Web Log for 1.25.26

Animals 

Far-flying British butterflies...some of these species fly so far they're found in the Eastern States as well as in Britain and Western Europe. Others have close relatives in the Eastern States.

http://eastsussexwanderer.blogspot.com/2026/01/vanessids-in-sussex.html

Books 

One doesn't review Jane Eyre, one announces it. This review quotes the love scenes as favorites. Forgive me, Gentle Readers, if I think the love scenes are the weakest part of the classic novel. Any two people can be mutually attracted and long nineteenth-century speeches about it can only be rated more or less cringe-inducing. Jane's appeal, like that of Shirley, is that they think about other things besides their hormonal feelings.

https://blbooks.blogspot.com/2026/01/10-jane-eyre.html 

Cartoons 

Dowdypants didn't say this, but she ought to have done.

To whom are we indebted for the photo? Google can't say. The fancy-schmancy new version of Lens is too cluttered with bells and whistles to do any actual searching.

Glyphosate Awareness 

Old news story, with some evergreen facts that may be useful to people who find themselves sensitive to corn.

https://thefern.org/2024/05/the-u-s-mexico-tortilla-war/

Another old news story with some facts that are still relevant, about other ways Bayer may be playing with food you eat:

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/gmo-product-bayer-gene-edited-salad-greens-us-stores/

Weather 

It's being theorized that the cold weather this winter, such as it's been, is due to global warming. Well, that is a joke, but it's like an Ohio joke--ludicrous, but actually happening.

Some fun facts: 

The University of Virginia claims the coldest temperature recorded in Virginia was ten degrees below Fahrenheit. Hoot! Silly flatlanders. That's the coldest temperature on their Swamp campus. Up here in the Point, my family remember 23 degrees below in 1985 (I was in Washington at the time and it was well below zero there too); the coldest temperature recorded during that freeze was either 30 or 34 below, depending on whose thermometer you accept, in Mountain Lake.

https://learn.weatherstem.com/modules/learn/lessons/148/13.html

The biggest snowstorm recorded in Virginia was recorded by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Both of them independently recorded that they got three feet in one snowstorm in 1772. Loudoun County matched the record in 1996. In 2010 Dulles Airport measured almost four feet, but that was from two separate storms.

That's snowfall, considered all by itself. Old snowdrifts and wind have done much more than that. In 1857 Norfolk logged snowdrifts 20 feet deep, during a deep freeze that lasted long enough that people walked a hundred feet on the ice over the Atlantic Ocean.

The most unlikely snowstorm occurred on the fourth of July in 1920. The snow didn't actually stick to the ground, but all across North America people told their grandchildren they'd seen snow in July!

https://www.novec.com/About_NOVEC/Virginias-Historic-Snowstorms.cfm#:~:text=Jan.%2028%2C%201772%3A%20Both,Virginia's%20biggest%20snowfall%20ever%20recorded.

Nobody is expecting the current storm to approach those records. 

Weather records are usually reported as "the hottest, coldest, most rain/snow," etc., "on this date," which means they're broken almost every year. Any day we might see the coldest thirtieth of January or the most rainfall on the ninth of February. That doesn't mean the coldest temperature, or even the coldest January; the twenty-ninth and thirty-first of January in other years might have been colder than the coldest thirtieth of January, or whatever. So in summer it's easy to get the impression that things are getting hotter--and, in winter, that they're getting colder. Actually, the only big change supported by evidence is that things humans do are making our cities hotter. In winter some people like that.

Book Review: Silver on the Tree

Title: Silver on the Tree

Author: Susan Cooper

Date: 1977

Publisher: Atheneum

ISBN: 0-689-50088-2

Length: 269 pages

Quote: “The responsibility and the hope and the promise are in...the hands of the children of all men on this earth.”

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS. If you're reading for suspense, the takeaway is that although the last chapter ought to feel like a climax to which the first twenty chapters have led up, and it doesn't, each chapter is a good, nonviolent story meant to pique young readers' interest in British folklore (which is rarely nonviolent). Go and read the book now.

In 1977 I looked for books with landscapes. I did a lot of reading in the backs of boring classrooms that looked alike, and if a book could give me a mental picture of something more interesting, I was pleased.

Silver on the Tree was my kind of book—in 1977. It has beautiful Welsh landscapes, interwoven with shimmering fragments of ancient poetry, legends, and mythology. Modern poetry is here too. Symbolism is thick. In 1977 I enjoyed reading a novel that would keep me tracking down clues to its symbolism for a few weeks.

Still, I thought I must have missed something in the actual plot. So I read Silver on the Tree again in college. And again, as a foster mother. And again, as a teacher. And again, as an aunt. And again, as a bookseller checking for mold inside the pages. And after thirty years I have to say that I still think Silver on the Tree fails to meet the standard it’s set for itself.

It’s about a conflict between the Light and the Dark. In a general way these cosmic forces are identified with good and evil, but it’s explained that they’re not meant to be good and evil, or literal light and darkness. They are alien forces that, in this book, withdraw from the earth.

Things identified with the Dark are usually unpleasant, but not always: the list includes bullies, bigots, weasels, a lake monster, a careless shipbuilder, a woman who seems bland and friendly, and the chief antagonist, who (you’ll have to remind yourself), in spite of the jacket picture and his character, was invented before Darth Vader. 

