March 8, 2026 · 5:15 am

Captain America at the Oz bicentennial!

More than a decade ago, I listed Steve Englehart’s Captain America run as one of my top 10 favorite comics. It was an unpleasant shock when he left the book, Cap-creator Jack Kirby took over and proceeded to ignore everything Englehart had developed in favor of doing his own thing (for reasons explained here, Kirby wanted to ignore the rest of the Marvel Universe as much as possible). I’ve been following Alan Stewart’s recounting of the Kirby run and I can safely say I don’t like it any better than I did at the time. While I admire a lot of Kirby’s Silver Age and Fourth World work, at this point nothing he was doing impressed me (e.g., Devil Dinosaur).

Discussion on Alan’s blog got me to check out CAPTAIN AMERICA’S BICENTENNIAL BATTLES, one of the big treasury-edition books DC and Marvel were putting out back then — bigger size, bigger price, more profit per issue.

The story, such as it is, has the mystical Mr. Buda challenging Captain America about his belief in America, then sending him across time to experience it: the Chicago fire, a boxing bought with heavyweight legend John L. Sullivan, helping John Brown’s son protect a runaway slave, inspiring Betsy Ross in her design for the new flag she’s working on. There’s no plot, just a set of set pieces followed by an uninspired Why America Is Cool message. Like most of Kirby’s work after his return to Marvel, this had my wondering why people thought Kirby was such a genius.

I had more fun with ULTIMATE OZ UNIVERSE: The Lost Lands by Cullen Bunn and Mike Deodato. It’s the kick off of a new Oz series, adapting Land of Oz with Ozma of Oz to follow (I’m curious if they thought the ur-book was done too much, worried about flak from MGM which made the ’39 movie or what). It looks good —

— stays close enough to the story to satisfy me and the changes (adding a special ops Oz team working for Glinda, amping up Mombi’s powers) don’t annoy me. The exception is that I’d have preferred the Hungry Tiger and Cowardly Lion as animals rather than biped beast-men, and that in stripping Wogglebug of his personality as pompous academic, they’ve made him utterly blad. I’m also surprised given the reveal, that they don’t lean into the trans overtones. Still, a solid start.

Art by Kirby and Deodata, all rights to images remain with their owners.

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March 7, 2026 · 5:30 am

Choose the bear: movies about men you should avoid

Classics of the Horror Film listed THE MAGICIAN (1926) not as a classic but one with really good visuals. They have a point: director Rex Ingram gives this silent film, based on W.S. Maugham’s novel (based loosely on the life of notorious Satanist libertine Alistair Crowley) a good look, whether it’s the sinister Haddo’s ancient castle or a snake-charming ceremony. I still can’t recommend it.

Paul Wegener has a strong screen presence as Haddo, who needs the heart-blood of a virginal young woman for his plan to create a homonculus. His solution is to entrance young, beautiful Alice Terry away from her fiancee and marry her, though he doesn’t lay hands on her. Can her sweetheart rescue her before the fatal hour? There isn’t enough of a story here to work for me and the fight over Terry comes off less like a struggle with evil and more like a domestic melodrama. “This is the song of the wheel that spins — who loses today, tomorrow wins!”

While I thoroughly disliked Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Woman and Saltburn, TYG caught her WUTHERING HEIGHTS (2026) Valentine’s Day weekend and liked it so much she wanted to see it again, with me. Good call on her part — this is a much better film.

Catherine (Margot Robbie) is the child of a drunken, wastrel, living on their slowly decaying estate with her companion Nelly (Hong Chau — her ethnicity is explained by being a byblow of Cathy’s father in his younger days, IIRC). When dad brings home an abused boy he rescued to serve as a pet for her, Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi) becomes instead Cathy’s soulmate, leading to obsessive love, insane jealousy and ultimately tragedy (it’s a 200 year old book, I don’t think that’s a spoiler).

I’ve never read the novel, though TYG says they softened the edges of the characters some; even so they still come across as awful people. The performances are excellent and as TYG told me, the look of the film is breathtaking — Fennell and her cinematographers manage to make every scene look cool. “If I thought you meant that, I’d slit my own throat.”

