Read my mind

"The Mind Readers."  This was the headline over a fascinating two-page article in today's New York Times, a discussion of recent developments in scientists' ability to read and use the thoughts of a person as they appear in his brain, and -- moreover -- to control those thoughts from the outside.

Our ability to do so is still rudimentary, but impressive.  For example, some victims of disease or accident with damaged motor nerves are unable to move an arm or leg.  Scientists are able to decode blocked messages from the brain  instructing muscles to move the limb, and can now wire a signal directly to the intended muscles.  The person desires to move his arm, and, yes, the arm moves -- exactly as it would in an uninjured person.  It's only one step further to hook up a prosthesis that has replaced an amputated limb, and to enable it to respond to the same signals

Patients who have lost the ability to speak, say from a stroke, while still remaining cognitively intact, can be connected to an artificial speaker, like Alexa's, and "speak" the words that their brain tries unsuccessfully to make the mouth speak.  More prosaically, the author notes that we already are able to control drones by brain signals.

The article projects far more extraordinary abilities that we may develop in the future, both to control our environment merely by brain signals, and to receive information directly into our brains without using eyes or ears as intermediaries.  The article also discusses at some length the ethical and legal dilemmas that may soon arise.  Do we really want to allow Google to tell our brains that we have an irresistible craving for an advertiser's candy?

While reading, my own mind was applying some of the developments discussed in the article to my own pathetically parochial interests.  Primarily, my two new kittens.

One obvious difference between a dog and a cat is transparency.  A dog would never make a good poker player -- not with that wagging tail, drooling tongue, panting breath, and big happy grin.  A cat, on the other hand, could look you straight in the eye and bluff a pair of nines into a winning hand.  You never know what's going on in their heads.

My kittens aren't even teenagers yet, in cat years.  They have no conscious secrets or desire to deceive.  (Or do they?)  But I'm almost convinced that the word "inscrutable" somehow shares a common etymological ancestor with the word "cat."

They will be wrestling on the floor, seemingly oblivious to me, that guy in the chair reading a book.  And then one of them will glance over at me, appearing to check out whether I'm watching them.  As though their little tussle is an act put on for my amusement.  With an older cat, I've looked up from my reading to see him sitting on the arm of my chair, staring at me, studying me.  What's he doing?  What's he thinking about?

When a human is so bored or tired that he "stops thinking," just staring off into space, his brain is still quite active -- thinking, even if not consciously, about plans for tomorrow, maybe worrying what his boss meant by that possibly insulting comment as he left the office.  But they've run EEGs on cats -- yes, honestly, they have! -- and discovered that when a cat stares off into space, his brain wave goes totally flat.  He is essentially, if temporarily, brain dead.

I'd love to read their minds.  Are they constantly conscious of me and my reactions to their wild activities?  Do they stare at me, trying to read my mind?  What happens to their thoughts as their brain wave flattens -- is it like listening to HAL's voice as he/it dies, in 2001 Space Odyssey?

Are they happy to see me?  Or is their apparent happiness ironic?  Do they look at each other and roll their eyes when my back is turned?

These would be wonderful things to learn.  On the other hand, why do I love cats?  Isn't it because they are so often mysterious?  So unlike a dog?  Do I really want to know their every thought?  Wouldn't it really be like discovering that the sophisticated woman you find so enchanting -- loving, but always mysterious -- actually spends the time away from you watching daytime TV, and says so little because she has so little to say?

The New York Times writer anticipates my concern, if not my cats:

Not even Dr. Gallant, who first succeeded in translating neural activity into a moving image of what another person was seeing -- and who was both elated and horrified by the exercise -- thinks the Luddite approach is an option.  "The only way out of the technology-driven hole we're in is more technology and science," he told me.  "That's just the cool fact of life."

Well, I'll leave it to the next generation to worry about.  My own cats will remain enchanting and mysterious.

Adoption: successful

Ah, yes.  My new kittens.  I suspect everyone has heard more than enough about them.  But, for those of you who are concerned about the success of the adoption, this final post (at least for a while) should bring some closure.

