A prayer of peace for these troubled times.

Posted on July 10, 2025 by The Old Wolf

I found this beautiful and comforting. “Elohai neshamah shenatata bi tehorah hi” is the beginning of a traditional prayer recited upon awakening – it translates roughly as “God, the soul You have given me is pure.”

For some background, the full Hebrew prayer is below, found here:

Elohai n’shamah shenatata bi t’horah hi.	My God, the soul You have given me is pure.
Atah v’rataH,	For You created it,
atah y’tzartaH,	You formed it,
atah n’fachtaH bi,	You made it live within me [breathed it into me].
v’atah m’shamraH b’kirbi,	And you watch over / preserve it within me,
v’atah atid lit’laH mimeni ul’hachaziraH bi leatid lavo.	and/but one day, You will take it from me and restore it in the time to come.
Kol z’man shah-n’shamah b’kirbi	As long as the soul is within me,
modeh/modah ani l’fanecha¹	I will give thanks to Your face/presence
Adonai elohai veilohei avotai,	My Lord God of Gods of the generations before me,
she’atah hu ribbon kol ha-ma’asim,	to You who are the power of good deeds,
mosheil b’chol ha-b’riot,	the Ruler of all creatures,
adon kol ha-n’shamot.	the Master Craftsman of every soul.
Baruch atah Adonai, ha-machazir n’shamot ha-meitim.	Blessed are You God, giving souls to the dead.

It is interesting to me that this prayer by Rabbi Keller reflects a core plot point in The Chosen, the seminal novel by Chaim Potok. In it, one of the protagonists is raised by his father, a rabbi, in silence (i.e. without non-essential communication or fatherly affection). The father later goes on to explain:

“Ah, what a price to pay…. The years when he was a child and I loved him and talked with him and held him under my tallis when I prayed…. ‘Why do you cry, Father?’ he asked me once under the tallis. ‘Because people are suffering,’ I told him. He could not understand. Ah, what it is to be a mind without a soul, what ugliness it is…. Those were the years he learned to trust me and love me…. And when he was older, the years I drew myself away from him. ‘Why have you stopped answering my questions, Father?’ he asked me once. ‘You are old enough to look into your own soul for the answers,’ I told him. He laughed once and said, “That man is such an ignoramus, Father.’ I was angry. ‘Look into his soul,’ I said. ‘Stand inside his soul and see the world through his eyes. You will know the pain he feels because of his ignorance, and you will not laugh.’ He was bewildered and hurt. The nightmares he began to have…. But he learned to find answers for himself. He suffered and learned to listen to the suffering of others. In the silence between us, he began to hear the world crying.“

This novel, and this passage in particular, always touched me deeply. I was moved to hear the sentiment expressed in a modern prayer for peace, but also for compassion and compassionate action.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Footnotes:

¹ This line reflects the prayer Modeh/Moda ani, which is recited upon awakening and before getting out of bed. “As this prayer does not include any of the names of God, observant Jews may recite it before washing their hands.” In Talmudic times, Jews traditionally recited Elohai Neshamah upon waking. The prayer was later moved to the morning synagogue services. (Wikipedia)

Another Declaration of Independence

Posted on July 5, 2025 by The Old Wolf

This one from Andy Borowitz at the Borowitz Report:

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for a people to break from a leader who governs with cruelty, contempt, and corruption, a decent respect to the opinions of humankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all people are created equal, endowed with inherent dignity and unalienable rights—among these are life, liberty, equality, and the pursuit of justice.

That to secure these rights, governments derive their power from the consent of the governed. When a leader becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right and duty of the people to refuse allegiance and to stand united in the defense of their freedoms.

The current holder of high office has shown himself to be unfit to lead a free and just society.

* He disrespects women, mocking survivors of violence and stripping away their rights.

* He fuels racism and white supremacy, scapegoating communities of color and denying their equality.

* He assaults free speech, attacking the press, punishing dissent, and spreading disinformation.

* He exploits public office for private gain, enriching himself and the billionaire class while abandoning the poor and working people.

* He undermines justice, ignores the rule of law, and places himself above accountability.

* He disregards science, endangering lives in times of crisis and sacrificing the planet for profit.

* He fans division and incites violence to maintain power, wielding fear as a weapon against the people.

Time and again, we have protested peacefully, spoken truthfully, and appealed to our shared humanity. We have been met with indifference, hostility, and violence. A leader who governs through hatred and greed is unfit to govern at all.

Therefore, we, the people of conscience and conviction, do solemnly declare our independence from this tyrant and all he represents.

We withdraw our consent.

We refuse to be complicit in cruelty.

We reject the abuse of power for personal gain.

We stand for dignity, truth, equality, and justice for all people.

