A Helen episode I had forgotten about!

Here is the link, and I'll explain below:

Chopsticks

This is a 'page' on the Blog.  It is set at the time Helen had had her most recent, and most invasive, brain surgery, and had returned home with Maryssa, to the Primrose house (Maryssa's family home, from where they would move to the new, rented home near where Lalitha's family, and the instrument factory were situated).

I was just reading this page this morning, and I was startled at how well I had been writing at that time.  Many of the characters are illuminated beautifully by this episode, but I'm a little nervous about slicing it into one of the other stories, for fear of having to do some lengthy inspections, to avoid duplication, etc.  The painfully slow steps Helen took to become a functional adult again have been glossed over in Concerto.  This episode also highlights how Erin struggled with Helen's nemory loss.

People Who Hate 'Spelling Nazis' Need Not Read

I'm just in the middle of a short story, and the author had confused 'their' and 'they're'.  I was puzzling over the sentence for a full minute, until I guessed what was going on. 

Now, I do not believe the entire e-story industry should revolve around my desire to avoid being confused for even 1 minute.  But I'm now becoming afraid of whether it is even possible to demand orthographic accuracy from my fellow-citizens.  I can imagine everybody thinking: Jeeze, the whole world is going to hell, and you want accurate spelling???

OK, well no.  Spell your words however you want; I would not deign to jump in the middle of these bleeding Iranian schoolchildren, and these gilded high-security ballrooms and these multi-billion-dollar thefts of public funds, and these shameless lawsuits to prevent citizens from voting, just to insist on good spelling; no sir, not I.  But listen, there are obviously a few leftover Boomers to spellcheck official government documents, so that uneducated goons like hegseth and whatsisname—the secretary of state—can dash off screeds to be later cleaned up by spelling flunkies.  But think long-term.  Ten years from now, who's going to do this unrewarding editing?  Just so that, in my old age, I will be saved minor peaks of blood pressure while reading fiction?  (Or governmental vitriol?)

I know; while impeaching the prez (affectionately called "the former president" by furious people, who don't even want to give him the recognition of being the elected head of state) the last thing we ought to be doing is worrying about spelling.  But this is how I keep sane.  The agitators advise: don't let this corruption become normalized!!  If this is going to be the way government will be run in the future, every group that doesn't like the policies of whoever is in power will adopt these MAGA-type tactics to render the Federal government ineffective.  This is the long-range objective of the Steve Bannons, the permanently angry podcasters out there. 

But no matter in what stage the destruction of the government is in, I have to remain sane.  So while I briefly allow my blood to run cold at the insane actions of Trump and his non-aligned ducks, I quickly come back to the sane world of women's fiction!  And, of course, rail against the wrong use of words.

I have to concede: it's not exactly about spelling as such; it's about the correct use of various words that sound alike. 

Kay

What do diverse college kids study?

I'm trying not to insult anyone, especially now that college-educated middle-aged liberals find political allies among farmers and union workers, and former government workers. 

When I was in university (I attended a university for both undergrad and grad school), I noticed some trends in what sorts of majors young people from various backgrounds signed up for. 

Asian kids: Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Chinese, Korean, etc, normally studied science.  As a result, there are a lot of Asian people working in industry, Tech, computer, and technical fields within media companies, and so on.  Meanwhile, most kids from the US tended to study Business.  Law schools had lots of US kids, but also kids from Jewish backgrounds, as well as from families where one or both parents were already lawyers.  The kids of teachers often went into teaching, though how rewarding that was, from a professional point of view, depended on how motivated their students were.  (Truly gifted teachers could work with even moderately willing students, but I personally found it difficult.)

What sports did kids get into?  Business majors were often into Golf, and Football.

These choices are seen in the makeup of the various professions:  I see lots of white Americans in Business; lots of Indians and Asians in News media.  It isn't as clear as I expected, but there do seem to be trends. 

In quite unrelated news, I'm reading that the prez seems to be spiraling, feeling that he's losing control of all the shenanigans he's been juggling, including the war, and foreign policy generally.  That last: foreign policy, is not something that can be improvised under pressure.  You have to have two things ready: a clear philosophical basis for all your actions; some people would call that a moral foundation; and a strong team behind you, and armed forces that believe in your leadership.  Trump had 0 for 2.  If he's reading this (or if his assigned reading assistant is reading this, because I don't think Trump can read efficiently) they would declare that I'm biased, and disregard the whole post.  At least, they would have, if Trump was all right.  But everything points to Trump being senile.  Trump certainly majored in business and golf.

Kay

Gender Transitioning, and Parents

I have written before about why I strongly dislike gender changing surgery for minors, and certainly for pre-pubescent children.  Many people who become parents don't seem to have the maturity to make life-changing decisions for their kids.  There's presently a case of a broken family, where one parent—who is transgender—has abducted their child, and taken it to Cuba, and it is suspected that the objective is to perform gender-altering surgery on the child.  OK, draw your own conclusions. 

Most of the difficulty with gender, in my view, it's because our society expects all of us to express our gender.  I mean that guys are expected to wear pants.  Girls, old enough to have breasts, are expected to wear bras.  In short, you're expected to dress according to whatever gender you "are".

In Catholic schools, for instance, the nuns are often severe on kids who prefer to cross dress.  If a guy is permitted to dress girly, and act girly, much of the psychological pressure for a little guy to want to be a girl will dissipate. 

Meanwhile, of course, young guys with hormonal urges tend to express their needs by bullying, shows of strength, picking on girls and effeminate boys, all with a view to showing off how tough they are.  So a little boy who wants to dress in a skirt and pick daisies is going to be relentlessly persecuted.  And there are going to be girls who would rather die than dress like girls are expected to, and prefer to play boy sports, and beat people up just like the boys.  If the kids just left each other alone (without interacting with each other in gender-related ways), they could easily express themselves in any way they wished, without wishing for gender-altering surgery.  I could easily imagine a time when little kids under the age of 9, say, could share common toilets, boys and girls, once our culture has proceeded beyond the taboos that are common today.  So it could very well be cultural imperatives that fuel much of dysphoria among little kids. 

A little second-grader girl who wants to dress like a boy can easily do so.  It's a little harder for a little boy to dress like a girl, and wear a ribbon in his hair, for instance.  And in Pennsylvania, I suppose, if that happens in a catholic school, the older nuns will freak out, because obviously God would not like his gender statistics ruined.  But the time can come, surely, where we could separate a person's preferred way of expressing their gender, from the morphology of their genitals?

Kay

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 use 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. 

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