All rights to images remain with current holders.

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March 6, 2026 · 5:15 pm

Everything everywhere all at once on Monday!

As I said last month, when I budgeted time off for emergencies into my year’s goals, I didn’t anticipate losing a week to dog problems this soon.

Similarly, while I budgeted several hours for errands into my plans for March, I didn’t expect to use them up last Monday.

I knew it would be a long day because we were taking the dogs to their PT session and it included Plushie’s recheck, adding time. Plus TYG had a couple of necessary errands on the way home, adding time. Still, I’d planned for that: my writing time would be all Savage Adventures. Proofing it doesn’t require the same creative energy as writing fiction and if the workday broke into chunks I could adapt to that too.

Unfortunately Trixie had been peeing in the house the past couple of days, or getting really frantic to go out, so we’d scheduled an afternoon vet visit for her. Still had hopes of getting stuff done … but on the way to PT, our rear left tire took a nail. No immediate threat — it served as its own hole plug — but once we got back I had to take it down to a tire place. They said probably a half-hour; it wasn’t. In fairness I’d asked about patching and they decided it needed replacing. I thought about getting a second opinion but TYG said go ahead and pay it. I was happy not to take more time.

So Monday was a wash as far as doing anything writerly. An hour of Savage Adventures, nothing more. However Trixie’s on antibiotics for a UTI and improving and the rehab vet is very pleased with Plush Dudley’s progress — we may not see much improvement but she doesn’t anticipate things getting worse or having to go through another surgery. Yay.

That said, the week went reasonably well; it helped that The Local Reporter is still on hiatus (I do hope we’re back in action soon, though). I got about 10,000 words done on Let No Man Put Asunder and around 7000 on The Impossible Takes a Little Longer. Part of the work on the latter book was rewriting Chapter Two — normally I don’t go back until a draft is finished but so much bugged me about the chapter I took the time to fix it.

And that was it, other than a post about awkward film endings over at Atomic Junk Shop. Yesterday the cleaners were in and that never works out well for getting anything done. Still, getting some fiction written always feels good. Ditto knowing the dogs are in good health.

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March 6, 2026 · 5:15 am

Snowdrop: the first year

In January 2025, TYG dragged Snowdrop inside for fear the cold weather would be fatal.

After a couple of nights of wailing and hiding under furniture, he settled in quite nicely. I’m sure having Wisp around helped.

He’s very skittish about being petted. Wisp is always up for petting, he’s much more wary. And hates it when both TYG and I seem to be closing in on him.

However he’s establishing his own turf — he loves those poofs TYG recently bought (they double as bags holding extra sheets and blankets). And he’s never attempted to run out again, despite having had occasional opportunities (we try to minimize those, just in case). Overall he seems happy with his life as a pampered indoor cat: Wisp, easy food, comfortable places to sit, normal temperatures, no mosquitos—the summer before he came indoors, they absolutely mutilated his ears.

Four pets is a lot, but we’re glad the cat distribution network sent you are way, Snow-Snow. And not having to sit with you in the living room with the porch door open on freezing cold — it used to be the only way he’d come in and get warm — is a plus too.

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March 5, 2026 · 5:00 am

“A fantastic monument to all the best instincts of the human race”

That was Hunter S. Thompson’s line in Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 discussing the Nixon/McGovern mashup. He correctly foresaw that Nixon’s victory would be a blowout and concluded “we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable. The tragedy of all this is that George McGovern, for all his mistakes and all his imprecise talk about “new politics” and “honesty in government,” is one of the few men who’ve run for President of the United States in this century who really understands what a fantastic monument to all the best instincts of the human race this country might have been.”

That’s a lovely aspiration. It’s echoed in the closing of the Necrotic Toddler’s State of the Union (“And our future will be bigger, better, brighter, bolder and more glorious than ever before.”) but the Toddler and his party, unlike Thompson, can’t bear to look at the dark side of America: slavery, misogyny, segregation and currently the ratcheting power of the super-rich to take over everything. Hell, those are the things they like about this country; legal equality and freedom for all are what they hate.

