Today's Categories: Heads Up, Animals, Plants, Books, Crafts, Chortles, Black History Month, Art, Travel, Quotes, News of the Weird, GMO's. Because of the Heads Up, and because it's time to stop socializing and do some actual work on this computer, I'm going to post this one now; there may or may not be a Link Log for February 10 (#2), later.
Heads Up
Senator Tim Kaine is sending an office staffer to meet with constituents in the Bristol (Virginia) Public Library this evening, 5 to 7:30 p.m. (If you just want to take exception to something he said on to Rachel Maddow last night, this web site recommends going in early, talking to other constituents with messages for Senator Kaine, and making sure the ones who need help get to talk first.)
Animals
You already knew this, but...do not buy any ivory or rhinoceros-horn products. Not ever. Plastic piano keys are so much better than extinction, even if it's only a sub-species that's in danger.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-31373711?ocid=socialflow_twitter
Cute coots! (We have them in the U.S. too.)
http://watching-bingley-birds.blogspot.com/2015/02/pictures-of-british-birds-coot.html
Dog lovers...this was a straightforward popularity contest between a "Dog Valentine" photo of a dog whose actual name is Valentino, and one of a small dog with a small child. But now both of these independent, natural dog images are being edged out by a less appealing photo where somebody's managed to throw in an overrated corporate trademark name! Please help! (What, actually, do +Ruth Cox and Valentino get if they win? Y'know I never asked.)
http://woobox.com/muyuri/djm3yg?fb_ref=ufp__6xsNnuP5A
Plants
Things to do with lavender...
http://www.personapaper.com/article/23514-lavender-oil-and-its-benefits
Books
David Boaz has a new book out today:
http://www.cato.org/libertarianmind
Did anybody ever tell you that a book whose main character looked different from you was "not for you"? Hah. Children read with their imaginations. Between ages three and six I don't remember caring much about the humans in any of the books I read with enough understanding to remember the stories; all my favorite characters were horses. (Thanks to Elizabeth Barrette for sharing.)
http://www.comicmix.com/2015/02/06/martha-thomases-the-great-comic-book-lock-out/
Crafts
Adorable crochet-flower coin purses...if you followed that link to +Theresa Wiza's crochet flower tutorial, these will give you ideas!
https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/OhhhWhatAYarn
Jil Eaton shares a free complete pattern for mittens...you could make them with craft-store yarn, but if you use her slightly thicker merino yarn, as recommended, they'll turn snow longer and give the kids more time to play.
http://jileaton.blogspot.com/2015/02/snow-snow-snow.html
Chortles
Do you take orders from machines? ("Things are in the saddle, and ride [hu]mankind".) Well, I don't own any device that thinks it's "smart." Yet.
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/110638270351/would-you-take-orders-from-machines
Fanfic:
http://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/true-history-jewish-wizards-hogwarts-harry-potter
(Thanks to Teresa Nielsen-Hayden for sharing.)
Children/Homeschooling
Some children naturally like math; my father was working his way through math books, for fun, in primary school, and at Tsu someone shared a photograph (sorry, no link) of a little angel who'd fallen asleep with its face buried in a math book. For other children, here's a game that promises to show a lighter side of math...
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/02/10/american-made-spotlight-yamie-chess/?
Black History Month
Black History of and for Republicans:
http://www.freedomworks.org/content/empower-member-geraldine-lewis-black-american-history-today
Alice Walker's poem for, and video of, Bob Marley:
http://alicewalkersgarden.com/2015/02/to-win-for-bob-marleys-birthday-february-6th/
Human Rights
The A.M.A. is right, and the mainstream media are wrong, about this. Vaccinations should always be a personal decision made on a cost/benefit basis. (E.g.: I've had measles. Measles cost me a few days of school, which was a clear gain. I've had an unnecessary but mandatory MMR vaccination. The vaccination cost me most of two years being not sick enough to be in a hospital but not strong enough to do a job either. If measles were a common side effect of vaccination against mononucleosis-complicated-by-hepatitis, that would be a vaccination I'd consider inflicting on a child...but only if the child were really likely to be exposed.)
http://www.naturalnews.com/048571_mandatory_vaccines_code_of_ethics_American_Medical_Association.html#
Art
John Singer Sargent did realistic "society" portraits that have made him familiar to students of history. Was he just a talented hack? Jonathan Jones argues that his paintings do reflect the contemporary "movements" in Creative Art:
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/10/john-singer-sargent-national-portrait-gallery-review?CMP=twt_gu
Thanks to Elizabeth Barrette for sharing this fantastic wood carving:
http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2014/02/intersections-an-ornately-carved-wood-cube-projects-shadows-onto-gallery-walls/
Geometric motifs...this guy's doing them as art, but they look like knitting or needlepoint designs to me, too.
http://www.theguardian.com/science/alexs-adventures-in-numberland/2015/feb/10/muslim-rule-and-compass-the-magic-of-islamic-geometric-design?CMP=share_btn_tw
Travel
Tweeted for financial reasons of course, but still a beautiful picture of a beautiful place for people to go when they need a day out of Washington. Or Richmond, for that matter.
http://myfamilytravels.com/content/62079-throwback-charms-big-valley-roadtrip
Quotes
Melissa Stewart tweeted: "People who have given up on their dreams spend most of their time trying to get you to give up as well."
Mark R Matthews tweeted this quote from C.S. Lewis: "When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”
News of the Weird
Alleged feminist allegedly aborts just because she was told the baby was going to be a boy? It's possible; some of the Lunatic-Left-funded "Occupy" crowd have used a lot of drugs. And I hate to say it, but the little guy might be better off not being born to a mother like that. I support women's right to "choose" abortion, no questions asked, because if that really is a choice they could make, no baby should have to spend five minutes in their custody.
http://thepunditpress.com/2015/02/07/feminist-aborts-son-because-he-was-a-boy-i-couldnt-bring-another-monster-into-the-world/
Stop the insanity...of p.c. censorship. "Crazy" is a very rude, hateful thing to call a person, but it's a technical term for some arts and crafts and an accurate description of some of the nagging documented in this article. (For those who didn't know, "getting the kinks out" refers to re-using wire or yarn, and has nothing to do with anybody's hair.)
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/398243/u-m-spent-16k-campaign-against-offensive-language-katherine-timpf
Josh Earnest...is he in earnest, or joshing? Duh. There's no debate about terrorism! It does exist!
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/02/10/white-house-spokesman-struggles-on-whether-climate-change-or-terrorism-is-a-bigger-threat/?
"Smart TV" sets rat out their humans...didn't George Orwell write this story seventy years ago?!
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/02/09/owners-of-samsung-smart-tvs-should-be-aware-of-this-very-scary-privacy-policy/?
GMO's
+Jeff Sullivan mostly posts pictures of beautiful Western States landscapes on Google +. Today, something seems to have spilled over, and he posted a passionate, fact-packed research paper that doesn't fit into Google + at all. Worth reading, though, and strongly recommended.
https://plus.google.com/107459220492917008623/posts/EDjdSKuvWkB
Tuesday, February 10, 2015
Book Review: The Heart of a Woman
Title: The Heart of a Woman
Author: Maya Angelou
Date: 1981
Publisher: Bantam
ISBN: 0-553-22839-0
Length: 272 pages
Quote: “I was not crying because of a lack of love...I was mourning all my ancestors.”
Some people are natural bachelors. Possibly Maya Angelou was one. In Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas, her marriage to “Tosh” Angelos ended almost as quickly as it began. In The Heart of a Woman, while starring in a play, Angelou jilts an African-American man, marries an African man, and divorces him. Despite the grief for her ancestors she feels in Ghana and the panic she feels when her teenaged son is injured in an accident, she likes being on her own.
This fourth volume of Angelou’s memoirs contains more celebrity gossip than the first three books together. In this book, she’s a rising star whose social circle includes Billie Holiday, Lorraine Hansberry, James Baldwin, Harry Belafonte, James Earl Jones, Miriam Makeba, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Hanifa Fathy, and of course her short-term husband, Vusumzi Make, who was also a celebrity at least in Ghana. But the story covers the years from 1957 to 1967. These people are still fairly young, and none of them knows which of them will become famous.
Her son, Guy Johnson, is now mature enough to become an interesting character. Possibly the liveliest story about him in The Heart of a Woman is the one in which Angelou goes to a bully’s house, shows a teenaged gang a pistol, and promises that if the gang harasses Guy she won’t leave so much as a cockroach alive in their homes. For a mother, the gangsters, have to admit, she’s a tough “mother.”
Angelou also describes the most controversial and confrontational phase of her life. Banned from joining the Army because she’d attended an “un-American” night school, Angelou is now old enough to take a political stand—on the extreme left, of course. In The Heart of a Woman she does not directly address the charge often made against Dr. King, that he “was a Communist” (which might have been hard to prove), but does discuss some of the evidence on which the charge was based. The groups with which they worked supported Cuba , and when Khrushchev and Castro met in New York City, Guy Johnson declared that “the meeting...is the most important thing that could happen. It means that, in my time, I am seeing powerful forces get together to oppose capitalism.”
"All the [B]lack struggles were one, with one enemy and one goal,” and although many of the people involved would have defined that goal as equal civil rights, there were those who felt that reclaiming their African heritage meant reclaiming tribalistic or socialistic political systems. As Angelou describes these scenes, people singing “O Freedom” in protest of outrages did not take time to debate whether they were more concerned about the freedom of each individual or the “freedom” socialism claimed to offer.
In the lives of many people at this period, a conflict could be observed. Angelou is typical. Her actual focus was consistently, unmistakably, on the freedom of the individual, as exemplified in her marriages and divorces. At the same time she was working with organizations whose actions, when effectual, tended to promote bigger, more invasive government. It’s hard to blame Angelou, Martin Luther King, or any of their colleagues for this observed tendency when the historical fact was that people dedicated to the socialist religion were actively working to steer almost every organization that existed in a leftward direction. Even the superficially patriotic service organizations were being steered away from any concern with individual liberties and toward a quasi-religious reverence for the United Nations. Change-oriented groups, like those working toward civil rights, were being steered toward a position that was not really liberal at all, but far to the left. It would be unreasonable to expect, even today, that activists of Angelou’s generation would ever really denounce socialism. In the 1960s Angelou had been persuaded that socialistic or totalitarian tendencies were part of “Blackness”...and yes, within her demographic, she and Dr. King represented the moderate, peace-seeking, Christian, and patriotic side of things.
Extremists in the civil rights movement were attacking the laudable efforts to overcome racism that Angelou recounts in Singin’ and Swingin’. Malcolm X was saying, “Any White American who says he’s your friend is either weak...or he’s an infiltrator.” There was some truth in this; friendliness and neighborliness are “weak” bonds compared with kinship and marriage. In the 1960s thousands, if not millions, of White Americans were seeing and saying that segregation was stupid, that it wasn’t always possible to tell on which side of a color barrier an individual belonged, that maintaining separate schools was a waste of money and maintaining separate hospitals could amount to killing emergency patients. They (the generations before mine) were voting for desegregation. We (the older generation and also mine) rejected the idea of being offered unfair advantages on merely demographic grounds. White Americans did indeed support the civil rights movement, whether they were public figures making public statements like Eleanor Roosevelt, or rich people donating money to organizations like Shelley Winters, or neighbors sponsoring “deserving” college students like Joycelyn Elders. Still, this was “weak” support in the sense that it reflected a general feeling about how the world ought to be, rather than their own personal struggle for survival. As in the old joke about producing a country breakfast, the hen was involved, but the hog was committed.
Under such abrasive influences, Angelou admits, she backslid. She played an unsympathetic character in a show that “became such a cruel parody of [W]hite society that I was certain it would flop.” In practice “Blacks in the audience reacted with amusement” or “coughed or grunted disapproval. They were embarrassed at our blatancy...Whites loved The Blacks.” The actors “howled in our dressing room. If the audience missed the play’s obtrusive intent, then the crackers were numbly insensitive...if they understood, and still liked the drama, they were psychically sick, which we suspected anyway.” It did not occur to the actors (they were young) that paying for tickets to this show might be a way White theatre-goers tried to express respect, support, or even apology.
