Book Review: Tame Your Thoughts

Title: Tame Your Thoughts

Author: Max Lucado

Date: 2025

Publisher: Thomas Nelson

ISBN: 978-1-4002-5624-2

Quote: "Thoughts begin to bray when we wake up and refuse to shut off until we sleep." 

Fair disclosure: I received a free advance review copy of this book, the document before the final editing and publication, in exchange for an honest review. So here is an honest review.

It's Lucado. Christian readers have probably read at least one of his books. At telling stories and polishing phrases that turn our thoughts back to God and Christ and Salvation, he has no living equal. He is one of those authors whose books don't need to be reviewed. They're announced. A new one's coming out this fall! You'll like it! 

You will, too. But the odds are against your learning anything from it that you didn't already know. 

For the very young, the idea of taking control of thoughts may seem like a novelty. That's because, for my generation, it was so completely run into the ground in the 1980s that publishers haven't wanted to touch it in recent years. 

This book contains fresh new stories and some updated language but it's basically a recap of what we all heard (and did or did not learn) in the 1980s. If we want to focus on our emotional "feelings," trying to control our conscious thoughts, to filter out what produces unwanted "feelings," may help.

May help. Helps some people. Does not help others. Totally does not work for others.

By the mid-1990s neurological science had an explanation for this. Our brains route electrical impulses around different circuits of neurons. Some thoughts are routed around parts of our brains that process emotions. Consciously thinking logical thoughts does not  stop these thoughts running through our brains. Other thoughts are routed through parts of our brains that process facts, numbers, physical structures, etc. Our emotions don't engage closely with these thoughts.

In some cultures, processing more of our experience through the facts-and-figures circuits in the left brain is prized as a sign of "maturity" (these circuits are better developed in older people, poorly developed in children). In some cultures, it can be seen as masculine and disliked when it develops in women--"She's so detached. She has no 'feelings.' She's cold, judgmental, obnoxious..."  Both of these cultural patterns are present in the United States today. This has been cited as one reason why so many women feel "depressed."

Thinking rationally about how to deal with a situation, rather than curling up in the fetal position and screaming, is something mothers do. It is not "masculine." Neither is it "feminine." It is something men like to believe they do more effectively than women, though statistical measures clearly show that women do it more effectively than men: Men are more likely to abandon children, run away from what they call "failing" marriages, quit jobs or fire employees, get drunk or use drugs, have heart attacks before age 80, take to fisticuffs when they're not "winning" a quarrel, and do many other things that nonverbally scream "I CAN'T DEAL WITH THE WAY I FEEL ABOUT THIS!!!" than women are. Women are more likely to cope with situations even if they say they feel "depressed" by them. 

One of the situations in which "taming our thoughts" can help is when women persistently tell themselves, "I don't need A's, B's, and C's approval." They may want those people's approval, but if they want to be free from "depression," or to finish works of art, or raise healthier children, or earn higher salaries, or whatever else more than they want those people's approval, they'll be just fine until A, B, and C come around. 

However, regardless of gender, reacting to more and more situations logically rather than emotionally is something people learn to do more efficiently as we grow older. 

The gender connection may have some tenuous relation to some biological facts, but it seems to be primarily a learned behavior. In many (not all) cultures, boys learn that they're expected to suppress emotions associated with feeling weak or less competent--fear, sadness, frustration, regret. Girls learn that they're expected to suppress emotions associated with feeling empowered or more responsible--anger, determination, impatience, lust. Somewhere between age 5 and age 25 most people learn to stifle the set of emotions they're expected to stifle. In cultures that have different expectations associated with gender, or with other traits, most people learn to stifle the emotions they're expected to stifle there.

Is this all bad? No. One of the ways we learn to route our thoughts through the logical rather than the emotional parts of our brains is by learning skills and using tools to deal with situations. A toddler who comes to a locked door has no way to deal with its feeling of frustration better than lying on the floor and bawling. Older children don't even think of lying on the floor and bawling when they come to a locked door; they know how to use keys. When we feel less of the emotions we did not enjoy feeling as children, only rarely are we suffering from blocked emotions that needed to be expressed. There are still a few men out there who would feel better if they let themselves cry about things like the loss of their grandparents, and some women who would feel better if they gave themselves permission to say "This is what I"m paying for and what I insist on" or "This is what I want to do in bed," but most of the time, most of us aren't feeling the emotions children would have felt because we've learned the logical, physical, mathematical ways to solve the problems that make children so emotional. Instead of feeling frustrated by our parents' rules about when lights should go off and what music should be played, we have our own homes with our own rules. Instead of feeling fear that we won't be able to swim across the pool or make an effective speech, we've learned the skills that allow us either to do those things or to avoid situations where we'd be expected to do them. Instead of spending money on impulse and feeling bad when we run out, (most of us) have learned to make a budget and stick to it. 

But for some of us this leaves some areas where neither thoughts nor emotions seem to be serving us well. Lucado discusses some of the common ones: anxiety and worries, paralyzing guilt, lack of joy, obsessive lust, a sense of being "overwhelmed," physical or emotional pain, fear of rejection even by God, general discontentment. 

Can we tell ourselves things that help dispel these thoughts? Some of us can. 

For others, self-talk doesn't work. We may be feeding the recommended self-talk in through the logical part of the brain, but our consciousness is still bouncing around the same emotional circuits, unimpressed by pep talks from ourselves or others. 

One thing that may help young people, or young souls, or the young at heart, is allowing time for the corrective thoughts to work. We can form better mental habits. We can let a passion for ice dancing or wood carving drive out obsessive food cravings. We can mature from a teenaged "pistol" who pops off at a glance or a word, into a wise elder who thinks things through and rarely says or does anything on an impulse. We can mature from lust-raddled omnisexuals into peaceful, productive postsexuals. But these things don't happen overnight. Building a cerebral circuit that actually routes brain activity onto a bypass above those emotional circuits from the past may take a year or two. The immature student who seems stuck in a habit of crying and giving up rather than thinking things through and learning has a problem. The immature teachers who expect that problem to be solved this year have a more serious problem. 

Another thing that is likely to help is the rule: FIX FACTS FIRST. FEELINGS FOLLOW. Unwelcome thoughts are likely to come from situations where we're trying to fix feelings without fixing the facts. It can be productive to think of unwelcome thoughts or unwelcome feelings as symptoms of the physical conditions that really need to be fixed. Are anxious thoughts a symptom of a nutrient deficiency? After the initial exhaustion and muscle stiffness have been broken through, does physical movement restore energy and joy? How much do confession and restitution do for thoughts of guilt and unworthiness? While addicts, their pushers, and pharmaceutical companies cling to the fantasy of a quick chemical fix for thoughts and moods, real cures tend to be gradual. Some celiacs feel an intense "high" just from relief from gluten reactions, as soon as we've eliminated gluten (and glyphosate) from our bodies, but the complete recovery from celiac disease that flips the celiac trait into a super-power may take a year or more.

