At the End of a Twitterday...

Someone asked for a Twitter Thread on the same day someone else claimed not to understand Threads. Most Twitter Threads consist of three or four tweets. This is the longest one I've posted; since I find it easier to follow the "subtweets" or "quote-retweets" some Twits prefer and others loathe, I don't expect to do another blog-post-as-Twitter-Thread...but who knows what I might do if provoked. Twitter has been very provoking lately. I'll admit I'm subjecting myself to provocation after having invited Beck, Ingraham, Limbaugh, my elected officials of both parties, and the whole Republican Party to observe. It was just a casual remark tossed out to boost a Tweep's signal; in fewer than 48 hours it's grown into something I think really might work like Dan's Bake Sale.

After reading the Twitter Thread below, you might reasonably ask why I don't just set up the GoFundMe myself and send links to all my "conservative" Tweeps. One reason: GoFundMe pages work best when set up by people who can afford to put digital money in the pot. I cannot afford to play with digital money, though I can pledge a little real money by U.S. postal money order. Another reason: GoFundMe pages work best when set up, if by third parties, as it might be because the person to be helped is undergoing surgery, at least in the same State and preferably the same city.

Priscilla King

@5PriscillaKing

Tweeps Left & Right, I think the

@guardian

article

@JodiKoberinski

shared has stirred up an idea that could be important for some of us...(This is a Thread. Clicking on "Show thread" should pull up a set of tweets in a coherent order.)

6:15 PM · Nov 24, 2020·Twitter Web App

View Tweet activity

Priscilla King

@5PriscillaKing

·

14m

Replying to

@5PriscillaKing

Namely: Is that ethical element that's missing from Monbiot's analysis *also* what makes the difference between respectful, informative political debate and "polarized," hateful fights about politics on

@Twitter

?

1

Priscilla King

@5PriscillaKing

·

14m

For example: JK was abt the only person who saw my tweets in real time today. (I've been posting horrible, hate-evoking tweets about conservatives putting money where mouths are & helping injured Uber driver pay for surgery.)

1

Priscilla King

@5PriscillaKing

·

14m

So we argued whether politicians are drifting leftward or rightward. Several of you wd say leftward. You've shared checklists based on UN #Agenda21 and/or old Communist Party platform. Using that definition, definitely leftward.

1

Priscilla King

@5PriscillaKing

·

14m

But JK shared material, some unfortunately inaccessible, documenting how it's possible to say they're drifting rightward...Note that this claim defines "rightward" as something different from anything conservative Tweeps currently support.

Priscilla King

@5PriscillaKing

·

10s

I usually read only news items at

@guardian

, so reading the Monbiot political op-ed was an eye-opener. It's clear that the British/Canadian Left author & audience are speaking a different dialect of English from the US Right. I find this *very* interesting.

1

Priscilla King

@5PriscillaKing

·

16s

The U-Penn Language Log, or *maybe*

@ScottAdamsSays

, would be better prepared to analyze the dialectal variations than I am--but it would be an interesting analysis to follow. Both sides need to understand these things.

1

Priscilla King

@5PriscillaKing

·

15s

Meanwhile...I started this exchange by picking on JK's e-friend's appeal for emergency funds. JK replied w harsh judgments on people I respect/ed. Then, instead of flaming, flagging, or blocking, both of us *backed off* & tried communicating.

1

Priscilla King

@5PriscillaKing

·

15s

I'm tempted to say this is a middle-aged female thing, but it's not; it was actually what I liked about the boy I liked in high school. It's a learned skill. So why is

@Twitter

facilitating "polarized" hostility rather than the skill of discussion?

1

Priscilla King

@5PriscillaKing

·

15s

Or, how could my mother & aunt, my husband & I, Carville & Matalin, etc., like & respect each other while usually cancelling each other's votes whenever voting for the same candidates? Such ppl say: "Similar ends; believe different means work."

1

Priscilla King

@5PriscillaKing

·

15s

People who talk about the similar ends tend to be "socially liberal" types whose similar goals include individual freedom, equal civil rights, equal pay, cold wars or none at all, good will and reasonable hopes of prosperity for all.

1

Priscilla King

@5PriscillaKing

·

14s

"Polarizers" tend to deny having similar ends, yet they do tend to achieve similar goals when they can--hostility, aggression, alarm & despondency, demands for more #censorship & surveillance, collapse of national economy if these reach natl levels.

1

Priscilla King

@5PriscillaKing

·

14s

As

@JonahDispatch

documented in "Liberal Fascism," Hitler & Stalin had a lot in common w each other &, well, *bullies* generally--most definitely including #cyberbullies like those demanding shadowbans on calls to help a crime victim.

1

Priscilla King

@5PriscillaKing

·

14s

Those "fascist" qualities we all hate & dread can appear on either Left or Right...wherever the ethical element is missing. David Duke & Louis Farrakhan used to exchange Xmas gifts (admittedly!) in honor of how each hater boosted other's following.

1

Priscilla King

@5PriscillaKing

·

3m

Article? Hey, this idea could become a book. I could not write that book this year; respectfully hesitate to ask whether

@JonahDispatch

or

@JimBabka

could. I cd write it *next* year. I'd be grateful for contributions from all sides.

