It's amusing, actually. Pages won't open. Videos won't play. The button at the bottom of the screen shows full connection, but not for the private account for which sponsors are paying; only for "SCTC Wireless." It pulls up a menu for "Troubleshoot options" or "Open Network & Internet Settings." The button to open the regular "Network & Internet Settings" page does nothing at all. The button to "Troubleshoot options" pulls up a whine: "Windows tested your Internet connection and verified that you are able to access some web sites." Some, yes. Trouble is, the people paying for private connections (who I have always said should be paying entrepreneurs to manage public-access computer centers for profit) are paying for full access to any and all web sites, at any time, more than one at a time, specifically for allowing the long videos some blind and/or lazy people post to natter along in the background while we run down our to-do list of things to do with other web sites.
Our social connections demand this, SCTC Wireless. They may expect us to reinforce their initial perception that some of these news-and-views videos are misguided, but the information from those videos, whether accepted or refuted or questioned, will be on the test of our having paid due attention to what they posted. There are a terrible lot of videos on the Internet that it's easy, probably profitable, and certainly fun, to ignore...and then there are the ones that allow normal blind people the sort of social connection George Peters was able to sustain through a terrific, even monomaniac, concentration on his cassette tapes. No, I don't "ghost" away from e-friends because they lose the ability to type. My e-friends who can type don't do that, either.
You need to restore 100% connectivity, SCTC Wireless. You need to explain, on your customers' next monthly statements, why you disabled the sound systems built into people's computers and why, as a result, the charge for their Internet service is half or less than half what it would normally be. We know there was a thunderstorm on Friday. We know that there was some rain and lots of humidity during the past week. Those facts have their natural consequences but there's a limit to everything. Nobody should pay as much as half of the normal monthly bill for this July.
Anyway, from some web sites, some links...and a Palinode.
Animals (the Palinode)
Last month we had some sort of animal crisis. I'm still not sure exactly what happened. Dasher, a possum distinguished from all others by his preference to gallop rather than walk, disappeared. Some animal died in among the loose rocks below the road. My cat Silver lost her kittens and had a stiff, sore, badly swollen paw. Was it possible that Dasher had threatened the kittens and Silver had killed him?
It was possible. I think Dasher weighs more than Silver, and runs about as fast, but she's an intelligent animal and he's a dumb one. It did not, however, happen. Dasher moved away from his residence behind the cats' sand pit in the cellar, but he's still living. Drabble, who looks like him only smaller and with a more typical possum gait, didn't move into the cellar either, although she's been fulfilling the duties of the resident possum.
The Vespula menace? When I inadvertently touched the place where a small group of belligerent bee-sized wasps were camping, very early Wednesday morning, it was complete news to me that Vespulas lived in my part of the world. I grew up using the word "yellowjacket" to refer to a different animal. But I asked someone from a different neighborhood, two or three miles away, and got a quick summary of what I'd just learned about the genus Vespula. I remembered, also, a neighbor who said there were good bees that live in hives and make honey, and bad bees that live in the ground and only buzz and sting. So, the Vespulas are not common to my part of the world in the way bees or paper wasps are, but they have been found here before.
Meanwhile, Serena-cat nonverbally told me, she'd known about our Vespulas before I did, and though cats get some protection from their fur, insect stings hurt cats too.
"Is that what happened to Silver's paw?!"
Silver nonverbally said it was.
The cats did not offer any indication of whether it had been the Vespulas, or the skunk, that motivated the possums to avoid the cellar. The skunk had not sprayed the cellar. Dasher dislikes this skunk more than any previous resident possum ever seemed to dislike any previous resident skunk, anyway.
I now think it's possible that the Vespulas on the porch are the remnant of a larger group that were in the cellar. They may have made their way to the porch as stragglers from a colony that was nearly wiped out by a skunk, guided there directly by the Evil Principle alone for all I know. If so they would have got here right at the same time with a population of biting flies we hadn't had before, and a red wasp population explosion.
There is no way of knowing who died among the rocks below the road. It was a small animal. I found three non-viable kittens in the house; cats usually have four. It is possible that Silver's original injury came from killing Vespulas; her paw showed tooth marks but I saw her bite it a few times after first noticing the swelling, as if she were trying to drain the inflammation. Apart from the bite marks the inflammation behaved like a worst-case Vespula sting, in which repeated stings and/or different wasps aggravated what looked like one very bad wound.
"Did a man dump those insects in the cellar?"
They didn't seem to know. They wouldn't. Sommersburr used to speak to the Professional Bad Neighbor, but female cats, who know they'd be missed, don't do that sort of pointless and dangerous thing. They hide from trespassers.
Math
One of the great advantages of being from Virginia is, or used to be, that in grade five Virginia schools taught everyone that, if you must "estimate" or "round" numbers, you should always round up if the digit dropped is 5 or greater than 5. This makes estimates more accurate. "A dollar fifty-nine" is not the same as $1.50. To avoid surprises at checkout counters, it's better to think of "a dollar fifty-nine" as closer to $2.00.
Poetry
I'm not sure where this poet is reminiscing about but I do think I know why she still dreams of and misses a place, and time, in which she vividly remembers unpleasant things. Because the good things about that place and time need to be preserved, that's why. Because nobody misses the flies that bred in the old outhouse but nobody misses the stench when people use water-flush toilets right inside the house, either, and nobody who has the option of burning biomass and getting some use out of it would ever miss the idea of all those water-flush toilets dumping all that (wasted fuel) into rivers from which people in Tennessee get their drinking water, either. By remembering what was good about the past and working to preserve and restore that, we can make tremendous improvements on our present situations.
Houses should be separated by an acre or two of woodlot; in some places that means white pines. You can't blame anyone who has to look at someone else's house, every time person opens a window, for pining for those pines.
Politics (Election 2024)
James Carville has been one of his party's more intelligent spox for a long time now. Matt Margolis has some pungent comments on his recent writing:
Y'know, in real life, I seriously considered circulating petitions to get Robert Kennedy onto the ballot as an Independent in Virginia. I've said I'd vote for our man, if only as a symbolic, some would say a wasted, vote for Glyphosate Awareness. I will, too, if Trump doesn't come forward with a specific apology for having promoted the use of glyphosate and a solid commitment to ending the same. As in, "If I am elected in 2024, farmers will be able to get some compensation for destroying existing supplies of glyphosate during February 2025, the use of any other 'pesticides' will be reduced by half in the summer of 2025, and spraying 'pesticides' will be recognized as a violent crime against persons in 2026." But I'd really rather see the Ds' best moderate on the ticket in every state, as a Democrat with a chance of actually winning.
Nobody identified with an administration remembered for high inflation, wrecked local economies, censorship, any kind of vaccine mandates even if the vax in question weren't remembered as "clot-shots," and the threat of drafting girls as well as boys into another foreign war, is likely to beat a former president whose administration is remembered for economic revival. Biden can't beat Trump; Harris can't beat Trump; Clinton can't beat Trump; Michelle Obama can't beat Trump; if any younger White men still identify with the Party of Vindictive Discrimimation Against White Men, they're not likely to beat Trump either. If he stays with his moderate bipartisan fact-focussed base, Kennedy can beat Trump. If his party let him stay with his base while in office, he can beat Trump twice.
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