Book Review: Woodcraft

Title: Woodcraft

Author: William Gilmore Simms

Date: 1852 (reprinted 1983)

Publisher: New College & University Press

ISBN: 0-8084-0423-7

Length: 537 pages

Illustration: frontispiece drawing signed “Richard Bough”

Quote: “One hundred guineas...Porgy had not, himself, seen such an amount of cash, in one heap, during the last seven years!”

This once popular novel has had three titles, none very satisfactory. The Sword and the Distaff, the 1852 title, may have come closest; it was understood to mean “male and female,” and the story features both kinds of characters, mostly male. Hawks About the Dovecote might be said to reflect Porgy’s view of his struggle to keep his property, but there’s nothing dovelike about him. Woodcraft suggests skills that Porgy, as a fictional member of Marion’s troop in the Revolutionary War, might have demonstrated in the years before this novel, but the novel is mostly about his life on a well cleared plantation. Fair Fat and Forty may have been the best title this not-quite-romance had; that does at least describe the heroine, although she gets little ink in the story.

No publisher would touch Woodcraft if it were a new novel. Woodcraft is more readable than some novels of its vintage, but its interest today is mostly historic. It does, however, hold some interest as a male perspective on contemporary women’s issues.

While fighting in the Revolutionary War, Captain Porgy failed to pay what he owed to his money-grubbing neighbor McKewn. By the time he comes home from the war, McKewn has quietly seized most of Porgy’s slaves. Porgy is not much of a farmer. If his farm can be saved, it will be by the slaves, of whose heroics we hear little.

The novel begins in 1782, with the Widow Eveleigh (we’re never told either of the main characters’ given names) reclaiming legal rights to her slaves and Porgy’s from McKewn. The idea that women need male guardians to protect their financial interests, later to become law, is expounded at length by the foolish Sergeant Millhouse. Eveleigh is Simms’ example of a woman who needs no such thing. She has a son, on whom antifeminists of the day would have argued that she ought to be kept dependent. She is much, much more competent than he. However, when Porgy comes home, he and his former aides in military service, Millhouse and Frampton, are able to come to the rescue as McKewn and his hired goons try to recover the slaves from Eveleigh and her son, by strength of numbers.

In real life, would the slaves have had anything to say about being stolen by McKewn and company, or would they have been chained hand and foot? Chains are not mentioned but the slaves seem unable to move independently. Simms seems to imagine them as all being so thoroughly habituated to slavery that they don’t need to be chained, but will follow whatever sort of person is leading them.

In any case, after Eveleigh has recovered the legal title to the slaves, Porgy rescues them from being stolen by force. Porgy has brought almost nothing back from the war; Eveleigh restocks his plantation with provisions. She also buys his slaves and rents them back to him on favorable terms. Her heart, cackles Millhouse, is aching; even Tom the house slave agrees that she’s making sheep’s eyes at Porgy. There is general agreement that Porgy’s excessive height and rum-barrel figure are considered repulsive, but Eveleigh, who is big enough that she and McKewn agree she could beat McKewn in a fair fight, may be willing to forgive him for shortcomings she apparently shares.

More to the point, Porgy can’t bear the idea of marrying a woman to whom he is financially obligated. The mere fact that marrying Eveleigh would secure his property against McKewn’s claims, or perhaps the fact that Millhouse keeps nagging him about it, puts him off her. His neighbors include another widow, the mother of Frampton’s fiancée. The Widow Griffin is a mousy little thing who has none of Eveleigh’s wit and experience. That, in itself, appeals to Porgy. He is intelligent enough not to share Millhouse’s view that women can’t be competent to provide for themselves, but testosterone-damaged enough to prefer the kind who are. He is attracted to both women, but determined to rebuild his family’s estate by himself, without the help of either, before he proposes to either one. Mrs. Griffin doesn’t get a speaking part but does, toward the end, get kissed.

For readers on the “sword side” of the house, Woodcraft is a fantastic story of a period in American history where an anarchical type could feed legal documents to the deputy sheriff and defy his creditors. Porgy does that, and he’s mildly funny about it—though nowhere near as funny as the fictional characters Charles Watson, introducing Woodcraft in 1983, compared him to, Shakespeare’s Falstaff, Sterne’s Toby, or Stowe’s St Clare. His success, without having to acknowledge Eveleigh’s help so far as marrying her, owes more to time and Simms’ estimate of readers’ patience than to plausibility as a strategy, even in 1782.

For readers on the “distaff side,” Woodcraft is an apology for a particularly idiotic piece of contemporary law. By 1852 women did, in fact, have to share their property with male “guardians,” and Woodcraft is a long way of saying “Yes, we men must admit that some women are competent, but we don’t liiike it when they are.” That Eveleigh’s heroics inspire scant gratitude in Porgy, Millhouse, Frampton, Tom, or even young Arthur Eveleigh, was instructive to Victorian ladies. Rather than being lauded as a real patriot who’s willing to repay her debt to veterans, Eveleigh is taunted about taking an inappropriate personal interest in Porgy.

The slaves...well, if Porgy doesn’t like a prospective wife who can really stand beside him as a friend and partner, you know he wouldn’t tolerate that sort of slave, now would he? Porgy tells Tom to his face that he’ll kill Tom rather than surrender Tom to McKewn; there’s no serious consideration that Tom might want to be free, as in fact, when asked, he knows enough to tell Porgy he doesn’t.

There were, in historical fact, many slaves like Tom. Born in North America, they knew they had no homes in Africa. They were told that they had no chance of making homes for themselves in America, either, except as slaves. In fact free Black people did own homes and earn living in some States, in Canada, or in the western territories, but slaves were not usually told about them. What the slaves saw every day were their own neighborhoods, where the rich White slaveholders held one another’s “property rights” supreme and the poor White class loathed their enslaved competitors. Many of them had little hope, and in fact not much chance, of eating as regularly if free as they did while enslaved. The Uncle Pokealong legend explains some of the slaves who, in 1852, were saying they didn’t want to be free, but in 1872 plenty of slaves who really didn’t see much hope in freedom were still working for token wages on the old plantations.

Porgy is, Simms admits, not much good for anything but combat. He threatens to work on his own farm; we never see him doing it. He dreams of making his farm profitable; we never see him doing that either. (In fact, Watson informs readers, Simms wrote five other novels in which Porgy appeared as a minor character, and those novels supported Simms’ assessment of his antihero. Porgy’s father knew how to make something of a plantation. Porgy lacks his father’s fortitude of character. He’s big and strong enough to intimidate any man he chooses to fight, even at forty-five, but not strong enough to get out and work a field. He defeats McKewn, not by any positive virtue, but by McKewn’s being too mean to live.

Nevertheless, Simms seems to say, slavery-ridden South Carolina was America! People rose or fell by merit or the lack of it! For Porgy and Eveleigh and the other adults there’s little hope; the older generation is represented solely by one old slave; but the teenagers, as represented by the son of the richest family and the “beautiful, innocent” daughter of the trashiest family Porgy knows, will have better lives than any of their parents had, because they deserve them. Simms was romanticist enough to believe in human progress.