1

Priscilla King

@5PriscillaKing

·

3m

Will I write it? As my lawyer says when giving gd free advice, "That will take Research, & Research will take Money." Yet it's possible that this new wave of #cyberbullying may generate enough publicity that I may be the 1 to write that book.

Tortie Tuesday: Checking In with Serena

 Queen Cat Serena is not, strictly speaking, a "Tortie." Her type of coat is called "Calico." There are other variations on the pattern, as well as classic tortie and calico, but Tortie Tuesday has traditionally been inclusive of all three-colored cats.

Here's a Cat Sanctuary Interview, written through the usual method of translating the cat's nonverbal behavior. The only stimulant necessary for me to write these things is the gift of Irish-American whimsy.

PK: Serena, what's happened to you during the weeks I've been offline?

Serena: A lot of things, some of them very bad. In October I ate a bird in the orchard, the way you're always telling me not to do. It was horrible. Everything kept going around and around. I would try to go out and eat some grass and bring it up, and everything looked and felt and smelled so wrong that I could hardly tell where to set my feet. I heard you calling me, several times, but couldn't follow the sound of your voice. I figured you were on the porch but I had trouble getting from the shed to the porch. Those few bounds became a lot of slow, awkward, difficult steps. I came to understand that it's not just a joke when you humans say "Everything hurts, and what doesn't hurt doesn't work." 

Silver: We tried to protect the human from you, because you were acting so strange.

Swimmer: Just as you always taught us, Ma, serious fighting is not allowed!

Silver: We tried to tell you not to go to her, but you kept staggering toward her, the way the humans did when they were playing zombies.

Swimmer: We tried to tell her not to go to you, but she kept calling your name and holding out her hand.

Silver: How could a human know that you were so delirious that we thought you were likely to bite her hand? 

Serena: Never!

Swimmer: Well you tried to bite me! If you hadn't been so feeble, or if I'd been as slow as a human, you could have killed me. You were not in your right mind.

Silver: Some of these diseases are infectious. You might have spread whatever it was to us! 

Swimmer: You were not fit to be around anybody, Ma. We were sorry.

Serena: No. I knew that. But I also knew that the human keeps that stuff that helps us get rid of things that have made us sick. So I wanted to go to her for help, but it was hard to be sure of anything. The human and the house looked strange and dangerous, spinning around, swaying back and forth, changing shapes. Her voice sounded all wrong too, and when she picked me up in those pathetic bare hands humans have, it felt as if her hands were covered in claws. I felt so bad.

I thought that the office room, where I was born, would be a safe place. I looked for my nest box. It wasn't there. Well, of course it had been moved out for my kittens. I wanted to get to the back corner of the closet. That always seemed the best place to hide, if a person wanted to hide. I wanted to lie down and be sick.

Silver: You never let us make excuses, so don't start now.

Serena: No. There's no excuse. The human would not let me lie on the rug and be sick. I heard her saying she was going to get some medicine for me, but I saw her looking like a huge, horrible, cat-eating monster, or maybe two monsters. I felt even the safe, dry rug sticking little sharp claws up into my paws. Then there was an object behaving strangely. I just knew it was going to kill me. I think it must have been a box, and the human wanted to scoop me up in it, but I didn't know that anything was safe any more. I bounded out of that closet and lay down near where the hot-air fan used to be. The hot-air fan was not there. 

Swimmer: Well, of course not. It was a hot afternoon.

Serena: The air didn't feel hot to me--though the sun did. I heard the human say something about resting on some newspapers, the way Heather did once when she was sick. I thought that newspapers would be cold, and I couldn't bear the way they crackle under you. 

And then she grabbed the back of my neck. I know now that she was only holding on to me, but it felt as if she were crushing my skin and choking me. And she had something in her hand that was hurting the side of my mouth. I know now that it must have been the syringe, because it had medicine in it, but it felt as if she were trying to cut me up with a knife. I kept trying to run away, and she kept crushing my neck and hurting my mouth.

Silver: Time out, Ma. That sounds like an awfully unpleasant thing to remember.

PK: I have here (I know you cats don't actually read English) a reprint of an article by Bob Story that my husband gave me, years ago, called "How to Give Your Cat a Pill." The article is about how much control cats have of their throat muscles, compared with humans. Once humans swallow a pill or anything else, it's hard for us to bring it up again. Cats' digestive systems are much shorter and can bring up things that seemed to be safely down in your stomachs.

Bob Story described a man trying to force a cat to take just one pill from a package of six. He wasted all six pills while the panicky cat did a lot of damage to him, and his property, and his friends. The way you went scrambling around the office, screaming and gasping, trying to scratch or bite anything that got near you, and not seeming to see clearly through your wide-open black eyes, was like the way Bob Story described his cat.  

Does this give us any insights into the way cats often do react to pills?

Serena: Yes. Even if they're as sick as I was, vets should prescribe medicines in liquid form. When everything else feels all wrong, of course pills feel strange and nasty too. And anyone who's trying to sit on a cat and force the cat to do anything, when the cat is as sick as I was, deserves what he gets. He does not deserve a goldfish, which is what Bob Story said he was trying to get to replace that poor sick cat!

