Friday, July 3, 2026

Web Log for 7.2.26

What a lot of content I'm not likely to have read or listened to by October...

The day's "update" upheavals (four of them, for a total of about 2 hours wasted on "updates" made me wonder what kind of people think this is an acceptable way to run the computer network, anyway. Maybe reforms should include mandatory retirement for all who programmed "updates," into tiny houses that are gyroscopically destabilized. Approximately every six or eight hours, but never at the same time of day twice in a row, a siren should go off blaring "Update! Update!" and the buildings should make at least one complete rotation and two half-turns, never in the same direction twice in a row. They should have a general idea that if they fall asleep they're probably going to wake up somewhere other than the bed or couch, but no idea where! Sometimes if they put food on a plate they'll be eating food off a plate, and sometimes they'll be picking bits of plate out of food stuck to the ceiling! Sometimes their water-flush toilets will flush, and sometimes... For them that would probably be fun! The kind of "excitement" they craved all their lives! 

Anyway a lot of the "to listen to" was music...

Ludovico Einaudi.




Gotthard.


Tom Petty.



Chi Coltrane. (This song title, and the one by Gotthard, were linked at 
and, if you have a preference for one or the other, you're invited to go there and cast your vote.)


Jefferson Airplane.


Pentatonix. (If you're a strict traditionalist, bookmark this one and listen to it in December.)


Pearl Jam.


Paul Simon. (I'm struck by the resemblance between his tune and "O Sacred Head Now Wounded." Maybe it's just me...I hear "O Sacred Head" as a solemn, even intimidating hymn and don't really like its being...parodied?...as "an American Tune." It's a German tune and it goes with the words "Lord let me never, never outlive my love to Thee." So I'm not keen on this song, but some people are.)


The Beatles. (No controversy there. If you don't like the Beatles you might lose your membership in the baby-boom generation.)


Lot of soccer fans.


John Lennon.


James Taylor.


Parliament.


Mozart.


Silver Convention.


Pam Cavelcanti.


War (Charles William Miller and friends).


Improvisations on a theme by Manuel de Falla, the improviser not clearly identified.


Talking Heads.


Shostakovich.


Jefferson Starship.


Anton Dvorak.


Nick Drake.


R.E.M.


Paul McCartney.


Olexandr Ignatov.


The Incredible String Band.


Dorothy Moore. (I think the only way to sing this song without inducing snarky laughter is very understated, very traditional, NO "ornamentation." I can believe the words coming from a wistful, pensive state of mind; emoting makes them sound like mockery. So, soft 1960s pop, or country, but not "soul," please! Don't mind me. At least I laughed.)


The Beach Boys.


Mix of 1970s pop tunes. I did actually know one person who used to tune her radio to a station that played this kind of thing, all day, every day, when she was at home. I remember it as the sort of music that was piped into some shops and restaurants. Music to select 89-cent paperback books, 25-cent cans of veg, and $5.98 shirts by. 
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Bad Poetry: Moche Shield

This week's Poets & Storytellers United prompt invites reactions to works of art. 


According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, this artefact was molded of copper, decorated with gold, silver, turquoise, glass beads, and originally with woven fabric, by or for a Moche warrior in Peru in the first century CE. The owl image was made separately and attached in such a way that the head moved a bit and the wings fluttered when the shield moved. If nothing else, the complexity of the shield might have distracted enemies from throwing spears or shooting arrows to trying to steal the work of art. 

On his shield he put a night bird,
And it glittered in the sunshine,
And it shimmered in the moonlight,
And its wings flapped when he moved it,
And its head bobbed as if watching
Any who were watching him move.
Every bead and fold of fabric,
Every curve of onlaid metal
(It was all of precious metal),
Every wink of sun through beady
Night bird eyes over his shoulder,
Spoke to all who saw him walking:
"Here behold a famous warrior,
Much admired by all the Moche.
Who strikes him will fight a hundred
Moche warriors seeking vengeance."
And there were nights when a watchman
Told himself, "This is the Owl Man,
Chief among the Moche warriors,
Come to take our gold and silver.
Better not to see him coming
Better say: I saw a night bird
Shimmering in the summer moonlight
As if made of gold and silver.
Let him take what he came seeking.
None of us need fight the Owl Man."
And there were days when a warrior
Said: "Ho! I will fight the Owl Man!
I'll win honor, I'll win glory,
People bow when I step forward,
Hold my feet when I am seated,
Carry my things when I travel..."
And his spear bounced off the owl shield,
And Owl Man returned it to him
Straight and swift, with the curare 
Sinking where it gashed his shoulder,
And the warrior hurried homeward
Ere its poison could destroy him...
If he reached home, if he fell down
On the homeward path, the Owl Man
Never asked, but added his spear
To the Owl Man's own equipment
Honored was the mighty Owl Man
Till at last luck turned against him
And he fell down on the war path.
Then they gathered his equipment
And divided up his weapons,
But the owl shield buried with him.
Never would another Moche
Represent himself as Owl Man.
Owl Man's name was long remembered,
Stories told to younger Moche,
Spirit called on as companion;
Even hundreds of years later,
When the Moche sleep forgotten,
Owl shield says to all who see it:
I belonged to a great warrior,
Loved and feared by all my people.
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Thursday, July 2, 2026

