Book Review: Order of Swans

Title: Order of Swans

Author: Jude Deveraux 

Date: 2025

Publisher: Harlequin

ISBN: 978--7783-6842-7

Quote: "Kaley had joined every ancestry site...on each one, her ancestry had come back partially as "unknown.""

That's because her real ancestors came from the alternate universe from which our fairy tales come. Kaley lost her mother long ago. Her best friend, who was also her mother's husband, has been preparing her to go back to her home world. The story of her adventures there isn't like the predictable romances we associate with Harlequin; it's a lively adventure story that mashes up elements from fairy tales and does not focus on the protagonist's physical attraction to one man. 

With a little help from new friends of various species, Kaley learns how to use magical healing feathers and saves a tribe whose men and women have been separated by an oppressive royal order, and more.

Skillful, successful author. Well told tale. And, yes, there's a fiction-proportionate probability of happily-ever-after when Kaley chooses a mate at the end. This book is not what Deveraux usually writes or what Harlequin usually publishes, but fans of the author and/or the publisher should enjoy this little variation on their usual offerings.

Book Review: Friend Zone

Title: Friend Zone

Author: Camilla Isley

Date: 2017

Publisher: Pink Bloom

Quote: "What's up with the hair?" "Change of style...Ethan dumped me."

Alice and Jack have been best friends ever since they got into Harvard. Alice has had an apparently pill-popping rather than intelligent, but monogamous, sex affair with Ethan for most of that time. Ethan knew her as a bleach-blonde. When he dumps her, Alice decides to symbolize her intentions to be truer to herself, in the future, by reclaiming her dark hair--a nice trick if you can do it; bleached hair tends to stay bleached, but tar-based anti-dandruff shampoo used to do wonders. The change of style makes Jack want to confide that he's actually been attracted to her all along. Alice has had a major crush on Jack, which was probably a factor in her being dumped. But instead Jack confides about another girl having told him she was in love with him, which made for an awkward ride back home, and Alice flops into bed with Jack's best buddy. 

Camilla Isley can do so-o-o much better than this. She's slumming. She can do thoughtful, intelligent, likable characters with interests and the ability to keep their hands off each other until they're married. She's even done characters who are serious, not preachy, Christians. But this is Harvard, the school that threw away its reputation by admitting it frankly discriminated against introverts and not even committing to a nonviolent revolution in that regard. The characters are extrovert idjits. When Alice and her roommates want to talk about something other than boys, there's a moment of silence before one of them squawks, "We can always discuss the latest Kardashian drama!" None of them has a noticeable job and, though they have to have chosen "concentrations" with some thought of future careers, the only one who shows any interest in his future career is Jack's best buddy, whose goal is to play basketball for a living. 

I could care less about any of these airheads and their stupid faith in birth control pills, but possibly some readers like reading about this kind of wastes of education. Well...I can't imagine Isley having known them well, in college, but she has observed them closely, and she does write about them with far more empathy than I think they deserve. 

Butterfly of the Week: Graphium Decolor

People don't agree whether Graphium decolor is "majestic" or "whimsical," nor whether it reminds them more of a tiger or a zebra. Whatever. It is noticeable. 

Photo by Leifgabrielsen.

Magnified images of museum specimens adorn posters, towels, mats, and other merchandise sold in countries far from its home, which is Malaysia and the Philippines. 

Because really, when you step out of the shower, don't you want to stand on the wings of a crow-sized, long dead butterfly? Actually I can't say that's a thing I've ever wanted to do, but let's give Wal-Mart props for trying to celebrate butterflies in some way. The Graphium decolor atratus mat is available online from Wal-Mart in Canada:

https://www.walmart.ca/en/ip/POGLIP-Butterfly-Species-Graphium-Decolor-Atratus-in-High-Definition-Extreme-Focus-Doormat-Floor-Rug-Bath-Mat-23-6x15-7-inch/PRD7113ZVT2F3WJ

In the US Wal-Mart offered the same motif on a flannel blanket. It was not a great success and is no longer available from walmart.com. Wal-Mart still offers a collection of flannel blankets with butterfly motifs, mostly airbrushed fantasy butterflies in pretty pastel colors, with one black-and-white blanket that just has to be a commemoration of an LSD trip. 

A more serious attempt to create original butterfly-inspired art is Lauri R. Dunn Peterson's mandala made from folded-up photos of Graphium decolor's wings. The pictures, arranged to form a logical, symmetrical, geometric design, are embedded in clear resin for a durable decorative piece. You can buy this for only $750 at

https://www.laurirdunnpeterson.com/products/yellow-and-black-mandala/.

Why only museum specimens? Apparently Graphium decolor is one of the "naturally rare" species. Wikipedia lists seven subspecies: atratus, decolor, jamesi, neozebraica, rebeccae, sibuyana, and tigris. Not all sources recognize jamesi and rebeccae. None of these is known to be endangered or decreasing, but only atratus, only on Mindoro island, and only "in season" (so, which season?), is said to be numerous enough that people would be likely to be able to photograph living butterflies. Clear, positively recognizable photos of living decolor are scarce. GBIF.org has one photograph of a living butterfly that can be identified with the faded museum specimens in their gallery. The living butterfly picture appears above. The museum specimens show the different color patterns that identify subspecies, and the tendency for this butterfly to fade from black, leaf green, orange, and white to bark-gray and white.

https://www.gbif.org/occurrence/gallery?taxon_key=5141221

Several people have posted photos of butterflies that either were not clearly recognizable, or were clearly recognizable as not being Graphium decolor, and called them Graphium decolor. This web site would not presume to arbitrate in disputes about whether a photograph represents decolor or another, less common, very similar looking species. This web site does not even presume to say whether an aged butterfly whose photo shows no tails, and looks as if it never had tails, really was the "Swordtail" decolor. This web site does, however, call out photographs identified as Graphium decolor that are in fact of Sphingid moths. Let us give some people the benefit of the doubt and imagine that they had photographs that at least looked like Graphium decolor but failed to upload them due to computer glitches.

It's called Graphium decolor because its vivid pattern is produced by a process of de-coloration. Before scientists had observed this (in the late nineteenth century) it was called Papilio antiphates. Two fairly well known characters in Greek literature were called Antiphates. The king of the cannibal giants hardly qualifies as a hero, so the butterfly was probably named after the soldier who entered Troy inside the Trojan Horse. But decolor is more scientific, anyway. 

