Iran

Dear citizens of Iran.

It is treason to provide comfort to the enemy.  However, there is no consensus among US citizens about whether Iran is an enemy to our nation.  Many of us shudder to learn about the death tolls from this latest round of attacks.

Arch

OMG. Peak / Peek Strikes Again

Not one but TWO instsnces of authors who haven't screwed up anything else, confusing Peek with Peak!!!

Peak is a hight thing.  Peaks of mountains.  Peak of someone's fame.  Peak of popularity.

Peek from behind a curtain.  Peek-a-boo.

Come, people, it's not that hard. 

Kay

P.S.  Jeeze.  'Gate' and 'Gait'.

Gate: a door set into a garden fence, or garden wall.

Gait: the style of motion, of a person, or a horse.  Gallops, and Trots, are two gaits of a horse.

I'm so depressed. 

Position Paper

Just this morning, I saw a post under Ron Howard's image; that implied that he supported what it said—and I thought he had written it, until someone clarified that it was written by a woman in 2018.  I have forgotten her name, but it really is a wonderful piece of writing.

It clarified a lot of the loose terminology that MAGA politicians like to throw around; especially what liking and supporting various Government services would, or would not imply.  Gratitude and admiration to both the original author, and Ron Howard for bringing the piece to our attention.

Kay

Added later:

I am a liberal, by Lori Gallagher Witt - by Nat Pernick https://share.google/BlNWJ0a5MXbeh2gIb

Death Tolls

I'm typically insensitive to large losses of life.  Though I feel sadness at deaths in school shootings, they don't set me back to the point of being unable to function.  But somehow, the news of deadly floods in Nepal are horrifying. 

In retrospect, I'm beginning to feel the scope of the killings in Gaza.  Israeli soldiers are responsible for these massacres, and they are terrible to contemplate.  The psychic consequences for the adults are going to be vast.  I'm not an expert in psychology, but I know that inflicting cruelty and horror is traumatic for the culprit as well.

I know that I'm conflating two types of disaster: natural, and human-inflicted.  But they're horrors anyway, and we feel the pain.

K

Rhiannon Giddens

Just got back from Chautauqua, NY, where The Silk Road Ensemble was performing, originally curated by Yo Yo Ma, but now under Rhiannon Giddens.

Thr basic idea of the Silk Road performances is to present  a sequence of (folk) performances from a variety of cultures, transitioning smoothly from one piece to another.  They feature nearly a dozen expert musicians—African, European, Oriental, Asian, Indian, and so on; I could not identify them all.

Featured instruments were a Cello, an Accordion, several Violins, a Flute, Marimba, a Banjo-like instrument, a guitar, and several Drums of different sizes, from different traditions, including a Tabla set, a pair of Indian drums.  There was also a digital keyboard, that provided a drone background.

Rhiannon Giddens led a column of the performers, right through the aisle, leading a sort of audience participation routine.  (The chant she got the audience to join in sounded vaguely African, which made me wonder who this woman was.  It was only later I learned who it had been.)

Kay

Peak vs. Peek

This is a repeat.  I've already written about this pair of words. 

OK.  The word should have been 'peek.'  You don't sneak a peak.  It's peeks you sneak.  Sneaking a peek at the television screen.  Don't let me hear you making this mistake again.  <grumble, grumble.>

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 gave 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