Web Log for 12.8.23 and 12.9.23

This post was open when the Internet connection on the screen porch died. I had seen the sky light up and wondered whether a transformer or phone tower had been struck by lightning, for a few seconds before the thunder crashed. No Internet since, though the lights and the little heater at my feet stayed on. I'm finishing it today, 12.13.23, with such links as I can find during my short online time.

Art 

John W. Maclean carves another stone...

https://catsofruatha.blogspot.com/2023/12/september-stone-on-shelf.html

Charity 

Yes, "conservative" people do charity. Often they do it more competently than governments or corporate foundations. Here's one that soliciting books, especially textbooks and useful nonfiction, for the kind of classes people missed the chance to take at public school. Board games, too.

https://ncrenegade.com/christmas-cards/

Economics 

For those who wanted serious, hard-hitting content here? This hits hard. Young people, keep your heads down and stay out of the fight that will break out whenever a baby-boomer dares to make this statement:

I OPT OUT OF SOCIAL SECURITY, MEDICARE, AND OBAMACARE. THOSE "BENEFITS" NEED TO BE PRESERVED FOR THOSE WHO ARE GENUINELY DISABLED, AND THE BEST WAY TO PROTECT THEM FOR THE DISABLED IS FOR EVERYONE WHO IS ABLE TO DO SOME SORT OF WORK TO CONTINUE TO DO SO, REGARDLESS OF AGE. 

If you make this statement before your fifty-fifth birthday AND the loss of both your parents, people will think you're merely trying to get out of paying your share toward the maintenance of your parents. Don't even think about it. Young people have their own social issues to debate among themselves. You can always support the work of us active senior citizens, quietly.

I, the writer known as Priscilla King, having aged by decades from age 40 in 2006 and thus been 50 for a good long time, renounce all claim on any age-related benefits. What I paid in was less than what my parents drew out. While my parents were drawing Social Security pensions and I was paying Social Security tax, I was glad to pay my share in and vote to keep the programs rolling. Now my parents are gone, and I say we should save all the benefits for the disabled. Age and duration of employment are valid reasons for changing jobs, not for pensions.

Because really, urging older people to become useless dependents on society is a little more polite, but basically the same thing, as urging us to commit suicide. 

https://www.freedomworks.org/the-united-states-of-debt-the-fiscal-future-of-america-is-increasingly-bleak/

Economy, Domestic 

Although I don't sew, I appreciate this poem acknowledging making one's own clothes as "an act of self-care." Note specifically that the writer mentions her handmade dress being of higher quality than the "fashions" in the shops--how many cheap frocks lack pockets!

https://sunrarainz.wordpress.com/2023/12/08/the-zen-of-dressmaking-ii-2/

Etiquette 

Or "Times When I Don't Miss Washington"...I only just got to the flapping and squawking about Melania Trump wearing a gray tweed coat to Mrs. Carter's funeral.

It's been pointed out that Mrs. Carter wore gray rather than black to President Nixon's funeral, and Mrs. Clinton wore gray rather than black to Mrs. Bush's funeral. What is this? A new tradition--people who can certainly afford a black coat, or jacket or suit or dress, wear gray instead of black to the funerals of those who disagreed with them while living?

https://twitter.com/simonateba/status/1729933097821405531?

When ordinary people wear whatever plain, subdued clothes they have, to a funeral, there is no reason to flap and squawk about it. A student might have been planning to get through a Washington winter with only a school jacket, and might have to borrow someone else's trench coat to wear to a midwinter funeral. A teenager might have only one black skirt, which happened to be slit up above the knee. A car-free aunt who hadn't arranged transportation back from a laundromat, and didn't have a good laundry barter going, might have to wear a trench coat over an old faded-to-gray dress. 

However, people who can afford to have a clean black suit or dress should keep it ready to wear to a funeral, and if they don't want to make room in their walk-in closets for a black overcoat because black is not their color, they could go to a funeral in only the black suit or dress...as Laura Bush did at Mrs. Carter's funeral. 

This web site officially excuses Melania Trump on the grounds that, as a foreign fashion model, she was probably told that it was all right for her to wear light gray to funerals...but the position of this web site is that The Nephews should all have some good-quality, plain, untrimmed, unslit, classic-cut black things to wear whenever a funeral occurs. Even if you're working for someone who insists you attend the funeral of Klaus Schwab. That might be an occasion for rejoicing, but youall are old enough to think of whatever relatives he may have and look funereal.

This web site's official comment on the photos of the First Ladies at funerals, provided for comparison at the link above: They are all fine-looking women, beautifully preserved. The dress Mrs. Obama wore at Mrs. Bush's funeral was unfortunate, but it's better to wear a funereal black dress or suit that fails to fit or flatter than to wear something that is not funereal to a funeral. The rule is that it's about showing respect to the deceased and grieving relatives, NOT about looking good. If, as so often happens to Melania Trump, you look much better than the mother or widow of the deceased ever did, and on taking it out of the closet for the first time this year you realize that your funereal outfit hangs on you in the way that dress did on Mrs. Obama, then wearing it anyway would be not only proper but charitable.

Land, Not For Sale 

From cantosyoraciones.blogspot.com: 

Basically Spanish for "These Colors Don't Run."

Music 

With very few exceptions I like almost everything Mozart ever wrote. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YT_63UntRJE

Then there's this old Aaron Copland chestnut...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcND9dlwpC4

I think what catches my attention about this music video is the picture. My browser tends to show a picture instead of playing a video. And the picture that goes one looks sad--grey twilight, candles not really lighting up the big hallway, dusty floor...And that hallway reminds me of one in the home of some people some of The Nephews used to know. And what you need to know about those dear people is that they've gone south to retire and left the big house to their children...but you remember how a big hallway like that can be made cheerful. On the young woman's right there should be the red room, in December an all-out Victorian Christmas red room, for guests to sit or dine in, and behind her the bright warm kitchen, dining room, and family sitting room.. Beyond a good cleaning, and waiting for more cheerful-looking light, what that hall most needs is a couple of big old friendly dogs. Remember?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9L3aX4qnDuk

Bad songs. Play these when you want people to go home.

https://pjmedia.com/chris-queen/2023/12/12/10-modern-christmas-recordings-to-avoid-this-year-and-every-year

Political Warning 

Dire, and not really news to regular readers. Share it with people to whom it's still news.

https://rumble.com/v40yg5g-briefing-the-fundamental-transformation-of-the-w.h.o.-from-health-advisor-t.html

Product Warning (Outrage!)

So in the Eastern States we think of Turkey Hill ice cream as "Your daily requirement of Lancaster County," right? Fresh cream from Amish and Mennonite farm cows! So I bought some Turkey Hill ice cream recently. "Moose Tracks" fudge ripple flavor. I opened the box, and instead of a wonderful fudge and cream smell, a nasty sweetish chemical odor wafted out. Took a bite, and instead of tasting like vanilla cream, the vanilla cream layer had a weird jelloid consistency and chemical flavor. Nasty, nasty stuff. What to do? I didn't want to eat it. I couldn't give it to the cats. I actually put it in the trash barrel and kept a fire going until it was gone!

