Web Log for 11.26.24

Holidays

Let's all make a resolution now not to let the word "h***y" out of our mouths at least until the idjits start annoying us about a "Cyber Monday," which has now apparently morphed into "Cyber Week," which might be considered to justify e-mails along the lines of "Honeychild, this family observes Zero Electronics Month between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day." But we can try not to use the evil H-word to family members during the Thanksgiving feast.

I got it from Messy Mimi. Google credits Pat the Wine Guy, whose blog I don't follow.

Hurricane

Trigger warning: FOLLOWING THESE LINKS WILL RAISE YOUR BLOOD PRESSURE. (Fortunately, post-COVID mine's tending to run low again.)

First, meet the person blowing the whistle on FEMA and the Salvation Army. Fair disclosure: she is a politician. Fair disclosure: she seems to be considerably more efficient than the average pol, a macher, somebody Trump and Musk might want as a consultant for the Department of Government Efficiency.

https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2024/11/25/amish-volunteers-built-100-tiny-homes-for-hurricane-victims-but-guess-what-happened-next-n4934609

It's getting chilly for tent living so where are the trailers that have been funded? 

One of those "unintended consequences" things: The Salvation Army became a "public-private partnership" because government recognized that they were "doing the most good" of all urban missions. So, right away, some ways they were doing good stopped. Other ways...sounded better than they were; political grandstanding that had toxic effects.

Should the Salvation Army have been required to employ homosexuals? I say no; they were a church and had a right to employ only church members, or members of other churches with comparable rules. No church should ever have to employ anybody who violates its rules, even rules against wearing colored shirts...the Salvation Army didn't have that rule for all members all the time, but fundraisers were supposed to wear white shirts or sweaters under the red aprons. But lots of people thought it was wonderful that "gay couples" could raise funds for the Salvation Army, as no doubt dozens of them were just longing to do (/sarc). I'm not in favor of discrimination against people's private behavior in public workplaces, but in churches...Why would people want to raise money for churches that frown on their behavior, anyway? Why not organize their own missions, as the writer known as Starhawk called for Neo-Pagans to do? Right. I get it. Singing for the Salvation Army is fun, at least until the weather gets cold. So why aren't there non-church, even anti-church, missions for which people sing and ring bells and have fun?

Next chapter of the story, not reported: Evidence comes in that the Salvation Army has also been obliged to employ thieves. Since they can't screen for private behavior...

Money that was sent to Asheville was not just tax write-offs made by corporations the size of Lowes, though Lowes made a big one. Money sent through the Salvation Army? We are talking about sixth grade students' pocket money. We are talking about what people on disability pensions scrape out at the end of the month. I've raised funds for the Salvation Army and stooped down to hold the collecting pan for toddlers to drop their coins in.

Well. There is a difference, after all. Nobody cares about charitable fundraisers' personal relationships, but misuse of funds can kill a charitable mission. And what a pity if it fails to kill an allegedly humanitarian government agency, too, just as fast and just as dead.

https://ncrenegade.com/follow-the-money-2/

I think the DoGE should make sure the feds specifically and directly pay for this. First: total ban on federal acquisition of any land in western North Carolina for another hundred years. Second: if any of these bureaucrats' jobs continue to exist, they should be reassigned by February 2025. Third: if any of these bureaucrats is free to look for work, person should be absolutely barred from working for any government office in any capacity ever again. I'd seriously consider requiring them to have CORRUPT tattooed on their foreheads. And, fourth: all of the tent village people's living expenses, until their homes are rebuilt and fully paid for, come out of the corrupt employees--let them live in tents. 

Poetry

Jeanie, the surviving human of the Marmelade Gypsy cat, posted this photo from a trip to England:

https://themarmeladegypsy.blogspot.com/2024/11/this-england-farewell-bath.html

,,,and it reminded me that one of the benefits of going to college is that when you see a beautiful image, you instantly think of beautiful words:

https://www.ronnowpoetry.com/contents/plath/Pheasant.html

...and these days, once in a while, you can even find both online.

Wisdom, Native

California elder has many worthwhile things to say.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlPdfvivhNY&t=2842s

Book Review: Songs for All Seasons

Title: Songs for All Seasons

Author: Michael D. Young

Quote: "I'll dive into the history of the most beloved songs."

He does, after a fashion. He doesn't provide source information, which would be appropriate for the type of book he's written; his histories are bloggy. All very well for free content but, if people are going to pay, he owes them real research, including source information. But I received the book free of charge so I'll try to explain what I like and dislike about it.

What I like: Here are twenty-six songs that a majority of Americans know. Several of them are Christian; some are patriotic songs that refer to our history. Each song comes with a link or QR code you may be able to use to hear a recording of the song.

What I don't like: Here is no sheet music you can use to play the song if you don't happen to be online, or want to sing your own song without pre-recorded interference. This book is for passive consumers of music, not musicians.

Sheet music has always been more expensive to print than words. Songbooks have always been printed without the music, on the assumption that people are already familiar with the tunes, or know someone who is, or that people who want to perform music ought at least to write their own arrangements if not their own songs. The Internet should have resolved this problem, since musical notes and staves don't cost more to arrange on a screen than any other kind of graphics. Unfortunately it's not.  

However, most Americans are familiar with the tunes for these songs. Most are also familiar with the words, so you might not learn anything useful from this book. The songs are:

Happy Birthday to You

The Star-Spangled Banner

America the Beautiful

My Country 'Tis of Thee

Battle Hymn of the Republic

Columbia/Britannia the Gem of the Ocean (first verse of each)

God Bless America

Lift Every Voice

Yankee Doodle

Christ the Lord Is Risen Today

Amazing Grace

When I Survey the Wondrous Cross

In the Garden

How Great Thou Art

It Is Well with My Soul

All Creatures of Our God and King

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

Mary Had a Little Lamb

Ring Around the Rosy

London Bridge

Danny Boy

Scarborough Fair

Auld Lang Syne

How Can I Keep from Singing

What a Wonderful World

Loch Lomond

The original content reports some of what is known about the first writing, printing, performance, or recording of each song. 

