A Book You Can Buy From Me
Book Title: The House of Thirty Cats
Author: Mary Calhoun
Date: 1965, 1970
Publisher: Harper & Row (1965), Pocket Books (1970)
Length: 214 pages
ISBN: 067142064X
Illustrations: pencil drawings by Mary Chalmers
Quote: "You can still have a house of many cats!"
Once upon a saner time, back when I was a child, this sweet little children's story was the complete guide to owning cats, helping cat hoarders, and dealing with cat haters. What's changed is that too many people failed to read the book, and too many communities listened to the cat haters.
Miss Tabitha Henshaw is a kind old lady who's getting just slightly "strange" after years of living alone and feeding stray cats. About thirty of the cats are pets, although only three old ones and the mothers of new kittens live in the house.
Only one cat is a troublemaker, and although today any vet would recommend neutering as the cure for all his personality defects, Miss Tabitha can only try to modify his behavior with love and indulgence. This leads to fights, detonates the cat hater, and motivates the town council to decide that Miss Tabitha must relocate the cats or let them be put down.
Sarah, the child heroine, tries hard to place cats with compatible people. (Her forming friendships with different kinds of people in her community is the real focus of the story.) In the end, however, the neighbors realize that the best thing for everyone is to leave Miss Tabitha and her cats in peace, especially now that they have human friends of all ages committed to keeping a neighborly eye on Miss Tabitha.
This book is warmly recommended--not only as a memory of the way Americans used to behave, but as a vision of the way we could and should behave now. Non-interference, rather than trying to make other people fit into our idea of well-being, is the key to peace.
(Pause for squeals from the Humane Pet Genocide Society: "Ooohhh, ooohhh, but those cats haven't been surgically sterilized!" The position of this web site is that there are valid medical reasons why cats should be sterilized. We regretfully remember a Cat Sanctuary that had forty cats, almost all adoptable, unaltered and living in and around one house. That's overcrowding--and we watched all of the adoptable, overcrowded, vulnerable cats succumb to an infectious disease. Overcrowded cats, like Miss Tabitha's, can benefit from a little herd-thinning by adoption and selective sterilization. However, we believe that across-the-board surgical sterilization is a valid plan, not for any natural animal, but only for cat haters.)
To buy it online, send $5 for the book, $5 for shipping, $1 per online payment, and Mary Calhoun (still living, according to the Harper web page) or her favorite charity will receive $1. (Yes, many people who are 91 years old still have favorite charities.) You may find a better bargain on Amazon but other dealers won't be paying Calhoun. I wasn't able to open what's alleged to be her web page; that means that payment will have to be forwarded from Harper via real mail, which will take longer, unless somebody out there can find her online.
Showing posts with label a book you can buy from me. Show all posts
Showing posts with label a book you can buy from me. Show all posts
Monday, January 8, 2018
Wednesday, July 1, 2015
Book Review: The Darwin Awards II
A Fair Trade Book
Title: The Darwin Awards II
Title: The Darwin Awards II
Author: Wendy Northcutt
Author's web site: www.darwinawards.com
Publisher: Dutton / Penguin
Date: 2001
ISBN: 0-525-94623-3
Length: 240 pages including index
Quote: “Darwin Awards commemorate
those individuals who ensure the long-term survival of our species by
removing themselves from the gene pool in a sublimely idiotic
fashion....We are not poking tasteless fun at accidents. On the
contrary! Darwin Awards poke fun at decisions that were obviously
wrong at the time.”
The easiest way to find out whether you like the Darwin Awards is to click over to Northcutt's web site, which is updated with fresh feats of stupidity and links you can use to buy new books in the series. If you feel very strongly that a story isn't funny if a person gets hurt, you might not enjoy the site or the books, because Darwin Awards are issued only for true stories of people either killing or sterilizing themselves. If you laugh at the world-class stupidity demonstrated in these stories, don't feel too bad; the books have been marketed as humor and have sold fairly well.
The easiest way to find out whether you like the Darwin Awards is to click over to Northcutt's web site, which is updated with fresh feats of stupidity and links you can use to buy new books in the series. If you feel very strongly that a story isn't funny if a person gets hurt, you might not enjoy the site or the books, because Darwin Awards are issued only for true stories of people either killing or sterilizing themselves. If you laugh at the world-class stupidity demonstrated in these stories, don't feel too bad; the books have been marketed as humor and have sold fairly well.
It would probably be a stretch to say
that the redeeming social value of the Darwin Awards is that they
teach us basic safety lessons. People who needed the kind of safety
tips the Darwin Awards teach are probably beyond help. These are
reportedly true stories about people who attempt to perform
liposuction with a household vacuum cleaner, hide in walk-in meat
coolers until they freeze to death, and dive off seventy-foot walls
into three-foot water. Each story is guaranteed to make readers shake
their heads and say “Duh...”
Well...you never know what kids will think of next, and if you know a kid who's going through the "Ha-ha, I'm riding a bike without a helmet, I'm in a car without a seat belt, and I'm still alive, so there" stage, these are excellent books to hand to that kid. Very cool, bland, matter-of-fact way to let the kid see what kind of stunts are likely to lead to pain, death, and also being remembered as stupid rather than brave.
Well...you never know what kids will think of next, and if you know a kid who's going through the "Ha-ha, I'm riding a bike without a helmet, I'm in a car without a seat belt, and I'm still alive, so there" stage, these are excellent books to hand to that kid. Very cool, bland, matter-of-fact way to let the kid see what kind of stunts are likely to lead to pain, death, and also being remembered as stupid rather than brave.
Although Wendy Northcutt probably does
believe the controversial theory of macroevolution, which this web
site does not endorse, you don't have to believe in macroevolution to
appreciate the Darwin Awards. What these posthumous awards for
outrageous, self-destructive stupidity commemorate is microevolution,
the fact that makes selective breeding possible. If you agree, even for the sake of argument, that
stupidity as stupefying as these feats probably depends on a genetic
defect, then you can appreciate the concept behind this book.
