Animals
Why I don't eat squirrels...they're subject to a chronic wasting disease humans can get by eating them. That disease can have a "mad" phase where the afflicted animal attacks other lifeforms that present no danger to it. There may be more than one "mad" squirrel.
Fiction, I Hope but I Suspect It's Not
Fictionalized, yes. If stories that you suspect started out as true bother you much more than stories in the horror genre, think twice about clicking on this link. It's awfully well done.
Internet, The, What to Read On
The part about "Trump, or the Kardashians, or the border-jumping criminals Trump keeps mis-calling immigrants just to yank the chain of the long-dead grandfather inside his head, or the generic 'mental patients' label this administration is being set up to demonize so the next administration can start slapping it on people currently called 'conservatives,' or the city of Washington DC, or the State of California, or the latest teenaged celebrity who's lost per virginity and found drugs, is/are soooo awful..."? Rubbish. Not worth an eye-blink.
The parts about which of whose books the quote comes from, or what year who was in what position, or what the weather's doing where your friend is? Nice to have. Worth looking up when anyone has a use for it. The Internet is one big encyclopedia. Mostly it's accurate on factual details and, when it's inaccurate, at least we can have plenty of good company in error.
The part about "I, an obscure keyboard warrior you've never met but who has a lot of unstructured computer time, am attaching feelings of love or hate or fear or anger or admiration to whatever these unknown third parties Out There are reported to be doing"? That is the only really important content on the whole dang Internet. Ignoring the part about the people who hand-type blogs and e-mails is a sin, and a tragedy. Read as much of that as your eyes can stand.
Law Enforcement
My opinion of Gavin Newsom is not high, but he does have a point:
If you're legitimately enforcing the law, why would you need to hide your face? Oh, say, as it might be, because you're using your knowledge of a foreign language and culture to identify which of your three unlovable brothers-in-law is actually dangerous to society, and you know you're more likely to survive this operation if your brother-in-law the terrorist is not certain that you ran him in? It's understandable but it's not our American way. If it becomes a violation of federal law to damage your in-laws' property, such that I need to help the FBI identify and lock up my brother-in-law, I think I should be required to show my face. Did he really do that much damage? If people can't deal with that kind of melodrama, it is just possible that they might not need to be involved in enforcing the law. If people aren't willing to take risks to enforce a law, it is just possible that that law is not worth enforcing.
Different issue...
So, what drugs were in Joshua Jahn's blood?
Memorials
Should there be a Charlie Kirk half-dollar coin?
Meh. Kirk was very young and had skipped the part of his education where students are expected to do more than sit still and memorize what they're told, and about some things he was just plain wrong. His heart was in the right place but his supply of facts was short.
Should young people boycott college education until colleges make it possible again for them to graduate without debt? Maybe. Should young people who want to get a job and use that job to finance a college education even consider having babies first? Er. Um. Charlie Kirk should have known some people who've tried it. Going to college at eighteen is a party. Going to college at fifty is a hoot. Going to college at twenty-five is a chore, especially the part about the only attractive people on campus being teachers and probably married ones at that, but it's still worthwhile--if you're single and have the mental space left to do it. Going to college as a frazzled working parent? Good luck, you'll need it! Some schools, like Berea College, have kept an old rule that forbids single students getting married while taking classes...because a body in full baby-making mode does not leave room for its brain to focus on a demanding course of study. Even new fathers need to rest when they're not actively working to take care of their mates and young.
Is "the patriarchy" a myth? Well, it's not a good name for what the people who use the word usually mean by it, because a patriarch is a good thing. No rational person objects to either men or women being honored for having gained wisdom and knowledge with age. The more people like that any society has, the better. Too many grandfathers is not our problem.
Rational people do object to a culture of injustice toward women, as expressed through things like not admitting women to jobs or schools, having elections in which we used not to be allowed to vote or electing governing bodies where we're not proportionately represented, paying men more than women for doing the same work, treating public space as if it were less available to women than to men at any time, imagining that medical procedures have been adequately tested when they've only been tested by men, and so on and so forth. I've heard recordings of Charlie Kirk trying to deny that these things existed because girls do better than boys in school, and I've thought, "Oh, child, did your mother know you were out?"