Book Review: M F

(So this is the first book review on the stack of drafts...the book was sold long ago, and this review didn't rate it worth restocking, so the only reason for posting it is that This Web Site Will Bring You A Book Review A Day, Come Flood Come Fire.)

Title: MF

Author: Anthony Burgess

Date: 1971

Publisher: Knopf

ISBN: 0-394-43608-3

Length: 242 pages

Quote: “I’m due tonight to be married by a circus clown to my own sister.”

In this novel the author of A Clockwork Orange displays his erudition by confecting one of the world’s most elaborate, sophisticated, slip-it-past-the-folks-in-Rio-Linda dirty jokes. Before the Internet, baby-boomers used to have a consensus of opinion that it was nicer to laugh at dirty jokes than at mean ones, so books like MF were fashionable. Fashions change.

For those of us who prefer clean jokes, Burgess thoughtfully made the central character a bit of an expert on complicated jokes and riddles. So I found much to laugh at in this book—his throwaway lines. Nevertheless I found the central joke, which is about incest and not very cleverly plays on the double meaning of “MF,” a bit of a downer.

If you enjoy James Joyce, you’ll enjoy this simpler work that seems to be a tribute to Ulysses. If you didn’t like Ulysses you probably won’t like MF either.

Caffeine, Potassium, and Kujichagulia

I wanted this post to go live while some people Out There are still thinking about our Swahili word for this week. I meant it to be posted on 12.29.24. Due to mouse bounce, it was buried as if it had been posted on 12.22.24. While I was in the process of fixing this, the electricity went off...the Cat Sanctuary hadn't seen heavy rain, but it had been rainy, and the wind blew through trees further up the mountain. So here I am at McDonald's, trying to find a way to report the outage, and McDonald's Internet connection is feeble, which is not giving much hope for the chance of my coming home to a warm (or at least unfrozen) house. Anyway, here is the Sunday post, belatedly.

Kamala Harris released a video that reminded me that it's ku-ji-cha-gu-li-a, no real stressed syllable as in English, so that the Swahili word can sound to Americans like "Kuji Chagu Lia." Everybody probably knows a person called Lia or Leah, at least the well-preserved actress Leah Remini, so they may associate this word with that person. I tend to let kujichagulia rhyme with "Julia," which gives the word a clueless American accent. 

Some readers dislike Kwanzaa. A meme that was going around last week supposedly polled people, "Which holiday is real: Kwanzaa, Juneteenth, or Toyotathon?" and 88% of respondents said Toyotathon. As a guess this poll was taken at a Toyota dealership. That's not what this post is about. (The position of this web site is that we all wish everyone happy holidays, whichever of the dozens of winter holidays they may or may not observe.)

Some point out that Kwanzaa is an awfully new tradition, founded by a man who some believe was guilty of kidnapping and torture during the 1960s color war, and who is still a race bigot. Dr. Karenga is an old man and, if he did the things for which he spent time in jail, he needs to repent, lest the Whirling Blender Blades of Justice for Domestic Violence come after him. That's his problem. That's not what this post is about. (The question was raised whether Kamala Harris could possibly have observed Kwanzaa as a child. I could believe it. Very few people our age heard of Kwanzaa as children but Harris's father was politically sympathetic to Dr. Karenga, so the Harris sisters might have been among the first.)

Ishmael Reed, who I'm glad to see is still formidable at age 86, used to point out some things about Swahili and challenge his Black students to learn Yoruba, which is much more difficult for English speakers to learn. Well, there are a lot of African languages a person might choose to learn, most of them more challenging than Swahili. If you feel drawn to an African language that your ancestors may have spoken, you might want to visit that country and celebrate their special days. That's beyond the scope of this web site so it's not what this post is about, either. 

This post is about a misstep one of our leaders is making, at a time when people across the nation are thinking about the virtue it violates. RFK didn't consult this web site about this idea:

https://pjmedia.com/chris-queen/2024/12/27/rfk-takes-on-big-soda-n4935471

The total ban on poison sprays needs to come first. When the supposedly "healthier" choices are full of glyphosate, soda pop is health food (adding needed calories to my diet of mostly chickweed in the 2010s, e.g.). 

"But it's not that bad now, is it? People can eat oranges and drink water now, can't they?"

At this time of year, they have that option, if it works for them. Maybe it does; maybe it doesn't. Oranges seem to trap most glyphosate residues in the peels; orange peels used to be the ultimate winter sweet treat with immune-boosting power trapped under the sugar. Now orange peels are toxic waste but oranges are safe to eat. Still, I can't say what works for you. You can't say what works for me. This happens to be the time of year when some of us, whatever the faults of the writer who started the tradition, reflect on the value of kujichagulia, self-determination. Self-determination means we focus on making our choices for ourselves and not interfering with other people's choices.

However nutritious a food item might be, if one person tells another person to eat it, that is not healthy. 

However junky or indigestible it might be, if one person tells another person not to eat it, that is not healthy.

It's not healthy to allow anyone to be a food bully or a food nanny. If somebody says "Ooohhh, don't drink soda pop, it's ba-a-a-ad for you," that person badly needs to see you chug a big bottle of soda pop in that person's face.

I, personally, do drink water. I have this terribly cute little family ritual of sharing bottled water with the cats. As a frugal choice I'd say you can filter your own tap water cheaper than you can buy pre-filtered tap water, on which corporations are making a killing. As a personal choice, well, I brought in a bottle of water on a day when coolness really was worth paying for, poured out about a tablespoonful for a long-ago cat called Ivy, and thus started a tradition of sharing a bottle of water with the cats. So now the cats and I get Pure Life water delivered to the front gate, and we do indeed share it and like it. 

One day this week, I was out in the yard. There'd been a lot of rain and not much evaporation. There were natural puddles of water, as well as cans trapping water in the recycling. The cats had lots of natural water options. And they nonverbally said to me, "Aren't you going to sit down on the steps, pour water into dishes for us, sip the rest of the water while we drink our portions, and spend a few minutes petting each of us in turn? It's not cold today! The water won't freeze!"

Earlier in the week they had had to keep licking at the ice that kept forming on a big bowl of rain water, keeping a hole through which they could slurp up a little cold water.

I said, "You have water."

They said, "But that's not the kind of water we share with you! Please, we want to share a bottle of water with you again! Mew mew mew!"

It's about the sharing. They like their Pure Life water, and don't anybody start nagging and nannying about the plastic bottles it comes in. You, too, can use plain water to start a bonding ritual with furred or feathered friends. If you don't want to buy bottles, use a special glass or pitcher that never touches your mouth to avoid sharing any cross-species disease germs.

And then again I also like liquids that have some flavor, as all humans on Earth always have done, and in that category, the liquids we need to worry about are the naturally fermented kind that smell so disgusting (to me, anyway) that it ought to be obvious that nature intended them to be used as cleaning fluid, but some people drink them. Some people become addicted to drinking them. Experience teaches us that scratching the surface of a whine about how much soda pop Americans drink usually uncovers someone trying to sell those nasty fermented things to Americans instead.