If you want to read the
stories of the student (what college admitted him?) who lay across
railroad tracks “to see how close he could get” (to moving
trains) “without getting hit,” the man who thought it was safe to
pop the magazine out of a “semiautomatic” pistol and pull the
trigger while pointing the pistol at his head, and the man who tried
to steal the copper cable that powers an electric train, this book is
for you.
It's a Fair Trade Book. To buy it online, send salolianigodagewi @ yahoo $5 per book + $5 per package. (I'd like to specify which of the other volumes in the series are also available as Fair Trade Books, but this computer, the Sickly Snail, can't even open Amazon. Basically, books that are still being sold as new books under the original author/publisher contract aren't available as Fair Trade Books; books that are widely available secondhand are.) When you send us this total of $10, we send Northcutt or a charity of her choice $1. If you buy six of these books, you send us $35 and we send Northcutt or her charity $6.
It's a Fair Trade Book. To buy it online, send salolianigodagewi @ yahoo $5 per book + $5 per package. (I'd like to specify which of the other volumes in the series are also available as Fair Trade Books, but this computer, the Sickly Snail, can't even open Amazon. Basically, books that are still being sold as new books under the original author/publisher contract aren't available as Fair Trade Books; books that are widely available secondhand are.) When you send us this total of $10, we send Northcutt or a charity of her choice $1. If you buy six of these books, you send us $35 and we send Northcutt or her charity $6.
Tuesday, December 2, 2014
What Gluten-Free Diets Do, and Don't Do, and Why
The facts about gluten sensitivity are pretty straightforward. About two-thirds of humankind can digest wheat, and for them natural wheat is a cheap, healthy, nutritious food. The rest of us have varying degrees of difficulty digesting wheat. Some people need to limit grain consumption generally, while for a minority of people, of whom I'm one, wheat is just plain poison and will always be.
It used to take an expensive and somewhat dangerous medical test to find out which category an individual fitted into. Now there are two cheap and simple ways: (1) Go gluten-free for a month or two and see whether you notice a drastic improvement--if you're gluten-intolerant you will; and (2) Get a blood test, which will also allow a doctor to test the same sample for other causes of illness, which may be acute and life-threatening. Option #2 is obviously preferable, if you can do it without having to work around some sort of insurance boondoggle.
The gluten-free food fad "debunked" here ( http://acsh.org/2014/11/american-consumers-falsely-believe-gluten-free-diet-linked-health-benefits/ ) may be a harmless waste of money for many people. If you're gluten-tolerant, the only benefit you'll get from eating pricier gluten-free food is being able to share exactly the same thing someone else can eat. That social benefit means enough to some people that they're willing to pay more for gluten-free bread, but, er um, some gluten-free breads are actually higher in carbs and calories than wheat bread.
How much harm do people do themselves by going gluten-free if they don't need to? Usually not much, because they won't see any benefits from the gluten-free diet and won't stay on it. If their gluten-free diet is unbalanced, they may develop dietary deficiencies, just like other people who give up one specific food for longer than Lent and don't compensate for whatever nutrients they had formerly been getting from that food. (You'd have to be awfully unhealthy to develop any deficiencies from giving up any food for six weeks.)
So why is the tone of some things we read about gluten-free diets, like this hatespew, http://junkscience.com/2014/11/25/gluten-free-diets-overrated-but-favored-by-food-fetishists/ , hostile rather than reassuring? If the intention is to keep you from wasting your money, shouldn't the tone be more like "Relax...wheat's still safe and healthy food for you"? If the intention is to do the most good to the most people, shouldn't the reaction be more like "How wonderful that growing awareness of food sensitivities is making it easier for people who can't digest specific foods to be able to eat in restaurants or at friends' homes"?
Well...what if that's not actually the intention? I'm calling out Steve Milloy's web site on this issue because I think the site's been hijacked. Steve Milloy is a serious scientist, and used to be a good, snarky source of scientific corrections to inaccurately reported "science" (like the "Global warming is likely to put Florida underwater in ten years" garbage that was floating around, er um, ten or fifteen years ago). Then he stopped posting on his own web site. Then he let people like "john1282" post on it, and thus changed the official Junkscience site into a source of unpopular-but-still-unscientific junk that somebody like Milloy needs to resume debunking. In this case, the name-calling seems to tap into a concern Milloy's mostly Republican readers are expected to share--which needs some attention here--but it's driven by a different concern.
Why is the gluten-free fad so popular? Partly because of misunderstandings, but also partly because two new products that have been flooding the U.S. food market, (1) glyphosate--weedkiller--as a food additive and (2) rice and corn that have been bioengineered to resemble wheat in order to survive spraying with glyphosate, are not traditional foods that healthy people have been eating for centuries. We are seeing a lot of reactions that resemble celiac symptoms in people who don't have the gluten-intolerance gene, and in people who have the gene but have been following a gluten-free diet. Some of these reactions are scarier than the classic symptoms of celiac disease, more immediately life-threatening. They're appearing earlier in life than celiac disease normally appears even in those who have the gene. There's evidence that glyphosate and glyphosate-resistant food crops are mimicking the effects of gluten intolerance...in which case the very bad news is that buying pricier gluten-free products made with corn, rice, and potato "flour" won't help anybody, unless the GMO corn and rice are removed from the food supply. And what I've been living through during the past year definitely supports this theory.
It's still a theory not a fact...because certain corporations, notably the one everybody loves to hate, Monsanto, make a lot of money from glyphosate and have been fighting tooth-and-nail to prevent any reasonable efforts to study the hazards of glyphosate, or even to label GMO foods as what they are. And it's hard to read a hatespew like the Junkscience post linked above, which denies the reality that a lot of people live with painful or disabling reactions to foods they like to eat and suggests that people who don't eat whatever is set before them just "have a need to be anxious," as coming from anything but a greedy investor's panic at the thought of losing potential profit on an investment that merely happens to be killing people. (Much as I'd like to believe that John1282's flame, which relies so heavily on using the word "little" as an insult, is just the best effort a half-grown boy can make toward debating scientific research with a grown-up...)
Probably you already hate Monsanto. If you don't, plenty of other web sites will explain why you should. It would take fresh news to motivate me to take the time to write any more about that.
