julia louis dreyfus

The brilliantly funny actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus announced on Thursday that she has breast cancer. She did not reveal the severity of her diagnosis.

I hope everything goes well for her. She was my favorite character on Seinfeld because of the range she brought to her performance. She arguably was the best actor on the show.

I was amazed to learn Louis-Dreyfus is fifty-six. I always thought she was in her forties.

Her diagnosis is a reminder to all of us to check our breasts regularly with a self exam. You're never too young to get breast cancer, ladies.

RIP hef

Hugh Hefner died on Wednesday at the age of 91. The New York Times published a comprehensive and very interesting obituary.

When he was a younger man, Hefner was a critically important figure in the so-called sexual liberation movement and also an important advocate for free speech.

At some unspecified point, however, as he grew older, he became more of a cliche. He was a maverick no more. He was a much older man hanging around with hot young women who wouldn't give him the time of day if he wasn't who he was.

He could have put away the pajamas and become an important elder statesman for free speech rights in other countries, for instance, instead of being a poster boy for the dirty old man stereotype.

If he was happy doing that, then it was his business. I wonder how his children felt about it. Maybe they didn't care. If he was my father or grandfather, I think I would have felt he was making himself look foolish and tried to convince him to move on.

Nonetheless, he had a momentous life. "The end of an era" is an overused tribute to many people, but not with Hef.

There will never be another one like him.

saudi driving ban lifted

The Saudi Arabian government announced earlier this week they were lifting the ban on women drivers, effective next June.

I've written about the ban here before and I agree this is good news, but it's only one baby step toward lifting Saudi women out of second-class status.

I had to laugh at some of the reasons advocates gave recently in favor of the ban: men wouldn't know how to react to women drivers in nearby cars, and women drivers would lead to promiscuity. One prominent cleric even said allowing women to drive would harm their ovaries.

Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy, and the royal palace has already announced the ban will not be reinstated, a none-to-subtle message that critics should shut up. Still, an anonymous message is being shared among conservative groups claiming that women drivers will spread epidemics and lead to adultery.

Given that Saudi Arabia is not a democracy nor a constitutional monarchy, all commoners have limited rights, but women are far more limited than men.

The best avenue to change that would be to eliminate the monarchy. However, the only realistic route there would be if a group like Al Qaeda or ISIS overthrew the government, and then everybody would go from the proverbial frying pan into the fire.

child labor horrors

As I mentioned in a recent post, I have been sporadically listening to this audio lecture series about the industrial revolution. I'm not all the way through yet, but the instructor has mentioned in detail several times about some of the wretched working conditions for small children in the eighteenth and nineteenth century.

I knew some child labor practices in that period were bad, but the lectures really opened my eyes about how deplorable they actually were.

I think the worst situation the lecturer described was when six- and seven-year-old children worked in eighteenth century coal mines, opening and closing wooden baffles in the crude ventilation system. They worked in complete darkness for up to sixteen hours a day.

The mines used small children because older children or adults could not fit into the ventilation shafts. The baffle job was often the first in a lifetime of employment in the mine, which often ended in early death, due to lung diseases.

You could not fault the parents who sent children to work, because the families were usually desperately poor, thanks to criminally low wages, and needed every penny that could be earned. They knew almost nothing about birth control and the rhythm method, so they kept popping out more children to be sent down into the mines.

The mine owners were a different story, however. They vehemently fought against the creation of child labor laws, and even after they were passed, continued hiring children in defiance of legalities.

How could they sleep at night, knowing they sent tiny children into the mines to pay for the fineries filling their sumptuous homes?

Of course, child labor did not end before the modern era. In some third world countries today, small children still work instead of playing or attenting school.

I had difficulty locating a photograph of nineteenth century coal miners that didn't include children, but I did find this one of circa 1890s coal miners. Notice how they have candles on their helmets and not battery operated lanterns, which were not then in wide use (enlargement).

the woman in cabin ten

Last month I wrote here about how much enjoyed British novelist Ruth Ware's first book.

I had her second novel on hold at the library and read it right after it came in a few days ago. This one is titled The Woman in Cabin Ten and is a mystery thriller about a troubled journalist who thinks she saw a murder aboard a luxury cruise, but no one believes her and there's utterly no evidence of any crime having been committed.

