8 March—On Be Nasty Day, let me start with Daylight Saving Time. When the whores in Washington should be legislating to have permanent Standard Time, instead they’re wasting their time and taxpayer dollars and crapping their pants—the Republicans, anyway—because of Donald Trump. You may recall that a few years ago when Marco Rubio was a U.S. senator he introduced the Sunshine Protection Act to end what he aptly called the “ridiculous and antiquated” practice of changing clocks twice a year.
Marco’s well-intentioned bill would have “locked the clock” on Daylight Saving Time, which was a mistake, of course. But it was a start. And it passed the Senate by unanimous consent. But Marco’s chronological legislation died in the House, in part because many thoughtful representatives argued that permanent Standard Time was the better way to go.
The next nasty is about HP computers and printers. I’ve lost count of the computers and printers I’ve had in the four decades-plus I’ve had computers and printers. So about 20 years ago I bought a highly touted HP laser printer. It broke down in less than a fortnight. HP service was disgracefully useless. So I returned the printer to Staples, no problem, and replaced the mother with a Brother. The Brother printer, which is old enough to vote, still performs admirably, despite Windows 11.
Windows 11 runs on my current HP desktop computer. Well, in the interest of accuracy, Windows 11 runs on the HP when the computer runs. A few years ago, when my custom-built 2013 Windows 8.1 desktop computer started showing signs of age, I replaced the old fellow with an HP, motivated largely by price. Long story short, it’s the lousiest computer I’ve ever owned or used. I shouldn’t quite call it junk, but it’s awfully close. And my senescent Windows 8.1 computer still works when called into service—and better on many occasions than the HP.
Hewlett-Packard’s anti-consumer business model certainly doesn’t help the brand. And it’s another reason I’ll never buy an HP product again.
Penultimately, Charter has bought Cox. Two of the most poorly rated cable-internet providers are now, pending a few more perfunctory approvals, a single entity and with some 38 million largely monopoly-captive customers have become the largest such operation in the country. Our hearts go out to Charter and Cox customers, who are bound to suffer even lousier cable and internet and customer service than before.
And last, Altice customers, like those of us in Litchfield, Torrington, Goshen, Morris, Warren, and Watertown, aren’t much better off than Charter and Cox customers. Because, while Altice’s cable TV isn’t rated all that badly, its broadband internet service—copper and fiber—is among the most poorly rated in the country. We certainly can attest to that . . .
7 March—In Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” Mark Antony soliloquizes over JC’s bloody corpse, “Cry ‘Havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war.” He’s thinking out loud, as soliloquizers do, about vengeance, fomenting war, and generally creating chaos. Sound familiar?
Well, Donald Trump has been crying “Havoc!” ever since his childhood, when, as people who remember him from Jamaica Estates—the Queens neighborhood where he lived until he was packed off to military school for “disciplinary reasons”—and Kew-Forest School, the local prep from which father Fred removed him for “behavioral issues,”—are not at all reluctant to relate, he was a big loudmouth bully. At Kew-Forest, it’s reported, big Donny served detention so often that the punishment was nicknamed “DT.” Maybe that’s why he’s added his middle initial.
One of his teachers at Kew-Forest asserts, “When that kid was ten, even then he was a little shit.” Little? And it appears that Trump has no hesitation confirming his obnoxious childhood—and adulthood: “When I look at myself in the first grade and I look at myself now, I’m basically the same. The temperament is not that different.”
(At New York Military Academy, it must be noted, some classmates remember adolescent Trump as a bully with an air of superiority who used his size and authority—as a moderately high-ranking cadet—to intimidate other cadets and not infrequently was called on the carpet. But others remember him as a “good guy,” popular on campus and with visitors. Just like delusional and otherwise misguided voters, it would appear. And of course he was a “Ladies Man,” according to the senior yearbook.)
And now senescent adolescent Donald Trump is crying “Havoc!” and letting slip the dogs of what can’t be war because Congress hasn’t declared it. Yet the psycho-sociopathic wannabe Nobel Peace Prize laureate and ruler of the world is demanding that Iran surrender unconditionally or else. Anything for peace. What a guy. But Iran’s president is calling Trump’s demand a dream.
The reality, of course, is that Trump is a nightmare who has made the American dream the American nightmare.