A Musical I Liked

The Sound of Music, of course. Everybody likes The Sound of Music. It has everything: gorgeous landscapes, songs that are fun to sing, adorable children, Nazis who are scary because they're Nazis but, considered as men, the type who probably lined up to surrender because they suspected your grandfather was going to be more humane than the other Nazis were, and Julie Andrews. The real Maria von Trapp was a very easy writer to like, but liking Julie Andrews is obligatory. 

(Most of the songs are free to watch on Youtube at 

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLycQGoRl0aEwbg3fEx27AdWtISMz8oH_V .)

Camelot, which also had the Grandmother of All Sweetie-Pies in it, didn't have the advantage of starting with a nice, cute, likable story. The original story of Camelot was about how Arthur lost what he'd won. Instead of being a happy hero story in which Arthur always knocks friendly competitors off their horses and kills real enemies, the story called "The Death of Arthur" was a classic tragedy. His marriage to Guinevere was a political arrangement; they never fell in love with each other. Arthur loved England. Guinevere found another man  In some ancient monarchies the king's right to rule depended on his marriage, and although people still respected Arthur he lost respect for himself. He was defeated in a fight, and his body was taken to Avalon, the apple tree island, where for a long time some people believed that he was only resting and recovering. It was a useful myth anyway. The original script for Camelot followed the traditional story. Julie Andrews and Richard Burton, however, being nice people, decided the characters would have respected Arthur too much to commit physical adultery. They kept the romantic attraction but portrayed the characters not acting it out. This makes Camelot a story about how self-control is what makes niceness possible...which is more true than most things that came out of Hollywood. It also gave our language "Camelot" as a word for the nice, or honeymoon, stage of a relationship to a person or job.

(It's not free on Youtube. It may be free on Plex, or free with a purchase. No link to Plex here.)

There were some classic early twentieth century musicals from which I've sung songs, but which I've never watched performed. There were some musicals I watched, and liked, that aren't considered classics; a version of Huckleberry Finn stands out in memory. There are some literary classics that were clearly written to be musical plays, including some of Shakespeare's as well as Moliere's and Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz's, that might or might not be great musicals by today's standards but I've always wanted to see them done, and never have

So, to fulfill the Rule of Three...Some consider Gilbert & Sullivan works as operettas, a separate genre from musicals. The distinction has never been clear and I don't think it's useful. I like G&S, although and because their plots border on pure nonsense. I'll say The Pirates of Penzance, any version not performed by the college drama club in prep schools from New Jersey to Ohio, because I still remember all the words to all the songs. 

(This sounds as if it might be another school group, or community group...at least this version does not have your Auntie Pris in it: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaem0R05xbU .)

Web Log for 11.22-25.24

The power grid was restored by 8 p.m., when someone headed in my direction came into McDonald's. But we should not let it be forgotten. While certain lesser-of-the-available-evils politicians are infatuated with the idea of burning through all our resources to revive the old oil-boom economy of our long-gone youth, We The People need to think further ahead. If you're likely to outlive the President, don't buy into his unsustainable fantasy. We need to break up the central power grid. We need to reduce energy consumption so that we can produce our own energy. We need to make sure that damage to one device, which actually turned out to be in Weber City, is not putting people in the cold and the dark all the way to Fort Blackmore. 

I was expecting that the damage would have been done by a snow-burdened tree. That was an inference made from correlation. Correlation does not equal causation. The damage was done by a corporate employee's mistake in managing a device involved in a corporate "upgrade." Let that sink in, local lurkers. Ask: When did it become possible for a device in Weber City to destroy all the mod. con. in Fort Blackmore? Why? Who benefits? Why have we allowed this and how do we make it impossible for what happened last week to happen again?

As this web site often observes, people who read stuff on the Internet certainly aren't in the top one percent of the world's richest people, but we are still part of a global elite. Given the materials, or money to buy the materials, we can figure out how to set up small, low-pollution, low-waste solar and wind devices for generating and storing our own electricity. Not everyone can do this so the companies should be going with the flow and helping people achieve energy independence.

They don't want to do this. Of course not. Who wants to be working on parachutes to allow them to fall safely, when there's a fantasy that they can fly higher than ever? The companies naturally want to buy into the fantasy.

We The People can bring the companies back to reality by becoming energy misers. You can get your electricity consumption down to where one circuit powers everything one person plugs and unplugs, turns on and off. Depending on your household size you can replace inefficient tanks that keep bathtubs full of water heated all the time with more efficient heaters that heat water when and as if flows over them, or just place the tanks in front of a window that catches the afternoon sun and have enough solar-heated water for one person absolutely free of charge (assuming you already have the tank), You can store a reasonable amount of food, for a reasonable amount of time, in a cooler bin and not need a refrigerator. The payoff? Two-figure monthly bills while you're on the grid and a realistic plan for meeting your energy needs with the energy nature has handed you: sun, wind, water, and don't forget your body with its physical need for exercise. With a little thought and effort we can live comfortable, modern, computer-enhanced lives without grid power. By doing that thought and effort, and lowering our bills this year, we can teach the companies that their options are going with our flow or crashing. 

Will there still be some need for some big corporate power plants to fuel big corporate projects like city transportation systems? Probably so, for a long time. But we can and should eliminate any real need for anyone's home to depend on an unreliable, just-paint-on-the-target-for-our-country's-enemies, power grid. Not only our way of life but our actual lives could depend on our doing this. We need generators that don't depend on petroleum.

Meanwhile...I went home, had lights, and dived into a book project. I came back online on Monday afternoon. The Internet connection seems to have sustained some damage, but it can still be described as working.

