Ode to John McCutcheon on the Occasion of His 45th Record Album

This week's Poets & Storytellers United prompt calls for odes, in a classical metric pattern if we can manage it, to things and people that deserve celebration.  

Fair use of a photo McCutcheon posted on YouTube.

As a young Northern singer drifting southward,

You helped record the songs of our very eldest,

First in Kentucky, then here in Virginia.

Nobody knew your name.

Then Malcolm Dalglish showed his handmade dulcimers

(Forty-eight years ago?) at a summer festival.

You said they seemed the most logical instrument;

So your career began.

When Jimmy Smith aired a Dalglish recording

On AM radio in the nineteen-seventies,

Old people said, "What pretty, funny music!

We've never heard before."

The awkward wooden trapezoid, crisscrossing

Strings over bridges to give different notes to each,

Some say, yields sounds as raucous as a circus

And clear as angel's harp.

Smith aired the first tune from "Wind that Shakes the Barley"

In between Christmas and Inauguration

Day, 1980. It was not familiar;

It sounded fresh and new.

Where the artesian well below Clinch Mountain

Pours down its little babbling, gurgling branch-creeks,

Fiddle and dulcimer find inspiration,

Echoing natural sound.

Soon you were called "King of the Hammer Dulcimer."

Soon you gave yearly concerts in the Capital.

Proudly I told my dates for each year's concert,

"He lives in my home town."

You gave free concerts at the children's story hour,

Children and parents, at the public library.

Asked why, you told a TV interviewer,

"Some day I'll be a Star!"

Years came and went, and fashion passed us by,

Us fusion folkies of the 1980s.

People remember only synthesizers

And banging back-beats, now,

Of years when we did guitar variations

Of Bach cantatas, classical fugues on themes

From ballads, ragtime, even Broadway show tunes--

Music both cheap and fun.

Yet you still sing, and people pay to hear you,

Not only your own generation, either.

What never sold well never has been sold out.

Your music's still your own.

--------

You can't hear a lot of McCutcheon's music free of charge on YouTube, and for some reason the recordings don't sound the same there. This song from the "Wind that Shakes the Barley" album sounds as if it was recorded from a 33rpm LP played at, maybe not 45, but 40rpm. On the record (and in real life) his voice might have been classified as tenor, not treble. On the other hand you get a sepia-toned photo of the back yard of the house where he used to live, a mile or two up the road from my house, between forty and fifty years ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0y3AO-gkXk&t=10s

To hear this canny Scotch-American's music as it really sounds, you have to pay for a recording, even the digital kind. They are worth paying for. He had to wait a few years to get the rights to the Internet address "folkmusic.com"...anyway, that's the current place to buy his records.

https://www.folkmusic.com/

And if he's been a slow steady seller rather than the rock star he joked about becoming, he is well off enough to be inviting fans to join him on a riverboat cruise up the Danube next summer.

The part that always makes me chortle is when people who never lived here talk about the hammer dulcimer being part of some old Appalachian Mountain tradition. The instrument is ancient all right; similar instruments are portrayed in old Asian and European art, and one of them may well have been in the band described in the book of Daniel in the Bible. Here and there a dulcimer was even brought to the United States, or built here, before 1890. However, it's a large clunky thing that takes skill to build, string, and tune, and it didn't become popular until it was mass-produced, along with autoharps and zithers, and sold by Sears Roebuck. 

Most people would not consider this a logical way to build an instrument...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIS4vxvlIF8

So it did not exactly sweep through the Appalachian Mountains--before the radio craze in the 1920s, mountain towns were isolated, each one its own subculture, so any generalization based on what was observed in one town was never accurate for the next town down the road in any case. In many parts of the mountains churches seemed to be competing to have the strictest rules, and many churches had rules against spending money on such frivolity as musical instruments. The dulcimer was not greatly admired in the early twentieth century. It was derided as a "lumberjack's piano." Nobody in my town had bought one. People who played instruments played guitar or mandolin, violin or cello, organ or piano, or some sort of wind instrument in a school or military marching band. Then the accordion was brought back from Germany as an early twentieth century fad. The only thing dulcimers reminded anyone in my town of, back in the Carter Administration, was the trickling of a mountain stream. The dulcimer was not one of our old traditional instruments when McCutcheon recorded "The Wind that Shakes the Barley." But it is, by now.

Fair use of a more current photo from PBS.

Web Log for 7.23.25

One link, one cartoon...

Cybersecurity 

Microsoft could become competitive with Linux on this, by doing what I've been recommending, all year, that they be required to do...simply blocking all third party input from computers for one hour after the last keystroke, which in addition to all its other benefits would give the corporations that say they don't send out malware time to search and destroy any malware that anyone else is sending out. 

https://ncrenegade.com/why-do-i-only-use-linux-this-is-why/

(My chances of actually getting Linux are slim since I've bought my computer for this lifetime and new ones come from grateful clients. Grateful clients usually went with Microsoft.  But let's just say that I will not pay for anything Microsoft-related, or even Microsoft-infested, unless and until that company changes its policies, specifically including policies that prevent "updates" or spyware or any other third party malarkey from interfering with what computer owners are doing with the computers they own. And that require all electronics to be repairable for 100 years from the date of manufacture. And that require anything that connects to the Internet to be designed for easy and complete disconnection, and, if it processes anything more sophisticated than on-off switching, to come with a keyboard and a printer--which defaults to printing on both sides of the page. I'd also like a policy that requires anyone who wants to buy a brand-new electronic device to sit through a three-hour documentary about what "recycling" all those plastics and rare minerals does to landscapes and people, and then, if they don't choose a reconditioned old one, to come back and watch the same documentary again the next day.)

Journalism, Muckraking, or We Can Stand Muck, but No Subsoil 

Signed by--hey, Lens, how d'you spell that name? Isn't Lens handy when people's signatures are more distinctive than legible?--Gary Varvel. Ganked from Joe Jackson.

Blogjob Phenology: Blue Jay

[Reclaimed from Blogjob, where it describes what was going on in September 2016. Bluejays are active in July, too. Some readers may enjoy the history; others should scroll down to the bird image for the links and photo. 

Blogjob paid fifty cents for each of two posts on one day, and pennies up to a dollar for each view, comment, or share of another Blogjobber's posts and for other blog housekeeping tasks, which tended to prompt people to publish quickie posts for which fifty cents was generous. Considering how thorough the moth posts have been and how much more information is generally available about birds than about moths, do youall think this is one of those posts?

I think, if I Googled blue jays and clicked on as many links as I do to write a post about an obscure butterfly species, I'd get enough material to fill a book. And Amazon would probably publish that book--it's published some books with less research and more violation of copyright. The only trouble is that I would know the difference between fair use of images on a blog everyone can read free of charge, and exploitative, illegal use of those images in a book that's published and sold for money.]

Colored ink indicates statements that were true for September 2016...

