Palinode: What Would Glyphosate Awareness Do with $10,000?

As regular readers know, a palinode is something written to retract something one wrote previously. Not enough palinodes are written these days. This one is long enough to have subheadings.

1. Simple Apology

Actually two things I wrote, or tweeted, yesterday need retraction.

One was a simple, stupid grammar mistake produced by trying to get too much content into too little space. Addressing the world at large, I visualized a typical American nuclear family--three people, three common-to-the-point-of-being-stereotypical glyphosate reactions. Perhaps influenced by the fact that I was retweeting something that had a male-type name attached to it, I addressed the husband rather than the wife in this hypothetical family. That was wrong; it made the tweet sound as if I knew the Twit whose tweet I was sharing, personally, and as if he had a wife with an inflamed digestive tract and a child with autism. I don't know the Twit. I have no idea whether the Twit has ever been married or had children, or is even male in real life--lots of people blur their identities by using a screen name and picture that suggests the opposite sex. The implication that I had that kind of information about the Twit, or would have been the first to publicize it if I had, is incorrect and also, when I think about it, rude.

I apologize for the way this tweet came out:

"

Priscilla King

@5PriscillaKing

When we do coast to a full stop on #glyphosate ... Will your hands span your wife's waist again? Will your #autistic child learn to read? Will your blood pressure (!) be easier to manage? How much better will we all feel? #GlyphosateAwareness

Quote Tweet

David Young

@David__Young__

· Jul 28

Replying to @GMWatch

this POISON is in nearly every food we eat today! it must be banned, full-stop! #glyphosate

2:19 PM · Jul 28, 2020
"

I don't apologize for the questions; I do apologize for failing to address them to something like "Gentle (Married Male) Readers of the World," which was whom I meant them to be addressed to. All I meant to say to or about the Twit known as @David_Young_ was that I agree with what he said.

2. Long Explanation, Part 1: What I Got Wrong

Now the more important retraction...

Someone wanted to get into a "direct message" conversation on Twitter. I hate those. Some conversations with e-friends, especially among people who might be old acquaintances in real life or between writers, reviewers, editors and publishers, do not need to be published to the whole Twittersphere...even so, Twitter's direct message system has never worked very well on any device I've used. 

This Twit appeared to be a stranger, and the message request was something about paying off credit card debt. Red flags popped up everywhere. Offers to pay off a stranger's credit card debt in cyberspace are like invitations to go for a ride with a man who has some candy for you, in his car, when you were in primary school. There is a very remote chance that someone has good intentions and doesn't realize that person is sounding exactly like a lot of people with evil intentions, but you start backing away at once.

I told the stranger that I have no credit card debt. Nobody at the Cat Sanctuary has had anything to do with credit cards since 1969, and I'm not the one who found out how un-liberating they were, back then.

On what I've earned by writing online and selling books, handcrafts, and junk in the Friday Market--what, three Fridays this year?--it's not been easy to pay for groceries, electricity, property taxes, and the following personal expenses: one shopping bag of discounted books (to restock my display and sell at a profit), one dress ($2 at a charity store), and six candles (over which I do indoor cooking). It's not been easy, but I have done it. I just might be the only native-born U.S. citizen whose frugality impresses people from India.

I added, "But you can always support Glyphosate Awareness with a postal money order," and gave the address that should appear at the bottom of the screen. This is something any and all Gentle Readers are welcome to do. 

I visited the Twit's profile, briefly, and retweeted person's explanation of what person was tweeting about with this answer to the question of what I could do with $10,000: 

"
10K would give my bookstore the physical space it's always wanted...and lots of NEW books by LIVING writers. (I don't do loans: no assurance of being able to pay back.)
"

Then I realized that, in that sequence, I was implying that Glyphosate Awareness solicits donations that go into my personal pocket. This is so wrong.

Glyphosate Awareness is not an organization that solicits donations. It's a movement. Any number can play but I don't endorse any attempt to use the movement for profit. We are not out to get rich; we are out to get well, to heal ourselves and our families from glyphosate-related chronic disease conditions. I have disowned and denounced people who've tried to market unproved remedies or solicit money in the name of Glyphosate Awareness, and so I will continue to do.

To the extent that anything I endorse in the name of Glyphosate Awareness would ever ask you for money, it would be the Children's Health Defense Fund as led by Robert F. Kennedy, Junior. 

There are legitimate ways money can promote activism. The Glyphosate Awareness movement has not relied on them; my idea of a grassroots movement is one that does not depend on money or connections, that spreads among private people just because a whole lot of diverse individuals who don't even necessarily know each other agree that something is relevant to them. But if you want to think about serious professional-quality lobbying, the Kennedy clan were all born and raised knowing more about how that's done than most of us ever want to learn. That is how RFK-Jr got to be the head of the Fund.

Historically, not only have Republicans admittedly hesitated to bash big corporations, but Democrats who hope to be elected to office have very quietly done just the same. Even other members of the Kennedy clan have scolded RFK-Jr for daring to denounce corporations like Bayer, Lilly, and Merck. Why? Because these corporations donate the maximum legal amount to both major parties and then, when facing anything short of an open-and-shut charge of outright murder, the corporate spokescreeps remind the politicians of "aaall we've done for you," and the politicians usually...well...this web site has published the sort of thing they have to say. We invited a member of Senator Kaine's staff to meet us in a popular cafe and talk to some people about their experiences when I happened to see my whole town react to glyphosate spray vapors. She couldn't fit that into her schedule, but sent us a press release about the Senator's contribution to a successful bill intended to reduce the harm done by "pesticides," generally, several years in the past. That is so typical of mainstream Democrats. The only D politician who's overtly said anything nice about Glyphosate Awareness has been unelectable Bernie Sanders. This is important for D correspondents to know. Yourall's party blames the Republicans for doing this, and then quietly does just the same...

But Glyphosate Awareness is of particularly pressing concern to people of Irish descent, so it's proper and appropriate that those of us who want to support professional-quality lobbying should rally around a Kennedy.

You may have heard the CDF smeared as an "anti-vaccines" group. It's not. It is an anti-protection-for-contaminated-vaccine group, and also an anti-protection-for-other-toxic-chemical-contaminants group. I have received free e-mails from the CDF for more than a year, and sometimes they do sound similar to the pathological anti-vaxxers (because the pathological anti-vaxxers quote the same studies), but they're not. I think we need to take a closer look at the chemical corporations' tactic of trying to smear all criticism by association. This web site, for example, is not anti-vaccine; we're pro-pet, so we urge people to take their pets in for rabies vaccinations, and if an unvaccinated animal were to bite anyone at the Cat Sanctuary we'd rush out for the human vaccination. This web site suggests that we start lumping together material from corporations like Merck, which are known to have continued to use batches of vaccine shown to have been contaminated and hazardous, with material from any lunatic out there who thinks dumping anti-malarial drugs into public water supplies will protect people from coronavirus. Paranoid-schizophrenic disorders are biological and therefore non-partisan.

And so is Glyphosate Awareness. This movement is for Republicans, Democrats, Greens, Libertarians, Independents, and Old-School Hard-Line Soviet Stalinist-Communists if any of them have suffered from glyphosate exposure and would like to stop suffering, too.

Regular readers know my story, and may skip it. Since this post is being shared with new readers I'll repeat my story below...between places where Amazon book links will go in the near future.