Things identified with the Light are most of the other human characters in the book. They’re said to include a vast assembly of people around the world, but the ones in the book are a fairly narrow sampling of British types. Some of them, though inhabiting human bodies, have superhuman memories and abilities; the careless reader might classify them as “gods,” but that would be a misinterpretation of British mythology: they are longaevi, the more ancient kind of faeries, superheroes and supervillains, members of a mortal and fallible alien species who live longer than humans and can do things humans can’t. Their English name is “Old Ones,” although some of them have been reborn in young bodies; the one on whom the book, and its previous volumes, focus is only about twelve years old (in his current human shape).

His companions include King Arthur, seen only in glimpses, and Merlin, seen close up in a human shape that might be only seventy years old, and the legitimate son of Arthur and Guinevere who has been sent forward in time and is also in his early teens, and the demigoddess Jana who seems to be in between human shapes, and Taliesin and Gwyddno Garanhir and Owen Glendower and various other legendary characters, and three ordinary, contemporary middle school kids (siblings), and various valuable objects they carry...they all seem meant to be pleasant.

At a certain magical time, the Old Ones know in their mysterious way, a magical silver flower will bloom on a magical tree, and if they do everything right they’ll be able to cut the blossom, banish the Dark from our world, and go somewhere else. In order to make it happen the children have to meet various tests, presumably of character and intelligence; the Dark is allowed to scare them and distract them but not directly do them physical harm. This nonviolence is unusual in British mythology. For adults who’ve waded through all the gory battles first it might have been a refreshing change. Silver on the Tree is the climactic volume of a five-volume series in an established twentieth century sub-genre of fantastic fiction, in which, despite the shadowy presence of the legendary heroes, the story is really about the personal growth processes of teenagers.

That’s the trouble with this book. The three human children are old enough to have real coming-of-age adventure stories, like Alan Garner’s characters, but their adventures are more of a guided tour than a real test or quest. They remind me of those old, insipid “Sister and Brother Go to [European country]” pseudo-novels of my childhood, where the characters see sights, learn words, listen to stories, and come home feeling that they’ve really learned something. Because the author is Susan Cooper rather than a committee of word-counting teachers, the sights Jane, Simon, and Barney see really come alive...but at the end of the book we’re told that the children won’t even remember their adventures, except as dreams.

Real Celtic folklore had a few active heroines, but not enough to satisfy most modern readers. In many old stories, as in this new series, the heroines only barely have roles. Jane does have to resist a psychic attack, but this turns out to consist of not being grossed out by a lake monster who can't touch her. Jana has spent the whole series being "the Old Lady," and that's about all, though she did seem to inspire an old human lady to throw a party in The Dark Is Rising. But it's not as if even the male characters in this series had to be terribly brave, or even athletic. 

The two “Old Ones” in child form, Bran and Will, have more powers and more active adventures. Still, although they move around more than the other kids, their challenges are easy: Bran has to look at himself in a mirror, and as a team they have to talk to a depressed adult...their success ought to be leading up to a serious challenge, but it's not. Because they're so young they get the choice of floating off into mystical space with their own elders, or staying on Earth and growing up to be ordinary men. The choice doesn't take a lot of time or thought.

In the end, the story Silver on the Tree tells us is a story-behind-the-story: Cooper had a contract to write five novels about five children whose fantastic adventures would echo and build on British mythology—Will in England (first), Bran in Wales, and the other three (who are siblings) in Cornwall. Each volume contained a different mix of fantasy and reality. Each set up a real challenge for its child character(s); The Grey King, in which Bran loses his dog and forgives his human foster father for not being his real father, won a Newbery Medal. Cooper had promised to tie all the stories together in the fifth book, and, for whatever reason, hadn’t thought of an adequate plot within the time allotted. So she wrote a superbly detailed dream sequence and told readers that the game was over, and if we weren’t convinced that a conflict between human good and evil had been won with the help of the alien Light, tough. As in more recent series like Harry Potter and A Series of Unfortunate Events, it can be hard to write a final volume that's as good as the first volume.

Cooper has since written other books, but none of them sold as well as this series.

Anyway, even if it's only a dream sequence, even if they seem to be leading up to a climax that never comes, the individual scenes are beautifully written. Each one works as a short story. The book is worth reading, if only for sharing the pleasure of the characters' dreams.

Butterfly of the Week: Common Swordtail

Graphium policenes is a very popular African butterfly called the Common Swordtail. It is also called the Small Striped Swordtail, as distinct from G. antheus, the Large Striped Swordtail. Sometimes it's also called the Marbled Swordtail, and sometimes the Turquoise-Spotted Swordtail.

At least it does have long sword-shaped tails on its hind wings, unlike some butterflies whose English names include "swordtail."

Photo by Danyparis, Cote d'Ivoire, March 2024.

Well...it always starts with long sword-shaped tails. It can survive if the tails are lost by misadventure.

Photo by Josephizang, May 2022.

Not believed to be endangered, this species is well represented at commercial sites. It can be bought (dead or alive, but usually dead) as a collection starter; its wings, preserved in clear plastic, are for sale as jewelry, and of course pictures of it can be found on just about anything. It's been featured on several postage stamps, some available for sale.

List of a dozen postage stamps featuring Graphium policenes at https://www.stampdata.com/thing.php?id=25094&offset=0 .

In Equatorial Guinea these butterflies, along with native bird and other species, have even been portrayed--in color!--on coins:

https://en.numista.com/134024

Some people who claim to be selling Graphium policenes, or images thereof, are actually selling different species.