Have you ever tried burning ice cream, Gentle Readers? Well, believe it or not, bogus ice cream with propylene glycol in it will burn.

I had tasted something like this before. When? When I'd tried picking the coconut icing off a yellow cake with coconut icing someone had donated to the cats. I figured the cats can eat the wheat-based cake, I can eat buttercream icing, and now that coconut's not being dried out with glyphosate I love coconut! But the icing was not buttercream. It was nasty jelloid stuff, and upon checking the label I realized it was jelled with PROPYLENE GLYCOL. Antifreeze. What you mix with honey if you want to rid your woodlot of bears! What you keep out of the house if you don't want your pets or children to die by misadventure, because it does taste sweet, in a horrible chemical way. 

Well, the cake was a Food Lion special and we all know Food Lion's products are rarely fit for human consumption and not always accepted by the cats, but...Long story short. Yes. Turkey Hill sold out to ConAgra and now Turkey Hill ice cream contains propylene glycol too.

Quality standards for a lot of foods are slipping these days. I notice each batch of Zatarain's rice getting less of its flavor from dried veg and more from yeast and that weaselly word "spices," which usually means monosodium glutamate. I don't like Zatarain's rice the way I used to do. Ben's is usually glyphosate-free and easy to cook over a candle, since it's only half dried, but it's full of chemicals other than the added vitamins. I don't like Ben's rice so much, either. Back to plain Success Rice with a can of veg I go. I like the spices in the premixed rice, but if they're going to be monosodium glutamate and other chemicals instead of paprika, turmeric, rosemary, a whiff of sage and half a saffron thread per box, I can do without those unspecified "spices." 

In the 1980s label readers motivated food packers to minimize their use of chemical additives other than salt or sugar. But now they're slipping back. We need to read labels and avoid buying products that contain ingredients that are not food.

Especially when they are THE SPECIFIC POISON YOU SET OUT FOR LARGE NUISANCE ANIMALS! 

https://www.turkeyhill.com/frozen/ice-cream/ice-cream/moose-tracks

Poems 

There's truth in the hyperbole here. Plants and trees show the same pre-conscious, merely electrical reactions to stimuli, including our presence and emotional moods, that animals do. When that sort of electrical reaction takes place in our bodies, we feel it! And, of course, if you're concerned about local warming, the first thing you do is plant more trees, open more green space, break up more pavement--get rid of anything non-essential that makes the city hotter, and bring in more of what makes it less hot...

https://stardreamingwithsherrybluesky.blogspot.com/2023/12/the-tongues-of-falling-trees.html

Petfinder Cat Post

Short one, as promised. This week's Petfinder post is a hodgepodge of the cutest cat picture, of any type, on the first page of each of the big Petfinder pages we visit...

Zipcode 10101: Pippen from New York City 

https://www.petfinder.com/cat/pippen-59382787/ny/new-york/frankies-fund-for-feline-care-and-rescue-ny1043/

He's thirteen years old and needs daily medication, but he's said to be a very lovable, friendly old furball. It's the season of giving. Why not give Pippen a good home?

Zipcode 20202: Haze from DC 

https://www.petfinder.com/cat/haze-70022493/dc/washington/lucky-dog-animal-rescue-dc20/

Beyond that perfect Torbie face he has a gorgeously mottled, blotched Torbie coat. He's only about half grown; at the time of posing he weighed less than 5 pounds, which I suspect is out of date by now. He will probably need a buddy to play with. The shelter doesn't say he's bonded with one, but does say there's a discount if you adopt another cat who's more than 7 months old along with him.

Zipcode 30303: Rad Rachel from Atlanta 

https://www.petfinder.com/cat/rad-rachel-65719018/ga/atlanta/fulton-county-animal-services-ga217/

She likes it! She'll use it! Somehow this photo just reminded me of Graybelle, who, as a half-grown, oversized Manx-Persian kitten, came out from under the bed to find one of those boxes waiting for her, gingerly eased her long fluffy body into it, and, by way of telling me there wasn't room for her to squat comfortably, made a puddle right over the side. I never blamed Graybelle for that. Anyway, the point here is that Rad Rachel will not do that to you. She is probably at least close to being as long and tall as she ever will be, and that's not too big for a litter box. She is languishing in the county shelter and would probably appreciate any home of her own at all. They don't know whether she'd be happier with a cat companion or without one, nor whether she'd rather cuddle or play a game. 

Please, those who can...it's about time to check on the other animals whose photos have been picked so we can report their adoption rates. I don't ask you to share my posts to boost my page view numbers, as many writers do these days. I do ask you to share the animal pictures to boost the adoption numbers. And yes, of course, if you don't live near the zipcodes 10101, 20202, or 30303, in the rest of the US you can always go back to the main cat or dog page and type in your own zipcode...I won't know which animal you picked, unless you choose to put a link in the comment section, but the animals will know. 

They will wish you a Purry Christmas and a Yappy New Year!

Gifts for People Who Are Hard to Shop For

HAH! Did people think I wasn't going to squeeze this post in? Here is the final post for the Long and Short Reviews blog challenge: Gifts for People Who Are Hard to Shop For. 

First of all, the other participants in this link-up have some very nice ideas, for those of you whose friends do want to receive presents but are just hard to shop for. "It's the thought that counts" and their homes are stuffed with stuff, so, maybe the gift of time or tutoring? Maybe a reflection of your thought, like a poem? Maybe something you know the person will use, even if the person is a well-known tightwad who only ever buys things like groceries and underwear? Giftcards from the discount grocery and department stores those people favor can look jolly festive.

Now a thought for the people who are really just about impossible to please, because the bottom line is that we don't get into the whole Christmas present thing at all. Well, maybe if we're in desperate financial straits Christmas can be an excuse to slip us a $20 or $100 bill, but it still feels sort of icky that we don't have one for you. 

Of course, for those of us who make things, you can always slip us the same amount of money and clean the ickiness off it by ordering something. For instance, you can send this web site payment for a blog post. Since the post will appear after Christmas there's no theological controversy about it, and since you're buying something there's no stench of toxic "charity" about the fact that I can't afford to spend money on you and will have to write something for you instead.

 

For other people who are hard to shop for, a nice thought is Lydia Schoch's suggestion to shop with them and ask them what they'd like to get. (But please resist the urge to "upgrade"...when people don't ask for the most expensive thing, there may be a reason for it. Do not try to substitute heavy leather shoes for the flimsy-looking canvas ones that don't blister someone's odd-shaped feet. Do not buy the larger size that won't fit into the space where the small size could just be squeezed into someone's small apartment.)

Then there are the people who genuinely hate "gift items" like ornaments (they don't decorate), handkerchiefs (they use tissues), neckties (they're retired), or scented soap (they're allergic to most of it and, in any case, have a box full from previous holidays). If you happen to hit on something they will actually use, they'll be pleased. 

