Toxic Tomatoes, or Was It the Peppers...?

Not to be callous about those for whom this summer's heat wave has got completely out of hand (for those who missed it, http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-fires-heat-20180731-story.html )...but here in the Blue Ridge Mountains, we've been basking in the coolest, most delightful July weather anybody can remember. Sultry afternoon temperatures have generally remained in the eighties (Fahrenheit, of course), with a few brief surges just above the 90-degree mark. Refreshing overnight lows have been in the sixties, or even the fifties, every night. Summer weather does not get nicer than this. If you have paid vacation time you must use right away, you might want to consider the Blue Ridge Mountains. I've heard some talk about local folks doing the AirBNB thing right in Gate City, a town so unspoiled that (some of us, the gentry at least) still positively enjoy tourists.

On the other hand, this year California's glyphosate ban has given me a feeling I've never had before, a sense of some emotional connection or at least respect for the place where I was, more or less by accident, born. (I'm the proud heir of an old Virginia family and an old North Carolina family, who happened to be born while my parents were in Los Angeles.)

The effects of glyphosate pollution on celiacs are really hard to believe, unless and until you've seen them, because they vary according to amount of exposure (yes, they build up over time) and also according to the form of a specific minority gene real celiacs have. But they're horrific.

I say, "I was sick over the weekend...food poisoning," and you picture me sprinting to the bathroom, which I did, but you probably don't want to know what I saw there that made this kind of food poisoning so special. It wasn't even the blood-flecked froth that defines celiac sprue, or it wasn't only that. It was that, during one bolt to an oldfashioned water-flush toilet, I saw a two-or-three-inch-long strip swirling slowly around. Strip of what? It looked like honeycomb tripe. No, I had not inadvertently swallowed a strip of blanched undercooked meat as long as my finger. I've never eaten honeycomb tripe. We are talking about my own body tissues here.

If somebody had come up and torn that amount of skin off my arm, would there be any question about that person needing to serve time in prison? I hope not.

Somebody came up and tore it off my colon, where the damage was much worse, and because they tore the strip off my body in an indirect way that person probably thinks he or she was being nice. Instead of expecting jail time for tearing a strip off me, the person expects me to return a favor, and has no idea what kind of favor I actually owe him or her.

I say "he or she" because multiple suspects may have contributed to this poisoning.

People in the point of Virginia are going around asking each other, "How are your cucumbers doing this summer? What about your zucchini? Bell peppers? Tomatoes?"--and if the answer is anything but "I've never had such a crop! From only three or four plants, more produce than I have any idea what to do with!" then the speaker's next line is probably going to be, "Can you use a few extra? I just happen to have a bag or two to get rid of...can you eat them, can them, sell them...?"

This weekend I sent someone a text message to the effect that I was too sick to haul the laptop to the nearest McDonalds, myself, and wanted to join a car pool. An hour or two later I saw the vehicle I expected to be told to run out and meet, not waiting beside the main road, but chugging up past my door.

"I'm glad you got the message! When you didn't answer, I thought the text message might have been lost in the humidity! Hang on while I pack up the laptop..."

"Message? Laptop? I just came up to see if you could use some cucumbers."

Most years, people at least try to sell their surplus vegetables. This year, they thrust them upon the unwary, leave them on people's porches overnight and run...

Anyway I've enjoyed many good salads this month, free of charge, and I'm pretty sure the cucumbers weren't what made me sick. The zucchini and squash weren't, because nobody has eaten any of them yet; summer squash tend not to be eaten when vine-ripened cucumbers, tomatoes, and bell peppers are on the table. Tomatoes have thin peels, although I do peel them. Bell peppers, which are practically impossible to peel until they're what I call overcooked, are the prime suspects.

I received one red bell pepper, one green one, and one at the halfway point between green and red. I enjoy the crunch of a bell pepper in a salad with cucumbers and tomatoes so I decided to eat the ripest one, the red one, first. Who wants to cook a fresh bell pepper? Rinse it off, slice it up, and enjoy it! I enjoyed it on Thursday afternoon.

So then on Friday morning I started to feel droopy and grumpy in the market, on Friday afternoon I started running in and out of the bathroom all day, Saturday was more of the same, and by Sunday I was completely enervated and afraid to risk walking three miles. By Monday I felt better, but not well. When celiac sprue reaches the point where large unmistakable bits of tissue start peeling away from the bleeding ulcers, patients are advised to expect it to be a year or so before they can be considered well.

I didn't eat anything that contained any wheat gluten, or corn, or soy. Last week I ate mostly garden-fresh vegetables...some of which somebody had obviously "protected" with Monsanto's Roundup, which some poor fools still want to believe is nontoxic to humans. Hah. The names chemists give chemicals do have some meaning. Glyphosate begins with GL because it's chemically related to gluten, which is what causes celiac sprue; glyphosate affects celiacs the same way gluten does only much moreso.

It has other effects on other people. The family from whom the bell peppers came consider themselves more English than Irish, although one of their children has some form of gluten sensitivity too, and five'll get you ten that, if the truth were known, that this family have been systematically poisoning their own child without knowing it.

Sick days? Meh. Whether or not I'd call a day a sick day depends on what else I might need to do with it. If I had to work with food, or children, or medically fragile patients, a summer cold would be a valid reason for taking a sick day even though I'd still be fit to do physical labor. Since I don't...Sunday was not a sick day. I sat up and wrote, stood up and walked around, picked the hibiscus caterpillars off Mother's Rose of Sharon (Hibiscus syriacus). I was fit to work, and I did work; I just wasn't fit to be more than, say, five hundred yards from a toilet.

What it's like, emotionally...the best word is "weird." In real life people do not go around just flushing chunks of their bodies down the toilet for very long. That experience definitely gives a person reasons to think about the end of their present lifetime, and when and how to arrange a quick end rather than a lingering one...but it has nothing to do with "depressive" emotions. The absence of a "depressed" mood, plus the short duration of the acute sprue, are evidence that (so far) it's just a celiac reaction, not cancer. I actually think that, if I don't have long to enjoy being alive, it'd be stupid not to enjoy being alive as much and as long as possible.

I came online and read a post by a rich White male celebrity this morning...the world is his oyster, but he feels depressed, boohoohoo. Boohoo bloomin' hoo! I have very little sympathy for depressive people--except that their moods, too, may be associated with sensitivities to toxic chemicals.

"All this world has turned against me! Nothing but trouble do I see!
There will be no more pleasure in this whole wide world for me!"



If you catch yourself actually relating to the mood of songs like that, you might want to try thinking beyond the end of your nose, right? Think about people who have reality problems. Join us. You might want to consider working toward a nationwide, preferably worldwide, ban on glyphosate.

Consider working toward a ban on poisons, generally. Also this morning I read that Alan Alda now has Parkinson's Disease. Studies have shown that that, too, has a pretty solid correlation with exposure to "pesticides"--specific chemicals weren't studied separately in the studies I saw. If you like, or admire, or have fond memories of Alan Alda (and who doesn't?), consider working against the whole idiotic idea of poisoning the whole environment because there's some animal or plant you don't like.