The Toddler’s speech invokes the idea of American exceptionalism, but as I’ve said before, American exceptionalism is cheap grace. The people who believe in it most see it not as a mission statement — let’s make America awesome! — but as a salve for their ego. They live in the greatest country on Earth, all you other people in shit-hole countries can suck it!

There are countries that can go a year or more without a mass shooting; we can’t manage a week. There are countries where police killing someone is a rare event; not here. Brazil and South Korea both jailed a president who tried to overthrow the government. China’s developed a 700 MPH bullet train; here even NYC’s successful congestion pricing program for using roads generates screams of outrage.

A big part of the problem is our commitment to hierarchy: whites, men, Christians who can’t let go of their desire to be at the top of the heap. They don’t want to earn it, they feel they should be recognized by default (i.e., Pete Hegseth) as a superior being. Like I said, even the limited steps America has already taken towards equality make them hate this country in favor of the fantasy WASP male-ruled America in their heads.

Another is money. Elon Musk buys Twitter and turns it into a right-wing cesspool; David Ellison buys CBS and now CNN and does the same. The gun industry blocks any effort at gun regulation; the auto industry propagandizes that mass transit is just a step towards putting us all in government chains. And that for all the struggles, in many ways life in the US is so good for many of us it’s easy to think it just happens naturally.

Fixing it will be a long hard struggle, and I don’t know the path to get there. But then, the same can be said of the women, POC and gay activists who looked at a country absolutely opposed to their rights, and won an impossible fight (even if they’re now having to fight it all over again, as are we all). I’ll close with the words of Andrea Pitzer: “My advice to you is that if you want to live this next year in a more beautiful world, go make that world. Make it where you are right now, without waiting for things to get worse before you decide to act, or assuming that they will get better without you taking part.”

No, wait, I’ll close less poetically but amusingly with an event in Texas. High school students staged a protest walkout over ICE. A local man attacked one of the girls. The kids kick his ass.

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March 4, 2026 · 5:27 am

Sherlock Holmes:”Nothing clears up a case as much as stating it to another person”

I’m not sure when it occurred to me that getting feedback from other people before I submitted my work might make it better.

While memory isn’t always accurate, I’m pretty sure I didn’t show my first novel to anyone until after I sent it off to DAW Books (came back with a “not bad, submit again,” which was quite a thrill). I showed my second novel (currently a new WIP as Let No Man Put Asunder) to my friends Martin and Cindy because I remember their feedback. Cindy, in particular, pointed out that my protagonist Adrienne (Mandy in the current WIP) didn’t have a purse or anything else to carry her stuff. I rewrote accordingly.

I’m a good self-editor. I can spot plot holes. I can sense places where my work needs something more, even if I can’t define what it is (eventually I do). I’m not an infallible self-editor. Showing my work to beta readers has made it so much better.

My short story “You Are What You Eat,” for instance, has the food in a married couple’s house possessed by ghosts. Every editor I submitted to said the ending disappointed them. Cindy made me see what was wrong with it: it had become a standard revenge story when it needed something weirder. I rewrote accordingly; it sold to Tales of the Talisman.

It’s hard as writers to see our work clearly. Once I’ve written a story I tend to think of the finished work as the only possible way it could have been done. Even if I can see alternatives, they’re clearly not as good. Obviously the reader will see that … right. Someone outside my head, reading cold, may (and usually does) have a completely different reaction. Sometimes it’s the aesthetics — the ending lacks oomph, the character’s issue got left unresolved. Sometimes I left out a point on the page that was very clear in my head, leaving the story an illogical mess. Plus the little things like changing a name between drafts and not catching all of them, head-hopping, etc.

This hasn’t always been an option. There have been stretches of time where for whatever reason I didn’t have anyone to provide a critique. I’m pretty sure I wrote Questionable Minds without any feedback; it’s a little too gruesome for Cindy and I didn’t have anyone else to ask at the time. I think it turned out well, and it got positive responses from some editors (even an acceptance, right before the publisher shut its doors). Still who knows if a more thorough beta-reading might have helped.

