I first read about the cuckoo and what it does to other birds in a miserable little book of would-be Aesop fables, but written by cruel buffoons.

I’m not that fond of Aesop, as is, since most of the tales are “there you have it, evil got away with it” stories, but this story of cuckoo was told in an absolutely horrible way, calling the parents stupid who don’t identify the intruder egg laid in their nest, even as it murders their children and who exhaust themselves trying to feed an enormous hatchling, till they also die.

I was horrified when I found out is is actually the reproductive strategy of cuckoo. But even at seven I knew it wasn’t that the parents were stupid. It’s that their senses, and the information they used to defend themselves and their nest failed them.

I had gone on enough nature walks with dad, and had things explained to me, to know that birds are simple creatures and a lot of them operate by “zones.” If you are in the “safe zone.” Outside the nest, they’d attack the cuckoo hatchling as a menace, but it is in their nest so to their bird brains it is their baby, even if very large and acting strangely.

The deception is particularly cruel, because it takes advantage of admirable bird characteristics — the care for hatchling and nest — to kill them and their offspring.

And yeah, I think this is the most accurate depiction of the color revolution that took place in the US most blatantly in 2020. (Though probably before. They just never needed to fraud that hard. However from the passing of motor voter and the loosening of voting rules to happen early enough the left knew exactly how much to fraud, our elections were probably mostly fraud. And the fraud is always on the left side. Which is why I have to say they are a tiny minority, because each year they have to fraud more.)

What happened in 2020 — in 2022 it was more covert though still obvious — was clear enough that our mechanisms of defense should have snapped into place. The courts should have delayed confirmation, and every possible case of vote fraud should have been crawled over like an army of fire ants looking for a sugar cube.

Only the left had been very careful to bypass our legal defenses, both by suborning of the courts with the installation of Marxist clowns and the scaring and intimidating of other judicial clowns with the displays of faux-black-rage (seriously, the BLM protesters, by and largest were lighter than DIL IT and she’s the lightest person I ever met) all summer, so they knew if they so much as said boo, they and everything they loved would burn. So the results were never examined, and all the way to the SC (with two exceptions) the country was handed over to Chinese-puppets. (Yes, I can say so. So can anyone who looks into the Bidens background.)

They also, having already taken over the regular news, played fast and loose with social media, and the ability of people to communicate, so we couldn’t fully sound the alarm.

And the cuckoo in our nest is killing — or at least destroying — our children, and trying to stop us from feeding ourselves. And exhausting us. We’re all so tired.

In 2022 they provided themselves with the flimsiest of excuses for why anyone would have voted their kakistocracy back into power by making a big hullabaloo of the demise of federal enforcement of no-limit abortion, and the fact that most states went back to rules that are still laxer than those in Europe. Has anyone heard about Ruth Sent Us since the midterms? No? Well, you see, they fulfilled their purpose: to make it seem like all women were up in arms about abortion and would definitely vote for democrats. Of course there was never any such thing, since in fact abortions have been falling year over year, and are increasingly confined to the minorities upon whom the eugenicists of Planned Parenthood prey.

Now of course they’re running the DeSantis Trump thing — and shame on DeSantis for letting himself be manipulated into covert attacks, until it turned into a war. But it’s obvious his head is turned and he thinks he is all that — because they don’t understand that most conservatives would crawl through broken glass to vote for anyone running against the Bidentia. (One exception. I don’t think I’d vote for Pence, who must be the stupidest person in the world, because he thinks these people are secure enough to keep a controlled opposition. Instead, he’ll be used and discarded, because they don’t trust anyone but themselves in power. Which is why they’ll run Joe and the Ho again.)

But I guess the polls showing that DeSantis in fact only has penetration among pundits and bien-pensants (I’ve told them) make it imperative for them to find a more likely fig leaf for their victory in 2024, despite the fact that they’re killing us and most of us (80 million and likely more, since they switched some Trump vote, of voting age and capable) know they’re killing us. So, they planned, perhaps still plan to arrest Trump and charge him with a felony. Because they want to say “You’d never vote for a felon.”

Expect them to hit all blogs, including this one, to scream about the terrible felony of Trump (which isn’t even a misdemeanor but is obscure enough most people don’t understand that.)

What they want is not to actually turn us, but to make it plausible we’d have turned. So the LIVs (there are still some) say “Oh, those stupid split republicans” and not “We were robbed.”

Don’t give it to them. Have the responses ready “Sure. You voted for an enemy agent. A mere felon is a vast improvement.”

However, if they hit you with polls, just tell them you’ll vote for Biden. The best chance we have is catching them with their pants down, though these days electronic vote means they can still “fix” it.

1 – Keep voting against them. I know this seems silly. No, you don’t vote because you expect to win (though there’s always the chance of catching them with their pants down.) You vote for them because when their candidate wins with a larger number of votes than there can be adults in the US, it will be open and everyone’s faces. Even the stupid ones.

2- In the measure of possible, in your own areas, try to fight vote fraud. And your conservative friends? Get to them, and explain: Vote as late as possible, vote paper. It’s amazing how many people haven’t got the message.

3- And this is very important: if you can avoid feeding them, stop feeding them.
Look, we can’t withdraw from everything. By the nature of my business I have to work with Amazon, I still have paypal.

On the other hand, what is going through paypal is now minimal, compared to the business I did before. And the same with Amazon, if I can find an alternative. (And I’ll notice they keep firing employees.)

And I’ll probably use Stripe, until I find someone not beholden to the overlords. (Almost typed overlards, which is what they are: a conspiracy of fat asses sucking the good off the land. A horrible mosquitocracy crying out for DDT.) Because they’re not quite as bad. Sometimes the “not quite as bad” is the best one can do.

More important even than cutting off the enemy when possible is to support our side. As I’m fond of saying, they have the billionaires, and the institutions that they’ve corrupted and taken over. We have each other. This is why I have the book promo on Sundays. It promotes people who are not afraid of being associated with us. And there will be a page, as soon as I have a day to revamp the site, with goods and services sold by our people, so when you’re looking, you give your money to them preferentially.

Yes, I know, it rankles for us on the right to use the any criteria but competence, but the people linked will be competent. For one, our side gives value. It’s who we are. And heaven knows we had to claw hard enough to get there.

There’s dark days ahead, and our side is small and exhausted. Save some comfort and food for us, and let the gigantic cuckoo starve and scream.

Until we can evict him.

Things have been drifting my way that make me raise eyebrows and say with Inigo Montoya: I don’t think that word means what you think it means.

Apparently believing abortion is wrong is out of the mainstream; believing gay marriage is wrong is out of the mainstream; believing transexuality isn’t the load of hogswallow that our society is being fed is out of the mainstream; being a Christian is out of the mainstream; and being convinced that you have rights as an individual which were granted to you by G-d and the government can’t take away is out of the mainstream.

