Lift Up Your Hearts!

Florida's state surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo, just went up another notch in my book. He is now recommending that Florida's cities that add fluoride to their water supply reconsider that practice.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not against fluoride as an aid to dental health. And once upon a time I was pleased to have fluoridated water, considering it to be a sign of a progressive city. I now believe I was wrong. (I have been wrong on occasion. Once upon a time I even thought it was a good idea to get the COVID-19 vaccine, a decision which I now regret.)

Maybe there was a point in time when it was a good idea to mass-medicate the population, but looking back, I don't think so. In any case, there are now so many other ways to obtain fluoride for dental purposes that it seems ridiculous to impose it on all the city's water customers. I'm not against fluoride, per se, but I am 100% against government-mandated ingestion of fluoride. Let those who want it avail themselves of the many options available, but let our water be pure and safe! Here's hoping we can convince our city to follow the surgeon general's recommendation.

In this I do envy our Swiss family, whose city water comes out of the tap as it comes out of the ground: no fluoride, no chlorine, just great-tasting, pure water.

UPDATE: I wrote to our mayor and our city commissioners, and received a response from the city manager, with whom I have already clashed on the issue of recycling. It was not encouraging. He hastens to reassure me that "you will be happy to know that the levels in our water [are] far lower than the level of fluoride in the study that concerned the Surgeon General," and "we are guided by the science." Well, no, that does not make me particularly happy. Any level of added fluoride is at best outdated, as fluoride for dental purposes is readily available in many forms for those who want it. Medicating the population, en masse and often against their will, is not an acceptable function of government.

Plus, the phrase "we are guided by the science" automatically raises red flags, as all too often it translates to, "we are guided by the pronouncements of whatever authorities we choose to follow," with little regard for how the process of science actually works. This is the same city manager who, when I asked where the materials that the city collects for recycling actually end up, showed no interest in what happens to it once the city passes it on to another agency.

I guess there's more work to be done. I hate politics, but the least I can do is speak up, so they can't insist that they must be right because no one is objecting.

I certainly should have known better.

For several years I worked in a research lab at a major university medical center. True, I only did the computer work (I have exactly one published paper to my name from those days), but even back in the 1970's it was obvious that the peer-reviewed papers/government grant system was, if not totally broken, at least rigged.

Moreover, I spent much of my life learning that "the system" was not to be trusted in many fields. I think it began when my mother, following the customs and recommendations of both society and the medical experts, fed her newborn infants a mixture of diluted evaporated milk and Karo corn syrup, instead of breastfeeding.

But it didn't really hit me until I had children of my own, and observed again and again that the best course of action seemed to be to do exactly the opposite of what the experts recommended and society accepted without question. From birth and childrearing practices to educational decisions to nutritional and medical choices, life taught me that "going with the flow" was often a very bad plan.

So why, why, why did I willingly, even eagerly, accept the COVID shots? Two reasons.

One, working in medical research had provided opportunities to perhaps make a difference in the world, and one of these was being a test subject for the development of the Haemophilus Influenza B vaccine. Porter and I have been blood donors for decades. Our DNA is part of a medical research database. In other words, we've always tried to be good citizens on the medical front.

I like to think that was a good thing. But it predisposed me to being willing to try the COVID shot for the good of the world. Plus, the pressure was great back then that COVID-19 was deadly for the elderly, and our children were worried about their parents.

Still, I feel really stupid for trusting the medical establishment that this was "safe and effective and the only way to keep from killing grandmothers." I knew better. I knew, and even proclaimed at the time, that when the government and medical authorities make such broad statements they are lying. They must be, if only because nothing—especially nothing so novel—can be known to be safe without long-term trials.

By far the biggest factor, however, in our decision to get the shots was blackmail. We have family living overseas, and the only way we could visit them was to submit to the jab. Grandchildren change so fast, even in the course of a year. Even stateside family was largely cut off. We missed a big family reunion, and a nephew's wedding, and barely made the wedding of another nephew. Florida relaxed its restrictions relatively early on, but several long-planned events could not have happened without our vaccination cards, thanks to the restrictions imposed by other states. It was much worse for other people; at least we didn't miss any funerals, or lose our jobs.