Animals

Extremely cute adoptable cat in Louisiana:

https://messymimismeanderings.blogspot.com/2024/11/farming-techniques-cajun-joke-sunday.html

Economic Indicators 

Where I live, the Arctic Cat is a pure nuisance. Used to compact snowy roads into sheets of ice, used to startle animals and disrupt people's privacy in their homes. I'm sure lots of people wish the company would just die.

What I wish is that roads were opened to those things, which were made to be driven on snow, when they become hazardous for driving regular cars. The Arctic Cat is a great big untapped potential for good. The hobbyists who drive them ought to be organized like a nonviolent militia, deployed whenever roads become impassable to deliver supplies to stranded seniors, take patients to hospitals, bring students home from school, and so on.

Such that I would think a case could be made for either the US or the Canadian government, or both, bailing out the company and upgrading the Arctic Cat's image. "ATVs aren't nuisances. Reckless, stupid, aimless or malicious ATV drivers are nuisances. But today's ATV drivers are neighborhood heroes!"

https://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2024/11/16/luxury-items/ 

Glyphosate Awareness 

Viva Mexico! We need to be better neighbors.

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/mexicos-sheinbaum-to-present-constitutional-safeguard-for-non-gmo-corn-in-coming-days/ar-AA1u5viA

Monarch butterfly populations continue to decline. (So do other butterfly populations--Monarchs only happen to be the best known and best loved.) 

https://www.npr.org/2024/11/18/nx-s1-5179002/protect-species-monarch-butterfly-decision-may-soon-tryb

Music 

Wu Fei and friends in Chinese-American jazz concert.

https://soundcloud.com/wufei/sets/house-of-wufei

Book Review: A Match Made for Thanksgiving

Title: A Match Made for Thanksgiving

Author: Jackie Lau

Date: 2019

ISBN: 978-1-989610-02-2

Quote:  "Why is it so difficult to have a one-night stand?"

Duh.

Lily Tseng has been told she's boring, so she decides to make herself more interesting to other idjits like the wormboy who told her that. She puts on a skimpy dress, goes to a bar, and tries to pick a man for a one-night stand. Instantly Nick Wong pops up. Having much in common--both have some Chinese ancestry, both spend time in Toronto, both feel excited by saying the same formerly unprintable word, and both like Nanaimo Bars--they proceed straight home for the one-night stand and, unlike real people who have one-night stands, immediately fall in love. But they have flopped into bed, drunk, first.

Well, it's not a sweet romance. It's not a romance I'd want to read on Thanksgiving Day. (And there's some intentional ambiguity about which Thanksgiving Day is being celebrated; neither the Tsengs nor the Wongs seem to care about the history, but they'll be thankful when their thirty-something children make them grandparents, they have made clear.) 

If you like an explicit romance with frequent mentions of body parts and a formerly unprintable word, plus close-knit families and the promise of three more siblings' holiday-theme romances, this one's for you.

Why Can't People Eat on Metro?

Last week I mentioned being disgusted by a scofflaw encouraging a child to lick a sticky sweet on Washington's Metrorail. I was disgusted because everyone learns that, even on Metrobus, there is a very real possibility of attracting literal "bugs in the system." Many parts of the city are overrun with German roaches. People who dsn't want these "friendly" little insects crawling from a sewer right up their legs. in pursuit of the warmth and chemical odor inside their laptops, have fairly intense feelings about the idea of attracting roaches to the public transportation system.

But a glance at an old newspaper I was about to burn reminded me that Metrorail has an additional reason to be vigilant about food and drink on the trains. 

Several, actually. Trains move. Crowds jostle. Food and drink spill. Nobody wants to step in other people's snacks, nor do Metrofolks want to scrub it off floors.

Then there's the fact that Washington is full of small restaurants and snack wagons run by nice people who need money, and if you feel a need to eat while you're in the city, you are supposed to pick a local entrepreneur to support. Noshing on packaged snacks is tacky. Everything has been done to attract the tourist's eye to all the nice places to sit down and eat the city offers. If, as it might be because you're on a one-week temporary job that is the first temp job you've had in a month, you do feel obligated to carry your own food around town, for goodness' sakes don't advertise the fact. 

But the reason why Metrorail is more vigilant than Metrobus is that Metrorail runs on electricity. Food and its containers are fuel that could easily catch fire. 

"In 1987," Richard Garrison of Arlington informed the editor of the City Paper, "31 people died in London's King's Cross underground station in a fire...caused by rubbish beneath wooden escalators being ignited." Metrorail's escalators are not wooden, but the prospect of all those electrical wires catching fire while people are somewhere in the middle of 160 steps is an effective way to suppress any normal appetite.

Metrocops have been somewhat inconsistent about enforcing the law. There's been a tendency to avoid getting involved if top government officials or big-spending tourists violate local laws, while enforcing the laws strictly on private local citizens. While most Metrocops are Black themselves, this still adds up to an unacceptable frequency pf Black youth going to jail for offenses like eating or littering on Metrorail, while older and richer-looking people might be politely ignored or, at worst, required to go to court and pay a $50 fine. So it's very likely that tourists ignore the law, stuff their bloated faces on Metrorail, and go home to tell their friends that city laws are enforced only by dirty looks and an occasional unfriendly comment. The sad truth is that those people probably don't even care that they're participating in a little sociological drama that is elitist, not racist, but is perceived as racist by ghetto youth. 

Like it or not, violating the law while rich and pale-complexioned is a way of grinding the faces of the poor into the fact that you are lapping up the benefit of prejudice that works against them. Not that people who think they are entitled to munch, slurp, and dribble in public places care. 

They won't care unless they are trapped in an elevator during a fire, and while that's a development all Washingtonians--even the ghetto youth--want to avoid, there would probably be some small compensation in considering that some two-legged swine deserve to be trapped halfway up a 500-foot elevator shaft in a fire.

