Politics Again

All sorts of sad things are happening in politics.  These are considered amusing by guys; just playground horsing around by political leaders such as Trump, and business leaders, such as Elon Musk (and perhaps Vivek Ramaswamy), and Podcasters, such as Steve Bannon, and the undisciplined hooligans who are Republican Congressmen.  But I'm not amused; there is work to be done; terrible fires are burning in Los Angeles.  Russia is bullying the Ukraine, the Middle East is struggling to have some sort of peace, but lots of leaders there are trying to arrange to be in positions of power when things settle down, and everywhere—while everything is unsettled—men are manipulating circumstances to control women, and wealthy businessmen are trying to control politics so that they get wealthier. 

This was all let loose by Trump (who really seems to be a puppet of some of these businessmen, but they keep Trump happy by flattering him), who is either too unconcerned to worry about these things, or is happy to have everyone fight among themselves, as long as they leave Trump alone to watch TV by himself. 

Leaders of Congress and the Senate probably have an inkling that all this is happening, but I don't think they trust each other enough to get together and talk about it.  At the moment they're kept busy confirming Trump's proposed cabinet, which consists of very controversial nominees.  That keeps the Senate distracted, but getting a cabinet set up is important. 

Congress is a sort of compound Nero, the Roman leader, who is said to have been fiddling while Rome burned.  Here, California is burning—at least LA is—but California is a Blue state, and perhaps the Republicans don't care too much. 

Some parts of the US are getting tons of snow (and some parts of Canada too), while other parts are dealing with strong wind that keeps blowing the flames closer to the center of LA, which is going to be a financial catastrophe. 

Meanwhile, the Democrats are organizing protest marches, and diverse peaceful expressions of disapproval, and I don't know where that will go; as always, Trump will pretend that he had the most fantastic inorguration in the history of the universe.  At least Carrie Underwood is singing!  Could be worse, I guess. 

All I can do is just stay home and read, I guess.  I have no consoling thoughts for any of you!  Is the wind trying to blow down your door too?  At least it's not trying to blow fire on our homes.  I'm not depressed; just exhausted with this foolishness.  This is the worst possible time for young people to give up on politics. 

Kay.

New Owners of Smashwords: Draft 2 Digital

Smashwords, the company that managed my self-publication business, decided a couple of years ago, to sell the business to snitch company,  Draft2Digiral.  I had never heard of this company, and I was suspicious of this plan, wondering what downsides there would be. 

My Stories on Smashwords were, many of them, free to download on Smashwords.  But now, I am informed that I no longer have control over the prices of the stories; D2D sets the price.  This is a serious disadvantage, and I don't know what to do about it. 

There are two obvious things I can do:

1. Delete my books from D2D, and try to put them up on some server, for anyone to download. 
2. Try to sell them on the Amazon, or some other agency. 

I don't have the energy to look up how to do either of these things, and I don't know what to do. 

Kay

Singers in My Stories

I just realized that there are few—or no—singers in my stories!  This is so strange; almost the only thing I can do is sing.  Not well, mind you, but better than I can do anything else, except play the guitar, I suppose. 

All the more strange that there are very few instances of singing in my stories: Alexandra sings (in Alexandra), Maia sings in Prisoner;  now I come to think of it, Helen does sing on lots of occasions; Jana sings in Jana, but I didn't publish the Jana story—except on this blog, in installments!-—so of course you wouldn't know about her.  And two of my favorite characters: Christine and Kelly, sing in my seasonal story, Christine's ... Amazing Christmas.

But I'm surprised that singing was never a plot element in any of the stories. 

Kay.

Less Volume on Hate, Pls

I'm not calling on haters on media to tone it down (though toning down on hate by everyone, everywhere would be a good thing); I'm calling on (so-called) liberals—including myself—to recognize some of our humor as hate in disguise, and tone it down.

The Trump family has been the target of focused hate for close to a decade.  Their patriarch is so oblivious to negative feedback (that is, people on all sorts of media expressing unhappiness about various things he says), that it makes these people escalate their disapproval to the level of hate, even if it didn't start out that way.  At this point, the members of the Trump family, apparently even more insensitive to criticism than the, er, patriarch, amplify the rhetoric they must hear around Trump Central, and say things bluntly that the Don has said more delicately.  (I never thought I'd be using that word in connection with these people, but there, now, this is creeping toward hate.)

As a result, the camp opposed to Trump—that includes myself, and many sane people—hate this rhetoric, and Trump and his, well,  followers, for lack of a better word, love it.  They know that we hate it, and that knowledge makes them love it even more!  So MAGA rallies almost completely feature this sort of material. 

We're going to get—or already are—labeled as 'Haters,' which will surprise many of us, again including me, because I have never considered myself a hater of any sort, except recently, because the incendiary Trump combination of lies, misconceptions, twisted humor, and rhetoric does make me respond with a knee- jerk reaction that is, on examination, nothing but hate.

The sad thing about hate speech is that it is easy to discount.  'Oh, that's just spewing,' I say to myself, and those who I intend should read it, my target audience, could be doing the same. 

It's all very sad.  But may improve, especially if the MAGA people want us to cooperate in various programs.  Immigration, for instance, is one area where we can cooperate. 

Kay, surprised to be a hater

Meditation, from Thais, by Massenet

This is one of my favorite violin pieces.  My parents used to play it at night; oh, so romantic!

https://youtu.be/ImEUiNAL9go?si=fgAq1er-Qf1EaP6l

My Readers

I recently read Alexandra, and Voyager, and the parts that I read were so satisfying that I feel I could never write that well again, and I am so frustrated at feeling that such a few have read these books.  Actually, Smashwords kept statistics of how many readers downloaded the books.   But now they (the company) has been acquired by Draft 2 Digital, and I don't know where to look for statistics, and I don't even know whether any statistics they keep would include the older downloads. 

I can hardly believe I had been capable of such great concentration at one time, as to put myself into the heads of these interesting characters, male and female, and put such convincing words into their mouths.  As much as they are real to me now, because of how authentic their voices are, they must have been more real when I was writing, a decade ago. 

Now to a different topic completely. 

When I wrote the Helen stories, I had her playing my favorite pieces, naturally.  I had listened to recordings of these pieces for years and years, but I hadn't seen them being played!  I recently watched a famous violinist play one of these pieces, and I was startled at how different her playing style was.  And now that I think of it, many of the violinists play that way; that is, they sway to the music, as though they were dancing.

I'm not sure whether this is a modern thing; pop singers, of course, use their entire bodies to make their performance more exciting, so it could be that classical musicians follow suit.  Come to think of it, the musicians I used to watch on YouTube were usually foreign: German, or Japanese, and they kept their bodies relatively still. 

When I described Helen playing, I described her as being relatively still.  I don't think I really like this dancing about, though it is the expected thing these days. 

Well, I'm no violinist, I want to make that perfectly clear, so my descriptions of musical performances are from the point of view of an outsider!

I wish you all a wonderful new year!

Kay Hemlock Brown

Female Athlete of the Year

I didn't realize that this was a thing. 

Ranking of things in the USA strikes again; in this case, women athletes.  This award, for 2024, was recently given to Caitlin Clark BY THE AP. The sports department of the AP has somewhat lower intelligence than the rest of the news service, apparently.  In a team sport, such as Basketball, many of you will agree with me, that it makes little sense to single out a particular individual in a team to whom to award something like this.  If I were Caitlin Clark, I would be embarrassed.   I would also be concerned that, winning such an award, there would be resentment among the rest of the team members that will hamper the team performance for the 2025 season. 

But for the media, it is more important to get their financial advantage than to be concerned about what happens when they break a story. 

Kay