Saturday: Hili dialogue

May 25, 2019 • 6:45 am

It’s Saturday, May 25, 2019, and June is nearly upon us. It’s also National Wine Day, but that’s nearly every day for me. It’s also National Tap Dance Day in the U.S., and Douglas Adams fans will know that it’s Towel Day. But will anyone really carry a towel today?

I have been busy having recreation, so posting has been (and will be) light, but I’ll try to post some vacation snaps tomorrow, including a trip to Salem, notorious for its witch trials.

On May 25, 1787, with a quorum of seven states, the United States Constitutional Convention formally opened in Philadelphia. On this day in 1878, Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera H.M.S. Pinafore opened in London. In 1895, author and raconteur Oscar Wilde was sentenced to two years at hard labor for homosexual acts. He served the full two years, and, health broken, went into exile in France, where he died three years later.

On May 25, 1925, John T. Scopes was indicted in Dayton, Tennessee for violating Tennessee’s Butler Act that prohibited the teaching of human evolution. (Most people think the law forbade the teaching of any evolution, but that is not the case.) After a weeklong trial, Scopes was convicted on July 21 after the jury deliberated for nine minutes, but the conviction was set aside on appeal because of a technicality: the fine, $100, was levied by the judge, and fines over $50 were supposed to be decided by the jury. Here’s Scopes one month before the trial:

On May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy announced to a joint session of Congress that his goal was to put a man on the Moon before the end of the decade. Amazingly, the U.S, succeeded. Here’s what Kennedy said:

Speaking of space, it was on this day in 1977 that Star Wars was released. I still have not seen that movie. Exactly a year later, the first bomb set by the Unabomber (Ted John Kaczynski) went off at Northwestern University, resulting in minor injuries to a University police officer. Kaczynski eventually killed three people and injured 23 before he was caught in 1995. He remains in prison in Colorado, where he will die.

On this day in 2001, Erik Weihenmayer became, with the help of Sherman Bull, the first blind person to reach the top of Mount Everest. The next year he completed the Seven Summits. Exactly a decade later, Oprah Winfrey broadcast her last show after 25 years on the air.

Finally, it was on this day a year ago that Ireland repealed the Eighth Amendment to its Constitution, prohibiting abortion in nearly all cases. The law now allows abortion during the first trimester, and even later in cases where the woman’s life or health is at risk or the fetus has a fatal abnormality.

Notables born on this day include Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803), Bill “Bojangles” Robinson *1877), Igor Sikorsky (1889), Beverly Sills (1929), Raymond Carver (1938), Mike Myers (1963), and Anne Heche (1969, 50 today).

Reader Laurie put her own drawing of Emerson, whom she greatly admires, on her Facebook page. I reproduce it with permission:

Those who died on May 25 include William Paley (1805), Gustav Holst (1934), Robert Capa (1954), and Ismael Merchant (2005). And reader Jon wrote me this: “Murray Gell-Mann, who transformed physics with his preternatural ability to find hidden patterns among the tiny particles that make up the universe, earning a Nobel Prize, died on Friday at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He was 89.”

Capa died when he stepped on a land mine in Vietnam, but before that had made many memorable photographs. Here’s one showing Picasso shading Françoise Gilot; the painter’s nephew, Javier Vilato, is in the background. This was taken in France in 1948.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili was hiding in the bedroom windowsill behind the curtains before Andrzej found her:

Hili: I couldn’t wait.
A: What for?
Hili: For you to start looking for me.

In Polish:
Hili: Nie mogłam się doczekać!
Ja: Na co?
Hili: Żebyś mnie zaczął szukać.

Sound advice from reader Barry:

A tweet from Nilou. Io, of course, is one of Jupiter’s moons:

https://twitter.com/WorldAndScience/status/1131409513557495808

Two scaredy-cats, also from reader Barry. The first one is especially awesome:

From reader Paul, who notes that the Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office may become the next Prime Minister.

Tweets from Grania. I was sad to hear that Charlie Gross, a neuroscientist married to Joyce Carol Oates, died in April. I had dinner with both of them in New York a few years back. Joyce is of course devastated, and sent out this tweet:

This plant looks like marijuana but I’m sure it isn’t. ID, please?

https://twitter.com/EmrgencyKittens/status/1131586898131083264

An amazing video: in one end and out the other.

Tweets from Matthew. Now the Chief Mouser appears to be in trouble:

 

If you find this animal ugly, you’re on the wrong site.

 

 

33 thoughts on “Saturday: Hili dialogue”

      2. Ah, I was about to ask who Laurie was. Excellent work!

        You were also Theo’s servant? Today’s a big day for you on this site!

    1. I don’t think so. It appears to be a cutleaf Japanese maple (Acer palmatum dissectum).

  4. I was watching some old Kennedy press conferences and one cannot help but notice the stark contrast between Kennedy ignoring questions by cracking a (sometimes actually funny) joke and the current President calling everyone names and being a general jackass.

  5. And in other news, Ken Ham’s The Ark Encounter is suing their insurance company over flood damage…

    Ok, in all fairness, it was damage due to a landslide that damaged a road but it’s still amusing and I’m not above a little schadenfreude.

      1. Yeah, sounds like a force majeure (aka “Act of God”). Those are generally excluded from insurance policies.

  8. I looked up Françoise Gilot and learned, to my dismay, Picasso treated here poorly. She was 20 and he was 60 when they met and they had two kids together, Claude, and Paloma. When Francoise left Picasso, he refused to see the kids ever again. What a cad! Francoise is still living and has been doing art her whole life.

    1. I was also compelled to look her up. She had an amazing life, later marrying Jonas Salk. She used her art to help support the Salk Institute.

  9. I am sorry to hear Murray Gell-Mann died. After reading the book “Strange Beauty: Murray Gell-Mann and the Revolution in Twentieth Century Physics”, I feel like I got to know him. 89 is pretty good however.

    1. Yes, the Kennedy “We choose to go to the Moon…” speech [Rice University Stadium, Houston] in the video is 16 months after the congress speech & they’re substantially different in content. This is the Congress speech one month after Gagarin’s Vostock single Earth orbit:

      https://youtu.be/TUXuV7XbZvU

      1. I notice he wasn’t using a teleprompter in those days. I have heard that speech several times over the years, but now, more than ever (due to the recent leadership vacuum in our government), I realize what a tragic mistake was made in the 2016 election.

  11. The Chief Mouser has a little podium! Aaahh I love it.

    I say they should bring back the Ministry of Labour, so my cat could be Secretary. He knows how to sleep all day and can always find the sun.

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