All posts by Janet Coburn

Vacations That Are and Aren’t

etc., family, holidays, music, television, travel, writing, ,

There are vacations that refresh, and then there are vacations that don’t. There are vacations where that create memories, and then there are vacations that don’t. There are vacations that are, and then there are vacations that aren’t.

My husband and I have had plenty of wonderful vacations, with scads of natural wonder, historic locations, local events, and places to explore. We’ve been to England, Monserrat, Croatia, and most recently Ireland, to name a few. (We also had a great time in Benson, AZ. Why Benson? “Benson, AZ” is the theme song to a sci-fi movie called Dark Star, which only a few people ever saw. What’s there to do there? Exploring caves, star-gazing, and visiting rock shops, among other things. But I digress.) We often returned exhausted rather than refreshed, but we’ve made memories that will last (I hope) until we’re older and grayer.

However, a gentleman of my acquaintance, who prefers not to be named, is on one of the vacations that aren’t.

He’s going to spend eleven days with, let’s say, his beloved ancient aunt and his cousin who live in, let’s say, Colorado. He has done this before, so he knows what he’s getting into.

What he’s getting into is work. Not his normal, paying work, though. His aunt has a long list of chores for him. And when I say chores, I don’t mean washing the car, which his aunt still does herself. I mean re-graveling the driveway. Clearing out a huge attic. Painting the porch. Installing a generator. Fixing the washing machine.

Or all of the above.

It’s like a “stay-cation,” only with airlines involved. And without the sitting on the porch with a drink with fruit and an umbrella in his hand and his feet in a kiddie pool with The Wild Jimbos singing “Let’s Talk Dirty in Hawaiian” playing on an iPod with an auxiliary speaker. He does it because he really, truly loves his aunt. She’s in her 90s and needs the help.

(What he doesn’t really, truly love is her taste in music. And TV shows. And movies. And news. All of which she plays at high volume because she is hard of hearing. Fortunately, he just acquired a tablet that has been loaded with streaming services, radio stations, books, and other media that he can browse to his heart’s content. With earbuds, of course. But I digress. Again.)

At least his cousin is going to do the cooking. Except that the cousin cooks for a week at a time, and they have it every day until it’s all gone. The gentleman of my acquaintance cooks too, but not usually after a day of working in the hot sun. Then, his major concern is rehydration, which will likely include iced tea rather than drinks with fruit and an umbrella.

What I’m having is the stay-cation. Without the kiddie pool and The Wild Jimbos, though. My husband is also going to be out of town. I have writing assignments at the moment, so I’m pretty sure I can fill up my days with that and a bevy of dancing boys. Well, and binge-watching cooking shows on The Food Network. It won’t be thrilling and memorable (unless the dancing boys turn out to be real rather than imaginary), but it should be relaxing, with no annoying sweat (except for possibly in case of dancing boys, see above).

The peace and quiet will be welcome. I don’t always like my husband’s taste in movies, TV shows, and music either, and he plays them very loudly. (Hearing loss may run in the family.) It’s much easier to write and type without auditory distractions other than the cats meowing for food.

I think, however, that both I and the gentleman of my acquaintance will need a few days to recover from our assorted vacations before we get back to real work. Not that we’re likely to get much of a chance. Ah, well. There’s always the next real vacation for my husband and me to look forward to. Maybe we’ll even go back to Benson.

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Fall In!

cooking, etc., fashion, food, holidays, , , , ,

One time I was interviewed on TV. My husband and I were at the Arboretum, chilling and talking to another nature-lover. A disgusted-looking reporter approached us and said that he was doing a segment on the first day of fall. (No doubt that was why he looked disgusted.) He asked us about our thoughts regarding fall. The nature-lover gave the standard answer about the color of fall leaves.

Dan and I were not so predictable. He said fall made him sad because he couldn’t plant flowers anymore. I said that I always thought of September as the first month of school and that I had mixed feelings because I was no longer in education. The reporter looked even more disgusted, packed up, and went away. When we watched the news, we discovered that we were the only people he interviewed.

(The next day I told my boss that I had been on TV. “The bank robbery?” he said. He had a dry sense of humor, which I loved. But I digress.)

I actually do have mixed feelings about fall, in addition to the education thing. The fall colors are beautiful, though they’re really only impressive when weather conditions during the summer are perfect. And this year, they were far from perfect.

Then there’s Halloween. I’ve written before about how much I dislike it (https://butidigress.blog/2019/10/27/halloween-bah-humbug/). For those of you who want the Reader’s Digest Condensed version, I hate handing out candy. There’s the lack of trick-or-treaters in our neighborhood, the amount of leftover candy we have as a consequence, and the door-darting cat. There are also the Halloween episodes of nearly every TV show, although they’re not as annoying as the Christmas episodes of every show. There’s no Halloween music except for “Monster Mash,” which gets played ad nauseum. This year, I plan to hide in the bedroom at the back of the house with the lights off (including the porch light) and read by the light of my e-reader.

