Yes, I'm spending some part of New Year's Day online. I have some catching up to do...
Animals
England actually has a species called the December Moth--proving that being close to the ocean really does moderate the chill. Places in the US that are in the same latitude with southern England don't have moths that fly outdoors in December.
Books
This review does a fine job of explaining why The Long Winter is not my favorite "Little House" book: When I want to feel cold and hungry, I go out and shovel snow or something. But Wilder/Lane did a magnificent job of writing detached, realistic winter scenes that make you feel cold and hungry.
This review is at least a refreshing new take on The Magician's Nephew, even if the computer was allowed to "correct" Polly's name to "Pool" toward the end:
Was it appropriate to write that "you could see...that [Jadis] was a great queen"? I think so. You could see by the way she was dressed that she was very rich; you could see by her body language that she was a ruling queen, not a queen consort or a queen mother who needs at least to seem kind or lovable. Autocratic. Imperious. Tyrannical, even. I think the point that needs to be emphasized, here, is that "great" here has nothing to do with "good"--that giving people credit for their positive qualities or accomplishments in no way implies that they're good people or good leaders. Jadis was a great queen, seven feet tall ("great" in the sense of "large") and dazzlingly beautiful, strong enough to throw iron lampposts about like hedge trimmings, but she destroyed her own country and became the channel of the Evil Principle in Narnia. We're being told that she fulfilled her culture's expectations that as a ruling queen she'd be imperious, and extravagant no doubt, and decisive, and bold, and probably cruel. Elsewhere in the book we're told that she was the Queen of Queens and the Terror of Charn (her homeworld). Charn apparently wanted to be led by a Terror, got what they wanted, and deserved what they got in Jadis. By appreciating what she had going for her, we understand how she was able to do so much evil.
I don't think it hurts to take this approach to real-world evildoers, either. Anybody can be a brawler or a gossip or a thief or, given the opportunity, a traitor. Some evildoers have brought special assets to the service of evil, and accomplished so much worse things than an ordinary brawler or gossip or thief. Hitler came as close as any man to being "the" Antichrist of his time, because he was seen (not that newsreels make it easy for me to see how) as being brilliant, charming, public-spirited and even good-looking. Osama bin Laden let his followers paint pictures of him as the modern Saladin, the great white knight on the white horse, protecting the innocent and avenging the righteous and--in bin Laden's case--blah blah de blah on; those pictures wouldn't have been paintable if he hadn't been tall, reasonably handsome, rich, a good speaker, and adept at playing the political game. We don't admire people like that but we should not underestimate the assets they have.
After all it is, in a way, a bit flattering to the side with whom we sympathize to acknowledge that their enemies had assets. David didn't bother to boast about the ordinary foot soldiers he defeated, or killed; he was remembered for having killed a lion and a bear and, in single combat, Goliath. We as a nation are so far from being proud of having bombed Somalia that many people don't even realize that that's why so many Somalians have become refugees, and why the ones who've come here see us as an enemy nation from whom it's acceptable, even virtuous, to take all they can take. Where's the glory in an unacknowledged war, or "police action," with Somalia? We're proud of having defeated Russia in the Cold War, the Nazis in our last acknowledged "hot" war, the British Empire in our Revolution. Those were big countries with big, tough, well-armed forces. We don't like to remember that we even sent troops to places like Panama or Korea or Kuwait, although we did.
Photography
The Roads End Naturalists put together a calendar of their most memorable North Carolina nature shots. You can print the pictures onto calendar charts for yourself, but they are good enough that the Naturalists could print their calendar on Zazzle and sell it in aid of hurricane recovery efforts.
Poetry
I tried to write a New Year's Day poem for the Substack. It rhymes; it's not a real clunker, but neither is it great. There's a reason for this. The good New Year's Day poems for this year were being written by Susan Jarvis Bryant. The link says "a poem," but actually there are three.
Sherry Marr offers hope for frustrated leftists. A beautiful and wise piece of free verse. Ground yourselves in True Green.
Politics
Made simple for teenyboppers.
[Cartoon acknowledged to be computer-generated by "Goths Against Cancel Culture," a F******k group. Any resemblance between the longwinded kid with the stringy black hair, messy bangs, and bosom and any real teenybopper later to write under the name of Priscilla King is purely coincidental, but I love love love seeing that type presented as having anything to say. Thanks to Joe Jackson for sharing.]
Resolutions and Self-Improvement
If I point out that several things on Escriva's list, at the end of the post linked, are subject to cultural interpretation and the one I'm most likely to do is regarded as honesty, authenticity, rather than self-conceit, in some cultures...is that making excuses when corrected?
Probably. It does need to be said, though, that there are different views of citing oneself or one's experience as an example. In some social circles there is a rule, sometimes unspoken, sometimes spoken in terms like "Tell us what you've learned from research beyond whatever personal experience you've had with the topic of discussion." In others the rule is "Tell us what you've learned firsthand about the topic, whether it makes you sound good, bad, or indifferent; be authentic; better to boast a little or to confess a little too much than to sound detached and academic when we all know the topic is one of personal interest to you."
Not only is it possible to sound, and to be, extremely arrogant while flattering oneself about--among other things--one's use of an academic tone with no reference to one's personal experience. It's possible to speak a language where the use of personal pronouns is often avoided, in order to sound modest or respectful or even, in a vague way, honest about trade, and never give a thought to developing any of those charming qualities. In Spanish and Portuguese (a name like "Escriva" has to come from one of those two, or both) the pronouns are often embedded in verbs rather than spoken. Not only do these languages encourage the use of a special verb form that makes "I" unnecessary in sentences like "I went to the door." Also, once it's clear that a story is about a certain person (call her Rita), the languages encourage pronounless sentences like (literally) "Puts the hand into the pocket" rather than "Rita puts her hand into her pocket." The context makes it clear that the third-person verb refers to Rita; that being said, Spanish-speaking people like to say, Rita could hardly put anyone else's hand into her pocket and no decent person would put her hand into anyone else's pocket. (Or at least, if Rita is leading a child by the hand and holding the child's hand inside her own pocket, for warmth, that departure from the norm would have been explained.) This is just common courtesy and, though it does reflect the idea that many people who speak Spanish think it's polite and proper not to call attention to oneself, it does not mean that all people who speak Spanish are either more modest or more honest than people who speak languages that don't have all those special verb forms.
Anyway...I learned to talk in the 1960s. "Be honest! Be authentic! Is this opinion of yours merely based on things you've read in books," which tended to be denigrated in the Age of Encounter Groups, "or how does it relate to your own experience?" So I have this blog, where I explain how my opinions relate to my experience, whether that's to my experience of getting things right, or my experience of getting things wrong, or my experience of seeing how things worked out for someone else. Blogs are personal; they may also cite academic studies, because in cyberspace nobody's afraid of numbers or footnotes, but they are about what bloggers did, thought, remembered, read, or even wore. Some people may think blogging reflects self-conceit. Well, they don't have to read it.
But just yesterday I came across an example of the kind of writer whose dependence on academic studies and denigration of personal experience was part of what made him seem like the most insufferable egotistical bore on Earth. No link for Mr. Bad Example. You don't deserve to have to read the jerk's words. You undoubtedly already know the kind of pompous ass who clutches at numbers that may or may not be accurate or relevant and belittles anyone's experience in the real world as irrelevant if it doesn't fit into the claim he wanted you to think his numbers support. Heavenforbidandfend I should, or anyone else should, ever sound like that.
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