2. Long Explanation, Part 2: Autobiography

[Amazon link will go here]

For about thirty years I lived with a sort of chronic low-grade sickness, weakness, vulnerability to every possible infection and adverse reaction to every medication including vitamins, and with constant nagging. Older people who were supposed to know said things like, "There's nothing wrong with you! You just want to stay home from school, not do chores...get attention by sitting out of things! If you'd only try harder," etc. etc. ad nauseaum. The nagging peaked when I had mononucleosis but it neither began nor ended there. It encompassed a lot of things like "If you hadn't gone swimming you wouldn't have that cold" (when I had allergies, not a cold) and "If you hadn't eaten chocolate, I saw you eating chocolate last month, you wouldn't have acne at your age," and worse.

And most of this verbal abuse was actually intended in the most helpful, most sympathetic way. Most of it came from the mother, grandmother, and aunt who shared the celiac gene they'd passed on to me. They talked that way to themselves, too. They, too, always felt that they were doing everything in life backward, in high heels, uphill, and carrying a 50-pound backpack. They were three of the strongest, toughest ladies you'd ever want to meet--or avoid meeting. They trained horses and built houses and had their own businesses while living with disabilities. "Tough as nails," Dad and other veterans of that vintage always said about them, admiringly. So they were and so I am, too, but in addition to being tough as nails I've also had the experience of being healthy. Here I stand to testify: healthy is better.

It was probably a glyphosate spraying episode that brought it unmistakably to everyone's attention: I am a celiac. I had celiac sprue, off and on in the early 1990s; by 1995 it was chronic, and in 1997 I took the plunge, went gluten-free, and never looked back. By 1998 the feeling of not being sick, which I remembered as occasional "high" moods from childhood and youth, had become normal. I had built up a lot of strength just by trying to live normally while being ill. For one thing I found that, when I wasn't reacting to wheat gluten, I could lift more than my own weight. Easily. It felt similar to carrying 20 or 30 pounds while having a celiac reaction. Celiac sprue is a gross, obvious, disgusting symptom but the worst part of it is the debilitating, depressing effect, which is less obvious to everyone else and far more obvious to the patient.

It was too late for the aunt and grandmother, but not too late for Mother, to become healthy too.

This web site mentions a group of young people we call The Nephews. Some of these people are the physical offspring of my natural sister. They all share the celiac trait to varying degrees (and there's a bit of planned ambiguity--heavenforbidandfend this web site should ever accurately identify any living child). It was too late for two of these young people to grow up without permanent neurological damage. Yes, the one whose sight and hearing are obviously impaired was exposed to more vaccines than the one who only had to start wearing glasses to attend grade three. Two more of them were brought up gluten-free, and can read without glasses. They all enjoyed some years of gluten-free healthiness. They are beautiful, sensitive, intelligent, goodhearted kids.

Then in 2009 glyphosate began to be marketed generically, competitively. People were encouraged to use more of this toxic chemical in more dangerous ways, including spraying it directly on foods as a "pre-harvest desiccant" allowing farmers to harvest more of a crop at one time. Suddenly all kinds of foods that were gluten-free started making celiacs sick again. Oats always did--celiacs assumed contamination with wheat was the reason, but when manufacturers made the effort to produce gluten-free oatmeal and oat cereals like Cheerios, they still made us sick. Orange juice was another leading problem food. Corn and all corn products were. Soy products were. Beans were. Nuts were.

This web site, and others, helped apply pressure to food manufacturers to keep a few mass-marketed food products relatively safe for us to eat. Only a few favorite manufacturers, at only a certain level of size and autonomy, responded to that pressure. Not all were able to respond consistently, at that. Between 2015 and 2020, in addition to what grows around the Cat Sanctuary (which is a variety of delicious, nutritious, though mostly unconventional fruits and vegetables), I've basically lived on a rotation among just a few name-brand grocery items. All of which I've had to nag; and in order for my nagging to have done any good I know a lot of other celiacs have been nagging these companies too. All of which have gone on and off the safe list in different seasons. For the benefit of other celiacs, I've corresponded about my list and I'll post it here:

* Riviana rice products--Success, Zatarain's, Mahatma (not all of them during every year)

* Planters Cocktail Peanuts (not dry-roasted, unsalted, or "lightly salted," and forget about the fancy flavors)

* Jif peanut butter

* M&Ms (no, chocolate does not affect my skin, which is lucky because it's become about the only tidy, ready-made thing I can eat in town)

* Bush's beans (but only the kinds packed with only salt and water added)

* Gwaltney chicken products

* Barbara's Puffins cereal

* The "Appalachian Morning" and "Jamaica Me Crazy" coffee sold at my favorite cafe...but not the decaf

And, ironically, soda pop...because the high-fructose corn syrup it contains is so far from being a natural food that, apparently, the glyphosate has been stripped out of it along with any natural nutrients. If citrus-flavored soda pop contained any actual citrus fruit I probably couldn't have used it all these years, but it doesn't and I have.

Milk products have varied so much that, despite surprising lactase persistence, I've not been able to say that any brand of milk, ice cream, or yogurt has even really tried to offer anything I can eat. I've not made an effort to keep any beef or pork product on the list.

I have wanted to keep fruit and vegetable products on the list--I love salad, and my poor little mother will eat her fruit, vegetables, nuts, and honey if they kill her, which they are now in the process of doing. But nobody, even among the allegedly "organic" fruit and vegetable suppliers, has consistently tried to deliver glyphosate-free fruit and veg. All that can be said is that generally fruits and vegetables with very thick outer layers, like pumpkins, melons, and navel oranges, have been less dangerous if all peels are thrown away; orange peel is now poisonous.

Fish and eggs have generally been safe...but that's it, Gentle Readers. That's all. There was a year when even my own fruit in my own orchard absorbed enough glyphosate vapor, after the utility company had sprayed around the power line, that I couldn't eat it without being sick.

I like cooking and trying new foods. My blog buddy, Grandma Bonnie Peters, intended to do that and make recipes a regular feature for this web site. No points for guessing why that never happened. We cooked. We concocted yummy gluten-free things. First we weren't sure why several of these things left us sick afterward, and then GBP was too "old" and ill to care. One year we actually tested a bunch of recipes, and I wrote and sold a cookbook that's been printed under someone else's name...but we never have been able to publish any substantial number of gluten-free vegan recipes, because fruit and vegetables have become unsafe for celiacs to eat.

We became convinced that this is due primarily, if not entirely, to glyphosate.

And then, around the same time that we pinpointed glyphosate as the common factor in our resurgent illness and the declining health of The Nephews...I just happened to spend a day in an open-air market and watch my townsfolk react to glyphosate vapors in the air. No two had identical reactions. Several blamed a virus, and a virus might actually have been in the air, but it was amazing how people who had got up feeling fine all suddenly came down with the virus at the same time--if there was a virus. (When I'm having a celiac reaction I have very little resistance to any airborne virus, and I didn't get the "cold" others got that day.)

It happened that glyphosate was up for review by Trump's Environmental Protection Agency that summer. I read the EPA's glyphosate docket--a batch of documents admittedly submitted by chemical companies. Amazingly, although you have to read between the lines, the chemical companies were unable to deny what I'd seen in the market. Glyphosate does noticeably harm the majority of all lifeforms exposed to it--fish, fowl, insects, quadrupeds, or humans. It does not produce a consistent pattern of reactions because it produces a bewildering range of reactions, of which it's rare to find two identical reactions in a hundred victims. With time and increasing exposure, however, more individuals will show more overlapping reactions. Individuals who don't show visible reactions, themselves, may become sterile or produce stillborn or deformed offspring.

When I started researching glyphosate I remember being wary about reports from Argentina about its causing birth defects in animals. Like most people--and the chemical companies are still banking on this--I thought "It's hardly possible that one chemical can have all those different effects."

