Many years ago, when Dan and I were young and hopeful — let’s see, carry the nine and make faces at the calendar… it was well before older son was born, so probably around 37 years ago? — Dan had a job interview near his parents. Since at the time we lived more than 12 hour drive away, we stayed with them. And since Dan hadn’t got a new suit in something like six years (and the suit got actual wear back then. Also he’d got it before we were married, and he hadn’t trained his taste, really) we went out and blew our meager budget on a very nice suit for him.

His mother was furious at this. She insisted we should have spent half the price on the suit for him, the other half in a similarly upscale outfit for me. Now, part of this was feminist rats in her head. But part was that she was obsessively worried about what would happen if, when they were seriously considering him, they invited us out somewhere so they could meet me too.

The idea that this was a thing baffled both Dan and I. This was the eighties. Most of our friends were working various temporary and makeshift jobs, and even those like Dan who worked in a tech avocation weren’t exactly socializing with the boss.

Because I don’t like things I can’t understand, I thought about it. A lot. And I realized that there were a lot of plots in old sitcoms about bringing the boss to dinner. And even homespun humor by housewives books talked about the anxiety of meeting the bosses, etc. This for positions that weren’t exactly VIP.

I was therefore forced to believe that at some point this was a thing. And the point had to be in the twenty year window after WWII when my MIL’s ideas of the world were being set in stone.

This also made it very clear why our attempts at making headway in life made no sense whatsoever to her generation. Both his parents and mine (with the added flip that mine were in a completely different culture) kept giving us advice that amounted to “Well, just tell the boss you want a 200% raise, and then sit back and spend the money” and then being incredibly upset we didn’t do it. (This wasn’t literally their advice, but a lot was d*mn close.) The fact that if we’d done that we’d have ended up fired or worse referred to mental health professionals didn’t make a dent, because they KNEW what we should do.

Of course, we came into the job market in the early eighties when not only were things falling apart and not fully recovered from the Carter plague years, but new tech was already starting to upend the market. And the boomers having decided to cut their hair and go to work had taken most of the positions we might have gotten, and–

Look, I’m not going to compare misery with the current generation. We’d lose. We came into a market with expensive houses, but not ludicrously expensive. We had trouble finding jobs, but at least temp work… worked. it wasn’t retail. And retail, as it was, (I did it as my first job) wasn’t being run by people too stupid to realize they’re shooting themselves in the foot with the hours they set for employees and the way they run the work schedules.

But that said, there was no clear path to get where we wanted to go. There was no path for me, of course, because I was told again and again publishing was no longer viable. No one read. You couldn’t make a living in it. And every way to break in was now moot. Write short stories first? It was harder to break into short stories than into novels. Submit cold? No one was reading it. Go through agent? Most agents now had the slush pile of publishers of old, so if not impossible, it was almost impossible. People kept telling me to attend cons, which was correct, except for the fact that we were broke and had no access to the con circuit (as in, we had no clue where to find out if they were happening) because neither of us grew up in the culture.

Then there was Dan, with his degree in number theory, working at the thing he learned on the side for grins and giggles: Programing. In the eighties and early nineties. It was part insanity, part scam, and bosses expected you to live to work. The idea of having a life, much less a marriage seemed to not occur to them. (True fact, Christmas eve 1993 Dan’s supervisor was confused he was leaving work early. When Dan pointed out he had to buy a gift for his 2 year old kid, because HE’D WORKED STRAIGHT THROUGH THE LAST FOUR WEEKENDS, his boss seemed puzzled. After all…. wait? Kid? When did codemonkeys start having kids?) And we again saw no “path” to go anywhere.

There was no road. And yet…. We kept doing, finding, and since there was no plausible road, we tried the implausible, the crazy, sometimes the absurd. We still are, honestly.

I’m not holding us up as a pattern. We are too risk averse, and only jump when the fire is starting to choke us. Which means by the time we jump we’re out of resources and end up in absurdly tight situations monetarily speaking. And I value security far more than I should.

BUT we still had to jump, because there was no road, and the bridge was out. And some of those jumps worked, and we could get a little ahead.

Everyone I know my age to about 5 to 6 years older to two years younger, the weird micro generation wedged between boomers and x who certainly aren’t boomers though some have some characteristics (look, if Zillenials get a name, can we be BooX? Let’s socialize it.) took the weirdest approach to career. Very few of us work in the field we majored in, where we thought our career would be. And even fewer work in the field where were started out. Or even the second of those. Our “careers” so called resemble a drunkard’s walk more than anything else. And yet, for all that, we didn’t do badly, as a group. Most of us are okay.

And as invidious as the situation the young people of today find themselves in, I think they’ll be okay too. At least if we can get over the effects of the Autopen-plague.

Look… It’s like this — the biggest thing holding them back right now is the illusion that there is or there should be a road to success. That there is a path that, if you follow it, will deliver rewards like clockwork. If you only do what you’re supposed to.

As my assistant pointed out, when I was talking to her about it, there used to be paths. The paths, traditionally, through history, were to apprentice with your dad, and eventually get into the same job. Some people were even very happy this way, and families developed high influence in certain fields.

If you were less affluent, or you know, like Leonardo DaVinci, a bastard and therefore couldn’t be say a lawyer, like Leonardo couldn’t, then you were more or less indentured to a master in some trade. It then was supposed to work like following your dad’s footpath. You learned from the master and eventually became a master yourself, and you had all the contacts and knew how things were done.

This worked for centuries, until the renaissance and the industrial revolution, and accelerating technological innovation made it non-viable.

But note it worked for values of working. It lent a certain rigidity to the advance of society, since anyone with any knowledge “knew how things had always been done” and also … well. I wouldn’t have liked my mom’s job. Utterly unqualified for it. Or my dad’s. My mind wouldn’t bend to the math, and who the heck is that interested in textiles, even?

For a moment, briefly, there was a path again after WWII. When the GI bill allowed people to go to college and fill positions in a crazily revving up economy, in ever-growing top heavy associations, both government and corporations, there was that path. “Go to college and work hard” And you’d end up with the key to the executive bathroom and eventually a secure retirement.

By the time we entered the work force THAT was dissolving. A college degree was slightly more useful than today, but not nearly a guarantee of “A good job.” So we had to improvise.

And the things that we improvised (let alone the people before us) accelerated tech yet more, causing upheaval where I never thought to see it. If I’d stuck with my original profession I’d now be out of a job. AI can do scientific translation much faster than I could at my peak, and frankly, the person who needs to check it over doesn’t have to be a senior translator paid a bazillion. You can have a relatively young and underpaid person doing it…. And I have to tell you, honestly, that is the one job I never thought would be affected. Yet, here we are.

So the kids are trying to get a foothold while the traditional job market as such as hit an iceberg and is listing dangerously. The orchestra still plays on, but there is no room in the lifeboats.

The metaphor is the one I used when all of my contemporaries (seemed like) got fired in 2003 partly as the aftershock of the horrible post 9/11 quarter (because bad sales are always the author’s fault, of course!) My first career also foundered, but I rapid fired enough proposals that, while there was no room for me in the lifeboat, I was floating on the grand piano. (For the record, one of the cooks of the Titanic survived that way. Apparently he had drunk so much alcohol that despite having swam to the grand piano, he didn’t die of hypothermia. There is a metaphor in that too. Like most things that worked in my path to my present career, being a little drunk (or in my case just desperate. I don’t really drink much. Maybe three times a year and not enough to register) helps.)

But first, if you’re a young one (At this point for me that’s anyone under 50) you must rid yourself of the idea that there is a road. Or in the metaphor, the idea the voyage will go on, as promised. Or even that you’ll fall into a relatively secure path like a lifeboat.

There are no roads. There are no paths. If you keep insisting on staying on the path and doing what should work, you’ll either stagnate or worse.

I’m very sorry if you’re as risk averse as I am. Yes, your immune system will hate you. (We’re now trying to solve damage of decades!) BUT you must scout out a new way to get where you want. You must think of all the wild ways to get there, and be ever alert for an opportunity, no matter how small. And always, always, be aware of where innovation is, and try to go with it, to find what new step has just formed in the every protean situation and take advantage of it.

The Titanic metaphor fails in that — unlike traditional publishing’s slow but inevitable journey — technology and economics haven’t suffered a fatal disaster. The turmoil is caused by catastrophic innovation.

When you’re trying to find your way amid shards of opportunity and rumors of prosperity, it might seem like a distinction without a difference. But there is a difference.

Unless things go really really wrong in a political sense in the next ten years (And honestly I think it can’t happen. It might happen for two or even four, but not all ten.) and politics throttles economics aborning, we are on the verge of an explosion of opportunity and innovation.

Which means things are opening up, not closing down. It’s just they’re opening up in ways no one was trained to see.

First you need to read yourselves of the idea that there is a path, an order, a way to get where you want to go. Or even that where you want to go will be there when you get there.

Instead, do what you can, what you’re good at, what you can learn to be good at, and do it unreservedly, with gusto, all the while scouting out the next step, the next opportunity.

Where we’re going, we don’t need roads. Which is good, because there aren’t any.

Which is why Americans are uniquely qualified to survive and thrive in this. Chaos is our native state.

Pull up your bootstraps, keep your eyes peeled. Go!

2026 Blog Fundraiser!

Hi. This blog doesn’t have ads (you might have noticed.) And unfortunately no one gives me a grant to write here, seven days a week, give or take (for values of “write.” Mechanically and time-wise the meme post is brutal.) Never did. Probably because I’m not the sort of blogger that USAID would fund. I like the USA too much.

Also, like most bloggers to the right of Lenin, I have paid a steep price (as has my whole family) because I stepped out of the shadows. Yes, even I, in this little blog.