On the home front, then, talking about—but not crying—havoc, here’s a picture of Litchfield’s dogs of war, Hope and Glory. Well, they’re not actually dogs of war, more like bitches of chaos and destruction. They still won’t pose for a formal portrait, but this morning they took a break from their shock-and-awe blitzkrieg.
Given their short spans of attention and destructive tendencies, a name change to Donald and Trump was considered; but they’ve lovable and innocent and shouldn’t be insulted. On the other hand, another seriously considered—and distinctly appropriate—dual aptronym was Tornado and Tsunami. But they already answer to Hope and Glory . . .
6 March—It appears that the Trumpublican caucus of the U.S. House of Representatives is a training ground for stand-up comics. Okay, truth be told, it’s been pretty obvious since Congress officially convened on 4 March 1789 that most members of all or no parties in both the House and Senate are funny ha-ha just as often as they’re funny serious.
So on Wednesday, which happens to have been the 237th anniversary of that momentous day, a decidedly and prominently (but not unusually, considering the milieu) loathsome House Trumpublican dropped a magnificently ironic one-liner that should get him inducted into the Comedy Hall of Fame.
And here it is: Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, talking about his tyrannical master’s crusade to bully his way to the Nobel Peace Prize by, among other things, destroying Iran and any other entity that stands in his sociopathic way—without actually mentioning any of it, mind you—asserted, “We’re not at war right now, [although] they have declared war on us.”
Get it? “We’re not at war right now, [although] they have declared war on us.” That in itself is funny ha-ha. Hilarious, even.
But what makes it funny really really serious is that even as the baby-faced Trump-ass-kissing pol-comic was deadpanning his hilarious one-liner, a U.S. Navy submarine—which, for whatever reason, hasn’t as yet been identified—torpedoed the Iranian frigate IRIS Dena in Indian Ocean international waters off the southern coast of Sri Lanka, killing at least 87 sailors, whose remains have been retrieved by Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka was able to rescue only 32. (IRIS, for Islamic Republic of Iran Ship, is the Iranian equivalent of USS.)
Whatever Donald Trump and his flunkies may call it, that gratuitous, unwarranted, indefensible act of war instigated by and/or on behalf of the delusional and unstable self-declared President of Peace was the first sinking of a ship by a U.S. submarine-launched torpedo since the USS Torsk sank a Japanese coastal defense frigate in the Sea of Japan on 14 August 1945, the day before Japan announced its surrender in World War II.
For the record, the British submarine HMS Conqueror sank the Argentine cruiser ARA General Belgrano 37 years later, on 2 May 1982 during the Falklands War. (HMS, for His or Her Majesty’s Ship, is, of course, the British equivalent of USS and is never preceded by the definite article. And ARA, for Armada de la República Argentina, is the Argentine equivalent of USS.)
So far in his second reign of terror, the President of Peace, through his newly christened Department of War, has savagely, wantonly, and of course illegally murdered people—mostly civilians, though that doesn’t matter—of at least two countries. As far as we know. The very fact that Donald Trump unilaterally turned the Department of Defense into the Department of War speaks volumes about him and his psychopathic motivation. The question, then, is who’s next? It doesn’t matter why . . .
5 March—Today is the 256th anniversary of the Incident on King Street, known stateside, thanks to Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, and other seditionists, as the Boston Massacre. (That was in 1770, to save you the trouble of switching smartphone screens.) In the dastardly skirmish, nine soldiers in the service of HM George III shot and killed five civilian subjects of the selfsame monarch (like it or not) and wounded several others, all of whom were among the crowd of 300 to 400 discontented colonials, known stateside as revolutionary American colonists and Patriots, who were verbally and physically harassing the soldiers just doing their job.
British troops, it seems, had been deployed to Massachusetts (then the Province of Massachusetts Bay) two years earlier to support Crown bureaucrats and functionaries in enforcing unpopular legislation enacted by Parliament back in Blighty. Sounds kind of like the ICE-related skirmishes, what with government thugs enforcing unpopular legislation and all, doesn’t it? But don’t even think of going there.
Five people died as a direct result of the bloody incident, three on the spot—Crispus Attucks, Samuel Gray, and James Caldwell—and two from their wounds—17-year-old Samuel Maverick the next morning, and Patrick Carr a fortnight later.