No matter how sincere a Christian may be, students at any level have a right to object to his being paid to lecture at schools if he's going to say things that are all that ignorant. The part of this story that really discourages adults is that the students, even the girls, weren't prepared to set Kirk straight. We have had a culture that actively discriminates against and otherwise harms women, we still do, and the appropriate thing for young men to learn to say is "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry." Repeat until they're as tired of saying it as the girls are of having them need to say it. Then continue for another thirty years.
Yes, for biological reasons, girls do tend to do better than boys in school. What do we need to do about this? The only sensible thing to do is to prepare boys to cope with it. Instead of letting your hormones tell you to stare at women and think about what they'd be like in bed, boys, wake up and think about what they're going to be like as supervisors. Consider how exceptional women who excel at men's jobs (like fighting fires, or wars) have far too often been physically attacked, whereas exceptional men who excel at women's work (like reading, writing, thinking, teaching, or managing businesses) have tended to be pampered and adored, by their co-workers. Yes, the equality of the sexes is a useful legal fiction. You're welcome.
Then there's that idiotic idea, something only a very young man could ever believe, about young women (as a group) being happier if they do what foolish young men think they want to do--have a baby before they're fully prepared to rear it. Buzzzzzz. Giving young women equal pay and full civil rights has yet to be tried; I don't think it would be the complete cure to young women's "depression," since "depression" is a symptom of physical illness that young women have been socialized to be able to admit they have, and freedom to walk when and where they chose would address only one of the things that make young people unhealthy...but fair pay and full civil rights would have to help more than premature parenthood would do.
I think Charlie Kirk committed the Deadly Sin of Hubris in suggesting that most people in their twenties could afford to marry young, as he did. Even the Internet, even the athletic and music industries, aren't going to make most people superstars who can afford to have two children when they're only thirty years old.
This web site doesn't do foreign policy so I'll stop right there. Let's just say that Charlie Kirk's other personal opinions, the ones not specifically part of his religious faith, had neither academic study nor life experience for bases. They were based in his emotions. There will be a wide range of assessments about how often Charlie Kirk was wrong; all this web site needs to say is that there was inherently a good chance that anything he said that Billy Graham or C.S. Lewis hadn't said would be wrong. But he correctly said, as they and other Christians have said, that he had a right to be wrong. We all have that. We all have the right to balance and correct and learn from one another's errors. That's the protection a society gets from freedom of speech.
Is that a valid reason not to mint a few memorial coins in honor of Charlie Kirk? Well...President Kennedy was also wrong about some things. Our national feelings about Kennedy's murder had a lot of influence on the collective decisions we've made, which have mostly been the ones he seemed likely to have made, ever since. Many of those decisions have been bad ones. Nevertheless, who doesn't have a Kennedy half-dollar tucked away somewhere, never to be spent, just as a piece of history? Kennedy had flaws and made mistakes. People still felt terrible about his untimely death. Our souvenir half-dollar coins testify to that.
Music
Molly Tuttle is from California, and this song is obviously about California, but it was written up in the Kingsport Times-News as showing a strong influence from "our" local musical tradition.
Following a recommendation from Katewerks at SmallDeadAnimals, I've finally started following ConservativeWoman.co.uk. This should not be taken to mean that I have any UK political opinions whatsoever, or want to have, or even that I'll go on following them. It merely means that I've been convinced that their Sunday e-mails have the best collections of High Church hymns in cyberspace. "Conservative" does, after all, primarily mean wanting to conserve and preserve the best of one's heritage. For any European that has to mean what most of us call classical music. If you, too, enjoyed singing in and listening to trained choirs singing classical choral music, sometimes with full orchestral accompaiment, you might want to visit that site too.
If I catch myself indulging in any thoughts or feelings that would belong to a person who had a vote in any UK election, I'll unsubscribe. The UK is the historic home of people who want kings. That's their right and I wish them well with it.
Writing, the Glamorous Life of Those Doing Professionally
I'm shocked.
In 2005 my standard fee, as a massage therapist, was $50 per hour. Elizabeth Barrette is older and in some ways smarter than I am. I can believe that, as a writer, she wasn't choosing to earn $50 per hour but, if all of her friends made the same choice, I am...puzzled.
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