This is not a complaint, and it’s not your fault. I chose to do it. (Though I’ll say I never thought things would get this crazy.) It is however a fact of life. Just as the blog is a third career, competing with the paying one (writing) the the unpaid one (cleaning and handywoman.)

Which is why after resisting it for years, I do an annual fundraiser. (I have so much psychological trouble with this, that if it were only for me, I wouldn’t bother, but frankly Dan and even the boys deserve some compensation for the years they’ve shared me with the blog.) This is not an emergency. I won’t say we’re swimming in dough, but we do know where the next meal and mortgage payment are coming from. SO PLEASE DON’T HURT YOURSELF TO CONTRIBUTE. And I’m not threatening to quit blogging. I will quit when and if I feel I can, but this year is not even the eve of that time. So, not demanding you give.

However, anything you can give without hurting yourself, is much appreciated.

If you wish to donate: There is a Give Send Go fundraiser for this specific fundraiser set up. Here is a Paypal Me Link if you prefer that. (Yes, I know. Paypal, but for now, they’re behaving.) If you have a monthly donation setup to the permanent Give Send Go, that is still working and thank you! There are also two substacks you can subscribe to. One is on the side bar of the blog, the other is supposed to be a newsletter, as well as giving you chapters of the current work in progress if you become a paid subscriber. It takes cards. For snail mail: Sarah Hoyt 304 S Jones Blvd #6771 Las Vegas, NV 89107

And if you want to read the whole appeal, it’s here: Toss A Coin To Your Blogger, Oh Readers of Plenty.

The purpose of this post isn’t to complain about Grokpedia. Look, I wont’ deny there’s a mini rant on that, because it unwittingly called me stupid and WORSE it called me OLD which at my age is VERY sensitive. It also utterly failed to get real cultural differences. However the point is where Grok learned this nonsense, which is US. And also how this nonsense causes problems and poisons minds.

So — does a little dance — rant first, explanation after.

My husband, who for some reason believes annoying me is as good as exercise by raising my heart rate, went trolling Grokpedia, which I’ll grant it, is less biased than Wikipedia. What it is is a fabulist of the first order, creating “facts” by taking things out of context and weaving “just so” stories around them.

For instance, it confidently assures all and sundry that my biggest influences were Ursula Le Guin, Joan Vinge (!) and a third woman whose name I can’t even remember now, and whom I might in fact never have read, just due to the vagaries of when books were available.

Okay, fine, all of you who are groaning and saying “Ursula Le Guin is responsible for you being a science fiction writer, woman!” are ABSOLUTELY RIGHT. But not the way Grok intended. Look, annoying someone so much they become writers is not the same as influencing how they write. None of that makes any sense.

Do I know where Grok got that bullshit? Well, yes, yes, I do. You see, it made up a little just-so story to go with it. According to it, my brother had me read these women so that I knew it was okay for women to write science fiction, and to encourage my ambition to write which was not a profession for women “under the Salazar regime.”

PEOPLE. That gigantic groan that just made the entire Western US tremble was not the ghost of dinosaurs, screaming from their fossil formations. That was in fact me, myself and I.

How and where do I start? That story above is so wrong it’s not even wrong. It’s a parallel reality where the moon is made of green cheese and Indy plays the violin in an orchestra.

First, my brother was NOT trying to encourage me to read science fiction. (Much less write it. My family had long accepted that I would at some point write, but they expected I would, like the rest of the family, write POETRY, which is an acceptable hobby for everyone in Portugal. The country doesn’t have a large enough population to sustain FICTION writing as a profession, so hobby was what they expected.) He was in fact — poor man — trying to hide science fiction books from me as at my age (the person who loaned him books reminded me recently — he found me on FB — that I was 9 not 11 as I’ve been ASSUMING) he thought they’d confuse me. (They did. But not more than history books or adventures in other continents did. It was glorious.) Also, because some of them were… uh…. spicy. (I didn’t get most of the spice. Like kids don’t.)

When he failed at this endeavor, he tried to control the books I got my greedy little mitts on, by not bringing the spicy/weirder ones home. By then it was much too late because I’d started taking the train to the city and READING SCIENCE FICTION BOOKS BY STANDING UP IN THE BOOK STORE NEAR THE SPINNER RACK UNTIL CHASED OUT. Then coming back the next day.

By the time I was twelve, I was blowing my birthday money on science fiction unless mom caught me first and spent it on useless stuff like shoes. By the time I was fourteen and engaged in various low-paying but paying gigs, my brother gave up and went halves on me on books, when we were both semi-broke. (Yes, pooling your resources to buy the equivalent of a $5 book is pathetic. Thou shalt most certainly DEAL.)

But…. did he then try to encourage me to read female science fiction authors?

Uh….. so, this is where Grok thinks I’m stupid and need to see someone like me doing something before I try it. This is the kind of bizarre affliction I never even UNDERSTOOD. People, I did things because I was bored. I often tried things I didn’t think were possible at all. Because they looked interesting.

Does the woman born in a small rural village in Portugal who came to the US and became a fiction writer in her THIRD LANGUAGE look to you like someone who sits around waiting to be “represented” in an endeavor so she knows it’s societally approved of and she can do it?

In fact, ladies, gentlemen and small pterodactyls, do I look like I ever gave a fig about whether anything I wanted to do, from whom I married to how I dress, to my hobbies, passions or profession, was something society — ANY SOCIETY — approved of?

Look, if I’d done what was approved of in Portugal when I was a kid, I’d be much better at crochet (my one womanly gift. Okay, crosstitch too, though that might fall under therapy against anxiety), I’d be passionately interested in telenovelas (they were radio novelas, but trust me, same same), I’d engage in a lot of celebrity gossip. Oh, and I’d have MAYBE because I was “smart” gone through ninth grade, then got out to do something societally approved of like secretary or clerk, until I married someone who lived not very far away.

This had nothing to do with Salazar (more on that later) in any way, shape or purple nothing. It has to do with Portuguese culture. The EU has made a lot of it go underground and it’s not spoken of openly, but I’d be shocked if women are considered as smart as men. And a bookish woman is an abomination. AND a woman who is interested in geeky stuff will find a way to disguise it, because she’ll be under suspicion of not being quite straight. Now in my time, before heavy indoctrination by the EU, this was more so. With bells on. I ROUTINELY got told by people including family members and teachers that I was in no way as smart as a boy and would only hurt myself trying to be. (People like my brother stopped saying it after a while. My dad never did. And mom advised me to PRETEND not to be as smart as boys because otherwise I’d only invite trouble.) I didn’t care probably because of a touch of the tisms, but also because I WAS BORED and just wanted to do things that looked interesting.

This gets to where Grok is calling me old. People, I was SIX when Salazar died. I was 11 when his successor was toppled by the international socialists. (Some other AI thought I approved of the Salazar regime because I compared it to FDR’s. THAT was a leap. I did compare it to FDR’s (without the minimal holding back FDR had due to our system of government) because he cribbed FDR’s speeches, even, for crying out loud. In no way did I mean to imply that made it non national-socialist or good. As far as I’m concerned both Salazar and FDR were national socialists and to hell with them.) This doesn’t mean I approved of the international socialists that followed, on account of they sold out millions of people in the Portuguese African colonies to the USSR and their Cuban mercenaries, and filled mass graves (As communists always do) and also made my teenage life a misery, due to my tendency to say exactly what I think to teachers who are spewing indoctrination. The later is a minor issue compared to the other crap they were doing, but very close and personal.

Now do I know where Grok got all this load of crap? Oh, yeah. I know. Because during SP I pointed out I’m tired of people trying to claim that women weren’t in science fiction till yesterday, and pointed out I knew these female writers from early on when I WAS A KID. Which it then confabulated with my complaints about sexism while I was growing up (to the extent I noticed it, which to be fair, wasn’t much, it bothered me. I tended to bowl over any discouragement or even shouts to stop, but it bothered me) and with the fact my brother introduced me to SF/F (more or less inadvertently) and wove it into this just so tale. The Salazar thing is probably because the idiots on the left attribute all sexism to right-wing (which Salazar wasn’t anymore than FDR was, not AMERICAN right wing. Though granted European right wing) regimes and to the fact some bright bulb thought I’d come here to “escape” when the national socialist regime fell. At eleven. By myself. (What can I say. I’m precocious. I headed to the beach, got some duck-shaped water-wings, and floated all the way across the Atlantic. Needs must, because I STILL can’t swim.)

(Note, I’d be proud and happy if Grok reported this as the way I came to America. Mostly because it’s absurd.)

Before I get to the point beyond the rant: the first woman writer that had ANY impact on my reading (I don’t know how much impact she had on my writing, if any) was Anne McCaffrey, because I was of an age (late teens early twenties) when she was published in Portugal to fall headlong into Pern. Before that I read women like I read men or small purple dinosaurs. I didn’t care, so long as it was words on the page. Heck, I preferred science fiction, but I read everything else too.

In fact, if you’re going to be keeping score, the female writers I read most in my early to late teens were Pearl S. Buck and Agatha Christie, one slowly giving way to the other, neither in science fiction and only Agatha Christie rivaling the spaceship on the cover books.

My favorite authors for the largest part of my growing up were, to no one’s surprise, Robert A. Heinlein, followed at a slight trailing distance by Simak (look, deal) and Bradbury, and at a longer loping distance by Poul Anderson and Phil Dick. Further back and mostly falling under “I’ll read their book if available” were Van Vogt, Asimov and a dozen people I can’t call to mind RIGHT NOW because coffee still hasn’t had any noticeable effect, for some reason. (A very busy weekend is my guess at the reason.)

Biggest influences? Robert A. Heinlein. And as an adult, a bunch of other people, including Pratchett. (And Pournelle.) My reading has always been wide and varied and I steal story telling tricks from everyone, including real history.