If Crispus Attucks rings a bell, it’s because he’s traditionally regarded as the first casualty of the Revolutionary War. And it’s also because he was a Framingham-born black Wampanoag Indian (sorry, Native American), escaped (probably) or freed (just possibly) slave who worked as a sailor and stevedore. He often went by the alias of Michael Johnson for a pretty obvious reason.
Don’t even think of going back to Donald Trump’s unforgettable and delightful congressional testimony back in 1993 before a subcommittee on Indian—rather, Native American—gaming—i.e., genteel gambling—regulation. He commented—not inaccurately, as it happens—on the Mashantucket Pequots, who had recently opened their ludicrous Foxwoods casino that was siphoning suckers away from his own failing Atlantic City casinos: “They don’t look like Indians to me. They don’t look like Indians to Indians.”
That’s because the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation doesn’t require a specific minimum percentage of tribal blood for membership and all the perks that go with it, but instead requires proof of direct lineal descent from one of 11 ancestors listed on the 1900 or 1910 U.S. censuses. Even Donald Trump can be right.
Anyway, Paul Revere had young Henry Pelham engrave a depiction of what Pelham called “The Fruits of Arbitrary power, Or the Bloody Massacre.” But slick Revere beat the kid to the market with his own popular and profitable (but none the less patriotic, to be sure) iteration, “The Bloody Massacre Perpetrated in King-Street Boston on March 5th, 1770.”
No surprise that Henry wasn’t too happy:
When I heard that you was cutting a plate of the late Murder, I thought it was impossible, as I knew you was not capable of doing it unless you copied it from mine and as I thought I had entrusted it in the hands of a person who had more regard to the dictates of Honour and Justice than to take the undue advantage you have done of the confidence and Trust I reposed in you. But I find I was mistaken. . . . If you are insensible of the Dishonour you have brought on yourself by this Act, the World will not be so. However, I leave you to reflect upon and consider of one of the most dishonorable Actions you could well be guilty of.
The bastard. And Revere’s ride was really a flop. So here are Pelham’s original and Revere’s best-selling iteration, Pelham’s on top. Many of Revere’s engravings, like this one, were hand-colored at the time by Christian Remick:
4 March—As folks who depend on Hearst Connecticut Media’s paper rags—and even Hearst’s criminally misnamed ctinsider.com website—for timely news reporting won’t read until (possibly) tomorrow, yesterday Democrat Gov. Ned Lamont used his highly touted line-item veto to spike a measly six relatively innocuous sections of a 98-part criminally concocted and misnamed “emergency” omnibus bill that because of that spurious designation last week sped through the greasy Democrat-unbalanced General Assembly without the usual committee review and public hearings. Unbalanced (in all senses) legislatures or all persuasions can get away with all manner of evil.
“Let me be clear at the outset,” Lamont rationalized in his veto message, “my objection is not to the missions of the organizations named in these sections, nor to the goals the legislature seeks to advance. Many of these programs do meaningful work in communities across our state. My objection is to the process.”
Sure. So in that case why didn’t the good governor, who conspicuously burns the candle at both ends while playing both ends against the middle, veto the whole damn bogus emergency-certified Senate Bill 298, titled “An Act Concerning The Reallocation Of Certain State Funds And Various Provisions Relating To Education, Public Safety, General Government, Elections, Intermediate Care Facilities And Warehouse Distribution Centers”? It is an omnibus bill, after all, which means it can be stuffed with virtually anything at all and for any reason.
So it’s politics as usual in Connecticut. And it won’t change, let alone improve, until at least one of the Democrat General Assembly majorities or the (or a) Democrat governor—but preferably not all three at any given time—gets dumped and replaced by a non-Democrat, Republican or otherwise. As long as it’s not Green, Working Families, Democratic Socialist, Communist of America, or other crazy party, to be sure. Libertarian, on the other hand, could be pretty good.
Right. The problem, though, is that Connecticut Republicans, the party least unlikely to take over either house of the General Assembly or the governor’s mansion, isn’t going to take over anything at all in the foreseeable future—simply because the poor Connecticut GOP isn’t up to it. And it goes beyond its spineless refusal to disavow Donald Trump and all he stands for and all the crimes he’s committed as president.
As the sad-sack out-of-power party, Connecticut Republicans are naturally great at criticizing, posturing, and promising. But if the Connecticut GOP were ever to regain any meaningful power, would it make any meaningful difference, let alone improvements?
March—A very dear friend and devoted reader bristled at the last sentence of the 26 February disquisition on Peloquin’s new stratagem—“Like a prep school dorm that parents pay outrageously humongous bucks for to get rid of their little darlings . . .”: “Your last sentence is insulting, stereotypical, or, at the very least, ill informed,” she wrote.
Point taken. But, first, I can’t apologize for insults that may have been inferred but certainly were neither intended nor implied. Second, the assertion was implicitly qualified and restricted because nowhere did it say it applied to all or even most prep schools, parents, or little darlings. Of course, certainly, and without question or doubt, parents often—usually?—send their kids to prep schools and military academies for reasons other than getting rid of them—some very good reasons, in fact, that need neither elaboration, explication, nor defense.
Children may indeed be sent to private schools—including military academies—as boarders or day-hops for reasons of education or discipline, inter alia. Given the sorry state of education and discipline in all too many public schools at all grade levels, private schools certainly are an attractive ameliorative.
Back to insulting, stereotypical, and ill-informed, then, while many parents may indeed choose to send their kids to whatever schools for purely educational or disciplinary reasons, many others do it unapologetically to feed the kids into whatever universities will open the sky-lit doors to bright futures. Put simply, prestigious prep to prestigious university to prestigious and lucrative job. Don’t even try to deny it. And you can’t really blame parents for doing it.
While the education at prestigious—so-called “selective”—preps usually is damn good (we won’t indulge in invidious comparisons, so we won’t say it’s better than at public schools), even though the staffs usually aren’t paid nearly as well as those at public schools, in practical terms the quality of education is subsidiary to the prestige and feed factor. And, frankly, despite what “experts” may claim, judgement calls on education (as opposed to discipline) are in all events purely subjective, even speculative. Don’t even try to deny it.
All that said, as for ill-informed, I’ve encountered a number of children at boarding schools whose parents were too busy—make that otherwise occupied—to visit their kids at special school events or to allow them to visit their homes [sic, sadly] during school holidays and even summer vacations. And a few adults of my acquaintance have regretfully reported that same sad experience in their childhood. And all boarding schools make provision for such unfortunate children . . .
2 March—Among the pregnant questions pertaining to the United States non-war, peacekeeping bombing synchronized with Israel’s preemptive defensive bombing of Iran that mustn’t be asked is why the U.S. and other nations not unfriendly with Ukraine haven’t bombed or even threatened—postured?—to bomb Russia. The question isn’t rhetorical; it mustn’t be asked because we know the answer.
A pregnant question that shouldn’t—but not necessarily mustn’t—be asked is whether the U.S. and Israel bothered to tell—warn—any other non-Iran-friendly nations, especially those likely to be affected by the non-war, peacekeeping, preemptive, defensive bombing, so that they might prepare for the likely—if not inevitable—aftermath. You’ll recall that the U.S. and Israel had in fact warned alleged allies in the Middle East before the humongous, gratuitous, ineffective bunker-buster bombing of alleged Iranian nuclear facilities last summer.
Another non-rhetorical pregnant question that mustn’t be asked is what real threat to the U.S. has Iran posed. Ever. And seriously. And we all know the answer: It’s politically, tactically, and strategically—in that order—more expedient and less dangerous to mess with Iran than with Russia.
Then there’s the question of why all the big bad bombers from the U.S. mainland as well as ordnance and aircraft from the Navy’s big bad boats floating and posturing in the Persian Gulf evidently haven’t done anything as of this writing to keep the Strait of Hormuz open to shipping so that America’s despotic Arab allies can transport their oil and liquefied natural gas by sea as well as by land. Even as Trump’s warlords, like Pete What’s His Name, are incompetent asses, Netanyahu’s warlords generally know what they’re doing and plan for such things.
