You guys? I am feeling peevish. It’s the usual stuff. Work hassles, other hassles, seeing pictures of the new Rose Garden, reading the Kennedy Center list of honorees, and then this:
In the World as Ruled by Nance, there would be no “K-9 officers,” which is copaganda so prevalent most people don’t even notice it anymore. A “K-9 officer” is a police dog, and that’s what they’d be called in my world. I don’t know what bugs me more: canine rendered as K-9, or a dog being called an officer. They’re not officers; I don’t care if they wear a little outfit and a badge. They’re tools used by human officers in the course of their duties, but calling them officers themselves is as dumb as declaring a police car to be an automotive officer.
What irritates me as much as anything is having to pause at this point and declare my love for dogs. Of course I love dogs. Most dogs are better than many humans, and disliking dogs is a red flag so glaring I think it should be disqualifying for holding high office in this stupid country, and yeah, you know who I’m talking about.
For a while now, I’ve tried to stop anthropomorphizing the animals in my life. I may talk to them like they’re human, but I know they’re not, and that’s what’s great about them. Truly appreciating animals is striving to understand them at their level, in their true nature, not the one we’ve imposed upon them.
Some years ago, a stupid superintendent in the local schools allowed the local police to do an unannounced contraband sweep of both high schools, using cops from their own and other departments and, of course, their dogs. It served as a training exercise for the police, and a terrorizing event for the students. A lawyer later told me it also yielded a case for him, when one of the dogs “alerted,” as they say, on a car in the parking lot driven by a girl whose father became his client. The father was an FBI agent, and his daughter was a multi-sport athlete, a straight-A student, and otherwise a shining example of teenage humanity, not likely to be even a casual drug user. Her car was thoroughly searched, and nothing was found, but the girl was isolated and aggressively questioned by the police, which left her in tears. They only reluctantly let her return to her class and drive her own car home after school. No apology. After all, the K-9 officer alerted! And dogs don’t lie!
They don’t lie, but being dogs, and being German shepherds in particular, they are bred and trained to please their handlers. The lawyer directed me to copious research on this subject, and how often these alerts turn up nothing, because the dog isn’t “looking for drugs,” which it can’t understand, it’s looking for a scent that will make the cop say “good boy, Rex.” Sometimes it’s contraband, but sometimes they just want the good boy.
That is today’s rant. There are a lot in the pipeline, which is the long way around to announcing I’ll be taking a few days of R&R, and while I’ll have wifi and my laptop in the cooler climes we’re headed to, I may or may not use them. More likely, I’ll just post a lot of pictures with brief commentary along the lines of wish-you-were-here. I want to let the world carry on without me, just for a few days. Please feel free to keep the conversation going, and thank every last one of you for reading.
Jason T. said on August 14, 2025 at 11:51 am
In our area, K-9 officers occasionally get funerals with full dress honors, at a veteran’s monument.
https://www.wtae.com/article/funeral-for-pittsburgh-police-k-9-officer-rocco-held-at-soldiers-sailors-memorial-hall/7464901
9/11 broke the U.S. in a lot of ways, but the conflation of civilian first-responders with members of the military deployed to combat zones was a significant one, and one that has caused real damage to American society.
“I guess you hate our troops” has been replaced with “I guess you hate our police” as a retort when you’re losing a political argument, and it’s just as effective.
Combine the post-9/11 “All First Responders are Heroes” mindset with our tendency to treat dogs as “four-legged people” and it was obvious what was going to happen next.
Ask any Canadian constable or U.K. bobby; they are generally not put on the same pedestals on which Americans place police and firefighters, and elected officials and the media in those countries are free to criticize their performance, when appropriate.
I don’t hate first responders. Some of my closest friends, etc. But they’re doing a job, and like every other profession, some of them are really good at it, most are good enough at it, and there are a few crumbs.
1254 chars
Suzanne said on August 14, 2025 at 12:28 pm
Speaking of drug sniffing dogs…
My late mother-in-law once flew from Dallas to Indiana with a foil wrapped ham bone in her checked luggage. Why, you might ask? Because it was a good hambone and the daughter she had been visiting was just going to throw it out! When she retrieved her luggage, the contents were a jumbled mess, clearly having been opened and searched through. She was incensed! So, we had to gently explain that airports often employ canines to sniff luggage for drugs and they no doubt went nuts when they smelled a good, juicy hambone which would be an unusual scent for them in the luggage hold of an airport.