Whatever thoughts Lucado's readers want to tame, more has almost certainly been learned about that specific kind of thoughts than Lucado has taken the trouble to read or write. This first book may cheer and inspire them, which is well worth doing, but it may also be irritatingly inadequate. 

If you're looking for well-turned phrases and fresh, pithy stories, this book is well worth buying. If you're looking for help to tame specific thoughts that trouble you, this is at best a first book, an overview of the material you may want to study. If you're looking for help for a friend or family member, you need to be aware that, if Lucado's thoughts do help person tame those troublesome thoughts, taming thoughts tends to take longer than taming a wild horse.

If you're a Christian who has not found fellowship in physically attending church, this book is, like other books by other Christians, a letter from a classmate. It's a mistake to think of other Christian writers as teachers; they are fellow students trying to understand and apply what we've been given by The Teacher. Their books are no less valuable for that reason. Although I suspect I've read quite a lot more on this subject than he has, I still thank Max Lucado for this book.

Book Review: Arbor Day Can Be Deadly

Title: Arbor Day Can Be Deadly

Author: Ryan Rivers

Date: 2021

Quote: "Cherry Blossom Cafe Cooks Up Texas Favorites with Japanese Flair."

When Sho Tanaka goes to visit his sister, Jenny, the proprietor of the cafe, he finds himself mixed up with corrupt local government, stolen money, and the growth of his own drug problem...and a murder? With his sidekick Levi Blue, who appeared with him in an earlier volume, he'll solve the mystery and come to grips with his felt need to supplement Zoloft with other things not prescribed by a doctor. 

This pre-chatbot novella is well enough written to keep readers guessing through a few hours of wait time. If you like wholesome cozy mysteries, you may want the rest of the series.

Bad Poetry: Living with Parity

This was provoked by the Poets & Storytellers United prompt to use three innovative words in a poem.

Can men live without oppression?

Fight that urge toward regression!

In this age of equal rights, men can survive,

Without those systems of repression 

That cause female-type depression.

(Losing those will help a man's "love" life to thrive.)

Now, one thing you must not do

Is indulge feelings that you

Are more competent than women in this life:

Each objective factual measure

Took away more of that pleasure,

So if you don't understand it, ask your wife.

Long as half of humankind

Feel restricted or confined

By the other half's propensity for violence,

Your "equality" is fiction;

What you feel about that's addiction,

So control your anger, listening in silence.

Nobody believes he's wise

If a man ever even tries

To dispute that women know what we are saying.

Pictures in our minds aren't hazy

If a man says "She is crazy"--

We can guess the sordid truth he is betraying.

So if you think she's delulu 

Then, dear brothers, what can you do?

Very quietly and quickly walk away!

Unless women feel disgusted

By her falsehoods, you're distrusted,

And so nothing's quite the best thing you can say.

If she tells you that your lewk's 

One of those unfortunate flukes

That occur when haberdashers in despair

Ask designers to drive sales

Of their buyers' greatest fails,

Silently make your own choice of what to wear.

Broligarchy must come down;

Never should have left the ground.

(If not done by women, should a thing be done?)

As each decent person hates

Even once-admired Bill Gates,

Jobs men dominate will never again be fun

Save, perhaps, for the young Real Man

With his muscles and his tan

Showing heavy labor's what he most enjoys.

In those jobs men still excel,

And those jobs must be done well,

So the future's bright for active, healthy boys.

But the geeks who would be god?

Leave them lying on the sod,

Drugs or STDs devouring each one's brain;

Let economies of debt

Crash, caught in the Internet,

While we and our husbands build one that's more sane.

(I call my favorite young people, collectively, The Nephews because a majority of them are nephews, as distinct from nieces. I love my nephews. I want their lives to be wonderful...at no expense to the nieces' lives.)

Book Review: The Vintage Charm

Title: The Vintage Charm

Author: Mia Montell

Date: 2023

Quote: "We found a body in the alley behind your store this morning."

The body belonged to a young woman who left her journal in the store. Can Tiffany use the journal to find out whodunit? Of course she can. Will doing that put her in danger? Read on...

This short and simple murder mystery conforms to the traditional rules. There's no magic, no romance, no comedy, just a straightforward story where the question can be answered by paying attention to logical clues. Those who love detective stories should like it. 

Eighties Nostalgia?

Recycled, or more likely reprinted, 1980 presidential campaign T-shirts? Seriously. People are wearing them. 

https://pjmedia.com/chris-queen/2025/08/26/from-84-to-gen-z-why-reagan-bush-tees-still-rule-the-conservative-wardrobe-n4943047 

I question whether the real reasons have been adequately explored:

1. Some people made up their minds in 1980 and have not used them since...sort of like the way my husband made up his bed, in the 1990s, and then announced that for his back's sake he was reclaiming his Indian heritage and sleeping on the floor. Except that that decision was good for my husband's bed and back. Minds need to be used and changed.

2. Seriously, some of us felt better about voting in 1980 than we have ever felt since. W Bush was cracked up to be the candidate most likely to restore the good things about the Reagan era, but nobody seriously believed he had a hope--nor had he. I'm not sure whether even a majority of Trump voters like Trump. I don't know how many Clinton or Obama voters really liked them, either. But Reagan just had too many unfair and unbeatable advantages when it came to being liked as a President. He aged well; he looked and sounded like the grandfather every family needs. He embodied the wit and physical courage and other good things we celebrate about being Irish. He presided over a period when every young American who was willing to work or study could get a job or go to college, often at the same time, conceivably even using the job to finance the college. And he was blessed with the chance to preside over the end of the supremely boring Cold War. It was impossible not to like Reagan and, in some ways, he could even be said to deserve his popularity. Nobody will ever crack jokes about his own near-fatal medical conditions, nor shed a tear of sympathy about someone else's untimely death, so well again.

3. Prior to 1980, political campaigns weren't advertised on T-shirts. If there had been Eisenhower or even Herbert Hoover T-shirts, some people would want to wear them.

4. People who voted for the first time (or two) in 1980 (or in 1984) were in demographic fact part of a baby bust, not of the baby boom itself. Some of those people identify as freshman or sophomore class baby-boomers, some as early Generation X, depending on how old our parents were and whether we spent time with older or younger siblings. As the image of baby-boomers now looks like the age of people who were born in 1946, some people who are currently between ages 55 and 65 want it to be known that we were the very last of the baby-boom generation, and came of age in the Awesome Eighties. Of which an iconic image was the Reagan campaign T-shirt.