Right, now the relevant part of this: Why did Grok create this bizarre just-so story out of a reality that didn’t even vaguely corresponds to its story? Because Grok learned confabulation from humans. When faced with dispersed and unclear facts, it constructs a just-so story. As humans do.

So, you know, Portuguese born science fiction writer mentioned her brother introduced her to science fiction, and she mentions these female writers. Also, the other side says she ran here when Salazar’s regime fell. AHA! this was why her brother introduced her to female writers.

People do this ALL THE TIME. Continuously. With relish (and sometimes mustard.) Not just the left, but every human does it. About things that are either obscure, or which they don’t want to spend months researching. We get hold of three or four disparate facts and run with them into a “just so story” that explains EVERYTHING.

This is how we get people assuring us that say Neanderthals had no sense of direction at all. Now I know that’s partly from brain structures, but as older daughter in law pointed out, they colonized all of Europe for a long time, and surely they couldn’t have moved around as a vast pack, afraid to lose the rest of the tribe. They had to go hunting and then come home after all.

This is how Marija Gimbutas invented an entirely female paradise before men dastardly invented patriarchy. The entire story falls to pieces if you poke it and not just because she confused bull’s heads with uteri, but because it has no internal psychological sense (like, if a matriarchal society was so perfect, why did men overthrow it? It’s not like they were a separate species.) Sure all of it is based on shards, misinterpreted figures and a lot of wishful thinking. BUT it’s a just so story and it made people who wanted to believe in mythical women who were communal, giving, and not in the slightest human, very happy.

This is how, of course, Marx constructed his theory which had nothing to do with real economics, and was 99% the wishful thinking of a grifter consumed by envy.

This is how Antonio Gramsci retconned Marxism to apply to people who could tan and who, unlike those traitors of the working class who chose country over class in WWI were NATURAL communist, and therefore the future.

None of it makes sense, if you think it applies to real humans. Real humans don’t think a certain way because they tan a certain color.

BUT they’re just so stories and because humans like just so stories, they eat them up with a spoon. Each of these bits of nonsense confuse a lot of people and make them believe horrible things and commit murder and worse (yes, there is worse) under the grip of just so stories.

90% or sometimes more of what I do here at ATH is poking holes in just-so stories that are being pushed as psy-ops to make you act in ways that aren’t good for you (or the world, or anyone.)

Every time you’re presented with a story, be it for why you shouldn’t allow data centers, why AI is going to take all your jobs, why the socialists will win forever, why we’re all gonna DIIIIIIIE, etc. etc. etc. ask yourself “How would this story play if happened to REAL humans who are actual individuals and don’t act in prescribed ways?” I mean I won’t request that you imagine everyone in the story is like me, because that’s highly unlikely. But I hate to tell you how much even one person with a touch of the tisms and no idea of HOW he/she’s supposed to act, let alone any intention of obeying can screw up a just-so story. And my brothers and sisters in tism are everywhere in the world and everywhen in history.

The left routinely makes the mistake of assuming people are vast groups of widgets. The right does too, until someone points out it makes no sense.

Because humans and clankers have a lot in common when it comes to Just-So stories. And all of it p*sses me off. Which must be my justification for this rant.

That and telling you to do what my mom complained I always did: When a story is too perfect, for the love of heaven, poke holes in it. The life you save might be your own. The liberty you save might be all of ours.

ARGH. UPDATE: I forgot to mention I’m conducting this blog’s fundraiser till the 15th (which will be fun since it’s a day after surgery. Never mind).

DAY SIX OF ACCORDING TO HOYT’S ANNUAL FUNDRAISER.

(Note there wasn’t one for Christmas last year, as NML did well enough I skipped the thing that makes me uncomfortable.)

Jerry Pournelle was the first person to insist what I do here has value and I should be paid. I ignored him because it makes me uncomfortable. However, as this blog and responsibilities associated with it have grown, my family thinks I owe it to them to allow it to pay at least a fraction of what a job that eats this much of time would.

So, if you find value in the blog, please contribute commensurately, understanding this has cost me not just in time and worry (not so long ago credible worry I’d be debanked or worse) but also in exposure to some very nasty people for both me and my entire family. (As I pointed out sometime ago when people were complaining that Glenn Reynolds doesn’t “need” money and shouldn’t fundraise, every blogger, large or small, to the right of Lenin has paid a price for what he or she does. And some of it is monetary. The rest is honestly probably ultimately medical. Fundraising can’t compensate for this, but it at least helps our families cope.)

If you wish to donate: There is a Give Send Go fundraiser for this specific fundraiser set up. Here is a Paypal Me Link if you prefer that. (Yes, I know. Paypal, but for now, they’re behaving.) If you have a monthly donation setup to the permanent Give Send Go, that is still working and thank you! There are also two substacks you can subscribe to. One is on the side bar of the blog, the other is supposed to be a newsletter, as well as giving you chapters of the current work in progress if you become a paid subscriber. It takes cards. For snail mail: Sarah Hoyt 304 S Jones Blvd #6771 Las Vegas, NV 89107

IF YOU WANT THE FULL SPIEL AND EXPLANATION IT’S HERE: Toss A Coin To Your Blogger, Oh Readers of Plenty

If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. By clicking through and buying (anything book-related, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE.*Note that I haven’t read most of these books (my reading is eclectic and “craving led”,) and apply the usual cautions to buying. I reserve the right not to run any submission, if cover, blurb or anything else made me decide not to, at my sole discretion. Remember though all of these submissions are from people willing to be associated with this blog. So if you’re trying to buy from people who don’t hate you, this is a good place to start.– SAH

FIRST OF ALL WITH A THANK YOU TO DOC N, FOR BEING A GOOD SPORT ABOUT MY USING ONE OF HIS COMICS AS A MEME: His webcomic. And his scifi story arc.

FROM SARAH HOYT’S INSUFFERABLE SELF PROMOTION: Witch’s Daughter.

Some letters come from the living. Some come from the dead. This one comes with a formula that turns a rowboat into a miracle.

Seventeen-year-old Lord Michael Ainsling — youngest brother of the Duke of Darkwater, builder of mechanical marvels, survivor of fairyland — receives a letter from a man sixteen years dead. The inventor Tristram Blakley has not perished; he has been imprisoned by his own genius and begs the one mind in all of Avalon brilliant enough to understand his work to set him free. All Michael has to do is find seven missing brothers first and walk a magical path..

Fifteen-year-old Albinia Blakley has spent her whole life under her mother’s iron thumb — and her mother is a witch. The day Al finally escapes down a rope of knotted sheets, she lands in a world she doesn’t recognize, with no money, no magic kit, and no idea that the stranger who catches her is about to become her greatest ally.

Together, a girl with more secrets than she knows and a boy who builds machines that try to murder him must outwit a sorceress, navigate the treacherous courts of Fairyland, and unravel an enchantment years in the making — before a family is lost for good.

Witch’s Daughter is a gaslamp fantasy brimming with wit, warmth, and wonder, for readers who love their magic wrapped in velvet and their adventures served with morning tea.

FROM ALMA T. C. BOYKIN: The Bard’s Curse: Bard’s Song Book One

In a world where words are power, a bard’s curse weighs heavy on those who draw his wrath.

Tuathal, master bard and prince of two realms, journeys north to his half-brother’s court. When Pyder of the Ford breaks the laws of hospitality, Tuathal’s satire brings ruin in its wake. But more than just righteous anger moves over field and forest. What began as an insult reveals far darker things moving in the realm Fiachta NoDomnail, low king of the Dunalaid.

A wandering bard and prince, Tuathal faces a war that will burn down all that his kindred have built. To stop it and lift a bard’s curse may cost more than he is willing to pay.

Words have power, but darker powers than those of man also have a say.

FROM TALEENA SINCLAIR: A Death In Good Society: A John Recht Novel (John Recht Novels Book 1)

A Death in Good Society

A John Recht Mystery
by Taleena Sinclair

When the body of Maire Beaufort, society’s adored “Angel of Waldfeld,” is found propped against a canal wall in the city’s most fashionable quarter, her death is more than just a tragedy; it threatens to ignite a diplomatic crisis.

Captain John Recht, former intelligence officer, is summoned from retirement to investigate on the heels of burying his wife. What begins as a straightforward murder quickly unravels into a labyrinth of deception, ambition, and betrayal. Powerful families are at odds, the palace whispers of scandal, and the Angel is at the center of it all.

As John and his trusted allies pursue truth through the salons and alleyways of a city built on secrets, they discover that the crime is only the first move in a much larger game—one that could topple governments and destroy the beginnings of John’s new life.

Set in the richly imagined city of Waldfeld, John Recht must discover just who is responsible for A Death In Good Society.

For readers of Patrick O’Brian, C.J. Sansom, and Dorothy Sayers.

FROM ROSS HATHAWAY: The Mything Road: The Bureau of Imaginary Problems 2

Reality is held together by stories.
Someone just put them up for a vote.

Agent Mara Quill expected paperwork, containment protocols, and maybe a mildly haunted bridge.

Instead, she found a miniature golf course running a continent-spanning network of cryptids, myths, and living infrastructure—controlled by a windmill that requires her to vote on reality itself.

Each decision expands the system.
Each connection strengthens it.
Each story becomes part of something larger.

And it’s working.

Forests answer. Rivers align. Mountains approve. Creatures once dismissed as folklore take their place like they’ve been waiting for someone to start the meeting. Because they have.

Then something notices. The Devourer does not attack cities or armies.
It consumes structure. It erases meaning. It unravels the connections that make reality hold together.

And now it has found a network built entirely out of those connections.

Humanity’s response?

Deploy everything.