The most noticeable life form in Kingsport these days is some sort of pathogenic microorganism. I've not learned yet whether it's a virus or bacterial infection, but it has been going around. Most people seem to be "under the weather." Some people are coughing. A few people, not necessarily even older people, have developed bronchitis and break out with horrific, painful-sounding coughs in public.

Last week Grandma Bonnie Peters' beautiful voice "broke" and she went around sounding like Tallulah Bankhead, or maybe even like Odetta, in between the coughs. That was bad enough but on Sunday morning, instead of coming out to meet me, she called to say she was unfit to drive. So of course I had to walk nine miles, and since I hadn't been walking much all summer that took four hours, and for the rest of the day I didn't have much more energy than she had.

It is actually easier to fend off infections on an empty stomach. For dinner I had a garlic clove. For breakfast this morning I had a garlic clove. For lunch I had another garlic clove and an orange. I feel almost normal now.

GBP is still coughing. She has a lot of friends and a few patients in Kingsport, and sings in the choirs of two different churches. Of course she just loved missing both church services and not talking to her friends, even on the phone...NOT! When people who normally have active minds get into the mental state from which television seems like fun, and they don't have television, they are usually no fun to be around. GBP has been less tiresome than many.

But anyway we have been back to the Cat Sanctuary and observed some birds and flowers. Flowers include out-of-season crown vetch, honeysuckle, and daisies, and more typical goldenrod, thistles, and asters. Birds include cardinals, mockingbirds, and a blue jay.

Blue jays used to be very common and very easy to observe. They are often classified as songbirds, but they're bigger than most songbirds, their squawks of "Jay! Jay!" (or perhaps "Thief! Thief!") aren't very musical, and in some other ways they seem more closely related to crows than to sparrows or warblers. One of the ways jays resemble crows is their susceptibility to West Nile virus. Jays and crows have not become endangered species, but there aren't nearly as many of them as there used to be.

When they're not bullying songbirds or raiding gardens, blue jays are attractive birds. Here's a picture from Wikipedia, photographed by Saforrest and widely copied:



The blue color is an effect of the way the feathers react to light. Jays look bright blue in bright light, pale bluish grey in softer light.

Here's a gallery of 24 different, cute pictures of blue jays. The crest feathers can stand up or smooth down behind the head depending on the bird's mood; the body feathers can be fluffed out for warmth.

All jays have crests, but at the bottom of this page about odd-looking birds is a mutant blue jay with quite an amazing crest:

Jay called "Papa Smurf"

As shown in the picture, jays like nuts and use their long beaks to shell large nuts. They may hoard nuts in a hollow tree for future use, like squirrels. They are omnivores and also eat fruit and insects. If you don't mind attracting jays to a bird feeder, offer peanuts and sunflower seeds. If you live near an oak tree, you will probably see blue jays, since they love acorns.

Like crows and cormorants, blue jays are curious and may pick up any kind of shiny or colorful little object they can carry, just to play with it. They have been known to steal earrings, although, for their purposes, bottle caps would be as good as jewels, or better. Though not as intelligent as crows, they seem cleverer than most songbirds; in cages, jays have been known to figure out how to use sticks or bits of paper to retrieve food, or even unlock the cage door. They also use paper, string, cloth, yarn, and ribbon to decorate their nests.

Blue jays are bold, especially in groups. They sometimes attack hawks, owls, cats, even dogs or humans, with the intention of chasing them off the jays' territory. Successful gangs of jays have been reported to kill and eat bird-eating bats. Nevertheless, jays bully songbirds enough that songbirds seldom seem to welcome jays into flocks, even the mixed flocks that travel together in winter.

Some people claim to have taught jays to imitate human speech. I've never seen that in real life, but I have seen jays imitate red-tailed hawk noises to startle chickens. They can make several different noises, not all of which even sound loud and angry. If reading this on an audio-enhanced computer, you can listen to recordings of more than a dozen sounds blue jays make here:

https://www.audubon.org/field-guide/bird/blue-jay

Blue jays are found in the Eastern States. A larger, darker bird called Steller jays take their ecological place further west. Blue jays and Steller jays are usually considered two distinct species that hybridize easily.

Book Review: Cowboy Has Another Chance

Title: Cowboy Has Another Chance

Author: Raleigh Raine

Date: 2023

Quote: "You have to let the Sheriff handle this!"

This is a fun read but it has just a bit of the feeling of a modernization of an older romance. The story seems to be contemporary; the plot and dialogue, about a century old. There's nothing wrong with retelling old stories but it's nice to tell them in your own, fresh voice.

Anyway: Kit Cassidy is being harassed by the McShanes because he refuses to sell his ranch to them. They want to consolidate all the local ranches and urbanize. (Clearly a plot to which I can relate. No McShanes are killed in this story; I wouldn't have minded if they had been.) One reason why Kit's clinging to his ranch is that the woman he loved, Erica, went away to university and then started dating a McShane. Kit has reached the point where he charges out alone to face at least two armed and dangerous McShanes, but they anticipate his action and escape. 

Erica comes back to the neighborhood. The mutual attraction remains. Erica still doesn't want Kit to be in a "Spirit Competition," an old-style set of rodeo attractions now mostly dropped or banned; there's talk of banning it because the competition is so dangerous. Kit has to raise some money to keep McShanes from being able to buy out his ranch, so he competes. Everyone knows who's the man for Erica at the end of the show. You knew that too; there's no suspense about a sweet romance.

It's corny as all get out, but if you like Western romances where the characters reveal themselves by actions other than kissing, you'll enjoy it.  

Petfinder Post: The Best and Worst Things About the Manx Kitten

Bonus Kitten Picture: Gia from New York City

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/gia-77292599/ny/new-york/anjellicle-cats-rescue-ny488/

Apart from her normal tail, and the back view of course, she looks just like Serena's kitten. The two white whiskers sprouting up over each eye, the fringe of white whiskers sticking out to the sides, the white toes on black fore paws, the long sock on one hind paw, the white under the chin and down the front, the tendency to sit in a curved or bent position, and all. Gia is a normal healthy kitten, available for adoption with any one of her three siblings. If you pick the light gray tabby kitten you'll be able to tell them apart easily. The other two look very much like Gia.

She is, of course, here merely as a double for The Most Adorable Kitten Alive This Year; the one who's been radiating that fabled Manx cat's loyalty for life every time it's seen me sit down, pausing for a quick snuggle even before it eats. 

There is no real excuse for this post being two days late. It's a disappointing status update that I wanted to put off writing. If you are prone to depression, stop reading here and scroll down till you see more cat pictures. Dog pictures follow.