But the other reason why "just going gluten-free" is becoming a fad, "I learned from my inmates at the jail that a gluten-free diet is better in some ways than the regular jail diet, for example they got more fish", does interest me today. Two aspects of this comment are important:
1. A planned gluten-free diet can be "better" than an unplanned diet...because it's mindfully planned. Gluten-free Americans can't just order Fast Food Combo #3. If they just pick all the wheat products out of a standard menu, not much is left on the plate. So they have to think about a diet that, long-term, is likely to contain more protein, more complex carbs, and more fresh food...even if it also leaves room for more candy and potato chips.
If you're not gluten-intolerant, you can get the same benefits gluten-intolerant people get from going gluten-free...without the bother of actually going gluten-free. You lucky gourmet, you! You can replace white bread with fresh-ground wheat bread or barley or bulgur, replace disgusting sugar-flour-and-MSG goop with olive oil and pepper, lose weight, feel good, and not even have to pay twice as much for weird baked goods that don't always turn out very well.
2. John1282 is counting on Republicans to be the Scrooges Democrats like to claim they are, and react, "Jail food should be cheap and disgusting! Jail should make people know that they're being punished, so the food should be terrible." And actually I'm not opposed to our prison system using relatively safe ways to make jail food seem like a punishment, like cutting out all the seasonings and flavorings that aren't part of the actual food value of a meal. Drunk drivers deserve worse things than dinner after dinner of meat, potatoes, and vegetables without salt.
However, although the fact is ridiculously easy to abuse (and to ridicule), there are "borderline personalities" that are sane and stable when people eat healthy, and sick, impulsive, and violent when people become malnourished. A classic celiac is chronically malnourished, so one thing that can happen with untreated celiacs is that they become "Least Competent Criminals," not strong enough to win fights or fast enough to dodge policemen or intelligent enough to think that shoplifting, purse snatching, or picking fights might be a bad idea. Other food intolerance conditions can also contribute to the problems of "Least Competent Criminals."
Of course, tobacco, alcohol, and other drugs (including prescription medication) are much more likely to push "borderline personalities" onto the violent side of their "borderlines"--but for them, too, it's easier to sober up if they're provided with the nutrients their bodies must really crave after the drugs have leached nutrients out of their bodies.
There are actually documented cases where prison doctors were able to feed convicts a more nutritious diet than the usual attempt to compromise between "what they want" and "what's cheap" dictated, and the result was less violent, more reliably "reformed" convicts. Republicans need to know that, although catering to convicts' tastes might be a luxury, making sure that convicts eat healthy is a sound investment--assuming that society wants imprisonment to function as a corrective punishment rather than just a school where petty offenders learn how to pull off bigger crimes.
Diet, Crime, and Delinquency is one of the few health books written in the 1980s that's still generating lots of online publicity. You can buy it from me. You're also encouraged to look at what else comes up as related material, mostly citing Diet, Crime, and Delinquency, from an Amazon search for that specific book...here. The research in Diet, Crime, and Delinquency was a provocative preliminary; read critiques and suggestions for further study here. See one of those further studies here, another one here. You can even read a snarky discussion of an effort to popularize/sensationalize the research here (scroll down; the comments are worth reading). A more serious online discussion of diet and mental health is going on here....and there are plenty more, if your interest in this topic is more than academic.
Efforts to standardize "healthier" diets for schools and prisons, rather than testing what works for individuals, seem to be the main flaw in existing research so far. Most people behave better when they are healthier, but what makes people healthier varies. Vicki Griffin affirmed, in a video Grandma Bonnie Peters used to play in her Test Kitchen dining room, that elementary school students behaved better and earned better grades, on average, when they were fed whole-grain bread or cereal instead of Fritos and Mountain Dew for breakfast. That sounds like a no-brainer...unless you're gluten-intolerant, in which case you may have tested several times and finally accepted, as I have, that you might do even better if you just ate an apple for breakfast, but failing that, you'll be a lot closer to par on Fritos and Mountain Dew than you would on whole-wheat toast. (Fritos and Mountain Dew got me through quite a few mornings before GMO corn started creeping into Fritos.) The lesson to be learned here is not that convicts, or elementary school students, should be fed Fritos and Mountain Dew every morning--actually that would be a good way to push a few "borderline cases" to misbehave!--but that each one should eat what works for his or her body.
The best way to find out what works for an individual is for that person to restrict his or her diet for a few weeks and experiment. The worst way is to allow anyone to be exposed to a food bully preaching that people "should" be able to eat whatever is set before them.
It used to take an expensive and somewhat dangerous medical test to find out which category an individual fitted into. Now there are two cheap and simple ways: (1) Go gluten-free for a month or two and see whether you notice a drastic improvement--if you're gluten-intolerant you will; and (2) Get a blood test, which will also allow a doctor to test the same sample for other causes of illness, which may be acute and life-threatening. Option #2 is obviously preferable, if you can do it without having to work around some sort of insurance boondoggle.
The gluten-free food fad "debunked" here ( http://acsh.org/2014/11/american-consumers-falsely-believe-gluten-free-diet-linked-health-benefits/ ) may be a harmless waste of money for many people. If you're gluten-tolerant, the only benefit you'll get from eating pricier gluten-free food is being able to share exactly the same thing someone else can eat. That social benefit means enough to some people that they're willing to pay more for gluten-free bread, but, er um, some gluten-free breads are actually higher in carbs and calories than wheat bread.
How much harm do people do themselves by going gluten-free if they don't need to? Usually not much, because they won't see any benefits from the gluten-free diet and won't stay on it. If their gluten-free diet is unbalanced, they may develop dietary deficiencies, just like other people who give up one specific food for longer than Lent and don't compensate for whatever nutrients they had formerly been getting from that food. (You'd have to be awfully unhealthy to develop any deficiencies from giving up any food for six weeks.)
So why is the tone of some things we read about gluten-free diets, like this hatespew, http://junkscience.com/2014/11/25/gluten-free-diets-overrated-but-favored-by-food-fetishists/ , hostile rather than reassuring? If the intention is to keep you from wasting your money, shouldn't the tone be more like "Relax...wheat's still safe and healthy food for you"? If the intention is to do the most good to the most people, shouldn't the reaction be more like "How wonderful that growing awareness of food sensitivities is making it easier for people who can't digest specific foods to be able to eat in restaurants or at friends' homes"?
