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Terrible shrieks.  Close by.  Thrashing on the bed.  All four cats alert.  More squirming and cat discussion.  Blood and mucus.  Tuxie and her mother, Bunny, are most involved.  Lickinglickinglickinglicking. One lump.  Totally indiscriminate.  Gray. Squirmy.  Chirping. Slowly I wake up and figure out it's Tuxie having a kitten.  She's been looking for a proper birthing place and being pesky about needing to be petted.   We all work on this lump.  The comforter is doomed.  The two big cats are lickinglickinglicking and the two from the last batch of Tuxie's kittens are watching.  Thimble, the male, is interested but only watching.  Thread, the female, is present but looking away. The lump squirms around until it has found a fold in the comforter and goes into it, hidden.  The two big cats are baffled until I pull away the fold.  TaDah!  A newborn kitten. I'm reeling with sleeplessness.  Finally I doze off with the light on.  Then I half-hear the soun

These notes, edited to capture certain points, were taken from an uppity article in "bitchmedia" called "The Myth of the Male Genius " by Aditi Natasha Kini. https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/myth-male-genius?utm_campaign=coschedule&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=bioneers Genius is power. It is unquantifiable, uncontainable, and like beauty, exists in the eyes of the beholder. Genius enhances access—sexual, social, economic, political. It is a collective agreement—or, in many cases, a collective lie—that grants boundless latitude to those we anoint with the title. But genius is also an indelibly gendered currency used by men—almost always men—of means and success to purchase license. The lie of genius is inextricable from the lie of meritocracy : With the rise of auteur theory in the mid–20th century, film joined the ranks of other fine arts, their marketable auteur status as a “ business model of reflexive adoration ,” auteur worship b

Daniel Corcoran Finney was laughing and laughing, the early morning light bouncing off his ragged Sam Shepherd teeth.  She was a little offended.  After all, she had just met this guy and had no idea what set him off.  But their very strangeness to each other made it possible to be frank.  They would never see each other again. "You really don't know ANYTHING about gay, do you?"  He had to stop, drag out a kerchief and wipe his laughter-wet eyes.  "Gay is like being Christian!  The hell it is." Stiffly, she defended herself.  "Dan, Christian IS hell.  Anything that locks you in is hell." "What makes you think that being "gay" locks me in?  What can you possibly know about the subject.  Do I remotely resemble anything the media presents as gay?  Am I built and blonde, wearing a Speedo?  Do I talk differently?  You're pretentious, uninformed, and insulting."   Oddly this made her curious.  It wasn't about sex

Daniel Corcoran Finney Preparing to leave my room in the rundown, Fifties, off-highway motel, I opened a can of caffeinated liquid with a fancy name and carried it out to the worn-out deck chairs against the front wall.  Someone else was already there.  Archetype of a ruined old loner, he slouched in his chair, so his cowboy hat brim shaded his eyes, dangling a cigarette expertly with his left hand.  I guess it was a cigarette.  I'm pretty much an innocent. The sun was barely up but already warm.  Mine was the only car, so I guess he must be traveling on the motorcycle.  I don't know much about those machines or I would describe it.  All I know was that it was big and dark, so probably powerful. "Getting an early start?" he suggested. I nodded.  I don't talk much first thing in the day.  If I had to preach at dawn, I would be handicapped, but usually the services across America are a little later.  I suppose when they were first organized, people