Apostrophes and Other Complexities

The binkster's brain was feeling stable enough that she could walk with me the five blocks from my apartment to the farmers * market yesterday.
Here bink is, below left, holding herself together so the waves of light coming off those sunflowers don't knock her apart:

 

ALL THAT LIGHT. bink's concussion reminds me how smashingly bright the world is, which you barely notice usually.

bink's problem is with her vision. If she were a doll, I'd say that the bangs on her head pulled the rubber bands that hold her eyeballs in place out of whack, so her eyes don't work together in perfect synch.
That makes her dizzy and nauseous.

I suggested she go to a Doll Hospital.
She's seeing a neuro-ophthalmologist instead. There's nothing wrong with her eyes themselves, luckily, it's the brain connection (the rubber bands, I guess), and that will get better, though she might have to wear some funny glasses and look like a scruffy kid in Charlie Brown or the Bad News Bears.
She's hoping she'll be okay by her wedding in a couple months, but concussions can last a long time. (She's in her fourth month now.)

I'm relieved that I'm feeling well again--my sore shoulder righted itself within three days. Lucky! It hurt badly, but I must not have been very injured. Maybe I just slept on it wrong?

It was nice to sit still for a coupla days and read the last two volumes Harry Potter, in reverse order. The last book, HP & the Half-Blood Prince is the best, partly because... there's no quidditch! *
Then I wanted to back up and remind myself what led up to it. I skipped the quidditch but was still reminded of the books' flaws.

What bugs me most is the treacly Victorian goal: a cozy world with large Christmas dinners for all the happy married couples and their adorable children!
(Good God, it's my bugbear hygge all over again.)

And the story's stereotypical sexism makes it read like it was written in the 1970s rather than the early 2000s. 
But I still liked immersing myself in the complete, coherent world of magic that J K Rowling created--she's absolute genius that way.

Her characters are wooden and predictable, and she's got no sense of humor––sort of like Harry himself––but you know, a good story can withstand a lot of flaws.
Look at Shakespeare...

The Dolls' Midsummer Dream

The girlettes loved Harry Potter (they are not critical like me)--they just saw the magic and ignored the characters. But none of them want to play any of the female roles in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
"They are not fun ones," they say. 

AMND's female characters are either boring or they're royally screwed: the royal wedding that frames the action is between Theseus and the Amazon he conquered in war, Hippolyta. She's his war loot.
He says,
''Hippolyta, I woo'd thee with my sword
And won thy love doing thee injuries…''

Gross!

So the girlettes are mish-mashing the characters--I think they've imported some magic from Harry Potter, and they've renamed their play  The Dolls' Midsummer Dream.

It's coming along slowly, which is fine except I notice the light is juuuussst starting to tip toward fall....

"We can adjust that", the say.

And there are all those hot August nights ahead. We'll be fine.


*Should there be an apostrophe in Farmers['] Market?

Answer (from Merriam Webster): If you want there to be. Variants with or without an apostrophe are acceptable.

However, "Since a farmers market is a place where farmers convene, but that does not necessarily belong to the farmers, many style guides recommend eliminating the apostrophe and treating the plural noun as a modifier: farmers market, a market for farmers."

P.S. Insert Erroneous Radish [Here]

"The British have a term for an erroneously inserted apostrophe: the greengrocer's apostrophe, predicated on the notion that a produce vendor’s handmade sign is likely to have an apostrophe where a simple plural is called for (e.g., radish’s rather than radishes)."

Interesting! But, geez., that sentence drips with disdain for people who misuse apostrophes. I hate when people act as if grammar is a moral issue.

"Erronesously inserted"?

"Doctor, I have erroneously inserted a radish up this grammarian's nose, predicated on the notion that their brain is wilting and needed an infusion of bright, snappy crunch."

"A simple plural"? Punctuation rules are not so simple. And they're not some sort of eternal Ten Commandments of Language.

I see lots of apostrophes used to mark plurals. It makes sense:
people got the idea in school that they should mark an addition but never absorbed the reason why.
This does not mean they are stupid or bad.

Article "The Mysterious Origins of Punctuation" suggests that our emoticons are the first new punctuation marks since the printing press froze marks in their stride.

That's interesting--I was just thinking about this when I handwrote a chatty letter to a friend this weekend and found myself drawing smiley (or frowny) faces in at spots.
I actually stopped to ask myself if I wanted to do that, and decided yeah, sure! Why not? They've become such handy accent markers.

** Bloody Quidditch 

I looked up the spelling of "quidditch" and see that the real-world game was renamed last week because J K Rowling is seen as "anti-trans".
OMG.
Keep the game she invented, but change the name?
Why is appropriating the stuff you like and denying its creator okay?

That seems dishonest and underhanded.
How 'bout if you feel so strongly about her, you just stop playing the game?
No one is playing quidditch because there aren't other terrific ball games. They're playing it BECAUSE of the association with Harry Potter, in other words, J K Rowling.

Below: Reading J K Rowling with visiting Pixie. She comes in the back door, which has no screen door (but I leave it open anyway, for air flow).

I LOVE that people are mish-mashing gender/sex/whatever--loosen it all up! In Christ there is no male or female. cf Galations 3:28

But I hate that the discussion around trans stuff is so divisive--among people who really want the same things: liberation!
There are plenty of people who really ARE anti-trans, as in, they would love to destroy trans people.

I hate that there's not really a free discussion among imaginative people who DO want to bring magic to gender roles. Too many people are going at each other with beaters bats, like if they disagree they're bludgers. (Quidditch terms.)

Is it really anti-trans of JKR to object to "women" being referred to as "people who menstruate" (because men can menstruate too), or, worse, "menstruators" (like dementors?).

Menstruators?

Come on! That's like "bleeders", or like the offensive name for straight people, "breeders".

Meanwhile, the words man & men remain the same, so far as I can see. Ah, the norm we all aspire to, eh? those [relatively] sealed, dry bodies.

Once again I notice that people who are hot for inclusion often overlook Old People and Other Variants on the Supposed Norm.
People who've come up with this new name seem to have overlooked that bodies that menstruate only do so for about half a body's lifespan, if all systems are go.
And if they're not go, or if you age out... then what are you?

Couldn't we do better than this?

I tell ya, I am glad I work in a workplace that flies under the radar of that particular social issue.
We've got plenty of others, and not that we're not affected by the question of menstruation and bathrooms too.
A couple examples:

A customer was asking for a change of clothes because she had her period and had bled in hers--to prove her point, she pulled down her underwear and showed the cashier her bloody crotch.
(Our policy is to give a change of clothes to anyone who asks anyway, no need to prove the need.)

Another customer peed on the floor in the corner of the store.
Should we reopen our bathrooms, which we closed when Covid came?
I think we should, though I admit it's been really nice not having to deal with the problems that come with public restrooms, including people shooting up in them.
Should we cut the bottom of the doors off so we can get in if they OD? (I think we should.)

So, yeah.
And off I go now, to this wild ride of a workplace.
I love it there so much, but I was disturbed last week to see that the gauntlet of drug dealers lining the street outside the store had returned.

In the ongoing whack-a-mole with the City, the dealers & co. had moved a few streets away at the end of last summer, but once again the police came down on them, so they've shifted back.

I don't know. It gets complex if you go much further out than this, but I continue to try to see us all as Beings Who Need Water and Food.

Who gave these creatures consciousness, and why did they think that was a good idea? We've got it though, and since we've got it, we also need some really good stories, flaws and all.