Well. The range of complications produced by living with the celiac disease that occurs when people with the celiac trait eat wheat, also, sounds wildly improbable, but it's true.

The life stories of people who've lived with celiac disease sound wildly improbable, but they're true.

And the lab-produced molecule that's making it impossible for celiacs to enjoy living with our trait, without the disease, once more...also sounds wildly improbable. But it's true.

Glyphosate really exists. So does the mind-boggling range of ways it's harming each and all of us.

We all have valid claims for damages from the Monsanto Chemical Corporation, recently purchased by Bayer. And yes, it's true...if your main health concern has been having a leg bitten off by a shark, glyphosate didn't cause that, but glyphosate probably did aggravate the pain you felt. And, since glyphosate affects both cognitive and emotional functions in the human brain, it's not altogether wrong to say that glyphosate may be a factor in divorce too, although the position of this web site is that people of sense and spirit ought to be able to detach and be mindful of their glyphosate reactions so that those reactions won't cause them to seek a divorce. I actually try to use this web site to help people do that.

4. Long Explanation, Part 4: How Glyphosate Awareness Could Actually Use $10,000 

In my own name, as a struggling writer and bookseller, I do ask readers of this web site for money. It's simple. If you liked a magazine enough to read it regularly, in the United States you'd pay about $5 per issue. If you like this web site enough to read it regularly, although Blogspot doesn't support "paywall" technology and I don't like the sites that use it, you should send us $5 every so often. In some seasons I've blogged about extreme financial hardships, in some not, but that's not the point. The point is that if you read what people write, you should pay those people or, if they decline payment, you should send money to their favorite charities.

Or you can buy a book: daily book reviews will be returning soon, after the long hiatus caused by my laptop being too old to work with Amazon, and each of those contains instructions for buying books from this web site. Or, if you're in my little town, you can just buy a physical book directly from me.

Or you can commission blog posts about any topic of your choice, at your site or mine. (I've done guest posts, in a detached research-writerly way, about all kinds of things--window shades, washing machines, the wildlife on an island I'll never visit...someone commissioned "Beards, Fashion, and Fiction," which was meant to sound like me, and someone commissioned the series of diaper backpack reviews, which was not.) I'm available for either writing or collaboration on e-books, too, and I have collaborated on full-length books that were printed on real paper.

I could use commissions to put my current stock of books in a nice, spacious, climate-controlled, wheelchair-accessible place where people could sit down and flip through them. They would look lonely in there--just one shelving unit's worth of books that I can haul around to flea markets. I could use commissions to add e-friends's new books to them. People who don't read e-books could read real printed copies of the e-books I've read. I've been working toward that goal for years.

But that's my goal, not the goal of Glyphosate Awareness. Heretofore, Glyphosate Awareness has never asked readers for money. In linking, sharing, summarizing what's been learned about glyphosate and that incredible range of ways it does harm to different people, I want to motivate you to do your own research and activism, in your own way. I want you as a reader to use your money to print your own documents and share them with your own friends, neighbors, elected officials.

I've designed some Glyphosate Awareness swag you can see on Zazzle if you look for it. Don't like it? Design your own. Zazzle is free for anybody to use to design anything. Use your own flower, bird, butterfly or whatever kind of images. Make Glyphosate Awareness postcards, stationery, coffee mugs, T-shirts or napkins that will blow mine away. Most people who use the Internet have better digital cameras than I have and ought to be able to design better Zazzle print-on-demand swag. I'll tweet about it and, if I can scrape up the e-money, I'll even buy it.

Glyphosate Awareness ought to be much bigger and better than any individual's contribution to it, even if that individual created the hashtag, has written the e-book, has hosted the live chat and caught the hate, and can reasonably accept the title of Queen of it. Any random reader of this post might be able to do more on behalf of Glyphosate Awareness than I've done. Go for it, random reader. Glyphosate Awareness is not about me.

I have applied for Awesome Foundation grants, which are for one thousand dollars, to cover specific projects I've wanted to do. Specifically, since Awesome Foundation pages tend to be localized, to cover local targeted mailings. With a little help to cover printing and postage I could've been sending people place-specific mailings about the harm glyphosate is doing in their own business or area, and what they--these chosen business, government, or community leaders--could do about it. At my own expense I've been sending newsletters to people who, when I've met them, have turned out to be mostly great-grandparents who wailed, "Now I know this, but what can I do?" I'd like to be sending information to people who can do what the retirees can't. But so far I've not been awarded an Awesome Foundation grant.

But with $10,000, Glyphosate Awareness could do better than that.

I got into an e-conversation about this yesterday, and I'd like to put this idea Out There.

Glyphosate is excreted from the body fairly quickly after exposure. It's relatively easy to find in nice, clean hair samples, except that, so far, what hair studies seem to be showing is that all of us are exposed to a lot more glyphosate than is good for us, all the time. Glyphosate is also easy to find in urine samples, except, well, ditto.

Celiac sprue produces another kind of samples, which this web site's contract probably forbids us to describe. The celiac reaction consists of bleeding ulcers that form all along the digestive tract from the mouth downward. There are distinct stages to this reaction as gluten (or glyphosate or, presumably, AMPA) proceed through the body; the final stage is the one where visible streaks of bright, fresh, liquid blood appear in the toilet.

If, as Bayer spokesghouls are still trying to claim, glyphosate does not cause this reaction, then Cologuard would show similar levels of glyphosate in that kind of samples when visible blood was present and when it was not.

If, as everyone associated with this web site is now convinced, glyphosate does cause celiac sprue in individuals who have it, then Cologuard samples would show substantially higher levels of glyphosate in when blood was visible than when it was not.

As a gluten-free celiac who has sprue only after exposure to glyphosate vapors and/or consumption of glyphosate-poisoned food, I can feel each stage of a reaction. I would expect other celiacs can, too.

Other laboratories may offer better deals, and legal counsel might direct us to a different one, but a laboratory that's been part of the Glyphosate Awareness chat for a long time offered to test six Cologuard samples for approximately two thousand dollars per celiac.

So, if someone sent us $10,000, which is not something I'm actually expecting, that's what Glyphosate Awareness could do with it: test Cologuard samples for five relatively healthy celiacs.

That would leave positions open for two celiacs who are not close relatives of mine. I'd want to find out more about these individuals than I'd ask anyone to reveal online, or than I'd reveal online.

In cyberspace I am The Celiactivist--out, loud, and proud--partly because neither "Priscilla" nor "King" has anything to do with my individual name. People who know me as an individual know that I don't talk about my medical history or anyone else's, in real life. I tend, and the people who know me well also tend, to avoid people who do talk about their medical history.

My guess would be that most celiacs, even if they also suffer from extroversion, and even if they run on about headaches or rheumatism, have learned that celiac sprue is just too much of a gross-out for most social relationships to bear.

If Glyphosate Awareness were to receive this kind of money, naturally the identity of the celiacs involved would not be revealed unless, and until, it was reported as part of a lawsuit.

Before trial, ongoing lawsuits are another thing it's best not to discuss online.

I'd like to blame the long siege of hot, damp weather for yesterday's two gaffes, and add that at least my brain wasn't so heatstruck as to start spewing inarticulate but probably unprintable words at co-workers in public...but, even in Code Red weather, I do remember not to talk about some things.

Whether anybody picks up this idea, and who they are if they do, will be one of those things.

Tuxie Thursday: Sommersburr Complains

Sommersburr complains. (So what else is new?) But it's time for a cat post...

PK: Apart from the fact that you're an elderly neutered tomcat, Sommersburr, what else are you complaining about today? Not that I really understand what you're saying. It sounds as if you had worked out a whole private language of "meows" to communicate with a human, humans, or even cats, where you used to live, but I have no idea where that was or what you used to be able to tell them, whoever they were.