Well...what if that's not actually the intention? I'm calling out Steve Milloy's web site on this issue because I think the site's been hijacked. Steve Milloy is a serious scientist, and used to be a good, snarky source of scientific corrections to inaccurately reported "science" (like the "Global warming is likely to put Florida underwater in ten years" garbage that was floating around, er um, ten or fifteen years ago). Then he stopped posting on his own web site. Then he let people like "john1282" post on it, and thus changed the official Junkscience site into a source of unpopular-but-still-unscientific junk that somebody like Milloy needs to resume debunking. In this case, the name-calling seems to tap into a concern Milloy's mostly Republican readers are expected to share--which needs some attention here--but it's driven by a different concern.
Why is the gluten-free fad so popular? Partly because of misunderstandings, but also partly because two new products that have been flooding the U.S. food market, (1) glyphosate--weedkiller--as a food additive and (2) rice and corn that have been bioengineered to resemble wheat in order to survive spraying with glyphosate, are not traditional foods that healthy people have been eating for centuries. We are seeing a lot of reactions that resemble celiac symptoms in people who don't have the gluten-intolerance gene, and in people who have the gene but have been following a gluten-free diet. Some of these reactions are scarier than the classic symptoms of celiac disease, more immediately life-threatening. They're appearing earlier in life than celiac disease normally appears even in those who have the gene. There's evidence that glyphosate and glyphosate-resistant food crops are mimicking the effects of gluten intolerance...in which case the very bad news is that buying pricier gluten-free products made with corn, rice, and potato "flour" won't help anybody, unless the GMO corn and rice are removed from the food supply. And what I've been living through during the past year definitely supports this theory.
It's still a theory not a fact...because certain corporations, notably the one everybody loves to hate, Monsanto, make a lot of money from glyphosate and have been fighting tooth-and-nail to prevent any reasonable efforts to study the hazards of glyphosate, or even to label GMO foods as what they are. And it's hard to read a hatespew like the Junkscience post linked above, which denies the reality that a lot of people live with painful or disabling reactions to foods they like to eat and suggests that people who don't eat whatever is set before them just "have a need to be anxious," as coming from anything but a greedy investor's panic at the thought of losing potential profit on an investment that merely happens to be killing people. (Much as I'd like to believe that John1282's flame, which relies so heavily on using the word "little" as an insult, is just the best effort a half-grown boy can make toward debating scientific research with a grown-up...)
Probably you already hate Monsanto. If you don't, plenty of other web sites will explain why you should. It would take fresh news to motivate me to take the time to write any more about that.
But the other reason why "just going gluten-free" is becoming a fad, "I learned from my inmates at the jail that a gluten-free diet is better in some ways than the regular jail diet, for example they got more fish", does interest me today. Two aspects of this comment are important:
1. A planned gluten-free diet can be "better" than an unplanned diet...because it's mindfully planned. Gluten-free Americans can't just order Fast Food Combo #3. If they just pick all the wheat products out of a standard menu, not much is left on the plate. So they have to think about a diet that, long-term, is likely to contain more protein, more complex carbs, and more fresh food...even if it also leaves room for more candy and potato chips.
If you're not gluten-intolerant, you can get the same benefits gluten-intolerant people get from going gluten-free...without the bother of actually going gluten-free. You lucky gourmet, you! You can replace white bread with fresh-ground wheat bread or barley or bulgur, replace disgusting sugar-flour-and-MSG goop with olive oil and pepper, lose weight, feel good, and not even have to pay twice as much for weird baked goods that don't always turn out very well.
2. John1282 is counting on Republicans to be the Scrooges Democrats like to claim they are, and react, "Jail food should be cheap and disgusting! Jail should make people know that they're being punished, so the food should be terrible." And actually I'm not opposed to our prison system using relatively safe ways to make jail food seem like a punishment, like cutting out all the seasonings and flavorings that aren't part of the actual food value of a meal. Drunk drivers deserve worse things than dinner after dinner of meat, potatoes, and vegetables without salt.
However, although the fact is ridiculously easy to abuse (and to ridicule), there are "borderline personalities" that are sane and stable when people eat healthy, and sick, impulsive, and violent when people become malnourished. A classic celiac is chronically malnourished, so one thing that can happen with untreated celiacs is that they become "Least Competent Criminals," not strong enough to win fights or fast enough to dodge policemen or intelligent enough to think that shoplifting, purse snatching, or picking fights might be a bad idea. Other food intolerance conditions can also contribute to the problems of "Least Competent Criminals."
Of course, tobacco, alcohol, and other drugs (including prescription medication) are much more likely to push "borderline personalities" onto the violent side of their "borderlines"--but for them, too, it's easier to sober up if they're provided with the nutrients their bodies must really crave after the drugs have leached nutrients out of their bodies.
There are actually documented cases where prison doctors were able to feed convicts a more nutritious diet than the usual attempt to compromise between "what they want" and "what's cheap" dictated, and the result was less violent, more reliably "reformed" convicts. Republicans need to know that, although catering to convicts' tastes might be a luxury, making sure that convicts eat healthy is a sound investment--assuming that society wants imprisonment to function as a corrective punishment rather than just a school where petty offenders learn how to pull off bigger crimes.
Diet, Crime, and Delinquency is one of the few health books written in the 1980s that's still generating lots of online publicity. You can buy it from me. You're also encouraged to look at what else comes up as related material, mostly citing Diet, Crime, and Delinquency, from an Amazon search for that specific book...here. The research in Diet, Crime, and Delinquency was a provocative preliminary; read critiques and suggestions for further study here. See one of those further studies here, another one here. You can even read a snarky discussion of an effort to popularize/sensationalize the research here (scroll down; the comments are worth reading). A more serious online discussion of diet and mental health is going on here....and there are plenty more, if your interest in this topic is more than academic.
