Last weekend, although the Professional Bad Neighbor had been up here to poison the spring whose water people in Tennessee drink, Serena gave birth to at least three living kittens. I didn't haul them out of the kitten box to look; I thought they were likely not to live long. Possibly Serena thought that meant I didn't care about them. If so she was mistaken; it was just that she was the only cat having kittens, and she had them in the box without any trouble, and they were so quiet I felt no need to do anything but shine a light into the box, I think three times altogether, and see that each little blob of mostly white fur was still breathing.
Friday morning, about two o'clock, we smelled someone the Bad Neighbor had hired to take another shot at the Feral Elberta Peach Tree. The list of people he could hire to do such a thing is short. The list of people who could actually do it--the man scampered up and down a rough road in the dark, without a light--is even shorter. The list of people who could conceivably be on those lists, and have the odor and body shape of this spray poisoner, is very short indeed. Come to that, the man is short, too.
Individually most of my family, even degenerates like the Bad Neighbor, tend to be told that some people find us intimidating. I know the Bad Neighbor has led others to believe that he speaks for all of us, which is just another lie in his everyday routine, in addition to lying about property lines and titles, so I can understand the short man's not having the fortitude to tell the Bad Neighbor to do his own dirt. In a spirit of pure Christian charity I hope he broke an ankle and will not be doing any more bad things for the Bad Neighbor. A broken ankle is better than being set up to take the blame for a sociopath's evildoing.
Anyway, Serena stepped out for a break and came in with her coat reeking of "Roundup." Serena's daughter have given birth to some horrible-looking Seralini kittens. Serena's own Seralini kittens have been beautiful babies who dropped dead at their first whiff of "Roundup."
At dawn Serena showed me the first cold, dead little body. What got to me, apart of course from my own glyphosate reaction, was that in other years she's left dead kittens for me to find; this time she picked the body up in her mouth, waggled it about, and seemed about to toss it up in the air as if it were a mouse. It would have been a pale calico with longish fluffy fur. The two smaller, short-haired kittens were still alive and showed an appetite for breakfast.
Flowers
Who Out There has been blessed with a good second generation of dandelions?
Music
Bob Marley.
The Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
Tom Petty.
The Second South Carolina String Band.
Olexandr Ignatov.
Johnny Cash.
The Name Game
Everyone knows, though some people don't want to admit, that the easiest way to show disrespect and ill will for someone in a "polite" environment is to misuse the person's name. Never mind that "Anjali Menezes" really is a name few English-speaking people have any idea how to pronounce, or how to spell if they've heard it pronounced. People who suffer from free-floating hostility are just as likely to foul up names like "Joe Jones." People whose memory for names is genuinely full up, but who are not hostile, show this by not calling people who are already present and, if it becomes necessary to call anyone, calling the person "Sir" or "Ma'am."
Should Menezes have resigned from her job because people "dehumanized" her by misusing her name? Probably not. I must give her points, though, for being ethically superior to me. In her position I would have mailed out cheques to the guilty lower-paid workers, and messed up the names and addresses so that the cheques couldn't be processed by their banks.
Respect for Elders, Enforcement of
No doubt everyone has already seen both the first release and the longer uncut edition of the video in which Pastor Tony Spell, whose wife's age has been given as 78, gives a beautiful beating to Scott Sherwin, whose age has been given as 20. Apparently Spell opened his church during the COVID panic and Sherwin and his parents have been harassing the pastor ever since. This time Sherwin threatened to harm Mrs. Spell and the grandchildren. Spell crossed the street to get up in his face, Sherwin took the first swing--and missed--and the only part of the Testosterone Tradition Spell missed was the part where the winner stands on the victim's chest and gloats, the way Justice is shown doing to Tyranny on the Virginia flag.
Should a minister know better ways to deal with a stupid brat? Probably. Should Scott Sherwin spend the rest of his pathetic life ruing the day he pressed charges against an older man who was clearly acting in self-defense? Whoo-wee. Sherwin was caught on video bawling "Help me!" to people who passed by with an occasional indignant honk. Should all the spoiled brats on Earth know that, if we see a fight between a youth and a grandpa, and if we help anybody, it will be the grandpa? Yes.
Should all men who threaten rape, or any other kind of hatecrime against women, be preemptively neutered, such that they will gain no physical advantage from testosterone and will have incentives to avoid picking quarrels even with their ten-year-old brothers? I think so. Though I am glad the pastor didn't do it himself, on the street.
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