So good to learn that, Clarice--that was Michael Bond, the author, who witnessed that and was inspired, then. Gosh, that's a sanitized narrative--Paddington was happy and comfortable in Peru, was sustained with plenty of marmalade on his long journey, and was (almost) immediately taken into the Brown family once he arrived, into the comforts of the English middle-class. The stories of the Jewish children--well.

Hi, all--sorry to have been absent (have been at JOM2). But I had to say: what sillies to try to do natural history on Paddington Bear! One of the first things we learn is that his grandmother, who raised him, has had to go into a "home for retired bears," and so the various wild improbabilities which follow are all just fine for the child reader. Paddington comes to Peru fairly literate in English, and the Browns (his English adoptive family) and their speech patterns were sure to have rubbed off on him. Plus small brown bears are cute; we are reminded repeatedly that he's a "young" bear--who never grows up, thankfully (like the Brown children, Paddington gets an allowance, which he shepherds carefully). I thought the little video was completely charming.

Hi, Pin! Thank you for the de Toqueville quote--I will use it on Tuesday for our discussion of RLS's essay, "The English Admirals." I've been at JOM2 all this time--my best to you and all here (so many cross-overs, of course!).

I'm sorry about your mom, clarice! She was in Betty White territory or past, wasn't she? My 86-year-old mother who looks like Betty White is now harping on the age difference!

Hi, MM--that gas leak sure seems diagnostically promising! Buford, JOM2 is actually very easy to use and the discussions are the same free-for-all we have here. I've been there more than here because I get tired of having to log in to Typepad all the time here where it's no issue at the new one. You do need to email JamesD. to get registered with your name (Jane has turned into Medusa, so you don't need to keep the same one, but I like the consistency) and password, but once he's done that you don't ever how to put anything, including the password, in again. James is jamesd@elevendayempire.com.

God bless you, Matt. You are right to quote Ecclesiastes--who is to know when these cycles of joy and pain will roll through?--but the fact is that they will roll through somehow. Again, blessings to you and your family.

Pin, thanks for the Messalina stuff--known, but really these days re-telling of what can go down without what OL rightly speaks of as guardrails is a good idea. Here's Chesterton in 1929: "In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it." I love the "the modern reformer goes gaily up to it."

Happy Birthday, Clarice--your dinner sounds grand. Jack, we are rooting for you!

Get sprung soon, Jack! Happy Thanksgiving Eve to all. Ducks on their last hour of thawing, pies made, so all well.

MM, it is so wonderful to have you back at the old stand. I so hope you will be fully rested and restored soon if not now!

Hi, Beasts! JOM Legacy is still chugging along, thanks to a number of stalwarts--and a bunch of folk are at JOM2, so touch base here and there, when you can! I am myself generally pretty remiss, admittedly...

GUS--agree with your 2:09--and thank you for the Frazier of yore!

Willowed: Ok, 9:00 pm CST. They are going to call it for Youngkin, not wait days, because the margin between the two will be less than, say, two-thirds of 89,000 which is the outstanding number of absentee ballots. Just my prediction.

Ok, 9:00 pm CST. They are going to call it for Youngkin, not wait days, because the margin between the two will be less than, say, two-thirds of 89,000 which is the outstanding number of absentee ballots. Just my prediction.

Hi, all, catching up as usual--earlier discussion of augmented humans (yuck) came to me as I learned today that the Chinese are perfectly willing to perfect nature post-birth, as per this article about the new (?) fad of putting babies in special helmets to ensure they have round skulls, because flatter skulls are not as attractive (so, also, yuck):https://nypost.com/2021/10/30/chinas-new-fad-is-parents-putting-helmets-on-babies-to-mold-their-heads-round/

Hi, Jack! I'm not up to explicating Dante--though I'll give you this: So these lines are from Inferno, canto 27, 61-66, and T. S. Eliot quotes them in the original Italian at the start of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Here’s one translation: "If I did think, my answer were to one, / Who ever could return unto the world, / This flame should rest unshaken. But since ne'er, / If true be told me, any from this depth / Has found his upward way, I answer thee, / Nor fear lest infamy record the words.” It’s a revealing but also ironic allusion, primarily because the speaker of the poem (it’s a dramatic monologue for an imagined person, the absurdly named Prufrock) isn’t in fact in literal hell, just the hell of a frustrated alienated dreamer stuck as an upper-middle-class man of his generation (the poem is set in 1922) who can’t connect with women or really anyone. The idea of telling something horrible in the surety that no one else will ever know is central to the poem, and to Prufrock’s inability to speak and, even, his metaphorical suffocation at the end of the poem. The speaker of the epigraph is one Guido da Montefeltro, who is in the eighth level of hell (just one up from Satan chewing on the heads of Judas, Brutus, and Cassius) because he gave false counsel to Pope Boniface VIII—it was a knavery, yes, but here Dante is paying back late 13th century grudges more than equitably assigning God’s justice. His only nod to his own bias is to have Montefeltro tell Dante that because he repented and became a friar later in life, at his death St. Francis came for his soul, only to be waved away by a “black cherub” who had a superior claim, thus drawing even more moral ambivalence in the allusion Eliot wished to exploit. Eliot wrote “Prufrock” when he was still an atheist, but he had converted to Anglicanism by 1927. His close friend Virginia Woolf was appalled, even viscerally disgusted, at his turning to God, though she should have seen it coming. She wrote to her sister Vanessa: "I have had a most shameful and distressing interview with poor dear Tom Eliot, who may be called dead to us all from this day forward. He has become an Anglo-Catholic, believes in God and immortality, and goes to church. I was really shocked. A corpse would seem to me more credible than he is. I mean, there’s something obscene in a living person sitting by the fire and believing in God." You know, I often sit by the fire and believe in God—I don’t really know how else to do it. Woolf ultimately “forgave” TSE and they became friends again—but then she couldn’t fight off despair and killed herself in 1941 (another awful story).

Hi, Narc! I hope you are having a lovely birthday!

And Ig, she really is, going by visual evidence, a peach. She could be wormy inside of course.

Boris, I agree with your 10:40 and 12;48--I truly at the moment thought the beauty of the election and its triumph would make the GOP be useful, which they were colossally NOT--so the more fool I. To give you some stupidity (because, truth be told, there really isn't much of any here at this site, not lately---not, that said, I'm certainly not yearning for the recursus of this or that unpleasant addition), here is the latest about Sean Penn and his latest dish of a wife--bad news for at least somebody: https://news.yahoo.com/sean-penn-wife-leila-george-030215347.html

It seems that the largest Lego kit is being produced, of the Titanic: https://www.ksl.com/article/50258212/lego-to-release-a-9090-piece-scale-model-of-the-titanic--its-biggest-set-ever. The slogan in Belfast is "she was alright when she left here."

MM, so glad to hear you are home and beginning to piece things together!!

And thanks, Mel, for the news about MM.

JIB, that Roethke poem is perfect for an engineer.

narc, I love your "interminable strings"!

Hi, narc! We are all worried about MM. She'd post or get information to us if she could.