Wednesday: Hili dialogue

It’s August 17, and at last I can post correctly what I misposted on August 11.  The highlight of today is that it’s officially Black Cat Appreciation Day. If you have one, as I did for 17 years, give it some extra kindness.  We have dozens of readers with black cats, so do right by your moggie. Don’t send me photos, but do put them in the comments (black cats ONLY please!)

On this day in 1908, Fantasmagorie by Émile Cohl, considered the world’s first animated cartoon, was released. I’ve put the very short video below; Wikipedia notes that;

The film, in all of its wild transformations, is a direct tribute to the by-then forgotten Incoherent movement. The title is a reference to the “fantasmograph”, a mid-Nineteenth Century variant of the magic lantern that projected ghostly images that floated across the walls.

On this day in 1932, author V.S. Naipal (now a Nobel Laureate) was born. I find his work uneven, but A House for Mr. Biswas is a true classic. And on this day in 1983, Ira Gershwin, who with his brother George composed some of the finest songs in “the American songbook,” died at 86. Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Cyrus had a bit of an enigmatic statement that Malgorzata explained to me:

Look at his tongue on the picture. He is salivating at the thought of a pheasant but he knows that the bird is not in his reach so he even refuses to look at it. He most probably was a hunter’s dog so he must have tasted the pheasants. And there really was a pheasant on the other side of the fence. We have quite a lot of them here and sometimes Cyrus is chasing them if we meet with one on our walks. He never got one though.

And the dialogue:

Hili: There is a pheasant on the other side of the fence.

Cyrus: I don’t even want to look at him.

Hili: Za płotem chodzi bażant.
Cyrus: Nie chcę nawet na niego patrzeć.

And out in Winnipeg, Gus sleeps softly, with a smile: