Tuesday, May 5, 2026

Bad Poetry: Snarky Happy Haiku

Red cardinal and
Tiger Swallowtail, are you
posing for tourists? 

(Because the view from either side of McDonald's is a lovely, enticing view of what people come here for. From one window wall you can see the quaint little town with the quaint little shops, the silly new park where the Friday Market used to be, and the high school and its sports fields. From the other window you can see a little mown grass and a few picnic tables below a steep tree-covered hill. So today I looked out my preferred window and saw the cardinal flying in between two trees, the butterfly flying in between two other trees. Two of our State emblems right there and yes, I think one of the trees happened to be a dogwood, which is another one...)
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Petfinder Post: Basset Hounds and Cats

Next on the list of dog breeds the British Meddlers & Blighters Union wanted to render extinct are the lovable, stumpy-legged Basset Hounds.

It's easy to see why Bassets were deemed an inherently dysfunctional breed. You can look at them and see that they wouldn't be likely to survive in the wild. Those long floppy ears can become a breeding ground for vermin and fungi. Those stubby legs can't keep up with a pack of normal-sized dogs. Their easygoing pace can easily deteriorate into sluggishness and hypothyroidism if they don't get enough exercise. Bred to track rabbits to their burrows and dig them out, Bassets aren't big or fast enough to catch most prey animals and would have a hard time feeding themselves. Humans can compensate for these survival disadvantages, and usually do. Bassets tend to be lovable, in a poky, stubborn, whiny sort of way, and are usually beloved pets. They are at least stereotyped as patient and good with small children.

They can actually work as service dogs. Bassets are a separate breed from what are now called Bloodhounds with a capital B...but if you're old enough to remember Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane fiercely threatening, on so many shows, to send his pedigreed bloodhound Flash after somebody and then bringing out a sweet, shy little thing that stood hardly a foot high, Flash was a Basset. She would have done a good job of tracking a lost child and not intimidating the child in the way a longer-legged Bloodhound or other type of hound might do.

For their size they are surprisingly heavy and strong. A show-quality Basset is no more than 14 inches high at the shoulder, but weighs 40 to 65 pounds. 

All purebred Bassets show at least two coat colors--white, and black or some shade of brown. Many show three colors. 

Several genetic weaknesses run in Basset bloodlines. Their bone and muscle mass is the same as a bigger dog's, but "sawed off short," and the bones don't always fit together in the most functional way. They can have trick "knees" and also hips and shoulders. They can be vulnerable to glaucoma. If you buy a pedigreed Basset, the American Kennel Club recommends having a veterinary examination for half a dozen diseases that are less common in most other breeds. Some of their health issues start with the teeth; the AKC recommends brushing these dogs' teeth with special toothpaste twice a week.

Their short hair doesn't look as if it needed brushing, but it tends to shed profusely and need a good brushing at least once a week. 

They can be hard to train, since instinct literally tells them to follow their noses, but they are considered trainable. Though not built for great athletic feats they can learn to walk at heel, sit, stay, and ask to go outside like other dogs.

Basset is a French word, derived from bas, "low," and two parts of France have developed special breeds of Bassets, also on the list of dogs of which the Busybodies of Britain disapprove. Since neither is common in the US we might as well consider them together with ordinary Basset Hounds. The Basset Bleu de Bretagne is a little more active than the usual Basset and more likely to have a "blue tick" or "blue marle" color. Spots mottled with black, grey, and white hair can add a fourth color to a black, tan, and white dog. The Basset Fauve de Gascogne is a little taller, has longer hair, and can be all one color without spots.  

There is no real cat counterpart to the Basset Hound. Some individual cats have relatively short, sturdy legs--like our Drudge, who is longer and broader-framed than Serena but not taller--and some people, whom I consider perverts, have bred selectively for extreme forms of this trait. While Bassets can at least hunt rabbits as long as their diet is supplemented with other things by their humans, stumpy-legged cats have no special ability that compensates for their dysfunctional shape. I'l show one photo of two short-legged cats and move quickly back to normal, healthy calicos and tortoiseshells.

Zipcode 10101: Riley from Brielle 


His humans dumped him in a shelter because they wanted to make changes in their own situation. Despite this Riley still seems to love any and all humans. He looks like a crossbreed, more like a short thickset Beagle than a really typy Basset, but that's typical: Basset Hounds are not normally left in shelters. 

Orchid & Iris from NYC


They think these poor little animals may have been deliberately bred for their deformity. The cats are NOT good with children or dogs, but behave well with other cats (besides each other). Fortunately, as shelter cats, they won't be producing stubby-legged kittens.

Gardenia from NYC 


Described as "a wonderful mix of calm, affectionate and playful," Gardenia has demonstrated an ability to make friends with other cats. How she behaves around dogs and children is unknown. Cuddly and confident, she looks like a junior-level Queen Cat looking for a place to rule through affection.

Zipcode 20202: Lydia & Dickerson by way of White Marsh 


Dickerson may be a little bigger than Lydia; they're not purebred. She was the one who looked more like a Basset Hound: short and dense. The siblings are described as a friendly, playful pair who have demonstrated good behavior around other animals, including chickens. Their origin is not clearly explained; there's some connection with Texas and they're said to be in "the Northeast"(which state?) but they can meet you in suburban or rural Maryland. The adoption fee is $450 for both dogs. They must be adopted together.

Maeve from Texas by way of Falls Church 


In Texas, they'll tell you up front, her adoption fee includes a veterinary bill and a carrying cage and adds up to $155. If they bring her to DC they'll add $200. Maeve is not really ready for adoption yet but they'd like to find a home as soon as possible. She has siblings and should be adopted with one of them.

Zipcode 30303: Sophia from Rossville 


There is no purebred, or even really typy-looking, Basset Hound on Petfinder's Georgia page--they're not a breed that winds up in shelters often. Sophia was the closest they had. They think she's part Basset and part coon hound because, although she has relatively short legs, as a skinny nursing mother she weighed 71 pounds. She tolerates, mostly ignores, other animals and young children. She really seems to prefer to cuddle up with her human.

Daisy Howell from Buford 


Daisy wants to be the only cat, or failing that at least the Queen Cat, and so far the only cat companion she seems to like is her dutiful daughter Demi. Their foster human seemed most amused by Daisy's bossiness. 
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Web Log for 5.4.26

After a weekend of Microsoft snafu and glyphosate poisoning, in the depth of refrigerator-cold "blackberry winter," the electricity was disconnected at the Cat Sanctuary. I had $200 worth of goods to sell to A. A hadn't received a payment from someone else, promised to e-mail when able to pay, has yet to e-mail. B had wanted to work on a project that should have been good for $300. B's health is not the best and B never showed up. By Friday I was wondering on which day the electricity would be cut off, whether I'd have time to ask for an advance from C on Monday. The electricity went off on Monday morning. It should be on by now. Anyway, I'm sitting in McDonald's, where Microsoft started throwing its little fits about 8 a.m. and continued through about 1:30 p.m. 5.5 hours so far today. 

We need a law. Microsoft needs to be required by law to make Windows secure in a useful way--by blocking all third-party input while computers are in use. Preferably third-party input, such as ad cookies and spyware and those infernal "updates," would be routed through the FCC and scanned for anything resembling spyware before it could be queued to reach privately owned computers even after they're shut down for the night. A button on every computer needs to be designated the "Report Delays" button, used to file a complaint if a keyboard command is not obeyed before the fingers can touch the next key. Computers must run at the speed at which people type. Regardless of how old the computers may be. Far from being allowed to try to "force sales," Microsoft needs to be forced to pay any customer to whom it fails to provide service by allowing wait time. There is no reason why today's computers and connections should ever fail to run faster than even professional typists type, bar an occasional weather disaster destroying physical connections. Wait time is the result of Microsoft living in fear that somebody else might be able to replicate Microsoft Office, when in fact anyone who happens to be a computer genius could replicate Microsoft Windows 7 (without the"updates") and blow Windows 10, 11, and 365 away. We shouldn't have to work through their anxieties. 

Maybe Microsoft should be split, the way Standard Oil was...or maybe not even into regional territories, but into companies forced to compete to deliver customer satisfaction, which is what built Microsoft, the loss of which will destroy Microsoft.

I am...actually feeling better. Slowly deflating. I inhaled enough poison over the weekend to puff up to the point that moving and bending became difficult, normal breathing uncomfortable. I'm wearing a sort of salwar-kamiz thing I bought from a local charity store just for this time of day. Normally it hangs loose like the modest Indian Muslim outfit it's meant to resemble. Today it's a snug fit but it's getting less snug by the hour, and I feel bad about being out in public, looking like this. Nobody seems actually to be giving me a second look. Most middle-aged people are fat these days; most are fatter than I am. I feel an urge to say to anyone who looks at me, "Only about a third of this surplus bulk is honest natural fat. Two thirds are gas and inflammation. This is not the look of a jolly fat person. This is the look of bearable but acute pain." So far I've just smiled like a jolly fat person...who expects to need to walk out with a hand in a pocket, holding up the salwar that fitted so closely this morning. I do still have a waistline, though it wasn't visible this morning.

Health News 

No veg until you've finished your candy and chips! Seriously, this study quantifies something I noticed more than ten years ago, and some "healthy foods" are less bad than others. Generally the rule is that the more of the outer part of a fruit, vegetable, nut, or grain you throw away, the lower the level of toxic "pesticide residues" is likely to be. Also, garlic and onions tend to be safe. Worth testing for reactions (eat a bite, wait until a reaction would start if it were going to, take charcoal if necessary): melons, pineapple, bananas, oranges, grapefruit, corn, dry beans, rice, winter squash, almonds, pecans, peanuts, pumpkin seeds, walnuts, coconuts. Dangerous unless you know they've not been sprayed: apples, peaches, pears, cherries, berries, persimmons, carrots, radishes, potatoes, green leafy vegetables, peas, cucumbers, celery, tomatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, rabe (canola), soy, wheat, barley, millet, rye. More expensive brands are more likely to be edible than cheap brands, but all those "healthy natural foods" people my age were told to eat--which were healthy to eat in the 1980s--are likely to be toxic. 


Housewares 

I've never liked 100-watt bulbs. They're too bright for my Highly Sensory-Perceptive eyes, they cost more, they had a shorter "lifetime," and they cast a yellowish light under which colors didn't look true. But some people's aging eyes needed them. I don't think it was appropriate for the federal government to dictate that the things not be made. People can, after all, see that fluorescent lights are a better bargain...for most of us...and people ought to be able to leave alone the minority who need the big bright bulbs.


Music 

Ernie Haase...full-length album, 13 songs.


Pictures 

Gorgeous nature photos: 


Decor...now THIS is how a house ought to look!


Reading, Reasons for 

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Book Review: Young King

Title: Young King

Author: Lerone Martin

Date: May 5, 2026

Publisher: Harper Collins

ISBN: 978-0-06-334094-7

Quote: "This book...asks us to strip [the] Reverend Dr. King of the iconic status that adorns him today and allow him to simply be an adolescent."

Fair Disclosure: This review is based on an advance review copy of the manuscript I received in February 2026. Though advance review copies are sent to reviewers in good faith, occasionally reviewers mention things in advance review copies that are changed when the final edition is published for everyone else to read. 

Before there was a Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, there was a boy, smaller than his younger brother and sometimes bullied by same, originally called Michael, then M.L., sometimes Tweed for the suits he liked to wear in the years when high school boys were required to wear suits, sometimes Will Shoot for the way he played basketball. This book is about that boy. It is a real, thoroughly researched, "Childhood of Famous Americans" story. 

Because Martin Luther King himself never told us much about his childhood, this book is based on other people's memories and written records. It's not as intimate a record, nor in some ways as accurate, as memoirs like Helen Keller's Story of My Life or even memory-based novels, where other people's identities are blurred in order to let the author/character speak frankly, like Little Town on the Prairie. It probably contains all that is known about the early life of Martin Luther King.