Now that I have my writer’s group here in Durham, that’s not a problem. I have feedback on almost everything, including my film reference books. They were great help on The Aliens Are Here and Watching Jekyll and Hyde, for instance — pointing out where I wasn’t clear, where I’d gotten bogged down in synopsis, where I’d wandered off topic.

Beta readers are not infallible either. And when you have 10 or more of them, there are inevitable outliers. The ending of my short story “The Schloss and the Switchblade,” for instance, has the lead hooking up with his long-ago crush. One of my beta readers had issues with that; I kept it in. Still, when you have a solid majority of people saying “that was a mistake,” it’s worth thinking about. And even one person can be right when they’re pointing out an obvious mistake.

Occasionally beta reading goes sour. About 30 years ago, I showed an intense, angry short story to one of my writer friends. She didn’t think it was marketable. This threw me enough I don’t think I ever tried to sell it — a shame, because what’s the worst that could happen? A no, that’s what, and I’ve had plenty of those. I didn’t submit it, which guaranteed it would never be accepted (and for various reasons, I don’t think it’s good enough now). I’ve no idea why that critique shook me so much, but it did.

Overall, though, beta reading has been a big win for me. I highly recommend it.

Rights to all images remain with their current holders. Questionable Minds cover by Samantha Collins.

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March 3, 2026 · 12:12 pm

Kennedy will get more people killed than Hegseth … maybe

Having an inept, unqualified schlub like Hegseth in charge of our armed forces is bad; particularly when the administration is all in on waging war. his commitment to weeding out anyone who isn’t an outwardly straight white Christian man from any position of authority is bad already. But still, Robert F. Kennedy Junior is worse, as the premier medical journal The Lancet points out in a blistering editorial.

Kennedy talks a lot about environmental poisons but “under Kennedy’s leadership, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) shuttered programmes studying the health effects of air pollution, HHS withheld a report linking alcohol consumption to cancer, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) withdrew warnings of potential harm from consuming products (such as raw milk and chlorine dioxide) falsely marketed as treatments for autism.” As noted in an earlier post, for all his professed concern about chronic disease his department has cut grants for dealing with diabetes. For all his concerns about environmental poisons he’s not concerned that the Necrotic Toddler wants to repeal a Biden-era rule about replacing lead pipes in water systems.

Some of this is undoubtedly a response to business interests lobbying for themselves, others Kennedy’s personal crackpottery. Some may be a mix: I’m sure whoever makes bank on raw milk is glad to have his support but Kennedy seems sincerely convinced pasteurization is the devil.

He’s a shrewd enough politician that he knows he has to serve the Toddler’s whims; sure the Toddler hasn’t ended inflation but hey, Kennedy says just eat cheaper meat. As the Senate seems terrified of defying the Toddler, that means Kennedy with his anti vax bullshit will preside as our health collapses. The Lancet again: “And crises are looming: in November, 2025, the first human infection (and death) from the H5N5 strain of avian flu was recorded in Washington state; pertussis, which killed 13 people in the USA in 2025, continues to spread across the country; and the measles outbreak that began in January of last year now threatens the elimination status of the USA and Mexico.”

I’m sure Kennedy and his supporters will hold up criticism from a pillar of the medical establishment as proof he’s being attacked like Gallileo. It’s important not to forget that Gallileo was an outlier. There have been lots of people with theories challenging established science; for every Galileo there’s a dozen people who were just wrong. People who had reasonable but erroneous theories, people who believed in the Hollow Earth, Nazi researchers who believed the hammer of Thor was a distorted memory of an Aryan super-weapon. Lots of others have been in medicine. Science and medicine are often wrong but that doesn’t make the lone genius/theorist/crackpot right. In this case, he’s completely wrong. But unlike most crackpots he’s got the power to turn his theories into action.

The Lancet’s right. What lies ahead will not be pretty.