What they aren’t actually telling us is: Out of the mainstream WHERE?

I mean, of course all of those are out of the mainstream in our better universities, where no one would go so far as to espouse one of those opinions, where they might be overheard and mocked — mocked! — as being gauche by their fellow socialist pudding heads.

And some of them are out of the mainstream in various places around the world. I wouldn’t advise you to go to a non-European Catholic country where faith is taken seriously and start babbling about how men can be women, women can be men, and it’s all about just saying so.

For that matter, I wouldn’t advise you to go and be flamboyantly gay or trans in an European country, out of the hangouts of the bien pensant, and where the authorities can’t hear you. Take it from someone who has crossed Europe, inconspicuously speaking the local language, and too poor to stay in even medium-expensive places: the urbane European is a myth. The woke European is a myth. There might be a few, again, in the academic hangouts, but if you get them to let their hair down and speak frankly, after hours, you’re going to find yourself blinking and being rather puzzled. Because the imaginary “hatey” rednecks of leftism’s fevered imagination have absolutely nothing on a “Sophisticated” European when it comes to hating anyone who sticks out and is not “normal for local populations. A lot of naive Americans have found that to their shock.

As for most of Africa and the Middle East? Well, you know, local tribal customs might vary on what is homosexuality and transexuality throughout Africa (and trust me, okay? EVEN what looks like transexuality to western eyes often isn’t and is in fact a rather horrible situation that works — maybe — as well as anything works where you live close to the bone and life is a constant struggle. It ain’t because they’re “enlightened” or “more tolerant.”)

In the middle East…. I have absolutely no idea what Islam’s view on abortion is, though judging from some of its other dictates, I presume it’s a child if the father wants it, and not if the father doesn’t. But pretty much all the other things, other than individual rights — and individual rights aren’t believed in anywhere out of the West, and even there…. mostly in the US — are not just “disapproved of” in Islam. They’re crimes. Punishable by death.

So, yeah, I do realize the US is out of the mainstream with most of the world. At least in believing in individual rights.

Because we believe in individual rights, we’re also way more tolerant of individual quirks. Mostly gay marriage didn’t raise a lot of eyebrows. I mean, a lot of us would get pissed off at forcing churches to officiate at gay weddings, and don’t get me started on the idiotic lawfare against Christian Bakers (Look, it’s idiotic on both sides, okay? You’re allowed to think a “gay marriage” isn’t a real marriage, but realize it’s real to the people celebrating and do the cake on that principle. Like, I have a friend who is Hindu, but he’s okay with buying fake leather sofas, okay? I have no idea if he’d design one for them, but I imagine if his avocation ran to couture he’d be quite happy to make a fake leather jacket. Now, when it comes to stupid cakes with the devil and dildos? The chick engaging in that lawfare should be taken out and beaten in the public square for having the worst taste since Hillary Clinton wore a yellow pant suit. And OF COURSE if someone doesn’t want to bake a cake for sale — for any reason or none — the client should go elsewhere. THAT frankly is the biggest stupidity ever. The courts should throw all those cases out for the plaintiffs being too stupid to not drown when it rains. “Waitaminute…. you know this person disapproves of your choice, but what will make your day complete is having him bake your cake. You’re either dumber than your common garden rock or you are trying to get someone to engage in bondage and domination play with you without their consent. I do suggest you withdraw the suit, before I throw you in jail for rape.” ….. yeah, I know, I have beautiful dreams.)

Sure. A lot of people think is a sin, but they also know they, themselves are sinners. Among my inner circle are gay couples and committed Christians, and believe it or not no bonfires have been lit when we all get together; no one has dragged anyone to the roof, or dropped walls on them. Actually, I don’t remember any harsh words. Mind you, the subjects under discussion are usually science fiction, fantasy, politics (and our POLITICS) tend to be in tune or house decorating, not what anyone does in bed. Because seriously, who discusses that at a barbecue? The essence of it being that most Christians would think their engaging in it is wrong (though some still do, because they’re human and broken) but they’re not going to judge, lest they should be judged. And we’re wealthy and well mannered enough to live and let live.

In the same way if you come into our group, claiming to be a sex you obviously aren’t, most people will shrug and go along, because why not? I mean this was true in the eighties when a six foot seven Marine who looked like his face was ripped with an ax off a mountain crag lived under the charming delusion that when he dressed in a dress or skirt, with a wig EVERYONE thought he was a beautiful woman. Even though he wore size 14 wide seven inch heels.

Our group of rather introverted geeks would shrug and go “sure, why not. At least he doesn’t think he’s Napoleon. Addressing him as Emperor with a French accent would get old.” I objected to his hitting on me in the kitchen, but not because at the moment he was wearing a dress and thought he was female. I objected to it because he was coming on to a married woman and being obtuse about getting it through his head I really meant “no.” (No touching, otherwise I’d have done something interesting with a knife — even though he was a marine — but really stupidly persistent.)

Was he really trans? Don’t know. Don’t care. I’m not paid to evaluate the minds of others.

I do sternly object to having children on puberty blockers, because I know someone whose children have to be on these due to a rare genetic condition. When they were first prescribed he acquainted us with all the side effects. And you know what? NO ONE SHOULD SUBJECT A MINOR TO THAT UNLESS IT REALLY IS NEEDED FOR A PHYSICAL, NOT A PSYCHOLOGICAL CONDITION. Adults? Well…. if one of my kids were considering it, I’d argue like hell against it, not just because they’d make the world’s ugliest women, bar none, but because — seriously — even in cases of “real” gender dysphoria, in the present state of science it’s a very high price to pay to be a pretend version of what your mind tells you that you are.

ONLY if you absolutely have no other choice, should you consider it. And if you really want kids, have kids before. I’m not going to say there aren’t cases in which transitioning isn’t actually warranted. I’m not other people. I don’t know. But I’m going to say the process is horrific, and most people end up stuck somewhere neither fish nor fowl nor good red meat. That means for a lot of the rest of their lives, they’re going to be given very weird looks. And feel out of place. Still, as someone who immigrated and also inhabits a limbo region, at least as soon as she opens her mouth, I’m not going to say some people won’t prefer that to the natural self. I’m not them.

And I think most Americans are kind of in the same place.

Abortion? I am out of the mainstream here, for various reasons. And have changed my mind on it over my life time. I don’t think anyone should have an abortion, unless it’s medically required. There’s a ton of reasons, including the fact that I knew within five minutes I’d conceived older son and that he was a boy. Never wavered. And never had that before, despite trying for six years. Younger son, OTOH? Well, I still can’t “sense” him. Possibly because he’s too much like me. Who knows? Anyway, between that, the fact that I’ve seen women in abusive relationships get bullied into abortions, and the fact that there is quite safe contraception generally available, I think the bar for “I want an abortion” should be much higher.