Like the Clearwings, whose wings do show some patches of melanin in the wings themselves, Graphium decolor has some color in its wings. Mostly melanin, in the dark spots and stripes along the edges. Its haemolymph is greenish, and it has some yellow-orange pigment in the sections where bright color may be noticeable. Above that the forewings have some of the pale sky-blue colored scales that other Graphiums have, but never very many, and they don't have them long. What start out as leaf-green patches fade to dull olive and mustard yellow. In some lights there may be a suspicion of blue on the inner sections of the wings, but only a suspicion. Generally this is a white butterfly with dark drab and sometimes yellow markings. Its color is described as "subtractive." Take away the turquoise blue wing scales that so many people find so pretty, on the other Graphiums, and decolor is what's left.

And that's about all people seem to notice about it. For a tropical Swallowtail, they note, it is small; its wingspan is typically 6 to 7 cm, more than 2 but not all of 3 inches, about the size of our northern Zebra Swallowtails. 

Its life cycle and host plants seem unknown. At a butterfly enthusiasts' forum someone posted a photo of a rather pale-colored Graphium caterpillar with yellowish green on the forward slope of its hump and pale grayish green, fading to white on the final segment, behind, and called it Graphium decolor, but apparently failed to confirm its species identity. It looked logically likely to be decolor. If there is any logic about butterflies it is rarely apparent to the human mind.

Web Log Weekender for 1.24-25.25

Microsoft behaved very badly this weekend. Some links have probably been lost forever. I think we need a law that if they crash your browser they owe you $1000, and if they lose your links, bookmarks, or history they owe you $5000.

Charity 

The "gifts" that give charity a bad name...

https://www.plough.com/en/topics/life/technology/send-us-your-surplus 

Cybersecurity 

I have no concern whatsoever about machines becoming "smarter" than humans. I do have some concerns about what humans can use computers to do to each other. None of these short items qualifies as news any more, but icymi:

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/bb-murthy-wounds-doesnt-kill-free-speech-social-media/

Foreign Affairs

"Become a State"? Canada could easily be our 51st through 63d States, inclusive, but is that what they want? The ones who've said anything to this web site definitely want a change of administration, maybe as dramatic as the one for which we voted last year, maybe more so, but they like being their own nation. The position of this web site is that statehood should be within reach of those who want it, even if they're not on our continent (viz. Hawaii), but it's un-American to press it upon those who don't want it. The President's joke about this was not funny.

Health 

This one's not really news any more, either, but it's worth sharing with all those who prefer to read their news in French. Basically, too many vaccines can be as harmful as too few for babies. The expectation that babies will be put in day care facilities, where infectious diseases run wild, has led to the recomendation that they be given too many vaccines. The writer doesn't actually say "Babies should stay home with their mothers and be naturally fed for the first year," but that's also true...

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/les-nourrissons-qui-recoivent-plusieurs-vaccins-en-meme-temps-courent-un-risque-exponentiellement-plus-eleve-de-maladie-et-de-retard-de-developpement/

Politics 

So why did we vote the way we did, Michael Moore?

Possibly because there are nuances to these questions, and people's votes can't be predicted as simple yes/no answers to the questions politicians want to believe they'd answer the politicians' way. 

This web site, for example:

Supports legal abortion, with no questions asked, until incubation technology makes it possible for aborted fetuses to be kept alive for longer than it takes them to go home, suffer, and die. But that day is likely to come, and when it does come the fathers should be sterilized and set at hard labor to pay the costs of rearing and educating their children, up to age 25 or as far through university as the children may want to go. Meanwhile, sterilizing fathers of aborted fetuses and setting them at hard labor would still be a good idea.

Is maintained by more than one person, though it's lost two founding members. Some of us shoot, some don't. If you are an evildoer who knows how to read, you do not want to find out what those of us who don't own guns use instead. 

Wants fewer gun control laws, because we have too many laws already and more paperwork is never a good idea.

Believes climate change is real, though local, which means that whether or not it's become a crisis is a local question. Believes the reality of global climate change is not knowable within one human lifetime. That doesn't mean it may not be happening, but it means that we don't know whether it's happening, how it's happening, or whether any governmental policy will do as much about it as the Green choices individuals can make all by themselves.

Supports the right of workers to form labor unions, join them when they find them useful, and stay out of them if they find that the unions are becoming just another tier of management and/or misusing the money workers pay into them.

Believes that even the rich are overtaxed already. We need a more frugal government. The federal government should be on a schedule of steady downsizing, with termination--with prejudice!--for employees who have behaved as if they had power over the taxpayers who have employed them. (Shoot a taxpayer, like those guys who were finally fired after the Waco disaster and then quietly rehired? Face a firing squad. Utter a taxpayer's name aloud in a government building where others might hear you? Clean out your desk, and good luck on the day labor site.)

Understands why people think they want to raise the minimum hourly wage, but is made up of people who've lived long enough to know that raising the minimum hourly wage never improves the minimum wage workers' financial situation. On the contrary. (Michael Moore has lived long enough that he certainly ought to know this, by now.)

Supports decriminalizing marijuana, or at least decriminalizing the possession and distribution of marijuana. Smoking anything indoors, or in any situation where others have to be within a hundred yards of you, should be listed as a violent crime.

Wants student loan debt relief, but not in the form of not holding students responsible for paying it off, in cash or labor. A better alternative would be to deflate the cost of education...possibly just by publicizing the idea that intelligent people aren't the ones who go to expensive schools.

Sees no reason for Supreme Court term limits, though some Justices, like some elected officials, do seem to need some system for making it clear that they've reached their personal retirement age. I'm all in favor of people doing their jobs as long as they can do them well. Our previous President was a very public example of someone who, even before election, was losing the ability to do his job well, and consequently did it badly. I'm not aware of any Supreme Court Justice having combined a frail, brittle appearance with a long sequence of bad decisions to any comparable degree, but it could happen.

Thinks some people want "pre-kindergarten" daycare for valid reasons, and those people should offer it on a private basis. Private funding does not lead to mandates. Public funding does. 

Supports an end to the discrimination against the unmarried that led people to think they wanted same-sex marriage. 

Has never reached a firm decision about the electoral college.

