Reading

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on pain of pain

this post is not Descartes apologia

but I did spend this morning sat down with my printouts and my page markers and my highlighters, and I did this evening take some photos of the relevant pages of a book I've loaned to someone else, and the essay (I say, grandiosely) tentatively entitled The Obligatory Page And A Half On Descartes: against a new dualism is definitely In The Works.

I haven't quite worked out the It is a truth universally acknowledged... opening sentence, and it's probably mostly going to be a series of quotations accompanied by EMPHATIC GESTICULATION in the form of CAPSLOCK, but it's not actually (in its entirety) germane to The Book, so here the indignant yelling can go.

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Miscellany

A couple of nature-related things:

Beavers provide a boost for declining pollinators, study reveals: 'beaver-created wetlands are home to greater numbers of hoverflies and butterflies than human-created equivalents.' Go beavers!

Given that there is reputed to be A Very Large Cat already around those parts, do you really want to start re-introducing the European wildcat to Devon, huh?

Felis silvestris has been absent from mid-Devon for more than a century, but the area has been judged to have the right kind of habitat to support a population of the wildcat. The area has the woodland important for providing cover and den sites while its low intensity grasslands and scrubland create good hunting terrain. According to the study, the wildcats would not be harmful to humans or to farm livestock and pets.

However, the issue arises that like the wildcat population in Scotland, they are interfertile with the existing domestic and feral moggie population:

For a reintroduction project in the south-west to succeed, the study says there would have to be cooperation with local communities and cat welfare organisations to support a neutering programme for feral and domestic cats.

***

I was fascinated by the concept of this project: Supernatural Law: Regulating the Paranormal :

We invite chapters that explore how law responds to, regulates, or resists belief and
behaviour in matters that cannot be proven. What role has law played historically in shaping
society’s understanding of the paranormal? With what intentions has it intervened and
which values and ideologies has it sought to uphold? What can we learn from law’s
engagement with the paranormal?

Call is for papers for edited volume, I think it should be a conference with suitable activities arranged - visit to local haunted house, seance with a medium, etc etc.

***

This is rather lovely: 'Happiness and tears' as Sikhs see rare outing of ancient holy book; though one does rather have questions seeing that it appears to have been loot from the Anglo-Sikh Wars:

The scripture was formerly in the possession of the Maharaja Kharak Singh, ruler of the Punjab, and taken from the fort at Dullewalla in India during its capture in 1848. It was presented to the university by Sir John Spencer Login, who also brought the Koh-I-Noor to Queen Victoria, through the Rev W H Meiklejohn of Calcutta.

But I liked this:

Trishna Kaur-Singh, Edinburgh University's honorary Sikh chaplain and director of Sikh Sanjog who was at the event, said she wanted the book to remain in Scotland.
She said: "I know people talk about repatriation and that's fine and it's needed in many instances but you have to take into context the fact that the people are here because of that colonial past and have lived their whole lives here.
"They have been parted from their history and their links and it was found here so it should be here for our communities for generations.

***

Full scan of Bill Brandt's 1938 photo-essay A Night in London (very few surviving copies).

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author: ursula k le guin

For Leonard, Darko, and Burton Watson

For Leonard, Darko, and Burton Watson

by Ursula K. Le Guin

A black and white cat
on May grass waves his tail, suns his belly
among wallflowers.
I am reading a Chinese poet
called The Old Man Who Does As He Pleases.
The cat is aware of the writing
of swallows
on the white sky.
We are both old and doing what pleases us
in the garden. Now I am writing
and the cat
is sleeping.
Whose poem is this?

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review

The Animals in That Country by Laura Jean McKay

A park guide's life is upended by a pandemic and her charming, idiot son.

The Animals in That Country by Laura Jean McKay

(no subject)

Happy birthday,

nocowardsoul!

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More about Medicare

Following up on my post from Monday:

adrian_turtle talked to a different advisor (also with SHINE, like the person we talked to Monday).

He told her that "CommonHealth" is a Medigap plan, which you can only enroll in if you are under 65 and on Medicare because you're disabled. They don't require you to have less than X amount of money or income, but the premiums are based on a percentage of your income, and for us would be significantly less than a standard Medigap plan. He urged her to apply by printing the form and sending it in with a cover letter saying that this is a CommonHealth application, because otherwise they might treat it as a MassHealth application, which is not what we'd be looking for.