BUT note, please, that I’m out of the American (and possibly the west) mainstream here. Most of America believes an abortion is okay up to ten weeks, and after that it should be restricted/forbidden. Or at least that’s what polls keep coming up with. That is in fact the law in most countries that allow abortion.

The crazy “abortion at any point for any reason” is not majority opinion here or anywhere in the world. So Governor Northam and his post birth abortion can go right to extremist hell.

As for being a Christian, it is, if not a majority belief certainly a widespread one worldwide. It is still a majority in America. How can something most people believe make you an extremist? I don’t know. Ask them.

Then there’s believing in individual rights. And they’ve got us dead to rights, there, boys: in a world filled with absolute monarchs, satraps, petty despots, totalitarian horrors (and Methodists! — reference joke) we are indeed unique and “Extreme.”

Should we suppress our extremist beliefs that we have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness unhindered by an abusive and intrusive government?

WHY?

The first question, of course, is who benefits. Certainly not individual Americans. So, why should we do it? In which way is it good for us?

Looking around at other countries where the belief doesn’t exist, what is in it for us?

I say often that the future comes from America. You might not get what I mean by that, but trust me. Almost all the innovations that make our life fat and comfortable started out in America. Sometimes Israel pitches in and more rarely another anglophone country.

However, most of what the rest of the world does is take what we invent and develop, or write, or put on screen, and try to give it some kind of a personal spin. But without us? none of it would exist.

Now, because America is a multi-racial nation, picking up the best from all over the world (and keeping it) this can’t be due to our vaunted blood lines.

So what is it due to?

Unless you’ve visited Europe, and, say, been sealed into a rapidly heating train in summer, despite the railway company knowing that the air conditioning is out in that carriage, you don’t appreciate how much that belief that individuals get to make their own choices matters in America.

The rest of the world, and those who are no longer our countrymen rail against central heating and air conditioning. Now, part of it is that none of these winnies know the climates most of us deal with. Sure, Portugal can go without central heating. Come over to my town and try it, in the dead of winter. Go to North Carolina in the heat of a very humid Summer without air conditioning. Then come and talk to us.

But the other part is “because we can.” And because individuals can choose to be comfortable. And most do.

Could we survive without those creature comforts? Sure. The pioneers did. And I once lived through a summer in Columbia South Carolina without air conditioning. You don’t want to know. Weirdly, too, I did no work all that summer.

And I remember being in Portugal — which is temperate if anything is — without air conditioning and/or heat, and let’s say most of my year was a lot less productive than it could be, because you’re not functioning very well when you’re dealing with extremes in weather.

So the American “extremism” of believing in individual rights is both more comfortable and more productive.

Therefore why call it “extreme” or try to suppress it. Unless you want to take those rights away so you can have absolute power, of course.

In which case you need to be aware you’re not G-d. Either real or imaginary. Your wants are not the law to me (no, not even if you’re a fat bastard who said that you believe in the rule of law and what you say is law. It ain’t. And I’m forever surprised you are smart enough to remember to exhale after each breath.) Nor should they be.

I’m not extreme. You are. You are an extreme, out of control loon who thinks that if everyone did what he/she said the world would be perfect.

I recommend you amend your extremism. Because in the path you’re taking us careening down, tolerance vanishes, and things get very very bad.

Places where there’s no bread, everyone argues, no one is right. Or if you prefer, societies that live close to the bone don’t believe in individual freedom. They also don’t believe in much of individual anything.

And the table is always set at the cannibal banquet.

Before you declare the US is “extreme” consider, in your heart of hearts what might happen to you if we weren’t.

And then, unless you’re as stupid as paste-eating Polis, you might consider giving thanks on your knees and fasting, that the rest of us are not in fact “extremist.”

This administration, like decrepit, idiotic inheritors of the philosophy of the French revolution has declared “Equity” its top goal.

That’s because “equality of results” is both harder to type and because they hope whole word readers will read that as “equality”. They might also think of equity as something they have in their houses, and therefore, something vaguely nice.

In practical fact, it’s the left’s insane idea that it’s the government’s job to make up for not just your personal failures and foibles, but for those of all your ancestors, going back presumably where the descendants of Abel get a big payout from Cain due to their ur-ancestor’s death, in the mists of myth and history.

Only of course, it’s not that way. Because they have no actual way of telling if anyone’s ancestors were discriminated against or hobbled, what they’re trying to do is compensate for PRESUMED discrimination against your ancestors.

Which is there they come up with beauties like San Francisco — a city that never authorized slavery — giving reparations to people who were never slaves paid for by people who never owned slaves.

Actually it’s almost impossible to say none of your ancestors ever owned slaves. And I don’t care what color your skin is. Contrary to the popular historical fiction peddled in our schools that white people enslaved black people because they were that racist and this was the first occurrence of slavery, people have been enslaving each other since… well, since they were people. Some zoologists have identified slavery-like arrangements in chimpanzees, so honestly, it might go further than that.

And if you’re there on the other side of this screen, breathing, have four fingers and a thumb or belong to a species that normally has those, you’re descended from slavers. You’re descended from slavers, murderers, rapists, warlords, pirates, conmen (and women) and you’re descended from their victims. You’re descended from saints, too, and heroes, and kings, and judges, and upright people, and a lot of men and women who were neither, but, in the common run of humanity were decent enough and honest enough and meant no one harm.

So…. what is this equity, and why are there groups that get priority under it to correct “past injustices.” And do note please that one of the groups is recent immigrants because you know, being oppressed in another country gets you rewards here.

Well, the first thing you have to understand is that the left has issues processing the fact individuals exist. Not just that individuals are different, but that they exist at all.

The fact that my elementary school class: all girls, born and raised in the village, and frankly in the way of Portuguese looking much alike, has had radically different outcomes (at least two died young, to my certain knowledge. The vast majority of them are mothers and housewives and two of us work in intellectual professions, very different ones, in different countries and on opposing sides of the culture war) is not in fact something they can process. It doesn’t compute. An homogeneous group must have the same outcomes, right?

If they were forced to confront it, they’d go looking for oppression. (More the fool them. One of the few that were seriously disadvantaged — being barely smart enough to learn to read (no, not me. Giggle) — has had the most successful kids. So, you know…) For “group stuff” that is, to justify the disparity.