PK: Most humans learn, at least from what other humans tell us, about being delirious--not perceiving things the way we normally do, not able to tell dreams and memories from real things around us. A high fever, or some things we use as medicine for ourselves, or some disease conditions like kidney failure or thyroid failure, can cause temporary insanity for us too. There was no question in my mind what was going on with you, Serena. I've never been delirious enough to run and scream and fight people who were trying to help me, but I've had enough experience of fevers and vertigo and pinched nerves that what you were doing made perfect sense--in a horrible way.

Serena: I thought it must really be you, and you must have been saying you were trying to help, but I couldn't be sure of anything. 

Swimmer: You did scratch our human. We smelled and saw the blood. How many times have you told us, Ma? She's only a human! She has no fur!

Silver: You would have banished us for life if we'd ever behaved like that!

Serena: I know. I'm not proud of it. I did have to clean disgusting human blood off my claws. Humans can't help that one reason why we find them so useful for protection is that every other creature on Earth, except for a few perverted creatures like mosquitoes, agrees that they smell and taste about as nasty as it's possible for an animal to smell and taste while it is alive. Those of us who've learned to tolerate human odor like to sit or lie where humans have been because so many nuisance animals, even big ones, will avoid their scent! And I was already sick, and I had that on my tongue.

Swimmer: And it served you right.

Serena: Yes. Well, there's no need to be tiresome about it. I thought I might have died and gone to the Bad Place already. The big black cup she puts the black powder in, and the sound of water being stirred, and the syringe, all seemed strange and horrible. Even when I could feel the medicine diluting the acid inside me, even that made me want to run out and be sick. So when she opened the door I did.

PK: That was actually a reassuring sight. When Heather had food poisoning, instead of becoming aggressive like you she became passive, but the staring eyes, the unsteady walk, the fever, and the germ-fouled breath were all just like yours. When she went out to be sick, the worst of it was over. She got rid of the bad stuff, buried it deep, slept for several hours and was normal the next day. When you rushed out to the sand pit I thought there ought to be hope for you. At least, theoretically, it couldn't be rabies. (And I'm quite sure that, even if you'd had rabies, you would've gone to a Good Place.)

Silver: Nobody gets rabies any more.

PK: Nobody in our part of the world has had rabies lately. The disease still exists. All pets, even friendly wild ones like skunks, should have rabies vaccinations for safety's sake. An animal with food poisoning, which is usually short-term and harmless, or distemper, which is usually fatal, can inflict as much pain on a human as an animal with rabies would. The difference is that when it's food poisoning or distemper, once the skin wounds heal we'll be all right.

(For those who are wondering...no, even in the year when rabies was found within a hundred miles of us, so far as I know nobody tried to take the skunks in for rabies shots. They weren't all that friendly. We just vaccinated the cats, and dogs, that year, and prayed for Pepe and Hepzibah. Humans' reactions to rabies shots seem to be more painful than other animals', although that may be partly because humans can describe our reactions in words. By watching other animals we can imagine what they're feeling, but we never really know. 

Serena: Well, I'm all right now. Say, I know that when I bounced off the computer I "said" something to our readers. What did I say?

PK: You inserted a lot of blank lines into a document. Maybe that meant "Fill in the blanks! What does it look as if I'm thinking?" 

Serena: I was thinking a lot of things. I'm glad I didn't actually say them. I didn't bite you, either, did I?

PK: It looked as if you thought you were biting me, but I'm glad to report that you missed. 

Serena: I'm glad too. If I smelled the same way that other cat smelled, I wonder why I was sicker?

PK: Possibly because Heather let me know right away when she started to feel sick, and didn't spend eighteen hours hiding in the shed. 

Serena: I didn't want to bother you. Nobody would have wanted to smell all the stuff that kept coming out of me.

PK: No, but your feeling better sooner would have been worth it.

Serena: I feel better now. Which of these switches should we play with next?

Eighties Sweaters Are Back: Part I.1

What makes a sweater "eighties"? The true answer is: having been made in the 1980s. That decade saw almost every style of sweater that's ever been invented in the spotlight of fashion. 

One exception is the Ugly Holiday Sweater with a dozen or more little pictures knitted in different brilliant colors, often cotton-ramie, with lots of little knots inside, embroidery, sequins, beads and sometimes bells or rolling eyes. Those whimsical sweaters could become ugly when the colors faded and ran together, the embroidery frayed, and the sequins came off, which often started at the first washing--yet the sweaters remained warm and comfortable, so people continued to wear them, with enough sense of irony to have declared "National Ugly Sweater Days" and Ugly Sweater Contests. Though prefigured by some elaborate pictorial designs of the 1980s, the Ugly Holiday Sweater was a fad of the early 1990s. If you find an ugly holiday sweater in mint condition you might get away with counting it as an Eighties Sweater look, but celebrating the ugly effects time had on these sweaters is a twenty-first century thing. 

This series will consider some authentic Eighties Sweaters trends to look for in consignment shops and, if you're lucky enough to be or know a knitter, to knit. I'll describe each one in the order in which I remember its appearance. 

