to go away and then came right back, that was "Indian Summer."

Some years, like this one, there's not much of a frost at the end of September. There is still usually some warm weather in mid-October but, as this year, it may be more like an extra-long summer than like a real "Indian Summer." In these years there usually is frost by the end of October, and some extra warm weather in the first half of November.

This November thaw had its own traditional name from England. It was St Martin's Little Summer, because Bishop Martin of Tours was a popular saint whose feast day was observed on the 11th of November. Being the patron of what was probably the last pleasant weather for outdoor work, before winter, didn't hurt St Martin's popularity. 

All kinds of stories are told about the life and work of Martin of Tours. Some of them are hard to believe, and are debated. Everyone seems to agree that he was born in what became Hungary, the son of a Roman soldier, and when he grew up he became a Roman soldier. Then he had a Christian vision, left the army, joined the early church, travelled around Europe in service to the church, and was eventually made bishop of a church in what became France. He was a strong, adventurous type who liked to travel. Probably the most popular story about him was how he was travelling light, with only one big cloak to wrap around him, when he met a beggar who had nothing to wrap over his shoulders at all, so he sliced his cloak in half and gave half to the beggar. Stories that are known to be true tell how, after becoming a bishop whose life was documented by his church, Martin set up local parish churches and visited each church once a year, and how he took sides in different debates that have shaped the doctrine of the church today. 

With one thing and another, St Martin also became the namesake of the progenitor of one of the oldest English families in our part of the world.

He was also the namesake of Peru's "Brother Broom," San Martin de Porres, whose story is even more unlikely--but (mostly) documented as true. Brother Broom was unfortunately born at a time when the law didn't recognize marriages between the Spanish conquistadores and the non-Spanish women with whom some of them lived. Efforts were being made to set up a caste system. Martin's father abandoned his family; his mother had to take in washing to feed the children, which was considered disgraceful at the time. As a teenager Martin went to the local monastery and begged to be allowed to work for room and board. Being of mixed race, he was officially ineligible to be recognized as a monk, but the monks were allowed to keep him as a servant. He worked hard, not only sweeping and cleaning the monastery, but also fundraising (with a begging bowl, on the street) to expand the monastery into a hospital, and tending sick patients. While the official rule books said that people of mixed race couldn't be recognized as monks or priests, the other monks eventually became so ashamed of this rule that they recognized Brother Broom as a monk anyway. He never became a priest who might have been called Father Martin, and was not even officially recognized as Brother Martin, but after he died his community started calling him Saint Martin; and so they still do. All sorts of miracles were credited to Martin de Porres starting from the time when, though still officially ineligible to be called a monk, he was eligible--by an oversight, no doubt--to be called a saint. If he was as humble and hardworking as the stories say, he was a miracle.

Martin de Porres died on the third of November so he, too, is remembered during St Martin's Summer, by those who observe saints' days. The third to the eleventh of November is about how long this "season" typically lasts. An old song "about the Martinmas time" describes November thaw weather, when the door was open for light and air during the daytime, but the wind felt chilly and people wanted to close the door at night. 

Are we now enjoying St Martin's Summer? Or has the El Nino wind just brought us an abnormally, unnaturally long summer? I think so. We still haven't had frost. Ash, beech, and maple trees are making the hills colorful. Oaks and some of the smaller trees are still green. The sunshine still feels warm, even hot, during the few hours when the sun does shine.

The "old" furnace man, who is not really all that old but is the old familiar furnace man the company sends out, has been dropping hints rather generously about how he hates and dreads working in the cold. If you want your furnace to be tuned up by a local man, don't put it off...

St Martin's Summer
dry green leaf falls from oak tree
check your heaters now
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Thursday, November 5, 2026

Music Log for 11.4.26

Well, music links. Not a lot of surfing was done today. I haven't even linked prescheduled posts to the linkups that inspired them. My bad.

Music 

Avishai Cohen.


Radney Foster.


Boogie Belgique.


Randy Newman. Some think they're supposed to dislike him, and some actually do, because one of his more popular songs contained the line "I have been a desperado, raped and pillaged o'er the plain." It might be nice if that had done it, but what really made Newman unpopular has to have been the second link below.



Robert Gromotka.


Rolling Stones.


Johannes Bornlof.