Serena's sole-survivor kitten is not growing right. He's reached an age and size where he needs to be getting a good share of his daily calories from solid food. What resources his body put into the last spurt of lengthening his legs seem to have come right off his ribs. Serena is as generous in disposition as she is in size, but she can produce only so much milk, and this year she has no dutiful daughters inducing lactation so they can share the experience of social cat motherhood. Baby is still resolutely refusing to eat solid food. No Purina Kitten Chow, no chicken, not even rice. He's gone from looking coltish and just a bit lazy to looking emaciated and anemic. Our weary wee Traveller, who died young, resisted eating Kitten Chow for a long time but would eat tinned cat treats or the bits of meat I scoop out after cooking rice. This kitten is in a worse case than Traveller.

This is one of the awful possibilities that occur when Manx tomcats aren't neutered. Serena doesn't have the Manx look but her father had it; the effects directly on Serena have been limited to her having a sturdy, wide-framed, big-boned look and bonding with one human, but last spring she was desperate enough to mate with a big bobtailed tom I called Tarbaby, and the kittens did show the horrid effects of allowing tailless or bobtailed Manx to breed. 

The gene that produces that distinctive look is lethal. People who breed Manx cats for sale allow only the ones with short complete tails (who are not "show quality") to reproduce, so that only the weak form of the gene is passed on, and even then, kittens aren't always viable. Kittens who get the stronger form of the gene on both sides (two tailless parents) don't live. One strong and one weak gene can produce some viable kittens and some with a set of birth defects some call "Manx Syndrome" (others prefer to deny that the syndrome exists, but it does). 

So, Tarbaby shows a strong form of the gene, Serena shows the weakest form but also shows the Seralini Effect (she doesn't react conspicuously to glyphosate but oh, how her kittens do). Two kittens who'd been born alive died when glyphosate was sprayed in the neighborhood. I said at the time that if the third kitten lived three months his name would be Miracle. He seemed to have a good chance of earning that name. Seeing him halfway through his ninth week, still living only on milk though he's obviously very hungry--I suddenly don't expect him to be here for another month.

Because Manx Syndrome can include a defective digestive system. There's a strong chance that the kitten has not eaten solid food yet because he is not and will never be able to digest solid food. He throve and grew fast while he was small enough to get all his nourishment from milk. He's probably doomed to starve, slowly, even if he's surrounded by solid food and given all the milk Serena has, in this third month of his life. In theory he might be kept alive a little longer on a powdered formula, but when so many healthy, low-maintenance cats need homes...

The two tailless cat breeds, Manx and Japanese, evolved naturally on islands. It is possible that a relatively low rate of reproductive success was an advantage because it prevented the cats from overpopulating the islands. 

I think all cats with incomplete tails should be sterilized early, because neither mother cats nor humans need to watch defective kittens suffer and die. 

Nevertheless...

This DOES NOT mean that you can't adopt a cute, lovable bobtailed cat from a shelter. In fact, the Humane Pet Genocide Society's policy of automatically sterilizing every animal they can get their hands on makes it easy to enjoy a Manx (or a less common Japanese) cat's company without the misery of losing kittens at the most adorable stage of their lives. By the time a cat is old enough to be adopted from a good shelter, you know it's viable. Since the adoption agreement usually specifies neutering, all that remains is to find out whether you or someone else will be the cat's favorite human. (Typically tailless or bobtailed cats are polite with all humans, but let everyone know when they've bonded with one human for life.) 

In fact, if you don't mind looking at a Manx cat, they can be the perfect shelter pets. They have super-thick, soft, silky coats and often love to be groomed, petted, and cuddled. Each cat has its own purrsonality but Manx and Japanese Bobtails are known for mellow temperaments, that tendency to bond with one person and show it, and willingness to participate in what their humans like to do (within the range of possibility for cats). The Cat Who Went to Heaven was a Japanese Bobtail. Some Manx cats are clever enough to figure out that, if they bring a toy you've thrown back to you, you're more likely to keep throwing it again for as long as they want to play. They can be lazy but, if persuaded to get enough exercise to maintain a healthy weight (which will look chunkier than most American-type cats, due to the wide frame and dense coat), they can have long healthy lives.

Dog people mean it in the nicest way when they describe Manx cats as doglike cats. They mean loyal, calm, and willing to retrieve toys. A cat who shows these stereotypical purrsonality traits might be an ideal first cat for a person who has bonded with dogs, not cats, in the past!

In many ways Serena's kitten has been the definition of all that is lovable about his unfortunate breed. Though able to bounce up onto laps with the best, he's been quite mellow for a kitten, inclined to observe things rather than try to grab them, climb on them, or eat them. He's always responded when called--if he's given me time to call him; mostly he's presented himself at full attention when I've spoken, sat up after lying down, stood up after sitting down, taken a step, or opened a door. He's never missed a chance to snuggle up against or beside me. Sometimes he's paused for a cuddle even before demanding his breakfast. As a baby kept in the office he got much of his exercise clinging to my hand with his front paws, rabbit-kicking me with his hind paws, pretending to eat my fingers and purring his little head off. As a toddler allowed outdoors during the daytime he's worked off more of his energy climbing and toddling about, and used cuddle time strictly for purring and cuddling. In some ways he's been a nuisance but during the past two months I have felt more than usually loved. 

I think even Drudge has felt loved. He didn't seem too pleased about having to share the attention with a younger, cuter kitten at first, but he is a social cat, and chivalrous. He gave his little uncle a chance, and has been rewarded with kitten affection, even hero worship. He likes it. Don't tell the other tomcats but I've seen him guarding the kitten's cage at night more often than I've seen Serena doing that. (Drudge is also, by the way, now longer and taller but still much thinner than Serena.)

I've thought that it was going to be hard to send this kitten to his Purrmanent Home in October. This week I've been thinking that there are harder things.

Once again, since this may be the last post about the little black kitten with the circle-shaped stump of a tail, our featured pets are Manx cats and bull terriers.

Zipcode 10101: Pudding from NYC 

https://www.petfinder.com/cat/pudding-76852751/ny/brooklyn/barbara-the-cat-lady-ny729/

This is one cat who does not need to be adopted with a companion cat. She does well with children but reportedly hides from all other cats. 

Zipcode 20202: Penne from wherever

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/penne-pasta-kittens-mama-76738691/va/alexandria/operation-paws-for-homes-va600/

Petfinder has two pages for this cat. She was placed in a shelter with kittens. The kittens have been adopted. The cat has apparently exceeded her allowed time at one shelter and been moved to a different one. She is described as shy at first, but friendly. She likes being brushed. It's not clear whether the two pages reflect her having been moved from Baltimore to Alexandria or from Alexandria to Baltimore. Anyway she's somewhere within driving distance from DC. 

Zipcode 30303: Caicos from Cumming

Well, first of all, not this brother and sister. They won the cute photo title, hands down, but they have an especially icky example of "Manx Syndrome." If you want to see how bad it gets...Mother cats stop cleaning kittens' bottoms when kittens start eating solid food. Both of this pair became sick because they will probably always need someone else to help clean their bottoms...although they eat solid food.

https://www.petfinder.com/cat/arlo-and-holly-76564799/ga/ellijay/furry-purrs-rescue-inc-ga1011/

If you claim a Manx tomcat, get him neutered NOW. Nobody should have to deal with this.