So, when a White woman feels the need to tell Angelou that she and her friends have seen the play several times because “we support you,” Angelou snarls, still in her hateful character, “How many Blacks live in your building? How many Black friends do you have? I mean, not counting your maid?” The supporter “turned to leave, but I caught her sleeve. ‘Would you take me home with you? Would you become my friend?’” Not surprisingly, the supporter doesn’t feel friendly any more.
Young readers will shake their heads, wondering what was wrong with everybody in the 1960s. I don’t blame them. Something was wrong with Americans in the 1960s: almost all of us were choking on a huge tangled mess of lies about what “race” was and meant. Progress has been made.
But in this book Angelou is still making progress. She learned for herself that “strong” relationships could not be based on race alone, that a real African like Make was even less of a treat to live with than a White American like Angelos.
There are readers, and I am one, who still find these parts of The Heart of a Woman annoying. I don’t believe in a demographic approach to friendship. For me, personally, the High Sensory Perceptivity genes may dictate whether someone can become my friend or not; the skin color genes are irrelevant. Friendship is a personal, individual thing, determined to some extent by chance, not by a desire to be politically correct. Still, rereading the scene where Angelou stayed in her nasty character and alienated the supporter, I feel like yelling at her: “How many White friends do you have? Would you take me home with you?” Which is not the way friendships begin. Angelou knew that, even in 1964. She must have been very, very tired. But the scene is still annoying to read.
There are also parts of this book that tell us more than some people, probably including Guy Johnson, wanted to know. Angelou describes Make as physically attractive. The detailed description of the sensations of physical attraction caught the attention of several of the people who supplied blurbs for the Bantam edition. This is not a smutty book, but it’s a very sensual book...not the kind of book young students generally want their parents to write.
Monday, February 9, 2015
Link Log for February 9
Today's Categories: Animals, Crafts, Politics, Homeschooling, a Picture, Losing Scenic Parkland, Books, Good News, Radio,
Animals
Vote for the cutest "Dog Valentine" picture:
http://woobox.com/muyuri/djm3yg?fb_ref=ufp__6xsNnuP5A
Thanks to Dave Barry for this study showing that wasps see and recognize faces as well as smelling and recognizing odors. DB's comment was "So if you enter a wasp's nest, cover your face." Mine, after laughing, was "So when you pass by a wasp's nest, move slowly and give the wasp time to recognize you...yes, tiny-brained and short-lived as wasps are, they can be good friends." Especially paper wasps, who eat flies, gnats, and mosquitoes. Since humans attract the things wasps eat, all we have to do is not threaten the wasps themselves, and they will literally see us as friends.
http://www.techtimes.com/articles/30866/20150205/wasps-use-facial-recognition-spot-intruders.htm
My own, but I want people to see it on Twitter and Tsu:
http://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-war-on-pets-continues-elizabeth.html
Delightful dog postcards:
http://www.zazzle.com/dog_lovers_flowers_postcard-239251612839451059
Crafts
+Theresa Wiza shows us how to crochet a cowl:
http://crystalbutterflycreations.blogspot.com/2015/02/can-you-crochet-too-many-cowls.html
Politics
U.S. readers, please take advantage of this U.S.-specific political discussion site:
http://connect.freedomworks.org/node/195382
(Fair disclosure: if you navigate from my Freedomworks page to build a page of your own, what I get is a sense that you and I are on the same page. That's it. That's all. But please do.)
Homeschooling
This history education site is very much a work in progress...do you want to help build it?
http://www.restoringhistory.us/
Today's Picture
I don't know who drew this Disney-princess-like cartoon or why Yougov assigned it to me...
...but if you click on this link, perhaps Yougov will create a cute cartoon of you too.
https://today.yougov.com/refer/brglBv6yISldXGeAQbYXBg/
(Speaking of pictures...this is by way of introduction to Angel Sharum, who's shared some of the nicest photos at Associated Content and Chatabout:
http://personapaper.com/article/23430-bringing-the-80s-back)
Losing Scenic Parkland
This doesn't fit into any of the topic categories I usually use. Maybe "Agenda 21"? The basic idea is, when greedy bureaucrats are allowed to get control of land that seems too pretty to build stuff on, they're not going to maintain it as nature park land forever. The next step is likely to be closing the park...at first, to keep it "pristine" for the dear, dear bears and rattlesnakes and other creatures that are basically incompatible with humans. And then it can be sold, for the benefit or at least the profit of the government. To foreign interests. Or for oil drilling, or strip mining, or bomb testing...whatever somebody's willing to pay for, but probably for purposes for which private owners wouldn't sell. We see the process beginning on the Eastern Shore:
https://www.change.org/p/to-the-u-s-house-and-senate-restore-access-to-the-cape-hatteras-national-seashore-recreational-area-they-belong-to-the-people-not-the-government?tk=5ne9HItLjdLlo-aoGZ3p3tAQso4t1AgzcprYvb0pKwc
Books
As if my daily book post weren't enough, +Marsha Cooper reviewed a pretty picture book:
http://marshasspot.blogspot.com/2015/02/super-sunday-reviews-pigments-of-your.html
Good News
+Coral Levang reports that Forbes found lots of other young people who were doing better things than the founders of ("We have misplaced all the remaining payments that were overdue for the whole of 2014") Bubblews.com.
http://personapaper.com/article/23247-forbes-30-under-30-in-media-bubblews-avi-dixit-and-jason-zuccari-did-not-make-the-list
Inspiring Thoughts
+Coral Levang also shared a nice inspiring thought:
http://personapaper.com/article/23469-fear-is-the-ultimate-liar
+Bill Kasman offers a badly needed clue for fundraisers:
http://www.personapaper.com/article/23388-charity-begins-at-home---at-least-thats-what-telephone-canvassers-seem-to-think
Radio
I don't like "formatted" radio stations that try to sound as if they're playing one thing all the time. I would probably turn on the radio to listen to a show like this one.
http://personapaper.com/article/23356-radio-show-playlist-diary--saturday-7th-february-2015
Children
+Theresa Wiza shares a cute "grandchild" anecdote.
http://myheartblogstoyou.blogspot.com/2015/02/pretend-play-with-avery.html
+Lyn Lomasi wrote this years ago, when her children were little, and stands by it, so it must've worked for her.
http://www.lifesuccessfully.com/upstream-parenting/positive-parenting-does-not-mean-zero-discipline
+Lyn Lomasi also shared this image of the ultimate treehouse...
http://www.lifesuccessfully.com/disabilities-articles/accessible-treehouses-should-be-available-everywhere
And the ultimate toy:
http://www.lifesuccessfully.com/momtrepreneur-moments/kids-belong-in-boxes
Animals
Vote for the cutest "Dog Valentine" picture:
http://woobox.com/muyuri/djm3yg?fb_ref=ufp__6xsNnuP5A
Thanks to Dave Barry for this study showing that wasps see and recognize faces as well as smelling and recognizing odors. DB's comment was "So if you enter a wasp's nest, cover your face." Mine, after laughing, was "So when you pass by a wasp's nest, move slowly and give the wasp time to recognize you...yes, tiny-brained and short-lived as wasps are, they can be good friends." Especially paper wasps, who eat flies, gnats, and mosquitoes. Since humans attract the things wasps eat, all we have to do is not threaten the wasps themselves, and they will literally see us as friends.
http://www.techtimes.com/articles/30866/20150205/wasps-use-facial-recognition-spot-intruders.htm
My own, but I want people to see it on Twitter and Tsu:
http://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-war-on-pets-continues-elizabeth.html
Delightful dog postcards:
http://www.zazzle.com/dog_lovers_flowers_postcard-239251612839451059
Crafts
+Theresa Wiza shows us how to crochet a cowl:
http://crystalbutterflycreations.blogspot.com/2015/02/can-you-crochet-too-many-cowls.html
Politics
U.S. readers, please take advantage of this U.S.-specific political discussion site:
http://connect.freedomworks.org/node/195382
(Fair disclosure: if you navigate from my Freedomworks page to build a page of your own, what I get is a sense that you and I are on the same page. That's it. That's all. But please do.)
Homeschooling
This history education site is very much a work in progress...do you want to help build it?
http://www.restoringhistory.us/
Today's Picture
I don't know who drew this Disney-princess-like cartoon or why Yougov assigned it to me...
...but if you click on this link, perhaps Yougov will create a cute cartoon of you too.
https://today.yougov.com/refer/brglBv6yISldXGeAQbYXBg/
(Speaking of pictures...this is by way of introduction to Angel Sharum, who's shared some of the nicest photos at Associated Content and Chatabout:
http://personapaper.com/article/23430-bringing-the-80s-back)
Losing Scenic Parkland
This doesn't fit into any of the topic categories I usually use. Maybe "Agenda 21"? The basic idea is, when greedy bureaucrats are allowed to get control of land that seems too pretty to build stuff on, they're not going to maintain it as nature park land forever. The next step is likely to be closing the park...at first, to keep it "pristine" for the dear, dear bears and rattlesnakes and other creatures that are basically incompatible with humans. And then it can be sold, for the benefit or at least the profit of the government. To foreign interests. Or for oil drilling, or strip mining, or bomb testing...whatever somebody's willing to pay for, but probably for purposes for which private owners wouldn't sell. We see the process beginning on the Eastern Shore:
https://www.change.org/p/to-the-u-s-house-and-senate-restore-access-to-the-cape-hatteras-national-seashore-recreational-area-they-belong-to-the-people-not-the-government?tk=5ne9HItLjdLlo-aoGZ3p3tAQso4t1AgzcprYvb0pKwc
Books
As if my daily book post weren't enough, +Marsha Cooper reviewed a pretty picture book:
http://marshasspot.blogspot.com/2015/02/super-sunday-reviews-pigments-of-your.html
Good News
+Coral Levang reports that Forbes found lots of other young people who were doing better things than the founders of ("We have misplaced all the remaining payments that were overdue for the whole of 2014") Bubblews.com.
http://personapaper.com/article/23247-forbes-30-under-30-in-media-bubblews-avi-dixit-and-jason-zuccari-did-not-make-the-list
Inspiring Thoughts
+Coral Levang also shared a nice inspiring thought:
http://personapaper.com/article/23469-fear-is-the-ultimate-liar
+Bill Kasman offers a badly needed clue for fundraisers:
http://www.personapaper.com/article/23388-charity-begins-at-home---at-least-thats-what-telephone-canvassers-seem-to-think
Radio
I don't like "formatted" radio stations that try to sound as if they're playing one thing all the time. I would probably turn on the radio to listen to a show like this one.
http://personapaper.com/article/23356-radio-show-playlist-diary--saturday-7th-february-2015
Children
+Theresa Wiza shares a cute "grandchild" anecdote.
http://myheartblogstoyou.blogspot.com/2015/02/pretend-play-with-avery.html
+Lyn Lomasi wrote this years ago, when her children were little, and stands by it, so it must've worked for her.
http://www.lifesuccessfully.com/upstream-parenting/positive-parenting-does-not-mean-zero-discipline
+Lyn Lomasi also shared this image of the ultimate treehouse...
http://www.lifesuccessfully.com/disabilities-articles/accessible-treehouses-should-be-available-everywhere
And the ultimate toy:
http://www.lifesuccessfully.com/momtrepreneur-moments/kids-belong-in-boxes
The War On Pets Continues: Elizabeth
Sometimes a horrible thing has to become personal for us to realize how horrible it is.
I'd heard the phrase "trap, neuter, and release" before. I'd even participated in an e-conversation about having it done at a "feral cat colony," years ago.
Then a friend, who lives in a big old wooden house within an easy rat's ramble from a major colony of monstrous urban rats, proposed to "trap, neuter, and release" the feral cat who's been protecting her home for several months now.