Neither, of course, is the Iraq war. The mainstream media devoted quite a bit of space in 2016 to explaining why the Necrotic Toddler would be a dove compared to Clinton. Now look at us. And while a number of Republicans are talking about freedom for Iran, we don’t have a plan for that. We don’t have a plan at all. And we’re wasting billions and using up military resources, for a war with no clear endgame or rationale.

Why are we attacking Iran? It’s not because they’re a malevolent authoritarian state; the Toddler loves Putin, jokes about Saudi Arabia having a journalist murdered, screams with outrage because Brazil and South Korea have put would-be dictators under arrest. The probable factors are that we’ve never forgiven Iran for owning us by seizing our embassy in ’80; Netanhayu has been pushing for us to attack them for years; Saudi Arabia and Iran are hostile to each other. And possibly the Toddler’s seething resentment that Obama gets more respect. Obama negotiated a no-nukes deal with Iran, which the Toddler tore up; one theory is that he expected Iran to come begging for a new deal, instead of which they decided there was no point. Now his fee-fees are hurt, again. For a deeper analysis, turn to Heather Cox Richardson.

As Lawyers, Guns and Money says, this is why the Toddler is so terribly damaging to America (and the world) even when he fails. He can’t admit he was wrong. He can’t reconsider his strategy. Instead, he doubles down: if he’s thwarted, his immediate response is to try something bigger, worse, and stupider. So things get worse. He’s ultimately responsible for picking Hegseth and Kennedy, and the Senate Republicans are 100 percent responsible for approving them. Do not be fooled when some of them pretend either man’s conduct was unexpected. And many of them, like Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee, are still in the cult. Anti-Muslim bigot Laura Loomer thinks this is only step one, and the Toddler should follow it up by locking up American Muslims for being, you know, Muslim (like most current Republicans, she hates us for our freedoms).

As for Iran, I’m seeing the inevitable shrieking online by Repubs demanding unity, supporting the troops, trusting the president, anyone who doesn’t is a terrorist sympathizer — exactly the same bilge we saw in the Gulf War. Either they’ve learned nothing or they think we haven’t.

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March 3, 2026 · 5:33 am

We are what we do OR an old man will now yell at clouds

College dropout Advait Paliwal claims to have co-created an AI, Einstein, that will help college students cheat. Not that he phrases it that way: according to Paliwal, it’s taking the burden of work off the students, like automation has always done. Why should they learn things if AI can learn them? Isn’t the whole model of education teaching people outmoded? He specifically compares students to the horses that used to pull wagons and coaches — the automobile engine came in and suddenly they could live free! Well, if you overlook that the horses were often shot as they were no longer of value (we’ve seen a massive drop in the horse population since 1900).

This put me in mind of two articles I read at least twenty years back. In one, the professors quoted said they’d seen an increasing number of kids who had no particular interest in learning or acquiring skills — college was just one more hoop to get through, like their SAT scores, their high school GPA, their extracurriculars, and none of it had any meaning to them.

The other was a discussion of cheating in high school. The students were adamant they were not cheats — come on, high school isn’t real life! It’s just something you need to get the diploma that leads to real life down the road. Once they’re out, they’ll stop cheating.

Will they? Maybe … and maybe not. “Honest when convenient” is not the same as “honest.” Like C.S. Lewis’s thoughts on being invited to join the cool kids, once you cross that line it’s easy to have a repeat performance — cheat on other tests, wildly pad your resume, hope nobody catches you. And yes, they’re cheaters, because whatever is in their hearts, they are still cheating. As Thomas Jefferson says, “it is in our lives, and not from our words, that our religion must be read.”

Or as Immanuel Kant put it, “act as if what you did set a universal law.” If you cheat, you’re not saying “cheating is wrong but this is an exception,” you’re saying “it’s okay to cheat.” (more here).

In the lively comments thread at the first link in this post, several people argued that yes, college really is just a hoop to jump through for a lot of people; that those who are genuinely curious about learning have always been a minority. There’s at least some truth to this; I remember a study some years back that concluded most fluffy, lightweight degrees exist so the college can bring in rich kids who can pay a full ride, kids who need a degree on their CV but will be getting jobs based on their family and connections. They have no interest in study so a degree that requires little effort will let them graduate while spending four years carousing and screwing (and building some of those connections for their future).

