This is the blog of Kelly Jennings, science fiction writer. Bibliography here: https://delagarbibliography.blogspot.com/
I was at the Harps today, just walking like a normal person, when suddenly my knee went wonky.
Sharp pain, and then it started buckling. I could barely walk.
It went away after I sat down awhile, but then it came back. I could only just drive home.
Now I'm in my big chair with the knee elevated, looking up possible causes. My friend in the sciences says it might be incipient rheumatoid arthritis. Ugh.
Another heat dome is on the way. Ugh
Today is almost nice -- 70 degree when I went to the park with the dog at eight a.m.
But next week looks terrible.
Two more weeks of summer.
One of the two people that died of measles in Pennsylvania was an infant.
All the anti-vaxxers who inquire (in bad faith) that if we have our measles vaccine, why do we care if others don't get it? Since we'll be protected by our magic shot, right?
This is why. Infants who are too young* for the vaccine can get the measles, and they are more likely to die of it than those of a more robust age. (Like six, which was when I got the measles. Not the shot. The actual disease. I lived before the vaccine was available, when children were still dying from the disease. About 200 kids died of it that year in America.)
“The real vulnerability is in infants between 6 and 11 months of age, as maternal antibody is waning and they haven’t gotten their first dose of the MMR vaccine,” said Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Dallas.
In places where infants have a high risk of measles exposure, health authorities sometimes recommend an early dose of the vaccine for babies starting at 6 months old. That was the case during an outbreak in Texas last year, when two unvaccinated girls died of the disease.
Other people have immunological issues. They too can catch the measles. Some people, like me, lived before the measles vaccine was available and may never have caught the disease. Sure, they're likely to be old, so maybe anti-vaxxers don't care if they die. They didn't care during COVID, when "only" old people and people with immunological problems were likely to die of the virus. (Like my father, who was in his 80s, and had dementia. Who cares if he dies, right?)
These people have shrugged off the bonds of community. They aren't part of the community, they are declaring. Often they have their own insular (and whackaloon) community they have decided to belong to instead. That's their right, here in America.
But they're despicable all the same.
*12-15 months for the first shot, and a booster at ages 4-6
(1) Guy at the dog park casually commented that he used AI to try to find out what kind of dog his mutt was. I hid my wince.
(2) The kid's husband is being compelled to use AI in his engineering class. WTF, I said. Apparently in the future engineers will use AI, he said, so we have to know how to do it. WTF, I said again.
Dolly Parton died today, and pretty much everyone is mourning her. I was never a huge fan, but I held her in a lot of respect for the work she did fighting poverty and helping people in poverty get an education.
Over on Reddit, someone not from the US asked what Parton did that made her, in his words, a saint.
The first comment gives a list:
She is the founder of Dollywood, which is an amusement park that helped turn her hometown of Sevierville, TN from a small extremely poor town to a built up city with a large tourism economy. Dollywood pays a living wage to employees and covers full tuition, books, and fees for employees who want to attend college. She is one of the largest and best paying employers in that area, and the overall economy has grown immensely due to her efforts.
She founded the Dollywood Foundation and other scholarship efforts to improve high school graduation rates and help kids from Sevierville attend college.
She runs a large number of other charity projects, including an animal sanctuary. She runs a program called Dolly Parton's Imagination Library that sends free books to children.
She has donated a huge amount of money to disaster relief and children's hospitals. East TN Children's Hospital is now renamed as The Dolly Parton Children's Hospital in her honor. She's also made large donations to Vanderbilt for children's medical research, children's medical care, and COVID research. She has made a large donation to the Salvation Army as well.
She has a reputation for being kind, easy to work with, cool under pressure, and fair. She's been married to one man for her entire career and has no personal or political scandals. The only things she is known for are her musical career, her philanthropy, and her personal image. Her charity work is focused on universally beloved causes, not political campaigns or pet projects. She got a lot of heat for her image and background early in her career and she handled it with am immense amount of poise and grace. Her early interviews are pretty much a masterclass in how to address backhanded complements and rude comments with dignity.
In 2020, she donated $1 million to help fund the development of a COVID-19 vaccine, then proudly received the shot.
Can we make this guy President:
We're being told that if we sacrifice the rights of some people, then the rest of us get to keep our rights. We all know that's some BS.
— Abdul El-Sayed (@abdulelsayed.bsky.social) 10:19 AM · Aug 23, 2026
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This is one of the first comics the kid ever made:
Translation, since only a mother could read the kid's handwriting:
First panel: Hello, Children!
Second panel: I'm Mr Happy-face!
Third Panel: Do you know what happens when you get old?
Fourth Panel: You die! (Kids, off-stage: Waah!)
So apparently the power has been off in Gary, Indiana for ten days now.
Why isn't this national news?
We lost our AC for four days in August one year and I nearly fucking died. Ten days in a city in Indiana?
God. Remember when America used to be a first world country? Good times.
In case you aren't already boycotting the New York Times, here's another good reason to join the boycott:
The nonprofit Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) found that, between 2024 and 2025, the Times published over 130 articles on trans issues, and only quoted trans people in 14 of them. Media Matters and FAIR both have found that the vast majority of articles they published contained misinformation or outright harmful rhetoric against the trans community.
