Election Rant That Outgrew a Web Log

Fellow Virginians, the campaign is getting so bad that I'm starting to believe the Democrats do intend for it to be this bad. 

Even a week ago, when Angry Abbylab Spambucket spewed forth another advertisement telling YouTube viewers to hate Winsome Earle-Sears because she represents the majority's political views, I was thinking it had to be just that Angry is so hard to work with that her own staff are sabotaging her. And stupid enough not to realize it? I had a harder time with that one. Maybe she thought she needed to throw the election to the Black candidate? She does have a site called WorstOfWinsome.com, and the Worst of Winsome is still more winsome than the best of Angry.

Then they let the boys out. Virginia's State House has had some decent Ds who might have been good Attorneys General, but the Loony Lefties running that party these days probably didn't even ask them if they wanted to run. They nominated this hater.

https://pjmedia.com/robert-spencer/2025/10/05/virginia-dems-affirm-their-support-for-candidate-who-wants-his-foes-and-their-children-murdered-n4944497

I don't know Mr. Miyares, who must be our next Attorney General, and his campaign ads have not exactly made my fingers ache to hold a ballot, but at least this apparent trainwreck of a campaign is starting to make sense. The Ds aren't trying to convince anybody that they represent anybody's actual interests, or that they are decent human beings, or even that they're competent campaigners. This campaign is one big flip-off to We The People. It's a very elaborate (and expensive, and they plan to send the bill to us) way of saying "We don't have to give a dahm what the voters think or want. We can count on enough votes from handout-dependent urban voters, even if they hate everything we say and do and are, that we can afford to run a campaign that spits hate in the voters' faces." 

The Angry Spambucket may not be planning to hang "White" and "Colored" signs over the water dispensers at the Governor's Mansion, but if she ever gets control of any public water supply you can count on her to block her opponents' access to water. 

If people who are as arrogant and hostile as Angry and That Young Man with the Name That Sounds Like an Alias get control of, say, the idea of their managing the public health in another epidemic, or plandemic...you can count on them to understand that the unstated goal is to set a precedent for trampling over the public's right to privacy, or choice, while getting rid of as many older voters who remember better politicians as possible.

If they get control of the schools, you can count on them to sigh and wail as they report that the incidence of major mental illness, requiring multiple drugs and probably surgery, has skyrocketed in our public schools during the last ten years, and call for an investigation that's been ordered to find a comparable incidence in home and private schools.

And of course they want to let convicted felons vote. Sounds Like an Alias can relate so well to the way convicted felons think.

Things to start doing:

1. Watch your D neighbors. Drive them to the polls early, then give them things to do at an all-day-long post-election party to make sure they don't continue voting. It would be worthy of Sounds Like an Alias, not of us, to serve them sweets made from chocolate laxatives. Knockout drops in their drinks are also a bad idea. But we can ply them with enough different flavors of steak, shrimp, pie, and ice cream that the ones inclined to gluttony become torpid and harmless for the rest of the day. Lead them to a TV room stocked with reclining chairs. With any luck they'll be snoring in their chairs at ten o'clock on the Wednesday morning. If you know that their reaction to alcohol involves harmless loss of consciousness, ply them with more and "better" liquor than they could normally afford, too.

2. Involve the public in a contest to choose the best set of lyrics about Sounds Like an Alias to fit this tune: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oqAU5VxFWs

Qualifying songs should use the phrase "Felons' Friend," "Would-be Baby Killer," and/or "Leftist Fascist" in their refrains, linking these phrases with "Mr. Jones." All qualifying songs should be played on as many radio shows, at as many times of day, as possible. 

3. Have polite, friendly conversations with people who depend on your tax money for part of their living, whether they are retired, disabled, government employees, or homeless panhandlers. Help them to understand that it's not physically possible to keep the pensions rolling. Assure them that people working for budget cuts want to allocate more money for disability pensions, funding whatever is relevant to an individual disability even in the absence of a large group of people who seem likely to benefit from exactly the same thing...and, for everyone else, encourage more new business, especially in Anonymity Protection Centers that block businesses from storing any data that contains strings of nine or ten digits.

4. Take known D voters in for COVID boosters on the Monday evening. The goal is not to cause them all to be unconscious or dead on Election Day. It is to promote peace of mind by ensuring that they have the sort of "health care" they are known to want. Whether or not that leaves them fit to vote is in the hands of Fate.

5. Don't waste postage on mail advising D voters that their polling place has been changed, however funny the locations you may be thinking of may be. Do line the block outside the polling place with R campaign signs. Hire platoons of nice retired Rs to stroll around outside the polling places making R noises such as "Good morning! Isn't it a beautiful day to be happy in the Lord! I can hardly wait to see our Winsome in the Governor's Mansion!" This will do no harm to sane Ds but it may cause interesting, and disabling, fits in the Loony Left. The goal is to produce so much cognitive dissonance between what every Virginian has been taught about showing polite, respectful manners to these dear older people, and what every left-wingnut actually wants to say and do to Rs if people weren't watching, that most of your local wingnuts will spend Election Day pleading for tranquillizers at the emergency room.

6. Organize a special tour of Palestine for radical Ds, during which you arrange for someone to draw them out in public conversations about issues like transgenderism, transhumanism, abortion as a "right," the use of poorer and darker-complexioned communities as a testing ground for bioengineered products, and the need for "gay" representation at the highest levels of government. They should be stocked with Palestinian flags and coached on using Muslim-friendly language so that the arresting officials and prison staff will be inclined to treat them humanely--by their standards. Also arrange that even the ones who are not arrested will arrive in New York after 11:30 p.m. on Election Day.

7. Speaking of arrests, how many Ds in your neighborhood would, if it weren't for White/rich privilege, have been arrested for things like speeding, distracted driving, or public use of profanity years ago? 

8. Identify inner-city parents who are tempted to vote D because they think something really ought to be done about the schools their children attend. See how many of those children can benefit from full scholarships to attend private church schools--books, transportation, and uniforms if applicable, included. 

9. Pull the rugs out from under the Loony Left's feet by organizing a Non-D Rainbow Coalition where members of all the Ds' favorite demographic groups parade through their neighborhoods carrying signs and singing "Spanberger/Jones/whoever think they own me--they are wrong." Women could, for example, wave signs that say "I don't need abortions, I need freedom." 

10. Organize live reruns of the old game show "Are You 'Smarter' than a Fifth-Grader?" where middle school students who have been studying the history of the US Constitution answer questions on that topic that adults miss. (Participating adults should have put up an entry fee that will cover a month's tuition at a local church school.) Follow with lectures and discussions. In the town of Berea, Kentucky, which is admittedly accustomed to this sort of thing, live quiz shows become quite entertaining.

Most importantly: Overcome the emotional feelings you may have about the idea of voting Republican. You know the current presidential administration consists of moderate, or what currently pass for moderate (Secretary Kennedy never used to be called moderate), Ds who were forced to run as R by the Loony Left. You know that, when the Loony Lefties lose hope of ever winning another popular vote, sane and decent Americans will reclaim the D Party and you'll have the option of voting for Ds again. But not this year.

Do You Follow Celebrity Gossip?

This week's Long & Short Reviews prompt asks: Do you follow celebrity gossip? 

Not really. 

Why not? 

Because so many other topics are more interesting. A man I used to date could make a case for celebrity gossip having redeeming social value. Celebrity gossip gives people ways to find out who shares their beliefs before they risk discussing opinions about things about which they might feel more intensely, was the idea.

Right. If people who feel that way want to talk to me, they usually have lots of tidbits about actors' divorces and politicians' pasts to share, and I'll listen. But when I'm scanning news headlines, I don't click on the celebrity gossip. I don't care a great deal about how long some actor can hold on to the role of wife or husband or how badly some overnight-success musician was cheated on a real estate deal.

Will I Always Be an Outsider Here?

A local lurker asked, recently. Person moved in from a different town in Virginia. Person got to know only a few people, mostly in one family. The relationship with that family was not ideal. Suddenly that nice little house in my nice little town began to feel very lonely. "Will I always be an outsider here?"

All I can say is: Define "outsider."