One thing I do love about the fall is pumpkin and specifically pumpkin pie spice. I’m not one of those who hates on pumpkin pie spice lattes and similar inventions. I seldom drink coffee, so I’m not usually around those. No, what I love are the actual spices – cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and ginger. I love the smell of them. I love the taste of them. I love them so much that I’m often disappointed by the small amount of them that most people use in their pumpkin pie. We’ve tried to make our own. This year I’m even going to look up a recipe.

(I saw a recipe online for two-ingredient pumpkin muffins – spice cake mix and canned pumpkin. Of course, I’d have to bump up the spices. I always do when I make my own spice cake. But I digress again.)

Another thing I love about fall is the clothing. Sweaters. I have a large collection of sweaters, including those knee-length cardigans that are probably out of style now, not that I care. I also have a number of sweatshirts and cozy lap blankets. Flannel pajamas, too. I love wrapping up in them. It’s like a fabric hug.

I can’t say I love the Peanuts special It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, but I usually watch it just for the line about never discussing politics, religion, or the Great Pumpkin. I do, however, love the pumpkins Calvin carves in the Calvin & Hobbes comic strip. And the Wallace and Grommit animated movie Curse of the Were-Rabbit. And Young Frankenstein. I can even take it when Dan binge-watches The Addams Family.

Of course, when it comes to things I really like about autumn, I recently saw a sweatshirt that says, “My favorite season is the fall of the patriarchy.” I may just have to get that.

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Proto-Feminists on Classic TV

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Who were the feminists who were feminists before we knew much about feminists? Who were the role models for young women when role models for young women were thin on the ground? Lately, people have been looking to vintage TV for the answers to those questions.

The first woman that many people think of as a proto-feminist is Samantha Stevens of Bewitched. Samantha was powerful, rescued her bumbling husband from unpleasant situations, and generally made life better with her superpower. (Although occasionally it went wrong.)

Recently, though, I’ve heard the sitcom deconstructed from a feminist viewpoint, and I can’t argue with much of what they said. Samantha gave up her vocation for the man she loved and had to sneak behind his back to work magic. (At least it’s not like the film Bell, Book, and Candle where, when a witch falls in love, she loses her powers entirely. (Also, irrelevantly, I consider BBaC a Christmas movie in the same way that Die Hard is a Christmas movie.) But I digress (three times in one digression)).

Where was I? Oh, yes, Bewitched. When Samantha did use her magic to benefit Darrin, he berated her, yelled at her, and shamed her. Instead of ripping him a new one or even pointing out that he’s an asshole, she meekly acquiesced and promised to do better. And they call this feminism?

In the 1970s, we had the Mary Tyler Moore Show. This sitcom had more going for it, feminist-wise. Mary Richards was a single woman, living on her own, and working at a responsible, possibly high-pressure, job in a newsroom. Mary wasn’t what you’d call an outspoken campaigner for women’s rights – but that’s okay. She was an example and a role model just by the way she lived, without dependence on a man.

The show had some episodes with more overtly feminist themes. There was one in which Mary discovered that she was paid less than her predecessor in the same job. Her boss admitted it was because she was a woman and spouted the now-recognized-as-drivel drivel about a man needing more money to support a family. There was another where Mary championed hiring a woman as a sportscaster. Perhaps most revolutionary of all was when Mary tacitly admitted that, despite being single, she took birth control pills.

Bridging the time gap between Samantha and Mary was the late-60s-early-70s That Girl, featuring Marlo Thomas as Anne Marie, an aspiring actress living on her own in New York. Anne was presented as kind of ditzy, but Thomas found it significant that her character wasn’t married off to her boyfriend in the series’ final season, and she had wanted to name the show Miss Independence.

Later in life, Thomas became a staunch and visible feminist. She once said, memorably, that getting married was like putting a vacuum cleaner to your head and sucking out your brain. She later married talk-show host Phil Donahue, apparently with no vacuum cleaners present at the ceremony. Thomas was also responsible for the ground-breaking 1972 Free to Be…You and Me, an album, illustrated book, and TV special which contained empowering content for children, including feminist themes and stories.

My personal favorite feminist icon in popular culture is Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Back in the ’90s, she was the kick-ass embodiment of girl power. Almost 25 years ago (so I guess it was classic TV, though not a sitcom but an action show with comic elements), the teenage Buffy was the “Chosen One” who could, well, slay vampires. The new slayer, who was called when the previous one died, was always a young woman. Series creator Joss Whedon specifically said that his purpose in creating Buffy was to upend the dominant paradigm that the cute young girl was always the victim in need of rescue. Buffy rescued herself and others in every episode. True, she had an unfortunate love life, but many feminists do.

