Cats Evolving? Eeek!

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“Curiosity killed the cat,” Fesgao remarked, his dark eyes unreadable. Aly rolled her eyes. Why did everyone say that to her? “People always forget the rest of the saying,” she complained. “‘And satisfaction brought it back.” ― Tamora Pierce, Trickster's Choice

Nobel Prize-winning author Ernest Hemingway was a famous aficionado of polydactyl cats, after being first given a six-toed cat by a ship's captain. Upon Hemingway's death in 1961, his former home in Key West, Florida, became a museum and a home for his cats, and it currently houses approximately fifty descendants of his cats (about half of which are polydactyl). Because of his love for these animals, polydactyl cats are sometimes referred to as "Hemingway Cats".

Some sources state that these cats are rare in Europe because they were killed as witches' familiars,[3] but other sources indicate that they are quite common in southern Britain.[2] - Wikipedia.

Indy the Smart Cat can open jars without a thumb.

Three Sisters - Corn, Squash and Beans

I have been a lazy but thinking gardener ever since I first read Ruth Stout's How to Have a Green Thumb without an Aching Back. Say the words "natural weed control" and I become interested. Add some Native American history to the mix and you have more of my attention and interest. The Three Sisters planting method is featured on the reverse of the US Sacajawea Native American dollar coin. The Three Sisters are Corn, Squash and Beans.

I went hunting in Google Land. It is amazing where a good graphic can lead you. I like things simple. Keep it simple, Sweetie is my motto.

I learned that this garden is simple to do. Except for the getting dirty and doing the digging part.

I cannot think of an activity that would be more fun for parents and children. My children loved digging in dirt and picking the flowers.

Making a Three Sisters Garden is an excellent teaching tool for science classes. There is an entire class lesson plan at the link.

Cultivating these companions in your school garden, a small patch near the building, a barrel, or even indoors, can inspire studies of Native American customs, nutrition, and folklore. As students dig in, investigations of plant growth and relationships will also flourish. - Creating a Three Sisters Garden

I learned a Three Sisters Garden is beautiful and became determined to put this planting into my own small backyard.

Paradise for Book Lover's

This illustration comes from a wonderful book entitled Apples of New York. It can be found, along with other books for your reading pleasure, at the E-Book Lending Library. You can read all their titles for FREE. Stock seems to revolve. I am fond of antique illustrations and typography. So, while the booklist is not enormous, the illustrations and typography of the original editions are rewarding and beautiful. 

I found The Varieties of Religious Experience by Wm. James in a 1917 edition. And a vintage Complete Works of Mark Twain. They have all the genres from romantic potboilers to science fiction. 

February - The Love Month #2

I love poetry. Shameless hot love. I found the Poetry Foundation. 

I went there hunting poems about Love. This poem was listed under Funny Love Poems. The poem comes from the book Bar Napkin Sonnets. 

I have lived this and I ain't laughing. Poem so good it hurts. I am remembering, lusting after and loving all and everyone who was there. I love them now. Even those who do not talk to me anymore.

Bar Napkin Sonnet #11

Things happen when you drink too much mescal.
One night, with not enough food in my belly,
he kept on buying. I'm a girl who'll fall
damn near in love with gratitude and, well, he
was hot and generous and so the least
that I could do was let him kiss me, hard
and soft and any way you want it, beast
and beauty, lime and salt—sweet Bacchus' pards—
and when his friend showed up I felt so warm
and generous I let him kiss me too.
His buddy asked me if it was the worm
inside that makes me do the things I do.
I wasn't sure which worm he meant, the one
I ate? The one that eats at me alone?

by Moira Egan

Do not pray for me. God might think I hang out with you.

I read this opinion piece from Charisma News and immediately developed an attitude. In the context of sexuality, the "watchman on the wall" stuff makes me think about Peepers. Peepers are creepy down to the ground.

Voyeurism is the sexual interest in or practice of spying on people engaged in intimate behaviors, such as undressing, sexual activity, or other actions usually considered to be of a private nature. - wikipedia

A photographic essay Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance; and the Camera since 1870 has been created and edited by Sandra S. Phillips, Simon Baker, Richard B. Woodward. It is a fascinating look at voyeurism and photography and the inherent pleasure and ubiquity of peeking. We all enjoy it and some of us are addicted to peeking. But I digress.