Lerone Martin raises the question that the future Dr. King showed both introvert and extrovert behavior; he did seem to have a strong internal conscience. He was nonviolent as a little boy and as a man, despite a conscious plan to develop the ability to fight like a man of his time in his teen years; he was also one of those "outgoing" children who want to "make friends" of every other child they meet. I've suspected that this mix occurs when a healthy introvert brain sustains some minor damage. The baby later to be known as Martin Luther King didn't start breathing easily; his mother had been ill and there was some question whether he was going to survive. Just a data point, for whatever it may turn out to be worth.

"ML," as Martin calls his subject, was not the best student, either. To some extent this may have been due to competitiveness. Children and some parents admired a student who was able to skip through school and graduate earlier than others. Little ML King wanted to start kindergarten before he was old enough, then wanted to skip through high school and start college before he was even sixteen years old. He was bright enough to get into those classes with older students but not bright enough to do very well in them; he was mostly a C stream student who could sometimes pour on the effort to achieve a B. What he learned as an undergraduate at Morehouse was mostly public speaking; he entered Morehouse unsure about whether he wanted to be a preacher, and emerged as one of the greatest preachers of all time. But he didn't write much and his sermons borrowed heavily from other people's words, notably those of the poet Langston Hughes. 

And was he really a Christian? Warning: the reviewer is about to say something "liberal" here. In the history of Christianity there have always been people who naturally love "religious language" and contemplative prayer and thoughts about Heaven. They can look, especially when young, alarmingly similar to people with certain kinds of mental illness, though they are not mentally ill and can have effective ministries. Then there are people who may believe Heaven is real and even wish we could spend hours in contemplative prayer, but whose idea of being Christians is essentially practical, firmly rooted in this earthly life. There have always been tendencies for people with these different types of approaches to our religion to question whether both types really are Christian. Some people think the other kind of believers aren't doing Christianity right--they are "trying to be holier than God," or "all about people rather than God." Some people think the other kind may be doing Christianity better than they are, and wish they had the ability to express their faith in the other way. I think both kinds are at least capable of serving Christ. He did, after all, call both John and Peter.

As a young ministerial student Martin Luther King was a good match for Morehouse. He had quarrelled with his father, asserting that many things in the Bible were "fairy tales." Morehouse's teachers met young men who felt that way where they were and challenged them to discover the spiritual truth behind the "fairy tales." They took the "Of course Jonah wasn't really swallowed by a whale, so what can we learn from the allegorical story about him?" approach, and, as a university for young Black men, turned out preachers prepared to take their place in the Black American tradition. White churches could afford to have pensive, contemplative spiritual sons of St John in the pulpit. Black churches demanded active, practical sons of St Peter, which happened to be what King had aspired to be--to the extent that he'd dreamed of being a doctor or lawyer before he considered being a minister. 

Martin shows evidence that ML really was the idealist people wanted to believe he was after he'd become a martyr. Not in all ways, of course. On jobs that involved physical work he was voted the laziest student laborer in the crew. In his social life he was the typical selfish young man, coolheadedly pursuing the right combination of charm, beauty, talent, and altruism necessary to an ideal pastor's wife (or unpaid minister) in a series of three girls he seriously considered marrying, joking with friends about seeking treatment from young women of lower social background as "doctors" who cured all a fellow's problems so long as he made sure to wear his "shoes," and planning to go on exploiting and betraying women similarly after marriage. But he really did hate race prejudice and segregation with such a passion that, given opportunities to put it behind him and live in a place where segregation was not the law, he preferred to live in a place where segregation was the law and work to change that law. He really did know that working for change might shorten his life expectancy. He really did seem to think that ending segregation was a cause worth being a martyr for. 

So, although this book is not a hagiography, although it mentions ML's moments of rebellion and indiscretion and even quotes teachers who gave him low grades, it will still leave activists who read it feeling humbled. None of us will ever, at least not for several more generations, escape comparison with Dr. King. Few if any of us will ever accomplish as much as he did. Knowing that he had his moments of insecurity, frustration, and being-a-bad-example may at least reduce any resentment the comparisons make us feel. Nothing will ever change his status as the "King" of all activists.
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Monday, May 4, 2026

Web Log Weekender: 5.1-3.26

How much time did Microsoft steal from me this weekend? Hard to say. On Saturday night, after four hours I disconnected from the Internet. Another two hours were wasted on Sunday morning. Four more on Sunday afternoon. I think society as a whole needs a serious pushback against this kind of thing. NO new computer sales. NO new versions of Microsoft. When the company's stock drops low enough, they'll figure out how to "update" in a more respectful way, making sure no "update" can ever run while a computer is in use.

Business 

Wal-Mart begins phasing out those obnoxious "self-checkout" machines. Cheers. Now all they need to do is hire some fully human cashiers--nice quiet math-oriented types who appreciate people who focus on getting the numbers right. And keep those prices rolling back--the way to market "healthier choices" is, once we get bans on open-air spraying and applying any chemicals to food, to sell apples, oranges, and bananas for a dime, candy, chips, and soda for a quarter.


Cleaning, Spring 

Whether you're tempted to be a tosser--like a big blundering bus of a woman I know who, among other things, once hauled the cabinet that contained our parents' real gold wedding rings off to the landfill--or a, not a hoarder, that's people who save sandwich crusts or try to keep all the stray animals in town in one filthy shelter-like room, a curator, like me: this article is worth reading. If for nothing else, for the footnote at the end. 


My advice to everyone is the same: Don't "declutter." Do, of course, share worldly goods you no longer need with people who do need them. Children's clothes that are still in good condition, dress-up clothes that are worn once in a lifetime, tools of a trade you no longer ply, will give you sooo much more nostalgic pleasure when you see someone else using and loving them, rather than letting them gather dust in a closet. But don't just toss anything, even a book you didn't enjoy reading, in order to make your house look like a hotel! Houses that look like hotels are horrid! If you don't know someone who needs it, embrace the responsibility of keeping it for the person you will eventually meet who does.

(Old shoes and underwear are an exception. You might be able to recycle parts of them into something else but, generally, nobody else is ever going to want them. Burn them. If you burn a pair of old worn-out broken-down shoes and next week a friend loses everything in an earthquake and needs shoes, be a real friend and buy person a new pair.)