Sommersburr: I am an elderly neutered tomcat. I've lost my original home and my human and all my other friends except Serena and her daughters. I'm not feeling well. It's so humid that everyone's fur is instantly wet if they venture outdoors.

PK: Yes. (My hair looks as wet, after coming into town to work online, as it did yesterday, when it was actually rained on.)

Sommersburr: And then there's the awful thing that happened to my young friend Serena and her kittens.

PK: Did you see anything, toward the end of their misadventure?

Sommersburr: I didn't see much. I've been spending some time with Suzie's humans, trying to get them to let me come into their house. What happened here this week was the kind of thing that motivates a cat to spend time at some other house.

PK: Agreed. Just don't try to lure Serena away from me.

Sommersburr: Well, a lot of help you were, to her!

Serena: Oh be fair. She tried.

Sommersburr: She told you she was going to have kittens. She asked you to let her use the box at the back of the office closet.

PK: Yes. The box where Heather had her late-summer kittens, who lived about three weeks.

Sommersburr: You knew she was about to give birth, didn't you?

PK: Yes, though only when her milk came in. She didn't look very different before and after the birth.

Sommersburr: She's a fine figure of a cat. Burly...cobby...sturdy...a big strong healthy cat.

PK: She was beginning to look just slightly fat. She still does. She had only two kittens.

Sommersburr: Yes, and they were her kittens...

PK: Yes. And she made a point of showing them to me as soon as they were out and moving about. I suspected that might mean trouble because, social though Serena is, cats usually try to keep their kittens away from everyone else's germs and fleas for the first few weeks, until the kittens have absorbed a few antibodies. Serena put those two right out on the porch. I thought she was asking me to move the kitten box to that corner and put a clean blanket in it. I did that. I'd washed my hands, and then Serena had rubbed against them. The kittens smelled their mother on my hands. The calico kitten, especially, sniffed all over my hand, looking for Serena. A bond began to form.

Sommersburr: What do humans know about bonds?

PK: We do bond with kittens, in our way. I noticed how well grown these two were. Nothing premature about them. The calico kitten was large for a newborn kitten, and the black-and-white one was extra-large. They were lively and alert. I remember, though, that other times when Serena has had kittens, the biggest and apparently liveliest one in the litter has been the one who didn't make it.

Sommersburr: They made it through the afternoon, the next night, and into the next afternoon. Then when we heard you cough...

PK: Just a whiff of dicamba on the air. It doesn't smell like the tear gas cartridges in the pistol I used to carry, but it affects the throat the same way. It doesn't feel like a cold or like strep. It's a highly abrasive poison gas. But as I wondered who'd been the fool this time, I could imagine that poor old Grouch down in town, locking himself away in his house, thinking he's got the coronavirus again...

Sommersburr: Whatever that is.

PK: A sort of cold some humans get. So far the only one in our town who's had it is the Grouch, after his grandchildren came to visit. They live somewhere in the North, New York City, New Jersey, it's none of our readers' business. None of them was ill, because they're young and healthy. But after they'd gone back, their grandfather was ill. Well, he had a cold--runny nose, sinus headache, cough, sore throat, and fever--but he said they felt worse than a cold and lasted longer. He said he called his doctor, and the doctor said, "If you think you've got the coronavirus, go straight to the hospital and stay away from me. I have to work with fragile, sickly patients." So he called the hospital, and people there said, "We have to save rooms for the sickest patients, so if you walk in on your feet we'll send you home. We will try to save a bed for you if someone else carries you in." So he stayed home and quarantined himself, and after several weeks he felt better. Then the doctor let him come in for a regular check-up. He asked for a blood test. He says the test showed he had the coronavirus.

Sommersburr: Who cares?

PK: You remind me of the Grouch, Sommersburr. Humans care very much about any facts we can learn about the coronavirus. People are saying it's a hoax, calling it "the controlavirus" because a certain political party that does not have a majority vote is trying to use it to control our legislature.

It's not a hoax, Gentle Readers. Coronavirus is real. It's been around for a long time. For most people it's less likely to cause even ordinary cold symptoms than rhinovirus, which is what we call the Common Cold. For people like the Grouch, who is an old mean drunk but not really fragile, it can be extremely nasty. For people who have cancer or AIDS, it's likely to be the end.

The message from our government has been, all along, that the government is trying to force everyone to react in exactly the same way to something that's actually not going to be the same for any two people; which is not right. Healthy people shouldn't try to live like sick people. But this web site has already discussed a phenomenon we called "Virus Karma," even if some Christian correspondents don't like using a Hindu word. When healthy people sneer at weaker people's reactions, sometimes it seems as if their consciences kick in, their resistance goes down, and they're worse off than those weaker people were.

I don't think anybody should be ordered to observe quarantine by the government. I think everybody should respect, without question, other people's observing quarantine for themselves, which is what the coronavirus panic has really been about. There are people who need to stay away from work or school for fear of the coronavirus. If it hadn't been for the panic, a lot of those people's teachers or supervisors would have penalized them for "being scared of a silly little cold"--and the fact is that a lot of people have valid reasons to isolate themselves from a silly little cold.

Tomorrow people in North Carolina have been ordered to cover their faces when they go anywhere. They're naturally unhappy about that; especially the ones in the part of North Carolina near us, who may not be in real danger anyway. They think covering their faces won't be enough to protect them if they have to stand in a cloud of airborne virus, which is true. They think they shouldn't have to think about not picking up a silly little cold--that nobody else they know is going to be more vulnerable than they are--which is probably not true for many of those who think it. They think the coronavirus isn't real anyway. Well, news flash, North Carolina neighbors. I don't know how many of youall know the Grouch, but everyone in Gate City does, and the virus is just as real and solid and annoying as he is. Only smaller, and harder to hit.

However, even though we can't rule out the possibility of his losing immunity to the coronavirus or to any number of other infections he's had in the past, the probability is that what's made him cough this week has not been coronavirus.

Sommersburr: Well, anyway, the important thing is, those kittens started crying. Healthy kittens don't cry. They squeak when they're hungry and when they're being cleaned, and they purr when they're being fed, and that's about all. Nature did not intend for anything as helpless as a day-old kitten is to make a noise. But we all heard tiny screams coming out of those kittens.

PK: I wondered why they weren't in the kitten box. I went over to put them back in, but they screamed so piteously as I approached that I didn't want to touch them.

Serena: They screamed like that at me too. They were in pain and they hoped you might be able to do something to help them. To bring me, anyway. Baby kittens can't see or hear much, so they rely on smell. Anyone who smells of their mother is obviously their mother's friend, so they trust their mother's humans...at least until they are able to see them.

PK: I said, "Oh for pity's sake, kittens. If you want to lie on the bare floor, lie on the floor." I set out dinner for the adult cats and went in for the night.

Sommersburr: Leaving them to die.

PK: Humans can sometimes help adult cats who are ill but we can't do anything for day-old kittens. I came out in the morning to see whether Serena had brought them back into the box and it looked as if they hadn't moved all night. The bigger one had died first, and was completely stiff. The calico kitten had been dead for only a few hours.

Serena: That's why I'd brought them out of the box. Young though they were, they had had a few good meals. I didn't want smells or mess in that box. Of course it's too small for me, anyway.

