Web Log for 10.17-18.25

Christian 

https://mywordwall.wordpress.com/2025/10/17/meditation-on-isaiah-49/

Cybersecurity

How this laptop is coping with Microsoft's ceasing to update it? No change. Microsoft isn't ceasing to update it. Microsoft is as annoying as it's always been.

We still need laws requiring one basic security upgrade for all computers: If they're owned by a company with a special license for COMPANY use under which anyone using them is being paid by the company, then the company may interrupt what the computer is being ordered to do through the keyboard. If they're sold to private people through retailers without that special license for COMPANY use, then, starting one second after a keystroke (or mouse click) and continuing for one hour after the last keystroke (or click), they must sort input as coming from one of three sources:

1. First party input comes from the keyboard (or mouse) and must be OBEYED INSTANTLY.

2. Second party input comes from an interactive site recognized through keyboard (or mouse) commands and may be processed efficiently until the site is closed by the first party through the keyboard (or mouse). Second party input may include advertisements (some people, like our Yona, work for retail stores and actually like studying TV commercials) but they must be controlled by buttons computer owners use to filter out ads in obnoxious formats, ads for unwanted businesses or products, or repetition of the same ad on the same computer. 

3. Third party input comes from any other source, such as Microsoft, Google, or other corporations, and must be kept on hold for one hour after the last keystroke (or click), during which time the FCC may inspect it for anything suggesting spyware, such as (in the US) any fields containing strings of 9 or 10 digits, any command that could allow a third party to activate a camera or microphone, any type of biometric information, any "cookies" that do anything beyond storing the history of visitor activity at a site, etc., and penalize the company if anything resembling spyware is found. "Updates" may run when the computer is inactive provided that they contain no spyware.

4. Any company that stores or scans individuals' content, public or private, for use in what we all need to start calling PLAGIARISM PROGRAMS, is automatically required to pay the producer of the content a reasonable fee per word or pixel. This information would be automatically collected by the FCC. There would be no appeal. Companies' only recourse would be to pay up front for anything they want to feed into plagiarism programs. (And let's all stop calling those things "artificial intelligence." They may be automated, but they are plagiarism--the camouflage of stupidity.)

There should be a clear intention to reward companies that publicize their products through individual interactions among humans, and penalize those that spew out TV-type advertisements or use bots to imitate human interactions. Companies should receive a consistent message that the way to use the Internet to boost sales is to show more, not less, respect to the individual customer. 

And I'd like to add a provision that corporations that have failed to support absolute freedom of speech, specifically including online "speech" that might reduce product sales, should be banned from having any identifiable corporate access to the Internet for seven years. Employees of those companies could surf the'Net from home and have anonymous social media accounts, but nothing that could be used to promote their companies or products in any way. And this would include the Democratic Party--and, if they don't condemn censorship unanimously and vigorously, the Republican Party too.

Marketing

It should be established by now: Go "woke," go broke. Commercial viability has a precipice, and the Loony Left have lockstepped over it. However, things are less clear in Europe, where feudal barons' heirs are still floundering desperately for control of their peasants, and, tragically, most of the major commercial publishing houses in the US are now controlled by a corporation based in Germany, where Nazionalsozialism may be dead but tyranny unfortunately is not. This means that censorship is being done by publishers themselves, and, though done in the name of demographic "sensitivity" rather than "modesty" or "chastity," the corporate publishers are no less censorious than they were in Boston in the 1850s. 

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/10/16/the-book-burners-have-taken-over-the-publishing-house/

Here's how to sell "poetry" to the big publishers these days. It was prose in German and it's not been translated into very good English; it doesn't sound like much of anything in any language, but it's the thought that counts. "Governments with international supervision" is music to their doctrinaire ears. And then they wonder why people don't pay for "poetry."

https://www.poemhunter.com/g-nter-grass/

What can be done about this? Oh, it'll be fun. In the name of opposition to censorship, we stop buying anything new from the likes of Penguin, Random House, Harper, Doubleday, McClelland & Stewart, Bantam, Dell, Atheneum, Delacorte, Simon & Schuster, even Rodale Press, and buy only books from small independent publishers and self-published authors. We can still get the big publishers' books from public libraries. The books we buy new should come from writers who dare to speak their truth. Every character doesn't need to be a fan of Musk or Trump or even Milei; characters can live in worlds like ours where people of different political stripes may or may not win games or solve mysteries or find Romantic Love. The best writers who mention politics, like Giovanni Guareschi, can convince us that even the character created to spout bad ideas is a good person. Still, points if characters are religious, are entrepreneurs, are classicists, and extra points if they observe that the corruption of government increases with the size and so global government will never deserve serious consideration, or that nobody "becomes a woman" without having been a girl, or that when an idea bankrupts everybody who's tried it the logical response is not to screech that that's because everybody needs to try it and all go bankrupt together. Let the big publishers sit on their truckloads of "woke" books nobody wants to read. And sit. And sit. And sit. And, if they have any intelligence at all, admit that it takes more than a potty-mouth voice to write uncensored books that interest adults in the free world. Admit that that just might be why so few European writers, even if translated, are actually read in the US.

"But aren't books more interesting when their modern city scenes are as 'diverse' as the populations of modern cities are, and doesn't that mean, in the name of authenticity, consulting readers from different backgrounds to help us get the 'diverse' characters right?" Of course they are and of course it does but that's no reason to send every story to Loony Left La La Land. Choose your "diversity consultants" from people you know. Compensate them well, in cash, barter, or favors as they deem appropriate. If you don't have any friends who belong to a certain demographic, it might be best for your speaking characters not to belong to that demographic either.

Mental Health

It gets better. These Brits cite studies that show that feel-good pills don't do significantly more than placebos, or counselling, or nothing at all, does for "mild depression." That doesn't mean the pills don't make some people feel good. They do, although they make other people feel terrible. It means that most people with "mild depression" are going to feel better, soon, in any case! 

This has not actually changed since I was in college, but doctors paid per prescription by pharmaceutical companies have found it profitable to publicize the rather small possibility that "untreated" depression may "worsen." 

It doesn't. "Mild depression" is a symptom of a physical condition that's not what it should be. When that condition worsens, nearly all patients consult a professional who's not a psychiatrist and, even if the real problem isn't solved, they focus on their physical condition rather than the "depression." In most cases, people simply feel better.