Morgan Griffith on Career and Technical Education

From U.S. Representative Morgan Griffith (R-VA-9):

"

Griffith Applauds House Passage of Legislation to Support Career and Technical Education

Wednesday, July 25, 2018 - Congressman Morgan Griffith (R-VA) issued the following statement after the House of Representatives passed the Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act: "Educational programs should provide students with the skills they need to thrive in the workforce. Career and technical education programs provide a vital way to prepare prospective employees for jobs. The Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act provides a boost to these programs, increasing their relevance for today's economy and allowing for more innovation. This bill is now headed toward the President's desk to be signed into law, meaning more Americans will soon be better prepared to grasp the opportunities presented by the job market."

"

Blogging and Blending: Long Rant with Links and Kitchen Appliances

This post is more about “marketing” than it is about blenders—kitchen appliances—as such, but yes, it was prompted by a discussion about blenders, and it ends with a discussion of blenders.

Once again, on Twitter, the greedhead corporations’ definition of a Brand-Friendly Blog is rearing its undead head:

http://www.thepositivemom.com/advice-for-bloggers-how-to-create-ideal-partnerships-with-brands#

In other words, pick a corporate product, indenture your blog to it, and then see if the corporation ever sends you a dime. And with all those other writers out there, some of them in places where a dime is probably considered a pretty good day’s wages for an old woman, a dime is probably what you can expect to get after going to all the trouble of dedicating your blog to the service of one other person’s product. I've been earning commissions from Amazon all these years, but they've yet to reach US$100. Yet. Since 2011.

Attention corporate executives: Reality is often counter-intuitive.

Over its years this web site has recognized several e-friends whose blogs are credible and charming and product-supportive. People like Mudpie's Human Melissa and Valentino's Human Ruth Cox seem to own a market niche. They’re good writers, good photographers, and the companions of adorably photogenic and well-behaved pets. I’ve honestly enjoyed the believable animal stories they’ve posted that were utterly non-controversial, light, “positive,” really like a short-writing equivalent of a TV commercial script...until: one of two things happen to these blogs:

(1) Writers get bored, because the number of TV-commercial-like moments in any person’s life is finite, and small. If these people are serious about writing, in a few months they have to pick a different market niche or a different style.

(2) Readers get bored, because nobody even watches television for the commercials. If you’re socializing online with one of these very product-supportive bloggers you may tolerate a piece of commercial writing for someone else’s product once a week or even twice, but you don’t follow that type of writing in the way you follow the kind of blog that actually reflects someone’s real life and thought. But the corporate sponsors don’t want reality interfering with their bland sell-sell-sell scene, so readers quickly learn that there are sponsored blogs and then there are good blogs—and unless people are awfully good e-friends, we ignore the sponsored kind.

Either of these developments ends in one of two ways:

(1) The blog dies.

(2) The blog affiliates with Zazzle and/or Amazon.

This web site has staked its fortunes on the idea that huge retail sites like Amazon can afford to sponsor realistic blogs that touch on anything and everything...that may support multiple products or themes, and may not be bland, and may not always be written to the lowest-common-denominator level, and may actually challenge a reader with a fresh new thought, which is what I-as-a-reader am always looking for and what corporate sponsors dread.

Corporations haven’t picked up this web site, although individual businesses have (and some of them have thrived). Corporations have preferred to sponsor e-friends who’ve agreed to harness their blogs to the brands. And some of those e-friends are in fact better writers than I am, and better photographers, with better cameras, in addition to their willingness to commit to producing only bland commercial content all the time; and everybody in cyberspace, and probably their goldfish, has more e-friends than I have. I have to be the only writer who is earning money in cyberspace while knowing fewer than half a dozen real people who will admit having an e-mail account, and none of them has ever maintained a reliable, steady online presence.So from Associated Content and Bubblews forward, a lot of my e-friends have launched blogs that were much more successful than this one’s ever been, for six months or a year. And check the blogs at the bottom of the blog list below. How is it possible for this web site to follow a hundred and thirty blogs? The list on the right side of your screen shows blogs in the order they’ve been updated. The bottom half of the list has been dormant for months or years. Those bland commercial blogs that people don’t read do not “convert” page views to sales, so no matter how good the first dozen or so posts were or how loyal the e-friends, the sponsors drop them, and the writers become discouraged.

The solution is so counterintuitive and cognitively dissonant that it’s made some people laugh, but attention corporate executives: Your commercials are no longer competing with static on the radio or test patterns on the TV screen. Nor do people have to buy fifty pages of advertisements and “articles” about product to get a one-page funny column or cheerful short story. You can't have it all your own way any longer. You’re going to have to engage with real writers and real readers...on our terms.

You can’t afford to reject blogs that mention controversial topics. You can afford to blow off only the truly pathological points of view; NAMBLA and the Ku Klux Klan can be snubbed, but when this web site starts buying guest posts, we'll buy'em both from bloggers who denounce the Church of Scientology and from bloggers who are active in it.

There are blog readers, and even bloggers, who want to huddle together with “people like themselves” in terms of beliefs or of demographics. Personally, although I look for resonances of individual feeling, I want to learn about people who are different from me. Enough people share the dating web sites’ belief that people want to meet people who live nearby that it may be worthwhile for a web site to take that sort of observation as axiomatic. This site will, however, continue to remind the world that I am not about to send someone else money to introduce me to my cousins.

I realize that this is not an idea corporate advertisers want to absorb, but...er, um...this web site has seen a lot of bland commercial blogs come and go. It would behoove you, advertisers, to join the rest of the world in laughing at the hubris of long-gone advertisers who wanted to write all the scripts for all the commercial media.

Do you want to advertise lipstick? Well, ha ha ha and ho ho ho, wasn’t it absolutely craaazy that some lipstick advertiser once tried to tell an editor that a news magazine couldn’t feature a cover photo of war refugees because those women weren’t wearing lipstick? At a web site that has credibility, your lipstick ad might fit in beside a post saying something like “I never understood why anyone would want to smear grease on her lips until I lived in the desert.”

Sports souvenirs? Plenty of people write realistic, credible blogs about the sports they follow but, if you’re lucky, one realistic, credible blog might say “I root for Team A because player #29 is an evangelical Christian” and another one might say “I root for Team A because player #92 is an atheist.” Actually team sport web sites can be relatively safe if they focus on pictures and statistics, but web sites that censor that kind of unscripted reactions are likely to be boring web sites.

Books, even? I’ve noticed something funny about my book posts. I've written some honest, unscripted, sincere book reviews that said things like “Basically everybody on Earth should read this book.” What do people say to that? They say, “That’s a bookseller’s opinion.” I’ve written other honest, unscripted, sincere book reviews that said things like “I think this book is about 200 pages too long, but for those who want all the details about X, etc., etc.” What do people say to that? They say, “I’m one of the few who want to know all about X. I’ll take a copy.” This web site has sold a lot of books that it rated silly, cliches, mere romances, partisan polemics, or so outdated as to be a collector’s item. Honest ambivalence sells.

And I’m afraid advertisers are going to have to profit by my example if they profit at all. They can keep moving from hopeful blogger to hopeful blogger, sponsoring slick commercial-looking site after slick commercial-looking site, but since anything that is consistently product-focussed and product-friendly is going to be read as “a seller’s opinion,” those slick commercial-looking sites aren’t going to “convert” into either sales or great blogs.

