Reading Books I've Already Read

There is [yet another] book I've read before that I'm reading again.   It's called Suddenly, by M. E. Tudor, and it has some interesting features.

Firstly, it's about a cheerleader who unexpectedly falls for girl with a rough past (who 'runs with a bad crowd,' as they put it), but who has turned over a new leaf, and walks a dramatically new road.  Her past crowd begins to pester the main girl, and the other girl defends her very vehemently.  I like these two characters very much, and, of course, that's half the battle of writing a successful story: to create believable, engaging characters.  They have to be so convincing that the reader just can't abandon them!  I've written a few stories, as you know, but the main one—the extended story of Helen, split into a half-dozen separate pieces—was so specialized, that only a few readers could relate to the main character of Helen, and I sort of have up.  (The subsidiary characters were a lot more relatable, and I focused on them.)

Secondly, there's the matter of voice.  The story is written in the first person, the cheerleader.  But the speech of the narration is that of a very middle-class teenager.  I've gone online, and read what Ms. Tudor has written in a lot of places, and in every case, the grammar, the vocabulary, the content of what she writes is most definitely adult, and humorous, and very different from what that cheerleader says in the book.  I've tried that—to write a first-person narration in the voice of a character—and it is very hard indeed!  (That's how I wrote Yraid, and I don't think I pulled it off.  Another story like that, Eyebrows, remains unfinished.)

The girl's (narrator's) mother is problematic.  She comes from money, and has very bourgeoise, superficial values: money, clothes, family, real estate, cars.  The cheerleader herself is far more down-to-earth, compassionate, values, streets ahead of her mother.  Her father is a much more reasonable person, and supports her friendship.  You have to wonder how the child of such a pair of parents could acquire such liberal values.  In my experience, most of our values are inherited from our parents.  Anyway, in the story it's a synthetic family; the father is a step-father.

Well, I encourage you to read this story; I have trouble inserting links, or I'd give you one.  It's on Amazon (though we 'antifa' people hate Amazon on principle).

Kay

Being Christian

I'm not a Christian in the sense of believing in a God, but I grew up in a Christian family, and to me, the objectives of a Christan life are almost the only objectives worth aiming for. 

But recently, I read that the murder of John Kennedy was very likely linked to his serious, no nonsense attitude towards the state of Israel.  Remember the book Da Vinci Code?  The religious leaders kept their hands clean, but managed to convey to unscrupulous operatives what they wanted—even up to murder—and the killings were carried out.  In the book (which was presented as fiction, and was probably mostly fiction) the assassins were given religious absolution in advance, so that they could plan their killings without the fear of eternal damnation hanging over their heads.  In the case of Israeli operatives, I doubt that the calculus of sin and punishment was as finely worked out as it was among the catholics, but the brutality of how they torture poor Palestinian children, performing surgery without anesthesia, etc, seems almost too brutal to be true.  But when I was a kid, hearing about the Kennedy assassination, I didn't have the slightest inkling that the state of Israel was even tangentially connected with it. 

I'm reading a book by Caren Werlinger, about a monastic order of nuns, and how their vague interest in (pre-internet) news from the outside world swelled to a flood after the Kennedy assassination.  Of course, the nation as a whole viewed Catholics with dislike and distrust, and some Protestants would have been pleased to remove a catholic president.  But the Israelis had the money (actually, American money) to exert the sort of pressure that works so well in this country.  Just the fact that this order of monastic nuns, who would never hurt or harm any being (other than each other!) would be horrifying themselves listening to the news on the radio, and being shocked at the murders of Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, makes me deeply sorry. 

I forgot where I was going with all this. 

Well.  Having religious beliefs helps to simplify life to a great extent.  But not enough to deal with Trump.  That wasn't the point of my Blog post today, but there it is. 

Kay

Sugar and Yet More Smoke

OK; head over to our sister Blog.  It's over there. 

MAGA Families and Children

Not all MAGA family members cheer for MAGA.  MAGA dads, I suspect, keep very tight control of what the family can, and cannot do.

Throughout the decades, it has become unAmerican for the so-called patriarchs to keep an iron grip on what everyone is allowed to do.  This is a large part of making America 'great again': let's go back to those long ago times when dads called all the shots.  But those were not good times; things were often settled with a good gunfight, but the heroes often did not win. This testosterone-infused style of storytelling, though Trump and MAGA see it through rose-tinted glasses, does not represent the truth of history. 

MAGA dads frequently do not understand the contributions of blacks, and women, and foreigners and immigrants, to the amazing developments in American science and art and education.  All of you who grew up with non-MAGA dads must be grateful. 

Recently, it appears that MAGA believe that the only way to win is through cheating.  It's as though they're saying: "Winning is important.  If we have to cheat, then that's what we must do!  If we cheat, it's not really cheating."

No, it is; it's cheating.  We're keeping track of it.

Kay

Wise and Wonderful Cats

I have been studying my friend's little white cat for a while now, and I'm puzzled. 

You know how, in fairy tales and children's literature, cats are so intelligent and wise, and always cautious when going into any reckless adventure, and a source of great wisdom, to offset the headlong enthusiasm of the dog, and the young boys in the party?  They're depicted as the Gandalfs, in those tales. 

But from all I've observed of actual cats, they do hardly any actual thinking at all.  In fact, this cat—whom I know the best—does everything purely on impulse.  You can almost see some idea suddenly arrive in it's head, and completely displace what it was doing, only to be displaced by yet another impulse!

They don't seem to be bothered by thinking and planning of any sort.  Just decide, in the spur of the moment, and go ahead.  The very opposite of a sage.

I think it's their great stillness that gives the impression of profound thought; they're not thinking, as such; they're simply observing.   They're comparing the layout that they're seeing now, with how it had been laid out before, and making changes to their mental map of how it was.  That's all.  It's not drawing any conclusions; just noting. 

I have to say that, in modern children's literature, cats are depicted quite differently.  They're presented as enigmatic creatures with whom it's impossible to communicate.  That's certainly true; information flows to the cat in a very unreliable stream, if at all. 

Kay

Trump and Stolen Elections

Because Trump is throwing so much of his weight to show that elections are being stolen, I'm suspicious that this is only a pretext to make it harder for the people to vote. 

But I have a fabulous idea. 

Why do passports have to be $165 each?  That's the sort of price you put on something if they're only intended for Elites.  If everyone needs them, they should be priced so that even people on food stamps can afford them.  This suggests a very reasonable project for Liberals / non MAGA to get behind: make acceptable voting ID as cheap as $10 each, and have teams of volunteers going house to house, helping people get their forms filled out, and their documentation ready.  Of course, if the âdministration learns that such a project is underway, they'll insist that only a gold- plated passport manufactured by a company headed by Donald, Jr, costing $500 each, is acceptable.  But then it becomes clear that it is clearly a poll tax. 

Kay

Red Cards and Peace Prizes

Everyone knows, by now, about how Trump requested a review of a referee's call.  It looks as though the president of FIFA, who had allowed Trump's request to go forward, will now have to step down.

Trump has no instincts to handle these sorts of diplomatic decisions.  Maybe he thinks that how so many of us think of the settling of international disputes are 'the old-fashioned ways' of doing things.  Yes, they have settled into this pattern because it has smoothed international relations for so long   The new ways that Trump, Musk, Boris Johnson, and other bullies want to do things will probably not work.  The dignity and the pride of peoples and governments must be preserved, and the 'strongest' nations cannot run roughshod over the others.  This is the foundation of the UN (though too many traditions really give the biggest nations a little extra procedural power), and we must decide whether we allow the bullies to do what they want. 

Kay