As a healthier alternative to foul stuff like beer and wine, we in the Southern States drink soda pop. I buy it, I sell it, I serve it, I thank God for it. We should be celebrating the drinks Southerners invented to encourage people to make healthier beverage choices. I don't currently buy the big-name brands of soda pop because they've doubled their prices for no valid reason but greed, but I do salute Coca-Cola, Pepsi, RC, Dr Pepper, Mountain Dew, Mello Yello, Sundrop, and Sunkist for their role in building a culture of sobriety.

We in the United States need to support our culture of sobriety and help Europeans to understand that if they, too, can choose coffee and soda pop over wine and beer, they may be able to progress beyond their culture of tribal warfare and live like civilized human beings. We need to be stepping back, looking at Russia and Ukraine, and asking, "How much of that could be avoided if those wretched people had learned to drink civilized beverages with their meals? When will Europeans stop poisoning themselves with alcohol and start drinking soda pop...since they, poor creatures, no longer have the option of drinking good clean water, having polluted all their springs."

And although we need to be offering more positive encouragement for people to break that welfare addiction that causes them to quit jobs for which they've been hired, punishing welfare addicts for the food choices they make is not going to help with that. 

"They come in with their food stamps and take a shopping cart," said an employee of a store that has room for two small shopping carts, "and fill that cart with soda pop and energy drinks. They don't buy bread, meat, potatoes..."

I said, "Wait a minute. They are trying to support your store because they appreciate your being in their neighborhood! So what are they finding in your store? What do you sell? Candy and chips, soda pop and tobacco! Gas for cars and snacks for humans are all very well, but many's the time I've wanted to buy food for a few days in your store, and the pickings are not merely slim. They are skeletal. Where is the rice? Where are the beans? Where are the canned goods, like tomatoes and pineapple? When was the last time I saw a sack of potatoes in your store? I don't buy bread, but do you ever sell bread? More often than not, whatever kind of fresh fruit is in season, because you don't have a steady flow of sales for fresh fruit you don't buy very much very often, and all you have in there are a couple of green bananas! You buy a bunch of green bananas and hope to sell them before they turn brown, but surely you know that, if most White people eat a banana that's not turned brown, their whole family will complain." (My husband always had a bunch of bananas in the kitchen, and there might have been two or three times, in ten years, when he let one of those bananas ripen to a stage where I could eat it.) "How can you blame the people who buy junkfood with food stamps when they are trying to be neighborly and trade in a store that hardly ever sells anything but junkfood?!"

That was a few years ago. When I'm in that store, I try, if I have a dollar or two to spare, to buy a can  just to encourage them to keep cans of beans, corn, and tomatoes on the shelves. They do not sell those things at the Wal-Mart price. Well, that wouldn't be very profitable for them, would it, when they buy the beans at Wal-Mart. They don't send the delivery truck all the way to Sam's Club. They do not buy in sufficient bulk to make it profitable to have an account at Sam's Club. So I nag them, and when I can I encourage them, just to have cans of vegetables in the store at all. But what move fast enough that they don't have to sell stale, dusty containers at half price are still those bottled drinks. There is no need to be hypocritical about this. Anybody who gets $200 in food stamps and says to perself, "I'm going to spend $50 at the neighborhood convenience store," is going to buy a load of bottled drinks. And we as a society need to be giving thanks that that person is choosing non-addictive, American-made soda pop over vile, addictive European beverages.

Anybody telling that food stamp shopper to drink water...deserves to have a strip of tape with "ELITIST SNOB & BIGOT" printed on it, slapped across per mouth. While peeling off the sticky tape, they should be rehearsing a speech along the lines of "May God have mercy on this misguided soul. What has this servant been spared to buy from Your Kindness, paying cash? This servant needs a hundred dollars' worth now." If anything is going to nudge that poor addict to break the addiction and get back into the healthy American habit of earning money and paying cash, it'll be showing respect for the person's self-determination at the point where it can be helpful to a person who wants to build self-determination.

Bottom line: government's attempt to tell people how to be healthy has been a world-class epic fail in the past five years. Robert Kennedy may be the Chieftain of Glyphosate Awareness but most welfare addicts don't have Glyphosate Awareness; to them even Kennedy is just another rich person, and if he's telling them not to buy something they like, that's an old rich White man who does not look or sound very healthy, himself, meddling with THEIR choices...this is not going to end well. He should just drop this bad idea and focus on laying the foundation for the change that will make it possible for those welfare addicts to discover that they can, once again, have a V8 and not feel any sicker than they would after having a Pepsi.

(Ohhh, V8 nostalgia. My father used to like V8. He'd send me to the store to buy cases of it and give a few cans to the driver to show her family how delicious it was. V8 was a savory tomato juice enriched with potassium-loaded vegetables, so the sodium and potassium balanced and replenished what you'd lost from sweat on a hot day. In the present century those vegetables have been sprayed with glyphosate, and people I've seen still trying to drink V8 have not kept  it down.)

Coca-Cola is big because, more than a hundred years ago, the product's founders offered the world a very good idea--a sweet, convenient drink that tasted better than wine and offered a healthier, milder caffeine boost than coffee. In its place that's still a good thing.

The trouble is that, because Coke used to be cheap, people were drinking it instead of water or milk, and now that it's no longer so cheap people are in the habit of drinking Coke instead of water or milk. Those people are being exploited. Often they would feel better if they drank water instead of Coke; often they're getting more caffeine than they need and not even feeling the "lift" because they're hypernatremic. Hypernatremia means too much sodium (from soda pop and salt in food) in the blood. It feels like major depression, a headache, fatigue--like a howling need for caffeine, but it's not relieved by drinking more Coke. It's relieved (slowly) by drinking water and (faster) by eating some raw greens or a banana, something with potassium in it. People who can afford to live in the city neighborhood where they can walk to Whole Foods can demonstrate this effect, even in the ghetto. If the greens (in a window box) or the banana (at the convenience store) have not been available in the ghetto, once ghetto people experience the benefit of them, they will be. There is the real benefit to poor people's health that a misguided better-off person wanted to feel good about bringing to the ghetto neighborhood. 

But the way to make that benefit available is so-o-o-o not to say, imperiously or condescendingly, "You should not drink Coke." Sometimes, for their own purposes, people should drink Coke. Poor people need to stay awake at least as much as rich people do. Other times, when they should drink water and eat raw greens, they should have been exposed to the knowledge that that is a quick, easy, cheap way some people can feel a great deal better in minutes. But nobody needs to tell them which of those two choices to make or whether to make some other one. Kujichagulia! In order to get the full benefit of the healthy choice, they need to make it themselves.

The role of ordinary people in the Glyphosate Awareness movement is to demonstrate and publicize the benefit eating raw greens used to have, and can have again, when the greens aren't poisonous. The role of government is simply to stop the greens being poisoned, and then get out of the way and let people exercise their self-determination in discovering the benefits of, once again, having access to clean, healthy greens.

Butterfly of the Week: Glassy Bluebottle

Today's butterfly is Graphium cloanthus, the Glassy Bluebottle. "Bluebottle" was the traditional English name for a kind of fly with patches of color like old blue glass bottles and jars. Glass bottles and jars were already available in other colors, including whitish "milk" glass, so when Australians and New Zealanders applied "bluebottle" to a family of butterflies they included those colors too.

Photo by Woodpecker Central. 

