This post was open when the Internet connection on the screen porch died. I had seen the sky light up and wondered whether a transformer or phone tower had been struck by lightning, for a few seconds before the thunder crashed. No Internet since, though the lights and the little heater at my feet stayed on. I'm finishing it today, 12.13.23, with such links as I can find during my short online time.
Art
John W. Maclean carves another stone...
Charity
Yes, "conservative" people do charity. Often they do it more competently than governments or corporate foundations. Here's one that soliciting books, especially textbooks and useful nonfiction, for the kind of classes people missed the chance to take at public school. Board games, too.
Economics
For those who wanted serious, hard-hitting content here? This hits hard. Young people, keep your heads down and stay out of the fight that will break out whenever a baby-boomer dares to make this statement:
I OPT OUT OF SOCIAL SECURITY, MEDICARE, AND OBAMACARE. THOSE "BENEFITS" NEED TO BE PRESERVED FOR THOSE WHO ARE GENUINELY DISABLED, AND THE BEST WAY TO PROTECT THEM FOR THE DISABLED IS FOR EVERYONE WHO IS ABLE TO DO SOME SORT OF WORK TO CONTINUE TO DO SO, REGARDLESS OF AGE.
If you make this statement before your fifty-fifth birthday AND the loss of both your parents, people will think you're merely trying to get out of paying your share toward the maintenance of your parents. Don't even think about it. Young people have their own social issues to debate among themselves. You can always support the work of us active senior citizens, quietly.
I, the writer known as Priscilla King, having aged by decades from age 40 in 2006 and thus been 50 for a good long time, renounce all claim on any age-related benefits. What I paid in was less than what my parents drew out. While my parents were drawing Social Security pensions and I was paying Social Security tax, I was glad to pay my share in and vote to keep the programs rolling. Now my parents are gone, and I say we should save all the benefits for the disabled. Age and duration of employment are valid reasons for changing jobs, not for pensions.
Because really, urging older people to become useless dependents on society is a little more polite, but basically the same thing, as urging us to commit suicide.
Economy, Domestic
Although I don't sew, I appreciate this poem acknowledging making one's own clothes as "an act of self-care." Note specifically that the writer mentions her handmade dress being of higher quality than the "fashions" in the shops--how many cheap frocks lack pockets!
Etiquette
Or "Times When I Don't Miss Washington"...I only just got to the flapping and squawking about Melania Trump wearing a gray tweed coat to Mrs. Carter's funeral.
It's been pointed out that Mrs. Carter wore gray rather than black to President Nixon's funeral, and Mrs. Clinton wore gray rather than black to Mrs. Bush's funeral. What is this? A new tradition--people who can certainly afford a black coat, or jacket or suit or dress, wear gray instead of black to the funerals of those who disagreed with them while living?
When ordinary people wear whatever plain, subdued clothes they have, to a funeral, there is no reason to flap and squawk about it. A student might have been planning to get through a Washington winter with only a school jacket, and might have to borrow someone else's trench coat to wear to a midwinter funeral. A teenager might have only one black skirt, which happened to be slit up above the knee. A car-free aunt who hadn't arranged transportation back from a laundromat, and didn't have a good laundry barter going, might have to wear a trench coat over an old faded-to-gray dress.
However, people who can afford to have a clean black suit or dress should keep it ready to wear to a funeral, and if they don't want to make room in their walk-in closets for a black overcoat because black is not their color, they could go to a funeral in only the black suit or dress...as Laura Bush did at Mrs. Carter's funeral.
This web site officially excuses Melania Trump on the grounds that, as a foreign fashion model, she was probably told that it was all right for her to wear light gray to funerals...but the position of this web site is that The Nephews should all have some good-quality, plain, untrimmed, unslit, classic-cut black things to wear whenever a funeral occurs. Even if you're working for someone who insists you attend the funeral of Klaus Schwab. That might be an occasion for rejoicing, but youall are old enough to think of whatever relatives he may have and look funereal.
This web site's official comment on the photos of the First Ladies at funerals, provided for comparison at the link above: They are all fine-looking women, beautifully preserved. The dress Mrs. Obama wore at Mrs. Bush's funeral was unfortunate, but it's better to wear a funereal black dress or suit that fails to fit or flatter than to wear something that is not funereal to a funeral. The rule is that it's about showing respect to the deceased and grieving relatives, NOT about looking good. If, as so often happens to Melania Trump, you look much better than the mother or widow of the deceased ever did, and on taking it out of the closet for the first time this year you realize that your funereal outfit hangs on you in the way that dress did on Mrs. Obama, then wearing it anyway would be not only proper but charitable.