We still laugh about it.
657 chars
ROGirl said on August 14, 2025 at 12:57 pm
For some reason this came to mind
https://youtu.be/6ASeKnczX0c?si=ZgkDuZed8Rm64GyL
85 chars
Brandon said on August 14, 2025 at 1:51 pm
The term goes back to World War II.
https://www.asomf.org/the-history-of-k9-corps-in-the-u-s-army/
102 chars
Suzanne said on August 14, 2025 at 1:56 pm
This is a bit long but well worth reading:
https://jaredyatessexton.substack.com/p/a-crisis-of-meaning-and-purpose-theres
“…the death of those mythologies – American exceptionalism, our supposedly everlasting empire, the promise that all the work and self-dealing would pay off – left a massive, sucking vacuum. For some, the feeling was a cold, stark realization of the loneliness we had always felt and always covered up with all the prescribed methods and addictions. Suddenly, the drugs didn’t work anymore. And that left us with the distinct awareness that something needed to change. We needed to change. The world needed to change. Everything needed to change. And that need for change presented something familiar and filling: a burgeoning sense of purpose in finding ourselves and in finding a better way.
For some, that realization was much too painful. They had invested their entire lives and all their energy and all their time and money and effort into creating that fictional self that could stave off the profound loneliness and lack of self-worth. The vacuum wasn’t just frightening, it was apocalyptic.
For those people, a new breed of shameless grifters and opportunists and fascists were ready to sell them even more odious and absurd products and alternate realities and, unfortunately, the timing was right to manufacture a political movement predicated on continuing the capitalist project at any cost, including dismantling liberal democracy and destroying anyone who got in their way.“
1534 chars
Brandon said on August 14, 2025 at 2:01 pm
And K-9 was not just one movie but a series of four, including a TV pilot called K-9000.
183 chars
Icarus said on August 14, 2025 at 2:09 pm
@RoGirl, that was apt pro pro. If the stories are correct, my maternal grandfather had to change his name from the contemporary common Adolf to something else.
I wonder if K9s look down on their cadaver sniffing counterparts?
229 chars
Deborah said on August 14, 2025 at 2:41 pm
I may have mentioned this before, the woman who officiated our wedding on our land in Abiquiu 25 years ago was named Kay Nine Coyote.
We met her through some architect friends we have in Taos (I don’t know if she’s still alive, she had cancer the last I heard a few years ago). She lived in one of those earthships you may have heard about, there are lots of them in Taos and our architect friends worked for the guy who started that company that designs and builds biotechture earthships https://earthship.com/. Our friends have their own firm now, they design self sufficient buildings that exist off the grid with solar power and rainwater collecting etc but they’re not as eccentric looking as the earthships. Taos is a fairly counter culture place, thus interesting people like Kay Nine are attracted to it.
We didn’t want a religious event and she turned out to be just great. She gave a little homily and it was perfect, it was a very windy evening but when the ceremony started the wind stopped and it was beautifully calm, she talked about the power of the wind and the wonder of nature, I think it was off the cuff, and very fitting. She had five children and then came out and started dating other grandmothers, also she looked just like Robert Duval.
1267 chars
Mark P said on August 14, 2025 at 4:43 pm
It’s easy to anthropomorphize dogs because they share so many characteristics with children, especially children prior to the age at which they can feel more self awareness and empathy. The polar opposites are anthropomorphism and anthropocentrism. I think anthropocentrism is the worse and less accurate of the two, based mainly on religion as it is. I am regularly amazed at how well my dog, a German Shepherd mix, understands us. And then I am regularly reminded that she is a dog, not a human, when she eats rabbit shit.
Has anyone noticed yet that we live in a militarized fascist dictatorship? I just happened to see a little of the news it seemed to be mentioned in passing. I see two ways out. First, massive protests, and more important, massive strikes that bring normal life to a halt — no mass transit, no gas stations, no grocery stores, no fast food restaurants, no Amazon warehouses, no FedEx or UPS deliveries, no trucking. Not likely, of course, until the MAGAts start really hurting. The other possibility is a military coup.
