State of the Farm, July 2025

This is coming out late since I’m writing it in July. We’re going to WorldCon and so I wanted to get this in the pipeline before we left.

 

(Picture from here.)

 

Things have been… interesting for the last month. We’ve had a significant problem with vermin. Wendy has caught several chipmunks, voles, and three rats. There may also be a gopher involved. Part of this is global warming—the rat problem in cities has been linked to temperature. I have no reason not to think it’s affecting us, as well. I also think that other rodents may well have the same response to warming as the rats. Not to mention that with milder winters, we have less winterkill. 

 

We lost nearly all the climbing beans but—for reasons that passeth understanding—they left the bush beans. I replanted a bunch of bush beans but today I think they may have taken them as well. Of course, it may not be rodents. It could be cut worms. The manure we bought in the spring (for much more money than it was worth) was full of cut worms and low on nutrition. 

 

Today, also, it looks like something tore into one of the sweet potato hills. Yay.

 

The main garden is flat. But the raised garden is doing fairly well. When I got the sweet potato sets, I split them: three in the raised bed and three in the main garden. Not only did they do better in the raised bed, they (and other things) were relatively safe from the ground dwelling pests. Not squirrels. Nothing stops squirrels. 

 

But we’re getting zucchini. There are melons on the vine. Some of the bush beans are surviving. Many of the carrots are doing well. And the daikon radishes look great. 

 

The squash have largely taken off. (Finally!) 

 

In the raised beds, we went through a very nice strawberry harvest back in June. The potatoes (and sweet potatoes) look good. We’re trying some long carrots in one of the beds but this was one of the first we tried. We did not bury the bottom in six inches of gravel. Sure enough, some moles may have taken out a few. We’ll see how that goes. 

 

One of the quinces succumbed to what appears to be black knot. We have a set of quinces that are where we used to have espaliered plums. The plums got black knot, starting from the south and going north. We tried for years to control it but then it spread to some peaches so the plums had to go. The worst infected was the southernmost prune plum. We planted quinces, thinking, well, these aren’t stone fruit. But we got something that sure looks like black knot. 

 

We were assured that this was cedar quince rust—which would not have been surprising. We do have a cedar tree nearby and we’ve seen cedar apple rust. But it marched south to north like Lee’s advancing army. 

 

We cut off the affected limbs and sprayed. The prune plum spot quince looked good for a couple of months and then bang! All over. So we took it out. The others still look rot-free. The quince in the prune plum spot most severely affected. Hm. Coincidence? I. Think. Not!

 

The new peaches produced peaches this year. Small and sweet. But still very young. The pears are producing like mad. The apples… well, we removed several this year because they were losing to the cedar apple rust. The remaining trees are producing but not well. We might have to do something drastic this winter.

 

That’s it for now regarding the garden.

 

Now, about the news today. One of my two readers asked me why I’ve been including bad news from the new administration. It’s a fair question and deserves a fair answer.

 

I want to start by talking about what norms are. Norms are traditions, practices, and behaviors that are an example of the overlying culture. They are agreements we’ve made that are intended to operate without challenge. 

 

Sometimes, those norms are derived from legal cases. The idea of being able to speak one’s mind or take a point of view differing from the administration without legal challenge is a good example. It was a norm that a person coming into this country legally had a right to their opinions, whether or not those opinions agreed with the administration. It was a norm that due process was the right of anyone residing in the United States. That the law would be administered as it was written and adjudicated. Norms are those behaviors we take for granted—being able to say something bad about politicians without repercussions. That both sides would take advantage of this—one news service or another. Each had the same right to speech.

 

While norms can (and sometimes should) be challenged, it should be a thoughtful process. Segregation was a norm that we disposed of—or tried to, anyway. Disrupting norms means disrupting the behavior people have relied on.

 

I, for example, thought the norm that preserved clean water and air was a good thing. Or that politicians should not enrich themselves at the expense of tax payers. Or that our leadership in science was a good thing. Or that the single most effective mechanism of preventing disease in the history of mankind—vaccines—should be continued and expanded. Or that preventing the unnecessary death of thousands of Americans by making sure there was good, strong information rather than succumbing to charlatans and con men was something to pursue. 

 

I’ve been alive, paying taxes, and voting for mumble-mumble years. In that time, I thought we had been building towards a fair, just, equitable, clean world. We were not succeeding for everyone—that was obvious. But we were succeeding at many things. We needed to succeed at more things. For everyone. 

 

The current administration appears to be in the business destroying all that. Making rich richer. Making air and water dirtier. Making children hungrier. Torturing more prisoners. Vilifying anyone that disagrees with them. Applying all that indiscriminately to both their supporters and their detractors. They don’t care. They just want the money.

 

In my small way, I want to point this out. The Emperor not only has no clothes, he is trying to demolish anyone that speaks up. 

