Web Log for 11.20-21.24

For about twelve hours between 11.20.24 and 11.21.24 the computer was only technically running, working at about one-tenth of normal operating speed and crashing five or six times, due to NASTY MICROSOFT RUNNING UNWANTED UPDATES TO DISGUSTING EDGE, WHICH I NEVER USE. I think we need a law. If people are paying for computers, for Internet connections, for electricity, for office space, then they should be the sole decision makers about what their computers do. If Microsoft employees want to play with computers, they should get their own.

I do think the Internet has grown to a point of needing regulation, and, off the top of my head, here are fifteen regulations I think it needs: 

(1) any device that connects to the Internet should be considered a computer, 

(2) all computers must be sold with keyboards, 

(3) all computers must be sold with printers to which they are connected by simple cables without depending on phone or Internet connections, 

(4) no matter how much people enjoy listening to music when they are alone with their computers, the default setting for all computers must be completely silent, 

(5) although computer owners have a right to change the programs they use, all programs (software, apps) that are sold to the public must come with printed operating instructions that are not subject to change, 

(6) interruption of Internet connection time for which someone other than the source of the interruption is paying IS THEFT AND THE INTERRUPTER MUST BE MADE TO PAY THE VICTIM OR GO TO PRISON, 

(7) all computers must be functional in completely Internet-free mode, 

(8) attempts to hybridize computers with old-style telephones have been rejected because they were dysfunctional and so the default assumption for all businesses and government offices shall be that people no longer use phones, 

(9) people cannot be required to use e-mail, either, which means that you can't "reach" a person to interrupt what the person is doing at your leisure, so deal with it, 

(10) unless online money-handling services agree to process payments promptly, anonymously, without trying to monitor who is paying whom for what in any way unless a warrant for a criminal investigation has been served, the default assumption for all participants in paid transaction shall be that payments must be made by US postal money orders, 

(11) all computers must be programmed to obey input from their keyboards first, from participants in interactions initiated from their keyboards second, and from third parties only (a) with a warrant for a criminal  investigation or (b) for strictly regulated, statistical, anonymous, data gathering purposes WHEN THE COMPUTER IS NOT IN USE BY ITS OWNER, 

(12) devices sold for uses other than computing may be sold with computers built into them if sold with keyboards and printers, but must be fully operational with those computers disabled or removed, 

(13) any transaction that requires positive identification of any individual must take place offline, 

(14) computers that connect to the Internet must not be allowed to store government identification numbers or phone numbers or any sequence of digits that could be either of those, and 

(15) however much some people may enjoy moving pictures, no image on a computer screen may be allowed to move until it is activated by a command from the keyboard. 

Anyway, I don't do the Petfinder posts in advance, so here it is Friday and (at the time of writing) I don't have one done yet. On that job now...

Cartoon

After that post about the righteousness of being baby-free, let's mention that mothers of small children are superheroines. Fan art from Joe Jackson:

...whose Calvin & Hobbes fan art I love, but whose Archie Comics fan art isn't even funny, just a matter of imagining the teenybopper characters acting out the fantasies most real teenyboppers are too shy to act out. We all know that Archie and Betty and Veronica may have dreams like JJ's cartoons at night, but in the daytime they think about each other, like, "Of course the good-night kiss lasts three seconds, max! What kind of girl/fellow do I want Archie/Betty to think I am?!" 

And thus be it ever. Part of being a teenager is thinking you want to rush ahead and be an adult, but being a teenager is fun in its own way. Free money to go with a friend you will kiss good night for three seconds, max, to the ball game. Free admission to cultural events that cost adults a hundred dollars per person. Teenagers really ought to enjoy it while they can; adulthood lasts long enough. 

Cute Things

I was going around the house pulling down storm windows. The house now has modern screen-and-storm windows, built in one piece; you can push up the screen or the storm window, or pull both down. Halfway inside the screen, in one window, was Johnny Wren, clearly preparing to snuggle down for the night in a dummy nest he made a few summers ago, using oak catkins and moss. It was thick, soft, airy dried plant material and would probably have added some insulating value to his feathers, which have not been receiving natural prompts to grow any extra down.

And here came this great horrid human and tilted his lovely cozy nest out of place! Johnny Wren was very indignant. He has one audible "word" to express dissatisfaction. If I spell it "rasp" you'll probably know the sound I mean. He said "rasp" over and over, with different phrasings and emphases, for a good three minutes.

"Dee dee dee," said a chickadee who had joined a mixed flock with Johnny for the winter. It sounded as if he were agreeing and commiserating. Johnny Wren appeared to think he was. 

This was about 5:30 p.m. Normally the flock would be asleep by now. But still, as the clock ticks closer to 8 p.m.: 

"Rasp rasp rasp rasp RASP rasp." Johnny Wren still has more pieces of his mind to give me.

"Dee dee dee." Maybe the chickadee is still agreeing. Maybe he's trying to tell Johnny Wren to be quiet so he can sleep.

"Peep, cheep." Another small bird is heard from. Maybe they're discussing the weather, and whether they should fly further south.

Photo from the American Bird Conservancy. Actually their wren is probably singing, with his beak open; they don't have to open the beak to rasp. But it looks to humans as if it might be complaining..

Gift Ideas

Election-related e-mail tends to be icky, but post-election begging? From a rich person to non-rich people? The claim being made is that Candidate Kennedy was very unfairly forced to pay his own guards during the election. Say what? He wouldn't have been paying them already? But selling merch as a fundraiser is an option I respect. Here is where to buy hats, T-shirts, and tote bags. I am most likely to wear black, red, or teal. 

https://merch.mahanow.org/collections/make-america-healthy-again 

Health 

For those who would rather sit through a lo-o-o-o-ong video, more than two hours, than read books like Back to Eden, McDougall's Medicine, Maximum Metabolism and others recommended here? Here's a very California-style, Cliff's Notes version where Tucker Carlson talks to two of the rising generation of health food pundits. 

Is healthy eating complicated? Oh no, the little darlings answer earnestly. The AMA and the FDA have made it sound complicated so that people won't cure their own health problems...

