Election stuff.
I wish Naomi Wolf had e-mailed this essay sooner; people needed to read it before voting.
(Digital image from Messy Mimi.)
Wednesday, November 6, 2024
What I've Learned from Other Long & Short Reviewers
This week's Long & Short Reviews question has an answer that's short and sweet. What have we learned from other L&SR reviewers?
I have a feeling that we're all going to end up saying the same thing. We've learned that, as book bloggers, we have much in common. We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike. (Book bloggers are likely to read that line and instantly think, "Maya Angelou!" though in real life most of us do not instantly think, "...Collected Poems of, page number, line number.")
And probably most of us have either added a few book titles to the library list we carry around, written on paper, slowly crumbling in our pockets, or else read these posts at the library and clicked over to check for the book online, or else added titles to our Amazon or Bookshop Wish Lists.
And if other thoughts come to mind, we're probably not going to embarrass people by publishing them, except for: From Lydia Schoch I learned about the L&SR blog prompts and link-up. It's been fun, and I thank her.
Tuesday, November 5, 2024
Book Review: Needy Little Things
Title: Needy Little Things
Author: Channelle Desamours
Date: 2025. See below.
Publisher: Wednesday (St. Martin's)
ISBN: 9781250334824
Quote: "My mind is an endless loop ofthe immediate or future needs of the people around me. Tangible, everyday items...usually."
(If this book's not been published yet, how can I have read it? I read what's called a galley--a mock-up of a book, distributed to writers, proofreaders, and reviewers. The idea is that corrections can be made to the galley before the book is published for sale, but the book is close enough to its final state for reviewers to start telling people how good it is. I received a galley of this book in exchange for an honest review. As a story about twelfth grade students learning about a grim part of recent history and sharing a dangerous adventure, it's good.)
Sariyah is a psychic, of sorts. She's constantly distracted by the felt needs of people who aren't close to her; she's not too good at recognizing the needs of her family or really close friends. The barrage of "needs" gives her migraines when she spends time around people. Her parents insist on her going to school, despite her obvious desperate need for homeschooling. She's due to graduate this summer but there's some doubt about her being able to graduate.
One of Sariyah's best friends is one of Atlanta's missing children and teenagers. (That's a long-running news story that's largely dropped out of the national newspapers because it's not news any more.) When another friend goes missing, too, Sariyah realizes how little she knows about her close friends.
Props to Channelle Desamours for giving Deja and her stepfather a problem that's more common in real life, less common in fiction, than the cliche of stepfather-molesting-daughter, Props, too, for inventing a fresh psychic talent; Sariyah and her gift/curse don't bother about people's deep emotonal needs, but focus on "needs" like chewing gum, hair gel, and potting soil, Mixing thesee elements gives readers an original story, with the prospect of a sequel or a series, that raises awareness of Atlanta's problem. And extra props for the girl who notices an attraction to a boy and pushes it aside, thinking "I don't need to deal with a silly crush right now.' There are teenagers like that, though for years publishers refused to print books about them.
The plot takes a twist I find hard to believe. A character who's seemed sane suddenly freaks out and goes into psychotic mode. Would that have happened in real life? One should never say never; maybe a similar incident made the local police blotter, but what's not to like about this book is that you might not find the character's mental breakdown, and fortuitous accident, believable.
Otherwise the story is believable and the characters are sympathetic. The content of the story is a little more intense than "a fun read," but family love and friendshp earn the sort of ending they deserve.
Publishers send galleys to reviewers when they think there's a high probability that we'll agree that stores, schools, and libraries may want to order a book in advance. Well, I do. This book is scheduled to be available in stores in February 2025. If you have a store and want to do a Black History Month display in February, order now; I think you'll be glad you did.
Link
After the video, a regular post will appear on this page some time today. It will not be the Petfinder photo contest; that will appear on Friday. You have time to go out and vote. This web site will wait.
Monday, November 4, 2024
Book Review: Ketil and Yitzy's Adventure in the House of Lost Dreams
Title: Ketil and Yitzy's Adventure in the House of Lost Dreams
Author: Team Netherworld Creations
Publisher: Naughty Netherworld Press
Quote: [Yitzy] "had a conical body with a three-eyed head on a stalk."
About a hundred years ago the writer known as H.P. Lovecraft published the very "pulpy" horror stories that made up the Cthulhu Mythos: Horror-fiction monsters, inspired by but not really based on the deep sea creatures oceanographers were beginning to describe and the not-quite-human creatures of folklore and fiction, are the future of humankind. People discover this through adventures narrated floridly, not particularly well, but with a positive delight in long or obscure words and a certain morbid glee.
Literary critics agreed that it was dreadful. Most readers never got into Cthulhu but Lovecraft's work attracted a following of people who read his work as a guilty or rebellious pleasure. Here was nothing educational, enlightening, or inspiring; just delight in gross-outs. For some Lovecraft's sesquipedalian words are part of his charm.
And so, unto this day, when publishers invite manuscripts of speculative fiction, they still find it necessary to state whether they are or are not willing to read any more fan contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos.
This "novelette" is typical. It's set on a world that died before Earth was born, but its characters use recent Earth slang and references. Ketil is a Swedish ghost; Yitzy is an alien who lets itself be called "he" just to fit in, though its species don't have genders. They will soon be joined by a pair of English ghouls who call themselves Robin Hood and Little John, and seldom miss a chance to talk about their taste for decomposing human flesh.
