Altivo Overo's Blog

The quality of public education in the US has been declining for years. One has only to look at literacy levels in the general population or among high school graduates to see this. As a retired librarian I can tell you that requests from high school and college students for audio or video formats of their basic textbooks and assigned readings were increasing rapidly even twenty years ago.

The average literacy level of our adult voters is somewhere between grades five and six, which I find appalling. Surveys after the recent election revealed the fact that voters in general had no understanding of what a tariff is. Queries online asking "How can I change my vote?" were amazingly frequent in the week after November 5th.

Yet the GOP wants to abolish public school funding and the entire Department of Education? (Seems that they fare better with ignorant voters than with those who can read?) I urge you to contact your congress critters now and tell them in no uncertain terms that the Department of Education and its budget that aids in particular schools in rural areas and low income neighborhoods must NOT be cut back or eliminated.

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"Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all."

--Emily Dickinson

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I first posted the note below to Substack and was immediately told that it proved I was a person of low intelligence. I guess because I don't support the Orange Madman...

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Here I sit with two college degrees, literate in half a dozen languages, and three quarters of a century of practical exposure to and experience with human behavior, yet I absolutely cannot understand what is going on with the USA and elections.

About half of the voters polled continue to support a candidate who is a confirmed liar, convicted felon, obvious misogynist and narcissist. One who loudly denies that he is a NAZI yet proudly proclaims his intention to place people of races or nationalities he dislikes into concentration camps and to punish anyone who opposes or has opposed him by placing them in prison or worse. One who accuses his opponents of the the very crimes he has himself perpetrated.

Is democracy impossible, a failure doomed to collapse? As Robert Heinlein cynically suggested, proving that no matter how many zeroes you add together, the result is always zero?

Fortunately for me, I probably won’t be around long enough to see the final consequences, but I remain depressed by what I see. Our educational system has been slowly disabled and redirected so as to prevent growing minds from learning logic or critical thinking. Now they want to erase the parts of history that might prove embarrassing or generate guilty responses.

Certainly, I never agree with 100% of what any politician says, thinks, or does; but it is very clear to me that a vote for one of them currently on the ballot leads to disaster. Climate change is real but he will ignore it just as he ignored the pandemic that was also real. His racist and sexist attitudes will serve no one well. And his ignorance of economic and legal complexities will drag us back into another recession or depression. (What else can we expect from someone with repeated bankruptcies? One who persists in thinking that tariffs are paid by the foreign producers rather than becoming a financial burden on the local buyer?)

Don’t blame me, I voted for Harris and Walz.

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Please vote! I know it can be a nuisance and you may not care much about politics, but this is about more than just political ideas. The very core of our lifestyle and existence in the U.S. is at stake this time. I don't imagine that anyone who reads what I write here occasionally would be a Trump supporter at this point, but I can believe that some of you might just not bother to vote. Please turn out. It is crucial, and most states seem to have made it ever so much easier in recent years, what with vote by mail and early voting. We choose early voting here because there are never any long lines and you can usually be in and out and done in just a few minutes.

A woman's right to control her own body is at stake this time. So is the relatively recent recognition of the rights of same sex couples to enter legally recognized marriage. Also the rights of perfectly legal immigrants to our country. Some politicians leading the negative side now are even hinting that they would prefer to take away the right of women to vote or hold office. We can't go back into those dark ages, and if we let that happen it will take years and years to escape the new walls they would impose to keep freedom out of our lives.

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Well, that was in addition to all the other stuff we do. And not counting the time it took to transfer the original pattern to better tissue paper (Gary insists on that, I'd not done it before.) Turns out to be a good idea, since you can make adjustments, changes, and such without damaging the original pattern so it can't be reused.

Anyway, here's what it was: Simplicity 1731A, a zippered jumpsuit in adult sizes designed to be made from Polar Fleece(tm) fabric. Actually, it is much the same as a basic fursuit body, and I've made those before and already had a pattern. Still, I had wanted to try this and bought the pattern and most of a bolt of fleece several years ago for it. Even had the zipper and elastic wrapped up in it. I think that was about the time I retired from daily work and things got hectic so it was pushed aside and forgotten. It's done now. Here's the photo from the pattern envelope.