Then there's a phenomenon every knitter knows well: There are people who don't stop with the hints about what we might knit next. They like sweaters, for themselves, which is nice, and for their children, which is not so nice, as children are more active and form a prejudice against sweaters that adults literally force upon them. "But it looks adorable! Aren't you going to say 'thank you' now," coos the adult. 

"Nooo!" screams the tot. "No fwedder! I haaaate fwedders! I'm burnin' up aweady!" 

And then there are the people who had that experience as children. A lot of them happen to be single young men. Here you learned to knit just so you could knit the perfect sweater to hang on those perfect manly shoulders. And he did thank you, even if it didn't come out quite the way you hoped it would, when finished. And then the whole relationship just sort of...

I knitted sweaters for single men. Some of them modelled those sweaters with pride. (A trick used to be to start them out at Stitches Fair, where modelling sweaters used to give the male minority the rock star experience of having women swarm up around them and fondle their sleeves.) One of them even married me. What is the secret? Part of it is to remember that US guy culture demands that men wear boring, uniform-type clothes that fit just right. Another part is to practice on your elders first and, although you can always give friends sweaters "in exchange for modelling," make sure your friends have seen your sweaters in shop windows, with alarming price tags on them. 

The third part, most important of all, is to remember that a lot of active young people just plain hate sweaters. Even on Ugly Holiday Sweater Day. Even if they own a fantastically faded, formerly beaded sweater dripping with unravelling embroidery, and have a good chance of winning the office Ugly Sweater Contest prize--the minute they've posed in it, off it goes. If this is going to change, it will be when they have to take blood pressure medication, which as a good friend you hope never happens. Don't bother trying to sell sweaters to anti-sweater people. If you must knit for them, knit holiday-color-theme drink coasters.

Finally, about the people who have grudgingly accepted Christmas carols or red and green sweaters as part of a useful "season of giving" but still don't think it's Christian to mix the birth of Christ up with the winter solstice...A really nice gift for those people is to accept that they really mean it. You can always exchange birthday presents, or celebrate the anniversary of the season when you met.

Status Update: Internet Zapped

Late Saturday night, about midnight, my neighborhood caught the edge of an out-of-season thunderstorm.

Most of the storm activity seemed to be in downtown Gate City, but one flash of lightning, a few seconds ahead of the crash of thunder, seemed to have struck something that went up with a bright light like a fried circuit box somewhere...and ever since then, computers plugged in on the screen porch where I work have displayed the message "Unplug your router, turn it off for 10 seconds, and try again." The router doesn't have an external on-off switch; it was installed by the company, with wires connecting one enclosed box to another. I don't want to void any warranties so I've not tried prying into the boxes. I tried unplugging the router. That didn't work. I tried plugging it into a different outlet. That didn't work. Right. Time to yelp for the company's notoriously lackadaisical help. Who knows when they will get around to finding out whether the router can be reset.

Meanwhile, although a sponsor is generously paying for an Internet connection to keep this web site displaying fresh content daily, that sponsor is not getting what person is paying for.

I came into town to work from McDonald's. I just caught a look at my face in their mirror. I look at least thirty years "older" than I did on Monday. Same person, same age; what changed was that the Professional Bad Neighbor sprayed the poison that primarily affects my sinuses on Tuesday afternoon. What he thought he was spraying for, other than spite, I have no idea--the ice thawed enough in the sun that the cats could lick up some clean rain water on Tuesday, before the spraying, but the ice in their dishes never completely melted. Nothing was flying; nothing was sprouting. This fool is visibly harming himself, and if he has any relatives who care whether he lives or dies, it is time they removed all keys to motor vehicles and gun cabinets from any place he can reach. 

Yes, I'm sure he is a difficult patient. Yes, all older people in my family are incredibly difficult patients from the point of view of White Nurses From Town, such that visiting nurses refused to visit some of them, because they're not senile and refuse to lie down and die on the schedule that White Patients From Town would do. Keeping keys away from them may mean keeping the keys on your person. For all of my other elders, including the one who had atherosclerosis and picked fights with other shoppers in stores, I have always recommended empathy and respect and, if absolutely necessary, saying "Someone else should do that with you" when they wanted to take long road trips or herd cattle. Their intentions were not evil. The Bad Neighbor is the sort of patient for whom straitjackets and ankle straps were invented. Use them. 

If he whines that he's barely even seventy yet and we didn't let other elders be tied down or locked in when they were over ninety, youall will just have to tell the patriarch (God help you!) of your family that he is sicker than any of them ever was, and it is his own miserable fault, and if he has any consciousness of reality left he should use it on repenting and making material compensation for what he has done with his life. Do not allow him to continue poisoning himself and others. Michael J. Fox has only barely reached early retirement age, and he's disabled, because of poisonous "pesticide" spraying...and he didn't even do it.

I like that picture today. Day before yesterday I saw myself in the mirror and looked gaunt and craggy and splendidly preserved. Today I saw myself in the mirror, and yes, that little string of hair flopping down over the wrinkled face, the glassy eyes, the baggy eyelids...well, I'm not looking good, but at least I'm looking bad in the same way a dang fine-looking movie star is! I wonder how specifically that look reflects paraquat poisoning?

Anyway I may look as if I had a bad head cold, but I don't. I know because I could feel the inflammation starting to subside and the pace of dripping slackening, even before entering McDonald's. I caught a lift out with the odd jobs man, and relief started about a mile down the highway. This sinus-ravaged face got me my very first senior discount, and nobody even asked for proof of my age...I don't actually like the idea of senior discounts. I think they should put the price of things from the one-dollar menu back to a dollar for people who are under 50 and not ill, many of whom I could easily work into the ground today. What I paid was the proper price other people should be paying too. But what I have is massive hayfever. It's not contagious. It's not any more fun than it was when I was a child--I had the exact same reaction at age two.

I am still, as you are, a walking sample of staph and strep and mono and many other virus and bacteria that don't cause symptoms for healthy adult humans. If you are especially vulnerable, or have contact with people who are (as cashiers have), do not stand even within handshaking distance from me. We never needed to lock anything down on account of puny little coronavirus; we did need to change our ideas of etiquette away from chumminess and back toward maintaining a good healthy distance.

I've not been able to read any e-books since Saturday, because I had stored them "in the cloud" and not saved them to disk, and I'm not sure whether they can even be saved to disk. I came into town to try. If successful I'll be able to post reviews of the other sweet Christmas romances and cozy Christmas mysteries before Christmas day...there should be a Petfinder post, later today, but it will be short.

New Book Review: Love in Time for Christmas

Title: Love in Time for Christmas 

Author: Katie O'Connor

Date: 2023

Publisher: Snarky Heart

Quote: "With only four days until Christmas, there was something in the air that felt magical."

 And so it was. Leaping back through the slush to avoid one of those people who try to drive in snow, Trudy spills her coffee on a man who just happens to be her ex-boyfriend. He dumped her, but he's sorry and wants to come back. Will his gift of gab win her over? Will she make another commitment to him? 