Ancient myths once carved into stone.
Legends whispered across generations.
Cryptids that refuse to be forgotten.

And, because this is still technically a government operation—Forms.

Thousands of them. Binding. Defining. Weaponized paperwork that can anchor reality just long enough to hold the line.

As interdimensional networks begin to connect, foreign agencies scramble, and something cold and ancient steps through to observe, Mara Quill realizes the truth:

This is not a new system.

This is not a new war.

This is something humanity has been building, defending, and remembering for longer than history admits.

The bridges are not roads. They are conversations.

And this one has just turned into a battlefield.

FROM ERIC W. COWPER: The Cough Is Loose (Bougie Apocalypse Book 1)

When the Cough starts dropping people in the streets, most folks panic.

Jackson “Jack” Harlan and his wife Raych make coffee.

Retired Army Sergeant Major Jack always knew something like this could happen. While society unravels overnight, he and Raych load the white 4Runner, fire up the Coleman stove, and stick to the plan: proper percolator coffee, hot ham and beans, and controlled violence when necessary.

Armed with enough guns and ammo for a small army and an ironclad commitment to not becoming savages, Jack and Raych fight their way out of the suburbs, pick up fellow survivors, and lay down the golden rule that will define their apocalypse:

“We shoot the Walkers… then we go back to the beans.”

A serialized military-flavored post-apocalyptic pulp story with World War Z realism, Zombieland humor, and stubborn civilization in the face of collapse. Because even when the dead start walking, breakfast doesn’t cook itself.

FROM DECLAN FINN: Cross Over (Honeymoon from Hell Book 4)

Amanda Colt and Marco Catalano’s original honeymoon has been extended by an all-expense paid trip to Rome. After fighting off vampires, wendigos, elves, necromancers and mad scientists, the Vatican Ninjas have decided to add to their training.

There is one other students will cross their path: NYPD Detective Thomas Nolan. He has had his own share of nightmare encounters with the forces of darkness.

But devilish things are afoot in Rome. Noises are coming from the catacombs. A film crew is afoul with monsters.

When these three cross over to join forces, they just have to make certain they’re not going to cross over for good.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Soul Inheritance

Fresh out of college, Evelyn Alexander’s first order of business was finding a place to live. One she could afford on her small inheritance before her job started. None of the local rental agencies had anything in her price range, but…she found a small Victorian house for sale, the only one mostly untouched in a decaying neighborhood of subdivided rental houses.

Complete with a ghost. A very attractive ghost. A very attractive ghost with a strong dislike of the idea of anyone changing his house. So, of course, she bought it. A cranky ghost for a roommate was still a better option than the tiny studio with criminal neighbors.

Between working to restore her new house, embezzlement at work and a murder next door, Evelyn has her hands full. As she works to get on her feet as a productive adult (and not fall in love with a ghost she can’t have), the problems start to snowball. And it’s only compounded by learning that her house has far more secrets than just a single, cranky (attractive) ghost…

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: She Dreams Day and Night

Nancy White they called her, a good, solid name for a troubled girl. But she knew her father had called her by another name, before he disappeared through the gate into another world of strange stars and stranger moons. No matter how hard the staff of Hildred House try to force her to forget, she remembers. And longs to reopen the gate, to rejoin her father on that alien shore where cloud-waves break.

FROM JOHN BAILEY: The Parcel On Wren Street: and Other Cases of Richard Fairchild (The Aurigan Conflict)

Commander Richard Fairchild thought retirement would be peaceful.

After a distinguished career as a fighter pilot in the Anglo Fleet, a war injury has left him grounded and living quietly with his sister Margaret. Quietly, however, is not the same thing as peacefully.

When a parcel addressed to another man arrives at the Fairchild residence, Richard notices several small irregularities.

Before the package can be returned, the intended recipient is murdered. What begins as a simple curiosity soon develops into a far-reaching investigation involving secret courier routes, hidden communications, and enemy agents operating throughout the region.

Across twelve interconnected adventures, Richard Fairchild and his companions uncover:
• A mysterious parcel containing hidden star coordinates
• A woman using false identities to gather intelligence
• Secret transmitters concealed in an abandoned manor
• A murder among former military aviators
• Smuggling operations hidden behind legitimate commerce
• Coded musical performances used for espionage
• A passenger who vanished from a starliner without a trace
• The mastermind behind an extensive spy network

Assisted by his practical sister Margaret, the capable Dr. Alice Merriweather, and the increasingly tolerant Inspector Geoffrey Pritchard, Fairchild finds himself drawn into mystery after mystery as clues slowly reveal a larger conspiracy.
Written in the tradition of classic detective fiction, The Parcel on Wren Street and Other Cases of Richard Fairchild combines fair-play mysteries, memorable characters, gentle humor, and science-fiction adventure into a series of puzzles where observation matters more than violence and intelligence proves more valuable than force.

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.

We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.

If you have questions, feel free to to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: FLAG

DAY FIVE OF ACCORDING TO HOYT’S ANNUAL FUNDRAISER!

This blog is running its annual fundraising drive, so that I can quiet the voices in my head that tell me I might as well do macrame or perhaps take an interest in tiddly winks. (Also because Jerry Pournelle tried to convince me to do this for years, and yeah, I miss him.)

There is a Give Send Go fundraiser for this specific fundraiser set up. Here is a Paypal Me Link if you prefer that. (Yes, I know. Paypal, but for now, they’re behaving.) If you have a monthly donation setup to the permanent Give Send Go, that is still working and thank you! There are also two substacks you can subscribe to. One is on the side bar of the blog, the other is supposed to be a newsletter, as well as giving you chapters of the current work in progress if you become a paid subscriber. It takes cards. For snail mail: Sarah Hoyt 304 S Jones Blvd #6771 Las Vegas, NV 89107

IF YOU WANT THE FULL SPIEL AND EXPLANATION IT’S HERE: Toss A Coin To Your Blogger, Oh Readers of Plenty

Yes, there will probably be memage later, supposing I don’t get distracted by food (I’m highly food oriented, sorry) or watching the sacred musical, but until then, I woke up this morning with a weird thought, because I read a headline last night (I no longer remember what the headline was) and the back brain fermented it, somehow. If I get distracted, you get memage AND promo tomorrow. It’s a bountiful day.

This is what I realized: I’m not going to say “diversity is our strength”. Diversity as presently understood is a weakness. That’s the old Marxist game of dividing people into separate and mutually hostile groups which compete for benefits from the bountiful teat of master government.

That type of diversity is the polar opposite of the focus on the individual and life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that our declaration promises and our Constitution ensures (if followed. Look, that’s been a struggle since before the ink dried.)

But besides those secured promises which of course shall remain and be true, even if the sun and the stars pass away leaving the universe in utter darkness (In this I am an absolutist) this country has achieved something quite wonderful and new in the history of the world, something you might not be quite appreciate, unless you were raised abroad and saw how nationality and culture works abroad.

What America managed, before the Marxists got a hold on our institutions, was to seamlessly integrate people of vastly different cultures in two or three generations with barely a hiccup.

Note that what I am speaking of isn’t even what WE consider different races, but what everyone else has considered different races, and definitely since the founding of this country (and before.)

I was reading a story from the settling of the west, and the notable thing was how Swedes, Germans, English, and Americans met, worked together and the foreigners gradually (and sometimes very fast. I mean I’m not unique. Sometimes it happens in a couple of decades for the original immigrant. Leading to our sacred liberties being loudly defended in weird accents) became as American as anyone else. It wasn’t that people were blind to differences, but that they assumed EVERYONE could be American and would become American, because of course that was the superior way to live.

On the way there, Americans acquired the best habits, words and ideas of the foreigners, while subsuming them and using them in the service of being AMERICAN. This happens nowhere else. Or not easily. When I traveled on European trains in my teens and young twenties, you could still not only tell the independent cultural groups, but also there was considerable animosity between them. I don’t know how it is now with the EU, but when I visit I still see the old divisions and animosities. There is no melding together into one people. Which it still happens here, almost without notice, provided we get the Marxist hold off the heads of the “educated” and the laws and institutions of our nation.

This sets us apart from the history of humanity, and makes us something quite new and wonderful, a promise that humans can eventually go to the stars however many and from wherever we need to be, and form a new polity, or more likely be absorbed into the new polity of America In the Stars.

In a hundred years, let’s look forward to the fireworks display to celebrate the historical independence of the Mother Country and the establishment of the Declaration and the Constitution, those words that set people free. This is why people all over the world want to be Americans and either try to move here or adopt a dog in the manger hatred of America that’s not even plausible, much less realistic. They love us, they hate us, they obsess on use continuously, and can’t believe we never think of them at all.

We never think of them, because we’re busy with more important things. To wit, we have great things to do. Because the future comes from America.

Americans: A people on the way to the stars.

It’s already great and it’s going to be glorious!

THIS BLOG IS HAVING ITS ANNUAL FUNDRAISER: For Give send Go, go here. For paypal go here. For more options and a long explanation of why I fundraise (the last few years, after 15 years of not) other than just “Because Jerry Pournelle ordered me to” and “So my family grumble a little less at early mornings, late nights and working on weekends” (Though that’s part of it!) go here: Toss A Coin To Your Blogger, Oh Readers of Plenty.

Posting 4th of July memes a little early, so you can share your favorites tomorrow!
Tomorrow there might be a regular meme post…. or something else entirely. We’ll see how I greet the day after coffee tomorrow! – SAH

DAY 3 of this blog’s annual fundraiser.

For Give send Go, go here. For paypal go here. For more options and a long explanation of why I fundraise (the last few years, after 15 years of not) other than just “Because Jerry Pournelle ordered me to” and “So my family grumble a little less at early mornings, late nights and working on weekends” (Though that’s part of it!) go here: Toss A Coin To Your Blogger, Oh Readers of Plenty.