I. That Earth Mama Look That Grew Out of the Mid-Seventies...

It stayed around into the early eighties. Hippies revived "folksy, earthy, peasant" looks in the 1970s; in the U.S. the Bicentennial in 1976 inspired a trend for "Americana"--more often Victorian or Edwardian than Colonial styles. Part of this trend was an interest in "folk knitting." Most of the colder climates on Earth have inspired people to develop a distinctive style of "folk knitting," but, ironically, knitted sweaters were considered either underwear or at best work gear. Historical specimens of knitting include more sock tops than sweaters. Nevertheless, throughout the Eighties knitters reinvented "folk knitting" techniques into the hand-knitted sweater look.

It is important to note that, although these styles are identified with different cultures, in Eighties sweaters cultural appropriation was never considered a bad thing. Most traditional sweater patterns of the past were simplified for faster knitting in any case. You can wear any traditional-pattern-inspired American sweater as an Eighties Sweater.

1. Guernsey

This little island in the English Channel was regarded as the home of the first sweater patterns on record. In many languages the word for a modern-style sweater sounds like "Guernsey." In English, the distinction between place and garment came to be marked by calling the sweater style "gansey." 

Official gansey patterns exist for many of the sea and canal towns of Europe. There is, nevertheless, photographic evidence that knitters did not keep knitting the same things over and over. Sweaters that featured the official hometown pride stitch pattern often also showed additional patterns knitters had worked out for themselves or copied from other people's ganseys. Alice Starmore described her aunts reminiscing about having stared at sailors "to pinch the patterns" of their sweaters, being teased about whether they were looking at the sweaters or the young men. Traditional ganseys were made of very lightweight yarn worked very tightly. Eighties ganseys usually show simpler patterns, and in different combinations, than old photographs show.

What makes a sweater a "gansey"?

a. In most places, ganseys were knitted in one color. Where they were seen as underwear, the color was usually natural white. (The gansey was usually worn over a cotton or linen shirt, under an outer shirt and/or jacket and/or coat. Still, it was made of wool, and undyed white wool is less prickly than dyed wool.) Where ganseys were seen as shirts, the color was usually dark blue, sometimes red. Fair Isle, the Faroes, and Canada were exceptions; gansey styles knitted there traditionally featured multicolor designs.

b. In most places, ganseys were made of wool. Greece was an exception; Greek fishermen's sweaters, a newer style, were sometimes made of thick cotton.

c. In most places, ganseys were made of as light a yarn, knitted at as tight a gauge, as the knitter could manage. The Aran islands were an exception; Aran geansai were sometimes made of wool as bulky as modern blanket yarn.

d. Many old ganseys had a long lower edge, called a "skirt," that was not always ribbed or shaped, but stuffed down into trousers. Bands of ribbing or other textured stitch patterns are almost necessary on today's pullover sweaters, to control the tendency of most knitted fabric to roll. Old ganseys were shaped by sweat, seawater, trousers and belt, and the almost necessary feature was that they be long enough not to shrink up above the wearer's waist when soaked. A minority of Eighties sweaters copied this "skirt" or peplum style. 

e. Early ganseys were knitted on long double-pointed needles, all in one piece, without seams--a very graceful style to master, if you can. Waists were never shaped until the wool got wet and shrank to the wearer's body. Underarms were shaped with a diamond-shaped gusset. Sleeves were started from the top and knitted down to the wrist, so damaged cuffs could be cut off and replaced. Neckbands were high and tight; at least one old fisherman stated on record that the sweaters his mother used to make had such tight collars that they pulled the skin off his ears. Ear-skinning turtlenecks are optional, though common in old photos; in any case, real ganseys have snug round necklines. 

f. Early ganseys were worn almost exclusively by men, though knitted almost exclusively by women. (Men knitted, but what they traditionally knitted were fishing nets. Women took pride in making all their families' clothes.) Some of the traditional designs form horizontal lines that are unflattering to most women. In the early twentieth century, when sweaters became part of women's fashions, the code of official hometown patterns was quickly lost--probably for this reason. 

Gansey pattern books to look for: 

* Gladys Thompson, Patterns for Guernseys Jerseys and Arans, is the classic study of traditional gansey patterns. It was not written for beginning knitters who want to follow a fully printed pattern. It was written for experienced amateur designers who want to plug stitch pattern charts into their own familiar patterns for making and shaping sweaters. There are lots of notes on shaping, variations, and even a couple of sample patterns for Aran sweaters (which are harder to design on paper since the cables change the shape of the fabric), but Thompson wouldn't have insulted her audience by telling them how to knit a gansey! If you're a beginner, this book can guide your shopping. When you're an experienced knitter you'll be able to appreciate it. 

People who bought the Kindle edition also complain that the pattern charts don't show up clearly on Kindle, so if you buy this book, buy the printed edition. I'm partial to Dover paperbacks--much better bound than competing paperbacks are.

* Michael Pearson, Traditional Knitting Patterns of the British Isles, was bigger than Gladys Thompson's book and included some patterns she missed. Like her book, it was written primarily for designers. (I linked to the book I've read. Pearson released an updated, even bigger, edition in 2015 but I've never seen that book.) 

* Priscilla Gibson-Roberts, Knitting in the Old Way, is another book for the expert knitter or beginning designer. Traditional samples include several "folk knitting" traditions as well as ganseys, with more information about how to design your own versions of the special shaping and knitting techniques, and not one step-by-step pattern for what Elizabeth Zimmermann (they were friends) called Blind Followers. 

