October 14, 2026

FROM CELIA HAYES:  My Dear Cousin: A Novel In Letters (Adelsverein.)

When Peggy Becker married Englishman Tommy Morehouse in San Antonio in the spring of 1938, her cousin and best friend Venetia “Vennie” Stoneman was her bridesmaid. After the wedding, Peg and Tommy traveled across the Pacific to Malaya, where Tommy managed his family’s rubber plantation. There they expected to raise a family and live a comfortable and rewarding life among the British expatriates in the tropics, while Vennie returned to Galveston to continue training as a nurse.
The start of the Second World War changed those comfortable, settled lives: Tommy Morehouse became a prisoner of war, Peg barely escaped the fall of Singapore with her small son, and Vennie Stoneman was a nurse in the US Army Nurse Corps, tending to battlefield casualties in North Africa, Italy, and France. In Australia, Peg waits out the war, wondering if her husband will survive brutal captivity by the Japanese, and Vennie risks her own life as an air evacuation nurse. Throughout all, the two women write to each other, of their lives, loves, of Vennie’s patients and comrades, and Peg’s children and the woes of running a wartime household among rationing and shortages of shoes for her children.

Posted at 7:00 am by Sarah Hoyt

THE USUAL PRE-ELECTION BS:

Posted at 7:00 am by Glenn Reynolds

I ALSO DON’T BELIEVE THE NOW YOU SEE HIM NOW YOU DON’T HOMUNCULUS WILL CLOSE THE DEAL:  A Blue Ripple in Texas?

It appears that one James Talarico is the present big blue hope for Democrats who have a passionate interest in turning Texas blue by somehow wedging him into a seat in the US Senate. This in spite of being someone which hardly anyone seems to have heard of, six months ago. He’s young, slick-appearing, superficially polished, makes all the right noises and voices all the correct progressive platitudes … I swear, they must order up these candidates by the dozen, from some central Dem Party clone factory/distribution warehouse full of test tubes. They are all youngish, sleek, shallow, did all the right colleges and socially-responsible early jobs, have an appealing but not too exotic background, get fawning national press coverage, do fundraising events outside of Texas, raise the hopes that this time around they will get somewhere with Texas voters as a whole … and then somehow before the big day, it all goes flat. The air goes out of the bubble. It happened with Wendy Whats-her-name in the pink tennis shoes, to Robert Francis the Fake Hispanic O’Rourke, and it looks as if James Talarico is also about to fizzle out in a similar manner.

But Celia and I could be wrong. So kindly all y’all get off your duffs and vote. We don’t want to lose Texas like we lost Colorado.

Posted at 4:06 am by Sarah Hoyt

October 13, 2026

OPEN THREAD: I disagree with your philosophy. What killed the cat’s not curiosity.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

HMM: Ilhan Omar Was 37 When She Entered Congress. Soon, She Became 36. “Omar became a year younger, you see, because she has stated publicly that she entered the U.S. as a minor, under the guardianship of her father, but if she was actually 18 when she entered the country, she was not actually a minor at all.”

Posted at 8:37 pm by Stephen Green