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.)
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