1051 chars
David C said on August 14, 2025 at 5:01 pm
I’ve been thinking we may end up with a military coup, too. I’ve worked for a couple of bird colonels and a general. They’re all what you would call small c conservatives. Their also internationalists. You don’t get to that rank without traveling the world and working with, and not shitting on, allies. The one thing they’re absolutely not is fascists. I can’t say I’d welcome it, but I also can’t say it would be worse than what we have now.
443 chars
Peter said on August 14, 2025 at 7:16 pm
I’ll admit it – when I was a wee kid and saw K-9 on the side of the police car, it never occurred to me that K-9 = canine: I was wondering how they got to K-9, wondered what K-1, K-2, etc. could be….
202 chars
Sherri said on August 14, 2025 at 7:47 pm
The most concerning thing to me right now is the paramilitary thugs that Trump has just greatly expanded funding for in the Border Patrol and ICE. They showed up at Newsom’s press conference about redistricting, just to intimidate. While the military might not be full of fascists, BP and ICE are, and will be increasingly, and they just got lots of money.
Soon, Trump won’t bother to send troops or the National Guard into cities, he’ll just send his paramilitary thugs in masks.
489 chars
Ann said on August 14, 2025 at 11:34 pm
Drug sniffing dog sat down beside my 18 year old Birkenstock-and-overalls-wearing daughter when we came back from a trip to Europe. Last stop had been Amsterdam. I’ll admit it was one of those “am I really positive?” moments. Apparently Noxema smells like drugs. Officer even ran a pencil through the jar to confirm there was nothing else there. There wasn’t.
359 chars
Dorothy said on August 15, 2025 at 4:35 am
They used a PENCIL, Ann? Why not a straw or just opened coffee stirrer – something that would have been clean and would not have contaminated the Noxema?! That’s just all kinds of wrong.
188 chars
Julie Robinson said on August 15, 2025 at 5:15 am
Neutrogena hand cream sets off an alert at airport security. Possibly the glycerin content is too high. I’ve learned to leave it off until after the TSA.
Just a little tip to my fellow members of the dry skin club, AKA lotion queens.
236 chars
Jeff Gill said on August 15, 2025 at 8:14 am
Jason T.: well said. I can’t improve on it and won’t try.
But I’m going to be thinking of Robert Duvall now all day.
119 chars
Dexter Friend said on August 15, 2025 at 9:28 am
I love the new-ish Geico TV ad in which the TSA officer confiscates the geico’s three liquids. “A pump top? You gonna cause a real mess!” , as the geico pleads “you took all three.” “Have a nice flight.”
And Rin-Tin-Tin.
from Wikipedia:
“Rin Tin Tin or Rin-Tin-Tin (October 10, 1918 – August 10, 1932) was a male German Shepherd born in Flirey, France, who became an international star in motion pictures. He was rescued from a World War I battlefield by an American soldier, Lee Duncan, who nicknamed him “Rinty”. Duncan trained Rin Tin Tin and obtained silent film work for the dog. Rin Tin Tin was an immediate box-office success and went on to appear in 27 Hollywood films…”
I grew up constantly hearing about this dog and then as an adult discovering he was real, but frequently had a stand-in trained dog.
818 chars
Dave said on August 15, 2025 at 10:52 am
Dexter, I did not know what a huge silent movie star Rin Tin Tin was until I read the book “Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend”, by Susan Olean. I only knew him from the 1950’s TV show, which I’m sure you remember, set on a Western Army post with a kid named Rusty.
Most of the silent movies are lost forever, you can find short clips on YouTube.
352 chars
alex said on August 15, 2025 at 12:30 pm
I’m reminded of the old joke…
Q: What’s on the inside of a fire hydrant?
A: H2O.
Q: What’s on the outside?
A: K9P.
