Do you ever find yourself wishing you could see R2D2 and the Hulk dressed in Renaissance Flemish clothing? Well, now you can.

That is almost certainly more than enough damage to your retinas for one day.

Do you ever have one of those days where you read two articles in a row that inadvertently seem to play off each other? Today I read “Why Do Americans Love to Blame Teachers?” and then “The Death of Adulthood in American Culture,” and I’ve enjoyed the feel of them bouncing around together in my brain.

Teachers are – or are supposed to be – the quintessential grown-ups. They’re second only to our parents in training us, disciplining us, and being figures of awe. I have long wondered whether the vilification of teachers (something I think of as a recent phenomenon, but that first article demonstrates is not) isn’t a knee-jerk “you’re not my boss any more” kind of reaction. People remember chafing against restrictions more than they appreciate the patience that was shown them.

The “Death of Adulthood” article is a bit of a slog if you’re not a dude, but he does eventually get around to the female side of things. What interested me most is that while he argues (effectively, I think) that American adult literature is pretty puerile, he doesn’t bother to analyse actual YA literature – the books that are so popular – at all. He as much as says he doesn’t read it, which is why he probably doesn’t realize that while adult literature may be pining for a return to lost youth, YA literature (in my opinion) is a road-map toward growing up.

Maybe people do feel unmoored without the old order and the patriarchs to enforce it, but I think YA literature addresses that. It’s hopeful literature, to my mind. Here are the things that really matter; here is the way we overcome our limitations, work together, and build a future worth having. The world is full of possibility and potential. I don’t think you’re ever too old to need a reminder of these things.

So sayeth an interesting NYT article about MRI scans of dogs’ brains. Of course, I suspect anyone who loves dogs could have told you dogs have emotions. I witnessed a display of unbridled canine joy just yesterday morning, when my husband returned from a week in Japan. It’s hard to doubt it once you’ve seen our whippet bounding around, running in circles, and frantically snuggling up to him the moment he sits down.

What’s more interesting to me in this article is the argument that emotions comprise personhood. In our household, we do believe Una is a person, but we would claim it’s because she has a “personality”. Emotional reactions are part of her personality, but not all of it by any means. The article, however, implies that emotion should make the difference between our treating animals as “things” and our treating them as “people”.

But should it? Are emotions the most important measure of personhood? I don’t mean to imply that I have the answer. This is something I think about a lot, however, and play with in my writing. I’ve created a species of dragon who do not experience emotions in their natural form, but are subject to emotions in human form, and find them profoundly disconcerting.

Are dragons in dragon form not “people”? I think they are. Is having emotions somehow superior? Some of my characters believe that, but I don’t. On the flip side, dragons sometimes don’t consider humans “people” – they’re too irrational!

The challenge and the goal, I think, is to accord respect – and a recognition of personhood – to minds that are different than our own. Even just among humans, there’s a lot of variation. Recognizing animal personhood may not be feasible until we can genuinely value all the different flavours of our own.

The St. Gobnait in Seraphina was inspired by a real Irish saint, whose church and sacred spring we visited years ago. Today (Feb. 11) is her holy day in Baile Bhuirne (Ballyvourney). Here’s an article mentioning Gobnait and some other ancient holy wells in Ireland. The Diocese of Kerry page has fewer pictures but is more informative. The last several paragraphs are in Irish, and are (according to my husband, my resident translator) a description of how to do the devotional tour. I will just bring your attention to a bit of Irish I understood, however:

If you do drink water at the well you take responsibility for your own well being!….. tá creideamh agus creideamh ann!

That is to say: there’s belief, and there’s belief! The well, as I recall, is at the bottom of a hillside full of cows. It was pouring rain when we were there. We didn’t sample it ourselves.

Beannachtaí Lá Gobnatan daoibh!