On schedule, I made the long (and beautiful) drive to Newhalem on Tuesday.  Anne and Tony arrived at almost the same time.  Greetings were exchanged.  The kittens in a large carrier were handed over, together with adoption certificates from the Okanogan County Animal Foster Care Service (together with a number of stern written warnings about proper care).  We turned our cars about, and headed home.

The five cats I've adopted in the past all came from animal shelters, where they had been confined in small cages.  They treated adoption as a release from prison, to be celebrated.  These kittens, however, were born into foster care.  They had lived pampered lives.  They knew not me, nor wished to.  They were about as pleased to arrive at my house as would be a shy eight-year-old sent off to summer camp against his will.

They hid.

By the end of the day, they were wrestling together -- their major past time -- but would bolt if I made any advances toward them.  The next morning, they approached me while I was on the floor reading the paper.  They accepted, very tentatively, pats on the head.  By Thursday they were following me from room to room, keeping an eye on my activities.

Today, first one and then the other approached me while I was sitting in a chair reading.  They fought for a while for sole possession of my lap.  One retreated to my ankles, the other curled up on my lap and immediately went to sleep.  (See photo.)

Things are working out well.  They eat well; they know all about litter boxes.  Their adoptive owner is relieved.

Their names?  Yes.  Well, they have been named Castor and Pollux, the twins, Gemini.  Those names seemed appropriate.  The Greek heroes were great fighters, and showed devotion to each other.  The names fit.

I'm happy.  The house seems more home-like.  And cats, unlike that 8-year-old camper, don't spend weeks being homesick.  We're all well; hope you are, too. 

Kush

All right, let's talk about Kush. 

No, not the "Hindu Kush" (Hindus-killer), the western extension of the Himalayas and the Pamirs that Eric Newby brought to our attention in his climbing adventure, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush.

No, my Kush for today is something I knew nothing about -- unlike you, my erudite readers -- until I read the cover article, beautifully photographed, in this month's issue of Smithsonian.  The Kingdom of Kush.  An ancient kingdom located in the northern portion of Sudan (known to my childhood as the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, a joint colonial venture of Britain and Egypt, usually described as a "condominium").

The Kingdom of Kush ruled what the Greeks and other Europeans called Nubia, a region between the First Cataract of the Nile (today's Aswan) and the Fourth Cataract, approximately two hundred miles down river from Sudan's capital, Khartoum.   I'd never heard of Kush.  What did I know of Nubia?  Exotic black Nubian slaves, of course.  Attractive appendages to ancient Greek and Roman civilization. 

The author of the Smithsonian article -- himself a Sudan-American -- wants us to know there was more in Nubia than slaves for Greece -- to wit, Kush.  Kush's civilization dominated Nubia, within various geographical borders, from 2500 B.C. to A.D. 300.  For years in modern times, Nubia (and Kush) was written off as an outpost of Egypt, a people who had picked up bits and pieces of Egyptian and Mediterranean civilization, in the same way as the British Celts were influenced by the Romans.

Certainly there was influence from Egypt, Greece, and Rome.  But, the article points out, Kush had a rich and distinctive civilization of its own, most apparent to today's casual observer in their unusual, steep-sided pyramids.  In 1500 B.C., Egyptian forces occupied Nubia as far south as the Fourth Cataract, and stayed until the Eleventh Century,  Then the Kushites returned the favor.  The Kushite kings declared themselves the rightful ruler of Egypt, marched north, and established Egypt's 25th dynasty -- the "Black Pharoahs" of Egypt, ruling from from their Nubian capital.

The Black Pharoahs' rule of Egypt lasted just under a century, and was ended by invading Assyrians.  But the Kushite kings maintained their Nubian rule -- a prosperous and civilized rule -- from their capital Meroë, about 125 miles northeast of present-day Khartoum.   Their power didn't fade away until the Fourth Century A.D., declining probably because of climate change and area-wide drought, together with competition from a nearby rival civilization.

But their influence lives on.  Today's Seattle Times published an article (from the Washington Post) discussing Black supporters of President Trump's re-election -- including one Candace Owens.  In the later Kush kingdom, a series of powerful women reigned as queens -- each called a Kandake.  The Greek historian Strabo (and the writers of the Old Testament) mistook the title for a name; they called one particularly militaristic queen "Kandake."  Which was Latinized to "Candace."