So if you want to sell, e.g., blenders, you need to resist the urge to say arrogantly, “I’m going to sponsor only sites that are about blenders. I’ll not pay for any blender ads on a site that seems to be about dogs or poetry or a student’s year abroad. I’ll not place any blender ads on a site that expresses opinions, especially opinions that Al Gore and George Soros want to give ‘minority’ status in cyberspace. I’ll sponsor only sites that post a steady stream of ‘smoothie’ recipes, of which each gets a minimum of X number of views per week.” That’s the type of blog you think will move blenders—the type of blog that, in practice, is only ever going to be read by people who already use blenders, and is only ever going to sell a blender to somebody who wants to replace the one they had.

Not that I wouldn't write that kind of blog posts. In fact I've ghostwritten some. Not that that kind of blog won't be visited, either--if it's a "Blog" tab at a store site, where everybody's there to buy a blender and they want to read about when to buy which model. (Actual stores always sell more products than ads do!) It's just that the slick commercial kind of blog post belongs on the company's site, under the company's name. 

The Advertising Age, the Waste Age, about which you learned what you’ve learned about marketing...is over. Deal with it. If you want a blender ad to be seen at sites that aren't called BlenderBrandX.com, you’d do better to look at quirky, literary, anything-and-everything blogs that attract slower steadier streams of traffic. You might want to reconsider advertising on this web site, even though Google has told you you didn’t want to do that.

If I post about blenders, that post is probably not ever going to be on the top ten list of my posts most often viewed. It’s going to sink down into the blog archive. Google is going to try to satisfy the Madison Avenue school of traditional TV-commercial-type marketing by hiding that post from search results. People are going to have to type “Priscilla King Blogspot blogging blending long rant” to find it from a search engine; if all they remember is something like “Priscilla King blender post” the big search engines will probably steer them to some retail store site advertising that “Priscilla” style curtains, bedposts, and rugs, in colors that blend, were on sale in Kingston in 2013. I know this from experience. And the funny part is, some people do take the trouble to search for "Priscilla King Blogspot blogging blending long rant."

I have written brand-specific product stories—just off the top of my head, the way we privileged Americans really do, occasionally, get into discussions of our experiences with name-brand products and the stores that sell them. In real life, when people remember the commercial brand name, they’re likely to be warning people off it, and I’ve done posts like that ("Food Lion Brand: Beans'n'Roaches"). But I did write some of these things for sites like Associated Content and Bubblews, and some of them were product-supportive (“Remembering the Toyota Camry,” “What Do You Put in a Taco,” “Souping Up a Can of Soup”). Those are the unscripted, honest, personal reviews that are most likely to motivate people who do find them to check out a new product. They’re also the kind Google thinks corporate sponsors are paying the search engines to steer readers away from.

When I open my Blogspot my computer is programmed to go directly to a “dashboard” sort of page Google provides for Blogspot bloggers. It has a button for “Stats.” I usually click on that button, first thing, to see what readers are reading. The Stats page automatically reports the total number of page views for the previous day and week, the top ten posts most often viewed, the top ten sites from which readers clicked or searched their way to my posts, the countries (but, annoyingly, not the cities or states) where people are reading, the posts on which readers have commented.

Usually the Stats page provides bloggers with a spiritual exercise in humility. Part of my learning experience has been:

1. Posts that are frankly product-supportive, even book reviews, usually don’t get read.

2. Posts that are frankly product-controversial, product-unfriendly, are more likely to get more views than product-supportive posts. A favorable review of a book that a lot of people agree is good will be read, but it seems to fade, in people’s minds, into a vague general mass of “Lots of people who like collections of short stories liked Alfian Sa'at's Malay Sketches.” A book review that warns people that it’s going to be “tepid” or “frosty” or “vindictive” gets more views, probably because more people want to laugh at snarky comments about a book than want to read about why they should buy the book...but then, after people have laughed, or among the ones who laughed, there are likely to be one or two people who want the book.

(I’ve tried exploiting this dynamic to say nice things about books and products in a snarky way. “What’s wrong with Flight Behavior is that too many good writers have written about the same place during overlapping lifetimes. It’s not faaair.” “Who wouldn’t want to buy Dave Barry Is Not Making This Up? Anybody who bought it when it was new, which probably includes all English-speaking adults.” Readers may smile, but they recognize product-friendly comments even in the form of wisecracks.)

3. Some posts that are brand-friendly will be read. I didn’t write, but an e-friend at The Blaze wrote, a post about the nutritional value of some popular items that are often denounced as junkfood. The title named a huge global fast-food chain that’s taken the lead in developing an online ordering system, putting Internet connections in each restaurant. (I think all Americans now know which chain I mean.) Nobody outside the chain had posted anything so supportive of it before, and when my e-friend did, did that post ever go viral. Apparently every manager of every restaurant was sending the link to every friend and ordering every employee to read the post on break time. Around the time most of those employees took their scheduled breaks, the whole site crashed! That’s the kind of blog post traditional marketers dream of discovering. But hey...y’know what? After its three days of fame, that post stopped attracting traffic. It wasn’t “the seller’s opinion” but it was perceived as such. It died.

4. Even if I honestly think that my cat’s unscripted, unanticipated reaction to a new flea comb was among the cutest, most heartwarming moments in my life as a cat owner—and I do, because Heather was an unusually lovable old cat and, although she seldom had a flea, she unmistakably adored being combed—that’s not going to be readers’ favorite post about that cat. Readers' favorite posts about the cat Heather were the Link Logs that rambled all over the place. This one got nine times as many page views as the post about how Heather loved her flea comb. Nine! So "product-focussed content" is not a priority for this web site.

5. Speaking of that post...For a few months I was doing Petfinder links, illustrating a few posts each week with images of cute animals who were allegedly up for adoption at various animal shelters around the Eastern States. (As all search engine optimizers know, 10101, 20202, and 30303 are zipcodes for the three major metropolitan areas in the Eastern States.) Those posts were among my all-time most popular. I enjoyed taking a few minutes to pick the cutest animal pictures in a different category each day. Some of the pictures looked weird on some browsers, but out of any three, at least one was guaranteed to offer readers a moment of cuteness. Categories were determined by which type of animal was suggested in the first e-mail or friend’s blog post I opened that day, so there were Cat Days and Dog Days, with searches for various breeds and colors.While doing those links I enjoyed more support for my own actual animal rescues, such as those are, and more support from other animal bloggers, and more traffic, and more invitations to “insider” forums, and giftcards and other pleasant things. I wasn’t even close to having gone through all the categories of adoptable animals that Petfinder lists--when Petfinder chose, for no obvious reason, to “upgrade” their whole site to a clunkier format, with slower searches and more annoying cookies. Petfinder no longer meets Blogspot’s requirements for linkability. So I had to stop doing the Petfinder links and my traffic dropped accordingly. 

I learned: Readers like links. Readers like to click on a picture of something that appeals to them and open a tab showing where they can buy an object, or find out where to watch a movie, or make inquiries about adopting a cute animal. Google doesn’t like that because it interferes with Google’s attempts to control click-throughs and deliver the kind of results the Madison Avenue school of marketers want, but readers love it. Google barely tolerates it, probably because Amazon likes it, but this web site is legally required to hold linked sites to certain standards—no porn, no violence, no hatespews, and no cookies that don’t crumble tidily away when we click on the cookie cleaner button. So, sorry, Gentle Readers, no more Petfinder links. And sorry, Pris, no more 500 views of one post in one day!