Cloanthus was the name of a character in ancient literature. In the Aeneid, he was a defeated Trojan who moved to Italy and became the ancestor of the Cluentius family. Early naturalists had a tradition of naming Swallowtails after characters in literature.

Photo from Wikidata. 

Found in several parts of southern Asia, this butterfly is common and popular. Its likeness appears on shirts, posters, etc., and has even been used on money. Efforts have been made to map its DNA: 

. 

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/3D-chromatin-structure-of-Graphium-cloanthus-genome-a-Interaction-map-of-Hi-C-data-in_fig2_382593795

Apart from that paper, Google pulls up little scientific material about this species. What comes up is an almost even mix of pretty pictures of adult butterflies, merchandise decorated with such pictures, and actual dead bodies offered for sale. An additional reason never to pay for any part of a dead butterfly is that, if no one would pay for dead bodies, searches for information about butterflies would be much more pleasant.

"Swallow tails" vary in length. Wingspan can be four inches or just over. Males and females look very much alike. Head and thorax segments are covered in soft mouse-gray fur. Abdominal segments have black and white lengthwise stripes. Males have scent folds. The predominant color of the wings is iridescent and can look blue, aquamarine, white, green, or yellow in different lights. 

Slight differences in color markings are classified as subspecies clymenus and sumattranus, sometimes kuge. 

The  butterflies are primarily pollinators, often seen on lantana and hibiscus flowers. They sip water from shallow puddles, sometimes in groups. While some Graphiums don't seem to care who shares a puddle and some like to be the only one of their sex and species in the neighborhood, cloanthus seem to prefer to flock together with other cloanthus. 

Caterpillars are typically well camouflaged with leaf-green skins and a humpbacked, tapered body shape. They eat the leaves of vines in the genus Aristolochia, species acuminata, foveolata, indica, ringens, and tagala. They have also been found on camphor trees.

Photo by Tony2148. Descriptions of juvenile cloanthus sound almost identical to descriptions of juvenile choredon except that the final tail segments of choredon caterpillars are a forked pair of little prickly points, while those of cloanthus are closer together and look like a single point. Graphium caterpillars are not venomous but some of them are prickly, like cucumbers. The humped back has a horizontal crossbar between two little prickles. The osmeterium actually appears, when it does, a couple of segments ahead of the crossbar but the crossbar becomes even more prominent, forming the points at the top of the chrysalis, in the pupal stage.

The life cycle of such a popular butterfly has to have been documented somewhere, but it doesn't seem to have been digitized. 

Book Review: Cloistered

Title: Cloistered

 Author: Catherine Coldstream

Date: 2024

Publisher: St Martin's

ISBN: 978-1-250-32352-1

Quote: "Safe, safe, safe--I am safe, I keep repeating to myself."

Catherine Coldstream was a nun for a few years. Then she wasn't one. Having "married Christ" in the ceremony of "clothing" in the Carmelite convent, Sister Catherine discovered that she wasn't really cut out for a really cloistered life. In an order where nuns had regular jobs, teaching or nursing, I suspect she might have done as well as Kathleen Norris. Among the Carmelites, where sensitive emotional women paid for the freedom to put their emotional energy into contemplative prayer by mortifying and repressing their emotions, she was bored.

So, is this one of the new genre of ex-Christian books? Coldstream doesn't say. Sister Catherine didn't run away from faith; she ran away from a dead-end job. However, her description of a communal life that was not working out to the glory of God can be usefully contrasted with Norris's description of a communal life that apparently is. Norris's monk and nun friends live in an intentional community with the intention of making a place where they can retire when unfit to work, but they work, use their education, and continue to learn, and by and large they seem to get along well with one another and their monastic life. Coldstream's sisters live in an intentional community that seems designed only to care for people who are unfit to work, feel "infantilized," and seem faced with a choice between leaving, having psychotic breakdowns, or becoming neurotic and repulsive. It's hard to question that, for Coldstream and others who were capable of doing something productive, leaving the convent was the sanest of the choices. It's also possible to read her story with attention to what intentional communities (religious or otherwise) need to avoid. 

I suspect some will want to use this book as a basis for bashing Christianity. It will not serve that purpose well. It's a Sunday Book, at this web site, because it describes vividly and objectively what is not working for Coldstream's Carmelites, and thus helps people who want to live in communities (or in families) think about what might work for them.

(Fair disclosure: I received copies of this book--copies, plural--in exchange for an honest review. They were all e-books; I can't even sell them. They were supposed to be formatted for Kindle, but first there were months when none of them got through into my Kindle, and then, after it was too late to write Advance Reviews for the publisher, three of them got into my Kindle. I've tried deleting the extras; Amazon staff have tried deleting the extras; they don't stay deleted. A suggestion for improving this situation is that publishers and authors may overestimate the interest people have in stealing manuscripts, and Net Galley may feed that overestimation in order to market their own peculiar "app."  Someone somewhere will steal anything, but there can't be very many people who want to steal a book about nuns. Ordinary formatting would have served everyone involved much better than "secure" formatting did.)

Web Log for 12.24-26.24

Happy holidays, Gentle Readers...they're not over. The traditional Christmas season lasts twelve days and overlaps with minor holidays like Boxing Day, New Year's Day, Short Films Day (a secular alternative to Holy Innocents Day, on the 28th of December), and National Braille Day (4th of January). 

Books 

https://wendy-welch.com/2024/12/24/the-monday-book-toto-by-aj-hackwith/

Christmas, Ongoing

Why The Nephews did not get cars: Nobody wanted to provoke this kind of hysterics (the last video, at the end).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVseZH8p38I&t=689s

Computer Graphics 

Take your time, the actual post is sweet and heartwarming, but what I wanted to share was THE ULTIMATE computer graphic at the bottom of the comments section. Best use of standard computer characters as a drawing ev-ah.

https://curiousasacathy.com/keeping-baby-warm/

Fashion

I found it at Messy Mimi's blog. Google traces it to someone called Heavendancer on Pinterest.

Food (Yuck) 

Last winter I mentioned having unusual reactions to peas and pea products. 

https://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2024/03/status-update-visualize-giving-possum.html

A reader I didn't want either to snub, or to mislead, had to ask: Have other people had such reactions?

Very few, it seemed, at the time--though my reactions were so new-to-me I didn't feel isolated by other people's lack of reactions to peas. In September of 2023 I ate peas and liked them, as I'd done for fifty-some years. In October and November the store ran out of peas, and when the store restocked and I ate the new crop of peas, I had vertigo after eating them. 

I had the funniest feeling, at the time, that I was reacting to a new chemical or spliced-in gene--that if they'd been the same kind of peas I used to raise, I would have been able to enjoy them as much as I ever did.

But I'm mortal and fallible and wanted to see some evidence before I said that.

Now the evidence is there. 

Doctors who don't want to hurt the feelings of any corporate sponsors have resolutely reframed what they've seen as mere "food allergies," never suggesting that chemicals added to food might be to blame, but new cases of "pea allergies" popped up in a few places in 2021 and increased dramatically in 2023. 

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11364600/

Google now has a few pages of links to pages specifically about "pea allergies." Most of those pages were created during the current calendar year. 