I'm not dissing Blind Followers. I myself Blindly Followed a dozen or so patterns for the things I was then able to design. So, later in the Eighties, we finally come to some books that can be used by Blind Followers:

* Gwyn Morgan, Traditional Knitting Patterns of Ireland Scotland and England, was a low-budget production, not reprinted, full of serviceable Eighties versions of British "folk knitting" traditions, including ganseys, fairisles, Nordic styles, and Aran cables. At Ko-fi you'll soon see a swatch for my version of one of these sweaters.

* Madeline Weston, Classic British Knits, includes nice Eighties updates for several Guernsey, Fair Isle, Aran, and Shetland traditions, including a shawl and a few accessories as well as sweaters. Yarns used are much thicker than the ones in museum samples (except for early twentieth century Arans) but still skinny yarns, not always easy to find in colors other than "baby" pastels. I remember the summer Wal-Mart downsized its collection of Luster-Sheen lightweight acrylic yarn, and I gleefully bought yarn to knit several of Weston's gansey patterns, including the one on top of the bin below...

Ah yes, the big-chain department stores regard lightweight yarns as novelties and don't stock many of them, most years. And the things we knit in lightweight yarns take twice as much time as the things we knit with the blanket-weight crochet yarn that fills Wal-Mart, Michael's, Joann's, etc., yarn shelves. But they are much easier to wear indoors, and much less likely to make wearers look fat.

* Eighties versions of gansey patterns appeared in many knitting magazines. A particularly attractive sample, and easy to make as ganseys go, was reprinted by Trisha Malcolm in Vogue Knitting's Very Easy Knits. Some readers complained that the shaping, stitch patterning, and relatively thin yarn make it more of a challenge than what Malcolm was calling Very Easy Knits in issues of the magazine she'd edited. Knitters have been making versions of this simple gansey for years. You'll soon find a swatch for it in my Ko-fi WIP Album, too.

* Well after the eighties were over, Beth Brown-Reinsel wrote her own book on how to make miniature, child-sized, adult-sized, lightweight, and bulky sweaters with gansey shaping and stitch patterns: Knitting Ganseys. She was working out these designs in the Eighties. Few people will know that you used a technique and pattern book that came out later. 

Petfinder Links: Jack Russell Terriers

Frankly, this post is a challenge. (That's why it's fun.) First of all, Google has changed its codes so the pictures don't link directly to the animals' web pages any more; you may be able to click on the URLs below, or you may have to paste them into your browser. 

Then, even though Jack Russell Terriers are one of the classic all-round breeds of dogs that have been popular pets for more than a century, they're not my favorite breed. This is mainly because a puppy of this type stayed with us when I was eleven or twelve or so; because my brother and I didn't know how to train a puppy, he became a miserable little "spoiled brat" of a dog, snuggled and spoiled when nobody had anything better to do, tied to the fence and ignored when anything else was going on, and after chewing up objects, yapping, and jumping on people's legs for a few months he finished by eating my favorite pet bantam hen. If he'd been adopted by an adult who'd given him firm, consistent, loving discipline he might have been a great pet. 

So, eventually I grew up and worked for a very nice 87-year-old writer who lived with a Jack Russell Terrier who had been properly brought up. That dog was as satisfactory a pet as the puppy I'd spoiled was not. He'd go downstairs and lead me up to his human's office, then supervise our work until he felt satisfied that his human was safe. I actually started to bond with him.

But I still find myself tending to feel that the cutest Jack Russell Terriers at Petfinder are the mixed breeds who look more like something else. I still have to fight this tendency.

The dog breeds called terriers have different characteristic coats, ears, and colors, but they have typical traits in common. They are bigger than cats, smaller than hounds, very strong for their size, tough little predators, famous for hunting and fighting nuisance animals. They can be rough and aggressive, even with friends, if not properly trained. If they don't want to be picked up and treated like baby humans, they'll let you know with a corrective nip. Not all terriers are as aggressive as the breed stereotype but it's not unusual for a terrier who feels neglected or rejected to kill another pet, even if the other animal is bigger, and especially if it's a rodent. When they're well disciplined their strength and tenacity can be useful to their humans. They are well known for solving rat problems. Many terriers are remembered as protectors of children, some even as having been strong enough to pull a toddler out of water or some other danger. Some terriers understand dozens of words; together with their strength, this means that some people have that incredible experience of telling a pet terrier, in an emergency, "Fetch the rope" or "Fetch the knife" or "Bring Tracy," and having the dog actually bring the object or person they need. They tend to be healthy, and live longer than bigger dogs usually do. A hundred years ago, because they are relatively long-lived and cheap to feed, they were the most popular family pets in North America. 

Jack Russell Terriers have short coats that don't shed much. They can be any combination of black, brown, tan, or white. The "pure" look for this breed features square jaws designed for heavy-duty chomping. Crossbreeds can look like almost anything the wide range of dog DNA makes possible. They need some objects they're free to chew up. They usually like an active life with a lot of exercise. 

All three terriers featured below are described as healthy, up to date on vaccinations, and already neutered.