The truth is that a lot of people who were once my peers are massive failures compared to me, and others massive successes. It doesn’t even correlate to IQ or anything you can see. If you really dig into that person’s life, you might find it was the ability to buckle down and do something difficult at a time I couldn’t, and that made them very successful. Others had a run of luck (as far as it exists, defined as being in the right place at the right time.) But for that you need to study the individual. And honestly? You can’t equalize that. The fact that I’m ADD AF has cost me tons of opportunities not to mention creating health hazards through irregular eating habits and medicine taking. Otoh being ADD seems to be a characteristic of a certain type of creative and they might be linked. Fix that, and maybe I’m massively successful. Or maybe I’m just not me.

It’s even harder to attribute success of failure to the fact I tan, or that I have an accent in speech, or happen to be female, or any of the other things the left would think gives me protected minority status.

The truth? People are people. And every group has… people. Some successful, some not.

If looking at the fact some groups are more successful than others in the US, it might be better to look at group culture, and what the overculture tells them. When you are convinced, through public school, that the only reason you don’t have As is because your teacher is racist or sexist, you’re not going to do the best you can. Instead, you’re going to recline in victimhood and helplessness. Which is another way to fail.

But anyway, the mondo Marxist brains of the Biden Junta — he might be the brightest of them. I mean have you heard Commie La Whorish? Or the others? — think they can solve everything by discriminating against the people they think are succeeding because they have it easy, and are promoted on characteristics that have nothing to do with ability.

While I’m the first to agree we shouldn’t throw jobs and honors at people who mouth Marxism most fervently, that’s not what the idiots mean.

No, they think white males have it easy and have always had it easy — failing to explain why my sons who are arguably white-ish have it easier than Barrack Obama’s pampered spawn — so they should be discriminated against. And then white women, and then black men, and then– the hierarchy. The most oppression points, based on nothing but what is in the head of the Gramscian-indoctrinated komissar administering these various boondoggles and having no point of contact with reality, the more you’ll be advanced, lauded, and given jobs.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, accounts for the fact that the Biden administration doesn’t have a single competent appointee. Not.A.Single.One. Which should be hard, but is what you get when you hire for any reason other than merit, but particularly when you hire to make people who haven’t been very successful successful.

By this merry path to hell, we’ve corrupted — already — our arts, our sciences, our literature. (No, dear idiots, I don’t want to hear that so and so is a writer of color. I don’t read writers, I read the books. The books are either good or bad. And if they’re long whines about what I can only call aspirational victimhood — the victimhood the author wishes she had experienced, so she’d be fully virtuous — they’re bad books. And that’s all there is to it.)

Now it’s corrupting our government.

The price of eggs has eased a little. A little.

But at their continued rate of hiring to promote supposed past discrimination, the truth is that eggs will get expensive again.

Everything will.

If they continue under the illusion that they can make outcomes equal they will.

When eggs are 100 thousand dollars apiece, we all starve equally.

Oh, look, it’s March. And I’m really late on all the rewards.

It’s not that we haven’t tried. We have. This was after all — as I warned you — the year of working the kinks out.

One kink we didn’t count on was not being able to send the “simple” things, the one I had put the onus on: sending out the electronic stuff.

Turns out various anti-spam measures mean most of our emails didn’t even go out, and if they did they disappeared. I know how to get around that for this year. I will require people to send an email to which I can answer. For this year that would probably not work because half the people will not get the message.

We are going to try something this week, using substack. We’ll see. If it works you’ll get something from a newsletter called something involving Rewards and Hoyt.

For the other stuff, we’ll be trying to mail everything that needs to be snail mailed in the next month.

If you donated enough for a critique or a tuckerization, please email me either at the email everyone knows or at the book promo email (in the patter at the beginning of yesterday’s post) and we’ll organize it. So far I have one tuckerization and one mentoring scheduled.

I want to get through all this by mid April, if all possible.

Some delay on the further stuff was due to the head of Team Hoyt, aka younger son going from unemployed to double-employed at the end of last year. We’re finding alternate ways to deal with it, but we were very unorganized for a while.

Of course, I still have absolutely no idea what donation system to use for this year.

We’ll figure it out. Probably.

Anyway, there will be something this week, at least the beginning of something, hopefully.

And then everything else by the by.

Again, so sorry. We didn’t count on infallible spam protection thwarting us.

And now excuse me while I type furiously on the next Dyce book.

Oh, yeah, DIL in training is doing audio for it. About the Refinishing Mysteries.

This sample is nowhere near final. She says it’s “muddy” and it needs a pop filter, so she’s redoing it. But I love the voice she gave Dyce.

Sorry this is so late. WordPress ARGH.-SAH

Book promo

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, by clicking through and buying (anything, 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. – SAH

Honestly, some authors and their pushy self promo…. ahem:
FROM SARAH A HOYT: Lights Out and Cry (The Shifter Series Book 5)

It is New Year’s Day in Goldport Colorado, the most shifter-infested town in the known universe.
At the George — the diner where shifters gather — Kyrie is about to give birth, Tom is getting psychic messages from the Great Sky Dragon and Rafiel is looking for information on why the mayor exploded.
Fasten your seat belts. This is going to be a fast ride into adventure and shape-shifting, after which things will never be the same.

FROM LAWDOG: The LawDog Files: Revised and Expanded

The entire sworn personnel complement of the department consisted of the Sheriff, the Chief Deputy and two patrol deputies.

That was it.

I miss that county.

To me, law enforcement is tracking an Alzheimer’s patient for four hours through the boonies after he wandered away from home; answering a 911 call because a rattlesnake is about to eat a nest full of baby birds; and scaring off ghosts because the lady of the house lost her husband ten years ago, her children live out of state, and you are the only outside contact she gets.


For me, being a cop is about keeping an eye out for a black-and-white dog of indeterminate ancestry, red bandanna, whose 9-year-old owner is crying his eyes out.

Most new officers will start out in medium-to-large cities/counties and never know what it’s like to patrol when your only back-up is 45 miles away as the cruiser drives – and asleep in bed, to boot.

So, I tell stories and hope that through those, the Gentle Reader can get a glimpse of what it’s like to be a Western small-town, rural Peace Officer

FROM MARY CATELLI: Through A Mirror, Darkly

What lies behind a reflection?

Powers have filled the world with both heroes and villains.  Helen, despite her own powers, had acquired the name Sanddollar but stayed out of the fights.

When the enigmatic chess masters create a mirrored world reflecting her own home and the world about it, it’s not so easy to escape.  All the more in that the people of that world are a dark reflection of all those she knows.

BY J. ALLAN DUNN, BROUGHT BACK BY D. JASON FLEMING: 3 Western Adventurers: A pulp omnibus

Three western-set adventures by masterpulp adventurer J. Allan Dunn!

Dead Man’s Gold

The old prospector knew he was dying when he shared his secret, in parts.Now four friends have to work together to find his rich vein of gold, fighting the elements, claim jumpers, angry Indians, and each other.