Every undergraduate used to be taught that.

https://trusttheevidence.substack.com/p/the-tte-verdict

Politics, US Generally 

Poor old Senator Fetterman! He disagrees with Trump like a good party-line Democrat, but he's out of favor with the Loony Left because he doesn't hate Trump enough. He can tell that Trump's not Hitler. He's not in favor of murder. He's a D, and a representative of the Uglo-American community, and a good example of working around physical disabilities...but he's just too decent a human being for the Loony Left.

https://pjmedia.com/rick-moran/2025/10/16/senator-john-fetterman-just-doesnt-hate-trump-enough-n4944919

Meanwhile US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has a point, but she just lost a bunch of Southern Lady points by making it in such an egregious and, yes, ugly way. It is not as if the world had seen R men in Congress crying and trembling at their constituents on Twitter when they had an opportunity to be seen defending their elders. We saw Ds do that during the Censorship Riot but, if Rs didn't form a solid ring around the senior Ds the rioters had specifically threatened, at least they were quiet about it. I don't recall hearing about Rs acting particularly cowardly the day Senator Scalise was shot, either. I don't know firsthand but I think Congressman Griffith would be of some use in a crisis. But why call them weak, dear Mrs. Greene, when nature so obviously intended you to guide and goad them to be strong? 

https://pjmedia.com/michaelcantrell/2025/10/15/marjorie-taylor-greene-snipes-at-weak-republican-men-in-new-interview-n4944909

Weather

Chilly mornings...Serena is enjoying the status symbol of coming inside for part of the night. Sometimes she wakes me. More often she lingers in the warm office room. She has her heat-soaking spots in the not-a-lawn; feels no need to come online with me, but she seems to like the luxury of getting up, looking toward the door, then going to another snoozing spot and snoozing for another five or ten minutes in a different position. And another, and another...

Unmentionable Punch

My first thought, when Rommy Cortez-Driks asked for poems using one of the Words This Web Site Does Not Use, was "Why not just pretend I missed this one?"

Then I opened another Youtube video and heard another profoundly obnoxious ad for a product that purports to cover up, at least temporarily, the symptoms of reactions people commonly have to either or both of:

(a) certain medications most of them probably don't need to use, notably including antidepressants and heavy-duty painkillers; or

(b) glyphosate. 

In an ideal world, people advertising this kind of less-than-helpful products would be required to create advertisements that told the truth about the situation. This particular patent remedy is known for a little chant that repeats the product's four-syllable name three times. They might, for example, have to pay for ads that say "If you've been paying for patent medicines to treat internal bleeding conditions that may have been diagnosed as Crohn's Disease or ulcerative colitis, have you tried treating the original problem? Internal bleeding is often a chemical reaction, most commonly to glyphosate and next most often to serotonin-boosting antidepressants! If your symptoms have either improved, or become much stranger and harder to predict, this year, it's probably the former! If you take antidepressants, it's probably the latter! (It could be BOTH!) By saving your money, YOU can also SAVE YOUR COLON! Stop poisoning stop poisoning stop POI-SON-INGGGGG!" 

In our world, we have a President who is extremely controversial, extremely divisive, and extremely old for his job, who won the election by teaming up with an activist who was on a mission to tell the world about this kind of thing. The corporate lobbyists were not pleased. Admittedly the President and the activist made a deal that, the first year, our activist Secretary of Public Health would spare the corporations with which the President has been involved--not Bayer, but a competitor that cashed in on glyphosate, being high on the list--and stick to nagging people about "health" advice that annoys more people than it startles. "Be careful crossing streets! Oooh! Oooh! Don't eat sweets! Oooh! Oooh!" is a very old song government officials have no business singing to their employers the taxpayers. Kennedy has a mandate that is more important than that. He's not forgotten it. Nor has Trump. Kennedy's not going after Bayer, Lilly, Merck, and the other corporations that sell "pesticide" sprays and antidepressant pills, merely makes both him and Trump look weak. 

Granted, his going after the corporations might easily get either of them killed. Granted, the corporations have sacrificed all ethical constraints to profiteer on products that have caused a lot of deaths, and probably would stoop to violence to preserve those profits. I do understand these men's situation, firsthand, and personally. We're old, we're bold...but there are so many other things we want to do before becoming martyrs...!

Does this situation warrant a snarky take on a classical poetic form? Well, yes, actually it does. And hold your ears if it bothers you--I feel rhymes that mix unstressed "-y" and stressed "ee" vowels coming on. Blame it on the product name using Y to spell the short I sound inside a syllable.

Does an unmentionable punch

Sometimes, but unpredictably,

Destroy hours from breakfast to lunch,

Or lunch to supper, it may be?

Are you enslaved to a tyranny

That never dares to speak its name

In respectable company?

Is Bayer or Lilly or Merck to blame?

Have you sought medical advice

For other chronic malady

And heard, for a tremendous price,

"A nutrient deficiency"?

Have those expensive dietary

Supplements vanished as in flame,

Without one benefit you see?

Is Bayer or Lilly or Merck to blame?

Do you avoid Thanksgiving's feast?

O'er restaurant dates choose celibacy?

Last Christmas party, called a priest?

Are you doomed to misanthropy

When even undipped chips, you see,

Lead only to disgust and shame?

And so must social eating be?

Is Bayer or Lilly or Merck to blame?

Political chicanery

These days seems hardly cause for shame,

But--Trump must unchain Kennedy!

Is Bayer or Lilly or Merck to blame?

Book Review: Witchful Thinking

Title: Witchful Thinking

Author: Amelia Ross

Date: 2024

Quote: "I had no idea who the dead person was or how I wound up here in the first place."

Audrey Rose is destined to inherit special psychic talents, but it takes her a while to identify them because they look like incredibly bad luck. She has Banshee magic. She's drawn to the scenes of murders and, if not locked up as a suspect, has the ability to enchant a crystal to identify the murderer. Unhappy about living in a city where she's solved a few murders, she moves to a small town with a low murder rate, but right away she finds herself compulsively going out alone to the bar outside which she'll soon compulsively go out to see the body still bleeding on the ground.

Audrey doesn't know how to solve mysteries in a way that makes them interesting brain teasers. This is strictly a story about a TV-sitcom-type witch, or psychic, not at all a good detective story. Audrey does, however, persuade a real detective to share her cottage for security. Some readers might want the series of longer stories about them for which they'll have to pay, just to see whether Audrey and Detective Clayton ever stop snapping at each other and acknowledge a mutual attraction. 

Web Log for 10.15.25

Things I Learned at School 

This would have been in grade four, the only year I went to a school that had a playground.

Fair use of cartoons by Bill Watterson, digitized by Joe Jackson.

Music 

A.J. Wilson has written a Halloween song...sort of a parody of "The Highwayman" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," together...

https://suno.com/song/9ed9b84f-5172-4383-a443-441cbc109ef2 

Book Review: Lenore

Title: Lenore

Author: Eric Williford

Date: 2024

Quote: "The Polycarbonate case rustles, against the wood with constant hum..."