Knowing what I know now, would I have willingly closed the door that the magic compliance card opened? I certainly hope so, but I can't honestly say I'd have made the sacrifice.

Nonetheless, I feel stupid, betrayed, and very, very angry.

We're all probably going to die when a more dangerous pandemic hits, because the trust is gone. At least the boy who cried wolf only got himself killed.

I know some mama bears who need to hear this message from yesterday. I don't want to send it to them individually, for a couple of reasons. One, even though I may be convinced that something about a video will resonate with a particular person, I could be wrong, and maybe even offend that person. I'd much rather make something available and let people decide for themselves. Secondly, even in a small audience like mine, I know there is someone who would benefit from it, though I have no idea who. Maybe some papa bears. Maybe some young people who are facing life with courage and joy yet are feeling old before their time. Who knows? So I put it out there. If you're not feeling overwhelmed and overstressed, feel free to skip this wisdom that is both Christian and Cherokee.

It is from the YouTube channel, Appalachia's Homestead with Patara. I've only been following it since Hurricane Helene, when I friend sent me a link to one of Patera's posts about the devastation there. News from Western North Carolina and East Tennessee was spotty at best, and those with already established communications channels (who weren't totally cut off) were a godsend. This quote is from her About section:

How a suburban family left it all behind in order to homeschool & homestead in Appalachia. Learn how to begin homesteading and to learn vital skills such as gardening, food preservation, animal husbandry, homeschooling, genealogy and more! We have chickens, turkeys, geese, quail, ducks, dairy cows, dairy goats, rabbits, 3 Great Pyrenees & the cutest farm cat around! Come along with us on our journey as we follow our Appalachian roots!

The video is 25 minutes long and does well at increased speed. I hope it is meaningful to some of you, but if not, that's okay, just move on.

I love the Amish people. It was an Amish Supreme Court decision (Wisconsin v. Yoder) that became the backbone of home education today. Our family has deep personal ties to a court case that brought the Amish of Western Pennsylvania into downtown Pittsburgh to show their support in a situation that threatened their own way of life. The Amish are a very private people who just want to be left alone to live their traditional lives, but they will rise up and make themselves heard when their very existence is at stake. Several of our grandchildren were born in Amish Country. I'm not Amish, and I don't even know personally any Amish people, but I admire them greatly.

The following video is from Nick Johnson, about whom I know nothing else; it showed up as one of those YouTube suggestions after I watched something else. I found it delightful on many levels, from the scenery, to the simple, innocent, and very shrewd wisdom of the Amish people, to their solid values, to their delightful accents. (Did you know that their language is still understandable by modern-day speakers of Swiss German?) There's also an interview with Amos Miller, who is at the forefront of the fight for food freedom in Pennsylvania; we have some of his great meat in our freezer even now.

If you've ever met an Amish buggy on the road, you'll know how surprising this image is.

Traditionally, the Amish do not participate in civic matters. They do not vote. But this year, they see an opportunity to speak up for their way of life, the very existence of their farming and small business based culture, which is being crushed by heavy-handed governmental regulations that favor large corporations. They are voting this year, and in large numbers. For a look into a beautiful part of American culture that we rarely see, enjoy this 30-minute video.

Amos Miller is excited about the team that is gathering around Donald Trump.

They know the importance of farmers, they know the importance of food freedom, and I'm hoping that Trump will get that same perspective so we the farmers can do our duty that we've liked to do for many years. Farmers are going out of business like flies. We have lost probably 50% of our farmers within the last 20 years. We like to be farmers, we love to be farmers, but the rules and regulations that have been forced upon us for the last 30 years are terrible. We can't make a living, the food system is monopolized, the corporations want to run the government—so we're looking for someone to push government back, so we can be the true farmers that we love to be. Our culture loves to be farmers. The work ethic is still here; that can be lost in a very short period of time if we can't be farmers.

Author S. D. Smith explains that his children's books are good but not safe—and why that's important. Authors like Smith prepare the ground for children to grow into the heroes we will desperately need.