Turquoise Cañon

Jimmy Hollister just lost everything he hadin a stock market crash. After a life of polo and caviar, he cheerfully starts building up his life again, eventually following a girl to Arizona and starting a goat ranch. But hostile neighbors want to make dead sure he never learns the secret of Turquoise Cañon!

The Man Trap

When Jimmy Crewe returned from his prospecting expedition, he discovered that his best friend (and the man who funded his expedition) had disappeared. As he looked into it more, he found that a series of men, in several cities across the country, all with certain similarities, went missing in circumstances that, when compared, roused the suspicious mind. Now, Jimmy is going to find the answer to this mystery — what is the man trap, who is luring these men in, and why?

    This iktaPOP Media omnibus edition includes introductions giving genre and historical context to the three novels within it.

BY EDMOND HAMILTON, BROUGHT BACK BY D. JASON FLEMING: Corsairs of the Cosmos (Annotated): The Interstellar Patrol Volume 3: The classic pulp scifi space opera

In 1930, Edmond Hamilton wrote three more installments of his Interstellar Patrol series of stories for Weird Tales before taking a break from galaxy-spanning space opera. In 1934, he wrote one last story for the series, and then left space opera alone for most of a decade.

Corsairs of the Cosmos collects these final four stories, in which the Milky Way galaxy is menaced by a rogue comet(!), a mysterious cancellation of gravity that threatens to rip apart the galaxy, and an attack from within a “cloud”, inside of which visible light cannot exist, along with the titular final tale, recounting the time when the Patrol had to deal with intergalactic pirates stealing stars out of the galaxy to rekindle their own.

    This iktaPOP Media edition includes a new introduction giving genre and historical context to the collected stories.

FROM KAREN MYERS: Second Sight: A Science Fiction Short Storyhttps://amzn.to/3TrZ8Ve

A Science Fiction Short Story

BORROWING SOMEONE ELSE’S PERCEPTIONS FOR A POPULAR DEVICE CAN ONLY MEAN COMMERCIAL SUCCESS. RIGHT?

Samar Dix, the inventor of the popular DixOcular replacement eyes with their numerous enhancements, has run out of ideas and needs another hit. Engaging a visionary painter to create the first in a series of Artist models promises to yield an entirely new way of looking at his world.

But looking through another’s eyes isn’t quite as simple as he thinks, and no amount of tweaking will yield entirely predictable, or safe, results.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Wolf and the Well-Tempered Clavier

With the coronation fast approaching, the Cathedral of St. George the Dragonslayer cannot afford trouble. But come it does, while the cathedral choir director is at the Dragon’s Breath Organ, practicing the anthem he wrote at King William’s own request. While explaining some technical terms to his understudy, the choir director decides to show off a little.

In the process, he releases an ancient menace from long before humanity came through the worldgate to this place. An entity that strikes him blind, and threatens further harm to anyone who tries to play the Dragon’s Breath Organ.

However, they dare not disappoint His Majesty, not on the most momentous day of his reign. Someone must cleanse the Dragon’s Breath Organ of this malicious entity, and the choir director cannot. So the task falls to Miss Anne Teesdale, understudy organist.

Now she must delve into the history of the cathedral, and the mysterious ancient magic that fills the organ’s windchest. A secret that may well cost this young woman her life.

Or worse, her sanity.

An Ixilon story.

FROM FRANK HOOD: The Devil’s Due

A controversial aging rocker reminisices about his start in the 70’s and tries to set the record straight about his mysterious, unknown love.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Normalcy Bias: Look closer…things aren’t always what they seem to be.

Look closer. The things that you’re assuming you’re seeing? May not be what you think. Is that really a mouse, or is it a Brownie? Is that really an owl? Is that polished gemstone a stone…or an egg?

We take so many things for granted. Some of them may be harmless, but many are a lot less so. I wonder how many people ignore red flags every day, because they only see what they expect to see?

This collection takes what’s “normal” and asks “What if it’s something more?”

FROM CAROLINE FURLONG: Contact: Angeles

While removing a prototype sensor from the prow of her new Alliance battleship, the Ausa, Captain Elizabeth Goodwin and her crew encounter a setback when one of the engineers sent to remove and stow the device is injured in an accident. Before the other engineer can help the man, the two are surrounded by amoeboid creatures which seem immune to the effects of vacuum.

Thought to be hallucinations experienced by early spacers who had been alone in deep space too long, these creatures – known as “angel fish” – startle the crew by their sudden appearance. Despite her misgivings, Goodwin allows three of the aliens to be taken aboard for study. But less than an hour after the aliens have been brought on the ship, one of Goodwin’s men is killed and another is seriously wounded.

Her search for both the murderer and the escaped “angels” soon leads to a disturbing revelation. Eventually, Goodwin must decide which threat is greater: an old enemy of the Alliance, or the fabled “angels” encountered by the first explorers from Terra.

FROM SABRINA CHASE: Red Wolf: Exile Part 1

Same map, different world.
Nic Duncan must prove she has what it takes to follow her uncle into the Special Forces. To get his backing she infiltrates a lawless area of postwar Asia posing as an adrenaline-junkie hiker. Checking out a newly discovered cave follows naturally as part of her cover.
But in that cave she encounters a strange artifact—and when she emerges, the world she knows no longer exists. While the terrain remains the same, every sign of civilization has disappeared. No road, no power lines, no GPS, nothing.
Starving and desperately searching for a way back, Nic discovers the relics of the past have vanished too – and the pre-technology people she encounters either terrified of outsiders or ruthless killers.

Can Nic find any safety in this strange yet familiar world … and what must she sacrifice to get it?

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 ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: Dangerous

The self promo is obvious. I probably should complain he used a picture from 20 years ago, but really I’m not going to. I wish I still looked like that.

While on that, there’s also this:

And now….

Because I woke up late and I’m finishing the next refinishing mystery (well, it was almost finished, but it turned out I was trying to write two books in one. And logically, the next in line is the one that’s less done. And I want it out by end of month, which means my copyeditor needs SOME time in which to work. And….

So, in view of all that: THE MEMES MUST FLOW:

Tastless Smeshless…. At According to Hoyt we can and we will!

This one is dedicated to Ray Epps Ken who keeps commenting despite a ban.

And now off the vile political stuff:

And this is to remind you the metric system was invented by the murderous French Revolution:

Shame on the British for going along with the French. When has that turned out well?

and just how life works…

This is a post with a setup, so bear with me. It all gets to a point. And not just on top of my head.

Yesterday, when I quit work for the day, husband reminded me that we had page proofs to go over for a Chris Kennedy anthology, Bonds of Valor. And by reminded me, I mean forwarded the proofs, because we had established at breakfast that I never got it. (Hotmail is whimsical.)

