February

I'm almost certain I posted a blog less than a week ago, but it's nowhere on the site 😞; an enemy has hidden or destroyed it.

I'm not sure of the original Latin meaning of the name February; I know 'febrile' means feverish, so February might mean 'hot'.  Over here, February is cold and wet, so that theory is probably one for the trash can.

For various reasons I have been losing weight in the past several months, to the point where my friends and relatives are concerned, and encouraging me to eat more.  I like to snack on junk food (an unfortunate new trend), and that causes ordinary people to actually gain weight, which goes to show that I'm special.  My doctor said, yes, I look just a bit skinnier than he would like, but it's way too soon to panic.

Well, the other day, I was visiting my friend, and she made an enormous bowlful of Pasta Salad (I don't know why I capitalized that) which she knew I liked.  It had all the stuff I like to have in it, including the quartered pepperoni slices, slightly roasted (well, microwaved for 15 seconds).  Also, cheese morsels, and lovely colorful rotini, sliced celery, cubed cucumber bits, black olives ... the whole bit.  After it was properly cooled (you have to persuade the salad that it has been cooled; if you eat it warm, it becomes very unhappy) I ate a bowlful.  It was a triumph!  The salad dressing was perfect (Italian, with sun-dried tomato strips), and not too much.  Heaven.  I think whoever invented Pepperoni should be given a culinary Nobel Prize!!  The true calling of pepperoni is pasta salad; I think pizza should be a mere side hustle. 

Despite the wonderful Okayness of the salad, I did notice that the cucumber bits were a little not-ready-for-prime-time, but of course I did not tell my host; after all, the pasta salad was a labor of love.

I stayed over that night, and in the morning, my friend added to the salad some fresh bacon bits!  You might be startled to see the word 'fresh' in the same sentence as 'bacon', but I merely wanted to emphasize that these bacon bits were fried at home; my friend is into bacon in a big way (a bigger way than your standard Boomer), and she fries the heck out of her uncured bacon.  She crumbled all the bacon that she and I between us could not eat, and mixed it into the salad.  Once again, we cooled it, and ate it for an afternoon snack.  OMG, I thought something horrible was going to happen to me, because the pasta salad was so awesome, that I thought we had exceeded the permissible awesomeness for the day, and I assumed there would be a terrible penalty.  The bacon added that tiny bit of extra salt that brought the salad within the realm of culinary holiness.  I felt we ought to embed a little of it in Carbonite, to remember forever the fabulousness of this dish!  (But then, 25 years from now, we would have been frustrated, trying to actually eat it, just to see whether it had held up.)

I went home that evening, to get some fresh stuff to wear (yes, clothes is the word you would normally use, but this is me, you understand) and then came back the next day, and the pasta salad was still there.  Would I like some for breakfast?  Hey, why not?

Here is where things get interesting.  By this time, the cucumber bits had soaked up the dressing, and tasted just perfect.  The pepperoni tasted as wonderful as always.  But the bacon bits had stopped tasting as fantastic as the previous day!  Yes, they tasted vaguely baconish, but not at all the little miracles they had once been.  Let this be a lesson to all of us. 

Kay

Martin Luther King Day

Well.  I heard, on the grapevine, that MLK Jr day is no longer a holiday, but that Trump's birthday is <smirk>.  

No, I had misunderstood what I heard.  MLK day is still a holiday (AFAIK), but entrance to national parks is no longer free on that day.

I'm not sure how much of this paragraph makes sense: 'I don't have a big problem with this—but I do have a small problem; after all, I was told that there were great difficulties to set this holiday up—and I think we ought to celebrate MLK on this new day.'

Getting too excited about anything to do with trump will only get him excited too, which, at his age, is dangerous, his admirable MRI's notwithstanding. 

Kay H B.

P.S.  just ignore this whole post. 

Unwanted Expansionism

This is January 7th, 2026.  Trump has announced that the president of Venezuela has been kidnapped by US forces, and brought here.  He also said that 'We will be running things' in Venezuela.

Jack Smith, the attorney who was originally appointed to prosecute the case against Trump for keeping classified materials in Maralago, delivered convincing evidence (against Trump) that he had conspired to steal the 2020 election.

I'm convinced that Trump needs to step down, or be thrown out of office.  There is a long list of actions by trump that are illegal, appointments by Trump that are improper, but everybody knows these; some readers very likely pride themselves on not reading long lists.  So here's my opinion: he has to go. 

Kay H. Brown

Christmas Holidays

Dear Readers, and other friends!

I have just finished sending off a sort of holiday letter to the few people I correspond with semi- regularly, and I thought I ought to send you guys a sort of holiday greetings too!

Well.  There are not a lot of matters to be happy about this year.  Reluctantly starting off with political topics: after a painful several months of Trump making it clear that Liberals are not high up on his list of people to care about, he's managed to make it appear that he's aging, and not in good health.  (Or maybe he really is!)  I never thought I'd be one to rejoice at someone getting ill, but maybe Trump will go away, and leave us to try and straighten things out as well as we can.  Because of the long-drawn-out attack phase of the past eleven months, some of the less rabid MAGA types are beginning to see that he does NOT have their interests at heart. 

The Beatles family: Paul, Ringo, Julian and Sean, and Dhani, got together to play and sing a holiday song for the fans.   It was "Simply having a wonderful Christmastime!"  They could have used "So this is Christmas" by John Lennon, but they might have had a discussion and decided it was a bit too obviously political, which might have reduced some of the goodwill they had with (a generalized concept of) Beatles fans.  In the olden days, they used to send out a newsletter and a Sound Clip for the people in the Beatles Club.  Who knows whether the BC is still alive and functioning anymore?