One of my favorite Substack people (Heather Heying, Natural Selections) wrote this in her article entitled, "It’s an Upside Down World, and You’re Living In It."

I used to be a Democrat. Two of the things that I did that felt democraty include:

I bought as much of my food as possible at farmer’s markets, and got to know the farmers who grew my food. I bought organic, and avoided GMOs. When given a choice, I bought food that was grown closer to how it had been before humans got involved—cows that had spent their lives grazing outside, coffee grown in the shade on farms with canopy trees, tomatoes and strawberries picked at perfect ripeness, transported as little as possible, eaten fresh and raw.

And I refused pharmaceuticals except when absolutely necessary—the notable exception being vaccines, which I barely questioned until Covid raised my awareness. Over the counter drugs were no better. The rule of thumb in our house was: the longer it’s been on the market, the more likely it is to be safe. Aspirin seemed like a pretty safe bet, as did some antibiotics, in moderation. Everything else? Buyer beware.

I still do these things. My behavior was always informed by an evolutionary understanding of the world, a fundamental preference for solutions that have stood the test of time (e.g. beef over lab-grown meat), and wanting as little corporate product and involvement in my life as possible. Such behavior just doesn’t seem democraty anymore. It seems like the opposite.

In response, I wrote the following.

For decades, I have been saying that the Republicans need to reinvent themselves as the party of human-scale life. Seeing Trump and Kennedy together call to Make America Healthy Again gives me more hope in that direction than I've had in a long time.

Your beautiful, healthy approach to living felt Democrat-y to you, but in my life it has always been embraced by a mixture of folks, from hippies to conservative Christians, who shared a love of what we saw rejected by mainstream society: children and family life; non-medicalized childbirth and homebirth; the critical importance of breastfeeding; independent and home education; the belief that children can be far more competent and responsible than we give them credit for; small businesses; small farms and natural foods; the superior flavor and health benefits of raw milk and juice, pasture-raised animals, and organically-grown fruits and vegetables; homesteading and preserving/restoring the land; reclaiming heritage breeds and seeds; and a deep concern for the environment that was called conservation before it was taken over and ruined by the environmentalist movement. 

If the Republican Party will truly embrace and fight for these values, I will in turn be thrilled to have finally become a Republican after 56 years a Democrat. The beginning of the end of my complacency with the Democratic Party was discovering the party's intense opposition to homeschooling—despite the fact that so many of the home education pioneers were radical liberals in their day.

Home education may have been the beginning of my disaffection, but the disconnect between the Democratic Party and the values I thought were their priorities became more and more obvious, accelerating at a most alarming rate, to the point where I agree with Dr. Heying again:

The democrats are claiming that they’re on the side of the little people. The only proper response to such claims is this: No. No you are not. Stop lying. And: No.

Republicans, this is your chance. Don't blow it by infighting, nor by sabotage from within. Reach out to the Independents and disaffected Democrats—like Dr. Heying, and RFK Jr., and Sasha Stone...and me—who are reaching out to you, willing—eager—to put aside our differences long enough to do the really hard work of seeking and saving that which is rapidly being lost.

C. S. Lewis said it best:

We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.

There is nothing progressive about being pig-headed and refusing to admit a mistake. And I think if you look at the present state of the world, it is pretty plain that humanity has been making some big mistake. We are on the wrong road. And if that is so, we must go back. Going back is the quickest way on.

I'm terrible about organizing and identifying photos and memorabilia. My intentions are good, but follow-through abysmal. I keep working on it, but the rate at which objects join the queue far exceeds the rate at which they are processed. I'm so grateful for (1) location stamps on my pictures—whatever the risks are of letting Google know where I am, the benefits for photo identification are immeasurable. And (2) Google Lens and Image Search. The unidentified photo of me as a little girl standing next to some monument? My father wasn't much better than me at keeping up with the documentation, but Google told me immediately that I was on top of Mt. Greylock in Massachusetts! Still, it's a very long and sometimes tedious job, and I just keep putting one foot in front of the other. My goal is to collate photos, memorabilia, and writings into a compact collection that people (i.e. family members) will enjoy looking at. The state it's all in now, if it falls into the hands of my executors, most of it will get tossed. If it's a hard job for me, it will be impossible for them. And I'm not getting any younger.