The Times has even been cited in laws and court cases attacking trans rights. In 2024, Mother Jones reported on numerous different anti-trans state-level laws and legal battles that cited their reporting, including in Alabama, Idaho, and Missouri. The infamous US v. Skrmetti Supreme Court decision, which ruled that Tennessee’s ban on gender affirming care is legal, cited the Times 29 times in justifying their decision.
Over on Reddit, someone was puzzled about why US schools start so early. When I was in high school, for example, I had to be at the bus stop by 6.30, which meant I woke up at six, dressed, and left the house in about fifteen minutes. I dropped my little brother at the baby sitter's on the way. I would buy "breakfast" at a food truck near the school, after the bus dropped me off at around 7:45. It was a cheap sugary sweet roll, usually.
Why start so early?
My mother taught in the Orleans Parish public schools, and had to be on campus by 7:15; she had to leave the house by six to get there in time. My father left for work every day at about four a.m. (He didn't get home until well past seven at night.) Schools in America have this schedule because pretty much every parent was working similar hours.
I would often fall asleep in my second period class (sociology) and sleep right through the entire class. (I read the textbook, and made an A for the semester, which pissed off the teacher.)
When I got home -- my bus left the school at three and I reached the bus stop around 4:15 -- I would pick up my brother from the baby sitter and then start supper. My mother got home around 5:00. I also had to do the dishes and deal with the laundry and take care of my brother. Homework, you ask?
Also, why weren't my two older brothers (one two years younger than me, one a year older) doing any of the housework? They also had jobs. My younger brother was a bag boy at a grocery store, and my older worked for a lighting company. I briefly held a job, working at McDonalds, but the manager scheduled me to work from 4:00 p.m. until closing six days a week, which meant I got home at about 2:00 a.m., and still had to get up at six a.m.
If we actually wanted to educate children, school would start around 10:00 a.m. and let out at four, with a mandatory two hour study hall somewhere in there, when homework could be done. No one under sixteen would have a job, and no one who hadn't yet finished school would work more than two hours a day.
But we don't want educated kids in this country. We want workers. That's what the schools are set up to do -- make it possible for parents to work, make it possible for 'students' to grow up to be workers.
I got very little actual education from middle school on -- I spent most of my time reading books on my own, or, at recess, talking to my friends. In high school, the teachers would often give us what they called "free periods," when we didn't have to do anything but stay reasonably quiet. I would escape from my classroom and go find one of my friends, and we would play cards. Or if the teacher caught me trying to escape, I would read novels while around me people played music on their radios and danced and squabbled. I would often finish two novels a day -- I always took at least two books to school with me.
My most indelible memories of high school are those: reading novels, playing card games with my friends, and boredom while the teacher 'taught' us nothing at all. I remember being assigned to write a paper on a book from a list the English teacher gave us. I picked Jane Eyre, which I was way too young to read. "Write a paper" was the entire assignment. I had no idea how to write an English paper, and the teacher didn't bother explaining or showing us how to write a paper, except to say she "didn't want a book report." What did she want? I had no idea.
French class was my favorite, because the teacher actually taught us. She left at the end of my freshman year, and after that I went over to the boy's high school to take Latin. (The girl's school did not offer Latin, or physics, which I also wanted to take.) The Latin teacher actually taught as well. Probably that's how I ended up with a PhD -- that was a way to keep taking Latin and Greek.
But other than those two courses, and a history class my junior year, no teaching occurred. I remember sitting in chemistry class so bored I drew little circles at the top of my paper and inked them all end, one per minute, for the last 20 minutes of class.
Every fall, I'm still glad I don't have to go back to high school.
It's been killing hot over the past week, with highs in the 100s -- 105, yesterday. Today, the high is predicted to be 99, and the same tomorrow.
After that, it will "cool down" to highs of 95 and 96.
But fall is in sight. Only eleven days until September, and once September hits, can fall be far behind?
Fingers crossed.
All of a sudden I'm getting emails from Doug Wilson's little white nationalist hate group, up there in the Idaho panhandle.
Why?
What makes them think I'd want their Christian hate mail?
I can't figure out how to block people on gmail. Anyone know how?
From the linked article:
"So probably the best illustration of this would be church bells? Yes. Minarets? No," he said.
Why?
"Because, the public space would belong to Christ," he added.
Wilson also wants to repeal women's right to vote. When asked why, he was quick to respond.
"Because it's a good idea," he said, adding that he wants it replaced with household voting, with women only voting if they are the head of their household.
Still reading SF novels for reviews, but also a lot of Stephen Graham Jones. He's a horror writer, and usually I do not like horror, but he's really good. So far I've read these books by him:
(1) Mongrels, which is a werewolf novel about a family (father, brother and sister and the child of another sister) living in isolation -- that is, they don't know any other werewolves -- and trying to figure things out. The lore in this is great, as are the characters. The werewolves are poor/working class, which is not something you usually see. In general, most of Jones's characters are working class and poor, and lots of them are Indians, as is Jones.