Gate City is not that town, allegedly in Vermont, where a gravestone allegedly reads something like "Here lies John Smith: Born in nearby town, 1812. Moved here with parents, 1820. Joined church, 1828. Married Jane, daughter of Councilman John Doe...served in...appointed to...elected to..." for nine or ten lines showing full membership in the community, and then the final line, "Died here, 1898. Dearly Loved Tho' a Stranger Among Us."

No. You can vote in the election after you buy or rent property here. You become the working equivalent of a relative by marrying a relative. You become a friend, or don't, on the same schedule you would anywhere else, with one person at a time. 

If you are becoming a friend, your having lived somewhere else  is...interesting, to many local people. Why do people always imagine that they are the only ones who ever feel awkward and socially insecure? Small towns retain a lot of the people who felt too awkward and socially insecure to move away, who got jobs only because their parents arranged jobs for them, or who own land or were full-time mothers and never got jobs at all. Most people in a small town resent that stereotype, but stereotypes have to come from somewhere. There are people like that here. They don't know what to say so, if the one thing their none-too-active brains retain about you is that you used to lived in a different town, even if the town in question is Clinchport, or even Yuma (the settlement on the other side of the mountain), if you live here for fifty years they'll still be greeting you with "Have you gone back to Yuma lately? Do you miss it? Do you want to go back?" You might be the closest thing they have to a friend, but still they'll say things that sound as if they thought you ought to go back to where you came from, because what else are they going to say. Some people just aren't very bright. One of the things some people like about small towns is that the relatives of the not-very-bright often find ways to fit them into local society, and everyone is charitable about them.

If you marry into a local family, outside that family you might be considered part of the community now. Inside, it might be a different story. Nobody ever thinks their in-laws are good enough for their relatives and extended families tend to grind it in. Why did I not bring my husband home and tell everyone about him? I'd seen how the family behaved toward some people my cousins were almost as lucky to get as they were to get my cousins, and said to myself, "I would not like to have married into this family."

If you work for a locally owned business, people who look forward to helping you spend your wages will want to be friendly. People who did not get your job will resent you. Any legal and even borderline socially acceptable behavior that makes you wish you worked a thousand miles away will be noted and repeated, and repeated, and repeated.

If you have your own business, and bring money from outside our town into our town--which is what most adults want their children to do--people of good will may admire you; that will be one more reason for people of ill will to resent you.

If you have a disability and chose your new home because it was accessible and near a reliable personal assistant...God help us, there are people who will resent that, too. What did you ever do to be so lucky when someone else had an unreliable personal assistant?

Whatever people notice first about you, there is someone who thinks this town could use some more of it, and someone who hates it. Height? Work experience? The car you were driving when you came into town, even if it was a rental? Yop. Haters hate because they are haters.

You have to understand that some people have never really recovered from going to public school during the baby boom. Everyone had a friend and an enemy, in each grade, however arbitrary the reasons for the choice of friends and enemies may have been, and however little most of us did about having friends and enemies. Those of us who can now shake the hands of our primary school enemies are strictly those of us who finished high school and lived somewhere outside of my home town for a few years. For some people who certainly look as if they ought to be "mature," I mean, who have grandchildren, hostilities are as strong as they were on the day the official enemy walked up to them on the first day of school and said "That's an ugly shirt, a stupid lunchbox, a bad hairstyle..." 

Some of us were the little poison-pills who walked up to people on the first day of school and made those remarks about the shirts their mothers had chosen. The biggest bully in my brother's classes, who finally stopped persecuting my brother because he was held back another year and could beat up even smaller classmates, got a government job. The meanest-mouthed girl in my class...at least she works in the private sector. They've changed! They've matured! But probably not as much as would be desirable. Some people still are the social bullies who tell other people, "Don't talk to that person unless you want to be as unpopular as that person is!" and some people still are the second-string social bullies who don't talk to "that person," too.

Some of us were, of course, the nice, kind people who never did or said anything to hurt anybody, even in primary school, and still don't. And since those people don't want to get into any controversy, they probably didn't say much at school at all, and they probably still don't. I was not necessarily one of those people at school, but as an adult I can relate to the idea that a successful trip into town is one on which all the errands are done without having to speak to anyone. You're not an outsider, to these people; you're not an enemy; you're just not one of the half-dozen people to whom these hermit souls find it necessary to talk, or relate, or pay any kind of attention. People who seemed nice and kind in primary school probably have hermit souls.

Mean people are usually extroverts. Kind people are usually introverts. There are more kind people in most small towns, including mine, than there are mean people; but the mean people make a lot more of the noise.

All these things are generally applicable to all small towns. In your own town you know some, not all, of the most unpleasant people's names. In another small town you don't. That might be one definition of the difference between "insider" and "outsider" and, if it's your definition, you can probably become an "insider" in five or ten years.

Sometimes it may be possible to measure some specific indicators of the extent to which people dislike, or don't care about, people who are "like you" in some specific way...or at least the extent to which living in a specific town will be an inconvenience to you. Do all the stores have steps, or do some have flat doorways or ramps? My town still has a lot of steps but, when and as money permits, people are putting in ramps.

But hostility, as distinct from cluelessness, has usually been driven underground to some extent. By now most Americans have heard enough about race prejudice to be ashamed of feeling it, if they do, but does that mean that they'll flock to a new store owned by someone who looks different from them, or that they'll resent the idea of someone who looks different from them even wanting to move in and open a store? To what extent does this have to do with loyalty to an existing store, as distinct from prejudice against a new store, as distinct from prejudice against a physical type defined as a "race," as distinct from their attitudes toward a type or even a brand of merchandise? Market surveys need to be very specific. Sometimes people say "Yes, we'd love to see that" when the unspoken bulk of the iceberg is "It would be nice if other people wanted that kind of store, and made it possible for this nice new neighbor to keep it open, but I wouldn't have any use for it." Sometimes they say "No, that wouldn't work" when the unspoken bulk of the iceberg is "Something in that general line didn't work, in the past; I have no idea whether you've learned enough from that other person's mistakes to have a working model for that type of business now; I'd support it if you had one, but I'll believe you have one when I see it." 

In the mid-twentieth century whole demographic groups of people decided that mainstream US culture had changed in ways that didn't serve them well. It seemed convenient at the time to call the things people wanted to change "traditional"; actually they were recent innovations. Black Americans didn't like the system of segregation that developed between the 1920s and the 1950s. Women didn't like the idea of suburban homemaking that developed (from an idea touted by French Socialists in the 1830s) between the 1930s and the 1950s. "Creative" people didn't like the conformism that was fashionable in the 1940s and 1950s. Homosexuals didn't like being presumed mentally ill and dangerous to society. People who built and worked with machinery didn't like many of the machines that were used in the 1950s and 1960s, and in fact we now know that some of them, like the hateful electric typewriter, were designed to leave lots of room for improvement while the designers worked on the inventions intended to replace them. Left-wingers didn't like the Cold War. Young men didn't like being drafted to fight in the Vietnam war. Lots of people wanted to change the changes that had been made earlier in the century. So the ones who were in the Democratic Party took it over and declared it the party of Change. 

Others of the people who wanted all that Change thought there were better ways to make Change than making the US more like the USSR. Equal opportunities, feminism, "creativity," inventiveness, pacifism, and "not necessarily pacifism but at least ending the draft" have nothing whatsoever to do with either the Democratic Party or socialism; they merely happened to interest some people who were in the Democratic Party and/or wanted socialism in the mid-twentieth century. Not only have women my age had to demonstrate that our being independent, feminists, single, entrepreneurs, yuppies or whatever else we are have nothing to do with left-wing politics; apparently young women still do, which is inexcusable. If you are Black, if you're not half of a happy heterosexual couple and not asexual in a way that's easily explained by an obvious medical condition, if you're "creative," if you're Green, if you're the sort of really radical Christian who has no more in common with capitalism than with communism, and you're not Loony Left--if you're any of those things and your politics are even moderate D, much less if they're R--the Trump Train has done a lot toward helping people in small towns imagine that you might be a good neighbor, as distinct from a "Communist" troublemaker. But you still need to prove that you, individually, are not working toward "Agenda 21" or some other form of anti-American, anti-democratic, anti-civil-liberties nastiness.