122 chars
tajalli said on August 15, 2025 at 3:48 pm
rolling eyes
12 chars
Dorothy said on August 15, 2025 at 4:13 pm
About 10 years ago when living in Dayton, the little girl next door to us went with me on a dog walk. They had a dog too but it was at home. As my dog walked along and sniffed the fire hydrants, trees etc. Anna said “He’s just checking the P-mail!” I had never heard that before and cracked up. The K9P made me think of that, Alex.
338 chars
Deborah said on August 15, 2025 at 7:18 pm
OMG, watching clips of Trump cozying up to Putin in Alaska is equivalent to watching your mother get raped. Calling him Vladimir, and being so excited to see his best dictator friend is disgusting. I do not understand how the rightwing can sit back and watch this happening and be OK with it. Someone please explain this to me. Please.
335 chars
David C said on August 15, 2025 at 7:49 pm
More like watching your mother willingly fellate your creepy neighbor.
70 chars
Deborah said on August 15, 2025 at 9:26 pm
I am stymied in my reading project. I’ve been trying to read the book for our next book club meet up which is the evening of the 28th, we’re joining via zoom or Face Time or something because we’ll still be in Santa Fe and the book club is in Chicago. I’ve been having a hard time with the book Empire of AI, by Karen Ho, it’s both boring and depressing in it’s description of Sam Altman and all of the folks involved in the AI hype. It’s all rather disgusting. I read Careless People about Facebook but that I read speedily through it, even though it was also depressing. I finally bought the audio book of Empire of AI, so I could multitask by doing other things while listening hoping that would help me finally slog through it. I’m a little more than a third through it and I’m making up every excuse possible not to listen to it. I may just throw in the towel and stop but I keep hoping that something will happen or somehow it will get interesting before I finally get it off of my to do list.
999 chars
Dorothy said on August 15, 2025 at 10:18 pm
Deborah I’m new to being in a book club but I have had that feeling with at least two of the books since our group started in February. I had to give myself permission not to finish one of them; for the other I just flat out said how much I hated the book. It was one of the dumbest books I’d ever read in my life – I did finish it but I can’t understand how this author is so popular and sells books so well. I happily threw the book away when the discussion group was done with it. I am one of the oldest members of our book club and I don’t need to make nice with anyone by saying I like a book when I really do NOT. I’m at the point in my life that I don’t really care if someone dislikes me. They’re allowed! And I’m allowed to be honest even if it means someone gets mad at me for speaking my mind about the book they suggested. For the record, I have no idea who recommended the one I hated. It was Ward D by Frieda McFadden.
948 chars
Dexter Friend said on August 16, 2025 at 3:14 am
Deborah, my old army buddy Johan built a geodesic dome home in a woods near Wilmington, Vermont about 11 years go. He received a large inheritance and decided that was a good idea, but he did not plan a reserve for cost overruns, and when he originally checked for property tax he would be paying, he was told $1,200. He assumed that was yearly. No, it was monthly. Just as he was ready to hire the electricians to wire the dome, he realized he had planned so poorly he had to abandon the project. Since he had poured in all his inheritance into this, no bankruptcy, just broke. He sold the property and contents for a nickel on the dollar. Now at 77 years of age he dreams of a lotto jackpot to move to Ireland, where he originally went to build his dome, but was turned down by the officials around Galway. So instead of just buying a house and starting the paperwork there to become a permanent resident of Eire, he came back to Vermont and disaster. Now he lives in a ramshackle house in Connecticut , doesn’t cut grass or maintain the house, and waits for the lottos to get him to Ireland to live out his days. But after his ancient Prius died, his sister helped him get into a brand new Toyota Corolla. He lives now on minimal Social Security and gets by on a sparse vegan diet and is skinny as a rail. Yeah…once in while I’ll send him a few bucks via snail mail. He won’t do CashApp or anything like that. I just don’t want my buddy whose letters of encouragement while I was in Viet Nam and he was in Monterey kept my spirits up , run out of grub to eat.