PK: Bah, humbug! You're a big strong Queen Cat, Serena, but you're not really oversized, the way our Graybelle was. I don't think you're much bigger than your grandmother Irene. I know you're not as big as Burr or Sommersburr, both of whom are big tomcats, but not giants. When Graybelle told me she was too big to use a kitten-size litter box, it made sense that she might have needed room to assume a specific position...but you do fit into that kitten box. Even Sommersburr could fit into it if he wanted to. Your problem is that you don't like to curl up in a box the way most cats do.

Serena: Well, no. I like to sit up and look down on what's going on from a place where I can climb out of reach of any danger, rather than be boxed in where danger can come in after me. I like that open-topped cardboard box that Heather used.

PK: Because of the risk of poison spray vapor drift I let Heather use that box. It did no good. The vapor drifted through the door when Heather and I went in and out. Those kittens lived long enough to get used to the way I looked, but not long enough to try to climb out of their box or eat solid food. Since you seem to understand more words than there is any logical explanation for a cat understanding, I said to you, "If you really want to bring them in, bring them in, but I will be spending more time in town, and you'll have to wait outside while I'm in town." You thought about that, and did not actually bring the babies in. And it probably wouldn't have saved them if you had.

Sommersburr: Why do humans do things like this?

PK: Because some humans are unbelievably stupid. Dicamba has been taken off the market because it makes humans ill, but the poisoners screamed because they wouldn't have any other kind of poison to spray on the pretty flowers and nutritious vegetables they call weeds, so our Environmental Protection Agency told them they could "use up existing supplies" this year.

Right. "Joe picked up a pistol, not realizing it was loaded, and shot himself in the foot. So then he fired all  five remaining bullets into his leg, to use up existing supplies." ???

Gentle Readers, the way to use up supplies of glyphosate, like "Roundup," or dicamba, like "Spectracide," is to take them back to the store where you bought them. Say, "I want to send this back to the manufacturer." You're not asking for a refund; the product has probably been opened. You're telling them to get the nasty stuff away from you. And if they don't, you might consider spraying it all over the store! Just be sure you don't spray it outdoors where it can harm innocent people, crops, and animals.

Sommersburr: You didn't even bury the kittens. You just rushed away to wherever it is you go...

PK: To work. And on the way I saw the browned-out plant life along the road. There's a huge swath of browned-out lawn grass above the drainage ditch all down the block just beside the Grouch's house. The people who live on that block had faithfully mown and weeded and fertilized and probably sprayed the disgusting Bermuda grass above the ditch, but some fool had sprayed dicamba on it anyway. We know it was dicamba because glyphosate browns out everything but Bermuda grass and a few other obnoxious invasive weeds. This poison browned out somebody's perfectly kept lawn.

I walked all the way home and got caught in the little shower that came just an hour or so ahead of the real storm. I had time to come in and eat dinner before the storm rolled in. We don't have a storm as dramatic as that one every year. Usually thunderstorms at the Cat Sanctuary last about as long as it takes to unplug things, but this one raged and roared for more than hour. I kept thinking that I hoped whoever had sprayed the poison was out in it, right under a large dead tree, as I dozed off at the computer.

Sommersburr: You still haven't buried the kittens.

PK: No. Because somebody, some body with much lighter feet than even a small human has, dragged the bag with their remains in it up toward the barn, then left it when the storm blew up. Somebody who comes out around sundown and takes an interest in the dead bodies of day-old kittens does not need to be living in the barn. Right at sundown suggests another raccoon, a species on which I've gone completely sour; but I suppose this somebody could be a possum. Whatever this somebody, and the storm, left of those kittens is now bait for a trap.

Sommersburr: You're heartless. I do not like you today.

PK: That's a pity and a shame but, if it helps us eliminate a threat to other kittens from the Cat Sanctuary, I don't actually care. You keep trying to get Suzie's humans to adopt you. The question is whether Serena wants to adopt any homeless kittens out there.

Serena: How would I know? Are there homeless kittens out there?

PK: Somewhere in the world I'm sure there are. Whether they're near us and want to stay at the Cat Sanctuary, I don't know.

After you lost your original litter of eight kittens this spring, Serena, I looked at web pages set up on behalf of alleged orphan kittens. I even e-mailed somebody who advertised barely-weaned kittens. She sounded like a young, poor student or even a single mother, with a story of how she'd found kittens and their mother in an alley and the mother had disappeared and she couldn't bring the kittens into her apartment and so on. I said something like "I can't guarantee that my cat will adopt your kittens, but if they can eat solid food you don't have to put them in the shelter," because the shelter in the town she claimed to be living in was a gruesome place to visit when I last did.

Her reply was an eye-opener. She said something like, "The kittens are in no danger of a shelter. I have three or four different fancy breeds. Adoption fees start at $175." In other words, the "animal welfare" lunatics who harass people who simply advertise that they have unwanted kittens, on advertising sites, have driven a commercial cat breeder to misrepresent herself as this student who's rescued feral kittens from an alley. And as a further precaution against harassment, she'd also misrepresented which town she was in!

Serena: Why would I want to adopt kittens anyway? If they're already eating solid food they'd be the wrong age for the milk I have. It might not be good milk anyway.

PK: Whether you want to adopt kittens is entirely up to you, Serena. Nobody can force a female of any species to nurse a baby, even if it's her own. But although you're the most dominant cat I've ever tried to live with, you're also one of the most social and friendly cats I've had the pleasure of knowing.

Tortie Tuesday: Perky Cats, Lazy Human

Technically, Serena is a calico cat, not a tortie...

She's a lot bigger than she was when she posed for this one clear picture, but her face and attitude have never changed. She is a Queen Cat. In this picture Serena was asserting control of what her mother, Samantha Scaredycat, had thought of as her very own Safe Space, or Samantha Box. (Samantha recognized her name and understood "Samantha Box" to mean the cage trap on which you see Serena sitting.)

Samantha was a true "tortoise-shell" or Tortie cat, mostly black with dapples of orange and white (and a few solid-color spots, like the orange on her face and white bib and paws). Serena is a Calico because she's mostly white with mostly clear patches of black and orange.

They are not "mean" cats. (There's a myth that three-colored cats are vicious. I've met a three-colored cat who was jealous and one who was unfriendly; Samantha was a panic biter in youth, but most three-colored cats are pleasant to have around. They seem to know they're special. Black and gray cats have the option of fading into the shadows. Three-colored cats do not, so there may be a biological reason why they seem to enjoy attracting lots of attention.) Serena and her two-toned gray-and-white daughters, Silver and Swimmer, are very playful cats. As kittens they bounced and pounced and romped and chomped. From time to time they made people go "Ouch" and, since they sincerely felt sorry they'd hurt their friends, they reached a consensus that it's better to engage humans in games that involve chasing objects.

They still like being chased, too, though. They're not cuddly. They will let people pet them, but their idea seems generally to be that the purpose of letting someone pick them up or stroke them is to bound away, waving their tails in the way cats do to say "Catch me if you can." When unable to start a game of tag they'll come back around, looking disappointed, and let themselves be petted, and then try to get chased again.

Now that the kittens are more than half grown, it's possible to say that Silver is growing up to be a normal-sized female cat, shorter and much slimmer than Serena, but strong and solid. Swimmer is still a small, thin cat, a featherweight; she's always been smaller and thinner than her siblings. When they play, Swimmer often seems the more energetic and more aggressive of the two. Compensating, no doubt.

Just to annoy the people who hate animal "interviews," I'll write about this weekend in that format:

Silver: It's been a wonderful weekend. Well, hot and humid, but it is high summer; it's supposed to be hot and humid. Anyway, all the animals have been perky and bouncy and have been having fun. What's the matter with the humans?

