The laptop was attacked this afternoon. I don't know when or whether posts will continue.
Wednesday, April 1, 2026
Favorite Book Blogs and Ten Bogus Book Reviews
This week's Long & Short Reviews prompt asks us to list some favo(u)rite book blogs.
Well, there's always the link-up at the L&SR site...
And these from the blog roll...
(This one's not been active lately. I begin to worry.) https://barbtaub.com/
...and others; five ought to do for a start, especially with the link-up above. (See the comments. Some regular posters at Long & Short Reviews backed away from this prompt because who wants to read us sitting around introducing each other to each other. The idea was to expand the circle but I can see why some people just commented that they didn't want to bother.)
This being April Fool's Day, however, here are ten Bogus Reviews of Books the April Fool Will Never Find in the Store or Library...
1. Pitt, H, M.D. Your Amazing Armpits. Bladensburg, Maryland: Axillary Auxiliary, 2010.
Discusses the importance of sweat as a means of communication and the damage done to entire societies when they have discovered aluminum-based antiperspirant deodorant. Includes an illustrated section on armpit hair braiding traditions.
2. Toze, I.C., Mystery of the Stolen Shoes. Grosset & Dunlap, 1987.
In this lost volume of the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories, Nancy, Bess, and Georgie find all of their shoes stolen and have to run out to the mall barefoot. Of course Nancy finds the criminal, who turns beet-red, then white, in the face when he sees that she's seen him blissfully sniffing a shoe, and then obligingly faints dead away. Meanwhile, our sleuthy team finally learn something about judging people by first impressions as they are suspected of having robbed one of the shops last week, when they were at school and couldn't possibly have done it. (In this volume we see, for the first time, evidence that the three school friends ever actually attend classes.)
3. Looney, U.R., M.S.W. How to Improve Your Mental Health. Tarcher, 2021.
An experienced counsellor discusses proven techniques to reduce depression in the post-COVID world, such as "Stop talking and thinking about your own feelings all the time," "Take a walk outdoors in the sunshine," and "If you drink alcohol, stop."
4. Moneyhun, I.O. How to Get Rich. Amazon, 2026.
Literally 159 of the 160 pages in this book are irrelevant blather that appears to have been copied from other books, one line from each book. Not only do sentences not follow logically from one another; they shift, within paragraphs, among different languages. There is a clear intention of filling up Amazon's minimum word and page count while not copying enough from any one book to be sued. However, on page 160 the author finally reveals a secret no other author on this topic has yet told you. "I don't know how to get rich! No other writer knows, either! If writers knew how to get rich, we wouldn't be writers!" This is well worth the price of the book ($99.95, paperback).
5. Rimer, A.B. Pi-Ology. Vogsphere Cosmic Press, 2026.
A collection of poems all written in lines of 3, 1, 4, 1, 5, and 9 syllables, in that order, such as:
"Anything
You
Do, and repeat,
Is
Heard as a pattern,
Including poems found in this book."
6. Jennings, P.N.M. Odes to My Darling Doggie's Adorable Internal Parasites. Cambridge: Counterculture Press, 1978.
Reprinted due to demand from the ever-expanding circles of Douglas Adams fans, these poems may or may not have been what Adams mentioned in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy but they certainly are bad. The poetess apparently never suspected that if she had stopped thinking of clever ways to describe animals that are not usually celebrated in verse, and taken her darling doggie to the vet, he might have survived longer.
7. Shoi, D.F. Vegan Chinese Cooking and Why Americans Are Doing It All Wrong. Hong Kong: Global Communications Inc., 2015.
Argues that soy sauce, and each other ingredient in a harmonious Buddhist vegan stir-fry, should be soaked in vinegar in a pyramid-shaped container in the roof of a pagoda for all 99 days of a southern Chinese summer. As a result the stir-fry can easily be consumed by people who have no teeth. The author blames Americans for the failure of his medical practice and his restaurant.
8. Dummkopf, I.B.E. What's Wrong with Women Today and Why Marriages Fall Apart. Salt Lake City: Brigham Young University Press, 2026.
A challenging read due to the author's nonstandard syntax, this book contains an hour-by-hour explanation of what the author blamed his wife for doing during the nine days he was married. The publication of this book was subsidized by the author's grieving parents following his suicide, for which they blame his ex-wife.
9. Ronzoni, G. Noodle: The Pastafarian Revelations of Leroy Studebaker. Tarcher, 2026.
According to his disciples, Leroy Studebaker found himself locked out of his home one night and, having drunk heavily earlier in the evening, sat down on his doorstep and narrated a vision of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Its message began with a list of female bar patrons at whom his staring had been winked, "but when thou eyeballest Rinda Tabermaker, thou eyeballest not well for her ways are the ways of death."
10. Zucker, I.M.A. The Benefits of Windows 365. Concept Publications, 2026,
"Blank books just don't sell like they used to," the publishers observed upon going bankrupt. This last book instantly became a collectors' item.
Link Log for 3.31.26
Politics, Practical
There are people who, if others don't interfere, will become literal "backyard breeders" keeping thirty good-sized pedigreed dogs in an average-sized yard with, apparently, zero poop-scoopers. Then there are people who live in a house with ample room for six dogs and three cats--I used to post to this web site from one of them--and the house is clean, is in fact maintained like a tourist attraction because the owners sell art and furniture out of it, and the animals are well kept and disciplined and friendly and a joy to visit.
The Loony Left think the way to protect the dogs from being forced to breed in a lake of filth is to issue diktats about how many animals one family can keep.
The American way, which my mother once successfully used, is for local government to stay out of the matter until a critical number of citizens petition to do something about a specific situation. My parents once rented the house next door to the people with, actually it was twenty-some poodles, and no scoopers. It took them less than a week to collect enough signatures to get that yard cleaned and some of the dogs rehomed.
Trivia
Who knew the different shapes of teapots had names?
Women's Issues
Misogynist mayor feels "divisive" about a memorial to a victim of hatecrimes against women. Women in Providence should demand that the memorial be replaced by a minimum of twenty memorials to other, almost certainly less pretty, female victims of male violence. (And that the gender-confused shut their fool mouths and stay out of it.)
New Book Review: Second Chances and Sweethearts
Title: Second Chances and Sweethearts
Author: Annelise Swan
Date: 2026
Quote: "For...those who are patiently waiting for the right love."
Claire and her little girl are welcomed back to Willow Creek by her aunt, who keeps the bakery, where Claire is going to work...but her ex-boyfriend, John, works too. John let Claire down at one time. Did he miss a date? Did he fail to claim fatherhood of the child, and marry Claire? (People think little Evie is his child, but we're not told the details of what went before.) Anyway, he disrespected her, he hurt her feelings, and if she ever talks to him as anything but part-owner to employee at the bakery, she firmly states, it'll be on her terms.
