Book review coming right up...
Animals
Not one for this week's Petfinder post, which will feature adoptable senior cats, because the eighteen-year-old cat found someone to celebrate his twentieth birthday with. Hm! Sniff! Sniff! Must be the niece who likes to cook (one of The Nephews, of course) peeling onions on the porch...if I cried every time a shelter pet finds a good home, I couldn't type.
Books
I'm three days behind on reading the books people have kindly sent me, and I'm still finding energy to want to read this one. Go figure.
Publishers aren't even trying to do book tours any more, but the scheduled tour for the book shown should alleviate the envy of authors who aren't being shipped around on tours. Note Arizona destinations at times of year when any normal author would rather be signing books in Boston...
Education
All the liberation groups of my lifetime have accomplished good and necessary things...despite two unpleasant truths: they've all been at least heavily infiltrated by left-wingnuts, and they've all at least appeared to be led by extroverts. That means they have often done disservice to the demographic groups they were trying to help. As a woman I think our experience with "women's" groups has been typical and illuminating. Yes, we needed the rights to keep our jobs and property after marriage (and divorce), comparable wages for comparable work, respect for our work, legal redress for sexual harassment and abuse on jobs, the right to keep our homes and children (if any) while abusive husbands had to go away--to jail! Yes, we still need the rights to walk around without harassment, to dress sensibly and present ourselves as human beings rather than painted-up sex maniacs, to be heard when we're talking about something besides the sex-hormone surges of youth, to know that society's judgment will fall on men who try to claim that we're incompetent if we dare to disagree with them, to get what we're paying for without being scolded by people too young to be our children for not "playing nice." Every rational person can now fairly be described as a feminist, since there's no longer any rational claim that women are not at least equally as valuable as men...and yet feminists still have to be activists. And some of the women who want to do all the talking, in the public sphere, are large parts of the problem. I mean to say, who the devil ever thought abortion was a solution?!
By and large I prefer to leave it to Black and other ethnic-minority types to call out the idiocies some self-styled leaders of their groups' movements are spouting in their names. Likewise the various disability lobbies to which I don't belong--I supported ADA before I even knew I was a celiac, but beyond that, what do I know about anything more disabling than being a celiac? People can and should speak for themselves. Homosexuals, too--although part of their problem still seems, from my point of view, to be that being represented to the world by the likes of Harvey Milk, Barney Frank, or now Anthony Fauci, is not helping decent human beings feel free to tell even friends who've suspected for years that they identify as "gay."
And transgender people...a small group that's never caught real hate so much as misunderstanding, that's generally been able to blend into society as long as they don't call attention to the reason why they seem "different." People who've had to "pass for" members of the presumably "opposite" sex in order to accomplish their goals can seem heroic or ridiculous, depending on what they did or did not accomplish, but nobody felt that society was threatened when a brave soldier was wounded, examined by a doctor, and dismissed from the Army for being a woman. People have laughed rudely about the idea that a big athletic woman was "mannish" or a less than athletic man was "effeminate," but even the news that some of these people really do have mixed DNA didn't seem threatening or arouse hate. If people did hate Janet Reno, they hated her for her role in the Waco disaster, not for her body type. If they muttered about which sports teams certain athletes ought to have been playing on, or whether they'd used too many steroids, people didn't think that those athletes were public enemies; at the very worst they were seen as cheating at a game and/or damaging their own bodies.
Until somebody had the bright idea that trans-folk needed a liberation movement, and out sprang lousy creeps like this alleged teacher, babbling about how "childhood innocence is a myth" (true in a way) and so small children needed to be told all about all the possible sexual combinations and positions two or more people can indulge in.
I don't think so. I remember having been a child, pretty well. No, I was not innocent in any real moral sense. Yes, it's a myth that children are pure little angels who never think of doing anything naughty unless someone else puts the idea into their heads; they're born sinful mortal creatures who can think of many bad ideas all by themselves. Children are born with original sin, selfish pride, greed, anger, laziness. Children's first inklings of empathy often produce sadistic rather than compassionate behavior. Children can manipulate and make up lies and do deliberate harm to other people just to see how much harm they can do; can, for example, report their teachers doing anything their parents will not approve of, just to find out what the parents will believe and whether it will get the kids some time off school. Children have not developed the pertinent body parts and hormones far enough to suffer much from lust, but if they get the idea that they can upset adults by showing an interest in what they have, they'll do that too. But the fact that a child likes to touch perself does not translate to any suggestion that a child needs a great big hairy grown-up getting in per face and talking about it. There are a few things of which children aren't yet guilty. Adults need to respect that. This teacher-lecher-leecher-creature needs to be hit, hard, with the reality that when a teacher even runs on at tedious length about the words for private parts or passions, children can and do feel violated. Children have the right to denounce that teacher as a child molester who should never again be allowed to be within 200 yards of any living child, even his own.
Music
Clever video splice of Oliver Anthony's topical song into what seem to be reactions from Americans of all ages, sexes, colors...and species. Yes, there's a dog nodding along too. Sometimes I wish Serena's reactions to all things electronic were less destruction-oriented. (Regular readers will probably enjoy Renegade BECAUSE he was banned on Twitter. How did some books, definitely that Turner Diaries dreck and probably anything by Norman Mailer, ever make a sale? Because decent people aaaallllways rally around to support victims of nasty un-American censorship.)
Phenology
Local readers might not have realized that there's another Johnson City besides the one we all know, in Tennessee. There's one in southern New York State, where they still have blueberries. But this blogger does say that the later crop are "very tart."
Ours were pretty well rained to death, so here is at least a picture of blueberries. And here, from Michigan, is a red squirrel, such as used to live at the Cat Sanctuary before grey squirrels chased them off in the 1980s. Follow the link to see other beautiful nature photos including a study of a great blue heron.
Psychology
There is no limit on the number of weddings a couple can have. In the mid-twentieth century the Guinness Book of World Records profiled a couple who'd set a record for having the most weddings. They called themselves "the most married." They said they'd done all the weddings as a protest against the existence of divorce. Meh. Some people just like to remind themselves of when and why they were married. If you had to compromise on planning the original party? You can have the party your way next time. You can be married in a nature park, in different houses of worship, on a ship, on a plane, in a cave, on a mountaintop, after running a fundraiser marathon with the glow of success still dampening your shirts. People may think you're silly and extravagant, but in such an endearing way...The artist known as SARK and her husband seem to be going for a new record. Luck to them, those adorable crazy kids! We only get to be sixty-whatever and "in love" once...go for it!
David Solway defends excellence. Worth reading, because excellence always deserves defending and Solway usually deserves careful reading, but I'm not sure I agree. In a general way, I do, but I question his numbers.
Obviously only 20% of humankind can be in the top 20% of achievers in any specific thing, but I think talents are distributed widely enough that at least 80% and probably 90% of humankind have a chance to be in the top 20% of achievers of something. The best poets are likely to be also-ran mathematicians; the best inventors are likely to be also-ran storekeepers. We need to get away from an idle obsession with numbers and focus on the work itself. When we do that, I think we already are seeing the gaps in achievement among ethnic groups fill themselves in. It's a mistake to focus on numbers and whether enough good books have been written by people of Estonian descent yet. If we focus on good books and don't specifically exclude Estonians, good books by Estonians will appear in due time.
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