This is the basic wish-fulfillment dream of every dump-ee on Earth. It might be healthier to dwell on making the dumper suffer rather than dream of reconciliation, but this is the version for dump-ees who still believe reconciliation is possible. Sometimes it is; sometimes lovers quarrel for no discernible reason except the pleasure of making up. Trudy and Maxim sound as if their problem was more substantial than that, but who knows? Good for some delicious fantasies, anyway. The key is to read through to the end. This reconciliation was brought to you by Santa Claus, and at the end of the book he disappears. 

Butterfly of the Week: Green Patch

Battus laodamas gets its Latin name from two minor characters in ancient literature, and its English and Spanish names from its color. There are different subspecies of B. laodamas. Some look like a solid green patch--black or dark brown in a dim light, they look iridescent green in the sun--and some have smaller patches of brighter or lighter green. All can fairly be described as Green Patch, or parche verde. 

Who was Laodamas and why was a butterfly named after him? Ancient Greek literature mentions five men called Laodamas, each one a minor character in a different story. The reason why a butterfly was named after him is probably that it was traditional to name Swallowtails after characters in ancient literature, and other names were taken. 

In addition to the genus Battus having been sorted out of the genus Papilio, laodamas has also been called chrysodamas, chromealus, or procasi. Two of those names call attention to the way the lighter spots on the underside of the greenish wings can often be bright golden yellow. They can also be red, white, or pale green. Some call it "yellow-marked" in English, too. But the marks aren't always yellow. Martin Reid opens a lovely photo essay with a photo of a Green Patch that looks black-and-white in indirect light: 

http://www.martinreid.com/Butterfly%20website/Mex05-swallowtails.html

"No, we're not closely related to the Longwings...why d'you ask?" Photo by Emimarsilli45, documenting that not only do some Battus swallowtails lack "swallowtails," some have extremely long wings, giving them more of the body shape of a different butterfly "family" altogether.

ButterfliesOfAmerica has pages for the four subspecies that are generally recognized. Basically, in the West Mexican subspecies iopas the patch of lighter color on the upper side of the hind wings forms a broad stripe across the wings when the butterfly spreads them in flight, in the East Mexican and Central American subspecies copanae they form more of a broken ring, in the south-Central American subspecies rhipidius they form two almost eye-shaped spots, and in the nominate subspecies laodamas, found in Colombia, they curve down from a bar across the front of the hind wings...except that, in each subspecies some individuals' markings are close to fitting the descriptions of each of the other subspecies', and some individuals don't show these markings at all. 

The species was first named and described by C. and R. Felder in 1859, in German. By 1906, when more was known, Walter Rothschild was able to describe the subspecies here, noting at that time nothing at all was known about the early stages or life cycle. Rothschild favored the name procas over iopas, though he lists both names for the same subspecies. Some sources still call this subspecies procas today.

https://archive.org/details/novitateszoologi13lond/page/532/mode/1up?view=theater

When the green shows, it's often subtle, an effect of only some light. Jorgevargasramirez donated to INaturalist a six-photo series showing how the color of the individual licking his hand changed at different angles to the light. He met his little friend in August, he says. What he did to make his hand  so appealing to a butterfly of normally clean habits, he does not say. 

Some male Swallowtails do like the mineral salts in human sweat. They don't usually make themselves pests about it, but if you sit still on a hot day, perspiring freely, they'll perch on you and slurp up salty flavor. Females usually aren't attracted to salt tastes. They prefer to sip flower nectar or fruit juice and absorb the salt they need through contact with their mates. Sometimes one does see an unmated female Swallowtail taking a savory drink from a puddle--a sad sight, indicating that the local population may be endangered. Or the lonely female may have been separated from her community, as it might have been by a storm or a child who wanted to keep her as a pet, and be stranded in a place where her species has no population.

It seems to be rare for a photographer to catch a living laodamas at the moment when sunshine on those iridescent wings really makes the colors pop...

Sierraeco documents that it is the light. (Sierraeco took four photos of this butterfly; he was completely male, and in equally indirect light his wings matched.) Well done!

This species is known widely but not well. Even Jeffrey Glassberg's Swift Guide to the Butterflies of Mexico and Central America has nothing to say about it beyond a few pictures showing how to tell it from other Battus--it doesn't have as many red spots around the edge of the underside of the hind wing as ingenuus has. On the wing it looks pretty similar to other Battus, actually, which may be why so little is known about it. 

It is found in Mexico, Central America, and the northern part of South America, where it's easily recognized but not common. Images of it are sometimes sold as souvenirs. So, unfortunately, are dead bodies, for which regular readers know by now we should never pay. 

It's not found in the African nation of Sao Tome e Principe, but that country has celebrated it with a painting on a postage stamp:

It belongs to the swallowtail family even though, like other South American Battus species, it does not have the "swallow tails" on its hind wings. Mexican sources seem to emphasize that the family are de cola de golondrina although these butterflies actually have no feature resembling the tail of the golondrina, or swallow bird. 

The average wingspread is about three and a half inches. Although human observers don't mention noticing its scent, males' hind wings show scent folds, little wrinkles of scaleless skin that release their distinctive odor as they fly. To one another they probably smell good. 

Photo by Alfredo Dorantes Euan.

Caterpillars eat the leaves of vines in the genus (you'll never guess!) Aristolochia. Mother butterflies lay eggs on the undersides of Aristolochia vines:

Photo by Jorgevargasramirez, who found this yellow-marked lovely laying eggs on the last day of August. 

The eggs are a bright warning yellow color, and the butterfly doesn't have to be especially careful  to place each egg on a separate leaf. 

Photo by D_B, who found this butterfly laying her eggs in October.. 

The caterpillars aren't very colorful. Note that, although this photo by Crake shows the light reflecting on the back of the caterpillar's head, its "helmet" only looks like the bright dark eyes of a larger animal that might eat birds. The working eyes are closer to the mouth, seldom seen by humans.

By human standards all caterpillars are extremely nearsighted, enough to be classified as "legally blind." They show little evidence of an ability to see anything a yard away from their heads and almost no indication that they see anything ten feet away. This is one of many things that change when they become butterflies; adult butterflies seem to have excellent vision.

Adult butterflies pollinate flowers. Two genera they are known to like are Bauhinia and Caesalpinia. 

Local Christian Book Review: A Second Chance for Sugarplums

Title: A Second Chance for Sugarplums 

Author: Emily Dana Botrous

Date: 2019

Quote: "She was coming home to get away from one man, not to get mixed up with another."

But when one is young and cute it takes considerable determination to keep young men from getting themselves mixed up with one's life. No sooner does Alexandria decide to leave the jerk who's lived with her long enough to be sure and is still refusing to have the wedding already, than her high school sweetheart, the only other man she's ever loved, plops into the seat next to hers on the plane back to the Tri-Cities Regional Airport...