With firm reliance on each other and unwavering hope in our collective strength,

We pledge to resist oppression in all its forms,

To uphold the rights of the vulnerable,

And to build a future grounded in compassion, courage, and shared humanity.

Let this declaration be both a breaking and a beginning.

The Psychology of Trump Voters

Posted on June 30, 2025 by The Old Wolf

Keen and on-point video discussion about the psychology of Trump voters by “jayneconverse3,” self-described “Political junkie, history teacher, disgusted American.” The original video is here, in case you’d like to listen to her.

I’ve been dying to dig into this. I’ve been asking myself why Trump’s followers can’t see reality. So I did my research, and I’m going to share it with you.

Let’s talk about the psychology behind the Trump Cult, because that’s what it is. It’s not a normal political movement anymore, it’s a cult of peronality and if we want to fight it, we have to understand it. So, let’s break it down.

First, Trump doesn’t offer policies, he offers identity. He’s not popular because of what he does, but because of what he represents. To many of his followers, he’s a walking, talking middle finger to a system they believe has failed them.¹

They see him as “their guy,” not because he’s honest, not because he helps them, but because he talks like them, rages like them, and punches the people they’ve been told to blame for everything.²

In psychology, there’s a term for this: “Identity fusion.” It’s when your personal identity becomes fused with your group or leader. That’s why criticism of Trump feels like a personal attack to his supporters. It’s not just “he’s being criticized,” it’s “I’m being criticized.”

Second, he offers revenge, not solutions. He doesn’t promise to fix healthcare, or raise wages, or protect your rights; he promises to go after “them.” Whether it’s immigrants, the press, Black activists, LGBTQ people, liberals, college students, elites, anyone outside the tribe… that’s classic authoritarianism.

Give people a sense of loss, tell them who stole it, then promise to make them pay. And to some people, that rage, that promise of vengeance is more emotionally satisfying than actual policy. It doesn’t fix their problems, but it feels like power.

Third: People crave order, and Trump promises strength. When institutions fail, when you don’t trust the media, the courts, elections, schools³, you start to look for a savior: Someone who says, “Only I can fix it.” That’s why Trump acts like a strong man. He creates the crisis, then sells himself as the only one tough enough to stop it. He’s done that over and over and over again. He’s not leading a movement, he’s leading a dependency.

Fourth: His follwers are trapped in an information bubble. They don’t just believe lies, they live inside them. Fox News, MAGA influencers, far-right churches, Trump’s own app Truth Social is a closed-loop ecosystem that tells them every day, “The elites hate you, the media lies, only Trump tells the truth.” ⁴ This is called “epistemic closure.” It’s cult logic. If Trump says it, it’s true. If the world says otherwise, the world is lying.

And then fifth: Shame is too powerful, so they double down, just like Trump does. Some Trump supporters know deep down that they’ve been conned. They’ve seen the cruelty, the corruption, the chaos, but they’ve already invested years of their identity into defending him.⁵ To walk away now would mean confronting shame, losing their community, admitting they were wrong, and that’s terrifying to them, so instead they dig in deeper.

And finally, and this one matters, Trump makes them feel seen. He tells them, “They’re not after me, they’re after you. I’m just in the way.” That line is emotional manipulation, but it works… because for millions of people who feel ignored, dismissed, mocked by elites, Trump says, “You matter. You’re not crazy, they are.” He gives them belonging, and in a country where loneliness is rising and inequality is everywhere, belonging is everything.

So when people ask, “Why do people love him? Why would they follow him off a cliff?” it’s not just politics, it’s psychology, it’s identity, and it’s fear. This is deliberate. Trump didn’t create the cult, he just saw the cracks in our society and weaponized them.

But here’s the thing: not everyone in that cult is unreachable. Some are too far gone, but others are on the edge, quiet, doubting, hurting. We don’t get them back with facts, we get them back by offering something Trump never will: real community, real care, and real solutions. Because people don’t join cults when they are happy and secure. They join when they are scared, isolated, and desperate for meaning.

So here’s your call to action: Keep speaking truth, keep exposing the con, and when you can, offer people a way out that doesn’t begin with shame, but with dignity. This fight isn’t just about defeating Trump, it’s about breaking the spell and building something better in it’s place. That’s how we get them in, that’s how we get them to abandon him.

Let’s do it.

There is one other thing I would like to add to this salient analysis, and that’s a mini-essay by someone who goes by the handle “xenophonsXyphos.” It dovetails nicely with what Ms. Jayne has said above, and really should be considered if we want to understand the mentality of the MAGA cult. Their statement has been mildly censored for a family-friendly audience:

You all don’t get it. I live in Trump country, in the Ozarks in southern Missouri, one of the last places where the KKK still has a relatively strong established presence. They don’t care what he does. He’s just something to rally around and hate liberals, that’s it, period. He absolutely realizes that and plays it up, they love it, he knows they love it, and the fact that people act like it’s anything other than that just proves that liberals are idiots, all the more reason for high fives all around.

