I could not be prouder

My kid found just learned that he has been given an internship for this coming academic year. It was a highly competitive application process, so we're very pleased. Also, it's a paid internship, which makes it even better.

He's going to be researching the archeology and historical management of forest lands on Osage land from pre-history to the present. What he learns will go into a graphic novel (which he will write and draw) aimed mostly at children/young adults -- a way to increase scientific understanding of forest management.

His proposal was brilliant, by the way. I have such a smart kid.

I'll share drawings when he starts making them!

Weather Report

Thunder and rain here. The dog is now afraid of thunder. This is because a few days ago when I walked him over to the park, there was a huge blast of thunder directly overhead, which terrified him.

Supposed to rain all week. I like rain, but it does make taking the dog for his exercise a lot more fraught.

Shamus, worrying about thunder

Whining

I have a cold, or maybe allergies. My ears are stopped up and all my joints hurt.

Wah.

How It Started/How It's Going

 This is what I planned to do with my retirement.

How did it go?

(1) I am reading a lot of books.

(2) I am writing a lot.

(3) No biking so far, but I am taking a lot of walks, mainly because

(4) We did get a puppy, one that requires at least three walks a day

(5) I never, ever get to sleep late -- see (4)

(6) My garden goes well! Though occasionally the dog digs plants up >:(

(7) (8) (9) Not at all. It's not that I don't want to, it's just that we haven't. Maybe this year.

A Day in the Life: Being Retired in Arkansas

I've been retired exactly one year today. What's it like so far?

Spoilers: I love it to pieces. Was it worth working fifty years* for this retiree life in the Boston Mountains? 

I'd have to say yes, mostly because most of those years I was a professor, which was a job I liked a lot. (There were some bad years, and I never quite made enough money, which was pretty stressful.) If I had been working a job I hated for all that time, maybe not.

What do I do with my time all day?

Well, I get up at dawn and take the dog to the dog park. He runs with other dogs and brings me balls to throw him. Then we come home and he goes out into the yard to make sure nothing has been stolen, and I make tea. While I'm drinking tea, I do several puzzles and my Duolingo. This caffeinates me enough that I can start working. Right now I'm working on book reviews for Asimov, so I am either reading for those or writing those.

Around noon, I eat something. Usually a bagel, sometimes a cheese sandwich. I also make lunch for Dr Skull, whose hands still don't function well enough to make his own lunch. (The pain doctor has recommended a neck surgery which might help. We're thinking about it.)

Then I take the dog to the dog park again. He needs to run around with other dogs at least twice a day. If you're considering a border collie, keep that in mind.

In the afternoon, I do things. Like, some days I go to the library. Some days I buy groceries. Once in awhile, we go to the bookstore or Walmart. There's also this cool store in town that sells Japanese imports, or I can cruise the thrift shop. If I don't do any of those, I might make bagels or flatbread or lie on the couch and read. Maybe I do laundry concurrently, or set the Roomba to vacuuming.  (I have to make bread a lot because there is no eatable bread in Arkansas. It is all as sweet and soft as cake.)

Around four, I start supper. If there are leftovers, I can keep reading instead. Or maybe we order in. We have enough money to buy dinner from restaurants! It's great.

After dinner, I do the dishes and then I take the dog for a walk -- either the dog park again, or just around the block. More reading at night, or occasionally television, though right now I seem to have lost interest in watching TV shows.

Sometimes the kid comes over and cooks dinner for us, or we take him and his husband out to eat somewhere. Every Friday we have lunch together at a local Greek place. 

One day this summer we will go to Crystal Bridges and maybe another day to the Botanical Garden. And the kid wants to learn to drive, so we'll have to pencil that in. And there are always medical and vet appointments. Also, I'm growing a tiny garden of herbs, watermelon, and a fig tree.

It's a great life. If I could have one wish, I'd like the dog to get used to sleeping past dawn. Please.

Anyway, retirement for me is 10/10, highly recommend. It really helps that we have money now, though. I wouldn't have been able to retire anywhere this soon without it. People who say money doesn't buy happiness have never been poor, if you want my opinion.

*I got my first 'real' job at 15, working in a snack bar; before that, I had lots of little jobs, mainly babysitting but also delivering papers, my first 'job,' at age nine. Between then and when I started working as a baby professor, I worked in delis and at McDonalds, in a library, and managing that same snack bar, summers, from age 18 to 23. Doing that made me enough money to pay for my undergraduate education, by the way, though I also lived at home most of the time I was in college.

Upsetting Books

So I've read two books back to back this week, both for possible review. Both looked like they would be science fiction, though neither really was.  If you like books that will upset you deeply, these are for you. 

The first, Under Story by Chloe Benjamin, is about scientists, and science, and there's an alternative universe. You see why I thought it was science fiction.