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My choice of fabric was not the elven stars shown here, but a brown background scattered with wolf faces drawn (perhaps) in pastel chalk. Worth the effort, it worked. Alas, I have no full length mirror to make a selfie, but take my word for it. Probably not as warm as I'd imagined during cold nights this winter, but not as excessively warm as either of my fursuits.

Note for anyone considering this--
You can probably get the pattern from Ebay or Etsy, lots of old patterns floating around there. I doubt you'll find it in any fabric store today. The instructions provided are a bit terse for beginning or timid seamsters or seamstresses. I have 60 years of experience and still had to improvise a bit, but in the end it worked out. It's really a bag with feet and arms, almost. Not one size fits all, but something like that. The pattern provides for child sizes as well as five adult sizes, and includes pieces to make one for your little dog, too. (Really!)

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Michigan State University is my alma mater (B.A. 1971) where I spent many years as an undergraduate, then as a grad student, and finally as an employee. Sadly, the news that a pointless mass shooting there has killed at least three and injured many more is little surprise in our current political and social climate. The epidemic of gun violence that has increasingly infected the US over the past half-century is so obvious, and yet our politicians and a substantial minority of voters and the population insist it isn't happening and doesn't exist.

The authors of the second amendment to our Constitution, when they talked about firearms, only knew single shot weapons with limited accuracy. I am sure they could never have imagined machine guns, semi-automatic rifles, or even the six shooter of the wild old West.

We must take action to stop this insanity. The only way to do so is by electing officials who will take sound action against it. Don't tell me this is impossible. Yes, crimes that involve firearms still happen in countries where guns are strictly controlled, but not with anything like the frequency we see here in the US.

Guns must be licensed just as vehicles are, with restrictions and required training. Strict enforcement must keep such weapons out of the hands of prior offenders. It appears in this particular instance that the shooter (who is reported to have killed himself after committing his crime) had a prior offense that was reduced to a "misdemeanor" and thus did not keep him from once again obtaining a firearm and abusing it. This is absolutely inexcusable.

Sign petitions and vote responsibly. Do not support politicians who refuse to impose restrictions on weaponry. I say this especially to younger people who are eligible to vote but often decline to take an interest in politics. You must do so. Take action now to protect the future not only for yourself, but for your peers and your future children. Firearms should NEVER enter any educational property, for instance. And penalties for violation must be severe and enforced.

Morons like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Greg Abbot, or Ron Di Santis need to be turned out of office immediately. The NRA should be stripped of its non-profit educational status too. Hollywood and television must stop depicting gun violence as entertainment and do so NOW.

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I call to mind the old TV program jokes about "We're the phone company. We don't care, we don't have to." Those referenced the AT&T monopoly over most of the US, of course. Now they face competition nearly everywhere, since most electronic communications go over the internet or the cell phone airwaves.

However, it seems to be very much true that they still don't care. My truck has a modem/hotspot that is (by default at least) served by AT&T wireless. Back in June I dutifully contracted for their services and agreed to their requirements. Monthly payment to be charged to my credit card, internet access to unlimited data (no cap) but subject to slowdowns at busy times. This seemed to work for the first six months, no problem.

Now it has stopped. When I sign into their web access, my account is still there and the account information is still valid. The credit card is good, and will not expire for another year. But I am greeted with the message "This vehicle has no data plan." And indeed, the truck can no longer connect to the internet to provide a hotspot, though it still shows up as an available connection. When I try to connect to it, I am connected to a sales page from AT&T demanding that I set up an account and a contract.

Note that they continue to charge my credit card every month for the original agreed amount, with the most recent charge paid on December 25, 2022.

There is no way to contact them about this by paper mail, e-mail, online chat or any other means except by calling a "toll free number." That number is clearly swamped with calls and doesn't have enough (maybe even no) service rep to answer. I get a recorded message telling me to stay on the line and someone will be with me shortly. "Shortly" apparently means more than 30 minutes, as that is the longest I have waited before hanging up in disgust.