This is a sweet romance, so you know how it will end. On her terms. If he didn't really love her, he'd turn against her and find someone else long before the end of the book. Sometimes that's what it takes to find out whether a man is worth keeping.
I think all men who have arrived late or fail to arrive for dates should be locked in her family's basement with a pencil, a ream of paper, and a bucket of water, and required to copy this book out by hand before they're released. There are ways to weed the future deadbeat dads and jobless not-very-good-around-the-house husbands out of our lives before anyone gets stuck with them. This book explains one of the ways.
Tuesday, March 31, 2026
Petfinder Post: Down Here So Long That It Seems Like Up to Me
A few weeks ago we looked at pictures of the newest additions to Petfinder pages. This week we look at the oldest additions. There is a warning. Because some of these animals have grown old in no-kill organizations or foster homes, possibly with people who always hoped they'd not be adopted, there is a possibility that the winning photos are obsolete ones that just haven't been properly removed from the system. The organizations probably still exist, though, and the goodhearted souls who want to meet the animal who's been waiting longest will probably get to meet an animal who's been waiting for a long time, so we will use these images as we find them. With cats the problem may be just that they're ordinary-looking gray tabbies or shadow-like black cats. With dogs the problem is usually more serious.
So many readers have said the same thing. "I already live with animals. What can I do to help these animals? I can't offer them a home." Scroll down to see an example of how you can help. Just sharing their photos with friends who don't have animal companions (yet) helps boost the signal, but you can also sponsor their adoption by families who need pets but don't have a lot of money to spare. You can pay either part or all of the adoption fee. At least one of these pets can be delivered to the right home with a free crate and some supplies thrown in, thanks to a generous sponsor.
Zipcode 10101: Jane from Point Pleasant Beach
Jane is used to being an outdoor cat. Though she's friendly to humans and knows which one hands out the food, she's not much of a lap sitter. She does rub up against people she likes. She tolerates dogs and has made friends with at least one dog. She's just sort of ordinary-looking.
Retired Racing Greyhounds from New Hope (Pennsylvania)
Greyhounds make great pets. Seriously. I wrote this web site out of a Dog Sanctuary that had one for a season, and I loved the big quiet fellow. Greyhounds have been bred to be some of the easiest dogs on Earth to love. Short smooth coats hardly ever shed. Quiet personalities, peace-loving, gentle, tolerant of other dogs. Sweet dispositions, actually, but walking beside one tends to command instant respect from other humans you meet. There are just two minor but VERY important considerations:
(1) They were born to run. They really want to go all out and run like the professional athletes they are, and if they do, they'll run you off your feet, guaranteed. They need a big yard where they can run at their pace before you try teaching them to walk with you on the street. Perhaps your present menagerie includes a horse? A recently retired Greyhound can probably run faster than your horse.
(2) Their fantastic potential as pets has probably been completely neglected while they were racing dogs. They've not been living in a human home. They've not been trained to walk at heel, sit, stay, tell someone they want to go outside, or come when they're called. They're used to being in close quarters with other greyhounds but not necessarily with other people's yappy puppies; they're not used to motor traffic, or chatty humans, or real-world rabbits. They need all that training as they adjust to civilian life.
So, greyhounds are not for everybody...but a few greyhounds are still available for adoption by the few people who have what it takes to adopt them.
Lady from Greentown
Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/lady-a7e2d69f-5189-4848-8dc1-6363f6e741fc/pa/greentown/sugar-mutts-rescue-ny651/details/
Petfinder says the individual dog who's been listed as adoptable longest, but not been adopted, is this Pit Bull Terrier from Pennsylvania. They don't say much about her. Meh. With dogs...there's another alternate, right? But somebody Out There might want to e-mail the organization and find out the story.
MJ from NJ
His web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/mj-df2c0a9c-3371-4c92-bced-e7b3a351a07b/nj/pittstown/s-l-animal-rescue-nj590/details/
The non-Pit-Bull-Terrier who's been listed as adoptable longest, but not adopted, is MJ from New Jersey. His current guardians say he's a good dog most of the time, and they can read the signals and know when he's starting to panic, but he is a panic biter. Well...I don't like recommending a dog who's bitten people to anybody, but someone who wants to adopt the neediest dog out there...?
Zipcode 20202: Sweety from West Virginia
Right, so for one thing she's been in a Humane Society shelter. I apologize. There's an alternate selection. I was actually moving the mouse pointer down to another cat photo, having considered this one and decided she got the red ribbon, and the computer snapped her web page open. It felt as if Sweety were saying, "No! Pick me!" She does have more than looks in common with our Founding Queen, Black Magic, who was the perfect first cat for me. Though spayed, Sweety has adopted orphan kittens. She's not fond of dogs or baby humans and she takes a while deciding to bond with adults, probably because she's been a stray or in a shelter for so long. She is one of those black cats who fade into the background when people look at the shelter animals who are up for adoption. She probably deserves to be picked first. She just might be the perfect once-in-a-lifetime cat for somebody Out There. Still. The Humane Pet Genocide Society.
Alternate Selection: Ingrid from Nottingham
A true "friendly feral" cat, Ingrid is looking for a barn to keep mice away from. She's friendly "on her terms, and only on her terms," they warn. The organization sometimes arranges for animals to meet potential adopters at Petco stores in Towson or Timonium, but they want to "approve an application" first. They can deliver her, with a crate and some supplies, to locations within three hours' drive.
There is no fee for adopting Ingrid. Someone has already sponsored her. You, too, can sponsor the adoption of a deserving animal by a family who need a pet. Petfinder tries to ensure that all organizations are legitimate, that if you sponsor an animal's adoption the animal will be available free of charge or at a greatly reduced charge to someone who can offer it a home. Nothing is perfect but this organization seems pretty legitimate to me. I'd warn only that, no matter how legitimate you and your correspondent are, real names, home addresses, bank information, etc., should never be transferred through the Internet. How do you know nobody's going to steal your car keys from me? You know you didn't hand your car keys to me, that's how.
Cookie from Landenberg
Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/cookie-e8ac10c1-79d1-4330-9329-6a0bcf762dad/pa/landenberg/comp-animals-pet-rescue-md117/details/
Going on nine years old, Cookie is a Pit Bull Terrier, the breed that tends to languish in shelters because people are prejudiced against them. They say Cookie is a little old lady of a dog who still likes brisk walks and play time with her humans.
Alternate: Dexter from Delaware
He's six years old, weighs about 35 pounds, has some special medical needs, and has had some behavior problems. Basically this dachshund-schnauzer mix thinks his vocation in life is to protect his humans and their home. From any approach by other animals. He must be an only dog. He might attack visitors, too. You need to be able to set up an environment for him where he won't become overprotective, even if you want a dog who might make a burglar or a Bad Neighbor very, very sorry he came to your house. (If, for example, you are a neighbor of mine, you'd need to make sure Dexter would never be able to get out and attack anyone else's more peaceable pets--pleasant though it would be if our Professional Bad Neighbor were marked for easy identification...)