Health 

Gene Weingarten's book explained this before Elaine Aron's book did: If you can feel two separate fingertips touching your back, when the fingers are touching each other, you're Highly Sensory-Perceptive. Can you feel two separate pins, stuck to a ruler 2mm apart?


Seriously. When in a supermarket, until we get a glyphosate ban, stay away from that "produce" section: 
"
‘Our research shows that younger non-smokers who eat a higher quantity of healthy foods than the general population are more likely to develop lung cancer,’ said Jorge Nieva, MD, a medical oncologist and lung cancer specialist with USC Norris and lead investigator of the study.

Researchers believe the explanation may lie in environmental exposure, particularly pesticides used in agriculture. According to Nieva, commercially produced (non-organic) fruits, vegetables and whole grains are more likely to carry higher levels of pesticide residue compared to dairy, meat and many processed foods.”

The full study is here, and so is the question nobody in mainstream media seems to want to ask.

"

Also: 


Movies 

Looks like Chicken Ten Thousand growing up in Greece.

 
Music

Frederic Chopin.


Pink Floyd


Leonard Cohen.


I didn't do a lot of dancing at the desk this weekend; the Professional Bad Neighbor drove by and sprayed my hedge on Friday night, and instead of budding and blooming a section of the hedge cast dead leaves on the ground, and I coughed a lot and lost some blood and puffed up to 50% more than my actual waistline so that even shapeless house gowns felt too tight, and I took a lot of unintentional naps, and I said to myself, "This is Tangible Evidence that the alleged son of the alleged marriage in Tennessee is not a fit guardian for this lost soul. This ought to put him behind bars where he belongs." But also, on a happier note, I was reading some new e-books and one of them contained its own playlist of lively contemporary music, which I decided not to reproduce here. People should read the book.
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Book Review: First Touch

Title: First Touch

Author: Teyla Rachel Branton

Date: 2017

Publisher: White Star

ISBN: 978-1-939203-99-1 

Quote: "I'm not psychic. I only read imprints."

Autumn Rain, whose late father changed his name from Douglas to Winter when he married Summer, sees vivid moving pictures of the memories other people have left on things they've touched. In this novel, a police detective enlists her in the search for a serial murderer. 

This is not a pleasant story to read but, for somebody Out There, it may address post-traumatic stress. I hope so. I didn't enjoy it because it's far too well written for its subject material. If you are at a point in therapy where you want to think and talk about the details of how someone goes about torturing and killing children, this book is for you. It's intense. Your therapist should probably agree to talk to you at any time you feel a need during the week or so after reading.

There is, by now, a series. Autumn travels with the detective, pointing out the site where her psychic imprints tell her crimes occurred, and they bond by cornering criminals together. They have a slow-burn romance--slow because their involvement with horrific crimes distracts them from wanting to start new relationships. This series was published with the name "Teyla Branton" on the cover, and there's another series of more readable fiction published with the name "Rachel Branton."

I tagged this one "Women's Issues" because hatecrime against women and their children seems to be the most urgent "issue" of concern to women these days.
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Butterfly of the Week: Kinabalu Swordtail

The Kinabalu Swordtail is not especially rare. It's a "lifer" because its range is limited to places most people visit only once in a lifetime. It is endemic to Borneo and Sabah islands. 

This blogger has collected several clear photos of Graphium stratiotes and the other Graphiums of southeast Asia and its neighbor islands. They're arranged in alphabetical order, with G. stratiotes at the bottom:


Jamiun has a page devoted exclusively to Graphium stratiotes: 


Henry Grose-Smith described the male:

"
Male.— Upperside. White, tinged at the base with pale greenish yellow. Anterior wings with the costal margin and cell crossed by four black fasciae; the basal fascia narrow, the second, third, and fourth wedge-shaped, the fourth extending beyond the discocellular nervules; beyond the fourth fascia is a semitransparent space divided by the discoidal nervules, which are black ; apex broadly black, centred with another transparent space, divided by the black nervules. Posterior wings with exterior margins narrowly black and three black lunate spots near the anal angle; anal area grey, a large bright, quadrangular, carmine spot at the anal angle, bordered on the upperside with black and on the inside on the inner margin with a white linear spot. Tails narrow and black, with white margins.

Underside. Anterior wings as above, tinged at the base with yellowish brown. Posterior wings ochraceous, crossed at the middle and near the base by two black bands, slightly convergent towards the anal angle and extending as far as the greyish-black space above the anal carmine spot; the exterior margin and anal area broadly black, irorated towards the anal angle with grey, the carmine spot as above, the discocellular and median nervules black; two small black spots below the former.

Expanse of wings 3-3/4 inches.
"

If you're familiar with the language of lepidopterists, you should be able to draw an outline of a Graphium, color it in, and get something very similar to this...


Photo by Weishou, October, Sabah island.


Photo by Gancw1, August, Sabah.

There are two subspecies, Graphium stratiotes stratiotes and G.s. sukirmani. 

As in many Swallowtail species, males are more easily photographed than females because of their "lekking" or "puddling" behavior. (Lekking refers to unmated male animals' tendency to hang out together; puddling refers more specifically to male butterflies' tendency to hang out at puddles, where they slurp up brackish, bitter, or polluted water containing the mineral salts they need.) Graphium stratiotes don't avoid each other particularly; here are two or three, hanging out with drinking buddies of at least two other Swallowtail species, in a slow-motion video presented as a micro-break for office workers:


This taste for salt can make them "too friendly" with humans hiking through their tropical territory. The one photographed below tried licking a human's hand as well as the sock top shown...


Photo by Simonenderby, October, Sabah.

Males and females also pollinate flowers while sipping nectar. 


Photo by Boris1214, in October.

A male Graphium stratiotes leads other butterflies to feast on the fresh mud and sweat on the blue shoes a tourist peels off, beside the river, in this video. After the tourists and their guides have rested, and cleaned their shoes in the cold water enough to climb into kayaks, they paddle into a canyon so narrow and dark it seems almost like a cave.