Book Review: Harbinger of the Rose

Title: Harbinger of the Rose

Author: Bonita Clifton

Date: 2023

Publisher: Cozy Corner

Quote: "You plan on dressing up and scaring...the kids this year?"

The character to whom this question is addressed is one of those people who grow up not fitting the names they were given as children. He's called Colt, but he's a big man who needs only the fur suit to play "Smokey the Bear." But no, at the Halloween party where two of his friends fall in love, he doesn't need to dress up. Campfire stories are told, and then the happy campers slip into a time-travel adventure--or was it only a dream? Did they all dream about the same thing?--in which a folk hero scolds someone for telling his story wrong and an  historical escaped convict threatens the single woman, whom the single man can conveniently rescue. 

It's a fantasy, part of an interlinked series of fantasies about the same characters. I didn't get into it. Some people probably do. The romance is tasteful, with some kissing. The book is short, a possible choice for those who need to read something in time to write a last-minute book report. 

Butterfly of the Week: Graphium Bathycles

Passing over Graphium aurivillusi, which is known only from a few museum specimens, so that scientists are starting to think it was only a variant form of G. agamedes, we come to Graphium bathycles, the Dark Veined or Striped Jay. Neither this species nor a half-dozen species that look very similar to it seems to be very well known, which made the research...interesting.

Photo by Sl_liew. The color is an effect of the light; at different angles to the light the wings look black and white, or black and pale aqua. There are yellow or yellow-green and red, orange, or pink spots below. These contrasting spots distinguish the subspecies bathycles from the subspecies bathycloides. Subspecies tereus and capitolinus have also been identified as showing consistent differences from G.b. bathycles.

Another photo by Sl_Liew. This one is the subspecies bathycloides.

Photo by Kristofz. Color or black-and-white look seem to be determined by lighting. In this species male and female are believed to look alike, but nobody seems positive about this.

Photo by Dhfischer. Courting couple, or brothers standing at different angles to the light?

The wingspan is five to six centimetres, or two to two and a half inches, Like many swallowtails, they frequently sip water from shallow puddles. Nearly all photos of this species show it sipping water from a puddle, sometimes as part of a large mixed flock. 

Photo by Stijn_de_wijn. Highlighting seems to indicate that the photographer knew this to be a mixed flock including some of the look-alike species.

The Veined Jay is yet another south Asian butterfly that resembles our Zebra Swallowtails, but is obviously a different species. For one thing. it lacks the long tails on the hind wings. 

Graphium bathycles is easy to confuse with G. chironides; this web page discusses their differences.

https://nlliew66butterflies.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-veined-jay-graphium-chironides.html

Genetically they are very similar, and individuals found in the wild may be too close for even experts to call. Most recent sources list chironides as a separate species but some mention its having been once considered a subspecies of bathycles.

https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/268876258.pdf

The species Graphium doson, G. eurypylus, G. evemon, and G. sarpedon also look almost exactly like bathycles so this monograph was written to explain how it's possible for experts to identify most, if not all, the individual butterflies of these species that they see. One reason why little is known about the life of this butterfly is that it takes an expert to be sure which of these species an individual belongs to.

https://lkcnhm.nus.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/app/uploads/2018/01/sbr2018-124.pdf

Subspecies appear to have evolved toward one end or another of the species' overall genetic potential in different locales. Bathycles of one subspecies or another are found on some, not all, of the islands south of Asia. On some islands, like Singapore, they are considered visitors, though it may be possible for visiting butterflies to lay eggs that will hatch in a place they have visited. This butterfly's youthful condition was presented as evidence that he must have hatched on Singapore; his wings would have been more worn if he'd flown in from another island.

https://lkcnhm.nus.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/app/uploads/2018/01/sbr2018-124.pdf

What puts an animal into a separate genus has been debated and reconsidered a few times. This Graphium has also been listed with the genus names Arisbe, Eurypleana, Papilio, and Zetides. 

Why bathycles? Bathycles was the name of a legendary sculptor in prehistoric Greece. Artefacts don't last long in warrior cultures, and the only piece of marble still believed to have been carved by Bathycles by Greek historians was an altar in a temple in what would later be called Turkey, but everyone agreed it was a good altar.

There is occasionally a published study that hints that the scientific study of butterflies may at times be fun. A Malay study determined that some Malay butterflies prefer bananas to watermelons, pineapples, guavas and various other fruits from which they may sip juice. Science now seems to lack something. Doesn't every butterfly species deserve a formal study in which students hang about in butterflies' territory, eating bananas, watermelons, and pineapples, throwing the scraps on the ground, and seeing which fruits the butterflies slurp up most eagerly? Considering the quality of students these days, I'd recommend that these studies need to be repeated annually, at all schools that are open in May, to observe the effects on the students. Fruits with thick rinds that keep out any poisons sprayed on the fruits, in the field or in storage, would need to be tested. One of my own very first observations of butterflies was that Zebra Swallowtails like fruit scraps. The Malay Graphiums, however, were not caught in traps baited with fruit scraps of any kind. Overripe bananas were found to be excellent bait for the Malay butterfly genus Mycalesis. Meanwhile, Graphium bathycles, which lives in and near forests, is known to pollinate lantana, bougainvillea, jasmine, abelia, and hibiscus flowers.

Caterpillars are said to eat a few different kinds of leaves, including chirimoya as well as plants in the laurel and magnolia families. Nobody seems to have posted a photograph of an egg, caterpillar, or pupa of this butterfly.

Morgan Griffith's Thanksgiving Message

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

"

Households throughout the Ninth District, our greater commonwealth and the country are preparing for Thanksgiving.

Discussions are occurring over the method of cooking the Thanksgiving turkey and ensuring enough of the right food is available. The dining room table is organized for a feast, and maybe even a guest bedroom or couch is tidied up for incoming family.

On Sundays around Thanksgiving, it is customary to hear the hymn “We Gather Together” in churches.

