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

Another Oxford Story

This one is a whole series by an American author, Lynn Morrison, who has settled down in the City of Oxford, and is clearly ensorcelled by that magical city!  In addition to the usual over the top adoration of Oxford University, this author has incorporated magic into the stories.  It's nicely done, but ends up giving the story a slightly Harry Potteresque feel.  Not terrible, but if a reader is familiar with Oxford—which I'm not, at all—they might feel like, come on, it's just a university.  It's weird, but not that weird!

There's a baby dragon- like critter—a wyvern, to be exact—that attaches himself to the main character, and very cleverly pretends to be a cat, so as not to blow this main character's cover to the muggles.  The name of the wyvern is Humphrey, but he hates his name, and wants to be called H.

The main character is Natalie Payne (rather an American-sounding name for a British heroine) but she's nice, and gets along well with the wyvern.

June 14

Apparently it's trump's birthday!  Nobody is celebrating it around here; Trump prolly doesn't care what happens in our town, and there's likely going to be a lot of fussing near Washington D.C., or Maralago.  Well, as long as everything is on Trump's own dime, can't complain!

How about Chuck E.  CHeese?

I'm reading a story, where, again, one girl in a couple wears a dress, and the other wears ǰeans, for a party.  This is getting to be just too much of a cliche in books on Amazon.  In going to have start looking elsewhere for more satisfactory stories. 

Kay

Lindsey Pennington: Soft Lips ...

I've just finished reading another book by Lindsey Pennington.  The previous books by this author I had read were exceptionally good; very literary, would have been my verdict.  Since I'm so picky about careful language, and grammar, I guess that those aspects of the writing must have been really good. 

This latest story, though, started out very promisingly, but sort of became a little scattered as it went along; actually the entropy in the writing got very bad indeed.  But I had made a connection with the characters, so I just had to finish the story. 

There are two women, the older one of whose marriage has broken up, but who is a very determined, very giving, very lovely person; and the younger a psychologist and counselor, patient and understanding, but just discovering that she is getting multiple sclerosis—still only minor symptoms, but eventually going to be serious. 

They love each other very much.  But the older woman is diagnosed with cancer, which eventually kills her, and the younger, the caretaker, is left devastated, with the only child of the deceased woman, a boy, to look after.  She is eventually persuaded to seek companionship in a lesbian bar. 

Also at the bar, with her crazy friends and her sister, is a young lawyer.  She's straight, but these girls are her friends, so she tags along with them, always to this same bar.  For a bet, she's asked to kiss a girl, a one-time exercise.  Of course, she ends up kissing our other protagonist.  It's a good kiss; neither of them can stop thinking about it.  The young lawyer runs home from the bar. 

The story revolves around the lawyer's clumsy attempts to deal with her unexpected new attraction to a woman, after a decade or more of being only interested in men.  She finds out the home address of the psychologist, Kerry, and bursts into her home, uninvited. 

There are some interesting circumstances; the lawyer—an attractive girl—is half Scottish, half Korean; and her mother is a typical, interfering Korean mother.  There are four children, all girls, all different, and all real characters. 

The biggest character of them all is the lawyer herself, who was extremely picky about the men she wants to date; she has a checklist, and she scores them all on a 100-point scale.   (She's even got a scale for women, to help her lesbian friends out.)

It's sort of fun, though nothing really unexpected happens.  The comic attitudes of the young women, and their zany conversation kept me hooked, though I thought the long-suffering psychologist was just a little too patient with her rude lawyer client. 

But there are just so many mechanical errors that I strongly suspect that there was a very capable editor for the previous stories, but not for this one. 

Kay

Terpsichore

The last few days I have had a strange experience—actually, a whole series of strange experiences—similar to some that I've had in earlier years.  Having so little to do, I spend a lot of time on Facebook.  And I get sucked into these so-called reels, which are simply videoclips.  And some of them are just girls dancing. 

They have a happy smile on their faces, and they've got pretty dresses on—I guess they know my taste in clothing, by now, so they can select videoclips keeping that in mind, or ... anyway—they're dancing away; and in my mind I'm so depressed, because I never learned this sort of dance!

I can certainly dance ballet; I took many years of it; I can dance the Waltz, but was seldom called upon to waltz with anyone.  But these hip-swinging Latin dances are completely out of my reach, and they're the best for dancing by one's self.  Then, there are these Tik-tok type dances that are so cute; and I'm so consumed with envy.  If I had to do it all over again, from my early teens, I'd dance up a storm!

Dancing is natural for girls in these times.