I also note that somebody is keeping Bunny alive...Bunny is a blind, dribbling Manx kitten who was supposed to have been adopted with a healthy sister she could follow around the room. Shelter staff reneged and let the healthy sister be adopted alone. Clearly some people in the Atlanta area are allowing, even encouraging, cats to breed when the sight of those cats' kittens is just waving and howling, "PLEASE STERILIZE US NOW." This web site featured Bunny and her sister as an adoptable pair in, what, 2022?

https://www.petfinder.com/cat/bunny-52373439/ga/watkinsville/magi-cat-adoption-network-piedmont-animal-clinic-ga314/

But here is Caicos, a roly-poly!, bouncy-pouncy!, adorable!, adoptable! kitten with his own permanent exclamation mark: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/caicos-777-25-77267848/ga/cumming/forsyth-county-animal-shelter-ga841/

He was supposed to have been adopted with a brother called Turks. Turks seems to have been adopted alone. Caicos is a healthy little fellow who loves to play.

THE DOGS

Zipcode 10101: Patch from Texas 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/patch-76563235/ct/darien/altruistic-dog-rescue-ri151/

They say it's altruistic, then proceed to list all the reasons why it's not. Rescuing a dog may be a little bit cheaper than buying one from a breeder, but not much. It may have a little less snob appeal, but not much; these days, in many social circles, it's considered tacky not to adopt a shelter pet.  And then, assuming you like dogs...Patch is described as affectionate, friendly, gentle, playful, athletic, smart, a champion snuggler, fun, energetic, a bundle of joy, always ready for play time, very smart, trainable, very eager to please, and a bringer of light to dark days. She's young and will need some further training.

Are there any reasons not to adopt this dog? There are. They'll admit it. She's big for a terrier and likes to play hard and fast, so they recommend her to families where any other dogs weigh at least thirty pounds too. She's full of energy and likes to run and jump, so she needs a big yard with a nice high fence. If you live in a neighborhood that limits fences to two or three feet high, your neighbors need to know that a three-foot fence means nothing to a determined dog. Patch's ideal human is up for walks and runs with her. Terriers are strong for their size and this is a large one. You can teach her to walk at your heel when other people are nearby but, to satisfy her adolescent energy, you're going to need to do some brisk jogging if not flat-out running.

But is any of those things altruistic? Hah. All of them have obvious benefits for the dog owner. 

Zipcode 20202: Izzy from Hughesville 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/izzy-75623362/md/hughesville/furever-safe-md469/

Izzy likes and behaves well with humans but is not always nice to other animals. They don't mention her being larger than average for the breed. They do emphasize that Izzy is another young, energetic dog who will need a well fenced yard and a trail buddy who can, ideally, sprint as fast as she does. 

Zipcode 30303: Toad from Decatur

His web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/toad-73169327/ga/decatur/doggie-harmony-ga627/

Terriers aren't supposed to weigh 69 pounds. You can see that it's not fat, either. He is twice the normal terrier size because he had other ancestors who belonged to much larger breeds. They guarantee that he will out-sprint you, so it might be good to have a treadmill where he can run all-out before going for a walk. Toad is two years old and still full of energy. He likes playing with toys, has learned several useful commands, and sometimes likes a cuddle. 

Although Staffordshire terriers have a reputation for being mellow and lovable, his known ancestors include bull terriers too. Any dog can turn on people who treat it badly. A 69-pound terrier mix is a serious dog for someone who has experience treating large dogs kindly, but they say Toad is a great guy and lots of fun. Well, on the one hand, if you walk with this dog nobody will bother you. On the other hand, you need to own a house with a big fenced yard and non-phobic neighbors.

Web Log for 7.22.25

I spent more time on actual writing than on link hunting yesterday, and almost forgot to post a Link Log...

Animals 

British butterflies. Some have close relatives (close enough to crossbreed) in North America, some have distant "relatives" or look-alike species. Two British species are called White Admirals; neither is known to have a completely different look when it's not been exposed to cold temperatures, and both look noticeably different from our White Admiral.

https://eastsussexwanderer.blogspot.com/2025/07/summer-butterflies-in-wealden-wood.html

Books 

Reprint of one I enjoyed as a teenager. I'd expect that anyone who likes this blog would like it too. 

https://readingmattersblog.com/2025/07/20/a-long-way-from-verona-by-jane-gardam/

Psychology 

Yet another reason not to use ChatGPT or Grammarly to do writing assignments...aside from the fact that those programs are not "artificial intelligence" so much as mechanical plagiarism.

https://goudsmit.pundicity.com/28730/use-it-or-lose-it

Book Review: The Female Transformational Leadership a Pygmalion Effect

Title: The Female Transformational Leadership, a Pygmalion Effect

Author: Angelica Larios

Date: 2022

Quote: "I honestly believe that women and their leadership have made a complete difference."

That statement's not fully defined. Businesses have been made aware that overt discrimination against women is suicidal; they're not exactly rushing to hire women who don't completely fit a stereotype that includes "successful experience doing exactly the same job for another company where everyone was deliriously happy but she just took it into her head that she'd rather work here." Well, they're not exactly rushing to hire men either, but in any case the market for this book is probably limited to the relatively few individuals who have been promoted to "leadership positions" in corporations. The Waste Age is over and we're getting to a point where corporations can hardly afford to exist. Oprah Winfrey (profiled in the Spanish edition of this book, and probably by now in the English translation) became her own industry but, if she hadn't, she too might be fired because some innovative top management type wants to try replacing her with a computer.

I think we all need to be shaking off the science-fiction-fantasy aura evoked by the phrase "artificial intelligence," demanding that the plagiarism programs be identified as what they are--programs that compile and remix the products of human intelligence--and that the programmers pay the people whose words, pictures, etc., they're feeding into these programs. This can and should be done in a way that discourages the misbelief that business, or writing, or even military defense can be entrusted to computers. It's not my issue but it needs activists working on it now, before we blow up a friendly country's embassy because a military plagiarism-bot has stolen ideas from Bill Clinton, or some other awful consequence of imagining that computers have been taught to think rather than mix-and-mash.

Anyway...what can I say about this e-book? I think it was sent to me as a courtesy, for which I think the author, along with the Spanish version. What I received, in English, is completely unready to be marketed even as an e-book. It's incomplete--it cuts off at page 35. It's not been completely translated, and the translation reads as if it's not been fully edited by a human after being done by Google. American English and Spanish are sufficiently similar languages that automatic translation usually yields readable results. I didn't find any howling language mistakes in the English edition, but did find some cognate words--words like "biographical" and "biografica"--with the accent marks for the Spanish spelling still showing. The table of contents doesn't give page numbers for the last three-quarters of the book, which, after all, hadn't been translated yet. What I have is a very rough first draft.