I enjoyed this novel a lot, and it's a real page turner, particularly in the first half, but I don't think I liked it quite as much as Ware's first book. I don't think the characters were as well defined and complex as her last book and the plot felt forced in passages toward the end.

She apparently wrote this book in a lot shorter period than the first one, and maybe that's why it doesn't quite measure up to her last manuscript, when she had the luxury of time to burnish it more.

Still, the book is a lot of fun, and you can easily imagine how you might try to work yourself out of the fix in which the central character finds herself after snooping around too much where she doesn't belon. I now have her third and most current novel on hold at the library and am looking forward to that one, too.

visiting north korea

The New Yorker is running a fascinating and detailed article by one of their best writers, Evan Osnos, who recently returned from North Korea.

The title of the piece makes it sound like it's about the risks of nuclear war, and there's certainly plenty of that, but it's definitely not the entire or even the main focus.

Reading about life inside the dictatorship almost seems like they planned certain aspects by using George Orwell's 1984 as a guide to suggestions about how to run a country. The piece made me want to read more about North Korea soon, particularly a memoir written by a native who escaped the place.

Like many people, I imagine visiting North Korea would be an absolutely memorable experience, at the same time it would be incredibly stupid for any American to do so. I've already written an entry here about that.

My father-in-law talks about how he never believed the Berlin Wall would come down but then it did. Similarly, I wonder if North Korea will ever be able to overthrow their dictatorship in my lifetime.

If the North Koreans want some pointers, they could research the collapse of the Romanian dictatorship in 1989. Then again, North Korean libraries likely would include no reference materials on that type of historical event.

The picture below taken recently in North Korea is not from the article, but I liked it because of the striking composition (enlargement).

blood sport

I've invented a new sport. It's called Smash. Two players roll a pair of dice three times. Whoever wins the highest total rolls gets to tie up the other player then beat him in the head with a wooden club three times. The beaten player can wear a helmet.

It will be bloody! Gore galore. Teeth will be lost. Probably consciousness, too.

Of course, if this sport catches on, the public will likely be outraged. There will be calls to outlaw such a violent endeavor. Doctors will issue statements about the serious long-term brain injuries that Smash will inflict.

But would Smash be any more dangerous than, say, professional NFL football in America?

I was reading about the late Aaron Hernandez, a former NFL player and convicted murderer who killed himself earlier this year. A lawyer for his family revealed last week that he had severe chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a neurodegenerative disease most commonly found in athletes with multiple serious head injuries.

More than one hundred former NFL players are known to have had CTE.

So why the hell are people continuing to support such a dangerous game? Why do high schools even have football programs, given these dangers?

I don't blame boys for wanting to play football. They see the game as young fans and they're hooked, little realizing the potentially lethal danger.

But what about adults? They'd be outraged if people played my game Smash, yet players are at a similar great risk in the NFL football they enjoy.

So I conclude with this simple rhetorical question: is it immoral to support or enjoy football?

too much money

I was reading about the death earlier this week of Liliane Bettencourt, widely believed to be the wealthiest woman in the world, with an estimated net worth of $40 to $45 billion (American dollars).

She was the only child of the man who started the company that would become L'Oréal, now the largest cosmetics company in the world and of which she owned the largest block of shares.

Notwithstanding her fabulous wealth, she actually never worked after a teenage internship at the company and had little involvement in running the firm.

Hence, she became the world's richest woman simply because she happened to be born to a clever chemist.

IMHO, she was also a walking billboard for why inheritance taxes need to be much higher on the fabulously wealthy.

Most democracies have done away with the nobility and aristocracy. It's specifically prohibited by the US Constitution, among others.

Nevertheless, someone who inherits tens of billions and never works is, in reality, little different than an idle aristocrat who inherits a title and vast wealth. The primary argument against an aristocracy is that people should succeed on their merits, not their name.

But if you inherit tens of billions simply because of your name but never work, then you are not succeeding on your merits.

A nice, modest inheritance is fine. But I think at a certain point the total dollar value of an inheritance should be capped. The rest should be taxed and invested in higher education or lifesaving medical research or something else worthwhile for the public good.

Now some would say "when you die, you should be able to give your money to whoever you want -- you've already paid taxes on it!"