He's been sponsored for adoption, but they're not saying what the adoption fee is or how much of it the sponsor has covered. Dexter is in a foster home already and may be there for life "unless that one in a million home" is found for him. They want to know all about you. They use an online application form. If you have a one in a million home to offer this dog (they say he is a lovable pet when he's made up his mind that you're his human family), this web site reminds you that the real names, home addresses, and other personal information about real people do not ever belong on the Internet. The organization is probably legitimate; everything else crawling around the Internet is not. There is a legitimate need to document that you can afford this dog's veterinary expenses, but don't put any financial information online.
Zipcode 30303: Penny, Lilith, and Vera from Atlanta
Penny's web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/penny-6148fd56-b7b2-4383-a698-9ed0718c49a3/ga/atlanta/southern-animal-rescue-ga653/details/
Penny is the one facing the camera, with the coat the color of a new penny. Lilith is the one with the misaligned fangs that show, and Vera is the ordinary gray tabby. These are not ordinary cats; they're a social cat family. That seems to be the deal breaker for Penny. If you want one cat, you must adopt three. I think there's a great deal to be said for being owned by three sister cats. I also think the foster family have become attached to the Weird Sisters and don't mind keeping them fur-ever, though that's just a personal insight based on my life with social cats.
Alternate: Matrix from Macon
Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/matrix-814dbb1d-d433-4b21-b767-dbaa2613c7bf/ga/macon/kitty-city-cat-rescue-ga721/details/
Matrix, it seems, likes to slap things. Playing with her with a toy like this one should help, but they warn that "You will get your hands slapped many times" in the process of bonding with this cat. What can I say? If you are a regular reader, have enjoyed the story of how I've grown to love my cat Serena even though many people would say she's unadoptable and "awful," this is your opportunity to bond with a cat whose purrsonality sounds similar to Serena's. When she's had enough running, slapping, and clawing at things she may eventually decide to snuggle up with you. They want you to promise that she can be an indoor pet. If you rent, they'll want to know that that's all right with your landlord.
Rocky from Westminster, South Carolina
His web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/rocky-95e5687b-5048-44ea-861c-914dd91a25d7/sc/westminster/the-fathers-house-intl-animal-rescue-division-sc148/details/
His web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/rocky-95e5687b-5048-44ea-861c-914dd91a25d7/sc/westminster/the-fathers-house-intl-animal-rescue-division-sc148/details/
Part Platt Hound and part Cur, Rocky gets along well with people but can be a bully with other dogs. He's not all that big but he wants them to know he's the boss. If they have their own opinions, maybe they want to fight to settle it? So...the organization says he's been in their shelter for more than twelve years. All that time he's been waiting for a home where he can be the only dog.
Web Log for 3.30.26
A few links:
Blogger Defense (from Cancer) Fund
Those who do or don't follow Kat Hel may want to chip in to help the mother of two pay for cancer treatment. Referred by Barkley's Human.
Food (Yuck)
Good news for those who like M&Ms and Reese's candy: You may have thought your preference was just a matter of habit, or price and availability considerations, but it turns out that the cheapest, commonest candy brands are the least likely to be contaminated with arsenic. Too bad if you like some of the other brands sold by the same corporations, though.
Politics
Most of the United States expects warm (in some places hot) weather today, so this web site has been given to understand that some older Ds are planning another pleasant afternoon of reminiscing together and waving anti-Trump signs. They do not understand Trump. He likes that attention. This web site finds it more interesting that, in a bid for recognition as being a separate country from Somalia, Somaliland is offering the United States a strategic base and a chance at mineral rights in exchange for sending Ilhan Omar back home. A tweet addressing her as "daughter of the Colonel" hints that she may not want to be sent home.
The position of this web site is that Ilhan Omar has done a spectacularly bad job in Congress and should have been leading her people home in a way that offered more room for reconciliation, before now.
Book Review: New Love on the Lake
Title: New Love on the Lake
Author: Cara Joy
Date: 2018
Quote: "She was supposed to come for Christmas and Thanksgiving and large family gatherings. Instead, it was likely she and her Caleb would be making South Clarion home for a long while. Who expects to be a widow at thirty-five?"
In our crowded and polluted world, more people are dying of cancer at earlier ages than used to be accepted as normal. Hannah's husband Calvin, father of Caleb, has just died. Hannah moves back to her parents' home, breaking a US taboo for a successful adult, as her parents are still active and healthy. Hannah is American but her mother came from Ghana. Hannah is a doctor, like her father, and can join his practice. When she finds herself attracted to a colleague in her parents' town, however, she worries about breaking a Ghanaian taboo. Widows aren't supposed to be interested in remarriage for one full year after losing their spouses. Will her mother give a full blessing on the marriage if Hannah wants to remarry less than a year after losing Calvin?
There's not much suspense in this story. It's a sweet wholesome romance that might, if the children found it, give them a little empathy for adults but not lead them to think about things they're not old enough to understand.
Monday, March 30, 2026
Book Review: Sleuths at the Spa
Title: Sleuths at the Spa
Author: Vikki Walton
Date: 2023
Quote: "I couldn't help over-hearing and while the drink may have been incorrect there's no reason to have pushed the tray..."
Let me guess: The writer known as Vikki Walton works at a spa, or her granddaughter does. In her idea of a proper spa, when an employee brings a customer the wrong drink, nobody considers how the customer felt--startled? disgusted? nervous because she was up to something she knew she shouldn't have been doing? Our heroine, Viviane, never considers that it's not her business, nor does anyone try to smooth things over. Everyone agrees that Mrs. Wilson, the customer who pushed the drink away, is a horrible, terrible, awful person and the employee deserves a promotion.
While waiting for Viviane to confess her lesbian feelings for the employee, Callie (she doesn't, but it's all right, Viviane, that kind of thing is legal now), I forgot to notice any clues that anyone else had means, motive, and opportunity to murder Mrs. Wilson. But I will say this to students doing student labor jobs. People who tell you to feel entitled to better working conditions, more ego pampering, pay raises, etc., are not your friends. Callie did have means, motive, and opportunity but we're told up front that she didn't do it. One of the people who rush to soothe Callie's little ego is doing so in order to distract attention from the fact that she's also setting up things to make Callie look guilty. Now that part I can believe.
Butterfly of the Week: Apo Swallowtail
This is another very rare Graphium. It is thought to live only on the heights of Mount Apo on Mindanao island; hence its English name.
Photo from Swallowtails.com.
A subspecies, Graphium sandawanum joreli, is said to live on Mount Katanglad on the same island. Their preferred altitude is over a mile above sea level, but they have been seen as far down as 1000m above sea level.