If you're not working toward the goal of leftist tyranny, but your ancestors have not been in my town for six, ten, or more generations like most of ours, are you still an "outsider"? If you're making a solid contribution to a community as others in the community want it  to be, but you spent part of your life outside that community, are you still an "outsider"? Define "outsider." 

Some people in my town have made being a proud "outsider" into a sort of trademark. Confident in their marriages to local people, they've revelled in being "the one from" some other town. When asked "Do you miss your home town? Do you ever want to go back?" they organize car pools! Unfortunately this is easier for The One From Clinchport to do than it is for The One From England... 

Some people are probably in for a hard time anywhere because they've made "persecuted outsider" part of their identity. It's one thing to be proud of being Irish or Jewish or Italian or Black or Southern, of having a strong, rich tradition that will go with you wherever you are. It's quite a different thing to define yourself in terms of victimhood. If you identify yourself as a victim it can be hard to act in ways that don't invite people to treat you like a victim all over again. If you buy into that stereotype the D Party are currently pushing--the one about Rs being neo-Nazis--you are identifying yourself as a victim. 

I don't know of any neo-Nazis in my town. I know that, while our Greatest Generation were alive, any neo-Nazis who grew up in my town would have been very quiet until they could get out, which they would have done as fast as they could. Though actually, if someone my age had come up to any of my male elders and said "I'm a Nazi" or "I'm a Communist," I imagine that what would have happened would have been a long hard look that could have frozen alcohol, and a softly spoken but intense reply along the lines of, "You don't know what you're talking about. Go home," and the person would have gone home, and stayed home, for a good long time. The men who volunteered to kill real Nazis were not prone to private violence. 

But the sort of thing we read and hear these days...! Seriously. We in my part of the world are starting to enjoy springtime weather, and some idjit whines, "You have to mention that some places are having autumn weather now, too, so that people in Australia don't feel left out." Well, I'm sorry, but that's Nature for you! They sort of are being left out. There are contexts where it feels realistic and reasonable to write that, or say in a public speech that, "On this day, which is midsummer for us here and midwinter for people in some other places..." and there are contexts where it's realistic and reasonable to write or say that, on this day, here, we are having this kind of weather, as distinct from what people somewhere else are having, as distinct from what we had at this time last year, as distinct from whatever else is not part of this time and this place. I like and respect the Australians I've met. Likewise the Canadians. Likewise the Zambians. Likewise the people in a hundred other demographics. I respect them enough to believe that they can speak for themselves, in their turn, and fill in the gaps. If I've said "your State," writing to a US audience, and you're reading this web site in a country that is not divided into States, I expect you to be able to fill in "province" or "district"  or whatever is relevant. More novels should probably be set in New Zealand and have sultry Christmas Days before the pohutukawa trees bloom, and so on, but Americans aren't going to write those novels. What I know something about is States; what I know about the season and the weather is that spring begins in March here; what I know about the birds outside my window is that they're cardinals and wrens, and so on. It would be more presumptuous for me to write as if I had any experience of Canadian provinces, or autumn in March, or the birds outside the window being nightingales. And if you are the sort of person who goes into a small town and annoys people with this kind of thing, yes, you can expect to spend a lot of time feeling left out, of more than descriptions of local weather.

Would, say, a "gay" man always be an "outsider" in my home town? Well...does he want to be accepted as an unmarried man who might or might not seem especially close to a friend or housemate, or is he going to demand that other people celebrate his "special" relationship and his "I'm not annoying, it's just that everyone else hates me because I'm so wonderful" attitude? It matters. If a former student or a friend's son were asking me, I'd say that, when you want to focus on your sexuality, my town is less than an ideal place to be; the selection of possible bedmates is probably ghastly and the number of people who don't want to think about you in that context is high. I don't know that that's a reason not to live here. Heterosexuals who don't want to date our cousins don't have a lot of options here, either; I had dates in Washington, I was married in Washington, and then I came home and had dates in another place that's not my home town. So if you want to focus on work or personal  growth when you're here, and either have your sex life somewhere else or have a stable, discreet relationship you can bring here, yes, you can be "gay" and be happy here. If you want to go around blathering about silence being death and everybody needing to know exactly what you and your boyfriend do at home, you probably won't be happy anywhere else either, but you certainly won't be happy here.

Would an Orthodox Jew always be an "outsider" here? Aren't they supposed to be "outsiders" everywhere; isn't that the point? A secular Jew who has not embraced socialism as a substitute for religion might like my home town. A Messianic Jew ought to like my home town. An Orthodox Jew would probably prefer to live in a place where there are enough other Orthodox Jews for a proper religious meeting. In some small towns there are. In mine there are not.

Would a Mexican-American, say the US-born son or daughter of legal immigrants, always be an "outsider" here? Much would depend on how much the person was willing to assimilate. We have a Taco Bell and a real sit-down Mexican restaurant. We also have at least one old idiot who called the parents of someone whose best school friend was waiting for person to join a car pool, to warn with quivering voice, "Some Mexicans have been parked across the street from your house for five minutes now!" The Mexicans involved laughed. They see the people who like them. They have good jobs; their neighbors enjoy being their neighbors. A different sort of Mexicans might have kept the old idiot in their minds' eyes, obscuring any view of the people who like them, for all the years it's been.

Would a Northerner always be an "outsider" here? Grandma Bonnie Peters was born in Kansas and grew up in Indiana. She was a Daughter of the Confederacy but she was a Northerner. People loved her anyway. Northerners who appreciate what they find here can be liked. Are they "outsiders"? You'd have to ask them. Councilman Roberts was a Northerner--almost an Englishman!--and people liked him enough to put him on the county council. People also made remarks about his accent and "Where is he from, anyway?" Define "outsider."

We've had Black councilmen, too. We've had female councilmen. We had two big stores, one owned by a Jewish family and one by a Palestinian family, across the street from each other, for years. People go to Indian-American doctors. People go to Chinese restaurants, even if they're not gluten-sensitive and even if they did not adopt Chinese children in the Bush administration. My brother used to love having someone to speak French to; I always enjoy having someone around who speaks Spanish. My family have had some of the biggest and best reunions, and those gatherings look like America. We had some "White supremacist" types come in looking for sympathy, thirty-some years ago, and we laughed them out of town, but in a charitable way, those poor idjits. We are not, generally, a town of haters. If anything we are a little too tolerant when people are haters, or are just plain sociopathic land-coveters. I think that may be typical of small towns too. Someone who has a good resume reaches middle age and nobody wants to believe how much evil he may be doing.

Am I an "insider" here? I have deep roots and a solid pedigree and a little hereditary property. Does that mean everybody likes me? Of course not; I have a third cousin who's been doing as much as he dares toward the goal of killing me for years now. Admittedly. Does it mean I'm part of some big "insider" clique? I think the town and county council may be a bit of a clique, and I want no part of any such thing. I don't participate in gossip. I don't want to do business on a basis of "liking" or not "liking" people; I want to treat all people impartially, according to the way they treat me. I reserve the right to agree with some things some people in the councils, and the Historical Society, want to do and disagree with others. Does that, all by itself, make me an "outsider" to some people? Absolutely. Does just not having a lot of money make me an "outsider" to even more people, in or out of my town? Of course it does. Does having a substantial amount of money, not even new money, in the family make me even more of an "outsider" to another lot of people, whether or not I even live to inherit any of the said money? Of course it does! 

Anybody can declare anybody else an "outsider." Anybody can declare self an "outsider," even when others have tried to bring the person "inside" a group. A poet once wrote:

He drew a circle that shut me out:

Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.

But Love and I had the wit to win:

We drew a circle that took him in.

It's an interesting historical exercise, at least: Make a list of the important things people have accomplished in human history. Use your own working definition of "important things." How many of those things were accomplished by "insiders"? How many by "outsiders"? How many by people who were born "insiders," like Jesus the descendant of David who, as soon as he'd made bar mitzvah, was hanging around under the feet of the rabbis at the Temple,  and then became "outsiders" because they made a difference? 