So far, nobody seems to have published anything about the life cycle of Graphium stratiotes. Google did find a news report in which a student was commended just for studying the population distribution of Swallowtail butterflies, and a copy of her 235-page report (in French so far as I read). Opportunities for other students to be commended for learning about Graphium stratiotes are still wide open.
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Sunday, May 3, 2026

Book Review: Sixty

Title: Sixty

Author: Yvette Walker

Date: 2024

Publisher: Positively Joy  Ministries

Quote: "Is this Linda Radcliffe? The reporter...I know you won't remember me. My daughter, Sarah, was killed..."

Linda remembers. It was only the ugliest murder story she had to report in her career. Readers don't have to read all the gruesome details Linda will never forget; we know they're there. Sarah was the victim of a serial murderer. After helping police find the man and the state kill him, Linda left town; partly because the murder case was so nasty, partly because a personal relationship with her editor was interfering with her work. But when Sarah's mother invites her back to help her through the twentieth anniversary of the murder, Linda comes back. Just possibly something beyond herself, in her fictional universe, impels her to return. Her feelings about returning are mixed.

The same man, Mark, is still editing the same newspaper. He and Linda have married and divorced other people in the intervening twenty years. There's still a mutual attraction.

Sarah's mother, Beverly, has adopted a beautiful little girl who turned up just after Sarah died. Jasmine, now in college, reminds some people of Sarah. She even has a similar birthmark; some people think it must be intentional, it looks so much like the numeral 60.

The policeman who used to give Linda information she could report has been demoted to a lower-paid job, directing traffic on a busy street corner. He always was a smaller, less intimidating policeman the department valued most for his public relations skills, his charming extrovert personality.

And a mysterious hooded figure has been stalking Jasmine. Luckily she can run faster than it can, because the figure creeps her out. She thinks it's a ghost.

This is a thriller, despite early hints that it might turn into a romance (it doesn't). That ghost is solid enough that all of the other characters are in danger. Mark will have to help Linda. Linda will have to help Mark. And can both of them together protect Jasmine? 

As a thriller this novel is satisfactory on its own, but the story goes on. The book as sold mentions a sequel. By now there might be more than one sequel.

This is definitely not a Sunday School story but the characters are Christians, as is their author, and a scene takes place in a church. Language is clean. Sex and violence clearly happen in the story but only in one scene do we see characters in a condition that has traditionally been considered obscene because enacting it on stage put actors in danger. (Eroticized violence: in real life some hatecrimes against women consist of nonsexual violence elaborated to a preposterous degree as a sort of psychological substitute for the rape the criminal is not able to commit.) Moral standards are conservative and are generally accepted in a "traditional" way--the "good" girl who "made the mistake" that produced Jasmine is expected to suffer considerably more than the "good" boy involved, to achieve the same level of repentance and reclaim their status in the community, e.g. If you want to believe that American morals have changed, you might not like this story. If you accept that Humanist morality may have displaced traditional Christian views in some social circles but that moral views in the small towns of the heartland are the same as they've always been, you'll probably enjoy it at least as a one-time diversion. 

The author refers to novelist Terry Macmillan in this book. Sixty is a shorter, simpler story than the multi-character novels for which Macmillan is known; I think, partly for that reason, it has the potential to be a better movie. 
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Friday, May 1, 2026

Web Log for 4.30.26

One more poem, the Monthly Fluffball, and then I dig into the e-mail...and have time to find two links.

Ethics 

This story is not a fun read. It is recommended only to people who know a dog dumper. Dog dumpers should have to copy it out by hand, with pencils.


Politics, Fun Facts

Of the seven Presidents we've had who did not have brown eyes, only one is remembered as having been any good at the job at all. 


 
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Book Review: Office Secrets

Title: Office Secrets

Author: Mary Asher

Date: 2023

Quote: "If all of these trips here and there are going to affect your marital prospects, then I would suggest you put a pause on them."

Evelyn has reached the level in her career where she's sent out on business trips. Her father congratulates her, but her grandchild-craving mother frets that travel might keep her on the job rather than getting her into the nursery as soon as possible. Poor confused Evelyn tries to like man after man, but there are serious reasons not to like the first half dozen. Then, at the beginning of the story, she decides she likes Matthias, who decides he doesn't like her. Meanwhile she's sent on a trip with a junior employee, Tobias, as assistant. Tobias is a charming, amusing extrovert with an invisible friend.

Friend? In the story, Casper, Tobias's friendly "ghost," is not a very helpful friend. Tobias is always yelling at him and having to tell people that he was yelling at a roach. 

In my belief system, Tobias is a classic schizophrenic, even if he's not asexual yet. Sometimes classic schizophrenics hear voices before they lose interest in sex. 

In Asher's belief system, Casper is a deceiving spirit who really exists, but he'll have to go away if Tobias commits to being a Christian.

It matters; in my belief system, if Casper does go away for a while, he'll soon be replaced by other hallucinations, probably worse ones, and he's one of a small minority of people whose spouse will be fully justified in locking him up and divorcing him, because he won't remember who she is anyway. In the English-speaking countries this is the majority belief system. Rare though classic schizophrenia is, I have more than one e-friend who had to leave a schizophrenic husband to living death in a long-term care facility. But in some countries most people apparently still believe that people can be troubled by these deceiving spirits.

I suspected that an earlier book by Mary Asher was not originally written in English or in an English-speaking country. With this book I'm certain. Evelyn does not initially want to work with Tobias because she thinks he's "lousy." Evidently in the language everyone was really speaking in the author's mind, this is a slangier synonym for "lively," which Tobias is, and nobody does more than smile reproachfully. In the US and UK "lousy" is used as a general slang term of profound contempt, much worse than "filthy" or "'rotten," because actual infestations with lice are rare and the most common kind are classified as a sexually transmitted disease. If someone is literally lousy, we don't mention it. If we think someone is lousy in a slang sense, perhaps "lousy with money" or "a lousy manager/writer/technician" (etc.), and say so, some listeners would be offended by the word itself, and certainly everyone would understand you to mean that there was no chance of love or friendship ever developing between you and that person.