So at nine something I sat down on the sofa to watch the Saint, but with the laptop, instead of crochet. (Curtain. For office.) Anyway, the minute I sat down, I realized one of you had been trying to reach me over social media, because (among other things) she had a sense of impending doom.

As someone who has awakened since December with the cold in the pit of the stomach, staring at the ceiling round about 2 am I get this. It’s awfully like the last days of 2019 and early 2020. (Not that THAT got better.) Husband has been having the same, which is why he insisted we import the DIL IT (daughter in law in training) within driving distance ASAP, because we need to have those we love close, so we can assist and he said “2023 there’s something bad coming. I can feel it.”

Before you think we’re some kind of soothsayers, we’re not. and we’re accurate-ish in these feelings, though this one feels big. What we are is artistic types.

This ties in with the story I was proofing. You remember where you bright boys and girls egged me on to write muse murder mysteries. Well, I hope you’re happy because the story in BOV is the first one of those, starring one Kit Marlowe, somewhat weirdly changed. It’s noir, and he has become a PI who lives between worlds and investigates crimes between or by authors (and artists) and muses. It came to me, as I was writing it, as though a fever dream, and the world setup poured out. (It’s called Great Reckoning in a Little Room and it will eventually be released as part of a series called The Muses’ Darling. Which will be short novels and novellas, like what I have planned for Rhodes and Magis, and the uplifted cats. And yes, those are coming. Shush. It’s starting to pick up speed, despite the I SWEAR every other month health collapse.)

Anyway, when I finished it, I told my assistant who was proofing it (it was 10k words written in 3 hours, and only gone over by me once, which means the typos they were gifted) “I only wish I were sure that the world building isn’t real.”

To explain, in this world writers, and artists and musicians have thought-wires throughout the multi-universe, crossing into and around parallel worlds. We are, sort of, nodes of these wires, existing sometimes more or less beffuddledly (totally a word) between realities. We are not crazy, just cross-wired. We’re also not sane, because it’s impossible to be crosswired, in a multi-verse where everything can happen, and not be more than a little nuts.

So, it starts with the concept of a multiverse, like an infinite deck of cards, stacked together. Most cards differ by very little, perhaps a wrong dot in the printing that’s in different places. This goes along with the whole concept of crossing between worlds and the Mandela effect. The idea that you routinely, more or less, cross between universes, exchanging with one of you (your alternate in that world) and that you don’t notice because the difference is so small. Like the car that was green is now black. Or the numbering scheme changed in a street, so your familiar address is off by two.

No proof of this, of course. How would you get proof? It’s even possible that even if everyone crosses over the line on the regular only a few are equipped to perceive it and remember it. But some of us do.

Granted it involves some kind of altered state, which calls our testimony into question, but then again, it happens often enough it makes you wonder.

Like, once, in high fever, I realized I was writing at my normal desk, but the desk was in a tower of a Victorian by the sea side. And there was a spiral staircase, leading down. I went a flight down, to the bedroom level, undeniably ours due to furniture, and started towards the stairs to the first floor. Except from it I heard my family’s voices… and mine. And scuttled double fast back to the office. Where I sat down, and suddenly I was in my familiar room, in a Victorian in downtown Colorado Springs. It wasn’t till I described it to husband that he said “Remember that house we looked at in Astoria, in 2002?” And I did.

Most other such events are less spectacular. Things you lost or broke years ago are suddenly on your desk one morning. Clothes you never had/bought show up in your closet. They’re your taste, you just never bought them. Etc.

I hear this from other friends, who are artistic types, sometimes with a degree of panic. There was the friend who opened a door to what should be a classroom, and instead it was set with a round “sharing” type table, and chairs around it. He closed the door, opened it again, and it was what he expected.

I keep hearing these stories, as I said, usually with a degree of panic. And it is probably because I’m somewhat of a den grandmother to a bunch of creatives. Note none of my friends or protegees are into funny substances.

But it reminds me of a much younger Sarah, just breaking in to writing, finding herself forgotten in a corner of a room while a bunch of old pros, some of them her heroes, talked about how they “got” stories and things that happened while writing. And closing her eyes, and sending a prayer up that all SHE got were feelings, and a sense of how the dialogue should go, or at the most dictation in thoughts in her brain. Because DEAR LORD it would be impossible to write and look after toddlers while getting the full panoply of sounds, senses, visions, SMELLS from the character. Uh, no. Thank you.

Anyway, the way I explained it in the story was that we are… odd… and have links to either our other selves or just others in all sorts of worlds. Not just the immediately adjacent ones (Which I think are responsible for most people’s hunches, because their other selves know this thing) but all over.

And I’m not sure it isn’t true.

It certainly explains the sudden panics, the “something wicked this way comes” and the way that the late insanity seemed to be one-off from Ringo’s Last Centurion scenario, only in this case the plague wasn’t and… well, the government insanity is an election cycle off. I just hope it goes well.

In proof that we live in other worlds than here, or that our imagination is really weird, I was going to compare us to something that apparently doesn’t exist in this world. Unless I got it from reading some archeological thing, and it was an unproven hypothesis. And I don’t remember where I read it. (I have poorly controlled ADD at the best of times, even on meds, and right now the meds are hyper caffeination though I have an appointment, which means I go on side quests all the time, and read things that pop into my line of vision. And unfortunately my mind is a cement mixer, so I often don’t remember where the original info came from.)

What I dreamed/read about/whatever was that in olden days, in regions prone to Earthquakes, villages had these bells on a hair trigger, which were in turn set inside other bells, or means of sounding, to amplify their sound. The idea being that even very small foreshocks of the kind only modern seismographs register, would make the bell tinkle and hit another bell that sounded louder, which in turn…. So that the entire village would know if there were a bunch of little tremblors in a cluster, and could get ready for a larger shake.

The thing that occurs to me against that system is that we have tiny foreshocks more or less all the time. Back in my thirties and forties, for whatever reason (not anymore. I think it has to do with the internal ear) I was a living seismograph. I didn’t register EVERY minor tremblor, but I registered some no one else felt. I’d tell husband about it, and sure enough later it would be in the news with “you don’t realize this, but the Earth moved last wednesday.” OR whatever. Anyway. So, the Earthquake Bells, which is what I thought they were called, depending on how sensitive they are, would have a lot of false positives.

As it turns out, creatives who “feel” things have a lot of false positives too.

I won’t go into people who hear voices, or see things — I’ve often wondered if we’re related to the ancient bards and shamans and such, or at least descended from them — and how they regulate that, because I don’t know. Till that, awe-struck moment hearing old pros talk, I had no idea anyone got this any harder than I did.