1. Near New York City: Charlie from Pennsylvania

Here's Charlie from northeastern Pennsylvania, a mixed breed whose known ancestors include beagles as well as terriers, currently up for adoption at https://www.petfinder.com/dog/charlie-46268989/pa/stroudsburg/animal-welfare-society-of-monroe-pa539/ . The shelter encourages people interested in adopting a dog to make an appointment to meet the dog or dogs who interest them. Charlie is a little over a year old.

2. Near Washington: Tanya from Pennsylvania 

 

In southeastern Pennsylvania, Tanya is looking for a home. This senior dog is described as sweet, shy, snuggly, and dozy, good with children but intimidated by bigger dogs. 

Shelter staff prefer to deal with local residents only. Seriously, if you've ever advertised anything online and received online responses only from spammers and scammers, you'll understand. They consider D.C. local enough. If you're in Maryland, Pennsylvania, or D.C., click here to meet Tanya: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/tanya-49667637/pa/dillsburg/canine-rescue-of-central-pa-inc-pa255/ . I didn't ask how they feel about New Jersey but I'm guessing that, if you drove to Dillsburg and made a generous donation, they wouldn't even care if you were from Ohio.

3. Boomer from Madison (Georgia) 

Born in 2013, Boomer would be considered old if he were a large breed, but he's only middle-aged for a terrier. Visit his web page at https://www.petfinder.com/dog/boomer-48069108/ga/madison/humane-society-of-morgan-county-ga150/ to learn more...When you're accustomed to living with cats, all dogs seem high-maintenance. When people who are trying to find a home for a dog advertise that he's active, high-energy, not recommended for a home with smaller animals, seven years old and still a "pup" who needs training, that's enough to put me off. People are different. You may be a dog person who wants excitement and a bit of a challenge in your life. If so, this dog is guaranteed to provide it.

(Update: The Sullivan County animal shelter in Blountville, Tennessee, has some dogs of this type who need homes. Do they ever need homes. A private Dog Sanctuary folded and turned forty-some sickly dogs over to the shelter, most in too poor condition even to be available for viewing at the shelter yet, but they need to empty out some cages. Local lurkers, please consider adopting a Sullivan County dog. The mixed breeds really are homeless dogs.)

Long Time No Blog...

Hello, Gentle Readers, how've you been? I'm sure rumors are flying, so here are the facts about my disappearance from my favorite cafe...

1. How seriously the cafe owners are "going crazy" I have no idea, but I know they were required by law to stop serving as the main WiFi hot spot for the whole town. They couldn't seat people for a long time, then they were allowed to seat people at only half the tables, and then the coronavirus actually reached my town and nobody with any public spirit wants to sit in a public place all day. This has all cost them a lot of money--more than they'd get if half a dozen writers all came in and bought cups of coffee all day, every day, all winter. Not that we would. Because...

2. The whole downtown area is now a WiFi hot spot...if your battery will run long enough, and, during that time, it won't rain. I can't take full advantage of the fact that you can now sit anywhere in downtown Gate City and use the'Net all day free of charge. Some people can, and are doing. 

3. I'd been blogging from a friend's basement. The predictable basement problems had kicked in. The corridor that divides the basement meant the friend's son and I kept bumping each other off the Internet and passing each other on the way to the bathroom. The less he was able to work, the more inconvenient I was for him. The suggestion did come from me: I am an aunt, and as such, if it were my nephew, I'd understand that the last thing a twenty-something guy wants is to have to check the corridor for other people's aunts before dashing to the bathroom. Possibly his mother had hoped that this would motivate the guy to find a better job. Hello? In 2020? Find any kind of job?

4. So when I suddenly had the cash in hand, either to rent a physical store for this winter or to rent a van and go to all the open-air markets, come sun or rain or snow...I thought the store would be easy; half the buildings on Jackson Street are empty. I was wrong; the owners of those empty buildings wanted to sell them for what the owners believe those locations ought to be worth, even though the people who are willing to consider those prices are going to lose their shirts.

5. However, no problem, right? I could still go to all the open-air markets and I had a couple of vans and drivers in mind. While those people were still haggling, however, I went to the Friday Market in my own town and checked out the crowd. Let's just say that most of this crowd are not coronavirus bloggers. They are not heavy Internet users. They are not people who believe what they hear on television, if they watch television, which many don't. And they were not making a connection between the trivial little symptoms they had and the Dreaded Coronavirus That Kills People. It is hard to explain the findings of modern immunology to people whose formal education ended before 1960, although Grandma Bonnie Peters was, and Adayahi and Lisiwayu are, exceptions. These older people grew up hearing things like "You had strep throat, your sister had scarlet fever, and your brother died of rheumatic fever," rather than "You had the mildest reaction, your sister had a more severe reaction, and your brother had a fatal reaction to infection with streptococcus bacteria." So, most of them were wearing masks, veils, or bandanas, at least when they approached other people...but a lot of coughing was still going on. People who were ill and knew it were still swarming up to people who were at high risk. For anyone at risk, anyone who was or had been in the market was a dangerous carrier.

6. "No problem for you, right, Pris? You're immune." Well yes, obviously I am immune. I've still not been tested but yes, going by the results, I'm 99% sure I had my trivial little case of coronavirus in August. I had no reaction to being coughed on by COVID spreaders. None. I kept paying bills, and looking for heavy chores to do at home to prevent weight gain, and loving that feeling of being able to work your average town-dwelling student into the ground. 