Define "outsider." Then give an example, and then explain why on Earth you care, anyway. If you like being here and don't want to make my town more like the place you left, then a reasonable number of people here will like you, a majority will leave you alone, and some should, as the song says, just go and love themselves.

The Land Is Not for Sale

Well, no, actually it was not a very happy Thanksgiving Day. Off-and-on rain kept the Professional Bad Neighbor busy spraying poison on acreage he's bought, legally, in the daytime, and on my hedge, criminally, after dark. Relatives prudently gathered at someone else's house. 

All night I had those pseudo-cardiac symptoms; my heartbeat sped up and slowed down, pounded and barely beat, like that poor little late-summer kitten Serena had. Serena brought him to me before she'd even finished cleaning him, said "Do what you can," and moved on, not showing much hope. The kitten was born alive, sort of, but his little heart never found a steady rhythm. It beat harder and less hard, faster and slower, for a few hours while the kitten uttered his first squeaks and took his first creeping steps. He took a few kitten-naps; I could see his heart beating irregularly while he rested. And then his heart stopped altogether.

My heart recovered its steady rhythm. It's done this before. I do not have cardiovascular disease. It is a reaction to chemicals that are sprayed along roads. If I knew which one, I'd probably be posting research about that one too. What killed the kitten might have been a reaction to the same chemical. 

I went into town to see if a payment had come in. It had. I thought I saw a friend's car parked beside her storage barn. It was not her car. It belonged to a former neighbor with notions of real estate speculation in his head. Neighbor acted very, very neighborly, offered me a lift all the way home, and even started trying to carry in a sack of kibble, to get a good look. 

Yes, my home is begging for renovation. Yes, the last man I cared anything about was a builder. Yes, we had plans to remodel it, which aren't going anywhere until my neighborhood is rid, I mean to say cleaned, of the Professional Bad Neighbor. It's no use buying more hardware to repair surface damage just so a Professional Bad Neighbor can creep around on the next moonlit night and damage it again. Yes, not only is the exterior of the house a wreck, with the rain gutter hanging down to bear witness to the morning I saw a pole hanging from it and, looking out the window, saw the pole being manipulated by someone in a truck that had the shape of the Bad Neighbor's, and the raw edges of wire showing where the fence has been cut, and the effects of illegal poison spraying showing especially in the hedge but also in the orchard...not only that, but also the yard is booby-trapped. It's perfectly all right by me if the Professional Bad Neighbor steps on a board with a nail sticking out of it, or better yet falls face-down on one. No, that's not the way I'd like my home to be, but it is external and temporary; it'll be easy enough to change.

"Nice place up here." There are things people with notions about real estate speculation can't keep from saying. They react to the Cat Sanctuary as predictably as lonely men react to C-cups; they all but literally drool. "But isn't it a long walk for you? Wouldn't you like to sell it and move into a place closer to town?"

I would not. 

For one thing, women who live alone in town tend to encounter even more harassment than women who live at the far end of roads maintained to discourage motor traffic. And, until we get a good tight law about spraying any kind of chemicals into the air, they're exposed to even more pollution. 

For another thing, keeping the house means that, in another thirty or forty years when I do expect to want younger people in the house all the time, I'll have something to offer them; by that time the Professional Bad Neighbor will undoubtedly have died, and the old home place should be a good healthy place for children. The house needs work; it won't take the sort of young people I'd be willing to share a house with very long to get that work done. Then they will have a pleasant place to live, and can decide whether they want to maiantain it as a tourist attraction--for its historic value--or keep it private.

And meanwhile, I am not yet seventy years old and still have the biblical right--even the duty--to remarry if the right sort of man presents himself, and the old house is a test. For the right sort of man it will be a positive attraction, as it was for my Significant Other. For the other kind, it will be an effective repellent. The right sort of man does not want to be close to town, does not want to be able to drive a show-off sports car right up to the door, does not want to be able to see neighbors without going out and looking for them. The right sort of man understands that physical work is what tells bodies, even in the presence of the longevity gene, to keep rebuilding themselves rather than breaking down. The right sort of man intends to enjoy maintaining a house and land, and working for other people too, until he and I are at least eighty and preferably ninety years old. 

Men who had symptoms other people noticed, with coronavirus, might be eligible to share the rest of my wholesome rural life. Men who were seriously ill with Long COVID, like the Professional Bad Neighbor, are the ones who should be thinking about "little places in town," and if they want me to do errands and housekeeping for them, they'd better have more to offer than their "little places in town." 

Obviously it's not likely that a man I'd want to marry, now, could exist. Then again it was extremely unlikely that either the man I did marry or the one I wanted to marry could have existed; the odds seem to have been heavily against most of my ancestors doing most of what they did, and were against my doing most of what I've done, and that includes finding men that you certainly don't meet every day. So if my "being alooone" is so important to you relatives, focus on finding another improbable man for me to marry.

It has often occurred to me, as I let the cool mountain breeze blow the mind-pollution of townspeople's conversation out of my head, that people who have coveted the house and land really ought to have started planning sooner.

If I'd been offered a job, preferably the one I wanted in the town library, right out of high school. If I'd been able to rent a "little place in town" when I was at the age for that sort of thing, so that my parents hadn't made the decisions about my going to college. If an employer had paid me to go to a public school and take courses relevant to my "career" working in town. If I'd been close enough to where I wanted to be that I didn't feel homesick, earning money and being treated like an adult, instead of working in the city with no career goal except to move back home. If I'd been allowed to yuppify enough to have been compatible with that dear, sweet, kind, congenial, intelligent, child-and-animal-loving, and even good-looking yuppie from Kingsport that I seriously considered marrying, instead of kissing and saying goodbye because we were taking different roads in life. If I'd become one of the "insiders" in what the rest of the county describe as the Gate City Clique, and they really do operate very much like a middle school clique...I might have grown up to be that sort of person, if I'd started at a formative age. 

I might have grown up to be a yuppie. And a Republican. And the size of most of my school friends who got those nice steady lifelong jobs in town. And so satisfied with a comfortable, rewarding life that I'd feel ready to retire at age 65, and die at age 70, as a friend who lives in town says she does. I might have given up the idea of being a writer, or settled for writing a nice, bland, predictable column for a church or local paper. I might now be all that it implied by the label "White." A real White Woman From Town. Dressing and decorating my nice house in town in the latest fashion, driving everywhere because who has time to walk across town to the post office; not only taking my trench coat in case of rain, but wearing it all day because I'd feel cold, in the kind of weather today's has been. I might even have found enough occasions to "make up" my face to have ever got used to the frankly icky sensation of having paint on my face.

But no. While I was too young and unformed to shove back, other people shoved me onto the road my life's taken. I was only allowed to go to college if it was one that cost too much for me to form the habits of shopping or eating in restaurants, where I formed the habits of doing odd jobs and supporting urban missions instead. I was not offered a job I could do while going to a more affordable college. I have yet to be thanked for not driving, though Heaven only knows how many townsfolk's lives I've saved. I've been harassed and discriminated against for walking into town and, though most people in town neither harass nor discriminate against anybody, they've not made me feel that my help was greatly needed or appreciated. I have found that all good long-term relationships, business or personal, begin when people feel at least as much need for my help as I do for theirs. It takes a certain amount of "please" and "thank you" for me to feel much interest in another person. I've loved and been loved by good men, and am not really interested in the sort of "relationships" second-rate men have to offer. And so, at my official cyberspace-entities-age-by-decades age of fifty (plus), I find absolutely no reason to want to be in town for a minute longer than it takes to do a job or an errand. Not even my own town; though most other towns are noisier and more polluted than mine. 

And then, too, cousins who are older and taller and stronger failed to step up and maintain the family tradition on our ancestral land. I'm afraid--and I am afraid, I'm not looking forward to it any more than poor old Prince Charles was looking forward to being an orphan and King of England--I'm only a relative or two away from being the head of the clan. Temptations to settle for what seems like an easier life of conformism in a "little place in town" might not work for me if another relative weren't up here carrying on in the ways our elders taught us. 

Knowing how to use new, fragile, unsustainable things like the Internet, the power grid, and the internal combustion engine; but also knowing that it's more important to know how to do without them.