(By the way, I was hooked on Buffy because my husband introduced me to it. The TV series. The movie of the same name was much less good, except for Paul Rubens’s death scene, which was worth the price of admission. But I digress again.)

Now feminist characters are everywhere in TV and movies. We’ve had TV dramas with women as US presidents, women as superheroes, women as crime solvers, women as hospital administrators, and more. It’s good that the industry has finally caught up with the way feminism has changed our culture and contributed to it. I don’t watch sitcoms anymore, so I don’t know if there are strong women in them, but I bet there are. Female heroes and feminist characters have gotten a lot of pushback from the bro brigade, but I think they’re here to stay. Personally, I think we need all the feminist role models we can get. And if my husband likes them too, so much the better.

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Coats of Many Colors

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Once again, I return to one of my favorite topics – cats.

I was inspired to write about cats again by a post that showed a picture of a friend’s new cat, which was all black, except for a few white hairs that appeared on the cat’s chest. I commented, “All black cats are required to have at least ten black hairs somewhere on their body. It’s a rule.” I do believe that, and nobody’s going to convince me otherwise.

Dan a never owned an all-black cat, but we have had one that was what’s called a “tuxedo cat,” all black except for a white bib and, in this case, little white feet and magnificent white whiskers.

As befits a cat wearing a tuxedo, she was very dignified and hated it when anything happened to offend her dignity. You could see that she was appalled.

(By the way, it’s not true that black cats are more likely to suffer human predation around Halloween, despite the rumors. It’s an Urban Legend. Shelters will let you adopt a black cat at any time of year, too. But I digress.)

We have owned black-and-white and gray-and-white cats, a couple of gray tabbies and a couple of orange tabbies, plus assorted calicos and tortoiseshells (calicos are actually a variety of tortoiseshell, with white added to the orange and black). I’m generally the one responsible for inviting the calicos and torties into our home, as I’ve always been attracted to their colors. Dan is partial to the orange-striped cats.

Calicos are particularly interesting because they are almost invariably females. Their tricolored fur is a result of genetics. The calico pattern is determined by two X chromosomes. An XY cat is a male and can’t have two copies of the calico gene required to express those colors of fur. Technically, a male cat can be calico if it has two X chromosomes and a Y, but this is very rare and a male calico is almost always sterile.

Another genetic trick that some cats have is heterochromia, or one eye a different color from the other. (Technically, lots of other animals can have heterochromia, including dogs and humans). We have a cat with one green eye and one gold (a calico), but even more striking are all-white cats that have one blue eye and one of another color.

All-white cats have a greater chance than other cats of being born deaf, but how many are or become deaf varies, partly with eye color. White cats with non-blue eyes have around a 20% chance of deafness. White cats with one blue eye are twice as likely to be deaf, and a white cat with two blue eyes has more than an 80% chance of being deaf. Interestingly, a cat with heterochromia (also called an”odd-eyed” cat) who is deaf in only one ear, is usually deaf on the side with the blue eye.

Another fascinating genetic fact (at least to those of us who are fascinated by this sort of thing) is that orange tabbies are most likely male, by a ratio of about 75%. Tabbies don’t have to be orange, though. There are also gray tabbies with darker gray or black stripes. (We’ve had two of these, and both had tan tummies with spots on them. Don’t ask me why. They’re silly-looking, but kind of endearing. But I digress again.)

There are a couple of different varieties of tabbies. The most common one, called the “mackerel” tabby, has vertical stripes that run from its spine down its sides. The “classic” tabby has thicker horizontal stripes that swirl over the cat’s side parallel to the spine. (I always thought it was the other way around. Goes to show what I know, I guess.) All tabbies have a marking like the letter M on their foreheads.

Nose leather (or rhinarium, as it is technically called) is a thing I didn’t even know was a thing until fairly recently. Apparently, nose leather is a touch-based sense organ, which may be why cats insist on sticking them in our faces. Cats also have “nose prints,” analogous to human fingerprints. The color of a cat’s nose leather doesn’t matter, but some of the various colors are pink, black, gray, and even ones called “red,” “coral,” “liver-colored,” “rose,” and “copper.” (I once had a cat whose nose leather I could only describe as “burnt terra cotta.” But I digress. Again.)

The only cat coat I don’t really care for is no coat at all. I understand that the Sphinx cat is highly prized by many and a breed that is often featured in cat shows. They just look disturbingly naked to me.

