Friday: Hili dialogue

December 30, 2016 • 7:00 am

It’s December 30, 2016, and the last day of Koynezaa, which means I’ve completed another circuit around the Sun. It’s a weird food holiday, too: National Bicarbonate of Soda Day and Baking Soda Day. What gives with that? A Bicarb Day should be right after Thanksgiving or Christmas! In Slovakia, it’s the Day of the Declaration of Slovakia as an Independent Ecclesiastic Province (Pope Paul VI’s doing).

On this day in 1896, Filipino patriot José Rizal was executed for his writings, which helped lead to the independence of his land. In 1922, the USSR was formed, and in 1965 Ferdinand Marcos became President of the Philippines.

Notables born on this day include Rudyard Kipling (1865), Bert Parks (1914), Bo Diddley (1928), Skeeter Davis (1931), Del Shannon (1934), Sandy Koufax (1935), John Hartford (1937), two Monkees (Michael Neshmith, 1942, and Davy Jones, 1945), Patti Smith (1946), Jerry Coyne (1949), Tracey Ullman (1959), and Heidi Fleiss (1965). Those who died on this day include Grigori Rasputin (1916; when I was a long-haired hippie and was a groomsman at a friend’s wedding in Texas in 1972, one of the old rich ladies whom I was escorting to her seat exclaimed in dismay, “What—I have to be taken to my seat by Rasputin?!”), Alfred North Whitehead (1947), Richard Rogers (1979), Artie Shaw (2004), Saddam Hussein (executed ten years ago today), and Carl Woese (2012). Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, there’s a special Hili dialogue for my special day. I think she’s messing with me!

Hili: I think that last year Jerry’s birthday was December 30?
A: That’s right.
Hili: And this year as well?
dsc00001g

In Polish:

Hili: Zdaje się, że w zeszłym roku Jerry miał 30 grudnia urodziny.
Ja: Zgadza się.

Hili: Czy w tym roku też?
As a bit of solipsism, I’ll enclose today’s “Freethought of the Day” from the Freedom from Religion Foundation. (My quote is taken verbatim from a talk, which is why it’s a bit unwieldy.) Thanks to Margaret Downey for calling it to my attention:
screen-shot-2016-12-30-at-7-37-56-am

47 thoughts on “Friday: Hili dialogue”

  2. From inside Aleppo (by way of thedodo.com) a doings’ birthday present for you, Dr Coyne: This Guy Is Saving Cats In War-Torn Syria http://www.thedodo.com/cat-man-aleppo-video-2117682447.html. Mr Aljaleel brings to my brain Ms Wanda Gág’s human character in her y1928 “Millions of Cats.”

    Happy Next Boogie Around Our Sun — beginning today then; and of another Professor JC … … here is this ‘toon, too, for you: of He Who finally acknowledges, concurs with and teaches what You / Your WEIT do ! Thank you, Dr Coyne, for every day helping us all. Helping us all to be better, true human beings. https://onsizzle.com/i/about-3-8-billion-years-ago-a-few-hundred-million-years-4765642.

    Some birthday cake brought to you by another cowboy boots’ aficionado here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6WVoEWqTKw.

    Blue

  5. Happy Birthday, PCC(E). You should probably get a day off from W.E.I.T. today, but …. we do enjoy your posts, so it’s nose back to the grindstone for you I’m afraid

  8. Birthday number…I won’t mention it since I will be there in three months. Have a good one.

  10. Happy Birthday Jerry!

    This here website is a great, unique service, and I thank you not the least for making it as-free. I’d get a gift if I could, but instead I’ll recommend you watch the film “Tim’s Vermeer” – a blend of art and science, hard to describe. Hopefully this link works:

    https://g.co/kgs/mO2xAx

    It’s on iTunes also.

  14. Happy birthday.

    Your writings and talks and this website have been invaluable and indispensable to me since I first discovered them.

    I am so grateful for their existence.

  16. Happy Birthday Jerry. I hope you have a wonderful day.

    I put one more revolution behind me two days ago myself. Please slow this thing down!

    1. I myself so do like (the idea of) turning back time, Mr darrelle ! So as to put off as much as possible … … our inevitable Big Sleeps ! and certainly would if I could … … if only to wish you, too, a happiest special day of this mess of a year known as y2016 !

      From our darling Ms Cher then for you, Mr darrelle, at this cycle’s .end. finally: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9Vm9v4J-3E&feature=share .

      Happy Belated Birthday !
      Blue

  19. Happy Birthday, big brother. Hope you have something fun planned. Also, happy half birthday to me. xoxo, YAW

  23. I should have planned ahead enough to apply to place a little Hili in a creche on the statehouse steps in honor of Koynezaa!

  27. Many happy returns of the day!

    Since “Koynezaa” is a coynage and I find that in days of yo(u)re, “coin” was sometimes spelled “coyne” it is legitimate to say that you are a coyner of words. I send this offering on your natal day — if you Google “Shakespeare Survey vol. 56 “coyne”* you should find a link to the volume in Google Books. Click that link and it opens at pg. 52 to an article by Patricia Parker, which contains some very interesting, surprising and rather risque material on the word “coine” and its variant, “coyne,” and scrolling back and forward a few pages yields more.

    * Here is the link to the Google Books page, but I find such links so long, they never work https://books.google.com/books?id=lvKUm7D2vckC&pg=PA52&lpg=PA52&dq=shakespeare+survey+volume+56+coyne&source=bl&ots=y4LkZ55NHo&sig=qNQUwsu_88jhSBtz4EV6A2c_d0I&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiaz8T4oZzRAhVI34MKHerLCjAQ6AEIJjAB#v=onepage&q=shakespeare%20survey%20volume%2056%20coyne&f=false

      1. So it does. Thanks. I’m surprised. Since I rarely get such long links to work, I didn’t even bother to try this one. Wish there was a way to print out the pages because I find all the associations and “cognates” (a word itself the author says was etymologically associated with “coyne” in Elizabethan times)very interesting. And one learns about quinces in Elizabethan life and lore as well.

  33. Although I am fluent in German, I know no Polish.

    I find a Google online translator translates “birthday” to “urodziny” and “happy” as “szczęśliwy”
    but “Happy Birthday” to
    “Wszystkiego najlepszego”
    which when fed back to English translates as
    “All the best”.

    This makes sense, since the accustomed German phrase is “Alles Gute zum Geburtstag” (All good on your birthday) not ‘happy birthday’.

    Well then,

    Wszystkiego najlepszego,
    profesor sufit kota

  36. Have a great birthday and a wonderful New Year. Always enjoy your travels and interesting articles.

  39. I’ll add my own tiny encomium to the pile – happy birthday, Professor! Reading the original WEIT, as well as this website, has helped make me a better-informed individual, I think. I’m grateful for your several good works of mind, sir. May the next year bring you more joy and interest than this one!

  40. Another wish for a good birthday, though a bit late. It seems that many of us celebrate another year we’ve had your interesting writing, as well as Hili’s sometimes obscure comments, to entertain us. A celebration is uber-appropriate!

    After I decided I was spending too much time reading blogs, and purged my blog list, there were only eight left. (Okay, some are groups, but still.) This blog, er, website, is at the top of the list. You rock!

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