I have two rebuttals to that. First, when you're dead, you're dead -- you no longer have any money. A corpse doesn't own anything and can't give money away.

Second, when someone is worth millions or billions, much of that is because of untaxed capital gains. No tax was ever paid, so when it passes to an heir, it becomes untaxed income.

Why should ordinary people pay taxes on income while the ultra-rich pay no tax on de facto income?

great courses

After some of my previous posts about audiobooks and self-education, a longtime reader emailed me and recommended I check out audio lectures by Great Courses. I looked and our library system had a bunch of them so I thought I'd give it a whirl.

The Great Courses presentation is fairly simple. A well respected professor gives a series of lectures on a specific topic. Each of the lectures is thirty minutes, and there are no students asking questions -- who knows if students are even hearing the lecture live.

You can listen to the lectures in or out of sequence and you can take long gaps between one lecture and another. So in many ways they're almost like audiobooks.

There are no tests or exams at the end, so if you don't learn anything, then that's your little secret. Many of the courses include a very detailed outline of the topics covered.

I was a little cautious before I tried one, fearing it would be some dry windbag droning on and on, but it was not that way at all. So far, I've listened to one entire course of thirty-six lectures on European history which I enjoyed tremendously and am now doing one on the Industrial Revolution, a co-production with the Smithsonian, which I also like just as much.

One thing I found really interesting as I was listening to some of these lectures -- they made me think about things I had learned elsewhere and I made little connections on my own in ways the lecturer never mentioned. I assume the same happens for other people, too.

The courses available cover everything from history to literature to math to science to religion and more. Our library has literally hundreds of these things plus many by a competing company called Modern Scholar that look very similar.

If you've seen either company's product -- they advertise heavily in American magazines -- but have been cautious, check one out on a topic that interests you. Your local library may have some or many to lend for free or a nominal cost.

true love

Imagine the hours of pain he endured for this travesty. Rather than spending his money on tattoos, he should have invested that in a few visits to a podiatrist. Those toenails are just nasty.

The only positive thing I can say about this tattoo is that socks will hide it and the mistake of a lifetime can remain hidden from public ridicule. After all, it could be worse -- it could be on his hands.

a feminist or not?

The New York Times is running an interesting article about German Chancellor Angela Merkel, her role as a female head of state, and how she doesn't call herself a feminist.

I don't think it matter whether someone calls him or herself a feminist or a tuna fish sandwich. It's what he or she does in office. If Merkel advocates policies and takes actions that treat both genders equally, then she is a feminist in fact, regardless of what she calls herself.

The piece also addresses how Merkel has downplayed her gender as Chancellor. Some or many might criticize her for that, but I think she needs to do whatever works for her.

Some politicians de-emphasize their race or gender while others do not. The reason is personal to each one of them.

Barack Obama, for instance, presented himself as a President who happened to be Black as opposed to a Black President. He did not do that accidentally, as his biographers have revealed, and it was arguably a very wise choice considering the times in which he was elected and served.

If I had to find fault with Merkel, I would criticize her wardrobe. Enough with the boring pantsuits all the time, Angela.

Would it kill you to wear a nice tailored suit with a knee-length skirt once in a while? The few times she has worn a dress in public, it's always been formal and floor-length.

Let loose a little, sweetie, and be bold. You're coasting to a fourth term. You can take a few small risks.

jane at eighty

Arguably few people turned more heads at this year's Emmys than Jane Fonda with a new hairstyle and electric pink gown (enlargement of shot below).

I don't know if I'm completely on-board with this new Jane. She certainly was striking and fantastic for a woman a few months from her eightieth birthday. If I look like her at that age, I will be happy and blessed.

I guess I'm ambivalent because she appears so different that she's almost unrecognizable. It's almost like a disguise.

I think it's the hair. She's worn a feathered hairstyle for so long that she seems like a different woman without it.

One important goal of a new look is to be memorable without being disturbing. Fonda achieved that and then some, but I still miss the classic Fonda.

multiple choice

I was looking for quotes for my Tumblr and noticed this one from the author John Irving: "I have a very poor record at multiple choice questions."

I didn't use the quote because it's not the sort I feature, but it did start me to thinking about when I was a student. I seem to remember a lot of multiple-choice quizzes and tests when I was in middle school and I didn't always do so well.