It's also beautifully written, and there's a lot of fascinating detail. The book opens with the point of view character, a scientist who used to study fungi, on her way to McMurdo Station in Antartica, where she is working washing dishes and unloading cargo trucks, things like that. 

As the book develops, we learn about her past, how she came to science, and that there is a husband and a child (not now with her, obviously) in her background. Later we learn that the kid is dead. Also, there's an "arc" visible from McMurdo station, and no one knows what it is. 

Spoilers: it's a place where this universe and another universe touch. In that one, entropy flows the other way. She and her husband (he's a physicist, and shows up to study the arc) use the juncture to travel to the other universe, where they hope they can locate their son before he dies and bring him back to this universe.

So it's a fascinating book and their lives in the other universe, where people are born old and age back to childhood, is fascinating. I think it's the dead kid that makes this one so hard to read. We know he dies, and then when (spoilers) they do find him in the other universe, they can't bring him out of that universe. So he ages back to birth, and we have to watch that. Very upsetting. 

But, again, compelling and wonderfully written. The parts about science and about McMurdo Station are wonderful. I think this one triggered my claustrophobia. I hate it when characters are trapped and can do nothing to save themselves. If you don't have claustrophobia, you might enjoy this one. The kid dying twice is a little hard to deal with, though.

*** ****

The other is upsetting for a different reason. Yesteryear, by Caro Claire Burke, reminds me of Gone Girl, if you know that novel. The main character, who is our point of view character, Natalie, is a social media influencer, with six kids and a five hundred acre farm in an Idaho valley. She releases videos on Instagram and YouTube, celebrating her existence as a "tradwife." She thanks God for her wonderful children and her wonderful husband who runs the farm while she raises the children, baking her own bread, home-schooling, raising chickens and cooking every meal from scratch.

From the beginning, we see how much of this life is an illusion -- the production team, the nannies who actually care for the children, the farm hands who actually do the farming. We also, almost from the start, recognize that Natalie is an unreliable narrator. She contradicts herself, gives us conflicting information, and seems to be operating mostly from spite. In fact, her entire life seems to be built on spite and childish tantrums. She is a thoroughly unlikeable person.

Then she wakes up in what appears to be 1875, still in the same Idaho valley. The "joke" is that she actually has to become a traditional wife from that era she was cosplaying. Her husband beats her, her kids see how useless she is (four kids, this time), she learns how difficult life is without antibiotics or modern appliances. 

Does she rise to the experience? No, she continues with her spiteful tantrums. We eventually learn what's going on -- she has not, in fact, been transported to 1875 -- but by that point we no longer care. 

I imagine this one sold on the concept -- a tradwife influencer transported back to the time she celebrates as so wonderful, haha, you won't believe what happens next.

But the structure is a mess, and the characters are completely unlikeable. Not just Natalie -- her husband, enamored of the manosphere and lunatic YouTube channels, is equally horrible. The grandparents bankrolling this cosplaying life are horrible: the grandmother is a drunk, the grandfather, a conservative politician, is hateful. The channel Natalie runs is fueled by what she calls "the angry women," liberals, apparently, but who knows, they're also horrible. The kids, the true victims in all of this, have their moments, but it's not enough to carry the book.

It's like being hit with sticks for three hundred pages. Read it if you like that sort of thing, I guess.

A Former Student Gets a Book Deal!

One of my former students (graduated 2012) sent me an email with some great news this morning.

A.T. was a poet when she was in my writing workshops; but she was really good at prose, and I encouraged her to think about writing fiction. Which she did! And now she has an agent and a contract for a duology. It's Romantasy, and those of you who like that genre should definitely pre-order.

It's called The Art of Living Forever, published under the name A. T. Rainach.

I can't tell you how happy this has made me!

From her bio:

A.T. has been telling stories since she could write. She holds a BA in English Literature and Creative Writing and is both a fiction author and a published poet with a love for lyrical language and dark, fantastical worlds. Off the page, she’s a lifelong barrel racer, horse trainer, and full-time wrangler of three feral children. In rare quiet moments, she’s probably reading, adding to her tattoo collection, listening to music, or playing guitar (she admits her enthusiasm exceeds her skill).

Paper Shells Update!

New update on Paper Shells, my kid's new comic.

This is the plotline I helped with -- how to be an English professor in the year 2000.

Dental Work

Several months ago, I had two abscessed teeth pulled and "cadaver bone" put into the empty sockets. Then last Thursday, I had posts screwed into the cadaver bone. In about four more months, I'll have caps put on the screws. 

Presto, new teeth.

But ugh, do you know how much it hurts to have screws put into your bones? 0/10, extremely unpleasant.

Buying Books

Probably my favorite thing about having enough money is I can buy all the books I want now.

To be honest, I pretty much did this already. There were some edge cases, where I wasn't sure I wanted to read the book: I didn't buy those books. But yeah, otherwise...