Last, we wonder about the three United States Air Force F-15E Strike Eagles that were shot down over Kuwait. Allegedly by mistake—friendly fire, as it’s known. The fighter airplanes probably flew out of Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina. Were they actually participating in Operation Epic Fury, as the U.S. calls the carnage, or just sightseeing? (Israel calls the preemptive carnage Lion’s Roar, by the way. You’ve got to love the de rigueur nomenclature of intimidation.)
Happily, all six aircrew ejected safely, were recovered, and are in stable condition. Tactfully avoiding the obvious question—why the three clearly, unmistakeably USAF airplanes were shot down in the first place—U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) chose, rather, to be “grateful for the efforts of the Kuwaiti defense forces and their support in this ongoing operation.”
Incidentally, F-15Es cost taxpayers about $97 million apiece. Will Kuwait reimburse us for its “mistake”?
1 March—Remember back in his 2024 campaign when Donald Trump promised to end wars, not start them? Anything to get the Nobel Peace Prize. And who believes anything Trump promises—or says—anyway?
And technically the current presumably strategic Israel-U.S. bombing of Iran isn’t a declared war. Yet. Don’t forget, though, the three-year Korean War wasn’t a declared war, just a police action.
The Israelis probably provided most of the intelligence that yesterday pinpointed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei—Iran’s Donald Trump, albeit avuncular and bearded—and the top military brass Israeli and U.S. ordnance handily took out. Israel is legendarily adept at that sort of stuff, as it is at crippling enemy air power and other proven highly effective military strategy. Khamenei and his generals are no great loss to the world, mind you. But the collateral damage—like innocent family members—is unfortunate. Mais, c’est la guerre.
There’s well-founded celebration in Iran now, as well as expected mourning. And perfunctory threats of reprisal and related posturing, of course. It remains to be seen if the good guys or Khamenei’s thugs will prevail. But are the good guys really good? Reza Pahlavi—son of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (a corrupt autocrat like Donald Trump but far more elegant), whose despicable regime was overthrown in 1979—is ready, willing, and able to lead Iran as—preferably, he insists—a secular democratic republic. (Reza has been living in exile in the DC area for four decades. Presumably his papers are in order, though that wouldn’t stop ICE from harassing him.)
One wonders how the death of Donald Trump while he’s still in office—by natural or other means—would be taken by the American public. There’d surely be lots of dancing in the streets and government offices and media boardrooms, among virtually all places. One also wonders how a new administration—even under the execrable creep JD Vance—would differ from Trump’s.
On the subject of Vance, remember Vince Vance & the Valiants? Their “Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran” never quite made it to the top-hundred in 1980 but was deservedly popular nevertheless. It saw the light again last year during Trump’s peaceful bombing of Iran. And this year . . . why not?
8 February—During his interminable performance at the Capitol theater Tuesday night, Donald Trump was so wired by Diet Coke that he broke forth with his favorite song, “When I Rule the World,” an underground hit from 2015 by Sophie Xeon, Cecilia Efraimsson, and Marcus Andersson. Two of his senior flunkies show their appreciation in the photo. The lyrics, condensed under the photo, give one second thoughts about Trump’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
When I rule the world, then I’m gonna make you sweat,
Dog collar ’round your neck, on your knees and scrub the deck.
Oh, there’s a spot over there so I’ll drag you by the hair.
So scrub it, rub it, whip it, dry it, ’til I tell you to stop.
When I’m on the throne, it’s a total freak zone.
You can call me mommy and I’ll throw a dog a bone.
Better bite on that bone, or you’re never going home.
So bite it, break it, hit it, lick it, ’til I tell you to stop
When I rule the world, then you’re the little girl.
You should do as I say ’cause things are gonna be my way.
I rule the world, so get down on your knees.
Better do as I please, until I tell you to stop.
When I rule the world, then I’m gonna make you work.
Brring brring! Stay alert, keep on pushing ’til it hurts.
So now look who’s sorry, now they’re answering to me.
So, scrub it, rub it, whip it, dry it, ’til I tell you to stop.
When I wear the crown all the people bow down.
I can be your daddy and you’re gonna make me proud.
If you don’t, you’ll be bound and thrown in the dog pound.
So, bite it, break it, hit it, lick it, ’til I tell you to stop.
When I rule the world, then you’re the little girl.
You should do as I say ’cause things are gonna be my way.
I rule the world, so get down on your knees.