6. There are a few posts that get a lot of page views because some readers like them, bookmark them, and make them their links to this site. There have been posts that got thousands of views because they supported something that was trending. Page views rise when (a) I post something new, (b) I share it on Twitter, or (even better) someone else does (because Twits trust each other's judgments of other people’s content more than their judgments of their own!), and (c) people are spending more time indoors. Page views drop in summer, on weekends (even if I’m online on a weekend), and during major holidays. Employers want to believe that people surf the’Net when they go home. Well they don’t.

7. So, although the Internet was tagged early, and for sufficient reason, as a venue for pornography, sex not only doesn't sell but it actually hurts blogs. This web site’s rules against even mentioning body parts (y’know, the ones some advertisers like to display in graphics, especially in ads for weight loss programs) started out as a satirical reaction to Google’s rules for Blogspot, which I thought were unnecessarily repressive. I’ve learned that they’re good rules, actually.

8. Plain courtesy costs nothing and should be part of every web site’s policy. Nevertheless, as this now-anonymous writer observes, if you start listening or apologizing to the crybullies, you will never again know peace. This web site would like to be a “safe space” for misunderstood people, but there are limits to everything. The limits of my tolerance for politically motivated crybullying are particularly low. Even while recommending that voters either vote against Judge Roy Moore as having been a rogue judge, or kick him upstairs for the same reason, I bar idiocy about how his dating younger girls, as a lonely awkward boy of thirty-five, had anything to do with real child molesters. (If he touched someone, and the person moved away and/or told him to stop, and he stopped, a man may be obnoxious and repulsive but he's not a rapist or molester. Those words refer to obnoxious, repulsive individuals who don’t stop.) And don’t expect any points for “the courage to speak out” if you denounce the past misbehavior of someone who’s retired, dying, or actually dead, especially if you did not denounce it when the person might still have been doing it, either. 

9. Remember that honest ambivalence factor that can actually boost sales of books, when I say “Well, this book might appeal to somebody” and somebody almost always comes to me saying “I am that person”? I, personally, don’t enjoy shooting. (I know of no person with astigmatism who enjoys shooting.) Google hates firearms-related content, with such a passion that people claim to have documented Google refusing to search for the color burgundy. At the time when I started this blog, I had a junk booth in a flea market, so I was personally acquainted with all the people in other local secondhand stores. One of the "Gun & Pawn" store owners enjoyed being the "pawn star" who could drop a few Benjamins among his lower-paid colleagues, and he paid to keep a “Second Amendment Rights” theme active on this web site. (He wasn't this web site's only active sponsor for its first few years, but financial distress did become a theme about the time illness forced him to retire.) Google never even offered to pay me, or anyone else, for not having that theme. I might consider letting it drop, if Google started treating me to lunch and handing me a couple of Benjamins; readers have never really gone wild about this web site’s “Second Amendment Rights” theme, but there’s no way I’d ever listen to crybullies instead of an actual paying sponsor. You want a blog not to mention something you don't want associated with your product, you pay for that.

As long as most of my sales are to local lurkers, I could probably be marketing Confederate flags, which some local people regard as a Cherokee Thing. (White supremacists? Hah. During the Civil War the Cherokee Nation were divided between followers of John Ross, who advised leaving the White population to their own stupid war, and followers of Stand Watie, who hated Yankees enough to fight on the Confederate side--although the Confederates were, on the whole, afraid of them and didn't venture to notify them when the Confederacy surrendered. I personally think Ross may have been the most sensible man on this continent in 1860, but as long as nobody's actually fighting, some of my neighbors enjoy self-identifying with Watie.) My feelings about Confederate-flag paraphernalia border on "political correctness," but nobody's paying me to be p.c. about them...Like most adults, I feel motivated to reward people who offer rewards when they want something, and to punish people who presume to try to punish other people when they don't get their own way. I saw this happen during the past week: A car pool buddy watched two reruns of a favorite TV show. Both episodes featured baddies who wore Confederate-flag T-shirts. I don't know what else he watched on TV, or talked about, except those two reruns that I'd also watched...but now his car flies a Confederate flag. I personally don't like car-mounted flagpoles, but I have enough sense not to be a p.c. crybully about it.

10. So, with that said...do people hire me to write about, e.g., blenders? Absolutely. And baby carriages. And racing bicycles. And other things I don't personally use. I don't use a blender for one of the secondary reasons why it's easy to talk me out of a trip to the rifle range; I don't like loud noise. But Grandma Bonnie Peters uses a blender. We can actually talk with firsthand knowledge about brands of blenders. (Note uses of emotional ambivalence and non-focussed blog post structure, here.)

When I was a little kid, my mother got an Oster blender, because that was what was available cheap at the time. That "Osterizer" was about the same size as the Vitamix blender we acquired later, but it was really a junior model. Osters need replacement parts at least once a year at best, they will not blend up the kind of firm vegetables (like raw carrots) that a lot of people really need to have ground up in blenders, and they'll need replacement parts fast if you try to blend anything that still feels warm against your wrist, but they whip up nice frothy protein-fortified shakes for growing semi-vegetarian children. The scream of the Osterizer used to summon my brother and me to the kitchen to drink one last carob-and-nutritional-yeast shake before bedtime.

Styles have changed over the years, but this is similar to the blender of my childhood memories. Fruit sold separately.

Later, when I was in college, my parents went to stay with Dad's rich uncle, who had had a few strokes and still found it taxing to talk or chew food. He liked to look at a nice balanced meal, taste everything, then slowly mash everything together into a disgusting but smooth mess he might be able to choke down. So, since that was what the great-uncle would eat and since he could afford it, the parents splurged and bought the Vitamix blender, which will blend a hot dinner in a cup every day for a few years before needing replacement parts.

Dad joked for years about how overpriced it was, but when he became disabled, this was the blender he took with him to the "accessible senior housing" project.

Later, Dad demonstrated that it's possible to use and clean a blender, while blind, if you have to. Unlike his uncle Dad kept an acute sense of taste and would blend compatible-tasting foods separately, cleaning the Vitamix in between cups. 

Mother's never been completely disabled, although she owns a wheelchair and has used it at times. She kept a basic blender, often an Oster, wherever she went all through life, also owned various juicers, and eventually reclaimed the Vitamix. She still crunches carrots, but she uses blenders to make specialty processed foods--notably Rice Biscuit Bread, which gets a taste and texture similar to buttermilk biscuits from that combination of regular rice flour, blender-processed cooked rice, and blender-processed cooked apples. Whether you're gluten-free or not, you can do a lot more in the way of vegan meat and cheese analogs if you grind your grains, nuts, and beans to the right textures.