The best thing that can happen to farmers who've been raising toxic foodoids and selling them for use as food would be to find the toxic foodoid substances gathering dust on store shelves, being collected and burned, because We The People stop believing that we've suddenly become isolated "allergy" sufferers when, in fact, food has been made toxic.

This does not leave us with a lot of choices about what to eat. Inevitably people buy the toxic "food" products that our systems seem, for now, to tolerate. I bought another case of corn that probably has BT spliced into it this week. I'll never forget the year when about the only road food I could tolerate was Planters peanuts--which are delicious, and which also, like all peanuts that make it into supermarkets without half of them showing black rot, have been marinated in fungicides. Because black rot is equally toxic, we as a society may be stuck with regulatory requirements that peanuts be made toxic to a minority in order to be useful to the majority. But corn would do just fine without BT if people would rotate and alternate plantings, give up poison sprays, and get through the years when recovering fields produce more earworms than edible corn. Peas would still be a healthy nourishing food, and a soul food for those of British descent I might add, if whatever has recently been done to them weren't done again. We need to start looking at the "pesticides" and any genetic modifications that have been done as PRIME suspects when the population suddenly breaks out with a previously unheard-of "allergy." It's not a "food allergy" and it will be more common, and worse, every year until people stop raising these toxic peas.

Petfinder Post: When Shelter Staff Run Out of Pet Names

This week's theme comes from Messy Mimi, an actual shelter worker who posted a photo of names allegedly given to some shelter pets, thusly...

The thinking is that it's easier to keep records of shelter animals if they're given names, although in most cases the animals did not have those names before and never recognize them as being names. So...

Sometimes a shelter animal does clearly recognize and respond to a name, and staff will advise you not to change it. Other times, if you pick a name you prefer, whether it has a similar sound or doesn't, the animal will learn that that's your name for it, and respond to the new name. Sometimes the reason why animals get into shelters is that they're not very good at recognizing or responding to anything humans say. 
 

But will we ever learn the fate of the poor little kittens, Sed, Ig, Met, and Dwayne? Here's a selection of adorable, adoptable shelter pets who have been given peculiar names. Three cats, three dogs...

Cat in Zipcode 10101: Portico from NYC 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/portico-72531043/ny/new-york/aspca-ny29/

A portico is a roof supported by columns, used as a porch on a building. The rationale for calling a cat that is that it sounds like "calico." Portico is an adult cat who can be shy with new people, and can any shelter cat be blamed for that. Instead of being displayed to the public in a row of cages, which has to be torture for cats, she's being brought out to people who chat with her handlers on Zoom, which seems like an expensive way to set up a lot of interviews that are likely not to work. This web site does not recommend showing your face on the Internet. Knowing that some people do that, this web site reports that Portico is currently in the custody of that kind of people.

Cat in Zipcode 20202: Earthworm from DC 

His web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/earthworm-73731485/dc/washington/lucky-dog-animal-rescue-dc20/

They say he wiggles. The photo shows that he can do a good eyeroll! Though photographed in a cage and described as a kitten, he's said to be currently in a foster home and old enough to be adopted for the lower near-adult-cat price.

Cat in Zipcode 30303: 57508512 from Atlanta 

https://www.petfinder.com/cat/57508512-74475559/ga/atlanta/fulton-county-animal-services-ga217/

They've given him a number for a name, twang, twang. All they've bothered to tell prospective adopters about him is that he was an adult tomcat, and he has been neutered. It's a county shelter. Nobody's paying them to put any effort into finding homes for the animals they get.

Dog in Zipcode 10101: Disco Queen from Texas by way of NYC 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/disco-queen-tx-72460978/ny/new-york/rescue-dogs-rock-nyc-ny1274/

They could have called her "One for St. Jude." This dog was dumped out at a shelter in Texas. A lean figure with a tapered waist is normal for her breed, but not that skinny. They thought she was ten years old. That might have been based on her medical condition after living a hard life, because police-type dogs don't normally live ten years and this dog is still alive. This web site thinks it would be terrific if somebody wanted to give her a good old age, but this web site does not actually expect to see that happen. So...something about her reminded somebody of a young chick who likes to dance? ???

Dog in Zipcode 20202: Squidword from Texas by way of DC or maybe Richmond... 

His web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/squidword-73420416/dc/washington/gracies-project-tx2503/

...is like a dictionary definition of Buying a Pig in a Poke. Somebody wants to travel, right? Somebody wants you to fund their road trip before you ever have a chance to verify that you are paying for an actual dog, much less that the dog will get along well with you. They say he's a cuddly pet, but they don't say you can confirm this firsthand? If interested in rescuing this dog I'd insist on meeting him where he is and paying a reasonable price that does not fund any road trips for any con artists, but it's not the dog's fault. Anyway, although I think I remember the name from an old cartoon some of The Nephews used to watch, it's a ridiculous name.

Dog in Zipcode 30303: 57521942 from Atlanta 

His web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/57521942-74519308/ga/atlanta/fulton-county-animal-services-ga217/

Nobody's bothered to give him a name or a story, either.

Book Review: Unfinished Tales

Title: Unfinished Tales

Author: J.R.R. Tolkien with Christopher Tolkien

Date: 1980

Publisher: Allen & Unwin (U.K.), Ballantyne (U.S.)

ISBN: 0-345-35711-6

Length: 493 pages

Quote: “I now wish that no appendices had been promised...It is, I suppose, a tribute to the curious effect that a story has, when based on very elaborate and detailed workings, of geography, chronology, and langauge, that so many should clamour for sheer ‘information,’ or ‘lore.’”

In the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Tolkien had worked out an unusually complete and complex fictional world, with its own history, literature, and languages. He had written some of these down, some in the form of short stories, some in syllabic verse like Beowulf. For some readers, he understood, the trilogy with its companion novel The Hobbit was quite enough. As his son warns in a foreword that includes the quote from one of J.R.R. Tolkien’s letters, above, many Rings fans “do not wish to know how the Riders of the Mark of Rohan were organized, and would leave the Wild Men of the Druadan Forest firmly where they found them.” But others did, and though he hadn’t polished these supplementary tidbits of the history of Middle-Earth for publication, Tolkien did intend to make them available, a job he left for Christopher Tolkien to finish.

That’s what you’ll like or not like about Unfinished Tales. The stories are “finished” enough to be readable, but not polished into the excellence Tolkien’s published fiction achieves. Sometimes blank lines and changes of font, such as Blogger likes to insert into anything uploaded as a Word document, are used to show where the last page of Tolkien’s draft ended and Christopher Tolkien could fill in where the story was meant to end from his father’s notes. Other stories seem to be complete but unpolished.

They’re not great stories. They are long historical and biographical footnotes on the Rings trilogy and The Silmarillion.

We learn that the Wild Men of the Druadan Forest are “a wholly different kind” of humans than either Dwarves or Hobbits, though, like them, smaller than he humanoid race most like ourselves. Though depicted with love and respect they seem based on a generic Edwardian British impression of “primitive people” (or “natives” in the colonies). Their language seems Celtic. Their culture seems a conscious rejection of the “civilizations” of Hobbits and Riders, recalling Native American cultural purists, or European Gypsies. The other humans of Middle-Earth are nicer to them than Tolkien’s generation of Englishmen were even to Irishmen, much less “natives” in the colonies. I read them as expressing an attitude of Tolkien’s that is not racism, although the young will probably assume from the inclusion of mere words that it is racism, but is simply Ignorance. 