Does oppose gerrymandering (the practice of redrawing district lines in bizarre, salamander-like shapes, as done by Elbridge Gerry long ago, in order to break up districts with a solid majority of one party and bring in more of the other). We last saw that done to bring more coal miners, who tended to vote D, into our State House district in the hope of weakening Delegate Kilgore's staunchly R positions. Did not work, but it's worked in places where elected officials had solidified less political power before it was done. 

Thinks a cease-fire in Gaza would be a good idea, just as soon as the Palestinians who want to live have rounded up the Hamas goons and anyone who insists on supporting them, delivered them to the Israeli government, cursed them, spat on them, and defiled their graves. Any Palestinian state recognized by civilized people needs a record of having solidly rejected rape, baby killing, and any form of violence against non-combatants. For several years...too bad for Palestinians who want to be their own nation in this lifetime; they should admit that Hamas has torn it. This web site has Arab relatives and Muslim friends. To them this web site says, sorry, they need to be denouncing Hamas's terrorist acts as un-Islamic.

Thinks that in Heaven it might be possible to separate money from politics, or separate human or post-human existence from both, but on Earth it won't be. Deal with it.

Is written by a woman, consists mainly of women, and also has a majority of legally White biracial members, but if anybody thinks that either being female or being "of color" is a reason for supporting either party, well...that person is living in the 1960s. Which is sad. Especially when the person, like too many of the miseducated Millennials, never even did physically exist in the 1960s.

Thinks support for any further "progress" in the direction of socialism is evidence of unfitness to vote. We can talk about maintaining some of what we have, but we need less socialism, not more.

Psychology 

Naming no names...some correspondents of this web site could benefit from this reminder. And then scroll down, or up if it's been long enough, to our Petfinder posts. There are Petfinder pages for all US states and I have searched and found a few pages for Canada and Mexico. 

https://theviewfromladylake.blogspot.com/2024/09/im-not-here-but-calvin-is_01579590453.html

Technology 

Microsoft wants to force obsolescence on even more computers that should still be functional. Don't let them. It's not really news, but you can still endorse the message:

https://pirg.org/articles/6-surprising-facts-from-the-uns-2024-electronic-waste-report/

Personally, I think they should be required to uninstall all traces of Windows 10 and reinstall Vista or ME. And also clean up, renovate, and resell all the old desktops and laptops that have been wasted, before they're allowed to build any more new devices. And also commit to "One computer per lifetime." And pay cash any time any uninvited "security update" affects the way anything works for computer owners on their computers; if you barge into someone's house, uninvited, and break things, or even move things around so that their owners can't find them right away, you certainly have to pay; cyberspace should have the same law.

(Which does not seem to be what the President wants...Donald Trump is a brilliant man in some ways and also has areas of real stupidity, and the authorization of technological proliferation he's allegedly backing shows one of the latter. Let us all pray that both new and existing surveillance technology  will malfunction, like the exploding electric cars, in ways that quell enthusiasm for adopting dangerous new surveillance technology.) 

Book Review: Holding True

Book Review: Holding True

Author: Jill Penrod

Date: 2016

Publisher: Jill Penrod

Quote: "That's my name. True Fischer."

When his parents were newlyweds True's father marvelled, "Is it true? You're pregnant?" and his mother was so amused by that that she named the baby True. True's father later sustained some brain damage; he stutters badly and is prone to seizures. True himself doesn't seem less intelligent than most boys in their late teens, but admittedly that's not saying much. When True falls off the diving board at the pool he blathers as if he's trying to have a brain injury to be like his Dad, but of course that's not his real problem. 

True does some of the dumb kid things he does because he has a real problem. He and his best high school friend were molested by a coach. His friend then died in an accident. The coach has warned him that, if True warns other kids or parents about the coach, the coach can make it look as if True was to blame. 

True has a year of high school left but he helps his parents maintain the apartment buildings they rent out mostly to college students. In this vulnerable summer, he meets some college students who are just his age; what we used to call summer children, "special," "gifted and talented," students offered the chance to take a few freshman courses on the college campus in the summer after or even before grade twelve, without having to be admitted to the college as regular students. As when colleges offer free online courses to anybody, even people who register in the names of their dogs...the stated goal may be to test different teaching methods or just qualify for some sort of government grant, but no points for guessing, the colleges want a lot of these people to register as full-time, full-tuition-paying students next year, ("Summer children" usually got reduced tuition, subsidized by their high schools; at some colleges they may also be subsidized by the State.) 

Summer children aren't supposed to date regular college students; they are, typically, too young to do most of the things college students, typically, want to do on weekends. They don't usually get even student labor jobs. They're supposed to be just adjusting to classes where they really need to study things on their own, instead of having everything read to them by the teacher. A few of them manage to like other summer children to whom they feel attracted. The stereotype used to be that they always formed hopeless crushes on regular college students who either didn't notice them or thought of them as, well, children.

True is not particularly attracted to a couple of cute, blonde, flirty summer girls he calls "the Barbies," whose role in the story is to be all that he and his friends don't want to become, but he is attracted to another pair, Jemma and Aubrey. They have their own teen problems, of course; all eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds are, at best, works in progress. Aubrey has food allergies that haven't even been fully identified yet, which means the primary sensitivity is probably to chemicals whose manufacturers have really leaned on doctors not to test patients for reactions to them, and goes into anaphylactic shock at a party. Jemma has been brought up with "good student" as her primary identity, lets herself be baited into talking as if she thinks everyone else is stupid, and has an emotional crisis when she gets a D on an essay test. 

This is an age-appropriate teen romance: While coping with their teen problems as Christians, True and Jemma slowly reach the point of declaring themselves friends. But it's also a Christian novel: their primary emotional bonds are still with their parents.

As readers can expect from Jill Penrod, this is a thoughtful story where kids face situations beyond the usual cliches of sex (and maybe drugs) with more than the usual level of insight. The characters are believable as eighteen-year-olds, which means they're not easy to like, but they are well written and sympathetic enough that you'll want them to reach a believable happy end-of-this-volume. If you like reading about teenagers, and especially about the damage done to teenagers when people tell them they "are smart" instead of accepting that it's to be expected that their parents' children would have some academic talent, you will like this book. If you are an adult who needs to be reminded that most children have a reasonable amount of intelligence, that the ones whose talents involve writing or math don't need to be made to feel like freaks, that the ones who don't seem to have talents may be coping with things you can't even imagine, and that nothing good comes from telling children they "are smart" if they earn good grads, you need this book. 