No pressure.

First, there's all my immediate family's stuff, which has been accumulating since we got married nearly 50 years ago. A couple of dozen large photo books with the pictures in chronological order (good) but largely unlabelled (terrible). Boxes of memorabilia that will be invaluable for identifying photos and for piecing together stories, even if most will eventually be tossed (before or after scanning). Carousels and boxes of old slides, which was the film medium of choice in our earlier days. Eighty thousand digital photos to sift through, label, and organize. The older photos take longer to process, as they need to be digitized and identification is much more difficult. The early digital photos don't need to be scanned, but they include very little identifying information. The pictures we took after getting our smart phones in 2014 are much easier to process because of included date and location data, but make up for that in sheer volume.

That's imposing enough. But as a firstborn (and thus more likely to be able to make identifications of older people and places), and even more as the resident genealogist (who cares the most about family history), I have become the repository for over 100 years worth of old photos (mostly unidentified) and memorabilia, from both my side of the family and my husband's. It has been accumulating in my closet for decades. And I mean accumulating; boxes and boxes that looked good because they were neatly stacked, but inside, all was chaos. I've been ignoring them because other projects have had higher priority, and—let's be honest—because I've been too intimidated to begin.

Recently, however, I girded my loins and pulled the first box out of the closet. I had decided that if I would just get everything roughly sorted by family and era, it would be easier to tackle the smaller chunks (certainly a relative term) piecemeal. That's the theory, anyway.

I began by going through all the boxes and sorting the contents into very rough piles.

It gets worse. What you see here doesn't begin to reveal why I suddenly felt completely overwhelmed when I ought to have been rejoicing in having made a start.

In addition to a lot of stuff that I know I'm going to discard, I found treasure. In particular, a large stack of notebooks containing further journals kept by my father, of which I had been unaware. I had already scanned and organized the 15 journals that I knew about, and that was quite a project in itself. It was thrilling to find more, from the later years; not so thrilling that they were written in unorganized spiral notebooks—here a little, there a little—sometimes in the kind of pen that bleeds over onto the other side.

Plus I found stacks of Dad's letters to the family and essays (with photos) of the many Elderhostel programs he had enjoyed. Dad was a prolific writer and a good one, and it's amazing to read what he wrote about life during our childhood years. I know better than to think I will be able to read them all as carefully as I would like. But I really want to scan them, and do some minimal image editing to make the faded text more legible, so that they will be available, especially to my younger siblings, whose activities they cover more than my own. My first thought had been to toss the Elderhostel writings, but it turns out they make interesting reading, and I think are worth preserving. Maybe that's the writer in me, reluctant to let go of any good writing, or the dutiful daughter who finds value in her father's thoughts. But at least one person in the family has expressed an interest in reading the stories—if they were in an organized form. And most of his letters are worth preserving, being another source of family history.

At one point I hoped to transcribe the journals and letters—and I have my own hand-written journals in addition to his. Why? For the same reason I like to have e-book versions of books (as well as physical copies of my favorites): The ability to search the text. (How old was my brother when he had the chicken pox?) Plus, in the case of handwritten originals, a transcribed version would be much easier and more pleasant to read. My father's handwriting is even harder to decipher than my own, if only because I generally wrote in manuscript, and he in cursive. However, I gave up the transcription dream for two reasons: (1) I'm not planning to live to 150, and (2) I have hopes that Artificial Intelligence, whatever disasters it might bring, will soon be able to do a much better job than the transcription software currently available. So I content myself with digitizing the pages, and occasionally including keywords in the filenames.

This is a huge project (and perhaps a just penance for not keeping my own archivist work up-to-date over the years!) but at least I know that my siblings and children, having entrusted the job to me, are of necessity all on board with my throwing away whatever I can't justify keeping. But that's a big responsibility, too, and one I find particularly difficult. Throwing out items that I figure I may someday want l is not my strong suit. What keeps me going is knowing that it all will be lost if I don't get it into a manageable state.