If you keep getting caught up in why do they not realize blah blah blah and how can they still back him after blah blah blah, you are not understanding what is the underlying motivating factor of his support. It’s much it. 🤬 liberals, that’s pretty much it.

Have you noticed he can do pretty much anything imaginable and they’ll explain some way that rationalizes it that makes zero logical sense? Because they’re not even keeping track of any logical narrative, it’s irrelevant, 🤬 liberals is the only relevant thing, trust me, I know first hand what I’m talking about. That’s why they just laugh at it all, because you all don’t even realize they really truly don’t give a 🤬 about whatever the conversation is about, it’s just a side-mission story that doesn’t really matter anyways. That’s all just trivial details the economy, health care, whatever. 🤬 liberals.

Look at the thing with not wearing the masks. I can tell you what that’s about. It’s about exposing fear. They’re playing chicken with nature and whoever flinches just moved down their internal pecking order, one step closer to being a liberal.

You gotta understand the one core value that they hold above all others is hatred for what they consider weakness, because that’s what they believe strength is, hatred for weakness. And I mean passionate, sadistic hatred. And I’m not exaggerating. Believe me. Sadistic, passionate hatred, and that’s what proves they’re strong, their passionate hatred for weakness. Sometimes they lump in vulnerability, a compromised circumstance, or an overwhelming circumstance in their with weakness, too, because people tend to start humbling themselves when they’re in those circumstances and that’s an obvious sign of weakness.

Kindness = weakness. Honesty = weakness. Compromise = weakness. They consider their very existence to be superior every way to anyone who doesn’t hate weakness as much as they do. They consider liberals to be weak people that are inferior, almost a different species, and the fact that liberals are so weak is why they have to unite in large numbers, which they find disgusting, but it’s that disgust that is a true expression of their natural superiority.

Go ahead and try to have a logical, rational conversation with them though. Just keep in mind what I said here and think about it.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Footnotes

¹ Much of that belief stems from 60 years of GOP disinformation and jingoism from people like Nixon, Reagan, Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, and others.

² From a New York Times article on Jackson County Florida: “A few miles away, another prison employee, Crystal Minton, accompanied her fiancé to a friend’s house to help clear the remnants of a metal roof mangled by the hurricane. Ms. Minton, a 38-year-old secretary, said she had obtained permission from the warden to put off her Mississippi duty until early February because she is a single mother caring for disabled parents. Her fiancé plans to take vacation days to look after Ms. Minton’s 7-year-old twins once she has to go to work.The shutdown on top of the hurricane has caused Ms. Minton to rethink a lot of things.”I voted for him, and he’s the one who’s doing this,” she said of Mr. Trump. “I thought he was going to do good things. He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.”

This is representative of the mindset of many Trump voters: He needs to hurt Democrats and Liberals.

³ See Footnote 1

⁴ This meme has been circulating for some time, but it says basically the same thing.

⁵ In Economics, this is called the “sunk cost fallacy.”

Scam within a scam

Posted on April 16, 2025 by The Old Wolf

This one goes layers deep. Lately my inbox has been swamped with an endless stream of these, (and I’ve written about them before)

But they are still going out, and people are still biting and losing lots and lots of money.

The first red flag is “Congratulation!!” – State Farm would never make such an egregious grammar error.

So if you Get Started, you’ll be taking through an inane survey – doesn’t matter what you click, you’ll be “qualified” – and then told you only need to pay for Shipping and Handling and you’ll collect a fabulous reward.

Well, you’ve just given your credit card number to a bunch of unscrupulous scammers, and it may be used for all sorts of illegitimate purposes. But you’ve also agreed (as outlined in the “terms and conditions,” which nobody reads) to sign up for not one but three recurring services which will be very, very hard to cancel.