Edited to add: the only part of this information that's relevant for me right now is the "special election period"--because I inherited money this year, while I could enroll in CommonHealth, it wouldn't save money and might cost more than a standard Medigap policy. I have made a calendar entry to check in one year, and in two years, to see if it makes sense then.

Standard Medicare Open Enrollment ends on Dec. 7th, making this seem urgent--especially if we want to trust it to the post office--but I remembered that the letter saying my current Medicare Advantage plan won't be offered next year said I therefore have more time to choose a new plan.

So, I opened a chat window at Medicare.gov, and ran into a weird bit of terminology. Open enrollment ends on Dec. 7th, but I have a "special election period" from Dec. 8 to the end of February. The agent wanted to make clear that if I don't choose a plan by Dec. 31st, I wouldn't have Part D drug coverage or a Medicare Advantage plan.

I then asked if the special election period also applied to Medigap, and they told me that Medigap doesn't have annual open enrollment, if you don't buy it within six months after starting on Medicare the private insurance companies don't have to sell it to you. At that point, I thanked him and said that Massachusetts has different rules, and I think I need to talk to someone from the state.

Watching The Adventures of Superman

"Could it be that (Superman) hides behind the darkest disguise of all? Could it be that he is a woman?"

"(...) What made you ask that?"

"Because he has compassion. He aids people in trouble. He helps the weak. "

It is possible the bad guy in The Secret of Superman has issues.

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[food] breadferences

At the weekend we made a mildly unusual detour to a fancy local bakery; one of the things they had on the shelves about which I went "oooh" was fig, hazelnut & anise bread. So that flavour combination (plus some spelt) was went into the oven this morning!

The way bread normally works around here is that I make it, via the Ritual Question of Do You Have Any Breadferences (Bread Preferences). To facilitate this call and response, A List of our Usual Options, doubtless to be added to. Suggestions welcome. :)

( Read more... )

Current Mood: Confuzzled
Current Location: In the still of the night

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weird

Well that was weird

4AM-ish I wasn't asleep, and heard something which I couldn't work out if it was an aircraft or thunder.

So I popped open the bedroom window to see if it was any clearer that way, just caught the very end of it, and still couldn't tell.

I stood listening for a while, as it's rarely that quiet, and I could hear a freight train going past in the cutting down the hill - you can only really hear the trains at that time of night as otherwise they're drowned out by the traffic noise.

And then, for about 10 seconds, I heard the distinctive clip-clop, clip-clop of horse's hooves. WTF?

If you hear hoofbeats, suspect auditory illusions?

I have no idea what it actually was, but it sounded like hoofbeats. At 4AM.

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bundle of holding

Bundle of Holding: Yeld 2E

This new Yeld 2E Bundle presents the 2024 Second Edition of The Magical Land of Yeld, the all-ages tabletop fantasy roleplaying game from Atarashi Games about young heroes (called Friends) finding their way home.

Bundle of Holding: Yeld 2E

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Wednesday there was SNOW

What I read

Finished The Golden Notebook - had a few comments about Lessing and blokes and plus ca change and allotropes of excuses in yesterday's post.

Decompressed with a Dick Francis, Slay-Ride (1973), which is the one set in Norway - period at which The War, resistance, Quislings etc still hangs heavy over them - not a top specimen of his, I spotted Dodgy Person very early on (but maybe protag does not read thrillers....).

Then got a jump on the next volume in the Dance to the Music of Time reading group, Temporary Kings (#11), which is the one set at some kind of cultural conference in Venice.

Also the latest Literary Review.

On the go

Continuing to dip in to Some Men in London 1960-1967.

Was agreeably surprised by the arrival of my preordered Cat Sebastian (had forgotten it was due), After Hours at Dooryard Books, which is being v good so far.

Up next

Latest Slightly Foxed.

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The Color of the End: Mission in the Apocalypse, volume 2 by Haruo Iwamune (Translated by John Neal)

Civilization has crashed, humanity may be virtually extinct, but library books must be returned to their proper facility!

The Color of the End: Mission in the Apocalypse, volume 2 by Haruo Iwamune (Translated by John Neal)

(no subject)

Happy birthday,

frumiousb!

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[embodiment] ... ha

"Ugh," I thought, "why am I feeling weirdly migrainey? My Next Phase Of The Menstrual Cycle is very much not due for like another week? I've been weirdly super regular basically since it reasserted itself post-surgery?"