PK: Well, the oldest human at the Cat Sanctuary is finally growing "old." Because her sister and cousins were older than she was, she's now down to just one cousin who's only a few years older who's still alive. They liked to travel when they were younger. They used to like "road trips," where you rent a van and sleep in it wherever you find a good place near the road--a park or a truck stop. For years they talked about taking a road trip to visit each other but never saved up the money or firmed up the plans. This year they're saying it's now or never and calling it the Last Road Trip.The mother of some of The Nephews is going along.

Swimmer: That explains them but what's the matter with you?

PK: Well, I know people who planted vegetables this year. When I heard that "Roundup" had been taken off the U.S. market I was looking forward to being able to buy vegetables. This hot, wet weather has been terrible for our berries and cherries, most of which went moldy before ever becoming ripe, but it's just the kind of weather some vegetables like. So last week two people whose houses and cars were filling up with fresh vegetables thrust vegetables upon me. They did not even try to sell those vegetables in the Friday Market. This is a rural area. Most people who wanted to eat cabbages, cucumbers, summer squash, or green beans planted those things in their own gardens and are now sneaking about looking for unwatched porches to leave surplus vegetables on. Someone offered me a lift home from work one day and as I got out of the car she whipped out a shopping bag full of vegetables and said "You can take these, can't you?" Someone drove up to the Cat Sanctuary and, when I went out to the road to ask what news he brought, he held out a cabbage first, then a squash...Supermarkets do display vegetables. I suppose some people passing through town are still buying them, but this is one of the years when local people haul premium-grade fresh-picked vegetables around, trying to give them away. If the raspberries had had a chance to ripen, they might have been worth some money...too bad! The few that reached their "mature" size and color weren't very sweet.

Serena: We watched him and you pick off damaged outer leaves and nibble into the cabbage. There's no accounting for tastes. Only snails, humans, and one kind of caterpillar ever eat cabbage. You and that man were telling each other you liked it.

PK: Well, it was a delicious cabbage. Fresh and cool and juicy, almost like lettuce, with just a little of that special cabbage flavor. Cats somehow get by without being able to metabolize Vitamin C and probably other nutrients humans get from raw green vegetables, but humans need those nutrients. Baby humans don't usually like cabbage either, but grown-up humans love it. Also spinach, and lettuce, and all those delicious wild vegetables that stupid humans throw away like chickweed, English plantain, burdock, and dandelions. And stupid humans also think violets are only here to look at, but they actually bloom longer and spread further, in any part of a garden that is too shady for other vegetables, if you pick and eat about half of the blooms.

Swimmer: What about roses? It looks as if you were trying to kill the roses. I thought you liked them while they were blooming. Can't humans eat roses? Is that why you wanted to kill them?

PK: Humans can't eat rose leaves or petals. Only the fruits, most of which I like to leave for the cardinals. Rose fruits are dry and seedy, not unlike this year's raspberries, but full of Vitamin C, and good for humans or birds to eat in winter. But rose bushes need to be cut back when they reach a certain size, and the big white rosebush had grown bigger than it was supposed to be able to grow.

Silver: Does the hedge need to be cut back, too? What about the trees?

PK: Fruit trees need a little pruning now and then. Privet, the woody bushes whose seeds the cardinals eat in winter, needs a lot of pruning. Flybush, the flowering bush in the hedge, needs heavy pruning in June so the plants will be at the right height to bloom and look pretty in September. We always have to cut the house out of its overgrown hedge in early summer. The house was built to hug the ground, to hold warmth from the earth in winter and get lots of shade in summer...but if nobody prunes all those bushes and trees the house gets too much shade, and too much litter on the roof. I was looking forward to getting most of that pruning done over the weekend, even moving on to the orchard.

Serena: Then what happened?

PK: The cabbage happened to me. That was the only one of those vegetables I dared to eat--about half of it. I knew the others had been sprayed in early spring, but last year the people who owned the cabbage patch swore and vowed that they wouldn't spray their vegetables any more. Unfortunately, the cabbage patch is within sight of a paved road...and the Highway Board have been allowed to spray poison on the sides of roads. So after enjoying a lovely cabbage salad, I spent the next day beginning to be sick. I felt very grumpy for a few minutes, and then very lazy for the rest of the day. It's a symptom I've noticed after exposure to higher levels of glyphosate than a bowl of rice or Cheerios would contain. It was one of my older cousins' only reaction to glyphosate; he called it "The Lazies" and one day after a double exposure he died of it. What's actually happening is that the kidneys stop working, but what humans notice is that instead of working through the day and sleeping through the night, we work--slowly and inefficiently--for an hour or two and then doze for an hour or two, day and night. For some older people having "The Lazies" does not seem to make much difference to how much they get done during a day. For a writer? I might as well declare myself dead for a week and return to life when it's over.

Swimmer: But you did get some work done.

PK: Housework, yes. Yard work. Knitting. But writing? When writers are healthy, a glance at the Internet will always give us things to blog or Twitter about; or, when we need to focus on a specific writing job, if we disconnect from the Internet and just apply the seat of our pants to the seat of our chair and look at the computer screen, our brains will start thinking of words to put on the screen. We might write a few pages of garbage but eventually we'll finish a writing job if we just sit with it until the day's work is done. But when we have "The Lazies," we look at the computer screen and our brains go directly into sleep mode. We don't sit with the writing job; we nod off and wake up with something like "ffffffffffffffffffffskjlfffffffffffffffffff" all over the screen and chenille marks in the shape of a keyboard on our faces. Luckily I had no deadline to meet this weekend. I have two full-length books and a guest blogging project going on, and I didn't write a whole paragraph of any of them.

Swimmer: Well, we were having fun. Even Sommersburr.

PK: Yes. Your fans deserve to know. Sommersburr was ill after poison spraying occurred earlier this spring. I don't know his exact age but he's obviously a geriatric cat; when he wandered away coughing I thought he might be going off to die. He wasn't. He's a tough old thing. Some days he walks with a noticeable limp and some days he doesn't. Now that he's started training me to pet him he's very particular about where he does and does not want to be petted, telling me to stay away from sore places and massage stiff places. He complains a lot; it's probably just as well that I'm seldom sure what-all he's complaining about, but many things in this world aren't the way he would prefer them to be. But an old grumpy cat can be nice to have around too.

Swimmer: He's not grumpy with me. A bit bossy at times, but that's only so the others will know whose mate he is. Did you see him watch for you to get up, this morning, and wake me with a kiss so I'd be the first one on the porch waiting for breakfast?

PK: Your relationship is beautiful, Swimmer, especially since it's protecting you from having kittens. For humans what we call an "April and December" romance usually seems pitiful. For cats it can be sweet. A lot of older male humans only wish that a young female like you would like them if they didn't have any money.

Serena: I'm having the kittens around here. I'm going to try again. Soon.

PK: There's no danger of animal overpopulation as long as humans think the way to deal with plant overpopulation, or overgrowth, is to spray poison into the air! I can't stop you trying to have kittens but I don't expect they'll live. So many people go spray-crazy in summer, and so much poison is still drifting around in autumn...People need to remember that although weeding and pruning even an acre or two of unpoisoned land will take care of all their needs for physical exercise in the summer, it's actually fun. It's a lot more fun than mindlessly pumping iron and smelling other people's sweat in a gym. When you get out in fresh natural air and take control of the plant population around you in a natural way, you get to nibble on the freshest, tenderest vegetables and the ripest fruits, and smell the flowers, and watch the plants you are encouraging thrive as you take out the ones you want to weed out or prune back. If you've not been made positively ill by eating something someone else poisoned, the way I was this weekend, tending an organic farm or garden is a pleasure.