Wait'll you've worked in a health care job for a few years, dears. Or developed a complicated health problem, yourselves. Granted, the more real natural food in proportion to overprocessed chemical junk, generally, the better. But every rule has its exception. Some things have to be highly processed to become foods, like the acorns that were a big part of indigenous Californians' diet. Soda pop often seems like the quintessence of junkfood, but not many years ago, when almost all foods were contaminated with glyphosate, soda pop was an important source of calories in my mostly chickweed diet. Because soda pop has had all the fibre and nutrients processed out of any fruit flavoring it may contain, it was one thing that didn't make me sick. 

It can be easy for those of us who've found healing in a special diet to become preachy, which is the worst thing we can do for our cause. Food nannying is more toxic than junkfood is. Tell me what's helped you by all means, but understand that what's helped you might not help me. 

The Bright Young Things think they understand PCOS. I'm not so sure. I will say this, though. When I learned that a friend and I had it, allopathic drugs weren't being offered for it. Birth control pills were. I thought they might unbalance my hormones even more. Anyway my symptoms weren't painful and I didn't want to give birth. But if I could go back, and try a few weeks of a high-fat diet, always assuming that that sort of meals would stay down, and become pregnant and give birth...I wouldn't do it. There are enough babies on this planet; enough of them look like me. I've always been glad Nature spared me from being tempted to do something I would probably have regretted. I seriously believe that the first thing we need to do about our "epidemic of sterility" is recognize that, while sterility can be an effect of disease conditions people want to change, sterility in otherwise healthy people is a blessing, really, by far the mildest of nature's correctives. We have a serious overpopulation problem, /We need to recognize that, when the human population is exploding into "billions," the biggest problem with simple infertility is people's seeing it as a problem. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=8456&v=mUH4Co2wE-I

Psychology 

Resentment of those perceived as better off can take strange forms. Chris Queen is receiving wails that mentioning the seasons in the US and UK "excludes" people in Australia and New Zealand. That reminds me of a Canadian reader's comment on an Associated Content post that referred readers to "your State" web site, "I am Canadian as you know." Yes, I did know. Associated Content was enough of a community that people could reasonably expect the writers they followed to remember where their hundred or two hundred most loyal readers lived. And I would have thought that, just as US readers would naturally compare their State's web site to the one I was citing for Tennessee, that particular Canadian reader ought to have been able to translate "State" to "province" and think, if the reader's province did not have an analogous page, that might be an opportunity to get paid for setting one up. 

It is fascinating that seasons work differently in different places, that in some places there's never snow for Christmas and, if snow falls at all, it's more likely to fall on the fourth of July. (Which, in those places, is probably not a holiday.) Previous generations of writers from the Southern Hemisphere were able to educate readers about this with style, verve, and charm, with stories that feature summertime Christmas parties and the oppressive heat of downtown Melbourne in February. Whining resentment is the new fashion...I prefer the older fashion, thanks. 

https://pjmedia.com/chris-queen/2024/11/20/when-youre-planning-your-seasonal-events-dont-be-inconsiderate-like-mother-nature-n4934470

There happen to be more writers in the US. That won't change. We can try to remember to mention metric measurements, use different names for things if known, and at least explain if we insist on using some of the more alarming phrases in US slang. ("We killed the other school" means "We won the game, 65-0.") Beyond that, we expect international audiences to speak for themselves, tell us which side of the road they drive on and when and where they take vacations. US writers and readers tend to think the other English-speaking countries are charming and interesting, when their residents don't represent themselves to us as tiresome people.

Book Review: A Mate for Thanksgiving

Title: A Mate for Thanksgiving

Author: Erin Havoc

Date: 2022

Quote: "There's nothing to say. Just feel."

Right. That's the fantasy in this book. Woman accidentally runs over wolf on snowy road, tries to save his life, discovers that he's a werewolf and she likes him as a man. Mainly because he's always avoided humans and lived mostly as a wolf with his litter mates, he's not yet found a mate. (Wolves are believed to be as monogamous as dogs are not.) So they mate, as wolves do, and now they're Partners for Life. Right? Well...this pathetic woman believes her hormonal feelings are "love," so what they're going to do when she comes off heat, who knows. But it's a fantasy.

This is the sort of "romance" that can fairly be called porn. The last two or three chapters contain little but body parts. There's no pretense to redeeming social value, no attempt to develop the characters as anything but sets of bodies--perfect, of course, despite the wolf-man's recent injuries. Some person, or couple, was trying very very hard to describe either what worked for the person the night before, or what the person is sure would work for the person if a certain other person would only try it. I tend to suspect that the authors of straight-into-bed "romances" are all men writing under female pseudonyms, but who knows, maybe some of them are just nineteen years old. Read it if that sort of thing works as a marital aid for you. Destroy it before the children come in. I'll admit I skimmed through the bedroom scenes, as women do when we're not trying to get into The Mood, but my guess would be that they don't answer the kind of questions that are in teenagers' minds accurately, either.

Just don't ever take this kind of fantasy seriously in real life, because error'n havoc are what that would be and what it would wreak. Ask your friends who've tried it.

I'm surprised, though perhaps I shouldn't be, that this is what Kindle has to offer in the way of Thanksgiving stories, compared with all the Christmas and Halloween stories. Come to that, I don't think I've ever seen a novel advertise that its characters fall in love on Veterans Day, either, or New Year's Day or the Day of the First Snow. Romance writers are leaving lots of potential markets unexploited.  

Book Review: Sorceress for Hire

Title: Sorceress for Hire

Author: Sedigitus Swift

Date: 2023

ISBN: 978-1-961852-02-0 

Quote: "You want me to find a lost dog?"

This story has a moral: The most fascinating jobs one can fantasize about have their dull moments. Sinta was born with talent, has worked to train that talent, and is now "a powerful sorceress" in the magic, vaguely Europe-like, realm where the story is set. Enchanting the armoring of soldiers into an easy task is the kind of job she does. But some days, all that comes her way are requests to find lost dogs. She does that well, too.

She also defends persecuted peasants, rides into Thieves' Town to recover her stolen purse, and defeats an evil misogynist in a fair magical duel, in this volume. There will be more volumes. If you like fantasy adventures told with tongue firmly in cheek, you'll enjoy all of them.

(Though a character who declares that "Aunts are a scourge and a menace" is allowed to live. Fie!)