I still get most of my books from the library, especially since the library here will buy whatever book I ask for. (These days those are usually academic books, or cookbooks, since I love to read cookbooks but I don't want to buy that many of them.) It would be hard to buy as many books as I read, and also this way I can take chances on books -- check out ones that are edge cases, that is.

But yeah, it's nice to see a book I want and start doing the calculus to see if I should buy it and then just say, oh! I can buy books now!

(Brought to you by the collected copies of SAGA which I never read because they were just too expensive, but which I have bought now.)

Parents Who 'Do Their Own Research'

Parents doing their own research -- by which they mean watching YouTube and Instagram videos -- are killing their children.

We know about the refusal to get the measles vaccine, which led to three deaths last year and thousands of cases of sick kids. See also chicken pox, whooping cough, and mumps, among others. Now parents are refusing Vitamin K shots for their newborns, which has led to a least a dozen preventable deaths, and probably many more.

Why are parents refusing the Vitamin K shot? They 'did their own research.'

The parents explained that they had declined the shot for a number of reasons: a concern, based on long-debunked claims, that the shot could cause leukemia; a belief that the shot wasn’t necessary; and a desire to reduce their baby’s exposure to “toxins.”

Also, of course, there's the "natural" fallacy. Why, for thousands and thousands of years, babies did without Vitamin K shots, or vaccines, so obviously.... 

What about the fifty percent child mortality rate we used to have? (That's fifty percent of all infant dying before age five.) Malnutrition, these parents claim. Bad hygiene. Their children play outside and eat right, so obviously....

Much of it is due to Trump and the way he and the GOP party in general handled COVID. It couldn't be that Trump mishandled the epidemic (due to a very real ignorance and lack of experience on his part), so it must be that the CDC and physicians and experts in general are lying to everyone. Why? Well, vaccines are how they make the big bucks, clearly. Also all that profit on Vitamin K shots.

Look, I'm all for kids playing outside and eating well. But to believe that MAGA and Trump are telling you the truth, and everyone in the medical system worldwide is lying to you -- to make a profit -- is just ridiculous. 

To let your infants and children die from things that could be prevented with inexpensive (indeed, sometimes free at the point of service) vaccines and vitamin shots is worse than ridiculous. It's child sacrifice. 

RFK Junior was asked to make a statement saying Vitamin K shots were safe and necessary, by the way. He refused.

“I’ve never said, literally never said, anything about it,” Kennedy said.

“That’s exactly the point,” responded Schrier, who [made the request and] is a doctor. “You don’t say anything about it, but the doubt you’ve created about all of medicine and science is causing parents to make dangerous decisions.”

New Comic From the Kid

It's called Paper Shells, and I helped with the university stuff!

To quote his husband: 

It's about domestic abuse, transphobia in the early 2000s, an english professor getting tenure, and TWO (2) whole werewolves called Paper Shells. Make sure to check out the trigger warning but go give it a look!

Go here to read it!

AI and University Teaching

People I know at universities are going back to paper tests written by hand, and what they are finding is the students are doing markedly worse under that system. Previous "good" grades were actually students using AI to write their exams and papers. Without AI, those students are helpless.

It's probably partly that these are COVID students, who got passed during the pandemic even if they did no work at all -- so they did no work. (One of my students told me they took a job during school hours, and just left Zoom open on their laptop.) And when students can pass without doing the work in classes they don't care about (for many, many students, that is every single class) then they don't do the work.

Why would that be? They're paying for these classes, why would they not make at least some effort to learn what's being taught? 

Possibly it's because these students come from Red States, where for the past two decades their parents and their governments have been saying that teachers are mindless liberals, that everything they're teaching is woke propaganda, and that education is worthless. 

Education is a meaningless credential, their parents and their pastors and their governments say. Education is hoops to jump through so that you can get a job. Education is a scam, a Ponzi scheme. That so many of these students then treat university classes like something they can cheat their way through is no real surprise. 

This is despite, or I guess maybe because of, their massive ignorance. (I could tell you stories....)

I'm glad I'm retired for two reasons: having to fail most of my students would be too depressing; and going back to paper exams and writing essays in class means I would have to read their appalling handwriting. 

Ugh. No thanks.

Insomnia

My insomnia is back, ugh. 

For awhile there I was sleeping fairly well, seven or eight hours every night. (The dog wakes me at dawn to go to the dog park, by yapping until I give in and get up.) But the last few nights, I keep falling asleep and then waking up and falling asleep and waking up and so on, all night long.

Also, I have anxiety dreams like you wouldn't believe. Probably that's what's waking me up. There's absolutely nothing to be anxious about -- except the political situation, I suppose -- so I don't know what's up with that.

Side note on that point: gas is $3.89/gallon at the cheap place as of yesterday. It's about that in Fort Smith, which is where I'm seeing all the complaining. Whose fault are these high prices, according to people in Fort Smith on FB? Why, Joe Biden!