Most people don't get into the Cthulhu Mythos. I don't; I don't like the practice of sending out "sample chapters" instead of complete novels, but in this case the e-book breaking off just where the characters drank the gruesome-sounding potion and divded into the murky liquid came as a relief. I say this in a friendly and supportive way. A Cthulhu story is not an ideal gift to a person you don't know well. For those who do like Cthulhu stories, however, this one seems the sort of mix of gross-out, comedy, and adventure they'll enjoy. Publishers who are willing to consider Cthulhu stories should take a long look at this one. Cthulhu fans? Run don't walk.
Blog4Peace
The biggest blog link-up ever...have I missed it?
Bloggers are for peace.
Kamala Harris is for war.
We know what we have to do. It will not be pleasant. I anticipate feeling disgruntled, disorientated, discombobulated, and bewildered all week.
I can, too, write coherently. About frivolous fiction. Or insects that don't live in any place I've ever been.
Just not about what I'm voting for. I don't drink, y'see. I don't have the sort of consolation the disaster candidate has for being herself.
This is the year I have to vote for destroying the land I love--over destroying the land I love in between the death by inches that is glyphoate poisoning and the ultimate end of thermonuclear war. Wotta "choice"
But. When all the other chices are bad, we can always choose peace over war.
Butterfly of the Week: Chain Swordtail
This week's butterfly's names make sense if we think about them. The Chain Swordtail has a long sword-shaped tail on each hind wing, and a pattern of stripes that curve and form a "chain" pattern just above the tails.
Photo from Science Images / CSIRO.
Graphium aristeus was named after either a legendary character, or an historical one, in ancient Greek literature. The mythical Aristeus or Aristaeus was said to have discovered, and taught the rest of ancient Greece, how to keep bees and how to make cheese, and was sometimes worshipped as a minor god of home food production. The historical one was a mathematician. The name is a form of the Greek word for "The Best/"
Is Graphium aristeus "the best" swallowtail butterfly? It's not the biggest. Its wingspan is typically about two inches, smaller than our cold-weather Zebra Swallowtails. Females are typically a little larger than males.
It's not the best known. Images of adult butterflies of this species are abundant on the Internet, as are sites that traffic in dead bodies. Scienttific information is relatively scarce.
It flits through much of southeastern Asia and Australia. Adults are believed to fly for about two weeks on average. Host plants are tropical species in the genera Milliusa, Polyalthia, Pseuduvaria, and Mitrephora.
Photo from Wandering Butterfly Effect. One of the "butterfly hordes" found in Kaeng Krachang park in Thailand, where its species perch on trees, spreading their wings to catch the sun, in the morning and sip water at ponds in large mixed groups "by noon." Many photos and videos of mixed groups that include Chain Swordtails are available.
Adults are primarily pollinators of several flowers including lantanas, hibiscus, and poinsettias.
Francis Burlingham didn't photograph all the Graphiums shown in this photo essay at one puddle.
Photo by Barlettsangma, showing G. aristeus with other Swallowtails and some smaller butterflies in a large mixed group. While butterflies of both sexes and all species sip fresh water, males of some species are attracted to brackish or polluted water. Blessed with the ability to filter some potentially harmful pollutants out of water as it seeps through the soil below oil spills and worse, they crave mineral salts and spend days sipping polluted water in order to be able to mate. Females prefer to drink only nectar and clean water, absorbing their minerals from contact with males, though they will drink polluted water if unable to get it from males. They flit around the edges of male groups and sometimes lead a male away from the group. Is that taking place at the left side of the picture?
Subspecies include anticrates, aristinus, bifax, erebos, hainanensis, hermocrates, palasarinus, parmatum, paron, puella, timocrates, and of course Graphium aristeus aristeus. Swallowtails.net may be beginning to prepare a web page showing what makes these subspecies different. Some are found on specific islands. Anticrates.for example, found in Assam and Sikkim, have a shorter or missing dark stripe on the under side of the hind wing. In paron the pale color is yellowish green and the under side of the hind wing shows orange spots.The white crescents around the edge of the hind wing are larger in anticrates than in parmatus. Several of these subspecies were reported as distinct species but ruled to be subspecies because they can hybridize. Graphium nomius, which looks as much like aristeus as the subspecies of aristeus look like one another, kept its species status because it does not "mix" with aristeus.
The subspecies anticrates is protected by law in India.
The life cycle of the Australian subspecies, G.a. parmatum, has been scantly documented. There is believed to be only one brood each year. Along with some other south Asian butterflies, including Graphium nomius, G. macareus, and G. megarus, these butterflies live in places where the weather is always warm. all of their life cycles timed so that they get through the wetter months from May to February as either eggs or pupae, and living their active lives between February and May when they get more sunshine. If you are at school you may be able to read this paper:
Eggs are said to be white at first and turn pink before hatching. They are usually laid in small clusters, indicating one of the more intelligent (and less strictly monophagous) species of Swallowtails.
Caterpillars start out black and, in some instars, have blackish-blue tentacles. Young caterpillars stick together in clusters; older ones separate.
Photo from 123RF.com. The caterpillar has an armor-plated rather than humpbacked look, The osmeterium is long and thin rather than stubby. The caterpillar's use of its osmeterium, to flick and lick and actively exude its odor at a potential attacker, has been compared to the martial arts technique of "snake boxing.'
This species burrows into the soil to pupate.
Sunday, November 3, 2024
Web Log for 11.1-2.24
Cluelessness, Public Displays of'
This is not a patriotic look. This is an "All the makeup I had was either red, blue, or black, and all the brain I had was on vacation" look. Or the person may have let a computer "correct" the way the person started to type "Pathetic looking man...." My guess is that he lost a bet. had to go out in public looking like this, and got drunk first. One should only bet on a sure thing. Pathetic.
