Jack's House

I think the world has truly gone insane.  If anybody calls someone else a m_therf__ker, especially if that person happens to be Eddie Murphy, that is a compliment.  The use of the N word in rap songs is constant and AOK, but people who are hysterical about "gay boy" also want to have To Kill a Mockingbird and Huckleberry Finn rewritten to suit their current tender sensibilities.
Sondheim wrote a song in 1971 called "You Could Drive a Person Crazy"--it had a lyric, sung by three women who are furious that the protagonist won't commit to them,  which went:
"I could understand a person
 If it's not a person's bag
 I could understand a person
 If a person was a fag..."

Subsequently changed to a drag.   Then to  "If he's set to go away...if he actually was gay."  And then with a female Bobbie, because diversity...if "she's set to go away."  Then "If she said to go away..." which makes no sense at all to the context of the song.  It's all very silly, like the kerfluffle over Timothee Chalamet's comments about opera and ballet this weekend. I disagree with him, but with the world burning around us, it is hardly a subject I think should take up much of any of our bandwidth, including a friend who is a performance manager at the Metropolitan Opera.

Totally agree.  A bit harsher than I prefer, but realistic and very well written.

Congratulations!  I know what I'm doing later tonight.

I just finished reading the final chapter.  I can hardly see for the tears in my eyes.

I am so sad the series is done, so happy with the ending, and so impressed by the magnificent story you created.  Not a spanking story or stories--but literature every bit as good as "Ordinary People" (the film and novel of which I will now have to revisit).

Which is why I search out your stories, and Danny's, and a number of others and scroll on by 90+% of what I perceive to be junk on the forum.  Keep writing the way you do.

Firs' and las' bothers me a whole lot less than people who don't bu-un (button) their jackets.  It's a silly affection that is also harder to pronounce, not lazier.  I don't see the point.

David, I loved the story.

Z, aren't 4H livestock always raised to be sold for slaughter to the highest bidder?  That makes them not really pets, but something else, making their raising and sale traumatic for some, perhaps many, 4H kids.  A former farmer acquaintance's 10 year old was devastated when his 4H project, a lamb, became family dinner.