Sunday: Hili dialogue

July 28, 2019 • 6:30 am

It’s Sunday, July 28, 2019, and National Milk Chocolate Day. While I favor dark chocolate more and more as I age, I still love Cadbury’s plain milk chocolate best. It’s also Day of Commemoration of the Great Upheaval in Canada, when the Acadians were expelled by the British, World Hepatitis Day, and Auntie’s Day, celebrating aunts (mine are all extinct).

Stuff that happened on July 28 include:

  • 1540 – Thomas Cromwell is executed at the order of Henry VIII of England on charges of treason. Henry marries his fifth wife, Catherine Howard, on the same day.
  • 1794 – French Revolution: Maximilien Robespierre and Louis Antoine de Saint-Just are executed by guillotine in Paris, France.
  • 1821 – José de San Martín declares the independence of Peru from Spain.
  • 1854 – USS Constellation (1854), the last all-sail warship built by the United States Navy, is commissioned.
  • 1868 – The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution is certified, establishing African American citizenship and guaranteeing due process of law.
  • 1914 – In the culmination of the July Crisis, Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia, igniting World War I.
  • 1935 – First flight of the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress.
  • 1939 – The Sutton Hoo helmet is discovered

The B-17 was the main plane used by the American military for bombing German during WWII. Take a 17-minute ride in a restored one:

From Wikipedia about the helmet:

The Sutton Hoo helmet was buried around 625 and is widely believed to have belonged to King Rædwald of East Anglia; its elaborate decoration may have given it a secondary function akin to a crown. The helmet is described as “the most iconic object” from “one of the most spectacular archaeological discoveries ever made,” and perhaps the most important known Anglo-Saxon artefact. The visage contains eyebrows, a nose, and moustache, creating the image of a man joined by a dragon’s head to become a soaring dragon with outstretched wings.

Here’s the recovered bits in the British Museum, with the original pieces placed in position on a replica background:

. . . and a complete replica:

  • 1943 – World War II: Operation Gomorrah: The Royal Air Force bombs Hamburg, Germany causing a firestorm that kills 42,000 German civilians.

Here’s a 7-minute documentary about the operation. All the RAF men were volunteers.  This kind of bombing seems to me immoral, though I suppose there are people who argue that it saved more lives than it took.

This compares to the lower figure of about 25,000 civilians killed in the fire-bombing of Dresden on Feb. 13-15, 1945; but the bombing in Dresden is more well known.

  • 2005 – The Provisional Irish Republican Army calls an end to its thirty-year-long armed campaign in Northern Ireland.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1804 – Ludwig Feuerbach, German anthropologist and philosopher (d. 1872)
  • 1866 – Beatrix Potter, English children’s book writer and illustrator (d. 1943)
  • 1887 – Marcel Duchamp, French-American painter and sculptor (d. 1968)
  • 1901 – Rudy Vallée, American actor, singer, and saxophonist (d. 1986)
  • 1902 – Sir Karl Popper, Austrian-English philosopher and academic (d. 1994)
  • 1929 – Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, American journalist and socialite, 37th First Lady of the United States (d. 1994)
  • 1954 – Hugo Chávez, Venezuelan colonel and politician, President of Venezuela (d. 2013)
  • 1964 – Lori Loughlin, American actress.

My favorite Beatrix Potter character is, of course, Jemima Puddle-Duck, who, after her eggs are eaten by a fox, successfully re-nests and produces a measly four ducklings:

Those who “passed” on this day include:

  • 1540 – Thomas Cromwell, English lawyer and politician, Chancellor of the Exchequer (b. 1495)
  • 1655 – Cyrano de Bergerac, French poet and playwright (b. 1619)
  • 1750 – Johann Sebastian Bach, German organist and composer (b. 1685)
  • 1794 – Maximilien Robespierre, French lawyer and politician, 2nd President of the Committee of Public Safety (b. 1758)
  • 1934 – Marie Dressler, Canadian-American actress and singer (b. 1868)
  • 2000 – Abraham Pais, Dutch-American physicist and historian (b. 1918)
  • 2004 – Francis Crick, English biologist and biophysicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1916)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili thinks the trees have shrunk:

Hili: When I was little these birches were bigger.
A: It just seems so to you.
In Polish:
Hili: Jak byłam mała, te brzozy były większe.
Ja: Tak ci się tylko wydaje.