Terms and Conditions Agreement
By participating in the contest, you agree to abide by the following terms and conditions (“Agreement”). This Agreement details the membership pricing, benefits, and terms associated with the Daily Win Prize website (the “Site”). The Site is operated by the Site Operator (“we,” “our,” or “us”).
Membership & Benefits
As a thank-you for your participation, you’ll receive complimentary access to exclusive resources within our renowned Epic Read Online, known for its high-quality offerings. As a member, you’ll also enjoy valuable monthly benefits, including significant savings on a variety of products. You can cancel your membership at any time by contacting us, and all recurring charges will be immediately stopped.
VISA Card Members:
➽ Initial Price: $14.77 Continued Membership: $73.85 billed monthly (every 31 days)
By becoming a member, you’ll access exclusive benefits like substantial savings on a range of products. You can cancel your membership at any time by contacting us, stopping all recurring charges. Review the terms carefully before proceeding. If you have questions or need clarification, don’t hesitate to contact us.
Mastercard Members:
➽ Initial Price: $11.47 Continued Membership: $76.49 billed monthly (every 31 days)
As a Mastercard member, you’ll enjoy monthly savings and exclusive benefits. If you wish to discontinue membership, you can do so at any time. If you choose to continue, your recurring membership fee will be charged every 31 days at the specified rate. We recommend reviewing the full terms before proceeding. Feel free to reach out for additional information.
Cancellations & Refunds:
You have the right to cancel your order at any time. To do so, please contact our customer service at +8554185206, and we will issue a refund within 5-7 business days. You may also email us at support@tradestreamshop.com for assistance.
Risk of Loss:
All purchases made through the Site are under a shipment contract. Once items are delivered to the carrier, the risk of loss and ownership transfers to you.
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The Site’s content, including text, graphics, logos, and trademarks, is owned by the Site Operator and protected by intellectual property laws. Unauthorized use of the Site’s content is prohibited and may result in legal action.
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When using the Site, you agree not to:
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By accepting these terms, you acknowledge that you have read and understood the Agreement and agree to comply with all conditions stated above.

So if you’re average Joe or average Jane, you’ll see charges on your credit card account for $122.27 every month unless you call to cancel, and those charges will repeat, and repeat, and repeat until you get wise and manage to get past the phone agents who are trained to deflect your cancellation request, and who are very, very good at what they do.

Be safe out there. Don’t click on these solicitations. Don’t give your credit card number out unless you’re on a secure website and know who you are dealing with.

I hate scammers with the fury of a thousand blue-hot suns.

Have Spacesuit, Will Travel

Posted on April 12, 2025 by The Old Wolf

By Robert A. Heinlein

This is the book that opened my mind to Science Fiction. I read it in 1961 when I was 10, and life was never the same. I even read it to my 10-year-old grandson last year with video calls (he lives about 2,000 miles away from me.) This is the only illustration in the book itself, but it’s a pretty good representation of Kip and Peewee’s trek across the lunar surface. That said, numerous other people have come up with SF pulp cover illustrations, none of which ever matched the images that I had created in my mind.

This one is close for the protagonist, deuteragonist and the setting. Kip looks too old, though, he’s just a high-school kid. Peewee is pretty darn good.

Wrong on all levels. Peewee is not a bar hostess, Kip is not the varsity quarterback, and the Mother Thing is not a lemur – only her eyes were described in that way.

This artist here tried to capture the Mother Thing – way too anthropomorphic; Iunio (not bad); Jojo the dogface boy (as good as any, I guess); Skinny and Fats (within the realm of possibility) and Him (or Wormface, and I’d guess that the illustrator didn’t even read the book.

I like this artist’s style, Kip is a definite possibility, but Peewee looks like she just ate a bad mushroom. Mother Thing is still way off base – she’s totally alien, not like a cat, and far more amorphous.

God help us. But I do give this artist credit for trying to create a non-humanoid Mother Thing.

Not bad as illustrations go, but again the Mother Thing is only analogous to a lemur in the look of her eyes. Far too cat-like here.

I like the representation of Oscar in this cover illustration.

Very generic and not really indicative of the book at all. It should be mentioned in passing that the artistic skills of all these illustrators are not in question. I couldn’t do 1/100th as well. I just judge them based on how closely they match Heinlein’s descriptions in the book.

This one gets a gold star for the representation of Kip’s struggle to get back to the Wormfaces’ base on Pluto after setting the Mother Thing’s beacon. I can feel his frozen anguish.

So after wishing for decades that I could have a visual of the main characters in the story that more closely matched what I saw in my head, I commissioned my artist daughter to come up with one. She had read the book, and we conferred on the main points of each character, but I gave her free reign to use her imagination, and this is what she came up with. I just love it. Wormface is appropriately horrific and petrifying, and the Mother Thing is totally inhuman but with that “loving mother” look that is so poignantly described in the novel.

“Mother Very Thoughtfully Made A Jelly Sandwich Under No Protest.” ¹ Great mnemonic.

Footnotes

¹ “Protest.” Pluto. Still a planet, always a planet.

Beloved Children’s Books

Posted on April 12, 2025 by The Old Wolf

Imgur recently did a Book Fair, where users would post their favorite or beloved books. This put me in mind of my own library as a child, many of which I have preserved or re-acquired over time for my own enjoyment (and for my grandchildren, if I can ever get them to visit me.)

Here then, a compendium of some of the books I have cherished since I was small, along with a few that have been added along the way.