The Christian song’s history is rooted in the Dutch war of liberation against the king of Spain. The Spanish were strong supporters of Roman Catholicism. The Spanish king was attempting to restrict the Protestant Dutch from exercising their faith and gathering at places of worship.

The Dutch were engulfed in years and years of battles.

In reference to the struggles of the Dutch people during this time, the hymn reads: “the wicked oppressing now cease from distressing...Let thy congregation escape tribulation.”

The hymn underscores the importance of community and faith centered around the Lord.

Meanwhile, people in England dealt with domestic problems of their own. Overpopulation with no room in the peerage for second, third and fourth sons, coupled with concerns of an overbearing government, caused people to reconsider their lifestyle options. Eager to improve their lives, the New World presented an opportunity for renewed fortune, promise and often religious freedom.

In 1607, the first permanent English settlement at Jamestown was founded in the colony of Virginia.

In 1619, others followed suit. That September, Captain John Woodlief and 36 men embarked on their own journey to Virginia. They battled stormy conditions sailing aboard the Good Ship Margaret from Bristol, England.

The wearied sailors and passengers arrived at their destination in December. They founded Berkeley Hundred, a settlement further up the James River from Jamestown.

Arrival at their colonial destination following the months-long journey became cause for celebration and prayer: “We ordain that this day of our ship's arrival … in the land of Virginia, shall be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God.”

While many children are taught in school that the Pilgrims held the very first Thanksgiving in Massachusetts two years later in 1621, Virginia is credited with being a foundational player in establishing the tradition, which is why I believe all the common Thanksgiving imagery is merely Massachusetts envy towards Virginia. The Berkeley tradition was celebrated annually until the community was destroyed in an Indian conflict. I should note the Massachusetts Pilgrims only celebrated their Thanksgiving feast once.

In his 1963 Thanksgiving Proclamation, President John F. Kennedy recognized Virginia’s role: “Over three centuries ago, our forefathers in Virginia and in Massachusetts, far from home in a lonely wilderness, set aside a time of thanksgiving. On the appointed day, they gave reverent thanks for their safety, for the health of their children, for the fertility of their fields, for the love which bound them together and for the faith which united them with their God.”

U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd, Jr. entered the story of the Virginia First Thanksgiving into the Congressional Record in 1969.

The modern annual Virginia Thanksgiving Festival at Berkeley Hundred, known better to some as Berkeley Plantation, pays homage to the contributions of Captain Woodlief and the original settlement. This year, the festival celebrated its 63^rd year commemorating America’s first Thanksgiving.

Berkeley Plantation also is the ancestral home of two U.S. presidents: 9^th President William Henry Harrison, which is where he was born, and 23^rd President Benjamin Harrison.

Aside from issuing proclamations, presidents engage in other customs around Thanksgiving time. One such custom is the pardoning of turkeys.

This practice allegedly stems from Abraham Lincoln. Legend holds it that Lincoln spared the life of a turkey at the behest of his son. Later presidents like Kennedy and Ronald Reagan held turkey pardon events before it became an annual tradition in 1989.

The National Thanksgiving Turkey Presentation takes place at the White House. During the Obama and Trump Administrations, some of the pardoned turkeys ended up at Virginia Tech!

While I will not be granting any clemency to the turkey my wife cooks, I will be thanking God for all the blessings I have received.

In my house, like the Dutch and Captain Woodlief, we will gather together and place our trust and thanks in the Almighty.

No matter what your religious tradition is, I wish all a happy Thanksgiving!

If you have questions, concerns, or comments, feel free to contact my office.  You can call my Abingdon office at 276-525-1405 or my Christiansburg office at 540-381-5671. To reach my office via email, please visit my website at www.morgangriffith.house.gov. Also on my website is the latest material from my office, including information on votes recently taken on the floor of the House of Representatives." 

Book Review: My Little Island Life

Title: My Little Island Life

Author: Alex Apostol

Date: 2023

Quote: "I would tell her to clear her conscience, to live a good life pursuing her passions...once she loves herself, only then will she be able to love others the right way."

With the job market tightening, with even advanced degrees no longer guaranteeing young people jobs that pay enough to support children, perhaps it's inevitable that some people want to bury their heads in the sand of the past. Why, they whine, can't young women just abort their educations when the hormones set in, marry the first man that comes along, have a bunch of babies, and they-can-always-go-back-to-school-later-if-they-survive? Wouldn't that plan at least give people my age the grandchildren some of them crave, or more realistically seem like a short-term solution to save the doomed Ponzi scheme we know as Social Security and allow us to "retire" before the crash, and really, historically, haven't a critical number of young people survived whatever messes their elders had made of society?

This book is written with Christian intentions but, between the foreword and afterword, it is not a Christian story. It's an uncompromising look at how "the problem that has no name" resurges in the life of a girl who gets married out of high school. It's the autobiographical first novel that Apostol had the good judgment to postpone publishing until she'd sold a few novels that were not about her. Kleio, a teenager with no vocation or experience or awareness of any talent, wants to get out of the Midwest so she runs off with the first boy who talks about marriage. Danny is handsome and seems like a prize because he's in a position to offer marriage at an age when other boys are not. Of course, Danny doesn't have the faintest glimmer of an idea how to be a husband. That might seem fair, or equally unfair to both sides, since Kleio doesn't have the faintest glimmer of an idea how to be a Navy wife.

It's lucky for me that Apostol keeps reminding us that Kleio is a Greek-American with a big nose, because at this stage of the novel, although the plot develops in its own different direction, I was starting to picture Kleio and Danny as one of my sisters and her husband. This story is not their story; Kleio and Danny try to have children and fail; my sister produced some of The Nephews. But it's the same sort of thing. A military wife needs to be as tough as her husband is, in her own way. Kleio, like my sister as a bride, is a teenaged princess wanting to be even more pampered than she's always been, and Danny, like my brother-in-law, knows nothing about the care and feeding of princess egos. Kleio's mother, the pessimist, predicted that theirs would be a first marriage. 