Not everyone thinks it's different enough to be counted as a subspecies. The museum specimen shown is somewhat faded; in real life joreli can iridesce pale green or blue, too.
With a typical wingspread under 3 inches and a look that, although unique, does resemble some other butterflies, this species has had some difficulty getting the respect it deserves. It has been known to science only since 1977. In its very limited habitat, it appears to be common; on one side of the mountain or another, some think, an Apo Swallowtail may be flying on any day of the year. People want to cut down trees in the forests where it lives. People who don't want this species to go extinct have demanded the most severe restrictions on anything that might further endanger these butterflies. Some people have argued that the species is already extinct.
Photo by Z_Lesonge.
Historically, people lived on Mount Apo. The Filipino government tried in the mid-twentieth century to take over the mountain and declare it a park. The people protested, and the government conceded limited rights to live and farm there. The people, of course, wanted to resume using the forest in the way they always had, while improved survival rates meant that more humans wanted to live on the mountain. People persist in cutting wood in protected forest territory. Indigenous people who want to go on doing things in their old traditional way tend to be skeptical about any need to change things for the benefit of an insect.
Dead bodies of this species are sometimes sold. On the Internet a few sites claim to offer them. Claim to is the operative word; actually selling Apo Swallowtail carcasses is illegal and some carcass traffickers apply this name to completely different butterflies. Even if the picture on the web page looks like Graphium sandawanum there is no guarantee that what the purchaser receives will resemble the picture. Sandawanum carcasses sell for prices close to $100 and, when sellers are quite sure buyers can't find them, there must be considerable temptation to accept payment for Graphium sandawanum and mail out carcasses of Graphium sarpedon, which looks similar enough that, even if caught, the seller could plead ignorance. The best recourse against such practices is not to pay for butterfly carcasses at all. If foreign visitors came to the mountain and respectfully studied these butterflies, that might impress on the local people that animals they probably consider a minor nuisance are unique and interest people around the world.
Nobody has reported any information about the life cycle of this butterfly, what it eats, how long individuals fly, what any of its pre-adult stages look like...there are opportunities for scientists from Mindanao to become famous!
Sunday, March 29, 2026
Web Log for 3.27-28.26
The first pair of Red-Spotted Purple butterflies flew yesterday. Last night was chilly enough to cramp a lot of flowers' and butterflies' styles, but yes, spring is here! Cheer!
Censorship
Not that it really counts as censorship when someone doesn't want children reading a certain book at a certain age, which is what this story turns out to be. It's all about the idea that children are able to deal with references to sex and other body functions better as they mature. Children do not all mature at the same time. A book can be appropriate for 24 of 25 students in a classroom, but the 25th can be the bully who will make any discussion of sex, mental illness, personal hygiene, even flu symptoms, traumatic for the smallest child in the class. A good teacher minimizes attention to the body in a classroom.
But seriously...Scalzi's Lock In has a character whose gender isn't made clear. J.D. Edwin's Headspace trilogy ends on a planet where it's normal for humanoid children not to know which sex they're going to be until they're almost old enough for marriage. Ursula K. LeGuin's Left Hand of Darkness is about humanoid space aliens who show a gender identity only during their mating seasons, not necessarily knowing which one they'll be next time. It's speculative fiction. Does that kind of thing make people want to be genderless or gender-confused? Do bug-eyed monsters in science fiction make people want to be bug-eyed monsters? Isn't science fiction about the problems that would be likely to arise if a thing could exist? Many people don't like science fiction, but banning it only gives it a special appeal to the students who want to raise those people's blood pressure. Get a grip.
Movies
I hadn't seen or heard of any of Netflix's top twenty movie sellers, either.
Music
When we see "F. Mendelssohn" on a piece of music, we think of Felix. But Felix Mendelssohn had a sister, Fanny, who some thought was even more talented. Fanny was one of those women whose gifts really were suppressed by envious men. Anna Maria Mozart was comfortable with her having a musical talent while her younger brother had a musical genius, but the Mendelssohns were a less harmonious family.
Felix and Fanny composed and performed music together, but their father, believing that Felix's talent would earn his living while Fanny's was "only an ornament," promoted Felix's work and forbade Fanny to publish hers. (Some biographers think Felix was the jealous brat who pushed their father to insist on this.) Fanny Mendelssohn was apparently pretty enough that the family expected her to "marry well." Felix was not expected to have that option, so for Fanny to have competed with him would have been selfish and greedy, her family insisted. She found a husband who supported her musical career...but her father apparently held her to a contract that allowed her to publish only things on which she'd worked with Felix, only under his name, while Felix was alive. Neither sibling lived very long. Felix died in May 1847, not even 40 years old; Fanny died in November 1847, 41 years old. Her music was published after both siblings' lifetime. Both were trained to write in strict classical tradition, so questions of "better" probably apply more to specific pieces than to either sibling as a musician. Both were considered very good, and some of their best work was "theirs" rather than "his" or "hers." How convenient that they had the same initial...
For purposes of disambiguation, some people refer to "Fanny Bartholdy" (a name the whole family tacked on, after "Mendelssohn," to emphasize their identity as Christians of Jewish descent), and others to "Fanny Hensel" (her husband's name, which she used while living). She seems, nevertheless, to have been somewhere between one-third and one-half of "F. Mendelssohn."
I'd read this information before this weekend. I had not, however, found any recordings of music that's known to have been all Fanny's work, before this:
Transportation
Fellow Virginians may enjoy this documentation that it's possible for road problems to be worse than ours. Much much worse. I chortled.
Writing
Another pair of well-known synergistic partners in "creativity" were Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan Macy. A recent video, not recommended, claims that Keller's story was "fraudulent." He's referring to the version of it he got in primary school, which suggests that Sullivan only taught Keller how to finger-spell and then finger-spelled lectures to her at Radcliffe. Little girls who liked to read, in my time, probably all became Keller scholars as new books about her were pressed into our little hands; reading her collected works (collected, at least, up to the point where she identified her religion as Swedenborgian and her politics as Socialist) gives what is probably a more accurate impression. Keller had been a bright, precocious child for her first year and a half, so as a toddler she had learned some words and seen colors, which made it possible for Sullivan to teach her. Sullivan was poor, had poor eyesight, and had no other prospects in life but becoming Keller's teacher; even after marriage she (and her husband) clung to Keller's fame as a prodigy.
Keller's books weren't exactly Pulitzer Prize material. People read her writing, as Joseph Addison had said of a speaker of his time, as they would pay to watch a dog walk on its hind legs, not because it was done well but because it was done at all. A short essay, "Three Days to See," may be the only thing she ever wrote that would have been considered original and good if an able-bodied person had written it. But for a blind person's writing Keller's work was oddly...visual.
