It looks as if there's more bad than good news today. Persevere. There are some pleasant things in this link log.
Status Update
It's Serena's turn to be sick. She was chasing a glyphosate-poisoned bird in the orchard yesterday; it must have suffered long enough for her to go back and find it. She found grass to eat but evidently failed to bring up the poison. She is feverish and miserable. I used up most of the food-grade charcoal in the house last week, but had enough left to mix up a cup for Serena. She took a dose and lay down to rest. Around midnight she rushed out to the sand pit. After midnight she came in for another dose but was feeling frisky enough to want to rest on top of a stack of storage bins on the porch, as usual. At the time of writing I expect her to recover, but she has had a very bad day.
Serena had kittens this spring, and lost all of them. Before she even started to look positively pregnant she had two more, in summer, and lost both of them too. One survived, after a fashion, long enough that we reenacted the trying-to-get-the-heart-going thing Samantha and I did with Serena's brother. The kitten's heart would start ticking evenly, it squeaked and wriggled and voided its meconium for about 30 hours after birth, but then its heart would slow down or speed up. Finally it stopped altogether.
Serena has seemed subdued, not resentful but discourged, ever since. Less energetic, less eager to play the games her daughters still want to play.
I know who did this. I saw it done; glyphosate was illegally sprayed on my hedge, the home of the cardinal family who've been part of my family since I was six years old. What made Serena sick today may well have been a cardinal. I know the vehicle the poisoner was leaning out of; all I was not able to see, around the hedge and the slope below, was whether the Professional Bad Neighbor did it himself or induced the young woman who looks exactly like his sister to do it.
I expect he's the one who will suffer for what he's done, all the rest of his life in this world and whatever he may have in the next, anyway.
I say this to my heirs, whenever the time may come. Our ancestors were Christians. They came here to practice peace. Let their legacy be preserved. Let any of his close relatives who may outlive this fool, as so few of them have done, live in peace, so long as they never come within sight of our land.
Food (Yuck)
Despite the long popularity of chocolate-covered ants as a novelty candy, insects' outer surface is quite indigestible. A couple of small ants are more than enough. Moses identified four insect species, all in the grasshopper family and none positively identifiable today, as being safe for human consumption. Some other insects that have traditionally been eaten by humans, like mopane "worms" and witchetty grubs, might have been left off the safe protein sources list just because the ancient Israelites weren't going to find and eat them anyway, or for other reasons--who knows? Anyway Tyson, the factory-farm chicken giant, whose owner claims to be a Christian but has not publicly repented of the sin of shipping bricks of cocaine shoved up the back ends of chickens some of whom were still alive, wants to start processing insect protein as an alternative food for humans? It can be done--large insects like grasshoppers do contain edible protein, once shelled--but if you don't trust them to use only kosher insects, it might be a good idea to eat only recognizable pieces of chicken. No more "nuggets" or "tenders" for me...
Glyphosate Awareness
Almost all childhood cancer is in the "leukemia" category.
Links they recommend...some should be familiar:
A more detailed summary:
Halloween
A charming idea, for those who don't get into the silly decorations and costumes of Halloween For The Tots, but do want a day to pray for the rest and remember the company of their departed relatives...
(My family tended to laugh like loons at things that wouldn't make any sense to anyone outside the family. As with some of Sara McNulty's ad-lib-comedy gems, you had to have been there. Nevertheless, Mother's limerick deserves to be remembered. It was written for a contest sponsored by a company that processed silver...
There was a fair maiden called Sylvia
Who was wooed by a young man called Wilbur.
He was valiant and bold,
And he offered her gold.
She said, "Thanks, but I'd rather have silver."
The company didn't buy it, but it's always made me smile.)
Obituary
While you might want to boycott Twitter...this is a tweet-thread the censors hate. It's extraordinary because it's a passionate obituary/biography/summary/advertisement by someone who knew and loved the deceased, and because it fully exploits the tweet as a (probably short-lived) literary form. It's a work of art as tribute to a doctor whose patients obviously adored him.
Poems
Leland James ponders the perfect pumpkin.
Zazzle
Zazzle now offers patches. What took them so long? How could anyone look hip without a decorative patch somewhere? Yes, of course there's a butterfly patch, as of today. They offer several shape options and, of course, you can substitute any picture from the Save the Butterflies Collection or your own. Zazzle is a legitimate computer printing company with a good reputation for delivering good quality merchandise.
Not mine, but pretty:
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