In no particular order, because I love them all.

*Winner of the Ruth Schwartz Children’s Book Award*

“Maylin cooks delicious meals every day in her father’s restaurant, but it’s her lazy brothers who take all the credit. One day a contest is held to honor the visiting Governor of South China and Maylin’s brothers don’t hesitate to pass off her cooking as their own. But when neither the brothers nor the Governor himself can replicate Maylin’s wonderful dish, they all learn that there’s more to the art of good cooking than just using the right ingredients.” (Description from Amazon) It’s the love that went into it that was missing.

This is an obscure volume, but it’s special to me because I’m included in the dedication. My mother was good friends with Edward Leight, who was a frequent guest in our home and who made the most insane chocolate mousse that I have ever tasted. Rivalled even things I’ve had in Paris.

Another volume by the same authors. I always loved Harriet and Mouse.

This volume is in French, which I began learning at Hunter College Elementary School under the gentle tyranny of Mme. Hopstein of blessed memory. The Babar stories in my library are in English, but the translations are lovely and capture the flavor of the originals.

A morality tale about the dangers of unbridled greed.

One of the ultimate classics. Everyone should have this on their children’s bookshelf.

Henry B. Swap and his “glas wen” – a Welsh term, literally, a “blue smile” – a smile that is insincere or mocking. But even Henry learned an important lesson in this book.

Wallace Tripp is probably one of my favorite illustrators of all time. His draftsmanship is exquisite, and his sense of humor is weird enough to tickle my funny bone in all the right places.

I remember perusing this book and its little side-illustrations for hours. I learned a lot about road construction and the structure of a town from this volume.

Representative of all Dr. Seuss books. This one has some really good lessons in it, but all of them are wonderful. Bartholomew Cubbins, If I Ran the Circus, Mulberry Street, the Lorax… too many to choose a favorite.

Is it a book by Chris Van Allsburg? Then it deserves to be on your shelves. This one is a particular favorite of mine, but Jumanji (of course), The Garden of Abdul Gasazi, and The Polar Express come to mind just as rapidly.

Haul out the tissues. Tomie de Paola has written the most touching stories of humanity (this one), History (Tony’s Bread), and Faith (see the next one, below.) Beautiful illustrations and gentle humor.

One of my long-term favorites. I could easily identify with Robert, the hero of this story, one of those tough pre-schoolers who would never be stopped by a little snow.

Something about poor Wee Gillis, torn between his relatives of the Highlands and the Lowlands, spoke to me as a child… along with bagpipes. Of course, bagpipes. Big ones.

I grew up in New York City, but I loved visiting my country cousins. This little book deserves all the awards it has ever garnered.

I think our kids read every single book by Bill Peet that we could get our hands on from the library. They were entertaining, but also carried important themes. Some weeks we would make two trips, bringing home 20 or so books at a time. Reading time was precious, and as they grew older they would devour books by themselves – either for sheer enjoyment or to win an individual pizza from Pizza Hut with the “Book it!” program.

The gentle stories and poetry of A.A. Milne will always be part of my childhood and my present.

There have been countless editions of this collection of poetry, but the one illustrated by Eulalie Minfred Banks has always been my favorite, perhaps because it’s the one I had as a child.

The Lamplighter

My tea is nearly ready and the sun has left the sky;
It’s time to take the window to see Leerie going by;
For every night at teatime and before you take your seat,
With lantern and with ladder he comes posting up the street
Now Tom would be a driver and Maria go to sea,
And my papa’s a banker and as rich as he can be;
But I, when I am stronger and can choose what I’m to do,
O Leerie, I’ll go round at night and light the lamps with you
For we are very lucky, with a lamp before the door,
And Leerie stops to light it as he lights so many more;
And O! before you hurry by with ladder and with light,
O Leerie, see a little child and nod to him tonight!
-Robert Louis Stevenson

This one was discovered later on one of those trips to the library. It’s a charming collection of children’s poetry, with illustrations by numerous artists including Eloise Wilkin and many others.

Daddy and Mother dine later in state,
With Mary to cook for them, Susan to wait
always cracked me up.

Something about this story always made me smile. The simple language and the charming illustrations were part of it, but perhaps it made me think of Twee, my Cat from Hell, with affectionate (but terrified) memory.

Ah, the poor little rich girl. Again, a book set in New York, which immediately spoke to me. Even as a child I thought Eloise was an insufferable brat, but the illustrations and stories were captivating enough that I kept coming back for more.

This is youth fiction, but having been fortunate enough to grow up in NYC on my mother’s dime and visiting both MOMA and the Met frequently, I could easily place myself in the shoes of these intrepid young explorers.