In her own letters and essays as in her unconsciously plagiarized story Keller seems to have been obsessed with the lights and colors she got from Sullivan's inaudible conversation, rather than writing about smell, taste, and movement as a blind person might be expected to do. She wrote in a goody-goody tone but it seems obvious that she felt entitled to use anyone else's visual imagery she could, whenever she thought it would improve an essay; I'm not sure that that's a bad thing, either--only that Keller seems to have known that her image wouldn't support any statements as frank as "If I can't see things, other people ought to be generous about seeing them for me."
Real blind people have been known to instruct their writing assistants to "colorize my story" when they're trying to sell their writing to the general public, so Keller's decision to publish a travel essay with a description of fireworks reflected in the water is not as bizarre as some think. Real writers, blind or otherwise, used to be told up into the 1970s that sight and hearing were "better" senses to appeal to than smell, taste, or touch, so that aspect of Keller's writing may also make some sense. The fact remains that Keller wrote clearly, vividly, and expressing strong opinions, only in synergistic teamwork with Sullivan. After losing Sullivan she wrote with help from other personal assistants, but never again in the writing "voice" she'd developed with Sullivan.
Sullivan herself...well, she died first...never published a book under her own name.
Is that a description of a writer, whose opinions were not destined for popularity, narcissistically exploiting a fraud? I don't think so. Considering the attitudes both women had to contend with, not only as women but as disabled and, in Sullivan's case, "shanty Irish," I think it's a description of two talented people who were shy about speaking or writing without literally holding each other's hands. With valid reasons. I think, if Sullivan had been a narcissistic exploiter, she would have found someone to market books about her role as Keller's Teacher--rather than leaving Keller to write her biography after she died.
With and without Anne Sullivan, Helen Keller wrote fourteen books. Several became hard to find in the mid-twentieth century. But have they ever been reprinted in this century.
I've long been bemused by synergistic teams in creative work. Anne Sullivan was neither the first nor the best known Sullivan to become famous as a collaborator. Rodgers and Hammerstein were an interesting pair. Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane. Clara and Robert Schumann. C.S. Lewis and his Inklings...
Sunday Book Review: A New Kind of Zeal
Title: A New Kind of Zeal
Author: Michelle Warren
Date: 2013, 2018
Quote: "It's 2030, and...Temperature's rising, food's disappearing, people are fighting, and lunatics are still preaching."
It's a hypothetical dystopian 2030. Elizabeth II is still Queen of England--age 104. (She's not onstage in the story.) New Zealanders are generally nice, not overcrowded people, so they're coping with food shortages by raising their own food and sharing it with neighbors, but even that worries Prime Minister James Connor, who fears that if the national government doesn't appear to be in control of things the globalists will take over. Bishop Mark Blake, father of Tristan (who utters the line quoted above), is a deeply unhappy widowed father of even more unhappy adult-sized children. And Joshua Davidson, a plainly dressed, charismatic, Christian young man, is turning hobo camps on the beaches into real parties. Joshua is a mixed breed. Some of his followers have determined that he's descended from both British and Maori royalty. Someone starts publicizing his speaking tours by calling him a king, though New Zealand is basically a democracy and no one expects, or wants, Joshua to do any actual ruling. Joshua believes in the separation of church and state.
But in some mysterious way, that allows this story to become a political parable, Joshua is destined to reenact the story of Jesus. He heals people who may already be dead. He promises people a spiritual way to meet the war and tsunami to come. He suffers horrible migraines and seizures after making contact with sinful people, reacting to the "spiritual darkness" of people who've decided that it's more palatable to call sin "darkness," and without being suicidal he's not trying to delay the day when his physical body will be allowed to die. And he attracts people with coincidental names, though they don't seem to be drawn directly from the saints--John is younger than Mark, James is Mark's friend rather than John's brother, and Rau Petera is a priest who speaks with the voice of caution rather than a fisherman who's always first with the wrong answer. There's a Rachel, too, and although she's too young to have children, she weeps with motherly love before the story's over. There's a Luke, and not a Eunice but a Eun Ae. With a cast like this there's probably a reason why no major character in this book is called Mary.
And then there's Tristan, the Sad Man, who's been in the Army, and his baby sister Selena, who is so rebellious that, since her dead mother and emotionally distant father were Christians, she's become a Satanist. Together with James and Mark they find themselves drawn into the roles of the enemies of Jesus. But the roles overlap and break down. In the real world the enemies of Jesus didn't live very long--Herod feared a new king because he was dying, Judas went out and hanged himself, Annas and Caiaphas weren't young. In this story the enemies of Joshua need to repent and be reconciled, not only because repentance and reconciliation are what Christianity is all about, but so that they can be major characters in the political parable that continues to unfold in two more volumes of their story.
Sinful people, this story tells us, would react to Jesus exactly the same way now, as professed Christians, as they did in Jesus' time. Well, not quite. Technology now allows people to be killed by methods that at least work faster than crucifixion.
Christians are told that we have "one Lord, one faith, one baptism." Jesus was unique. His mission will never be repeated. Historically, however, there have been many Christians who wanted to offer up to God whatever bodily suffering they had to endure, who wanted--and tried--to do everything Jesus did. In this story Joshua is able to do what many of the saints have prayed to be able to do, only a little more effectively than they did.
This story is primarily for and about people in New Zealand but it's worth reading in any country. Most of the world could stand to learn a bit more about New Zealand.
Friday, March 27, 2026
Web Log for 3.26.26, with Virtual Shopping Trip
Status Update
The weather's been delightful at the Cat Sanctuary. Seductive. I've spent time outside. The first butterfly of spring may have been Iryna's Azure; the ones with white underwings are fairly common, and often the first to fly in spring, here. Then came a pair of Tiger Swallowtails, circling each other in the air in a courtship dance, and, minutes later, a small Fritillary, and a little dark Skipper, and on the next day more Spring Azures, some with white underwings, some with pale blue, and some with pale brown. Only two daffodils bloomed, got snow on the flowers; the rest seem to have decided not to bloom for a good long time. Neighbors who get more sunshine had crowds and hosts. Violets have bloomed, and azaleas, and forsythia.
I had a fairly bad glyphosate reaction yesterday evening. Blood and pains--they weren't in the heart, thank goodness, though some women have said they felt the pain of a heart attack as coming from further down. I've had pseudo-cardiac symptoms that never turned out to be from cardiac disease, occasionally, for years. They all seemed to be reactions to some sort of chemical residue in the air. Not glyphosate, but something else that's sprayed along road verges. I don't know how common this is but want the idea to be Out There for discussion. If you or a family member have had something that seemed as if it might be cardiac disease, but it passed quickly and there are no other signs of cardiac disease, you might want to find out which local roads or fields have been sprayed recently, and with what.
And the computer had a severe Microsoft reaction yesterday afternoon, and all through the night. I restarted itself once. It restarted itself six times. So when I was paying attention to the laptop it was misbehaving. I did get some butterfly studies done, but very little else.