Silver: What about that man who brought the cabbage? Was he ill, too?

PK: I think so. His wife is always ill these days. Their grandchildren were there last week, so it's to be expected that they felt tired after the children left. Some things that look like symptoms may be something else; when a grandchild writes "I love you" in the dust on a car, some grandparents actually want to drive the car around like that until they've told everybody about their grandchildren, so it's not only that they feel too tired to wash the car. Then these two are about sixty; for some humans that may actually be "old," although they look more like the predominant breed of humans around here, for whom sixty is middle-aged. He said he felt all right this weekend but, when I looked in, he was sleeping through a favorite television program, and when he woke up he was grumpy. When people like them do notice symptoms of reactions to things like pesticide residues in their own unsprayed home-grown vegetables, they usually reach for over-the-counter pills, which cause additional reactions. Then it's hard even for their doctors to get any idea of what they're reacting to. One reason why humans don't realize how much harm our "pesticides" are doing to us is that a lot of humans do not normally enjoy natural good health.

Serena: We do our best to help you, though it's hard to help creatures who are designed to eat things like cabbages instead of natural food like mice and crickets. Sommersburr thought a little squirrel Silver caught might have done you good. I told him you wouldn't eat it and there was no use letting any of it go bad in the sun.

PK: You were right about that. I'm proud of Silver but I really didn't need even to look at the baby squirrel's tail in the yard.

Swimmer: I think I helped you more than that. Serena always tells us not to be soppy and silly, especially about humans. She says you'll never get any better at any interesting games if we start taking naps on your laps, pretending we are babies and you are our mothers. But when you lay down on the porch, we knew you had a special need, so it was all right to humor you just a little. I sat down beside you and purred until you woke up and picked up a stick for me to chase.

PK: I was not actually sleeping...but I was delighted to learn that, as a near-adult cat, you do remember how to purr.

Silver: We've heard you joking with other humans about an old cartoon series where a shelter cat had lost his purr. We are not shelter cats. We've just not seen much need to purr since we were babies who purred and cuddled with our mother, grandmother, and that uncle we used to have. If we ever have kittens we'll purr and cuddle with them. If our mother does we'll probably purr and cuddle with them, while they're here, since we were brought up as social cats.

PK: There's a natural progression of reactions as glyphosate passes through the body. If I'd absorbed it from airborne vapors the reactions would have begun with sneezing and possibly asthma. I suspect it all came from the cabbage, probably with some additional residues in other things I ate, because the reactions began with "The Lazies." That's passing on schedule--I'm certainly thinking of words to type today! Bleeding ulcers take longer to subside although the one that was visible yesterday, right on my tongue, is healing by now. In any case I'm sure a purr-and-cuddle session, which many cats normally do every day but which Swimmer did for the very first time in her life, helped me recover in some way. A cat's purr is a healing vibration. Who knows how much purring a cat needs to do, or whether the size of the cat makes any difference in any measurable reaction humans have...but even a small cat, purring for just a few minutes, has to help.

How Herbicides Foster Evil Weeds

This post would be a lot better if I had a decent cell phone camera...The good plant pictures below come from Wikipedia. The bad ones are mine.

Once again, toward the end of June, Route 23 was desecrated by poison spraying...to kill the wildflowers a wiser generation actually planted there. The lupines, I think, are completely gone now (and I liked lupines).

There are hundreds of species of lupines. Some of them even produce edible seeds. The ones planted along Route 23 in the 1990s were spikier, but this is a native Southern species many people like. This photo of a Texas Bluebonnet was donated to Wikipedia By Loadmaster (David R. Tribble). Also see his personal gallery at Google Photos - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10100551 .

Some sections of the highway are still lovely mixes of red and white clover, chicory, vetches, fleabane daisies and a few real oxeye daisies in full bloom. The flowers are especially pretty in the morning when the chicory blossoms are wide open, bright light blue. The daisies have taken a real beating from the road poisoners, but the native white vetch is growing and blooming furiously in what is probably a stress reaction. This morning I brushed past two white vetches that must have been close to six feet tall.

There are many species of vetch, too. This European variety has fluffier flowers than the American white vetch along Route 23, but it's in the same general family--tall, narrow-leaved, weedy-looking plants with spiky-looking clusters of flowers rather than single blooms or round "crowns." Photo donated By Bernd Haynold - Own work, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=867437 .

Native plants tend to be well adapted to their environments and to displace non-natives. Right after the completion of this section of Route 23, in the 1970s, non-native crown vetch was planted as a safe but fast-growing ground cover. It still grows; its little round crowns of pink and white bloom still form a pretty backdrop, but the white vetch is crowding it back further every summer.

Crown vetch: pretty, useful to prevent soil erosion, hard to kill (with chemicals), but easy to displace (by encouraging native plants to crowd it out). Poisonous to horses, edible to cows. Photo donated By Daniel Gross - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38223543

Then there are those sections along the guard rails where you'd think plants helping to hold the hillsides together, below the highway, would be most appreciated...but no. Idiots always spray poison there, and the effect on the vegetation that grows back, afterward, is definitely not what the chemical companies want people to expect.

This is a pathetic cell phone photo of a roadside area that has been sprayed with chemical "herbicides."

In real life, from that distance, you can clearly see...What's growing closest to the camera, front and center, is Johnson grass, which looks like young corn plants but is toxic to cows that eat it.

Johnson grass is closely related to sorghum, but seeds look very different from the species used to make molasses. Photo donated By Forest & Kim Starr, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6192566

The smaller plants around it are jimsonweed, which can be used to produce genuine temporary insanity, which may or may not be followed by long-term brain damage and/or death, in humans.

Jimsonweed in healthier, more mature condition than the measly plants in my snapshot, with blooms and seedpods. Photo anonymously donated to https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=237684 . Details about the history and toxicity at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datura_stramonium .

Further along the road are Spanish Needles, the little burs that stick through your clothes and prickle your skin if you walk through them. In places where this weed will grow when it's not been selectively encouraged by poisoning so many nicer plants, people do eat it, but they don't claim to like it. In Virginia, eating any Spanish Needles you find would be a very, very bad idea.

I suspect Wikipedia picked this image of a tropical variety from Midway Island because the flowers have visible petals. In Virginia the petals don't show nearly so well for so long, and the needle-shaped burs are much more conspicuous. Photo donated By Forest & Kim Starr, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6153528

The spray that killed the native plants around these three noxious weeds is thus actually promoting the growth of three of the most deservingly hated weeds in North America.

This is the natural vegetation about ten yards from the ecological disaster photographed above. In real life you can recognize the plants here, too. They've been mown rather than poisoned; in real life they're mostly healthy shades of green with yellow at the cut edges. They include crabgrass, dandelions, and red clover. They might be considered "weeds" in a garden but they're just what you want beside a road.

In war-torn Europe people have eaten crabgrass seeds; that's why this "large" crabgrass variety is sometimes nicknamed Polish Millet. Americans may never have been quite that hungry, but eating the small, uninviting seeds would be one way to control this garden weed! Photo donated By Rasbak - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1053034

In my corner of Virginia we don't usually find a lot of Johnson grass, jimsonweed, or Spanish Needles. What nature intended to grow here are the more useful native plants. Dandelions, clover, burdock, chicory, plantain, daisies, buttercups, and less annoying species of Bidens will crowd out the evil weeds, and native fescue and sedgegrass will even displace nasty Johnson grass or Bermuda grass, when they get a chance. Only when people spray poison on our useful native plants do we see the really vile weeds take over.

