Friday: Hili dialogue (and Leon lagniappe)

May 6, 2016 • 6:00 am

It’s May 6! On this day in 1757, Christopher Smart was put into the lunatic asylum in London, where he wrote the best cat poem ever, “For I will consider my cat Jeoffry,” part of a larger poem called “Jubilate Agno.” Read it! And, on this day in 1937, the Hindenberg disaster occurred, killing 37 and evoking the famous radio comment, “Oh the humanity!”. Finally, on May 6, 1954, Roger Bannister ran the first sub-four-minute mile.

Notables born on this day include Sigmund Freud (1856), Orson Wells (1915), and George Clooney (1961), a man with whom I’d gladly trade places. Those who died on this day include Henry David Thoreau (1862) and Marlene Dietrich (1992).

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s on the hunt again, but not too successfully:

Hili: It was on this branch…
A: What was?
Hili: A dove, it was there and it flew away.
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In Polish:
Hili: Był na tej gałęzi…
Ja: Kto?
Hili: Gołąb, był i poleciał.
And in nearby Wrockawek, Leon has an interspecies interaction:

Leon:  Snail, why are you dawdling?

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And I forgot, in the list of daily events, to mention Holocaust Remembrance day, which began the evening of May 4 and ended yesterday evening. All over Israel everything stops for one minute while a siren sounds and people pause and remember. Here’s the traffic in Israel yesterday:

One of the people we lost is Abramek Koplowicz; Kelly Houle is illustrating and making a book of the first poem at the link.

h/t: Orli

17 thoughts on “Friday: Hili dialogue (and Leon lagniappe)”

  1. Watched the video… Heard a podcast from Sam Harris last Saturday: We don’t know how many brilliant people left the world in the holocaust…

    1. That is true – lucky to have Einstein inter alia. However humble lives are also of value…

      2. To paraphrase (I think) Stephen Jay Gould in “The Mismeasure of Man” (his diatribe against the IQ industry), “the sad thing is that people as intelligent as Einstein almost certainly lived and died as illiterate slaves.”

    1. er, Hili might disagree with this line –
      “For the English Cats are the best in Europe.”!!!

  3. The Zeppelin that burn out in Lake Hurst was called Hindenburg honoring the guy who had won the second battle of Tannenberg and who was the stirrup holder for Hitler. Hindenburg’s image has changed from famous to infamous over the years.

  4. If I once knew I had since forgotten the minute of work stoppage. Powerfully somber.

    Condolences to any reading who lost loved ones.

    Mike

  6. Orson Welles — a towering artist, much of whose wonderful work is as ignored as though he had never created it.

  7. I got a great bio of Orson Welles for my birthday: Young Orson: The Years of Luck and Genius on the Path to Citizen Kane. It covers his life up to the beginning of filming on Citizen Kane. It’s really amazing everything he did in those few, young years.

  8. the famous radio comment, “Oh the humanity!”.

    And it’s counterpart, “Vogonity, Arthur. Vogonity.” (H2G2, Fit The Second, 15 March 1978)

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