Glyphosate Awareness
Glyphosate may be breeding "super" disease germs that resist antibiotics:
Virginia Election 2026: Special Vote on the 21st of April
This is the one where we vote on how the votes in November will be counted. The situation is dire. Basically the Ds, who have been advertising so heavily they're making the whole special vote sound sort of wix and like something you'd want to sleep through, want to redraw the election districts NOT to represent the numbers of people in different places fairly, but to get more urban welfare dependents into every district in the Hump and Swamp so that only the Point still maps red--although the property owners of Virginia still do map red.
This is the way they want to redraw the map:
Don't let it happen, Gentle Readers. The map the Ds are proposing obviously does not reflect the actual views of the electorate. We do not want all those Swamp types letting themselves be misrepresented and misgoverned by people they don't support, and then fleeing out here. We want them to stay and drain their own Swamp. We should all go out and vote NO on the 21st of April.
What say you, fellow Virginians? Is it worth the trouble to do like a group of voters who called on our US Senators this week, and all wear red to the polls?
The one shown above was marked down to $10 at the time of posting, so it's probably no longer available...
I would wear that to an office job. Everybody knows I'm more arty than yuppie and like to swish a skirt around, anyway.
Sort of a compromise between arty and yuppie?
I don't think it's fair that the dress with the belted, bloused fit costs so much more than the ones designed to show off a trim waistline. We're going to burn off the winter fat! It's only March!
This one would be comfortable, but for daytime wear I'd want to take a few inches off the bottom.
There's always the stylish shirt, not a T-shirt, to wear with a skirt, or even with trousers that reach to the top of the shoes.
Or the white, blue, black, or beige shirt or dress with a little cover-up.
And nobody else will ever wear palazzo pants as well as Melania Trump, but for those of us who are in between 5'2" and 5'6" or 5'6" and 5'10", there is something to be said for trousers that look like a skirt, so nobody expects them to reach to the top of the shoes while being clear of the bottom. The line between palazzo pants and culottes is fine. You can wear any length, so long as you're not actually walking on the hems.
Just sayin'!
Book Review: The Missing Bride
Title: The Missing Bride
Author: Zanna Mackenzie
Date: 2015
Quote: "If I do manage to complete my apprenticeship...the agency will offer me a job."
Amber, an apprentice for a private detective agency ("We're not the police. We're better than the police"), is assigned to find out who kidnapped the bride-to-be just before a big expensive wedding.
At least it's a twist on the usual mystery and the usual romantic comedy. I don't know what to say. For those who like this kind of plot, I suppose this is the sort of thing youall like. I did not get into it or suspend disbelief, but that's me.
Thursday, March 26, 2026
Meet the Blog Roll: Laura McKowen
Moving down the blog roll, I paused to delete a couple of links to sites that used to be writers' blogs but have evolved into publishers' marketing pages, which is all right if the writers are putting their time into writing books, good for them, but it means that no blog posts are actually showing up on the blog roll and the sites are only taking up space that keeps new blogs from being added. I am likely to want to buy new books by e.g. Louise Erdrich, whose Birch Bark Blog has grown into a full-sized publisher's site for the new Birch Bark Books imprint. This new site is easy to find on Google. It is no longer an individual's blog.
This brings me to Laura McKowen. Her Substack is now hidden behind a paywall. She's not updating the web site that's on my blog roll. I still follow her, sort of. I'll mention her here because some people may want to follow her Substack.
I am not and have never been even in her intended audience. Knowing he had alcoholic genes, my Irish and Cherokee father kept our home alcohol-free. I grew up with stories about what happens when people who have alcoholic genes use alcohol other than the way nature clearly intended it to be used--as cleaning fluid.
A beloved elder "had two more brothers that died back in the 1930s. They would beg outside bars, dig in garbage bins and drink whatever kind of alcohol or take whatever kind of pills they could find. They started drinking beer with friends, and what it did for them was make them so sick they wanted anything at all to make them feel better for a little while. They were in bad shape before they died. They were like old men. Neither of them was even thirty years old. Seeing how they died at least turned the two younger brothers in the right direction, but you can see how much damage they've done themselves." Both of the younger brothers were sober men with disabilities that showed when they talked; neither ever married or had children.
An elder I never knew had had a long healthy life, with grandchildren, before some loss or illness unknown made her want to alter her consciousness. "She's in a hospital, on a locked ward. They talk about 'hitting the bottom'--she went down fast and hit that bottom hard. Most of your cousins just forget about her. Well, she sort of adopted her husband's family and forgot about us for a while, before you were born. Anyway A and B go out to see her when they can."
A man who served in the same war with my grandfather, though they didn't apparently work together as buddies, didn't go down quite as fast. Apparently he'd been the neighborhood drunk for years. People felt sorry for him, but the story they told about him was just too good not to share. "Some neighbors found him lying on the ground. He said 'Are you dead too?' He must have been so sick he thought he'd died...and A said, 'Get up, [name]! You're not dead! If you were dead you'd see the fire!'"
Then of course there was the man from whom we rented a house, at times, before inheriting the house where I live now. Things he had done for beer money had included throwing lighted sticks of dynamite into the river to kill a lot of fish, some of which he then netted and sold. He seldom got up any more, but would draw a hand out from under the sheet to show visitors the first joints of two remaining fingers, and the stub of bone inside the "webbing" that had been the base of a thumb. He could still expand his hand; you could see a little knob at the inside edge of the hand move the "webbing" in and out. "What I got for dynamiting fish," he said. "It's not fair to the animals. Never fish with dynamite." He had been a carpenter, even a "house carpenter" who built wooden houses, and the ones that have not burned down are still standing. After the fishing incident he did some unskilled labor. His sober wife, who still worked though I was bigger and taller than she was by age ten, got a pretty good widow's pension for twenty-some years after he died; they were about the same age.
And there was another old man who always hailed my brother and me as "boys." Probably he could see the difference, Dad thought; he was just saying he intended to treat us the same way. He was the only man we actually knew who'd ever been a coal miner. (We knew an old lady who'd been a coal miner's daughter; she was "the one from Appalachia," accepted that identity with pride, organized car pools to go back for visits. It was not disreputable to be a coal miner if you lved in Appalachia.) The way this neighbor had become a coal miner was that he was a mean drunk and, though he used to be strong and hardworking, nobody wanted to work with him. He was known for going home drunk and beating his wife. She was relieved when he got work in a mine fifteen or twenty miles away, and rejoiced when he moved on to one fifty miles away. During Dad's school years the man "got saved" and became a total abstainer from alcohol. He was still bad-tempered and disreputable, Dad said. "He was mean to his kids--they all left as soon as they could and never came back. You should say hello if he speaks to you, and it's all right to take a lift if he offers you one, I suppose, but try to steer clear of him. If he needs any help I'll do the visiting." Mother added: "Remember that song Ernie Ford used to sing? Coal miners were proud of being rough and mean. Nice people didn't want to know them." Oh, people in the towns that never had coal mines, in the Appalachian Mountains, just love people who think we all had connections with the coal industry. Only after gerrymandering put mining towns into our state delegate's constituency did we discover that, "If you think coal is ugly, look at poverty."