Food for the Great Anniversary Festival by Jerry Stratton

The day is passed.—The 4th of July, 1776, will be a memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe it will be celebrated by succeeding generations, as the GREAT ANNIVERSARY FESTIVAL!

That’s how the Morning Chronicle of July 13, 1826, quoted John Adams’s July 3 letter to his wife Abigail. It’s a slight misquote: Adams thought the day of celebration would be July 2, when the Continental Congress voted in favor of independence. Instead, people chose July 4 as the anniversary to celebrate. That was when the Declaration of Independence was approved announcing our independence in terms that were as revolutionary as the revolution itself.

A hundred and fifty years after that misquote, and two hundred years after Adams wrote that letter—that is, in 1976—I and my brothers dressed up as Uncle Sam for our small town’s Independence Day parade. That same year saw the first cookbook I remember my mom using: America’s Bicentennial Cook Book, by the St. Mary’s Altar Society of our church.

Do an eBay search on “bicentennial cookbook” or “1776 1976 cookbook” and there are hundreds of these, for communities across the United States. At the moment I’m writing this I see a wide variety of organizations, from the Conway Junior High PTA of Orlando, Florida through the Hartford (Connecticut) Courant newspaper through the Holy Family Altar Guild of Poland, Ohio—and yes, it’s heavily Polish-influenced, filled with wonderful-looking recipes—through Snyder, Nebraska; Dallas, Texas; the Saint Louis Symphony; the Oklahoma State Fair; the Georgia Power Company; and the Yakima Valley (Washington) District Federation of Women’s Clubs.

Several senior citizens centers, hospitals, even the Congressional Club of Washington, DC, all got into the spirit of ’76 by publishing cookbooks.

One of my favorite snacks in 1976 is also one of my favorite snacks today: oatmeal no bake cookies. Everyone had their own recipe, so I can’t guarantee that my mom used this America’s Bicentennial recipe from Adele Yob at our picnics and reunions that summer. But it is the recipe I use most often today.

Adele Yob’s No-Bake Oatmeal Cookies

• ½ cup butter
• 2 cups sugar
• 4 tbsp cocoa
• ½ cup milk
• 3 cups oatmeal
• 1 tsp vanilla

Mix the butter, sugar, cocoa, and milk in a saucepan. Bring to a boil and boil for one minute, then add the oatmeal and vanilla. Drop quickly from a spoon onto waxed paper.

I’ll be bringing some of these to LibertyCon.

Two years ago for LibertyCon 36 I was inspired by Les Johnson’s LibertyCon 35 side comment, about foods that emit the most positrons, to adapt one of my favorite fudge recipes. Per Les Johnson, I used bananas and brazil nuts, both high positron emitters. The original recipe called for pineapple and pecans, and appeared in the Potter County Home Demonstration Council Bicentennial Cook Book courtesy of Mrs. C.D. Baldwin.

Potter County Hawaiian Fudge

• 2-½ cups sugar
• 1 cup cream
• 8 oz crushed pineapple
• 1 cup pecans
• green coloring

Bring sugar, cream, and pineapple to a boil over medium heat, stirring until blended. Cook until mixture reaches 234°-240° (soft ball).

Remove from heat, add pecans and a few drops of food coloring. Let cool slightly, to about 195°. Beat until creamy. Spread into a buttered or lined 8×8 pan. Score into squares while still warm, and cut when cool.

Whether Hawaiian or Positronic, this is a wonderful fudge. The food coloring is optional, but the fudge is an odd color without it due to the high-temperature cooking of the fruit.

I don’t know how much the country as a whole celebrated the Centennial in 1876. We weren’t that far from the end of the Civil War and were only six years from the last Confederate state’s readmittance to the Union. A search on “1776 1876 cookbooks” on eBay unsurprisingly brings up very few results from that era—such books would be 150 years old this year.

But it was definitely celebrated in Philadelphia. If the various promotional cookbooks of the era are to be believed, everyone involved with food, at least, entered into the competitions that were part of Philadelphia’s 1876 Centennial Exposition, and used that in their promotions.

A search on newspapers.com for “centennial cook book” finds a few advertisements for celebratory collections. Most of them are for Mrs. Ella E. Myers’s Philadelphia-centric 403 page cookbook “and general guide”. Nearly the final hundred pages are dedicated to a pictorial history of Philadelphia with a special focus on locations significant to the Revolution…

…to give each purchaser of this book a little souvenir of our nation’s “Centennial Birthday;” something that may be retained by future posterity as a memento of the grand celebration of this “Centennial Year, 1876.”

I have a copy of this book. It would have been and is an amazing souvenir. It’s also filled with wonderful ideas for food. If you have spare space on your grill, for example, you might take a few tomatoes, cut the stem end out to leave a small divot, and fill the divot with butter, salt, and pepper. At 350° it needs about 50-60 minutes. On a closed grill, adjust to your grill. This is very, very good made in an oven, but it is phenomenal infused with the flavor of grilling over charcoal.

Of interest to food historians, Myers also included an early version of “Saratoga Potato Chips”. But because I enjoy my sweets, one of my favorites from this book is her very quick-to-make German Biscuits.

German Biscuits.

TIME, SIX OR EIGHT MINUTES.

Half a pound of dried flour; five ounces of butter; seven ounces of sugar; two eggs; two dessertspoonsful of cream; peel of a small lemon grated.

Beat five ounces of butter to a cream, and mix in the loaf sugar pounded the grated lemon peel, half a pound of dried flour, and the cream and well-beaten eggs, to form a nice light dough. Mix all well before kneading it, roll it in thin, long, narrow strips, and bake on a tin in a quick oven.

Volume measurements in this era, as opposed to weights, were not generally standardized. For dessert spoons I usually start with two teaspoons as the equivalent. Flour, too, while it is often given in amounts by weight, tended to vary even more than it does today with regard to how much liquid it soaks up. Further, “dried flour” is likely a special kind, perhaps a new kind of packaged flour. The term is only used three times among the hundreds of mentions of flour in Myers’s book.

This is my interpretation of those cookies—and they are cookies. Myers uses the terms “biscuit” and “cake” for what we would call cookies.

German Lemon Cookies

• 7 oz white flour
• 4 oz whole wheat flour
• 5 oz butter
• 7 oz sugar
• 2 eggs, well-beaten
• 4 tsp cream
• grated peel of one lemon

Beat butter until creamy. Beat in the sugar and lemon peel. Stir in the flour. Add the cream and eggs and mix to a light dough. Drop by teaspoons onto greased baking sheet and flatten with a wet fork.
Bake 6-8 minutes at 425° until golden.

I took a few liberties with it; while I don’t know specifically what “dried flour” was, most flour called for in 1876 and even in the late 1700s meant a flour that was closer to our white flour than to our whole wheat flour. I just happen to like whole wheat. For historical accuracy, replace the whole wheat flour with however much white flour you need to get a cookie or biscuit dough consistency.

The women of the First Congregational Church of Marysville, Ohio, also got into the celebration with their Centennial Buckeye Cook Book. This is the second-most-commonly advertised “Centennial Cook Book” in newspapers of the era, at least as archived on newspapers.com. The Women featured this quote on their book’s indicia page:

“Bad dinners go hand in hand with total depravity, while a properly fed man is already half saved.”

Of particular interest from a Centennial perspective is the chapter with “a recipe from the households of the President and each of the Centennial Governors of the States and Territories”.

That was the plan. They received only twenty-six responses, not all of them recipes, and nothing from the President. I have not tried any of them, but looking at them right now Massachusetts Governor Rice’s Rice Cake looks both interesting and indicative of a sense of humor.

What I did try was a heavy-on-black-pepper coleslaw from a Mrs. Hawkins.

CABBAGE SALAD.

Mrs. Hawkins.

Two quarts finely chopped cabbage, two tablespoons salt, two of white sugar, one of black pepper, and a heaping one of ground mustard; rub yolks of four hard boiled eggs until smooth, add half cup butter slightly warmed; mix thoroughly with the cabbage and add teacup good vinegar; serve with whites of the eggs sliced and placed on the salad.

I tend to go lighter on the salt than the original. But then, I have a refrigerator.

Ohio Black Pepper Slaw

• 2 lbs shredded cabbage
• 1-2 tbsp salt
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 1 tbsp black pepper
• 1 tbsp ground mustard
• 4 hard boiled eggs
• ½ cup melted butter
• ¾ cup vinegar

Mix the cabbage, salt, sugar, pepper, and mustard. Mash the egg yolks smooth and mix the butter and yolk thoroughly to make a creamy paste. Stir the yolk and then the vinegar into the cabbage.

Slice the egg whites and toss into the salad. Adjust vinegar, salt, sugar, and pepper as desired.

Also for the Philadelphia Exhibition, the “Women’s Centennial Executive Committee” of Philadelphia solicited recipes for and published, The National Cookery Book of the International Exhibition of 1876. The book is disappointing in that it does not attribute most (or any that I saw) of the recipes. But the solicitation, as printed in the December 2, 1875, Beloit (Wisconsin) Free Press is worthy of remembrance:

It is designed to make this work purely American, excluding, as far as is possible, the receipts common to all nations. The products of our country are more varied than those of other lands, comprising numerous articles in common use at our tables, partially, if not wholly, unknown to the inhabitants of the old world, or used by them only as luxuries. The varieties of climate give to each section its own peculiar products, but the facilities for transportation, which bring to our doors even from far-off California its delicious fruits and vegetables, render the resources of the table common to all, and therefore National.

…

No receipt will be considered too homely, if characteristic of the country. Dishes peculiar to rich and poor—to hunting, fishing, or exploring expeditions, or to camp life, &c., &c., are desired. If comical, and at the same time good, so much the better. Our aim is to give the true savor of American life in all its varieties.