Multiple choice in math usually makes the test easier because it narrows down the possibilities. There's only one answer to "what is 2,381 minus 1,744?" but when you have three or four possibilities presented to you, then getting it right is a process of elimination.

Geography multiple choice is pretty straight forward, too, and again contains hints and clues. "What is the capital of France?" only has one answer. But what is the value in learning rote facts like that? Do you understand anything more about France's place in the world simply by knowing the name of its capital?

History is where I had problems with multiple choice. "What was the primary cause of the Civil War?" might not have an answer on the list. Then what do you do?

I've often wondered if it's lazy teaching to use multiple choice. An essay test would take time to correct. Multiple choice can be graded quickly and even by machine in some schools.

I imagine I'm thinking more and more about school lately because Joey starts kindegarten next year. While it will be a while before he has tests of any complexity, I imagine I will have to keep some of my opinions to myself about exams within his earshot.

I don't want him to loathe them just because I do. I want him to form his own opinions. Some kids love tests -- my brother was one of those.

But if he finds tests perplexing and annoying, he may find a sympathetic ear.

suicidal thoughts

A friend from Los Angeles days emailed me recently to catch up and, in the process, told me someone we both knew had committed suicide. The dead man was not a friend nor even someone I liked, so it's not like I'm in mourning.

The reason for his suicide is apparently not known. He had no history of depression nor any money problems nor any personal bad news.

I'm always one who believes "never say never," but I have to say I can't ever see how I could commit suicide. Part of the reason is because I don't think I could ever become so despairing that it would be a viable option, and part of the reason is I'd be way too chicken to do it.

Like many/most people, pain is something I avoid. Most common ways of suicide involve significant potential pain or horrible distress: leaps, drowning, slashed wrists, gunshots, etc. Even pills could potentially be awful in the final moments of consciousness.

I've always wondered what runs through someone's head when he or she makes the decision to end it all. Panic or peace? Or alternatingly both?

Part of the reason this intrigues me may lie in the fact that I saw this picture when I was a child, studied it closely, and never forgot about it. It could be a horrific image but it isn't.

The fact that she hit the car with such force -- not that she looks so peaceful -- tells me that suicide could be horribly painful. I also am intensely curious about who she was and what drove her to make that fateful decision.

the water is wide

I have always loved this ballad, although I think most performers sing it too slowly. I found some renditions on YouTube that, while professionally done, just dragged too much IMHO.

The Seekers are still popular in Australia, from where they originated. I know they were big in Britain in their day. I don't know about the United States.

My husband likes The Seekers, but they're really not his generation. His mother used to play them, and while she died when he was quiet young, he said he does have a memory of her singing along to the music in the kitchen.

axios

I have another webpage recommendation today -- the news site Axios, which launched earlier this year.

Axios was founded by key people from Politico but is of a somewhat different focus. The site distills down issues to only the most important points and without a lot of narrative.

The result is that you can consume a lot of news very quickly, so it's a great way for me to keep on top of what's happening back in the United States. Each short piece is filled with multiple links if you want more details.

I particularly use the politics feed to get my daily fix of things that outrage me because there's lots of coverage about You Know Who.

If you're a news junkie like me and not already familiar with Axios, I recommend you give it a whirl.

beware of the fatberg

This is a fascinating but somewhat disgusting story about a gigantic "fatberg" clogging London's public sewers.

The thing is a solid mass formed by hardened and packed oils, diapers, hand wipes, and still more repulsive yuck.

And here's what's really amazing: the thing weighs 130 tons and is more than 250 yards long -- longer than two American football fields. It will take three weeks to break up the mass so it can be removed.

It's sort of a no-brainer not to flush dirty diapers down the loo -- at least it seems so to me -- because they could clog the pipes. Fats are also obvious because they harden when cold and can block piping, too.

Rather than pour used oil down the drain, I always put it in an empty, sealed plastic vitamin jar I keep in the fridge. When that is full, it goes to recycling, and I start a new jar.

political porn scandal

The Internet is in a tizzy over the news that the Twitter account of Senator Ted Cruz, a conservative Republican from Texas, "liked" a hardcore porn video for at least thirty minutes earlier this week.