Hemileuca Rubridorsa

Going down the long list of Hemileuca species...H. pica, the Magpie Hemileuca, was recognized as the same thing as H. hera. H. proserpina is now considered just a variant form of H. maia. H. rickseckeri and H. rubra were both classified as variants of H. electra. Rubra, the Red Hemileuca, is a fairly conspicuous variation, and so is H. rubridorsa, which is still recognized as a distinct species.

Hemileuca rubridorsa means "half white, red back," or the Red-Backed Hemileuca. It's another relatively little known Mexican species of Hemileuca. Little known, I suspect, because Mexican; that country has so far produced more interesting wildlife than wildlife biologists. The economic significance of "butterfly tourism" is likely to change this. Mexican authors whose work comes up on a web search are aware of H. rubridorsa, as a species found in a location some people want to "develop" or in a museum, but they have yet to take an interest in its life cycle. There is still room for some young person to become famous as an expert on this species.

Photo by Mamole.

Individual moths aren't always reddish all over. Some are whitish or blackish gray but they still have reddish veins in their wings like the Citheronias. 

Photo by Jose Belem Hernandez Diaz. He suggested that people mention that it was found in Mexico. Nearly all rubridorsa are found in central Mexico, though it has been found (alive) in Florida.

All the Hemileucas are hairy; this is another species that looks as if it didn't even have a head.

Photo by Cecilia Ma. From the side that red-and-white tuft over the actual head would look like the head. The head is separate from the plump, hairy thorax, but it's just a little flat button to which the eyes and antennae attach.

Photo by Javier1028. The moths lack logical intelligence. When they were caterpillars, curling up with their bristly backs facing out protected them from many dangers. When they become moths, they no longer have bristles, and curling up makes it easy for predators to bite into them. It's possible that they may look to some predators like hornets about to sting, but oh well, no silk moth lives long in any case. Not having mouths means that silk moths can't eat or drink. As if designed to show the foolishness of Teen Romance, they can only mate. Once, maybe twice. Then if nothing's eaten them they die of old age.

Photo by Wendolyneleju. The Hemileucas seem to lose the scales on their wings more readily than most moths do. 

Despite some fear, during the Hemileuca oliviae population explosion between 1910 and 1920, that H. rubridorsa was "allied with" H. oliviae, its host plant is mimosa. 

Photo by Heri13. The severity of the sting depends on how many bristle tips touch your skin and whether any of them break off and stick in. The flat rosette shape of bristles on the back allows more bristle tips to touch a person, thus more venom. 

Photo by Adrianacervantesf. This caterpillar was parasitized, possibly in the egg stage, by some sort of small flying insect. Several species of small wasps and flies specialize in parasitizing large caterpillars. The parasite eggs hatch inside the caterpillar, who may be smaller and wormier than its siblings. Before the caterpillar pupates, the parasites do; they gnaw their way out through the caterpillar's skin and spin their little cocoons on its back/ They seem quite comfortable in between stngingworms' bristles. The caterpillar may live long enough to pupate, but it won't reproduce. 

While people who have had a close look at a stingingworm usually agree that the species ought to be extinct, human efforts to extirpate animal species have tended to backfire. It is more effective to work with nature and encourage natural predators to thin populations of species we don't like. Instead of trying to develop a poison spray to kill the stingingworms, we do better to focus on not using sprays that might harm those little wasps and flies that keep their numbers low.

Web Log for 11.19.24

Election 2024 

The shock waves continue. Naomi Wolf:

https://naomiwolf.substack.com/p/dear-team-trump-dont-spike-the-football 

Glyphosate Awareness 

The "cola" in the URL indicates the article was written by Joseph Mercola. He's writing a bit beyond his pay scale and subject to correction by Real MD Doctors--if any of them have the fortitude to go there.

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/glyphosate-toxic-destroys-health-cola/

See if Windows tries to block this Friends of the Earth report on "New Roundup," this version hailed as glyphosate-free, which does not mean it won't make people ill. In fact it's expected to make more people sicker sooner than glyphosate did. If the link doesn't work, it's FOE's fault. Backspace through the URL to go to foe.org/resources/, scroll down to the article "New Roundup New Risks," and download it. The site has a really annoying chatbot that will try to ask you for money first. I politely told it "It's a good idea not to let anything pop up and interfere with reading," which got it out of the way long enough for the download to go through. You may need to tell it something else...

https://foe.org/resources/new-roundup-new-risks/

Music

Content warning: Aunts are not supposed to recommend songs like this one. It was apparently released in the campaign season, but wouldn't have been played on local radio. There's a lot of reference to the Democratic Party animal totem, which isn't really so bad. The Ds claimed 81 million votes, so, y'know, 81 million votes for their emblem. Unfortunately there's also an expression used to mean "annoyed" that I really think Kari Lake should not have stooped to using in public. Someone also shows confusion between the Mean Girl's given name and guacamole. Tsk. I laughed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4XWiKZNMOU

How I Spend My Weekends

This week's Long & Short Reviews prompt asks how book reviewers spend our weekends.

Well, typically I spend substantial parts of weekends reading books. I am a Christian without a church; reading a Christian book on the Saturday and writing about it on the Sunday is one form of Christian fellowship I have. 

The other form is visiting and being visited by people in the real world. (I do know some people in the real world; I just have a rule of writing about public figures, hypothetical people with generic names, and animals.) Some local lurkers have communicated to me that this web site would interest them more if it contained more details about who sold what to whom, and why, and who married whom, and why, and whether they knew something about their bride's or bridegroom's past, and so on. I don't like to talk or write about that kind of thing. Someone always gets a detail wrong and the writer can then be sued. 

I can occasionally mention a bit of local news that all the local people already know. For example, the marching band from East Tennessee State University, where many Gate City students go because it's only about thirty miles' drive, won a competition and will be marching in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. I would never mention their names but there is a possibility that people watching the parade on television will see a young relative, or relatives, of mine. I don't plan to watch television on Thanksgiving Day but no doubt I'll see the video recording later.

But as a rule the only part of any conversation with real-world friends that was ever supposed to appear on this web site were Grandma Bonnie Peters' recipes and any reminiscences the non-writers at this web site ever wrote down. 