I've never felt inclined to drink cleaning fluid. I have friends and relatives and readers who struggle to remind themselves that for them, too, alcohol is cleaning fluid. Most of us in my home town have Irish or Cherokee ancestors, or both. For about three out of four Irish people and three out of four Cherokee people, a dominant gene for alcoholism makes the rule "One drink, one drunk." Responsible use of alcohol means don't ever drink it. In other ethnic groups alcoholic genes that produce different patterns of alcoholic behavior are recessive, but for us, social rules based on the idea that there's anything normal or healthy about drinking alcohol are harmful rules that have been deliberately used against us. (Those rules have been used to discriminate against the alcoholic minority in those groups, too.) We are best off when we reject those customs altogether; when even the Communion wine served in thimble-sized cups at church is unfermented "new wine," a.k.a. Welch's grape juice. People who feel a need to imbibe stuff that weakens their grip on reality are not the kind we want doing responsible jobs. Alcoholism is one category of "disability" that can and should remain potential rather than actual, without ever limiting anyone's opportunities in life.
In short; I believe Jesus turned the water into wine at Cana, but if He'd been present in the body at a wedding here and someone had brought wine, He'd be more likely to turn the wine into water. Maybe into soda pop, which, we in the Southern States have a right to affirm with pride, has displaced wine as a party drink in our culture. So let it remain. Let stupid German ideas about a real man not actually being an extrovert, but having built up a high tolerance for alcohol as the depressant that acts first on the conscience and produces temporary extroversion, rot in the grave with Hitler. God gave sober Americans the ability to defeat beery Germany for a reason. We should celebrate the superior merits and achievements of our AA-friendly culture; we should help European visitors discover how much healthier and more productive they, too, can feel when they learn to drink coffee or soda pop or, at least when they're in parts of the US where water has not yet been made nasty, plain water, with meals. Maybe they could even stop destroying their cultural heritage with their never-ending tribal wars. European civilization would be a fine idea, if tried...but that's not the point of this post.
I have reasons to believe that I inherited alcoholic genes, but I've never tested the hypothesis. In the diplomatic community a lot of drinking went on. My husband was a heavy drinker when we met. I said, "I don't want to live in a house where alcohol is drunk." Ours was a house from which some expensive bottles were taken to parties, or to his big house in Maryland where up to six couples could stay in guest suites if they were too drunk to drive home, but if my husband reached for a glass I said, "If you're drinking, I'm driving," so most of the time we both stayed sober. Though he was not an alcoholic and said that some of those parties were only fun if you drank fairly heavily at them, he liked being sober enough to spend less time at those parties. He credited sobriety and daily meditative walks, in fact, for what turned out to have been remission from cancer, during the years when we celebrated that it hadn't been a more common and treatable kind of cancer. I never tried to nag him out of drinking. He had one friend who was a mechanic; when that friend came out to do maintenance on the car they'd drink at least one six-pack out in the yard. My husband was the one who noticed that he felt better on weeks when that had not happened. And that it's not necessary to have physical Irish ancestry to laugh out loud, or even sing out loud, in the company of Irish-Americans.
Laura McKowen is a recovering alcoholic who decided to publish books that are no longer anonymous. They're not case histories; they're about things she learned from life experience, going beyond the basic alcoholic story, that may be helpful to other people who are or are not alcoholics.
The "anonymous" twelve-step groups have produced books. Unfortunately, anonymity means that any details that might make a story fresh or funny have been cut out. People tell the same story over and over.
My name is (kindergarten name or "street name"), and I am an alcoholic (or addict). (Number of years or even months) ago, I was drinking or using (whatever). I passed out and forgot to come to work a few times, like fifteen or twenty times, so my employer told me not to come to work any more. That made me feel bad, so I reached for relief in a bottle of booze/pills. The next thing I remember is waking up in the hospital feeling terrible. (Optional: They told me I had done something I was lucky to have survived.) (Optional: I had destroyed my own (body part/s).) While I was still in rehabilitation, I joined this group. I knew I had to replace my addiction to alcohol/drugs with an addiction to the group and I'm so thankful to have met such congenial people. When I feel like reaching for the bottle, I call my recovery buddies and, if we can't get to a full group meeting, we have a meeting of our own in somebody's house. (Optional: I know I will never work as a (surgeon, pilot, teacher) again but I am just glad to be alive and employed as a (dishwasher, salesman, massage therapist). I am just taking my life One Day At A Time...
It's a good story, but in these groups' "Big Books" it may be repeated fifty or a hundred times. For the person who needs to be reading and telling that kind of story, it's good to read it over and over and find that the same general process worked for the surgeon, the teacher, the truck driver. For the rest of us... well...
This web site has its own anonymity policy. Knowing that all blog hosting sites fund themselves by tracking our "interests" and selling our profiles to advertisers, we never mention anyone's real-world contact information. So all I'll say about the person who recommended Laura McKowen's blog is that person really worked a twelve-step program as a spiritual discipline during the last ten years of per life. One thing that person did was to recommend Laura McKowen's blog, and books as she wrote them, both to people at an earlier stage of recovery and to people who don't feel a need to get drunk or stoned.
Because McKowen's message is not limited to "just replace the physical/emotional addictions to substances with a purely emotional addiction to your group, call meetings when you feel tempted to drink or use other drugs, and take it one day at a time," but goes on into insights into work and family life and spirituality, I think sober women will appreciate her writing too. It's no longer available free of charge. If you have a disposable income, you might find her writing worth supporting.
Book Review: Claws Clues and a Deadly Detour
Title: Claws Clues and a Deadly Detour
Author: Pandora Gale
Date: 2026
Quote: "[B]est stay in your room tonight. Inn gets...restless."
When her car broke down, Crowe thought she heard a psychic voice calling her to go to the inn in town and help someone. When she lay down in her room in the inn, she dreamed about a big fluffy Maine Coon cat being locked up because people were calling him "the Phantom Cat" and associating him with human trouble. So she uncages the cat and immediately there's a murder for them to solve.
The cat is in the lead. He has psychic powers. In his past he was worshipped by humans who called him Lucifer. He doesn't like most humans or wish them well. He likes scaring the guilty into confessing. I think this book was written with more comedic than satanic intentions, but it's the kind of book that used to trigger "satanic panic."
If you read Lucifer as an animal who' s been abused by Satanists rather than an old school witch burner's notion of a familiar demon in animal form, you might want to read the rest of a series about Lucifer and Crowe. I wouldn't spend money. The cute, whimsical, funny part of this series is going to be a phobia trigger for someone you know. There are better cozy mysteries.
