Status Update #1: Serena and Me
After almost a month offline, it took more than an hour just to open all the links on my blog reading list that I wanted to read. It took almost as long to open the links for the next butterfly in our alphabetical sequence--a very popular butterfly in the Southern States and Mexico. Then Bing tried to open itself, uninvited, in Google and the browser crashed and lost all of those tabs. You know how sometimes a bit of bad news seems to zap your whole system? Your own, I mean, not merely your computer's. I was already having a glyphosate reaction. I was already fighting off coronavirus. More bad news I did not need. I went down with the virus and home to bed for three days. I still don't feel quite like myself though, as mentioned below, the chest cold symptoms subsided, only to be replaced by head cold symptoms. I've not been fully functional all week. Serena-cat has officially scolded me for being a Bad Human and told me to snap out of it.
"I know it's raining," Serena nonverbally says. "That is not the point! Where's the water you share with me?"
The deliveryman might know something about that, I whined.
"Never mind about him! You're supposed to bring in our water."
"It started raining about the time the ground began to thaw out from last night. I'm not bringing in anything."
"Bad human!" Serena nonverbally said, very deliberately biting my hand, but not hard enough to break the skin.
On Sunday morning I got thirsty enough to walk out and bring home some water. I spent a good part of the following night coughing.
Status Update #2: Ratbag, the Professional Bad Neighbor
You probably always thought that "ratbag" was just a general term of contempt. Sometimes it is, but it seems there's an actual history of Professional Bad Neighbors dumping actual bags, or boxes, or whatever, of rats at the homes of people they are harassing.
I noticed the peculiar behavior of the rodents in this part of the country about twenty years ago. When I was a child, my parents wanted to believe that poison baits would get rid of mice. That is so not true. The first winter I lived up here with a good cat, I had to tell the cat I would come out and admire only two freshly killed rodents a night--others should be given to the possum. If I'd been willing to get up and fuss over that cat three, four, or five times a night, she would probably have brought in that many mice every night. But by the second winter the rodent population had declined, and for some years there was very little evidence of rodent activity near the Cat Sanctuary. Then rodents started turning up again, but in batches. Strangely, although a batch of half a dozen rodents might include a pair of the same species, rodents turned up in mixes of different species--many of which aren't normally attracted to humans' houses, even. The cats and I would collect a field mouse, a deer mouse, a trader rat, two voles, and a shrew, all in a day or two. Then there'd be no more rodents for a few weeks. Then there'd be two trader rats, a deer mouse, three shrews, and a chipmunk. These different rodent species do not normally like to be close to each other or to humans. So we had a real, literal Ratbag harassing us, and people used to wonder who and why. Surely not X. Grown-up men with jobs didn't do things like that.
Hah.
But Ratbag has expanded his repertoire from vandalism and poisoning into thievery. I went into the kitchen to look for a knife recently and found the whole block of knives missing. They weren't expensive knives, or very good ones. Oh, well...nicks and scrapes seen on my fingers lately have come from getting accustomed to using different knives. Meanwhile, I noticed that the axes had disappeared, too. Dad had two long axes he used for ordinary woodcutting. I prefer a short hatchet or "hax" for most wood-chopping tasks, but yes, I've used the long axes from time to time.
Dad also had an extra-heavy axe, an iron weight welded onto an iron handle. I remember when he bought it by mail order. It was called "The Monster Maul" and was more useful as a test of everyone's strength than as an actual tool. If a living tree had needed to be felled, or an oak or chestnut log split, for some reason, then a person would appreciate a Monster Maul. For chopping the dead wood that is all I normally cut or burn, the extra weight is wasted. But one year I did work on a job where my benefits included some oak and chestnut logs; a neighbor bought a few of them, and for a few days the Monster Maul served its original social purpose, with the neighbor saying "That has to be too heavy for you" every time I used it, and me saying "That has to be hard on your injured back" every time he used it, until those logs were split and hauled away. I hadn't planned to sell the Monster Maul. It held good memories and I used it, once in a while, just to maintain muscle tone.
It was easy to recognize--a big heavy wedge of steel painted blaze orange; handle, just a big solid length of metal like a pipe, only solid, also blaze orange, about as long as the handle on the axes, no contours or handles.
I can imagine why a Ratbag would want to steal what looked most likely to be used as weapons to the eyes of guilt, and I can assure the Ratbag that that was a useless demonstration of cowardice and dishonesty. Knives are for cutting food. Axes are for cutting firewood. Anyone who doubts that the parents who left me the axes, and showed me what they are used for, also told me what can be used to fix personal attackers so that they will not want to attack anyone any more, is even more of a fool than I've recently realized Ratbag is.
Part of all health care fields' basic core of education, Ratbag, includes knowing where to apply our fingers to discourage inappropriate thoughts, cut off breath, drain blood, suppress consciousness, or if necessary perform an emergency lobotomy. I never have felt that killing was what my hands are for, any more than it's what the knives and axes were for. But I know how to kill a man with my hands, just as I know that, if there's a reason to bash a man's head in with an object, a log is a better choice than an axe. All Real Southern Ladies do have this kind of information; it's just that most of us get all the way through our lives without finding an occasion to use it. That is what we call Civilization.
Anyway, if anyone happens to find a Monster Maul for sale, they should notify the police, who know where to find me. Several other objects were also stolen. Most were too popular and generic to be tracked down, although the Mother Earth News, Prevention, and Organic Gardening & Farming may have contained some identifiable markings, but the Monster Maul was unusual. By 1980 most people who needed to apply that much weight to wood were using machinery.
Animals
Nice clear photos of chickadees and bitterns.
Nice clear photo meant to suggest a less lovable kind of animals...
On the lovable side again, the puffin:
Books
Linda Goudsmit's preface doesn't promise much that's new to readers of this web site, but does promise a well organized and documented exposition of what so many of us have been thinking all this while. If I had any money to spare I'd buy this book.
Education
Not an ideal example of how the student should behave, but...F'art is fake art. If it sounds like failed art, like foul art, or like any number of other things to you, that is what the coiners of the term might call gravy.
Music
Autoharp in church music.
Philosophy
As all e-mail correspondents surely know by now, COVID cost the planet more paper products this month than it did on its three previous visits to me together. First I had a chest cold, then I had a head cold, then vertigo, and I still have a cough. And I must warn you that this link added to the Cat Sanctuary's total consumption of paper products for the month. I might have cried even if I hadn't had a head cold. So find a tissue before clicking, but I think you;'ll want to read:
Poems
And English isn't even this blog's primary language...
Privacy
Important enough news to be available in every language.
Science, and Bayer Science
This would be classic Bayer Science (TM): To get the results you want, study seven times as many examples in one group as the other, so you can be sure of finding a substantial majority of either kind of results in the group where you want to find them. Shame, CDC.
Security
May Heaven keep us safe from those who think they know how to keep us safe...
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