Regular readers already know how several butterfly species originally called Papilio were split off into the genus Graphium, and how some now want to split Graphium into separate genera in which policenes would be classified in the genus Arisbe, but why policenes? Whatever the name may suggest to English-speaking readers, it's Greek. In English, as an ordinary man's name it's spelled Polyxenes, and as the name of a literary character it's found only in the feminine form, Polyxene or Polyxena, a daughter of Priam and Hecuba. Not mentioned in Homer's Iliad, she appears in other stories of the Trojan War, with some disagreement on the details--one author mentions her long black hair, another says it was blonde, and so on. She was betrothed to Achilles, apparently against her will; calling her "most pure" and saying that she "remained chaste" in spite of everything probably means she foiled attempts at rape. Euripides accuses her of complicity in Achilles' death and says Achilles' ghost demanded that she be sacrificed. Other sources say she asked to be sacrificed, or committed suicide, after her brothers killed Achilles. In any case she lived and died a virgin princess. Butterflies show no interest in the concepts of virginity or monarchy, but people have to call them something.

Next week's butterfly, Graphium policenoides, was not named after a character but after this species. Policenoides means "shaped like policenes."

Widely distributed in central Africa, often found in descriptions of other butterflies that look similar but aren't it, G. policenes has a wingspan of about 6cm, up to 2.5 inches. Females are slightly bigger than males, most females between 6 and 6.5cm and most males between 5.5 and 6cm. As with other bluish-winged Swallowtails, most if not all the blue color comes from the way light strikes the wings, so the same individual may look bright blue or green, white, or grayish depending on the light. They are said to fly very high and fast.

Two subspecies are generally recognized: Graphium policenes policenes and G.p. telloi. Some sources list Graphium policenes biokoensis. Others count biokoensis as a separate species or list it as a subspecies of some other similar-looking species. Graphium biokoensis and Graphium liponesco are sometimes described as two distinct species that happen to look alike but aren't found in the same places. They seem to be different from Graphium policenes but look the same. A few older sources also list a subspecies sudanicus, now considered just an older name for telloi. One source lists a subspecies laurentia, which looks as if it's usually classified as a different kind of butterfly.

Other names under which this species has been discussed, according to Funet.fi, include agapenor, coussementi, polixenus, pompilius, and scipio.

For butterfly collectors the rule is that antheus, which is not always all that much bigger, has S-shaped pale bars across the front edge of the fore wings, rather than relatively straight ones, and liponesco and biokoensis have narrower wings with relatively more black and less white. A fuller discussion by Torben B. Larsen is available: 

http://abdb-africa.org/library/bibliography/2190.pdf

However, specialist sites indicate that some individuals puzzle even experts. 

Graphium policenes policenes photographed by Jakob, December 2013.

Graphium policenes telloi (Tello's Swordtail) photographed by Joan Outside, June 2023. Much less information is available about telloi, possibly because the subspecies look so much alike and their ranges overlap. Telloi's range is, however, smaller. INaturalist, which has so many photos of Graphium policenes generally and of G.p. policenes that it's set up pages for photos from specific nature parks, shows only four photos positively identified as telloi. 

Maps of where to find these butterflies are available at ABDB-Africa, which counts biokoensis as a subspecies of policenes. 

https://abdb-africa.org/species/Graphium_policenes_policenes

https://abdb-africa.org/species/Graphium_policenes_telloi

This species flies and breeds continuously when weather permits, which in most of its range is continually. It can live on several host plants; Wikipedia lists

"

 Uvaria caffra, Artabotrys monteiroae, Uvaria bukobensis, Uvara chamae, Landolphia buchannani, Landolphia ugandensis, Polyalthia species, Annona reticulata, Annona senegalensis, Annona squamosa, and Monanthotaxis caffra.

"

Photo by Mortenchristensen, Tanzania, November 2024. The underwings are consistently browner than the upper wings, and usually show some yellow-green; their color, too, depends on their angle to the light. 

Photo by Cherisea, November 2021, South Africa.

Photo by Hippolytep38, 2019, Cote d'Ivoire. Some of the Graphiums seem attracted to anything of that sky-blue or turquoise color that shows on some species' upper wings. INaturalist shows a disproportionate number of photos of Graphium policenes fluttering around bright blue objects as distinct from other colors.

Of course, some of those objects are shoes. Graphium policenes are one of the Swallowtail species that are attracted to the mineral salts in human sweat...

Photo by Botalex, 2013. These "Common" Swallowtails can, like some other Swallowtail species, be a little too friendly with humans. Especially on a hot day.

The life cycle of Graphium policenes seems typical for the Graphiums. Male butterflies eclose a few days short of sexual maturity and complete their physical development by drinking mineral-rich liquids, composting brackish or polluted water. The species is most easily observed when male butterflies are drinking in groups with other male butterflies, often including several different species. 

Photo by Craigpeter, November 2022, showing a typical mixed group.

(A delightful description of some butterflies that might join one of these groups, or not, in Uganda, is at https://www.semulikibutterflies.com/family-papilionidae . Not much information is given about any species but nice clear pictures are given for most species discussed.)

Smaller white and yellow butterflies are often observed around the edges of groups of Swallowtails. Some of these butterflies seem unintimidated by Graphium policenes' greater size, but often, as in this video, they keep to themselves, out of the bigger butterflies' way:

https://www.facebook.com/Ghanabutterflytours/videos/ghana-butterfly-tours-with-ashanti-african-tours/194412184426686/

Females eclose full of eggs they are eager to start unloading, and sometimes flutter around the edges of groups of male butterflies, checking out prospective mates. Each individual may, if lucky, have about to weeks to fly. 