Everyone knows Edgar Allan Poe's superbly constructed, deliciously spooky poem "The Raven." Crows and ravens can learn to use human words, and Poe's narrator, grieving for a recently deceased friend, is wondering if he can at least hope to be with her again in Heaven, when in comes a raven who seems to have learned only the one word "Nevermore." Is it only making a noise someone used to reward it for making, or does it know something? The man doesn't dare chase the raven out of the house, and it is still, he tells us, sitting in his house muttering "Nevermore." 

Eric Williford has written a parody of this poem in which a phone mysteriously vibrates and displays the text "Nevermore." 

As an editor, I think it would have been funnier if he'd worked a little longer on getting the rhymes and metre as perfect as Poe did.

As a reader, I smiled. 

Meet the Blogroll: Asexual Artists

AsexualArtists.wordpress.com has been on indefinite hiatus since 2021 because it was catching so much hate and harassment. 

Some people don't believe our culture persecutes aces. Some might say that Christianity, a religion whose sacred texts are mostly ascribed to two well-known celibates, has been supportive of asexuality. Historically this was true--sort of; enough of the early Christians were hermits that the largest Christian denominations have officially supported monasteries for people who didn't want to center their lives around sexuality. (Most of those people were not ace, or even postsexual; this led to problems.) However, most American Christians don't have monasteries and many churches overtly disrespect single adults...and in cyberspace...

Asexuality was feared, in the twentieth century, because Freud noted that classic schizophrenics are asexual. Which is like noting that classic schizophrenics are young. Most young people are at no risk for classic schizophrenia and so are most aces. 

There is, however, a correlation between asexuality and a milder form of mental illness: Temporary asexuality is one of the most common side effects of antidepressants. 

Asexuality usually is temporary. We all start out ace--we start out as children. Some young people remain ace because their hormones haven't changed this. Usually the change from asexual, or presexual, to heterosexual simply arrives later than usual. If not the most common cause of sexuality, this is the most common reason why people identify as ace. People who become asexual later in life usually identify as whatever their hormones indicated that they were going to be when they were seventeen, although their spouses identify them as asexual, often in bitter and misinformed terms.

Other causes of asexuality are more concerning, including long lists of drugs and disease conditions, before midlife, when the usual cause is that hormone levels simply drop. In all cases, asexuality is a physical condition people couldn't have chosen if they'd wanted to. It does no harm to anyone else. It's not incompatible with Christian morality. There's no reason why people should harass asexuals. There's every reasons why parents, teachers, churches, and even employers should support asexuals: Aces spread no diseases, don't contribute to overpopulation, don't threaten other people's marriages, and can do more with less money because sexual activity costs money. Aces have no trouble obeying the seventh Commandment, though they may have trouble with the tenth.

Relatively few people are true lifelong aces. When they are the causes can include rare genetic patterns, some of which do no harm at all to the individual apart from the individual's sterility, and the individuals may benefit from having more time and energy for their work. Twentieth century artists Dare Wright and Edward Gorey appear to have been lifelong asexuals.

However, those who harass asexuals seem to believe that if only asexuals didn't have any social support they'd be as lust-ridden as the harassers. Testosterone poisoning is a real thing.

(Asexuals do feel attractions and attachments to other people, sometimes described as "romantic" or "semiromantic." Sometimes these "pure" friendships break up, because one person finds someone to marry or just because people drift apart over time. Sometimes they devolve into sexual relationships and can include marriage. A cutesy-wutesy term for aces who, after a few years, become sexually attracted to an opposite-sex friend and marry person in the usual way, is "Ace of Hearts.")

During the 2010s the AsexualArtists blog introduced hundreds of young artists, some of whom may be successors to Wright and Gorey. Some of their interviews with these artists were linked at this web site. I've not heard more about their career breakthroughs, during these dire years of COVID panic and automated plagiarism. But I hope that one day we all will. It would be a very fine thing if, regardless of how many of the group remained asexual, AsexualArtists became a social site that supported long-distance, long-term friendships.

Book Review: Donna Parker

Book Review: Donna Parker Special Agent and sequels

Author: Marcia Martin

Date: 1957

Publisher: Whitman

ISBN: none

Length: 282 pages

Illustrations: drawings by Jon Nielsen

Quote: “I haven’t even walked into the school yet, and my problems are beginning already.”

Donna Parker was the heroine of six mystery novels for children. On the assumption that children like to read stories whose characters are a few years older than they are, the stories were written on a fourth or fifth grade reading level. In volume one Donna and Ricky, her best girl friend, enter grade nine. The series spans a year or two of adventures, all of which are similar enough to be reviewed at once (I’m selling the books as a set).

The whole series was a real period piece. In Donna Parker Special Agent, the Cold War was at its icy depth; paranoia about spies was everywhere. A boy at school sees that his blueprint for a model plane has been tampered with and, before even suspecting that another kid might have wanted to build a similar model plane, begins to suspect that the new janitor at school might be a spy. Donna and Ricky will of course find out who the janitor is...but I won’t spoil the story here.

Instead I’ll ramble on about the delicious 1950s touches, like those little white gloves the girls wear even when it’s not cold enough to bother with jackets. There’s a socioeconomic history behind those images. Before running water was widely available, educated people had started wearing gloves everywhere to keep the germs off their hands. A glove industry developed. By the 1930s, most North Americans were happily discarding their white cloth gloves, which were a considerable expense and nuisance. The glove industry was threatened, and the fashion industry came to the rescue. Back then “real ladies,” even in America, were supposed to take some interest in alleviating other people’s poverty, so even into the 1960s, if you were a “real lady” or the daughter of one, you would wear those silly little gloves. Men weren’t expected to go back to wearing gloves everywhere, but women were. Without the white gloves, a well-to-do female would have looked, not avant-garde, but selfish and mean...my mother still recalls being openly ridiculed by other women because, on a hot day in California, she wasn’t wearing gloves! White gloves were even part of Girl Scout uniforms, after age twelve. So on the cover of this book clean-faced, flat-chested Donna wears only a light jacket, but she wears white gloves.

The Donna Parker books were meant to be bestsellers for a few years and then become obscure collectibles, so they’re as indelibly date-stamped as today’s paperback TV tie-ins. They can be used as guides to 1950s fashions in clothes and decor, as long as you remember that 1950s fashions included some options; Donna Parker’s look was meant to tell us something about the Parkers’ socioeconomic level (affluent), their politics (conservative), and Donna’s image at school (wholesome, cheerful, reasonably popular). If your goal is to set a scene for characters who really did like Ike and exhorted kids to “Be Straight! Be Square!”, by all means let Nielsen’s illustrations inspire you. 

Web Log for 10.14.25

Today's agenda is just to see how much the computer can do WITHOUT SUPPORT FROM MICROSOFT, which according to Microsoft was supposed to be a bad thing. Con suerte I may even dig out my e-mail from the pile of tabs that were scattered by Microsoft's allegedly parting kick...