1575 chars
Jeff Gill said on August 16, 2025 at 8:05 am
Thursday I got pulled into a meeting of the county commissioners, one that included reps from the county auditor’s office, the health department, the county veterans service office, and a city water department. The issue to try to boil down an hour of complicated discussion was this: there’s a neighborhood outside of municipal limits but “considered” part of a village which is about 400 homes. They’re all on wells, and there’s a known arsenic issue in the groundwater. The county has figured out how to get a water line from the county seat city to the area, and is running it through the neighborhood with the tap fee basically at half of what it costs the county normally, which is $3400. Once you hire a contractor to put in the line and connect, and get the final permits from health dept. (backflow valve test, etc.), the net cost is going to be close to $6000, but a new well that’s deep enough to avoid the arsenic problem is $12,000 or more. (Some of the known problematic wells are just 12 feet deep, and go dry about this time almost every year.)
So far so good, right? But it’s a classic rural mixed neighborhood, with a bunch of nice houses, some small not-so-nice ones, and a few modulars (okay, trailers) which are never moving they’ve been where they are so long. In some of the latter two categories, there are people in their 80s who have an annual income of $11,000 to $12,000 from Social Security. Maybe five of the 400, the former mayor of the nearby village who’s now a commissioner thinks. Call it half a dozen. Two or three are either veterans or spouse of a vet.
The both inspiring and frustrating part was how all these public servants were using their best thinking caps and knowledge base to figure out how they could mitigate the costs for the lowest income homeowners without opening the door to all or at least most of the 400 taking advantage of it. They discussed various funds that could be used and some that can’t be used, unless they come up with a workaround no one there was confident of; means of spreading out payments without kneecapping the utility which needs the income to pay for ongoing maintenance and service (three years? five years? ten?); complications of how this could be put on property taxes to help spread out the cost but the deadlines and no-go areas that option triggers, helpful though it could be.
A couple of options were decided upon and set in motion, and the overall problem was not resolved while some committed to keeping on looking for solutions. But it was bracing to hear in detail how the problem local government most often faces in doing the right thing, which they want to do, is how to help a few with the greatest need without setting themselves up to funding the well off or at least comfortable to the overall detriment of county budgets, and ultimately more taxes on everyone to pay for what they really don’t need to pay for. Legally, so many options they had ran up against the fact that if they do it for Widow Murphy in the trailer, they have to do it for Judge Smails in the mansion, and everyone knows Judge Smails doesn’t miss a trick.
Anyhow, it was good to see and hear local government trying hard to do the right thing, and the veteran service coordinator was actively looking for ways they could spend some money, not looking for excuses to not do so. She asked if one resident had children who had gone into the service; there was a discussion about how some funds require certain vet status on discharge, and she said there are ways to work with less than general discharges. A frustrating discussion, but the spirit was good.
3627 chars
Julie Robinson said on August 16, 2025 at 11:09 am
Jeff G, meetings like that are why local newspapers are so important. How else are your homeowners going to get that information? I read earlier this week that another midwest chain with a bunch of tiny papers has gone belly up, everything shut down.
Deborah, I’d skip the rest of the book and make sure you have more input into the next one. I’m not sure of the decision process, but in my experience one person leads and heavily influences what gets chosen. I’ve had luck with having everyone make their suggestions ahead of time, so you get a chance to give the options a good look and give your opinion.
Does anyone here use shampoo and conditioner bars? I’m looking to lower my carbon footprint by buying fewer plastic bottles. So I borrowed my daughter’s shampoo and conditioner bars, and it was just like washing my hair with…water*. No suds, no quantity no matter how I rubbed with water, pretty much nothing. Today it feels oily.
We have a new refills store in the neighborhood and when we go I’ll see if they have any samples. But so far I’m underwhelmed.
*Our son practiced this technique during college days, insisting it was healthier for his hair. It was hard to hold my tongue as it got greasier and greasier, but his life, his hair, bigger fish to fry.
1282 chars
tajalli said on August 16, 2025 at 11:44 am
Dorothy, I consider my remaining time on earth to be precious and permit myself to not finish books those I find distasteful. Period. A couple good ones I’d recommend are Real Americans and this month’s book club read, Songs for the Broken-Hearted.
Julie, try buying shampoo and conditioner by the gallon. One co-op I use will even special order and still give the discount. You will refrain from generating 16 8 oz plastic bottles and the gallon jugs can be repurposed. If you can influence you favorite store to offering by the gallon or using a refillable option from gallon jugs, you’ll also have a huge impact on the purchases of others locally.