By now the English edition has probably been completed, and if you are willing to read detailed discussions of business leadership but not willing to read them in Spanish, you probably should read this study of how women in top corporate positions, mostly but not all Spanish-speaking, are making employees feel that their leadership style is "softer" but not flabby. 

The English e-book I have contains only a general introduction to that study.

TV Shows Reviewers Have Binge-Watched?

Well, that's a short list. Click HERE to see what other reviewers have binge-watched.

I've never binge-watched any specific show. The only time I've watched TV for hours was when I came down with flu while staying at the home of people who had all the cable channels and a TV set in every room. Watching television kept people from worrying that I was bored or lonely, and for two or three days I felt feverish enough to take an interest in revisiting all the cartoon shows that were being rebroadcast on cable. Flintstones, Jetsons, Bugs Bunny, Tom & Jerry, "Wait Till Your Father Gets Home," "Speed Racer," and even "Atom Ant." 

There have also been nights when I wanted to stay awake, and the person I was watching over was accustomed to television and could sleep while I sat up awake...but I wasn't really watching so much as using the noise to keep me awake and the light to knit by. I've sat through the "infomercials" the makers of products that are really had to sell pay cable channels to broadcast between 2 and 5 a.m.

Every human brain has its own set of "sensory channel" preferences. Some people can absorb information most easily by looking at pictures. I can enjoy looking at pictures if they're pretty, but just looking at pictures sends me straight off to slumberland. I need to do other things, like reading the words beside the pictures, or walking around in a museum, to stay awake past the third picture. If you want a message to get through to me, WRITE THE WORDS. 

 As a general rule, men with average or low IQ scores pay most conscious attention to sight, women with average or low IQ scores pay most conscious attention to touch or movement, and people with high IQ scores pay most conscious attention to words and sounds. If you guessed that this is because IQ tests measure how well people learn in traditional schoolroom environments more than people's overall intelligence, and traditional schoolrooms (and IQ tests) emphasize hearing and reading words, you're absolutely right. Some intelligent people have low IQ scores. People who have high IQ scores aren't stupid, but are not necessarily much more intelligent than other people, either. 

So, some intelligent people, nine out of ten of whom are probably male, would rather watch a "vlog" than read a blog...but in cyberspace those people are definitely a minority. Eye thinkers like television. Computers attract word people, and pictures, especially moving pictures, are either decorations, clutter, or a sleep aid, for most of us.

Even what some very arty people consider the "best" films...If I want to know what happens on the screen in a movie, I have to watch it with someone else. Knitting helps, as do comic effects in the film, but now that so many of the "classic" movies I've "missed" are free to watch on YouTube, I've tried to watch them and fallen asleep every time.

Book Review: Losing My Magic Sword

Title: Losing My Magic Sword

Author: Jamie M. Samland

Date: 2021

Quote: "A talking sword that alone had the power to defeat the daemon lord, and you lost it? How?"

Ser Vazadon tells the children the story. It's a short book so all I'll mention are two brief trigger warnings: (1) Killing, obviously, of fantasy creatures but with gory details; and (2) Ser Vazadon is a grandpa figure in the present time of the story, but in the past he's recalling he fought the fantasy creatures alongside another knight who was his "partner" and "love"; the kids know he is or used to be "gay." The story is told with flair and whimsy. The magic sword's personality, the possibility that Vazadon wanted to lose it, are not to be missed.   

Web Log Weekender for 7.17-19.25

Lots of links this time...

Announcement 

Due to the upsurge of interest in Bad Poetry, I've found a use for my Substack account. Starting next week I'll post at least one new piece of verse there each week. These poems will not appear here; they'll be available by subscription only unless, and until, they're printed in a book. The first fifty subscriptions will be free of charge. Subscribers will be able to propose forms and topics.

Cat Sanctuary Update 

Serena's kitten is now two-thirds of the way to being called a Miracle. He's resisting the idea of eating solid food. I don't think it's reached emergency level yet. His body has almost stopped gaining size as his legs have grown. He now bounces about looking as if he were on stilts. He's not an active kitten; must be a disappointment to his mother. He'll watch Drudge chasing switches, curled up on my knee, till he falls asleep. 

If someone had a nice, beta-personality, confirmed FIV-negative, single mother cat with one kitten, would Serena let Drudge have a bride and her kitten have a playmate? The mother cat would need to be a true beta, or I wouldn't even bother trying. Serena takes no back talk. The way some prospective temporary or resident cats were afraid Heather was going to behave is the way Serena does behave. A challenge or perceived challenge, including cuddling up to me, would become a fight. Still, Serena did seem to like having daughters who functioned as a team with her. We shall see.

Civil Rights 

I don't agree with Rick Moran, linked below. I think everyone has a natural right to wear a mask or veil. If the veil is white, and worn with a white dress, the default assumption should be that the person is a bride. If the veil is black, and worn with black salwar kamiz or a burqa, the default assumption should be that the person is a Muslim. If the face covering is any other kind, the default assumption should be that the person believes self to be extremely ugly. If, of course, the person does something illegal, then the arresting officers should remove the person's veil. 

Laws against masks were, as Moran mentioned, enacted in some localities to show opposition to the Ku Klux Klan; but they were, in my opinion, unjustified and probably unconstitutional. People have the right to wear what they like. The Ku Klux Klan have the right to wear their regalia if they are peaceably parading around calling attention to themselves so that everyone knows whom to watch. They have no rights to start fires or otherwise harass anyone, but nothing in the Bible or the Constitution says they can't wear dunce caps and bed sheets. 

If people have to be positively identified to gain access to places that are other people's private property, of course, the property owners have a right to demand that they unmask, unveil, show badges or papers or whatever else. But people have as much right to cover their faces on the street as they have to cover their hands.

https://pjmedia.com/rick-moran/2025/07/18/do-protesters-have-the-right-to-war-a-mask-to-protect-their-identities-n4941867

Fantasy

In real life I think hounding Fauci is not an ideal use of tax money and merely makes Senator Paul look mean...but on the Lost Planet of Nice, if there ever was anything analogous to Anthony Fauci or to the COVID vaccine debacle, they'd make Fauci go to every vaccine survivor on his knees and apologize. On the Planet of Nice, people probably wouldn't kill him, 'cos he's so old and so short. He'd probably soak a lot of trousers, anyway. People would be too nice to mention it...but he'd know.

Glyphosate Awareness, Call to Action 

President Trump seems to be wobbling off course, listening to chemical corporation spox rather than the clear will of the people. He needs to be reminded that he owes his broad coalition at least as much to Secretary Kennedy as to himself, and that he can't afford to lose Gabbard, Musk, or Patel either. 

https://www.hoosieragtoday.com/2025/07/17/rfk-jr-pesticides/

Here is a form people are using to urge their US Representatives to block efforts to protect Bayer-Monsanto from glyphosate lawsuits, Syngenta from Parkinson's Disease lawsuits, and evil chemical corporations generally from any responsibility for the damage they do to crops, animals, and humans. 