"Well, I don't want her to be bred to death the way they do," she said. Really? Most other animals, like most women, simply become infertile when they're physically unfit for motherhood. Cats even have birth control options: at the Cat Sanctuary, Ivy apparently chose not to have kittens, last year, by consorting exclusively with a sterile mate--and Grayzel apparently chose to have more parties and fewer babies, for five years in a row, by wallowing in pennyroyal whenever her sexual activity seemed to have led to pregnancy.
"And if she has kittens, they'll be wild, and we'll never see them," the confused human said. Really? The Cat Sanctuary has harbored several feral cats whose kittens became memorable pets. Regular readers are probably tired of reading about Graybelle, Bounce, Pounce, Mackerel, Polly, and Graymina, all of whom were born to feral mothers and were great pets (though only Mackerel was really mine); new readers may search this site for those stories. The scientific fact is that kittens' brains are very "plastic," and will fail to develop properly if kittens are not exposed to the appropriate formative experiences. Completely feral cats form brain circuits that tame cats don't have; house-reared pet cats form circuits that feral cats don't have. Outdoor pet cats form both, and can thus theoretically be considered more intelligent than either feral or house-reared cats, all else being equal. (Well, in the case of poor little Graymina, all else wasn't equal...but the other feral cats' kittens who've lived here certainly supported this theory.)
The feral cat Elizabeth refuses, as feral cats usually do, to bond with anybody. I've visited often enough, and got close enough to Elizabeth, to suspect that if she spent a few months at the Cat Sanctuary I would probably be allowed to stroke her. But why would I want to bring Elizabeth to the Cat Sanctuary? I have the three lovely resident cats, and last spring's kitten, Sisawat, who seems to want to be a resident cat too. Elizabeth is needed where she is. The house where she's been staying is three or four blocks away from the Feed & Seed Store. The rats who have been mopping up spills of hormone-laced cow feed get bigger than a well-fed gray squirrel.
Rats are smart; tame rats can become clever, amusing pets, but alley rats direct most of their intelligence into raiding and fighting. Rats have memories. Rats hold grudges. Rats share humans' taste in food, usually don't consider cats fit to eat, and usually just bite and run rather than spending time trying to kill animals they don't want to eat...but I can just imagine what would happen if Elizabeth were wounded and then dumped back into the crawl space to contend with a few hormone-fattened giant rats.
That should never happen to a cat. It shouldn't even happen to the animals that are incompatible with humans and need to be confined to a few securely restricted wilderness areas, like bears, wolves, cougars, or coyotes. Granted, we need to reduce coyote populations fast, but must we do it by torture? Can't we just kill the wretched things?
Here's a copy of an e-mail I just sent to my Delegate in the Virginia Legislature. This is not a matter of partisan politics, and the HSUS #WarOnPets is nationwide, so residents of other States may want to send similar e-mails to your elected officials too.
"Please help block any current or future consideration of http://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?151+ful+SB693S1 and any other legislation that would allow petnappers to remove an animal's collar, claim it as "feral" (because it wouldn't be their pet), and have it sterilized, or interfered with in any other way whatsoever.
I'd heard the phrase "trap, neuter, and release" before. I'd even participated in an e-conversation about having it done at a "feral cat colony," years ago.
Then a friend, who lives in a big old wooden house within an easy rat's ramble from a major colony of monstrous urban rats, proposed to "trap, neuter, and release" the feral cat who's been protecting her home for several months now.
"Well, I don't want her to be bred to death the way they do," she said. Really? Most other animals, like most women, simply become infertile when they're physically unfit for motherhood. Cats even have birth control options: at the Cat Sanctuary, Ivy apparently chose not to have kittens, last year, by consorting exclusively with a sterile mate--and Grayzel apparently chose to have more parties and fewer babies, for five years in a row, by wallowing in pennyroyal whenever her sexual activity seemed to have led to pregnancy.
"And if she has kittens, they'll be wild, and we'll never see them," the confused human said. Really? The Cat Sanctuary has harbored several feral cats whose kittens became memorable pets. Regular readers are probably tired of reading about Graybelle, Bounce, Pounce, Mackerel, Polly, and Graymina, all of whom were born to feral mothers and were great pets (though only Mackerel was really mine); new readers may search this site for those stories. The scientific fact is that kittens' brains are very "plastic," and will fail to develop properly if kittens are not exposed to the appropriate formative experiences. Completely feral cats form brain circuits that tame cats don't have; house-reared pet cats form circuits that feral cats don't have. Outdoor pet cats form both, and can thus theoretically be considered more intelligent than either feral or house-reared cats, all else being equal. (Well, in the case of poor little Graymina, all else wasn't equal...but the other feral cats' kittens who've lived here certainly supported this theory.)
The feral cat Elizabeth refuses, as feral cats usually do, to bond with anybody. I've visited often enough, and got close enough to Elizabeth, to suspect that if she spent a few months at the Cat Sanctuary I would probably be allowed to stroke her. But why would I want to bring Elizabeth to the Cat Sanctuary? I have the three lovely resident cats, and last spring's kitten, Sisawat, who seems to want to be a resident cat too. Elizabeth is needed where she is. The house where she's been staying is three or four blocks away from the Feed & Seed Store. The rats who have been mopping up spills of hormone-laced cow feed get bigger than a well-fed gray squirrel.
Rats are smart; tame rats can become clever, amusing pets, but alley rats direct most of their intelligence into raiding and fighting. Rats have memories. Rats hold grudges. Rats share humans' taste in food, usually don't consider cats fit to eat, and usually just bite and run rather than spending time trying to kill animals they don't want to eat...but I can just imagine what would happen if Elizabeth were wounded and then dumped back into the crawl space to contend with a few hormone-fattened giant rats.
That should never happen to a cat. It shouldn't even happen to the animals that are incompatible with humans and need to be confined to a few securely restricted wilderness areas, like bears, wolves, cougars, or coyotes. Granted, we need to reduce coyote populations fast, but must we do it by torture? Can't we just kill the wretched things?
Here's a copy of an e-mail I just sent to my Delegate in the Virginia Legislature. This is not a matter of partisan politics, and the HSUS #WarOnPets is nationwide, so residents of other States may want to send similar e-mails to your elected officials too.
"Please help block any current or future consideration of http://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?151+ful+SB693S1 and any other legislation that would allow petnappers to remove an animal's collar, claim it as "feral" (because it wouldn't be their pet), and have it sterilized, or interfered with in any other way whatsoever.
We need a solid definition of "feral" that would require documentation that an animal is in fact feral and not an outdoor pet--i.e. the animal has been consistently found scavenging near garbage bins for weeks, is obviously hungry and not cared for, and has been advertised as a found pet and not claimed.
Both dogs and cats who are in fact pets have been known to stray, and can act wild when approached by strangers; they may still be loved and loving pets.
Also, the idea of performing major surgery, such as spaying a female animal, and immediately releasing the animal outdoors, seems sickeningly inhumane. Even if the animal is a nuisance species like a raccoon or coyote, why torture it? Why not just kill it?"
Morgan Griffith on the IRS
From Congressman Griffith's E-Newsletter. (I agree with him about the need to print paper-based forms. I don't think the problem is confined to the IRS; lots of people want to put things on the Internet and demand that customers pay the cost of printing them out. Unfortunately, citizens don't have the option of doing to the IRS what we do to businesses that refuse to mail out Real Catalogues...or writers who can't afford to publish Real Books...
"The IRS - Up to its Old Tricks?
As you probably know, tax return filing season is upon us once again. January 20 was the first day of the 2015 tax season, the day on which the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) began accepting tax returns.
The IRS has estimated that the average taxpayer spends roughly 13 hours per year preparing their taxes. But this year, it might be even more difficult.
For those who fill out paper tax returns, you may in previous years have gone to your local library or your county’s Commissioner of Revenue to pick up your various forms and instruction booklets. However, this year, the IRS is sending limited forms, and the agency is providing few free instruction booklets.
This is particularly troublesome for farmers who use the 1040 Schedule F form (the “Profit or Loss From Farming” form). The IRS is providing printouts of this form, but we are told the agency is not printing its instructions. We are also told by local officials that this form is used regularly.
Further, as reported last month by the Wall Street Journal, “Taxpayers are facing the worst service from the Internal Revenue Service since at least 2001, with more than half of callers unlikely to get through to the agency and average hold times of 30 minutes or more, according to a new government report.”
IRS forms and instructions can be found at www.irs.gov to be downloaded and printed, but it goes without saying that doing so is difficult if you don’t have internet access, as some in the Ninth District do not. If this is the case for you, contact my office (see below) for assistance acquiring tax forms and instructions.
Some are arguing that cuts to the IRS’ budget are to blame. A January 2015 story in the Washington Post reports that the IRS’ budget has dipped approximately 10 percent since 2009.
Notwithstanding this reduction, I would suggest a willingness to look for efficiencies in their offices ought to enable the agency to provide both good service and savings.
My first week in office, I voted to cut my budget by 5 percent. From 2011 to 2015, we have had a reduction of approximately 13 percent to our overall budget. Additionally, we have not spent an average of 10 percent per year during the 2011 to 2014 timeframe.
All this without making constituents pay the price. Surely the IRS could do that as well.
I would submit to you that the IRS is once again attempting to punish the American people, instead of looking for ways to save American taxpayers’ money without shortchanging them on service.
Let’s remember, this is the agency that in the past spent money on spoof Star Trek training videos and expensive conference meetings. These meetings cost around $50 million over three years – this at a time we were being told there was little fat in the budget.
Also, as you know, the IRS admitted to having inappropriately and improperly handled applications from conservative groups.
And in a report released last week, the agency’s inspector general said the IRS had rehired between January 2010 and July 2013 hundreds of employees despite past work troubles including having used their positions to access taxpayer information without authorization, having botched their own tax returns, off-duty misconduct, etc.
Are the IRS’ latest actions part of a backdoor attempt to again hit conservative groups? I would like to think not, but the IRS has little credibility. And farmers, who are usually conservative, seem to be negatively impacted.
While the current IRS seems to go after conservative people or groups, perhaps – under a conservative President – they might think they should use their power to hit liberal people or groups. Neither is proper. The IRS must be politically neutral.
Unfortunately, it seems to me that the IRS may be up to its same old tricks. If true, the IRS cannot be trusted to look out for the best interests of the American people.
This rogue, now politicized government agency must be stopped.
My team has alerted House Appropriations about these concerns. Actions will be taken. Rest assured I will fight to see that the IRS is held accountable.
If you have questions, concerns, or comments, feel free to contact my office. You can call my Abingdon office at 276-525-1405 or my Christiansburg office at 540-381-5671. To reach my office via email, please visit my website at www.morgangriffith.house.gov. Also on my website is the latest material from my office, including information on votes recently taken on the floor of the House of Representatives."
"The IRS - Up to its Old Tricks?
As you probably know, tax return filing season is upon us once again. January 20 was the first day of the 2015 tax season, the day on which the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) began accepting tax returns.
The IRS has estimated that the average taxpayer spends roughly 13 hours per year preparing their taxes. But this year, it might be even more difficult.
For those who fill out paper tax returns, you may in previous years have gone to your local library or your county’s Commissioner of Revenue to pick up your various forms and instruction booklets. However, this year, the IRS is sending limited forms, and the agency is providing few free instruction booklets.
This is particularly troublesome for farmers who use the 1040 Schedule F form (the “Profit or Loss From Farming” form). The IRS is providing printouts of this form, but we are told the agency is not printing its instructions. We are also told by local officials that this form is used regularly.
Further, as reported last month by the Wall Street Journal, “Taxpayers are facing the worst service from the Internal Revenue Service since at least 2001, with more than half of callers unlikely to get through to the agency and average hold times of 30 minutes or more, according to a new government report.”
IRS forms and instructions can be found at www.irs.gov to be downloaded and printed, but it goes without saying that doing so is difficult if you don’t have internet access, as some in the Ninth District do not. If this is the case for you, contact my office (see below) for assistance acquiring tax forms and instructions.
Some are arguing that cuts to the IRS’ budget are to blame. A January 2015 story in the Washington Post reports that the IRS’ budget has dipped approximately 10 percent since 2009.
Notwithstanding this reduction, I would suggest a willingness to look for efficiencies in their offices ought to enable the agency to provide both good service and savings.
