Miscellaneous

Well.  I slept over at my friend's last night, after having attended Governor Josh Shapiro's meeting at the local college!  I was trying to meet him and say hello, but I could not get close enough 😞!  He holds our state on a steady course, despite all the shenanigans of the maga component of our state house.

This morning, we were drooling over some photographs of my friend's Irish family!  The nieces were so incredibly cute!  There's something to be said for raising a family and having children!  But I love tiny kids too much to inflict silly GOP nonsense on them.  Imagine sending your child to a classroom where vaccination isn't required?

The little critters were just painfully cute this morning!

My friend is going nuts over the nice weather, and she wants to go work on her garden!  That's what she's doing now. 

And then she's going to watch golf.  I could never see the point of that sport; miniature golf I enjoy.  But real golf: count me out. 

Kay

Clair Ashton: Oxford Romances

I have been reading Clare Ashton's sort-of trilogy of romances, centered on two friends, Charlotte and Millie, who get into the university the same year, and really hit it off beautifully.

Charlotte is an upper-middle-class child of Oxford-educated parents, while Millie is the only child of a single mother.  Charlotte is reserved and naïve; Millie is blunt and brash and outspoken and loud.

The author is quite clear-eyed about the snobbery of the place, and the annoying attitudes of Oxford boys ("men"), actually not very different from those of guys on any university or college campus.

I have noticed that those who have gone to Oxford tend to love the place to pieces; the stories are replete with descriptions of the environs, though Clare Ashton, the author, is considerably more restrained than most oxfordian authors.  Even in this story, many of the characters leave Oxford, but then return.

The characters Clare Ashton delineates over the four volumes of the 'trilogy' are very three- dimensional, including the grandparents of Charlotte and one of her friends, and some young children.  All this goes to underscore what I have tried to say, namely that an interesting author is a careful observer of everything!  Of course, we can only infer how much õf an observer an author is by reading their work, and naturally there's a lot of selection there, in what he or she chooses to record.  I just love what CA chooses to comment on, though I could use a lot less Oxford information.  (In fact, Oxford is effectively an additional character in these stories.  It is so in other stories as well, e.g. The Golden Compass.)

However, the author occasionally goes haywire, and drops one or more words in her excitement.  The language is beautiful (a long as she's aware, and keeps track of her mechanics), and she drops into colloquial lingo as and when necessary, sometimes totally cracking me up!  In these horrible days, it is just fabulous to know that there are sane, imaginative people writing fiction. 

Another author I have been enjoying is Caren Werlinger.  She writes stories that are deeply religious, and about people who are religious—in fact a community of nuns in a convent.  Now, I'm not in the least religious, and certainly not Roman Catholic, like Caren Werlinger's characters (I was an Episcopalian, and very low-church), but I can say that her stories (actually, mainly just one long story) is mainly about values.  The values of our society are splitting in two, in the Trump era, to coin a phrase—or actually, into three.  A large number, of quite articulate people, continue to be strongly grounded in values that drove the political leadership of the last fifty years.  Then there is an enormous number of people who are quite cynical.  Robber-baron wannabees.  And then, unfortunately, there are religious militants, who seek power and wealth, and are totally intolerant.  Reading Caren Werlinger, Ì'm transported to the idea-world of my childhood and youth, filled with idealism.  Popular media is full of a sort of fake, performative idealism (Theater), and the fiction of both these authors are very refreshing, for their values.

Kay

 

Babies

Somehow, the Facebook fairies have discovered that I like baby animals; my Facebook feed is now full of videos of newborn baby animals, being cuddled by their dams, and the dams' humans!  I can barely restrain myself from squeeing at the sights; you have to do something to respond to them!

Most commonly they're horses, or cats, giraffes, or cattle—cows, anyway; the word 'cattle' seems so derogatory—especially woolly highland cows and calves.  (It seems so horrible to learn that some livestock farmers specialize in veal, breeding baby calves expressly to slaughter them before they're yet a year old.)  It's no more cruel than slaughtering an adult animal, but it does seem more cruel.  I'm depressed that I continue to eat beef and pork; though in very small quantities.  Do not feel that I'm judging you, readers, we're descended from carnivores, so it's natural. 

These days, there's plenty of news to feel horrified about, not least the war atrocities perpetrated by the US government.  The only things that matter to the members of this administration are to remain in power at any cost.  And for what?  To treat those suspected of being immigrants with great cruelty and violence. 

Many citizens who voted for Trump did so because they were alarmed at the huge increase of non-white members of the population.  Those who did not go away to college, often never encountered anyone with a complexion that wasn't pale.  So it's only natural that they're uncomfortable with brown-skinned people, with their accented speech, which leads them to vote for a (failed) real-estate developer, with a very limited quiver of skills*. 

But many of these bigoted people are far from being cruel.  The administration has tried to persuade them that the cruelty is necessary.  The administration knows that these people are not persuaded.  So now they have gone on to try to sell to the electorate that violence and death in Iran is necessary.  From all I know, Iran is the home for one of the most ancient civilizations on the planet.  Yet it's all targets for bombs now, and they're trying to find yet more bombs to carry on the destruction.  Meanwhile, it is emerging that there is evidence that numerous members of the political leadership of the last few decades were involved with pedophilia with Jeffrey E., and that our dear president was one of the primary organizers of the systematic raping of underage children. 