Every American should use it. The system is supposed to send the form to your US Representative, which means Canadians, Mexicans, and also Puerto Ricans can't use it online, but youall can type in your contributions, print the document, and fax copies--our US Representatives need to know that reckless, profit-oriented use of spray "pesticides" is doing damage beyond our US borders!

If I had a fax machine, I'd send the White House a copy, too. Trump won't read the faxes but his staff will have to tell him if the White House fax machines run out of paper from all the howlers people send them. Make it happen, Gentle Readers.

https://mstr.app/38e8ba68-b1eb-4d79-8130-6df56fa35b27

Glyphosate Awareness, Information 

New Roundup formulas have changed within the year as people were demanding refunds on the glufosinate-based version. New versions contain diquat and triclopyr, which affect non-target plants in ways similar to dicamba only moreso:

https://purduelandscapereport.org/article/the-summer-of-triclopyr-mounting-evidence-for-off-target-damage/

Even acetic acid, a.k.a. vinegar...it's harmless when people who like the flavor use a little to wilt their raw lettuce, or when gardeners carefully drip or paint a little on a weed stalk; it's not at all harmless when it's sprayed over acres of land. Many of us need to drink more water but over a hundred people in Texas have died from exposure to too much water at one time...

We really have to make farmers aware that spraying poison on the land always was a stupid, unsustainable idea that started vicious spray cycles, and they need to bite the bullet and go spray-free. Yes, it takes the land a few years to recover. Seven to ten years before the ground is profitable to plough. The time can be shortened by applying heavy organic mulch for no-till planting.

Meanwhile, this web site calls everyone's attention to the new EPA regulations on individuals' responsibility for "pesticide" use affecting neighbors and their plants, and the resulting possibilities for civil lawsuits that can and should be used to make it unprofitable for stores to sell "pesticide" sprays. It becomes a good idea to document everything that goes wrong during the week after someone sprayed something outdoors. "Summer colds" are usually associated with staphylococcus bacteria, and "allergies" are often triggered by foods or pollens, but do you or your children suffer from either when not exposed to poison sprays? One summer with the new rules ought to get "pesticide" sprays out of Wal-Marts, Targets, Dollar Stores, and probably Tractor Supplies everywhere.

Guilt and Guilt Trips 

Scott MacFarlane--with a name like that, how can he act so wimpy in public?--claims post-traumatic stress from the fact that people seemed to be blaming him and his censored-media-reporter buddies for the attempted murder of then-Candidate Trump.

https://pjmedia.com/lincolnbrown/2025/07/18/weekend-parting-shot-someone-needs-a-hug-n4941886

Hmm. Can you put yourself in his place? I can. With considerably better reason than reporters have to loathe Trump, I loathe my third cousin Wrymouth Calhoun, Professional Bad Neighbor, who legally (I believe) murdered all but one of his immediate family, a young tree trimmer Mother hired while I was in Washington, our beekeeper and his bees, and other people, and injured both of my parents, and deliberately made his wife's nephew paranoid, and was seriously trying to kill me, before he stumbled into new legislation making it a federal offense to torture animals; e.g. my cats Silver and Pastel. We don't have laws making it a federal offense to kill a dozen human beings by reckless use of "pesticides" but at least we now recognize it as a federal offense to torture cats. The depth of my loathing for this man can be measured by the fact that, if I happened to find him lying paralyzed (by a glyphosate reaction, no doubt) in the road, I wouldn't want to kill him; I wouldn't be able to make him suffer enough. After last week's poem about the hypothetical "you" I should clarify that he's not been sent to the Lorton federal prison yet, nor is it certain that I personally will get the credit for sending him there, though I do look forward to sharing his remarks about selling land to Black people with his future fellow inmates there. But let us imagine, with pleasure, that he's there, being beaten up regularly for making noises like a racist. So, if some murderer spoils the natural course of events by stomping Wrymouth all the way to death, have I killed him? Merely by publicizing the fact that, to all his other sins, this disgrace to humanity added racist trash-talk? 

I don't think so. I think the stomper would be responsible for his own use of his own feet. 

I don't think MacFarlane should have been subject to "mob justice" if Trump had been murdered last year. It might have been understandable, but it would have been cheap and cowardly, to waste even spit on MacFarlane before the shooter was locked up.

I do think MacFarlane should be subject to the condemnation of society for feeding the unjustified violent hate some people feel toward Trump. Anyone can detest Trump, apparently most people who've ever lived in a place his businesses have infested do, but nobody thinks Trump killed anybody. Trump's immediate family is unreasonably large, because of his three wives, but they certainly look well. Trump's former neighbors are alive, healthy, and indignant. Trump has given people abundant reason to want to sell property to other investors, or vote for other candidates--but nobody has a valid reason to want to kill Trump. And too many left-leaning reporters have written irresponsible hatespews that made it sound as if anyone had. 

Microsoft

Breathes there a computer user who can't relate to this video? If only it had been real...this video was inspired by Word 2007, which was admittedly a step down from Word for Windows ME. If it had been real, there would never have been Windows 10.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-c0YSsF_O0

Poetry 

The face in the photo shown with this poem isn't smiling, but if it were, you know a stench of rotten eggs would come out. A forced smile is like the stench of rotten eggs. 

https://writingaddiction2.wordpress.com/2025/07/17/super-star/ 

Signs of the Time, Discouraging

The endless parade of video "vlogs" people throw out onto the Internet is discouraging enough, all by itself. I let the things run in the order received, which is how it's possible that I listened to some "Bigfoot" nonsense ahead of a presentation by Publius Huldah. So an alleged Alabaman, with a credible accent, even, was telling Jeremiah Byron, "You tell me, what would just strip peaches off the tree...maypops off the vine...?" 

Child. Hungry deer will do that. Raccoons usually don't strip fruit methodically so much as they break branches and throw food about; when they find something they like, fruit or corn or whatever, they'd rather spoil what they can't eat than share it. Possums are small, but they'll eat every bit of sweet fruit they can hold, which is more than you'd imagine was possible. If you have all three of those species you might not even notice having a Bad Neighbor. This Alabaman also claims to have sasquatch, which I can't say are entirely things she dreamed about after eating a lot of maypops. Sasquatch are supposed to be apes, so presumably they love fruit too; supposed to be bigger than gorillas, so presumably they eat a lot of fruit. But between deer, which the Alabaman mentions having, and possums and raccoons, one can easily have whole trees stripped of fruit overnight. There is no need to postulate sasquatch, or even Bad Neighbors, even if one also has those. 

It's discouraging when someone living in rural Alabama does not know this. 

(Is Dawn Possum hungry enough to steal all the Feral Elberta peaches this year? We will soon know. The tree had a nasty dicamba shock this spring and has not produced many. It's sort of miraculous that it's produced baby peaches at all. I've been giving Dawn fruit scraps to lead (presumably her) away from Serena's kitten.