I'm not sure how powerful Candace Owens turns out to be -- not very, I hope -- but she does have her name going for her.

I've never come close to visiting Sudan, although I once considered a trip to its more frequented neighbor, Ethiopia.  If Covid-19 ever ends, and if I ever get the chance, I'd love to visit the fascinating ruins and antiquities bequeathed the world by the Kingdom of Kush.

Kittens coming

One of kittens -- seven weeks

You can't have too many cat stories.

So reads the conventional wisdom on the social media.  God knows, if I'm desperate -- desperate like Trump-desperate -- for attention and "likes," all I have to do is post a cat picture on Facebook.

"Oh, isn't he just adorable!?"  Which I read as "Aren't you, who posted this photo, just adorable?"

But "Confused Ideas" is a work of literature, not out for cheap squeals of appreciation.  Nevertheless, the last time I adopted new cats was in 2004, back when "Confused Ideas" wasn't even a spark in the synapses of my churning brain.  And it's exciting to look forward to new members of my household, members of whom  -- past experience teaches -- I will quickly become obsessively fond.

So the two kittens are still up in Winthrop, Washington, with their third brother and their mother.  All three brothers had their eight-week birthday on Thursday.  Yesterday, to their dismay, they were taken to the veterinarian, received various shots, and -- horrible to relate -- lost their manhood. But they're too young to miss it, and their recovery will be swift. They were never planning to sing baritone, in any event.

The mother and her favorite son will be adopted by someone in Winthrop.  But my two kittens will have their nine-week birthday here in Seattle (no public celebration planned).

Yes, on Tuesday morning, I will drive to Newhalem, near the western entrance to the North Cascades National Park.  From Winthrop, the sister of my friend Jim B. -- the sister who enticed me into this new human-feline relationship -- will also drive to Newhalem from the east.  And in Newhalem, the transfer of custody will occur.  As Jim B. commented, it sounds a bit like a spy thriller where a prisoner is covertly released in exchange for certain secret documents.

It's about a 2¼ hour drive to Newhalem from my home.  I expect the transaction to be swiftly concluded, all human participants wearing masks.  I will carry my own lunch, a water bottle, and a thermos of coffee, returning home with as little interaction with the local populace as possible.  Yes, the fear of Covid-19 still looms large.

But by late afternoon, they will be in Seattle, studying the features of their new home.  Between now and Tuesday, I will secure all easily destroyed items of importance in my house.  I know kittens.

I may report later on their progress.  I'll try not to keep whipping photos out of my wallet to show you.  I'll try not to write tedious reports bragging about their report cards and high SAT scores.  But I'm only human. 

And admit it -- everyone loves a cat story.

Reviewing books

“Unfortunately, missing the author’s point, or not understanding the book, is not enough to prevent one from reviewing and/or rating it.”

--Mokokoma Mokhonoana

As you've noticed, part of my performance of my duties as a blogger is the writing of book reviews.  At least, I call them book reviews.  They bear little resemblance to the analytical essays I was required to write in freshman English, and they bear even less resemblance to the book reviews appearing in the New York Times Book Review.  They are rather just my little post-reading reactions to what I've read, sometimes not much more than amazed summaries.

But -- as I say -- I call them "book reviews." 

As I've mentioned frequently in earlier posts, after publishing book reviews for your delectation, I copy and paste them onto the Goodreads website, with an introductory disclaimer, "(FROM MY BLOG)."  I hope this explanatory introduction will excuse me from failing to write the sort of reviews that others write -- some of which are well-written, informed evaluations of subject matter as well as analyses of writing style; many more of which are mere elaborations on the theme of "Cool book, I really really liked it."

Whatever.  

Goodreads advises me that, to date, I've published 134 book reviews on their site, the great majority of which you, my readers, have had the opportunity to read here first.  Does anyone pay attention to my little masterpieces?  Apparently.

I received an email yesterday from the publisher Little, Brown & Co., reminding me that I had written a favorable review of Ayad Akhtar's novel, American Dervish, back in 2013, and advising me that they would, with my consent, send me a free advance copy of Akhtar's new novel Homeland Elegies.  No obligation on my part was required, but obviously they hope that I will both read this new novel and write something favorable about it, something that will encourage sales among Goodreads readers.