7. Because most people do seem to be feeling better than we were this time last year. Because the level of glyphosate exposure from the air, water, every kind of food, even paper products, is lower! In 2019, I was seeing puddles of blood-flecked froth beside the road I usually walk into town, continually. In 2020, I've not seen one. I have had a few celiac reactions, but by far fewer and less unpleasant. Humans have made 2020 a very bad year; as if to compensate, nature has made it a lovely one, with an early spring, a mild summer, and a long, long autumn. And people have been free to enjoy it...whenever they weren't worrying about their employers or their business going bankrupt, anyway.

8. But, y'know what, about my case of coronavirus? I apparently got it from someone who was also immune. And that person would also have spread it to Yona, whose last words to me were about an over-the-counter cough suppressant that "really works, but lately I've been feeling just the way I did before I had that heart attack a few years ago." Yona and the mostly young crowd with whom he worked did not take the coronavirus seriously. Because he could still work longer and harder than they could, Yona did not take seriously, either, the fact that he's old enough to be their father. He didn't get it from me but what he's had has been deadly serious. Adayahi's still monitoring a family member's progress day by day, not venturing to report, also. And the loudest, cheeriest coronavirus-fear-denier in town has been on my prayer list since I emerged from quarantine myself, and she said "Oh, we've all had a cough, but nobody's been ill," and then proceeded to sound sicker every day thereafter.

9. I predicted this, not because I'm psychic, but because modern immunology was the hot topic when I went to university. About 99% of all coronavirus, for about 99% of all humans, is not serious; it's "the other cold," "the uncommon cold," the virus that normally doesn't even make people sneeze. But it's still one more way immune-compromised people can die, like the gray-green mold that can grow on their bodies and the harmless little streppy-bugs that can give them pneumonia and several other things most people don't feel a need to think about. People who are immune don't notice the disease any more, but any person, or animal, or object can still spread any airborne disease. Without noticing it.

What some people see as Trump's big mistake--though I don't believe for a minute that coronavirus would have got here if Trump had never existed--was trying to act as if there's one answer to the question "How serious is this disease?" There's a continuum of seriousness for diseases. Even AIDS and rabies aren't 100% fatal, though close to it. Even the strain of streppy-bugs that are sometimes used to process milk into nice digestible yogurt aren't 100% harmless, though close to it. Coronavirus is a lot closer to the harmless end but, like most diseases, it's serious for some people not others. The question Trump had to answer was how seriously to take the fears of the immune-compromised minority. In my county (official reports aren't broken down by town), out of close to 24,000 people, so far we've seen 12 people actually die of coronavirus. How much people want to sacrifice, for 1 out of 2,000 people, is a very subjective decision. Trump's initial answer to that question was Trumpy to the max, but if he'd called for a full lockdown, the virus still would have got here and probably about the same number of people would have died--leaving behind a majority of Americans for whom coronavirus is not and never was a serious problem. Unless that one vulnerable person among the two thousand we know happens to be our favorite one of those people, anyway.

10. So, in my corner of Virginia, the stampede to send kids back to school, have football and basketball games again, sit in restaurants, drop tots off at the library, go back to church, and some people even rushed to drop their masks...all coincided with the arrival of cooler weather and thinner, less Vitamin-D-rich sunlight and lots more non-serious cases of coronavirus. Just as the legal restrictions stopped pouring out of Richmond, those of us who understand what modern immunology has to say about coronavirus went into voluntary lockdown. Meaning, among other things: NO open-air markets for me this winter. I want to maintain my record of not having spread this virus to anyone for whom it might be serious.

11. So I ended up bribing somebody to reactivate an Internet connection that was disconnected for years because it was unreliable, in a private home, on the same edge of town where I live. Meaning I can use the Internet under a roof (well, a leaky sunroom roof, but still...) without walking through my locked-down town. When the weather's just right. During almost the reverse of my previous schedule: now I'll be online mostly in the evening. For the duration. Courtesy of a different founding family, but most of this clan are also Republicans. (I will be online under the roof of a Trump voter. Tweeps, please keep your opinions of Trump reasonably clean.)

12. So I finally got online. It took a long time, because the speed of Dell laptops, generally, has not improved since the Sickly Snail's time, and because this Dell laptop is a piece of garbage (that's its name, The POG), programmed among other things to balk and wheedle for cables even when it's set to work from a wireless connection. I click on the button that says "WiFi" and a message pops up saying "Can't connect to this WiFi connection" until I run a "Troubleshooter" program that reminds the POG it doesn't need cables. I would not have made this up but, at the risk of being a positively annoying blessing-counter, it is primarily responsible for my getting such a good price on this POG. (No need to pop my little balloon about this. I still hate using the thing.) 

13. And then...I have to share this because I find it hilarious. I've been in lockdown mode, right? I walked all the way into town to vote. I made three quick dashes into specific places of business in people's cars to use the drive-up windows. I have not been in a place where I could look at a newspaper to see who won the election, although, going by the number of Biden signs that popped up outside the polls here in the Heart of Kilgore Country, I would've bet it was Biden. 