When these lovely flowers dry out, they can be brewed into a tea that's known as one of the few plant sources of Vitamin B-12. Photo donated By Ivar Leidus - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50438310

Kudzu and cinnamon vine are the only invasive species that choke out our native wild plants. I recently read an old novel that described a very young landscaper tackling kudzu the way the corporations advise--cutting the vines back to the ground, then painting glyphosate on the cut ends. While painting poison on target plants is much safer for humans and animals than spraying poison is (if I were running the Environmental Protection Administration, people could still get licenses to paint poisons), by now we've all seen what happens to fields where this approach to kudzu has been taken. There are farms that look like this...you can still see vague outlines of fences, equipment, and trucks beneath the kudzu growth.

What you get if you follow Monsanto's recommendations for kudzu control. Leaves die in autumn; new leaves sprout among old growth in spring. This is what certain properties in Scott County look like in April, but the clear photo was donated to Wikipedia By Rhododendrites - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=88927032

No. Actually there is a way to get rid of kudzu, for...exercise (I wouldn't say fun) and profit. You have to dig up the main roots. It's a day's work: if the roots don't strike bedrock they may grow twenty feet down below the surface, and they can be as big as your leg. But although cows and goats sometimes eat kudzu leaves, and people can make jelly from the flowers, the roots are the most useful part of a kudzu plant. Dried and powdered, they can be used like cornstarch or arrowroot to thicken the sauce in a stir-fry. Regular use of kudzu root starch in cooking is thought to help regulate blood pressure.

Kudzu. Photo donated By Bubba73 (Jud McCranie) - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33772551

The main roots of cinnamon vines are "Chinese Yams" or "Japanese Yams." They don't taste like yams, sweet potatoes, or Irish potatoes, but if they're peeled thickly enough and soaked in vinegar for several hours, many Japanese and Korean people claim they taste good. They're certainly welcome to all of mine...but the point is, nature did not intend us to kill animals and harm humans by poisoning even these invasive "weeds." Wild plants have uses and the ethical thing to do with them is use them.

The species that's a nuisance in Scott County is Dioscorea polystachya, the Many-Fruited Cinnamon Vine, and are they ever "many-fruited." Let one vine go to seed and you'll be picking sprouts out of several square yards of lawn or garden...or else seeing those square yards covered in vines. Photo donated By James H. Miller, USDA Forest Service, Bugwood.org - This image is Image Number 2307129 at Forestry Images, a source for forest health, natural resources and silviculture images operated by The Bugwood Network at the University of Georgia and the USDA Forest Service., CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18252361

Even the plants we find easiest to hate have their uses. Even Bermuda grass, loathsome though it is to gardeners, does tolerate heavy mowing and give that tacky oldfashioned Astroturf look to a "lawn." Personally I wish people who wanted Astroturf would just buy some and join the rest of the world in helping kill Bermuda grass, but some people do like looking at the stuff. And they'd even have a right to look at Bermuda grass...if they could keep it from spreading beyond their own property lines!

If you want a lawn that looks like this, why waste water, waste fertilizer, and spray poisons? This lawn wasn't very expensive. Sheets that will look like lush, close-cut Bermuda grass for years cost pennies per square foot...and instead of choking useful plants, they'll mulch the ground around the useful plants! Photo of the Astroturf Lawn Look done right donated by By ProGreenGrass - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38355102

I don't like wild grapevines, and neither did the Bible writers, who expected everyone to relate to the disappointment of a person who had planted domestic grapes in a field that "brought forth wild grapes." However, people make things, wreaths and sometimes even baskets or hammocks, out of wild grapevines.

Wild grapes will eventually look like miniature grapes. They're edible, though not very palatable or nutritious. Photo donated By Vassil - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2098262

I used to live near a park where the rangers didn't like chinaberries and phragmite reeds, both of which had invaded the park from suburban gardens. I don't mind either of those plants myself, but if you do, you should know that crafters find all kinds of uses for them. If I wanted to get rid of these or other introduced ornamental plants that have spread and become nuisances, I'd organize a crafts contest with a cash prize for the most inventive use of them.

It's possible that NASA chose to donate this picture of supersized phragmites from the Great Lakes, rather than the Greenbelt or nearby parks along the Anacostia River, because in Maryland the reeds never seem to grow quite that huge. Some scientists think there's actually a native variety that is easily crowded out by a more invasive foreign variety of what seems to be the same species. Photo donated By NASA Goddard Space Flight Center from Greenbelt, MD, USA - NASA Tracks an Environmental Invader, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=81860613

If I wanted to get rid of crabgrass, I'd tear out the clumps it forms and sow fescue or sedge grass. (It's noteworthy that Wikipedia uses "sedge grass" to mean a different genus than what my elders called by that name.)These grasses grow taller, and will shade out crabgrass and even Bermuda grass if you let them.

Fescue in full bloom. Photo Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2740153

You don't want to get rid of clover, dandelion, dock, plantain, or daisies. When these plants grow right on the berms of busy highways they're not fit to eat, but they do absorb pollution and reduce soil erosion. When they grow in yards, near houses, they are food. They nourish many other creatures as well as humans, which is a good thing.

There are only a few plants for which nobody has ever found a good use. Three of them are Johnson grass, Spanish Needles, and jimsonweed. (Actually some historians believe jimsonweed was reintroduced to Europe and Africa by people who wanted a new way to commit murder...but though researchers have experimented with microdoses as cures for diseases, nobody has yet found a good use for jimsonweed.)

"You can't please everybody," wailed a local park manager. "I like the nice clean" (imitation Astroturf) look of that bank. It looks as if someone cares about it," which he must do, having mown that steep bank in the hot, humid weather we've been having. "It's not a scary, ratty, snaky look."

Americans need to re-educate ourselves to feel less fear of native plants and the other natural inhabitants of our natural environment. The kind of rats and snakes you might have been trained to fear do not live in my not-a-lawn, although my family have been encouraging useful native plants to choke out any invasive Bermuda grass that might creep in, for many years, and some years the ladies' thumbs "grass" does grow four feet high. The main reason why we've never had problems with undesirable rats and snakes are (1) the resident snake, and (2) the cats. If you don't entertain morbid fears of cats and the friendlier kinds of snakes you won't have to worry about vermin lurking among native plants, either.

Though scientists are currently debating what its Latin name ought to be, there's nothing "obsolete" about this common, harmless snake. The Black Rat Snake is the "climbing" species properly called gulegi in the Cherokee language. They're not venomous (though the big ones can chomp). They're not social; apart from occasional mating visits their only interest in other snakes is eating them. (The myth that they mate with venomous snakes comes from the difficulty some people have in telling exactly what snakes are doing.) They can grow big enough to eat a dumpster rat. They usually avoid humans. If you live near one of these snakes you'll probably never see a venomous snake. Photo donated By Judy Gallagher - https://www.flickr.com/photos/52450054@N04/6936274620/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=54266563

The Black King Snake is a little showier, less common, and less likely to grow more than a yard long, although it can. The more common variety of King Snake where I live has bands of light brown and tan. Other species have other patterns--some even ringed with red and black, like poisonous coral snakes. But they don't harm humans. They don't let inferior kinds of snakes harm humans, either. Their favorite food is a smaller snake. Photo donated By en:User:Dawson - Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1518737

By itself a taste for the dowdy Astroturf look might be considered harmless, like a taste for red over white roses or vice versa. However, we really can't afford to indulge any landscaping tastes that depend on spraying poisons on the land. Dead songbirds, or sick people, or even learning-disabled children, need protection in a way a garden look does not. We all need to learn to appreciate the beauty of clover, dandelions, and chicory.

The result of a phobic reaction to these pretty, useful native "weeds" is--really nasty weeds.