After mating males have nothing to do but go back to their drinking buddies and continue sipping polluted water, though they get most of their food from flower nectar. 

Photo by Charleyhesse, 2000, Ghana. White and light-colored flowers may be preferred. An important consideration for Swallowtails is relatively shallow flowers. For their size they have smaller probosces  than most butterflies; they can't get at the nectar inside a deep flower.

Photo by Magdastlucia, February 2018.

After mating the males are biologically disposable, though they may try to mate again if they see a chance. Sometimes their preferred puddles, or leks, attract enough spent male butterflies to attract the red-headed agamid lizard, which eats them. Like the other Graphiums they eat leaves that are mildly toxic and discourage most predators...not all.

Females spend most of their lives placing their eggs on suitable host leaves. Caterpillars are relatively small and may spend most or all their caterpillar lives on one big, fast-growing tropical leaf. 

Photo by Magdastlucia, 2018, South Africa. Graphium caterpillars start out in life with harmless bristles that probably make them harder or at least less pleasant for predators to swallow. 

Photo by Wolfachim, January 2011. As the caterpillars grow and molt, the bristles are smaller in each instar. 

They typically molt through five skins in less than two weeks. Pupae hang by threads from leaves; depending on the weather the adult butterfly may emerge in a week or stay in the pupal shell for several months. 

Web Log for 1.23-24.26

Snow is falling as I type. For myself, I don't care how much it snows, as long as the electricity and Internet stay connected. Concerns about my well-being may be coming from the cosmic principle of Good--it may be trying to prod you to do something about the well-being of someone who does not enjoy walking in snow.

Cooking 

Athena Scalzi is very new to housekeeping. She visits Internet recipe sites--most of which are sponsored by people who encourage the site hosts to post recipes that use expensive ingredients--and then says you can't make dinner for less than $50. 

Hello? I cook. I certainly encourage people to talk to me over meals at buffet restaurants, but that doesn't happen every month. I encourage people who are going to supermarkets to take me along and pay for odd jobs before we go into the store, which works out in practice to $100 for anywhere from one to four weeks. I don't buy the full package of every ingredient every time I shop, because boxes of seasonings last months or years, but I wouldn't get enough meals to survive if I spent $50 on dinner. I do survive. I actually have, at the time of writing, some surplus pounds to work off--all this Internet time is starting to show. I even share meals from time to time. 

Frugal meals do not have to rely on oatmeal or will-even-your-possum-eat-Kraft-macaroni-and-cheese (mine won't); they are good ways to use up dry beans if you have a place to simmer things for hours, but they don't require dry beans. I usually buy canned beans. 

Local lurkers, if you want to start a series of ten posts called "Five Frugal Dinner Recipes (#1-10)," please fund them now. Each post costs $5 and may include your business name, a short blurb, a link to your web site if it behaves well for me, and/or a plain JPG photo of your business or logo or anything you fancy (if you're not in business you could ask for a picture of a flower, vintage car, public figure, etc.). No post here will ever contain videos, GIF, or any spyware or "cookies" other than what Google embeds without consulting me.

Athena Scalzi's post, with her $51.24 recipe, is here:

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/01/22/a-very-mid-attempt-to-incorporate-more-protein-into-my-dinner/

Poetry 

We know why traditional songs and poems didn't celebrate rain at the winter solstice: Though the Northern Hemisphere usually sees a thaw just after the solstice, when the December thaw lasts too long our ancestors observed correlations with poor crops and more contagious disease and said that "a green Christmas makes a white graveyard." The thaw was thought to have arrived too soon, and be likely to last too long, if Christmas Day wasn't frosty and cold. Pathogens and their vectors would multiply if they weren't frozen; perennial plants wouldn't be stimulated to produce seeds and fruit. A long December thaw seems less of a problem in a world that ships food around the world and zaps contagious diseases with antibiotics, but farmers still note that some crops, like wheat and apples, thrive in summers that follow cold winters.

https://www.classicalpoets.org/rain-and-snow-on-christmas-day-a-poem-by-lauren-v-leon/

But there are lots of good poems and songs about rain...

https://www.djmikebills.com/blog/30-songs-for-the-best-playlist-for-rain-on-your-wedding-day

https://readalittlepoetry.com/2023/07/28/in-praise-of-rain-10-poems-about-rain-to-stir-the-heart/

poetryinnature.com/poems/nature/rain/

Politics, Strategic 

Florida is crowded, Republicans. Virginia has some towns that are losing population. If you're leaving a solid "blue" state, consider whether Virginia may want you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-njK2kc-qEA&t=87s

Psychology 

Jamie Wilson may be reading too much into one simple study that found that, when an experiment was set up so that lying had only a very small emotional payoff and no consequences, an all-male group of research subjects felt bold enough to tell the truth (reporting lower game scores) when they had higher levels of testosterone, nervous enough to lie (reporting higher scores) when they had higher levels of cortisol in their blood. 

1. Humankind don't learn much from studies of all-male groups. What we know about testosterone in women's blood, which is what "human blood" should presuppose, is that any significant amount of it produces a state of discomfort. We still don't know how testosterone would affect women's reporting of their scores to people who wouldn't know which ones were telling the truth, but we can guess that it would lower their scores.