Web Log for 7.1.26

Once again...anything from the "to listen to" queue that has a beat may be linked below. 

This is not really a post. This has not really seemed like a day. I've been in the most unpleasant part of a glyphosate reaction. It mixes badly with a heat wave. All I've really wanted to do all day has been lie down and think of ways to produce these sensations in people who don't feel them as simple glyphosate reactions.

Glyphosate Awareness 

It's unfortunate that the Supreme Court upheld restrictions on the liability of corporations that sell poisons. Or is it? People who honestly didn't know glyphosate was making them ill filed their suits ten years ago. The ones still filing today are likely to be bitter clingers,

Time to consider the liability of people who have sprayed poison and thereby harmed other people. We are no longer talking about old farm laborers with cancer. We are talking about people who've deliberately ignored warnings and claimed they had a "right to spray." As those people react to blood tests suggesting they may indeed have cancer, they deserve to be hit with lawsuits from the neighbors they've harmed. They deserve to go into chemo knowing that people who know them are thinking, "If cancer must happen it couldn't happen to a more deserving blighter. I hope he swells up so that he can't even see his feet. I hope all the relatives of anyone put in the same hospital room with him complain because he's constantly covered in blood-flecked froth." They deserve to know that when they come out of the hospital their neighbors are going to own their homes and they should go straight to a homeless shelter, from which they can send the address if anyone feels charitable enough to send any of their personal paraphernalia through the mail.

Goops and How Not to Be Them

Predictably, someone answered ex-President Obama's interview with "Are the slave owners in the room with us now?" Meaning, of course, that although Islam teaches that freeing slaves is a righteous act every Muslim should do, Islam does not actually forbid some people trafficking in slaves in the first place. The usual argument. "Well, you know these people are generally a bit retarded and incompetent--some of them may have been kidnapped for ransom but most of them sold themselves, or their families sold them, so that someone could teach them how to work, which is the best thing for them really," and although many of the Arab countries have officially outlawed slavery, that is still what people know their "guest workers" are there for. Not to be exposed to the roots of their faith tradition.To be beaten and raped and trafficked around and treated worse than the "honest dust" of the earth. In a few parts of Africa people can actually be led out in chains and sold at auction.

Right. But I want to say this as a legally White person. We personally, we Anglo-Americans, have never owned a slave. (Maybe a follower who enjoyed being talked to and treated like one, maybe a college student who reenacted a slave auction as a fundraiser, but that's different. Those people were having fun.) Likely we have never even practiced race discrimination. We think segregation was stupid. We've corrected clerks who turned to us first when someone who looked different had been waiting first. We may have called people to tell them why they ought to hire our Adult Ed students. Some White people who may be reading this have legally Black grandchildren. And we want to help the young Black Americans making all the noise these days outgrow socialism, too. We think "reparations" for bygone generations is pretty stupid, especially when, if people trace their ancestors, some of them are going to come to a handful of Black and/or indigenous Americans who owned English-born slaves. But we would absolutely love to have dinner with Thomas Sowell or share a work space with Tim Scott. We voted for Ben Carson, would have voted for Condoleezza Rice, will be voting for Tim Scott if he ever seeks a promotion...

And. Still. Even though some of the "microtraumas" that perturb the young are "micro" indeed. Even though, considering a different minority pressure group, we think it would be good sadistic fun to watch today's college freshmen explain to Hillary Rodham Clinton exactly how having to ask for access to the computer with the voice recognition program (you know, because the older student working in the library didn't remember that they were the ones with the micro-disabilities) hurt them. Even though the idea of celebrating how slowly the news reached Texas in the 1860s would have seemed silly even if it hadn't been sponsored by Joe Biden.