Anyway, my weekends usually include books, conversation, and nature walks. And food, although the hazards of trying new recipes still keep me from posting much of what GBP hoped would be this web site's main attraction--delicious food that is naturally gluten-free and, preferably, vegan. 

And the cats. I don't actually spend a lot of time with the cats. They don't normally hang out in the office or go for walks or drives. They get breakfast and dinner and, on sunny days, the water-sharing ritual. If the weather is pleasant I'll probably sit down on the porch, usually about sunset, and pet each cat for a bit, and dangle a hedge trimming for them to chase, almost every day. The cats are my friends, very dear friends, but not my children.

Prayer is a part of my days. Sleeping is. Bathing and toothbrushing are. Some form and amount of music is, and at least a few rows of knitting. By Sunday night, I'm usually on the screen porch, with a heater and bundles of knitted fabric as they become necessary, writing and scheduling the pre-scheduled posts for this web site. 

This all sounds very routine. Well, it is. The reward of a life well lived is that eventually you get to have a routine. There is also room for adventures in my weekends but, since, they involve other people, I don't write about them.

How do you spend your weekends? If you're a reviewer I have read or will soon read your blog. If not, please feel free to answer in the comments section.

Book Review: Dark Roots

Title: Dark Roots

Author: Lucius Valiant

Date: 2023

Publisher: Thornhill

Quote: "The rumor was that he already had a little vampire in his blood to begin with, and that a hunting accident had caused it to soar past the strict 30% threshold."

So Ramsay is no longer allowed to hunt, and he resents having heard Harlan, the narrator, described as the Van Helsing Society's "most promising hunter." His goal is to ensure that Harlan will be forbidden to hunt, just as he is.  

Will Harlan gain status by hunting down the Highgate vampires...after discovering that they're what's left of his blood relatives? Or will this be the rare novel in which the narrator's antagonist is the one who achieves his goal? I'm not telling.

Vampire stories aren't my favorite genre but, if they're yours, you will probably like this one. It's told by Victorian rules; if the vampires get up to any incestuous orgies, we're not told about it. All we see them do is bite. Though one biting scene goes into lurid details Bram Stoker tastefully withheld.

Why America Needs More Baby-Free Adults

It's an inescapable, self-evident truth: Our world needs fewer and better babies.

By "better" I mean, primarily, healthier thanks to the benefits of having adequate space to grow in, and more intelligent thanks to the benefits of growing up among adults not children. 

There are different ways of being intelligent. One way is to recognize the symptoms of overcrowding--loss of a sense of the value of human life, sterility, "alternative sexual identities," loss of resistance to diseases, "depression," violent hostility--in our daily news. We need to stop population growth at a point that allows most if not all people to live well, with land of their own and meaningful employment. We have passed that point. So: time to slow down on baby production. We have reached the time when it was prophesied that the barren would have more blessings than the fruitful. Human scientific progress has reached a point where we can choose, instead of having a plague or a war, just to have fewer babies. 

"Billions" means that there are a thousand times more humans than there need to be; that in order to get back to optimal population levels in one generation, only one person in a thousand should have one baby. We're not likely to achieve that but, certainly, every baby-free adult is helping humankind.

Our Vice-President-elect made an idle remark about "childless cat ladies" as people he did not expect to vote for him. It wasn't very funny but I proposed that some of us who had held our noses and voted for the lesser evil should have "Childless Cat Lady" printed on T-shirts and wear them to R victory parties. 

Then that opened the door for really sick ideas about baby-free adults to start spewing out of some Rs. Is it "bad for society" when people aren't married or don't have children? It's bad for society when people have babies because they don't realize that they could have good lives without babies. It's bad for society when a child is not a choice. It's bad for society when people don't understand that our animal urge to reproduce can and should be sublimated into our human sense of vocations to produce all sorts of things other than babies.

Let's face it. America is greying. Into the lives of greying people there comes a time when we know that babies, travel, etc., are ceasing to be valid excuses for not rescuing animals from shelter, and we may acquire more animal companions than we can pet at one time. This is known as The Many Paws. It's a wonderful time of life. There are a lot of us, male and female, never married, formerly married, and still married, aunts, uncles, and grandparents, enjoying Many Paws in baby-free homes. 

I think it's a mistake for people to think of animals as children. Animals are, or become, adults of their kind. They have their own parents and their own babies, in addition to any humans they have trained to fetch food for them. Animals are our friends. Our work is our "babies." Or rather, since we're all called to work but only some of us are called to have babies, parenting is one of many uses to which we can put our human brains. 

We might do better to think of having babies as one of the lower forms of work. We already do know that it can be an excuse, and even an actual cause, for lack of success in work--"Daddy was a farmer but all he ever raised was us." We could do more, as a society, to encourage people to think beyond the nursery. We already know that, when "Mary is a teacher, John is a lawyer, and Jane is the mother of...", Jane is going to be the insecure one, inclined to obesity and depression, in need of help to find an identity she does not share with a stray dog.

I saw a video where a larval Republican, obviously thinking of a specific person as her stereotype of "childless cat ladies," asked, "Are those the kind of people you want running society?" Well. I think of a fat White woman I saw, carrying a baby and leading a toddler, on the Metro where it's illegal to eat or drink or carry food and drink in open containers. The toddler wasn't even whining but the horrorcow shoved a stick of sticky sweet sculch into its mouth. "Excuse me," I said, "it's illegal to have food on the Metro." Horrorcow, clearly feeling that trains full of roaches were better than the thought of teaching her child to wait for anything, brayed "He can eat if he wants to!" Are THOSE the kind of people you want running society? Or running around loose? Of course giving birth does not automatically make people selfish, greedy scofflaws, but you must admit there are correlations among personality traits...

No. The democratic process allows multi-infant horrorcows to vote and trusts that there will be enough decent human beings to offset the damage they do. Sometimes after age forty a multi-infant horrorcow even whips herself into shape, gets a job, and becomes a useful member of society--though it may not be possible for that ever to be said for the surplus humans she's inflicted on the world. 