Or, of course, you might be dyslexic...but it's rare for people who are that dyslexic to be sent on business trips. Dyslexic authors are few, and even they usually spare their characters that inconvenience. Dyslexia in fiction is almost always limited to a child's having difficulty learning to read. Well-known people who have the kind of dyslexic brains that may learn to read easily, but mix up words in speaking, usually don't blurt out insults like "lousy." Dyslexic brains make mistakes by sorting out neurological messages from different parts of the brain in the wrong order, so we're more likely to mix up words in a sentence or sounds in a word. President Bush's "sex, er, setbacks" in a discussion, or Dr. Spooner's "You have completely tasted two whole worms," are typical dyslexic mistakes. I've said things like that but I'm more likely to mix up alternative ways of saying the same thing, singular and plural, positive and negative, passive and active: "She had seen Quebec before; she had spent her whole life in Calgary," or, "Every employee were given a bonus." Then there's the pattern where we "dysphonics" use the antonym of the word we mean: "It was white as a crow." And some of us mix up numbers, which is the dyslexic mistake I make most often; to my brain, a numeral is a numeral is a numeral. But a dyslexic American would be unlikely to say "lousy" for "lively." An American yuppie would be more likely to describe a subordinate employee as "impulsive" or "hyperactive" or even "volatile." A dyslexic American yuppie might well say "He's so hyperpulsile," or even sputter "He's so hyperpulactivile." But not "He's so lousy." 

(What the character might have been saying might, of course, have been accurately translate by the US slang word "antsy." Because a person who has actual, literal ants in his pants presumably got them by walking over an anthill rather than sleeping around, it's acceptable, if not exactly polite, to say that a child or a childish young man is antsy.)

I like Mary Asher's writing but I'd like it better if her fiction was set in the country where Asher obviously saw or imagined the stories taking place. In a place where many people believe "familiar spirits" are real, a character who had one might be naive but competent, and not a hopeless prospect for anyone at all to marry.

And that awful mother-in-law Asher's given poor daft Tobias? In a better novel any woman like her would next be seen widowed, with a chronic disease, and struggling to bring up four or five grandchildren alone as her daughters had all given birth to twins or triplets, been divorced, left the babies on their mother's doorstep, and left the country. So many things are so much worse than not having grandchildren that anyone who wants to be allowed to see grandchildren, if and when they are born, should make it a spiritual discipline to act as if person couldn't care less whether person ever has a grandchild...even if (as in my parents' case) this is an outright lie they become unable to sustain for a minute after a grandchild appears. Society as a whole may be in no danger of an excess of femininity, but in Jungian psychology "toxic femininity" is seen as a condition from which a patient (even if male) may suffer, and one of the more obvious expressions of toxic femininity is, if utterly unable to keep children from growing up and leaving her alone in the nursery world, badgering the adult children to give her grandchildren.

(For those who missed the lecture on Jung at college: Carl Gustav Jung, a junior colleague of Sigmund Freud's for several years, theorized that everyone has a masculine "soul" and a feminine "soul" among the other archetypes in our psyches. The one that corresponds to our physical sex should of course be more fully expressed, but it's good to be aware of both of them. Healthy masculinity is expressed in behavior like planning ahead and working diligently; healthy femininity, in behavior like caring for those who need care; toxic masculinity, in behavior like brawling and quarrelling; and toxic femininity, in behavior like gossip and manipulation--perhaps most of all in trying to manipulate others to have babies.)
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Thursday, April 30, 2026

Book Review: Her Billionaire Cowboy's Twin Heirs

Title: Her Billionaire Cowboy's Twin Heirs 

Author: Cathy Shouse

Date: 2021

Quote: "Can you believe your baby turns eight tomorrow?"

Young, cute single mother meets rich, handsome single father--of twins. The only question is whether the children are as compatible as they are. Since it's a sweet romance...

I think this whole story is a little too good to be true. Some of the action takes place in a bakery and sugary desserts are mentioned on almost every page. The story is as sugar-fog-inducing as the desserts. But I had just read that grim police-procedure thriller so I could stand a little virtual sugar. Maybe you can too. If so, this romance may be for you. 
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Napowrimo 30: Writers

The final National Poetry Writing Month challenge was to write a poem that discusses a category of beings or people in a detached, musing way.

Writers say writing is fun. But they're lazy.
They'd rather go out and look at a daisy
Than come in and write what they learned from the flower.
Writers refuse to be paid by the hour.
Most of the time writers aren't even paid.
Don't be a writer. Learn some other trade. 

It's been fun, writing a poem a day, except when it's conflicted with other things, such as that, right now, I need to be finishing the Monthly Fluffball. 
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Wednesday, April 29, 2026

Web Log for 4.28.26

What's left of it...starting late today, and likely to stop early...Microsoft attacking the laptop...

Comedy (Not) 

This web site joins the Trumps in calling for the dismissal, and permanent blacklisting, of so-called comedian Jimmy Kimmel. Hear this well, boys: the only woman you ever accuse of looking like an expectant widow, if you want to have a career, is YOUR OWN WIFE. She has a valid reason to look that way. Kimmel basically accused Melania Trump of conspiracy in the attack that occurred a few days later. Doing that shouldn't be censored. It is most definitely of interest to law enforcement. It may be a valid, evidence-based criminal charge worth investigating, and it is more likely to be either (a) a false accusation based in wishful thinking, also worth investigating, or (b) a false accusation made in hopes of distracting suspicion from the speaker's own culpability, also worth thoroughly investigating. 

Candace Owens is not a comedian. She is investigating accusations coming from her base, but she is showing very bad taste by publicizing those accusations in a complete absence of proof. Let Kimmel's fate be a warning to her.


Fashion, More Low Moments in 


Half-grown Ella Devi sneered at Mrs. Hegseth about a dress that...I don't care how little she paid for it. If she got the dress from the Amvets or Salvation Army or Prevention of Blindness Society store, babygirl, I say cheers! I do think the dress does nothing for her, and probably would have looked even worse on the majority of women worldwide. But what's tacky here is an 18-year-old child trying to tell grown-up women how to dress. Don't you have a term paper to write, Ella, dear?

