What I'm Listening To Now

I listen to audio books when I'm doing kitchen work or laundry, and when I'm trying to fall asleep (my insomnia is really bad at the moment). These are the ones I've been listening to lately.

Angela Thirkell, High Rising

Read by Jilly Bond. Written in 1933, this is what my kid calls a "family book," by which they mean books about families doing nothing much except having tea, raising kids, and falling in love. This is Thirkell's first book that focuses on Tony Moreland, I think, and his mother; but George Knox and Lord Stokes and others show up as well. There are some anti-Semitic moments and casual classism, as is usual with Thirkell's early books. Since nothing much happens, this was a good book to listen to when I was trying to fall asleep.

Josephine Tey, Miss Pym Disposes

Karen Cass reads it. One of my favorite books, which I have read so often I know it almost by heart. This is also a good category of book to listen to while I'm trying to sleep. Miss Pym gives a lecture at a physical training college and then stays on for a few weeks, dealing with a murder toward the end and middle of the book. The mystery isn't the point, though it features heavily in the plot. Rather, this is a study of the students and faculty at the college, and of a particular kind of English life. Published in 1946, there is some classism and eugenics commentary, but this is nevertheless a charming novel.

Richard Russo, Nobody's Fool

Read by Ron McLarty. I have listened to this one before, but it's such a good book, and McLarty does an excellent job reading it. It's really long, over 24 hours to listen to, but well worth it. If you haven't read Russo yet, this is his best book. We follow working class Donald Sullivan -- Sully -- and the other inhabitants of the dying town of Bath, NY, through a few months in the winter of 1983 or so. Just a great book.

This Isn't at All Alarming

From Paul Krugman's column, which I encourage everyone to read all of:

Trump is now calling for “nationalizing” the midterms, meaning to put voting and the counting of votes under his administration’s control. He can’t do that, but his demand is a clear sign that he will not accept the public’ s verdict in November.

So it’s just being realistic to say that MAGA will try, somehow, to prevent voters from having their say. Will ICE try to prevent blue districts from voting? If that fails, will they reject the results, in a midterm version of Jan. 6? Call me alarmist, but remember: The alarmists have been right, and the people telling us to calm down have been wrong, every step of the way.

Still Cold, MN Still Occupied

It was 16 degrees when I took the dog to the dog park this morning -- the first time we've gone in a week, due to all the snow and ice. It was still snowy there plus lots of ice. The pond and stream were frozen over. The dog still had a good time, though. He loves to run.

I'm limping a bit because I slipped on the ice a few days ago and bruised my Achilles tendon. It's not serious, just annoying.

Minnesota is still occupied. Donate if you can: https://www.standwithminnesota.com/

AI Being Very Helpful

So on my Gmail account, which I use to communicate to editors I write book reviews for, AI has started helpfully attaching summaries to the threads, explaining what the emails have covered.

For all kinds of reasons I do not like this.

Still Snowy, MN Still Occupied

No sign of snow melt yet. About seven or eight inches on the ground, I think. The high today is supposed to reach 33, but not for long enough to melt much. Tomorrow we're reaching the 40s, but for today at least we are still snowed in.

I take the dog out for his walk twice a day (in multiple sweaters, a ushanka, wool gloves and snow boots) so I'm doing okay, but Dr Skull is getting stir-crazy.

I've made donation to food pantries in Minneapolis and to the ALCU of Minnesota, and I encourage you to do likewise if you can. One of my students lives there now, as do many of my favorite SF writers. Naomi Kritzer has a page about how to help.

Kritzer also includes links to local news services, if you want to read about what's happening but don't want to be fed MAGA propaganda.

I've seen lots of MAGAts on FB and elsewhere saying Pretti shouldn't have been armed -- these are the same people that love to preach about the 2nd Amendment, so I don't know how to square that circle -- and others saying that he should have "informed" the agents that he was armed. You know, like Philando Castile did.

Most of the other boot-licking MAGAts are saying he should have just stayed home. Because that's the way to deal with injustice and tyranny and people murdering your neighbors -- stay home and watch TV.

These people sicken me.

Another Murder by ICE

Yet another US citizen has been murdered by ICE. This one was shot in the back by an agent -- it's all on tape. At least ten shots were fired, some while the man, Alex, was already unconscious and on the ground.

The Trump regime is saying it was justified because the man had a gun. (He also had a valid permit to carry the gun, and never drew his weapon. In fact, another ICE agent took the gun and backed away well before the murderer shot the man.) That it was justified because the man was a "terrorist" who "attacked" ICE agents. (None of that is true.) That he went to the protest planning to kill ICE agents. 

On FB, MAGAts are saying he deserved to die because he was blocking traffic (He was not) or interfering with ICE agents (he was filming ICE and he tried to help a woman they pepper-sprayed and knocked to the ground).

Or he deserved to die because he was at the protest. 

Or he deserved to die because he had a gun.

Second Amendment? What's that?

Never mind the First Amendment.

If you ever thought MAGA had any principles or honor or human decency, they stand revealed now.

Another Shorter Video

Snow Dog

 Shamus loves the snow:

Ooof

It's cold here. 

Really, only 27 degrees, but with the wind and 40% humidity it feels so much colder.

How cold is it? It's so cold I'm not taking the dog for his evening walk. This means he will be restless and annoying, but it is just too cold.

Snow is predicted to start at 10:00 p.m.

Winter Emergency

The weather guys are saying we're getting from eight to eighteen inches of snow this weekend, starting Friday night. Also "brutally cold" temperatures.