Pooh. The message T-shirts I owned in 1980 said "Shape Up, Shape Up, Shape Up, Super Shape" and "The Best Girls Are From Gate City, Virginia." (I had outgrown a handed-down Kareem Abdul-Jabbar fan shirt, and my brother didn't want to wear it because I'd been seen in it.) I might still wear those but I will not be buying a reprint Reagan campaign shirt. Though my first presidential vote was for Reagan. 

Not everything about the Sixties was terrific nor was everything about the Eighties awesome. The Eighties were, for example, the years when millions of us naively threw away the good old boring Ekco can openers that had been in our homes for fifty years, and bought new, trendy-looking can openers instead. Little did we know that the reason why these horrid objects looked so new and trendy was that they weren't built to open even a hundred cans before they stopped working. 

The Eighties were also years when women who were actively aggravating their cramps by wearing high-heeled, pinchy-toed shoes transitioned, in just two or three years, from furiously denying that their job performance suffered in any way at an particular time of the month to furiously demanding that everyone else tiptoe around their disabling PMS. Those were interesting years to be a husband, child, or even parent of one, not to mention actually being a young woman.. 

Also, for part of the Eighties, nobody knew exactly what caused AIDS or how to avoid it. The Eighties were the decade when we lost Arthur Ashe. The decade when it took real physical courage for Dr. Fauci not only to study AIDS but to admit that the disease interested him because he was "gay." Because he'd been brave some people wanted to imagine that he was either honorable or intelligent. In some places it still took fortitude to claim friends on the other side of the color war, too.

Name a period of time in history, whether a decade or an afternoon, and if anyone remembers it that person will be able to feel nostalgic about it. Oh, the Thirties, when so few people had any money and your parents weren't among the few, but your family were rich because this one, that one, and the other one were still alive. Ah, the nineteenth of December of 1976, when a bundle of loud noise with a wet diaper on it started to grow into Tracy Smith. And sigh, at this time last week I was admiring a huge flock of female Blue and Tiger Swallowtails, with a few hangers-on from other species, flapping around a field of thistles, and realizing that this rare and lovely sight was a consequence of declining male populations of both species; these female butterflies had time for a kind of lekking behavior because they weren't finding mates and laying eggs. This sort of thing is natural and proper as long as it doesn't interfere with enjoying, and improving, the present.

"Say not thou, 'What is the cause that the former days were better than these?', for thou dost not inquire wisely concerning this."

Web Log for 8.26.25

I didn't spend a lot of time on the computer...

Animals 

Clue alert: When they look like this, they're not homeless. Offer treats if you want them to keep visiting, but about a cubic centimeter of treat on any given day. Obesity is not good for cats. 

Ganked from Messy Mimi's blog. I don't know who posted it first. Anyway, it's worth finding out whether a visiting cat is all about extra food. My experience is that they're more interested in the cats than in the humans, but sometimes they do know when someone on their circuit could use a purr and a cuddle...

Same source, same day.

Good News 

No link, because it's private...In town I met an old acquaintance who had been very concerned, when I was seeing more of him a few years ago, about his children. Daughter lived nearby and was always promising to do little extra-pair-of-hands things for him and not doing them; apparently too busy taking drugs with a housemate who sounded as if person needed some jail time. Son lived far away and only ever called to report needs for money. Neither seemed to be a Christian. We used to pray for them.

So, as I was walking in the direction of Compuworld with a freshly cashed paycheck to bail out my working desktop computer, old acquaintance offered to drive me out there. (I had not really expected to walk all the way. It was still an August afternoon. I'd been planning to walk slowly for a few hours and let someone know where to meet me after work.) Just to chat and catch up on news. Some projects were going well. An older mutual acquaintance had died. 

We had collected the computer and stopped at the Wal-Mart nearby, and a call came in on the person's old car phone, which almost never picks up a call. It was the far-away son. He was working. He had gone into the same skilled trade as his father. He wanted advice about a job. 

"I'll have to call from your sister's house and get her help to explain that," said the father, quietly, looking at some very technical stuff the son had sent through the phone. To me he said, "Let's stop for food and drink and wait for her at her house." 

So we had supper in his car in daughter's driveway. The house looked tidy. If the dopey, messy housemate was still there, person must have been out on a job. Animals were socializing across fences between large, well-kept dog space and horse space. All of them looked well kept and eager for human company. Clearly this was the home of a responsible adult. 

Daughter came home, still sounding impatient and full of herself, but she took time to help her father and brother use her phone. A horse had been nonverbally talking with me across the fences while we waited. That horse was due for a good walk with its human and didn't want to wait. It pawed the ground and pulled horse faces, plainly saying "Hurry up! I want my human now!"

Father and son talked for more than an hour. When the phone battery started to run down and the daughter pried them apart, they expressed love for each other. It is always such a delightful feeling to see that one's life experience has done someone else a bit of good. 

It was evident that the father's Christian influence had done his children quite a lot of good. He is a cheerful old fellow, but after that talk with his son he was radiant.

I love to see young people behaving well, making their parents radiate joy!

Music 

Even as Celtic dance tunes go, this one is "A Wild Rumpus." 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBeg4_DZEmQ

Poem, Exposition of 

Earlier in the month I wrote a "blitz poem" about the times when the most important step to take is the step back:

https://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2025/08/bad-poetry-step-on-back.html 

I'm not sure whether any of the generation of poets who survived the Blitz in the 1940s would count this as a poetic form. But it does work in real life.

Other years, in August, I've been annoyed by spiders spinning big webs right across the path through the not-a-lawn. Going anywhere in August meant having my face and hair festooned with cobwebs.

This year, the signs of the seasons came early and it was still July when I saw a great beautiful web, freshly made, shining in the morning dew. Right across the path, as usual. The spider was at the top, looking down. 

Instead of impatiently tearing down the web, I took time to admire it. It was about two feet square and seemed perfectly symmetrical; nothing had blundered into it yet. "What a fine job," I said. "You must have been working on it all night." And I carefully turned it to the side of the path.

And there, Gentle Readers, it has remained. For their size spiders have much more in the way of brains than other cold-blooded animals; I'm convinced that this one understood that a compromise was being offered, and accepted it. 

Meanwhile I've enjoyed the rewards of stepping back: web-free hair.

Book Review: Catching the Wave

Title: Catching the Wave

Author: Emily Selby

Date: 2022

Quote: "[T]hat girl had a strange power bill."

Amelia, the Internet security consultant at the Book by the Sea bookstore, is a real computer geek. She doesn't even recognize how bizarre and rude the phone call with the people yelling about the "strange power bill" is. She investigates, though, and finds herself doing real detective work, tracing the owner of the cryptocurrency "mining" operation and the resulting Bitcoins that are raising the bill. 