Fashion, More Positive Statements in 


Found at Messy Mimi's blog. Lens says it was first posted by Mary Edwards Arceneaux on F******k. This is actually the kind of thing I wear around the house in winter. If I wanted anyone to think it was sexy, I would point out how easily the whole lovely confection slips off.

Flowers 

Beautiful yellow things.


Kentucky 

Most of anything anyone from Kentucky has to say about Virginia should be dismissed as mere envy, but this must be allowed.


Music 

Dire Straits.



Aoife O'Donovan.


The Grateful Dead.


Cat Stevens.


Ballake Sissoko.


The Byrds.


Nana Mouskouri.


Three Dog Night.


Toto. 


Progress Satellite. This is a long one. Not, in my opinion, great: nobody ever has done or will do this kind of music as well as Mannheim Steamroller. Nevertheless, some nice long tracks with breaks in between for link hunting.


Aerosmith. This would have been my pick for a list of Bad Songs in 1976 or so, but I will admit it sounds a lot better in stereo than it used to sound on that old radio banging around at the back of the school bus.

I do down-rate singers for diction, though. If you're going to all the trouble of recording a song, it's worth practicing to get the consonants to come out clearly.


Arrogant Worms. This Canadian chap has excellent diction, and the song is hilarious.


White Stripes.


J.J. Cale.


Meh. Do you readers actually follow these links and discover old favorites or new fun stuff to listen to, or do these music sections merely expand the page?

Party Politics 

Revenge! Deny it who can! 

I think this kind of thing should be subject to the popular vote. If Floridians really are turning against the Loony Left, that's good news. If they're being subjected to "redistricting" just for revenge, that's tacky. Let the people decide.

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Napowrimo 29: Then & Now

Today's National Poetry Writing Month challenge suggests poems that compare our past and present lives.

This does not follow the rules for the thought flow of a sijo, but since my brain's gone there...

Typewriter clacking all day
cost me housemates, filled my pockets.
Computer softly moaning
"update, replace," drains my pockets.
Could I go back? In a heartbeat.
I've outlived housemates, anyway. 
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A Celebrity I'd Like to Meet

This week's Long & Short Reviews prompt asks for posts about "A Celebrity I'd Like to Meet."

Meh. I'm not really fangirly about any living celebrity. I think, if the life and work of someone who's become well known interest me, I'm likely to learn more by reading person's books, listening to per music or even watching per videos, than by meeting face to face at some reception where people have the opportunity to exchange thoughts like "Good afternoon."  

Sometimes it's more interesting to meet people who work for the famous and infamous. The King of England is obviously not going to tell someone he's only just met anything about himself or about England that we didn't know, but one of his entourage might.

Generally when one meets celebrities they're bland and polite, coached by their public relations agents. I have met one exception: the actor known as Michael Caine. He used actually to work in a cancer research charity he ran in Washington, a point in his favor; he advertised for help often, and I answered several ads and always thought Caine seemed like a disaster to work for--not only irascible, but also careless and not very competent. (So why answer another ad? Because I did hear good things about the organization and figured the acting office manager probably did excellent work.) But most people who've made a career of being well known have practiced being easy to like without being even possible to know.

On a scale of celebrity I don't know that Gene Weingarten rates very high, but he comes to mind as someone I'd like to meet...because I have enjoyed his work for most of my lifetime, and there may not be a great deal of time left to tell him so. But I'm sure he's been told so by hundreds of other readers.
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Book Review: Shepherd of Wolves

Title: Shepherd of Wolves

Author: R.J. King

Date: 2021

Quote: " [B]efore he had his next guest over...Edmund made sure that there weren't any visible remains from the last one."

Trigger warnings: Absolutely nobody is going to enjoy this book. It's about a serial murderer and a police detective. The gory scenes are "tastefully" narrated, but there are a lot of them. People who enjoy this type of book like the satisfaction of having the murderer caught. This book ends with him still at large, with a suggestion that the detective may be so discouraged that there won't even be a sequel. 

Meh. The serial murderer's method is consistent. The detective knows who he is. When the detective hears of a similar crime in a different town, he can go out there and nail the murderer to the wall. If he has the energy left. So it's one of those "Lady or the Tiger," you pick the ending, sort of stories. 

For those looking for male point of view, action and adventure (at least the protagonist observes it, and seethes with frustration because he's not the one doing it), and a deeply decent Black male protagonist (even if, at fifty-two, he's starting to think of himself as "the old man"), this book has those things too. You will like Detective Wright, who's been wrong before, and knows it. I only wish that, even if he is too "old" to bring the murderer in, himself, the story had assured readers that Wright had found someone who would.

As things are, this novel is too much like the real news.
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Napowrimo 28: At Last, Rain

This National Poetry Writing Month challenge invited poems in a form used by Victoria Chang. The original Chang poem has been translated into English. It doesn't quite fit the syllable count for a traditional sijo, but it looks as if, in the original language, it might have been one. 


White rose from Google, which credits all-creatures.org. 

At last, rain deepens the green
coloring ground, bushes, and trees.
White rose bloomed; white violets
are still in bloom; where's white privet?
Has the white honeysuckle choked it?
No, but poison sprays may do.
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Tuesday, April 28, 2026

Web Log for 4.27.26

(Apologies for the incomplete Petfinder Post. We didn't have a real power outage during the night. We did have a storm that was close enough to the house that I disconnected the computers and slept late.)

Fashion Disasters

Madonna Ceccone, a leader of the long-gone fad for "the lingerie look," apparently accepted a dare bet from a younger singer and appeared on stage in a girdle almost but not quite matching one of Sabrina Carpenter's, who is probably too young to be Madonna's daughter. Sabrina may have been born blonde, though her hair looks lightened. Madonna, at 67, never was credible as a blonde and now looks proud of her black roots. Apart from that both look toned and tanned enough to wear the lingerie look in public and look...I don't know. Drunk and disorderly rather than like professional hookers? Tasteless rather than disfigured? Stupid rather than fat? Not the way I want a niece and myself to look, but not bad?

Attention baby-boomers! Yes, some of us 55-to-80-year-olds do look better in bikinis than some 19-year-olds we've seen. But we're old enough to know about mosquitoes and melanoma, and cover up when we come out of the water, anyway.