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Help Yourself

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I admit it. When I was younger, I used to read self-help books. You know the kind, ones with titles like Women Who Hate Women Who Love Men Who Love Women Who Hate Cinderella. Back in the day, most self-help books were targeted at women who wanted to know why their love lives were train wrecks or why their psychological conditions were train wrecks. (Apparently, they didn’t consider that their psychological conditions might be train wrecks because their love lives were train wrecks. But I digress.)

Nowadays, most self-help books are written for business leaders – excuse me, entrepreneurs – and have titles like Give Yourself the Power to Lead Right Now With Powerful Leadership Secrets From the Early Etruscans. The rest are some modern-day versions of Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking, which I suspect the Early Etruscans knew something about too.

I don’t know much about business leadership except that I prefer managers who use a hands-off management style (for both business and interpersonal interactions). I also don’t know much about women’s love lives, except my own, which I don’t think would be appropriate for a self-help book. I do know a thing or two about psychological conditions and write about them every week in my other blog, Bipolar Me.

Nonetheless, I find myself in the perhaps-awkward position of writing self-help books in my guise as a ghostwriter. (Or disguise. I’m required by the company to use a pseudonym.) I haven’t tackled one on women’s love lives yet, but I have written a couple about life with pets, something kind of New-Agey about envisioning your future, and two sort of business-y ones about listening to your inner voice and setting boundaries. My latest endeavor, which I’m about to start working on, is a senior health book, about which I ought to know a bit more than I actually do.

Apparently, a lot of the books that people want to have written are some variety of self-help – parenting tips (titles like Why Your Teen Behaves Like a Teen and Why You Can’t Do Anything About It), investment advice (Become the Only Person in America Who Tries to Pay the Electric Bill With Cryptocurrency), and doomsday prepping (Apocalypse When? Build Your Own Bomb Shelter Using Wattle and Daub) being some of the most-asked-for topics. (Again, subjects about which I know nothing.) I put in requests for book projects with more mental health focus such as overcoming anxiety or dealing with your inner child. But no. I get inspirational titles.

I must admit, I hate inspirational books. If they’re not about succeeding in business without really getting a business degree, they’re about positivity.

What’s wrong with positivity? Well, first of all, it’s been hard for me to achieve for most of my life, seeing that I was diagnosed with depression for decades. I’ve never been perky and seldom gung-ho. In addition, I’ve always hated cheerleaders, both the pom-pom kind and the believe-in-yourself ones. I guess I just don’t believe it’s possible to think yourself to a better, more fulfilling life with daily affirmations that sound like something from Jonathan Livingston Seagull. (If I’m going to take advice from a bird, I’d rather it be a parrot. Although it could conceivably provide me with daily affirmations. But I digress again.)

In fact, I’ve been exploring self-help books that are about non-positivity (not that I’ve been asked to write any of that kind). But Barbara Ehrenreich, the noted author of Nickled and Dimed who died recently at the age of 81, wrote a book titled Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America. Another such book, which I’m reading now, is The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking by Oliver Burkeman. (Ehrenreich also wrote a book called Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer, another one that I need to read, though probably not until I finish writing the self-health book.)

I sincerely do hope, though, that readers will get more out of the books I write than I did out of those that I read. I’d hate to think that all my good, if ill-informed, advice is going to waste.

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Teachers Under Fire

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I was going to say that the title of this post was metaphorical, but anymore, it may not be.

Putting that aside for now, however, teachers today face any number of other difficulties they don’t deserve, some of which have existed for decades and others that have come to the forefront in recent times.

My respect for teachers is immense. I wanted to be a teacher when I was a child. My father, though, wanted me to be an engineer. My mother finally got him to stop trying to channel me away from teaching, but by that time he already had. Not that I ever became an engineer, however. (I might have been able to become one, but I think I would have been a very unhappy engineer.)

Still, even though I never became a teacher (unless you include two years of teaching English to first-year college students while going to grad school), I became involved with education throughout much of my life as a writer. I worked for magazines that included Today’s Catholic Teacher, Early Childhood News, Private School Administrator, School Planning and Management, and Technology and Learning. I edited textbooks on religion, English, and social studies. Education was in front of me at every turn.

The obstacles that teachers face these days, though, can’t be alleviated by articles on classroom decoration tips or advice on self-care (important as that is).

Teachers put up with low pay and out-of-pocket expenses for supplies that they shouldn’t have to buy. They put up with crumbling schools that lack basic necessities like heating and air conditioning. They put up with old textbooks or newer ones that are prescribed by committees who have few choices, thanks to the power of states like California, New York, and Texas. They have to teach in school buildings that may have lead in the drinking water or lack ADA-compliant facilities. (Two years ago, a report said that 2/3 of US schools weren’t up to ADA standards.)

Not enough people going into education – and why would they? The pay is low (and staying low) and respect is not a given. The general public does not understand the process of education, or they think that the way it was in their day is the way it should always be. They place too much emphasis on test scores, meaning that teachers must “teach to the test” instead of allowing children to learn in more fruitful, organic ways such as project-based learning.