The other night some people at a forum got into a discussion of the current fad for using Formerly Unprintable Words as routine expressions. How did English-speaking people ever get the idea of using the same word to mean the way babies are made and the worst fate we could wish on a person? Where the older generation used an old, shorter variant form of "condemn" that had been relegated to use specifically for God's final condemnation, we use a word that means a sexual act. Coming out of male mouths, it sounds like a threat to commit rape, and should be regarded as hatespeech. At the very least men should have to learn to expect the counter-threat, "Well snip you." Coming out of female mouths, I'm surprised it doesn't cause more men to smirk, "Is that a promise?" The only reason they don't must be that they feel that a person spewing words that are meant to be transgressive and express anger is not attractive. 

Apostol shares this feeling. Danny, she says, is a sailor and talks like one. Kleio hasn't been taught to say she's turned off by Danny's ugly language, but she is. Early in the marriage Danny brays, "I married the [rude word for sex] out of her," and as the story goes on, we see, he really did. Kleio doesn't go asexual, but her marriage to Danny does. Whenever Danny manages to talk civilly, she thinks there might be hope for the marriage. When he sinks back into crass words, she despises him.

Some introverts, especially young women, can be horribly passive-aggressive. Kleio finds messages from an ex-girlfriend on Danny's phone and computer, accuses him of having cheated by continuing to see this woman while he was engaged to her, and proceeds to pay him back by sleeping with other men. She hooks up with a random man she found in the grocery store because his impudent smile made her feel attractive. She flops into bed with Danny's drunk friends, while Danny's at work, because they don't have anyone else. She lets Danny know she's having a real fling with one of his friends who is subject to military discipline for violating a buddy's marriage. She has a real crush on a younger man who is a Mormon and who seems to want romantic love more than mere sex, but he's turned off by her still living with her husband. She knows she deserves to be thrown out of his house, and perhaps wants to be, but instead Danny tries restricting her behavior, making her feel like a grounded teenager. In order to stay in his house, he says, first she can't have a job unless it's a part-time job in the nearby store, then she can't have a job at all, can't have horseback riding lessons, can't have her own car or phone, can't see the old friend from the mainland who's living near them in Hawaii...Both of them keep on punishing each other in the same way that failed them before. Neither of them seems to be learning anything. Living in "paradise" with a good income and an attractive, apparently very desirable partner, each of them appears to be miserable. Their only relief seems to be getting drunk, after which they inevitably feel even worse.

The nomadic nuclear family structure marketed in the 1950s was just a commercial version of what, in the past, was occasionally seen as a religious vocation but much more often seen as a desperate reaction to poverty or a punishment for a crime. The traditional family structure wasn't perfect, but it relieved "the problem that has no name"; both wives and husbands usually did their work from their homes, and those homes were in at least one of them's family territory, among relatives who made sure they had things to do and think about. What Danny offers Kleio is endless time to sit around the house watching television, feeling depressed, and hating Danny. And punishing him by turning his home into a peculiarly unprofitable kind of House of Ill Fame.

We don't see Kleio reclaiming her own religion (apparently she's not going to become a Mormon) in this novel. We're told that she will, because her author eventually did. What we see is how trying to be "just a housewife" stifles Kleio's unformed spirituality and all but destroys her character. As a bride she is not a mature woman who can be loved for anything beyond sex appeal, but being "just a housewife" puts her even further from becoming one. 

Some women who were suffering from "the problem that has no name," as young housewives, were able to have babies. That's how emotional dysfunctions develop in the next generation. It's a very good thing that Kleio doesn't have children. When little girls who want sex to cure their low-energy moods have babies that really drain their energy, they do not magically transform into devoted mothers. And there's no longer room or employment for anyone to plan on making a career of having babies. 

Christians who wish women could "just 'be keepers at home' as in Bible times" need to read this book, to grind their noses into what they're actually trying to inflict on their daughters--and on their sons. This is a first-person story but the astute reader can clearly see that Danny is, if anything, more miserable than Kleio. 

What's not to like about this novel? It doesn't have room for the more pleasant side of its message. All the drinking in the novel naturally leads to the appearance of vomiting as a positive symbol, and this novel itself seems to have been written as an act of purgation, a way to put disgusting, nasty acts behind the character and her author. Toward the end of the book a character urges others, if feeling seasick, to lean over the side of the boat because "it encourages the sharks" they're out in the ocean to admire. The author's intention is clearly to let selfishness and promiscuity be recycled back into the Earth like shark bait. So let it be. But here we are at the end of a full-length novel with no room left for Kleio to start publishing the writing she's started to do, find her writing voice and her joy, reconnect with spirituality as anything beyond the urgent need for repentance and reform, become a woman who can be loved, or find a man she loves. Or a horse. Or a child. Alex Apostol has had those experiences, she tells us, but we'll have to buy another book to find them in her fiction.

I believe in love, even in romantic love. I believe in marriage. But romantic love and marriage are seldom found by picking up the first sailor that blows into town. Growing up Protestant, I didn't study the Apocrypha much, but I've always been grateful for my exposure to the teachings of Ecclesiasticus: "If thou wouldst get a friend, prove him first; and be not hasty to credit him." When the hormones have ebbed and flowed a few times, and the friendship has lasted, then it's worth thinking about acting out those hormonal feelings. Not before. Meanwhile, young women should laugh privately at our hormones and focus on becoming adults who will be fit to care for children--and disabled husbands. 

It was a coincidence that while I was typing this review I had an e-friend's blog soundtrack going in the background, and it came to a song that sounded apropos...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZP69PLBqFUo

It's worth skipping the steps of having a miserable first marriage and divorce, and just going directly through work to the Real Thing.