This cozy mystery introduces readers to the basics of cryptocurrency. Danger and gross-out levels are low. When not panicked by the inflated bill, even the landlords are reasonably polite. Solving the mystery depends on your ability to apply logic to the information about cryptocurrency Amelia provides to the other characters and you. 

This mini-book is a sort of trailer for a trilogy of detective stories, featuring Amelia, set in New Zealand. 

Books That Deal Well with Tough Topics

Today's Long & Short Reviews asks about books that deal well with tough topics. Others may choose different topics. I want no trendy "tough" topics here. When a topic is being beaten to death in the commercial media, probably serving to distract attention from other topics, I think the best way to deal with it is to leave it alone. I'm interested in topics that are tough enough to intimidate the commercial media.

1. Tough topic: "How bad was COVID? How bad were the vaccines? What kind of evil conspiracy would be necessary to develop vaccines that were worse than the disease?" 

Book: Lies My Govt Told Me by Robert Malone 

From a scientist who worked on mRNA "therapies" and then warned that they weren't (yet) a good idea, I'd expect an un-phobic yet unflinching answer to these questions. No "conspiracy" was necessary. People just wanted a vaccine. New technology seemed interesting. No vaccine is totally contamination-proof or safe for everyone. New vaccines that are released as experiments carry high risks. So why did government officials push the experimental COVID vaccine as if it were a tested, reliable vaccine against a disease that was likely to kill a healthy person--which COVID was not? Malone's in a position to offer reasonable answers, and does. 

 2. Tough topic: "Is 'depression' a really dangerous disease? I've felt 'depressed' myself. Does that mean I'm going to end up feeling a need to commit homicide-suicide?" 

Book: Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman 

Babies react to everything with their emotions. That's not all bad; their howling and kicking gives them needed exercise and may summon help when it's needed. As we grow up, however, we increasingly process unpleasant input through brain circuits involved in logical thinking rather than emotion. The gender split demonstrates that this is something we learn from the bigger, older people who help or scold children crying about different things. Males are at least subtly punished for expressing emotions associated with feeling weak and helpless, like grief, fear, and pain, so as boys grow up they learn to detach emotion and think logically about things that provoke those feelings, yet most men are still anger-prone. Females are at least subtly punished for expressing emotions associated with feeling strong and tough, like anger and competitiveness, so as girls grow up they learn to detach emotion and think logically about things that provoke those feelings, yet many women are still prone to sentimentality. Almost all people, of almost any age, can learn to think logically about things that still provoke overwhelming emotions that don't serve them well; that's a primary function of psychotherapy--talking logically about the emotions until they wear out and go away. 

We can choose to "stay in touch with our feelings" enough to communicate with babies and animals. However, crying about being locked out is generally less useful once we've developed the ability to use keys and unlock doors. The specific set of emotions we call "depression" has a survival function--it's a symptom of ill health that can help us find and treat its cause. 

3. Tough topic: "If people can learn to think logically about their 'depression' as a symptom of a disease that can be diagnosed and treated, why do so many people think they need antidepressant drugs? How dangerous are these drugs, exactly?" 

Book: Prozac Backlash by Joseph Glenmullen 

Many people don't want to explore the subtle causes of their "depression" (food intolerance, chemical sensitivity, lack of exercise, a very early stage of treatable cardiovascular disease). Many already have a diagnosis of an incurable condition with symptoms that include "depression" (rheumatoid arthritis, AIDS, inoperable cancer, various rare fatal diseases). Personally, I think antidepressants should be withheld from the former group, but they were made for the latter group. For some patients who aren't going to recover real wellness--and doctors are now beginning to be able to identify which ones--antidepressants extend life expectancy and improve the quality of life. For the majority of people who think they want antidepressants, antidepressants complicate treatment and allow physical diseases to become more serious, while making pharmaceutical companies profitable. For about one in twenty patients, antidepressants produce a very specific physical syndrome of intense pain, pseudo-memories that seem to account for the pain, and eventually a plan to commit homicide-suicide as a final remedy for the pain. If you choose to use an antidepressant or live or work with someone who does, you should at least know what to report immediately to your doctor. 

4. Tough topic: "Isn't withholding antidepressants from people who feel depressed cruel? What are they supposed to do--just go on feeling bad while they pay for hundreds of expensive tests for rare diseases?" 

Book: Potatoes Not Prozac by Kathleen Desmaisons 

Most things that go wrong with our bodies have a depressing effect on our moods. Most people can, however, feel better faster, and cheaper, by treating their "depression" with diet and exercise. This book explains how to deploy potatoes, and other foods most people naturally like, along with exercise to reduce depression even in some patients with incurable diseases. In fact some "depression" is a symptom of conditions as curable as nutrient imbalances and lack of exercise; when that's the case this book will tell you how to cure the whole thing at one delightful swoop. 

 I've been heard to say that I switched to a psychology major in order to write this book and, after it was written, I didn't need to finish my degree because my mission had been accomplished. That's a hindsight perspective if ever one was, but it's close enough to being true. I switched to a psych major, not "to deal with my own problems" (although I was nineteen, so I had problems) so much as because I'd had outstanding success peer-counselling other undergraduates dealing with anxiety and depression. I was having the insights that led Dr. Desmaisons to do the research and write the book. 

5. Tough topic: "Most novels for and about teenaged girls are romances! Are there any stories about teenaged girls who are already having sex, and if they're consenting to it that's in order to protect their even younger siblings, and it's a family member--often a 'step' relative in a 'blended' family--or teacher who's doing it, and the last thing they want is to add a 'boyfriend' to the existing mess even if they have a brother or male friend whom they like? If such a girl does want to explain the situation to a male friend, or even just vent to her brother or cousin, how would she ever start?" 

Book: Chinese Handcuffs by Chris Crutcher 

I've not been in this situation. My adoptive sister, who has, started recommending this book as soon as it reached local libraries. 

6. Tough topic: "What about teenaged girls who just have lives, and don't feel a need to mess up their lives by being silly about 'boyfriends'?" 

Book: The Harper Hall of Pern (Dragon Song, Dragon Singer, Dragon Drums) by Anne McCaffrey 

In volume one, Menolly's life is greatly improved by not having to deal with any men any more, at least during her summer in the cave on the beach. In volume two, while her focus is on which of the men at the Hall are most prejudiced and what to do about it, three of them clearly feel more than just unprejudiced about her, but she accepts their good will as a normal part of life and does not think foolish thoughts about possible future "romance." In volume three, when she's all grown up and established in her career, we find out which one will be her Partner for Life. 

7. Tough topic: "What about teenaged girls who have difficult, complicated lives, far beyond just being 'gifted' students like Menolly with her perfect pitch and lovely voice, and really don't need to mess up their lives by being silly about 'boyfriends'?" 