I know how I “regulate” it and it’s by the “strength” of the feeling. We’ll establish that waking up in the middle of the night with my stomach full of ice, and a sense of “something wicked this way comes” is pretty strong. It’s not as strong as what I got for three months before 9/11 when I’d wake up drenched in sweat, and not be able to sleep more than two hours at a time. So, there’s that.

Then again, for the whole Covidiocy I never got more than what I’ve been getting since December. (And getting worse, same as then.)

I have this theory that you feel an event in proportion to how close it is to you (meaning does it affect you, which 9/11 did, because I was tied to NYC publishing) and how near it is in time. So an event vaguely related to you but HUGE will feel about the same as an incident related closely to you (say death of a relative) which doesn’t impact many people.

So, I hate woo woo, and don’t put much faith in it. Because for all I know the feeling I was having all through the end of 2019 was for John Ringo’s Last Centurion world, and not ours.

Yes, I know this all sounds insane, unless you’re one of us, in which case you’re going “Oh, so, that’s why…” And mind you, I think it’s not just creatives. I think everyone can feel this stuff to an extent. And if you don’t want to go with a multi-verse hypothesis, and the sounding bells, consider that our subconscious might be adding things all the time, and trying to give us warning of something wicked this way comes.

Anyway, Earthquake Bells, if they existed, would be super-sensitive. By the time the shock was big enough to make the bells in your local search start to rattle, it would be practically on top of us. Which is when normal people feel it.

What I want to say is two fold: I’ve been getting reports from creatives, all over, of waking up with cold in the pit of the stomach, or all in sweats, or… definitely the feel of something wicked this way comes.

It might be that living in clown world we’re reacting to shadows and intimations of things not there. It might very well be. Remember that. Even though a lot of us are getting it — and because there are connections between us, we’re all probably panicking the next person, like the little bell on a hair trigger making the bigger bell sound, too — it might not be nothing, or it might be very little and got through relatively easily.

For those of my religious persuasion, praying the cup pass us by without our tasting it is always approved. We have the best example on that. (Though remember even He didn’t get what He prayed for. It’s not a vending machine. Sometimes the plot requires what the plot requires.)

The second part is, just because you get the warning, it doesn’t mean you can do anything about it. The bells can’t stop the Earthquake. They just give early (and sometimes false) warning.

This is what drove me nuts in 2019 and early 2020 (heck, all through it.) It was “if I’m sensing this, I should be able to stop it.” But you can’t really. Even when the feelings are more specific, there’s really nothing you can do, even if they’re true (and sometimes they’re not. Or they’re exaggerated.)

So, if you feel that something wicked this way comes, the warning is not really for YOU specifically (Probably, unless it’s extremely personal. Which is unlikely with how many people are getting it) and you probably can’t do anything about it.

I know — I KNOW — it drives you half insane, but all you can do is prepare as best you can, pray as best you can and then resume building over under and around.

And keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.

Long before I watched The Saint, I’d read all the books, by Leslie Charteris.

I count it as one of the saddest moments of my grown up life having found out that Leslie Charteris didn’t in fact write most of them, but farmed them out to other writers who were going to a tough spot and that he often didn’t say them. The last one is the material point. I don’t hold it against any of my favorites getting work done in whatever way. After all, the book is the book. You do the best you can with it. If you can’t write it for whatever reason and outsource it, that’s fine. So long as you make sure afterwards that you edit it so it matches the previous style, that’s okay with me. It was the fact that he stiffed fellow word-harvesters, including Heinlein that truly broke my heart.

Robert A. Heinlein, of course, didn’t let him have the story he hadn’t paid for. Instead, he filed serial numbers and released it as “They do it with mirrors.”

I don’t actually remember at what age I first watched the Saint. I want to say I was eight, but as I pointed out, in my memory, I pretty much was 3, 8 or 13. Sometimes 16. The other ages don’t seem to exist.

But of course, for the little girl who liked Robin Hood, the saint was catnip. And whatever age I was, I was old enough to appreciate Roger Moore’s looks. Though young enough to have no idea why I liked them.

I didn’t realize until we started re-watching them that the first series aired in the US before I was born. To be fair, the run in Portugal was probably at least 10 years later, since the Portuguese usually got these series as bargain, so they were either really not very successful, or very old.

Anyway, because we live in clown world, and because clown world has decided it needs to mess with even my innocent pastimes, like watching British mysteries, by making them increasingly, every year, both woke and nonsensical, as we were flipping around the many things available for free — mostly old or not very successful, but that’s fine — my husband and I realized that we both had enjoyed the Saint, but neither of us remembered much about it.

So, we decided to watch it at night, after we deal with various… duties and annoyances,. We sit on the loveseat and cuddle, and I do my crochet as a wind down towards bed.

Yeah, some things have struck us as funny or, you know, just not very convincing, like the fist fights. Dan says part of this is because of the fixed camera issue. They simply filmed with only one camera, so they had less latitude to pull punches while appearing not to, or something. I’m not sure I understand any of that, since I don’t in fact know much about filming and photography. (Or no more than I’ve learned playing with DAZ3D)

But black and white and all — because, well, as we all know the world was black and white till about 1967. I don’t remember it that way, only because I was very young, but we have the historical documents. — we’ve been enjoying it. I won’t say the plots are much better than TV these days. They’re not. Though this series has managed to surprise me once or twice.

It is interesting to watch their blind spots, versus current blind spots. I’ll stay silent– No, heck, I won’t.

I was amused, though not offended, at the Saint’s advice that one of his clients (?) spank his woman to earn her respect. On the face of it I’d say that was ridiculous — more or less ridiculous than current film makers’ tendency to make any smart female lesbian, I can’t say. Both annoy me — but given the success of Fifty Shades, perhaps he was correct. Not being a typical female, I don’t know. Anyway laying hands on me in any way I didn’t wish him to, or in any way that caused pain usually lived to regret it. (I mean, the regretting was a given. I think most of them lived. I didn’t check in a couple of cases, so who knows? Also, it was long ago and memory is hazy.) And though I can understand power games in bed (well, it’s much easier to write, for one, because there’s a clear line to follow) I never understood pain. Perhaps because I was sufficiently spanked as a child to associate it with punishment.

On the other hand, despite the fact that we all know, as we’re told so endlessly, the women of that time were horribly oppressed and treated as nothing but objects, I’ve found that the women depicted tend to be of the same kind as those that make good characters today: self actuated, independent, and quite capable of pulling a fast one on the men.

I don’t know, something must be wrong, since obviously — we’ve been told — women in sixty one and sixty two were complete slaves of men, never seen outside without being in chains and wearing an apron (which as we’ve been told is a symbol of subjection, and not something that protects your clothes.)