Phenology 

Autumn leaves in Wyoming, and Colorado and Utah.

https://roadsendnaturalist.com/2025/10/14/the-colors-of-autumn/

Politics--Election 2025 

Who gave Angry Abigail Spanberger the idea of seeking elective office, anyway? She's been elected to office and can't claim any success as a legislator. She's run what is probably (at least I hope) the worst social media campaign of all time. She can't debate, either. Dodging a question, she lacks fact-based debating points, retreats into vague ad hominem attacks on someone with whom it would be her job to work if she were elected, and, while doing it, quivers like a jittery high school freshman.

https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2025/10/13/watch-spanbergers-super-cringeworthy-semi-demi-backpedal-n4944790

Angry's ads claim she worked with the police. According to her Wikipedia page, it must have been a token or cover-up job arranged for her when she was working for the CIA. She may have had very close and warm relationships with male police officers at the time. She was not a policeman, herself. She does not have the presence the job requires. She does not have the presence to preside over our government, either. Tremors can indicate other things besides fear, dishonesty, or Parkinson's Disease--too much coffee, commonly. Still, a person who is qualified for the Governor's office would know not to drink too much coffee.

She's young for a politician, not that anyone would ever guess by looking at her, and the idea of putting her into competition with a Marine...well...it had to have come from the same set of sadists who pushed Joe Biden to run, after he'd already accurately said he'd reached retirement age and then become senile enough to forget the fact.

Oh, and although she looks "old" in that video, she's young enough to be Winsome Earle-Sears' daughter (if the Lieutenant-Governor had bee a different sort of girl, anyway). Age itself is a positive point, but aging that fast tends to indicate the kind of unhealthy personal choices that can detonate into a massive midlife crisis. And do the math: If elected, Angry is likely to reach midlife while in office. Setting all women politicians back for a long time.

Fellow Virginians, if anyone wants to be remembered for service to the Commonwealth, let that one find this pallid child of woe a job where she can survive midlife out of public view. People in the Hump may think they want her, but they would be badly disappointed if able to elect her. Don't let them. Save Angry from herself.

Books I Read on Someone's Recommendation

This week, Long & Short Reviews asks reviewers about books we read on someone else's recommendation. I will exclude teachers and school librarians from this list...not a Top Ten List, but a list of books someone else, either in real life or in a non-school book, recommended and I was glad I listened...another First Ten That Come to Mind List.

1. Charlotte's Web by E.B. White

Recommendations remind me of how manipulative even my favorite adults were. When I was four years old, my mother loved the idea that I was reading a Chapter Book recommended by the neighborhood librarian. (Which neighborhood was that? Might have been Folsom, California; I'm not certain.) When I was eight years old and delighted to have a teacher who didn't think imagination was a bad thing, my mother thought reading Charlotte's Web again was regressive. Bah. The character Fern is a "little girl," presumably eight or ten or so, so people assume that that's the best age to read the book, but plenty of adults enjoy Charlotte's Web. 

2. Rascal by Sterling North

Already discussed here...Dad read it because North was a fellow polio survivor; this story is based on his memories of the last couple of summers before polio. When I was ten or eleven or so Dad found a copy in a secondhand store and assured my brother and me that we'd like it. We did. It's another book where the main character may be pre-teen but adults usually enjoy the story too. I think it's probably better read as an adult, actually. Adult readers will remember, even as they laugh at Rascal's adventures, that those adventures consist mostly of property damage and were enjoyed as comedy because the character Sterling is both rich and a bit spoiled. You do not actually want a raccoon as an indoor pet. 

3. My Friend Flicka by Mary O'Hara

My mother had seen the movie and thought I might enjoy the book. I did...at seven, and for some years afterward. At sixteen I found Wyoming Summer, the still somewhat fictionalized selection from the author's diaries that explains how My Friend Flicka was written, and I've liked it much better ever since. But at seven I didn't mind that the novel falsified important facts. 

4. The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

I've discussed this one before too. I disliked my fourth grade teacher, Mr. Ed. --, enough that his constant reminiscences about having fought the Germans made me think there might have been something to be said for the Germans. My parents did not directly say anything. Dad found a copy of Anne Frank's diary and left it where I'd find it. Mother said it was depressing and I probably shouldn't read it--which might have been a deft use of reverse psychology. I smuggled it to school, read it there, and liked it. I think what I liked might have been that Anne started out as the sort of well-off, talkative, thoughtless girl who reminded me of what were called my friends, at home, but who were not friends at that school in that superficially nice neighborhood in California. She got what they might have needed and deserved; she had to hide in a storage room for four years. And it forced her to focus on learning, reading, doing exercises, and writing her little book. She knew at the time that she was living through an adventure that would make a marketable book. It was not the usual tedious mess of childish "secrets" about childish social drama. Anne read her diary entries aloud to her parents and revised and edited them for eventual publication. I don't think she was much more intelligent than the average teenager; I think the adventures narrated in her diary would make a writer of any young girl, or boy, if they didn't destroy person altogether. 

5. Stalking the Wild Asparagus by Euell Gibbons

Recommended to Mother and me at the health food store in Sacramento. Stalking the Good Life, Stalking the Healthful Herbs, and Stalking the Blue-Eyed Scallop were sequels. All are useful. All were fun to read, and reread, all the way through middle school. I don't cook the wild plants I use in many of the ways Gibbons did, now, but most of his discussions of wild plants have a recipe for everyone. 

Caveat: The properties of wild foods vary, as do the properties of cultivated foods, depending on where and when the plants grew. A species that one person finds delicious as it grows in this particular field may taste nasty or even contain toxins when it grows somewhere else. Gibbons didn't recommend anything that's likely to kill you but he liked some things you may hate and was unenthusiastic about some things you may love. 

6. The Seventh Day by Booton Herndon

Recommended by someone at the Seventh-Day Adventist church we visited regularly when I was nine or ten years old. Writing a biography of Desmond Doss, a war hero, led Herndon to write about the church to which Doss belonged. Herndon didn't join the Seventh-Day Adventists but he learned about the church's teachings and the state of its ministries in the 1960s. He was given many good stories to tell. He told them well.

7. Downright Dencey by Caroline Dale Snedeker

Recommended by a committee that made up lists of good books for children of various ages, in the 1950s and 1960s. I don't think many people would recommend it now. I wouldn't recommend it to children, generally, now. Snedeker made a novel-length version of a family story about how the daughter of a rich family married the son of a drunken "Indian." There are cringe moments and quaint phrasings and quite a lot about the spirituality of Quakers in the early 1800s. I think the spirituality always was what I liked best. The childhood friendship that grew up with the characters became more interesting after the first reading, at age twelve.

8. The Waste Makers by Vance Packard

One of those books that appealed to real adults that Dad was always trying to get me to read. (He would have been even better pleased if my brother had read those books; did not happen.) Packard wrote about the Advertising Age at its height in the 1950s but he wrote well and wittily enough that I think, and recently a publisher also thought, people would enjoy revisiting his world and thinking about how much it's like ours. 

9. Jubilee by Margaret Walker

In my twenties I read lots of literary essays--long-form book reviews really. They steered me to read a lot of books. Many of those books, like Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea and L.P. Hartley's Facial Justice, were well enough written that I could see why they became other writers' favorites, but they didn't become mine. Jubilee, recommended by Alice Walker, did become a favorite. It contains some material that is as raw and horrible as the most off-putting contents of Toni Morrison's books, but the character Elvira--who may seem impossibly nice because she was based on Walker's memories of her grandmother--transcends the awfulness that surrounds her, and so does the reader. Elvira survives being a slave in the house of a woman who hates her, loves and is loved, achieves reasonable success after the end of slavery, gets her choice of two men, and finds inner peace. 

Jubilee has been called "the Black Gone with the Wind." Both are longish novels set in the Civil War period; both focus on young women who, at a time when the supply of young men was so depleted that many women had no chance to marry, had a choice between two attractive men. Both books took more than ten years to write. But that's one of the major differences. Margaret Mitchell spent those years working out details of plot and characterization because she was writing a metaphoric study of the Southern States; she had all the historical documentation she needed. Margaret Walker spent those years digging for her historical documentation. 

10. Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery

I grew up in between the waves of this series' popularity. It wasn't recommended to me as a child; it was recommended in my late twenties by a cousin. (Who was a teacher, but not one of mine.) Everybody likes the whole series. 

Book Review; Hershey's Cocoa Cookbook

(Will readers forgive me for posting about another old book, when it's CHOCOLATE?)

Book Review: Hershey’s Cocoa Cookbook

Author: Hershey Chocolate company employees

Date: 1979

Publisher: Hershey Chocolate Company

ISBN: none

Length: 96 pages

Quote: “Hershey’s Cocoa is pure chocolate with about three-quarters of the cocoa butter removed.”

The good news about this little recipe book is also the bad news. Hershey’s Cocoa isn’t sweet at all. It’s bitter, in a way that can be pleasant in savory dishes. In some ethnic cooking traditions small amounts of cocoa and chocolate are used as bitter spices. 

There is not one recipe like that in this book. It’s just one sweet dish after another, and let’s just say that, if you save the sugary chocolate desserts for birthday parties, the Hershey’s Cocoa Cookbook will allow most people to try a different recipe for every party to which they bring a dish in their lifetimes. 

Web Log for 10.13.25

Censorship 

Just the other night a British e-friend was expressing concern about the silly reasons why the American Library Association report having books "challenged." But most of those books have been "challenged" only for schoolroom use--many of them for presenting more detailed information about sex than some parents and teachers know some children are ready to read, or have read to them. You can go into a bookstore and order any of the ones on the ALA list. Several are bestsellers; you can find them in secondhand stores. Several are classics that someone thought we could do without--I'm surprised not to see Milton, Dante, and Shakespeare's Macbeth on the list; they certainly have been questioned.

What children and teenagers will welcome, what they'll be traumatized by, and what they'll blithely ignore, varies widely. Only parents--if even parents!--are likely to have a clue. Anne Frank's Diary was on the list for going into more detail about puberty than some students...at my school the class read it in grade eight...are ready to read. I read it in grade four and, because I wasn't so oversupplied with hormones as to be interested in the details of puberty, I don't remember even noticing them. They would have been boring bits I skipped--I skipped a lot of things in primary school. But I can imagine some junior high school students, who are likely to be interested in the details of puberty, tormenting each other. "Why are YOU so far behind or ahead of Anne Frank? It says here, when she was fourteen, she..." I think I'd save this book for classroom use in grade eleven or twelve. Though I actually liked reading about how Anne learned mental discipline in her Achterhuis, in grade four.

Several books on the ALA list (it's at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_commonly_challenged_books_in_the_United_States ) are available at my Bookshop; I recommend them to all adults and college students but, because they'd be likely to traumatize some person in a public school class, I would recommend that high school students who enjoy them not take these books to school. You may, at fifteen, be a sophisticate who shrieks with laughter at the image of a prescribed ritual for three-way sex intended to minimize pleasure for all three participants in The Handmaid's Tale, and it would be funny if it weren't so sad, but you have to think about that 80-pound, 13-year-old overachiever in your class, and share your appreciation of The Handmaid's Tale only in groups where everyone else is as sophisticated as you are.

I'm not sure how Chris Crutcher's Chinese Handcuffs managed not to be on the list. So many of his other books are. Maybe librarians didn't put Chinese Handcuffs on the shelves because they knew it would be "challenged" by parents. It's a novel about a boy whose best friend is a girl. That's controversial enough. She's also his running buddy. That's pushing things with some parents. Then we learn that she's being sexually abused, and how he knows she feels, and how he feels about not being able to do what he'd like to do about her situation. My adoptive sister found it in a library and recommended it to me as being a good book about that kind of situation; she would, unfortunately, know. My natural sister, at the same age and size, thought it was disgusting. That's usually true for books that present information about sensitive matters--sex, or prejudice, bullying, human meanness of any kind, the scandals in the biographies of people they admire. For one teenager it may be liberating or vindicating or validating to read someone else's description of something similar to what has been the teenager's secret that nobody else would understand. For another one it's so disgusting that any enlightement the book may offer to other people will be lost in the teenager's nausea.

I think a person who has not been sexually abused can probably get through life quite well without reading Chinese Handcuffs but I think books like The Handmaid's Tale and The Color Purple and Catch-22 are worth saving until a person has become desensitized to the existence of the unpleasant material they document. Teenaged girls are impregnated, against their wills, by men they believe to be their fathers (and a few of them may actually be their fathers). Our heroic soldiers, even if they did heroically save something (collectively) or someone (individually), spent a lot of time cheating one another and "the system" and thus by extension us. Ideas that seem neat, like a "cashless economy," are certain to lead to horribly messy consequences. People need to know these things and they don't get to know the important things if their minds are full of "Eww, ick, her own father..." just as they miss the spiritual enlightenment in Huckleberry Finn if their minds are full of little sirens blaring, "He said a hateful word! He said a profane word!" 