This is a patriotic look. (It's also an oldfashioned look; I wanted a young man with auburn hair, to contrast with the pathetic-looking one above, and Google kept pulling up pictures of old men, Black men, or women mail carriers. I think it's been fifty years since I saw one of those hats.)
Education
Trump pledged to offer tax breaks and other forms of support to homeschoolers. Scroll down--it's video clip #1 on a Top Ten List with #10 at the top.
Election 2024
Senator Kaine says his legislation will cut costs and Candidate Cao supports legislation that would raise costs. That's as may be. I don't doubt that it's true for specific bills, but in the overall budget...well, you know how that goes.
What Senator Kaine may not know is that for me, personally, cost is not the main issue. Glyphosate is. Senator Kaine has a good record of having once stood up to chemical companies; unfortunately he's not done that again in the past ten years.
It's too late for my mother, who deserved to be a perky vegan in a glyphosate-free world if anyone ever did. It's too late for my Significant Other, whose cause of death may never be known, but who certainly was tortured, not by pseudo-celiac reactions but by pseudo-strokes, as unmistakable glyphosate reactions in the last ten years of his life. It may well be too late for me to have a long healthy life, or it may not. But anyone who wants my vote had better deliver some serious prospects for The Nephews to enjoy the long lives and good health they deserve.
No link to the lazy incumbent's political ad. He had many chances to lead the call for a glyphosate ban. He and I corresponded about it for years. He did nothing about it. If Cao's going to cooperate with Kennedy and work for a glyphosate ban, Kaine's career is toast.
Mean Girl McTackypants is claiming that a tariff on imported goods will make everything cost much more. Not necessarily. It will make some brands cost more, and bring different brands into fashion. It should not be enough of a problem to justify voting for Tackypants. No links to her political ads, either.
However, this web site will remind readers: Apart from the jeans and coveralls we wear when doing physical labor jobs, there's no reason why women need to wear trousers. For those who want to wear trousers to work or school, what makes them "tacky pants" is any combination of (1) straining across body fat, and/or (2) showing the ankles--trouser hems should touch the top of the shoe when we stand up--and/or (3) inappropriate shoes. With unisex clothing we should always wear unisex shoes.
Glyphosate Awareness
Enough to make you consider a new regulation: "Members of or candidates for legislative positions may receive funds from manufacturers of products known to harm human beings on the sole condition that the manufacturers' representatives present the money directly, face to face, to persons harmed by their products, in the presence of the campaigning official, apologizing for the harm done and providing proof that the manufacturers have made significant changes to any products they want to continue to be licensed to manufacture." And: "Manufacturers who have attempted to censor private citizens' good faith complaints about harm done by their products shall be presumed to have operated in bad faith, with intent to harm human beings, and shall be subject to criminal prosecution for whatever type of harm they have done."
Not only do I want Bayer to make me wealthy. I want Bayer to make other celiacs wealthy. I want Bayer decision-makers who ignored our pain to learn how to live on the minimum hourly wage for hand-picking weeds and insects on organic farms.
Shopping
Pet memoirs and fun stuff:
It's possible to order beautiful hand-knitted wool socks and In the Tenth Year of the Pandemonium at
And watch ysabetwordsmith.blogspot.com and whatever.scalzi.com for their annual holiday shopping link-ups, later on.
Book Review: Lonely Heart
Title: Lonely Heart
Author: Vida Li Sik
Date: 2020
Quote: "Admit it. Having a former jailbird by your side cramps your business style."
Savanna was an impulsive, aggressive girl when she caught her boyfriend (for two years, a boyfriend) in bed with another woman. She didn't intend to kill him but she screeched that she did while whacking him with her esgrima stick. He was fit to go into court and testify against her. Meanwhile, her being on trial for attempted murder had left her mother "hysterical" and triggered a fatal heart attack for her stepfather, and her guilt had left Savanna so depressed she didn't even want to talk to the lawyers her parents had hired. She felt that she belonged in prison since she'd killed a stepfather who had felt like a father to her. She spent five years in prison.
Now she's out, but she's insecure about what people will do if they find out where she's been during the five years she wasn't posting anything on Facebook. (Yet another good reason not to use that site.) She's grown up, but she's not had much practice being an adult. So she feels so insecure about meeting an important contact for her brother's business that, seeing him and his ex quarrel decorously in a bar, she gets drunk and goes home with him for the night.
Well, that's an unusual way to begin a romance. I wonder whether something like it even happened in real life? Anyway, Savanna and Alex have bonded, although they were too drunk even to have sex and just fell asleep in their clothes on that first night. It's a sweet romance; you know where this must lead.
Vida Li Sik has written specifically Christian books, and this one explores a Christian theme, but the religious aspects of forgiveness and reconciliation are kept in the background. There are passing references to God, to doing the right thing, and to Savanna's being tempted to consult a traditional spiritualist in an effort to communicate with her stepfather. (Well, this is Africa; the main characters are South Africans who, for various reasons, meet in Cote d'Ivoire.) The story does not specify the characters' religious affiliation. Unbelievers can read this book without fear.
US and UK readers should also enjoy the Ivorian atmosphere. I think the glossary translates more French and British words than needed translating--does anyone not know that Monsieur is the equivalent of Mr.?--but I suppose Amazon demanded that so that people could read the book using translation software. Vida Li Sik acknowledges the dangers (a character comes down with malaria) while piquing readers' interest in scenic landscapes, modern cities, and a rich diversity of ancestral cultures.