Tri-Cities? Can it be? YES! It can be; it is! This small town romance is about a fictional town like the ones in my corner of Virginia. Probably most like Clintwood, because it's called Claywood. 

And oh, how it rings true...even and especially the perception that common-law marriage, the commitment that (in my opinion) makes a wedding into a real marriage, is a big bad sin. Allie let herself be guilt-tripped into living with her boyfriend in the big city and probably alienated him by feeling guilty about doing that. 

I just know that some reader is going to say "Yes, but she suffers and repents! If you'd only repented, perhaps God would have blessed you!" If a critical number of local lurkers really want to read my personal testimony on that subject, that can be arranged. I wrote the first draft of this review with my personal testimony in it, then decided most readers just wanted to know about the book. 

Back to the book, then. Yes, its delightful local atmosphere features a realistically stubborn, disagreeable old relative. Alexandria's own relatives love her and are glad to have her back, but paying jobs are scarce, and the one Alexandria finds sets her up as a personal assistant to the very same prospective mother-in-law whose hostility drove her off to Miami in the first place. Because this is a romance, the mother-in-law is much less disagreeable than her type normally are in real life, but I'll let that pass. The image of a yuppie bank employee "temporarily" helping a geriatric patient get on and off the toilet is so, so true to local life. 

Because they're only 24 and 25 years old, Alexandria and her high school boyfriend are still single and, if anything, more attractive to each other than ever. They're still very active in the local church, where her father preaches. Her future mother-in-law is a renowned cook; Alexandria is a mediocre one, but that comes to please the older lady. But the boyfriend's aunt who used to make oldfashioned sugarplums at Christmas is gone. Nobody else cared for sugarplums, or learned how to make them. Can Alexandria and his aunt's daughter follow the old recipe and make sugarplums like the aunt's?

I thoroughly enjoyed this romance. The author states clearly that the characters are fiction, and they are. Not only are their identities fictional; their good fortune, and the niceness that makes them deserve it, are peculiar to characters in romance fiction. At the same time their moral sense, their determined character, even the expressions they only occasionally use, are so utterly typical of the Blue Ridge Mountains that, for me at least, the atmosphere in this book more than makes up for its being merely a romance. For a genre that's expected to consist of predictable, even cliche, fiction this book contains a remarkably high proportion of freshly observed, timely, insightful truth. 

Link Log for 12.7.23

and

Animals 

The videographer could have spent more time getting more relevant footage of these parrots, but he does show baby green parrots growing up and learning their names from their parents. Parrot squeaks and squawks sound like a lot of noise to humans at first, but, like domestic animals, parrots make a variety of noises and use them to form a simple language that includes an individual parrot's signature noise, which other parrots repeat and use as that parrot's name. Thanks to Elizabeth Barrette for the link..

https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2014/04/15/300136332/can-it-be-parrots-name-their-children-and-those-names-like-ours-stick-for-life

Holidays

Happy Hanukah to all who observe it. This web site is featuring frivolous Christmas fiction this year because it usually doesn't and because Booktober Blitz sent us virtual crates full of Christmas stories, but we've not forgotten those who observe the rest of the winter holidays. This web site will mention the obscure saints' days, product celebration days, and Internet-generated "there ought to be" days if youall mention serious plans to celebrate them. 

Now a question for European readers. Zwart Piet, Black Pete, the given name of the Krampus who travels with St Nicholas and hands out the lumps of coal to those who have not behaved well during the year. He's European, isn't he? Black in the sense of constantly handling coal? I can picture "Black" immigrants to Europe wanting to play his part in pageants, but I've heard distressing reports that the role is being shoved upon them, in a hostile "You're the wrong type to play Santa!" sort of way. 

Fact  Nicholas lived in Turkey and spoke Greek. Nobody knows what he looked like. He's not one of the saints whose African look was the first thing people noticed about them, like Benedetto the Moor, but where he lived a really white White look would have been conspicuous, too. 

Google says this is the oldest known image of St. Nicholas of Myra. It was painted a few hundred years after his lifetime, then displayed in a church where people burned candles. It is hard to be sure, now, what color the painting originally was, but this is what it looks like now.

This thirteenth century artist thought Nicholas might have been White.

This fifteenth century artist thought otherwise.

Quite a few older pictures of Nicholas color his skin dark (and some of his clothing light enough that we can tell he's not been "blackened" by candle smoke alone). While the artists had never seen Nicholas and probably were using their imagination to interpret an oral tradition, at least we know that tradition is not being violated when Black men dress up as Santa Claus.

What we do know for sure is that Bishop Nicholas of Myra was loved by those who knew him, apparently most of all for his habit of giving gifts in secret. There are detailed, probably reliable contemporary descriptions of some of the saints; we know that Paul the Apostle was short, with red hair that fell out on top and sore, squinty, watery blue eyes, and Jeanne d'Arc was skinny and blonde. But about all we know about Nicholas is that he had a long active life and must have been old at the end of his career. And he gave enough anonymous presents to enough people that it became traditional to say any gift received toward the end of the year might have come from him.

He did not have a wife. Some medieval churches allowed priests to be married. Not his. But when American women want to dress up as Santa Claus, we have a late tradition that married Santa Claus to a lady whose name was Mary Christmas before she became Mrs. Claus. This, like the Zwart Piet tradition, is not historical, but it doesn't pretend to be.

Zazzle 

Here's the link for the State Postcards, of which there are now four. 

https://www.zazzle.com/collections/save_the_butterflies_postcards-119012566686365777

For some States nobody else seems to have thought of putting a butterfly on the postcard. When we think of Alaska we don't think of butterflies, although butterflies flutter around Anchorage in summer. For some States, like California, there are lots of other butterfly designs. Here's a monarch picture that I wish were mine, or were free stock!

https://www.zazzle.com/migrating_monarch_butterflies_cling_to_leaves_postcard-239060648772307497

 

Book Review: Tara and Her Grumpy Second Chance

Title: Tara and Her Grumpy Second Chance 

Author: K.C. Kirkland (from Texas!)

Date: 2023

Publisher: K.C. Kirkland

Quote: "I was wondering if you would cater my wedding reception."

Tara, a dignified widow with grown-and-gone children, liked Timmy in high school, but they drifted apart after graduation. Both of them married other people. Both of those people have died, and when Timmy moves back to town he opens a business in direct competition with Tara's. Both Tara and Timmy feel a bit grumpy toward each other. But when Timmy's niece insists that they collaborate on her wedding reception, the scheming brat has an agenda that goes beyond her wedding. When she throws her bouquet and her bridegroom throws her garter, they know where to aim...

I enjoyed this wholesome small-town romance between the baker and the caterer. One thing not to love is that they have food fights--plural; I was brought up in the belief that it's a sin to waste good food. Apart from that, their approach-avoidance drama is believable and their small town is a pleasant place to visit. If you like a wholesome romance where the older couple's thoughts get more attention than the young couple's passions, you'll enjoy Tara and Timmy in spite of their moments of grumpiness. Most of the time they're a fun couple.