Perhaps the film makers of the sixty just continuously and consciously lied to us? I mean…. surely it can’t be that today’s mavens are completely insane and suffer from excessive presentism, having been lifted to positions of cultural influence through either strict and loud adherence to Marxist views or diversity that consists in having an interesting skin shade, sleeping with people other than the most commonly expected, or styling themselves as something quite different. Or of course through yes.

Thank you to whomever just slapped my back. I did have a piece of snark stuck in my throat. Hopefully the cats don’t eat it.

Anyway, we’ve been doing this for a week and change, and yesterday it hit me, and I confessed in some dismay that though it’s not the main reason I’m watching it, Roger Moore’s looks, such as they were, are part of the reason that I’m enjoying this rewatching.

My husband laughed at my chagrin, and said, and I quote “So?”

Which is about par for the course, because you know… I have never resented his ogling beautiful young women. Why should I?

Provided neither of us builds a fantasy life in which because someone is prettier or younger (often prettier because younger) than our spouse, they must also be what we want, the sheer enjoyment in watching a beautiful person of the opposite (or same. I mean, not for us, but whatever does it for you) sex is… rather innocent. It’s an aesthetic pleasure, comparable to watching a beautiful sunset, or admiring a gorgeous sculpture, only more so because human and the sex one is attracted to.

I never understood the entire crazy-hole-in-the-head of feminists and other ists who think that because you enjoy looking at someone and admire the way they look, you are objectifying them.

I honestly don’t know a blessed thing about Roger Moore the person, nor am I even vaguely interested. I know he died recently. I also know he was a very good actor (the expressions in The Saint are…. speaking, so to put it. Even if it’s played a bit over the top, as it should be.) I suspect his political opinions were appalling — actors’ opinions tend to be — and … Well, I just don’t care much one way or another.

Is enjoying watching him act, when he was young, and not caring the least what he thought or how he lived “objectification”? Likely if he were female and I male, the feminists would accuse me of it.

But the truth is this: I like beauty. I — being female and heterosexual — particularly like male beauty. Particularly well-groomed male beauty, of a type that is increasingly hard to find.

Beauty is, at any rate, rare. Most people aren’t beautiful. They’re okay. They pass. But they are not beautiful. Worse, very few of those remain good looking as they age. (And seeing a picture of Roger Moore in his old age was very sad, really.) Some do, but those are even rarer than those that are beautiful as young people.

Even though the Roger Moore of the Saint is young enough to be my kid now, I can enjoy his beauty captured on film and rejoice we live in an age of miracles, when such can be captured and enjoyed long after the person aged and died.

I don’t see any reason to feel guilty. If you enjoy my words, I don’t also demand you know what I look like much less find me ravishing (I was all right when I was young, but never ravishing at this time, at this weight, at this age, if you find me ravishing, I recommend a psychiatrist..)

It was important to me, of course, that my husband have an interest in me beyond the way I looked when we got married. Mostly because I knew my genetics, and that things would go downhill look-wise fairly quickly (How quickly and how far downhill was the only surprise.) In my relationship with him, it was important that he like both the way I looked and the way I thought, and the second one a little more, since it’s likely to last longer. (Though not permanent, either. You change. Everyone does.)

But for the vast majority of people out there, supposing someone stumbles on my picture of me at 19 and takes pleasure from it, I don’t require they know who I am, or what I enjoy, or even that I exist and am not an AI creation.

Beauty is damn rare. And we should enjoy it where and when we can.

Because it is all too fleeting. As is life. Which was going to be the theme of today’s post and will probably be tomorrow’s, but I spent the night dreaming of the solution to Dyce’s book, and having figured it out, I want to write it.

Which I should have been doing all this time, but things sidewayed (totally a word) at speed today, so I’m only now about to start.

Go forth and look at something or someone beautiful today.

And take sometime to sit with someone you love and watch something old, or silly or interesting and unwind a bit.

And then return to the fight. Because it’s clown world. You can’t go go go all the time. You’ll wear yourself out.

So take a breath. And then get back to work.

Guys,

We lost Geoffrey Withnell I don’t know how or when, but his wife just left a message on my newsletter telling me he was gone.

He’s been a commenter here for a long, long time, and his input was always appreciated.

Ave atque vale, Geoffrey, godspeed until we meet again.

Raises glass. Drinks. Throws glass.

Absent companions.

My friend Kim Du Toit, recently, told me that I had to figure out what is wrong with me and get it taken care of….

I know what is wrong with me. It’s taking care of it that is a problem.

What is wrong with me is that I am someone whose auto-immune responds to stress, living in clown world.

When our financial system and the safety of our very nation are in the hands of clowns who blame things on “capitalism” (We maybe should try capitalism, eh?) or “Trump” or whatever they ate for breakfast there is a certain stress.

In fact, as another friend pointed out about a month ago, we’re all tired. And tiredness and stress bring on their own problems.

Over the last three years we saw what seemed to be a — granted flawed — system of order and institutions become weaponized in the service of — objectively — its own enemies, and turn on its own people with ravening hatred.

Worst, we saw behind the mask of institutions that exist for the public good — the CDC? REALLY? — and now realize it might in fact never have been on our side. It wasn’t bureaucratic and bungling, but outright malicious.

And the fact that our churches, our companies, our media all jumped on the bandwagon and rode it to hell doesn’t help anything. On the contrary.

After the experience of watching the entire world go crazy, I’m not sure I can unsee it.

So…. Yeah, I’m still not 100% sure what the heck consumed the last four days of a lot of sleeping (mostly) but I figure it was just my auto immune acting up, because I’m so tired.

It’s like all of us are living, every day waiting for the next shoe to drop.

It’s like living on the slope of an active volcano, waiting for it to blow up. You wake up in the morning, and you check if things haven’t blown up yet.

It is important to remember that those of us who are over 50 have lived through several cataclysms. They are never as cinematic as it is in movies or books.

What is going to kill us is never what kills us. And sometimes the most terrible things come completely unforeseen. Unless any of you had “The democrats terrify the entire world in order to enrich some medical companies and steal an election” on your bingo card. Because I didn’t.

But what is seen can’t be unseen and the world is now a different place. I’ve been reading my own old books, getting back into series to continue and I keep thinking how young and naive I was.

Only I wasn’t. It’s just that the truly terrible event lurking in the future was too bizarre to guess at.

We can work ourselves into a fret, trying to anticipate the bad thing that might come. Or we can do the best we can and keep going.

There are things we’ve learned are true: the truth always outs. What can’t go on won’t go on. And if we can’t do anything about the big things, we can improve the little things, right here, in our personal lives.

We can build over and under, and around, little by little, day by day, and be ready.

It must be sufficient, because it’s all we can do.

And when the stress gets us down? Dust yourself off, and try again.