A final delight is the resolution of Savanna's :depression." Depression is a symptom of more kinds of health problems than not. (There are some disease conditions that produce euphoria; increased immune system activity associated with beating off disease germs can provide a "high.") Savanna, we're told, picked up some serious eating problems and some post-traumatic stress, and she'd be unusually lucky if infectious diseases couldn't be added to the list, in prison. It happens. Savanna's depression is no longer overwhelming but it's a persistent little reminder that she needs to pay attention to those other things. Those conditions are not addressed by serotonin boosters, which apparently didn't even give Savanna the intended "high" but probably left her with yet another imbalance. So the author blesses her with a doctor who may not be familiar with Prozac Backlash but does know that depression is a complicated symptom, that Savanna can't just pop a pill and feel better, that she will need to work through her real health problems one day at a time. We need more of this message in pop culture;
(No, the paragraph above was not censored out of the Goodreads review. I didn't write it in. I was thinking something like "Unusual plot, fresh setting, Christian themes in a secular story anyone can read, that's three things to like." So I posted the review, but it felt unfinished, and after a few hours I recognized what needed to be added.)
How Christian Individualism Can Help Our Country
Here are some thoughts, as they occurred to my mind this week: some for an author and his readers, some for all descendants of Sarah Hill- and Josiah Lassiter and of people who worked for the Lassiter Mills in the 1850s, and some for everyone...The train of thought is easier to follow, I think, through all three sections, but the questions are for those in a position to answer them.
1. Questions for Robert Turner and His Readers
What kept post-Egyptian African kingdoms from flourishing for long? Why, when slavery was global, were Africans seen as "by nature slavish" in a way Europeans, Asians, and Americans were not? (Somebody had a hope when they linked our word "slave" to the enemy tribe's name "Slav," but it didn't work in practice.) The African climate has been blamed for some things, but these slaves were no longer exposed to it. Tropical diseases deserve blame for some things, but valuable slaves were immune to those. African slaves were probably easier to recognize in Europe and America, but if that were the reason why they were considered "slavish," why did it not apply equally to European slaves sold in Africa--as some were? I think it had to have been the group consciousness. One of the African proverbs that seems to have been most widespread, and longest remembered, was "Because we are, I am." In other words, I am worthless apart from a group of other people; the group comes first, the group's chosen leader has the right to make life choices for me, if I've been sold as a slave then I have to be a slave no matter how unethical the terms of sale were...
We'll never really know to what extent this is true, but to some extent it is indisputably true that when African slaves in the United States claimed their freedom, they ceased to be African tribesmen and became Black Americans. They didn't want to go back to Africa, at least not just then; they wanted their own land and their own piece of the American Dream. And, as described in precise historical detail in Creating a Culture of Repair, in surprisingly few works of fiction and even fewer of the history books where it belongs, when people tried to cheat Black Americans out of that dream even after 1900, racial hostility escalated--but that's not the thought I wanted to bring up today.
"Conservative" writers have argued that a fundamental reason for some cultures' being more successful than others has always been individualism--a clear sense that the individual comes before the group. In order to be born we had to have fathers, but we can survive if they died before we were actually born. We had to have mothers, but we can outlive them, too, after we're about a year old. In the absence of biological mothers we needed mother-surrogates up to age five or six or so. Then, like other lifeforms, we might have been younger and smaller than others but were able to survive on our own. After that point, "Because we are, I am" becomes "Because I am, and you are, it's possible that we can agree to form a 'we,' to agree on some common goals and interests--such as defending ourselves from hungry wolves and bears, having babies, maybe even building houses that are more pleasant to live in than caves..." We instinctively crave social circles, but we can live without them. Some of us even choose to live happily, successfully, productively, without them; this has generally been recognized as something close to a super-power, and has often been feared and hated for that reason.
Yes, solitary humans who've written anything have written about their instinctive craving for company, and usually mentioned the ways they've found to meet that need--writing and reading that gave them mental companionship, talking to occasional visitors through a window, living in a "silent" monastic order where they saw other people regularly but didn't converse, bonding with animals or with employees to whom they didn't talk...We all loved that primal bond with our mothers, when we were babies. We all want to recapture reminders of it after we no longer depend on it. We can reproduce without pair-bonding, as so many other mammals do, but most of us will put up with vast amounts of abuse and injustice to be able to depend on some sort of pair bond. Yet people outlive every social bond they have, and they survive. Christianity teaches that some people may be saved, in the Final Judgment, without any of the social bonds they had, and they will rejoice. We can live without social bonds.
(We can live without fresh sun-ripened fruit. We can live without music. People even claim to live without feeling gratitude or worshipping God, though I'm not sure I believe that.)
Certainly what I was consistently aware of, reading every single page of Creating a Culture of Repair, was that some of Turner's hundred suggested actions recognize the primacy of the individual (and are likely to make sense to most or all readers), while others don't recognize the primacy of the individual (and are likely to seem ridiculous to most readers). Most Christians and many Humanists would feel moved to help maintain a lovely historic (Black) church or pay a deserving (Black) student's tuition. People who can spare a little money might feel rewarded by the mere sight of the church or the student but no reasonable person supports a demand that everyone else be taxed to pay every Black American a large amount of tax-free money.