There is scientific evidence that small class sizes are better for student learning, but finding the money and the number of educators required for that is not forthcoming. In fact, subjects that aren’t considered “academic” enough, such as art, music, and drama, are being sacrificed. Even recess for grade-school children is no longer guaranteed in order to spend more time in the classroom, despite the fact that physical activity is vital to a child’s health and development.

Many of the difficulties facing teachers were recently highlighted when approximately 4,500 teachers, librarians, counselors, school nurses, and other support personnel in Columbus, Ohio, went on strike. It was the first time since 1975 – nearly 50 years – that they had done so. The teachers’ demands included pay raises of 8% (they were granted only 4%, despite a much higher rate of inflation). But many of the issues they brought forward related to infrastructure issues such as the lack of functioning heating and cooling systems in the schools, particularly since the weather has been so hot and continues to be. And the teachers went back to school after a week on strike, despite the fact that only a “conceptual agreement” was reached. It included no promises of spending on infrastructure, though that was the cause that received the most complaints and publicity.

And what were the repercussions of the strike? The district hired 600 substitute teachers to replace the 4,000 or so teachers and fill in for online classes. In addition, the movement to allow public, taxpayer-supported funds to be used for private school tuition was enhanced, which would leave even fewer dollars in the public system to effect changes. An official for the Center for Christian Virtue, which placed billboards around Columbus promoting private schools, castigated the striking teachers: “These schools are hitting kids while they are down. After all kids have been through, being blocked out of their schools for years [a reference to the COVID crisis], and having just failed attempts at remote teaching, the fact that they would strike now is the ultimate blow to kids,” Baer said.

The Twitterverse reacted as well. While many tweets supported the strike, there were also ones that decidedly didn’t. “For the 2nd time in 3 years, Columbus City Schools athletics have been paused for all Fall sports. Both sets of soccer teams looking to have off campus workouts while the teachers are on strike. Pray for all CCS students and athletics during this difficult time” was one opinion. Another said, “Give them 48 hours and fire them. Their PR is mindless, the kids would rather be in school and their extracurricular activities. If the teachers cared about the kids, they’d still be teaching.”

Nor is Columbus the only place where these battles are playing out. New York City is engaged in a court case over proposed slashed budgets advocated by the mayor, who is a proponent of charter schools that sap funds from the public schools.

I could also mention the flack that teachers are now receiving from lawmakers and parents who want to control what teachers teach, what books they have in their libraries, and even what they’re allowed to say. And don’t get me started on the let’s-arm-the-teachers thing. There’s not enough room here for my outrage. Maybe another time.

So, here’s the bottom line. Teachers have continued to work with purpose, care, intelligence, and dedication. They have also continued to be underpaid, overworked, under-respected, and over-criticized. That they have continued to do so is a tribute to their strength and resilience. But how long must we expect them to do so? Sure, our kids deserve better than what they are getting through our broken education system – but our teachers deserve better too. When teachers get what they need to do their jobs as well as they are able, it’s a win-win. I don’t know why that should be controversial.

As John Steinbeck said, “I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.”

Teachers are indeed the artists and architects of the future. We owe them a little more slack and a lot more support.

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Cats in Space

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Those of you who follow my blog know of my enduring love for cats – and not just my own. Last week my blog post was about cats in mysteries (https://butidigress.blog/2022/08/21/mysterious-cats/), so this week I’m going to tackle cats in another genre – science fiction and fantasy. Because science fiction books aren’t as predominant as they once were, I’ve expanded my source material to include various other media.

Let’s start with books, though. The most famous cat in a work of fantasy fiction is undoubtedly the Cheshire Cat in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (who shared the stage for a brief appearance of Alice’s cat Dinah). Notable for appearing suddenly then disappearing slowly starting at its tail until only its grin was left, the Cheshire Cat is sometimes considered a guiding spirit for Alice, directing her to various destinations around Wonderland.

(The Cheshire Cat is prominently featured on t-shirts and other Alice memorabilia, including a coffee mug that pictures the cat’s scene with Alice. When a hot liquid is poured into the mug, the cat vanishes, leaving only its grin. This is, I think, much more entertaining than the mugs that feature ladies who shed their clothes under the same circumstances. But I digress.)

Superstar writer and opinionated curmudgeon Robert A. Heinlein had a soft spot for cats, which appeared in a number of his works. A cat named Pete appeared in his novel A Door Into Summer, which was inspired by an actual cat that Heinlein once owned. (Or that owned him. Sometimes it’s hard to tell.) Another book, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (shades of Lilian Jackson Braun!) featured a cat named Pixel that mysteriously appeared wherever the narrator happened to be. Cats played minor roles in some of his other books, including one named Mr. Underfoot, which I have been known to call all my cats at various times.