No. Let the public school classes study "The Nun's Priest's Tale" and David Copperfield and Helen Keller's Story of My Life. Let teenagers imagine that adults don't want them to read Flowers for Algernon or 1984 or I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. We know what effect that is likely to have in college literature courses. "You're all probably still too young to appreciate it but has anyone already read Brave New World?"--they all have, and they've probably read it in the spirit it ought to be read, too. "Oryx and Crake? Well, it's new, trendy science fiction with a porn star in it. Now, to get back to Shakespeare..." Old Will wrote the bestsellers of his time, and had some insights into issues that are,  trendy today, too. But why preach about Shakespeare to students when we can let them discover for themselves, "You know, actually, there's a lot of genderfluidity in Twelfth Night, and having Othello be jealous and insecure because he's a 'Moor' showed some consciousness about Black people, too. Othello was well off but he'd been distrusted and disfavored because of his color, not unlike some Black Americans today...." 

Anyway my point here was that when anybody's free to "ban" a book for a specific situation for reasons of per own, the author may make more money from a "banned" book than from an uncontroversial book. While D.H. Lawrence was so controversial people read his books in order to participate in the debate about whether public libraries should have them even in a locked box; after deciding that Lawrence was intelligent for a coal miner and belonged on reading lists as a token Member of the Working Class, everyone lost interest, because frankly, assuming you already know what the Formerly Unprintable Words mean, the books aren't all that good. Langston Hughes represented the Working Class much better. But being banned made Lawrence rich.

But now we consider the state of censorship in the UK...Presumably these incidents occurred in a context in which they made more sense than they do to the US reader.

https://pjmedia.com/tim-o-brien/2025/10/13/in-great-britain-speech-is-free-for-me-but-not-for-thee-n4944798

Music

An e-friend wanted to see this one shared everywhere. I can see why. The vocals are really worthy of the original recording being parodied, and the all-things-Californian graphics are gorgeous, no matter how unrealistic and unappealing the AI of Trump playing flute...Real Men do play flutes. Some of them. James Galway, e.g. But not Trump. You have to ignore the AI and focus on the iconic background images, from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Hollywood sign to Alcatraz Island...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfkHNrQebZY

For musical send-ups of our President, though, this one's a winner. They neither look nor behave like any President and First Lady, ever. They dance well enough to convince me that they're expressing admiration for the Trumps.

https://x.com/CL4WS_OUT/status/1977581138546987183

And, while we're considering political satire through rock music...the person who shared this one on the Mirror warned that it's an UNAUTHORIZED parody of a RECENT song, therefore the link may break at any moment, but it's a good song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wc-Y1ZkTVyw

Then of course there's the one that makes me want to adopt a burro so I can stand next to it and sing this song without violating the Rules of Aunthood.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4XWiKZNMOU

Politics 

Click to enlarge; it's worth it. Found at the Mirror.

Petfinder Post: Thursday Is Feral Cat Day

Thursday is Feral Cat Day...But, ironically, it's unusual to find a really feral cat on Petfinder. Cats who've grown up independent of humans can become pets, especially if they bond with humans at an early age, but adopting them as pets is usually considered too challenging...well, let's just say that the traditional shelter experience does not nudge feral cats in the direction of loving humans.

Cats who grow up feral can be friendly with humans, but they don't feel that they need humans and may refuse to come indoors, go to the vet, etc. That feral cats never become pets is a misunderstanding. Some feral cats recruit humans to share food with them, offer shelter in inclement weather, or help in an emergency; they may bond with the humans of their choice but they retain a degree of independence fully domesticated cats don't have. 

In the cat memory that's been printed in The Dog Who Wooed at the World, I described a cat who chose to lie on my lap while nursing kittens, encouraging the kittens to become my pets, as feral. The editor of the anthology "corrected" this to "stray." I thought that made a simpler story so I let it stand, but I knew for a fact that Polly was feral; her parents had been alley cats in a nice city neighborhood for years. Polly was born in an alley. 

Polly became a pet. She was tiny and pretty and very determined. She liked me; she liked to ride on my shoulder. She recognized her name and came when it was called. She allowed me to take her to the vet, and even spent one cold night indoors, though she obviously was not comfortable being behind closed doors in a house or car---much less the veterinary clinic. And she started what's become a multigenerational family tradition of nursing her kittens on my lap; Polly's social cat family were just too dang interesting to be subjected to the general rule of sterilizing adult cats and adopting shelter kittens--though that's still a good rule in many places, at least for normal cats. 

Friendly though Polly was, she was different from a cat who'd grown up as a pet. She was very polite about accepting food; she always thanked me for food with a touch of her cheek, and trained her kittens to do the same. She was also very proper about the daily purr-and-cuddle routine, as the kittens grew up, in which the cats lined up for me to pet her brother Mackerel first, then Polly, then the kittens in order. Polly was usually very gentle after that first bite-and-scratch session, but she intentionally scratched me, lightly and harmlessly, twice; once it seemed to be a test before she decided to become a pet, and once it seemed to be asserting herself, to her brothers, as being Queen Cat after her mother died. And, though she acted as if she loved Mac and the kittens and me (her relationship with the kittens' father seemed to be respectful but not loving), after two years she walked away and moved in with a tomcat she seemed to have recognized as her beshert. She loved her family at the Cat Sanctuary but she didn't need us.

Polly's life was short; she probably had FIV. She never became an indoor pet and nobody saw her after her third summer. However, my "Aunt Dotty" rescued a pair of feral kittens she'd watched grow up in an alley. They became real house pets. One lived seventeen years, and one lived eighteen years. They were quite friendly and used to purr-and-cuddle whenever I visited. They even went on a road trip with Aunt Dotty and "Uncle Pete," one summer, though they didn't seem to like it much and were reportedly glad to get home.

And now, at the time of writing...a neighbor reported that three dumped-out kittens seemed to her to be completely feral. She was not able to trap them to bring them to the Cat Sanctuary (they may have learned about box traps from having been dumped out of one) but, over the summer, they found their way up here all by themselves. Drudge and Serena are working on teaching them some manners. Cats' lessons involve slapping, yelling, and sometimes biting, but from the fact that the kittens are still around when neither food nor sex is happening, we know the resident cats like them and are teaching them. I've started calling the black one (male) Wild Thyme and the calico Wild Rose.

You, too, can try making a pet of a feral cat who finds you. Outcomes depend on the cats as well as the humans. A few observations:

1. A straying pet who doesn't know the way home can be just as wary as a feral cat. Whether they are lost pets, feral cats, or dumped-out unwanted kittens whose mother was a pet, some cats will boldly claim a new human friend and start training that person to share food with them, let them come into the house, etc. Most cats are wary about new people and won't make themselves easy to see, even if they live in your shed for weeks. Before assuming that a cat is feral or abandoned it's worth the effort to find out whether it's a lost pet. One way to tell: If it looks well fed and well groomed, in my part of the world it's likely to be looking for a new home because its human died or went to hospital, but it's almost certain to be a lost pet. True feral cats tend to look hungry and flea-bitten.