The readers who visit my pages are, I fervently hope, not sympathizers with those who hope to participate in these travesties.  We will remember; we will not allow all this to be swept under the rugs of foreign wars.

I seem to have wandered far from relating stories of baby animal videos, but I want to make it clear that many of us have seen and noted these things, and our patience is running out.

Kay

*Namely Trump.

Dido's Lament

The story of Dido and Aeneas is set in the aftermath of the Trojan War, as numerous war heroes are making their way homeward from Troy.

This afternoon, I was stunned to stumble on this aria (a classical solo) from the opera Dido and Aeneas, by Henry Purcell.  The soloist, a wonderful soprano, held me spellbound; she was certainly beautiful, but the words and the music caught my attention, like glue.

The plot, I just learned, was that Aeneas and his son were heading to Italy, because the boy had Italian ancestry.  But a violent storm took the boat, and forced it towards Carthage.

At this time, Carthage was ruled by a queen, Dido; and Dido and Aeneas fell in love.  But, fatefully, Aeneas was determined to resume his journey to the North, and departed leaving Dido.  The despairing Dido had a funeral pyre built on the beach, had it set alight, and sings this lamentation: 'Remember me, but not my ending.'  She then stabs herself.

Henry Purcell was a gifted composer, a few years before Bach, and the English claim that, if it hadn't been that he had lived a little too early, he would have surpassed Bach.  (This is a rather pointless argument, but music lovers are as passionate as sports fans in these matters.)

Purcell, like so many brilliant people, was interested in other arts as well, and particularly in the Theatre.  His wife got tired of his coming home late after plays, and locked him out of his house one time.  Reportedly, Purcell caught a bug, and died.

Kay

Dalmatian!

Well, we took our little dog on a brief walk around an 8 or 9 block circuit, and on the way back heard a sharp bark; at around a counter-tenor pitch.  It was him, our sort-of friend, the Dalmatian!  When my friend and I talk about him, we use the name Pongo, after the dog in One hundred and one Dalmatians!  Oh, it is the cutest, quietest young man ever, so well- behaved!  I so want to give him a hug!

Our own member of the canine persuasion, was conspicuous in his silence; he didn't even growl.  Actually, this is good doggie-on-a-walk behavior; we want to avoid escalation at all costs, which could happen.

As I said before, Dalmatians were bred from Great Danes and pointers, and this doggie had his paw raised in a pointer-like way, as if to say "It's them!"  But maybe it's my imagination.

Well, love to all,

Kay.

What's Going On?

Since Donald J. Trump was sworn in as president last year, his government has not managed to accomplish any of the things that he stated as the goals of his presidency.  One set of things that he mentioned in passing were to 'destroy' the government in Washington D.C., the government machine that Obama and Biden managed to make life moderately comfortable for some of the poorest of the poor.  In a few weeks—with the help of Musk—Trump managed to hollow out those complex departments, which ought to have saved the government billions of dollars.  But it is doubtful whether that has happened. 

But he has convinced the world that the US can be governed even if three-quarters of the population are dissatisfied with the government.  Trump probably does not care about that particular outcome (except that, maybe some of the people in his inner circle do).

He has convinced the world that, even if he has committed some crimes that at one time would have guaranteed that he would have been hounded out of office, he wasn't.  It's been a study in the political loyalty of feeble-minded people.  Almost as if he took a bet about it. 

He has convinced the world that the way to control the Gaza Strip, and maybe convert it into a lucrative casino in the desert, is by starving the Palestinian population, or bombing them to death, with the help of the villain Netanyahu. 

He is eager to remain in office for a third term.  He can't get anything done in it; he's already too feeble to even stand straight.  It's just to show that he can, even if he'd be the oldest candidate to ever aspire to the office. 

He has personally acquired a lot of personal wealth.  The MAGA followers aren't helped in any way from that corruption; some of them probably like the fact that "the Libs" are indignant about it. 

Don't forget the fact that soon after the elections of this November are done, lots of laws that effectively defund many welfare services go into effect.  This is Darwin in action: people who are not thoughtful enough to prevent crooks from messing up their lives, will not be able to have children.  (They will be unhealthy, their families will be undernourished, their children will be uneducated.)

Kay

Palm Beach International

Palm Beach is an affluent community in Central Florida, near which Trump's home, Maralago, happens to be located.

One thing that annoys me is this habit of the Trump Administration naming, or renaming, various and sundry things after themselves.  The Kennedy Center, for instance, was named after John Kennedy, the first Irish-Catholic, and at the time, youngest President of the USA.  Trump declared that it would be called the Trump Kennedy Center, after himself.

Now, there are rumors that the Palm Beach International Airport would be renamed after Trump.  The only thing about this nonsense that pevents me from being absolutely furious, is that it is a little bit comic, too.  PBI, the Palm Beach Airport is not, as far as I know, a very important airline hub.  But soon, when Trump leaves office, there will be all these Trump this- and-that left behind, which will very probably soon revert to their original names.  So these renamings are only temporary distractions, to draw our eyes away from some sneaky action that they're really planning.  It's puerile, really, and in bad taste.  In fact there's a great deal about the Trump administration that's just in bad taste.

Kay