Cruz's staff tried to explain this away by saying the senator's Twitter account was hacked, but it's impossible to hack an account in the way that they claim.

I am certainly no Cruz fan, but I think this is all much ado about nothing. Checking several political sites online, I could find no reference to him ever advocating any anti-porn laws, so it's not hypocritical of him to enjoy smut.

This is 2017, not 1957. Lots and lots of people are porn consumers. It's no big deal. Yes, Cruz is all "faith and family," but it's not sacrilegious to watch porn. Better that than stepping out on your wife.

Focus on real issues, the sorts of things Cruz does that hurt ordinary Americans. There are lots of reasons to criticize him, but this certainly isn't one of them.

hampton sides

I recently finished reading a nonfiction book by the author Hampton Sides, whom I was certain I had written about here before. A quick search through the archives, however, showed I was wrong.

I've read three books so far by Sides and heartily recommend them all. A year or so ago, I read his book Ghost Soldiers -- The Epic Account of World War II's Greatest Rescue Mission about the liberation of more than five hundred allied soldiers from a Japanese POW camp.

I initially only read this because my husband strongly recommended it. I thought it would be filled with blood and gore and war, but I was way wrong -- it's a tremendously compelling story well told.

Because I found that book so worthwhile, I next picked up Sides's In The Kingdom of Ice -- The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette. This one is about a Arctic shipwreck in 1879 and the horrendous two years thereafter the crew spent marooned in the farthest north.

Although my husband had not read this book, I was again somewhat leery before I read it because I thought it would not capture my interest. Again, I was 100 percent wrong, and this time I urged my husband to read it. He did and thoroughly enjoyed the book, too.

Most recently I read the author's Hellhound On His Trail -- The Electrifying Account of the Largest Manhunt in American History about the international quest to identify and capture Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassin. Just like the polar book is so much different than the World War II one, Hellhound was completely compelling in another subject area with no overlap.

Sides has written a few other books that I plan to read soon. Only one is available through the Sydney library system, so I'll have to order the others via interlibrary loan.

Unfortunately, he seems to publish only one book every five years or so, thus it will be a while before he comes out with his next one, reportedly about the Cold War.

filthy rivers

I was reading offline about the Industrial Revolution and how it was common, even into the early twentieth century, for businesses and residents to pipe liquid industrial waste and raw human sewage directly into any handy nearby river.

And sometimes people downstream continued to use those rivers for household water and washing.

You have to wonder about the common sense of people who did things like this. Didn't they ever think about how they were creating problems that could come back to haunt them in the near future?

Maybe it was an "out of sight, out of mind" situation. As long as the river upstream from them was clean, they didn't want to think about what they were doing.

On a smaller scale, this kind of thinking is still with us. When someone litters, they have the same kind of mindset -- it's now somebody's else's problem to deal with their waste.

My husband finds it amusing that the rare time I see someone deliberately litering in public, I will call them out for it on the spot. I do the same thing if their dog shits in public and they don't clean it up.

balloon tits

I do not understand why women do this to themselves. I can see why small-chested women might want to enhance their boobs, but then do it with implants that are undetectable.

What really boggles my mind is how some men love fake tits like this. They prefer women with obvious implants, particularly when they're huge and impossibly unnatural.

Many women like men with a generous male endowment. But if men walked around with obviously implanted, huge fake dicks, I don't think many women would dig that.

In contrast, plenty of men love when women are as natural as possible. My husband is one of those, and I am naturally inclined to be that way, too, given I'm small in the tits.

But I've never understood when people prefer the obviously phony instead of the real thing.

hurricane irma

I know I have some Florida readers, because they've written to me in the past. I hope each and every one of you is safe this weekend.

Don't take chances. If you're trying to decide between a safe option and one that's less so, choose the first one.

Don't risk lives to save property. Property can be replaced, but lives can never be.

teddy update

I wrote here in August about how I was reading Edmund Morris's three-volume biography of Theodore Roosevelt. The combined total of the three books, not counting footnotes, bibliography, index, etc., is close to two thousand densely packed pages of small type, so it's not a fast read.

I finished the final volume last night and now feel like a semi-expert on the 26th President. I thought the first book, titled The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, was the strongest, and that's also the one that won the Pulitzer Prize. That volume covers his life up until the day he became President when William McKinley died.