2. This is because they tend to be hungry and flea-bitten. You may want to take them to the vet right away. If you do, feral cats will probably move to a different neighborhood after what they probably experience as a horrifying abduction by aliens who did painful and perverted things to them. I try to base the decision on triage. If a cat is obviously too sick to survive without veterinary care, having it treated or euthanized is probably the right thing to do, even if it means the cat will never be a friend. If it's only hungry and flea-bitten, feeding it for the months it takes to build a relationship is probably the best thing to do for the cat (it may not find another friendly human if it moves away)--even if it means the cat may have kittens.

3. Only cat haters seriously believe that sterilizing cats is a high priority. If, however, you're quite sure you will not be able to keep kittens, it's possible to stage an abduction by someone else, who takes a cat to a horrible place where it's sterilized, and you then come in and rescue the cat. The difficulty is that ethical vets like to give rabies vaccine at least two weeks before surgery. You may have to choose one. Of the two I'd choose the vaccine. I'd try to maintain an open mind about the probability that a feral cat's kittens would be pets and would forgive me for letting them be neutered and spayed. There is a chance that a feral cat who's forgiven you for letting it be vaccinated will stay around and let itself be sterilized in due time.

4. Bonding with any unfamiliar animal takes place at the animal's pace. The more patient you are, the more reliable the bond will be. Letting a feral cat sniff and touch you before you reach toward it is good for the skin.

People who bond with feral cats don't have much choice about when this bonding happens, but it's good to be prepared by bonding with a more ordinary rescued cat first. So here are some cats (and dogs) who have had some experience of feral life and life with humans. They can teach you how to live with that like-you-but-don't-need-you attitude really feral cats (and dogs) will always have.

This post is late because Petfinder doesn't have a way to sort by history. I had to read the story that went with each qualifying photograph, then close the pages for dozens of adorable, adoptable animals who were moved directly from homes to shelters.

Zipcode 10101: Athena and/or Sokolata from Greece by way of NYC 

Sokolata's web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/sokolata-76403867/ny/new-york/anjellicle-cats-rescue-ny488/

Born feral on a Greek island, these sisters were rescued young enough to have grown up almost like pets. Not the snuggliest, but friendly. Athena is the one in the chair. They can be adopted separately, but would probably do better together.

Zipcode 20202: Ricky Lane from South Carolina by way of DC 

His web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/ricky-lane-78682382/dc/washington/final-victory-animal-rescue-sc497/

Ricky Lane Cat's biography is unknown. Did he lose trust in people because he was dumped and abused? Is he just naturally cautious? In any case he's shy until he gets to know people, then gradually becomes friendlier. If adopted he'd probably spend a few weeks hiding in the darkest corner of the basement, then start venturing closer to his new humans and working up to quick touches before he finally purrs and cuddles. His foster humans enjoyed this slow process and, if you're the right human for him, so will you.

Zipcode 30303: Momo from Atlanta 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/momo-78708031/ga/atlanta/lears-legacy-tx2906/

Momo was a stray who just found a house she liked, walked in, took over, and gradually became friendly with the humans. She's not always in a cuddly mood...just often.

Zipcode 10101: Trixie from NYC 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/trixie-ny-77384003/ny/new-york/rescue-dogs-rock-nyc-ny1274/

This Chihuahua-mix puppy was found, with her sister, on a city street in the rain. They hadn't lived long enough to deserve that. Nobody knows how long they'd been on the street. Probably not very long because both of them survived. They may have been dumped out just because they were female, or also because their other parent was probably a pit bull, or mix. Both Chihuahuas and pit bulls can be aggressive. (In the case of Chihuahuas it's usually considered cute until the Chihuahua chews up someone's leg.) Fortunately both breedscan also learn to be gentle and protective. 

Zipcode 20202: Koa from Maryland 

His web page: ;https://www.petfinder.com/dog/maryland-koa-78320831/dc/washington/national-anatolian-shepherd-rescue-network-az41/

Anatolia is a peninsula on the border that's been claimed by both Greece and Turkey, and also by Rome, at different times. It's been mostly a rural area (with some historic cities) where people kept sheep, goats, and cattle, and big strong guard dogs to herd them. The Anatolian Shepherd is a serious dog--probably a young man's dog. They are large, move fast, jump high, and really do best on ranches with cattle. They are protective, bred for an instinct to scare off bears, though a bear would probably beat one Anatolian Shepherd if it came to a real fight. They are not recommended for small homes, families with babies, or homes that receive a lot of visitors. They like to have a job with a regular routine and responsibilities. Koa's weight is not given but purebred Anatolian Shepherds can weigh up to 150 healthy pounds. Koa's permanent home needs to have a big yard with a solid 4' fence. 

So you can see how easy it would be for a person to neglect this kind of animal, and even to slip from neglect into abuse. That happened to Koa and other animals kept by the same irresponsible human.

Despite his history, Koa is friendly and affectionate, said to melt when petted. If you're an athletic type and want a trail buddy who will keep a brisk pace, make people leave you alone, and snuggle beside you at the end of the day, Koa might be the dog for you.

Zipcode 30303: Auggie from Atlanta  

His web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/auggie-77648455/ga/atlanta/australian-shepherds-furever-ca2261/

Auggie is five years old, likely to live another five or ten years, and he grew  up in what might be called a home with benign neglect. He lived on a farm. He behaved well with humans, including children, and farm animals, but his humans just realized that none of them had the time to train him properly. He's neither a real working dog nor a real pet. His intentions are good, though. He is part Australian Shepherd, part retriever, and part poodle and shows some of the most lovable traits of all three breeds. 

There probably is a dog in a shelter in Georgia who's actually been feral, but after reading about half a dozen dogs with behavior problems in a row I decided a neglected dog would have to do. Lovable dogs who bit somebody, but only one person and the dog had reasons, or attacked another pet, but it was especially tempting and how many people keep Muscovy ducks as pets anyway, are not my favorite subject to read about. For no obvious reason, this week Georgia shelters seem to be full of them.

Book Review: Crabs

Book Review: Crabs

Author: Herbert S. Zim

Date: 1974

Publisher: William Morrow & Company

ISBN: 0-688-30114-2

Length: 64 pages including index

Illustrations: drawings by René Martin

 

Quote: “Crabs show another interesting kind of growth that is called regeneration.”

This is an informative little picture book, meant to be a challenging read in grades three and four, informative enough to interest adults.

Reviewing Crabs, about which there’s little for an amateur to say, provides me with as good an opportunity as any to share what I know about books for children and the notion of “reading levels.”