What's happening is people are posting about how much it costs to fill up their giant pickups and SUVs and other people are saying, well, back in 2022, when Biden was president....

It's true gas price were high in 2022, due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Gas prices are high now because of Trump's ridiculous illegal war against Iran. Somehow one is Biden's fault and the other is Biden's fault as well. 

Don't ask me how they're managing these mental gymnastics.

What I'm Listening to Now

The Small Change Trilogy, Jo Walton, read by John Keating and Heather O'Neil

These are three books -- Farthing, Ha'penny, and Half a Crown -- set in an AU where Britain made peace with Hitler in 1941. FDR was assassinated in his second term, so that Lindberg becomes president just before WWII kicks off. I guess it isn't a WW, since no one except Britain is fighting Hitler; and then they make peace.

In any case, these books are about fascism increasing world-wide, and especially in Britain, so they're apropos for today's events. There's a great and awful bit in the second book, from the POV of an actress, saying all politicians are alike, Churchill and Atlee wouldn't have done anything different from the Farthing group (the fascists that take over Parliament), and the death camps in Germany are just work camps, and anyway none of Britain's business. In the third book, there's some harrowing scenes of fascists marching in London and Jews being stoned.

These are mystery books, in that each book turns around a mystery; but they aren't traditional mysteries. Mysteries are generally conservative works, in that they start with a Utopian space, which is disrupted by crime; and then the space becomes disordered and terrible; and then the police or a private detective or Miss Marple solve the crime, right the wrong, and the world returns to its former Utopian space. However, here, the space being disrupted is far from Utopian, and while the crimes get solved, nothing is made better by the solving of the crime. Indeed, everything gets worse, until the last book, which has, frankly, an unbelievable ending.

These are excellent books, wonderfully narrated. Well worth listening to. Available via Audiobooks.

The Keeper, Tana French, read by Roger Clark

This is the third in the Cal Hooper trilogy, about a Chicago homicide detective who retires to sheep country in Ireland and accidentally adopts/mentors a 13 year old (Trey is 15 in this novel). The setting, a small rural town, is as much a character as anyone else. The cast of characters includes sheep farmers, shopkeepers, ne'er-do-wells, high school students, and Cal himself. Also some great dogs.

Each of the novels contains a mystery, including this one, but honestly I don't read French so much for the mystery as her ability to create characters and place. When you listen to them, also, there are wonderful Irish accents. 

Available via Audiobooks.

The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson, read by Tony Walker

I may not make it all the way through this one. Jackson writes creepy better than anyone. It's strange, because she also wrote these charming, slightly funny stories about her children (in Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons) which are just orthogonal to the horror fiction. Those are also worth listening to, by the way.

Anyway, I'm enjoying this one so far, but man is it creepy. The set up is a professor of haunted houses (or something like that) rents Hill House for a couple of months and goes to live there with these people he hired because they (the people) all of some sort of paranormal events in their background. Like one was living in a house where stones rained down for three days, and another is apparently telepathic, or at least can identify cards without looking at their faces.

There's also a very New England peasant couple. And, of course, Jackson's wonderful voice. I like what I've listened to so far (the first half hour or so) but it's starting to get creepy. This one is available for free on YouTube.

Performing Gender

I have been idly wondering for some time why so many MAGA women have that face -- fat cheeks, small plump eyes, narrow nose, giant lips -- and the long flowing overly styled hair. If you've seen Charlie Kirk's wife out monetizing her dead husband, you've seen the face. It goes with the tiny body and tight clothing.

Kristi Noem has it, too, as do most Fox News anchors. Our governor, Sarah Huckster Sanders, tries for it, but she just doesn't have the body or the bone structure. She also may not have the money.

Turns out that face, also known as Mar-a-Lago face, is a deliberate choice. The hyperwealthy in the GOP camp are buying plastic surgery that makes them look like the MAGA notion of a desirable woman. (The men are also getting plastic surgery -- to make them look like "real men," with a specific jawline, eyes, forehead, and lips; but this isn't about that trend.) Here's an interesting video essay about the phenomenon.

And here's Erika Kirk, before and after:

According to the video essay, this is a thing fascist governments do with their women. It separates them from progressive/non-fascist women by highlighting the "correct" way to look, which is hyperfeminine in a specific sort of way. (That look differs from culture to culture, obviously.) It's a uniform, which women must wear to prove that they are one of the group.

As such, it's also a form of control. I'm thinking also about the way women in the Christian Quiverfull movement were compelled to look -- with that long, over-permed hair and dowdy dresses; with that tiny high "girl" voice, and constant smile. Quiverfull women were not allowed to express any emotion except enraptured devotion. "Keeping sweet," they called it.

Trump women have to look and act a certain way also. It's a rigid gender performance, and it's there to ensure MAGA men that women exist to perform for them.