Everyone should read Carter G. Woodson's Mis-Education of the Negro, because Woodson was modest and polite about saying it but his findings apply to all disadvantaged people. As J.D. Vance said last night, what he observed about the poor "hillbilly" families who moved to industrial cities is also applicable to Black and at-the-time immigrant families who moved to the same cities. People who recognize themselves as a disadvantaged group can benefit greatly by connecting with and supporting others in the same group. Even at schools this principle works. It doesn't need to be "freshmen against sophomores," but good things can come from thinking in terms of "freshmen in support of freshmen."
The level of group consciousness and loyalty that helps individuals enjoy the bliss of social connection also tends to be profitable.. But it can get out of hand and become unprofitable when individuals forget the primacy of the individual. Defining people as primarily members of groups promotes prejudice and causes conflicts. Someone who believes that "every Black man is my brother, every White man is my enemy" does not automatically become violent, but does cut off all possibility of social or business benefit from the majority of the people he meets, and also, as the old saying goes, he might as well change his name to Abel.
People who became slaves according to the law of Moses sold themselves, for up to seven years at a time, to pay their debts. Other people became slaves because their tribe lost a war, or because their relatives didn't pay a ransom. In many cultures people sold themselves, also, for five or seven or ten years, to masters of a skilled trade, in order to learn their skills. But it's also well documented that several cultures historically allowed some people to sell their relatives as slaves, just for extra money. Rules differed; an Englishman could sell his wife with her consent and co-operation, a Chinese man could sell his children--and in some parts of Africa a tribal leader could sell the rest of the tribe, and often they did. If ethnic groups owe money, as groups, or are entitled to money, as groups, this means that Black Americans owe reparations to themselves.
All people have ancestors who were done wrong by somebody. Most people, if we examine the matter, have ancestors who were done wrong by other ancestors. If we take the idea of groups owing "reparations" to other groups seriously, for a start, all German-Americans owe money to themselves. Most of us will, in fact, owe money to ourselves. Group "reparations" are nothing but a pretext for a few people, most of whom will probably not be Black Americans, to "redistribute" the wealth of everyone else, Mostly, of course, to themselves. The British Isles were historically a mess of tribal wars before the British became Christians, so the redistributors, mostly of British descent, would need a lot of money to live on while trying to work out exactly how much they owe themselves for what.
We as a nation need to think of criminals as owing "reparations" to those they have harmed. If someone steals a purse, feeding and sheltering him at public expense does less good to "society" than making him work to repay the owner of the purse does. We needed to be, in 1921 and today, governed by a law like the law of Moses, under which trials for property crimes focus on how much money or property the criminal owes to the victim. We also need to understand that crimes are committed by individuals, against individuals, and criminals have to be made to pay during their own lifetimes if they are going to be made to pay at all.
The difference between the Old and New Testaments, in the Bible, is that the OT was written for a group, a tribe that grew into a nation by obeying the laws God gave their group. Their food and hygiene rituals worked better than other tribes' rituals did. Their civil law code taught people how to behave toward other people. God knows and judges their individual souls. But the NT was written for individuals. Salvation is offered to individuals. Individuals knowing themselves to be saved can think for themselves and subvert governments. In the ancient world no nation really liked any other nation; ancient Israel was attacked and often oppressed, but early Christianity was hated, persecuted, and martyred because it liberated individual souls from whatever was happening to and among groups.
How much have we personally discovered for ourselves of the liberation that comes from thinking of ourselves and others as individuals? How does individualism promote healthy relationships among people who might be classified as different demographic groups? How do we move beyond "liking X kind of people," which is very hard to put into practice, into "liking the best qualities of humankind as I find them expressed in people of my kind and other kinds"? How much progress have we made beyond the legalism, tyranny, and bigotry the OT's focus on groups can promote, into the liberating individualism Christ offered His disciples?
2. Questions for the Lassiter Families of North Carolina
Thinking of relationships among slaves and slavemasters in the past, I thought, as so many times before, of Grandma Bonnie Peters' family of origin, the Lassiters of North Carolina. My real name is "of" Virginia, but I'm related to some of these Lassiters too.
There is exactly one record of a Lassiter who immigrated from England. He and his wife are, so far as was known when the genealogy was published in 1980, the ancestors of all White people by that name. (The only Lassiter many Americans ever heard of, one of Louis L'Amour's characters given an unusual family name, was a fictional invention.) There are records of how his descendants respected the indigenous population, prospered, and acquired slaves, up into the generation before the Civil War. At that point the heir married the daughter of one of the last European slaves sold in America, who had earned his freedom and prospered in his trade. He became very conscious of the evils of slavery, such that, upon inheriting the right to do it, he sat down and emancipated three hundred slaves--reportedly "in one day," probably having prepared for that day for years.
It cost money both to record the emancipation of a slave and to send that slave away with enough money to start an independent life, (In Virginia each emancipated slave had to be given a thousand dollars in cash, which was why landed poor people, like General Lee, failed to emancipate their slaves at once too. One of the Randolphs was considered extravagant for emancipating two slaves each year.) So this Lassiter was seen as a big stupid show-off and, to show how much he didn't care, he told all of those ex-slaves that if they needed work, they could apply for paid jobs in his businesses, and if they needed to register surnames, they could call themselves "Lassiter" after their employer. And there are Black and Lumbee people in North Carolina who use the name Lassiter, and affirm that they're not related to one another or to the White Lassiters, unto this day.
The one who emancipated the slaves ended up going west; the businesses did not survive the 1860s. The English-American Lassiters are still proud of their "blue blood" and their unique family name and story, but they're not millionnaires. Not, in fact, necessarily richer than the Black and Lumbee Lassiters. But it's always seemed to me that it would be proper for the Lassiters to get together, compile the history of all six or however many families share the name, find out how one another are doing, and set up a scholarship fund for the most deserving student in the families in any given year. It would just show some other Southern families.a thing!