I used one 8 oz Dr Bronner’s bottle for probably 40 years until it finally split and started leaking – that’s a lot of those little bottles avoided!
809 chars
Jakash said on August 16, 2025 at 1:18 pm
With all due respect, I refuse to support any analogy in which the orange felon represents the role of one’s mother.
Here’s an article that should be pretty unpopular with the nn.c gang! I’m prompted to throw it in by Julie’s remark: “I’m looking to lower my carbon footprint by buying fewer plastic bottles.”
“The top three individual actions that help the climate, including avoiding plane flights, choosing not to get a dog and using renewable electricity, were also the three that participants underestimated the most. Meanwhile, the lowest-impact actions were changing to more efficient appliances and swapping out light bulbs, recycling, and using less energy on washing clothes. Those were three of the top four overestimated actions in the report.”
One of the reasons that dogs are a problem is if they are fed meat, since beef, in particular, is a big contributor to climate change.
https://apnews.com/article/climate-choices-impact-decisions-recycling-flying-meat-a85ef43fc63c666e16f29e8ca1e43beb
Aside from that, I’ve always preferred bar soap to liquid soap and am stymied by the recent trend of motels just having big push-button dispensers of shampoo and “body wash.” Though I appreciate the concept of eliminating a lot of waste from the tiny bars of soap and tiny shampoo bottles — Ugh! The shampoo part doesn’t bother me as much as the freaking body wash.
We do have one place in the house with liquid soap — provided in twin 80-ounce bottles from Costco. Can’t match Tajalli’s 40 years, but at the beginning of the pandemic, when the Walgreens shelves were practically barren, we paid through the nose for an 11 oz. bottle of J. R. Watkins Hand Soap. To maximize the value of that investment, we’ve been refilling it with the Softsoap from Costco ever since…
1808 chars
Julie Robinson said on August 16, 2025 at 1:32 pm
We don’t seem to have any co-ops around here, but I’ve been getting the Costco quart size shampoos, etc. If I like any of the liquids at the refill store I can bring in my own bottles. Daughter also uses toothpaste tablets and those have all tasted nasty to me.
As for the rest, our roof is covered in solar panels, we have heat pumps for AC and water heater, and since my dryer is electric, I also have a clothesline. We mostly drive just in the neighborhood but I think we’ll be getting an EV soon, if I can stand all the dealer BS. We walked out of the last place after I’d had too much and was just about to blow.
One small dog and two cats who belong to the other members of the household. If it was just us two that number would be zero. They create havoc with my allergies.
786 chars
Mark P said on August 16, 2025 at 2:42 pm
I’m guessing that the list of under- vs overestimated ways to cut greenhouse gas emissions is just shy of contrarian bullshit. First, if you don’t fly, does the plane stay on the ground? And if you don’t have a dog, will they not grow that cow? They probably use near waste products for the “beef” in dogfood anyway.
326 chars
Sherri said on August 16, 2025 at 2:59 pm
I just finished reading Murderland, by Caroline Fraser, which I did finish, despite not being sure I would. It’s a weird mish-mash of a book, trying to figure out why the Pacific Northwest produced so many serial killers (Ted Bundy, Gary Ridgeway, among others), and tying them to the ASARCO smelter in Tacoma, which spewed lead and arsenic over a large area (and long after the smelter has been closed, there’s still lead and arsenic in the soil in many areas.) She also makes it a sort of memoir about growing up on Mercer Island, near Seattle. It doesn’t quite work as true crime, memoir, or case for how the smelter led to serial murder, but I kept hoping it would tie together,
I have little doubt that the smelter had an impact, but Fraser can’t make the case with a few anecdotal examples. She brings in serial killers from other areas, and finds where they, also, were exposed to smelters. What she doesn’t do is explain why western Pennsylvania, for example, didn’t become a hotbed of serial killers, despite the steel industry filling the skies with such pollution that Pittsburgh had to turn on streetlights in midday. When I lived there in the 80’s, all the buildings were coated in soot, and they were slowly starting to sandblast them to restore them.
She makes a good point that part of the cost of WWII was an enormous environmental catastrophe that we mostly ignored.