Perhaps best known to modern readers are Hermione’s ginger cat Crookshanks and Argus Filch’s cat Mrs. Norris in the Harry Potter series of books. Mrs. Norris was somehow able to detect student misbehavior at Hogwarts School, which happened a lot. Crookshanks comes to no harm, but Mrs. Norris is temporarily frozen by the gaze of the basilisk in Chamber of Secrets, though she first appeared in Sorceror’s Stone. (She gets unfrozen and suffers no permanent harm.) In the book, Mrs. Norris is described as bony and dust-colored, but in the films she was portrayed by three much more impressive Maine Coons.

Seanan McGuire’s October Daye series of fantasy books features a feline character, Tybalt, King of Cats, a fairy (Cait Sidhe, technically) who can transform from cat to human size and shape, in which form he woos and weds October after an on-again-off-again semi-adversarial relationship. (The character Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet is referred to as “prince of cats” for his sleek and violent nature. But I digress again.)

When it comes to cats in SF&F film and TV, we have Ripley’s cat Jonesy, who along with her manages to survive in Alien. There is Pyewacket in Bell, Book, and Candle, a film about witches that ought to be a Halloween movie but is instead a Christmas film, much the way Die Hard is, because it takes place during the winter holiday. And then there is Orion, the cat in Men in Black, whose collar proves to contain an important plot point.

The overwhelming winner for cats in media, however, is Star Trek. In the original series (or The Original Series as it’s now known), there are two different episodes that feature cats. One is “Assignment Earth,” which features a cat named Isis who may or may not be a human being, and “Catspaw,” featuring Sylvia, a woman who may or may not be a cat.

There are two other Star Trek cats of note. One is Data’s cat Spot in the TV series The Next Generation and the movies Star Trek Generations and Star Trek Nemesis. Spot is an orange tabby, but that’s about all the continuity it has. It has been portrayed as a Somali cat and as an American shorthair. It (I use the term advisedly) has been identified as male or female on different episodes, though I think we have to settle on female, as Spot gets pregnant at one point. In one episode, Data writes and recites an “Ode to Spot,” the first stanza of which is:

“Felis catus is your taxonomic nomenclature,
an endothermic quadruped, carnivorous by nature.
Your visual, olfactory, and auditory senses,
contribute to your hunting skills, and natural defenses.”

In the series Star Trek: Discovery, the character Booker has a Maine Coon cat named Grudge, which was meant to make a one-episode guest appearance but became a more featured player in a number of episodes. We know Booker has left the ship for good when he leaves Grudge with Captain Burnham. Grudge is described by various characters as “fat,” possibly due to a thyroid condition, but more likely attributable to the fact that Grudge is portrayed by two Maine Coons that are, at 18 pounds, at the top end of the range for that breed.

There’s more that could be said about cats in science fiction and fantasy, from the Tom & Jerry movie Blast Off to Mars to one Simpsons hyper-violent “Itchy and Scratchy” cartoon called “Flay Me to the Moon.” (Scratchy is the cat. I always have trouble remembering that.)

I’m sure there are others I’ve missed, and I’m equally sure that outraged cat-fen will point this out to me. My husband wanted me to include the 1935 cartoon “Dancing on the Moon,” which featured a number of animal pairs including two cats. And now I have.

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Mysterious Cats

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Books and cats. Cats and books. They go together like a hot dog and mustard. Well, no they don’t. And I don’t like mustard on my hot dogs anyway.

What I meant was that cats appear in a lot of books (and poems, songs, paintings and other forms of art, probably including architecture). They’re just so adorable and full of personality (I didn’t say “purr-sonality” – you’re welcome) that authors can’t resist them.

I studied some cat literature when I was an English major in college. There’s the cat in Kipling’s Just So Stories: “I am the cat who walks by himself and all places are alike to me.” And, maybe the best-known of all, T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, the source material for the Broadway musical Cats. Perhaps the most famous lines are “The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter/It isn’t just one of your holiday games/You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter/When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.”

(Our cat Toby has at least three names. In addition to Toby, I may or may not have referred to him as “Toto-Booboo Baby,” and we also call him “Green-Eyed Monster.” But I digress.)

But contemporary books are populated by cats as well. Primary among the genres that feature them are mysteries and fantasy/science fiction. This week I’ll tackle mysteries and next week I’ll go on to F&SF, as it’s known.

Probably the best-known series of mysteries featuring cats is the “The Cat Who…” books by Lilian Jackson Braun. This was a series that started back in the 60s, took a break for a couple of decades, and eventually racked up 29 books with titles like The Cat Who Could Read Backwards and The Cat Who Read Shakespeare through The Cat Who Had 60 Whiskers in 2007, the last one before the author died at the age of 97.