Here are more MAGA women. It's a little disturbing, and very creepy.

In a Desperate Bid to Boost his Approval Ratings

I don't think the guy with the guns at the Whitehouse Correspondents Dinner was staged, but I do think Trump's party is going to play it for all its worth. Hey, it got his approval ratings up last time, yeah?

That's not what I wanted to write about here.

Here, I want to talk about a different attempt to boost his ratings: an attempt to keep birth control out of the hands of Americans.

This is never going to happen, I was promised by endless people when Roe v Wade was overturned. Birth control is too popular! Yeah, well, so is abortion. Most people want it to be available; one in three women have had an abortion. I had one after my miscarriage, though when I say that people start shrieking that that is not "really" an abortion.

Yes, it fucking is. I needed it, too, because otherwise the fetal remains might have stayed in my uterus, causing sepsis, and damaging my future fertility.

How did the "conservatives" convince people abortion was evil?

(Except for their abortions, which like mine are not "really" abortions. I know people who are absolutely opposed to abortion until their sixteen year old needs one, and then it's "different," or until someone they know needs an abortion for medical reasons, and then that's not "really" an abortion.)

They pushed propaganda in their "conservative" Christian schools and their churches and their publications. They did this for 40 years. Even then, most people still want abortions to be legal.

Over the past two decades, these Christians have been spreading the lie that birth control is an abortifacient, that it "kills babies," and that a fertilized zygote is a baby. Facebook and TikTok and Instagram are filled with "health" advocates explaining how birth control damages women's health. 

Now Trump wants "to curb contraception."

His DHHS has released new guidelines, "prioritizing childbirth over contraception," and trying to convince people to use "natural family planning," instead of contraception. ('Natural family planning' is how we spell parenthood, by the way.)

Why? You know why.

The unwieldy political coalition that sent Trump back to the White House in 2024 is clamoring for action. For different reasons, an alliance of MAHA adherents, social conservatives and pronatalists are eager to go after birth control. With Trump sinking in the polls and his coalition fracturing, he may want to deliver for his core supporters. 

I'd say this was a terrible idea, but the past decade has proved to me that today's Trump supporters will literally do anything their ugly tin god tells them to do, and believe anything he tells them to believe. If it contradicts the reality, well, why should they believe in reality? That's what liberals do.

 

Bam!

I had the dog at the dog park this morning. There were two Australian shepherds there, about six months old, and he ran and ran with them. He was having a great time. Then he swerved to run past me, except he didn't run past, he clotheslined me and I slammed to the ground.

Let me tell you, falling when you're 66 is very different from falling when you're 26.

(I'm fine, except my ankle hurts a little.)

All three dogs came running back to make sure I was okay, sticking their noses in my ears and face. I said I was okay and they ran off again.

The culprit, all worn out

Weather Report

Weather page says it's going to rain for a week and then after that we'll get another short winter (lows in the 40s, highs in the 50s). My favorite weather!

Which is good, because next week is a nightmare. Nonstop medical appointments. FML.

My Kid Does Art

This is a picture of me driving around mourning my beloved 1989 Fayetteville:

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.

Dialects of English

You'll remember I wrote a post about the insistence on only one dialect of English being "real," or an actual language; and how this foible is because Americans love to have what they consider legitimate reasons for bigotry.

Here's evidence that this is an actual problem. White Americans -- especially conservative White Americans -- are either unable or unwilling to understand AAVE in courtroom settings, which is contributing to unequal justice under the law. 

Court reporters have to be able to transcribe what is being said in a courtroom with at least 95 percent accuracy. According to this article, court reporters tested on AAVE can only transcribe what is being said with less that 83% accuracy. 

In 31 percent of the 2,241 transcriptions, researchers found, the court reporters’ errors changed the content of what the speaker was saying, misinterpreting either who was involved, what was happening, when it happened, and/or where it happened.

Further, juries either can't or claim they can't understand what black witnesses are saying in court.

As the article puts it, there's a real lack of "willingness" to understand AAVE.

This might be an actual lack of comprehension, of course. When I taught World Lit, I would often teach Frederick Douglass's Narrative of a Life, which is written in perfect SAE of the time. That dialect was often well above the literacy level of my students, who could often barely read what they called "modern" English (English written since the year 2000). Still, they never complained they couldn't understand what Douglass was saying (even when it was clear they could not). 

I would also give them half a dozen narratives from the WPA slave narrative collections in the Federal Library. The WPA collectors deliberately transcribed these narratives in the language, the dialect, spoken by the former slaves -- in AAVE, in other words, from the 1930s. (There's a pdf collection here.)

When I would assign these, some of my students (I won't say conservative, although they probably were, being this was a freshman class in Arkansas; they were definitely white kids) would insist they "couldn't" read the narratives. "They're not in English," they would insist.