Two living writers use the name "K.C. Kirkland" so it's important to clarify, when looking for this one's books on Amazon, that this is the one from Texas.  

Ode to Frivolous Fiction

This week's prompt at Poets & Storytellers United : Write a poem that include the title of a season-themed book you're reading. 

It is good to see that other people are reading Booktober Blitz books as fast as they can, too.

Embedded in the verse below is the name of my favorite holiday romance, so far. The review is forthcoming--Sunday, the day after tomorrow, in fact. Along with the obligatory lovers' quarrels the author has managed to work in some fresh, respectful, and dead-on-target social commentary about my part of the world. I like a book with a good sense of the author's topophilia. Usually the places other writers love are places where I've never gone and will probably never go. This time the author's invented a fictional town that has to be imagined as just a half-hour's drive away from mine. Names are blurred but the place the author loves is, unmistakably, the place I love. How could I resist Emily Dana Botrous' Second Chance at Sugarplums!

And have I gone soft in the head?

I hear some readers' angry taunt.

With celiacs being murdered, dead,

Is escape reading all I want?

What of our war on glyphosate?

What dispatch from the battlefield?

Those buck moths people love or hate,

What knowledge of them's been revealed?

The moths are fluttering right along,

Be assured, sponsors of the blog.

When glyphosate news comes along

It's sure to be in a link log.

Meanwhile, are joys and comforts dead?

Life's cookies nibbled down to crumbs?

For couples who still quarrel and wed

A second chance at sugarplums

In real life, as in frivolous tales,

Awaots those who will feed their need

With reason's work, not passion's wails,

As in the better books we read;

Some news is bad, some news is good.

Relief from constant, needless pain

Is not being reached fast as it should.

Time's wrapped in winter wind and rain.

Yet still young people seek a mate;

Old people hope a grandchild comes;

Whatever else may lie in wait,

There's still some chance of sugarplums.

Web Log for 12.6.23

the

Animals 

The hedgehog or urchin...not usually celebrated in poetry, but isn't this one cute enough to deserve to be?

https://writinginnorthnorfolk.com/2023/11/28/hibernation/

And a Tortie Face ornament, endorsed by Mudpie:

That didn't paste right. The one I wanted to highlight was the recognizable Tortie face at the top right. Visit Mudpie to see closer photos and links to buy the things, if you want them.

https://www.mochasmysteriesmeows.com/2023/12/2023-holiday-gift-guide-for-tortie.html

Three-colored cats' faces are as individual as fingerprints so, if you want a souvenir of your Tortie or your friend's, please feel free to upload that particular photo into Zazzle where I have the Tortie Face Collection. It's a small collection because I imagine yourall's interest in generic Tortie faces is small. The idea is to paste in images of the cat or cats you want to commemorate. Zazzle still pays me for the idea if you use my link to upload a photo of your cat.

https://www.zazzle.com/collections/119970582716651775

Comedy 

Long stand-up performance. Trigger warnings: jokes about body parts, medical conditions, blood, childbirth, kidney stones, rednecks, hunters, hunting, p.c. bigots, the ghost of Hank Williams, misogynists claiming to be transgender, and the thorny question of whether non-indigenous lifelong residents of Hawaii can ever be considered Hawaiians with tangential reference to the sub-issue of whether they greet visitors with leis. Apparently the comic and his family went to Hawaii and never got lei'd. Sad. I laughed.

https://ncrenegade.com/country-boy-will-survive/

Philosophical Rant for the Shopping Season

There's nothing wrong with a little occasional outburst of "giving without expecting even thanks" if it's genuine--you want to clear out the shelf before the groceries reach their sell-by dates, so you pay somebody to cook the overstocked food and serve it as a free "community" dinner, e.g. But in real life, "giving without expecting anything in return" usually has much nastier, stickier, stinkier strings attached than a good honest exchange ("Your aunt sent you a box of presents, so you should write her a nice letter"). People who really want to practice altruism, if they think there's anything good about altruism, need to make sure they neither see nor are seen by the people to whom they give their gifts. 

Actually I think it would be good for the United States, at least, if we reclaimed the status of fair traders instead of trying to hog all the pleasure of "being the giver," like the fop dropping his coin into the beggar's hand, expecting to be seen, in the picture at the link below. We need to humble ourselves and admit that we do have expectations. And when we try to delude ourselves that we are practicing altruism, those expectations are usually unrealistic, symptoms of a diseased ego. 

"I'll thrust this old unwanted coat on someone who has less--who already has a coat, who is at this moment sitting comfortably in a warm cafe, and who, although small, is still at least three sizes too big for the coat--and, as seen in that Lifetime Channel movie I watched last night, that will show the person that someone caaaares and will TURN THE PERSON'S WHOLE LIFE AROUND and within a month the person will look, talk, and think EXACTLY LIKE ME! (Only with younger eyes that can see things like the coat being at least three sizes too small for person to wear.)" 

That is actually not a parody. It really happened. To me. I get more fresh air and exercise than most old ladies do in my part of the world, so I bundle up less than they do while walking, so people have been shoving coats at me ever since I left home and was free at last from a hypothyroid mother trying to smother me in winterwear and then wondering why I didn't feel like running and playing. If you want to give away a coat, there are charity stores that will hang it on a rack where someone who actually has a use for it will pay for it. If you want to give me a coat, fine, I'll try to sell it for you. If you think Lifetime Channel movies have anything to do with reality, you might as well sign yourself into the nursing home now.

There's nothing wrong with admitting that you wanted to see someone's eyes light up with delight because you'd found something the person actually wanted, and you're disappointed when--as is likely to be the case, more often than not--you picked the wrong thing. Buy your gifts at stores with liberal return policies so that at least, when you buy Tracy the lovely sweater in your favorite color, Tracy can trade it in on one in a color Tracy doesn't mind wearing in public. Or maybe on the plumbing pipes and valves Tracy actually needed, this winter, more than Tracy needed a sweater, but Tracy was polite enough not to bore you with that story. The thrill of playing the gift-guessing game is that most of the time people's eyes will not light up as they say "Oh, thank you, dear. It's the thought that counts," while they're already thinking "Do I know anyone who would accept this as a Boxing Day gift, or do I take it directly to the Salvation Army?" It's like baseball, where the odds are against anyone ever hitting the ball but, once in their lifetime, at least, almost everyone will hit a home run. 

https://brudberg.me/2023/11/28/no-strings-attached/

Rerun 

How quickly we forget: Before the Left decided to push transgenderism as a lifestyle choice, Harry Potter was lauded for influencing young readers to express more sympathy to members of non-elective minority groups, "like refugees." 

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20150106-can-you-read-yourself-happy

New Book Review: Game Set Matchmaker

Title: Game Set Matchmaker 

Author: Evie Sterling

Date: 2023

Publisher: Evie Sterling

Quote: "How do you drive away from a guy you feel out-of-control, terrifying feelings for?...You keep your foot pressed to the gas, that's how."