(2) Buffalo Hunter Hunter, which is what it says on the tin, a hunter who hunts buffalo hunters during the latter half of the 19th Century. The hunter is an Blackfoot Indian who has watched his people being decimated by white invaders. He's also a vampire. Some great detail and lore here too.
(3) Don't Fear the Reaper. This is the second in a trilogy and I read it first, so it's pretty stand-alone. I have to go find the others now. Anyway, it's a book about a small town on a lake where slasher movies, or rather their plots, keep happening. Like a lot of Jones's work there's some meta-fiction happening here. I like the writing and the characters more than the story, as I am not into slasher movies. But the writing is good enough to keep you reading.
Also recently read:
Margaret Atwood, Book of Lives, a Memoir of Sorts
A sort of a memoir of Atwood's life, this is surprisingly fun, with a lot of droll bits.
I say surprising because I've only read a couple books and stories by Atwood and they were all very bleak. Atwood addresses this in the memoir, referring to herself as a kind of Jekyll and Hyde creature, with dark stories to tell while she has lived cheery life and is (apparently) a cheerful person. Anyway, this is nearly 600 pages long and I enjoyed every page.
Richard Russo, Under the Falls
This is Russo's new book, and of course I read it. I will read anything by Richard Russo. I thought it would be a sequel to Empire Falls, or maybe set in the same universe, but no, it is stand alone. It's okay. A musician name Tyler returns to Stone Mountain, his hometown, which he fled at age 18, to give a benefit concert. He doesn't want to be there, and most of the very small town doesn't want him there. As he's fleeing town after the concert, his limo is run off the road by -- someone. That's the mystery in the plot.
The main flaw, probably, is length. Russo doesn't do well with short fiction, and this is a very short novel. Because it is so short, none of the characters except Tyler really get developed. I don't really believe that some of these characters would do the things they're supposed to be doing, but that's at least partly because the characters are so undeveloped. Tyler is about 30, also. Russo's writing about a kid who is my kid's age, except he's fabulously wealthy, and a rock star. The parts where Tyler is writing music, those work, but Tyler doesn't feel like a 30 year old living in 2025, or whenever this book is supposed to have taken place.
The novel is readable, but it is far from Russo's best novel. That one is Nobody's Fool, which is one of the ten perfect novels in the world. If you've never read Russo, start with that one, not this one.
Lee Smith, Silver Alert
Very short, an easy read, and despite the subject matter not at all depressing. 10/10, even though I wanted it to be longer.
D. E. Stevenson, The Young Clementina
I was delighted to find a Stevenson I had not yet read. This is not her best work, though. Written in the early 1930s, this one has the flaws of its time (casual racism, silliness about measuring people's heads to figure out how evolved they are, 'old maids' of 33) and the entire plot is based on a lie one character tells which destroys (almost destroys) the lives of everyone, including that character. This is not how people behave -- why just believe someone one person says? Why not go talk to one another?
It reminds me of a line in one of Mary Renault's books, where one character, puzzled, says to another, "I think you must have read a lot of silly books, or something."
Anyway, if you want to read Stevenson, this is not the book to start with, as engaging as I found the young Clementina.
Dean Koontz, Going in the Dark
Did not finish.
EDITED TO CORRECT: My kid DOES NOT LIKE KOONTZ, thank God. likes Koontz, so I've been trying to read one of his novels to see why. This one starts well, with some meta-fictional stuff and a promising plot (the four main characters all have amnesia around some mysterious event in their young adulthood), but I could not get through the first half. Edited to add: The kid is furious that I slandered him on the blog. He has never even read Koontz.
One problem is how Koontz over-writes, taking three pages to tell you someone has blonde hair. The real flaw, though, is that Koontz does not understand people, so he writes people who behave in ways no human being would actually behave. The academic in this book is shown to us through the eyes of her son, who hates her, so I tried to go with the ridiculous portrayal of an academic. Of course she is unrealistically awful, the son hates her. That sort of thing. But even with that, I could not believe this character, or the way her son engages with her. Same for the rest of the characters. Koontz has been reading too much social media or something.
Koontz also lards in his kind of silly political opinions throughout, generally debunked nonsense about renewable energy, for example. I could wince past those if I could have believed the characters, or cared about what was (maybe?) happening to them.
Edited to add: It is Clive Barker my kid likes. Maybe I will give him a try instead.
I have another Koontz book on hold at the library. I am giving him ONE MORE CHANCE.
It's a college town, and I knew that when I moved here.
But JESUS, this first weekend they're back is a nightmare.
Traffic like you wouldn't believe, which would be horrible even without the record-cracking heat we're having; and all the restaurants (except the one we took the kid and his husband to for lunch) are just jammed.
The restaurant we went to, known as the Bloom Cheese collective, is tiny and services mainly cheeses and cheese boards, as well as sandwiches with things like fig jam on cheese; and also we got there around 1:30, so there weren't that many people there. The food was fantastic. I had the fig jam one. Amazing bread, and of course great cheese.
10/10, will go again, hopefully on some weekend when the traffic doesn't give me a migraine.