I shared this thought with GBP, back in the 1990s. I could see on her face that she liked it. Whether she liked the idea of going to North Carolina to meet more Lassiters, or the idea of showing up the Jeffersons (whose cringeworthy behavior gave me the idea), or whatever else, she never said. Then she said, "But none of the Lassiters I know is all that rich."
Meh. Enough living people use the name that they wouldn't have to be all that rich. It wouldn't have to be a full scholarship at Duke, or not in the first year, anyway. If the idea had ever got off the ground GBP would probably have scraped up twenty or fifty dollars; if it gets off the ground, now that she's gone, even I could probably scrape up twenty dollars in her memory. Well, do the math; it wouldn't take a great number of living Lassiters to make a dent in somebody's educational expenses, even at twenty dollars apiece. But family pride would probably motivate someone to chip in $500, someone $1000, and so on, as far as they could afford. And the name of the families that did that would deserve to be represented at a big-name university, every year, wouldn't it?
Questions for the Lassiters: How? When? Where? Should a Lassiter Fund support, or wait until after, the restoration of Asheville?
Would a fund created by individuals who voluntarily contribute what they can spare be a good example of how "many hands make light work,: provided that all of those hands are there to work and nobody is engaged in "social loafing"?
3. Questions for Everybody
We usually hear the word "individualism" applied to some extreme idea which is then denounced as a bad thing. Has this interfered with our sense of the primacy of the individual?
All individuals need to spend time alone regularly, even though an unfortunate minority have mental deficiencies that make them hate and fear solitude. In the twentieth century some influential people tried to deny the need for solitude. We all need to reverse this denial, to recognize that failure to enjoy "quiet time" is dysfunctional and a warning that an individual may not make good decisions, much less be a good role model. We need to recognize that although we've read and heard a great deal more about individuals' desire to connect, much of that has come from social pressure.
A major reason why people divorce, for example, is that one spouse does not leave the other spouse private time and space. "S/He is not a bad person--we're still friends--I just fell out of love and realized how much I missed having time to think." These people thought they wanted to spend their lives together. If they spent adequate time alone, not chatting with bachelors on the Internet but doing some sort of creative work in their rooms or gardens, they might discover that "falling in love" is a hormone cycle and that they do love each other.
When people respect each other's privacy, they can live under the same roof in peace. When people are crowded together, they lose the ability to appreciate one another.
Do we need to spend time alone, forming our real selves separately from other people, in order to from the connections we all want? Does anyone want to work with, or marry, or talk to, "just one of the crowd"? Don't we want to know individual men and women we don't meet every day?
How do solitary activities, and friendships outside any demographic categories into which we may be put, help us build healthy independence from groups?
Christianity is often supposed to remind Christians to recognize all the people with whom we interact as children of God. Has it had that effect?
How do relationships with other people suffer when people fail to maintain enough time and space for themselves?
Whether or not we notice it, being around other people is a source of physical stress. Failure to notice this stress is probably a reason why extroverts tend to age faster than introverts. How do we reduce this stress when we want to from "we" relationships? How do we reward respectful, friendly behavior and discourage pushy, outgoing behavior?
How does respect for others' privacy help build healthy relationships?
Hoe does respect for others'' property help build healthy relationships?
Even if people could be said to begin doing anything at the same beginning point, differences of abilities and priorities will always cause them to reach different end points. Once people learn to read, some choose to spend their lives in the world of books, and other read only when they have to read. When people are doing a paid job, not only their different abilities but also chance guarantee that they'll get different results much of the time. This is why so many people, not necessarily either White people or people who are generally regarded as privileged, oppose the idea of anyone trying to ensure "equality of outcome." Schemes to do that usually violate privacy, always violate property rights, and ensure unequal rewards for the work people have actually done. Then, on top of that, even if the workers who started at four o'clock p.m. get the same payment for the day's work as the ones who started at four a.m., by the next day their own choices will have produced even more different outcomes; one worker goes home, gets a good night's sleep, eats a good breakfast, and reports to work bright and early the next day, while another one goes out, gets drunk, sleeps late, and drags into the workplace late, feeling miserable. Moses said nothing about equality of outcomes or incomes, but merely told people to have fair, universal system of measurements they could use to agree on what things are worth. How does respect for individuals' differences help us overcome envy of the different sets of advantages and disadvantages that add up to some people's earning more money than others?
When people have, historically, treated each other as enemy tribes rather than individuals, and whole groups of people have had to live with the knowledge that their neighbors wanted them to be and remain disadvantaged, people in the victim group may grow up with twisted perceptions of differences. Suppose you, understand why it's fair and reasonable that Apple-Polisher Paul got a merit raise while Sluggish Sal got his hours cut back. Suppose further that, having reached this understanding since being born in the year 1900, you have always worked with your parents in a little general store in Greenwood, Oklahoma. Every morning as you rotate the stock and dust the shelves, you remember how at least one of your parents has been in this store for twelve hours a day for as long as you've been alive. You watched them expand and modernize the store. It has grown up along with you. You now hear people on the street pointing to your parents as an example of success. People come into the store and ask whether you might be planning to move away and let them take your job. You and your family earned this success; you deserve it; you fee good about enjoying it. You also hear some people muttering that your family have no right to be so successful when you're all Black. One night some of those people, and some of them don't even look particularly White to you, come out and set fire to the store. One day you were successful and prosperous; the next day you're waiting in line, with your overcoat buttoned around your pajamas, for a small dish of soup and a cot in the church basement. You had finished three years of a four-year degree program, and you know you're not going to be able to afford another year at college. You had nice new winter clothes you've never even worn, and if any of them survived the fire, you're trying to sell them. What happens to your sense of having earned what you have, now?