My first week in office, I voted to cut my budget by 5 percent. From 2011 to 2015, we have had a reduction of approximately 13 percent to our overall budget. Additionally, we have not spent an average of 10 percent per year during the 2011 to 2014 timeframe.
All this without making constituents pay the price. Surely the IRS could do that as well.
I would submit to you that the IRS is once again attempting to punish the American people, instead of looking for ways to save American taxpayers’ money without shortchanging them on service.
Let’s remember, this is the agency that in the past spent money on spoof Star Trek training videos and expensive conference meetings. These meetings cost around $50 million over three years – this at a time we were being told there was little fat in the budget.
Also, as you know, the IRS admitted to having inappropriately and improperly handled applications from conservative groups.
And in a report released last week, the agency’s inspector general said the IRS had rehired between January 2010 and July 2013 hundreds of employees despite past work troubles including having used their positions to access taxpayer information without authorization, having botched their own tax returns, off-duty misconduct, etc.
Are the IRS’ latest actions part of a backdoor attempt to again hit conservative groups? I would like to think not, but the IRS has little credibility. And farmers, who are usually conservative, seem to be negatively impacted.
While the current IRS seems to go after conservative people or groups, perhaps – under a conservative President – they might think they should use their power to hit liberal people or groups. Neither is proper. The IRS must be politically neutral.
Unfortunately, it seems to me that the IRS may be up to its same old tricks. If true, the IRS cannot be trusted to look out for the best interests of the American people.
This rogue, now politicized government agency must be stopped.
My team has alerted House Appropriations about these concerns. Actions will be taken. Rest assured I will fight to see that the IRS is held accountable.
If you have questions, concerns, or comments, feel free to contact my office. You can call my Abingdon office at 276-525-1405 or my Christiansburg office at 540-381-5671. To reach my office via email, please visit my website at www.morgangriffith.house.gov. Also on my website is the latest material from my office, including information on votes recently taken on the floor of the House of Representatives."
Link Log for January 28
Well, the last Link Log I did was long and messy. Can this one be long and organized? Let's see...
Comfort Food
Via Twitter: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/jan/28/jack-monroe-red-bean-soup-and-dumplings-recipe
Sports
Re-tweeted: DRIVE SMART Virginia @DRIVESMARTVA 2 hours ago
Politics
Re-tweeted:
Comfort Food
Via Twitter: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/jan/28/jack-monroe-red-bean-soup-and-dumplings-recipe
Sports
Re-tweeted: DRIVE SMART Virginia
Hosting a #Superbowl party? If you serve a guest alcohol and he or she gets in a drunk-driving crash that night, you could be held liable.
Politics
Re-tweeted:
I support @SenRandPaul’s #AuditTheFed bill. Transparency is important. Taxpayers deserve to know what govt agencies are doing in their name.
Photo from one of the countries said to be the sources of the demand that the U.S. reduce its carbon footprints by banning wood stoves. (Actually, before motor vehicle filters were invented, Los Angeles used to look like this...one reason why my parents left.)
Book Review: Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas
Title: Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas
Author: Maya Angelou
Date: 1976
Publisher: Bantam
ISBN: 0-553-25199-6
Length: 242 pages
Quote: “I learned from Porgy and Bess...that jealousy is conceived only in insecurity and must be nourished in fear.”
In the third volume of her memoirs, Maya Angelou gets her break into the performing arts. She explains the second part of her stage/pen name. She meets entertainers older readers will remember: Cab Calloway, Truman Capote, Phyllis Diller, more. She tours Europe . At times Singin’ and Swingin’ reads more like a generic celebrity memoir than like the individual whose story was told in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, but the book begins and ends with the private, individual lives of the child Guy Johnson and his mother.
In the second half of the twentieth century it was fashionable to talk as if only the dominant group had the power to act on real bigotry. In this volume, and even more in the next one, we see how wrongheaded this belief was. In her early twenties, Angelou admits, she believed color doomed “Black girls” never to be “discovered,” as Rita Hayworth was, but only “uncovered” as strippers and bar-drinkers. In fact, in the 1950s African-American art and artists were on the leading edge of fashion. Arty audiences around the world adored the all-Black production of Porgy and Bess; in Yugoslavia , African-Americans were less distrusted than Euro-Americans. Angelou portrays herself trying to be polite, but still being reminded constantly of the only White faces she seems to have looked at in her early life, the “trash” kids who bullied her, her brother, and their grandmother.
There are vivid, sometimes hilarious vignettes in this book. The cast make what seems to be several members’ first long trip on a ship. At one party, when they’re all stressed out, several drink too much; Angelou admits pushing “Miss Fine Thing,” the star, who stands up growling, “No one pushed Miss Fine Thing. I fell!” Then there’s the admirer who assures Angelou that the box he’s given her contains his heart; it contains an inedible heart-shaped cake decorated with “symbolic” junk.
Other memories are touching. Worried that Guy, who misses his father, is becoming too interested in being a soldier, she makes anti-war remarks to him; he repeats these remarks and gets into trouble at school. Still, the child affirms that his mother is “a great singer.”
As with the first two volumes: I don't physically have a copy now; this set of books sold fast. I can get a copy for any local lurker who needs one, cheaper than I can sell the book online ($5 + $5 shipping). If I'd found the time to post these reviews sooner I could have offered this series as Fair Trade Books and donated 10% of the sale price to any charity of Maya Angelou's choice. Unfortunately it's too late to do that now.
Friday, February 6, 2015
Link Log for February 6
After two days totally offline, then one day online without socializing...categories: Tsu, Norway, Animals, Handcrafts, Frugal Tips...
Tsu (Lots of Pretty Pictures)
Tsu.co streams pictures and comments, like Twitter (with room for more words than Twitter). A lot of the things I "liked" and "shared" there are specific to Tsu and have no other web home. If you want to look at lots of pretty pictures, with just a few ugly advertising images thrown in:
http://www.tsu.co/PriscillaKing
Norway (More Pictures)
Want to see what "winter" looks like? Check out this English-language blog about Norway.
http://everydaybergen.blogspot.no/2015_02_01_archive.html
Animals
Border Collie balances on log...
http://bordercolliecorner.blogspot.com/2015/01/border-collie-training_25.html
Vote for your Dog Valentine photo here:
http://woobox.com/muyuri/djm3yg?fb_ref=ufp__6xsNnuP5A
Handcrafts (More Pictures)
+Marsha Cooper finished a rug that appeals to my eye for color.
https://www.etsy.com/listing/221542340/scrappy-locker-hook-rug
Frugal Tips
What do people whose county officials don't help them with taxes free of charge, or can't be trusted to do it right, and who don't really owe enough tax to need H&RBlock, do if they need help with their taxes?
http://marshasspot.blogspot.com/2015/02/frugal-friday-with-marsha-week-in-review.html
Tsu (Lots of Pretty Pictures)
Tsu.co streams pictures and comments, like Twitter (with room for more words than Twitter). A lot of the things I "liked" and "shared" there are specific to Tsu and have no other web home. If you want to look at lots of pretty pictures, with just a few ugly advertising images thrown in:
http://www.tsu.co/PriscillaKing
Norway (More Pictures)
Want to see what "winter" looks like? Check out this English-language blog about Norway.
http://everydaybergen.blogspot.no/2015_02_01_archive.html
Animals
Border Collie balances on log...
http://bordercolliecorner.blogspot.com/2015/01/border-collie-training_25.html
Vote for your Dog Valentine photo here:
http://woobox.com/muyuri/djm3yg?fb_ref=ufp__6xsNnuP5A
Handcrafts (More Pictures)
+Marsha Cooper finished a rug that appeals to my eye for color.
https://www.etsy.com/listing/221542340/scrappy-locker-hook-rug
Frugal Tips
What do people whose county officials don't help them with taxes free of charge, or can't be trusted to do it right, and who don't really owe enough tax to need H&RBlock, do if they need help with their taxes?
http://marshasspot.blogspot.com/2015/02/frugal-friday-with-marsha-week-in-review.html
Frugal Tip: If You Like It, It's In Fashion
Somebody shared a bumper-sticker-type motto on Tsu: "I don't want to brag, but I can still wear the earrings I wore in high school."
Ha. I didn't wear earrings, and still don't, but I can still wear the...shirts, skirts, and sweaters I wore in high school. (I can't wear the same jeans because I wore them out before 1990.)
Who says clothes need to be "this year's look"? Don't people who believe that ever notice that there are only so many realistic looks for clothes? Basically, in the modern world, we have a limited set of looks that keep being recycled from year to year. What young people actually wear are jeans (cycling from snug to baggy, straight cut to shaped legs) and T-shirts (cycling from snug to baggy) plus sweaters (no noticeable fashion cycle for those). What adults actually wear are suits (limited cycle of different details like cuffs and lapels) and dresses (cycling between shapes that fit and flatter the normal female body shape, and shapes that don't do that so well). Then there's a bizarre punk look featuring lots of oddly assorted pieces, piercings, obviously dyed hair, miniskirts, hooker heels, and other things that real people don't actually wear, and this is what Madison Avenue keeps trotting out as "fashion." It's sort of pathetic. If "fashion" is ever going to get back to having anything to do with what real people wear, the "fashion" designers are going to have to settle for designing clothes that people can wear in situations other than posing for "fashion" photos.
Most of the clothes I wear are basic, not "this year's look," but I own a few things that were "fashions" of the year before someone handed them down to me, and now look like this year's "fashion" version of something a reasonable person might wear--the shirt with a 1979 design on it, the combination of colors that was "this year's look" in 1965...
At the back of my closet I recently met a shirt I wore mostly on special occasions in high school and college. I did not think "Oh poor little me, haaaving to wear a shirt I acquired secondhand in 1978." I actually caught myself thinking "Hello, old friend! Nice to see you again," and remembering some of the good times at which I'd worn that shirt.
One day last fall I broke out a sweater that had originally been part of a dressy knitted suit I wore in 1981. The colors and pattern were back in "fashion." I don't know what happened to the skirt--I never really liked it--but wore the sweater with jeans and a T-shirt. It got lots of compliments.
I realized that I actually prefer wearing clothes that hold memories to wearing brand-new clothes. Of course, not all memories are good...I remember donating some things to charity, the day after an especially unpleasant event, because I never wanted to see what I'd been wearing on that occasion again. But the clothes I wore on happier occasions have something going for them that new clothes don't have.
And, since most of them were nice, sensible, comfortable, practical clothes that didn't really scream "this year" or "that year," they actually look quite a lot like the new clothes I'd be likely to buy if I had to buy new clothes.
So why not keep wearing what I have...at least until a real change does have to be recognized: the leather boots that started out roomy and gradually became snug have now become child-sized, the black jeans are now definitely gray jeans, the cotton dress frays away from the new thread when I try to mend it...
If you make frugal decisions about eating, and frugal decisions about driving, you can afford to be frugal about clothes too. Then, when "this year's look" becomes "so last year," you can put it in the attic and wait for it to be "this year's look" all over again.
Ha. I didn't wear earrings, and still don't, but I can still wear the...shirts, skirts, and sweaters I wore in high school. (I can't wear the same jeans because I wore them out before 1990.)
Who says clothes need to be "this year's look"? Don't people who believe that ever notice that there are only so many realistic looks for clothes? Basically, in the modern world, we have a limited set of looks that keep being recycled from year to year. What young people actually wear are jeans (cycling from snug to baggy, straight cut to shaped legs) and T-shirts (cycling from snug to baggy) plus sweaters (no noticeable fashion cycle for those). What adults actually wear are suits (limited cycle of different details like cuffs and lapels) and dresses (cycling between shapes that fit and flatter the normal female body shape, and shapes that don't do that so well). Then there's a bizarre punk look featuring lots of oddly assorted pieces, piercings, obviously dyed hair, miniskirts, hooker heels, and other things that real people don't actually wear, and this is what Madison Avenue keeps trotting out as "fashion." It's sort of pathetic. If "fashion" is ever going to get back to having anything to do with what real people wear, the "fashion" designers are going to have to settle for designing clothes that people can wear in situations other than posing for "fashion" photos.