 

So, here’s a Korean scientist with a green card working on a vaccine for Lyme disease that’s been detained after returning from his brother’s wedding.

 

Franchise Mythology

I saw Superman last week. 

(Picture from here.)

 

It’s a pretty good film—probably the best Superman film since Christopher Reeve’s first attempt. There are those that have said it even bests that since it doesn’t attempt the birth/Krypton origin story. It’s based, in part, on All-Star Superman and more than a little resembles HBO’s My Adventures with Superman. 

 

Spoilers after this.

 

But—it still has all the Superman beats: Superman is a good guy. He’s just trying to do good deeds. Perry White still runs the Daily Planet. Jimmy Olson is still a junior reporter. Supes loves Lois Lane. Ma and Pa Kent are still the loving parents from Kansas. Print journalism that works. I have some issues with Ma Kent’s accent which sounds more like Deep Ozarks than Kansas to me but that’s a quibble. 

 

In other words, the mythology is retained and some—but not too many—new wrinkles added. 

 

On the surface, this shouldn’t be too unexpected. It has a long tradition back to Parzival and Tristan and Isolde, where the poets take existing material and redisplay it from a new point of view. God knows how many Arthur and the Round Table stories there have been. But, this is a problem over time and especially in our money driven culture. These stories accumulate over time. How many Romeo and Juliets have there been? How many Hamlets? Superman, himself, has undergone many reboots. As have other Marvel and DC comic characters. Each time, the beats remain the same.

 

Sometimes, they mythology is broken. A good example of this is Red Son, which tells the story of a Superman whose rocket had not grounded in Kansas but 12 hours later in a Ukrainian collective under Stalin. That broke the mold. It had many of the same character: Lex, Jimmy, Lois, etc. But there was no Ma and Pa Kent. No Clark Kent. The Daily Planet of Jimmy and Perry is in the US while Superman is half a world away. Lois is married to Lex and never really meets Superman at all. 

 

Red Son was a critical and commercial success but it was a what if? sort of story. An alternate history of an alternate history. Reboots of Superman inevitably seem to return to norm: Superman and Lois, Clark, Jimmy, Perry. Superman loses his powers but regains them. Gets different powers and return to the same set. (As an aside, super breath? That freezes? Come on!) Sometimes he starts as a super baby. Others, he gets his powers as a child, a middle schooler, a teen. But he always ends up the strongest guy on the beach. Let’s be clear, too. It’s not artistic forces that cause this. The forces are financial. Superman makes money. He makes money fulfilling the mythology, not breaking it.

 

One of the interesting things about the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is that it broke a bit of the mythology in the very beginning. This began in Iron Man, when Robert Downey Jr. said “I am Iron Man” as an ad lib that so captured the producers they said, let’s go with that. I do like the MCU better than I have (up to now) the DCU in the sense that Marvel made an attempt to have the heroics be an outgrowth of the character of the heroes rather than the characters subsumed into the heroics. DCU went the other way. Also, the MCU is often funny. The DCU (again, up to now.) was not. 

 

That said, in both the DCU and MCU, the mythology drives the story. There are always twelve labors of Hercules, Leda is always raped by Zeus in the form of a swan, Medusa is always slain by Perseus. 

 

Except when there isn’t. 

 

The YouTube channel of Jun Chiu has an interesting take on Medusa. There is Medusa, the Prequel  and Medusa, the Stone Kingdom. Essentially, it’s told in a series of beautiful paintings of a quasi-cartoon style along with music. There is no dialog of any sort but that doesn’t make any difference in the telling. The Prequel has a take on the Perseus story. The Stone Kingdom comes later. These are quite compelling pieces that break the mythology and in the breaking find something quite new.

 

Parzival didn’t break the mythology. Parzival still fails at his quest and then returns and succeeds. But Wolfram von Eschenbach had a bone to pick with society and embedded his response to chivalry in it. The story of Parzival hits the beats but Gawain is included also as an interesting counterpoint. Von Eschenbach didn’t break the mythology but he bent it pretty strongly. 

 

My point is that the best material dealing with these mythologies are those that tackle the mythology itself rather than just a retelling. Some break it (Red Son) and some bend it (Parzival.) The degree of reshaping can create something new. It may, of course, just be tin foil rather than gold. I recently saw a discussion of a new Batman where he is the son of Aztec royalty bent on freeing his people from Spanish rule. And it was advertising all the beats: the Joker, Catwoman, Two-Face. Since it hasn’t been released, I have no real idea on the nature of the take. But the fact that they are advertising the beats doesn’t bode well.

 

Which brings us to the problem of franchise mythologies these days: they are businesses. They can be the product of a singular talent but that talent is in the service of corporations. Artistic endeavors that do not turn the expected profit are rarely continued merely because they are artistically successful. Remember Firefly?

