Holidays and keeping busy

 Today is a holiday of sorts, Indigenous People's Day.  It used to be Columbus Day but they changed it.  I am sure some of my Italian- American friends are having a stink about it.  They do not tell you what a jerk Columbus was, that he did not "find" North America- he didn't make it this far and it was here all along and how come things are only "found" when white men find them anyway.

Ugh.  Columbus was a jerk.  His crew mutinied for goodness sakes.  He  got lost a lot.  We need to stop worshiping the myth.  

I am home and I am going to get off the computer for  a while.  I have stuff to do.  I have to make my final decisions on the ballot and decide if I am dropping it in the box by the Library or waiting and voting on my day off in person.  I have already decided who I am voting for for the main offices ( big shocker, huh?) but I need to look at the propositions to see which way to vote.  I need down time to do that.

I made granola and granola bars this morning,  It's fairly easy, I just need about an hour uninterrupted to do it.  I might make beer bread in a bit.  it's cooler and fall brings out the baker in me.  I love to make food!

I finished my ARC commitment yesterday and am waiting for another assignment.  So far, four of the five books have been good.  I did not finish, therefore did not review the last book, the Warriors by Glen Lazar Roberts.  Here is my take on it, I only got about 50 pages before I gave up and  I TRIED for three days.  Disjointed, it hops from cliché to cliché with no real purpose.  The lead character is a lesbian Roller derby queen.  I think Mr Roberts has never met an actual lesbian and is working from the vantage point of a junior high school boy.  It's supposed to be Science fiction mixed with satire- ala Christopher Moore.  It missed the mark.  Avoid it ( and if you read it and it tickles you, do let me know what I missed about it.  The fact that the former lover of the lead character was a Sasquatch and she supposedly was a "professor at UCLA" of some stupid thing or another, just made me give up.  It sounded very junior high.  When I was in high school, we wrote a collective story about an alien who came to earth and opened a chain of hamburger stands.  It was better than this.

I am avoiding watching the news and hoping at least two Republicans will grow a pair or get a vagina. I can't stand this.  the election can't come soon enough and I hope the idiot loses, even as they try their best to cheat their way in.  FAKE election boxes?   I hope their people place their ballots there in droves.

sigh.

Banning books and other Sunday musings

 The news about Trump dominates everything.  It's a shame that he is such a con man and a liar ( it's a PROVEN FACT the guy LIES- not misspeaks- LIES) that people think this is another of his misdirections.    I feel bad about questioning his health status, but not too bad.  Time will tell.  The most interesting thing  is all his minions, when announcing their infection status, don't call it the boss's preferred sobriquet, "The China virus"  suddenly, it has become "Covid-19" as if by infecting Trump, it gained real status and is no longer a hoax that will miraculously disappear should they decide to try to postpone the elections.

It's  been a bad week for the Trump camp anyway.  His tax returns show him in hock up to his eyeballs and hemorrhaging money.  No way to sugar coat this.  The returns either show he is a broke and bad businessman, or he filed fraudulent returns- which even for the President of the United States- is a crime.  While his lapdog, Bill Barr won't bring charges, I wonder if the all powerful IRS will.  They should.

It's Banned Books Week, and every year, I look at the list of books and shake my head.  No one should have the right to decide what I read.  If YOU don't like a book, and don't want kids to read it then by all means, forbid your children from cracking it open ( fun fact about kids, they will read a "banned " book quicker than one you recommend)

I keep going back to books and authors whose long ago written works are now getting a modern morés.  Laura Ingalls Wilder got taken down as being a beloved children's author for ACURATELY QUOTING her mother's view on native Americans.  The current take is that we should not expose children to Ma, I suppose.  Was Ma wrong?- well yes of course.  Was it the prevailing thought of settlers?- yes again.  Do we take this opportunity to talk to children about how people felt 150 year ago and how things have changed and why Ma might have said what she said in the first place?  You would THINK so, but instead, now Laura and her family are OFF the list of books to read and Laura herself is being disparaged.  Put what you don't agree with in a box, never again to see the light of day.  

It reminds me of the story of Sleeping Beauty.  Cursed at her christening that on her 16th birthday, she would prick her finger on a spinning wheel and die ( which was later amended by a fairy to fall into a hundred year sleep) He parents overreacted.  Instead of TEACHING her that the darn thing might be dangerous to her, they hid ALL of the spinning wheels in the kingdom ( how anyone got clothes made in that place is another thing to ponder, but I digress) so when she was confronted with one- or a roomful of them depending on which version you read- she touches it and , well, the rest is history. ( the original story of Sleeping Beauty, written by Basile of Naples is far more horrible and the Grimm Brothers Fairy tales in the original also would have wound up on the Banned Books lists)

Banning books and putting out false news narratives do not "protect" us.  Instead, they make us skeptical of anything coming from a certain source and while questioning is the best way to learn, having to challenge EVERYTHING is exhausting.