There are several recipes for brown bread in the book, but the recipe submitted by “M.S.A.” by way of the Niles (Michigan) Democrat of January 15, 1876 does not appear to have made it in.

I have been requested to furnish for publication the following recipe for making brown bread. Having used it in my family for years, I pronounce it unapproachable in simplicity and excellence, and am satisfied that every good housewife will number it among her choice recipes. It is certainly worthy a place in the “Centennial Cook Book:” — M.S.A.

3 pints Graham flour; 1 tea cup, or less, of molasses; 1 teaspoon of salt; 1 teaspoon of saleratus; sour milk sufficient to make a stiff batter; steam three or four hours; bake in moderate oven to give a light crust.

I have not tried it; but if you do I’d suggest starting with ¾ cup as the equivalent of a tea cup; and a 1:1.25 ratio for saleratus:baking soda, thus, 1-¼ tsp baking soda—unless, of course, you have saleratus on hand.

M.S.A.’s submission is followed by a notice that it isn’t just fruits and vegetables making their way east from “far-off California”.

A stamp mill with two hammers weighing 200 pounds each has just been put in place for use in the metallurgical department of the Michigan University. Three tons of gold and silver ore are now on the way from California for use in the department.

One of the companies advertising their participation in the Philadelphia Exposition was the Rumford Chemical Works, and their Horsford baking powder. They didn’t call it baking powder except in their awards listing, which included an award from the “Centennial Exhibition, Philadelphia, 1876.”. They called their product a “bread preparation”. It contained a soda and an acid separately, which were mixed together at the time of baking using a special two-sided measuring device that had one side twice as big as the other.

A recipe that grew on me in the few days after I made is not quite as American as apple pie. I was a little disappointed when I first made this apple custard pie. I had it for dessert, and—for someone with my sweet tooth, at least—it’s not really a modern dessert. But it turned out to be a great breakfast treat with a cup of coffee.

APPLE CUSTARD PIE.—Peel sour apples and stew until soft and not much water left in them; then rub thorough a cullender; beat three eggs for each pie to be baked, and put in at the rate of one cup butter and one of sugar for three pies; season with nutmeg.

Less eggs and butter will make a good pie not as rich as above recipe.

My version makes one pie:

Horsford Apple Custard Pie

• 2-½ lbs Granny Smith apples
• ⅓ cup butter
• ⅓ cup sugar
• 3 eggs
• ½ tsp nutmeg
• 2 9-inch pie crusts

Peel, core, and purée apples in food processor until smooth. Stew over medium-low heat until no water pools at bottom when stirring. Or, consider baking the apples whole and using a food mill to get the meat without the core and peel. Let cool.

Blend the ⅓ cup butter into the apple. Blend in the sugar and nutmeg. Beat in the eggs one at a time.

Fill bottom crust with the apple mixture. Layer top crust over, and cut or poke holes for steam vents. Bake at 375° for 45-60 minutes. Cool to room temperature before serving.

Any pastry crust will do. Horsford, of course, wanted you to make their own pie crust, using their baking powder, and you can download the full Horsford Cook-Book as a PDF from my Centennial Meal page to see it. But if you want a pastry from the Founders’ era, “Amelia Simmons” has several in her American Cookery. I especially like her puff paste number 3, although I’ll be using her Royal Paste (number 9) for the cranberry tarts I’ll be bringing to LibertyCon.

Puff Pastes for Tarts.

No. 3. To any quantity of flour, rub in three fourths of it’s weight of butter, (twelve eggs to a peck) rub in one third or half, and roll in the rest.

A later edition amended this recipe:

ERRATA.

Page 29. Puff pastes for tarts, No. 3; for 12 eggs read 6.

In Pastes, the white of eggs only are to be used.

Incorporating the errata and sizing it for a double-crust pie, this is how I make it:

American Paste Number 3

• 10 oz flour
• 8 oz butter (cold)
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 large egg white

Combine flour and salt. Cut in four ounces butter. Mix in egg white by hand until dough barely holds. Form ball and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate one hour along with rolling board.

Flatten dough into rectangle. Divide half remaining butter into six pats, laying three on one side of rectangle. Fold over a third, and lay the remaining three on top, folding the remaining third over.

Roll again to rectangle and repeat with remaining butter. Divide into two squares, wrap, and refrigerate one hour. Press one into disc for 8- or 9-inch pie pan. Fill, and flatten remaining dough for top.

Because it calls for a single egg white, if I only need it for a single-crust pie I store the extra dough in the freezer until I need it. It’s rare for it to need storage for longer than two weeks.

American Cookery was published in 1796, and is the first American cookbook. No one knows who Amelia Simmons was; the only information we have is what is on the cover of American Cookery, and what can be inferred from the text of American Cookery, which is a bit circular from the standpoint of historical evidence. Whenever I read historians trying to describe who Amelia Simmons was, I get the feeling she may also be our first fictional food spokesperson. But regardless of Amelia Simmons’s identity or existence, the opening text of the book is remarkable.

The orphan, tho’ left to the care of virtuous guardians, will find it essentially necessary to have an opinion and determination of her own… It must ever remain a check on the poor solitary orphan, that while those females who have parents, or brothers, or riches, to defend their indiscretions, that the orphan must depend solely upon character.

My metaphor alarm may be overly sensitive, but this sets it off every time I read it. This is as much a description of America at the time—just seven years from the Constitution and only five from the completion of the Bill of Rights—as it is of a generic “poor solitary orphan”.

Also of interest is how different the methods in this book are from modern ones. If you don’t, as many refrigerator manufacturers did, consider refrigeration to be cooking, then cooking changed far more between 1796 and 1876 than between 1876 and today.

One of those early advancements was just beginning to play out. Four of her recipes, two cookies and two gingerbreads, are among the earliest recipes that call for pearlash, an early baking soda-like leavener. You can generally replace pearlash 1:1 with baking soda.

Another of my favorites from American Cookery is, sadly, not one of the nicest looking of the recipes in this book. But I love old-school puddings and I love cornbread. Her “Nice Indian Pudding… No. 2” is, at least as I make it, a bit of a cross between a corn pudding and a custardy corn bread.

A Nice Indian Pudding.

No. 2. 3 pints scalded milk to one pint meal salted; cool, add 2 eggs, 4 ounces butter, sugar or molasses and spice q.f. it will require two and half hours baking.

Note that if you choose to make the third “nice Indian pudding” rather than the second, there’s an entry in the errata for it.

I use molasses for the sweetener. If you can find a source for sorghum molasses, I strongly recommend it. It’s often available at specialty nut shops and at Amish-style groceries.

A Nice Indian Pudding

• 3 cups very hot milk
• 1 cup cornmeal
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• 2 oz melted butter
• ½ cup molasses
• ¼ tsp nutmeg

Mix the cornmeal and salt. Stir in the hot milk. Cool to room temperature.

Beat egg into batter, stir in butter, molasses, and nutmeg, and pour into a two-quart baking dish. Place into a larger dish and pour hot water around it to about ¼ inch.

Bake for about 90 minutes to two hours at 300°.

It’s a bit clichéd to call Thomas Jefferson the first American foodie, but he really was. He’s famous for introducing French and Italian food to the United States. Less well known is that he also worked hard to introduce the French and others to American food, even growing American corn in his garden when he was the ambassador to France, to serve corn on the cob to his French guests.

Like Benjamin Franklin, he thought that American Pippin apples were superior to any apple in Europe.

Unfortunately, while some of his recipes are publicly available in their original form, such as his wonderful biscuits de savoye and his famous ice cream—both in his own handwriting—most are only available in archives far from Texas. For these recipes I used the 1976 University of Virginia edition of Marie Kimball’s 1938 Thomas Jefferson’s Cook Book.

Thomas Jefferson’s Cook Book is a wonderful resource, but it has two serious flaws. The first and most obvious is that it provides interpretations of eighteenth and nineteenth century recipes through 1938 eyes, without presenting the original text. The second is that it doesn’t tell us exactly where the recipes come from. Kimball appears to have used the notes of Jefferson’s granddaughter Virginia Jefferson Trist. Trist’s collection was a family collection, and contains recipes from well after Jefferson died.

Martha Jefferson Randolph, however, was Thomas Jefferson’s daughter. So it is entirely possible that her Fish Potato Pie could have graced the White House table while he was president, or that he could have enjoyed it in his semi-retirement afterward.

Martha Jefferson Randolph’s Fish Potato Pie

• 1 lb trout or whitefish
• 1 lb mashed potatoes
• 2 tbsp butter
• ¼ tsp nutmeg
• ⅛ tsp pepper
• ½ tsp salt
• 2 tbsp brandy
• cream or milk
• 9-inch pie shell

Steam fish just enough to shred. Mix with mashed potatoes made as you like mashed potatoes. Mix in butter, nutmeg, pepper, salt, and brandy. If too stiff, thin with cream or milk. Turn into pie shell and bake at 375° for about thirty minutes, until set.

Whatever the provenance, Kimball’s/Trist’s collection of recipes includes early examples of two classic southern dishes: gumbo, and rice and beans. The rice and beans are attributed to a “Baron de Brise”, who may be the most obscure of all of the attributions in Kimball’s book. Morton Gill Clark, in his French-American Cookery from New Orleans to Quebec, attributes the “Podrilla à la Créole” as “a great favorite of Thomas Jefferson, the recipe for which he got from his friend the Baron de Brise.”

That’s pure cookbook history, with no reference and nothing to back it up. It’s also pretty much the only reference to Baron de Brise I could find. I would expect a Baronial “friend of Thomas Jefferson” to have left more of a mark in historical documents. But if Clark is right, this recipe is contemporaneous with Jefferson.