Most of the clothes I wear are basic, not "this year's look," but I own a few things that were "fashions" of the year before someone handed them down to me, and now look like this year's "fashion" version of something a reasonable person might wear--the shirt with a 1979 design on it, the combination of colors that was "this year's look" in 1965...
At the back of my closet I recently met a shirt I wore mostly on special occasions in high school and college. I did not think "Oh poor little me, haaaving to wear a shirt I acquired secondhand in 1978." I actually caught myself thinking "Hello, old friend! Nice to see you again," and remembering some of the good times at which I'd worn that shirt.
One day last fall I broke out a sweater that had originally been part of a dressy knitted suit I wore in 1981. The colors and pattern were back in "fashion." I don't know what happened to the skirt--I never really liked it--but wore the sweater with jeans and a T-shirt. It got lots of compliments.
I realized that I actually prefer wearing clothes that hold memories to wearing brand-new clothes. Of course, not all memories are good...I remember donating some things to charity, the day after an especially unpleasant event, because I never wanted to see what I'd been wearing on that occasion again. But the clothes I wore on happier occasions have something going for them that new clothes don't have.
And, since most of them were nice, sensible, comfortable, practical clothes that didn't really scream "this year" or "that year," they actually look quite a lot like the new clothes I'd be likely to buy if I had to buy new clothes.
So why not keep wearing what I have...at least until a real change does have to be recognized: the leather boots that started out roomy and gradually became snug have now become child-sized, the black jeans are now definitely gray jeans, the cotton dress frays away from the new thread when I try to mend it...
If you make frugal decisions about eating, and frugal decisions about driving, you can afford to be frugal about clothes too. Then, when "this year's look" becomes "so last year," you can put it in the attic and wait for it to be "this year's look" all over again.
Book Review: Gather Together in My Name
Title: Gather Together in My Name
Date: 1974
Publisher: Bantam
ISBN: 0-553-26066-9
Length: 181 pages
Quote: “I had given a promise and found my innocence. I swore I’d never lose it again.”
This is the rough patch in Maya Angelou’s memoirs. Having recommended I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings to everybody, I feel a need to begin the review of volume two with a warning. Gather Together in My Name is not for everybody. It’s a cautionary tale for teenagers who feel attracted to sin, vice, and crime. It’s an eye-opener for censorious older people who may have dismissed Angelou as “the former prostitute and poet laureate.” In this book we share Teen Maya’s walk on the wild side, and although Angelou manages to give this book an uplifting ending, many readers will find it disgusting.
And misleading. I’m willing to believe that an eighteen-year-old can “find innocence” again after misadventures like Maya’s, because I’ve seen kids survive similar misadventures; I think teen readers need to know that the survivors are a minority. Some teenagers take drugs, not merely marijuana, which Angelou discusses in this book, but hard drugs, and keep enough brain cells working to succeed as actors, dancers, musicians, writers, or even Presidents of the United States. Some teenagers die during their first experiment with even a legal drug like alcohol or Prozac...and some are killed during friends’ experiences with drugs these teenagers aren’t even taking into their own bodies.
I wish Gather Together in My Name had gone into more detail about the friends who were doing the same stupid things Maya was at this age. They weren’t good or close friends, and the narrative gives us no reason to expect that the ends of their stories would really be part of Angelou’s story, but it seems only fair to tell teenagers: if you go out drinking with a friend, and you get only slightly stupid while your friend passes out, and although you’ve never driven a car before you decide to drive yourself and your friend home, a few hundred miles through the mountains, the statistical odds are against your getting home. Maya Angelou did things like that. Maya Angelou was a Phenomenal Woman. You might not be so lucky. You will notice that the other restless kids who got bored with food service jobs, weren’t allowed to join the Army, and decided to add excitement to their lives by taking drugs or selling sex, did not become famous multitalented artists.
You might even notice that, despite her success in all the performing and creative arts, Angelou never quite reached the pinnacle of success in any artistic endeavor. It’s possible that, if she’d focussed on singing or acting during the years when she was smoking pot, selling liquor, and generally courting disaster, she might have been a superstar like coevals Diana Ross, Eartha Kitt, or Ruby Dee. She was still successful as a supporting actress, as a back-up singer...Angelou’s freedom from whininess about why she wasn’t even more successful is generally refreshing, but a little whining on her behalf might be advisable to adults who choose to share Gather Together in My Name with teenagers.
My Bantam edition of this book cites Shana Alexander’s comment that it’s “rich and funny.” I’ve never found the funny parts. If read as fiction, the scene where Maya challenges the White girl over a perceived insult might be considered funny; since it’s written as a memoir of a time when race tension was such that that incident might have got Maya killed, I find myself not laughing. If read as fiction by someone who hates lesbians, the scene where Maya goes home with a couple of lesbian admirers, gets them drunk, and contrives to sell their bodies for her own vindictive fun and considerable profit, might be funny, but that episode is also a little too nasty for me. I’m not sure I believe it. To the extent that it’s believable I think it’s sad.
On the other hand Maya’s stomach-turning relationship with a married man is worth preserving in print. I recommend it to any woman who imagines her physical relationship with another woman’s husband is “love.” Okay, so most of these slobs don’t have as much nerve as Maya’s jerk, but they are not “lovers.” They are not human beings who love...anybody. If the original marriage really is doomed—as it might be because the original wife is disabled—a man who has the ability to love will either spend his days caring for his wife, and wait to consummate his “love” for a young single woman until after his wife is dead; or at least, if the wife is likely to remain disabled for twenty years, put the wife in a nursing home, get a divorce, and have at least a courthouse wedding with the other woman he loves.
Angelou is still a gifted writer whose scenes spring to life in the reader’s mind. That’s why some readers don’t like this memoir of the roughest and nastiest time in her life. Of the four-volume set of Angelou's memoirs, this is the volume that's hardest to find in stores and first to have been discarded by libraries. But some people still need to read it.
As discussed yesterday, I no longer physically have the copy of this book about which I wrote this review. You can buy it online for less than the minimum price of any book sold through this web site--$5 for the book + $5 for shipping.
Thursday, February 5, 2015
Book Review: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Title: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Author: Maya Angelou
Author's web site, maintained and updated as a memorial: http://mayaangelou.com/
Date: 1969
Publisher: Bantam
ISBN: 0-553-27937-8
Length: 246 pages
Quote: “He was gone, and a man was dead because I lied.”
As described in her memoirs, Maya Angelou’s conscious life began when she was sent from her mother’s home to her grandmother’s home on a train. She was three; her brother Bailey, who was the source of what became her stage and pen name (“my-a sister”), was four.
She doesn’t seem to have talked much at any stage of childhood. The “Einstein Syndrome,” in which little boys who are gifted, but not in language skills, don’t speak until they’re three or four and can say complete sentences, appears to be sex-linked. Still, it’s easy for gifted little girls to choose silence, sometimes merely because they realize that they’re not yet able to express their thoughts in words others can understand. Being whipped for innocently repeating the expression “by the way” (“Jesus is the Way...His Name will not be taken in vain”), tortured by “po’ White trash kids” who bullied Maya and Bailey by insulting their grandmother, and taken to charismatic church services where children were punished for laughing or talking about the funny things the adults did, would have been more than enough to motivate a bright child to choose silence.
Of course, as many readers remember, that wasn’t all that pushed Maya into silence., At age eight, she was raped. Wanting to be sure the rapist went to jail, she denied that she had allowed him to touch her in the past. The rapist was sentenced to jail time, then released on bail, and spectators who didn’t think that was enough killed him. Maya, who thought that was too much, spoke only to Bailey for a year.
She did not “bury the memory.” “Buried memories” that surface only when people take antidepressants, long after an event, are unreliable...often drug-induced pseudomemories.
She did not have a mental breakdown.
She did not compulsively do things more stupid than the things her unmolested friends were doing. Teen Maya’s adventures are a lively mix of brilliant achievements and ignorant-kid shenanigans. On a road trip with her father, she drinks enough tequila to make a fool of herself, but not too much to drive after her father passes out. She qualifies for, and accepts, a scholarship to attend an openly “un-American” night school; the story of how this piece of ignorance worked against her will be in the next volume. Tired of being a child, she browbeats the city transportation service into making her the first Black, female, and underaged streetcar conductor in San Francisco , works for a few months, then quits. At sixteen, worried that her tall, skinny body isn’t seen as “feminine,” she becomes a single mother. She makes plenty of mistakes, but she faces the consequences and copes with them well.
She survives all the abuse without any kind of “professional help.” Without, apparently, even any “therapeutic” conversations.
This fact-based content would be quite enough to give I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings its place on high school reading lists, even if Angelou hadn’t also happened to be a gifted writer who creates the illusion that readers really are in an Arkansas country store or on a San Francisco streetcar.
This book is warmly recommended to any adults who may not have read it yet. I personally think the frank, not fantasized or glamorized, sexual development of Maya (and Bailey; they don’t explore sex together, but they confide in each other more than many brothers and sisters ever would) ought to interest only physically mature readers, though exceptions might be made for children who have been sexually abused. I don’t think teenagers who are slower to develop sexually need to read more than the bare facts, which should be presented with a focus on What You Must Not Let Anyone Talk You Into Doing If You Don’t Want To Be A Teen Parent; let them discover pleasure for themselves as they grow into it—and lock up anyone who tries to tell them that they must be “gay.” So I think I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings should be reserved for grade eleven or twelve, not thrust upon presexual children. But I know of nobody who read this book, after age seventeen or eighteen, and regretted it. In the “reminiscences of childhood” genre it’s among the world’s best.
I wrote this post, and the ones that follow, several years ago when I had a matched set of Angelou's memoirs on display in a physical store. It took longer to write short reviews of these books than it took to sell them. I no longer have the books in my possession; and Maya Angelou no longer has any use for money. However, if you want to buy it online here, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings will still cost you $5 for the book + $5 for shipping.
Wednesday, February 4, 2015
Book Review: The Fourth Hand
A Fair Trade Book
Title: The Fourth Hand
Title: The Fourth Hand
Date: 2001
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0-375-50627-6
Length: 313 pages
Quote: “What if the donor’s widow demands visitation rights?”
That, Irving tells us in the fact-based afterword, was the question his wife asked while they were watching a news story about an attempt to transplant a hand. Thinking about it led Irving to write The Fourth Hand, in which a fictional character gets a successful hand transplant. (So far, this has happened only in fiction.)
There’s not much complexity in the plot of this novel. The protagonist has been into one-night stands. The novelty of the widow who’s more interested in her late husband’s hand than in the body to which it is now attached catches his attention. In order to preserve some suspense about the outcome of this romance, all I’ll say is that the significance of the title, The Fourth Hand (the man counts the transplanted hand as his third) is more sentimental than ghoulish.
Along the way, there are many complaints about the news broadcasting industry, and that’s about all Irving has to tell us. He’s told us a lot of what he knows, believes, and feels in other novels; in this novel he seems to have been absorbing and reacting to research about organ transplants, and there’s a good deal of white space on the 313 pages. Most of the moral, ethical, philosophical, and psychological elements in this book are carefully understated and expressed in explicit sex scenes.
I’m tempted to wax censorious about the number of detailed sex scenes in this book. Instead, I’ll say what some of you have been longing for a censorious type to say: anybody can write down the details of who kissed whom where and who then touched what, but organizing such details in such a way that they tell readers more than the obvious about a character really is an art. I think writers who can do sex scenes as well as Irving could do “manners” scenes with equal skill if they tried; not that Irving could actually be Jane Austen, but who knows how close he could get to her standard. Writers who can’t do sex scenes as well as Irving, which means most writers, are hereby advised to try writing about forthright people who reveal their characters by saying what’s on their minds.
Men have traditionally underrated women’s novels because they didn’t feel that the women did male characters well. I can understand this reaction; I tend to avoid men’s novels because I don’t feel that men write female characters well. In this novel the female characters get more lines than the males, but although I can believe that this is the way women look to the shallow, spoiled protagonist, I can’t believe that it’s the way any living women are.
