Monday: Hili dialogue

October 31, 2016 • 6:30 am

by Grania

Good morning! Happy official beginning of winter if you live up north, or summer if you live south of the equator. Samhain marks the end of the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold months.

Keeping the theme of the Jazz Festival that is going on around me here in Ireland, we’ll mark the birthdays of two saxophonists; Illinois Jacquet (1922) with Flying Home

and Booker Ervin (1930) with No Private Income Blues.

We’ll also mark the Halloween tradition of carving pumpkins by admiring the work of the NASA show-offs.

And here are some photos of the Halloween Parade in Galway Ireland.

However, I should point out that if you are hearing tales of how Halloween is an Irish “Samhain” pagan tradition imported to the USA, that turns out to not be accurate. Irish historian Liam Hogan has a very good post here about the origins Hallowe’en: Customs, Myths and Messiness. TL;DR: although there was an agricultural cycle festival in Roman Gaul, most of this festival, its origins and its trimmings are Christian.

Over in Poland catto-doggo relations have entered what appears to be détente, but Hili assures us there are no hostilities.

A: Have you quarrelled?
Hili: No, but everybody needs some privacy sometimes.

p1050022

In Polish:

Ja: Pokłóciliście się?
Hili: Nie, ale każdy potrzebuje czasem trochę prywatności.

15 thoughts on “Monday: Hili dialogue”

    1. I visited a similarly marked cat at the weekend – Marcus (Claurelius Catticus) – & he slept in exactly the same way 🙂

    2. That was my first thought. Usually Cyrus gets jammed against a wall or cramped by Hili.

  2. Those pumpkins remind me there is the new film, Arrival, which I want to see – though I am sure PCC[E] would hate it! It probably IS rubbish… But I am already from another planet, so I am told… 😉

  4. I just happened to have the headset plugged in for Flying Home. Very good…the real stuff.

  5. Happy Halloween everybody.
    Last night I gave my youngest some torn up old shirts and jeans to dowse with fake blood, so he can go out trick or treating as a zombie. Since he is getting older, this will be his last time going out this night. *sniff*.

  6. Does winter start earlier in Ireland? In the US it officially begins at the winter solstice. The farmer’s almanac says “In 2016, winter begins on December 21, 5:44 A.M. EDT”. This always seems to me like an odd time as one might think that the solstice should mark midwinter.

    1. No it doesn’t technically. But Samhain marked the end of the harvest and the start of the dark months though, so from an agricultural perspective it was the start of the winter months. -Grania

      2. In our latitudes, there are still some grapes and cabbages to be collected. But everyone hates working in the fields at this time of year.

  7. My guess would be that in Ireland, it feels winter enough by the first of November. It’s like that Mark Twain saying – The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.

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