Bad Poetry: The Ever-Changing Who

If that church college I attended aimed to teach us anything, it was how to be missionaries, so in the first or second term everybody had to take a speech class. The teacher tried to make it more interesting and less intimidating by calling the course Interpersonal Communications and, on the theory that college freshmen are most interested in themselves, making the first speeches be in groups of three or four and the topic be "Who Am I?" 

Just the facts, as in the student directory, was my reaction to that assignment, but one kid in my group wanted to impress the teacher and gushed, "I am an ever-changing who!" 

I suppose I did participate in keeping the "Who" name and jokes going throughout our church college years. I thought that was a terribly amusing and thought-provoking line. 

"Who, who, who are you?"

"I am an ever-changing who.

Not one, but two,

Or perhaps a few."

"What, what, are you for real?"

"Depends on how I feel.

I can lie and cheat and steal

So long as innocent's how I feel.

Nothing but me can change it

On my ever-turning wheel."

"How, how, how is this?"

"Oh, the sublime, ineffable bliss

Of changing with the wind: that! to this!

There's not much I ever miss."

"How, how do youexplain that?"

"For eveyrone I have met,

I'm a new who, don't forget.

I've not stopped changing yet."

"The changing who, the changing who,

Never the same, but always new!

Change is the only constant for it.

Hebrews 13:8 would bore it.

Christ, ever different yet ever the same,

Died for this who. Who-m can He redeem?"

Feline Friday: Snow Before Frost

We hadn't seen frost yet at the Cat Sanctuary. This is very unusual; we usually get frost in the last week of September or first week of October, but this year it was as if Old Man Winter was feeling sorry for the people in North Carolina who are still living in tents. Day after day, the sunset came earlier and the sunrise later, but the temperatures stayed at mid-September (which is to say, from humans' point of view, perfect) with lots of sunshine.

This couldn't last as long as some people in North Carolina needed it to.

Earlier in the week I was near a TV set on which MSNBC was confidently saying that downtown Gate City would get "a trace" of snow, the Cat Sanctuary would get an inch, and the top of Clinch Mountain might get two or three or even four inches, because the ground temperature even on the lower ridges would be warm enough to melt snow. I had to smile. Weather forecasts have become much more detailed than they were fifty years ago, when it would have been "chance of snow," and by becoming more detailed they've remained often wrong. Local meteorologists make different guesses so that people can have favorites, but they're all often wrong. The Blue Ridge Mountains are where northern and southern weather patterns meet. It's always anybody's guess which weather pattern we'll actually get, except that rain will almost always be involved. 

I dug up blankets and shawls, brought in things that might freeze outside, and settled in for a day or two of rain. Not that I mind snow, as long as the computer works. 

So, early this morning, I was out on the screen porch putting the finishing touches on today's Link Log and assuring readers that a Petfinder post was forthcoming. And I had just scheduled the Link Log, hit "Publish," and reached to open a new tab with Petfinder in it, when all the lights went out and the heater stopped. About two inches of snow had fallen. Much of it had fallen directly on the ground and melted, but relatively mild temperatures only meant wetter, heavier snow clinging to trees. Somewhere there must have been one last dead tree that hadn't gone down in the Edge of the Hurricane. 

No use sitting on the screen porch if I wasn't computing, was there? So I went home to bed. No electricity there, either. I lay down under a blanket and had a nice nap. It was about time for one. I'd been up all night, sending out feelers about a novel and contending with Microsoft's endlessly annoying updates to a program I had not planned to open again in the foreseeable future. 

Then I woke up; the sun was bright, the house was chilly, the lights were still off. So the most useful thing to do was to come into town and report the power outage. 

Most of the snow had melted but even McDonald's was closed, due to the power outage, until one o'clock.

On days like these we think how much everyone loses by having "power grids," how badly we all need to be generating our own electricity instead of paying companies to build big, dirty "plants" and dams and abandon them ten years later.

Anyway, about the animals. In honor of the weather, can we find snowy or frosty white animal photos? I tend to neglect white animals because Petfinder's sorting mechanism does not separate animals with really white coats from animals with a white spot here and there. For both dogs and cats, the gene for just a few small white spots is dominant. More animals than not have a white spot somewhere, so a Petfinder search for white animal photos is almost the same thing as an unsorted search. Growlgrowlgrowl...

Zipcode 10101: Duchess and Glow from New York City

Duchess's web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/duchess-73161294/ny/new-york/anjellicle-cats-rescue-ny488/

They're spring kittens, rescued from different alleys. Like our Serena and Traveller, they recognized each other as the siblings they had been missing so badly for so long, and bonded on sight. Duchess is the white one. Both kittens are female. I'd be greatly surprised if Glow hadn't been spayed, too, but I didn't check. Duchess has been spayed. They should fill your house with bouncing and pouncing and racing and chasing for a few years. They are recommended for people who don't want shelves cluttered with breakable objects, who keep plants in heavy pots on the floor. The photo showing what a lapfull they've become by now caught Glow at the sort of angle MSNBC favors for Republican politicians, but at Duchess's web site there's another photo showing that Glow has a normal adorable kitten face too.

Zipcode 20202: Snow White from DC

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/snow-white-74015137/dc/washington/lucky-dog-animal-rescue-dc20/

Snow White is not a social cat. She's a rather small cat, her apparent bulk mostly fur, and likes to sit around posing and looking down on other animals. She's being sheltered in a foster home, where she reportedly doesn't acknowledge that other cats and dogs are there. She is thought to be about six years old, healthy, spayed, friendly with humans. 

She looks to me like the sort of would-be Queen Cat who'd sprint a mile if Serena looked at her, but she might do very well as an only pet.

Zipcode 30303: Polar Bear from Atlanta

His web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/polar-bear-73604965/ga/atlanta/pattys-kitties-ga1119/

Move fast! Polar Bear and his mother and four siblings will be on display at a shopping mall tomorrow! They're all pure white, though their coats may show silver or gold undertones in some lights. Not much is known about the kittens' individual purrsonalities; they'll probably develop some as they grow up. If you're in Atlanta you'll have a chance to meet them.