It appears that my only choice here is to tell my credit card provider to stop paying them. Then see if any other provider in my area can give me a connection. T-Mobile is the most likely, I guess, but aren't they the same company now?

Catch-22 anyone?

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This has come up twice in the last year, and I did some historic research this week to verify my stance on the subject. [Possibly boring discussion of ham radio call signs follows.]

My amateur radio call sign is K9NZI and has been that for the last eleven years. Before that it was KA9NZI dating back to 1982 when I was first licensed. The KA prefix was the one being assigned to all new novice class licensees at that time. The numeral 9 indicates that my station is or was located in the ninth call district, which includes the state of Illinois where I live. The NZI suffix was assigned by the FCC when my license was issued, and they were doing that in a strict alphabetical sequence so that KA9NZH preceded me and KA9NZJ followed me. In other words, the suffix in my call sign is there by pure chance and was not of my personal choosing.

A few people have assumed that NZI makes some connection with "NAZI" which is simply not true. I am not a subscriber or supporter of any kind of fascism. And I had nothing to do with "choosing" NZI anyway.

There was a long period when the FCC kept call sign records on physical filing cards. Back then, they also reassigned call signs to a new person when the existing station license had been cancelled or expired for some length of time. At some point, however, it was deemed too much work to do this and the practice ended. The only way an amateur call sign is reassigned today is by the personal request of an existing licensee, subject to various limitations having to do with license class and other qualifications.

I was under the impression (incorrectly, it turns out) that someone else had already held K9NZI and though I was qualified to ask for it (as a shorter call sign is almost always preferred, especially when dealing with Morse code) I did not do so until eleven years ago. My license was up for renewal, and at that time I could request a change to K9NZI by paying a $10 fee. I looked it up, and no one had it then, so I asked for and received the change. No one was thinking about NAZIs at that time.

Recently I learned that the Internet Archive now has call sign directories going back to before World War II. They are PDF files and cumbersome to search in, but that's how I learned that not only was K9NZI unassigned in 2011, it had never been assigned at all. W9NZI was held by someone, but going back to the mid-1950s, when K9 prefixes were first used, the FCC never reached that far in the alphabet. After running all the way to "ZZZ" in populous zones like California (K6) and New York (K2) they started over with WA and then WB prefixes, and soon applied that to the other eight zones even though there were still unused K call signs in those zones.

Consequently, it seems that I am the only operator who has ever held the K9NZI call sign, and I intend to keep it.

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By request from a few folks. I've been making these occasionally for a couple of decades, and don't remember where the recipe came from. Likely a newspaper or magazine item. Anyway, pretty simple but a bit on the messy side to put together. Click on thumbnail to enlarge image, but alas, you can't smell them.

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Orange Muffins

1/3 cup butter or margarine, cut into small pieces or softened
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
grated peel or zest of one fresh orange
1/2 cup orange juice
1/4 cup milk
2 cups (9 ounces) bleached all purpose flour
2 tsp. double acting baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda (sodium bicarbonate)
1/2 tsp. fine salt

Preheat oven to 450°F. (Not a typo. Muffins rise better if the oven is really hot when they first go in.)

Cream butter and sugar together. Scrape down bowl, and beat in egg, orange peel, juice, and milk.

Sift together dry ingredients and add all at once. Mix just until completely moistened. Do not overbeat.

Fill greased muffin tins (or paper lined if preferred) to two thirds full. This is about 1/4 cup of batter each for standard sized tins or 1/2 cup for the "giant" muffins. Turn oven down to 400°F before baking for 20 to 25 minutes. Tops will be golden brown and an inserted toothpick will come out clean when they are done. The "giant" pans will take a bit longer.

Serve warm, with spreadable cream cheese if desired. Yield 12 standard or 6 "giant" muffins.

No calorie counting here, but with all that butter and sugar do you really want to know?

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Please vote. This is a critical election for the survival of US democracy. The names far down the ballot matter. Know what they stand for and don't skip over them.

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