In our family I have the ugliest teeth--nobody but my adoptive sister has pretty teeth, but mine are the kind that make orthodontists say "If you want pretty teeth, consider synthetic implants." Oogesti had small, even, pearly-looking teeth after about age 75, whenever he chose to wear them; I have that to look forward to. Nevertheless I can still eat raw carrots and almonds if I'm reasonably careful. (I drink a lot of coffee and Mountain Dew, but I also brush with salt'n'soda and rinse with heated-then-cooled mountain spring water--about equal volumes of pure water and caffeinated drinks is the goal.) My natural sister started out with better looking teeth, then had too many babies and lost too much calcium, and let's just say that on some sad future occasion she can have the title of Hereditary Tender of the Blender.

I don't own a blender, and never have...but if I became a chef, or developed a major disability, then I'd want one. And I can say firsthand that a lot of people reach a stage in life where the Vitamix professional-quality blender is worth its sticker-shock price. I've not cooked for them; Mother has, and still does, regularly.

Crunching is fun for those of us who can still do it, and the exercise can actually encourage our bodies to keep our teeth as fully calcified for as long as possible. Nevertheless, not everyone can crunch. If you cook for friends, you should probably consider ways to pre-grind carrots and almonds. 

Note honest ambivalence, lack of specificity between competing brands, lots of raw'n'ugly reality--a Madison Avenue marketing nightmare--but give this post a year or two to attract its niche audience, and then we'll see whether it's actually sold a blender somewhere. Obviously this post won't move as many blenders as a kitchen appliance store site, a health food store site, a chef site, or a "Retirement Living" site that actively markets blenders. But I'd guess that it's more likely to sell a blender than the bland, corporate-approved, search-engine-optimized  kind of individual blog is.

Hot Dogs: Another Change.org Petition...

...that I'm not signing, although you might. This post is about why I'm ambivalent, and how those who support this petition might want to improve it. (Yes, Google, I am using the link Change.org can trace back to this site; I want Change.org to read this post.)

Nevada, according to a group called "Save Our Animals," still has laws against breaking into cars to "rescue" pets who might become overheated. So ooohhh! ooohhh! waaail! hand-wring! temperatures inside cars can reach 150 Fahrenheit in minutes during a Nevada heat wave...

--They can, mind you, under certain conditions. One reason for posting about this topic is to remind people out west that, while Virginia is basking in a cool July, youall--just in case you had not noticed it--are having a heat wave! Right. These Nevadans think youall need writers back east to tell you, because youall would not have noticed the heat drying your skins and cracking your lips and making your noses bleed. Yes, but (as the T-shirts used to say), it's a dry heat. Humans who drink enough water survive the dry heat in the Western States better than they do the awful humidity in the Eastern States. Cats and dogs, whose natural cooling system is less efficient than ours at best...you know. How stupid do Internet writers think pet owners are? We've been banging on about the need to provide water for your pet, even if your pet's natural response to a nice bowl of cool water is to tip it over, for years now. You already knew that.

We Easterners are not, in fact, reading a lot of news items about Westerners coming back to the cars they've left in the sun, with the windows rolled up tight, and finding the parched bodies of their dogs slumped over the drink holders where the dogs died trying to slurp up a last drop of melted ice from somebody's empty Slurpee cup. Left to ourselves, we'd guess that most if not all pet owners in the Western States had found ways to help their pets survive heat waves.

Meanwhile, in Tennessee, where the kind of law "Save Our Animals" apparently want allows people to swoop down on cars the minute they see someone go into a building leaving a dog in the car, the Kingsport Times-News exposed the real motive behind many people's support for these laws: While adults in the family had to go into the county courthouse, a stressed-out primary school boy was left in the car, clinging to his pet pug dog. Windows were partly down, the car wasn't in full sun, and neither child nor dog was in danger until the boy went in to use the bathroom. Instantly a local "animal rescuer" pounced on the pug dog and took it in a shelter. The shelter promptly announced that its "adoption fee" was $400 (which happened to be the going rate for pedigreed pug pups from dog breeders, that year), and, when the parents tried to rescue the child's pet, told them they had to pay a "board fee" which would also be--surprisingly?--$400.

So as I look at this petition in aid of all those hypothetical dogs who might become "hot" in the sense of overheated, I'm wondering: If Nevada's Governor Sandoval heeds this petition, how many dogs will become "hot" in the sense of stolen? Petnapped for profit?

In Tennessee, public reaction to this dognapping story, boosted by many people's knowledge or belief that their pets had been stolen for "adoption" from the same shelter, led to...the closing of that shelter, yes. So now animals "rescued" in Kingsport are taken to a different one, where shelter staff can control which visitors get a chance to see which animals they've taken into their oh indisputably benign, humane, altruistic custody--meaning, of course, only visitors who shelter staff are sure will agree that $400 or $1000 is a fair "adoption fee" for an animal of unknown parentage who's likely to be killed if not adopted in a month?

Beware, Governor Sandoval. Beware, animal lovers everywhere. Though warehousing large groups of animals in racks of cages is harmful to the animals, needed improvements must include procedures that guarantee at least equal transparency--the right of anyone who's lost a pet to see which animals have been "rescued" and, if the pet was stolen, to reclaim it instantly, without paying a penny, and (ideally) with some recourse for damages from shelters with histories of receiving stolen pets.

This post really needs some Petfinder links, and at the time of posting there's an adorable grey-muzzled black Lab for adoption in Kingsport, but until that site has cleaned up its cookie mess we can't use Petfinder links any more. So here's an Amazon link to yet another "hot dog" pun:

Morgan Griffith on Rural Broadband

Official editorial comment: I respect Congressman Griffith's good intentions but...but...I don't want broadband Internet access in my "rural area." I want the Internet to be something I go into town to use, and leave behind at the end of the day.

My whole neighborhood has felt this way for a long time. There's a local legend of Zeke Newton (not a close relative, and not the grandfather of the Twit using that name) not wanting rural electrification with such passionate intensity that, when two young fellows told him they wanted to install a power post near his house, he knocked'em flat, one after the other. He was sorry to have to hurt them, but that was just the way it was...and the power line bypasses the site of Zeke Newton's little farm, unto this day. And although I enjoy having electric heaters, fans, cell phone chargers, and offline computers at home, many's the time I've wished my ancestors had resisted enmeshment in "The Grid" as staunchly as Mr. Newton did. I think the whole concept of a central power grid, rather than individual pedal-powered generators, is sooo twentieth century Prog-fool, it should come packaged with "Married Women Must Not Be Employed Outside The Home" and "White and Colored Children Must Not Attend The Same Schools" stamped all over it. My parents used to have the electricity disconnected in summer; I've not bothered, but every time I get a letter from Apco urging me to take out an insurance policy on the gadgets the Rural Electrification Project slapped onto my home, I think I could shut it all off and save up to buy a generator.

(I remember a miserable night in my favorite hotel in Alexandria when Pepco was trying to "reduce the burden on the grid" by blacking out each neighborhood for about half an hour out of every four hours. Why the bleep couldn't I have lights because other people wanted to crank their thermostats up higher?!)

My neighbors have flatly refused to consider public water supplies, or any use of gas power, with their attendant monthly bills. Centralized water supplies? One word: Flint.

And, television? Let's just say that, having grown up with very little access to TV, I lived in rooms, flats, and houses that came with TVs in Washington and its suburbs...and I used those TV sets mostly as supplementary shelving units. I remember wanting to watch the premiere of a TV show based on a pen friend's cartoons in a local paper, and realizing for the first time in more than six months that the TV set that came with my room was broken...anyway "The Simpsons" did well without me!