Of course, I said yes.  I danced around the house, imagining myself as one of those famous literary critics writing for the New Yorker or the New York Review of Books.  Or even the Seattle Times, I suppose.  After the metaphorical champagne wore off, I realized that I had not really joined a small, exclusive club.  I recalled the many Goodreads reviews I'd read that contained the disclaimer that the reviewer had been provided an advance free copy of the book they were reviewing, as though to escape the suspicion that a favorable review might have been the quid pro quo for receipt of a $24.99 book.  

Well, I probably could be bribed.  But I do have some integrity. At least for only $24.99.

Sooner or later, you probably will read my review of Homeland Elegies in this blog.  I'll remind you that I got a free book out of the deal, and assure you that I was not thereby influenced, just because that's what we reviewers on Goodreads like to do.  

Not cool

It's been a cool summer in Seattle.  Not a damp summer.  But our temperatures have run just a bit below normal.  Finally, this past week, we had several days in a row with highs above 80.

Then yesterday!  Pow!  98 degrees (36.7° C.)!

Yeah, I know.  Death Valley had an all time record of 130 yesterday.  Who lives in Death Valley?  And if they do, they live in air-conditioned splendor.

But in Seattle, 98 is unusual.   Not a record.  We had 103 degrees in 2009.  And 100 in 1992.  Three 99s since 1960.

One hundred three degrees -- eleven years ago -- is not sufficient to acclimate our bodies and minds to 98 yesterday.

If you page back through this blog a year, you'll find that on August 16, 2019, I had just returned from an over-heated visit to Italy.  The temperature every day I was in Rome reached about 98.  So yesterday in Seattle was just a little reminder of that trip.  And a taunt that in 2020 I can't visit Italy -- in over-heated August or any other month -- because of our unpleasant little virus.

My house is pretty well insulated, but not air-conditioned (unlike my hotel in Rome).  (Not many people bother with air-conditioning in a part of the world where nature's clouds and rain generally handle that task for us.)  The indoor, main floor temperature was a livable 70s most of the day, creeping up to 80 by evening.

But stepping outside -- wow!  It reminded me of my summers working in an air-conditioned aluminum plant laboratory, when I occasionally had to walk out to the pot rooms -- huge rooms full of electrical furnaces where the aluminum ore was being smelted.  Vivid memories of pitying the poor workers who were clearly earning their union scale wages.  The muggy heat slapped me in the face.

And if the main floor in my house retained a moderate temperature, not so for the upstairs where my bedroom is unluckily located.  I kept the windows closed until nearly 10 p.m., because the air outside remained even hotter than that in my bedroom.  When I finally opened them it really didn't make any difference.  Not much air movement from outside, and the insulation works both ways:  it keeps the heat out at first, but once in, it keeps the heat from leaving. 

I just lay on top of the covers and sweated throughout the night.

By morning, it had cooled off outdoors to 66 degrees.  I did my daily walk early, prudently.  But the temperature shouldn't exceed 86 today, with a gradual cooling trend all week.

Thank god our one-day summer is finally over.  We can now gradually segue into autumn.

Kamala Harris for Vice President

I have to admit that, until this week, I really hadn't paid much attention to Kamala Harris. 

She dropped out of the race for the Democratic nomination for president in December, citing lack of funds.  That was when I was just beginning to pay closer attention to the race for the nomination.  And once Biden became the obvious Democratic nominee, I didn't pay as close attention to the contending candidates for the vice presidential nomination as I might have in prior years.  They all seemed pretty much acceptable to me.

And, now that I review her history, Kamala is perhaps more acceptable than most.  She is a lawyer, a graduate of Hastings law school in 1989.  She served as assistant district attorney for several years, and was elected San Francisco District Attorney in 2003.  In 2010, she was elected California Attorney General, and in 2016 elected to the U.S. Senate. 

She became a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, months before the Senate confirmation hearings on Brett Kavanaugh's appointment to the Supreme Court.

She is well qualified by formal experience, and has shown herself an intelligent and aggressive prosecutor and interrogator in all of her positions.  These are all reasons enough for me to be happy with her nomination and to support her election.