Web Log for 1.23.25

Only two links...

Economy, The 

If it costs three cents to mint a penny, should we stop using pennies and round all prices up to the nearest nickel? Ha ha ha, wouldn't merchants love that? There's another solution: We could deflate the dollar, restoring prices to the point where a penny would actually buy something...and not merely a ball of bubble gum. The American penny never was a laborer's standard wages for a day's work, but it used to pay for a stamp, a cheap greeting card, a snack, a small useful item like a nail or a shoelace. It should be made to pay for such things again. Yes, history shows that there's always some short-term discontent associated with deflation, but in the long run, correcting inflation works to stabilize money and work for everyone... except perhaps greedhead moneylenders, who deserve to lose a few dollars.  I vote to keep pennies, and bring back penny stamps, penny valentines, penny postcards, penny nails, penny buns, penny candy...

https://pjmedia.com/sarah-anderson/2025/01/22/is-this-the-end-of-the-penny-n4936267 

Pop Culture 

Was Donald Trump the last of the yuppies? Pooh. He wasn't even in the demographic generation of the typical yuppie. And Kamala Harris was the quintessence of yuppie, only, for whatever reason, she never learned to dress the part. Female yuppies wore suits with big, boxy, shoulder-padded jackets and short, skimpy skirts...but Kamala's ghastly 1930s hooker heels were classic yupwear. Female yuppies tried to look like professional dominatrixes, only they usually limited the black leather to shoes and purses. Quite a few female yuppies were, in fact, dominatrixes. Or they wanted to be.

https://unherd.com/2024/06/donald-trump-the-last-of-the-yuppies/

Book Review: Rescued by the Alien Royal

Title: Rescued by the Alien Royal

Author: Sonia Nova ("Starr Huntress")

Date: 2020

Quote: "He was going to rescue his sister if it was the last thing he did."

Jiran and Deseer are humanoid space aliens with purple skin and swishy tails. They belong to the royal dynasty on their planet. While travelling incognito Deseer was kidnapped and was going to be awarded to the winning gladiator on another planet, which still has gladiators and slaves. Jiran, her brother, comes in to rescue her and they end up taking along Sarai, a full human who was brought up as a "pure" slave and has no job skills other than obeying orders, but Deseer thinks she might have some latent intelligence and Jiran has also noticed that she's cute. 

This is a romance fantasy so, in just a few chapters, Sarai and Jiran will have satisfying sex the very first time, which Sarai doesn't even know borders on being miraculous for humans, and will decide they're "in love" and make a commitment for life. Fade out. 

The literary value of a romance novel is how well it portrays human relationships as they are in the real world. This one doesn't even try. If it's your kind of fantasy it may still have value as a marital aid. It's definitely a book to hide from any children in the family.

Petfinder Review Post #3

Well...we are still looking at the pets who weren't adopted in 2023, either, despite our efforts to publicize how cute their Petfinder photos are. 

Old George from NYC

His web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/george-60879712/ny/new-york/anjellicle-cats-rescue-ny488/

They think this lovable neutered male has lived with HIV for more than eleven years now. He does have some special needs. He's likely to do best indoors, as an only cat, in an all-adult house. But they say he's healthy and lives a normal indoor-cat life, liking to play with toys, scratch a post, and even watch cat videos on television, and of course snooze on the couch beside his human.

He looks large in that photo but they say that, in real life, he's a medium-size cat.

Cliff from NYC 

His web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/cliff-65736967/ny/new-york/carl-goes-woo-inc-ny1601/

...has not been updated since 2022, when he was rescued from an unhappy situation. At the time of posting he was gaunt and had some skin lesions. This is probably not the way he looks after more than a year as a shelter dog.

Big Sky from Atlanta 

His web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/big-sky-46669806/ga/decatur/paws-atlanta-ga914/

Well, he is big--85 pounds, as photographed, obviously not overweight. And as of 2024 he was only starting to get some training in basic dog etiquette. He was one of those big dogs who jump up in people's faces, put their paws on people's shoulders, and could actually knock a person down. (I detested dogs like that when I was smaller than they were. In vain people assured me that the dogs were showing affection. I did not want their affection. The list of dogs I actually liked, and the upper weight limit for the dogs on that list, grew every year right along with me. Anyway, a small child might not love this dog.) 

But he's the perfect redneck-chic dog accessory. He's said to be friendly and good-natured, and to be doing well in basic training. And there is no charge for adopting this Old Yeller look-alike. There will of course be a substantial cost for dog food, but you can take him home for free. He's been sponsored.

Emily from Garwood 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/emily-48338525/nj/garwood/willow-rescue-foundation-inc-nj923/

It has to be the shelter's fault that this fluffball has not been adopted! She is admittedly very small for an adult cat--only six pounds, healthy weight--and shy until she gets to know people. She is a Listening Cat. She answers to her name. Although spayed, she's bonded with a neutered male. They call him Romeo and say the two cats' history is "a love story for the ages"! The pair have been in a shelter for two years now. Romeo, who is in some of Emily's photos at her web page, has short black hair. 

The problem? The shelter staff demand too much information in e-mail. That's it. That's all. If you live in New Jersey or New York City, it would be a good thing to send them flaming, howling rebukes and demand that they put their real-world names and addresses online because you need to be sure you're not adopting an animal with worms or fleas. There is no way Emily and Romeo would not have been adopted if their web page didn't look like such a total scam.

Lady from Blountville may have found a purrmanent home.

APRIL

Now we're getting to the list of animals who've been featured here only one time before.

Will may have been adopted.

Pippen may have been adopted.

Connie the Collie Mix from NYC

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/connie-70986766/ny/new-york/stray-from-the-heart-ny245/

...still describes her as a puppy, which obviously is no longer the case. A year ago they said she was getting some training. A progress report might be helpful, but although some outdated information has been removed from her web page, nothing's been added. Anyway this pretty pup has obviously been a shelter dog for too long. She needs a real home.

Benji from Maryland may have been adopted.

Violet from Atlanta may have been adopted.

Safira from St. Thomas island, by way of New Jersey, may have been adopted.

Suga from Korea, by way of NYC, may have been adopted.

Lux from DC may have been adopted.

Iris, the dog with the family from Texas by way of DC, may have been adopted.