So, Congressman Griffith, please consider those residents of the Ninth District who don't want Internet access at home. For some of us, all of those monthly bills, even electricity itself, are more trouble than they're worth. Think about progress away from central grids and monthly bills. If your constituents wanted any more of those things we would be living in Richmond or Arlington.

"
Monday, July 23, 2018 –
Progress on Rural Broadband
For Americans from all parts of the country to participate in modern life, it is vital that they have access to broadband. We increasingly use the Internet for information, entertainment, business, indeed, almost every aspect of our lives.
In the 20^th century, rural electrification projects brought power to parts of the country that were unserved or underserved. Federal assistance to cooperatives organized by farmers made a big difference for rural areas, aiding them in modernization and boosting their economies. Broadband today offers similar promise for rural areas, and the Federal Government can lend a helping hand in realizing that promise.
The House of Representatives recognizes the importance of broadband access for all parts of the country. In fact, we have already sent an important measure to the desk of President Trump, who signed it into law.
Called the Repack Airwaves Yielding Better Access for Users of Modern Services Act, or RAY BAUM’S Act, it was named after the former staff director of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Ray was a friend of mine, and he loved his work. Even when fighting the cancer that would eventually take his life, he kept up at his efforts, which included expanding telecommunications access.
The legislation named after Ray reauthorizes the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), reduces barriers for deploying broadband, and accelerates development of 5G, the next generation for telecommunications.
The Energy and Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over telecommunications, has stayed at work considering and passing broadband legislation. In unanimous, bipartisan votes, the committee recently advanced two bills for the full House to consider.
I am a cosponsor of both. H.R. 3994, the Advancing Critical Connectivity Expands Service, Small Business Resources, Opportunities, Access, and Data Based on Assessed Need and Demand (ACCESS BROADBAND) Act, would streamline the process of applying for federal grants and coordinates federal resources in support of broadband. H.R. 4881, the Precision Agriculture Connectivity Act, would promote the deployment of broadband in agricultural areas.
As part of the Energy and Commerce Committee’s continued efforts, its Subcommittee on Communications and Technology held a hearing on July 17 specifically to examine rural broadband. The subcommittee heard from representatives of the telecommunications industry about their deployment of broadband and what federal support would be most helpful.
Witnesses also included a hospital administrator testifying about the importance of broadband for telehealth. Having introduced bills to promote access to stroke telemedicine in particular and seen broader uses of telemedicine in the Ninth District, I appreciate the possibilities telehealth offers. More broadband access won’t just improve lives; it could actually save them.
To learn more about the Energy and Commerce Committee’s work to expand broadband access throughout all regions of the country, you can visit energycommerce.house.gov/broadband.
President Trump and his administration have also taken steps to help rural areas with broadband access, including signing executive orders to promote it at the Farm Bureau convention in February.
Americans already live in the Internet Age; the question is how fully they can participate in it. Broadband can be extremely important in rural areas because it allows access to services that city dwellers can find nearby, such as telemedicine and educational resources. But an FCC report issued in February found that 24 million Americans still lacked access to quality fixed terrestrial broadband at the end of 2016. Bridging the digital divide between rural areas, such as parts of the Ninth District, and urban zones must be a priority for our time.
Quality broadband Internet access expands the horizons of commerce, agriculture, health, and numerous other aspects of modern life, but the digital divide limits too much of the country.
Electrification helped rural areas catch up with the rest of the country in the 20^th century, and so can broadband access in our time. My colleagues and I in the House have made progress in achieving this goal, but the work goes on.

If you have questions, concerns, or comments, feel free to contact my office. You can call my Abingdon office at 276-525-1405 or my Christiansburg office at 540-381-5671. To reach my office via email, please visit my website at www.morgangriffith.house.gov. Also on my website is the latest material from my office, including information on votes recently taken on the floor of the House of Representatives.
"

Tom DeWeese on Community Planning

From Tom DeWeese...ends up with a request for funding, which I'm sharing, because I was so glad to receive a political e-mail that was about an ongoing political issue, as distinct from some person! As regular readers know, the American Policy Center is a legitimate online news site.

"

In the Bayou of Alabama there is a beautiful, small, quaint village called Bayou La Batre. Boat building is the major industry of the community. Shrimp boats. Sailing boats. There are ten to fifteen ship yards. These supply the jobs, the economy, and the tax base. This little community is the seafood capital of Alabama and every year the community sponsors the “Blessing of the Fleet.” For over two hundred years, the folks of Bayou La Batre have lived quiet, happy, productive lives. But we live in a time of massive upheaval in this nation. There are dangerous forces operating in every community, in every state legislature, in our federal government and on the international level. Those driving the upheaval are private, independent non-governmental organizations (NGOs). They include planning groups, land trusts, environmental organizations, and the like. These forces have their own agenda – their own vision of how the rest of us should live – whether we want to or not. Of course, they usually enforce these ideas based on the scare tactic of environmental protection. It’s emotional and most people are afraid to oppose such plans. To get their way, they partner with the power of government to create rules and regulations to force their agenda on us – usually funded by federal grants that are actually our own tax dollars. Private property rights, free enterprise and individual choice have no place in this powerful reorganization of our nation. Control of the land and dictating how people are to live on it is the goal. Well, last year these forces targeted little Bayou La Batre. A typically easy target because it has few resources to defend itself against the rich and powerful NGOs. This time their scheme called for transforming the town to “Eco-tourism.” What is Eco tourism you ask? It means land locked away from development. It means that every fly, snail darter and mosquito has more rights than the people who own and live on the property. The NGOs prepared an entire “visioning” plan outlining the town’s future, that would mean lots of rules and regulations that were never there before. In other words, Bayou La Batre was about to be locked into a time warp, restricting growth, destruction of property rights and denial of freedom of choice for the residents. To keep the residents calm the new plan called for “grandfathering in” the existing ship building companies. However, the small print told the truth. If a ship builder’s property happened to be severely damaged or destroyed by a hurricane, flood, or fire – they were forbidden to rebuild. Instead the property would be taken over and used for the Eco-tourism plan – perhaps becoming a bistro for the tourists. But this time the NGO plan met opposition. There were people in the town who knew the game being played against the residents. THIS WAS AGENDA 21 IN ACTION! How did they know? One reason was because some of the local folks had been to one of my speeches in Mobile a couple of years ago. There they learned first hand what Agenda 21 was all about. They contacted me for ideas on how to fight back. We had long talks on the phone. Then, using American Policy Center (APC) information, they went to work. After some initial opposition from local government officials, including the mayor, the activists were able to convince them that the new plan was going to be the death of their wonderful town. Even though the NGO’s came armed with powerful government connections, detailed plans, and the grant money, the local city council and the mayor rejected the plan in a unanimous 7 – 0 NO vote! I wanted to tell you this story because as I travel the nation teaching people about the threat of Agenda 21 too many of them believe it can’t be stopped. They fear that the NGOs and planners are just too powerful. I want you to know that is not true! It can be stopped. You can save your town and your property rights. This is what the American Policy Center is all about. This is what I do! I travel and speak. I write. I teach. I alert. APC has produced some of the most effective tools to help local activists learn the truth about Agenda 21 and take action to stop it. There is only one thing that limits my ability to organize across the country and stop the Agenda 21 assault. Funding. APC is not a large, wealthy organization. We are small, yet incredibly effective. We make every dollar count! No fat. No waste. Every dime goes into our fight. Will you help me expand that fight against these powerful - but beatable -Non-governmental organizations and planning groups that are using federal grant money and the UN international agenda to destroy our nation of freedom? I’m asking if you will today send $25, $50 or even $100?