Now I’m reading Challenger, by Adam Higginbotham, about the space shuttle disaster. So far, it’s excellent. A good reminder that the shuttle was based on flawed premises from the beginning: that it could be done fast, cheap, and good, and launch every few weeks with reusable boosters. Someone’s trying to sell that same story with Mars. The problem is, space is very unforgiving.
1796 chars
David C said on August 16, 2025 at 8:05 pm
We’ve never been able to find liquid hand soap that’s both fragrance-free and not anti-bacterial. So Mary grinds up a couple bars of Dove sensitive skin in the food processor, puts it in our stock pot and boils it until it’s dissolved. It’s good for about a gallon of liquid soap and probably lasts a year. It works pretty well and the gallon of water comes from the tap instead of being shipped all over the country.
417 chars
Julie Robinson said on August 16, 2025 at 9:38 pm
David C, we use the same Softsoap that Jeff B mentions and it’s both unscented and non anti-bacterial. I’m super sensitive to chemicals and I haven’t had trouble with it. I’m kind of the canary in the coal mine when it comes to odors and get sick headaches when no one else can smell the problem.
Sherri, I had decided not to read Murderland and you confirm my choice. Challenger made me very, very angry at the cavalier waste of human life.
For anyone needing to get their reading mojo back I’d recommend Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green, which is science and history told in novelistic style, and Mailman: My Wild Ride Delivering the Mail in Appalachia and Finally Finding Home by Stephen Starring Grant. His high-flying career came to an abrupt end during early 2020, and faced with a mortgage and a prostate cancer diagnosis, he took a mailman job, mostly because it was available and paid health insurance from Day One. This book is also science and history told in a novelistic way, and even though Grant has a new high-flying job, I really hope he continues to write. Both audiobooks were narrated by their author, and both were worth listening to, especially Mailman.
1185 chars
basset said on August 17, 2025 at 8:37 am
I make my own bar soap from deer tallow. Good for shaving too, but not for hair.
Finished the massive Heinlein biography, the writing does deteriorate toward the end but I still learned a lot and plan to do some rereading of his novels, starting with “The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress.” Gotta pull out of Heinlein immersion for awhile first, though; the bedside stack currently includes Steve Earle’s “Doghouse Roses” short stories, which I bought at an estate sale at Sheryl Crow’s house, a selection of soldiers’ letters home from war, and biographies of Karl Doenitz and Al Bowlly.
596 chars
Jakash said on August 17, 2025 at 2:16 pm
Julie,
I hope my comment above didn’t make it seem like I was suggesting that you were among those cited in the article confused about environmental impacts. It’s just that your comment reminded me of the piece. I recall asking you about the project where a guy essentially turned your front yard into a farm years ago. Can’t get any fewer “food travel miles” for your produce than that! Anyway, if I offended you, I apologize.
Whether that warranted your confusing me with Jeff B. in comment #35 is debatable, but I suppose I should be honored! 😉
555 chars
Julie Robinson said on August 17, 2025 at 3:23 pm
Pleading TDT. Too darn tired.
29 chars
Dexter Friend said on August 17, 2025 at 5:50 pm
Al Bowlly’s song was resurrected in the cult film “Withnail and I”. I may have watched it 200 times.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2Ccbjp3hCg&list=RDh2Ccbjp3hCg&start_radio=1
188 chars
Jeff Gill said on August 17, 2025 at 6:32 pm
“Citizen of the Galaxy” & “Glory Road” are my suggestions, Basset, not that “The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress” isn’t relevant, what with the early look at how AI might manifest . . .
“Glory Road” is shocking when you read the intro chapter and then realize RAH is writing it BEFORE we’d ramped up in Vietnam. You’d swear it had to be a 1970 book, but he wrote that in just three weeks of early 1962 (April & May). How could he have seen it so clearly?
458 chars
basset said on August 18, 2025 at 10:13 am
Read em all years ago and they all need to be revisited, “Moon” is just the one I have at hand; will have todig around in the storage locker for most of the others.
Been studying a reprint of the technical manual for the M1903 army rifle,have a 1943 model A3 which I mention to see if anyone here has similar interests.