Land, Not For Sale
From cantosyoraciones.blogspot.com:
Basically Spanish for "These Colors Don't Run."
Music
With very few exceptions I like almost everything Mozart ever wrote.
Then there's this old Aaron Copland chestnut...
I think what catches my attention about this music video is the picture. My browser tends to show a picture instead of playing a video. And the picture that goes one looks sad--grey twilight, candles not really lighting up the big hallway, dusty floor...And that hallway reminds me of one in the home of some people some of The Nephews used to know. And what you need to know about those dear people is that they've gone south to retire and left the big house to their children...but you remember how a big hallway like that can be made cheerful. On the young woman's right there should be the red room, in December an all-out Victorian Christmas red room, for guests to sit or dine in, and behind her the bright warm kitchen, dining room, and family sitting room.. Beyond a good cleaning, and waiting for more cheerful-looking light, what that hall most needs is a couple of big old friendly dogs. Remember?
Bad songs. Play these when you want people to go home.
Political Warning
Dire, and not really news to regular readers. Share it with people to whom it's still news.
Product Warning (Outrage!)
So in the Eastern States we think of Turkey Hill ice cream as "Your daily requirement of Lancaster County," right? Fresh cream from Amish and Mennonite farm cows! So I bought some Turkey Hill ice cream recently. "Moose Tracks" fudge ripple flavor. I opened the box, and instead of a wonderful fudge and cream smell, a nasty sweetish chemical odor wafted out. Took a bite, and instead of tasting like vanilla cream, the vanilla cream layer had a weird jelloid consistency and chemical flavor. Nasty, nasty stuff. What to do? I didn't want to eat it. I couldn't give it to the cats. I actually put it in the trash barrel and kept a fire going until it was gone!
Have you ever tried burning ice cream, Gentle Readers? Well, believe it or not, bogus ice cream with propylene glycol in it will burn.
I had tasted something like this before. When? When I'd tried picking the coconut icing off a yellow cake with coconut icing someone had donated to the cats. I figured the cats can eat the wheat-based cake, I can eat buttercream icing, and now that coconut's not being dried out with glyphosate I love coconut! But the icing was not buttercream. It was nasty jelloid stuff, and upon checking the label I realized it was jelled with PROPYLENE GLYCOL. Antifreeze. What you mix with honey if you want to rid your woodlot of bears! What you keep out of the house if you don't want your pets or children to die by misadventure, because it does taste sweet, in a horrible chemical way.
Well, the cake was a Food Lion special and we all know Food Lion's products are rarely fit for human consumption and not always accepted by the cats, but...Long story short. Yes. Turkey Hill sold out to ConAgra and now Turkey Hill ice cream contains propylene glycol too.
Quality standards for a lot of foods are slipping these days. I notice each batch of Zatarain's rice getting less of its flavor from dried veg and more from yeast and that weaselly word "spices," which usually means monosodium glutamate. I don't like Zatarain's rice the way I used to do. Ben's is usually glyphosate-free and easy to cook over a candle, since it's only half dried, but it's full of chemicals other than the added vitamins. I don't like Ben's rice so much, either. Back to plain Success Rice with a can of veg I go. I like the spices in the premixed rice, but if they're going to be monosodium glutamate and other chemicals instead of paprika, turmeric, rosemary, a whiff of sage and half a saffron thread per box, I can do without those unspecified "spices."
In the 1980s label readers motivated food packers to minimize their use of chemical additives other than salt or sugar. But now they're slipping back. We need to read labels and avoid buying products that contain ingredients that are not food.
Especially when they are THE SPECIFIC POISON YOU SET OUT FOR LARGE NUISANCE ANIMALS!
Poems
There's truth in the hyperbole here. Plants and trees show the same pre-conscious, merely electrical reactions to stimuli, including our presence and emotional moods, that animals do. When that sort of electrical reaction takes place in our bodies, we feel it! And, of course, if you're concerned about local warming, the first thing you do is plant more trees, open more green space, break up more pavement--get rid of anything non-essential that makes the city hotter, and bring in more of what makes it less hot...
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