Efforts to standardize "healthier" diets for schools and prisons, rather than testing what works for individuals, seem to be the main flaw in existing research so far. Most people behave better when they are healthier, but what makes people healthier varies. Vicki Griffin affirmed, in a video Grandma Bonnie Peters used to play in her Test Kitchen dining room, that elementary school students behaved better and earned better grades, on average, when they were fed whole-grain bread or cereal instead of Fritos and Mountain Dew for breakfast. That sounds like a no-brainer...unless you're gluten-intolerant, in which case you may have tested several times and finally accepted, as I have, that you might do even better if you just ate an apple for breakfast, but failing that, you'll be a lot closer to par on Fritos and Mountain Dew than you would on whole-wheat toast. (Fritos and Mountain Dew got me through quite a few mornings before GMO corn started creeping into Fritos.) The lesson to be learned here is not that convicts, or elementary school students, should be fed Fritos and Mountain Dew every morning--actually that would be a good way to push a few "borderline cases" to misbehave!--but that each one should eat what works for his or her body.
The best way to find out what works for an individual is for that person to restrict his or her diet for a few weeks and experiment. The worst way is to allow anyone to be exposed to a food bully preaching that people "should" be able to eat whatever is set before them.
Thursday, June 6, 2013
Pris's Book: Alley Cat Tales
Per reader request, the first volume of the Patchnose Cat Family History has been written, will not appear on this web site, and is available to those of you who pay for it.
Alley Cat Tales is the true (in essence) history of the most interesting family of cats the Cat Sanctuary has seen or heard of. I didn't plan for a "baker's dozen" of stories to end around the point in time where this blog begins, but the stories seemed to come out that way.
As Yahoo readers may remember, the rule I used for telling these animals' stories was to "translate" their behavior into words. I have no idea what the animals think about human politics or religion, although for me they are both a religious and a political statement. I do know what they think about cat food (cheap is fine but it needs to be fresh) and being indoors (wide range of opinions) and one another (they love their family and are generous and hospitable to friends).
What they seem to think about the things they do seem to think about ought to be lively, edgy, and "adult" enough for anybody. And yes, the things the cats seem to think about include some details about my personal life that seem to be of interest to some online readers and will never appear at this web site.
Both animal and human conversations are fictionalized: the animals' because after all they don't speak English, and the humans' because only snippets of the things we really said are relevant to the story and there's no reason to drag a complete real-world conversation into a story that's not even about the humans who had it. However, the stories are fact-based.
In Alley Cat Tales regular readers will, for the first time, find out what became of Mackerel, meet Princess Grace, and learn the rest of the story about how I was able to part with Mogwai.
I'd like to sell reprint rights to a big-name publisher and turn this short book (I can squeeze it onto 20 single-spaced pages, but I won't ask you to read it that way) into a coffee-table book with big clear type and pretty pictures of mixed-breed cats...preferably featuring residents of the Sullivan County Animal Shelter in Blountville, Tennessee, where the Kingsport Times-News recently reported that, yes, two more super-social cats, not noticeably related to each other, had met and become friends.
Realistically, I suspect that my cats and my human family may be too edgy for a corporate publisher to consider, so I'm offering the text-only, hand-bound paperback version for the standard $5 + $5 shipping.
And if, after reading about the cats either here or in the book, you skeptically say "I don't believe cats are like that"...all I can say to you is: adopt two or more alley cats from Kingsport, Tennessee. Even in the Patchnose Family not every single cat has been "like that," but you never know what kind of cat you might meet in Kingsport. Some of them are amazing.
Alley Cat Tales is the true (in essence) history of the most interesting family of cats the Cat Sanctuary has seen or heard of. I didn't plan for a "baker's dozen" of stories to end around the point in time where this blog begins, but the stories seemed to come out that way.
As Yahoo readers may remember, the rule I used for telling these animals' stories was to "translate" their behavior into words. I have no idea what the animals think about human politics or religion, although for me they are both a religious and a political statement. I do know what they think about cat food (cheap is fine but it needs to be fresh) and being indoors (wide range of opinions) and one another (they love their family and are generous and hospitable to friends).
What they seem to think about the things they do seem to think about ought to be lively, edgy, and "adult" enough for anybody. And yes, the things the cats seem to think about include some details about my personal life that seem to be of interest to some online readers and will never appear at this web site.
Both animal and human conversations are fictionalized: the animals' because after all they don't speak English, and the humans' because only snippets of the things we really said are relevant to the story and there's no reason to drag a complete real-world conversation into a story that's not even about the humans who had it. However, the stories are fact-based.
In Alley Cat Tales regular readers will, for the first time, find out what became of Mackerel, meet Princess Grace, and learn the rest of the story about how I was able to part with Mogwai.
I'd like to sell reprint rights to a big-name publisher and turn this short book (I can squeeze it onto 20 single-spaced pages, but I won't ask you to read it that way) into a coffee-table book with big clear type and pretty pictures of mixed-breed cats...preferably featuring residents of the Sullivan County Animal Shelter in Blountville, Tennessee, where the Kingsport Times-News recently reported that, yes, two more super-social cats, not noticeably related to each other, had met and become friends.
Realistically, I suspect that my cats and my human family may be too edgy for a corporate publisher to consider, so I'm offering the text-only, hand-bound paperback version for the standard $5 + $5 shipping.
And if, after reading about the cats either here or in the book, you skeptically say "I don't believe cats are like that"...all I can say to you is: adopt two or more alley cats from Kingsport, Tennessee. Even in the Patchnose Family not every single cat has been "like that," but you never know what kind of cat you might meet in Kingsport. Some of them are amazing.
Friday, February 8, 2013
Can Students Be Required to Read "Atlas Shrugged"?
Becket Adams, who is obviously not a big fan of the book or movie, reports on a proposal to require high school students to read Atlas Shrugged. (Which is, by the way, a book you can buy from me, although Ayn Rand has been dead longer than the average blog reader has been alive, so if you're not buying it from me in real life you might as well buy it cheap from Amazon.)
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/02/08/irony-idaho-lawmakers-mull-bill-to-force-students-to-read-atlas-shrugged/
The comments are worth reading, because they show how twentieth-century notions of "Left" and "Right" are starting to break up. My comment is long enough to belong in a separate blog post here, and I'm using an older computer and don't want to deal with Blaze cookies just now. Well...just the first five objections that come to mind, because although I'd be happy to get paid for hosting a web site that was all about books all the time, I am getting paid for hosting one that is currently supposed to focus on the Virginia General Assembly...