Hermes, the Russian Blue type from Atlanta, has positively been adopted.

Briar the hound from Atlanta may have been adopted.

Sissy the Dalmatian may have been adopted.

Marshall the Dalmatian from Pennsylvania has been adopted. The deal has gone down. No more chances.

Neo from Harrisonburg may have been adopted.

Liana from Alabama may have been adopted.

Clovis from New York has definitely been adopted.

Rubi from Falls Church may have been adoopted.

Kobe from Decatur may have been adopted.

Liam Creamsicle and Marcus Greyson may have been adopted.

Captain Hook and Smee may have been adopted.

Happy from Fayetteville may have been adopted.

MAY

Lunchbox from Manhattan may have been adopted.

Porthos may have been adopted.

Pixie from the Fulton County shelter may have been adopted.

Ripley from NYC has definitely been adopted.

Speedy and Snappy from NYC may have been adopted.

Skye from DC has probably been adopted.

Bert and Ernie have been adopted.

Sushi from DC may have been adopted.

Theodore from Atlanta has positively been adopted.

Mayflower from NYC 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/mayflower-69952205/ny/new-york/anjellicle-cats-rescue-ny488/

Not the most social of cats, Mayflower (May-May to friends) is said to tolerate other cats and humans with polite disdain. She doesn't like to be picked up. She will gradually learn to come to a human for grooming. She's said to like to rest beside, not on, a human friend. Some cats just aren't great cuddlers and Mayflower seems to be one of those. This may be why she's not been adopted yet. If you are not a needy, clingy person, and are comfortable ignoring a cat until it comes to you, you just might be the human Mayflower learns to love.

Web Log for 1.22.25

More online time was spent dealing with Microsoft's hubris than discovering links and memes for you..

Education 

 From AntiWokeMemes. Wouldn't it make a lovely cross-stitch prezzie to give to a teacher.

Hurricane

Beth Ann Chiles says Hendersonville still needs help:

https://itsjustlife.me/currently-3/

Not to leave out anyone closer to Asheville...

https://ncrenegade.com/lets-hope-for-a-new-fema/

Post for 1.22.25: Funny Book Quotes

Participation in this week's Long & Short Reviews blog challenge is down. "Funny book quotes" requires us to get up, find a book, page through it, find a quote, and quote it exactly...

Ah, but I just read a review copy of a book that had some good funny lines. This was  Rangikura by Tayi Tibble. It's a short book of short essays and free verse. Do not be deceived. It's a challenging read; among other things the author throws in a Maori word or phrase on almost every page. If you are from New Zealand, or if you don't mind looking up Maori words, you'll probably like the book. It's mostly about the universal experience of being young. Millennials can relate; the rest of us can reminisce.

The quote, which also appears in my reviews:

"she realised that life

was not going to be fair

but it could be

ferocious"

I like funny books. Douglas Adams', Mark Twain's, Erma Bombeck's, and Florence King's funniest are in the older part of the house. Y'know what? It's 9 degrees Fahrenheit outside and when I crawl out from under the pile of knitted fabric here on the screen porch, I'm sprinting straight to the warm room where I shall let the cats in, turn on the hot-air fan, and burrow into an even bigger pile of knitted blankets. I am not going into the older, colder part of the house to look for books.

There are lines I can quote, or possibly misquote, from memory. Look these up before reusing. They're not even the funniest lines in the books; they're just the ones that came to mind first. Generally I think the funniest bits in a book are entire scenes where the comic effect has built up slowly. Some really funny bits that come to mind, e.g. from Terry Pratchett, aren't here because I read them later in life and am not confident about quoting them from memory; nearly all of these lines come from books I read before I was full-grown, which is why the list, like publishers' lists of that time, has no Cultural Diversity. I just want to indulge in a half-hour or so of seeing how many I can remember...

"Do people want fire that can be fitted nasally?"

--Douglas Adams, in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, when the various telephone cleaners, personnel managers, and other "useless b*y loonies" who've been sent away from the planet Golgafrincham are trying to find out how to make a fire

"If it had not been a pleasure it would have been a duty to hate Uncle Wilbie Culpeper."

--Joan Aiken, The Embroidered Sunset

"I should like to be a beautiful butterfly,

All blue and yellow and green and red;

But I should not like

To have Dan put camphor on my poor little head."

--Louisa May Alcott, Little Men

"'It's all right'," she said. 'It's organically grown.'"

--Lisa Alther, in Kinflicks, in a scene from Ginny's lesbian affair where vegetables are being wasted

"Grundy Golem was the size of an inconsequence."

--Piers Anthony, in Golem in the Gears, where I suppose describing Grundy as a golem is an act of inappropriate cultural appropriation, but it's a funny book

"You fit into me

like a hook into an eye

a fish hook

an open eye"

--Margaret Atwood, Collected Poems 

"There was the strangest odor of onions about the young Woodlawns...But she forgave them, because of their tears of grief."

--Carol Ryrie Brink, Magical Melons, at the end of a story where the children have been baby-sat by a relative who is not the sharpest knife in the drawer

"Jessie was not as ill-natured as she was silly."

--Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess

"Irish proverbs always turn out to be insults in disguise."

--M. Grant Cormack, How the Rabbit Took a Ride

"Garnish with nuts, bolts, and old washers."

--Elizabeth Enright, Then There Were Five, scene where brother is teasing sister about her interest in cooking

"How gold's the King of Egypt?"

--Eleanor Farjeon, The Little Bookroom, in a story suggested by a news report that wheat found in an Egyptian tomb was still golden and mold-free

"If I Ever Get Back to Georgia I'm Going to Nail My Shoes to the Ground"

--Lewis Grizzard, the title of the book

"There's Nothing in the Middle of the Road but Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos"

--Jim Hightower, the title of the book

"Dearer to me than the evening star

A Packard car

A Hershey bar

Or a bride in her rich adorning,

Dearer than any of these by far

Is to lie in bed in the morning."

--Jean Kerr, Please Don't Eat the Daisies

"There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it."

--C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

"'Watch it, Linkletter,' I say to myself. 'Your hatband seems to be shrinking!'"

--Art Linkletter, in The Secret World of Kids, describing his own struggle against feeling that he was entitled to all the attention being a TV star got him. The book, which is about what Linkletter felt that he and his wife had done right with their five children, was soon withdrawn from reprinting, despite popular demand, after one of the children died by misadventure. If he were still alive I wouldn't quote it here, despite having chortled over it in middle school. He's not. I think the book's due for a reprint.