I took on the job because I care about family history—and possibly because I'm the eldest. First-born's burden, I suppose.

One. Step. At. A. Time.

Do you have books from your childhood that have been loved into reality, like the Velveteen Rabbit? Think twice before trading them for newer editions. The same advice holds for any book you value.

I've already been hanging on for dear life to my copies of C. S. Lewis' Narnia books with the original American text. The modern, modified versions are interesting—I believe they are the British versions—but I still prefer the American versions, which contains Lewis' later revisions. What I really don't like about the currently-available books is the way they are numbered in chronological order, rather than publication order, as I strongly believe that they make much more sense in publication order.

Far more important than these minor changes, however, is what is being done to books now. This Natural Selections essay, "The Age of Censorship," gives some examples of what has been done to the new editions of Roald Dahl's works.

Many of the changes are of a type. For instance, more than a dozen instances of the word “white” were changed. White was changed to pale, frail, agog or sweaty, or else removed entirely. Because, you know, a color can be racist.

In one book alone—The Witches—The Telegraph counted 59 new changes. These run from the banal—”chambermaid” is replaced with “cleaner”—to cleansings that appeal more directly to modern pseudo-liberal sensitivities. The suggestion that a character go on a diet, for instance, is simply disappeared. And this passagage,“Even if she is working as a cashier in a supermarket or typing letters for a businessman,” has been changed to, “Even if she is working as a top scientist or running a business.”

It’s hard to know what even is believed by the censors who made these changes. Do they mean to suggest that nobody should go on a diet, or that no woman has ever worked as a cashier or a typist? And what, pray tell, is a “top scientist.” I’m guessing that none of the censors could provide a working definition of science, but that when asked to conjure a scientist up, they imagine someone with super science-y accoutrements, like a white lab coat and machines that whirr in the background. Sorry, that would be a pale lab coat.

Dahl's final book, Esio Trot, contained this passage, not in the text but in an author's note: "Tortoises used to be brought into England by the thousand, packed in crates, and they came mostly from North Africa." This was replaced by: "Tortoises used to be brought into England by the thousand. They came from lots of different countries, packed into crates."

I'm beginning to suspect that the real reason for these changes is to dumb down the language, the quality of the writing, and the readers.

It's not just children's books that are being rewritten. This Guardian article explains how Agatha Christie's books have been subjected to the censors' edits.

Among the examples of changes cited by the Telegraph is the 1937 Poirot novel Death on the Nile, in which the character of Mrs Allerton complains that a group of children are pestering her, saying that “they come back and stare, and stare, and their eyes are simply disgusting, and so are their noses, and I don’t believe I really like children”.

This has been stripped down in a new edition to state: “They come back and stare, and stare. And I don’t believe I really like children.”

Really? Is there some sort of requirement that when one dons a censor's hat, one must forget how to write interesting prose?

Back to Natural Selections.

There are many things troubling about the creative work of an author being changed after his death. It interferes with our understanding of our own history. We live downstream of our actual history, which did not change just because censors got ahold of our documents. Having the recorded version of history scrubbed interferes with our ability to make sense of our world.

Post-mortem revisions are also bad for art. These edits raise questions of creative autonomy. Of voice. Of what fiction is for. Fiction is not mere entertainment. Fiction educates and uplifts, informing readers about ourselves and our world, and also about the moment in time that the work was created.

When our children were young, I noticed that the newer version of Mary Poppins had been scrubbed of a chapter that was decidedly inappropriate to more modern sentiments. I didn't think too much about it at the time. But now I'm utterly convinced that even young children deserve to know—need to know—that not all cultures and times have had the same values and priorities that we do now. That while we may find other beliefs and practices horrifying, many other cultures would find our own beliefs and practices equally horrifying. What's more, and most important of all, that people in the future will look at us with the same patronizing disgust with which we see our predecessors. We are not the pinnacle of civilization.

That's an excellent topic of conversation for parents and their children, and what better place to start than with a beloved book?