The thing about degrees, though … they aren’t just a formality. They’re supposed to indicate a basic level of proficiency in field X, with abilities including writing coherently and (as one commenter put it) sitting and listening. If someone’s got the degree but not the skills, having jumped through that hoop may not help them in the long run. I certainly hope it doesn’t.

Paliwal’s bullshit makes no sense: training and learning are not like being yoked to the plow and taking the “burden” off the student isn’t more efficient, it’s less efficient, as they’ve spent four years in college accomplishing nothing and learning nothing. And as someone recently opined on Bluesky, if you duck the hard part of learning, you miss out the fun part — discovering you’ve mastered a skill. It’s the same with writing: sure, writing a story is hard but that’s why it’s satisfying when I succeed. What would be the point in turning that part over to an AI?

In the words of Chanda Prescot-Weinstein, “The thing is, even if you’re just thinking in terms of fiscal value, having gone through a degree program and being able to put it on your resumé/CV isn’t the most significant return on your investment: the way you have further developed your mind is.”

For further reading, 404 Media looks at how many people will be hurt if college studies are discredited. Inside Higher Ed looks at the short-term steps (back to bluebook exams!) and the long-term need to shift education away from the transactional model.

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March 2, 2026 · 5:15 am

Misogynists want law to protect men but not bind them, to bind women but not protect them

The title is a variation on Wilhoit’s Law, that conservatives believe the law should protect them but not bind them, and bind others but not protect them. For the majority of right-wingers, men are free to claim any job they can qualify for; women should be confined to one job, stay-at-home mom, preferably when they’re vulnerable teens. As Simone de Bouvier put it, women have been “denied the human right to create, to invent, to go beyond mere living to find a meaning for life in projects of ever-widening scope.” Women are chattel who should be bound by the will of their husband and master.

Many right-wingers support marital rape; many of them want to end women’s suffrage. James Dobson is one of many right-wing evangelicals who think the only way to stop spousal abuse is for the husband to chose to stop — turning to the church or the police would be defying her rightful lord and master and going against God’s will for her to submit. Patriarchal writer Lori Alexander, along with insisting marital rape does not exist (marriage is consent, end of story), says taking action to escape an abusive husband will anger god. Other conservative female misogynists think sexism is bad, when it’s directed at them (though no, they don’t deserve that either).

None of these ideas are unique to the right wing, to be sure (or unique to America. See also this). Most people, however, aren’t as devoted to making their misogyny into law as the right wing. As Jill Filipovic says, “they are getting very, very clear on what they think an acceptable life looks like for women: Settle for any man who decides he wants you; don’t go to college; marry early; have as many babies as possible; quit your job (or don’t pursue one in the first place) to stay home full time and depend financially on your husband; shoulder the blame if you wind up married to a jerk; wind up impoverished if you divorce; and face social condemnation if you fail to follow the Trad Wife script. Contraception should be illegal or at least hard to get; same for IVF and other fertility treatments. The reactionary conservatives of the New Right are not simply pro-natalists who want lots of babies; they are people who want to impose a strictly patriarchal model of the family on all of us, which has certain kinds of women having babies, and other women punished for deviating. And that requires giving men greater rights and freedoms, while allowing women fewer.”

One way the Heritage fascists plan to accomplish this: financial aid for women with kids but only married, two parent families, excluding step and adoptive parents. And targeting families who are more well-off rather than less. This is typical: when the right says it cares about families, it means families who conform to a 1950s sitcom image. Not single parents, not divorced parents, presumably not rape victims who choose to keep the baby (or have no choice due to forced-birth laws).

Right-wingers have also expressed enthusiasm for ending laws that protect women from discrimination: no job, no choice but to marry to support yourself (and the kids you’ll have a hard time not having). As right-winger David Frum puts it, when you’re living on the edge of ruin you have to behave carefully. Economic hardship for women is a win for the right.

You can find more raving misogyny in the long list of posts with the Undead Sexist Cliches tag.