Game Set Matchmaker is a sweet romance about a woman who runs a matchmaking service and a retired tennis champion. Do you deduct points for the title being too, too cute?

Given that you're interested in a sweet romance, that's about all you need to deduct points for. This is a sweet romance with a charming, socially confident introvert, volunteer teaching, the Appalachian Mountains (the Green Mountains, specifically), and shelter cats in it. Be still my heart. It would have been hard for Sterling, who did not write this book for me, to have tailor-fitted the atmosphere to my preferences any better, but toward the end of the book, at the ugly holiday sweater party, she does. 

It's still frivolous froth, intended strictly for use as a marital aid, but it's so completely my cup of frivolous froth that you might distrust my review. So I'll quickly add that the hero is the sort of blond muscle man I have never found attractive. With tattoos. Isn't biodiversity wonderful--it's good for the species that some women do like that type of man--and all that. I have liked blond men who were skinny and who, if they had any scars, had come by them honestly. Do women's preferences for real-world men ever affect our preferences in romance novels? Don't we always cast our own heroes when visualizing these stories?

Also there's a bit of a cheap trick, where a frazzled nurse blurts out a lot of information about "his" condition, not specifying which patient's privacy she's violating, that prompts a woman to pour out her heart to the "him" behind the curtain...oh, read the book and find out. This is a romantic comedy. 

If you like a romantic comedy with a book-smart heroine who thinks she's been life-stupid--is she right or wrong about that?--you will enjoy Game Set Matchmaker. Like all of these Booktober Blitz books, it is available online, sometimes directly from the author, sometimes on Amazon. This one should be on Amazon some time today. (This review is being written ahead of publication, too.) Writers have reported some schedule/release glitches at Amazon due to the high volume of activity this season, but if you don't find this book at this moment, Sterling has a few other romantic comedies to read while you wait.

Namesakes, Not Relations: Post That Outgrew the Link Log

This post started out as a comment on a group of links I found on 12.3.23 and 12.4.23. It grew too long to be called part of a link log, even by me. It's a post about what are probably four unrelated families that use the same name, and about the current political issue facing one of the people using that name.

As a family name, "Peters" is traced to the Greek word petros, meaning a stone. It commemorates an extroverted yet lovable disciple whose original name was Simon Bar Jona. Of three nicknames by which he was known (the others meant "Big Fisherman" and "The Head"), "Rock" was the name given to Simon by Jesus, who told him, "You are Petros, and on this Petras (a boulder) I will build my church." While living, Simon Petros Bar Jona was known for denying that he knew Jesus during His trial, for repenting and being reconciled with Jesus after His Resurrection, and for being the most outspoken leader of the Jewish apostolic church. Tradition says that he eventually faced his own trial for preaching Christianity, affirmed that he was indeed a Christian, and when sentenced to be crucified said that he was unworthy to die the same way Jesus did, and asked to be crucified upside down. In an even later tradition the Roman Catholic Church named this saint (Petrus in Latin, Pietro in Italian, Pedro in Spanish, Pierre in French, Peter or Pieter in northwest Europe and Britain) the first pope. Though Petros clearly identified Simon as something smaller in relation to Petras, suggesting that Petras was a reference either to God or to the company of disciples, the Papist school of Christian thought blurred this distinction and identified Petros, the individual man, with the foundation of the church. In Spanish literature, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz called San Pedro her "father" and wrote a musical drama about his story. In western Europe and in the countries colonized by western Europe, Peter or Pieter was a popular name given to a lot of people's sons and taken as a family name by the descendants of those sons, whenever the country became crowded enough for people to register family names. The names Peters, Pererson, Petersen, McPeters, McPheeters, Pierson, and Pearson were chosen by several unrelated families in western Europe. 

Two of those families are the numerous Peters family of western Virginia, descendants of three brothers who immigrated from Germany in in the 1730s, and the smaller Peters (sometimes Petres, Petre, or Petrie) family of Maryland, descended from a rich Anglo-Catholic family associated with the Howards in England. The German family were well-off farmers and builders; the English family were landowners who were proud of not working for a living. The original meaning of "all men are created equal" was that, by the time the American colonies became States, men in both of these families were landowners who worked as builders, teachers, and ministers  A descendant of one of the German brothers surveyed the "District of Estilville," later known as the town of Gate City. A direct descendant of his, born on the land the surveyor chose as his home, was our late lamented Grandma Bonnie Peters' husband George Peters.

Grandma Bonnie Peters was not my grandmother, although she joked about being just barely old enough to be--she was thirty years older. She chose her own screen name when celebrating the arrival of her first grandchild, the little girl portrayed on the boxes of Grandma Bonnie's Allergy-Ease Foods. I checked. Google remembers that that company had a GoDaddy site but no longer has images of the products, which are no longer made. GBP lost a great deal of money by trying to make the company grow faster than nature seems to have intended. It was a great local business until she tried to take it to the national level.

Today we consider two very different men who represent other Peters families in former British colonies. Both men's given names celebrate the most admired Englishman of the twentieth century, Sir Winston Churchill. They live on opposite sides of the globe and look about as unrelated to each other as it is possible for two  men to look. What can be said about both of them is that "Winston Peters" seems to be an auspicious name for politicians.

Photo of the Hon. Winston Peters from the official web site of the Parliament of Trinidad & Tobago.

Winston Peters of Trinidad rose to international fame first as a musician. Calypso music was at first considered a disreputable, working-class style, and it became traditional for calypso singers to choose stage names rather than using their real names. Winston Peters originally performed as "Gypsy," and later, as a tribute to a previous Calypso King called the Mighty Sparrow, "the Mighty Gypsy." The title of Calypso King, later Calypso Monarch, is conferred on the lead singer of one of the bands that compete in the international contest during the Carnival on Trinidad island. Calypso songs are a folk form with lyrics often about local news and gossip, sometimes very rude, but the prize is awarded for songs that are considered uplifting, in the category called "patriotic." Here is the song for which "Gypsy" first won the title:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBlsfp-h4KA

I remember my husband bringing back a tape from a visit to the island in the late 1990s. At the time I thought George Peters might want to share it with the blind community on a FacTape, but a week after I heard the song, someone had "permanently borrowed" the tape! The song was quite popular in Washington during the Clinton and Bush administrations, though. "Look at the bank, see who's the banker. Look at the business, see who's the owner. Look at the prison, see who's in there, too!...Be Black, be Black, but be conscious." The song stayed in my mind through the folk process. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGtIGJuDkT8

It certainly helped the song "Little Black Boy" that its writer and singer was a living example of "Education is the key to get yourself off the streets and off poverty." On Trinidad, as on Jamaica and other Caribbean islands, African immigrants settled as free landowners just as English, Indian, European, and other kinds of people did, but most of these families were "landed poor" for a long time...sometimes until they sold their land, after which they were just  plain poor in Port of Spain, Kingston, or some other city. Traditionally calypso songs wee associated with farm workers and street vendors, but as the genre gained international popularity it gained respectability. Some twentieth century "calypsonians" came from white-collar backgrounds. When not performing as "Gypsy," Winston Peters was a politician.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gypsy_(calypsonian)

Competitors objected to his election because Peters had dual citizenship; he had served in the US Marines. He renounced his US citizenship but has maintained some personal friendships and interests in our country, notably allowing a song of concern about Trnidad and Tobago's economy ("oil pressure reading low") to be used in a US political campaign.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKC1128T4e4&t=369s

At 71, according to latest reports, Winston Peters is serving out his term in Parliament but has resigned his position as a Cabinet Minister over disagreements with others in the party. His Wikipedia page shows an inclination to identify as a musician more than a politician--or veteran.