I learned to read before my fourth birthday. Being a child prodigy was good for lots of adult attention and resulting envy and hostility from other children. People handed me all sorts of grown-up things to read; I remember entertaining our pediatrician by reading aloud from his medical journals. Like most children who figure out phonics and seem to be “reading” material beyond their age level, I didn’t understand or remember most of the grown-up stuff I “read”. I remember keeping myself awake, reading the medical journal, by imagining “Hemoglobin” as a little cartoon goblin; I remember that even Charlotte’s Web was far enough over my head, at four, that I rediscovered it as a completely new book at eight.

In most ways my brother was more precocious than I was. Let’s just say that while I was being the child prodigy and waiting for kids my age to catch up with me, my brother, three years younger, was never far behind me in anything. So naturally people expected him to start reading at three, after playing with alphabet blocks and magnets, as I had. But he didn’t. He could spell out short messages (“I LOVE YOU MOM”) with magnetic letters, and he liked to have grown-up books read to him, but he didn’t seem to read even picture books by himself until age six. As a result, in primary school his I.Q. was drastically underestimated. At home, while he was in grades one through three, he’d find me reading something age-appropriate like Tom Sawyer or Heidi and want to read it too. He’d read a few pages and then bring the book back to me: “Would you read the rest of it? I’m tired.”

Toward the end of grade three he spent a rainy morning curled up with one of those Zane Grey books I scorned, and then my brother became a reader. He liked all stories with dogs and horses in them, but his preference was for grown-up nonfiction; there was no in-between stage. He’d liked to have history, biography, and simple science read aloud even at six. We had to imagine that my brother had had the mental ability to read even at three, but had had to wait for his eyes to mature before he could enjoy reading ordinary-size print.

Later we learned that this is quite a common way children, especially boys, learn to read. They may be intelligent enough to learn the letters before age six, but they are slightly farsighted up to six, eight, even ten, and won’t start reading ordinary books for pleasure until their eyes are ready for that job. If they are not given an emotional complex about it, or forced to wear glasses that may interfere with the development of normal vision, they usually outgrow this farsightedness in time to catch up with their age group at school--or pass it. (How computers affect the development of children’s eyes remains to be learned.) That’s why books that work for most primary school students will have large clear print.

Crabs has large clear print, and although my brother was not particularly interested in crabs, this is the kind of book that primary school students like him need. A slow-reading first-grader who lived near the beach and was interested in crabs might enjoy reading this book, a page or two at a time, as his eyes would allow, in time to relieve the anxiety of adults who underestimate his intelligence because he’s not reading novels. 

Butterfly of the Week: Graphium Mandarinus

Happy Thanksgiving, Canadian readers!

This week's butterfly is the subject of controversy and confusion. Graphium mandarinus always was very close to being considered the same thing as Graphium glycerion. Both have been called Spectacled Swordtails. The subspecies name garhwalica is now preferred as a species name, Graphium garhwalica.  

Currently, while the subspecies G.m. garhwalica is now regarded by some scientists as different from the other subspecies of mandarinus and similar to glycerion, the other subspecies of Graphium mandarinus seem to be keeping their names. Those who want to replace the name Graphium glycerion with Graphium garhwalica still accept the names of Graphium mandarinus mandarinus, G.m. albarea, G.m. fangana, G.m. kimurai, and G.m. stillwelli. Graphium mandarinus paphus, or Graphium paphus, depending on whom you asked, is now often classified as the same species as Graphium glycerion or, nowadays, Graphium garhwalica. (Though Moore et al. made the case for keeping it as a distinct species:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326033191_Revision_of_Pazala_Moore_1888_The_Graphium_Pazala_mandarinus_Oberthur_1879_Group_with_Treatments_of_Known_Taxa_and_Descriptions_of_New_Species_and_New_Subspecies_Lepidoptera_Papilionidae )

All of these subspecies names have been assigned based on the way the butterflies look, only. They don't live in highly populated areas and don't seem to have been reared in captivity. Since a butterfly is a small prey animal whose survival may depend on its ability to confuse predators, determining which  looks define species, subspecies, or mere individual variation frequently confuses experts, too. Even Walter Rothschild, who never seemed to mind letting his best guess be taken for a fact, ventured only so far as to say that mandarinus was "variable."

Though popular, these butterflies are seldom seen, because they live at tropical or semitropical latitudes but at high altitudes, in India and Thailand. The lowest altitude recorded for this species is about 4000 feet, moderate and comfortable for humans, but they are more often reported much higher up the mountains. They seem to have one generation a year. Their wingspan is about three inches. They are not really common anywhere, but not so uncommon as to be considered endangered, either.

Little is known about their life cycle. This paper documents the life cycle of a very similar species; it's linked here with the caveat that early stages in the life cycle of similar-looking species may be different:

https://www.zobodat.at/pdf/NEVA_32_0109-0112.pdf

Despite their ethereal appearance, they require mineral salts the males slurp up from polluted puddles, with a special preference for urine. Females can usually get their quota of minerals from contact with males, so they can afford clean habits, sipping only clean water and flower nectar. Human sweat contains enough mineral salts that these butterflies may perch on a sweaty hiker, licking shirt, socks, or even skin if the hiker holds still.

This Chinese naturalist took a short, clear video of mandarinus flitting, sipping, and pollinating:

http://www.butterfly-photo.com/butterfly-universe-%e8%b3%9e%e8%9d%b6%e5%a4%a9%e5%a4%96%e5%ae%87/fairies-at-summit-graphium-mandarinus/

Some may want to watch more of these butterfly videos.

http://www.butterfly-photo.com/butterfly-universe-%E8%B3%9E%E8%9D%B6%E5%A4%A9%E5%A4%96%E5%AE%87/my-butterfly-video-highlights-of-the-past-ten-years/

This short, slow-motion video is Japanese.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJw4O0JLG1o

The subspecies albarea and stillwelli are undocumented on the Internet. 

Subspecies fangana, sometimes spelled phangana: 

Drinking buddies show the transparency of their wing tips. Photographed in February in Thailand at a relatively low altitude of 1500 meters, almost 5000 feet.

Subspecies kimurai was formerly known as Graphium glycerion glycerion:

Photo by Ayuwat, taken in January in Thailand.

Also by Ayuwat, January, Thailand; but I think this one, with more worn and transparent wings, is a different butterfly. 

This couple of Graphium mandarinus kimurai were mistakenly labelled Bhutanitis lidderdalii. They are much smaller and have only one tail on each hind wing. They were found in December, in Thailand, at an altitude of 2300m or over 7500 feet. 

Subspecies paphus is documented at sources that treat it as a subspecies of mandarinus:

Photo by Sonam_Pintso_Sherpa, taken in April in Sikkim.

This site, which accepts paphus as a species, describes the minute but consistent differences in their wing markings and provides photo documentation of other things. Did that puddling male intentionally dip his hind wings in water?

http://ifoundbutterflies.org/graphium-paphus

There are still opportunities for students to become famous by adding to what is known about this whole family of butterflies.