Gay-Affirming Nabisco Is Shoving More Than Oreos Down Our Throats

"Many are calling for a boycott of Nabisco. I’m not a fan of boycotts, but I am a fan of healthy eating—and I’m not a thin little 7-year-old anymore. I stopped eating Oreos, Nilla Wafers and Nutter Butters long ago to avoid packing on unwanted pounds. That said, Nabisco is still trying to shove something down my throat for which I have no taste. Although I defend their right to do so, I grieve over the latest example of how immorality is the new normal. Our only godly response is to continue speaking the truth in love and to pray for those whose hand may be caught in the cookie jar of sexual immorality when Jesus returns." - Jennifer LeClaire, news editor of Charisma.

Read more of LeClaire's opus at the link. Her essay is meant to be a response to an ad by Nabisco below. Subject: Wholesome Family Life

Maybe it is just me but is it not sexually suggestive to use the phrase "shove something down my throat for which I have no taste?" And we are going to teach godly sex by referring to the "cookie jar of sexual immorality?" Say what? I hear the word "cookie" and I begin to salivate. Is that really the reaction this woman is trying to create?

I mean, a Christian looks at a family and the first thing you think of is gay sex? Huh? And gay folks are supposed to be "objectively disordered?" Something stinks to the highest heaven in the state of Christianity. Disclamer: I self identify as Christian.

I was starting to get all bent out of shape over this and someone posted this photograph of a cookie jar --------->

Sometimes my Significant Other looks just like this Pup. I gained perspective immediately. That is the power of image and sight. Now, if you are reading this, Honey Baby, I think you adorable when you are wagging your tail, so to speak.

If this is The Cookie Jar of Sexual Immorality, I want one. And I am going to fill it with Sinfully Good Chocolate Brownies and HoneyMaid Crackers.

Reading to Cats

This is the feel-good Pennsylvania story of the month. I love cats.

The Animal Rescue League of Berks County PA has a program called “Book Buddies.” Children volunteer to read to sheltered cats. Via Reddit.

Have patience if you go to their website. Everyone is going there for more information, more pictures and to donate to this great program. The boy in the photo thought he was "too dumb" to learn to read. Nope. His reading and grades have improved tremendously. And the cats are finding forever homes.

Turkey Crack-Up

I found this in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1945 collection of essays, notebook excerpts, and letters, The Crack-Up

TURKEY REMAINS AND HOW TO INTER THEM WITH NUMEROUS SCARCE RECIPES

At this post holiday season, the refrigerators of the nation are overstuffed with large masses of turkey, the sight of which is calculated to give an adult an attack of dizziness. It seems, therefore, an appropriate time to give the owners the benefit of my experience as an old gourmet, in using this surplus material. Some of the recipes have been in my family for generations. (This usually occurs when rigor mortis sets in.) They were collected over years, from old cook books, yellowed diaries of the Pilgrim Fathers, mail order catalogues, golf-bags and trash cans. Not one but has been tried and proven — there are headstones all over America to testify to the fact.

Very well then. Here goes:

Turkey Cocktail: To one large turkey add one gallon of vermouth and a demijohn of angostura bitters. Shake.

Turkey à la Francais: Take a large ripe turkey, prepare as for basting and stuff with old watches and chains and monkey meat. Proceed as with cottage pudding.

Turkey and Water: Take one turkey and one pan of water. Heat the latter to the boiling point and then put in the refrigerator. When it has jelled, drown the turkey in it. Eat. In preparing this recipe it is best to have a few ham sandwiches around in case things go wrong.

Turkey Mongole: Take three butts of salami and a large turkey skeleton, from which the feathers and natural stuffing have been removed. Lay them out on the table and call up some Mongole in the neighborhood to tell you how to proceed from there.

Turkey Mousse: Seed a large prone turkey, being careful to remove the bones, flesh, fins, gravy, etc. Blow up with a bicycle pump. Mount in becoming style and hang in the front hall.

Stolen Turkey: Walk quickly from the market, and, if accosted, remark with a laugh that it had just flown into your arms and you hadn’t noticed it. Then drop the turkey with the white of one egg—well, anyhow, beat it.

Turkey à la Crême: Prepare the crême a day in advance. Deluge the turkey with it and cook for six days over a blast furnace. Wrap in fly paper and serve.

