New Recipe up on Cooking with delagar

I've been making this stew this winter. It's about to be too hot to cook, so I made it last night as a kind of farewell tour.

This is even better as leftovers, which is what we're having tonight.

What I'm Reading Now

Suzette Haden Elgin, Native Tongue

This is a science fiction novel from the 80s. The science is mainly linguistics. The conceit is that in the 1990s, the United States disenfranchises women, and strips them of most of their legal rights. The novel is set a few centuries after that event. 

In the world circa 2200, women have the legal status of children -- they cannot vote; they can work only with the written permission of their husband or other male guardian; the jobs they are allowed to do are limited; they cannot control any money they earn; they cannot own property; they can be locked in insane asylums if two male relatives/guardians say they should be.

A small number of "Lines," or extended families, specialize in linguistics and in translation, particularly translations of alien languages. (In Elgin's future, Earth has many, many off-world colonies, and has encountered dozens of alien species.) Children of the Lines learn alien languages from infancy, by being with representatives of specific alien lifeforms for several hours each day; they also learn two or three human languages each from infancy on, by being exposed to people speaking those languages; and they add several more languages as they grow to adolescence. They begin work at about ten, translating alien languages in negotiations, and translating Earth languages for the aliens. Both male and female children do this work, though it's a given among the men of the Lines that women don't actually understand the things they're translating. They're like a translation machine, or a wire that transmits signals.

Women have their own culture, as we learn, which the men know nothing about. They pass on knowledge of women's history, and -- in this first book -- are sculpting a woman's language which, they believe, will change reality.

The first novel in the trilogy is one of the best books I've read in months, though it is a bit dogged and didactic at times. The linguistic stuff is the best part. Elgin was a linguist, so I suppose that makes sense. 

The second book in the trilogy, The Judas Rose, is readable but less interesting that the first. I could not finish the last novel in the trilogy at all -- Earthsong takes as its conceit that the big problem with humans is their deep-seated need for violence, which I can agree with, but then posits that the way to fix this is to end hunger by means of Gregorian chants (or any music, really) which humans use the way plants use sunlight. It was one impossible thing too many for me, though the writing remains good.

Rachel Parris, Introducing Mrs. Collins

I really wanted to like this one more than I did, and the first half of it is pretty good. It's Pride and Prejudice from the point of view Charlotte Lucas, later Charlotte Collins. That's a great premise, and at first the novel goes well. I'm thinking, this is a novel about someone who marries without romance and makes a good life by doing so. That's an interesting topic. And in the first half, Parris seems to be retelling Mr. Collins pretty successfully, so that we can see how Charlotte can manage to have a good life with him.

But then Parris decides this has to be a romance with a capital R, and Charlotte falls in love with Colonel Fitzwilliam, blah blah blah. Kills Mr Collins off, now Charlotte is free to marry again. The last half of the book was a real disappointment. Sigh.

Edward Ashton, After the Fall

Edward Ashton wrote the Mickey 7 books, which were a lot of fun and compelling at times, so when I saw this in the new book section, I picked it up. It's a B+ science fiction novel. Aliens have invaded because humans are destroying (really, have destroyed) the ecosystem. They wipe out most humans and keep a few as breeding stock, which they have been breeding for neoteny, basically, cuteness, small stature, that sort of thing. (That's a semi-impossible thing, but Ashton does say the aliens are working on the genetic surgery level, not just breeding the way we bred dogs. So I got past it.) These humans are adopted as puppies, um, toddlers and small children, by the aliens and kept as pets. Any that age-out, get too old for adoption, are "put down," casually and butally.

There's a plot of sorts, in which John (one of the pet humans) locates some feral humans -- those who escaped execution when the aliens took the planet. But mainly this book is showing us the world of the aliens and how humans react to it. On the whole, Octavia Butler did it better.

The Selected Letters of Laura Ingall Wilder, Ed. William Anderson

Wilder was one of the formative authors of my childhood, so I enjoyed this. It's what it says on the tin, letters chosen by Anderson from the time of Wilder's young adulthood (when she and Almanzo leave South Dakota) onward. Anderson is not a reliable narrator, so I don't know how much he messed with the letters, nor what he left out. Still, I enjoyed reading this.

Brrr

It was 38 degrees when we went to the dog park this morning. I think this is the last cold(ish) day we're going to have.

Next week looks spring-like. Summer isn't far behind, I am sure.

Screen door, dishwasher, garage door, gutters....

All day yesterday workmen were here taking down rusty and leaking gutters and putting up wonderful new ones. This is the last of the things our house inspector said needed to be done, so, knock wood, this is the last big ticket item we will need to do on the house.