You can probably find a cheap copy of this book--it sold well, and it's been out for a while--at any number of book sales and charity sales, possibly for a quarter, possibly for a dime, possibly as the extra book they throw in free if you buy a certain number, which is how I acquired the copy I owned at the time of writing. (I have since sold that copy.) If you buy The Fourth Hand online from me, you'll have to pay $5 for the book + $5 for shipping. (One $5 for shipping covers as many books as fit into one package.) This higher price allows us to send $1 to John Irving or a charity of his choice. If you're curious about the book and want to help us help living writers collect fair payment for what they've done, by all means buy The Fourth Hand here.
Tuesday, February 3, 2015
Book Review: Kathy Sue Loudermilk I Love You
Title: Kathy Sue Loudermilk I Love You
Author: Lewis Grizzard
Date: 1979
Publisher: Warner / Peachtree
ISBN: none (but it's on Amazon here)
Length: 336 pages
Quote: “There was something special about Kathy Sue Loudermilk. Even at eight, she made a tight sweater seem much more than a woolen garment.”
Fun fact about this book: “Loudermilk” is a family name actually used by real people. Not all of them live in Georgia .
Kathy Sue Loudermilk I Love You introduces several repeating characters Grizzard caricatured in his comic columns over the years, giving them unlikely names like Weyman Wanamaker and Cordie Lou Poovey. It also introduces real people, some of whom are known to history only through Grizzard’s serious columns. For many readers, the publication of this book also introduced Grizzard.
At the time of writing, Grizzard was still supporting the railroad industry against the trucking industry, supporting Jimmy Carter against anybody, and, he claimed, sincerely shocked that anyone could question anything General Lee ever did.
Women were extremely touchy about anything that sounded sexist. Grizzard wrote some columns that deliberately started, exaggerated, an unenlightened point of view, apparently to generate controversy, attention, and sales. (Women who worked with him said he didn’t act that wary in the office, nor did he write that way in his serious columns.) On the other hand, his ex, Kathy Lewis, wrote a comic expose about “life with Lewis” called How to Tame a Wild Bore. The book did not portray Grizzard as either especially wild or as especially boring, but as your basic selfish, immature young man who is not really ready for a serious relationship.
Whereupon women who feel that there’s nothing wrong with being an immature young man—only with sharing any serious activities with one—took Grizzard’s books to our bosoms. The books, not the aging boy who wrote them. He died young, apparently without a bosom on which to lean.
In Kathy Sue Loudermilk, Grizzard claims that he was threatened with bodily harm after writing a column that blamed refrigerated biscuit dough for divorce and suggested that wives should get up in time to mix biscuits from scratch. Bodily harm? Well, yes...you see, it was still 1977; due to discrimination, women did not yet have the more feminine and empowering option of writing their own syndicated newspaper columns suggesting that husbands who wanted to stay married should get up in time to mix biscuits from scratch too.
And Southern Ladies, even those of us who were only ten years old at the time, just laughed and laughed. I mean, biscuits, people. Baking-powder biscuits were invented by people who didn’t have time to cook,. Baking-powder biscuits do not require the cook to have his or her eyes completely open. Just dump a reasonable amount of self-rising flour into a bowl, add milk until it feels like biscuit dough, press it onto a pan, cut out biscuit shapes, and bake it for fifteen minutes in a hot oven. Making biscuits from scratch is actually quicker than making them from refrigerated dough, since by making biscuits from scratch you can avoid getting biscuit dough on your fingers and taking the time to wash it off. Men can make biscuits. If you have a gas or electric oven, biscuits take no more energy or intelligence than cereal.
It’s this kind of confusion that makes Kathy Sue Loudermilk more than a nostalgia trip. Oh yes, there’s plenty of nostalgia in this book, with detailed inventories of the kind of traditional Southern-fried convenience store that still exists, in some communities, even now, and columns about the great ball games and Nashville songs of yesteryear, and bleeps. Does anybody over age 35 not miss bleeps? (Bleeps were electronic sounds used to protect the ears of the upper class from any trashy language uttered within range of a live broadcast; hence “bleep” could be, as on three pages of this book it is, substituted for any rude word.) Part of 1970s pop culture was missing 1950s pop culture. But Kathy Sue Loudermilk is not merely a sentimental look at the 1950s; it’s the way the 1970s actually were. Some things were nicer back then, and some were not.
Monday, February 2, 2015
What's Wrong with Porch Furniture?
I'm guessing that this image of porch furniture wouldn't upset the current mayor of Gate City so much, because it's color-matched. (Thanks, Jade from Morguefile.)
There is, however, a house on Park Street with about this amount of furniture on its porch, only it's not all matchy-matchy, and it's more wood than wicker. This house belongs to an antique dealer who uses the porch to store furniture that won't fit into the dealer's Jackson Street business. It's a huge old Victorian house, with a lot of porchage and a lot of furniture, but I've walked around the porch and found a nice, clear walkway in between the furniture, which...well, most people could find some pieces we'd call garbage, but somebody likes it. That's why this furniture is on the porch. It is waiting for its "forever homes." It is there to attract that somebody to whom it seems beautiful.
I have seen boxes and sacks of things being moved in or out piled up on top of this furniture. In fact, because this family deal in books too, I've set boxes and sacks on this porch, usually for less than thirty minutes, but once, due to missed connections, for three days. Did that do anyone any harm?
There is another house on Park Street that displays a sign identifying it as the studio of a "Frugal Artist" who does creative things with antiques and junk. I can't afford any of the Frugal Artist's stuff so I've not contributed to the display of curios on that porch, but I've seen it. Again, it's a display, not a mess; these people set things out in a way that invites people to browse through the merchandise.
There is a house on Jackson Street that has a porch that looks, well, lived-in. I've never seen it look conspicuously cluttered. It's a porch where people may hang out, and may set things down, or move things in or out. I don't know these people. They're not maintaining a display of merchandise; sometimes when I've passed by their porch has looked pretty bare.
However, all of these people have received letters of complaint from the mayor, threatening them with fines if they don't "declutter" their (attractive-looking) porches.
I think the real question is what's wrong with the mayor. Porch furniture does nobody any harm.
I think every country, state, city, town, and neighborhood needs laws that limit the extent to which people can use government to give their neighbors a hard time. The criterion should be that material, measurable harm is being done to someone else. If a neighbor's noise is stampeding cattle or keeping people awake at night, that is doing harm. If a neighbor's septic tank is flooding the street, that is doing harm. If a neighbor's house, furniture, or garden don't appeal to somebody's aesthetic taste, that person needs to be told to go home and shut up, or maybe pay a fine.
For the information of Gate City's town council, this kind of stupidity occurred before, a generation ago, when people complained about the Friday Market being messy. Well, actually the Friday Market is messy, because it's our number one tourist attraction. The Frugal Artist and the antique dealer certainly don't attract the kind of traffic the Friday Market generates, thank goodness, but why do you imagine they bother to set their merchandise out on their front porches? Ask them what percentage of their sales come from neighbors and from tourists. They are attracting tourists in small manageable numbers. Some of those tourists may not be conspicuous because they may be old friends who fit into the local crowd, but they still bring in money, and they still eat and buy gas while they're here, and some of them even spend money in Jackson Street stores or Kane Street restaurants.
So, is the mayor really so a'compulsive she's trying to deprive the town of badly needed tourist revenue, just to satisfy some personal need for control? Or just shortsighted enough to hope that the Frugal Artist and the antique dealer will pay the fines this year, so she can claim to have put a little money into the town treasury before being voted out in the next election? What is the matter with this mayor?
What is the matter with anybody who thinks he or she has any business telling other people how they should look? Do we even need to know? In this crowded world, with this overloaded economy, maybe nobody even needs to spare the time to try to analyze these people's problems. Maybe what we need is Duct Tape Therapy. One piece across each eye, with a little space at the bottom so these people can see where they are stepping and what they are doing with their hands, might solve a lot of their problems.
There is, however, a house on Park Street with about this amount of furniture on its porch, only it's not all matchy-matchy, and it's more wood than wicker. This house belongs to an antique dealer who uses the porch to store furniture that won't fit into the dealer's Jackson Street business. It's a huge old Victorian house, with a lot of porchage and a lot of furniture, but I've walked around the porch and found a nice, clear walkway in between the furniture, which...well, most people could find some pieces we'd call garbage, but somebody likes it. That's why this furniture is on the porch. It is waiting for its "forever homes." It is there to attract that somebody to whom it seems beautiful.
I have seen boxes and sacks of things being moved in or out piled up on top of this furniture. In fact, because this family deal in books too, I've set boxes and sacks on this porch, usually for less than thirty minutes, but once, due to missed connections, for three days. Did that do anyone any harm?
There is another house on Park Street that displays a sign identifying it as the studio of a "Frugal Artist" who does creative things with antiques and junk. I can't afford any of the Frugal Artist's stuff so I've not contributed to the display of curios on that porch, but I've seen it. Again, it's a display, not a mess; these people set things out in a way that invites people to browse through the merchandise.
There is a house on Jackson Street that has a porch that looks, well, lived-in. I've never seen it look conspicuously cluttered. It's a porch where people may hang out, and may set things down, or move things in or out. I don't know these people. They're not maintaining a display of merchandise; sometimes when I've passed by their porch has looked pretty bare.
However, all of these people have received letters of complaint from the mayor, threatening them with fines if they don't "declutter" their (attractive-looking) porches.
I think the real question is what's wrong with the mayor. Porch furniture does nobody any harm.
I think every country, state, city, town, and neighborhood needs laws that limit the extent to which people can use government to give their neighbors a hard time. The criterion should be that material, measurable harm is being done to someone else. If a neighbor's noise is stampeding cattle or keeping people awake at night, that is doing harm. If a neighbor's septic tank is flooding the street, that is doing harm. If a neighbor's house, furniture, or garden don't appeal to somebody's aesthetic taste, that person needs to be told to go home and shut up, or maybe pay a fine.
For the information of Gate City's town council, this kind of stupidity occurred before, a generation ago, when people complained about the Friday Market being messy. Well, actually the Friday Market is messy, because it's our number one tourist attraction. The Frugal Artist and the antique dealer certainly don't attract the kind of traffic the Friday Market generates, thank goodness, but why do you imagine they bother to set their merchandise out on their front porches? Ask them what percentage of their sales come from neighbors and from tourists. They are attracting tourists in small manageable numbers. Some of those tourists may not be conspicuous because they may be old friends who fit into the local crowd, but they still bring in money, and they still eat and buy gas while they're here, and some of them even spend money in Jackson Street stores or Kane Street restaurants.
So, is the mayor really so a'compulsive she's trying to deprive the town of badly needed tourist revenue, just to satisfy some personal need for control? Or just shortsighted enough to hope that the Frugal Artist and the antique dealer will pay the fines this year, so she can claim to have put a little money into the town treasury before being voted out in the next election? What is the matter with this mayor?
What is the matter with anybody who thinks he or she has any business telling other people how they should look? Do we even need to know? In this crowded world, with this overloaded economy, maybe nobody even needs to spare the time to try to analyze these people's problems. Maybe what we need is Duct Tape Therapy. One piece across each eye, with a little space at the bottom so these people can see where they are stepping and what they are doing with their hands, might solve a lot of their problems.
Link Log for February 2
Happy Groundhog Day! No shadows in evidence here. Not a lot of links--I did that yesterday. Categories: Kid Stuff, Child Abuse, Food, Football,
Football
Between cancer treatments, the true football fan +Richard Rowell finds time to report on the Super Bowl. Hang in there, RR, and LL...
http://www.lifesuccessfully.com/the-ultimate-random/day-33-of-365-freewrite
Food (Easy Gluten-Free Recipe)
This was shared at tsu.co, without a link I could paste in, so I'm quoting it. The graphic looks like single-serving omelets or pancakes, and the text was "1 banana. 2 eggs. 3 Mash. 4 Grill. 5 Eat."