Wednesday, March 25, 2026
Book Review: Vision of the Heart
Title: Vision of the Heart
Author: Mary Crawford
Publisher: Diversity Ink
Date: 2015
ISBN: 978-0692619605
Quote: "We all made a pact to continue to be nurses as long as we could stand with walkers."
But Julia developed macular degeneration first. During the time frame of this story she still sees large shapes and colors, but is classified as legally blind. This is a short e-book in which Julia pushes herself to go to a reunion. Instead of reinforcing her belief that she's become useless, she finds ways to stay active in the nursing field.
It's fiction, but the Author's Note makes clear that it's autobiographical to some extent too. It's not a romance--Julia is happily married with grown-up children--but it opens a series of romances about the younger people in its fictional world.
Everyone who works with computers daily, feeling the tension between "Looking at blinking boxes is hard on our eyes" and "To a considerable extent computers can replace our eyes," is likely to be interested in this book.
A Genre I'd Like to Read More
This week's Long & Short Reviews prompt is "A Genre I'd Like to Read More of in the Coming Year."
That would be nonfiction.
Nonfiction does not fit into the Book Funnel's marketing mold, which is one great thing in its favor.
My tastes flipped, during my reading lifetime. As a child I was most interested in fiction, and various adults used to try to push me to read more nonfiction, to which I used to respond by choosing the most frivolous topics available. Books written to teach things to children tended to be dumbed-down and preachy and aimed at boys. Children's novels had a better chance of being interesting and aimed at least partly at girls, and sometimes piqued my interest enough that I even looked up a topic and read nonfiction about the topic, to find out what the characters in a novel were talking about.
As an adult I found it to be the other way round. Novels written for adults can be very good, but are generally pretty bad. In the twentieth century the consensus of literary critics' opinion was that genre fiction--romances, mysteries, "westerns," and many critics added science fiction--was garbage. So what were the rules for novels that were not considered garbage? Some critics liked a lot of travel; some liked a "cross-section of society," with something like DEI in the selection of characters. Depressingly few, and nearly all of them were female, wanted the female characters to be believably human. Serious literary fiction was usually about adultery, or murder when everybody knew who'd done it; it focussed on the male experience and usually involved a lot of alcohol and tobacco, and had the general mood of a dirty ashtray. The critics always paid tribute to authors who could write about war, but they were more interested in authors who, like themselves, had been unfit for service. \
Cartoon by James Thurber, who was actually one of my favorite twentieth century male writers.
Mostly the male writers and their characters lived in places where women lived too, and had active relationships with women; in the twentieth century any hint of sympathy for homosexuality would cost a book sales, even after the left-wingnuts of then took up homosexuality as a cause and actively marketed it to, e.g., graduate students in literature or psychology. But the successful male writers tended to write about their relationships with women as if they would rather have been homosexual. They wrote like a lot of pathetic aging graduate students, all sitting around in someone's basement wearing black shirts and getting drunk, terrified that marriage would lead to responsibility and gainful employment and would destroy their creativity. In most cases, if they had lost all interest in writing books, from the viewpoint of English Literature that might have been a good thing.
This attitude had, of course, already spawned the beginning of the 1960s and 1970s outbreaks of Loony Left feminism, as defined by divorcing men (sometimes they were those male writers, sometimes the audience for the male writers), having abortions, using bad language, wearing polyester leisure suits instead of dresses, not admitting it if they liked children, screaming in the streets at political demonstrations for this and that, picking up disgusting diseases because in the thinking of those days people who weren't married and weren't seriously religion were supposed to summon the stork as soon as they'd shaken hands, writing convoluted arguments about how a sexual act to which they had consented at the time was really a form of rape because male privilege, and sitting around in someone's basement wearing polyester pantsuits and getting drunk. Some women who got into that lifestyle were depressed, for what then seemed the obvious and sufficient reason that it was a depressing lifestyle. Meanwhile women of less extreme views made great progress just by being less depressing to have around than the Loony Left.
One sign of this progress was that literary critics were forced to stop raving about fiction in which male characters' idea of success was to sleep around without ever getting married, and acknowledge the merits of novels in which women achieve what they want to achieve without, or in spite of, men. Literary critics could now celebrate novels like The Color Purple as being much better than novels like I'll Take Manhattan, in which the twenty-something chick saves the family business from her evil uncle by taking a loan from the young Donald Trump.
What the literary critics carefully avoided saying, Joan Aiken, whose father the literary critics admired, was able to say: Adults writing for adults usually rely on stereotyped characters and predetermined plots. Fiction for adults only occasionally reflects any real "creativity." Adults writing for children often mix up the stereotypes and twist the plots in ways that add humor and freshness to their fiction. As a result a novel for children, about how the protagonist survives the first term at a school with a tradition that nobody speaks to new students, or qualifies to be a prairie schoolteacher at age seventeen, or just wins the championship game, can be more interesting and realistic than a trite tale of adultery and murder for adults.
Or even a good tale of adultery and murder for adults. Macbeth is a classic fictional reenactment of real history that gave new phrases and even new words to our language, but what it really tells us is that murder is a bad idea. Er, um, we knew that.
But nonfiction liberates writers from having to worry about making characters recognizably different from stereotypes, and allow them just to describe what happened. Nonfiction written for adults is much more varied, realistic, broad-ranging, etc., than novels written for adults are. Good nonfiction does have a plot; it tells a story about how one unique event happened, or how several similar events have happened, or how a writer set out to find out what happened. Good nonfiction is fun to read even if you're not researching that specific thing that happened. Good nonfiction doesn't have to be as "creative" as James Herriot's veterinarian stories to be well worth reading, for information or for entertainment, and when the information in good nonfiction goes out of date, good nonfiction still has value as history and as entertainment. Good nonfiction is what blogs would like to be when they grow up. All bloggers can benefit from reading good nonfiction books.
Some examples of what I mean, or what I'd like to discover:
Cleveland Amory, The Proper Bostonians
John James Audubon, Birds of America
Sue Bender, Plain and Simple
Elisabeth Bumiller, May You Be the Mother of a Hundred Sons
Euell Gibbons, Stalking the Wild Asparagus
Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism
Booton Herndon, The Seventh Day
Tony Horwitz, One for the Road
Zora Neale Hurston, Tell My Horse
Shirley Jackson, Life Among the Savages
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (or The Five Loves)
Alison Lurie, The Language of Clothes
Jessica Mitford, The American Way of Dedth
V.S. Naipaul, A Turn Through the South
Kathleen Norris, Dakota
P.J. O'Rourke, Eat the Rich
Vance Packard, The Waste Makers
Henry David Thoreau, Walden
James Thurber, My Life and Hard Times
Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad