Katya Reimann, Writer & Artist
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--Katya Reimann, 2022--

Katya has been telling stories, building worlds, and creating the art to go with them for most of her life.  
 
The content of these pages reflect her diverse interests over time

Frances Carpenter, Distinguished Folklorist

11/6/2019

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​Frances Carpenter Bibliography

  • Carpenter, Frank, & Carpenter, Frances. The Food We Eat: Journey Club Travels. New York: American Book Co., 1925.
  • Carpenter, Frank, & Carpenter, Frances. The Clothes We Wear: Journey Club Travels. New York: American Book Co., 1926.
  • Carpenter, Frank, & Carpenter, Frances. The Houses We Live In: Journey Club Travels. New York: American Book Co., 1928.

  • Carpenter, Frances. Ourselves & Our City: Journey Club Travels. New York: American Book Co., 1928
  • Carpenter, Frances. The Ways We Travel: Journey Club Travels. New York: American Book Co., 1929
  • Carpenter, Frances. Tales of a Basque Grandmother, ill. Pedro Garmendia. New York: Junior Literary guild/Lippincott, 1930.
  • Carpenter, Frances. Our Little Friends of Eskimo Land: Papik & Natsek, ill. Curtiss Sprague. New York: American Book Co., 1931.
  • Carpenter, Frances. Tales of a Russian Grandmother. NY: Doubleday, Doran & Co. Inc, 1933.
  • Carpenter, Frances. Our Little Friends of the Arabian Desert: Adi & Hamda, ill. Curtiss Sprague. New York: American Book Co., 1934.
  • Carpenter, Frances, Our Little Friends of the Netherlands: Dirk & Dientje. New York: American Book Co., 1935.
  • Carpenter, Frances, Our Little Friends of Norway: Ola & Marit. New York: American Book Co., 1936.
  • Carpenter, Frances, Our Little Friends of China: Ah Hu and Ying Hwa, ill. Curtiss Sprague. New York: American Book Co., 1937.
  • Carpenter, Frances. Tales of a Chinese Grandmother, ill. Malthe Hasselriis. NY: Doubleday, Doran & Co. Inc, 1937.
  • Carpenter, Frances. Our Little Neighbors at Work & Play: Here, There, Then & Now. New York: American Book Co., 1939.
  • Carpenter, Frances. Tales of a Swiss Grandmother, ill. E. Bieler. Doubleday, Doran & Co. Inc, New York, 1940.
  • Carpenter, Frances. Our Little Friends of Switzerland: Hansli & Heidi, ill. Curtiss Sprague. New York: American Book Co., 1941.
  • Carpenter, Frances.  Our South American Neighbors. New York: American Book Co., 1942.​
  • Carpenter, Frances. The Pacific: Its Lands & Peoples. New York: American Book Co., 1944.
  • Carpenter, Frances. Our Neighbors Near & Far. New York: American Book Co., 1946.
  • Carpenter, Frances. Canada & Her Northern Neighbors, New York: American Book Co. , 1946.
  • Carpenter, Frances. Tales of a Korean Grandmother: 32 Traditional Tales from China. New York: Doubleday, Doran & Co. Inc, 1947.
  • Carpenter, Frances. Children of Our World. New York: American Book Co., 1949.
  • Carpenter, Frances. Caribbean Lands: Mexico, Central America, & the West Indies. New York: American Book Co., 1950.
  • Carpenter, Frances. Wonder Tales of Horses & Heroes, ill. William D. Hayes. Garden City: New York: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1952.
  • Carpenter, Frances. Wonder Tales of Dogs and Cats, ill. Ezra Jack Keats. Garden City: New York: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1955.
  • Carpenter, Frances. Children of Our World. New York: American Book Co., 1956.
  • Carpenter, Frances. Our Homes & Our Neighbors. New York: American Book Co., 1956.
  • Carpenter, Frances. Pocahontas & Her World, ill. Langdon Hihn. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1957.
  • Carpenter, Frances, in Best in Children's Books, Volume 24. Nelson Doubleday, 1959.  
  • Carpenter, Frances. Wonder Tales of Seas & Ships, ill. Peter Spier. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1959.
  • ed. Frances Carpenter. Carp's Washington. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1960,
  • Carpenter, Frances. The Elephant’s Bathtub: Wonder Tales From The Far East., ill. Hans Guggenheim. Garden City: New York: Doubleday & Co. Inc., 1962.
  • Carpenter, Frances. African Wonder Tales, ill. Joseph Escourido. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1963.
  • Carpenter, Frances. The Mouse Palace, ill. Adrienne Adams. McGraw-Hill Book Co. 1964.
  • Carpenter, Frances. Holiday in Washington, ill. George Fulton. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1966.
  • Carpenter, Frances. The Story of East Africa. Wichita, Kan.: McCormick-Mathers Pub. Co., 1967.
  • Carpenter, Frances. The Story of Korea. Cincinnati: McCormick-Mathers Pub. Co., 1969.​
  • Carpenter, Frances. South American Wonder Tales, ill. Ralph Creasman. Chicago: Follett, 1969.
  • Carpenter, Frances. People from the Sky; Ainu Tales from Northern Japan, ill. Betty Fraser. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1972.
  • Carpenter, Frances. Spooks and Scoundrels - SRA Pilot Library IIb Book 14. 1976.​
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"A Memorable Fancy" Goodbye, Sixth Chamber

3/20/2019

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For years, this was my local used bookstore. I missed buying a first edition of The Game of Thrones there. I missed buying a 12 volume set of My Bookhouse, a beloved childhood companion (the edition we'd grown up with was my father's, an early 1930s printing, and it's become too fragile to trust in a young person's hands... and many of the volumes are "read alone," not "read aloud"!).

But I also purchased many excellent books there. A replacement copy of Farley Mowat's Never Cry Wolf. Connie Willis's Bellwether. And many more. Books and Christmas shopping. But evidently, between myself and the rest of my community, not enough.

​​In all the years... I was too shy to ask "why 'Sixth Chamber'?" and after that it was so familiar that I never thought to look it up. Only as it was closing, did it post my answer, on its Facebook page. The name came from "A Memorable Fancy," written and illustrated by William Blake (1790), a passage/page from his longer work, "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell":
I was in a Printing house in Hell & saw the method in which knowledge is transmitted from generation to generation.

In the first chamber was a Dragon-Man, clearing away the rubbish from a caves moth; within, a number of Dragons were hollowing the cave.

In the second chamber was a Viper folding round the rock & the cave, and others adorning it with gold, silver and precious stones.

In the third chamber was an Eagle with wings and feathers of air; he caused the inside of the cave to be infinite; around were numbers of Eagle like men, who built palaces in the immense cliffs.

In the fourth chamber were Lions of flaming fire raging around & melting the metals into living fluids.

In the fifth chamber were Unnam'd forms, which cast the metals into the expanse.

​There they were reciev'd by Men who occupied the sixth chamber, and took the forms of books & were arranged in libraries.

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"A Memorable Fancy" William Blake, 1790. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
I accept that the world is changing, but this change, this closing of my used bookshop--it's a bad one.
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Nikolai Mikhailovich Kochergin (1897-1974)

11/24/2018

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All I know about Kochergin: something in his fairytale illustrations appeals to me. I came across this illustration yesterday.  It is a cropped image from a postcard that someone sold awhile back on Etsy.

I find this illustration humorous. Yes, that fox looks like he's in trouble (yes, I'm quite certain that foolish fox is a he), equally, I'm quite sure that he's going to come out of the situation scathed, but perhaps wiser.

I can't find out anything else online about the Fairy Tale (or, the thing I'd really like to see, an uncropped verstion of this illustration).
Russian Folk Tale
Russian Folk Tale "The Fox and The Eagle" - N. Kochergin, 1963
I got intrigued. The limits of the internet fascinate me.  And the more I looked for Kochergin images, the more I realized how familiar I was with his imagery.  To some extent, he has the corner on classic Russian fairytale imagery.  He owes a debt to Ivan Bilibin (1876-1942)--one of those innocent, tremendous "Golden Age of Illustration" artists who got caught up in weird Central European Nationalism (much to the detriment of their illustrations, I'd put Alphonse Mucha in this category also). But from what I can tell, Kochergin is a creature of a different generation.

I say "from what I can tell," because the internet isn't telling me anything about these next pieces, except that they are all images created by artists named, variously, "N. Kochergin," "Nikolai Kochergin," and "Nikolai Mikhailovich Kochergin," all of whom appear to have lived 1897-1974. I am pretty sure that these are all the same person. But--this is just from the internet, so maybe not.  In any case, Kochergin's images:

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A 1920 ANTI CAPITALIST PROPAGANDA POSTER BY NIKOLAI KOCHERGIN (RUSSIAN 1897-1974)
EGE KAPITALISTU GORE, ZAGONIM EVO V CHERNOE MORE [Aha Sorrow to the Capitalist, We Will Drive Him Into the Black Sea], color lithograph, 1920, initialed in plate, 70 x 105.5 cm (27 1/2 x 41 1/2 in.)
SOVIET WWII PROPAGANDA POSTCARD, PUBLISHED IN LENINGRAD DURING THE BLOCKADE. ARTIST N. KOCHERGIN
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And then come these (POSTCARDS: 1960s. N. KOCHERGIN). Okay, I can see the Social Realism influence here, but there's a step (in history) that I'm feeling gets glossed over:
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What was the progression from the young man who created the top image to the old(er) man who created these last images? I don't know if it would make a book. But it's something I'd like to know something more about.
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Snihurónka

10/19/2018

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Snihurónka is the Ukrainian Snow Maiden, companion to Did Moróz, Grandfather Frost.

Moróz has been identified with
Morozko, the pre-Christian pan-Slavic personification of the snow (an animistic spirit, god, or demon, depending on your perspective), but it is widely accepted that his companion, Snihurónka, dates back only to the 19th century, and Alexander Afanasyev's 1869 ""The Poetic Outlook of Slavs about Nature."

I have yet to resolve to my own satisfaction why this should be. Afanasyev is, effectively, the Russian equivalent of the Grimm brothers, and his folktale collection techniques, where "he never tried to give any definitive version of a folktale: so, if he gathered 7 versions of one folk type, he edited them all,"* is considered to have been intellectually sophisticated and ahead of its time. Why Snihurónka should be relegated as Afanasyev's personal invention, rather than one among many folk figures that he collected--I have not seen the scholarship that tells me this is anything other than bias against the story--the Moróz figure, in other cultures, does not have a female companion.

Very little is known definitively about Slavic mythology, but one thing that is known is that the Slavic pantheon was full of unusual gender assignments, gods who are variously represented as female or male in different times and locations, and god-pairs with male and female partners. So--why not Did Moróz and Snihurónka?

The archetypal nature of the icy grandfather, ceding way to his more delicate grand-daughter--who melts away in spring, cycling back to repeat out of the depths of each winter... it feels to me that something deeper (and older) is at work here than a late Imperial Russian fantasy.
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"L'Étang" :: French Words

3/20/2018

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Small frog in large pond
I am currently going through a French language obsession. Or, more precisely, a French word obsession. In trying to understand why, I'm seeing myself loitering (with great pleasure) at the building blocks stage of things.

I'm very much enjoying these Sicklemoon decks on Tinycards (that's a vocabulary App, a subsidiary of the language learning Duolingo program, and a log in is probably needed to see them). Each of these decks, like a sort of "sonnet plus one," has fifteen entries, each on a closely related theme. I think that's related to the way the program is set up, but to me, they are like fifteen word poems, introducing me, almost from a child's point of view, to snippets of French life: "Les Animaux de L'Étang." "Les Animaux de la Plage." "Les Fruits de la Forêt."

The pond one is a particular favorite (also the berries). Who needs to know the French words for waterstrider and whirlygig beetle? Evidently... me.

They're words--they are names--in an Ursula K. Le Guin sort of sense. Knowing the names... I think that still bestows real power--even if only a brief flare of it.

And... drat. The formatting has cropped off the accent aigu from the capital "E" of étang.




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Marie Bashkirtseff: the journal of a young artist, 1860-1884

4/25/2017

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I'm reading the "New and Revised" edition of 1919. My understanding is that there's a good, more recent, complete e-edition out (from Fonthill Press), an edition which restores all the "rampantly expurgated and cleansed" bits that her mother took out before allowing the work's publication.

Oh yes. Given the mischief I've read already on the page, I'm definitely intrigued to dip into Fonthill's unexpurgated bits, but... I'm also curious about the text that became a bestseller in Europe in 1887 (three years after Bashkirtseff's death)--the text, evidently, that held a beloved place of pride on the shelves of many a young educated woman of a certain class in the years before and after WWI.
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Thus far, the book has lived up to my expectations. So far, Marie is 16 years old, and I have moved only a little on from her early entries as a precocious 13 year old. But what an odd privilege, to read the words of this petted young woman, as she rackets around some fine estates in Italy and France:
[May—in Nice]
Paris—At last I have found what I longed for without knowing what it was! Life, that is Paris! Paris, that is life.... Nice—I regard Nice as an exile....

[September—in Paris]
Here there is neither morning nor evening. In the morning they are sweeping; in the evening the innumerable lights irritate my nerves... While at Nice one is comfortable! It is as if one were in a nest surrounded by mountains, not too high or too bare... I love Nice. Nice is my country...
Something tells me that both Nice and Paris must have been nice... in 1873, when Marie was living there.