Photo of the Rt Hon. Winston Peters from the official web site of the Parliament of New Zealand.

More recently, Winston Peters of New Zealand has been in the news. Without claiming dual citizenship, he also says he wants to strengthen his countries ties with the United States.

Unfortunately, he has not starred in any music videos. Back to the serious stuff!

On promotion to the position of Deputy Prime Minister, Peters of New Zealand was called to account for the persecution of "whistleblowers" who first publicized the sad fact that experimental vaccines for COVID-19 were being developed too late to offer any actual benefit to people hoping to evade the currently circulating mutation of the virus, while carrying high risks of side effects up to and ncluding death--associated with contamination, specifically including glyphosate contamination, and with the uae of mRNA rather than traditional "killed germ" or "weak virus" as an ingredient in the injections. 

I want to emphasize this detail because people discussing the recent vaccine-triggered death of a teenager in a town near mine have said, "Doctors ought to know from a blood test what kind of immunity a person has, and whether a vaccine will help or harm that person, before they vaccinate a person." They really ought to know that, especially in the case of flu and COVID vaccines, because specific batches of those vaccines have killed people who were only slightly inconvenienced by the virus themselves. How many of us expect to work right through most years' "flu season" whether or not we notice, much less whether anyone else suspects, when our bodies react to the virus. We grew up thinking that working through colds and flu was honorable--evidence of fortitude and dedication. We're still adjusting to the idea of the same choice being blamed, taken as evidence of selfish cruelty. But in any case it's hard for doctors to be sure about the effect a COVID-19 shot will have on a person because the effects of both the mRNA itself, and the potential glyphosate contamination, are unknown. 

Many people have reported feeling very sick after a COVID jab. Vaccine reactions have often been described as much worse than the disease. People who may or may not have noticed feeling tired or having "that peculiar cough" when they actually had COVID have complained of having to spend days in bed, being sick or faint, having serious symptoms here and there, after the jab. Those immediate reactions are likely to have involved glyphosate contamination, especially if they involved internal bleeding. There are certainly other potential contaminants too, but glyphosate is known to be a factor in immediate adverse reactions to the vaccine. Individuals react to glyphosate differently. So long as doctors hide their heads in the sand and fail to diagnose glyphosate poisoning as a factor in the chronic illnesses so many people now have, they will fail to recognize the dangers of glyphosate contamination in vaccines. 

Actual deaths from cancer and heart failure, the latter often caused by the formation of bizarre new types of solid formations clogging bloodvessels, can be ascribed to the "spike protein" reaction to either COVID or the mRNA in COVID vaccines...but although doctors studying this issue say that "spike proteins" can form when people have had only mild, unnoticeable reactions to COVID, the sudden deaths have been strongly correlated with vaccines rather than COVID itself. Glyphosate is known to promote the growth of cancer tumors. Spike proteins are believed to trigger the formation of tumors and/or those strangely solid, fast-growing, massive blood clots. 

This link represents the cutting edge of naturopathic medicine as doctors try to find ways to protect the body from those spike proteins. Like the vaccines, it is new experimental research. It may or may not save lives. My feeling is that it's more likely to save lives than a vaccine is. I am a fallible mortal.

https://worldcouncilforhealth.org/resources/spike-protein-detox-guide/

This web site is not going to link to the inflammatory speeches of some indignant New Zealanders accusing their government of having known the vaccines would kill people. It's hard to prove what people knew and it's far more likely that people discounted warnings about vaccine dangers because they so wanted vaccines to work, rather than that they deliberately urged people to take vaccines they knew to be deadly. New vaccines are always experimental. Some risk of adverse reactions, even fatal reactions, and some risk of simple failure--the probability that new vaccines won't protect people against the disease--has to be accepted. People want very much for "someone to invent a vaccine" against every disease. That desire motivates people to try new vaccines. People who line up to take new vaccines, not because they have been ordered to do so to keep their jobs or stay in school, but because they hope their vaccinations will protect them or others and help wipe out the diseases, can be remembered as heroically wrong if the vaccines kill them; they took a risk and paid the cost of it; they were not "murdered." Nobody took my Significant Other's life; he laid it down. He died as he lived, a man of extraordinary strength and fortitude who did many dangerous things in order to protect or encourage others. He was an Army volunteer in 1971, a COVID vaccine tester in 2021, and a risk taker in other ways in between. When people were coerced into taking vaccines they did not choose, of course, that's another matter.

This web site does, however, call on all government leaders, including Deputy Prime Minister Peters of New Zealand, to protect the freedom, the privacy, and the safety of all "whistleblowers" who warn people that popular products--vaccines, or whatever else--may be harmful. Corporations aren't going to stop selling profitable products merely because those products harm people unless the "whistleblowers" are free to call them to account. The world is free to call us party-poopers, buzz-killers, Cassandras, etc., but the world desperately needs ua. No nation that fails to protect us can fairly be called civilized.

Why has the Deputy Prime Minister been singled out for attention? Apparently a reputation for protecting whistleblowers was part of his early political branding in the 1980s, and his constituents are demanding that he maintain that reputation.

Google isn't doing too well sorting out the documentation of his record. One "trusted journalist" source, ranked high on Google, actually claimed that Peters was the protester whose home had been raided by the police. (Other news media make it clear that the whistleblower is a different man, though the name he apparently gave one reporter, "Winston Smith," the name of the protagonist in 1984, seems likely to be self-chosen.) So let's conclude our considerations of this topic, today, with a reminder of the sort of thing whistleblowers bring to public attention--the sort of thing that goes on and on in the absense of whistleblowers.

https://www.odt.co.nz/opinion/editorial/whistleblowers-are-needed

Do you want to know whether a doctor is actually treating your disease or merely observing its progress as it makes you sicker? Then demand that anyone for whom you vote, any newspapers to which you  subscribe, any social media you use, very specifically BAN any attempt to censor content because it fails to support some sponsor's short-term commercial interests. 

While recognizing the need to protect whistleblowers is not exclusively common to the US and New Zealand--An Enemy of the People was written in Norway--it is one of the cultural traditions that have contributed to the extraordinary success and prosperity of the English-speaking countries generally. It is a part of our culture that the rest of the world would do well to appropriate.