Book: Dicey's Song by Cynthia Voigt was the first and best book in this category, after years when publishers just didn't want to publish anything about characters who wanted to remain uncoupled. There have been more novels about girls and women who solve their problems while single, since. (This web site had the privilege of reviewing some new ones. Check out Needy Little Things by Channelle Desamours. When I classified Upon Destiny's Song by Michael B. Ericksen as this kind of story, I was thinking of Ane's completing the trek as a young single girl; however, Mike Ericksen e-mailed, after reading my review, that the real Ane later agreed to marry a man to pay off a debt...so, does she count? I still say she does.) 

 8. Tough topic: "Are there good literary novels by White male authors any more?" 

Interestingly, even in the 1950s publishers were willing to print lots of stories about boys whose sports and adventure stories seemed to be complete without dragging in a romance. Teenaged boys, however, mostly seemed to leave those stories to the better readers in primary school, because most of them were so bad. (Lots of shameless exploitation of their fantasies--"Even though he still needs an adult to reach the controls of his craft, little Billy is a much better astronaut than any of the full-grown men in the Space Force!") Apart from the current fad for discrimination, the other reason why there aren't more good male novelists is that so many men feel that they've outgrown reading or writing fiction. Often the reason for that is that their standards for fiction are high--they like only very good novels. So they don't want to count men who do genre fiction well, even Douglas Adams, Tony Hillerman, Stephen King, or James Patterson. By "good literary novels" they mean "as good as Mark Twain's or Herman Melville's or John Steinbeck's." This does leave a...lot of room for improvement in today's literary scene. John Kennedy Toole died too young. I doubt that Tom Cox is up to these men's standard, either, but they should at least try his books. If not quite on the same level with Milton and Shakespeare, he is at least consistently funny.

9. Tough topic: "Are there good books, fiction or nonfiction, about being a Christian in high school today?" 

Book: The Road to Home by R.A. Douthitt 

It's new, still obscure, and unpolished, but it's good...There aren't a lot of well known ones. Denominationalism has allowed Christian writers and publishers to form denominational ghettos. Within denominational ghettos, what's published may be what's doctrinally correct, and/or what's written by influential members of the denomination, more than what's good. And good true stories about Christian teenagers may not be available: I'm currently sitting on the true story of a Christian teenager whose parents didn't want publicity while they were alive, and whose sisters have yet to release the story. But there are good, true stories about young people practicing Christianity. Sometimes it's hard to spot because the writer or publisher doesn't want to make anyone feel left out by specifying whether the character is Christian or Jewish. The Road to Home is explicitly about a Christian.

10. Tough topic: "What about going back to the land, getting off the grid, investing in real property and always paying cash?" 

Book: The Tightwad Gazette by Amy Dacyszyn 

One of many. Lots of different people want to do these things, in lots of different ways, lots of different places and stages of life. What serves A well may be useless to B, and so on. Generally anything from the Rodale Press (Prevention, Organic Gardening & Farming) or Mother Earth News has been useful to somebody, but may or may not be relevant to you. The Tightwad Gazette is more frugal than Green but, for a book, I think it may have the highest number of tips that have worked for people I know. 

Bonus tough topic: "I thought biodegradable plastic was a good thing. How bad is it? Of the increase in chronic disease since the 1980s, especially in pseudo-celiac conditions, and the increase in deaths from diseases (like celiac disease) that used to be considered non-fatal and not even disabling, how much is due to biodegradable plastic and how much to glyphosate?" 

Book: Tragically, there isn't one. These questions badly need to be answered. The simplest way to answer them would be a total ban on all use or production of glyphosate, since no "herbicide" accomplishes anything steam can't do better. Meanwhile, anecdotal information from people in places where glyphosate has been banned and biodegradable plastic has been used indicates that the focus of the Glyphosate Awareness movement does not need to shift to plastic...though reducing plastic waste would also be a good thing. 

Bonus tough topic:"What about glyphosate itself? Aren't there books on that by now?" 

Book: Merchants of Poison by Stacy Malkan 

There are several. If they're not at your bookstore or library, that may be due to censorship. We should demand that all public libraries stock at least Merchants of Poison. 

Bonus tough topic: "Is growing my own food a complete solution to glyphosate, glufosinate, and other "pesticide" problems? Are there books about raising my own food" 

Book: There are actually hundreds. Some of them may be helpful for you, even though gardening is a matter of how individual plants do in specific conditions, so the best tips for you will probably come from any old Green gardeners and farmers who live near you. (The "garden" suburbs of Washington, in Maryland and Virginia, illustrate this nicely. Some of the flowers tourists cruise through these residential neighborhoods to see are hard to kill in one neighborhood and hard to keep alive in a contiguous neighborhood; everyone in Takoma Park has azaleas, great solid masses of every color, while in Hyattsville only a few varieties of azalea can be kept alive, and even they don't bloom the way azaleas do in Takoma Park.) 

Bonus tough topic: "Concerned about the effects having dozens of vaccines at once can have on babies, we've kept ours out of "day care" and "play groups" and "preschools" and even primary schools. They've had only essential vaccines, and only one each year. Now our thirteen-year-old wants to go to a public school that insists she have the measles vaccine, though measles is one of the non-fatal diseases for which we think it's safer to acquire natural immunity. Are there books about how to change this kind of rule, or work around them?" 

Book: People in the Children's Health Defense network have written some. They tend to be self-published, removed from stores or libraries if ever displayed there, and the ones that contain true, recent success stories tend to involve living in a place with liberal "religious exemptions" to vaccine policies. A really satisfactory book on this topic has yet to be written. Suffice it to say that, if your unvaccinated teenager gets into school and is then exposed to measles, she'll probably want to move to a different State. And change her name. And, considering that the strain of virus most often called measles these days can keep healthy people in bed with "cold-or-flu-type symptoms" for six weeks...I gave in and had the jab for the sake of peace, and then spent two years doing very little but regretting that decision. There is no really good solution. 

Bonus tough topic: "It still isn't easy being Green--and a Christian--and 'gay.' I'm not talking about wanting to sleep with lots of other people's husbands, or sons; I'm looking for a Partner For Life. I'm not talking about evangelizing. I'm not rich myself, so the last thing I want to do is inflate property values and taxes. I only want to know whether there are any other people out there anywhere who are like me. Are there books about such people?" 

Book: I've not seen one, but the Internet is there to help it get published so that people can find it.