“If visions of Claudia and Jamie bathing—and collecting lunch money—in the Met’s Fountain of Muses bring up fond childhood memories of your own, you’re among the legions of readers who grew up loving E.L. Konigsburg’s From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. The classic children’s book turns 50 in 2017, and the tale of the Kincaid siblings spending their days wandering about the paintings, sculptures and antiquities, and their nights sleeping in antique beds handcrafted for royalty, is as popular as ever. The 1968 Newbery Medal winner has never been out of print.” – Patrick Sauer, History Correspondent for the Smithsonian Magazine.

No list of favorites would be complete without an entry from Richard Scarry. These books allowed younger children to be able to identify so many things in the world around them, illustrated with sympathetic characters like Huckle Cat, Lowly Worm, and Bananas Gorilla. We spent hours with these editions.

On that note, this is taken from a photo of my nursery school class in 1954. Notice the Car and Truck book on the shelf, one of Richard Scarry’s earlier volumes, which I still remember with great fondness.

I had this book as a child, and kept it until it literally crumbled into dust. I was able to score another copy from the Internet, but it, too, is ancient. I have referred to it in another post.

The Tale of Custard the Dragon, *by Ogden Nash*
Silhouettes by Janet Laura Scott and Paula Rees Good

Riley, James Whitcomb, *A Host of Children*, Bobbs-Merrill, 1920

This book is special to me, because – while sadly uncredited, the black-and-white illustrations were done by a great-aunt of mine, Mildred Rogers Dickeman. Here is a post featuring an extract from this book, “Little Orphant Annie.”

This book was written and illustrated by Gelett Burgess in 1900. People may think that the manners extolled in this wonderful book are stilted and out of date, but I maintain that we would have a much more civil society if these were univerally taught and observed.

*Tony had ADHD, which was not recognized at the time, but boy howdy is this me.*

The entire book is available online at Project Gutenberg for your enjoyment.

I’m tired. I could keep going forever, but this is a good representative sample of children’s books that I have loved, and that I would wholeheartedly recommend to anyone who has young people around.

The Bad Fortune Restaurant

Posted on April 10, 2025 by The Old Wolf

… and how it feels in America, right now.

Recently a cousin of mine posted this on Facebook:

Image of a fortune cookie with a bad fortune inside it.

This put me in mind of something I once saw years and years ago, and have never again been able to find. On June 8, 2007, artist Norm Feuti published this strip on his now – tragically – ended webcomic, “Retail:”

Cooper and Val, from Norm Feuti's comic strip "Retail." Cooper is complaining that his Chinese take-out order didn't contain a fortune cookie.

I only discovered this wonderful webcomic a few years before its end, but thanks to Feuti’s preserving the entire run, I was able to go back and peruse the entire archive. In 2021 I commented:

At some point I read about a Chinese restaurant – it may have been in Canada – that drew customers by having fortune cookies with awful fortunes. The two I remember were “Dental work will be done poorly, and you will have to go back,” and “Your fetish for rubber underwear will cause you great embarrassment in public.” I would pay to eat at a place like that, but I guess the schtick was only effective for a while.

What a hoot. I wish the Internet could remember the original article I saw, and provide information about where that place was. But my opinion remains the same – I would drive miles to eat at a restaurant like that, just for the gallows humor. “Circling the drain” is an insufficient metaphor for what is happening in America right now – we’re already past the P-trap and halfway to the sewage treatment plant. In addition to the “Hands Off” protests of April 5, 2025 and more planned demonstrations on April 19th, and writing and calling representatives in Congress, sometimes a good dose of dark humor helps to ease the pain of a nation’s Democracy going up in flames.

While the restaurant I mentioned – and it was a real thing, because otherwise where would I have learned of these “bad fortune cookies” – is no more, you can get some evil fortunes of your own over at FAL.net, and some New Year’s-themed (for 1998) versions here.

This year, people will stop judging you by your appearance and dislike you for who you are on the inside.
You will be reminded of your historic visit to the Oval Office by painful rug burns.
Your long time skin problems will be corrected by an ordinary cheese grater.
Success will never change you. You’ll always be a bastard.

These are so great. But all kidding aside, it is my sincere hope and prayer that somehow, enough people can rise up to throw off the yoke of hateful ChristoFascist autocracy that Donald Trump, Elon Musk, MAGA, the Heritage Foundation, and the Freedom Caucus in Congress is imposing upon our government, for the exclusive benefit of the “broligarchs” – the white, wealthy, Protestant, male, cisgendered minority who want to control our nation with an iron fist for their own enrichment, keeping Liberals, people of color, the LGBTQIA+ community, immigrants, Jews, and other “undesirables” in their “proper place:”

*Apologies to the Harry Potter franchise*

Our nation deserves better. Its citizens deserve better. We must absolutely keep fighting, because as someone (attributed to Ben Franklin, but probably not) observed, “We must hang together, or we will assuredly all hang separately.”