For Tolkien all “primitive people” were evidently a source of numinous wonderment. He knew nothing about any culture more “primitive” than what mere poverty imposed on his Irish coevals. He respected “natives” enough not to go out to the colonies and annoy them with sentimental drivel about living among them. His Druedain, like the “Indians” in Peter Pan, have nothing to say about colonialism’s oppression of “primitive” people, though they express the consciousness of someone prepared to sympathize with “primitive” people when “primitive” people started talking in English about that oppression. The Druedain’s propensity for sitting on the ground in deep meditation for days is not a reaction to loss or to exotic diseases. They do it because, while being left in peace to remain “primitive” and having never built up the vulnerability that is the long-term product of full “herd immunity” to diseases, they feel like working out something in their minds and have no obligations to finish jobs first. They are the kind of semi-feral tribe Edwardian children had in mind when apparently almost all of them said, or thought, “I wish I was an ‘Indian,’ ancient Celt, Aborigine, etc., and didn’t have to wear shoes, go to school, be on time, etc.”

In the Rings books Galadriel, though still beautiful and in full command of the various powers, is white-haired and (Elves being longer-lived than humans) several centuries old. There are hints of past dramas in her youth. Tolkien had more than one try at writing those dramas and wrote them in different, conflicting ways, none of which apparently satisfied him.

Other dramatic legends of Middle-Earth’s past are at least fully sketched, though not in a fashion that would have satisfied Tolkien. There are cautionary legends, the tragic results of a quarrel and the short unhappy lives of a couple who inadvertently committed incest. There are lists of monarchs and court histories. There are battles and hero tales. There are maps, too, and etymological notes on words and names in the Elvish languages. If you like that sort of thing you must have Unfinished Tales and, if not, you’ve been warned.

Book Review: Irrelevant

Title: Irrelevant 

Author: Sara Addison-Fox

Date: 2019

ISBN: 978-0-9951188-2-9

Quote: "I'm not supposed to be nervous about the day I take my Relevance Test, but I am."

Does Relevance mean intelligence? Competence? Not...exactly. It turns out to mean something more like "ability to function as part of a totalitarian government." 

The narrator of that passage (this is one of those books where two narrators take turns, and they sound exactly alike) is Mallory. Addison-Fox obviously believes Mallory is autistic. Young people like Mallory accept the label "autistic" so they can get pensions but, even though Mallory does show a few reactions that suggest some brain trauma in her past, she's not disabled in any way. She's very sensitive to others' "feelings" as well as her own, and there's nothing abnormal about her "feelings." Anyone who remembers that "autistic" literally means disabled by having perceptions so skewed that one fails to learn to communicate even basic approval and disapproval with other people, by being a person who's likely to fall over sidewise if spoken to unexpectedly or howl with pain at the touch of water, will cry foul to Mallory's even claiming that label for herself, much less anyone else telling her that it describes her. 

Mallory is an intelligent eighteen-year-old with a conscience and a habit of rocking back and forth when crying, visualizing a friendly flying dragon when distraught. She fails the Relevance Test because, when asked what she'd do in various job situations, she gives answers indicating that she'd think for herself rather than obey or conform. She's not allowed to go home, but dumped outside the city walls into a little community of fellow Irrelevants. None of them shows any evidence of brain trauma, though the author evidently thinks they're autistic too. 

Real autism, the falling-over-if-spoken-to and howling-at-the-touch-of-water and similar genuinely disabling symptoms, does not exist in this story and it seems unfair to people who have real autism that the book mentions autism at all. A case could be made for using "autistic" to mean "self-directed," if it weren't in general use as meaning "disabled by inability to perceive consensus reality." But it is. Mallory's world doesn't seem to be so much healthier than ours that nobody has the disability we know as autism. The suspicion arises that people whom anyone not on the take would call autistic don't exist in Mallory's world because they're killed and made into the unpalatable nutrient bars people eat.

Anyway, while undergoing the torture of withdrawal from various drugs she's been fed for years--some to maximize docility, some as experiments--Mallory forms an instant bond with a boy, Cristan, who's been dumped out long enough that his skin has tanned. He has lots of temporary tattoo ink, which Mallory adores, not because ink does anything for women but because women tend to adore any and all characteristics of men who show actual concern about us before demanding that we make unwanted babies with them. They can hardly keep their hands off each other even as they're learning how the city government became increasingly totalitarian, even shutting out colors, apparently because it was allowed to do so. It all began with censorship, they're told.

This is volume one of a trilogy, so questions remain unanswered, the main plot unresolved, at the end. 

If you like dystopias, what's not to like about this one is that reading it may make you want to buy the other two books in the trilogy. If you don't like dystopias, well, you've been warned.

Censorship and Cybersecurity

A rant that outgrew the Link Log... 

Let me begin by saying that I, personally, will never miss Tiktok. I have about 200 tabs full of videos that people posted instead of writing blog posts like human beings, and how many of them I'll be able to watch before Google loses the tabs--much as I want to keep up with these people's news--I have no earthly idea. Videos take too long. I tolerate "vlogs" as background noise here on the screen porch because no one else objects to them and because the "vloggers" are older bloggers whose eyes can't read screens as they once did. They're walking around without white canes, but there is a real possibility that, if they read and wrote real blogs, that might cease to be the case. They have to decide what their old eyes are going to see, these days. But I am not interested in the videos young people post because they're too lazy to learn to type. I seldom leave the tab playing the video on the screen; I'm not going to spend those minutes looking at anybody's foolish face. I want people to type at least tweets, or Blue Sky "skeets." Life is too short to sit through videos.

But although Tiktok has already exposed all the personal information young Americans so foolishly shared to people in China who might become our enemies if socialism does enough economic damage in their country, while telling them how rich we are...although a hostile Chinese person who wanted to steal a Tiktokker's identity for evil purposes might already have digital "verification" of that Tiktokker's real first name, where person goes to school, per friends' and crushes' and teachers' names, per face, per voice, per way of walking, and per fingerprints as scanned from a touch screen...as a mechanism for gathering data Americans, and I include everybody on at least the northern continent, should never have typed or scanned into a computer, and using that information to harass people, and claiming a need to censor "hateful" and "hurtful" content as an excuse for censoring valid information that "hurt" sales and political campaigns of people who couldn't dispute the facts, Tiktok's record is outclassed by Meta's. The fact that Meta is US-based in no way means that Meta is either pro-American, or less than un-American. 

Meta is the company that started out as Facebook, then added most of Facebook's former competitors to its competitors. Meta currently owns Beluga, Instagram, Messenger, Onavo, Reality Labs, Snapchat, Threads, and Whats App, and has been allowed to "manage" some operations for Yougov, which is why Yougov's US standards have gone so far downhill. For a while Meta was "managing the US interface" of Live Journal; my understanding is that Meta failed to reduce the frequency or annoying quality of LJ-glitches and settled for alienating the majority of LJ bloggers with an obnoxious ad format, then abandoned ship. 