Web Log for 8.25.25

What a draining day it was. I wanted to finish something quickly. I think Microsoft can smell that on my fingertips; they ran more of those "updates" whose purpose is to make computers fight their owners every step of every way the owners may want to go. Maybe they were triggered by my mentioning to a client that I might adopt a new used laptop that has Windows 11...that's if the client is paying for Word documents, of course. Maybe they need to see a critical mass of people going to Linux. Maybe we need a federal law requiring Microsoft to pay computer owners for time STOLEN by "updates," and criminalizing the ecological and human damage done by pushing computers into obsolescence. It's not necessary that Microsoft run "updates" that cause "older" computers' displays to change size or orientation on the screen. In fact it could easily be mandated that, if Microsoft runs an "update" that interferes with the use of devices less than 100 years old, Microsoft must reverse them at its own expense and pay the owners of those devices to keep those Wangs and Laniers and Tandys and other long-gone electronics earning their keep, out of landfills.

Animals 

Lovely bird photos.

https://roadsendnaturalist.com/2025/08/24/shore-patrol/

Books

How to support writers, individually, and writing, generally...

https://ysabetwordsmith.dreamwidth.org/4885004.html

Health News 

This doesn't deserve a link: This has been a poor summer for fruit but a perfect summer for fungi. Somebody's advertising a patent remedy for respiratory allergies that's supposed to linger in the nose and kill mold spores for weeks, the way Listerine does when used to wipe mold off boots. Don't buy it. Eat medicinal garlic.

Phenology 

While news headlines scream that the West Coast is sweltering and burning even more than they usually are in August, while the East Coast recovers from Hurricane Erin, the Blue Ridge Mountains prepare to finish our fourth wettest summer on record with what may match or surpass existing records for cool nights in the last week of August. It's normal for people to wake up and dig out a blanket in the middle of the night in the last week of August. Local meteorologists are advising us to wear suits with jackets to work this week! The cold front hit us last night, dropping temperatures by about ten degrees Fahrenheit lower than they were yesterday. Different places cooled at different rates and, for a rarity, Kingsport's weather station reported about the same temperatures as Gate City's early this morning, even though it's at a lower altitude and closer to larger bodies of water.

Absolutely gorgeous weather--if no bunghole goes out and sprays poison and ruins it for everybody. If you want to visit some part of the Blue Ridge or Smoky Mountains, this is expected to be an excellent week for visiting. Cool nights and mornings, warm afternoons, and the soil may even dry out enough to stop trees blowing over in every wind.

Book Review: Sweet Thing

Title: Sweet Thing

Author: Kelly Genelle Fletcher

Date: 2020

Quote: "Julia lavished in the thrill of being unattached."

She rushes out to buy some peaches and, in hardly longer than it takes to read the mini-book, she's summoning the stork with the handsome peach farmer. As fictional disgraces to womankind go, this Julia is not far above the Obama Administration's. 

For those who want a transgressive fantasy...maybe. This web site maintains that divorcees who put out the act of marriage without being married are lowering the status of all women. May the fleas of a thousand camels infest Julia's bed.

(Am I being harder on this novel than I've been on other romances that spell out that a couple are doing what makes babies before marriage? Not intentionally. It would be pleasant, though, if even steamy romances saved the details of how to make babies for scenes in which the couples wanted babies. When people enjoy being unattached they should remember how to use their hands.)

Petfinder Post: International Dog Day

Today is International Dog Day. Not that this web site is set up to do anything special about it, but it's another good reason to adopt a dog.

International dog adoptions are a hassle. Many people prefer that animals be adopted by someone "local," in the same city or even neighborhood if possible, because people know how their neighbors treat animals and some former owners or "foster families" want to visit the pets they've given up. Petfinder does enable interstate adoption, bringing surplus animals from rural areas into cities where too many animals have been "humanely" euthanized or sterilized. This web site welcomes comments from international readers about their experience with animal adoption, or animals who need adoption, in their countries.

Supposedly the Muslim Prophet Muhammad observed that, in the conditions that prevailed in the Arab countries in his time, it was almost impossible to keep dogs and cats sanitary. Muslims, as "clean" people, should be sure to bathe after touching these animals and never allow a dog or cat inside their homes. This was reasonable; fleas pullulate in hot places where there are more humid than actually rainy days, and who wants to live with fleas! Faithful Muslims take all the teachings of their Prophet literally and still, today, may refuse to sit down or take off their shoes in a house where a dog or cat is kept indoors, even though they know it's unlikely that fleas will infest their clothes. So, earlier this summer, news services reported that some Muslim clergymen have forbidden Muslims in their cities to keep pet dogs, claiming that people walking pet dogs on the streets are making the streets unsanitary. Americans who have not lived in those cities have posted hostile comments on these clergymen. 

This web site, imagining streets where dog effluvia builds up for weeks of rainless, hot, humid days where the odors only intensify with time, takes no sides but urges people to try to live, at least to bring up children, only in places where every home has a back yard with room for a dog pen where bodywastes can be buried. There's more room for better homes when people refuse to accept "housing" in unsanitary stack-and-pack "towers" as an option. Dog walking is an opportunity for humans and dogs to bond, not a way to offload your dog's bodywaste on someone else's property. The idea that Muhammad allowed his followers to keep only "guard dogs" that lived outdoors with the herds they watched over embeds the idea that clean-living people can let their dogs (and cats) live a relatively natural outdoor life.

There are ways to keep fleas from infesting our homes and our pets. When the ancestors of my social cat family were rescued from the alley, they were positively grateful for a relatively natural, herb-oil-based flea powder. I thought Mackerel especially, as a little alley kitten, had more fleas per square inch than any animal could be expected to support. I've since seen flea infestations that were much worse. This has been a wet, flea-friendly year and the fluffy black kitten a friend recently released into society, where he's a super snuggler who doesn't think he's been properly introduced until he's climbed onto a person's shoulder, still has short hair on his neck and the base of his tail where fleas and scratching had destroyed the hair before he was rescued from an alley. Flea populations evolve resistance to different chemical and herbal formulas, though, and even the herbal ones can be toxic, especially to those tiny cute kittens who have not yet developed the ability to kill their own fleas. So flea combs are an excellent idea. Infested animals usually appreciate your help to comb fleas out of their fur and drown them. Fleas are almost as unable to swim as uninstructed humans, but they are light and float well and take a long time to drown in clean water. It is humane, and prudent if you have a lot of fur to comb, to use a little pet-friendly soap or alcohol to kill the fleas faster.

Some healthy short-haired animals don't become infested. This year the flea problem was bad enough everywhere that a friend bought brand-new flea combs--one for Serena, one for Drudge, and one for poor little Zakitty. Zakitty loved the attention of being combed. Drudge liked the attention, too. Serena tolerated being petted a little while she was full of prolactin. However, Drudge's coat seldom yielded a flea; Serena's never did. Fleas bit Serena, she nonverbally told me, they were toast. Humans' teeth and nails aren't sharp enough to kill fleas easily. Cats' are. Serena spends time killing fleas that attack her young ones, too. It probably relieves any tension or frustration she feels about being only a big strong house cat when she has enough purrsonality for a lion. 