And then, in addition, there's the "Trump Factor."

Trump has suggested and implied, without quite being specific, that he agrees with "birther" arguments that she is not qualified to be vice president.  Why?  Because her father was from India and her mother was from Jamaica, although both were naturalized American citizens.  The legal community agrees -- virtually unanimously -- that the argument has no merit.  She was born in Oakland, California, and is a "natural born citizen" under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Trump calls her "nasty."  Now, Trump calls many, many people "nasty," and especially uppity women who don't show deference to men in general -- and to Trump in particular.  She was "extraordinarily nasty" in interrogating Kavanaugh during the Senate hearings -- nasty essentially because she questioned him as a competent attorney.  She was, alternatively, "nasty to a level that was just a horrible thing."  She was "probably nastier than Pocohontas" -- referring to Senator Elizabeth Warren, another highly capable (uppity) woman who is "nasty." 

She is "very weak on facts," this humorously stated by the president who has shown the least interest in, or even mild curiosity about, facts of any president in American history.

Most recently, Trump has accused Kamala Harris -- a poised, articulate, highly intelligent and forceful speaker -- of being a "Mad Woman."  Spoken by the man whose uncontrolled anger and derision and insults pour from the White House virtually daily, in undiluted streams.

Finally, like a chip off the old block, Donald Trump, Jr., at one point re-tweeted a post implying that Ms. Harris was not black enough to represent a black constituency as vice president, and stating as a fact that she had been suggesting in her campaign that she was descended from American slaves.  Trump Jr. accompanied the re-tweet with his own words, "Is this true?  Wow!"   The tweet had been quietly deleted by the end of the day.

I'd cheerfully support anyone on whom Trump spewed that much vitriol!

Kamala Harris is an excellent choice for the Democratic ticket.  Her credentials and background suggest she will handle the office well.  More importantly, if she were to become president during the next four years, because of the president's death or incapacity, I'm convinced she would make a strong and capable president.

If nothing else, she would make a refreshing change as vice president from the current incumbent.

Mimbreños

Mimbreños.
You buried your ancestors
in floors beneath your homes.
You slept on them,
you kept them with you always.
They grew through earthen floors
filling your lives
with dreams of passing worlds.

--Benjamin Alire Sáenz, "The Dead"

I had never heard of the "Mimbreños." 

They were a people in southwest New Mexico, part of a larger ethnic group, the Mogolon culture.  They are named after the Mimbres ("little willow") river, that runs through their region. 

The beginnings of their culture can be seen as far back as A.D. 200,  but their "classic" period was A.D. 1000-1130, by which time the Mimbreños had settled into towns and had become an agricultural people.

What do we know about them?  They originally lived in "pit houses"-- houses half dug into the ground, and covered with a roof.  In the larger communities, they build large, communal pit houses, called "kivas," which were probably used for community and religious ceremonies.     

But by the beginning of the classic period, they were moving out of pit houses and building large, above-ground pueblos -- some of which contained hundreds of rooms.  At the same time, they began a ceremonial destruction of their kivas, burning them to the ground in great fires.

The Mimbres culture is best known today for its characteristic black-on-white pottery.  The pottery became quite sophisticated, and was both geometric and figurative in the designs used.  Some were used as ceremonial burial masks, covering the faces of the dead, but most were produced for actual home use.

Near the end of the classic period, Mimbreños began abandoning their homes, and the culture disappeared within a few years.  The end of the Mimbres culture, in its characteristic features, is usually blamed on local drought.

The Mexican-American novelist Benjamin Alire Sáenz, who has written novels for adults and young adults, as well as books for children, began his writing career as a poet.  I learned of the Mimbres culture from two poems included in his collection Calendar of Dust (1991).  "The Dead" marks the coming of the Mimbres people, from the time of their ancestors' first crossing of the Bering Strait, through the millennia as they cared for themselves and honored their ancestors, to the full flowering of their culture, and until ultimately their people and its culture died from drought.