This web site has had little to say about Meta because the position of this web site is that, if you are surfing the'Net and a site or person asks for your real-world name, or any kind of real-world live-contact information, bank information, medical information, basically any information you would hesitate to give to a stranger on the street, you should close the tab and have nothing to do with that site or person. Sites you want to visit are of two kinds: informative, and interactive. Informative sites display the same information to every visitor, like a newspaper. Interactive sites should ask you to choose a screen name, share an e-mail address, and optionally disclose your web site (if you have one) or set up a password. Laws forbidding sites to ask for a phone number are overdue. If you still have a phone, nobody in cyberspace needs to know about it. If you have or have ever had a credit card, nobody in cyberspace should ever know about that, either. So you should have no interaction with any site owned by Meta, whose business is all about gathering and misusing the kind of information this web site has consistently warned you not to share with anybody online. 

Does your school have a right to know your real name? Does your mother? Does the IRS? Of course they have but that does not mean your real name should be in a computer. You should never touch a computer screen with a fingertip. You should never post a picture of your face or participate in video chat that allows other people to see your face. If someone says you're "secretive" or "paranoid," a useful thing to say is "Yes, I even lock my doors." You should be "secretive" and "paranoid" in cyberspace because it's a precise equivalent of locking doors.

Meta has little or no information about intelligent Americans but, for evil purposes, enemies may prefer information about stupid Americans who post pictures of their homes, inside and out, and pay bills, and put their whole genealogies online. Science fiction used to speculate that biometric "security scans" would give criminals an incentive to murder innocent people for their fingertips. That wouldn't be altogether impossible but it's turned out to be easier for criminals to hack the scanning devices, inserting other people's data, including biometric data, in place of their own. By sending hair to genealogy sites for DNA tests, fingering touch screens that recognize our fingerprints, even turning a video camera on our faces while we sing or dance, we supply biometric data to people who may want to use it against us...whether that be government or corporate interests that want to punish us for dissent, or foreign enemies that want to pretend to be us when they hijack planes or plant bombs. 

Meta belongs to US citizens who enjoy the power of granting access to that information exclusively to the US government--now--but Meta is not omnipotent. Sooner or later Meta will be hacked and that information will be available to those who hate the US. 

Everyone always thinks "Oh that's silly. I'm not rich or famous; who'd want to pretend to be me?" until someone does. Like someone disputing a will who wants to get per hands on someone's legacy to you. Or someone who already has a six-figure credit-card debt and wants to enjoy the benefits of your solid credit. Identity theft can be petty, even trivial: you'd probably use your library card to check out books for someone who's not a local resident, even someone who doesn't find it convenient to pay a library fine, but you'd probably draw the line at lending your card to someone who doesn't even ask you before checking out a book, even if it's only the one book and the person returns it on time. Or even someone with noble intentions, like a student who can't afford the extra expense of being a foreign student at a US university, looks a bit like you, and wants to learn how to help people in per own, poor homeland...whose use of your identity will keep you from getting the tuition grant you need if you want to finish a degree. Accept it. If you are a US, Canadian, or Mexican citizen, even if you are currently homeless, you're better off than a lot of people in this world. Some of those people look enough like you to be able to convince people that an old photo of you is an old photo of one of them. Some of them would pay well for the use of your identity if you'd sell it to them, and some would just as soon keep your identity and take you on a one-way ocean cruise.

So Meta has the full legal names, home addresses, face photos, fingerprint scans, in some cases the DNA scans, bank and credit information, medical test reports, prescriptions, children's names and photos and school records, and list of all the passwords, for all the vain and foolish people in North America and a good number of them around the world. And for people, like Grandma Bonnie Peters, who had enough sense to stay out of Facebook, but who did not anticipate that an employee would "helpfully" set up Facebook accounts for them. There is no way this can possibly end well. The best possible outcome might be for the federal government to criminalize possession of that kind of information and melt down all of Meta's computers but the information is undoubtedly already stored in China, Russia, Nigeria, and other places. 

So who hates Tiktok most? Who's the competitor that's failed to buy a piece of it? Who is guaranteed to profit from Tiktok's demise? Who's detested and distrusted by some people who like Tiktok? Funny, isn't it, how these questions all have the same answer. If Tiktok is shut down, which might not be such a bad thing in et per se apart from being unconstitutional, Meta grows even bigger.

I think that a ban on Tiktok could be framed and enforced as legitimate, constitutional protection of any more gathering of data for evil purposes...but only if it's followed by a ban on Meta. Punishing Tiktok in order to reward Meta for doing the same bleep thing is altogether unethical. Ignoring both companies is the sort of thing the Biden administration would do. Shutting both down is the sort of thing serious swamp drainers would do. The shutdown should be based on the inherent risk of storing identifying data and the need to keep such data out of the Internet. It should require businesses to store information about customers, like home addresses, on paper or on devices that cannot be connected to the Internet.

Sabrina Salvati doesn't seem to be very conscious of the evils of censorship, and may have emotional feelings about foreign countries that I would not describe as "smart" or even "funny." (If you have not lived in a country, the only kind of emotion you can intelligently attach to it is curiosity.) She sounds as if she's most concerned about the incomes of her foreign e-friends. And I can see no reason why a woman would ever defend rapists and baby killers, nor why anyone would embed the clips of the foul-mouthed young man's rant in a video and publish them under her own name. But she's right about the badness of what is, as it stands, in force as a "Facebook Aggrandizement Act." Here is her video, and yes, vlogs do languish on my waiting list for nine months or more. Use it if you need audiovisual communication. I recommend muting the sound when the young man comes on.

https://alicewalkersgarden.com/2024/03/you-have-to-lead-yourself-vote-for-you-a-teaching-using-tik-tok/

Hemileuca Tricolor

With Hemileuca tricolor we come close to the end of the Hemileuca species list. Based on DNA studies alone, Hemileuca vanschayki is a distinct species, but (as with siriae) very little has been written about it; without DNA studies it looks like just another variant of H. eglanterina, and no difference in behavior or habitat has been identified. H. venosa is still sometimes received as a species name but documentation of it online is still limited to lists, no articles or photos. H. washingtonensis has been discussed as a subspecies of H. nuttalli; H. watsoni is now considered a subspecies of H. electra; H. yavapai has been reclassified as a subspecies of H. juno. Not enough material is available to make an article about any of these species, nor do their names appear on a majority of the current lists. So the next and last post about the Hemileucas will be an index. 

What follows will depend on you, Gentle Readers. Although only Automeris io is found in Virginia, the genus Automeris is very similar to the genus Hemileuca; there was some disagreement about which genus some species belonged to. There are more species of Automeris than of Hemileuca. Along with all the Automeris species, some species of Coloradia and Saturnia, and especially Lonomia, can be described as stingingworms and, in some ways, resemble the Hemileucas. In the rest of the world, Africa seems to have no native species of caterpillars that sting, but Europe and Asia have a few, and we haven't even considered the slug moth family Those who enjoy caterpillar gross-outs might choose to fund more articles about those moths. Both slug moth caterpillars, many of which sting, and the other silk moth caterpillars, which don't sting but can be very large and bristly, tend to be hard for insect-phobic people to appreciate. The silk moth genus does, after all, include the horned-devils.

