Lot of Microsoft hassle as I worked on something unrelated to blogging or Web surfing. Four hours, altogether, were stolen by Microsoft on Wednesday. One pretty picture and a few music links:
Animals
From the Roads End Naturalists. Tiger Swallowtails' gender can be easy to tell on sight, recognizable to butterfly watchers, or hard to guess without observing a couple together. This is a couple. Female on the left, male on the right. Female Swallowtails are normally the same size as males or bigger, but in this case the male is closer to the camera so he looks much bigger.
Tiger Swallowtails are Virginia's official emblem and are usually found at the Cat Sanctuary. The Professional Bad Neighbor is gone from county property lists for the neighborhood but is still often found here, day and night, in the grossly aging flesh, usually in a vehicle since he now walks with difficulty. Harassment has included drive-by spraying of "Raid"--and I've yet to see this generation of Tigers.
Music
Allison Russell.
Robben Ford.
Haley Heynderickx.
Tedeschi Trucks Band.
Susan Tedeschi, with a different band.
Meh. There are women like this. A few. Rush Limbaugh said there were fewer than two dozen feminazis on Earth. I imagine more misogynist societies breed more "man-eaters," but in our fifty States we might have five hundred...
And there probably are a few innocent little girls of twenty-five who are "holding out for a hero," too. There may even be a hero like the one this song describes, somewhere. Actually the "fast and strong and fresh from the fight" kind of hero is more of a male fantasy. Real Women are probably more interested in the steady and reliable and honest and responsible and self-cleaning variety. But somewhere it's possible that a boy who's living out the male fantasy of being fast, strong, and tough, in a respectable way like fighting fires, is also building the character of a real grown-up responsible man.
But seriously, I have to question whether this is even a time when anyone ought to be flattering men and building up their infamous self-conceited egos. I think we might benefit from a new rule: In a year when any hatecrime against any woman has occurred, we say good things about the wombless when and as they do specific good things, and we praise only those specific acts. We can still notice when a man does a particularly good job vacuuming the stair carpets. Men generally, as a class? Their performance deserves no praise.
"I'm the one who can't go out alone, at night, etc., because other people are violent and out of control?"
Where are the songs like "It's HER street, boy, but if you're nice she MIGHT let you walk on it too, so eyes down, mouth shut, step back, nobody wants to take any notice of YOU"?
Sheila E...Why the bleep does this "girl" assume that "love" equals "man"? Why is she not focussed on the love of her family, her friends, the people with and for whom she works? Romantic Love is very nice when it happens. It is not going to happen to the "girl" who is out there making the ultimate commitment, when she doesn't even mean it, to men who are so commitment-phobic they don't even show up on time for dates. That "girl" is not giving anyone anything to love! If the character in this song concentrated on being a Real Woman, having a life of her own, doing what she's in this world to do, loving and being loved for herself independent of sex, very likely some man would respect her enough to earn her trust and love...
Janet Jackson's got it.
Nothing to rant about here...Ludovico Einaudi.
John Coltrane.
Ray Charles.
Les McCann.
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