In addition to the powders and combs, this web site has discussed other things fleas hate, elsewhere.  Fleas like carpets, cushions, and layers of fabric that aren't laundered regularly, where they lay eggs that hatch and mature with astonishing speed. They don't like bare clean floors where rugs, cushions, and laundry are laundered often in hot water. Fleas don't like the herbs and spices that human cultures that developed in flea-friendly climate use in cooking, but they can tolerate odors like lemon, sage, and oregano when they are overpopulated and desperate. Bay leaves, tulsi ("holy") basil, and pennyroyal are the most effective flea repellent herbs; tulsi and pennyroyal can also upset young women's hormone cycles and should be removed from rooms that may be visited by women trying to have babies. Fleas can't live long on surfaces coated with baking soda or borax (washing soda), and neither can the surface molds that have been such a nuisance this summer. Male Grass-Carrier wasps, harmless witless tame things that I tend to kill accidentally when they are chasing gnats or mosquitoes away from me, like to live in corners under furniture where surfaces are not coated with abrasive soda; they know how to love baby fleas--for meals. The Cat Sanctuary has never had a real flea problem, but one flea is one too many for your pet's health and comfort. 

In any case, combing your pet's fur with your pet's very own flea comb is a lovely way to relax and bond with your pet on a summer evening. Check the comb after each stroke and immerse it in soapy water or alcohol if it brings out a flea. Dogs can hear the difference when they're told they're nice clean dogs as distinct from being told they're good dogs, which is a word many dog trainers reserve for use when a dog has obeyed a command correctly. Cats may or may not hear the difference, or care, but they like being clean anyway.

Zipcode 10101: Tangerine from Texas via NYC 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/tangerine-77953544/ny/new-york/mutts-n-such-rescue-tx2788/

Fair warning: this organization says they finalize adoption contracts via video call. This web site warns that you should never expose your face or your home via video call. If the contact person's eye cravings can be satisfied by a look at your general body language while you're wearing a hat, mask or veil, and sunglasses, in a public place, proceed. If not, you might want to prosecute the group for phishing, but you probably won't be adopting an animal from this group.

Anyway, for International Dog Day our Cat-egory is Cats Who Are Known to Behave Well with Dogs. Tangerine, described as the sweetest and spiciest in a litter of kittens named after fruits, is a baby Queen Cat--one of the minority of female kittens who inherit the red hair gene from both parents and look like ginger toms. They are normal females (she would still need to be spayed), only unusual. 

Zipcode 20202: Rosalyn from DC 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/rosalyn-77739304/dc/washington/lucky-dog-animal-rescue-dc20/

Rosalyn is a toucher. Her foster human says she might not absolutely have to have another cat or a small dog to wrestle and tickle with, but she'd benefit from having one. She likes to give and receive massages. She's young enough that she'd be likely to bond with anybody over time (still growing into her ears). Especially if they like to exchange paw massages.

Zipcode 30303: Esther from Tennessee by way of Atlanta 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/esther-77656163/ga/atlanta/your-local-fur-mama-tn1052/

Just another unwanted kitten who needs to be rescued from a shelter where she might be killed. She's very young and should probably still be with her mother, if her mother's alive, but she has that attitude of a kitten who intends to become a gracious Queen. "Why would I be afraid of anybody? Everybody always loves me because I am pretty and nice." She's unperturbed by cats, dogs, and toddler humans in the shelter. She should go far. Though not necessarily in the literal geographical sense.

Now the dogs, themselves...Just to be fair, our Dog Category will be Dogs Known to Be Nice to Cats.

Zipcode 10101: Mia from NYC 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/mia-76016685/ny/new-york/stray-from-the-heart-ny245/

Spayed, vaccinated, and crate trained while only eight months old, Mia is thought to be a mix of dachshund and Chihuahua and something a bit bigger. She currently weighs ten pounds. She's still growing, but she seems friendly with cats and other dogs as well as humans. Her profile is what I was looking for a few years ago when a local lurker needed to replace his neighborhood pet Cocoa, whose job was to hang out in the front yard being so cute and so friendly he attracted people to stop and chat with his lonely, retired, divorced human. I don't know whether that's an ideal job for a dog but Mia could do it well. 

Zipcode 20202: Babe Hunter from DC 

His web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/babe-hunter-77919425/dc/washington/k-9-lifesavers-dc19/

Whether you plan to hunt with him or just enjoy his company, who wouldn't want to adopt Snoopy? This baby beagle was rescued from a semi-feral pack in rural Maryland. Several mothers were trying to rear puppies together but apparently only five puppies survived, and each of the five ran up a substantial vet bill. But they think that, with training, Hunter will be worth it. This organization includes some professional dog trainers who will make sure Hunter knows how to behave like a perfect gentleman, at the very least.

Zipcode 30303: Milli & Vanilli from Tennesse by way of Atlanta 

Milli's web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/milli-77865399/ga/atlanta/your-local-fur-mama-tn1052/

Vanilli's web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/vanilli-77865473/ga/atlanta/your-local-fur-mama-tn1052/

Milli is male. Vanilli is female. Not much is known about their individual talents and pawsonalities, except that they are part Great Pyrenees, so they will grow into those paws, will have long thick coats that will make them look fat even if they're thin underneath, and might be happiest in a cooler climate or if their human can bear to clip and thin those gorgeous coats. Like Internet celebrity dog "Ms. Huck L. Berry," Great Pyrenees can be mellow, gentle pets but they are watchdogs--woe betide anyone who appears to intend to mess with their human or their home. They go through large quantities of food and normally live five to ten years.

Web Log for 8.24.25

Just a few....

Agriculture 

GMO chocolate? I'd rather pay more, or wait, for the real thing than risk ill health effects from "gene-edited" chocolate, thanks.

https://pjmedia.com/david-manney/2025/08/23/gene-edited-cocoa-mars-modern-answer-to-a-sweet-disaster-n4942988 

Animals 

The Silver-Spotted Skipper can be an annoying butterfly. It's a composter; it tends to warn people who are about to step on something nasty by flying straight up off the nastiest spot and perching on their faces, clinging, sucking sweat. I really disliked this species as a child, when people farmed and they were common as stable muck. Now most farms are owned by absentee landlords, and this valuable composter species is locally rare. Alana Mautone found one pollinating sweetpeas. They are sort of pretty when they keep a healthy distance. Her photos are pretty, as always.

https://ramblinwitham.blogspot.com/2025/08/silver-spotted-skipper-wordlesswednesday.html

Glyphosate 

Yes, the EPA should be required to exclude from consideration anything authored or sponsored by a chemical company when deciding NOT to re-license glyphosate. Better they should test a few samples from even a dozen patients with chronic bleeding conditions and, as a majority of those samples will show more severe bleeding after glyphosate exposure, ban the stuff. And require any use of spray pesticides to be done by a trained and licensed applicator, whose annual licensing fee should be in six figures between the dollar sign and the decimal point, following a unanimous vote by everyone living within three miles of the spray site. No more disabling illnesses for the neighbors because someone is too lazy (or too evil) to pick weeds out of his garden. And require all sprayed and/or genetically modified "food" items to be clearly marked as such, so that we can refuse to feed them to our gerbils.