DONATE NOW

The UN and its NGO shock troops thought you and I would do nothing as they destroyed our culture and system of government. We are proving them wrong! We stopped them in tiny Bayou La Bartre. APC can do it in your town. Yours in Freedom, Tom DeWeese

"

O Bheal Word Game of the Week

(This piece of Bad Poetry was inspired by a writing contest: http://www.obheal.ie/blog/five-words-poetry-competition/ . I have a rule about writing contests: No entry fees, ever. There is no charge for using the prompts. Some people who participate in the WithRealToads poem linkups do this one weekly. The site randomly throws out five words and challenges people to use them in poems.)

Wish for a wind, for a whisper of willows,

Rushes and redwings and rainbows (the fish),

Rippling long light lilting out through the shallows,

Damselflies dazzling and dainty (you wish).

Pollen of poplar and aspen, and petals

Bringing the butterflies, buzz of the bees,

Pallid and pretty it pleasantly settles,

Sifts over surfaces under the trees.

If you could only infuse summer evenings

Into a scent, you could bottle and keep

Haymaking, horses, heather, and hiking

Under a pillow to lull you to sleep.

Prop painting surface, supplies, on an easel;

Never has any paint summoned such green

Back under light through the bare winter’s trees; still,

Never despairing, paint what you have seen.

Bronze, brown, or burned, by the end of bright summer

Back to the bare boring city returned,

Locked under eyelids, long last you the glimmer

Of summer’s lesson in beauty you’ve learned.

(Before anyone quibbles: Is this poem about summer in Britain, or summer in North America? It's about whichever you like. Rainbow trout, native to North America, are farmed and released for sport fishing in Britain. "Redwings" refers to different birds in each country. "Heather" is an individual name that's been given to many animals and humans in North America.)

Morgan Griffith on Supreme Court Justices

Official editorial comment: This is the kind of political e-mail I don't regret opening. No name calling, no attempt to convince me that I'd love or hate someone as a person when we all know I'll never see the person in real life and I doubt the correspondent will either. Just a logical, coherent thought. Thank you, Congressman Griffith, for a breath of fresh air.

From U.S. Representative Morgan Griffith (R-VA-9):

"
Monday, July 16, 2018 –
A Lawyer’s Lament
Judge Brett Kavanaugh, President Trump’s nominee to replace retiring Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy, has great credentials. He is a strong pick to join the Court, and I hope the Senate acts on his nomination promptly.
But Judge Kavanaugh’s resume, while glowing, highlights an unfortunate fact about the Supreme Court. Of the nine current justices, all attended law school at Harvard or Yale (Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg started at Harvard before transferring to Columbia and finishing her law degree there). Prior to joining the court, they were academics or federal appellate judges. As a Yale Law School graduate and current judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Judge Kavanaugh maintains the Court’s homogeneity in education and experience.
The United States Supreme Court is the highest judicial body in the country, but the country’s laws cover more than just classrooms and appellate courtrooms.
My colleague Congressman Jimmy Duncan, whose Tennessee district borders part of the Ninth District, made this point in a July 2 statement suggesting presidents consider picking nominees from a broader pool, with consideration for lawyers in private practice and with jury trial experience.
He said, “I think that we are eliminating many of the greatest lawyers in this Country by not even considering those who have represented a wide variety of people in a rough and tumble private practice.”
I agree with Congressman Duncan, who was himself a judge. It’s not such a bad idea to have a verbal warrior who has fought with his words in front of the hallowed benches of justice.
Considering the important place trial by jury occupies in our legal tradition, it seems downright foolish to deny its practitioners a seat on the body deciding the most serious legal questions.
Before the tongue-wagging from Internet trolls gets going, it should be noted that I do not now nor have I had any desire to be a Supreme Court justice. My calling is to be a lawyer/legislator. But having practiced law before juries, judges, and other tribunals, I recognize what the country misses when its highest court excludes such experiences.
The Court could encompass broader experiences beyond jury trial, too. Of course, the early Republic did not have a farm team of appellate court judges ready to go for the Supreme Court. John Jay was a politician and diplomat before George Washington appointed him as the first Chief Justice, and he returned to diplomacy and politics after he left the bench.
Before Virginia’s John Marshall became Chief Justice in 1801, he served in numerous political offices, including the House of Delegates. He was Secretary of State when President John Adams named him to the bench. Marshall drew on his practical experiences in addition to the legal education he received at the hands of George Wythe to become one of the most influential justices of all time.
Many justices similarly arrived at the Court with varied backgrounds throughout our history. When Sandra Day O’Connor, an Arizona state legislator and judge, was appointed in 1981, her fellow justices included Thurgood Marshall, a Howard Law graduate who practiced for decades on behalf of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and William Rehnquist, who worked in private practice and politics for sixteen years before joining the U.S. Department of Justice.
Only in the past few years has academic or appellate court experience essentially become a job requirement.
The Constitution imposes no requirements on who can be named a Supreme Court justice except that they keep their office on good behavior. As far as qualifications for nominees, I believe anyone who has passed the Bar and who is considered to be in good standing is qualified. After that, it is a political choice by the President making the appointment and the Senate considering it. Considering the prominent role of the Supreme Court in American life, why not look for nominees that represent the breadth of American law?
None of this should be seen as impugning the professional accomplishments or knowledge of the men and women currently on the Court or Judge Kavanaugh. But the next time a vacancy occurs, I urge the President to look beyond classrooms and appellate courtrooms to find a justice. The Court and the country would be well served by it.

If you have questions, concerns, or comments, feel free to contact my office. You can call my Abingdon office at 276-525-1405 or my Christiansburg office at 540-381-5671. To reach my office via email, please visit my website at www.morgangriffith.house.gov. Also on my website is the latest material from my office, including information on votes recently taken on the floor of the House of Representatives.
"

When I Do It, It's Research: Phenology, Tortie Tuesday, and Watching NBC

1. Mostly phenology...

Status update: Eat your hearts out, people who planned big social events in touristy hot spots that offered fantastic deals in high summer. Gate City, Virginia, which is still unspoiled enough that we actually like tourists, has been enjoying a cool summer. Not so good for some crops, but excellent for raspberries (and wineberries). I've turned on a fan to keep dew from forming in my bedroom and woke up positively chilly, cuddling up under an extra sheet. Sometimes the humidity has been bad, but Fahrenheit temperatures have been in a delightful 55-to-85-degree range for most of June and July.

Those who are prone to the Deadly Sin of Envy can continue saving it for Melania Trump's looks. We'll probably have a few outdoor-cooking-without-a-fire afternoons before summer's over.

Local weather-wisdom, by the way, foretells the first frost on the eighth of October--twelve weeks since the katydids started chirping, which they did, at the Cat Sanctuary, last night.