Can we please, please, take a little time off from ego-defending and consider one way we personally can show good will to some member of some minority group today? Special good will, to help them see what's missing in what they've heard about White Americans being everyone else's enemies?

Music 

War, the band.


Steely Dan.


Aukai.



Headstones.


Matthew Halsall.



The Mamas and the Papas.


Robert Gromotka.


Luke Brogden.


Yeahman. 


Frenic.


Boogie Belgique.


Neil Young.


Emancipator.


Santana.


Ringo Starr.

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Book Review: Cooking with Friends

Title: Cooking with Friends

Author: Amy Lyles Wilson

Date: 1995

Publisher: Rutledge Hill

ISBN: 1-55853-383-4

Length: 134 pages

Illustrations: color photos

Quote: “If your guests ask what’s that curry flavor, tell themto shut up and eat or go to their rooms.”

These were, according to food writer Jack Bishop, the recipes the cast cooked and ate on the “Friends” TV show. Bishop supplied the recipes; Amy Lyles Wilson supplied the summaries of the scenes in which each recipe was prepared, consumed, or reminisced about; the Warner Brothers corporation supplied the lines and full-color photos from the TV show.

This cookbook is recommended to fans of the “Friends” show for nostalgia value. Unfortunately, I can’t find much to recommend the recipes, unless you’re trying to help someone gain weight. The arrangement of recipes is clever—instead of the routine sequence of appetizers, soups, meat, fish, veg, bread, desserts, and drinks, these recipes are classified as appetizers, coffee and accompaniments, comfort foods, holiday foods, New York food, vegetarian entrees, and desserts—but the recipes themselves are basic foods with lots of added fat. One dozen muffins would normally be made with two tablespoons of butter or oil; Jack Bishop’s recipe for a dozen corn muffins calls for ten tablespoons of melted butter.

If you buy the book and want actually to eat any of the food, I'd ignore the amounts of fat Bishop recommends dumping into everything. Start with one tablespoon of butter or oil per two servings of anything made with vegetables, fruits, or grain, and just enough to coat the pan for anything made with milk, meat, or egg since these foods already contain more fat than most bodies really need. 

Another way to cut cost and improve quality, if you insist on trying to eat any of these recipes, is to realize that you don’t have to use a food processor to make everything. Actually, if you don’t enjoy wasting electricity while subjecting your friends and relatives to unpleasant noise, you could forget about the food processor altogether. The only foods discussed in this book for which a food processor really saves time and trouble are the “creamy” whipped-oil salad dressings. You could just pass oil and lemon juice on the side and forget about the mayonnaise-y stuff. Picky eaters would thank you.

Otherwise, eggs fluff up about as fast when beaten with an eggbeater, a small hand tool that’s ecologically sound and easy to clean. Vegetables can be chopped more evenly and efficiently with a good sharp knife, also ecologically sound and easy to clean. Mixing dough and batter with a big wooden spoon is one of the main reasons why people bake in the first place; if tennis elbow has put you out of touch with the primal pleasure of beating up food, let a child do it—children instinctively know that beating batter is a treat in its own right. You can save those kilowatts for the actual cooking and find something more enjoyable to do with the money.
 
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Wednesday, July 1, 2026

Web Log for 6.30.26

Some cyberchores got done, at the expense of link hunting, e-mail, etc. But I did keep moving through that "to listen to" list, and quite a few of the things people thought I needed to hear were music.

Music 

Neil Young.


Bill Haley and what may be some of his original fans. (Fun fact: this is the first rock song I remember hearing.)


Crosby, and/or Stills, Nash, and Young.



A child called Leona. I'm not sure I believe this is unedited live video, but I've heard a two-year-old sing a simpler melody, almost this long, this close to being on key, many times before. My natural sister was the main attraction of "The Three Bigguns" before, at age six, she lost the ability to hear most of the notes in this treble range. 


Dave Brubeck.


Chet Baker.

Stevie Ray Vaughan.


OntWtf.


Joni Mitchell.


Bob Dylan.


George Harrison.


The Band.


Jesse Colin Young.


Chris Thomas King. 


Terry Reid.


Tom Petty.


Donovan.

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Book Review: Seasoned Timber

Title: Seasoned Timber

Author: Dorothy Canfield (later Mrs. Fisher)

Date: 1939

Publisher: Harcourt Brace & Co.

ISBN: none

Length: 485 pages

Illustrations: color frontispiece by Paul Honoré

Quote: “Mr. Hulme...had self-indulgently picked up a magazine instead. It was a Manchester Guardian, a fortnight old, but newly arrived. What he saw in it was anything but inspiriting—an account of recent anti-Semitic brutalities under Hitler—but a familiar feeling of guilt over the passively accepted safety of his own life had made him ashamed not to go on reading.”