... TURNS OUT that I had lost track of time a bit and I'm not a solid week early at all, it's a whole two days. This Means Some Things:

... still super regular by my pre-surgical standards,
I will not be at the worst stage of my cycle during Significant Travel next week, and LAST BUT VERY MUCH NOT LEAST
the migraine is still in fact very clearly associated with hormonal changes even when I'm not expecting them, take THAT Headache Is The Second Most Common Form Of Psychosomatic Pain ~statistics~ (and ongoing anxiety).

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And lo, the song of the Mybug was once more heard in the land....

Not OK? Booker winner Flesh ignites debate about state of masculinity

No, really, you don't say? Can it be that - once again, or perhaps, still MASCULINITY IS IN CRISIS?

Does it not sound as though the author goes in for 'dumb, dark, dull, bitter belly-tension'? (Sigh.)

I am sorry to discover that an excoriating retrospect on John Fowles with particular reference to The Magus by DJ Taylor in the latest Literary Review does not appear to be fully accessible online, chiz, chiz -

[E]ach of his novels when stripped of its fashionable appurtenances - The Magus, for example, is rife with Jungian animas - is ultimately about male entitlement.... the books are all about men expecting to get the things they want and being mortified by their absence.
....
[A] series of exercises in what Maurice Bowra called 'the higher bogus'.

I recently had the apercu, following my re-reading of The Golden Notebook, that besides being about the themes that Lessing found readers took from it - The Woman Question, the crisis of the Left at the period, mental health - surely it was also about Crisis of Masculinity/Men R Terribly Poor Stuff (I think Dame Rebecca remarked on that in her critical essay on younger woman writers). Which they were expressing/excusing largely in Freudianism terms (so many of them in analysis or had been). Wonder if current deployment of The Neurodiversity Plea is the current allotrope of He Couldn't Help It Because Reasons Beyond His Control (I suppose at least these do not blame Mummy, unless you are into to the What She Did That She Shouldn't When Pregnant narrative....).

I note that there was a BBC programme last night on the 'manosphere': young men who have drifted towards misogynist influencers – and finds them lonely, heartbreaking and on ‘semen retention journeys’ to control their sex drives. They sound rather sad and confused. (And historian is appalled at the persistence of a panic drummed up by an early C18th quack....)

Am trying to think of period when one could reliably say that masculinity was not in (some kind of) crisis.

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The Queen Bee by Randall Garrett

Castaways are trapped in a terrible Randall Garrett story!

The Queen Bee by Randall Garrett

I know my site is down

Along with a lot of the interwebs...

No election

Not over this budget, anyway.

It boggles me that Canada had to endure 13 days of ambiguity about the budget vote. What next, an election cycle that lasts five whole weeks? The suspense would be palpable.

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bundle of holding

Bundle of Holding: Salvage Union

Scrappy scavengers in scrap-metal mech robots

Bundle of Holding: Salvage Union

Current Mood: confused

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Medicare questions/decisions

I just had a phone appointment with someone, funded by the state of Massachusetts, to help decide between basic Medicare plus a Medigap plan, or a Medicare Advantage plan. I have gotten some useful information, but am going to double-check everything, because in at least one case what she told me contradicts what the official Medicare.gov site says. It's a relatively minor point--the existence of a roommate discount for some Medigap plans--but I asked about which plans it applied to, and she said it doesn't exist.

The new and interesting information is that apparently, because I am under 65 and disabled, I'm eligible for a Medicaid plan, without an income limit. It's called CommonHealth, and seems to be part of the state's "Commonwealth Care." If I understand correctly, after Medicare paid 80% of a bill, it would cover the rest, but only at providers that take MassHealth.

If I got basic Medicare (parts A and B), a part D drug plan, and a Medigap plan, I could see any provider that takes Medicare, without worrying about what's in-network. However, a Medigap plan would cost significantly more than this CommonHealth thing.

Or, I could sign up for another Medicare Advantage plan. The advantage there is there are some that would cost no more than the Medicare Part B premium. The disadvantage is being limited to in-network providers unless I'm willing to pay significantly more for that service.

I thought the question was, is it worth $250-$300/month (Medigap + prescription coverage) more to not have to worry about being in-network and prior authorization. It sounds like this CommonHealth plan would cost significantly less per month, but if the provider doesn't take MassHealth, I'd be paying 20%. Which gets back to the larger problem that there's no way to find out what number that will be 20% until after the visit.

If I understood correctly, all these options have copays for some things, and CommonHealth may require prior authorization for some things.