Knowing that it's better to be free and live in a cave than to feel like a prisoner in, and of, even the nicest house in town.

Accepting our Whiteness, but never forgetting that we're not only White and we're not From Town.

Those things need to be done and, though our elders might have tried to prepare other relatives to do them, I happen to be the one for whom it worked. Probably because, unlike some cousins, I was not offered a nice smooth yuppie life in time to be tempted by it. I finished high school just a year and a half too early, and now it is forever too late. 

For those friends and relatives who just "didn't want to take sides" because "after all, it can't be best for even a family of only women and children to be aloooone in the woooods!", their time might be more profitably occupied in finding the sort of man who would want, and deserve, to share my home and life. Admit that I'm not a "young girl" any more, that I know my own mind if I know anything, and that you've been stubborn and silly to expect that I'd marry anyone whose life plans didn't fit nicely in beside mine. 

I'm not really alone; most of The Nephews are young adults by now, and some of the men are pretty big and strong. Do they need to move in with me? Certainly not until they want to. Whenever one of them has had some success in a job person can take to wherever person chooses to live, and wants a good wholesome place to bring up children at a healthy distance from "the corruption that is in this world," the place is here. Meanwhile, fat old men who have done themselves enough damage to have had "Long COVID" should avoid coming within sight of the Cat Sanctuary. Some of The Nephews are physically related to me, Old Wrymouth, Disgrace to the Clan. They inherited the same super-senses we did...when we were their age. Your sight has dimmed, your strength has diminished, and both your marksmanship and your driving have deteriorated to the point where, if your nephews really had any use for you, they'd be taking the guns and the keys away. 

I am afraid (actually, in this case, I am sadistically delighted) that nothing good can be expected from the old age of a Professional Bad Neighbor who has chosen evil, Wrymouth. Even if he was once "the smart one," and came to hate me because I was also presented to the outside world as "the smart one" before he was full-grown. It's bad enough to have outlived our elders in the normal course of events; it's worse to have lost first a husband and then a lover to cancer, and a brother to misadventure...it must be utterly miserable not to have had a family long because, not only did one do them wrong, one did every one of them in. 

Real estate speculators annoy me, Wrymouth, and you had best not try selling any acreage to them. This particular ridge is for the direct descendants of the man who surveyed the town of Gate City and chose the place that is naturally most desirable for himself and his heirs. You are not one of the few. I recommend you try to persuade one of the family you tried to "run off" to take the land you've been able to "run anyone off" of. If you make the land a gift, pay all processing fees to register the transfer as final, and pay the one who accepts the land a monthly stipend for the time it will take to undo your damage, and then get your miserable carcass out of Virginia, you might be able to resolve matters in a way that won't harm whatever nieces and nephews you still have. I think New Orleans is the place for you to spend your old age. It is a good long way from here, and also it is a place where, every time you take a drink of water, you will be moved to pray that a dozen people upstream from you have been Good People, like me, and not evildoers like your loathsome self.

The land is to be either inherited or bestowed as a gift. It is to be owned by those of the family who can best use it, which means, of course, sharing it with the rest of the family. It is not for sale in the ordinary sense. Some exchange of benefits may take place when titles are transferred between family members but no bank, and no real estate agents, are to be involved. 

The land is for people who walk, not drive. It is for people who know better than to open a door that is closed unless they see a note telling them how long they should expect to wait, and inviting them to wait indoors. It is for people who know one another's animals, even the chickens--by name--and lead them home if they stray. All of the land is for all of the children to enjoy. None of the land is for people who value money higher than land.

The land is not for sale, Wrymouth. Perhaps you have been told to your face, by now, that "These Colors Don't Run." Perhaps you have been asked questions about the basis for the charges against our short-term neighbor from Mexico, or the very mysterious illnesses of the old beekeeper and of Grandma Bonnie Peters. There will be more of those questions, Wrymouth. There may also be questions about the mysterious sudden death of the young tree pruner. We don't run. You start running!

No real estate speculators need to inquire about the land the surveyor claimed for himself.

There is not enough gold in California.

There are not enough diamonds in Kimberley.

There is not enough oil under the Persian Gulf. 

There is not and will never be enough money to buy good land from good people. You may go home and rue the day you crossed the path of one of them.

In Town, the End of an Era. In County? No Change. (Warning: Rant)

You'd expect that a town with a population of about two thousand people, a majority of whom are active seniors, would be..."conservative" in the sense of not eager to change anything for the sake of change.

Most of the time, in my town, you'd be right.

Gate City, the town proper, lost a good councilman just before the election.

https://cartertrent.com/tribute/details/324228/Allan-Roberts/obituary.html

 "I didn't think you liked him? He wasn't one of those bald blue-eyed men you fight against the tendency to dislike, so why didn't you like him, anyway? Because he was a Republican?"

I didn't dislike Mr. Roberts at all. Au contraire! As a widow with black hair and a top-heavy figure, I rate other people's husbands based on how completely they leave me alone. I ignore them. If I'm friendly with married people, it's with the wife not the husband. But I do like and respect other people's husbands when they treat their wives right and have nothing to say to me. I'm disgusted by the way small-town types carry on because "He never shook my hand the way he shook her hand at church!!!" I prefer that other people's husbands find someone else's hand, preferably a man's, to shake. Councilman Roberts rated high. He was loved and will be missed. 

I live and vote in the county, so when I went to vote last week, I received a ballot with no town councilmen on it. 

Oh, such a ballot! Lots of positions were on it. "Be sure to fill out both sides!" the election judges were telling every single person as people filled out their paper ballots with normal ballpoint pens. 

On one side of the ballot, in exactly one slot, there were two names. The one D incumbent was being challenged by an R. 

Otherwise, the incumbents, all R's so far as I know, were running unopposed.

No points for guessing that the one R challenging a D for a position in local government won the election--though, for the position in question, party politics don't make much real difference.

This is a town that was painted blue in the 2020 election by one thing. Our D senators sent out letters and e-mails that told everyone, in essence, "I'm trying for all I'm worth to send you money but that mean old President Trump won't let me." Those of us who were paying attention knew that Trump actually did want to send people those second COVID handout checks, but wanted to strip a lot of additional boondoggles out of the bill authorizing the said checks. But a lot of people weren't paying attention, because COVID actually happened around the time the election took place, and there was a lot more interest in who'd had it and how bad it was. Also a lot of people who were paying attention were not Trump fans. There was a third party candidate. That candidate got some votes, not because anyone thought wossname was going to win, but because people wanted to vote against both Trump and Biden. Nevertheless, although there hadn't been a lot of Biden campaign signs actually set up in lawns, a lot of Biden campaign signs were brought in and set up outside the polls on Election Day.

Two years ago we had a lot of people who wanted to vote for Democrats. Where are they now? 

As a guess they're looking at what the Party of the Burro has wrought, in the past three years, and hiding themselves from public view in shame. 

Some years the D party has campaigned on things like peace, fixing potholes, postponing the implosion of Social Security, and other good things. Some years Ds have actually accomplished good things. But this year? Hello? 

Wages have dwindled. Prices have doubled. Businesses have gone under. Censorship is being tolerated. Specifically, censorship of the fact that government nannyism tried to bully people into having vaccines that turned out to be neither safe nor effective. 

Nobody has a right to be angry about this--we knew it has always been a strong possibility with new vaccines--but people are, especially if their vaccinated relatives died. I don't, personally, feel especially angry about the possibility that the COVID vaccine that he wanted to show people was safe killed the last man I'm likely to be able to love in any carnal sense of the word. He wasn't young; he'd been ill for a long time. He'd fought off cardiovascular disease by staying physically active, and Lyme Disease had interfered with that; who knows how many non-fatal strokes and heart attacks he'd had. But it does seem odd that, instead of a fatal stroke, he suddenly developed post-vaccine cancer. It does fit a pattern that makes people want to vote in an administration that will overhaul its policy on attempts to allow government to try to manage people's health.