I do want wood floors, instead of this horrible carpet; or, as Richard Wilbur put it, "The end of thirst exceeds experience."

Or, as Buddha put it, "You want to end suffering? Stop wanting shit!"

Measles, Whooping Cough, Chicken Pox...

Earlier this year we had an outbreak of whooping cough at the university. We haven't had measles yet, but the Department of Health is worried about the outbreaks elsewhere spreading here. And now we have a case of chickenpox in a nearby small town. The parents sent the kid to school before they knew they had chickenpox, so the whole school is at risk. 

Many local parents are shrugging this off. Getting chickenpox is good for the immune system, they ignorantly claim. Why, my grandmother had a "chickenpox party" for my mother when she was....

I mean, yeah. Parents did used to do that, because getting chickenpox as a child was safer than getting it as an adult, and no vaccine existed yet. But as someone who had chickenpox as a kid, I absolutely do not recommend this practice, now that we have a safe and tested vaccine.

You can tell these local parents have never been really sick in their lives. If they had lived through measles, mumps, and chickenpox all one winter when they were six years old (me), not to mention endless cases of strep throat (two or three times a year from the time I was five) and flu, they wouldn't think this was something to just shrug off.

Much less congratulate yourself over.

What terrible parenting.

Wait

Trump announced a few days ago that his war in Iran is over, and that we won.

Now he says it's SOON going to be over. And by the way, let's send thousands of more troops to the area.

Gas at the cheapest station in Fayetteville is $3.49 a galloon. 

The national average is $4.10 a gallon. A month ago the national average was $3.69, and a years ago it was  $3.10.

These days I think often about that farmer in my health club who said he had to vote for Trump, because "these gas prices" needed to come down. Arkansas is leading the nation in farm bankruptcies right now.

Orban Defeated

Rod Dreher's favorite fascist was defeated in the election yesterday, and people are dancing in the street:

Hungarians celebrated the landslide defeat of Orban by singing "We Are the Champions" out in the streets

[image or embed]

— Pasquinel (@pasquinel.bsky.social) Apr 12, 2026 at 6:29 PM

Bye, Orban. May many fascists follow you down this road.

ETA: See PZ Myers on this topic as well.

Oh, so THAT's how you win a war

Trump: “Whether we make a deal or not makes no difference to me because we’ve won”

Source

As a comment later puts it, this translates as "Reality makes no difference to me, because my base will believe any crazy fucking thing I say."

I Know It's TikTok, but I love this Poem

 It's by a guy named Lucas Jones:

@lucasthejones Books in bio 🥀 Poem: ‘I’m doing this thing where I’m pretending to be nice to women’ #poem #fyp #spokenword #foryou ♬ original sound - Lucas Jones

Alternative link

Paying Taxes

We paid our taxes today, plus a $319 fee to TurboTax.

I don't mind paying taxes, though I do mind that so much of what I pay goes to billionaires and to this ridiculous war. 

I do mind that the process of paying taxes is so complicated that we need either professional help or this extremely expensive program to pay them. Other countries manage without this bullshit. Why not us?

(I know why not us, it's a rhetorical question. Why not us because tax companies bribe the government to keep the system in place.)

Passover 2026

Dr Skull got sick shortly after I did, but we both recovered in time to have the Seder last night.

I had to do all the cooking, sadly, but mostly everything turned out well. Though I forgot to make the asparagus, and the horseradish I bought was painfully hot.

My carrot tsimmes was a big hit. I put the recipe on my cooking blog.

We also had matzo ball soup, boiled potatoes with dill, roast chicken, matzo, and various desserts of affliction, including chocolate-covered matzo, fruit slices, and coffee cake.

Dr Skull, Uncle Charger, and the kid had slivovitz at the end of the meal, but I was too tired.

Chag Pesach Sameach!

Making Progress

I feel much better today but I had terrible fever dreams all night, waking up several times feeling deeply awful. It was like the dreams were telling me I'd wasted my entire life and it was too late to do anything about it. 

This is not at all true, of course. I've done pretty much exactly what I wanted with my life, married the perfect person, had a wonderful kid and a great job, and am continuing to live precisely how I like: reading books, writing books, hanging out with my family, throwing a ball for the dog. I'm guessing fever and toxins made my brain think otherwise?

Anyway, no fever this morning, no body aches, only the usual headache. Let's hope that's all over.

Ooof

Our Passover Seder was supposed to be tonight but I am down with either the flu or Covid. I haven't tested for either yet. According to the internets, it's probably the flu.

We've rescheduled for Saturday.

Ugh.