"'But Merrill,' you might say. 'Merrill, Merrill, Merrill...' Then again, you might not, because you have already exceeded your quota of opportunities to use my first name."

--Merrill Markoe, Merrill Markoe's Guide to Life

"Beauty is twice beauty...

when it is a matter of two socks in winter."

--Pablo Neruda, "Ode to My Socks," I forget whose translation

"HOP HOP We like to hop.

HOP POP We like to hop on top of Pop.

STOP.

You must not hop on Pop."

--Theodor Seuss Geisel as "Dr. Seuss," Hop on Pop, recently recalled to my mind when a certain large cat climbed onto a mound of knitted blankets and unerringly braced her weight on a paw planted directly above the hollow at the base of my throat

"When beetles fight these battles

in a bottle with their paddles

and the bottle's on a poodle

and the poodle's eating noodles..."

--T.S. Geisel, Fox in Socks

"The black side of her hair's turned white. And the white's gone green--a horrid shade."

--Dodie Smith, The Hundred and One Dalmatians, describing the final rout of Cruella de Ville

"Scrub the soap thoroughly with the washcloth, and then hang up your neck."

--Caskie Stinnett, reprinted in The Family Book of Humor, final line of an essay on the way his son's brain seemed to scramble the keywords in directions

"If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament."

--Gloria Steinem, Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions

"And when you've finished, if any are whole,

Send them down the hall to roll!

...That's what Bilbo Baggins hates,

So carefully! carefully with the plates!"

--J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

"...and it would take the tartar off, too, and mostly the enamel with it..."

--Mark Twain, in Huckleberry Finn, where the king and the duke are describing the scams that got them chased out of various towns

"It is not often that someone...is a good friend and also a good writer. Charlotte was both."

--E.B. White, Charlotte's Web

"I've just become a Socialist...You work for the abolition of private property, and start by collaring all you can, and sitting on it."

--P.G. Wodehouse, in Mike and Psmith. This line got the author hated and slandered but he never tried to suppress the book.

Book Review: Betrayal's Price

Title: Betrayal's Price

Author: Lisa Blackwood

Date: 2015

Publisher: Lisa Smeaton

Quote: "Ashayna...preferred the name 'sentience.' It was less dire than calling herself demon-possessed."

Ashayna has been reborn as a human, or humanoid resident of an alien world, anyway, and because of the sins of a past life she's now fated to marry a phoenix, or resident of this world with phoenix-like traits. If you read "phoenix" and think "animal of which there was only ever one in the world" and then try to remember that in this novel it means "one of a species that have birdlike and humanlike traits," the cognitive dissonance may spoil the fantasy for you, as it does for me. Or it may not. This story has gone on and grown into a series.

Even if the spirits that inhabit Ashayna and Sorntar, her phoenicoid Partner for Life, are more benign than the humans feared, my feeling is that this fantasy aims too high and falls short of its aims. Not all readers agree.  

Hemileuca Warreni: Emergent Nuisance?

We already met Hemileuca warreni, last summer. It has usually been classified as a southern subspecies of H. maia. Stingingworms found on the peninsula (not the panhandle) of Florida tend to be more colorful, and moths may average darker in color, than other maia. What's changed recently is that in 2023 some scientists voted to list H. warreni as a separate species and, though most web sites haven't added pages for it, this winter some sites have set up separate pages for the "Florida Buck Moth."

Here's what I learned last summer. Basically this species is a minor nuisance. It is a significant food source for some little tachinid flies and braconid wasps. Its primary food plant is oak leaves, often switching to other plants as the caterpillars mature. It does all of its eating as a caterpillar; moths don't eat or even sip liquid, and don't live long. It's not a threat to any plant but it is a great inconvenience to fruit pickers, as caterpillars often like to spend their final instar as caterpillars infesting fruit trees and bushes. Caterpillars are covered in stiff branching bristles; when startled they drop off their food plants and curl up with all their bristles out. Each bristle tip contains about as much venom as a bee sting and will, like a bee sting, continue to cause pain as long as it remains in the skin. If touched by one of these little monsters humans are advised to pat the affected skin gently with duct tape, sticky side down, to remove any bristle tips from the skin. Once bristle tips are gone, wounds generally heal quickly. Reactions could in theory include anaphylactic shock; in practice it's very rare for anyone to report symptoms worse than a painful skin rash.

https://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2024/08/hemileuca-maia-moth-of-week-for-81524.html

The name "stingingworm" has been applied to Hemileuca maia at least since colonial days, though caterpillars are not, technically, worms and some scientists dislike names for caterpillars that include "worm." 

The photos of Hemileuca warreni available online are mostly not new; most of these photos were posted on pages for maia in the past, and have been transferred to pages for warreni as those pages have been set up. The Inaturalist group are leading the way to set up separate pages for warreni. 

Photo by Michaeltrestman. Big, feathery antennae identify the male of the species. 

His anatomy is a bit unusual. Tufts of fur add to the bulk of his thoracic segments, in which is stored most of the fat on which he lives  as an adult. Head and tail segments look tiny by comparison. His little flat head contains eyes and antennae but no mouth, and his thinnish abdomen contains only reproductive parts, no digestive parts, and surprisingly little fat for an animal who can't eat.

Photo by GraceBaffer. The female is similar, though usually a bit larger, only when she emerges from pupation her abdomen looks fatter. This is because she is full of eggs. By all appearances she is eager to unload the eggs as fast as possible. Many individual Hemileucas also show a tendency (if anything, more common in males than in females, though we  see it in this female) to lose the feathery scales that give their wings color and texture, so their wings become translucent. In many species the male has red or orange fur on his tail setments and the female has black, white, or grey, but this is not as reliable an indicator as the antenae. Female antennae are simple; male are featherlike.

Most of these moths probably live only one day. Most of the stored energy from all the food they have ever consumed, such as it is by the time they eclose and fly, goes into finding a mate, preferably on that first day of their adult lives. The female actively pumps out a scent (which humans can't smell) to summon males, and males follow that scent, using all those sensitive nerve endings on their feathery antennae to bumble about as they try to follow a scent on gusty Eastern States wind, for half a mile or more. 