2. We don't know how testosterone affects males' ability to report the perhaps-uncomfortable truth about things more consequential than game scores. It would be hard to set up a large-scale study of how well men report the truth about who really did most of the work on a "team" project, or how much they put into and took out of a petty cash box set up for about a dozen employees to use.

3. We don't know how testosterone affects either males' performance on a simple game, or their reporting of their performance on a simple game, when sex is even remotely involved (when the researchers are male or female, or wear A, B, or C cup bras, e.g.). We do know that testosterone tends to blow the male mind; men score lower, on average, on IQ tests supervised by researchers who wear bras, and increasingly lower according to bra size, then they do on IQ tests supervised by other males.

https://pjmedia.com/jamie-wilson/2026/01/22/testosterone-is-not-toxic-fear-not-strength-produces-lies-n4948607

Virginia Legislature 

Excellent bill proposed by young Delegate Clark of Isle of Wight. Regrettably it seems to be just sitting on the table in committee. If your Delegate is on the Committee on Agriculture, perhaps you can persuade person that this bill needs to become a law.

https://lis.virginia.gov/bill-details/20261/HB1375/text/HB1375 

World Economic Forum 

This web site does not do foreign policy, so we'll not be discussing Trump's remarks at Davos last week. They are recommended reading. Here's the transcript:

https://www.rev.com/transcripts/trump-at-wef

If you find that white-on-black format hard to read, you can always copy it into your word processing program. If anyone out there really finds it easier to watch a video than to read the words, Brian Zinchuk posted the live video:

https://pipelineonline.ca/donald-trumps-speech-to-the-wef-at-davos/

Bad Poetry: Early Mornings

Prompted by Poets & Storytellers United:

Early in the morning while the day is just a-borning

Has long been my favorite time of day.

While the stars fade with the sun up is a pleasant time to run up

To the orchard, and pick flowers on the way.

The silent hours of morning's glow are pristine as new-fallen snow.

The Muse can make her softest whispers heard.

Call it matins, call it morning, call it sunrise, call it dawning;

Every name for morning is a lovely word. 

Web Log for 1.21.26

Christian 

For those who may have missed it: Don Lemon, a former news reader, now has nothing better to do than lead a mob to run into a church screaming that people weren't real Christians if they weren't opposing the deportation of Somali-Americans, chanting the name of the homicidal motorist Renee Good, and (as the Christians filed out and the mob chanted) yelling an attempt to "interview" a minister who was clearly torn between wanting to witness to his faith and wanting to throw Lemon bodily out of the building. Tina Toon's graphics show the general physical types of Lemon and the minister. 

It's hard to tell to what extent left-wingnuts actually believe their own rhetoric. The way they angrily reject any possible solution to any problem they are emoting about other than what their party demand suggests that they don't believe any of it, but it strains the imagination to believe that so many people can be such frauds. They want the Somalis to be a beleaguered minority of second-class citizens, they're not hiring or trading with any Somalis themselves, but it's possible that Lemon's mob had avoided seeing the evidence that Good was threatening a federal agent's life and believe the agent just randomly shot her. And it's possible that some of the Somalis, who show clear evidence of physical damage from what they've been through and may have equal or greater brain damage, won't have good prospects of survival in their native land even after its civil war is over. It is just possible that Lemon perceived his desecration of the church as emulating Jesus' attack on the moneychangers. Poor fool.

Libraries 

Didn't we all use to love libraries? And haven't they changed since the turn of the century! There were some heroic holdouts, but year by year I saw more of the holdout librarians retiring and being replaced by parrots who all squalled, "Libraries should be more than quiet places for reading books! They should be community centers!" Out went most of the books; if they looked new they obviously weren't being read, if they looked used they were "worn out"; when new books were bought they were often inferior and the selection showed obvious attempts to push a political agenda. Out, specifically, went books written for people who had or were working to have what used to be called "education"; literary classics, primary documents of history, books about English or any other topic that were "on a college level," books in other languages, and also a lot of books about how to do things. When I'd worked in libraries I'd never really liked rearranging the madly popular Chilton's Car Repair Manuals--there were dozens, of course, and they were bulky books and were always being consulted and put back out of order; out went the Chilton's Car Repair Manuals. "Information in books is out of date! People can get their information from the Internet!" the parrots screeched. By now we all know how well that works. Libraries are places for information that, over and above concerns about privacy or national security or blah blah, needs to be instantly available when the electricity goes out. Libraries need to be non-electronic. 

People who objected to the destruction of community book collections were usually stereotyped as wanting to censor libraries' collections. I want to be clear about this. I'm an adult, I've read plenty of adult content, and I think there's nothing public libraries need to hide from adult readers. Literally nothing. Libraries should expand and form branches, like Starbucks; there should be one in every neighborhood and, with computer networking, every branch library can have its own collection. There can be collections that are separate from the main collection and circulated only to adults. There should be books that represent political and religious minorities. A public library should be an introduction to its community, and if members of its community want to donate the complete works of Mary Baker Eddy or Mary Daly or Leroi Jones or Lyndon LaRouche, the library should lovingly curate those. I don't think libraries should be asked to handle books whose appeal to male sexuality is so strong that the books are returned with stains and odors, but the best way to identify those books is to accept everything that is donated to the library in good condition and discard what is returned in foul condition, when and as that happens. What I objected to, and still object to, is the disappearance of valuable books. I don't care if libraries acquire books I consider loathsome. If anything they should stock Mein Kampf and The Turner Diaries and The Anarchist's Cookbook. I do care if a major city's public library system isn't keeping even one copy of a book by Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson or Henry David Thoreau.