The other poem, "Resurrection," is a reflection on the passage of time, and the communion between the living and the dead.  Four stanzas -- First, the still-visible accomplishments of the ancient Inca civilization; second, the lifelong anguish of the poet's mother over the death of her brother, a brother whose photo she holds close;  and third, the poet's thoughts and memories as he looks at photos of his own dead relatives, relatives with whom he once walked, all hoping to cross the border, hopes that for all but him were unfulfilled. 

The communion of the living with the dead.  The communion of the present with the past.  The fourth stanza returns to the now extinct Mimbres people:

The Mimbres buried their dead beneath their homes.
At night, softly, the buried
rose, re-entered the rooms of the living
as blankets woven with the heavy threads of memory,
blankets on which the Mimbres rested,
on which they slept, and dreamed.

Sáenz's poetry is haunting and melancholic, as is his recollection of the slow rise and rapid collapse of Mimbres civilization. As are the lives of those of us still living. And as is the life of our own civilization.

"The past is never dead. It's not even past." --William Faulkner

Nitrates

The explosion of a vast amount of ammonium nitrate in Beirut is a tragedy of immense proportions, both for the multitudes killed or injured, and for the damage to Beirut's infrastructure.  Strangely, and perversely, it brings back memories of an enjoyable childhood experience, if one fraught with danger.

I had a microscope set as a young teenager, which came with a number of stoppered test tubes.  Some were filled with interesting things -- a bee, for example, preserved in alcohol -- to examine microscopically.  Some contained various chemicals useful in preserving exhibits, or preparing them for placement on a slide, or for other uses that I don't now recall.

I especially don't recall why there was a tube full of potassium nitrate (saltpeter).  I can't imagine what use it had in the context of my microscope, but if I were better trained in that direction, its use might be obvious.  But it had a quite different use at my young hands.

10KNO₃ + 8C + 3S → 2K₂O₃ + 3 K₂SO₄ + 6CO₂ + 5N₂

This is the rough equation for the explosion of gunpowder.  It's a "rough" equation, because the constituents of gunpowder -- potassium nitrate, sulfur, and charcoal -- react with each other in a number of complicated ways, depending partly on their proportions as combined by the chemist.  Or by the trembling hands of a young teenager.  A young teenager who was damn lucky it didn't blow up in his trembling hands and face.

Yes, I'm afraid all of my potassium nitrate was consumed for recreational purposes.  I packed the resulting gunpowder carefully into a small cardboard container, which I then wrapped tightly in duct tape.  My brother and I took it to a nearby park, lit the firecracker fuse we'd inserted, and ran for our dear lives.

The result was highly satisfactory.  Luckily, no arrests were made.

As every serial murderer knows, one killing only whets one's appetite for the next.  I had plenty of sulfur and charcoal.  What I needed was more potassium nitrate.  I wisely sent my younger brother to a local pharmacy to see how much he could hustle up.  The answer -- not one gram.  The pharmacist took a peculiar interest in what a 12-year-old kid was planning to do with potassium nitrate, and wisely decided not to sell him any.  (If he even had it in stock.)

Did he care nothing for our education?  As the Nobel prize-winning chemist Linus Pauling has said, as quoted by Oliver Sacks in his memoir Uncle Tungsten:

Just think of the differences today.  A young person gets interested in chemistry and is given a chemical set.  But it doesn't contain potassium cyanide.  It doesn't even contain copper sulfate or anything else interesting, because all the interesting chemicals are considered dangerous substances.  Therefore, these budding young chemists don't have a chance to do anything engrossing with their chemistry sets.  As I look back, I think it pretty remarkable that Mr. Ziegler, this friend of the family, would have so easily turned over one-third of an ounce of potassium cyanide to me, an eleven-year old boy.

More's the pity.  My career in explosives came to an early end, due to the excessive caution of a small town pharmacist.

But Beirut has shared my early experience on a grandiose scale.  The stored substance was ammonium nitrate ((NH₄NO₃), not potassium nitrate (KNO₃), but the chemical reactions would be essentially the same.  Just substitute the radical NH₄ for K in the equation given above.  In either case, huge amounts of expanding carbon dioxide and nitrogen gases are released, together with a substantial amount of heat.

And for me as a kid, and for Beirut this week, the heat and explosive power of the gases released are far more impressive than the nature of the resulting chemical compounds.