Photo by Logancrees. Eager to mate though they are, couples of Hemileuca usually take their sweet time and enjoy each other's company for about an hour. Mating back to back is the most common position for moths, but Hemileucas sometimes mate face to face (around a twig). They do not, however, show any interest in each other after mating. Moths are most likely to produce viable offspring the first time they mate so, if both of a couple live long enough to mate again, both the male and the female will look for younger mates. 

After mating the male rests for a day or two. He has used up a good deal of his life force and is vulnerable to predators. If nobody else eats him, however, he is likely to regather his energy and flit off in the direction of another female if he can smell one. 

After mating the female uses up the biggest part of her life force flying about to find the right place to lay her eggs. Flying seems to be part of the process; if she happens to be sitting on a suitable tree she still flies about for fifteen or twenty minutes. Then she places eggs in a cluster, vaguely ring-shaped, around a twig. This takes a few hours. After laying her eggs she, too, rests for a day or two. 

If they enjoy the full week to ten days it's possible for them to live, Hemileucas may mate two or three times. Each time they will produce and release fewer fertile gametes. Each of a female's egg clusters will contain fewer eggs, and fewer of those eggs will hatch.

Hemileuca warreni fly in what most of North America calls winter--the temperate season in Florida--and they also "buck" silk moth customs by flying in the daytime. Most photos of adult warreni are dated in January. Eggs hatch in March. 

Photo by Invertebrateguy. Hatchlings contain relatively less venom than older caterpillars, but at all stages of their lives the caterpillars' bristles seem to protect them from one another. They like feeling a sibling's bristle tips brushing their own, on all sides if possible. They may not realize that their bristles are venomous. However, when they are in overcrowded conditions some observers, including the author of this document, believe that older caterpillars may try to sting one another--and fail. It's hard to be sure about this. Being poisonous to everyone but their siblings, and normally enjoying being close to their siblings, allows these caterpillars to have a peaceable attitude most of the time. Only in very crowded conditions are they observed lashing their front ends about in a way that suggests that they know they can sting, and wish they could sting their relatives.

As they grow bigger the caterpillars become more colorful. First the bristles on the upper back show bright red, orange, and yellow color; then patterns of white, sometimes red, and sometimes orange or yellow develop on successive skins. While they live together and eat the same thing siblings seem at least to show a family resemblance, though their colors vary and they seem free from color prejudice. As they mature they separate and eat different things, and their final caterpillar skins vary dramatically in color. Most individuals photographed remained yellow, black, and white in different patterns, but some are real studies in yellow, red, and orange. 

Photo by Mudgiecrabshabistan.

Photo by Hannahwojo. This was the most common color pattern photographed--a mostly black caterpillar with dark yellow rosettes and black branching bristles. White can predominate over black, and branching bristles can be yellow or white. Some aberrant individuals were pale all over, and one had solid reddish-brown skin and brownish-yellow bristles.

Photo by Beach2022. Warreni does sometimes show one real structural difference from other Hemileucas. Their posterior segments taper more; they have only one central rosette-shaped yellow bristle in the next to hindmost ring of bristles, instead of a pair of rosettes, with narrower branching bristles on the sides. However, not all photos identified as warreni clearly show this difference from maia. All photos identified as warreni do seem clearly to show that the central pair of bristles, and sometimes the single central bristle at the tapering rear end, form long rosette shapes at an early age, while maia develop rosette-shaped bristles in the final instar or not at all. Warreni's rosettes are yellowish brown to orange; maia's, if they ever form, are often gray.

Early in the summer the pupal shell pops out of the final caterpillar skin. Although the pupa squirms away from the cast-off caterpillar skin, it does not usually put much distance between itself and its dead skin, and smooth pupae are often identifiable because at the tail end they're still stuck to bristly, empty skins (which still contain venom). The insect then pupates for the rest of the year, finally ecloses, and starts the cycle over again.

So, you might ask, what else is new? Apart from the different spacing of the rosettes, which does look like the kind of structural difference usually considered to identify a distinct species, why does warreni suddenly deserve an article all to itself? It is very similar to maia. All the Hemileucas are very similar to each other. This has been discussed before.

What's new is this report on Reddit: "There were 1000s plus of these guys flying around."

In January? Near Boca Raton, Florida? That has to be warreni. It looks dead but it's probably not. The Hemileucas curl up and play dead under stress, both as caterpillars, when curling up puts their bristles out and makes them formidable opponents for predators that rely on biting to kill prey, and as moths, when the same position displays the juiciest parts of their bodies for easier biting. 

And that's bad news. Boca Raton seems to be the social hub of Hemileuca warreni's world--most photos of warreni on Inaturalist indicate that the individuals were photographed near that city--but Hemileucas are usually found by dozens, not thousands. 

The city could be building up to the kind of irruption the Southwestern States had with Hemileuca oliviae a hundred years ago. By all accounts it was horrible, and left people with a perception of the Hemileucas as even nastier than they are. Chronically overcrowded and malnourished caterpillars seemed to be consciously trying to sting anything and everything. Gnawing desperately on things they couldn't digest, they were blamed for wastefully, maliciously eating pasturage away from hungry cows and sheep, then "poisoning the land" with their dead bodies when they starved to death anyway. They did ever so much more damage during the years when, apparently due to loss of their tiny primary predators, they were found at ten or twenty times their normal population density--when nubile moths fluttered around one another by hundreds instead of dozens.

Floridians know by now what they must do...or at least the ones who read things on the Internet know. They must resist, must positively fight against, any temptation to spray poison on their stingingworms. They must allow natural predator populations to restore the balance of what is, at best, a deeply unlovable species. 

It would be a good idea for the State of Florida to move now, to remove all "pesticide" sprays from every store. (Yes, I know, the mosquitoes. Breathe. Youall may have to live with your mosquitoes to avoid even worse plagues...even a plague of stingingworms would last for only a short season, but a Vicious Spray Cycle with the mosquitoes...) Do not make it possible for anyone to try to "control" stingingworms in a way that will push their population, and other nuisance insect populations along with them, hopelessly out of control.

Book Review: The Vampire's Bite

Title: The Vampire's Bite

Author: Scarlett Chu

Date: 2022

Publisher: Kirin

Quote: "They waited in line for The Flying Lotus, a vampire club in Las Vegas. Beth still couldn't believe Dana had convinced her to travel here after her breakup with Albert."