I was a devotee of the series, which featured cat-sleuths Koko and Yum Yum, until The Cat Who Moved a Mountain (1992), when the plot was an idiotic one featuring two rival clans, the Taters and the Spuds, which was (I think) meant to offer biting social commentary but fell beyond flat. Later there was a satire called The Cat Who Killed Lilian Jackson Braun, by Robert Kaplow, featuring cats named Ying-Tong and Poon-Tang solving the murder of Braun herself.

Rita Mae Brown, the author of the sensational autobiographical novel Rubyfruit Jungle, credited her cat Sneaky Pie Brown as co-author of the Mrs. Murphy series, which included titles such as Murder She Meowed and Claws and Effect. The feline Mrs. Murphy shared the stage with a postmistress sleuth named Mary Minor “Harry” Haristeen, a dog named Tee Tucker, and another cat named Pewter, all of whom were definitely second bananas.

Another series is the Midnight Louie books by Carole Nelson Douglas, which started with Catnap and continued through titles including Cat in an Indigo Mood and Cat in a Zebra Zoot Suit. Las Vegas PR specialist Temple Barr and Louie (who was based on an actual cat) have adventures that include “wacky friends and sexy guys.” I read this series for a while, too, but quit not because of any flaw in the writing, but the endless failure to resolve any given plot line.

Cozy mysteries are rife with cat detectives as well. One series takes place in the Cat Cafe, a small establishment in Massachusetts. Writer Cate Conte uses the setting for a series of mysteries including Purrder She Wrote (don’t blame me) and The Tell Tail Heart (still not my fault). (There is a cat cafe in Dayton, Ohio, called The Catfe, where there are many cats up for adoption. I’ve never been there, though I’ve meant to go. I just know I’d come home with one or more of them. But I digress again.)

Another cozy cat mystery series with special appeal to me is the Cat in the Stacks series, which features a librarian named Charlie and a cat named Diesel. Titles are a plethora of puns, including Hiss Me Deadly, Cat Me If You Can, Careless Whiskers, and The Pawful Truth. I guess the author, Miranda James, just couldn’t help herself.

I’ve left out a bunch of other series, mostly cozies (for those of you who don’t know, these are mysteries where the sleuth is an amateur and all the violence happens offstage). But you get the idea. The cat usually uncovers some clue that helps solve the murder, or even has telepathic powers or internal speech. (We have a cat that has demonstrated telepathic powers, though not in the context of solving a mystery, unless “Why is my water dish empty?” is a mystery, which I guess it is to her. More digression.)

If you have any cat mysteries to recommend, please do. My TBR pile is threatening to topple over and crush me, but there’s always room for one more cat.

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Things I Know Too Much About

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If you thought I was going to say, “my neighbors’ sex life,” prepare to be disappointed. No, what I’m talking about is those Facebook memes that say, “What could you give a TED talk on right now?” or “What could you talk on for 20 minutes without preparation?”

I have at times compared my brain to a steel sieve. At other times, I’ve said it’s like a steel trap, one that’s unhinged and rusty. But actually, what I think my brain most resembles is a dusty old closet with a sticky door. I don’t know how I’ll get it open and I don’t know exactly what’s in there, but I’m fairly certain there are some things in there that I don’t even remember I knew.

I have friends who have epic knowledge about various and assorted topics, from video games (and their creators) to evolution to dairy farming to the Irish language. If I were ever on Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?, I would have plenty of “phone-a-friends” to use as lifelines (if I could remember their phone numbers, which I can’t).

I have all sorts of useless trivia stuffed in the corners of my brain: Armadillos are the only animals besides humans that can get leprosy. Henry Heimlich (he of the eponymous Maneuver) was a drum major at my alma mater and was married to Jane Murray, daughter of Arthur Murray, of dance lesson fame. Pear Ripple wine actually tastes pretty good. John Milton invented the word “pandemonium.” A “cenotaph” is a gravestone with no body buried under it. Some of these facts would not even be useful on Jeopardy, or even at a bar trivia night.

But when it comes to things I actually could give a 20-minute talk on, I have a choice of subjects.

First, there’s bipolar disorder. I’ve got a lot of experience with that. I have bipolar disorder myself and have been diagnosed with it for decades now. I’ve seen countless therapists and a few psychiatrists and have been on medications for decades. I’ve written two books on the subject, based on my other blog, Bipolar Me (bipolarme.blog), which I’ve been writing weekly for almost nine years – 468 posts. In those posts, I’ve covered topics including depression and anxiety, self-harm and suicidal ideation, lobotomy and shock therapy, plus a lot of everyday symptoms and treatments for the disorder.