Better do as I please, until I tell you to stop.
When I rule the world, then you’re the little girl.
You should do as I say ’cause things are gonna be my way.
When I rule the world, so get down on your knees.
Better do as I please, until I tell you to stop.
When I rule the world, so things are gonna be my way,
’Til I tell you to, ’til I tell you to, ’til I tell you to stop.
27 February—Not that it means anything, of course, so it must be merely coincidental that Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos paid a visit to the White House yesterday and shortly thereafter Netflix withdrew its offer to buy Warner Bros. Discovery after Paramount Skydance—controlled by daisy-chaining Trump collaborators the evil Ellison father-son dynasty—raised its offer.
Apropos nothing, Netflix stands to get a $2.8 billion termination fee from Warner, likely to be covered by Paramount.
So we’re told that while David Ellison (the son) had actually met with Donald Trump earlier, Ted Sarandos didn’t actually get to grovel at Trump’s chronic venous insufficiency-compromised feet, but instead was harangued and harassed by Trump flunkies about whatever and more.
We know that Trump had promised not to get involved with the Warner Bros. Discovery-Netflix-Paramount Skydance machinations. But we also know that Trump’s word is as good as his morality and stability. It’s likely that Sarandos, an active liberal and Democrat, was reminded by Trump’s flunkies that their lord and master had publicly warned Netflix that unless it dumped Susan Rice from its board it would “face the consequences.”
Susan Rice, for those who forget, is the Oxford-educated (Rhodes Scholar) assistant secretary of state, national security advisor, United Nations ambassador, and more whom Trump calls a “political hack” with “no talent or skills” because she served the administrations of three Democrat presidents.
Back to the Paramount Skydance takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, then, outside of the usual corporate crap attendant to such deals, observers and commentators observe and comment that there are “significant” regulatory hurdles to be overcome before it can be finalized. These include making it through Trump’s Department of Justice (his personal shyster firm), Trump’s Federal Trade Commission, and Trump’s Federal Communications Commission.
Is there any doubt the takeover will make it over all those hurdles in no time, just like the Paramount-Skydance merger floated over last summer? There also are state and foreign regulatory hurdles, to be sure, but with Trump bullydozing the way for his extended despotic media control, it’s a done deal.
Something else we’ll have to live with. Until happy days are here again . . .
26 February—The big news in Monday’s Hartford rag, as reported by Emily Olson, was that Litchfield’s illustrious wannabe property magnate Doctor Judge Michael Peloquin has come up with a brilliant new threat—sorry, make that idea—for the 39-acre property Virginia Mortara sold him a few years ago for what was supposed to be an extended-care facility.
No need to rehash the popular doctor judge’s financials. (But type “Peloquin” in the header search field to refresh your memory.) Suffice to say that in October he paid off a $400,000 note to one of his lenders that had been executed only in June. But as of this writing he still has other pending mortgage obligations as well as impressive tax liens from the Internal Revenue Service, the Town of Litchfield, and the Borough of Litchfield on the books. But Peloquin is a survivor.
And his lawsuit against Litchfield’s Planning and Zoning Commission is pending. And his 91 North Street manse, a former mortuary, is once again on the market, this time for $2,850,000.
So what, you may wonder, is Doctor Judge Peloquin’s latest strategy to screw—sorry, impress—Litchfield? As Emily Olson wrote, “the idea is for housing homeless teens who are attending schools in Waterbury.”
“The town of Waterbury, I’m told,” Doctor Judge Peloquin told Emily, “has more than 500 students that are homeless. That disgusts me. That needs to change. So I’m coming in with six buildings for the homeless in Litchfield.”
In the tradition of Donald Trump, Michael Peloquin is short on details. But you wonder if, among lots of other things, the 500 homeless Waterbury kids would become 500 Litchfield residents, with the town forced to foot the bill for their education.
Don’t even think that the good doctor judge, who obviously cares about homeless kids, could pretty easily give homes to perhaps 50 of the poor waifs in his 6,783-square-foot manse with six bedrooms and six bathrooms. Eight to a bedroom, eight to a bath sounds pretty feasible and reasonable in the circumstance. Like a prep school dorm that parents pay outrageously humongous bucks for to get rid of their little darlings . . .