I think the best filter for public library collections is a tight limit on new book purchases. Most library books should be donated by private members of the community who have read them and thought they deserved to be shared. Librarians can and should read the library journals with the lists of p.c. books  the Parrot Trainers tell them every library needs, and they can buy and donate those books just like every other citizen. Libraries should be community projects, not top-down, dictatorial institutions, and beyond the classics every library is likely to need, the contemporary book collections should show only 20 to 30 percent overlap between any two libraries. 

I think more of the critics of the politicization of libraries should draw a clearer line--as the authors of the article linked below fail to do--between public libraries and school libraries. School libraries are not for the general public; they are for students on specific levels and, as such, should stock books that are appropriate for their levels of study. University libraries should focus on academic subjects at a university level, including scientific journals. High school libraries should focus on classic texts that encourage teenagers to begin to think, with perhaps a focus on encouraging them to think more and emote less. Elementary school libraries should collect books for children of the ages that attend the school, with a focus on books parents want their children to read and on screening out content that might traumatize children--some information about how people are born and how people die, but no graphic description of either process or of the passions that might be involved. University libraries can and should stock material about every kind of human sexuality. Primary school libraries should limit sex-related content to a couple of books that mention the visible differences between male and female bodies. Middle grade libraries should have a couple of the "Darling, You Are Growing Up" sort of books but, in the interest of reducing harassment of children who don't fit the usual pattern, references to "non-binary" bodies or "alternative" sexual preferences should consist of "Some bodies develop in different ways. For more information about that, you should talk to your doctor." 

I think one way libraries can operate within reasonable budgets is to stick to their mission and avoid branching out. A library is a place for books. Every public library should be able to get audio books and Braille books, and more books should only be available in those forms, but most public libraries should stick to printed books. A library is not an employment service, not a day care center, and not a political action group, and should lose funding if it allows librarians' personal interests in running those things to distract either space or money from its purpose of providing a quiet place for reading and study. A library can curate items that aren't books, that people want to borrow and then store in a public place--maps, cameras, tools, toys, works of art--but that should not be allowed to interfere with the quiet study for which libraries exist. "But more people will come to the library if it includes a cafe, or day care programs, or movie nights, or..." Yes, and undoubtedly even more people would come to the library if it sold beer. A library should be funded only to provide a quiet place for people to read and study books. Extroverts should be charitably discouraged from looking for work in libraries. Extroverts who visit libraries should be trained to understand that they are in a minority and must conform to the behavioral expectations of people who belong in libraries. People should meet and make friends and network at libraries...in the traditional way, by passing notes to the people who interest them inviting those people to talk to them outside the libraries.

This article barely skims the surface of the issue...

https://thefederalist.com/2026/01/20/because-libraries-push-racism-and-queer-extremism-they-deserve-their-massive-federal-funding-cuts/

But people who like books and reading haven't been talking enough about the problems. One must begin somewhere. 

Quilts 

Alana Mautone shares three new quilt photos, plus a link to previous quilt photos I missed.

https://ramblinwitham.blogspot.com/2026/01/more-new-york-quilts-wordlesswednesday.html

Weather 

Ahhh, that cozy global warming...

I asked the cats if they wanted to go out at 6 a.m. They did. They had their fur on. I didn't want to know exactly how cold it was outside. I can always Google the temperature in Kingsport and subtract ten degrees. I Googled. The temperature in Kingsport was thirteen degrees Fahrenheit. The temperature here was definitely colder than yesterday morning's ten degrees, too. The cats zipped in and out of the sand pit in under three minutes, and did their cleaning-up bit indoors. 

The secret of staying warm on a screen porch, not an enclosed room, with just a little hot-air fan in this kind of weather is that when my typing fingers get cold I put the laptop on my knees, on top of the blanket, and curl up right beside the hot-air fan. The cats are sitting on my feet, too, at the time of typing.

Book Review: Candy Freak

Title: Candy Freak

Author: Steve Almond

Date: 2004

Publisher: Algonquin (hardcover), Harcourt (paperback)

ISBN: 0-15-603293-7

Length: 251 pages

Quote: “The author has eaten a piece of candy every single day of his entire life.”

According to Entertainment Weekly, Almond is the real legal name of the self-proclaimed Candy Freak who takes us on a mostly funny 250-page tour of the commercially marketed but under-advertised candies of America. On the way he stirs up memories of Pop Rocks and Bubble Yums, explains what happened to the Caravelle bar, reveals the heroic history of Necco Wafers, provides even more reasons to hate Nestlé, considers the Vegetable Sandwich chocolate bar (actually made with dried vegetables) and other doomed confections with names like Fat Emma and Cold Turkey, identifies the Three Musketeers, and provides some hope for Northerners and expatriate Southerners looking for Goo Goo Clusters.

Obviously this book is not for those carbohydrate addicts addressed by yesterday's book. If you are, however, a healthy person who can read about candy without salivating, with only a casual “thanks for warning me off this grotesque glop” now and then, then Candy Freak is the book for you; you may even chortle enough to exercise your diaphragm muscle, which is good for the heart.

And if you enjoy looking at thin young men, you’ll want to admire the small picture of Steve Almond on the back cover. It’s neither fair nor decent that he ever looked like this, but you have to appreciate the irony of this picture being printed next to the quote about his dietary habits. Exercise is the key.