1. It's long--over a thousand pages--and it doesn't start to get interesting before page 600.
2. It's a very adult novel...in the sense that, although Dagny Taggart does sleep with other women's husbands, everybody including Dagny is much more interested in money and politics than in who's sleeping where. The first 500 pages or so mostly read like something Trollope or even Howells might have inflicted on Victorian audiences who didn't want any emotional reactions, including laughter, to be inflamed by a novel.
3. Women who make the effort to read about Dagny Taggart are hoping she'll die. If I called that character by the standard term used for females like her in American street language, dog lovers would have a right to complain. The horrible thing about Dagny Taggart is not just that she makes Scarlett O'Hara seem like a saint, although she does, and not just that she's arrogant and greedy and mean-spirited, although she is, and not just that she's the only major female character in the book and thus makes the statement that Rand thought gifted women ought to be arrogant and mean-spirited, but that in real life Ayn Rand actually does seem to have wanted to be Dagny Taggart.
4. Then there's the way Rand treated Lillian Rearden, one of the "less worthy" ladies whose home Dagny wrecks. Lillian started out as a nice girl. She becomes a bitter, hateful old woman because her husband dumps her for Dagny, because Dagny can work with him. If we'd been told or shown how her husband tried to educate Lillian, but she preferred to remain ignorant, we might hate Dagny a little less. We're not told this. The message to girls is: if you didn't happen to be "Daddy's Girl" before you found a husband who was equally obsessive about the same sort of work Daddy shared with you, you deserve to be dumped. The message to boys is: don't try to educate your wife, or communicate with her; just throw her away for the first man-eating she-shark you meet at work. I am not appealing to any specifically Christian family values when I say that these are very harmful things to tell teenagers. As a matter of objective fact, even the original Objectivists eventually saw that Dagny's (and her author's) ideas of love and marriage were wrong, regardless of your religion or philosophy.
5. Then there's the kind of sex that goes on. Rand does deserve some praise for appreciating the value of giving readers one telling detail and leaving the rest of a sex scene to our imaginations. In her case this is especially merciful, because, don't her fans ever notice how grim and sadomasochistic all Rand characters are? You'd take a vow of celibacy before you'd touch any of them. When John Galt and Dagny Taggart finally embrace, they don't kiss like normal human beings. They bite. Is this the kind of sexuality we want teenagers taught?
On behalf of the students and teachers of Idaho, I'd like to offer this alternative suggestion. Embedded around the middle of Atlas Shrugged is a very true, and very good, and also accessibly short, story--the early career of John Galt as narrated by his friend. All the good ideas in Atlas Shrugged are expressed in the course of this story. In the canonical Ayn Rand Reader this story is extracted from the novel and presented all by itself, and it is one of the best American short stories of the twentieth century. Require high school students to read that. If they're interested enough to read the super-sized novel of which the John Galt story is the kernel, later, they will be that much older and better prepared to reject what's false and appreciate what's true in the rest of Atlas Shrugged.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/02/08/irony-idaho-lawmakers-mull-bill-to-force-students-to-read-atlas-shrugged/
The comments are worth reading, because they show how twentieth-century notions of "Left" and "Right" are starting to break up. My comment is long enough to belong in a separate blog post here, and I'm using an older computer and don't want to deal with Blaze cookies just now. Well...just the first five objections that come to mind, because although I'd be happy to get paid for hosting a web site that was all about books all the time, I am getting paid for hosting one that is currently supposed to focus on the Virginia General Assembly...
1. It's long--over a thousand pages--and it doesn't start to get interesting before page 600.
2. It's a very adult novel...in the sense that, although Dagny Taggart does sleep with other women's husbands, everybody including Dagny is much more interested in money and politics than in who's sleeping where. The first 500 pages or so mostly read like something Trollope or even Howells might have inflicted on Victorian audiences who didn't want any emotional reactions, including laughter, to be inflamed by a novel.
3. Women who make the effort to read about Dagny Taggart are hoping she'll die. If I called that character by the standard term used for females like her in American street language, dog lovers would have a right to complain. The horrible thing about Dagny Taggart is not just that she makes Scarlett O'Hara seem like a saint, although she does, and not just that she's arrogant and greedy and mean-spirited, although she is, and not just that she's the only major female character in the book and thus makes the statement that Rand thought gifted women ought to be arrogant and mean-spirited, but that in real life Ayn Rand actually does seem to have wanted to be Dagny Taggart.
4. Then there's the way Rand treated Lillian Rearden, one of the "less worthy" ladies whose home Dagny wrecks. Lillian started out as a nice girl. She becomes a bitter, hateful old woman because her husband dumps her for Dagny, because Dagny can work with him. If we'd been told or shown how her husband tried to educate Lillian, but she preferred to remain ignorant, we might hate Dagny a little less. We're not told this. The message to girls is: if you didn't happen to be "Daddy's Girl" before you found a husband who was equally obsessive about the same sort of work Daddy shared with you, you deserve to be dumped. The message to boys is: don't try to educate your wife, or communicate with her; just throw her away for the first man-eating she-shark you meet at work. I am not appealing to any specifically Christian family values when I say that these are very harmful things to tell teenagers. As a matter of objective fact, even the original Objectivists eventually saw that Dagny's (and her author's) ideas of love and marriage were wrong, regardless of your religion or philosophy.
5. Then there's the kind of sex that goes on. Rand does deserve some praise for appreciating the value of giving readers one telling detail and leaving the rest of a sex scene to our imaginations. In her case this is especially merciful, because, don't her fans ever notice how grim and sadomasochistic all Rand characters are? You'd take a vow of celibacy before you'd touch any of them. When John Galt and Dagny Taggart finally embrace, they don't kiss like normal human beings. They bite. Is this the kind of sexuality we want teenagers taught?