Surplus humans. Yes, Mommy-nom-nom. Human life is cheap. Countries as close to civilization as Japan and Canada have talked openly about thinning the herd, and from some US hospitals that reported high COVID fatalities have come reports that sound like an unofficial version of the same. If we don't want to become a society that talks frankly about the benefits of killing people with chronic illness or disability, we want to become a society where breeders bow their heads and murmur "Thank you for your continence" when the baby-free pass by. 

We want to become a society where teenagers are exposed to, and tested on, information about the dangers of pregnancy and childbirth in enough detail that a majority of boys opt for vasectomies--why waste all that rubber? We want to be a society that rewards celibacy even more than marriage. We want to be a society where baby-free couples are seen as heroes of public spirit. We want to be a society that "sells" baby-freedom in every way, short of punishing the innocent babies. Where mommies and daddies can earn enough money to feed their broods, e.g., but promotion to management jobs is reserved for the baby-free.

We want those things because, although they run counter to generations of instincts that told us that our lives would be short and we needed as many babies as possible, they are also what will protect us from paying the favored type to have more babies while slaughtering the less favored type of humans. In order to be Nazi leaders Hitler and his colleagues had to be drugged-out and probably literally demonized, but it did start with "We love babies, we idealize the genotype that withstands even inbreeding among beautiful, hardy, healthy Icelanders, but we can't afford a socialist system for very many people..."They really couldn't. So they started killing. 

Well, we don't want killing, and the alternative costs just a dime. It works like this: The woman holds the dime between her knees whenever the couple are together. 

So then...the normal human instinct for self-actualization is always impeded when people "run down to babies." People are more likely to feel that they've succeeded at being themselves, doing what they were meant to do, when they're not entangled in diapers. 

The normal family does not and never did consist of two adults and two children moved all over the country by corporate whims. Real families have roots, and there are more adults than the breeding pair in each one. The Bible writers spoke of Abraham's travels almost as glibly as if the man had been riding around like a lonesome cowboy with only a horse to talk to, but actually he travelled with a cantankerous wife, an elderly father, a nephew he and his wife had taken in to raise, animals by the thousands, and enough hired men to match a city-state's army--and win. Real families have grandparents, they have nephews, they have aunts and uncles and cousins. Baby-free people should not be imagined as anti-family, but as those aunts and uncles the family needs. Babies should not be left with strangers or in "day care centers," but sent to visit aunts or grandmothers, when the parents need baby-free space. 

Despite the evil machinations of corporate employers, who feel powerful when they separate people from their family base, reality is that baby-free adults do not lead "childless" lives. We spend more time with children who are old enough to be good company than with yowling, drooling infants--a big improvement. We get some choice about how much time we spend with the next generation. Most of us enjoy our nieces and nephews, and of course those who became baby-free by rearing children to adulthood notoriously dote on their grandchildren. Many baby-free adults are interested in homeschooling because, after about grade three, we're called in as upper-level teachers./Our baby-making siblings went to the same high schools we did but they've forgotten a lot since they had these babies.

I think it would be good for children if we moved in the direction of being a society where people had ancestral homes, where people were free to travel but always knew where "home" was. A "citizen of the world" is a homeless, rootless wretch. We learn to be citizens by being citizens of a particular house in a particular neighborhood. Children need the controlled adventures of walking from Mommy's and Daddy's house to Uncle John's house next door, then Grandmother's house up the road, then Aunt Jane's house on the other side of town. Many families have lost that privilege by failing to acknowledge the roles of baby-free relatives in completing a family. "Nuclear families" are like isolated atoms, apt to be smashed or lose their elemental integrity; they need to reunite into extended families to be really part of their element.

I personally don't know any baby-free people who really feel that "the cats are my children." Joke about it, maybe. Cats are remarkably unrewarding substitutes for children. They can be great friends to those who appreciate them for what they are, but for a baby-substitute a rock would have to work better. How does any reasonable aunt deal with cravings for child company? She invites the nieces and nephews to visit, of course. A good aunt spoils children, now and then, swooping in with saved-up money to ask "Who wants to go to the mall, or the beach, or Dollywood?" A good aunt also makes children feel spoiled when they're being invited to help paint a room or pick fruit. Grandma Bonnie Peters taught a grandchild of the appropriate age to work for the privilege of vacuum-cleaning her carpets. Baby-free adults normally interact with children only for fun, and can enjoy feeling "more popular" than beloved parents are as children drop everything at the happy cry, "Grandma's here!" Cats...well...they can love and be loved. Some cats do try to cheer up humans who aren't feeling good; some will fight in defense of their humans, and some will try to lead their humans away from what they think may be danger. Cats do not really have many interests in common with humans. Nor do dogs, although dogs make even more persistent efforts to redirect humans' attention to the interests we do have in common with dogs. 

But why, given that aunts and uncles and grandparents have all these natural, wholesome outlets for any baby-specific component in our instinct to do productive work, are there baby-free adults who direct what seem like frustrated parental instincts into nannyism? They live to help others, no matter how hard the others try to escape. Legislation that purports to keep people "safe" is usually subsidized by corporations (insurance companies that don't want to pay if someone falls off a bicycle, manufacturers that want to protect the world from the risk of not buying all of their products) and should not be blamed on aunts. There are, however, some detestable renegade aunts who are not welcomed by their nieces and nephews, so they feel sad and rejected, and take it out of everyone else by supporting those stupid corporate laws. It's not saaafe to let the children walk to and from school! Better to expose them to all those germs on the bus and then let them play football for exercise! And it's not saaafe to burn the leaves in the yard! Better to spray poison on the yard! And oh dear you'd better put down that stick before you hit OOOFFF...

Why do these people always seem to line up on the Left? "Seem to" is a keyword. They have in fact been found on the Right, but the Left gives them more visibility when they can be persuaded to whine about how they need a big, all-powerful government to keep them safe from their fool selves. A delegate to a Democratic Party convention, early in the present century, stood up in front of a TV camera and loudly proclaimed, "I have a broken brain!" Indeed. Childlessness may be an accompanying symptom, or an effect, of nannyism but the primary cause is the broken brain.