The Baron de Brise’s Rice and Beans

Beans

• 2 cups red beans
• ¼ lb salt pork
• salt and pepper
• seasonal herbs

Soak the beans overnight in plenty of water, and drain. Cover again with water according to the instructions with the beans, add pork, salt and pepper to taste, and chopped herbs.

Rice

• 1 cup rice
• salted water or broth
• 2 tbsp butter
• salt and pepper

Boil rice in salted water and/or broth until light and tender, according to the instructions with the rice. Add butter, and salt and pepper to taste. Press into a ring mould. Bake at 350° for ten minutes. Turn out, and fill with beans.

One of President Jefferson’s most famous acts was the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. It wasn’t an impulse purchase; he’d been worried about the security of our western borders well before the Purchase, both in matters large and small. In 1802, he appointed Hore Browse Trist, Sr., to a position in the Mississippi Territory, which bordered the French territory and so needed customs officials.

One of Hore Browse Trist, Sr.’s sons was Nicholas Philip Trist, who married Thomas Jefferson’s granddaughter Virginia Randolph on September 11, 1824. His other son was Hore Browse Trist, Jr., who remained in the Louisiana area. Mrs. Rosella Trist, to whom the Gumbo is attributed, was Hore Browse Trist, Jr.’s wife, although it’s unclear when they married. Depending on that date, this recipe, too, might have been enjoyed by Jefferson.

If he did, I expect that he considered gumbo a major benefit of having acquired the Louisiana Territory for the United States!

Mrs. Rosella Trist’s Gumbo

• 2 tbsp butter or lard
• 1 tbsp flour
• 1 tsp chopped parsley
• ½ onion minced fine
• 3-4 lbs chicken parts
• 2 quarts water
• salt
• black pepper
• red pepper
• 2-3 tbsp sassafras powder

Melt fat in a large pot. Gradually stir in flour, parsley, and onion until flour is brown. Add and brown the chicken, then add the water and season to taste with salt, black pepper, and red pepper. Boil gently for 90 minutes. Reduce heat and stir in sassafras, stirring constantly without boiling.

This is not at all what I expect to get if I order gumbo in a Louisiana-inspired restaurant today. But it is an absolutely lovely chicken stew, simply flavored. If it did arrive in time, it could have made a wonderful soup for an ailing ex-President.

I’ve made a PDF of all of the recipes I’ve featured here, formatted to print three 6×4 cards per page. You can print them on normal paper or on cardstock. Obviously if you have your own favorite format you can just copy and paste the recipes from this post.

I have many more Bicentennial, Centennial, and Founders-era recipes on my Meals for the Sestercentennial series that I started in 2023, including both the Eye in the Biscuit and the Jellied Guacamole. That series led to my Sestercentennial Cookery which is available in print as well as a free download.

I’ve been doing a few non-food Sestercentennial Year postings starting with the Battle of Bennington last August. Researching those is where I found the opening and closing quotes for this post.

All of the cookbooks I used as references from the Centennial and earlier are available online. If they weren’t available online before I wrote about them, I scanned them in myself and posted them on my web site. They’re linked in the body of the post, but here they are again all in one place. They’re all fascinating.

• The Centennial Cook Book and General Guide
• The Centennial Buckeye Cook Book
• The Horsford Cook-Book
• American Cookery
• Thomas Jefferson’s Cook Book
• The National Cookery Book

There are some differences between the 1976 version of Thomas Jefferson’s Cook Book that I used and the 2007 version available for checkout on the Internet Archive. I haven’t noticed any differences in recipes, but I also haven’t looked, and I just now noticed that the 2007 Archive reprint titles the rice and beans as “Podrilla là Creole” where my 1976 reprint titles it “Podrilla à la Creole”. Having not seen the 1938 original, I can’t say which matches it.

There are restored versions of American Cookery in print. I especially like the one from Colonial Printer & Bookbindery, available from their website and from places like Townsends. It’s a quality facsimile without embellishment, made in the U.S.A.

Each coming festival shall bring to memory’s view their noble end

And blessings on each honor’d name shall from the patriot’s lips ascend.

—“Lines on the Deaths of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams”, by A Lady of Richmond, E.L.S., July 14, 1826.

At the height of the Obamanation, there was a con in Philadelphia, and — of course! — we took a chance to visit the holy sites.

At the time there was a legend rampant that if you rang the Liberty Bell, there would be a second American Revolution. Dan caught me trying to lean-not-lean on it and told me to stop it. And I’ll give you the poor thing is strapped down five ways from Monday to the point that it would take a five point Earthquake to move it.

Look, by disposition I seem to always be on the side of chaos and upending. It is a very funny — not funny — joke of the Author that He then requires me to be the sane one, holding the reins and saying “it might eventually be needed. But not yet.”

Weirdly the “revolutionary Fed Speak” has propagated frantically on Twitter, and i want to tell you, it’s an ops, and it’s not an ops for OUR side. (It rarely is. The individualists as always fail to organize.)

Yes, the “socialists” have got some wins in jurisdictions where the voting is so corrupt they could run Mickey Mouse (instead they chose to run Goofy, of course) and win. But that doesn’t mean much for the country at large. I always roll my eyes when I read something about how people under thirty think well of communism/socialism. I’ve been reading this headline my entire life, which means at one point it was my generation they were talking about… on our way to becoming, as a generation, the most irascible constitutionalists on the block.

Not only does socialism sound great when your only experience of life is school and parents looking after you. Once you enter the working world and acquire responsibilities and rights, the socialism peels like snake skin, allowing the individual to grow.

Add to that that a) the kids have been told that anything requiring community is “socialism” including roads and schools. I’ve had someone argue that with me in the past, and thereby class the ROMANS as “socialist”. Then there is the fact that their acquaintance is mostly from school and the teacher probably told them socialism was great, so they’re afraid of letting the classmates know they don’t buy into it.

Anyway, I don’t see any great deviation from norm in the kids, except maturing a little later.

And honestly, the beginning of the twentieth century was more reliant on collectivism and central planning of all sorts. It was back then just the “sensible position” because of the way that industry had been reorganized by central planning and made so much more efficient and prosperous. It seemed logical and obious it would achieve the same to organize government the same way. (I remember the remnant of it in my high school economics class where they talked about how hard it was for the mixed economies to catch up with socialist/communist ones who were eliminating all inefficiencies, by nature.) If you don’t believe me, read early SF and you’ll catch the whiff everywhere. Which is why FDR and the other “progressives” got away with so much.

Now, in the post covidiocy era, we’ve become more jaded about the whole central authority thing. No, not all of us. (For is it not written, the custard heads thou shalt always have with you.)

Yeah, “Socialists” are winning in places where a cat would win with a D after its name, mostly because the fraud machine is that efficient. And btw that means they’re convincing themselves that running to the left is the way to go. Will it work? Well, it depends on whether the “socialism” is the real draw (it won’t work) or they have the fraud that set up that this is just to give cover to the fraud (“see, we told you they wanted socialism. That’s why we won.”)

How do I know that socialism isn’t what people want? Because the left has been trying to sell this since 08 and everywhere that it’s not a safe space for crazy left, it bounces like a weaponized rubber ball. Because people picked Trump. Twice. And not all the promises that “There will never be jobs again, but government will take care of you.”

I think coming out as socialist is their last attempt at appealing tot he masses, which in their head (arrow of history) are of course socialist. Like Occupy Wall Street, which was in the same category, it won’t work. because the masses are not socialist. They might think that’s the name for anything cooperative, but they’re not in point of fact socialist. And the things the crazy socialists say repel.

Anyway, we might yet lose control of the country. We might yet need “a second American revolution.” Heinlein believed it, and you know, I have one, at the end of the USAian arc in DST.

But today is not the eve of that day. Today this is in no way needed. The screaming voices on Twitter are trying to get us to move because that is, in fact, their last chance at winning. (And even then their chances are low.)

So, go out and celebrate the fourth with an absolute clean conscience and happy soul.

Yes, the country got very far down the path to “Progressive-possessed” before any of us were born. But we’re clawing it back, and things are in point of fact going our way.

We are winning this, without the need to roll the dice in a revolution. Which is the best kind of win, I might add.

Note I’m not saying it will be easy — if it were easy, it wouldn’t need Americans — or that we won’t have loses. I’m just saying we will win without massive loss of life.

Be not afraid. As for me and mine, we’re watching the sacred musical (1776) and then blowing up stuff, as it should be. There is 100% chance of wretchedly rendered but very fervent singing of the Star Spangled Banner, too.

May it always be so.

2026 FUNDRAISING APPEAL. If this is one of your regular stops, please consider donating! Because Jerry Pournelle told me I should be making 100k from the blog, given readership and how often I blog. So far I’ve never made more than about $30k per year, but then again, I’m not Jerry. I think he was assuming HIS value add. :D
Whichever. he said to fundraise annually and I’m doing it. It helps convince my family I’m not insane when I got to bed late and get up early to keep the blog fed. (Today? today it’s a matter of doctors. Sorry.)
The full appeal is here: Toss A Coin To Your Blogger, Oh Readers of Plenty paypal link in it is broken (fixing but also here) and forgot to give the snail mail which is Sarah A. Hoyt, 304 S Jones Blvd #6771, Las Vegas, NV  89107.

Oh Readers of Plenty It’s that time of year where I show how obedient and what a good listener I am, and ask people who like what they read here to kick in a few bucks, if they have it to spare.

Your contribution can knock out the rats in my head who insist that this is a waste of time!!!

I have been told, repeatedly, by several of you, that it also helps the rats in your head that do not like feeling like freeloaders.