To end on a less grim note, a thought from Kate Allan (@thelatestkate):

The Old Wolf has spoken.

An interview with Brooke McEldowney

Posted on April 7, 2025 by The Old Wolf

Cross-posted from Nicola Rose at Substack.

Brooke McEldowney is the artist responsible for 9 Chickweed Lane, a syndicated comic strip that started out as a gag-a-day exploration of the lives of three generations of women living under the same roof – Gran, Juliette, and her daughter Edda. Now over thirty years in publication, the strip has morphed into something else entirely, with long (sometimes years-long) arcs of character development and relationships fraught with humor and pathos both. GoComics link: https://www.gocomics.com/9-chickweed-lane

Mr. McEldowney (he’s a he, yes, despite people wanting to claim that “Brooke” is a woman’s name) is also the author of the online-only webcomic Pibgorn, the wild and wooly saga of a fairy who longed to exceed her limits of lugging dewdrops and hobnobbing with bumblebees. The stories, many of which have been published in book form, have almost entirely conformed to the admonitions of Mark Twain in Huckleberry Finn:

Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.

In other words, just go with the flow.

Is it exciting? (You gotta read this next paragraph in Peter Falk’s voice): Are you kidding? Fairies (whole and cyborg), demons, succubi, historical figures (people like Mozart), evil little girls, mechanical aliens, accordions cum weapons of destruction, film noir episodes, talking animals, hellish game show hosts… the list goes on. Don’t try to figure it out, just enjoy the stories and the captivating, luscious artwork. You can read Pibgorn here:

The authoress of the blog mentioned, who happens to be McEldowney’s daughter, pinned him down for an interview, and asked questions culled from readers across the internet. I was one of them, having been a fan of Brooke’s work since at least 2002 and possibly earlier; I’ve since met Brooke and his delightful wife a number of times and have tried to be one of his most ardent supporters in the face of some serious unpleasantness from those who should have been entirely in his corner.

Link to the current Pibgorn strip: https://www.gocomics.com/9-chickweed-lane. Because of time constraints, Pib has been on hiatus for quite a while, but it’s the artist’s intention to end the current saga and begin another. Sadly, the archives are now only available at GoComics to paid subscribers (greedy sods), but a number of Pib’s adventures (as well as 9 Chickweed Lane collections) are available at Pib Press.

Nicola’s interview can be found here. You are welcome.

Mitch McConnell is retiring. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Posted on April 1, 2025 by The Old Wolf

Moira Donegan

Shared from The Guardian for wider exposure. Original link: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/24/mitch-mcconnell-is-retiring-from-us-politics-good-riddance

Whenever you see a horror of anti-democratic rule, remember Mitch McConnell. You have him to thank

You would think that this is exactly what Mitch McConnell wanted. McConnell, the 83-year-old Kentucky senator – who announced last week that he will retire in 2026 and not seek an eighth term – is one of the most influential Republicans in the history of the party. But he has in recent weeks expressed dissent and discontent with the direction of the Republican party. He voted against some of Donald Trump’s cabinet appointees, refusing, for example, to cast a vote for the confirmation of the anti-diversity campaigner and alleged rapist and drunk Pete Hegseth.

He has also voiced some tepid and belated opposition to Republicans’ extremist agenda, citing his own experience as a survivor of childhood polio as a reason for his opposition to Republican attacks on vaccines. But the Republican party that McConnell is now shaking his head at is the one that he created. He has no one but himself to blame.

Over his 40 years in the US Senate, with almost two decades as the Republican leader in the chamber, McConnell has become one of the most influential senators in the nation’s history, radically reshaping Congress, and his party, in the process. Few have done more to erode the conditions of representative democracy in America, and few have done more to enable the rise of oligarchy, autocracy and reactionary, minoritarian governance that is insulated from electoral check. McConnell remade America in his own image. It’s an ugly sight.

In the end, McConnell will be remembered for one thing only: his enabling of Trump. In 2021, after Trump refused to respect the results of the 2020 election and sent a violent mob of his supporters to the Capitol to stop the certification of the election results by violent force, McConnell had an opportunity to put a stop to Trump’s authoritarian attacks on the constitutional order.

McConnell never liked Trump, and by that point, he didn’t even need him: he had already won what would be his last term. He could have voted to convict Trump at his second impeachment; if he had, it’s likely that other Republican senators would have been willing to do so, too, and that Trump could have been convicted and prevented from returning to power. He didn’t. McConnell voted to acquit, and to allow Trump to rise again. If the next four years of Trump’s restoration are anything like the first 30 days have been, then that will turn out to have been the singularly significant decision of McConnell’s career.

