I am part of a degenerate elite.

If Sen. Michael Bennet runs for president, his brother at the NY Times can't write about it.

If Trump finds a way to pardon Manafort, NY State prosecutors will hit him with more charges. And Roger Stone should've kept his mouth shut and his fingers off the keyboard.

Mueller's report is expected very soon.

The Vatican's summit on clergy sexual abuse has begun.

Republicans are trying to undo progressive measures approved by the electorate.

The 2018 Nebula Award finalists.

What 'Peanuts' taught me about queer identity.

A judge in the Commonwealth (not state) of Virginia has no sense of history, equal rights or humor.

In Hawaii, the art of bark cloth making.

In New York City, persecution of people wearing black hairstyles is legally banned as racial discrimination. I hope the rest of the country follows in this.

A different kind of theory of everything.

Vanishing flights of monarch butterflies/

Lorena Bobbitt Gallo on domestic violence.

Endangered in India: WhatsApp, free speech, encryption.

Clarence Thomas goes to war against the rights of non-citizens.

The Supreme Court *unanimously* decided against civil forfeitures and policing for profit.

Brexit and the loss of citizenship.

One of the email addresses I have has gone bonkers batshit borked.

It is the one at aginc.net. Do not use it!

If you need to get hold of me, use the email that is my real first and last name as one word, and gmail.com.

Anything sent to aginc.net will not reach me. I assume that the creatures that lurk in the interwebs are snacking on it.

A Revolutionary War grave site may have been found in Lake George, NY, above Albany. There were several campaigns up and down the Hudson River and around Lake George (the lake), so I'm surprised that it's taken until now to discover this.

The British-Irish dialect quiz.

Researchers create first evidence-based map of elephant populations in Asia.

How a trans soldier took on the jail that denied her medication -- and won.

Media silence as gang-rape survivor from northern Iraq wins the Nobel Peace Prize.

Introverts don't hate people -- they hate shallow socializing.

Pope Defrocks Theodore McCarrick, Ex-Cardinal Accused of Sexual Abuse

This deserves more than just a headline link.

Francis has done something here that hasn't happened in history -- he has laicized a cardinal archbishop for committing sexual abuse, and not just any cardinal archbishop but one of the three most powerful in the country. This is the man who ran the Diocese of Washington, D.C., which includes Georgetown University and Catholic University -- you can't tell me that the guy at the top of the hierarchy has no input on decisionmaking at Catholic universities. (The other two most powerful dioceses are New York and Chicago; sometimes Boston get in there too.) Also, quoting the article:

Mr. McCarrick was long a prominent Catholic voice on international and public policy issues, and a champion for progressive Catholics active in social justice causes.

Which means he had a voice in what happened on the Hill.

What does it mean to laicize someone? Let me provide a comparison to the military, since in many ways the Catholic hierarchy is based on the Roman hierarchy at the time of Constantine.

Suppose you have a general who screws up really badly. Whoever's above him can bust him down a few ranks, remove him from power -- but he's still in the military. He's still subject to its rules. But if it's bad enough, and more is discovered, he might get kicked out all the way -- dishonorable discharge, not entitled to anything more in terms of military benefits, and possibly barred from some other jobs.

In McCarrick's case, the Pope removed him from ministry in June (took him away from the ordinary contact with people and the rights and privileges of being a cardinal archbishop). A month later McCarrick resigned from the Council of Cardinals (there goes his power and influence over the powerful) and suspended him from all priestly duties (can't celebrate the Mass, can't hear confessions, can't marry people, etc.) But being suspended doesn't mean he was out of the picture. He was still there, he just couldn't do anything. Now, by defrocking him, laicizing him, the Pope has taken away his identity and given him a new one: a known malefactor who has been punished after the accusations against him were proven true.

There is a financial side as well: a defrocked cleric at any level loses church-provided housing and financial benefits. McCarrick is 88; I suspect he lives in a church-sponsored residence. If so, not for long. Any stipend he received as retirement pay is gone. He might end up having to pay his own way in a small apartment with his Social Security, if he wasn't good at investing.

Some take-aways from this:

-- If the Pope will kick out a cardinal archbishop, a "prince of the church", those who have been abusers are due for their own reckoning.

-- I have not heard anything at all about the possibility of Church-backed (as in paying, not influencing) counseling for victims of abuse and their families. This should happen.

-- This should make it a little easier for people who have been abused and mistreated to come forward.

-- Abuse of power will now come at a high price.

Do I think this is the end of it all? No. This is the beginning, only the tip of it. More will come. The house needs cleaning; this is only beginning to clean one shelf in one closet, even if it's the top one.