On behalf of the students and teachers of Idaho, I'd like to offer this alternative suggestion. Embedded around the middle of Atlas Shrugged is a very true, and very good, and also accessibly short, story--the early career of John Galt as narrated by his friend. All the good ideas in Atlas Shrugged are expressed in the course of this story. In the canonical Ayn Rand Reader this story is extracted from the novel and presented all by itself, and it is one of the best American short stories of the twentieth century. Require high school students to read that. If they're interested enough to read the super-sized novel of which the John Galt story is the kernel, later, they will be that much older and better prepared to reject what's false and appreciate what's true in the rest of Atlas Shrugged.
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Big Turkish Carnation Jacket
Hand knitted by Gena Greene
Photo by Victoria Cooley
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Size: Large woman's (5'6-6', 44-48")
Material: Mixed; 80% acrylic
Care: Machine wash and dry
Credits: "In 1991, the Turkish Carnation Jacket in Glorious Knitting was the most challenging thing I'd knitted. Someone saw it and asked me to knit one just like it, only extra-large, for a big, tall woman who liked things oversized. I thought changing the gauge would have that effect. It did, with a few extra effects--the sleeves came out just long enough for a tall woman with no cuffs at all, just a gathered edge at the wrist, and the shoulders are wide. Although it matched the intended wearer's measurements, it was not the one (of a batch of sweaters that had been requested for her to choose from) that she ended up buying. It's just too big for the average woman, so it's still waiting for the right person to wear it."
Click here to buy the sweater for $65 + shipping, or to buy a copy of Glorious Knitting for $5 + shipping (includes $1 for Kaffe Fassett or the charity of his choice).
Photo by Victoria Cooley
Size: Large woman's (5'6-6', 44-48")
Material: Mixed; 80% acrylic
Care: Machine wash and dry
Credits: "In 1991, the Turkish Carnation Jacket in Glorious Knitting was the most challenging thing I'd knitted. Someone saw it and asked me to knit one just like it, only extra-large, for a big, tall woman who liked things oversized. I thought changing the gauge would have that effect. It did, with a few extra effects--the sleeves came out just long enough for a tall woman with no cuffs at all, just a gathered edge at the wrist, and the shoulders are wide. Although it matched the intended wearer's measurements, it was not the one (of a batch of sweaters that had been requested for her to choose from) that she ended up buying. It's just too big for the average woman, so it's still waiting for the right person to wear it."
Click here to buy the sweater for $65 + shipping, or to buy a copy of Glorious Knitting for $5 + shipping (includes $1 for Kaffe Fassett or the charity of his choice).
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Baby Bootees
Hand Knitted by Gena Greene
Photos by Victoria Cooley
In real life they're black.
Size: 6-12 months
Material: Acrylic
Care: Machine wash and dry carefully (in a bag--don't let them get caught in the machinery!)
Credits: "These are just basic baby bootees knitted in blanket-weight yarn. The pattern is in Leslie Linsley's Quick and Easy Knit and Crochet."
Click here to buy the bootees for $5 + $5 shipping, or Quick and Easy Knit and Crochet for $5 + $5 shipping.
Photos by Victoria Cooley
In real life they're black.
Size: 6-12 months
Material: Acrylic
Care: Machine wash and dry carefully (in a bag--don't let them get caught in the machinery!)
Credits: "These are just basic baby bootees knitted in blanket-weight yarn. The pattern is in Leslie Linsley's Quick and Easy Knit and Crochet."
Click here to buy the bootees for $5 + $5 shipping, or Quick and Easy Knit and Crochet for $5 + $5 shipping.
Chickens Cardigan
Hand Knitted by Gena Greene
Photos by Victoria Cooley
In real life the sweater is a bright, glossy, Christmas-y green. (It would be easier to wear year-round if it were the color I'm seeing on this computer.)
Size: 34-36" bustline, 5'3"-5'6"
Material: base yarn acrylic, contrast colors mixed
Care: machine wash and dry
Credits: "This is a version of the famous Chickens Cardigan from Maine Island Classics by Chellie Pingree and Debby Anderson. Since I used a slightly lighter yarn, and the armholes on these sweaters tended to be designed for slim people anyway, I widened the armholes and dropped the shoulder line. There aren't any more of those buttons--someone insisted on them, then didn't buy the sweater presumably because three buttons weren't enough. I can substitute plain buttons for an extra $5."
Click here to buy the sweater for $36 + $5 shipping, or to buy Maine Island Classics for $5 + $5 shipping.
Photos by Victoria Cooley
In real life the sweater is a bright, glossy, Christmas-y green. (It would be easier to wear year-round if it were the color I'm seeing on this computer.)
Size: 34-36" bustline, 5'3"-5'6"
Material: base yarn acrylic, contrast colors mixed
Care: machine wash and dry
Credits: "This is a version of the famous Chickens Cardigan from Maine Island Classics by Chellie Pingree and Debby Anderson. Since I used a slightly lighter yarn, and the armholes on these sweaters tended to be designed for slim people anyway, I widened the armholes and dropped the shoulder line. There aren't any more of those buttons--someone insisted on them, then didn't buy the sweater presumably because three buttons weren't enough. I can substitute plain buttons for an extra $5."
Click here to buy the sweater for $36 + $5 shipping, or to buy Maine Island Classics for $5 + $5 shipping.
Sheaf of Corn Jacket
Hand Knitted by Gena Greene
Photos by Victoria Cooley
The color of this one shows up differently when I look at the screen from different angles. In real life it's what Lion Brand called "sienna"; it's as close as I've seen in the fashion world to the color of red cedar heartwood.
Size: 36" bust, 5'3-5'8"
Material: Brushed acrylic
Care: Machine wash and dry
Credits: "This jacket is a substantially altered version of the 'Sheaf of Corn' sweater from Pat Menchini's Beatrix Potter Knitting Book. (If you don't get the title, remember that in the U.K. 'corn' means 'grain,' usually wheat or barley.)"
Click here to buy the jacket ($45 + $5 shipping) or The Beatrix Potter Knitting Book ($10 + $5 shipping includes $1.50 for Pat Menchini).
Photos by Victoria Cooley
The color of this one shows up differently when I look at the screen from different angles. In real life it's what Lion Brand called "sienna"; it's as close as I've seen in the fashion world to the color of red cedar heartwood.