Awaiting custody

Since Covid-19 took control, I've been ordering my groceries on-line, and picking them up at Safeway each Tuesday.

When I picked my groceries up today, the grocery boy hoisted something new -- and heavy -- into my trunk.

A large box of kitty litter. 

My two kittens will be six weeks old on Thursday.  Along with a third brother, they are still being cared for by their mother in Winthrop -- a town in Okanogan county, 187 miles (by road) northeast of Seattle.  They and their natural mother are in foster care with a very friendly and caring foster mother (human), who regularly texts me photos of the kittens' amazingly fast growth.  She has given them provisional names of Gustaf and Wallaby -- named after, allegedly, two foreign brands of licorice.  I'll quickly rename them after assessing their personalities.

I'll pick them up in another two or three weeks, after they're weaned from an increasingly impatient parent, and after they've received their various shots and have been neutered by a local veterinarian. 

The purchase of kitty litter is my promise to the kittens that I'm eagerly awaiting their arrival. 

Pets are in short supply during the epidemic.  People are lonely, and are looking for dogs and cats to keep them company.  That's true of me, as well, but after owning -- or being owned by -- five previous cats from kittenhood to death, something more than loneliness must be at work.

Although I've always considered The Owl to be my spirit animal, I suspect that, insofar as pets go,  I'm undoubtedly a Cat Person.  I'm not sure how I feel about that -- images of a smelly house, of furniture covered with cat fur, and of myself reading on a dark winter evening with cats twined about my body..

But, as our President would say, "It is what it is."

Back to the '50s

Families taking walks together; parents, not on their phones, paying attention to their children; children, not on their phones, paying attention to the world around them; people sitting in parks and reading; children outside playing, biking, skating, running around on the beach, swimming in the Puget Sound; families biking (or skating/paddleboarding) together; neighbors outside talking. 

--Seattle Times

I discussed some time ago the Ray Bradbury short story, broadcast as a radio drama when I was an impressionable youth, about an expedition to Mars where the crew stepped off the space ship and discovered the world of their youth -- long dead relatives living happily in Small Town, USA, honeysuckle and picket fences and all the trimmings -- their relatives welcoming them with love and kindness

The story didn't have a happy ending, of course, but that's not my point.  We all long to return to whatever era we grew up in, assuming we had a reasonably happy childhood.

As the reader of the Seattle Times wrote in the quotation above, the terrible Covid-19 does have a silver lining.  Ever since the orders to "Stay Home" were issued in March, we have been rediscovering some of the joys of life in the 1950s and 60s.

I noted in my Fourth of July essay that

in some ways, Seattle's Fourth was like Fourths you see in old movies, like Fourths of July as they were celebrated before I was born, before everyone had an automobile in which to high-tail it out of town.  When families did everything together, and neighbors were neighborly.

And this new atmosphere has become increasingly obvious in the weeks since.  Every evening, my neighborhood is full of people walking.  Not just the brusque exercisers, like myself, or the hand-holding lovers.  Those we've always had.  But entire families out strolling, with their little tykes walking, or pushing scooters, or riding trikes or bikes with training wheels.  

People are out sitting on porches in the twilight, porches whose existence hadn't even been obvious until now.  Neighbors stand six feet apart chatting over their property line or on the front sidewalk.  And what happened to all the helicopter parents?  I see kids, nine or ten, out riding their bikes -- alone or in groups -- with no parent keeping an eye on them.  Just like when I was a kid.  I suspect that after weeks and months of enforced togetherness, many parents have been quite happy to send the little dears out the door with an exhausted exhortation to "be careful."

In general, despite a large number of basketball hoops in my neighborhood, I had been unaware of how many families with children do live around me.  I guess that until last March, the kids had been whisked out of the house each day and chauffeured to soccer practice or oboe lessons or ballet classes, night after night.  Those diversions unavailable, they've suddenly appeared outside, like real children.

I could go on, but you get the point.  The pandemic has forced us to live as we did when we had more free time and less disposable income.  It's a quieter life, but not necessarily a less happy life.

Maybe, once life returns to "normal," folks will not only remember that cooking was fun, but that certain aspects of the lives of their parents and grandparents were actually pretty satisfying -- and perhaps worth reliving.