Mind you, these are Arkansas kids. Most of them grew up speaking Southern English, which has its roots in AAVE. I'm not saying they were all liars. At least one of them I know for a fact just wasn't too bright. They could barely read SAE written in the 21st century, so maybe they actually couldn't understand this text (a sample):

I wuz 'borned in Orange County and I belonged ter Mr. Gilbert Gregg near Hillsboro. I doan know nothin' bout my mammy an daddy, but I had a brother Jim who wuz sold ter dress young missus fer her weddin. De tree am still standin what I set under an' watch ' em sell Jim. I set dar ant I cry an' cry,  specially when dey puts de chain on him an carries him off, an' I ain't neber felt so lonesome in my whole life. I ain't neber hyar from Jim since an' I wonder now sometimes if'en he's still livin.

But maybe they and the other students who complained were just not willing to understand what they saw as "not English." Maybe their point was Black people who couldn't speak in the standard English of the time had no right to be heard.

I also remember a smart (white, conservative) kid, very likeable, from my History of the English Language class who wrote, very nicely, in my end of the semester evaluation that as much as he realized I was educated and intelligent, I was wrong when I taught in the class that different dialects of English were just that, different dialects. Speaking proper English, he said, was moral issue. 

Speaking anything but standard English, that implies, is immoral. Is a sin.

You can see why this might be a problem when people who don't speak SAE show up in court seeking justice. (It's not just Black people who don't speak SAE, and of course some Black Americans do speak SAE. That's not the point here.) When we speak about systemic injustice, this is what we mean. This injustice is baked into the system, and it is approved of and enforced by a sizable percentage of our population, some of whom are lawyers, some of whom sit on juries, and many, many, many of whom are police officers. 

Or ICE agents, but probably that's less important, since ICE agents aren't really interested in what anyone has to say, in SAE or AAVE or the dialect of the Intermountain West or whatever.

My kid is Flying Home

So far no trouble with TSA or ICE in the airport, but then they both pass as white cis males, so.

We've been taking care of Rosen, whom Dr Skull loves so much he wants to adopt her. But Jasper is afraid of her, so much so that she won't go in the room where the litter box is. (They've had two fights so far, both of which Jasper lost.) 

So unless I figure out a place to put a second litter box, that's probably not a solution.

Also, the kids love Rosen and don't really want to give her up. It's too bad, because Rosen is a great cat and she does indeed really love Dr Skull, who misses Junti (who was his cat) terribly.

Dr Skull with Rosen

Rereading Books

Apparently some people think you should never re-read books, because, and I am summarizing, there are so many books out there to read, why would you ever waste time re-reading?

I do read a lot of new (or new to me) books, but for me one of the pleasures of reading is re-reading. I especially like to reread a book that I haven't read in years. It's kind of like parallax vision, maybe? I remember what I thought or how I understood a book when I was 20 or 30; how will I see or understand the same book now? I'm a different person now, so I understand the book/see the book differently.

I'd go so far as to say you haven't really understood a book if you haven't read it more than once. This is especially true for me, I think, because I read really fast (though I don't skim unless the book is terrible and I'm trying to see if it's worth finishing). When I'm gulping down a book because I want to know what happens, I don't always spend a lot of time thinking about what's happening. Re-reading lets me do that.

I also like to reread a book I've read maybe a dozen times. It's like watching your favorite movie or listening to a favorite song. I enjoy the beats and the scenes because I know them so well.

Recently I've discovered the joy of listening to a book that I've read a dozen times. The audiobook of Nobody's Fool, for example -- listening to that was such a different experience from reading it. Same for Jo Walton's Thessaly trilogy.

What about y'all? Do you re-read?

Spotted on Tumblr

If y'all aren't on Tumblr, by the way, you are missing out. It's the internet the way it was meant to be.

ANYWAY.

A German Tumblrist asks why Americans are so obsessed over "whether something is a word." Why are we like this, they want to know. They're talking about how certain speakers of American English get angry when a dictionary includes words like 'ain't' or 'irregardless.' Why? Why? they demand. Those aren't real words!

As a professor of the language, I have the answer to this question: It's because Americans love any excuse at all to be a bigot. 

I used to teach History of the English Language as well as English Grammar and one of the things I had to teach my students was that their "correct" English was a dialect of English, like any other dialect of English. It wasn't "better" than African American Vernacular English, or Bronx English, or Mississippi English, or working class East Coast English.

That is to say, Standard American English (what they counted as 'correct' English) does not communicate its meaning any better than, say, AAVE. In fact, in some ways, SAE communicates less well -- AAVE is really good at communicating aspect with its verbs, for example, which SAE mostly ignores. 

(I remember when I was first studying Greek. Greek verbs also pay a lot of attention to aspect, and my entire class could not wrap their heads about what this mean -- for us, 'perfect' was just another sort of  past tense, and what even was aorist? Raised speaking SAE, this was a concept we had real trouble grasping.)