IMHO the second volume, covering only when Teddy was actually President and titled Theodore Rex was the least strong. I didn't say "weakest," because it certainly isn't weak, but it's just not up to the par of the other two books.

Thus, of course, the final volume devoted to his post-presidency, titled Colonel Roosevelt, was better than the second but not up to the mark of the first. I did feel, particularly toward the end of this book, that the author was hurrying -- the prose seemed flabby at times and some claims went unsourced.

I don't regret reading the three books by any means, but also, I think the author could have excluded certain sections of chapters or at least condensed them significantly. While I really understood, for the first time, why World War I happened after reading these books, I think the war details could have been trimmed.

At some point, but not too soon, I will read some other acclaimed Teddy books, like David McCullough’s Mornings on Horseback, primarily about TR as a young man, and Candice Millard’s The River of Doubt, about his post-presidential Brazilian rainforest trek which nearly killed him. I also plan to read Doris Kearns Goodwin’s The Bully Pulpit about Roosevelt, William Taft, and the rise of modern journalism.

Nonetheless, I think right now I could handle "I'll take TR for $2,000, Alex." (I miss watching that show regularly, but do occasionally catch it on the internet.)

odious artists

I was reading something offline about Richard Wagner, the famous nineteenth century German composer and notorious antisemite. More than a few people are so repulsed by his beliefs that they refuse to listen to any of his works.

I think that's a mistake. Yes, Wagner was an odious creep. However, in many cases, the art can be separated from the artist as long as the repulsive ideas and ideals are not an obvious part of the work.

I've read and enjoyed a few writers who I know have political beliefs far different than mine. Their work stands separate from their beliefs because they don't turn their books into polemics (unlike someone like Ayn Rand, who did).

I'm not a fan of Wagner's operas, but some of his orchestral music is strikingly beautiful. I don't think you can say that a wordless melody is inherently antisemitic or racist.

So why deprives yourself of pleasure when the art is totally devoid of politics? It's not like Wagner or his estate is earning anything from any performance or recording, given they're all in the public domain.

man down

I drove home yesterday after picking up Joey at preschool and, as I came down our street, I saw a man lying face down in the middle of the road.

I quickly bailed out and saw that his face and hands were covered with blood. He seemed to be unconscious. I had never seen him before in my life.

I shouted to him something like, "sir, were you struck down by a car?" He only murmured in reply and moved slightly, like he was trying to get up but had no strength.

I said in a loud but more normal voice that he should lie still and I was summoning emergency services. I called from my cellphone; police and ambulance arrived within a few minutes.

Our street is barely traveled, particularly during the day, so who knows how long he lay there and what had happened. He was only murmuring when the ambulance took him away.

So therein lies a mystery. Who was he and how did he end up face down and bloody on our street? Given I was only the person reporting the incident, I'll probably never learn the answers.

I told my husband later that if I was like one of those nosy broads in mystery novels and TV programs, I'd probably try to find out and stumble on some complex conspiracy.

Well, I may be curious, but not that curious.

the $2 billion rathole

Quartz magazine published an interesting article last week about how the US government has spent $2 billion on abstinence-only sex education for teens and why it's been a gigantic waste of money.

I had some kind of minimal sex education when I was in eighth grade that was a unit in health class. It seems we spent about a week on very basic sex education, but I don't remember anything about abstinence. That's not to say it didn't happen.

I do remember what we were taught about birth control was very minimal and inadequate. I never had a real clear understanding of exactly when I could become pregnant until sometime after I was already sexually active and that education didn't come from any class. Thankfully I never had a mishap.

I don't think any amount of abstinence-only "education" would have made me even consider that idea for a second. Many are half-crazed with lust during teenage years and just saying "no" to something so pleasurable would be laughable.

If the government had spent that $2 billion on birth control education, I suspect the rate of unwanted teen pregnancies would be much lower. Given the current political climate, however, that kind of spending doesn't seem very likely.

paradise is burning

I last lived in Los Angeles about ten years ago, but I still keep up with the local news there as well as exchange email with a few SoCal friends. Several of them are not far from the big La Tuna fire now burning in the northern part of the city.

If you live near there, I hope all is well with you.