I used to wallow in Holiday Music when I was younger, but these days I don't have the motivation to do it.  I have a couple of discs of Carols, a disc of Christmas songs [e.g. Frosty the Snowman], some holiday humorous songs [Grandma Got Run Over], but since I spend most of my time between my house, and my friend's house, figuring out where to play my music is too much of a problem!  My friend also used to watch a movie, like "A Christmas Story", or sometimes one of the Scrooge movies, and occasionally both.  This year she's not in the best of spirits, so I haven't been pushing the movies.  Once her obligations for the season are all discharged, she might pick a new movie to watch.  She has grandchildren who visit (some of whom are major Kay fans, but of course that's not what they call me) but they're not quite old enough to sit through a movie.  Or maybe they are ...

Do you readers have snow on the ground?  I'm so envious!  We have about a 1/2 inch of snow, wherever it hasn't been blown off or plowed off.  Where I live, you get the occasional deer coming to check out the prospects of getting some grub near my house; I just leave them alone.  If course it's deer hunting season right after Thanksgiving, which might explain why there are fewer deer around right now.  (You must excuse my ignorance; I'm not hooked into the whole Hunting and Fishing culture.)

I have a tiny little Christmas tree, decorated only with those crystal balls!  In the old days, they would wrap the balls in silk, and they were called 'satins', I believe. 

Some years I have traveled to visit during the holidays.  This year,  I have an invitation to visit my cousin's home (I wrote about her in the Summer, I think?) but I have to weigh the cost versus the benefit of saying I'll be there!  I have to rent a car ... or worse, take a bus ... Also, I hate to be a nuisance during the holidays. 

Anyway, a happy holiday to you guys!

Kay

OMG

This is a post from a Lexie Hull fan group.  (Or maybe Lexie herself; she does things like that.)

She looks a lot more muscular than she does in her team uniforms.

Go, Lexie!

Kay



Trump's Magic

For years I've wondered what sort of magic Trump wields.  What his secret attraction is.

In his 'Apprentice' days, he'd stomp into a scene, gather everyone around, and essentially tell one participant that he had been voted off the island, or whatever.  I sort of hated that signature raincoat he wore, and I don't think I was the only one.

I have heard that the whole 'game' was a setup—like many reality shows—and that the producers essentially decided whom to throw out based on what was best for the show.

In any case, lots of viewers liked that show, and they liked the figure that Trump presented.  In reality he wasn't as successful as he made himself out to be (and the producers claimed that he was).  But, without a doubt, he was a highly visible TV personality, with a big following of white people who liked to see a tall white guy kick butt!  Mostly, I think, it was the suits.

It was only once I really understood that MAGA was not a bunch of people who all believed some list of things-to-believe that I began to see that—like the GOP—MAGA was really a biggish tent, with a few major things they all hated:

1. The 'Browning of America': the prevalence of non- white citizens that were becoming visible everywhere. 
2. The Democrats.
3. The support for the poor and the minorities, which meant Social Security, and scholarships for poor, and minority programs to make housing easier and more affordable for minorities and blacks. 
4. College-educated people, and worse: people who had even higher qualifications.  Clever people, generally.
5. Successful women.
6. Rules that made it difficult for businesses to victimize customers.
7. Any language other than English.

One important  group was: businessmen.  They joined the MAGA movement in droves—even though they might not have wasted time at the rallies.  The big thing they wanted is Lower Taxes.  They have stood by Trump through thick and thin.

Another group were the bigots, the prejudiced, the racists, the white supremacists.  ICE enforcers belong to this group.  It was hard for MAGA to put forward one single thing as what everyone hates.  If they said they hate Blacks, there would be some who reply: but so sad!  Blacks are nice!  The same with the other groups.  So they've compromised with: immigrants.   At first, everyone in MAGA agreed that they had to stop the "open borders" attitude that they accused Democrats of wanting.  (Democrats did not want open borders; they just wanted immigrants to be able to support themselves.)

So you have businessmen on one side ("Lower  taxes!"), and people who were uncomfortable with anyone except white Americans.  It's this coalition of bigots (well, actually people uncomfortable around foreigners) and greedy businessmen that formed the backbone of the MAGA.

Hate of the Democrats was a uniting factor.  Any plan to lower taxes, for example would get support from businesspeople.  But the other group could be brought on board because: "The Dems will throw a fit!"

Any plan to frighten immigrants away from our borders: the bigots would be all in.  But the businessmen could be brought on board because: " The Dems would throw a fit!"

Eventually the "Dems would throw a fit" angle was so successful, Trump and his government buddies could justify anything just because the Dems would hate it.   But now it's come to the point where even the MAGA hates it.

In the end, Trump has only helped (1) Business, especially the richest few business families, (2) Those who do him favors, like the government of Qatar; (3) Those who have helped prevent Trump from getting punished for various crimes. 

Kay

Caitlin Clark Clickbait

I'm getting inundated (on Facebook) with posts asking: If you're a fan of Caitlin Clark, Sophie Cunningham, and Lexie Hull, like this post!

I do love those three girls.  But why are they singling out these pretty white girls to promote, when there are so many others?  They occasionally include Aliyah Boston in these races.  Occasionally Kelsey Mitchell.  Occasionally one of the other girls.  But two things are clear:

They're all about the white girls. 

They're all about the looks of these girls.

This is about appearance, and it's about racism.  This is almost the perfect way to destroy the team spirit of the Indiana Fever.

And there's a huge fuss over how much these girls are paid.  I don't know much about team sports, and athlete remuneration.  And I don't want to know, honestly.  All this will put an enemy's strain on the players, and has put a strain for years.  It's frustrating for the athletes if they're not attractive. 

Kay