Turkey Hash: This is the delight of all connoisseurs of the holiday beast, but few understand how really to prepare it. Like a lobster, it must be plunged alive into boiling water, until it becomes bright red or purple or something, and then before the color fades, placed quickly in a washing machine and allowed to stew in its own gore as it is whirled around. Only then is it ready for hash. To hash, take a large sharp tool like a nail-file or, if none is handy, a bayonet will serve the purpose—and then get at it! Hash it well! Bind the remains with dental floss and serve.

Feathered Turkey: To prepare this, a turkey is necessary and a one pounder cannon to compel anyone to eat it. Broil the feathers and stuff with sage-brush, old clothes, almost anything you can dig up. Then sit down and simmer. The feathers are to be eaten like artichokes (and this is not to be confused with the old Roman custom of tickling the throat.)

Turkey à la Maryland: Take a plump turkey to a barber’s and have him shaved, or if a female bird, given a facial and a water wave. Then, before killing him, stuff with old newspapers and put him to roost. He can then be served hot or raw, usually with a thick gravy of mineral oil and rubbing alcohol. (Note: This recipe was given me by an old black mammy.)

Turkey Remnant: This is one of the most useful recipes for, though not, “chic,” it tells what to do with the turkey after the holiday, and how to extract the most value from it. Take the remnants, or, if they have been consumed, take the various plates on which the turkey or its parts have rested and stew them for two hours in milk of magnesia. Stuff with moth-balls.

Turkey with Whiskey Sauce: This recipe is for a party of four. Obtain a gallon of whiskey, and allow it to age for several hours. Then serve, allowing one quart for each guest. The next day the turkey should be added, little by little, constantly stirring and basting.

For Weddings or Funerals: Obtain a gross of small white boxes such as are used for bride’s cake. Cut the turkey into small squares, roast, stuff, kill, boil, bake and allow to skewer. Now we are ready to begin. Fill each box with a quantity of soup stock and pile in a handy place. As the liquid elapses, the prepared turkey is added until the guests arrive. The boxes delicately tied with white ribbons are then placed in the handbags of the ladies, or in the men’s side pockets.

There I guess that’s enough turkey talk. I hope I’ll never see or hear of another until—well, until next year..

Heroes of Feminism Series - Introduction to Alice S. Rossi and the Hero Margaret Sanger

Introduction to this Long Book Review of The Feminist Papers by Alice S. Rossi

Alice S. Rossi is a Founder of the National Organization for Women. I had a paperback copy of her book that I bought long ago when it and I were new. A link to her obituary is below.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/us/08rossi.html?_r=0

My friend Ocean was the inspiration behind this series. I will have Ocean speak for herself. She posted this statement of intent in a comment:

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"I've read some great books on the history of the women's rights struggle in the past few years. Apparently, there were a lot of unbelievably stupid women who believed such nonsense as "women aren't interested in voting, because they have their men to do the voting for them." Some of the right-wing female fruitbats (love that term!) today are just as moronic, if not more so, than the anti-suffrage women in the 1850's.

During the summer, I came across a great collection of feminist essays at my public library called THE FEMINIST PAPERS, edited by Alice S. Rossi. I think it's well worth reading some of these essays, if your public library has a copy. Hell, I would seriously encourage ALL girls and women to read some of the great essays this book offers. I think too many women of younger generations have no idea what battles the women in the 19th and early 20th century had to fight to both get the right to vote AND to use contraception to prevent unwanted pregnancy. Reading essays by some of these women, including Margaret Sanger, could help more young women understand that electing an anti-choice candidate would be disastrous for women. As President Obama has said, "we've been there, we've done that, we're NOT going backward, we're going forward."

From:  THE FEMINIST PAPERS, "The Right To One's Body: Margaret Sanger," by Alice S. Rossi, 1973

Quote:

"Without the means to prevent, and to control the timing of, conception, economic and  political rights have limited meaning for women.  If women cannot plan their pregnancies, they can plan little else in their lives during the long period from age twelve to fifty, while they are 'at procreative risk.'  So long as sexual pleasure could not be enjoyed without the anxiety of a possible pregnancy, women seeking wider and more demanding participation in professions or politics really had an either-or choice of marriage or a career, while those who attempted the combination did so with a sense of anxiety that can be anathema to creativity in work.  Sexual abstinence has never been a banner that could attract very women or men, even in the nineteenth century, much less the twentieth.