I’ve written about why you can’t say assorted famous people have (or had) bipolar or various other disorders. I’ve engaged in the debate over what causes bipolar disorder and whether psychiatric drugs are helpful. I’ve even written about why people with bipolar disorder sometimes aren’t able to take showers (one of my most popular posts, for some reason).

Another topic I can expound on extensively (and have, much to my husband’s chagrin) is country singers and songwriters. I can tell you why Willie Nelson’s Shotgun Willie album was so important; how The Sound in Your Mind prefigures Stardust; how “On the Road Again” was written; what movies he’s been in (and why one of them was called Honeysuckle Rose); how Django Reinhardt influenced his guitar style (and who Django Reinhardt was); and what other singers have recorded his songs (Patsy Cline’s “Crazy,” for example, was one of his).

I can talk endlessly about Kris Kristofferson’s early encounters with Johnny Cash, his marriage to Rita Coolidge (and how it broke up) and his hot fling with Janis Joplin; his political activism; his military career; how he came to write “Why Me, Lord?”; and what the original lyrics to “Sunday Morning Coming Down” included. I can expound on his education and his fondness for the poetry of William Blake. I can even tell you the specific time he stopped drinking.

I know which country songs were written by Shel Silverstein (yes, that Shel Silverstein). I can talk about the Outlaw Country movement and underappreciated women songwriters like Gail Davies, Matraca Berg, and Gretchen Peters. I can even talk about alliteration and internal rhyme in the lyrics of Kinky Friedman and how his songs were reflected in the mystery novels he wrote. (Yes, I have two degrees in English and have never gotten over it entirely. But I digress. In fact, this whole post has been something of a digression.)

And that’s why I never get invited to parties.

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Adopt-a-Human

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updush

As I may have mentioned before, most of our family cats have come from shelters. We’ve gone there looking for specific kinds of cats – calicos or torties, orange tabbies, or frequent talkers – and we’ve found them. But some of the best relationships we’ve had with cats have been the ones where they have chosen us rather than the other way around.

The first one that chose us was Maggie. Or rather she chose my husband. One night after work, he was walking across a dark, rainy parking lot when a small, wet, scraggly gray tabby accosted him. “Meow, meow,” she said, meaning “Take me home with you right now.” Dan said, “Yes, I understand. You’re coming home with me.” Then he scooped her up and put her in his car. We named her Maggie (really Magdalena, but it was too much name for her).

Maggie had to live in the garage for a little while. After all, we never introduce a new cat into the house until it’s had a vet check, de-worming, and all its shots. We don’t want to take the chance of exposing our other cats (and there are always other cats). Besides, she smelled terrible and wanted to rub herself all over Dan.

Even when she was allowed into the house, she was unnaturally devoted to Dan. At the sound of his voice cooing at her, she would instantly flop over on her side and begin writhing in ecstasy. I always said if they were the same species, I’d never have had a chance.

Django was another cat that chose our house as his home.

He was a big (but not fat), robust gray and white cat that appeared in our woods one day and came up to our front steps when we put out a snack for him. Then he hung around after chowing down. Soon he was one of the gang. (Django was named for Django Reinhardt, the famous guitarist who made Gypsy Swing popular. I figured if Dan could have a cat named Garcia, we could also have one named Django. But I digress.)

Django also had an unnatural relationship with Dan – or at least with his arm. Whenever Dan was working on his computer, Django would try to mount his arm and boink his elbow. I honestly thought he was going to drill a hole in it. (The vet said there was nothing wrong with the cat; he was just a horny bastard.) Django was, and remained, a sturdy cat, even after he developed cancer.

Yet another cat who decided to keep us is Dushenka, the calico pictured here. (“Dushenka” is Russian for “Little Soul.”) She was a stray who hung around the neighborhood for a while, scoping us out. Then we didn’t see her for a while. One day, there she was, ambling through the garden like she had just made up her mind. After all, there was a sign over our door, visible only to cats, that said, “Free food and pets here!”

Dushenka still remembers her days as a stray. Now and then she likes to go walkabout if we happen to leave the door open a slit. She never goes far and always walks right back in like she owned the place (which she does) after she satisfies her wanderlust. Nowadays, she sleeps by Dan’s head every night.

Perhaps the most stray of all the cats that adopted us is Toby, a gray tiger who hitched a ride to Dan’s workplace in a delivery truck, all the way from Michigan to Ohio. After a few days of living in the warehouse, he was eager to come home with Dan. Since then, Toby has turned into quite a mouser, leaving little half-carcasses around the house for us to find and aspiring to bite the little birdies that frequent the feeder outside the window cat perch.

I’m sure that Fate has another cat out there somewhere who needs us as much as we need it. It’s just a matter of waiting for it to choose us.

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