Click here to see video clips of the two lovely idiots. (You always wondered what Fenimore Cooper's phrase would look like in the real world, didn't you? Here it is.)


Someone else posted on X about hating Ilhan Omar's headscarves, because she wears them so well and might make adopting sharia-compliant clothing a fad into which American women might be led as a step in the direction of becoming a Muslim country. I think the only way to stop the US becoming a Muslim country is for more of us to be overtly Christian--in ways that acknowledge the humanity of, even express loyalty to, all of the allegedly natural descendants of Abraham through Hagar, Sarah, and Keturah, and their right to separate themselves from us to practice their different beliefs if they so choose. 

I think, whatever Minnesotans may decide about Omar's right to stay in Congress or in Minnesota, we can all recognize her scarves as a celebration of her Somali heritage, in the way we recognize saris, when we see them on US streets, as a celebration of people's Indian heritage. Thumbs up on Ilhan Omar's enjoying the (mixed) blessings of being young and cute and Somali. None of my own nieces has any business appropriating her exotic culture but I hope we can all agree that Omar's baby face does a lot for a headscarf.

Music

"Monday." 


George Harrison.


Cream.


The Byrds.


I think the band call themselves Hava Nagila.


Riffing on the classic tune:


LOL! Imagine a grown man telling someone else to cook breakfast when he's already out of bed!


The Grateful Dead.


New York City 

Wailing on the yuppermost tiers of yuppie affluence! Mamdani carries out his mandate from his electorate by at least trying to move a shelter for homeless men into a posh neighborhood! He said he'd do this, and other things the yuppies won't like. If they seriously don't want these things done, bleep did they vote for Mamdani?


Sensitivity 

No links here because the people involved don't deserve them. I'm seeing more overt race hate, and more sex-based hate of various kinds, on the Internet these days. It doesn't read as if people's real thoughts and feelings are finally coming out into the light, either. It reads as if people who've tried to believe that God hath made of one blood all nations of men are feeling hurt and scared, retreating back to old dead expressions of bigotry. 

This web site's page view count dropped, maybe because it was a weekend, maybe because people didn't like something I'd said about Black students saying vile things about all White people even including their own mothers.

I am not complaining about the usual, understandable things even White students are likely to say the first time they read certain unavoidable historical facts...not even so much about slavery, which was global. (Slave traders probably sold more European slaves in the Arab and African countries, over time, than African slaves in North America, simply because the market existed longer.) Reading about how our European ancestors (in the collective sense, thank goodness, not mine personally) "conquered" North America by cheating and lying and bringing in diseases, and calling it bringing in the Christian religion, was what made my brother and his biracial school friends form their Hate Your White Self Club. I don't think it's altogether unreasonable to say: "I hate what my ancestors did. I wish I weren't  descended from people like that." (Or: "I'm glad my ancestors came later and weren't part of that." Or: "If my ancestors had to be either slaves or slavemasters, I'm glad they were slaves.") 

I am not saying that Black students are not entitled to call out the disgusting historical racism they do not personally remember, when they learn about it. Nor that they're not entitled to call out the acts of ignorance that have hurt them. There was a little triracial girl who, if she'd been expected to live longer, might have become my legal stepdaughter; one of my husband's students, born with major disabilities that included inability to speak. Her real name was of Cherokee origin.  She had a permanent tan and big hair. The first year or two I knew her, she knew me, and waved and smiled when she saw me. Then came the summer a White nurse tried to "process" her hair, rather than simply conditioning and combing it as anyone with any sense could have done. She spent a lot of time at Johns Hopkins being treated for chemical burns. She stopped smiling at me. She had learned to hate the sight of anyone who was not positively Black. I never blamed her, at all. If she'd lived to grow up I would have hoped to see her work through the memories of this childhood trauma and overcome the prejudice she'd formed.

I'm talking about the videos that are being posted where Black Americans are snarling, "Kill all the White people." So far I've not seen videos where White Americans are ranting about killing all the Black people, which is a point in White Americans' favor. I am seeing a resurgence of bigoted remarks on X and in forums. If called out the authors of these remarks will say "Oh I don't mean all Black people, I mean big-mouth jackasses like that braying fool over there." But things like comments about convicted murderers who "all seem to look alike," because so many murders have been committed by Black Americans recently--never mind the wide range of actual skin colors, hairstyles, body shapes and so on. I don't see much resemblance between the lunatic who killed Iryna Zarutska and the moron who most recently tried to kill Donald Trump, and don't believe most White people do, either.

I don't think anything should be censored from adults. Calls for violence should be published and taken seriously by law enforcement. Those "Kill all the White people" scenes should be followed by video coverage of how the fool was cuffed'n'stuffed and thrown into jail during an intensive investigation of all his social contacts to determine whether he was part of a violent gang, or was just being drunk and disorderly. Those security video clips of how Iryna Zarutska was murdered for no reason by an oversize paranoid-schizophrenic case ought to have been followed up, by now, with video of how the #MadMan was literally thrown into solitary confinement and told, "If you're a good boy you might get to come out and watch television with the other monkeys in here...some day, after the doctor takes off those naughty paws." 

I do think that students ought to be learning about the values of politeness and reasoned discourse, not given platforms for spewing hate, even when they read about things that naturally do cause all the White students to "show blood in the face." I think they ought to read Thomas Sowell's historical study of relations between majority and minority groups of humans, worldwide, for perspective. I think they ought to read Sowell's early essays, too, and know: he was not a sycophant trying to relieve his patrons' White guilt; he was a conscious, outspoken, but sane, Black man who found a lot of real racism to call out, and did call it out. In a nonviolent, ethical, humane way.

I don't think it would hurt anything for all of us, of whatever race, sex, or religion, to apologize on behalf of the selfish aggressive dominance-seeking part of us that could become a slavemaster, to the weak unthinking part of us that could become a slave. For, like Jung's hypothetical masculine and feminine souls, those capabilities are built into all of us humans.

I think Black students should be encouraged to focus on finding ethical solutions to society's problems--and, after reasonable preparation and demonstration of competence, on leading society to solve them.
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