But she did. In this fantasy world, vampires really exist as a different species from humans; they have wings, which pop out of their shoulders as needed with "a sting, like a paper cut," and fly. They can survive on the amount of blood one human mate can spare. In return they deliver passionate, romantic sex. 

So basically this is a male fantasy written from a female point of view, into which this female reader totally fails to get, but some readers might. Beth goes to a club in the hope that being bitten by a stranger will get her into the mood for sex with a stranger. It does, so then they fall in love. Cart before horse but, if readers want a marital aid, whatever turns them on. 

Will this book embarrass readers if children find it at their house? Is it possible to die from embarrassment? This book might cause readers who are visited by children to find out.  

Web Log Weekender for 1.17-20.25

Again, such as it is. The lads from the company have run to and fro; the Internet service has fluctuated between sluggish and totally shut down. Overnight lows were in the single digits last night. No election links here; if you want to mourn or celebrate you can find those links all over the Internet.

Books 

Those who have Kindle Unlimited (I don't) may want to collect all of Frances Dall'Alba's books--free this month on KU. I love her topophilia!

Business

Should anyone try to keep a store open in a neighborhood where the store's been robbed of $7000 worth of merchandise in a day? 

https://pjmedia.com/rick-moran/2025/01/17/black-lives-matter-demands-grocery-store-remain-open-despite-losing-7000-a-day-to-theft-n4936075

Meh. The following thoughts were inspired by observation of the behavior of the Giant store chain in DC, especially during the lifetime of Israel Cohen:

1. There is more sympathy for individuals than for corporations. Safeway might want to try a more autonomous franchise arrangement that identifies local residents as store operators. "The Brand Belongs to Safeway but This Store Belongs to Me, A.B. Jones." 

2. Train and employ other local residents as armed guards. I remember wondering whether I wanted to shop in a store that needed armed guards, the first time I saw them, but it's better to have more security than you need than to need more than you have.

3. Publicize the store's role as a job creator for neighborhood youth. Emphasize these youth's responsibility to prevent theft so that the store continues to pay them honest wages. 

4. Help other local residents identify social needs in the neighborhood. How are individuals being empowered to start their own businesses from wherever they are? What part of the store's parking lot is designated for flea market ventures? How are individuals making progress toward owning the houses where they live? How is the sense of  respect for private property being built up?

5. Dissociate the store from "race" organizations and their blather. Make it something for the individuals who want to build a community of honest, respectful neighbors.

Glyphosate Awareness 

A beautiful fact sheet. Note especially that glyphosate was supposed to go off the market, according to Bayer's publicists at the time of writing, in 2023. It is NOT off the market in 2025, Gentle Readers. We need legislation with teeth in it...e.g., holding individuals who spray anything but H2O outdoors responsible for any effects reported by complaining neighbors, holding grocers who sell glyphosate-tainted food responsible for any effects reported by complaining consumers...

https://usrtk.org/pesticides/glyphosate-health-concerns/

 

How serious are we about ending racism? I know, I know, grooooannnn...but seriously, glyphosate does disproportionately affect disadvantaged demographic groups.

https://usrtk.org/healthwire/glyphosate-harms-infants-health-in-rural-areas/

Paraquat...harms most people a little more slowly than glyphosate does. If you don't plan to live long enough to develop Parkinson's Disease, do this one for Michael J. Fox, or for Muhammad Ali.

https://www.thenewlede.org/2025/01/epa-moves-to-withdraw-decision-on-paraquat-delays-report-on-risks

Hate 

...But the federal government can and should cut off all funding to any schools where outbursts of religious hate and bigotry are reported. And tolerance for rape as an act of war? One little pro-Hamas whine, the school should be 100% self-funded for the next ten years. Petitions for more funding from women's tax dollars should begin with statements about how pro-rapist fools have been expelled and barred from re-entering the campus for a minimum of thirty years. 

https://pjmedia.com/scott-pinsker/2025/01/17/theyre-coming-for-the-jews-why-liberals-choose-to-hate-the-chosen-people-n4936078 

We must never forget that the Nazis were the Nazional Sozialist party. There are pro-socialist statements that are moderate, reasonable, and worth discussion among decent human beings, such as "Government-funded schools can be better than no schools at all" or "While the Social Security scheme was an unsustainable Ponzi scheme that should not have been allowed to outlive the generation it was meant to preserve from starvation, some sort of public safety net based on disability, not age, could be sustained." But people who want to make those statements need to be vigilant about any resurgence of the, yes, Nazi history of support for moderate, limited socialist schemes. No Jew-bashing allowed.

And anybody comparing Hamas to the Cherokee resistance might once have qualified for a pass, if talking to Palestinians about how and why the Cherokee resistance basically failed, but no longer. No Cherokee did anything as dastardly as the recent Hamas attacks. Even Benge, the half-breed terrorist, showed more in the way of a sense of honor than that. Comparing Hamas to any other group is always an insult to that group. War is never a good thing but armed combat between warriors can be considered to have a kind of honor; terrorist attacks primarily on noncombatants have none. Any legitimate institution of education will denounce such comparisons on the grounds of etiquette, even if they are supported by history. 

Music 

Chinese music for the Chinese New Year, 1.29.25:

https://wufeimusic.substack.com/p/1101-ringing-in-the-lunar-moon

Book Review: Bayou Heat

Title: Bayou Heat 

Author: Suzanne Jenkins

Date: 2023

Quote: "Do you think you're the only woman who's ever lost a baby?"

Maggie doesn't think that. She just feels miserable. She and two friends, earthy Catholic women, well off, were going to "have our girls together," and then Maggie's baby girl didn't live. How she gets through the depression--finding a dead body, discovering that the body came from a whole neighborhood stuck in post-hurricane poverty, working to help individuals in that neighborhood--makes a short, goodhearted, very "adult" read. 

Trigger warnings: stillborn baby, adultery, murder, an autopsy that finds a fetus in the body. Also, when helpful well-off people observe the kind of overpriced junkfood people in the poor neighborhood eat, they do some ritual wailing and then start eating chicken nuggets and cupcakes too. 

Definitely not a good choice for sharing with the children, this novel just might be a good choice for sharing with a teenager who thinks she's "in love with" someone else's  husband. What wholesome stories about Nice Girls who instantly lose interest in a man upon finding out that he's married have failed to do, this one might accomplish.