As I’ve written in Undead Sexist Cliches, there should be no compromise on gender (or any other kind) of equality. Neither men nor women being dominant is the compromise position, the balance between the male supremacy we have now and the female supremacy so many people imagine is the alternatives (by envisioning a world without supremacy, feminists are visionary). By imagining equality as the extreme opposite to “men are in charge,” people fool themselves into believing “well, women should have some equality but not 100 percent” is a moderate position, e.g., the New York Times. Or there’s this story, which assumes that if a gay man or a woman is promoted ahead of you, that has to be affirmative action. Which as an analysis shows isn’t true; “Instead, what appears to have happened is a lot of empty talk, no real significant change, and backlash that is causing real harm. This is the worst of all possible worlds.”

Compromise with people who to reduce women to chattel is unacceptable. As Jessica Valenti says, “You don’t ask the guy with the boot on your neck to wear a softer shoe. You rip his fucking foot off.”

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March 1, 2026 · 5:19 am

Do coyotes love tahini and horror films? Books

COYOTE NATION: A Natural and Supernatural History by Dan Flores paints the coyote’s history and its clashes with Homo sapienx as “a nature story where nature wins!” — despite a century of trying to wipe coyotes out, they’re thriving more than ever.

Flores covers the coyote’s role in indigenous legend (something I’ll come back to in a later post), it’s evolutionary history (no, it’s not a species of jackal), and the European colonists and explorers having early encounters with the “prairie wolf.” In the 19th century things took a turn for the worse as Americans began seeing the coyote as a cowardly, sneaky, no-good varmint (Mark Twain vents on this line in Roughing It). It didn’t matter: coyotes adapted to us just fine. When various wildlife agencies began butchering wolves (Flores shows protecting livestock was an excuse to justify a much larger budget), coyotes adapted to that too (wolves have been known to prey on them), expanding their range and growing in number. Eventually that led to the same agencies justifying continued big budgets by killing them too, at various times using poison, bear traps and shooting them from the air (one “researcher” explains sheep farmers, the main ones demanding this, want to see corpses rather than being told sterilizing adults gets the job done).

Again, coyotes won. Unlike wolves, they can hunt as pack animals or go solo after small prey, giving them more options; they’re even able to eat vegetables. Coyote howls are a guide to population density: if they don’t hear many of their kind, they produce larger litters. Suck it, killers. While solidly on the coyotes’ side, Flores does thing we should be hostile when we encounter them in urban areas — keeping them afraid of us minimizes things going bad.

It’s an excellent book though when Flores gets away from the core subject his science is wonky — Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene is not about the genetic basis of selfishness, for instance.

I’ve learned that tahini, the basis of hummus, has a lot of uses in cooking — in many recipes that use peanut or other nut butter, it makes a tangy alternative, for instance. That led me to check TAHINI BABY: Bright Everyday Recipes That Happen to Be Vegetarian by Eden Grinshpan out of the library. I’ve made one — a fruit dish with a tahini/oat crumble on top — and might try a couple more before I take it back, including a variation on regular hummus. Others simply aren’t practical for someone who relies heavily on leftovers (I have that problem a lot) — a shakshuka sandwich with poached eggs isn’t something I want to leave in the fridge. And there’s not quite as many tahini recipes as I was hoping for — still, it’s a good book if your taste runs to Israeli/Middle Eastern cooking.

Despite the title, William K. Everson admits his CLASSICS OF THE HORROR FILM: From the Days of the Silent Film to the Exorcist isn’t attempting to pick the best of the best as much as to select a wide array of great films. Overall I think he succeeds as he looks at Frankenstein, The Undying Monster, Night of the Demon and The Exorcist.

This 1974 book did its job as it whetted my interest for a number of the films contained within. Enough I can live with the times I disagree strongly — he doesn’t care for Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein and while he’s delighted to see a modern horror movie make big bucks, he dismisses The Exorcist as more shock than art. Overall, interesting, though dated by coming out before cable, VCRs, DVDs and now streaming made many movies he laments are never seen easily available.

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