Advanced English Grammar, Part 1: Fewer Bottles Less Water

It's a series! Some time ago this web site linked to a list of "25 Grammar Rules You Weren't Taught in School." Since the list appeared as a meme that may have been difficult for some readers to see, and since some readers like examples, here's a fuller and snarkier explanation of one of the rules...

1. Fewer bottles, less water.

"Less" was originally the comparative form of "little." It was one of those irregular sets of words like "good, better, best" and "many, more, most": "little, less, least." 

"Fewer" was the comparative form of "few." "The rules of badminton are few. The rules of billiards are fewer." 

The rule is: Use "fewer" when things can be counted, "less" when they can't be counted or are counted as single things.

If you had $56.78 in your pocket yesterday, and you were very frugal with heating in December, so your bill came to $42.46, and your municipality successfully upheld your right to pay the exact amount in cash, so after paying your bill you now have $14.32, you now have fewer pennies, or less cash, in your pocket. If you had to pay some sort of third-party handling fee, you have even less cash. We should always pay in cash because third-party handling fees add up to a substantial overpayment for the same things, or, the more often we pay in cash, the less we pay for whatever we buy. 

Anyway, when the precise value of the coins and bills in our pockets are added up, we have more or fewer dollars and cents; while we are only thinking about the amount of unsorted stuff in our pockets, we have more or less cash. Pockets may also contain more or fewer cards, more or fewer keys, more or fewer tissues, but only more or less lint. 

If, however, you decide to slim down your wallet by using up giftcards and not carrying store discount cards, as you use up the value of a card and pay the balance in cash you might cheerfully say "One less card!" You are now thinking of cards as an uncounted mass of clutter. If, as a cyclist or pedestrian, you bought things with the "One less car" slogan, and if they are what the name of the opposite-of-sainted Renee Good now brings to your mind, you think of motor vehicles as an uncounted mass of traffic hazards. These phrases are correct because these ways of thinking are correct. 

A forgettable song of years gone by told the story of a man who had been, or claimed to have been, a lawyer in Philadelphia, trying to seduce someone else's wife. Maybe she was only his girlfriend--I forget. Anyway the woman's faithful husband, or boyfriend or whatever he was, heard the so-called lawyer proposing plans for her to leave him and run off with the lawyer, and committed a crime of passion. "There's one less Philadelphia lawyer in old Philadelphia tonight!" The singer was clearly thinking of Philadelphia lawyers as an uncounted mass of men with low moral standards, or a title claimed by such men. Whatever one might call them, the audience tended to agree, the fewer of them are left alive, the better.

Depending on the size of the animals you feed, you measure out more or less kibble, more or less grain, etc. If you don't have anything better to do than count the individual grains or kibbles in each measure, you might be able to report exactly how many fewer kibbles you gave the Chihuahua than you gave the Doberman.

Meanwhile, as the English language has developed, "little" has become one of a minority of words that have sets of regular and irregular forms. When thinking of a quantity of something that might or might not have a physical shape, we still say "little, less, least." When thinking of the size of something that has a single physical shape, many of us choose a word that came into English by way of Scotland and say "small, smaller, smallest," but some now say "little, littler, littlest" in contexts like "She had the littlest waist he'd ever seen." "Littler" and "littlest" are understood and are used in conversation by people who speak English well, but it's probably best to use "smaller" and "smallest" in written English.

"Little" also has an extra comparative form "lesser," which was probably never part of standard English conversation but which has become part of some phrases and names. Probably "lesser" entered standard English through jokes, like "worser," where nonstandard word use was part of the humorous effect. We say "the lesser of two evils," rather than "the less of two evils," most often to refer to voting for a candidate whose bad ideas we think may be easier to correct or recover from, in the absence of any candidate who we believe has good plans. "Lesser" also appears in proper names, but "less" is generally the word to use.

"Lessor" comes to English from a different source. It means one who leases, lets, or rents out property to another person, a "lessee." Someone who has two rental properties, both in terrible condition, might be described as a "lessor of two evils," though if the properties are all that bad the person probably won't be a lessor for very long.

Web Log for 1.20.26

Two memes. 

Computers 

Your computer should not be your "co-pilot." Or "co-author." Or anything else but a tool you use, at your convenience, to serve your purposes. 

(Google finds lots of similar cartoons, but nobody claiming authorship of this strip. I'm not surprised.)

Weather

Hell is in Michigan and is pretty solid by now. Google traces this meme to "Adventures of a Nurse" on Facebook; the original post attracted comments on Michigan weather.

Book Review: The Carbohydrate Addict's Healthy Heart Program

Title: The Carbohydrate Addict’s Healthy Heart Program

Author: Richard F. Heller, Rachael F. Heller, Frederic J. Vagnini

Date: 1999

Publisher: Ballantine Books

ISBN: 0-345-42610-X

Length: 314 pages plus 25 pages of references and index

Quote: “When compared to other risk factors, insulin levels were the most statistically significant predictor of heart attack risk.”

Do non-diabetics need to think about insulin and blood sugar? Increasingly, research suggests that they do. Blood sugar reactions can produce emotional mood swings. Insulin can interact with other hormones to affect people’s ability to have children. Insulin reactions may create predispositions to weight gain and cardiovascular disease. Adult-onset diabetes is part of some people’s cardiovascular disease pattern and not others’, but in the long run the same lifestyle choices determine whether people are likely to develop diabetes or a stroke or heart attack first.