If you are in fact Black, or Cherokee, or Jewish, or Irish, or if you're a woman, how do you reconcile the fact that some individuals have treated/you or your ancestors unfairly with your own need to deal fairly with individuals here and now? What if you were qualified for a merit scholarship at a big-name university, but were not even admitted to the university because you're an introvert? What if you did a great job on the Republican campaign a few yers ago, and today you were passed over for a job without consideration because the boss is a Democrat? What, if anything, keeps you from becoming enmeshed in prejudice against a whole group of people where some people have treated you unfairly? Do you even want to be free from bigotry? If so, why?
Can anything be done to help people who want to spend their lives stuck in resentment of the bad things done by people who are now dead?
What are some ways we might want to choose to support members of our own demographic group, e.g., buying things from local independent businesses even if similar things may be cheaper at a big-chain store?
What are some ways group loyalties have led us to make decisions that were not in our best interest, e.g. trusting the word of a member of our group over the word of a member of some other group?
What are some ways thinking of the people around us as individuals, rather than groups, has contributed to healthy relationships with them?
If that's not already happening, what are some ways thinking of people as individuals, rather than groups, could contribute to healthy relationships with them in the future?
Friday, November 1, 2024
Pris's Problem
Gentle Readers, I want your advice about an unanticipated problem.
It seems that some people who came to blogging late did not want to work through those first few months when, no matter how many e-friends you have from other sites or even from real life, it takes people a while to remember where to find your blog, and so your hosting site tells you day after day that your last post has been read by two people, which is how many people the hosting site assigns to check on new blogs. Or they didn't trust sites like Blogspot, Live Journal, Weebly, Wix, etc., not to suppress their blogs for political reasons. So they put their blogs on Substack, which e-mails blog posts to followers.
In addition to some publishers, here are five writers I follow on Substack: David B. Clear, Tom Cox, Wu Fei, Robert Reich, Naomi Wolf There are others. Those are the first five that come to mind.
For those who don't know, a few words about each of the five:
David B. Clear: Young, hardworking, not rich. Laugh-out-loud funny. He and his wife have been living on a shoestring to pursue their dream of owning a building they can rent out as apartments. They had bought a building and started work on it when they were told that Fabi (the wife) had to keep on alone while DBC left the country due to visa regulations. They are a little older than The Nephews/ I recommend his blog to The Nephews because, in my twenties, I always liked to read about people in their twenties doing adult things successfully. No traditionally published books, records, or films so far. Web site.
Tom Cox: Middle-aged, "voicy" novelist with an eye for the details of the British landscape. Wrote a novel about a village from the viewpoint of the oldest living "villager," a tree. Witty. Probably hard to read if you don't remember the pop culture Britain exported in the 1960s; tremendous fun if you do. Owns a nice house in the country, near his parents' nice house in the country. Goodreads author page.
Wu Fei: Writes quirky innovative music mixing Chinese and other traditions, and blog posts about all the places to which she's subsidized to travel and perform it. Old enough to write good English, young enough to seem to enjoy a busy schedule. Doesn't sound rich (no whining about travel) but obviously has no financial hardships. Recorded music here.
Robert Reich: At 78, the oldest writer on this list, and rich. Retired from the Clinton Cabinet. Became BC's buddy in university, specifically on the ship to England when both went to Oxford as Rhodes Scholars. Almost always writes about politics as a traditional, sane Democrat being dragged by party loyalty into supporting Loony Lefties. Web site.
Naomi Wolf: Middle-aged, middle-class, comfortable enough to write about ideas rather than soliciting for work or writing about frugal life hacks. Has been known to post video of her reading the Bible aloud. Writes about women's and children's health issues with enough edge to be snubbed by Ds, but writes about hurt feelings not poverty. Goodreads author page.
So now you know I have a nice diverse reading list that represents different countries, ethnic groups, ages, sexes, religious identities and so on. This is not a problem. The writers my age or older have impressive lists. The one who's young enough to be my son will undoubtedly have an impressive list in another twenty years. All five of these writers send out one or more real original posts per week, free of charge. All also publish posts Substack sends to paid subscribers only. None of this is a problem.
The problem was this morning's e-mail: "Substack has gifted you with a free subscription to Robert Reich."
Why him? He's not the first writer I followed onto Substack, nor the one whose posts I'm most likely to share or discuss.
Because, of the five, he's been publishing longest and sold most books?
Because, as the oldest and richest of the five, he can afford to offer freebies to bloggers who are likely to link to one of those paid-subscribers-only posts and thus tell the world how good they are?
Because, as a teacher, he found one or more of my comments on his Substack "intelligent but uninformed" and thought I needed extra reading? Or listening--his subscriber-only posts include video conversations.
If I knew Reich ordered the offer himself, either to me or to his non-paying followers generally, I'd feel grateful, accept the offer, think "How nice," and have no problem.
My problem is that I suspect Substack thought free content from the biggest-name writer on my list would entice me to pay for things online, which is banned by contract, so don't even think about asking, and free content from a younger, needier writer would not. And that's the total opposite of how I work.
If someone wants to make a gift to me of a subscription to a paid Substack, which is nice, and recommended,,,it should be the Substack of a young, struggling writer who needs the money. Of the five on this list, it should be David B. Clear. No question.