And then there are the poor souls who vote for all the nannyism and nincompoopery. Their plight really is sad. They are nice, normal, baby-free adults. You might be their housemate or co-worker and notice nothing wrong with them. What happened to them? Maybe they went to a "good" college on a scholarship and alienated some people who didn't have to earn scholarship-worthy grades. Maybe they had enough sense not to want to marry a college boy, however promising, and while they were keeping in touch with the college boys as friends, more desperate females threw themselves at the college boys, who are still trying to figure out exactly what they were thinking when they proposed marriage to the desperate females. (Or it might be the other way round; the pressure on men to get married, just to fit in, works differently but it works on men too.) So they were fresh out of college with their job skills and their jobs and their sweet youthful faces and their crazy adolescent energy. And then...

Maybe they thought the church could use their energy, and then they were allowed to read or overhear some "inside" church discussion of what to do about the horrible plague of single adults in the church. 

Maybe they thought that, although they were paying off their student debt faster in industry jobs, they liked teaching, so they volunteered as substitutes or teachers' aides or maybe PTA officials, and they heard all the women who'd failed to get good jobs spitting about their not having babies yet. 

Too many "conservative" groups have fallen into a habit of thinking of human beings as animals in a Noah's Ark toy to line up two by two. Oh, XYZ has a great singles group! These women hoped for the sort of casual fun they had in college activity groups, hiking, singing, volleyball for all I know. So they went to the singles group and someone grabbed them by their arms and plopped them down at tables facing the most unattractive men in the Eastern States, and ordered them to chat. 

So they said, "I have a home. I need to go back to it now. Right now. I might have left something turned on," and they went home. 

And then on the Left, even though some of it was pretty off-putting, they found such a warm, welcomng atmosphere. People noticed their job skills and offered them government jobs. They found housemates. They found other dog walkers walking at the same times they walked their dogs. Most of their new friends didn't have children, or even spouses, so there was no pressure about their being single. They never have believed any of the D party froth about how horrible Republicans are...but they have to admit they've known Rs who were pretty unpleasant to know, while these Ds are practically congenial...

Many of the different groups that are classified as conservative, in the United States, are bigoted against single, baby-free adults, and end up pushing them into the anti-marriage Left, even though the reason why the Loony Left was anti-marriage always has been that Loony Left men think all attractive women should be involved in theoretically state-paid, free-to-the-user prostitution. So we meet Ds who are still single at age forty or fifty because most people they know just don't like the idea of marriage anyway, and they've never found anyone that they liked the idea of marriage to, either. They're not anti-marriage themselves. When they're not in the city doing their jobs they like hanging out with their nephews. But they don't want to join the anti-bachelor social circles they left, or support whatever political ideas those people support, which just about have to be bad because those people are so icky. Whole neighborhoods in Washington are full of these bachelors. They actually belong to nice families, and like their families, but they have been alienated by hateful bigots who call themselves "pro-family." So they reach age sixty or seventy still trying to identify primarily with their buddies, like high school kids. (Many of them are still renting apartments and don't even have pets.)

They were my buddies once. I still have a few car-pool lists of dozens, hundreds, of them who were in various activity groups in Washington. Network members, prospective housemates, foster parents of my adoptive sister's school friends, dance partners, band members, hiking buddies, car pools, activists working on the same issues, dates. Marriage was almost like quitting school, a defection, a rejection of friends. A lot of us were still in that school when I left the city. Our lives were good, at the time. We were the bright young things sipping overpriced coffee at Starbucks. Now, as some of us begin to consider being old as a thing that can happen to us...in the famous words, to all old buddies going home to "take your place there the spent and maimed among," I hope all of you can "find one face there you loved when all was young."

Conservatives might get away with a few witticisms about the "childless" people who vote D, because most baby-free people that I know are comfortable with ourselves and can take a joke. Still, they'd do well to work on a positive outreach to welcome more unmarried aunts and uncles, more widows in no hurry to remarry, and more grandparents back into "the family." Honor and celebrate our single-mindedness. Save any job that involves making decisions, or could potentially involve overtime work, or would ever involve travel even to a different town, for someone who is baby-free. Thank us for our self-control and public spirit. Make sure that those of us who are not, in fact, Marxists are appreciated for our kind of political, or civic, or religious activity. 

Churches could, for a start, organize more things for men's groups and women's groups, or for real family groups as distinct from couples, with spaces for aunts, uncles, and grandparents as part of the family. They could talk openly about how at one time God commanded humans to "be fruitful and multiply," but now it's plainly written in the Book of Nature that God has crossed this one off our list of things to do and now wants us to focus on practicing good will toward one another. 

All of us could do with a bit of detachment from what may actually be selfish genes prompting us to babble, "But I don't want my heirs to look Chinese, I want a red-haired blue-eyed grandson with double-jointed thumbs like my grandfather..." Have a little faith at least in genetic science. For better or worse, whether or not we have grandchildren and whether or not our grandchildren resemble us more than they do their other grandparents, our genes will pop up again. 

Book Review: Dragonfly

Title: Dragonfly

Author: Resa Nelson

Date: 2015

Quote: "You long for the Northlands beause you'd fit in. You'd look like everyone else."

In this fantasy world, drawn from fragments of Scandinavian sagas, Northlanders in their long ships travel regularly back and forth to the country of the Shining Star People. They've set up forges (the old word "smithy" appears in the text, misspelled as "smithery"). Even their girls are strong enough to be blacksmiths. Greeta's mother,, who may be dead, was a blacksmith. And a fair bit of intermarriage has gone on. Poor little Greeta feels that she's an object of superstitious horror because she's blonde, but that's only the beginning. When she leaves her village in search of people like her and finds a blond man who is rich, single, and interested in her, but she thinks he's not properly respectful of the dragons he's breeding, Greeta discovers that she's also a shapeshifter--by turning into a dragon.

She may have found the man she's looking for, by the end of this book, but it'll take a few more adventures for them to be sure. This is the first full-length adventure story in a series.

I didn't get into it, but some people do. 

Book Review: Wormwood Abbey

Title: Wormwood Abbey

Author: Christina Baehr

Date: 2023

Quote: "You couldn't sell Wormwood Abbey. You don't own it. The abbey owns us."

The quaint laws of Victorian England make Edith's father the heir to the house called Wormwood Abbey while Gwendolyn and her siblings are still living there. Edith's father proposes to sell the old place, but Gwendolyn wants to stay there, though she doesn't seem to like the place. To understand why Edith has to find out the secret of Wormwood Abbey.