Why then do so many people believe that SAE is "real" and everything else is 'slang' or ignorant or not even actually English? 

Because it lets them feel superior. It allows them to look down on some group -- to be bigoted in a way that feels approved of by their culture.

Let me tell you, I too used to wince when someone said something like, "I have already ate," or "Mom took Tim and I to the state fair last week." That was before I actually knew something about how language works. Now I find these regional difference -- like "Anymore you can't find eggs for less than ten dollars a dozen" -- fascinating.

Anyway! My point, and I do have one, is that anything which communicates meaning is language. For example, I love saying things like "irregardless" and "ain't" and "we might could finish this tomorrow," just to jar people a bit.

"Ain't?" they will exclaim. "Irregardless? Those aren't words!"

"But you know what it means," I point out. "If I say, I ain't eating no more pie, you know exactly what I mean, irregardless of what you claim."

And they do. So why does this upset them, someone with a PhD who says irregardless? 

It's cognitive dissonance. They know I'm educated, they know they can't treat me like trash, and what does that mean about this thing they have been counting on, that their ability to speak SAE means they're better than people who say things like "I seen her at Walmart"?

It's like people who think being an American makes them better than people in other places. When they find out that people in other places actually have good lives, and are good people, some of them better lives than many Americans in fact, cognitive dissonance. It was the one way they could feel superior. Now what do they have?

See also people who think that being a certain religion, or having a certain skin color, or being a certain gender makes them 'better.' When anyone suggests otherwise -- that tantrum they throw, that's cognitive dissonance. If they don't have this way of being superior to other people, then what do they have?

I mean, they could accept that being superior to other people isn't something they need, or even should want, but it takes a great deal more enlightenment than most of them will ever have to come to that realization.

Headaches Again

 As I think I mentioned, I pretty much always have a headache. Usually it's a low-grade ache around my temples or behind my eyes. But -- as now -- when the weather is changing, I have a first-class banging headache that makes me want to lie in bed and whimper. Nothing really helps. Sometimes a shower does. But not usually.

I have taken Motrin and a Tylenol. We'll see how it goes.

Retirement

Dr Skull and I had a lovely outing last night -- we ate at one of our favorite restaurants and then went to the bookstore and bought more books. We discussed traveling to various cities, which he wants to do and I am less eager about. As y'all know, my favorite thing to do is stay home, read books, and write books.

A day trip to Tulsa I could probably manage. 

Though I am slightly jealous of what the kids are doing in Maryland -- day before yesterday they went to the Smithsonian Natural History Museum and yesterday they went to the Smithsonian zoo. I think today they are driving to Philly to visit an art museum.

Spring Break

This town is deserted during Spring Break, which I have to admit I'm enjoying. No lines at the grocery store. No traffic on the roads. There are fewer dogs at the dog park, which I'll admit is a drawback.

Dr Skull and I are having our long-delayed anniversary dinner at the Southern Food Company this evening, that's our celebration for the Break.

The kid and his husband are having a great time in Maryland, and Dr Skull has decided to steal their cat. "This is my cat," he keeps saying. "I'm not giving her back."

Rosen, the Cat in Question

Babysitting the Grandcat

 There are actually two grandcats, but they're not getting along, so one is staying with us

and the other I visit every day.

The kids are in Maryland, visiting their friends who live there. They'll make a sidetrip to Philly. I'm hoping they don't get caught up in all this lunacy with Trump and the airports.

Whaaaat!

Okay, I'm interested.

It doesn't seem entirely accurate, since Odysseus could honestly have given a fuck about his men, but other than that it looks epic. I might even see it in the theater. 

UGH

It was 72 degrees when I took the dog to the dog park at 7:30 a.m. High of 90 is predicted today.

Tomorrow is supposed to be cooler, but I'm already in my dread-summer mode.

Brought to you by Global-Climate-Change-is-just-a-Myth.

The Pitt and ICE

If you're not watching the Pitt, we're already into Season Two. This is a show in which each season takes place in a single day -- Season Two is the fourth of July. Every episode is one hour in that day.

There had already been a nod toward Trump's brutal immigration policy, with a young Haitian woman who has custody of her ten year old brother. The parents, seized by ICE at their immigration hearing, had been deported. The kid blew two of his fingers off off playing with fireworks with other kids in their housing complex. "Wouldn't [the kid] be better off with his parents?" a clueless first-year student asks.

July is when you want to avoid hospitals, FYI. It's when all the new students, doctors, and residents start their year.

Anyway, on this week's episode, Thursday night, ICE agents showed up dragging a tiny woman in plastic cuffs. She 'fell down the stairs,' they claimed, and injured her shoulder. The ICE agents were huge men in masks, barking orders and refusing the leave the woman alone with the doctors. Eventually, abruptly, they decided to drag the woman out before her treatment was complete, and when a nurse, Jesse, tries to intervene, they tackle him, cuff him, and drag him away too.