This is not an emergency appeal, this is not a matter of life and death, (or even death and ice-cream), and I will throw my shiny new chinchilla of hope at you if I realize you’ve hurt yourself to send me a few dollars of thanks.

That said, a workman is worth his hire, and I think I feel Jerry Pournelle glaring at me from heaven since he cannot give me the lecture about how my work has worth and I need to respect that value. So, if you find value in this blog’s work, and you won’t hurt anything by doing so, toss something into the hat!

There is a Give Send Go fundraiser for this specific fundraiser set up. Here is a Paypal Me Link if you prefer that. (Yes, I know. Paypal, but for now, they’re behaving.) If you have a monthly donation setup to the permanent Give Send Go, that is still working and thank you! There are also two substacks you can subscribe to. One is on the side bar of the blog, the other is supposed to be a newsletter, as well as giving you chapters of the current work in progress if you become a paid subscriber. It takes cards.

For what is going on: I am actually doing quite a bit better since multiple people have taken it on themselves to nag me into going to the doctor before I am nearly dead.

On the down side, as a result of that I am in the position of waiting to see a specialist (mid month) for a something which responds to antibiotics but comes back when the course is finished, and has the normal doctors saying “huh. I’ve never seen that before.” I am sure I don’t have to explain to everyone here how not reassuring that situation is, but it is being handled.

1. My songs of the clankers are here on You Tube. I am on TwiX here, and of course share links on Instapundit most nights.
   
   
2. There are several non-book tasks I intend to get rolling this year- among them putting the clanker songs on Spotify so various Hunlings will quit asking if they are up yet, and another of which will need to be further along before I open it up. It will be site for all things geeky and also hopefully a good promo site for indies. (Can you feel the anticipation?).
   
3. If I can stop throwing out “interesting” symptoms and becoming a medical curiosity, I should be able to finish Rhodes to Hell and move on to the next Dyce.  Needless to say I’m also working on Orphans of the Stars, the second book of Chronicles of Elly.

And that’s all for now, throw a handful of hundreds in the hat, (go ahead! Make my day!) and lets get back to playing!

Nothing has changed.

Yes, I do think the Supreme Court’s decision on birth citizenship was wrong, and further it was dangerous, because I believe Clarence Thomas over the lot of them. His scholarship is superior to all of theirs.

The truth is that we’re facing a new form of attack. As I said before, when the borders were open, the world cannot win against us militarily but they found they can attack us by sending the most wretched, uneducated and frankly hostile to us (In the Americas and I suspect the rest of the world, they heavily recruited communists for the caravans) people they could find over the border in massive waves. That this had the advantage of lowering our wages, raising costs of living and draining the body politic dry, while presenting us with scenes of squalor was an advantage.

It was an attack by human wave, no more, no less. They’ve done the same to every Western nation. Successfully, in terms of more or less destroying the countries.

It has abated now, and largely stopped. Except for H1B visas, which are a different problem, but not by much, and which this administration is failing to curb.

BUT the human wave attack has taken another form. Not only women performing birth tourism, but in China’s case doing that factory style. And in many ways, too. There have now been found more than one literal “factory” where Chinese citizens are having children via surrogate and raising hundreds of kids in various institutions throughout the land.

This is innovative, technically legal, and evil.

The supreme court ruling against birth citizenship would be an easy solution, of course. but please keep in mind that what we have now is exactly what we have had for the last two or three generations. NOTHING has changed. We just hoped it would.

It doesn’t mean we can’t combat this by other means. Sure, getting the supine congress to act might be a forlorn hope — which is why we must win in November. I don’t know what to do for it other than pray, but we must — but they might. Miracles do happen.

And I bet you anything that Trump is already plotting how to make them act, because he has seen the size of the threat (now if someone can clue him in to H1Bs? I’d appreciate it.)

Probably the absolutely easiest way to combat this threat is actually within Trump’s reach, though it will bring law fare, as well as crying and gnashing of teeth.

NOTHING in the constitution allows us to tolerate dual citizenship. NOTHING. The oath I took at naturalization required that I renounce all allegiance to foreign nations and potentates.

And yet, most Americans today think nothing of someone having or assuming dual citizenship. If that weren’t possible, the baby factories on US soil might not stop, but the having a kid and taking him “home” to be raised would. Because in the parent’s country of origin he’d have no status and no right to any services. And it would create an intolerable situation.

Yes, i do realize it would put a lot of people in uncomfortable positions. But the law is the law. Choose a country and cleave to it.

After that there are various legislative situations. The lowest probability one is the congressional amendment. Sure, try for that too. Try for EVERYTHING. But do not go into lamentations and rending of garments. You are not any worse off than last week.

It’s just the easy solution has been shut off. We’ll have to do it the hard way.

Be not afraid. And keep fighting to the extent you can, even if (just) with words.

In which I have become Sarah, Destroyer of Panels.

I’m back, and as much as I’d like to write a coherent post, it’s not going to happen today. So I’ll do an after action report of sorts.

As usual, I go to Liberty con to see friends old and new, and a lot of you who hang out here in the flesh again or for the first time.

This year I wasn’t as available as is normal, because having been sick in the lead up to the con, I was, while healthy, still what the Victorians used to call “very pulled down.” I.e. I tired easily.

Also, it is one of the scars of 2020 that I can’t handle crowds as well as I used to. Hey, I have recovered to the extent that I no longer have an anxiety attack at spending a day with both sons and their wives, but twenty or so people, surrounded by another 100, with occasional look ins and hugs and such from those 100, is a lot. And required a lot of time in my room in silence.

For this I’m sorry, and hope to have recovered some more (psychologically) and to be in better shape next year.

Also I suspect I’ve aged a lot because most people didn’t recognize me, which is disquieting. I mean someone asked me if I’d seen me….

Meanwhile I got put in the Dystopia panel, this year renamed Destroyer of Worlds. Sigh. I told Rich he could put me in it. I INTENDED to behave properly, honestly.

The best laid plans of Sarahs and con goers….

The panel started with SOME MINOTAUR walking in. This would have been perfectly fine, except that both the moderator and one of the panelists were OBVIOUSLY Liberty con firsters and also the panelist took himself super-seriously. All of which was a serious problem, because the panel was 75% Huns and I realized from their expressions they had something planned and were all in anticipation.

Look, I used to teach. I know the look of a classroom that has set up the BEST prank yet and is practically jigging in their seats waiting for the it to fall.

And here, I won’t pretend I didn’t know something was up. I knew that there was a group gift planned from my close-in fan group on discord, because I accidentally stumbled onto that conference. They were collecting for a collective group, and I knew it had something to do with an eagle, and that I’d been warned to have space in the car on the way back.

I did not realize my adorable, insane, frustrating, amazing, completely ungovernable fans had chipped in to buy me a METAL EAGLE THE SIZE OF A SMALL CHILD. Which is, of course, going to have a place of honor in the entrance patio for the new house. No question. And will wear holiday-appropriate hats. Which considering we’re moving deep into suburbia (husband likes it) means that we’ll be the weird people. Ah, well. His name is George.

I don’t have pictures because husband took them and he’s out on errands.

The problem is that OF COURSE the moderator, not being wise to the Huns was somewhere between irate and confused as Orvan delivered the Eagle and I unboxed and displayed it.

And he TRIED TO GO ON WITH THE PANEL WHILE THIS WAS HAPPENING. At one point he asked me, “Is this normal? Does it happen all the time?” To which my answer was “Definitely not. And yes.” Followed by, “I’m sorry, they’re my fans. They’re adorable but insane and I can’t do anything with them!”

He then thought he was safe and tried to resume the panel, at which point the minotaur delivered the… Chinchilla or hope: A BEAUTIFUL Chinchilla plushie with wings and a flower crown. (Yes, I promise pictures later.) I understand Shesellseashells made it. THANK YOU.

And then the poor man tried to re-start the panel, just as Orvan delivered me a notebook with a cover that said it contained the nuclear US launch codes. By that point I was laughing so hard I couldn’t speak.

And from the audience, from a Hun, came, “Behold, I have become Sarah, destroyer of panels.”

At which point the panel resumed, 15 minutes later, with one very bewildered mod and one very upset panelist. All of which was okay until …. three of them claimed that if something or other happens civilization will die. Even you know, a supervolcano erruption or a year without a summer.

And I lost my mind. Because even Cuba still has a civilization of sorts, despite impairment of being under communism and various interdictions. I refuse to believe Americans are less resourceful. Within three days five guys in a garage will ride in with solutions. And hell, if the onerous regulations are lifted, not only will we come back, but we’ll roar past where we are and maybe finally become a multiplanetary civilization.

Look, not only am I not at home to doomerism, but I’m becoming less tolerant to doomerism each passing day. I’m not telling you the way ahead is all ice cream, skittles and smiles. It’s not. never was. Never in the history of ever. I’m not claiming that I’ll survive a massive disaster — being dependent on a daily thyroid dosage, this is HIGHLY unlikely — but humans were made to strive. And Americans are still the most dedicated to individual liberty of any humans in the world and also the more resourceful.

There wouldn’t be ONLY five guys in a garage, but thousands of five guys (and the occasional crazy gal) in a garage and possibly even an army of grandmothers (biological and not) just putting their hands to what they could and bringing civilization back.

As P. J. O’Rourke said in his trip to Russia: the utter dinginess of the place would not survive a few Americans with bottles of windex and rags.

We will be okay. And I think we’ve turned the corner on the worst. Yes, the communists are coming out of the closet and sure this time it will work. Be not afraid. Their plans always fail. Yes, sometimes they impose a lot of suffering on the way, but the hey day of their destructive philosophy has passed. We have the receipts. Just keep working. And most of all, keep being American. As hard as you can. No, Harder than THAT. Just do it.

….. I think, though, I’m going to have to beg off the dystopia panel in the future.