Insect populations are still waaay down...except for gnats and mosquitoes, which are waaay up. Somebody must have tried to poison moths, the ongoing germ war on the invasive gypsy moth having failed to stop the creatures' move southward. Lymantria dispar are mostly a northern European species but they don't demand a cold climate; they love the sultry summers in Washington, D.C., which means they can take anything Virginia or North Carolina have to offer in the way of hot weather. But dang, people...I don't like gyps any more than anybody else does, but they don't kill humans, which mosquitoes have been known to do. Mostly they don't even bite humans. At the stage when they explore the world and get down people's necks they're more like stray bits of dirty wool yarn than like mosquitoes. If I have to choose between being the sole predator on Aedes albopictus in a natural marsh and killing my own Lymantria dispar the way I did in Washington ("by ones," in the case of gyps, includes single wads of eggs from which hundreds of caterpillars would emerge next spring), I'll take the gyps any day.

I'm glad to report that Johnny and Jenny Wren have nested in an apple tree near the house, and the New Cardinals seem to be nesting closer to the creek. They eat insects, at least when the cardinals aren't competing with the humans for raspberries (and wineberries). Aggressive though cardinals are, they go vegan whenever nature gives them a chance...

2. Mostly cats...

There've been no new developments with the cats. I'm still low on prepaid phone minutes, so haven't uploaded photos of Serena and Traveller. They continue to "say," nonverbally, that both of them were lonely only kittens who wanted litter mates, and if the words "brother and sister" can be defined in ways that don't mean them, they don't know or care. He's still bent on taking over control of the Cat Sanctuary by being adorable. She's beginning to snuggle since she's seen Traveller get things that way, but still naturally inclined to show affection by nipping and scratching. She'll still wrap herself around my hand, grabbing with her forepaws and rabbit-kicking with her hind paws and nibbling, all at once, and if told she's hurt me she'll stop and pat and lick me in a soothing way, then jump up and bound away, waving her tail like a flag, nonverbally saying "If you don't want to be the mouse, you be the cat and I'll be the mouse."

Both of them are growing. So is Samantha, who is still a kitten despite being the mother cat. All three of them still like to bounce and pounce and chase stalks through the not-a-lawn. Samantha tries to maintain a pose of mature dignity, but can't keep it up for many minutes at a time yet.

Both kittens had developed quite impressive vocabularies of "spoken words" they used to communicate with humans when humans were their closest friends other than their mothers. It's amusing that, now that they have each other, they're almost silent. Trav still uses his Loud Obnoxious Whine to beg for food, and Serena still uses her little chuckling "gurk" or "urf" noise to encourage tickling. Both of them "said" dozens of other "words" in June that I've yet to hear them repeat in July. The whine and the chuckle are all I've heard out of them recently.

3. Watching NBC... 

So, to complete this weekend's observations of dumb animals, on Monday I went to someone's house and watched NBC for two hours. (NBC is the traditional TV network that's most likely to be viewable in my corner of Virginia.) We watched one hour of news and one hour of game shows.

By way of encouragement to NBC, let me say that they worked with Merv Griffin to develop two excellent game shows with three awesome hosts. Pat Sajak, Alex Trebek, and Vanna White have always been nice-looking, not in such a way as to stand out in a crowd or distract attention from what they have to say, just in a way that makes you notice that they have nice faces and good clothes...until you realize, hey, they've been looking nice in the same way for thirty-five years.

Well, Alex Trebek's hair used to be light brown rather than white, and old age and retirement used to be things he didn't joke about, and thirty-five years ago I used to wonder whether I'd be distracted by his presence if I were on the show. Working with my husband gave me the ability to focus on a job in the presence of attractive men, so now I can admit that, for all my adult life, my Impossible Dream has been to win five "Jeopardy" games. Like many people who'll never win money on the real "Jeopardy" show, I did well enough on Berea's "Departmental Jeopardy" games or some other trivia game mock-up to support this fantasy, and when watching the TV show I usually think of the right answers for more than half of the questions.

My husband used to complain that "Jeopardy" always featured "three White guys." There never was a rule requiring that configuration; that's just what viewers were most likely to see. Observing shows where the contestants are more demographically diverse, I've not noticed an ethnic or racial dynamic, but I've often noticed a gender dynamic. It's especially fun to notice this in reverse: "Jeopardy" games tend to be played between two players of one gender, with the one player of the other gender barely qualifying for, though sometimes winning, the final section of the game. One woman seems inhibited from interrupting a competition between two men; last night, though, one man seemed inhibited from interrupting a competition between two women. (We tried to be loyal and root for the non-telegenic American until the telegenic Canadian demonstrated a better knowledge of U.S. history...I wish my husband had lived to see that.)

But the NBC news show was dreadful. The actual news was the usual mix of "good," "bad," and "ho-hum," with the emphasis on the "ho-hum"...but the so-called reportage...!!! "Newscasters" overlooked other stories in order to vent their dislike of the sitting Presidents of the U.S. and Russia.

"Right," I silently reacted during the first felt-like-five-minutes of what felt like an hour of anti-president feeling. "So they're a matched pair of mouthy, tacky-mannered White guys. So neither of them is a gentleman and ours can't even manage to look like one. So, you'd prefer to watch gentlemen declare war than to watch blunt, mouthy, undiplomatic guys make a deal? The measure of a man is how well he wears a suit? If so, Alex Trebek should be the king of the world. Give me a break, please. Explain to me what you don't like about the deal they made, whatever it was."

Nothing was explained. Sixth grade social gossip. "Donald sat beside Vladimir instead of Antonio, Jean-Claude, or Other Donald."

"Like, whoop-de-flippin'-doo. Why are you pretending you even care if two guys whom neither you nor I know, who obviously have things in common, such as being guys in a crowd made up mostly of gentlemen, find each other more congenial than they do a lot of other people that neither you nor I know? Why are you wasting your time on this non-news, non-story? Maybe if you were analyzing what the Donalds and Vladimir and Antonio have actually been saying to each other, agreeing and disagreeing about, maybe that would be a news story worth reporting. Maybe you could educate your audience...how many of them remember Other Donald's last name, offhand? When I said 'Jean-Claude,' how many thought of a name more current than 'Duvalier'?"

No such luck. Yap yap yap the "newscasters" went, over and over "We think the Donalds ought to liiike each other better than either of them likes Vladimir although we can't explain any reason why."

NBC has done a good job of setting up a broadcasting station in Bristol and a fantastic job of picking three world-class TV game show hosts to amuse us, but local lurkers, I sincerely hope none of you relies on NBC for actual news coverage. Their effort in that direction, last night, was just pathetic.

I do not rely on television for news coverage. I do not own a television set; when I watch television, it's research, for which I feel somebody ought to be paying. I miss some stories, seeing only headlines in printed papers, Twitter, and e-mail--but I get a lot more news that way than I would from NBC, because NBC allows lazy reporters to report their emotional feelings about celebrities as "news."

Those of us who rely on television, even "trusted news source" shows, for information are likely to be beaten by foreigners on quiz games about our own history, and deserve it.



(Amazon link: The news is that Amazon Prime Day deals are still live. For those who like to listen to TV, radio, or recorded music on electronic devices, there's your sale on speakers.)