During the two school years Seasoned Timber spans, Timothy Hulme, principal of the Clifford Academy in Clifford, Vermont, does a number of things because he would be ashamed not to. Around his forty-fifth birthday, he falls in love with a younger woman. He gets over being ashamed of his eccentric aunt, who compulsively plays classical music to keep down panic, and confides in friends about what makes her so special. He recognizes his feeling for one of the older teachers as a kind of nonsexual love. He rescues a nephew from disgrace. He stands up to a frankly detestable member of the school board. He persuades the town of Clifford to vote against what seems to be their clear economic interest. He helps one of the students launch an idea that may be more profitable for the school. And he buys an old house, fixes it up, and nobly gives it away...but the house is made of native stone. Timothy is the “seasoned timber.”

Dorothy Canfield Fisher wrote one novel for children, Understood Betsy, that won a Newbery award. Understood Betsy is the only one of her novels you’re likely to find in most libraries today. It was not her only one. Nor was it her most interesting one. The first few chapters of Seasoned Timber drag a bit, and gave me the impression that the book was going to be a longwinded, boring, but clean romance. It’s not.  Halfway through the book I’d lost all preconceived notions of where this story was going and actually built up a sense of suspense.

Vermont’s “hillbillies” had a considerable image problem in Mrs. Fisher’s day; she wrote in defense of her people. With this as a goal, I’d say that she succeeded quite well. I nominate the characters in Seasoned Timber as superb examples of the fine art of describing fictional characters who aren’t meant to be perfect, but whom readers would have to like and respect if the characters were real anyway.

The main fault readers might find with this story is that, for too many chapters in the beginning, all Timothy does is passively admire a woman he knows is too young for him; the plot plods and Timothy starts to seem like an old fool. Bear with him. As the plot becomes more interesting, so does Timothy. One could wish that he’d find a woman his own age to love—he is, after all, still the active and healthy coach for all the school sports—but in 1939 middle-aged people were supposed to have put romance behind them.

Timothy’s period-perfect politics naturally add a great deal to the story. The language used in Timothy’s political discussions is authentic--meaning that it would be very offensive today. Educated adults talked very differently in 1939 than they do now.

This novel is recommended to mature readers. It would be no more offensive to high school students than The Rise of Silas Lapham or The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg but it may, like those classics, be over some high school students’ heads.
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Web Sites I Wish Still Existed

This week's Long & Short Reviews prompt is "web sites I wish still existed." 

The web sites that I wish still existed are the ones that disappeared because bloggers died. 

Sometimes blogs are kept online as memorials. I like this; at least readers don't lose the whole archive when the blog stops being written.

Sometimes web sites just disappear. You click on a link to a web site you used to frequent and see a message that the site name is available for rent, if you want to set up a site with the same name.

Either way, the living web site is gone when its primary author is. Group blogs like Making Light, and like what this web site originally intended to be, do outlast one primary author as long as other bloggers survive. Too often the whole group are the same age, so the others don't outlive the primary blogger by very long. This web site did start out with the perspectives of two different generations; by now of course it represents only one.

I miss the living, growing Ozarque blog.

I miss Scott Adams' Dilbert Blog.

I miss Vivian Zems' Smell the Coffee Blog.

I miss Barbara Ehrenreich.

I miss Linda Lee Lyberg. 

I don't want to rush back to the "bright side"--facts first, feelings follow--but I will point out that, oddly enough, although I miss the blogs I followed twenty years ago, I still seem to find more worth reading online than I have time to read.

For one thing a lot of people who never used to blog are now blogging on Substack. Gene Weingarten, Dave Barry, Roy Blount, Garrison Keillor--many baby boomers' favorite comedians now have blogs. Poets like Rajani Radhakrishnan, literary novelists like Margaret Atwood, have blogs. These writers are not young. No worries--lots of younger writers are on Substack too. All I can say is, if you open a Substack account (even if you don't publish a'zine there), you'll be astonished at the number of people who you never thought would have blogs, who now have them, on Substack.

I don't look forward to having to starve the monster by pulling out of the Internet...but if that's what it takes to stop the plans for "data centers" to turn our Promised Land, North America, into the sort of toxic waste dump that is now known as Industrialized China, I''ll do it. And so will you. We'll just have to print our Substack'zines on paper and send them out by real mail.
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