Our national income is down, our national debt is up, yet we're pouring money into a foreign war...and what are Ds doing about it? Spouting inflammatory rhetoric in support of something that is not a nation, or anywhere close to being one, and ought to be stifled by treating them as the psychopathic murderers they are. Do you care about Palestinian children? I do. I want people to stop encouraging the parents of Palestinian children to imagine that what Hamas did can possibly have good results. Encourage them to surrender and beg for mercy. (This web site takes no sides in international disputes, but we're not talking about an international dispute here. We're talking about punishment for common criminals, or, in this case, uncommonly despicable ones.)

Our experiments with small-scale, controllable socialism--old-age and disability pensions, college scholarships, government meddling in patient/doctor relationships--are ruining our budget, damaging our society, aggravating poverty...and what are Ds doing about that? Screaming that everything and everybody is "racist," that's what. Making no positive contribution whatsoever.

I've voted for Ds in the past and I may vote for some in the future. In fact, in our little local election, I voted for the D incumbent; her party politics don't matter and I had no objection to her job performance, nor had I heard if other people did. But in any election where party politics do matter, at the present time there is just no positive reason to vote for the Party of the Current Administration That Is Doing Nothing Right At All. 

I never used to think a presidential administration could get much worse than Lyndon Johnson's. The current administration has shown that that thing can be done.

I say the administration because I don't think it's President Biden's fault. I think he's been a party spokesman rather than an independent leader all his life, and it's not really his fault that now, when he looks like a representative of people who are heavily medicated for cardiovascular disease, who tend to be easily confused, his party has been hijacked by extremists whose policies can fairly be called insane. 

Robert Kennedy is not exactly a conservative, politically. His whole family have been famous for being liberal, but in a sane way that can fairly be called liberal, as distinct from Loony Left. Kennedy's stated positions on issues definitely aren't Republican but there's a reason why, as an Independent third-party challenger, he's getting a lot of support from conservatives. Because he represents the kind of attention to the actual concerns of the public, together with an awareness of reality, that the D Party used to be, and ought to be, and has currently ceased to be, that's why!

D readers, this web site loves you, but you have got to stop listening to the extremists--R's are really good at ignoring their extremists--and start talking to the people you allow to represent you. We do not need to be a one-party nation but nobody can possibly support the party that is steering this administration.

Web Log for 9.15.23 Through 9.17.23

It's been a busy weekend...A magazine editor very kindly sent me a copy of someone else's book for review. I did not like the book. The editor obviously did. So will many of the magazine's readers. The book works as escape fiction; I just don't happen to like escape fiction. I'm not sure whether it's meant to have a Serious Message; it can be read as having one and I didn't like the message, either. So I was writing about why people who like that kind of thing would like something I personally haaated, which is always an interesting chore, anyway...and because of the week of sunshine I was also dealing with a nasty glyphosate reaction involving lots of unscheduled napping and loss of blood and so on. Then I finally had the chance to take my broken-down work bench apart and put it back together. It did not leave a lot of time for link-hunting, or even watching John Maclane's new movie, which is actually getting decent reviews from people who are wired to get into movies. 

And then I had a lot of wordy reactions to things I found online that aren't news, and/or don't deserve links, but...

Business 

We hear that Kingsport's original Wal-Mart, out on Stone Drive, wants to join the list of local stores that encouraged their cashiers to "be assertive" and indulge in little social dominance displays toward customers.

The photos aren''t links, but you can Google each photo and get links to TV and newspaper reports about the stores,. I opened only one search page; the phrase "Rude employees" leaped off the screen, just below the photo.

Seems as if the prudent store owner would be training all employees...NEVER give anyone a reason to post the phrase "rude employees" on a Google Review. Don't speak before you're spoken to. Don't stare. Don't "call" if you can help it, and if a "call" just bursts out of you, be SURE it's "Sir" or "Ma'am." Don't chatter. Don't gossip. Don't let your shadow fall within six feet of a customer. Always ask yourselves "How respectful is it possible to be?" Never let yourself imagine that you are in control of anything beyond the ends of your noses. Just control what you can control--yourself: make sure every part of your body language exudes your real physical need to please the customer who is the source of the shirts on your backs. 

Kingsport does not currently look like a city that can afford to have one store where one employee speaks out of turn to any customer--even if the employee is sure it's one of the city's new homeless population. If one of them comes into the store to piddle on an employee's leg, the employee might be pardoned for saying "Please Sir, may this servant humbly beg your gracious pardon, Sir, the restrooms are over here"--but the tone should be subservient at all times! When I see an employee yapping insolently at a homeless derelict, I think how much that employee needs to be flopping down right beside him in the alley, unemployed, unemployable, just another useless extrovert that will never be missed. 

Kingsport looks like a city that needs to keep its extroverts in fear. "If offensive noises, e.g. words that are not 'Thank you Sir' or 'Thank you Ma'am' or a very very polite and humble answer to a direct question, could possibly come out of your mouth, apply Duct Tape Therapy before reporting to work!" The future of the city may depend on this.

Car Show 

Alana Mautone deliberately chose to take the kind of pictures I would have tried not to take. Anyway, some wonderfully wacky vintage cars.

http://ramblinwitham.blogspot.com/2023/09/august-car-show-shadowshotsunday.html

Charitable Opportunity 

A company advertised a product reviewing job last week. They'll probably give the job to someone who already has a decent camera, but...sponsors, here are some facts:

1. About twelve miles from the Cat Sanctuary, the Kingsport city animal shelter has been having a hard time with funding and has been unable to find good homes for some adorable, adoptable animals who have been pets, who have already learned some basic rules and commands...

2. My cats, who lead a simple natural life and whose needs are few, get bottled water as endorsed by Serena. And she didn't even pose with a bottle in a video.

3. Shelter animals are a more diverse group with more diverse needs. They could endorse just about anything and look all kinds of adorable while doing it.

4. If you're not local, you'll have to take this on faith, but...You've seen that I can take adequate photos with a ten-dollar phone camera. Before digital photography, I used to have a 35mm camera. I have won prizes for landscape and action photos. Good digital cameras are sold at Wal-Mart now. Given a good digital camera, I could take prize-worthy photos of shelter pets endorsing or refusing to endorse pet care products...food, toys, brushes and combs, beds, mats, carrying cages, collars...

Want to see local shelter pets earning their keep as they find fur-ever homes? Just add money...or, if you happen to have received one as a gift and never used it, a digital camera.

Cybersecurity 

You knew that even in Singapore, the fabled island/city/state/nation of niceness where they impose fines on impoliteness and real punishment on crimes like littering, there had to be some people who just...weren't...all that...nice. What outlets do they find for their not-nice impulses? In recent years, it seems, they've taken up computer hacking. Often very stupid and amateurish hacking, like pasting my e-mail address in as the source of the sort of blatant scam I don't even need to bother telling you to report and block. 

Most Singaporeans are decent ordinary people, probably too busy with their own jobs and lives to read a lot of US blogs, but if you blog about Asian books in English you might have the good luck to find e-friends in Singapore. If, however, you notice your corner of cyberspace suddenly getting thousands of visits from Singapore...you shouldn't put any personal or financial information online in any case. Be very careful about where you click.

(ETA: If your e-mail or blog headlines feed show you S.A/R/K.'s new post, in a mx of Malay and English with a lot about betting and depositing money...you know Sark didn't post that. Do not click. Empathize.)

Politics 

No direct link for this one, because you've already seen links galore: Republicans reportedly think the way to use their majority status in Congress is to try to impeach President Biden. Harrumph. It'd be better strategy to impeach the Vice-President first, and I do believe she deserves it more, but with so many things to fix, is mudslinging really the best way for Rs to use what's been given them? Try mandating a real education, with particular emphasis on the disciplines of detached and critical thinking, the ability to state a position which which you don't agree, and the often unpalatable fats of history, for the young victims of education by people who (eyeroll) still believe in Socialism. Or taking a stand on the abuse of the Internet to steal people's online time--say, limiting "updates" to the hour between 3 and 4 a.m. on the 29th of February. Or declaring unrestricted free enterprise, with tests of professioanl competence but no fees, for all senior citizens who choose to forego Social Security and keep working. And I'm sure any real Republican voter they asked could think of another twenty or thirty things our Republican Congress might do that would be more useful than another impeachment effort. We've sat through that kind of show before and it's not even entertaining.