Alternatively, you might prefer to fund articles about prettier things. Birds and flowers have been thoroughly covered. Bees and beetles, and the vast number of moths whose caterpillars don't sting, not so much. Or we could move on to some other field of human knowledge. There are enough butterflies to satisfy most readers' interest in fun facts about insects, I'm sure. 

Now for the fun facts about Hemileuca tricolor, the Tricolor Buck Moth or Three-Colored Sheep Moth.

Photo from ButterfliesAtHome. Exactly how do they count the three colors? Dark, medium, and light on the wings, or white and neutral-colored on the wings and orange on the body and antennae?

Its other distinction is that a higher proportion of the web sites that Google is willing to show, that mention this species, focus on the caterpillar's sting. Its Mexican name is quemador. Some Westerners call them burnworms, as distinct from other stingingworms. Relatively little is available about this species, and though the moths have their admirers, the emphasis seems to be on the fact that "the caterpillars...will sting you something terrible!" (as a Flickr poster put it).

H. tricolor is found in a wide band of land on both sides of the Mexican-US border. Here's a report of its effect on a nature walk in Baja California.

https://www.lasecomujeres.org/plants/ucbee_2019/jan2019.html

On the US side it's found most often in Arizona and New Mexico, where the caterpillars can get all the paloverde and mesquite they want to eat. They can also eat acacia and mimosa leaves. H. tricolor is listed among wildlife found near Las Vegas, and is sometimes found in Utah and California.

Photo by Astover45. His head looks like a pinhead in a cushion of fur. (Males have feathery antennae; females have hairlike ones.)

Bodies are about an inch long, usually a fraction over one inch. Wingspans range from just over 2 inches to just over 3 inches; females are typically larger than males. The proportions of dark and white speckling in the colored bands on the wings varies. Individuals can look black...

Photo by Desertdutchman.

Or pale...

Photo by Salticidude. Females are more likely to show a pinkish or brownish color, males a bluish gray. Hind wings can be relatively light-colored with white margins, or may look plain white.

The upper legs, as well as the thorax, are furry. The abdominal section is also furry with bands of longer hair around its various segments. Under stress, like other Hem,ileucas, the moth tends to curl up and display its most vulnerable area. Possibly it resembles a wasp enough to make this behavior pay, once in a while. It can't sting, and probably doesn't think it can. It has probably formed the habit of curling up from being a caterpillar who was cushioned, when it fell, by landing on its bristles. The fur may be what causes people to describe these moths as "stunningly beautiful," or "tribbles with wings." The moth's fur is not considered venomous, but some say it can be irritating. (Short ends of human hair can also be irritating.)

The life cycle is apparently similar to that of other Hemileucas. Females exude a subtle scent that humans don't notice, but male moths can smell half a mile away. Males race toward a female, who is as eager to unload some eggs as the males are to fertilize them. 

Photo by Clara4. The one who dared to get close enough to touch her first is 99.99% sure of being her chosen mate, but the other three (or more) hang around, catching their breath and no doubt hoping the chosen male drops dead. Silk moths typically spend some time cuddling and enjoying each other's company before and after the reproductive act. 

However, once the female flits off to lay her eggs, the romance is over; both male and female Hemileucas normally have the ability to mate three times, if they survive long enough, and each time they will ignore prospects of their own age if a younger moth is available. Both sexes release most of their viable gametes in the first mating, because both are unlikely to survive long enough to mate again. 

Females lay eggs on a twig of an appropriate plant and hope it will put forth suitable leaves when the caterpillars hatch in spring. Their first few skins are black, and contain relatively little venom. They like to maintain physical contact between bristles, presenting the appearance of a solid mat of thorns to predators. After eating their way through three caterpillar skins they separate; now they eat fast enough that each one needs a leaf of its own. 

Photo by Suecar. The yellow color can be bright or, as shown, subtle. 

The final caterpillar skin has rows of branching bristles around the head and tail end and along the lower sides, and a double row of rosette-shaped bristles on the back. The severity of the sting depends on the number of bristle tips that stick in the skin. Rosette-shaped bristles inflict more pain than branching ones, though branching ones are usually enough to remind people to avoid contact with stingingworms.

The inflammation we form on contact with stingingworms is an allergy-type reaction that almost all humans have--some more intensely than others. Anaphylactic shock can occur, but it's rare. Usually pain is confined to the point of contact and fades after bristle tips are removed. 

Before the hottest part of the summer the caterpillars hide under dead leaves or sand and pop out of their bristly skins in a smooth pupal shell. The last shed skin is usually near or attached to the end of the pupal shell, and still stings if touched. 

Sometimes in autumn like other Hemileucas, but usually in spring (sometimes January--the Sonora Desert doesn't really have winter) the moths hatch out, or eclose, and crawl up onto the ground looking like grubs with only stubs of wings. 

Photo by Antrozousamelia. The poor little fellow's wings and antennae are still expanding. He can't yet fly. He thinks exposing his curled abdomen may help him survive. Little does he know that he's safe as if his mother had ever had arms to cradle him in.

They climb up a vertical surface and spend some time pumping haemolymph into their extremities, expanding wings and legs. As the female's wings expand her scent gland starts "calling" males. Before most females test their wings, they mate. After mating they fly for a bit, then lay most of their eggs, then rest for a few hours and, if they can, mate again and lay a few more eggs. Whether or not there is a second mating, fewer eggs will hatch from a moth's second or third brood. Second matings will increase the rate of hatching only slightly. 

Book Review: Decker & Joy

Title: Decker & Joy

Author: Elle Rush

Date: 2016

Publisher: Deidre Gould

Quote: "A year after hanging out his shingle as a private investigator, his dream of being hired as a private detective was dying a painful death."

Then Decker the detective is assigned to track an espionage device, disguised as an Elvis doll, that's been mysteriously lodged in the walls between a "Pure Bred" pet store and a store called "Kitten Caboodle" that sells pet toys and screens adopters for actual pets. There is no store that humanely cares for rescued animals without control-freaking. Joy, the control freak who runs "Kitten Caboodle," would like to keep all four of the kittens she has for sale, pardon me, pricier "adoption," but at least she makes it hard for people to "adopt" them. Joy lives in an apartment where she's not allowed to have a pet of her own. She likes Decker, though, and so do the kittens. 

It's a sweet Christmas romance so we know where this is leading. Well, not quite. A company in Winnipeg is actually setting up meetings between potential couples whose names remind people of Christmas carols. Decker and Joy are single. Will they become a couple? Will they move to Winnipeg as a couple? Do people who've been given Christmas-carol names adapt more easily to a place where at least all their Christmases will be white, and probably most of their other holidays as well?

Is this what it takes for employers in Winnipeg to hire people?

The writer known as Elle Rush, we are told at the end, is based in Winnipeg. So maybe she would know. 

Anyway, it's a cute, funny, clever romance. I laughed. Enjoy it, or just enjoy the thought of it, as you like. Merry Christmas, Gentle Readers. God help us every one.