Likewise, if someone wants to make a gift of a subscription to a Christian literary magazine--although I'd take The Christian Century or Sojourners willingly enough--it should be Plough. They all publish some jewels, some kernels, and some chaff, but like the young struggling writer Plough does more with less than the more establilshed magazines do.
What would you do, Gentle Readers? If "gifted with" a subscription to the writer or magazine on your list that needs the money least, would you just take it? Or would you try to change it and get a subsidized subscription to the one tht needs the money most?
Web Log for 10.31.24
Just a couple of quick, serious links...
Election 2024
Voting information for counties still affected by the hurricane:
Glyphosate Awareness
I don't think I've ever met Anna Lappe, but her parents, Marc and Frances Moore Lappe, did the research my parents presented to our neighbors, between 1967 and 1971, to make my neighborhood the healthy environment in which it was possible for me to survive even as "the Weepy Weed" I cheerfully called myself. I was one of the baby-boomers who had melodramatic asthma attacks as reactions to chlordane, a pleasant-smelling carcinogen people used to spray in the ludicrous hope of controlling roaches; it did not noticeably discourage roaches but did it ever make us ill. The senior Lappes were the pioneers who told people like my parents that chlordane was what was killing their children. And PARaquat was what was giving "Great-Uncle Park" PARkinson's Disease. And, generally, we'd all be better off if we just wrote off farms as a source of income for a few years, planted cover crops and regarded any actual crops as a party gift from Nature, took jobs in town, and just waited for organically grown crops to start growing again. And So It Was! For years every ear of corn seemed to have an earworm; we picked the corn, peeled the ears, cut off the bits with the caterpillars sliming around on them for the chickens and took the rest to the pony, or the cows after we'd all outgrown the pony...but every year, more and more of those years of organically grown, heirloom-breed corn were fit for human consumption. I know the horror with which farmers think about going organic. Been there, done that. And here I stand to testify that if you pay off any old loans and don't take out new ones you do, indeed, get the trophy.
But here's Anna Lappe's horrified lifelong Democrat's reaction to the news that...she can't bring herself to type it...during the Trump administration that corrupt EPA of Then cheerfully collaborated with the chemical industry to make an official enemies list, and yes, the Biden administration has maintained that list and added data about us for our enemies to use AT THE PUBLIC EXPENSE. But she can only bear to mention the Trump administration's role. My heart goes out to this stricken woman.
Only people whose children are grown and on their own should be publicly advocating a ban on spray poisoning. It really is that bad. Public pressure to stop funding this list won't keep our enemies from remembering our names. Young readers can still support Glyphosate Awareness...privately, by talking to friends offline, by buying clean food, by writing to your elected officials, and by voting for the candidate who's publicly promised to put RFK in charge of public health in the second Trump administration. I don't like the idea of voting for Trump any more than Anna Lappe does, but a vote for the Mean Girl is a vote for four more years of having poison deliberately sprayed at our windows from the road and not even being able to prosecute this violent crime. Trump is our only hope for making the companies wish they'd stopped producing paraquat the day Michael J. Fox was diagnosed and stopped producing glyphosate the day NIH posted the Samsel-Seneff report to their web site.
I want the corporations to stop manufacturing these poisons. I want public funding to be used to buy back these poisons and store them in lead-lined vaults as the weapons of war they are. I want the corporate executives to have to get down on their knees in court and sign over the controlling shares of stock in their corporations to those of us they have done grievous bodily harm; I mean, specifically, the individual shill who pooh-poohed my testimony about glyphosate with "So, you threw up," as if making people vomit were not a violent assault even if no internal bleeding was involved, gets to sign over his share of the company and his salary, to me, personally, and thank me for agreeing to let him sign on for heavily supervised work release picking insects off crops on a newly organic farm. I want those things enough that I can even watch the Orange One spewing disgusting orange rhetoric about border-jumping criminals, even when he's calling them "immigrants" which is the last thing they should ever be, and think...well, y'know, he has the courage of his convictions. Donald Trump was never known for physical courage before his reported religious conversion, so I suppose that conversion is real. He took a bullet and stood up again and promised to clean up our food system. Not only do I intend to vote for him; I would, by now, shake his hand.
Book Review: Sword of the Dead
Title: Sword of the Dead
Author: Morgan Rice
Date: 2023
Quote: "I want to do something important."
In the Greek myth, Persephone started out as the embodiment of springtime, child of the harvest goddess. Persephone was still an innocent child, kept away from humans to play at making flowers grow, when Pluto, the lord of the underworld, dragged her down into the land of the dead.
In this opening volume of a serial story, Princess Meredith is eighteen, and has fallen in love with Lance, a commoner who has fought his way into the king's guard, when Zander, the evil king of the underside of her fictional world, drags her down into his kingdom of nastiness. Lance is the first of the knights in the king's guard to volunteer to rescue her.
Meanwhile, a gang of thieves are plotting to attack Meredith's father's kingdom, two thieves are starting to think about rescuing Meredith, and Meredith's father himself may be dead. The last thing he knew was that a tree was about to fall on him; we're not told whether he was hurt or killed, Lance[s classic hero's journey has just reached the stage, relatively early on a full hero's journey, where the mentor is lost. And then the book ends, abruptly. You have to read at least one and probably more full-length novels to find out whether this story is going to resolve the way the Greek myth does or in some other way.
I like each volume in a series to end with a resolution of its own section of the plot. You may like books that end with a cliff-hanger, If so you're likely to enjoy this one; it's reasonably well written apart from what I call the major fault of endng in the middle of the story.
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