Arkansas is dutifully panicking -- the kid and I got groceries yesterday (including milk, but not bread, because we bake our own bread) and the store was filled with frenzied shoppers. The hummus we like was sold out, as was the cream.

Home Health (Dr Skull's home nurses) called to make sure Dr Skull had enough food, medicine, and water, also a plan for where we will go if we have to evacuate. (We have no plan for what to do if we have to evacuate.) It's interesting to have access to functional health care. You just have to wait until you're 65 and then pay $650 a month in premiums. 

Send Help to MN

Naomi Kritzer (one of my favorite SF writers) has written a post about ways to help if you live outside of Minnesota. Go here!

She also gives information on how to prepare for ICE coming to your town. ICE is already in Arkansas, attacking brown people only two towns up the highway from me. If you think they're not coming to your town, you're probably MAGA and lying.

Nicole and Maggie have links.

If you're in a Red State, as I am, and your reps are celebrating this despicable behavior, as mine are, call them anyway. Explain why the Gestapo is not good for America. They probably won't listen. Do it anyway.

Snow?

We might get snow this weekend -- one site says 14 inches, but most are saying 3-5 inches. You can imagine my excitement.

Plus! This will be Shamus's first snow!

Who Is Paying the Tariffs?

A study just came out showing Americans are paying Trump's tariffs.

Seriously, did anyone not already know this? (I know MAGAs pretend not to know it, but everyone knows they lie about everything, so they know it too.)

I ordered something recently from England. It came by Royal Mail, which I continue to think is the coolest thing ever. But anyway, before it was shipped, the company I bought it through notified me of a surcharge, due to the tariffs. OBVIOUSLY we're paying for Trump's tariff. 

We're also paying for ICE to beat, shoot, kidnap, and abuse people in Minneapolis. We paid for the tear gas that put that six month old baby in the hospital. That's our tax dollars. That's what we're getting instead of Medicaid for our poorest citizens. That's the world that MAGA wants.

What I'm Reading Now

Deborah Solomon, American Mirror: The Life and Times of Normal Rockwell

I liked this a lot, although I was made a little uneasy by Solomon's heavy hinting that Rockwell was sexually attracted to his teenage male models. (She carefully insists he never acted on this attraction.) If you can wince your past that, this is an interesting look at Rockwell's artistic growth, as he moved from an apolitical creator of funny paintings to a left-leaning artist who created what are probably the two most famous visual works of the Civil Rights era:

It's also a good look at the history of popular art in American through the 20th century. Very readable, and except for the bit mentioned above, I enjoyed it immensely.


Frank Conroy, Body and Soul

This is re-read of one of my favorite books. It's the story of a musician from his early childhood (about four years old) through his young adulthood (about 25 years old). The musician, Claude, is a prodigy, and the book suffers just a little because everything comes to the kid so easily -- he finds the perfect teacher when he needs one, he inherits a fortune just when he needs one, everyone is always in awe of how wonderfully he plays, so on and so forth.

It's basically the Brave Little Tailor plot -- watch this wonderful guy succeed -- but it's well written and immensely readable. This is my fourth or fifth re-read, and I enjoy it every time.

Ian McEwan, What We Can Know

This is the first bookI've read by McEwan, who is apparently a big deal. (He won the Booker Prize in 1988, among other prizes.) I picked up this one because I thought it was science fiction -- it's set in 2120, and deals with a world affected by climate change. Well, sort of deals with it. It's mostly about an academic who is studying a dinner party given by the wife of a famous poet in the early 21st century.

McEwan himself has said that this novel is "science fiction without the science," which, dude.

Half of the book is set in 2120, in England, which is now an archipelago, and told from the point of view of a scholar who is writing about a lost poem, written in 2014. It is a corona, which is a series of linked sonnets, and has an enormous reputation despite the fact that no copies exist and no one has ever read it. This part of the book is interesting: the hunt for the poem, and the look at England in the future caused by climate change: metal is scarce, major cities have been lost due to global floods, thousands of species have been wiped out. The university system continues, but students are bored and don't do any of the work required in the humanities classes. They don't care about history or the past, and don't want to learn about it. This is all interesting reading, and McEwan writes well.

The second half is a journal (found by the scholar while he is looking for the poem) about the wife of the poet who wrote the lost poem. It's less interesting, honestly, though it reveals the answers to all the secrets we're teased with in the first half of the book.

I mostly enjoyed this, though I don't know if I'll read anything else by McEwan. Dr Skull has a copy of Atonement, another of his books, and I read the first several pages of it, but didn't like it well enough to go on.

Thursday Links

This post by Fraser Sherman makes good points.

What's the Insurrection Act?

Not Nazis but slave catchers.

Trump regime wants a list of Jewish students and faculty, which isn't disturbing at all.

Can ICE shoot anyone they like and suffer no consequences? (Last night they shot another person, this one in the leg. They also threw a flash bomb into a car full of children, all of whom are now hospitalized.)

More on the flashbomb attack.

Hank Green on why they're lying and why it matters:

Two Cartoons and a Note

 

That last one is from Alas A Blog, where Barry appends this commentary: 

"I went back and forth on how malicious and evil to make the ICE agent in the final panel. Then I read about the ICE shooting of Marimar Martinez, just two months before Good’s death. Martinez, like Good, was accused by an ICE agent of trying to kill him with her car. Martinez, despite being shot five times, survived, and the case against her was so weak the government quietly dropped all charges.

"The agent who shot Martinez, Charles Exum, sent texts to his fellow ICE agents gloating about the shooting. His texts included: “I fired 5 rounds, and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book boys,” “I’m up for another round of ‘fuck around and find out’” and “Sweet. My fifteen mins of fame. Lmao.”