I've reviewed a couple of Rod Dreher's books (Live Not by Lies and The Benedict Option) and find him on the whole a wise voice in the wilderness. A friend sent me an article that he wrote about the opening ceremonies at the Paris Olympics: "A Civilizational Suicide Note on the Seine." I disagree with Dreher that the spectacle was blasphemous, on the grounds that I don't think you can blaspheme any gods other than your own, and France has not been a Catholic country for a very long time. 

However, I'm certainly disgusted by what little I saw, which was enough to show me that I didn't want to watch any more. That they could claim they had no idea a very large number of people would find the show abhorrent reveals a great ignorance—of history, of art, and of their audience. What is most offensive to me, however, is that the parade was so obviously not safe for children—and the opening ceremonies are often the part of the Olympics families most eagerly watch together.

I figure God can take care of himself, but we have an obligation to protect children from sights inappropriate to their age, and in this, Paris and the Olympics failed them.

(I'm not taking the time to pull quotes to publish here, but it's a good article if you want to follow the link. Dreher is an American journalist who lives in Budapest.)

David Freiheit, who is still "my favorite Canadian lawyer," despite now living in Florida and no longer practicing law, interviewed Sam Sorbo, a woman who had not been on my radar at all, about homeschooling. I said that Sam was not on my radar, but as he introduced her and mentioned her husband, his name rang a bell for me. I had no idea why. I can hear my family laughing at me, because, while my brain can easily cough up trivia like the second lines of famous poems, there seems to be a black hole in my memory when it comes to people associated with popular music and movies. They will be proud of me, however, because it didn't take me (okay, me and Google) long to solve the mystery: Kevin Sorbo was one of the stars (and better actors) of The Firing Squad, the movie that we watched just a couple of weeks ago.

Puzzle solved, I could settle down and enjoy the interview, which I share here. The content starts at 4:47 and goes on nearly to the very end, making it over an hour long. The school stuff starts about 22:00; what comes before is the story of how she got to that point, which I also found interesting. As an old-time homeschooler—20th century, with grandchildren homeschooling in the 21st)—I love hearing today's homeschooling journeys, how things differ, how they are the same, what we've learned, what we've forgotten. Above all, I like to hear the enthusiasm of converts and potential converts. Do this, not because the alternative is so bad (although it often is), but because this is so good!

I just watched Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s Phoenix speech live, and admit I was transfixed by every word. Politicians, it turns out, can still speak intelligently, rationally, and with substance!

It's not as long as it looks (90 minutes)—the video says 90 minutes, but his speech doesn't start till 41:29. I highly recommend it.

Thanks to all the leaks, everyone was expecting Kennedy to endorse Donald Trump. And that he did, without drama, but with conviction, because he believes he can worth with President Trump, especially on the issues that drive his own vision: freedom of speech, war policy, and the unspoken epidemic of chronic disease in America. On these issues Kennedy spoke at length from his heart, taking advantage of this "bully pulpit."

I strongly recommend taking the time to listen.

When our daughter and her family moved to a small town in New Hampshire, the disadvantages were obvious to me. Over time, I've learned to see the advantages as well. Two segments of the following America's Untold Stories video make me all the happier they live where they do, and I want to tell my grandchildren: Hang on to your hometown! But also, be aware of what's happening elsewhere, so you can recognize the beginning stages when they come to you.

Back when our children were still in elementary school, I attended a conference at which a speaker regaled us with horror stories of what was going on in public schools. I'm afraid I didn't take her too seriously, because—like so many people who are passionate about an issue—she came on too strong, and painted a picture far too bleak to resonate with my own experiences. I was very much involved in our local public schools, and had not seen the abuses she was describing. The thing is, she was right. She was ahead of her time, and her stridency put people off—not unlike the Biblical prophets. But all she warned against came to pass, and orders of magnitude worse.