Size: 36" bust, 5'3-5'8"
Material: Brushed acrylic
Care: Machine wash and dry
Credits: "This jacket is a substantially altered version of the 'Sheaf of Corn' sweater from Pat Menchini's Beatrix Potter Knitting Book. (If you don't get the title, remember that in the U.K. 'corn' means 'grain,' usually wheat or barley.)"
Click here to buy the jacket ($45 + $5 shipping) or The Beatrix Potter Knitting Book ($10 + $5 shipping includes $1.50 for Pat Menchini).
Pastel Tabard
Hand Knitted by Gena Greene
Photos by Victoria Cooley
In real life the colors might be a little brighter than they look in this browser, but not much; they're a mix of beige, cream, white, and baby pastels.
Size: One size fits all (adults)
Materials: Mixed fibres with about 50% natural fibres; lots of mohair
Care: Hand wash and dry flat recommended; machine wash at your own risk
Credits: "The stitch pattern here comes from the 'Hudson's Bay' super-chunky wool tunic in Kristin Nicholas' Knitting the New Classics. Of course, a tunic is not a tabard. The difference is that the tabard is drapey, like a shawl, rather than chunky, and is open at the sides. You'd throw it over your head like a poncho."
Click here to buy either the tabard ($120 + $5 shipping) or a copy of Knitting the New Classics ($5 + $5 shipping, including a $1 payment to Kristin Nicholas).salolianigodagewi@yahoo.com
Photos by Victoria Cooley
In real life the colors might be a little brighter than they look in this browser, but not much; they're a mix of beige, cream, white, and baby pastels.
Size: One size fits all (adults)
Materials: Mixed fibres with about 50% natural fibres; lots of mohair
Care: Hand wash and dry flat recommended; machine wash at your own risk
Credits: "The stitch pattern here comes from the 'Hudson's Bay' super-chunky wool tunic in Kristin Nicholas' Knitting the New Classics. Of course, a tunic is not a tabard. The difference is that the tabard is drapey, like a shawl, rather than chunky, and is open at the sides. You'd throw it over your head like a poncho."
Click here to buy either the tabard ($120 + $5 shipping) or a copy of Knitting the New Classics ($5 + $5 shipping, including a $1 payment to Kristin Nicholas).salolianigodagewi@yahoo.com
Bramble Stitch Pullover
Hand Knitted by Gena Greene
Photos by Victoria Cooley
The colors show up pretty true in this browser--cool, muted shades of rusty red, denim blue, leaf green and white. Cool enough tones to wear with a white shirt and denim jacket.
Size: Up to 40" bust, 5'3"-5'8"
Material: Acrylic
Care: Machine wash and dry
Credits: "This is a variation on a design from Annette Mitchell's Country Diary Book of Knitting. It's made in a bunchy, lacy stitch, on the same principle as thermal-textured underwear--it 'breathes' yet also traps warm air when worn under a windbreaker, denim jacket, or trench coat."
Click here to buy either the sweater ($ + $5 shipping), or (if available) a copy of The Country Diary Book of Knitting ($15 + $5 shipping).
Photos by Victoria Cooley
The colors show up pretty true in this browser--cool, muted shades of rusty red, denim blue, leaf green and white. Cool enough tones to wear with a white shirt and denim jacket.
Size: Up to 40" bust, 5'3"-5'8"
Material: Acrylic
Care: Machine wash and dry
Credits: "This is a variation on a design from Annette Mitchell's Country Diary Book of Knitting. It's made in a bunchy, lacy stitch, on the same principle as thermal-textured underwear--it 'breathes' yet also traps warm air when worn under a windbreaker, denim jacket, or trench coat."
Click here to buy either the sweater ($ + $5 shipping), or (if available) a copy of The Country Diary Book of Knitting ($15 + $5 shipping).
Basic Vest
Hand Knitted by Gena Green
Photo by Victoria Cooley
Size: Medium, unisex Knitting Made Easy
Material: Acrylic
Care: Machine wash and dry
Credits: "This was a sample of the easy beginners' projects in Barbara Aytes' Knitting Made Easy. If you're not a raw beginner, you can make it in one day."
Click here to buy either the vest ($20 plus $5 shipping) or the book ($5 plus $5 shipping) from this site.
Photo by Victoria Cooley
Size: Medium, unisex Knitting Made Easy
Material: Acrylic
Care: Machine wash and dry
Credits: "This was a sample of the easy beginners' projects in Barbara Aytes' Knitting Made Easy. If you're not a raw beginner, you can make it in one day."
Click here to buy either the vest ($20 plus $5 shipping) or the book ($5 plus $5 shipping) from this site.
Monday, January 30, 2012
Middle School Girl's Jacket (Update)
Hand Knitted by Gena Greene
Photos by Victoria Cooley
Size: Girl's size 12 or petite woman's size--30-32" bust, 5'-5'4"
Material: Acrylic
Care: Machine wash and dry
Credits: "This is a version of a girl's jacket shown in Alice Starmore's rare classic, Children's Knitting from Many Lands. Differences in the finished look were created by using a different yarn. Acrylic doesn't 'block' flat, so this version flares slightly below the V-shaped yoke."
Click here to buy the jacket for $18 + $5 shipping. If you want to buy Children's Knitting from Many Lands, currently it's available only for collectors' prices: $35 + $5 shipping includes a $4 payment to Alice Starmore.
Photos by Victoria Cooley
The color on this browser is just a little more grey than the sweater is in real life. It's two shades of a color most women would describe as a greyish green rather than a greenish grey...recommended for drawing attention to green-grey-blue "Irish" eyes.
Material: Acrylic
Care: Machine wash and dry
Credits: "This is a version of a girl's jacket shown in Alice Starmore's rare classic, Children's Knitting from Many Lands. Differences in the finished look were created by using a different yarn. Acrylic doesn't 'block' flat, so this version flares slightly below the V-shaped yoke."
Click here to buy the jacket for $18 + $5 shipping. If you want to buy Children's Knitting from Many Lands, currently it's available only for collectors' prices: $35 + $5 shipping includes a $4 payment to Alice Starmore.
(Update: It's been sold.)
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