Pirate Jenny rolled over and stretched, opening up the spaces between all her toes, then rolled back neatly to her feet, walked over to me and nudged. "Are you sure you're awake enough? Oh, all right." She yawned and reached out to touch a soft pink felt ball with one front paw, snag it with a claw and pull it back to herself to hold and knead...

As Haruar and the yeti came over the hill, they could see the raging of the river, engulfing the small stream with its broken bridge and a third of the way up the valleyside. The waters were nowhere near the outcropping sheltering Rrua, though. Rrua was half covered in the four-legs loose fur, lying so loose-limbed that Haruar stared hard to make sure she was still breathing. Criaor lay next to Rrua on the downhill side; little Ahtahtaht lay next to Rrua's head, backed into the rock face away from her teeth, in case she woke disoriented, and was licking Rrua's sore ear. The other four-legs had moved further uphill and were cropping grass and small plants, as if all were well, though it was apparent that one was keeping an eye on the river's movement, another was standing guard, of sorts, over Rrua and Criaor, and the third was watching the crest of the hillside. As soon as they were visible to one another, the four-legs on watch ran up to greet them.

"Yoooooooooooouuuuuuuuuu caaaaaaaaaammmmmmmeeeeeeee baaaaaaaaaaaaccccccckkkkk!" Beeta exclaimed. "Weeeeeeeeeeeee aaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrreeee sssssssssstiiiiiiiiiilllllllllllll heeeeeeerrreeeeeee."

"And Rrua?" Haruar asked. She had to drop the food she carried in order to speak.

"Sssssshhhhheeeeeeee llllllliiiiiiiiiivvvvvvveeeeeeessssssss."

Ahtahtaht wriggled carefully backward, out from between Rrua and the rock face, and trotted up to them. "Heeeeeerrrrrrr eeeeeeeeaaaaaaarrrrrrr hhhhhhooooootttttt."

The yeti looked down at them with no expression, and walked down to sit in the space near Rrua's head. Criaor, who had been napping, awoke and watched as the yeti reached over to put its forepaw, with its long clawless toes, on Rrua's ear and head and simply leave it there for a long moment. The hard spot on her ear broke open, draining out blood and yellow goo... and then that spot was gone, as if it had never been except for the bare patch where there was no fur. Rrua shuddered once, and then began breathing more deeply, as if she were only sleeping. The yeti gathered her onto his lap and held her as she breathed, and the color came back into her nose, and the tip of her tail twitched -- it had not moved since the wolf attack.

Criaor said in a low voice, "Thank you." He got up, nosed at Rrua, and then held still while the yeti ran its paws over his sides, and the shallow slash at the edge of his ribs where the wolf had caught him in the fight was gone, as if it had never been. He could not help it; he bowed to the yeti, the full-on forelegs-out bow that was properly owed only to Haiirao, First Brother.

The yeti regarded him calmly, reached out to put that cold paw on his head for an instant, and Criaor rose, hungry but whole. He ran up to where Haraur stood. "I'm so glad you're back!" he said, and rubbed himself along her entire side as he would have done as a kitten.

"Let me guess: you're hungry." Haraur felt she had to make a joke; she was seeing miracles and it was almost too much to deal with, though she would not have wanted the miracles to stop because of any limitation of her own. "Take half; the other half is for Rrua."

Criaor nodded and pulled off a back leg and haunch, and took it aside up the hill to eat it. "I left some for you both."

Haraur dragged the rest of the food down near where Rrua still lay on the yeti's lap, but not so near that it would alarm the small four-legs, who had gathered around the yeti and Rrua. They stepped aside so that she could walk up to the yeti and see for herself that Rrua was better, breathing easily. The yeti, who had been smoothing down the fur on Rrua's side, looked over at Haraur, who took a deep breath and stepped forward.

It didn't hurt. That was her first thought, as the yeti moved its hands over her. It didn't hurt, and it didn't feel too cold. It felt ... it felt like the way air moved high up on a mountain, fresh and clear and just moist enough to numb briefly, not to harm. She wondered if that was what the four-legs felt, or if they would even think of their experience in the same way, with their narrow little hard toes and their thick fluffy fur. Maybe different bodies and different languages did not share the same ideas, along with the same words.

Pirate Jenny gazed out the window nearby, where a bird was singing on a branch. "You hear that? It's a declaration of war against any other bird-of-that-kind that comes near. But even I cannot understand all the words."

Haruar closed her eyes and breathed slowly, deeply, until the yeti's forepaw stopped touching her. When she opened them, Rrua had shifted on the yeti's lap and was opening her eyes. "Where am I? Oh, there you are. Is everyone all right? I'm so hungry."

[End of Part the Eleventh]