And now the dogs:

Zipcode 10101: Sinbad from Puerto Rico by way of New York City 

His web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/sinbad-71679987/ny/new-york/miracles-for-satos-rescue-ny1518/

Remember Sinbad and Me? Kin Platt's bid to create an iconic dog character may have helped some real Old English Bulldogs find homes, but Sinbad here is believed to be mostly retriever. Nobody knows for sure. Anyway, somebody thought he looked like a dog who'd be the perfect baby-sitter and bodyguard for a teenaged boy and girl who fancied themselves detectives. Nobody knows for sure how well he'd do at that, either. Kin Platt's dog hero's competence, like his humans' adventures, had a hint of the supernatural. Retrievers are not usually as intelligent as herding dogs or terriers. 

This real-world Sinbad is five years old and weighs fifty pounds, and they want $550 for him. That's to include transportation from Puerto Rico to New York or New Jersey. If you can meet him in Puerto Rico the adoption fee should be more reasonable. 

He is described as a well-meaning, lovable pet, but almost completely uneducated. He belonged to people who just tied him to the fence to be a watchdog--in one case, while they moved up to the mainland! Then he was rescued by someone who lived with a bunch of other dogs, and they chased him back onto the street. For his size he seemed surprisingly afraid of the street; it was a new experience in his short unsatisfying life. He is said to be very demonstrative of gratitude for a foster home where he has a chance to lead a normal dog's life, with walks and runs and suchlike. He would probably love to run at the heels or the bicycle wheels of a teenager, but he's big and rambunctious enough to intimidate a small child. 

For a large dog he's getting on in years, but he's still full of pent-up energy from his misunderstood puppyhood. Ask about adopting this dog only if you are serious about fitness. He'll provide all the workouts you need to maintain a good figure.

Zipcode 20202: Cotton Ball from South Carolina 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/cotton-ball-73742063/dc/washington/final-victory-animal-rescue-sc497/

She's just a spring puppy. Readers who've watched Dave Paulides' Missing Persons Project videos will remember Executive Producer Huck, the big fluffy pale-colored dog Paulides usually pets and calls a good girl at the opening of each video. Huck is a Great Pyrenees dog. Cotton Ball is a Great Pyrenees puppy.

Cotton Ball (and a sibling called Q Tip) were typical shelter pups: nice, cute, well-meaning dogs dumped out of the homes of humans who didn't want puppies and couldn't find the time to have their dogs fixed so that puppies wouldn't arrive. This web site is not fanatical about neutering pets because all of us hate that "any domestic animals are too many, people must be herded into tiny apartments so that the population can keep on exploding and the Social Security Ponzi scheme can keep rolling" mentality behind the chant that "Neuter and spay is the only way." We are, however, very judgmental about people who don't make the time to have simple operations done and then dump out their unwanted puppies or kittens. If you want your dog to be a natural unaltered animal, you need to plan on giving her pups a loving home until your friends claim them. 

Well, Cotton Ball is already spayed, so no worries about that. She is very large for a nine-month-old puppy because she's probably going to be an oversized dog. Oversized dogs need a lot of food, a large doghouse (or just give them a whole shed), at least one positively athletic person who can run at big-dog speed, at least one person who is big and strong enough to lift them if necessary, and a large yard with probably an eight-foot fence. That is why they tend to be put in shelters. For people who can supply what they need, extra-large dogs can be great pets. Their worst quality is that they don't live as long as smaller dogs and cats do. They can live ten years, but, realistically, they're senior dogs at age five.

If you have what it takes to adopt a big dog, visit Cotton Ball's web page to work out where in DC, SC, or any point between would be best for you to meet her. 

Zipcode 30303: Athena from Atlanta 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/athena-37912470/ga/atlanta/ginny-millner-rescue-group-ga652/

Lazy people should not adopt Australian Shepherd puppies. These beautiful, photogenic dogs make good pets for people who want to stay slim and fit with lots of walks and adventures, and a large yard with a high fence. Athena unfortunately got stuck with lazy humans who didn't teach her anything, and she is yappy and excitable and hard to manage. They recommend not taking her to dog parks. If you can be a kind, firm, responsible trainer, this six-year-old, 65-pound dog might still learn to walk around town on a leash, eventually. She has languished in shelters longer than any dog should, but they say she's still a well-meaning dog, just excitable and uneducated. She likes running and playing and catching balls, and would probably be good at a responsible dog job if offered one. She should probably be an only pet.

Visit Scenic North Carolina

This is Noah. His web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/noah-73887722/nc/burnsville/yancey-humane-society-nc08/

Noah is currently in the Burnsville shelter, on the North Carolina - Tennessee border, which has very reasonable adoption fees. He is thought to be young, and has been vaccinated. That's all they're saying.

And this is Loki. His web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/loki-73358834/tn/johnson-city/tiny-miracles-kitten-rescue-tn1004/

Nobody calls anything Loki unless they expect it to play lots of tricks, some more fun than others. In the Old Norse legends, Loki started out as an amusing younger brother whose pranks made everyone laugh, but eventually he created so much ill feeling that he was cast out of the family. If you want to live with kitten pranks like pushing china plates off shelves or bounding across a perfectly decorated cake, this may be your kitten. 

I've said less about people losing homes in contiguous States, too, because the unprecedented flood in Asheville did so much damage, but the hurricane itself did abundant damage in Virginia, Tennessee, South Carolina, and Georgia too. If you're going to be a hurricane tourist, Johnson City is not far out of the way from North Carolina. 

(Four billion dollars' worth of damage in Virginia? Well, yes, we did lose some bridges, and people could easily have lost houses to the Edge, but I hope we don't have any people in Virginia who are mean enough to inflate claims and thereby take money away from people who are still living in tents.)