This is about an hour of video with slow, not really exercise-type music, though slow exercises can be beneficial too. Anyway, lots of soft background tunes and birdcalls during a tour of a rose garden.


Neil Young.



Depeche Mode.


Spinners.


Trace Adkins.


Cream.


The 82nd Airborne Chorus.


Tom Petty.






Toby Keith.

Mark Knopfler.


Elijah Bossenbroek.


Lemon Pipers.


Muppets. (Warning: although this song never used to bother baby-boomers, the lyrics are about people welcoming death, except that in the Muppets version the character "Beaker" says his name every time the song refers to the "Reaper." This did not bother anybody while the Muppet Show was on the air. It's only recently that a sort of cult of toxic empathy have decided that we all need to be protected from hearing about what's available, for a small fee, to those of us who cross the border and request it.)


Blind Faith.


Rumble strip built to reward driving at the prescribed speed by playing a tune.


Computer imitating 1950s pop style.


Dion & the Belmonts.



Johnny Rivers.


Fever Tree.


Beatles.


Ludovico Einaudi.

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Wednesday, November 4, 2026

Web Log for 11.3.26

Not much computer time.

Animals


Found at Messy Mimi's blog. Lens traced it to Meow.citos on Instagram.

Election 

I know real efforts have been made to make voters in some districts have to think about this election, but...


Found on the Meow.

Music 

Hugo Kant. I didn't plan that the first tune I'd let the computer play this morning would have the jangled, discordant, strained feeling of waking up and realizing that I have to go into town and do something that isn't even going to pay cash, but it is what it is! LOL. Everybody go out and vote! 


Micha Philipp.


Ludovico Einaudi.

Obituary 

Elke Sommer.
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Something That I Always Thought Was True, but Wasn't

This week's Long & Short Reviews prompt asks for stories about something that we always thought was true, that's turned out not to be true. 

I'm glad to have this opportunity to put in a word in support of someone I've always liked.


Record cover photo from Google. 

I always thought Buffy Sainte-Marie had some sort of indigenous Canadian ancestry. Even though the blurb on the first LP of hers that I ever had said that she'd been adopted by indigenous people, thought she was "really" Cree but was trying to find out for sure who her physical ancestors had been...I thought it would be a question of which Cree family, or whether she had other kinds of ancestors too.

She looked so "Indian." She sounded so "Indian." She was so passionate about being an "Indian." She gave back to her adoptive parents and their tribe. Younger people on the reservations admired her, and she gave them an absolutely "Indian" response.

"I've got my own kith, 
I've got my own kin,
I've got my own sin,
And it's my way.
I've got my own prayers,
I've got my own fears,
I've got my own tears,
And it's my way.
Put down the story of what I've known;
You're bound for glory all on your own."

And she told it like it was to all of us biracial Americans and Canadians who grew up enjoying all the benefits of being White while still feeling some pride in our ancient lineage.

"Your great-great-grandfather from 'Indian' blood sprang,
And you feel in your heart for these ones?...
It's still going on here today:
The government now wants the Navajo land,
That of the Seneca and the Cheyenne.
It's here and it's now you must help us, dear man,
Now that the buffalo's gone."

In that inimitable voice of hers--so pretty and tuneful one minute, so raspy and alien the next. She was a total drama queen. She looked young and beautiful for a very long time, and she used her face to good effect. "She looked mean," a White relative quavered. I could imagine. On the record that last "Now that the buffalo's gone" did sound as if it might have been leading up to "So, Paleface, fight if you dare!" I was not intimidated. I was not inclined to disagree with her. Treaties were still being broken and ought still to be enforced. I did not yet know that we had Cherokee ancestors, thought my brother and his friends who wanted to reclaim their Cherokee identity were being childish, but I did know that the Cherokee Nation has been cheated enough and other indigenous groups have been treated even worse. I would not have wanted to say so in a way that would alarm that dear old White relative, but I was with Buffy. I was with women, generally, who have learned that looking pretty and sweet sometimes gets the wrong kind of attention. Pretty and sweet makes men's eyes glaze over as they start to drool and squirm. Angry and grim wakes them up...n'est-ce pas, Paleface? Only Buffy Sainte-Marie could look angry and grim and beautiful, all at the same time.