(Trump wants to sue? How's he figure that? I will tell him, and I'm sure many other Virginians who are Republicans, or at least "Never-Trump" Republicans, or at least they sometimes seriously consider voting for a Republican, will tell him the same thing. If Congress voted for another round of handout checks, and Trump then vetoed that--which was the rumor all over town during the week before the election, though I found no official confirmation of it--then yes, Trump, there is a way to lose Virginia. You should have asked Congressman Griffith about this. I want honest work for honest pay and you can keep the handouts, but I was catching hate for having expressed this opinion on a daily basis when I was in town on a daily basis. Most of my townsfolk do not realize that even the first round of handout checks are coming out of their own pockets, sooner or later. If it's not true that Trump vetoed the handout checks, then he has grounds for a lawsuit all right. If it is true, he should just go back to New York now.)

So today I fiiiinally get online. Two and a half weeks after the election, in Lockdown Mode, I'm still waiting for official election results. I go on Twitter, I look for the election results...and...it's still not over?!?!?! 

Well, I call that funny. I did laugh. I'm a cheerful Irish-American Independent, not one of your grim, hate-spewing partisan-type voters. Actually I think this election was pretty grim but y'might as well laugh as cry.

Some elections held during this century really were close, and the results really were tainted. Both W Bush and Obama should have had to wait for more closely monitored do-over elections before either took office the first time. But if Trump was personally responsible for refusing to give free money to people who vote with their feelings, in a year when even the town richies are wailing about how poor they think they are...nobody would ever expect Trump to jump the net and shake our hands if we'd beaten him at tennis, but nobody's going to believe he didn't know that that veto amounted to throwing the election away. Either he's just become the most grievously slandered human in history, or else he has only himself to sue. 

14. And meanwhile...I am sincerely grateful to the people who wanted to advertise masks at this web site. (Youall know who you are.) This is a general, personal web site that's not really focussed on any product, unless we count "books" or "blogs" as products. As such, it's not SEO (search engine optimized) for consumer products such as masks. For this web site that wouldn't be appropriate. For your web site, if you have one...ah that's another story. Last spring I did a lot of research and writing about monarch butterflies. Google "monarch butterflies," send me your top ten results, and I'll confide to you where I rank at SEO writing for SEO-appropriate sites. After posting my articles, my client's site has been in the top ten. Once I saw it showing above Wikipedia woo-hoo yee-haaaa goodygoodygoody...

This web site's own traffic has hit zero during the second month without an update. I see Web traffic going down generally as people have less money to spend and have to spend whatever online time they have on work or school, but we'll certainly bounce back above that. I have no intentions of changing this site to get daily page views over five figures. It is a real-books-and-writing site, after all, maintained by and primarily for a small group of quirky people most of whom are related by birth.  I can post about fashions, including face coverings. I can link to pictures of flattering masks, comical masks, positively sexy veils, retro bandanas, and of course cozy knitted cowls. 

Here are some topics I'm not particularly interested in writing about: How to get rich quick. How to self-diagnose and self-medicate for anything. How to lose weight by buying anything (most Internet readers don't carry around all that many coins). How to hate any political candidate or party, though I am willing to consider reasons to vote--soberly, dispassionately, appreciating their good qualities and wishing them success at something other than politics--against them. How horrible, unlovable people find True Romance by flopping into bed with people they don't like any more than anybody else ever would. How to feel good about having a lot more money (or a lot more of whatever else, such as time) than your friend has--without sharing. How big totalitarian systems have never achieved anything like real small-scale communism, but even bigger totalitarian systems might (in George Soros' fever dreams anyway). 

That leaves pretty much everything else. Last summer it was butterflies. Last spring, dragonflies. Before that, for most of a year it was a series of SEO forum posts about international studies that went live in some European countries. E-books I've written very fast have been about language, communication, psychology, and religion, which I studied at school and about which I own dozens of classic books. (Most of the time I even remember which book to quote, though that's not to claim that I'll be able to find that book and copy that quote overnight.) Science, history, food, clothes, and travel take more research time, but I enjoy it. Genre fiction usually writes itself fairly fast, for me (except last winter when I was fighting the flu and one mini-novel just dragged); working it up to suit the client can take longer. Small un-cuddly animals became a bit of a theme for this web site because The Nephews were at the age to think they were cool, and remained one because they seem popular with readers.

Investigative journalism, as in Glyphosate Awareness, coronavirus, and other current-events-behind-the-news topics, is a genre I admire, but (1) it's not cheap (I take "legwork" literally) and (2) I've done relatively little of it, partly for that reason. I would love to write a book like some I've read by Dick Reavis, Roger Morris, or Carey Gillam. I would not claim to be able to write that kind of book anywhere near as well as they do, but I'd have a lot of fun trying.

I'm working on full-length, printable books about frugality, glyphosate, and (I think proposing this may have been a symptom of coronavirus, but I'm working with it) knitting, so can't guarantee e-books quite as fast as the ones I cranked out for Guru clients. But I can guarantee they'll get done. E-mail your proposal, mail your money order, and let's write something. My biggest health-related fear at the moment is that the dreaded Retirement Syndrome will start in either body or brain, so please help keep your perky Auntie Pris perking.