324 chars
basset said on August 18, 2025 at 11:01 am
… in WW2 history and relics, I mean.
38 chars
Jessica W said on August 18, 2025 at 11:01 am
Mark P, it doesn’t matter which cow your dog’s food comes from. What matters is how many cow-equivalents are grown and killed for dog food. If, say, the equivalent of 1 in a thousand cows are used in pet food, then if a whole lot of people didn’t feed their pets food containing beef the total environmental penalty of raising beef would go down.
I’m not qualified to judge all of the under/over estimates listed of course. But it’s the same issue that arises with all activities where your particular contribution (such as recycling) doesn’t make much difference but everybody’s not-much-difference collectively adds up.
And similar to the argument that says you shouldn’t bother to vote because your individual vote only rarely makes a difference.
760 chars
Mark P said on August 18, 2025 at 12:06 pm
The report that ranks dogs (or pets in general) as having a high carbon footprint is, as I suspected, mostly clickbait. The cited study really isn’t about carbon sources, but people’s difficulties in ranking sources, or really pretty much anything at all. Trying to track down the facts in the original study is hard, because one source cites another source that cites another source. Apparently it mostly started with a UCLA paper that makes some questionable assumptions about the beef consumption of dogs. Other authorities question some of the assumptions, and I have no real interest in trying to track those down. My conclusions are that if you’re worried about your dog’s carbon footprint, then feed your dog chicken, and find something else to worry about.
Virtually every single thing we do today has a carbon footprint. Even gardening — where do you think your hoe came from? Steel manufacturing has a carbon footprint. Logging has a carbon footprint. Even running — where did your shoes come from? Your clothes? Does your electricity come from hydropower? That’s good, because there is a much lower carbon footprint from operating a hydropower facility than a coal-fired facility. But it’s not zero. The only way to eliminate your carbon footprint is to throw away all your belongings and begin a hunter-gatherer subsistence, using sharpened sticks to kill your prey and making your clothes from the pelts. And make sure you don’t use a steel knife.
1481 chars
basset said on August 18, 2025 at 9:05 pm
I used to know an old guy outside Nashville who could pick out a flint rock, chip it into a blade, and skin and cut up a deer with it.
134 chars
Deborah said on August 18, 2025 at 10:12 pm
Finally getting around to responding Jakash, The orange felon is the rapist and the mother is our country. I guess my analogy was confusing.
140 chars
Jeff Gill said on August 18, 2025 at 10:32 pm
Out in the southeast corner of this county, we have a highland area rightly called Flint Ridge, and in fact I know a number of guys up there who still do flint knapping and dressing out a deer carcass is common & respected skill. Flint Ridge flint, or Vanport flint, is the classic flint resource of the Hopewell Culture all across Ohio.
I’d love to run across a Warner & Swasey model M1908 scope, Basset. But I don’t know much about the M1903s. Is yours a Remington or a Smith-Corona?
496 chars
Deborah said on August 18, 2025 at 10:46 pm
Mark P. You’ll never reduce your carbon footprint to zero, but carbon output can be lowered all kinds of ways. Every bit helps, but it really won’t make much of a difference unless it’s large systematic opportunities, like solar and wind farms, trains (like Europe or Japan) public transportation in cities, EVs, sustainable architecture, etc etc etc.
351 chars
alex said on August 18, 2025 at 11:57 pm
I reduced my plastic bottle footprint for about 30 years when I discovered I could get just as clean all over with bar soap instead of little bottles for every different body part. But then I discovered body wash, and one particular brand that lathers well, so I’m doing bottles again, but only one.
When I look at the amount of consumer plastics everywhere I cannot see how anything I do or don’t do makes any goddamn difference. What would make a difference is if we would start making plastics from silica (sand) which can do the job just fine but biodegrades, instead of petroleum, which sustains a dinosaur industry and chokes sea turtles to death and all the other ills that come with it.
And that’s my two cents’ worth for tonight.
745 chars
basset said on August 19, 2025 at 7:43 am
Jeff, it’s a Smith-Corona. I tried one of those scopes, or one very much like it, on a replica 03a4 and it was really hard to use because it’s so narrow.
158 chars