As perhaps the greatest champion of woman's freedom to control her own life and body, Margaret Sanger has a central place in any overview of feminist history and thought.  From the first issue of her magazine, Woman Rebel, in March 1914, to the financial and organizational support she gave to research in hormonal anovulants in the post-World War II period, her life was dedicated to a passionate single-minded commitment to bring the best birth-control methods to ever larger numbers of women around the world. . . .

Sanger's vision was not narrowly focused on the dissemination of birth-control devices.  She believed that the whole modern movement toward new sex ideas was bound to be challenged by the conservative forces of society.  In her view, sex morals for women had been one-sided, purely negative, inhibitory, and repressive, 'fixed by agencies which have sought to keep women enslaved; which have been determined ... to use woman solely as an asset to the church, the state and the man.'  [Sanger 1920]"

Ocean - Editor's Note: Because the original introduction to Margaret Sanger's essay is quite long, I thought it would be more helpful to readers to quote what I believe to be the most important points.  Anyone who would like to read the entire introduction can read it in THE FEMINIST PAPERS, if it can be found at the reader's public library or online.

"My Fight For Birth Control," by Margaret Sanger, 1931

Quote:

    "One day a woman by the name of Margaret Whitehurst came to us.  She said that she was the mother of two children and that she had not money to support more.  Her story was a pitiful one -- all lies, of course, but the government acts that way.  She asked for our literature and preventives, and received both.  Then she triumphantly went to the District Attorney's office and secured a warrant for the arrest of my sister, Mrs. Ethel Byrne, our interpreter, Miss Fania Mindell, and myself.

    The crusade was actually under way!  It is no exaggeration to call this period in the birth control movement the most stirring period up to that time, perhaps the most stirring of all times, for it was the only period during which we had experienced jail terms, hunger strikes, and intervention by the Chief Executive of the state.  It was the first time that there was any number of widespread, popular demonstrations in our behalf. . . .

    The arrest and raid on the Brooklyn clinic was spectacular.  There was no need of a large force of plain clothes men to drag off a trio of decent, serious women who were testing out a law on a fundamental principle.  My federal arrest, on the contrary, had been assigned to intelligent men.  One had to respect the dignity of their mission; but the New York city officials seem to use tactics suitable only for crooks, bandits and burglars.  We were not surprised at being arrested, the shock and horror of it was that awoman, with a squad of five plain clothes men, conducted the raid and made the arrest.  A woman -- the irony of it!   I refused to close down the clinic, hoping that a court decision would allow us to continue such necessary work.  I was to be disappointed.  Pressure was brought upon the landlord, and we were dispossessed by the law as a 'public nuisance.'  In Holland the clinics were called 'public utilities.'

    When the policewoman entered the clinic with her squad of plain clothes men and announced the arrest of Miss Mindell and myself (Mrs. Byrne was not present at the time and her arrest followed later), the room was crowded to suffocation with women waiting in the outer room.  The police began bullying these mothers, asking them questions, writing down their names in order to subpoena them to testify against us at the trial.  These women, always afraid of trouble which the very presence of a policeman signifies, screamed and cried aloud.  The children on their laps screamed too.  It was like a panic for a few minutes until I walked into the room where they were stampeding and begged them to be quiet and not to get excited.  I assured them that nothing could happen to them, that I was under arrest but they would be allowed to return home in a few minutes.  That quieted them.  The men were blocking the door to prevent anyone from leaving, but I finally persuaded them to allow these women to return to their homes, unmolested through terribly frightened by it all.

    Crowds began to gather outside.  A long line of women with baby carriages and children had been waiting to get into the clinic.  Now the streets were filled, and police had to see that traffic was not blocked.  The patrol wagon came rattling through the streets to our door, and at length Miss Mindell and I took our seats within and were taken to the police station. 

    As I sat in the rear of the car and looked out on that seething mob of humans, I wondered, and asked myself what had gone out of the race.  Something had gone from them which silenced them, made them impotent to defend their rights.  I thought of the suffragists in England, and pictured the results of a similar arrest there.  But as I sat in this mood, the car started to go.  I looked out at the mass and heard a scream.  It came from a woman wheeling a baby carriage, who had just come around the corner preparing to visit the clinic.  She saw the patrol wagon, realized what had happened, left the baby carriage on the walk, rushed through the crowd to the wagon and cried to me:  'Come back!  Come back and save me!'  The woman looked wild.  She ran after the car for a dozen yards or so, when some friends caught her weeping form in their arms and led her back to the sidewalk.  That was the last thing I saw as the Black Maria dashed off to the station. "