Some may think the idea of an appealing possum is an oxymoron, but...when I first saw Dawn, I thought she was Dare. She wasn't, of course. Not bigger, but she looked fatter, or pregnant. Her white face has pale orange patches that I think border on looking cute--well, I'm accustomed to the species; they're an ugly species; most are uglier. Anyway she came steadily toward me as I was sitting on the steps with the kitten on my knee, and I thought, "Is that animal mad? Is it planning to grab the kitten off my knee?" and then I thought, "Or is it one of Dare's pups, approaching me to beg in the way Silver taught Dare to do?" And since then I've thought it's probably the latter.

What I know for sure about this year's possum: I miss Silver.)

Trump, Thanks to 

I know, I know. Stop wailing and think it through. How do we guide anybody? Through rewards. What is a reward for a man who has everything? In the case of Trump, that would be attention. So let's all thank Trump for affirming this: 

I used to have an LP of a Christian group whose cover of this song I liked better than the original, but Google loves original releases...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM1fbZBfcgA

Book Review: Taming the Damaged Billionaire Rancher

Title: Taming the Damaged Billionaire Rancher

Author: Olivia Steele

Date: 2023

Quote: "My heart skips a beat when I lock eyes with the one person I had trusted who walked out of my life five years ago."

Whew. How often do reviewers get to write that, even for one individual reviewer, a book moved too fast, didn't include enough details, left too much to the imagination?

If more of them review this book, I think more of them will have that rare pleasure. This is a short, short novelette. We never even visit Chris's ranch. We see the emotional scenes--Annabelle quarrels with her father and attaches herself to his younger, divorced friend Chris; Annabelle bristles when Chris backs away without having violated what was presumably her father's trust, sooner; Annabelle is getting comfortable in Chris's condo in the city when his ex-wife barges in, storms out, but is reconciled with him while readers are turning the page; Annabelle and Chris have sex before the wedding, with mention of unmentionable body parts; Annabelle and Chris have met again because they were involved in a very public-spirited legal case, but we never see them working on it, we're only told they've won. We don't see Annabelle and Chris doing anything but feel and, without some grounding in their thoughts and actions, their feelings don't mean a dang thing to me. They're not characters; they're puppets in a sex education course--all they actively do is run on and off the stage and bump bodies.

Well, it's a romance. You know how it's going to end. You're reading it as a marital aid. So maybe all you were going to read were the emotional scenes anyway. In that case you might appreciate a novel that skips all the effort to make characters in a romance seem believable as based on human beings. If so, Taming the Damaged Billionaire Rancher is for you, even though, from what we see of them, Annabelle is more damaged than Chris, Chris does more of the "taming," and it's even possible that Annabelle is the one who's inherited a ranch she never thinks about--neither of them does any actual ranching...Whatever, de gustibus, and all that. 

Butterfly of the Week: Junod's Swordtail

This week's butterfly is one of the more recently recognized species that were named after living people. Graphium junodi commemorates Henri-Alexandre Junod. While some sources say it's not known to be even threatened, some have listed it as an endangered species.

Roland Trimen, who first described this species and had the privilege of naming it after the Rev. Dr. Junod because Junod sent him specimens, knew nothing about the early life forms, but if you're familiar with butterfly anatomy his description should enable you to draw a picture of the adult:

https://archive.org/details/transactionsofen1893roya/page/137/mode/1up?view=theater

There are two stories about where to find this butterfly. Some sources say it's only ever found in Mozambique. Some say it's worth looking for in Angola and Zimbabwe, also. The International Swallowtail Butterfly Network say that individuals seen in those countries were probably only visitors.

Photo by Snidge, taken in Mozambique.

According to a guidebook published by the government of Mozambique, a good place to look for this butterfly would be Chimanimani. The book can be viewed online in Portuguese; the discussion starts on page 48. 

https://sibmoz.gov.mz/content//uploads/2022/01/Ficha-Tecnica-das-KBAs_Port-vol-ii_Actualizado_Junho-2021-.pdf

A forest-specific discussion in English is online at 

https://www.keybiodiversityareas.org/site/factsheet/6690

A tour group in Uganda says that Graphium junodi can be seen in Bwindi (admission: $30 per day for foreign visitors). They don't mention whether the butterflies are reared indoors as a display. The species is not known to live in natural conditions in Uganda.

https://www.bwindiugandagorillasafaris.com/information/butterflies-in-bwindi/

Although an authoritative book on African butterflies states that reports of this species being found in Angola were errors, the species still appears on checklists of butterflies to look for in Angola. They fly fast, according to Pringle as quoted by Williams, and can be mistaken for species with similar looks, especially G. polistratus. Pringle adds that they are found between July and September, and between January and April. 

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

All butterflies drink water. Many male Swallowtails are most easily found at puddles, even polluted puddles, drinking water with high concentrations of mineral salts. Nearly all photographs of Graphium junodi found online show males at puddles.

Sometimes they join mixed flocks. Photo by Martinmandak.

Another photo by Martinmandak. Hmm...this one's palpating a leaf in the shade of the forest, and the colors show lower contrast than those of the puddle sippers. Does that mean it's female? Nobody can be sure. The ones that lay eggs are female.

The caterpillars are said to resemble other Graphium larvae, with humped backs and four pairs of harmless but unpalatable bristles. 

The pupae are said to have that irregular pyramid shape, with a hump along where the butterfly's back will be, perhaps even more conspicuously than other Graphium chrysalides. 

Book Review: How Can I Let Go If I Don't Know I'm Holding On

Title: How Can I Let Go if I Don’t Know I’m Holding On

Author: Linda Douty

Date: 2005

Publisher: Morehouse

ISBN: 0-8192-2132-5

Length: 180 pages

Quote: “It is my hope...that this book will encourage you to...practice the art of letting go.”

This is another New Agey “spiritual” book people hand to other people, the kind whose central presupposition is that feelings can be put before facts, that people can feel happier if they just “let go” of anything and everything that they want and don’t have. Meh. There may be people out there for whom this line of thinking leads to lower blood pressure. For me it leads to higher blood pressure. So this is not a book I can recommend highly.

If this book is for you, you’re a person of exceptional strength of character who can resist the temptation to callous selfishness that’s typical of those who preach this kind of “wisdom.” You know that you must keep these “insights” absolutely to yourself. Even if God is leading someone else into a Job-like experience, which is something God might reveal to that person in per prayers but not to you, the meaning of that idea for you is that you need to behave like Job’s friends after, not before, God rebuked them. Shut your mouth, tremble, pray, and offer sacrifices.