Kid Stuff
+Theresa Wiza shared:
http://helpforsingleparents.blogspot.com/2015/02/hilarious-and-inexpensive-way-to-spend.html
+Marsha Cooper shared:
http://marshasspot.blogspot.com/2015/02/super-sunday-reviews-crafty-creatures.html
Child Abuse
Is Montgomery County, Maryland, "Stalinist"? Or is it just one of the very few places (a rich, crowded bunch of suburbs of Washington where many celebrities live) where elementary school children really might conceivably be abducted by strangers? I hate to say this, but...I wouldn't let a ten-year-old run around, alone or with a younger sibling, in the Sligo Park. Because I was frequently harassed when I lived there; because someone really did try to drag one of my dorm mates (a good-sized nineteen-year-old) into a car; because someone really did batter and rob a middle-aged gentleman walking in the park at night, before the park went car-free, and someone really had shot one of the college security guards in the back while he was walking home from work. The park became safer after it went car-free, of course. Still, the quality of the neighborhood is generally considered to have decreased...and this may not be just a "free-range kids" issue where the question is whether the kids are intelligent enough to find their way home. Parts of Sligo Park still look like models for paintings of the Garden of Eden (which they were), but I remember it as the place where I used to carry a pistol...and felt grateful when a neighbor's dog "rescued" me from harassers. If the Meitivs want to bring up free-range children, which is an excellent idea, I'd recommend that they start looking for jobs in Frostburg or Crisfield.
Nevertheless. Even in view of the park in question being just fractionally above Pennsylvania Avenue as a target for everything from street-level to international terrorism. I still think Child Protective Services stepped out of line, and threatened to do more damage to these children than they claim to be protecting the children from. Scroll down to the comments; KCWeb got it right.
http://www.naturalnews.com/048480_Child_Protective_Services_parenting_government_overreach.html#
Right. During these last two hours at the Dog Sanctuary, let's see whether I can get this piece plussed, Twittered, Tsued, and get one short original-thought piece posted as well.
Football
Between cancer treatments, the true football fan +Richard Rowell finds time to report on the Super Bowl. Hang in there, RR, and LL...
http://www.lifesuccessfully.com/the-ultimate-random/day-33-of-365-freewrite
Food (Easy Gluten-Free Recipe)
This was shared at tsu.co, without a link I could paste in, so I'm quoting it. The graphic looks like single-serving omelets or pancakes, and the text was "1 banana. 2 eggs. 3 Mash. 4 Grill. 5 Eat."
Kid Stuff
+Theresa Wiza shared:
http://helpforsingleparents.blogspot.com/2015/02/hilarious-and-inexpensive-way-to-spend.html
+Marsha Cooper shared:
http://marshasspot.blogspot.com/2015/02/super-sunday-reviews-crafty-creatures.html
Child Abuse
Is Montgomery County, Maryland, "Stalinist"? Or is it just one of the very few places (a rich, crowded bunch of suburbs of Washington where many celebrities live) where elementary school children really might conceivably be abducted by strangers? I hate to say this, but...I wouldn't let a ten-year-old run around, alone or with a younger sibling, in the Sligo Park. Because I was frequently harassed when I lived there; because someone really did try to drag one of my dorm mates (a good-sized nineteen-year-old) into a car; because someone really did batter and rob a middle-aged gentleman walking in the park at night, before the park went car-free, and someone really had shot one of the college security guards in the back while he was walking home from work. The park became safer after it went car-free, of course. Still, the quality of the neighborhood is generally considered to have decreased...and this may not be just a "free-range kids" issue where the question is whether the kids are intelligent enough to find their way home. Parts of Sligo Park still look like models for paintings of the Garden of Eden (which they were), but I remember it as the place where I used to carry a pistol...and felt grateful when a neighbor's dog "rescued" me from harassers. If the Meitivs want to bring up free-range children, which is an excellent idea, I'd recommend that they start looking for jobs in Frostburg or Crisfield.
Nevertheless. Even in view of the park in question being just fractionally above Pennsylvania Avenue as a target for everything from street-level to international terrorism. I still think Child Protective Services stepped out of line, and threatened to do more damage to these children than they claim to be protecting the children from. Scroll down to the comments; KCWeb got it right.
http://www.naturalnews.com/048480_Child_Protective_Services_parenting_government_overreach.html#
Right. During these last two hours at the Dog Sanctuary, let's see whether I can get this piece plussed, Twittered, Tsued, and get one short original-thought piece posted as well.
Book Review: Crazy Love
A Fair Trade Book
Title: Crazy Love
Title: Crazy Love
Author: Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Author's (children's-stories-focussed) blog: https://alicemckinley.wordpress.com/
Date: 1977
Publisher: William Morrow & Company
ISBN: 0-688-03178-1
Length: 192 pages
Quote: “Didn’t Ted’s background give me pause...? No. Seventeen is the time when life is eminently conquerable.”
In this memoir Naylor, best known as a writer of children’s stories, makes a plea for acceptance of insanity as grounds for divorce. Since most states and even most churches now accept insanity as grounds for divorce, who else needs to read this book? Readers of the magazines that printed Naylor’s short pieces, or of novels like The Agony of Alice, The War Between the Boys and the Girls, or The Witch Herself, who have grown up and would like to read what Naylor had to say to adults?
Definitely not children. This is not a children’s book. Marital relations are discussed, not in gross physical detail but with clinical precision, and they do belong in this story; sexual behavior reveals clues in the diagnosis and treatment of psychoses. The rest of the story is about the adult world of business, money, teaching, college textbooks, hospitals, prejudice, and the Cold War. Nothing in Crazy Love would interest a child. This is not a complete autobiography (Naylor’s memoirs of her own career have been published as a separate book), but strictly a memoir of a brief, painful marriage.
The horror of life with “Ted,” as recounted by his ex-wife, does not involve domestic violence. Ted tries to protect his wife from the “They” he imagines stalking the couple. His efforts to defend his loved ones from this “They” may become dangerous, but Ted always means well.
What was it in Ted’s background that should have made his bride, young Phyllis, think twice? That his Italian/Jewish parents were more likely to express emotions, including frank self-appreciation, than Phyllis’s English/German relatives? This cultural difference generated the sort of hostility among in-laws that wasn’t as funny in the real life of this period as it’s made to seem in contemporary comedy. In some ways Phyllis’s relatives seem to be right, although they come across as the kind of bigots of which Archie Bunker was a parody. The cultural difference kept Phyllis from recognizing what a contemporary reader may recognize as important clues to Ted’s diagnosis and treatment.
Ted’s half sister, who died in a mental hospital, was diagnosed as schizophrenic. Ted’s mother was legally sane, but obese, and obsessed with her irritable bowels. After praying for success on the toilet, “she once remarked to Ted that her excrement, miraculously, had no odor.” In 1949 Phyllis mistook this for a cultural characteristic; even today a nineteen-year-old bride could be excused for mistaking it for the kind of eccentricity that was then called “neurotic.” Odorless excrement is, however, neither a miracle nor a neurosis. It is a symptom. While some diseases of the digestive system are characterized by strong, foul odors, others are characterized by a deficiency of the acids and gases that produce normal odors. Sounds as if Ted’s mother has one of the genetic digestive disorders that cause the malabsorption and malnutrition associated with some paranoid-schizophrenic psychoses. The good news is that some of these disorders are curable.
Ted does not have what Freud insisted was “true” schizophrenia. "True" schizophrenics don’t have orgasms; this observation was responsible for Freud’s, and to a much greater extent his followers’, overemphasis on sex. Ted enjoys sex.
His behavior is classic “paranoid-schizophrenia,” a different disease according to Freud, and fits the general description of paranoid-schizophrenic disorders associated with enzyme deficiency. First there is general anxiety and tension, superstitious ritualistic behavior, nightmares and sleep disturbance. Then there is the chronic fear that his food has been poisoned—the recognition that something is badly wrong with Ted’s digestion, which is true. Then the brain really starts to break down, and it becomes impossible for anyone, least of all Ted, to predict what Ted may do next.
People like Ted usually are gluten-intolerant. The good news for the rest of us gluten-intolerant people is that, as Patrick Tracey learned, people like Ted also inherited probably a dozen other genes that interact to produce schizophrenia. A gluten-free diet is part of the treatment that postpones total disability, but not the complete cure for which people once hoped.
Ted’s tragedy is that he developed this disease thirty or forty years before doctors began to have a hope of treating it. Today not all, but some, people like Ted can be helped at least for several years. But, by the time research had worked up to the point where younger people with symptoms like Ted’s could be cured, Ted’s brain would have deteriorated beyond the point at which even a temporary return to sanity would have been likely for him.
Meanwhile Ted’s story illustrates the flaw in the otherwise sound thinking of counsellors like Wayne Dyer or Jay Addams, who believed that the problems people brought into psychologists’ officers could be solved by straight talk and thinking. Many people who consulted psychologists in 1977 could solve their problems with a little straight thinking. But coping with psychosis is not as simple as Addams made it sound in some of his writing. Simple neurological disorders that cause one or two simple, persistent distortions of perception are not psychoses; people do learn to adjust their interpretations of their perceptions to allow for misperceptions like ringing in the ears, “floaters” in the eye, or “pins and needles” when something interferes with blood circulation. People who have psychoses like Ted’s seldom misperceive the same thing twice, and since the common denominator among all their delusions is anxiety, they can’t just sit back and watch the delusions like a movie (as Lauren Slater, being aware that the medication she used can produce delusions, apparently did).
The young bride Phyllis wants nothing more than to be a good wife to Ted, but she can’t cope with his disease. In the end she leaves him in a hospital, remarries, and becomes Mrs. Naylor, the successful author. For her this seems to be the right solution, yet it remains tragic and continues to give her pain. Knowing that her tragedy was to some extent a matter of timing, that Ted’s total disability probably could at least have been postponed if he’d only been born forty years later than he was, makes the happy ending Crazy Love has for Phyllis—but not for Ted—a sad read.
If Crazy Love had been written more recently, it would probably have had more educational value. As written, it tells us a lot about the history of psychiatry, and a little about the kind of danger signals family members can recognize, and a good deal about why some Christians accept divorce and remarriage.
Crazy Love is not particularly rare; you can find better prices than our bottom-most price online, but if you buy it online here, $5 for the book + $5 for shipping, Phyllis Reynolds Naylor or a charity of her choice gets $1.
Sunday, February 1, 2015
Link Log for February 1
Today's Categories: Charity, Food, Politics, Football Trivia, Quilting, Insanity, New Books, Animals, Dolls, Scams, Homeschooling, a Music Video...
I'm still dog-sitting at the Dog Sanctuary, and this Link Log won't feature anything from The Blaze, Huffington Post, Townhall, or other sites that often feature good content in among nasty pop-ups and ads, because this computer just can't handle that sort of thing. This week I'm reading smaller, plainer web pages only.
Charity
Can you spare $15 to buy a cheap blanket for an Iraqi refugee? Reportedly one of these ISIS victims' camps is high in the mountains (by Iraqi standards) and some of them are freezing. No, I did not check whether the charity is taking handmade blankets.They say they're currently trying to pay for a load of blankets they ordered during the last cold snap at US$15 apiece,
http://www.grassrootsaction.com/201211/offer.asp?Ref_ID=29642&CID=201211&RID=43056461
Food
If you're not particular about making it "Greek," you can warm up the chicken in a little water (or use a little of the broth if you just poached it) and use a different herb or mix. Olive oil, basil, and oregano make it Greek-ier. Parsley, fresh or fried, adds Vitamin C and fibre. Thanks to Elizabeth Barrette for making my mouth water.
http://ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com/3558583.html
You know a neighborhood is yuppified when it has a "barkery" specializing in dog treats...but you might want to use these ideas to make treats for your dog, too. Or for friends' dogs. And the little paper bags are sooo cute.
http://www.dogpawsitivetidbits.com/2015/01/paws-barkery-dog-treats-delivery.html
Politics
Why, even if we like, trust, respect, and even vote for some Democrats, the U.S. should distrust the Democratic Party:
http://ntlconsulting.blogspot.com/2015/01/american-communist-party-plan_31.html
("American Communist Party"? Yes, apparently there still is such a thing. More of a religious cult than a political party, but...)
