Blogspot reports the site's lost a few thousand readers this week. Apparently they were regular, and now they're gone. Has this happened to your site, too? Has a specific country been involved? I don't think it was anything I said; I'm pretty sure somebody's either cracked down on some hackers, or shut down one of the foreign editions of Blogspot.
(I'm in favor of shutting down all the non-English editions, actually. French and Spanish might be all right if I could at least read what I've been translated into saying, but Google doesn't enable that. I don't trust robots to translate my writings into languages I can't even read.)
Books
Does the Cat Sanctuary still have a skunk called Jimmy in residence? I don't know. I've not seen him this year, and he might easily have eaten the poisoned bait intentionally set out for the neighborhood cats, but skunks like to keep to themselves. Anyway, here's a review of the book from which our Jimmy Skunk got his name. It started to seem babyish to me around age seven, but tiny tots liked the very loosely fact-based stories Thornton W. Burgess used to write.
COVID Panic, Surviving
The number of people who felt moved to comment on this, on X, amazed me. I wouldn't have believed a long, yet civil, debate on any topic was still possible there.
I posted a few replies to comments on X, partly to see how many of the commenters replied like human beings rather than a private bot army...Long story short: I think we as The People need to move forward, learning from the COVID panic that government is the wrong place to raise health or even medical questions. That doesn't mean that some people don't need to be sued; it means that lawsuits are of interest to, at most, the "class" of people injured by a specific batch of vaccine, and reclaiming our own health care from government or insurance companies or even doctors is something we all need to do for survival purposes.
Music
In one way, at least, baby-boomers refuse to grow up just like our parents and grandparents...E-friends who blog about being seventy years old also blog about cranking up the stereo and blasting the neighborhood with rock'n'roll. My preference for soft, clear, pure tones and interesting harmonies was very unusual for people my age and used to be called an affectation...
There's always been a lot of ambivalence about the "band" formed by Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel. Their voices harmonized so well. Their personalities apparently clashed--or was that an act intended to point up what they were all about? They sang about the lack of connection people were feeling with one another, which seemed only aggravated by all the well meant efforts to "draw out" the "lonely" people so that they could "fit in." Their old record company now maintains a database of all their classic songs. It's worth revisiting...How many of their songs expressed the confusion introverts felt when society was screaming at us that extroversion was normal? Was that the theme of all of their songs that weren't about Teen Romance, or also of some of the ones that were?
I don't know this young fellow in real life, but the Kingsport Times-News says he's local so I looked him up. The accent's real, the background could be ten or fifteen miles from where I'm typing, and he's speaking for a lot of local young men.
Poetry
Here, for your Fourth of July delight, is a bit of light verse from the Mossy Creek neighborhood of Jefferson City, Tennessee. Tennessee readers, do you consider that local? Anyway, it's on grilling:
Seasonal Nag
Serena was too busy to do anything cute with this theme, but an e-friend kindly shared this dog. In the original GIF the dog was slurping up as much cold water as possible, then lying down with his muzzle in the dish as shown. This web site will never inflict GIF on you.
One more nag: Most animals don't enjoy fireworks. It would be nice to make arrangements for them to stay somewhere they feel safe, with someone they trust, while they wonder whether those reminders of past battles mean you or they are being shot at. Serena seems pretty comfortable with the idea that people occasionally shoot at deer in the woods and she's safe as long as she keeps out of their way. Your pet...well, I wouldn't take Serena close enough to a fireworks display to get a good view.
Have a safe and Glorious Fourth!
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