People who have diabetes need a more precise regimen of diet, exercise, and medication than the simple program this book presents for people who are not currently diabetic,. The Carbohydrate Addict’s Healthy Heart Program may help prevent diabetes, but won’t cure it.

The bad news is that we haven’t placed all the pieces in the puzzle yet. Different doctors have taken different approaches to treating cardiovascular disease through diet. Each program seems to be working for some people who had been at risk for diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and other bad things. Each program seems to be a viable approach for those who want to enjoy as many “mature years” as possible, but how do you know which one’s best for you? The Hellers suggest that genetic factors may determine which cardiovascular program will be most helpful for you, but DNA testing has not reached the stage where the question can be answered before you’ve tried one that may not work.

The Hellers offer a short test to help readers determine whether we can benefit from their system. The test isn’t perfect. Basically, if you’re middle-aged and not skinny and hyperactive, the test will suggest that you could be a carbohydrate addict.

If you are not yet middle-aged and are already concerned about your health, you might also be sensitive to some of the proteins the Hellers recommend you eat more of. Probably two thirds of humankind can benefit from using more whole wheat, oats, and barley. The rest of us feel worse, and some of us will develop stubborn, debilitating, even deadly chronic diseases, if we don’t avoid whole wheat, oats, and barley. Any of the cardiovascular health programs can be adjusted for people with food intolerance. Since the Heller program involves a higher-protein diet, tweaking the Heller program may be harder than tweaking the others if you need to avoid gluten, casein, or other proteins.

The good news is that Doctors Heller, McDougall, Pritikin, Sinatra, and even Adams agree on several points that are likely to do almost any body some good. Even if you’re genetically predisposed to get better results from one approach than from another, you’ll probably get better results from working any of their programs than you would from the unenlightened “junkfood, beer, and TV” lifestyle. All cardiovascular health programs basically involve eating more fresh fruit and vegetables, eating complex carbs instead of simple carbs, getting more exercise, and getting less “excitement” or “comfort” from drugs and drama.

Working the Hellers’ program may be easier than working the others. The Hellers don’t prescribe menus. To minimize blood sugar swings, you eat high-carb foods during one hour of the day, along with fibre and protein foods; you get to choose at which meal the carbo-load will be, and it doesn’t have to be the same time every day. During the rest of the day you eat high-fibre, low-fat, low-carb foods. If you are a true carbohydrate addict, they predict you’ll feel better and start to lose weight in days.

More Humorous Book Titles

Long & Short Reviews asked reviewers for lists of humorous book titles before, and this week they're doing it again. Can I think of a new list? I can try...These are books I've read. Not all of them are primarily comedy. The titles are not the only funny lines in the books. 

Scott Adams, Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel

Maya Angelou, Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas

Dave Barry, Babies and Other Hazards of Sex

Lesley Conger, Love and Peanut Butter

Cathy Crimmins, When My Parents Were My Age They Were Old

Will Cuppy, The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody

Hildegarde Dolson, Sorry to Be So Cheerful

Joseph Epstein, With My Trousers Rolled

Cynthia Heimel, If You Can't Live Without Me Why Aren't You Dead Yet

Stilton Jarlsberg, Johnny Optimism (the series)

Florence King, Wasp Where Is Thy Sting

Sam Levenson, You Don't Have to Be in Who's Who to Know What's What

Merrill Markoe, What the Dogs Have Taught Me

Patrick McManus, Never Sniff a Gift Fish 

P.J. O'Rourke, Eat the Rich

Ishmael Reed, The Free-Lance Pallbearers

H. Allen Smith, Life in a Putty Knife Factory

James Thurber, Let Your Mind Alone

P.G. Wodehouse, Love Among the Chickens

Bryan Woolley, Home Is Where the Cat Is

Book Review: Refuge

Title: Refuge

Author: Terry Tempest Williams

Date: 1991

Publisher: Vintage

ISBN: 0-679-74024-4

Length: 304 pages, including a bird checklist

Quote: “The understanding that I could die on the salt flats is no great epiphany. I could die anywhere.”

When does a young, healthy, happily married birdwatcher look at a favorite bird refuge and think about her own death? When family members, old and young, are dying. Terry Tempest Williams wrote, “I have known five of my great-grandparents intimately,” before years when one funeral followed another and “At thirty-four, I became the matriarch of my family.” The good news is that Refuge is not exclusively about mortality. It’s also about birds, and natural events that threatened the bird refuge, and a mother in her early fifties who doesn’t expect to have grandchildren but, if she does have them, wants them told that she is “the bird’s nest beyond the waterfall.”

Mrs. Tempest, the author’s mother, was one of a lucky few. After a diagnosis of breast cancer, she lived more than ten years before cancer appeared in a different part of the body. Observing the impact her cancer had on the rest of the family, Mrs. Williams thought that individuals don’t get cancer; families do. This observation moved past its intended meaning and became literally true as other relatives developed cancer.

The slow, painful death scene in Refuge is not allowed time to dominate the reader’s memory. The book moves us on. Bereaved people normally go through a stage of wanting to blame someone for the loss; Mrs. Williams found that blame for her extended family’s years of funerals could be assigned reasonably.

A popular protest song refers to “gentle, angry people...singing, fighting for our lives.” Terry Tempest Williams was such a person; Refuge is a gentle, angry, True Green book. It’s recommended to all who appreciate good nonfiction writing; and to all who care about the environment; and to all who think that environmentalism may be turning into a religious cult; and to all who have living parents, and need to be reminded to enjoy them while they can.