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/epa-decision-glyphosate-safety-monsanto-ghostwritten-study/

Book Review: Murder at the Cellar

Title: Murder at the Cellar

Author: Dani Simms

Date: 2022

Quote: "She'd spent so much of her life on paths that led away from the vineyard, and, in the end, they all led her back."

(Points to Dani Simms for remembering how to write in third person, past tense, making this e-book read like a Real Book.)

Avery loves her farm. Well, her author's home is in Irvine. Avery's farm is a vineyard. Someone is trying to encourage her to leave in a creepy way, leaving nasty, threatening notes in and around the house. It might just possibly be the former owner, her parents tell her. An unpleasant, unpopular man, he let them have the farm indefinitely, on the condition that they'd leave if he ever came back to town. He's been gone so long that they've retired and left the place to Avery. Has he come back?

He has. And, as Avery doesn't budge, he allows her to find out why he left town. He does not intend that she live to testify. Of course, this being billed as a cozy mystery, we know she'll survive; I leave it to readers to find out how.

What's not to like? A vineyard. Wine culture. To me the whole book is icky-squicky because there are references to grape juice gone bad on every page. To some people that might be a temptation to backslide into an addiction. That leaves some people who might enjoy solving the mystery, though it's not much of an intellectual challenge. If you're one of those people, then you might enjoy this book and its sequel, or, by now, sequels.

Butterfly of the Week: Leech's Graphium

This week's butterfly has an unfortunate name. As you probably knew, the leech or bloodsucker is a sort of worm that attaches itself to people who wade or swim through infested water. People used to hope that diseases could be cured by draining out the infected blood--bleeding did seem to bring down fevers and subdue extroversion--so doctors used to keep leeches and carry them around to apply to sick patients. Though this treatment probably didn't cure anyone and may have killed some people, at the time it was considered an honest living, and "Leech" became a respectable family name. Eventually an obscure butterfly found in China and Vietnam was named after a naturalist called J.H. Leech--Graphium leechi. The butterfly does not suck blood. It's not even especially eager to lick sweat.

Photo by Rosefan2, taken in July in China.

Photos of living butterflies do not often show whether the males have furry scent folds along the inside edges of the hind wings. Museum specimens show this feature better. It is one of the ways naturalists can tell Graphium leechi from some similar-looking species; Graphium evemon have small scent folds, Graphium bathycles have no visible scent folds, and Graphium leechi have large conspicuous scent folds. Museum images for many Graphiums, including leechi, are available at Yutaka-it:

https://yutaka.it-n.jp/pap/13200001.html

What it does eat is unknown. That is, adults sip nectar, apparently preferring white flowers, and caterpillars eat leaves, but nobody has published an official document identifying which species. Because China and Vietnam have not paid researchers to study butterflies, much remains to be learned, although Graphium leechi is not hard to find and photograph. Its genome has been mapped, but has anyone documented its life cycle?

Photo by Yzcitic_zj. This looks like a pregnant (some prefer "gravid" for egg-laying insects) female, whose coloring conforms with the general tendency for female Swallowtails to have bigger, stronger wings with better camouflaged colors than males of their species. Is she choosing a food plant for her offspring? If so, Graphium leechi may be able to live on a different kind of leaves than any other Graphium species. Graphiums generally live on the indigestible leaves of plants in the Annonaceae family, but some Swallowtails can eat the less toxic leaves of plants in the Rutaceae family--mints, which have shapes like the plant shown above.

Photo by Kaivictor, also taken in July in China.

We can see that males, as in many Swallowtail species, need mineral salts and spend some time composting polluted water. Algae and litter in the water are probably part of the attraction for these butterflies. In gregarious species, where males spend a lot of time hanging out in flocks at puddles, females often hang out on the edges of the male groups. Instincts tell the male butterflies that they need to slurp up a certain amount of minerals in order to be able to mate, and the females that they can meet their need for minerals by mating so that all they have to drink is flower nectar and clean water. 

A photo at Inaturalist, not included here, documents a male Graphium leechi's attraction to a puddle in which a toad had been run over. Some Wikipedia editor has, for reasons of per own, chosen to use this as the main photo for this species on Wikipedia, though dozens of prettier and more informative photos are available. Many photos document the species' attraction to wet pavement--with residues of oil and lead from motor traffic and possibly still manure from animal-drawn traffic. There are reasons why the Bible classified the butterfly as an unclean animal. Photos do not show this species clinging to sweat-soaked shirts or socks, as some Graphiums have been caught doing, but do show it licking people's fingers...and two photos at Inaturalist show a naturalist who had obviously observed what else the butterfly had been licking, holding it up to pose on a rubber glove!

Photo by Nj_sam, taken in July in China. They'd really rather be pollinating.

Photo by Xuc, taken in April. 

Three subspecies are recognized: aprilis, leechi, and yunnana. The subspecies aprilis is the one that flies in April.

Photo by Yixianshuiesuan, taken in July in China. 

Photo by Xiaodoudou, taken in September. At this early stage the caterpillar resembles other Graphium caterpillars. Some species flatten out a bit as they grow up, while others beome more humpbacked. The host plant looks more typical for this genus, too.

Photo by Seventeennature, taken in September in China.

Photo by Jishenwang, also taken in September in China. This one's two pairs of false eyes may give predators pause. The working eyes are, of course, facing the surface on which it crawls. In order to see further than an inch ahead caterpillars rase their heads and look about in a shortsighted way. When tested, caterpillars seemed to be shortsighted, though Vincent Dethier, who took the trouble to test caterpillars' vision, was studying US moth caterpillars.

Photo by Jueming641, taken in September. The caterpillar's eye spots resemble the effects of a fungus infection on the leaf.

Photo by Dqk, taken in July in China. The pupa seems to be attached with an extravagant amount of silk, enough to have spun a cocoon, to a straight pin. Normally, of course, they pupate outdoors, on the undersides of leaves:

Both photos by Yzcitic_zj, taken in September in China. (One shows a single pupa close up; the other shows two pupae together, photographed further from the camera.)