I do think some time in Lorton would be good for Hunter Biden; he's the sort of rich brat people our age grew up singing songs about, "going Too Far'cos y'know it won't matter anyway. You can rely on the old man's money...but it won't get you Too Far with me!" He failed to learn anything from the song and ought to be given a chance to learn something from going to jail just like a less connected man. All our Presidents have had embarrassing relatives and some day Hunter, too, might hope to be remembered for efforts to help other rich brats achieve sobriety, like Betty Ford, whose efforts not to disgracet the name of Frist Lady succeeded; she'd been an embarrassment but she really showed the world how pretty and nice she was when sober. Hunter Biden will never be handsome but he might become nice..

A Lamentation for the City of Kingsport

This is doggerel. It has to be. Serious poetry about city planning codes is bad doggerel; Bad Poetry about city planning codes is deliberate doggerel, unashamed. Perhaps the novelty and audacity of doggerel being written without shame will get some attention. I hope so. Bad Poetry is usually light, but this situation, as suggested by the prompt at Poets & Storytellers Unlimited, is one that brings me to tears. More or less regularly. Any time I'm in a car pool that's not able to bypass the former shoppng attraction, as most of them do.

Why didn't I think of a poem about something that made me laugh? I gave that idea forty-eight hours, and then someone's posts at another forum started this thing going in my mind, instead. I'll probably think of something funny later. The trouble with me is that, although the situation itself has made me cry, the idea of writing doggerel about it does make me laugh, in a tasteless and embarrassing way. As noted before, I've been afflicted with sarcasm all my life.

More to the point...this is Sunday, but is this Christian content? For me it most definitely is Christian content, despite its not containing specifically Christian words. Jesus identified with the poor. A neighborhood that excludes poor people would, by definition, exclude Jesus. Nufsed I hope.

"A Zoning Ordinance we have not needed

Two hundred years, nor do we need it now."

"You need it," says the dictatorial state that's

Excluded from the Commonwealth by vow.

County officials promised to repeal it,

Then yawned, "What need? It's never been enforced.

We can collect more packages of funding

If from it we're not formally divorced."

I've seen such things at work in other places.

They start in bigotry and end in blight.

The lie's that money makes more pleasant faces.

The truth: expenses put good will to flight.

Not far from here, there is a Model City.

It had its plans and zoning from the start.

People moved in where planners meant to put them.

It was a triumph of the planner's art.

The nearest part to us of all this city

Was what they called, lightheartedly, "Snob Hill."

It had a proper name; that doesn't matter now.

It was a terrace laid out just to fill

With bigger, better houses each row upward.

My parents married when the place was new.

My mother thought she might like to retire there,

About three-quarters up, on every view.

And when my father died she bought a house there,

For that was where she was a private nurse,

And all her patients' friends were on a long list

Of jobs she might take when that case grew worse.

For by the time they moved up on the Terrace

They'd proved resistance to all kinds of ills

Except Old Age, and that they all did gracefully,

With hardly any aches, or pills, or bills.

And they could pay enough to make house payments

And yardmen's wages and tennis club fees.

And they were close to all the nicest churches,

And schools, and parks, and everything to please.

And visiting, at first, I thought "What madness!

'Nice' neighborhoods in sight of factory stacks?

What cruel ways to gouge old folk for money

Occur to city planners--tacky hacks!"

But then a young man lost all of his income,

And neighbors found odd jobs that he could do

While he was mending; baby-sat his children,

And gave him lifts, and sometimes paid bills, too.

And then somebody's daughter's husband left her;

Of course she and the children moved right in,

Then everyone helped their grandmother spoil them,

And no one blamed them for their father's sin.

And then one of them couldn't make house payments.

A competiton started! "Live with me!"

The dear old ladies came almost to cat-fights

Before this mortal coil set that one free.

And so I saw the Terrace was not merely rich,

But really had "developed" something good,

And if the old dears bought more than they needed,

At least they lived in a nice neighborhood.

And then the median age of them reached ninety,

Prospective patients dropping off like flies,

And Mother said, "It's good to see some children

In the neighborhood again," with happy sighs.

And then, oh then, the blight of city planning

Rose from its pit and shook its ugly head;

"We must do something to attract more billionnaires

To keep our neighborhoods so 'nice'," they said.

Somewhere someone had found a batty billionnaire

Who wanted to improve plans that were great,

And in place of a shopping plaza, down-at-heel,

Put in a Tower to rent under Section Eight.

All mothers die too young, however old they are,

But I am glad mine never had to see

What that bleep billionnaire did to her neighborhood.

What does he care? Live right in town? Not he!

And now we see the addicts living on the street

Because, though "housed," they can't find their way home,

And piles and puddles of filth form around them

Until a fire hose goads them on to roam.

They don't go far. They can't. Best thing about them

Is that they can't go on this way for long.

Their lives already written off, they lie and wait

For the Dark Angel to right their last wrong.

The Towers have bedbugs, have tuberculosis,

And up the Terrace they climb, carrying those.

They've grown accustomed to sleeping behind stores;

The open air lures them away from Towers' woes.

I used to walk out there just for a visit.

It was a pleasant place to spend the day.

We'd stroll beside the river and go shopping.

Now "Keep me from that cesspit, Lord!" I pray.

The individual addicts, whores, and convicts

Cannot survive to blight the place for long.

The town already knows Blacks and Latinos

Have choices other than the slum's dead wrong.

But people think that filth, noise, and diseases

Are just to be expected from the poor.

How quickly they forget! The Terrace never

Attracted people born to wealth galore.

Before the prosperous, generous retirement

Most of them worked in the factories when young;

They thought "just being a housewife" was a luxury,

A fantasy not lived, to which they clung.

And, once retired, how much would be left over,

House payments, wages, club fees being paid?

The further up the hill, I think, the more of them

Depended on their children, still in trade!

Must widows pay for twelve rooms and a tennis club

To have a safe and friendly place to stroll?

Bosh! In my town they get that with a trailer house.

The sales pitch? Not even quaint, just stale and droll!

The way to build and keep a pleasant neighborhood

Is not to think of incomes and expense,

But of the things you want neighbors to do, or not,

And then make neighborhood rules that have some sense.

There can be rules about noise and untidiness,

About how late kids roam outdoors at night,

About which words a sober person does not say,

Excluding every kind of urban blight,

And people whose ground floors still hide a trailer's wheels

Will vote in such laws, and by them abide.

When people make their own rules and agree on them

They're strict indeed, on all who would reside.

But when they think that money's what buys niceness

Then desperation rises with expense,

So in "exclusive" neighborhoods in cities

The young design new drugs to sell for rents.

And when they think that money's what buys niceness

They ban the working parents with the whores,

And grandparents with medical expenses

Find themselves and possessions set out doors,

And who comes in? No tycoons, no landowners,

No poets, painters, nor weavers of rugs,

But money-grubbing slumlords and embezzlers,

And those who've made a pile in booze or drugs.

And neighborhoods expensive and exclusive

Are hardly safer at night than the slums,

And a child who had strayed from parents' loving care

Would, of the two, be safer among the bums.

Why give the poor excuses to be trashy?

Why give the rich excuses to be snobs?

Do people become more pleasant to live with

Merely because they're picked for better jobs?

No! Rules for neighborhoods' codes of behavior

Must be, and stricter's better, most will say,

But never mistake ill-got wealth for niceness.

The town near us did that; oh, how they pay!

Tortie Tuesday: Discontented Calico, a Rant, and Petfinder Pictures

Three discontented calico cats, a discontented gray-and-white cat, and a discontented black-and-white cat are on the porch. 

Skeptical Reader: "How do we know they're discontented?"

Serena: "Because I'm clawing at the door. The writer known as Priscilla King does not like it when I claw at the door. That is why I do it to show that I'm discontented."

PK: "And why are you discontented?"

Serena: "You need to ask? Where is our kibble?"

PK: "You've eaten all of the little bag the driver delivered last week. A certain person who has been delivering cat food was supposed to have been here on Sunday the twelfth of February, but has not been seen since then."