It did not look possible that Buffy Sainte-Marie could have been of pure European descent, but it turns out that she was. She was adopted by Cree people but her real parents were not Cree. Nor were they Canadian. Nor were they even French; their name was Santamaria, but they'd changed it to Sainte-Marie during the War, when Italians were enemies. That American couple who had also adopted or fostered her for a while? They were her biological parents, all along. 

Exactly how confused were Baby Buffy's early years? Did she intentionally disown her Italian-American father and English-American mother? Because they were abusive? Because being the "Native North American Child" was a great stage gimmick to launch a career? Did her parents intentionally disown her, before she was rich and famous? Because back then other women didn't want to live in the same dormitory or apartment block with a single mother? Because even in my youth Nice Girl credibility was often felt to require acting as if having a baby before the wedding were an incurable contagious disease? Because a lot of premarital babies, and even children of divorce, used to be intentionally confused about who their real parents were? None of that is any of her fans' business.

What is public business, sort of: Though only an adoptive Cree, Sainte-Marie was a professional Cree, receiving opportunities and awards and funds on the basis of her being Cree rather than on the basis of her being a great singer. At some point she had to have known she was receiving some of those benefits in competition with people who, though less talented, were in fact Cree. 

The position of this web site is that people who are more about ancestry than about talent or achievement, when it comes to funding that's supposed to be about achievement, deserve to be shown up in every possible way; but it is too bad if someone who actually needed ancestry-based benefits, who couldn't sell a record on music alone, didn't get ancestry-based funding that Sainte-Marie did.

Meanwhile, to what extent does choice matter? 

In a bit of speculative fiction I once invented a character who looked more Italian than anything else, was adopted by Italian-Americans, liked "being" Italian-American, but then turned out to be from a different planet...(The character popped into my head when I looked at a cute but not really human-looking doll in a store.) Do choices have any bearing on identity? 

Sainte-Marie poured money and energy into indigenous causes. Does that mean anything any more?

Sainte-Marie now has a web site that states that she "virtually created the role" of Native American activist. Does it make a difference that she "created the role" to give something back to her adoptive family, rather than to support the rock-star lifestyle she could reasonably claim to have earned? (Does it matter that she probably wouldn't have survived a rock-star lifestyle for as long as she has, by now, been alive?)

Anyway: I thought she probably was Cree, and if she had European ancestors they probably would have been French. So I was deceived by looks like everyone else. 

Turns out that, if we go by DNA alone, Sainte-Marie's name might as well have been...oh, say, Sinatra. Or Bertinelli. Or Pacino, Loren, De Niro, Minelli, Scorsese, Milano, DeLuise. Ciardi, Lombardi, Puzo, Garagiola, Mantovani, Liberace. It's not as if Italian descent kept people from succeeding in the entertainment business during Sainte-Marie's lifetime.
 
I say choice matters. If her adoptive parents say she's Cree by adoption, and she demonstrates that she's Cree by choice, then she's close enough to being Cree that we can leave her in peace. 

Also, she rocked in 1964. Also, she still does.

Recently I saw another one of those cartoons that mock Senator Warren by portraying her as a traditional healer, and it reminded me that Warren's presumption that her cheekbones were Cherokee had nothing to do with the shift in the popular imagination--from indigenous Americans as sneaking, tomahawk-waving "savages" to indigenous Americans as healers and Green activisits. Warren came along after that shift had started to happen, and claimed to be Cherokee when and only when she was able to take advantage of that shift in stereotyping. Buffy Sainte-Marie did a lot to create that beneficial change. To give even our ancestors' names for themselves or for one another the sound of anything any girl in her right mind ever wanted to identify with. When I was a four-year-old learning to read, "Cherokee" did not look or sound like a friendly name. Now it does. The shift started with Will Rogers and was greatly boosted by Vine Deloria, and also by Buffy Sainte-Marie.

Elizabeth Warren is in no way Cherokee but Buffy Sainte-Marie is Cree by adoption. Even if she has, and this is probably a unique achievement no set of DNA has ever accomplished before or will accomplish again, managed to look more "Indian" than some people who were born on reservations- while being Italian.

Also, she and/or her friends are in the process of building a beautiful web site  (A lot of older celebrities, like Wendell Berry, have web sites or social media accounts and, if asked about the content on them, say "I didn't do that!") Each time I visit I find more of her songs, good strong songs that will last long after her time, at

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