The secret is that "worm" comes from the old word for dragon, and "wood" from "ward" or keeper. Edith was born with a special mutation, which people in our real world used to believe in, that makes her an Hereditary Dragon Keeper. 

But that's not all. There are some adventures; there will be more for the young people to do. This is the first novel in a five-book series. Those who enjoy historical dragon stories will want to read all five. 

Butterfly of the Week: Graphium Auriger

Graphium auriger is the Gold Bearer. In a group of what are usually counted as sixteen species of African Graphiums that all look very much alike, auriger is the one with a touch of gold-yellow on its black and white wings. The yellow is not always visible from above...

Photo by ShinK. As in other Swallowtail species, the wings can look blue-black and blue-white in some lights, dark and light gray in others, and they fade to brown and beige. 

An early name proposed for this species was Papilio harpagon. Papilio was the genus name used for all Swallowtails until it became overcrowded and was broken up. Harpagon was the name Moliere gave his "Miser" character, a caricature of a greedy old man who cares more about his money than about his children. Well...to be fair...butterflies have no family bond with their offspring, and the ones with yellow hairs and scales are indeed attached to their "gold"...but Swallowtails were supposed to be named after heroes, not buffoons, in literature.

It is found in central Africa. Some sources mention sightings in Congo, Cameroon, and Guinea, but it's usually reported in Gabon. It has not received a great amount of attention. Some argue that it's not "really" different enough from Graphium schubotzi to be a distinct species. It's not common, but not known to be extremely rare or endangered.

Its wingspan is three or four inches. Bold and showy, it goes for warning colors rather than camouflage.  

Drawings of what are said to be a typical male and female are found on pages 96 and 97: 

https://metamorphosis.org.za/articlesPDF/1040/009%20Genus%20Graphium%20Scopoli.pdf

Web Log for 11.15-16.24

Animals 

The Red Admiral butterfly was known as a British species before it was known as an American species; it has a British name. What may be changing is its ability to winter in England. It's a migratory species. Individual butterflies may lay eggs in places where overnight lows drop below freezing, but those eggs apparently don't hatch; butterflies reappear in the North as individuals that hatched in the South fly northward in spring. This species' ability to overwinter in England would be evidence of dramatic warming, the kind that's likely to be local not global.

http://eastsussexwanderer.blogspot.com/2024/11/the-red-admiral.html

Book 

Alice Walker's daughter's: 

What a cute cover! It's a picture book. To some extent we can judge a picture book by its cover.

Education 

I'd like to see Religious Right types read this. If they let their children take the brain-rest courses, why complain that what's taught in those courses is second-rate? 

https://ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com/6700671.html 

Is this web site still being read at public high schools? Hard to tell; as the page view numbers rise, the correlation between readership and school schedules is obscured. Anyway, if you are a public high school student reading this web site, my concern is not with your exposure to opinions you might not agree with, but with your lack of exposure to material that big-name universities want you to have. Once people are thirteen or fourteen years old they should be able to deal with the fact that somewhere two boys have kissed each other. If your teacher is kissing boys in your class, now that would be a problem. My question is whether you're learning algebra, history, geography, languages and literature, some sort of job skill each term and some sort of creative art. You should not have time for courses with "relationships" in the title, in high school. If somebody tries to push you into such a course, don't fight back with the whine that it's going to "groom" you for toxic relationships to see the kind of relationships other people have. That's like sending your parents into the principal's office to say "Our kid is stupid." Fight back with a reasonable assertion like "There's only time for six classes in a day and I want Algebra, HTML, Literature, Biology, Japanese, and Classical Orchestra, not this twaddle about 'relationships'." If all you want to do at school is doze off and let left-wingnuts indoctrinate you, don't blame them for trying it.

High school is the place to take courses that are fun, that appeal to lots of young people, that you could not do at home or church. My husband used to chide me for slacking off and taking courses in Spanish at school. Anybody can learn Spanish on the street--at school one should take a language that's not spoken on the street. He took German! Then I'd chide him back because he never read or talked German and had forgotten most of what he'd learned. I say some of you Nephews had a brief exposure to Cantonese as children, and I'd like to see you keep up with it. If that means you have to seek out Chinese-American friends? You could do worse. All I'll say about taking Spanish in high school is that at the time that seemed the only way to keep that language in my mind, in Gate City, and I missed it. But some of you live in cities and can take courses from educated native speakers of Russian or Korean or who knows what-all, and I would like it if you became fluent in languages that I can't speak. Neither high school nor college should be wasted. Take Marching Band. Take ROTC. Take Golf, if your school offers it. Opportunities aren't likely to come again. Talking about relationships? You can do that for free when you reach the room-renting stage and have housemates.

Hurricane

Appalachian Voices, best known as a printed news magazine, is really trying to make this web site a central hub for post-hurricane relief efforts. Some shelters are now overstocked with water! Others are not, and they're still looking for the big, expensive, important donations like generators as well as little things like personal hygiene supplies. 

https://appvoices.org/helene-relief/

Political discrimination? The sort of un-American political discrimination that's typical of the backward European and Asian countries that want to tell us how to do things? Here's a good point for swamp drainage: For any position in the federal government that puts employees in direct contact with taxpayers, if Republicans have not spontaneously recommended an employee for giving good service to taxpayers regardless of their known (or guessed) political positions, that employee can have no public-contact position in the federal government ever again. Positions that involve no decision-making and minimal interaction with the public, such as groundkeepers', building maintenance staff's, cafeteria cooks' and dishwashers', machine repair staff's, and nightwatchmen's jobs, deserve more respect (and better pay) than they have often had. What better way to boost the status of these necessary jobs than by filling them with former office managers. Meanwhile those federal employees who do have contact with the public should recite daily, befoire sitting down in their offices, "I am especially responsible for pleasing those taxpayers who believe my position should not exist. My job is to convince those people that I deserve to have a job."

https://rumble.com/v5oz1bt-fine-point-fema-staff-told-not-to-help-trump-supporters-w-tommy-tuberville-.html

Knitting 

Butterflies are the pretty face of Glyphosate Awareness. Here's a way to knit a band of butterflies around your winter cap. You can order a winter cap, with butterflies or some other motif, from this web site for $10 plus shipping ($5 in the US, per package; four to six caps will usually fit into a package).

https://www.gannetdesigns.com/2024/11/15/oak-butterflies/

Morgan Griffith on Border Policies

From U.S. Representative Morgan Griffith (R-VA-9):

"

After the election of President-elect Trump, one change expected for the incoming Administration is the reversal of the Biden-Harris Administration’s open borders policies.