Marie is known best these days for her journal, which she herself predicted... and somewhat for her paintings. She did some very fine paintings--not enough of which are on the internet (as of 2017). Here's hoping that will be rectified in the next couple of years.  I very much like these portraits.
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Thomas Andrews's Mount Auburn Cemetery Posts

11/8/2016

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My friend Thomas Andrews periodically posts short pieces, with photos, about his walks in Mt. Auburn Cemetery.  I love these pieces, which constitute brief rambles through a scenery with which I am intimately familiar.  Mt. Auburn, the first landscaped rural or “garden” cemetery in the United States, was founded in 1831 on a site that spread along the Cambridge and Watertown, MA line.

In honor of election day 2016 (US), I am reproducing here (with permission) his entries from today.  Text and photos, unless otherwise credited, are all Thomas's.

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Meandering Paths at Mount Auburn--Ann Chapman (click photo for linked source)

Less than 100 years ago, Helen Taussig was allowed to take medical classes at BU and Harvard, but not allowed to earn a medical degree from either school. Her Harvard histology professor only allowed her to take his class if she did not talk to any classmates, for fear of "contaminating" them.

She eventually got her MD at Johns Hopkins.

She was part of the team, with Alfred Blalock and Vivien Thomas, who invented the first heart surgery, solving a common heart issue common to newborns.



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©2016 Thomas O. Andrews. Grave of Helen Brooke Taussig, Mt. Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, MA.
©2016 Thomas O. Andrews. Grave of Dorothy Dix, Mt. Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, MA.
©2016 Thomas O. Andrews. Grave of Dorothy Dix, Mt. Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, MA.

Dorothea Dix worked tirelessly for the more humane treatment of the mentally ill.

During the Civil War, she was the Superintendent of Army Nurses.

She was never allowed to vote.

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Bad Art History

2/10/2015

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I was recently looking for a certain type of face, and William Bouguereau's (1825-1905) late work Priestess (1902) caught my attention.  Bouguereau, I quickly discovered, has a less-than-enviable reputation:  "As the quintessential salon painter of his generation, he was reviled by the Impressionist avant-garde"--and it's not just Wikipedia who is saying this.
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Scanning the internet for a quick, more general look at Bouguereau's artwork, I could see why Bouguereau's reputation has suffered since his glory days as one of the most popular painters in France.  But still, I was interested--enough to call up what books might be available on him via Inter-library loan. 

Bouguereau is the artist of some surprisingly familiar paintings--when my books came, I was not surprised to read this line in one appreciation:  "reproductions of Bouguereau's paintings are frequently the best-sellers in their respective museum shops, and the curators, responding like the nineteenth-century critics, despair over the public's taste."

But what did surprise me was... the books I ordered up on Bouguereau.... I'm sorry, but they were not good books.  I completely understand the cultural tick that causes people to sneer at those who choose to go to college to major in Art History.  Yes, yes, I know.  How is one to earn a living in that field?  But--how truly frustrating, to be unable to discover any kind of decent analysis of an artist who has retained his popularity for more than a century.

Don't get me wrong--I'm no rabid fan of the Victorian Alma-Tadema school.  I like my Impressionist paintings.  But there are some pictures by Bouguereau, or a series of pictures, that I find very interesting.

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Are these the same person?  Members of the same family?  What was the artist's relationship to this model?  I'm not the first person to be interested by this question.  And yet--the art books I received through Inter-Library loan--they did absolutely nothing to address this question.  Page after page of (ghastly) multi-figured quasi historical paintings were reproduced--at the expense of reproducing his more popular "genre" small groupings pictures--and, worse than this, there was almost nothing by way of commentary on the people who appeared in the paintings.  Bouguereau, one author complained, was not much of a letter-writer.  He kept close at home, "his personal life was his own." 

Really?  It seems to me... if, as a researcher, your only source for personal details is a man's (or perhaps his wife's) personal letters and perhaps his journal... you are not much of a researcher.  You have plucked the low hanging fruit, and moved on.  It's sheer laziness.  Why not even a catalog, distinguishing the figures appearing in each painting?  Perhaps this might be guesswork, but you could acknowledge your guesses, and the work wouldn't be in vain.  You'd be laying the groundwork for the next researching generation, giving a place to start, allowing us a better understanding of these paintings.

Who is this girl, aging before Bouguereau's eyes into a young woman?  A servant?   A paid model?  What did she mean to the man, to the painter?  What could an investigation of the man's interactions with his subjects reveal about the psychology behind these paintings?

It seems to me the Art Historians who are filling out the written columns that accompany the plate reproductions--they really don't have much feeling for what they are looking at, or for, or even why people continue to like this man's paintings.  Okay, Bouguereau's not a Millet, ennobling the dirt and the sweat and the work, in a peasant setting, and he's not an innovator when it comes to the surface and brushwork of a painting.  But there's still something interesting here.  Why not dig out that story?
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Todd Manly-Krauss--Oh, how I hate him!

6/7/2014

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On Writers You Want to Punch in the Face[book] (by Rebecca Makkai)

I have been thinking about this article since a friend shared it with me, a month or more back now.  It's a wonderful piece, in its own delightfully twisted way, and has provoked a fair amount of internet discussion. The article describes the imaginary-but-all-too-real "Todd Manly-Krauss," a writer who uses social media to write smugly and blithely and self-servingly about even the least of his achievements--with a nauseating undercurrent of tone-deaf gender insensitivity. 

Here's my standpoint--and it's a strongly visceral one.  My toes literally curl in revulsion when I read anything, in the real world, in the style of Todd Manly-Krauss (hereafter TMK!).  And not least--when I'm reading something I have written myself, or am even just reviewing an idea in my head, and my inner ear alarmedly senses that first beat of TMK intonation. 

The truth is not something that pleases me.  Because the truth is this: My fear of the TMK tone has stalled me out, and indeed inhibited my work, many, many more times than TMK writing has actually been a sin in which I've overindulged. 

And that's the element that has led me to loathe dear old (imaginary!) Todd Manly-Krauss so obsessively this past month. 

I'm not alone in my TMK fears.  One person commented on Rebecca Makkai's article: "It’s the authorial equivalent of the Christmas card letter that talks about the family’s perfect year."  Point taken. But this very real, fierce dislike of TMK--it feeds and spawns that wretched, powerful TMK fear.

And what, really, is so bad about getting a poorly written Christmas letter?  I'd rather get a sheaf of Christmas letters--some poorly written, some good--than not get any mail at Christmas.  I don't want my friends to turn the letter task into a process so lengthy, so weighted, so significant, that the letter would just absorb too much energy to actually complete, so--I never hear from them. 

The same goes, somewhat differently expressed, for the writers whose blogs I enjoy.  Don't get me wrong.  Most of the author's logs I enjoy have a high proportion of really great posts.  But they also have dopey ones too, ones I can recognize that the writers concerned are not expecting me to take too seriously.

TMK fear: it's just another hydra-head of the paralysis-perfectionist impulse.

Todd Manly-Krauss!  Oh how I hate him!
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    Sites I recommend

    These ones are maintained by long-time personal friends.

    William Reimann
    is a consummate artist.  There are so many images to enjoy on this site.  His carved wooden long-leaf red pine Rhinoceros (which he made for me when I was ~11 years old)  is a personal favorite.

    Starless River
    Is the U.K. based caving gear store run by serious hard-ass Tony Seddon. This link goes to the 'caves' section of the store's site--complete with alarming portrait photo of Tony ("After 7 days underground and 700m prussiking").

    The Oxford University 
    Cave Club
    Maintained by Steve Roberts, a guy who is extraordinary in so many ways, I'll just limit myself here to saying "Steve is a man who knows about motors."

    Bensozia
    John Bedell is an archaeologist, historian, and father of five living in Maryland. His blog is a fascinating grab-bag of historical, artistic, and political materials.  This entry about work and leisure gives a good example of his voice.

    Earthsign Studios
    This is Liz Manicatide (now Liz LaManche), principal at Emphasis Creative's personal art & graphics site.  I love Liz's work, panache, and aerial artistry, which leads me to-

    Flying Squirrel Consortium
    Phil Servita's site, and the place to go for custom fabricated circus equipment (either freestanding or fixed point), and aerial classes, if you happen to live in the area.

    Paul Nordberg
    Paul's site is... unique, authentic, & expressive, and pretty much exactly what I think of when I think of a website as an artform.

    Metro Bikes Trails Guide
    (St. Paul, MN)
    "Reviews and Reports on over 70 bicycle paths in the Minneapolis/Saint Paul area!"
    Maintained by the tireless Seamus Flynn, and a great little site for those local to the Twin Cities area.

    Green Ivy
    I enjoy the Ukrainian/Russian artisanship on this website.

    Sites I enjoy

    I don't know these people, but I appreciate their work.

    What's That Bug?
    The title says it all.  A useful site for both the non-bug-phobic & the consummate bug-phobe.

    Margaret & Helen
    Best Friends for Sixty Years and Counting…

    Raging Grannies
    I'm not a grandmother (or raging!), but I appreciate this site.  Especially the fact-checking part.
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