 

Mythologies are stories burned down to essence in refining fire. They are the bones of stories. Putting flesh on those bones makes for actual tales. What we see in these franchise mythologies are stories that are built to emphasize those bones, those highlights, those Cliff notes, with pretty lights, quick banter, and big explosions. The first of the franchise might be good—Reeve’s Superman. But there is money to be made so Superman II, III, and IV were made, each progressively less interesting, with prettier lights, and more stupidity. 

 

This is a problem with the whole franchise mythology. They get progressively worse as sequels pile onto sequels or novels pile onto novels. I think it’s in part because the mythological bones aren’t enough to sustain the franchise on their own. And a lot of the time, those left to continue the project aren’t talented or creative enough to keep it alive. 

 

Sometimes an individual or team’s spirit is enough to keep the franchise going for a while. The MCU was pretty good at keeping it together from Iron Man (2008) to Avengers: Endgame (2019.) Eleven years and twenty-two films. There were a fair number of duds in that list—you can pick your own—but the arc was sound. They have had trouble since. They had a rich mythology within the Marvel comic universe to pull from but that mythology, itself, grew thin over time. Both Marvel and DC tend to get bound up in their own canon to the point that they have to break their structure to keep the cash cow flowing.

 

The Star Wars franchise has a worse problem. Marvel and DC both have experience in tearing down a structure and rebuilding it in a “new” way—it ultimately returns to the original mythology but at least the journey back can be fun. Star Wars has no such mechanism. It just churns on, feeding on itself, until understanding the projects requires deep understanding of its minutia. Game of Thrones, I think, suffered similarly. 

 

Ultimately, franchise mythologies suffer from a basic defect: they have no ending. Parzival had an ending. Star Wars does not. The MCU does not. As long as there is money to be made, that horse is going to be flogged, dead or not.

 

News today: The current USDA is requesting names, birthdates, and social security numbers for those receiving SNAP benefits. What could go wrong? RFK Jr is likely to destroy the US Preventive Services panel just like he destroyed the vaccine panel. And the president is claiming Beyoncé broke the law for doing something that didn’t happen.

 

Arts and Crafts VIII: The Dancing Lady

About three years ago, I was in the Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology. It is a wonderful little museum filled with unexpected treasures. I found this lovely lady. She is a piece of pre-Columbian Costa Rican pottery about which I know very little. I tried to find out more but didn’t get much of a response from the museum. So it goes.

 

Fast forward a couple of years. I’d been doing pottery a bit and kept coming back to her—I’d begun to call her the Dancing Lady. She’s clearly not a girl. This is a woman familiar with child bearing. She is not going to be left out of the dance. She will make her aging body follow the steps if it kills her. How could I not be entranced?

 

I decided to attempt to make a likeness. I was not going to say copy or reproduce since I didn’t have the skills. That didn’t say I couldn’t try.

 

I decided to throw two semi-closed bowls and then seal them together, adding on the face, legs, and arms afterwards. This is only not how the original artist did it since they did not have wheels nor did they use high fire glazes. But I’m still learning hand building.

 

But I had trouble with the proportions. I threw the two bowls but they were way too close together in size. I redid them into different pieces.

 

I had a similar problem with the next two—the top bowl much too large. I decided to make a single vase from it. The shape suggested the Venus of Willendorf so I incised the figure into the side of the vase and made the hair shape the throat of the vase. Then, I used some underglaze to highlight the figure and oxide to bring out the detail.

 

Behold Vasa de Willendorf.

 

 

 

My third attempt came closer. The head/body ratio is still not right but it’s closer. I used a burnt orange underglaze that looked more like the original. The top was a bit too tall but I wasn’t willing to cut it down.

 

 

But disaster! Severe crawling when the true-clear glaze was applied and fired. Instead of Dancing Lady, I got Leprosy Girl!

 

This was enormously discouraging. But, after a bit, I tried again.

 

This time I did a little better on the face. I decided to give her a smile—which gave her a sort of Pillsbury Dough Girl effect but I decided to go with it. One of the problems with Leprosy Girl was how the glaze made the face indistinct. I tried to fix that by using a little black underglaze on the mouth, nose, and eyes. Also, we used the same burnt orange underglaze with some resin treatment suggested by my instructor.

 

Better. I still think the proportions are wrong. The underglaze didn’t crawl but it still has the brushed look. In retrospect, I might have done better not to glaze the outside at all and only glazed the inside. Also, the black didn’t work as well as I would have hoped.

 

For the moment, I’m done with the attempt. But at least, she looks like she is having a good time.

 

Oh, yeah. Remember all that food that was intended to be shipped as aid overseas? Rather than distribute it, they let it expire and will burn it. See here.