During Trump’s first term, securing the border was a priority. Thanks to the institution of policies like the Migrant Protection Protocols, better known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy, Trump stemmed the tide of illegal immigration across our southern border.

According to a report from the chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security (Mark Green), between Fiscal Years 2017 and 2020 under Trump, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reported 3 million illegal alien encounters nationwide.

Under Biden-Harris, these policies were discarded or allowed to expire. As a result, illegal immigration across the U.S.-Mexico border has exploded.

Moreover, catch-and-release practices under Biden’s Administration contributed to the release of millions into the interior of the United States without sufficient vetting or screening, heightening public and national security concerns.

Since Biden’s inauguration in January 2021, there have been more than 10.4 million illegal alien encounters nationwide, according to CBP data.

These millions of illegal aliens receive benefits in the forms of significant medical attention and health care, access to education and enrollment in social service programs like SNAP, at the expense of American taxpayers at the local, state and federal levels.

This is unsustainable, and Americans sent an overwhelming message this year that border security must be taken more seriously.

With a change in White House leadership, House Republicans and some Democrats are committed to working with President Trump to strengthen our border and equip border patrol authorities with the necessary tools and resources to stem the flow of illegal immigration.

Although not yet in office, Trump’s election is sending shockwaves to illegal aliens.

Reuters News highlights a migrant caravan traveling through Mexico in November that has shrunk in size following news of his election.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas met with heads of CBP as well as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to discuss operational readiness in the event of a migrant influx. In other words, preparing for a rush across the border before it is too late.

NBC News cites the operator of a migrant shelter in Tijuana, Mexico, who predicts smugglers will pressure immigrants to start crossing now before it is too late.

The operator of the shelter might call them smugglers, but the rest of us know them as “coyotes” who work for the illicit Mexican cartels.

President-elect Trump has announced he will tap his former acting ICE director, Tom Holman, as his border czar.

Holman will work to reverse Biden-Harris open borders policies and activate immigration enforcement, and that includes migrant deportations, starting with those who have committed crimes.

The Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, also estimates that there are roughly 1.3 million immigrants who have already been issued removal orders but remain in the United States.

States will have a hand in contributing to the deportation effort. Governor Youngkin understands the importance of this subject. Virginia communities, including rural ones like some in the Ninth District, have seen the threats posed by gang-related activity and drug trafficking.

Back in 2017, Lynchburg teen Raymond Wood was abducted and brutally murdered in Bedford County by members of MS-13, a mainly Salvadoran gang. Six men were charged and convicted.

The Mexican-based New Generation Jalisco Cartel had roots in towns such as Axton in Henry County, where they stored and distributed drugs.

As the fentanyl crisis, fueled by Mexican cartels, upends American communities, it will be essential to stem illegal drugs from coming across the border. And we must curtail the cartel’s side business of bringing illegal immigrants here.

Some Democratic governors are already objecting to the idea of working with the incoming Trump Administration to assist deportation efforts. Interestingly, some of the same people were requesting assistance with the overwhelming surge in migration to their states earlier this year!

Is deportation new? No!

President Obama oversaw the deportation of more than five million people as commander-in-chief (although that number pales in comparison to the Administrations of Presidents Clinton and Bush, who deported more than 10 million each).

Mexico must also cooperate fully with the Trump Administration to curb illegal immigration. Days after the election, Mexico’s newly elected President Claudia Sheinbaum called Trump.

Because of the Biden Administration, every community in America is a border community. This trend must be reversed, and I will do whatever I can to support President-elect Trump’s goal in closing the border.

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." 

Book Review: God's Love in Action

Title: God's Love in Action

Author: Kiana Jackson-Resendez

Date: 2024

ISBN: 979-8-9899419-1-9

Quote: "I've got the rhythm of love."

This quirky picture book features Isaias, "the first student" at a school where all the other students are color drawings. Isaias does some things that children should know better than to do before they go to school. The text then invites child readers to touch the book, or the computer screen, to indicate what he ought to do in each situation. Should Isaias push another child aside on his way up the slide, or wait in line behind the other child (who is a cartoon figure while Isaias is a live photo spliced into the drawing)? In between scenes Isaias dances to a refrain, "I've got the rhythm of love."

Having been a five-year-old who really did, of my own free will, "practice" for school by playing with imaginary classmates, being mindful of whether I might have bumped into an imaginary person while racing around the room, I can say that this way of presenting basic information about good manners makes intuitive sense for some children. Whether parents want to teach children to put their hands on computer screens is another question. I'd teach children to touch screens only with the special stylus or, better yet, use only electronic devices that have proper keyboards. 

The PDF e-book I received looks as if there is or will soon be an interactive version with sound and animation. I didn't get that version.

Ode to the Long Awaited November Rain

In a land of endless summer

smoke and dust make brazen air

like a greenhouse glass; a bummer

if we live or sojourn there.

So returning to the moody

places where four seasons roll

and November's bleak and broody

is refreshing to the soul.

Though the air's a long time cleaning,

in the end the scent of rain

gathers to itself the meaning

of refreshment for the brain.

Hail the bleakness of November

onto which we can project

all things tedious to remember

(even those that we elect),

stash provisions in a bunker,

break out quilts and rocking chairs,

gather with our cronies, hunker

round the fire like sleepy bears,

until positively freezing

wind blows in to dissipate

mists of all that's been unpleasing,

and we eagerly await

ice and snow and all December's

round of primal winter-bliss;

sing and dance around the embers,

light the next fire's logs from this.

We can do without November,

some say. Do they say amiss?

Frostless, colorless September

said to us, this year: Remember

winter's own peculiar bliss. 

This poem was suggested by Rosemary Nissen-Wade, who lives where November is a spring month:

https://poetsandstorytellersunited.blogspot.com/2024/11/friday-writings-153-my-cup-runneth-over.html