Statistics gun haters won't like to read...if you're interested, Glenn Beck's the author of a whole (short) book of'em.
http://ntlconsulting.blogspot.com/2015/01/high-gun-ownership-lower-crime.html
Trevor Loudon offers a nice historical sidelight that happens to tie into something I was thinking about this morning. This winter a local newspaper reported that an old chant from the 1960s had been revived as a ghoulish parody with "dead cops" substituted for "voting rights" or "equal pay" or "wheelchair access." Disgusting. There are certainly some police officers, and some entire police departments, that might be better employed in some completely different line of work; there are probably a few who should be in jail. If you find them, point them out, for everybody's sake. But don't be sucked into hate...if you're young and strong and feel righteously aggressive about bad cops, why don't you take the training and be a good one?
http://noisyroom.net/blog/2015/01/31/hatin-on-the-police-an-old-communist-strategy/
Some conservative members of Virginia's legislature have supported a resolution encouraging a "new constitutional convention." In most states, it's the Extreme Left who seem to be clamoring for one. Publius Huldah has set up a web page explaining what's likely to go wrong with this idea:
https://publiushuldah.wordpress.com/2015/02/01/delegates-to-an-article-v-convention-cant-be-controlled-by-state-laws/
Political Humor, shared by Coral Levang:
http://www.political-humor.org/you-can-lead-sheep-to-knowledge-but-you-cant-make-them-think.shtml
Football Trivia
Congressman Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) challenged an e-friend with this trivia question: Which four universities can claim both a U.S. President and a Super Bowl winning quarterback as alumni?
http://hubpages.com/hub/4-Universities-that-Count-Super-Bowl-Winning-Quarterbacks-and-US-Presidents-as-Alumni
Twitter suggested this one: Which of the contenders in this Super Bowl game used to play for the University of Tennessee?
One vote for Seattle:
http://www.bubblews.com/news/9830156-superbowl-2015-which-team-is-your-favorite-to-win
It's hard to paste an original Twitter comment, but a Twitterer called CIASpyGirl says, "I'm giving my husband the silent treatment, which is exactly what he wants for Super Bowl Sunday." Re-tweeted. (Non-fans, these links should help you leave the football fanatics in your families alone.)
Quilting
A quilting "marathon": twelve hours, nonstop...
http://nrvnews.com/area-news/marathon-quilters-show-they-are-cut-from-competitive-cloth/
Insanity
What kind of people want to make the world safe for The Mentally Ill by turning the whole world into one big hospital where only a few designated adults have access to deadly weapons? (If they get a gun ban, will the next step be a car ban or a scissors ban?) Not to be too mean about this, because anything can go wrong with any part of any body including the brain, but...if the one interviewed for the Washington Post is typical, they twitch, tend to spill things, and want the right not to bathe as often as three times a week.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/she-fought-for-patients-rights-then-she-was-put-in-a-hospital-against-her-will/2015/01/31/c306f01c-a1b0-11e4-903f-9f2faf7cd9fe_story.html?tid=sm_tw
New Books
In addition to Jerry B. Jenkins' new project, forthcoming this week,
http://jerry-jenkins.com/2015/01/30/the-matheny-manifesto-part-2/
Karen and Rick Santorum are on tour with a new book:
http://www.bellasgiftbook.com/events.html
Animals
I just created my very first Twitter hashtag: #WarOnPets. I encourage everyone to use it when they find evidence of HSUS, the Humane Pet Genocide Society, grabbing for a monopoly on control of all domestic animals and their humans.
http://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2015/01/virginia-needs-laws-protecting-cats.html
The Cat Sanctuary is also the home of several wild animals. The ones that are absolutely no trouble, and welcome, include a cardinal family, a wren family, a dynasty of possums (usually only one at a time), a skunk, a snake, some blue-tailed lizards, various paper wasps and hornets, and lots of butterflies and moths. But what this blog post reminds me of is the block on which my husband and I lived in Maryland. It had been "developed" into nasty little suburban Tract Housing, but with large back yards, trees, and gardens; the robins always nested in our tree, the cardinals in a neighbor's tree, and the mockingbirds in other trees, so that everybody could enjoy them...
http://diaryofwildgarden.blogspot.com/2015/01/can-you-attract-wildlife-if-you-have.html
Dolls
I don't know why Google + pulls up CNN in Spanish; everything else on the page comes up in English, but CNN stories appear in Spanish with the option to click on the English version when you open the page. Anyway, although all Disney characters officially come from imaginary countries, here's the latest Disney fashion doll, Elena, who is "sort of" Latina; the button to switch to the English page is in the top right corner:
http://cnnespanol.cnn.com/2015/01/31/disney-presenta-a-elena-su-primera-princesa-latina/
Scams
Hidden charges when you unsuspectingly use a well-advertised phone service, U.K. version:
http://www.personapaper.com/article/22623-118-118----who-is-laughing-now
Homeschooling Stuff
Lots of free lesson ideas available at this site:
http://www.lifesuccessfully.com/education-articles/how-to-teach-kids-about-money-guest-post
Music Video
Coral Levang shares a personal link to the Lawrence Welk show:
http://www.personapaper.com/article/22491-he-left-me-the-gift-of-music-i-share-him-with-you
I'm still dog-sitting at the Dog Sanctuary, and this Link Log won't feature anything from The Blaze, Huffington Post, Townhall, or other sites that often feature good content in among nasty pop-ups and ads, because this computer just can't handle that sort of thing. This week I'm reading smaller, plainer web pages only.
Charity
Can you spare $15 to buy a cheap blanket for an Iraqi refugee? Reportedly one of these ISIS victims' camps is high in the mountains (by Iraqi standards) and some of them are freezing. No, I did not check whether the charity is taking handmade blankets.They say they're currently trying to pay for a load of blankets they ordered during the last cold snap at US$15 apiece,
http://www.grassrootsaction.com/201211/offer.asp?Ref_ID=29642&CID=201211&RID=43056461
Food
If you're not particular about making it "Greek," you can warm up the chicken in a little water (or use a little of the broth if you just poached it) and use a different herb or mix. Olive oil, basil, and oregano make it Greek-ier. Parsley, fresh or fried, adds Vitamin C and fibre. Thanks to Elizabeth Barrette for making my mouth water.
http://ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com/3558583.html
You know a neighborhood is yuppified when it has a "barkery" specializing in dog treats...but you might want to use these ideas to make treats for your dog, too. Or for friends' dogs. And the little paper bags are sooo cute.
http://www.dogpawsitivetidbits.com/2015/01/paws-barkery-dog-treats-delivery.html
Politics
Why, even if we like, trust, respect, and even vote for some Democrats, the U.S. should distrust the Democratic Party:
http://ntlconsulting.blogspot.com/2015/01/american-communist-party-plan_31.html
("American Communist Party"? Yes, apparently there still is such a thing. More of a religious cult than a political party, but...)
Statistics gun haters won't like to read...if you're interested, Glenn Beck's the author of a whole (short) book of'em.
http://ntlconsulting.blogspot.com/2015/01/high-gun-ownership-lower-crime.html
Trevor Loudon offers a nice historical sidelight that happens to tie into something I was thinking about this morning. This winter a local newspaper reported that an old chant from the 1960s had been revived as a ghoulish parody with "dead cops" substituted for "voting rights" or "equal pay" or "wheelchair access." Disgusting. There are certainly some police officers, and some entire police departments, that might be better employed in some completely different line of work; there are probably a few who should be in jail. If you find them, point them out, for everybody's sake. But don't be sucked into hate...if you're young and strong and feel righteously aggressive about bad cops, why don't you take the training and be a good one?
http://noisyroom.net/blog/2015/01/31/hatin-on-the-police-an-old-communist-strategy/
Some conservative members of Virginia's legislature have supported a resolution encouraging a "new constitutional convention." In most states, it's the Extreme Left who seem to be clamoring for one. Publius Huldah has set up a web page explaining what's likely to go wrong with this idea:
https://publiushuldah.wordpress.com/2015/02/01/delegates-to-an-article-v-convention-cant-be-controlled-by-state-laws/
Political Humor, shared by Coral Levang:
http://www.political-humor.org/you-can-lead-sheep-to-knowledge-but-you-cant-make-them-think.shtml
Football Trivia
Congressman Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) challenged an e-friend with this trivia question: Which four universities can claim both a U.S. President and a Super Bowl winning quarterback as alumni?
http://hubpages.com/hub/4-Universities-that-Count-Super-Bowl-Winning-Quarterbacks-and-US-Presidents-as-Alumni
Twitter suggested this one: Which of the contenders in this Super Bowl game used to play for the University of Tennessee?
One vote for Seattle:
http://www.bubblews.com/news/9830156-superbowl-2015-which-team-is-your-favorite-to-win
It's hard to paste an original Twitter comment, but a Twitterer called CIASpyGirl says, "I'm giving my husband the silent treatment, which is exactly what he wants for Super Bowl Sunday." Re-tweeted. (Non-fans, these links should help you leave the football fanatics in your families alone.)
Quilting
A quilting "marathon": twelve hours, nonstop...
http://nrvnews.com/area-news/marathon-quilters-show-they-are-cut-from-competitive-cloth/
Insanity
What kind of people want to make the world safe for The Mentally Ill by turning the whole world into one big hospital where only a few designated adults have access to deadly weapons? (If they get a gun ban, will the next step be a car ban or a scissors ban?) Not to be too mean about this, because anything can go wrong with any part of any body including the brain, but...if the one interviewed for the Washington Post is typical, they twitch, tend to spill things, and want the right not to bathe as often as three times a week.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/she-fought-for-patients-rights-then-she-was-put-in-a-hospital-against-her-will/2015/01/31/c306f01c-a1b0-11e4-903f-9f2faf7cd9fe_story.html?tid=sm_tw
New Books
In addition to Jerry B. Jenkins' new project, forthcoming this week,
http://jerry-jenkins.com/2015/01/30/the-matheny-manifesto-part-2/
Karen and Rick Santorum are on tour with a new book:
http://www.bellasgiftbook.com/events.html
Animals
I just created my very first Twitter hashtag: #WarOnPets. I encourage everyone to use it when they find evidence of HSUS, the Humane Pet Genocide Society, grabbing for a monopoly on control of all domestic animals and their humans.
http://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2015/01/virginia-needs-laws-protecting-cats.html
The Cat Sanctuary is also the home of several wild animals. The ones that are absolutely no trouble, and welcome, include a cardinal family, a wren family, a dynasty of possums (usually only one at a time), a skunk, a snake, some blue-tailed lizards, various paper wasps and hornets, and lots of butterflies and moths. But what this blog post reminds me of is the block on which my husband and I lived in Maryland. It had been "developed" into nasty little suburban Tract Housing, but with large back yards, trees, and gardens; the robins always nested in our tree, the cardinals in a neighbor's tree, and the mockingbirds in other trees, so that everybody could enjoy them...
http://diaryofwildgarden.blogspot.com/2015/01/can-you-attract-wildlife-if-you-have.html
Dolls
I don't know why Google + pulls up CNN in Spanish; everything else on the page comes up in English, but CNN stories appear in Spanish with the option to click on the English version when you open the page. Anyway, although all Disney characters officially come from imaginary countries, here's the latest Disney fashion doll, Elena, who is "sort of" Latina; the button to switch to the English page is in the top right corner:
http://cnnespanol.cnn.com/2015/01/31/disney-presenta-a-elena-su-primera-princesa-latina/
Scams
Hidden charges when you unsuspectingly use a well-advertised phone service, U.K. version:
http://www.personapaper.com/article/22623-118-118----who-is-laughing-now
Homeschooling Stuff
Lots of free lesson ideas available at this site:
http://www.lifesuccessfully.com/education-articles/how-to-teach-kids-about-money-guest-post
Music Video
Coral Levang shares a personal link to the Lawrence Welk show:
http://www.personapaper.com/article/22491-he-left-me-the-gift-of-music-i-share-him-with-you
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