Suppose someone you know personally owned a house and worked in an office that have been buried in lava by an erupting volcano. You might think, “I should show them something in Douty’s book!” Recognize this as the voice of the Enemy. Rebuke it. There’s a reason why Jesus never preached about “the art of letting go,” but rather demonstrated the arts of giving and sharing. What is God calling you to let go and sacrifice? Time? Money? Privacy? Listen silently for the Spirit’s guidance, then let go whatever you’ve been blessed with the opportunity to give to your afflicted friend.

Be sure to include that urge you may feel to edit and correct your friend’s emotional feelings. People who have lost their homes and offices are not usually happy. It would be abnormal and a possible warning sign of real mental illness if your friend’s moods didn’t range through grief, anger, and anxiety. Are you feeling an urge to slap a Band-Aid over your friend’s feelings and insist that person seem happy? Kneel at once in prayer. Say, “Dear God, please heal my delusional thinking that I have any business even trying to guess what X is feeling. Please forgive me that I actually had a fantasy about telling X how X is supposed to feel. This difficulty I’m having accepting the way X says X does feel shows that something is badly wrong with me. Please help me to detach my emotions and avoid turning X’s real problems into a demand that X fix my craziness. Please remind me that this is not about me. Please shut my mouth, load down my back, and keep my feet moving until I can get over this mental problem I’m having.”

If temptation returns, try giving your friend all the groceries and money in your house. You may find that a few days without food help you to stop trying to play guru and focus on facts.

The fact is that, even though our desires do lead to suffering, in Christianity that’s good. The suffering is not there to help us eliminate desire and die, as in Buddhism, but to help us reduce the amount of suffering around us. Only in specific, limited senses do Christians think about “the art of letting go,” or “the art of losing.” Ours is basically an activist religion. We fast, rest from our work, abstain from this or that form of pleasure, for limited times and specific purposes—to make time for prayer, save money for a worthy charitable cause, etc.—not to achieve the ultimate obliteration of consciousness as fast as possible. Rather than withdraw from reality and ignore material needs, we engage with reality and help others meet their material needs.

With this in mind, if you are having particular difficulty with some particular need to let some specific thing go...I’d be less inclined to recommend this book than to recommend examining what you are clinging to. You do know you’re holding on, if you need to let something go, and if you think about it you know why. Is mourning for one departed family member interfering with your doing what you need to do for another? (If that’s the problem, what do you feel guilty of having done or not done for the departed family member?) Is a sense of identity with one language, computer program, filing system, etc., interfering with your learning to use a different one? (If that’s the problem, how can you update your sense of identity?) Is your belief that something’s not been resolved inconvenient to someone else? (If that’s the problem, then you might do well to let go the belief that you need that person’s approval.)

I’ve seen so many more situations where Douty’s ideas about “letting go,” as if this were a thing in its own right, were or would have been harmful than situations where they would have been helpful.The primary use of these ideas would be in clinical psychology, for counselling people who can’t bear to rent out the room full of toys that belonged to the children of whom they lost custody ten years ago even though they do know, on one level, that if a 19-year-old does move back into a room full of Fisher-Price houses the first thing that 19-year-old is likely to do is to move the toys out. If you are that person with the rooms still decorated in Fisher-Price and Strawberry Shortcake, by all means read this book.

If someone else handed you this book, please be sure you use it liberally against that person’s manipulative demands. The grandparents who still know their way around their own house don’t need to “let go” of their independence and move into a nursing home; their children need to “let go” of some of their wealth and status symbols, and honor their parents by not putting them into hospices before their time. People who are in mourning doesn’t need to “let go” of their grief; their friends need to “let go” of their craving for superficial happiness and accept their share of the duty of mourning the dead. People who have been unfairly treated don’t need to “let go” of their demands for justice; their neighbors need to “let go” of their complacency, stir themselves up and work for justice along with those who have been done wrong.

Most Americans really need to “let go” of an unhealthy combination of social-emotional stress and physical laziness, a fantasy that “we” (meaning an ever-expanding socialist bureaucracy) can take care of everyone else’s needs while we, individually, watch television. Most of us would like to think that we’re “caring for our friends’ feelings,” and some of us can work up real emotional fits as we vibrato, “I’m sooo sorry that you’re so unhappy! You need to ‘let go’...” Wrong. I re-programmed myself some years ago to recognize “You need to,” in any context in which I might say it, as a cue to say immediately, “I’m sorry. I’m being stupid. What do I need to do right now?”

I do not in fact have to resolve every difficulty everyone I know has. Sometimes I need to feel my discomfort with the fact that I’m not able to do what ought to be done. But in all cases I need to focus on the facts of any situation, and only the facts, and never compound the facts with any idiocy about how I think the person ought to feel, unless and until someone says to me “Everything in my life is going perfectly; my emotional feelings are my only problem.”

Bad Poetry: Survive for Spite

Sometimes surviving is the best revenge,

especially when murder's been attempted.

I'll live to dance on your grave you have vowed

when homicide in self-defense has tempted.

Even when he's been led off in prison orange

while everyone hands you the martyr's crown

and you try to look modest, feeling proud,

with hands flat at your sides, with eyes turned down,

justice has not been done. Nor will it be.

Others had died before the fool met you.

If only they could join the dance, to see

young convicts line up, beat him black and blue,

justice might seem to sprout up like the tree

whose trunk he cut, and sprayed with poison, too.

This topic is too close to real life to provide much fun, actually, but I do thank the Poets & Storytellers United for proposing it. For the gruesome details, see the past six months of this blog. For the denouement, wait another year. 

Celiacs of the world, hang tough, and pray that Secretary Kennedy will be guided to hand us Bayer and Chemchina, on a silver platter, as neatly as he handed old Granola Greens the bans on food additives they've wanted since 1972.

 

Web Log for 7.17.25

Political, but light...

Ethics 

Rand at her clearest. But, perhaps, pessimistic. These conditions have sometimes been reversed.

Radio

Well, I laughed...

https://pjmedia.com/stephen-kruiser/2025/07/16/laugher-of-the-day-npr-ceo-says-rural-communities-rely-on-public-broadcasting-n4941817

It's not that nobody in Gate City would ever want to listen to NPR out of Blacksburg or Floyd or wherever they broadcast from. It's that we have to be at least a hundred miles up the road before that signal comes in. Rural communities not only can't rely on NPR; many, perhaps most, of them can't listen to NPR. I grew up listening to the small local stations, WGAT, WKIN, WKPT, WJCW and later WDUF. Two of those still exist. Radio-locator.com says 34 radio stations can be heard in Gate City but I've never heard most of them. Maybe somebody in town has picked them up one night, probably not on two nights.

(Should "conservatives" listen to NPR? Why not? How many other radio stations do live interviews with authors? Where else would I ever have heard Amy Tan read excerpts from The Joy Luck Club? It's nice to have a car radio dial tuned to NPR...when the car gets into range.)

Television 

Maybe she needs glasses and hearing aids?

(Lens says the cartoon was drawn by Tom Stiglich. I ganked it from Joe Jackson's NSFW, sometimes R-rated site.)