I lived in several different parts of LA during my time there, both on the westside and to the north. For a while, I lived quite close to the current fire location in a rented room in a nice house I hated to leave but had to when the owners sold the place.

I look at the local photos online and LA still feels like home for me in some ways. I spent some of the happiest days of my single life there, but I also have to admit I spent some of the worst ones there, too, before I escaped to Las Vegas.

LA may seem like a concrete archipelego at times, but in a strange way, natural disasters bring people together in the Southland. I remember that happened after a big fire when I was living there.

The photo below (enlargement) was taken from Burbank, looking north toward the fires, and appeared on the LA Times website.

Wherever you are, stay safe. And to my fellow Americans, Happy Labor Day.

the good old dirty days

I read something offline recently about how public defecation was such a problem in American cities during the 19th century that laws were passed to make it a criminal offense.

This wasn't a problem with homeless or mentally ill people, as it later came to be, but a common practice among working men and a few women who just decided to go wherever they wanted because it had always been done that way.

Of course, it was commonplace for people in towns and cities to open the window in the morning and empty their chamberpots into the street. If you or your carriage happened to be in the way, then that was just too bad.

The high and mighty were certainly not above filthy public habits. I read a book about Marie Antoinette recently that talked about how the nobility and royals regularly used the gardens and lawns at Versailles to relieve themselves, and during inclement weather or at night, they just crapped and peed wherever they found a secluded spot in the corridors and stairwells inside the palace.

If you traveled back in a time machine to an earlier century, the first thing you might notice is that an entire city smelled like a dirty diaper.

like a natural woman

In the shower yesterday, the melody for the great song "You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman" popped into my head. I usually sing during my daily scrub so I started to belt it out, trying to remember all the lyrics.

The song was originally recorded by Aretha Franklin and later, among others, by Carole King, who was one of the song's cowriters. IMHO both women's versions are the best available.

With all this said, some of the lyrics are rather nonsensical, when you think about it. The verses are great but the refrain really makes no sense -- "Cause you make me feel, you make me feel, you make me feel like a natural woman."

What did she feel like before she felt like a natural woman? An unnatural one? A natural man? What about when you had your period that month, didn't you feel like a natural woman then?

The titling of the song is also silly, because it uses random parenthesis, a common gimmick in popular music for more than a half century. The title technically is "(You Make Me Feel Like a) Natural Woman."

Those parenthesis are totally pointless. You don't begin sentences with parenthesis. They're not being used correctly.

But at the end of the day, that doesn't matter, because countless millions of people have loved the song and surely it has earned countless millions for both Franklin and King.

Aretha's performance below is arguably the best she's ever given. You'll also recognize the man wiping away a tear or two. Carole King herself is the one who looks like she'll pop out of her skin she's so excited by the song.

statues revisited

I already wrote an entry recently about confederate statues, so this is sort of a follow-up to that one.

Several days ago I bookmarked this article comparing Germany, where there are no statutes to defeated military figures, to the United States, where there are more than a thousand statues to defeated military leaders. I finally had a chance to read the piece yesterday and found it very thought provoking.

The writer makes some very good points, in my opinion. The American statues at the center of the current controversy were only a part of a revisionist history process in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century that transformed the Civil War in collective consciousness into something it wasn't.

So even if the statues were removed, that would not solve the problem of a societal amnesia by many people who inaccurately romanticize something that shouldn't be. At the same time, as long as the statues stand, many people will cling to an inaccurate history.

Germany faced up to what had happened in the 1930s and 1940s, but the process wasn't immediate and it was generational. But the United States has never gone through a similar process, even though America partly directed and administered the Germanic transformation.

I had a discussion about confederate statues with my husband but only after I had written my earlier entry linked above. Up to that point, he hadn't really paid much attention to the issue, thinking it was just a nutty American thing, but when I explained it to him, he was amazed to learn what was at stake.

He's been to the United States but never realized the very startling fact that for every Union monument in America, there are more than ten for the confederacy. He found it mind boggling that "the losing side" even had one single statue, let alone more than a thousand.

"You will never solve race problems in your country until every last one of those statues comes down and everyone understands and accepts why," he said without hesitation.

Sometimes non-Americans understand Americans better than we do ourselves.