But McConnell had been working against American democracy long before Trump sent the mob to ransack the Senate chamber and smear feces on the walls. It was McConnell, after all, who is most responsible for the current campaign finance regime, which has allowed unlimited amounts of dark money spending to infiltrate politics – making elections more influenceable, and politicians’ favor more purchasable, in ways that tilt public policy away from the people’s interests and towards those of the billionaire patron class.

Such arrangements of funding and favors are not consistent with democracy; they change politicians’ loyalties, diminish the influence of voters, diminish constituents and their needs to a mere afterthought or communications problem in the minds of elected representatives. This was by design, and it is how McConnell liked it. In Washington, he operated at the center of a vast funding network, moving millions and millions of dollars towards those Republicans who did his bidding, and away from those who bucked his authority.

It was partly his control over this spiderlike web of wealthy funders that allowed McConnell to exert such control over his caucus. It is hard to remember these days, when Republicans pick so many fights with each other, that the party was once feared for their discipline. McConnell was able to snuff out any meaningful dissent and policy difference in public among Republican senators with the threat of his deep-pocketed friends, always ready to fund a primary challenger. The lockstep from Republicans allowed McConnell to pursue what he viewed as his twin goals: stopping any Democratic agenda in Congress, and furthering the conservative capture of the federal courts.

As Senate Republican leader during the Obama years, McConnell pursued a strategy of maximal procedural obstructionism. His mandate was that no Republican in the Senate would vote for any Obama agenda item – that there would be no compromise, no negotiation, no horse trading, no debate, but only a stonewalled total rejection of all Democratic initiatives. This has become the singular way that Republicans operate in the Senate; it was McConnell who made it that way.

The underlying assumption of McConnell’s strategy of total opposition and refusal was that Democrats, even when they win elections, do not have a legitimate right to govern. In practice, the authorities of the presidency or congressional majorities expand and contract based on which party is in power: Republicans can achieve a great deal more in the White House, or with control of Congress, than Democrats can.

In part this is because of McConnell’s procedural approach, which posits bending the rules to suit Republican interests when they are in power, and enforcing the rules to the point of functionally arresting legislative business when Democrats take the majority. This, too, is antithetical to democracy: constitutional powers can’t be limited for one party, and expanded for another, so that voters are only fully represented if they vote one way. The strategy of obstructionism functionally ended Congress as a legislative body in all but the most extreme of circumstances. What was once the most representative, electorally responsive, and important branch of the federal government has receded to the status of a bit player, and policymaking power has been abdicated to the executive and the courts. That’s McConnell’s doing, too.

Maybe it was part of McConnell’s indifference to the integrity of democracy meant that he refused, during the Obama era, to confirm any of the president’s judicial nominees. Vacancies on the federal courts accumulated, with seats sitting empty and cases piling up for the overworked judges who remained. But McConnell’s seizure of the judicial appointment power from the executive was only in effect when the president was a Democrat; when Republicans were in power, he jammed the courts full of far-right judges.

When Antonin Scalia died in 2016, under Obama, McConnell held the US supreme court seat open for almost a year, hoping that Trump would win the 2016 election and get the chance to appoint a right-wing replacement. When Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, just a few weeks before the 2020 election, McConnell jammed through the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett. His tendencies, then, were always authoritarian: power, in his view, did not belong to those the people elected to represent them. It belonged, always, to Republicans – no matter what the voters had to say about it.

Mitch McConnell is an old man. In 2026, when he finally leaves office, he will be 84. He will not have to live in the world that he made, the one where what was left of American democracy is finally snatched away. But we will. Whenever you see a horror of anti-democratic rule – whenever cronyism is rewarded over competence, whenever cruelty is inflicted over dignity, whenever the constitution is flouted, mocked or treated as a mere annoyance to be ignored by men with no respect for the law or for you – remember Mitch McConnell. You have him to thank.

Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist

Playing in the World Game

As One

Author Archives: The Old Wolf

A prayer of peace for these troubled times.

Another Declaration of Independence

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for a people to break from a leader who governs with cruelty, contempt, and corruption, a decent respect to the opinions of humankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all people are created equal, endowed with inherent dignity and unalienable rights—among these are life, liberty, equality, and the pursuit of justice.

Scam within a scam

Have Spacesuit, Will Travel

Beloved Children’s Books

The Bad Fortune Restaurant

An interview with Brooke McEldowney

Mitch McConnell is retiring. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for a people to break from a leader who governs with cruelty, contempt, and corruption, a decent respect to the opinions of humankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all people are created equal, endowed with inherent dignity and unalienable rights—among these are life, liberty, equality, and the pursuit of justice.

SECTION I: THE PREAMBLE