Babies

Somehow, the Facebook fairies have discovered that I like baby animals; my Facebook feed is now full of videos of newborn animal babies, bring 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 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

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

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.

[Added later:  The month of February, Google says, is named after an ancient Roman  spring-cleaning festival, called Februalia, or something like that.  Was there a lot of sloshing of boiling water around?  That would lend a little weight to my 'heat' theory.  Oh, I give up!]

For various reasons I have been losing weight in the past several months, to the point where my friends and relatives are concerned, and are 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.