Serena: "Where is that person?"

PK: "Anyone's guess. The sixties are an awkward age in my family. I worry about person being in the hospital again. Lonely people in Tennessee and Kentucky, who are not already related to us, worry about person having enough parties and dates, and drive out to take person to places of entertainment where alcohol is served. There may be such a thing as 'responsible drinking' of alcohol for some people who do look as if all of their DNA came straight from Germany, but this can still be very dangerous when other people drink too much and start brawling, or think they're fit to drive cars. Or person might just have paid one of those big medical bills, paid one of those jacked-up electric bills that have been going out this winter, and not had enough left over to buy a sack of kibble. That could very easily be the case, even though person has a full-time job with seniority, because the behavior of the electric company this winter has really been...obsolescent."

Serena: "What does 'obsolescent' mean?"

PK: "It means that something is in the process of becoming useless now that something better is available. "

Serena: "The electric company sends out men in trucks. They never stop to deliver kibble. By 'something better' do you mean men in trucks that have kibble in them?"

Skeptical Reader: "Serena didn't say that. No cat could reason like that."

PK: "Serena obviously has her own way of thinking, which is feline rather than human, but I believe she does some of what we call reasoning. What have you been doing in these days since we've run out of kibble?"

Serena: "I've been eating human food, which is nice for a treat but doesn't satisfy us cats in the way our kibble does. So then I run into the office and kitchen, although I don't usually do that. I run inside and look around for dishes. I sniff at dishes and meow to tell you to put something in them."

PK: "You see. Of course, part of your discontentment has been with the human food itself. I've not been to the store that sells the kind of meat we can keep longer than a few days. You had the last meat in the house; after that I cooked vegan food, which is really for humans only."

Serena: "That's very selfish and impolite of you. You're supposed to share your food with me."

PK: "I know that. Let me finish. The electric company has been extremely obsolescent this winter. While we've had the sort of mild weather that uneducated people think is proof of 'global warming,' further north it's been a different kind of winter. Now, for reasons of their own, our electric company in the Point of Virginia, Appalachian Power or APCo, is still set up as a separate company from Potomac Electric Power or Pepco, in the Hump, and Dominion Electric Power, in the Swamp, or other companies further north, but they're all run by the same people as one huge conglomerate mess. When there are weather disasters they all send workers to help. And then they pay for it by sticking it to people in some place that didn't have a weather disaster. 

This winter, in December we had one real freeze. Everyone used a lot of electricity. Nobody complained about the bills being high in January. I paid my bill up so I could pay taxes in February. I had no taxable income last year but the Cat Sanctuary is taxable property.

Well, on the morning of the thirteenth, my lights went off. I couldn't believe it. They cut off electricity when bills are two months overdue or are over a hundred dollars. Mine was neither. Luckily, we've had almost all thaw and no winter, and last week, the February thaw weather really felt like spring. That might have been the pretext for gouging more money out of us to pay for repairs in New York State. I went boiling into town, and everyone else seemed to be boiling too. For one thing nobody used very much heat in January, but our bills were as high as they'd been for December, or higher.

That kind of little game is so-o-o-o obsolescent. Solar collectors are currently being built, as the company's web site will tell you, in such a way that "for safety" they'll be cut off if the company decides to disconnect your electricity, or if it goes off naturally because it rained or a squirrel jumped onto a cable somewhere, as happens about every week. That's why, although Mother hoped for great things from that old deep freezer that is still taking up space on the porch, the deep freezer didn't last long and neither did the food stored in it. It could not survive that kind of abuse. Everyone's electricity is constantly surging or shutting off, whatever they do. This does not have to be the case. Solar collectors could be storing electricity in batteries so that our lights never blinked again. 

If the company knows what's good for them they will not try to interfere with technological progress. They will be knocking on the doors of people in Scott County who have any roofs or pavements with a southwestern exposure, making bids to buy the right to use some of our sunshine. It will be our sunshine. It will be serving us first and them second. 

We need solar collectors to be built in such a way that, "for safety," individual home owners will be able to cut the company off if we don't like what the company are doing. Not only will the company be sending us monthly payments, but there's to be no more nonsense about nuclear reactors, or deep mining, strip mining, or any other un-ecological foolishness., There's to be no more spraying of power lines, and a lot better maintenance of the ground around them from the ground, weeding and pruning. And if people in the Swamp continue to complain about Dominion's abuses every few months, the way they have been doing, people in the Point and Hump of Virginia are likely to have something to say about that too.

We need legislation to the effect that, before the company can even mail out those letters threatening to cut off people's electricity, the month before that they have to mail out letters offering to install solar panels on people's property. 

Ultimately we need to get rid of the grid altogether, but there's no reason why the company can't be nice about it and stay in business for another ten or twenty years, while people in the cities work out how they are going to generate their own extra electricity. For the time being, we in the Point have something to sell, a way to stop people in the Hump thinking of us as a lot of useless welfare cheats."

Serena: "Were you going to get back to cat-related topics some time today?"

PK: "Well, there we are, back to cat-related topics!"

Serena: "Like kkkiiibbbbbbllleee?"

PK: "Oh, stop acting pitiful. You had human food again for breakfast this morning. You can always find a mouse or rabbit or something in the orchard, and the kibble situation will be resolved one way or another in a few more days. You have humans who can still work and buy kibble for you. Some cats don't even have homes."

Skeptical Reader: "Speaking of which, what happened to those other cats you were going to bring on board?"

PK: "There've been two litters of homeless kittens reported to me, so far this year, and although I did go out and meet one of the seven kittens and make preparations to bring him and his sisters to the Cat Sanctuary, actually all seven kittens were adopted before they could be brought here. That's typical of this part of the world. Most people are kind to animals, so most homeless animals find homes fast. A few people, most of whom probably live in Tennessee or Kentucky, are cruel to animals and just dump them out on streets, or outside houses where nobody is prepared to help them. So there are things people can do and should do to help animals, here, but none of those things fits into the Humane Society's narrow little agenda for the world. For one thing, people can just realize that, when you start looking around for people to foster kittens, that is a sign that your cats have had enough kittens and need to be neutered and spayed. The world needs some kittens but  it's very easy to reach a surplus point, especially if the mother cat has FIV, or the Manx gene, or some other problem."

Zipcode 10101: Pink from Hempstead 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/pink-58351806/ny/wantagh/town-of-hempstead-animal-shelter-ny359/

Isn't she a classic Siamese? Unfortunately Pink is a survivor of shelter trauma. She got into an official city shelter by way of an unapproved shelter or "hoarding" environment. She does take food and use a litter box but her main focus is on hiding from humans and other cats. If patiently left alone long enough she might someday reconnect with instincts to cuddle. Or not. 

Sometimes cats like Pink do better when another cat is the primary pet and soaks up all the human attention, so here is an alternate cat from Petfinder's New York page: 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/shakira-59861809/nj/old-bridge/happy-homes-animal-rescue-nj728/

This cute Q-cat is thought to be two years old, friendly and gentle, a bit lazy, and loving a good cuddle. She might satisfy the cat-cuddling needs of a person who also adopted Pink. The one thing on Shakira's web page that might put someone off is the price tag. 

Zipcode  20202: Blue from Herndon 

His web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/blue-58653529/va/herndon/fancy-cats-rescue-team-va145/

The most typy-looking Siamese cat on the D.C. Petfinder page is not thought to be "purebred" Siamese. He's ten years old, a mellow old fellow looking for a quiet comfortable home. He is described as quite quiet, for a Siamese, but good with other cats and children. -

Zipcode 30303: Penelope and Selene 

Her web  page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/selene-bonded-to-penelope-57347736/ga/rock-spring/freddies-felines-ga998/

They're not sisters, but they may be social cats. Both are young Siamese-mix cats. Penelope is closer to the show-quality Siamese look. Selene is mostly dark "blue" gray with that white tip on her tail. They met in a shelter, after Penelope had been separated from a real sister kitten, and became sister-surrogates who sleep curled up together, twine their tails together, and generally act like best buddies. As a package deal, already vetted, they should be worth a hundred dollars even if the shelter staff sound just a tiny bit like control freaks.