One reason I like America's Untold Stories is that Eric Hunley and Mark Groubert pull no punches without being strident, and more often than not have personal experiences to back up their concerns. Caveat: I haven't listened to the entire show, which is over two hours long at normal speed, so I don't know what else they talk about. The first segment I'm concerned with here, about the "Homeless Hilton" being built in Los Angeles, runs between the 17-minute mark to minute 26; from there until minute 48 deals with the New York City school system.

[Quoting Manhattan school board member Maud Maron] Parents, and the children of immigrants who came from former Communist countries—Eastern Europeans and the Chinese—were saying, "Maud, we know what this is, and this isn't good."

It's easy to think, "Well, that's Los Angeles and New York; it has nothing to do with my town, my city, my schools." To that I can only say, weep for those cities, pray for those cities—and be awake and aware of how your own home might be at risk of starting along the same paths.

For those of you who enjoyed Charles Cornell's analysis of the writing of the Pirates of the Caribbean music, and/or Grace's family's production of the same, here's another Cornell video, and not coincidentally another Daley production, this time for The Lord of the Rings.

I have mixed feelings about those movies, which to my mind do a grave injustice to J.R.R. Tolkien's creation, but they have their good moments, and the score is incredible. I'm a devoted "classical" music fan with little patience for so-called popular genres, but modern art music has veered off into such strange directions that I'm more than half certain that all the good composers have deserted to movie music. And I say, more power to them!

The Daley version was created two years ago this month, a year earlier than their Pirates production. Grace's contribution comes at the end of the credits.  (I was disappointed that there was no 2024 family musical production, but there was this small matter of Grace's cancer consuming every spare moment of their lives.  Maybe in 2025!)

Every important question is complex.

I'm as appalled as anyone at the irreversible mutilation being done to children by their parents and their doctors, under the guise of "gender-affirming care"—a term that's as bizarre an example of doublespeak as George Orwell ever dreamt of. Parents and doctors, abetted by teachers! Three of the strongest forces in life charged with keeping children safe! Surely this inversion of reality is one of the greatest horrors of our day.

And yet. And yet. It doesn't take much thinking to realize that societies, over all time and all places, have had a very inconsistent view of what, actually, is considered mutilation.

As a child, I remember seeing pictures (probably in the National Geographic magazine) of African women with huge wooden disks in their lips or ears, their bodies having been stretched since childhood by inserting disks of gradually increasing size. I called it mutilation; they called it fashion.

Not that many years ago, the Western world was horrified by the practice in many cultures of female circumcision, dubbing it "female genital mutilation," and putting strong negative pressure on countries where it was common. As recently as 2016 we saw billboards in the Gambia attacking the practice, and I was in agreement. But who was I—who is any outsider—to burden another culture with the norms of my own? Cultures can and sometimes should change, but from within, not imposed by outsiders.

What about male circumcision? That has been practiced for many millennia, in divergent cultures, and is far less drastic than the female version. If we'd had sons, I don't think we would have had them circumcized, there being no religious reason to do so—but when I was a child, it was the norm for most boys in America, regardless of religious affiliation. By the time my own children came along, there was a strong and vocal movement to eliminate male circumcision. Where are those folks now, when we are routinely removing a lot more than foreskins?

Okay, how about piercings? Tattoos? Frankly, I call both of them mutilation. Obviously, a large number of people disagree with me.

Some cultures in the past had no problem with "exposing" unwanted babies, leaving them to die—unless some kindly, childless couple found them and raised them as their own, thus creating the foundation for centuries of future folk tales and novels. We in America can hardly cast stones at those societies, given how few of our own unwanted babies live long enough to have a chance to be rescued.

Where do you draw the line? Maybe between what adults do of their own free will, and what adults do to children who are not yet capable of making informed decisions? Yet there are parents who have the ears of their babies pierced, or disks put into their lips, or parts of their genitals removed, and the societies they live in have no problem with that.

Where do you draw the line? I agree it's a complex and difficult issue.

All I know is that if America has become a place where parents, doctors, and teachers—those we trust most to do no harm to children—are facilitating the removal of young children's genitals, flooding their bodies with dangerous drugs, and encouraging them to believe that this is the best course of action for their mental health, then we haven't just crossed a line—we've fallen off a cliff.