It was extremely upsetting, and -- according to viewers from Minnesota -- extremely accurate.

As you can imagine, MAGA cultists are crying and screaming about the episode, which was filmed months ago, way before Minnesota kicked off. I doubt any of those throwing tantrums actually watch the Pitt, which is really for people who are smarter than most MAGAs. (I mean, who isn't smarter than a Trump supporter at this point?) But they're offended and this is treason and also propaganda.

Weirdo losers. Let's hope they shut up and faded into rightful obscurity post-Midterms.

ETA: See also this.

Spring Arrives

Spring is arriving in Fayetteville just in time for Spring Break. All the flowering trees are flowering; all the other trees are putting out bright green leaves. The grass is coming up silky and thick and green as the leaves.

Today we're expecting a high of 90, which is a record high for this date. Same tomorrow. After that, it might cool off (like, highs in the 70s) for a little while.

The kid and his husband are flying to Maryland to visit friends there. I'm babysitting one of my grandcats while they're gone. 

What are my plans for Spring Break? I'm going to write a lot and read a lot and take the dog to the dog park. Maybe Dr Skull and I will have lunch at a fancy restaurant one day.

I'm living in paradise.

Evangelical Cultists and Pedophilia

Another Duggar son has been arrested for sexually assaulting a child.

At some point, we have to recognize that Christian Cultists are a true danger to children and act accordingly.

ETA: Yes, this is slightly ironic. It's what Christian Cultists say whenever someone even tangentially related to or involved with a trans person commits a crime. Though it is worth noting that far more "Christians" commit crimes, sexually assault children, and shoot people to death than anyone trans or trans-adjacent does. Also more white cis men. 

The advice, by the way, from the Christian Cult on how to stop your sons from sexually assaulting their siblings and other small children? Don't let boys change diapers, make sure your small children don't run around naked after their baths, and teach your tiny daughters how to wear dresses without being 'immodest.' These are children under the age of three, by the way. How *do* we keep young men from sexually assaulting infants? It's a puzzler.

My Actual Birthday

It's today! I can't believe how old I am. Or rather, I can't believe how young being 66 seems. I remember at 16 thinking 33 was old. Ha!

Anyway, here is an update on what being old is like:

Every day, something new aches. Right now it's the tendon I bruised during the snow storm and also my spine. ("My spiiiine!" I cry often.) A week ago it was my hip, after I slept on it a little too long one night. Sleeping! Sleeping gives me injuries now.

I wake up early now. Not at five a.m. as I was when we first moved here, but I'm up and dressed by 7:30 most days. Partly this is the dog, who begins demanding his walk around 7:00. But also it's because I'm in bed by 9:30 or ten most nights. Me! Who seldom managed to sleep before 3:00 or 4:00 a.m.!

I'm eating a lot more cake than I used to. I'm sure this isn't good for me, but on the other hand, who's going to stop me?

I spend a lot of time in doctor's offices. Mostly this is for Dr Skull's appointments, but some are also for me.

I take exercises as seriously as I did when I was 30, when I ran a couple miles every day and also took my dog for a three mile walk most days. Some of my aches arise from this, but most are because I'm ooooold.

I love being retired. Day after day with nothing planned. I lie on the couch and read books. I take the dog for at least two walks a day. I go to the library. I write whenever and as much as I like. I never have to teach composition again. There's plenty of time to do laundry and the dishes. (It's amazing how much less annoying dishes and the laundry are when you aren't exhausted and also you have plenty of time.)

I am extremely glad I don't have to depend solely on my social security. Medicare, on the other hand, is wonderful. I got a lengthy statement in the mail yesterday for all of Dr Skull's home health care, and the big news was on page one: "Amount you may owe: $0.00."

Granted, this is only because we can afford to pay for Part B and Part G, but still.

I'm liking being 66 a lot, I guess is the conclusion here. May it long continue.

He just wants to sit in my lap all day long, is that so much to ask?

It's My Birthday

 Well, not until tomorrow. But we had a party yesterday, with order-in Italian and this:

A leaning-tower of carrot cake, which I made my own self, since Dr Skull cannot make cakes at the moment. I am not a fifth-generation baker, as you can probably tell. Still, it was tasty. The cream cheese frosting was especially good.

The kid and his husband and one of their grad school friends came over; also Uncle Charger. We had a good time. Next week is the kid's spring break and he and his husband are flying off to Maryland to visit friends. Maryland is where the kid plans to move if the situation does not improve in Arkansas.

The kid painted this for my birthday:

Jasper and my little cat Junti, may her memory be a blessing, cuddling together for once.

It was 20 degrees and wimdy when I took the dog to the park this morning. There were two big dogs there so he had someone to run with.