From Facebook, a d*g gets its comeuppance:

Here’s my BFF Pi in his box (note the replica of Pi on the side—made with his own shaved-off fur):

Here’s a tweet Grania sent me on November 28 of last year. She loved tardigrades, and who doesn’t?

https://twitter.com/rmartinledo/status/1067872086134272000

A tweet from Nilou: Julia Lenarz has lost her beloved Muscovy duck (they are adorable and friendly ducks even though most people see them as ugly):

From reader Barry: a cat loves doing situps, but does them in some strange places. What abs that cat must have!

https://twitter.com/akkitwts/status/1154758693935878144

From Heather Hastie. I can’t get enough of orphaned joeys jumping into artificial pouches:

https://twitter.com/Naturesdiy/status/1152496467073884160

Tweets from Matthew. The first one raises a one-word question: WHY?

https://twitter.com/41strange/status/1155134536302206977?s=11

Cats will be cats. . .

Look at this squid!

This mineral specimen looks like something meant to eat:

 

47 thoughts on “Sunday: Hili dialogue”

  1. War is immoral, so certainly most all acts of war could be immoral. But it does not always mean it is unnecessary. For this country, WWII was necessary and immoral.

    While the B-17 is the most known or popular bomber of WWII it was not necessarily the main airplane. There were more B-24s built and they carried more bombs.

    Reply

      1. I picked that up reading Steven Ambrose book where he featured George McGovern, a B-24 pilot during WWII. I think the last book he wrote before his death.

        Reply

      2. I was going to make a similar comment. After the first few months of the war, the B17 was used exclusively in the European Theater. While being more rugged than the B24, it had less range. In the huge expanses of the Pacific, the B24’s greater range was a premium.

        Both were exceptionally good heavy bombers for their day. Germany had nothing even close to them, though they did make some designs. The only plane really in their league was the British Lancaster bomber.

        Reply

        1. Good point. The VLR Consolidated B-24 Liberator flying from the US, Canada & the UK closed the “mid-Atlantic gap” & gave the U-boats nowhere to hunt without risk – fitted with the fearsome Leigh Light even darkness was no protection. Supposedly 93 U-boats sunk in quick time.

          Reply

          1. The Leigh Light was one of those things that sounds ridiculous on the face of it – shining a searchlight on a submarine, ffs? – but actually worked surprisingly well.

            cr

        2. . While being more rugged than the B24, it had less range.

          I would challenge the ruggedness claim. It is very difficult to find figures on the Internet but those that do exist suggest that the B24 was marginally more survivable in combat. i.e. you were more likely to come back alive from a like for like mission.

          The only plane really in their league was the British Lancaster bomber.</blockquote.
          And the Handley Page Halifax and, if you are talking about the B17 specifically, the De Havilland Mosquito bomber could carry a similar bomb load.

          Reply

          1. Sorry, messed up the tags. The second bit should be:

            And the Handley Page Halifax and, if you are talking about the B17 specifically, the De Havilland Mosquito bomber could carry a similar bomb load.

    2. The RAF Bomber command have been cast as the bad guys for carrying out area bombing .
      They started to do so after three years of trying daylight and night precision bombing which killed more RAF aircrew than the Germans .
      Why is it ok to destroy a tank on the battlefield ,but not attack the factory where it was made ?The bomber offensive made a huge impact on the German war effort ,for a start thousands of AA guns used to defend German cities could have been used at the front .

      Also Germany had to disperse it’s factories to avoid the bombing .

      As for the German civilians ,they should have demanded their leaders build more bomb shelters .

      Also why no mention of the Avro Lancaster which carried more bombs than the B17 .

      Reply

      1. Another point many do not know are the losses for bomber air crew were the highest of all services fighting in WWII.

        Reply

      2. The indiscriminate bombings of civilian populations initiated by the allies including the fire bombings of Dresden and Tokyo and culminating in the atomic bombings of Japan were immoral by any standards. But, as Randall said, war is immoral. I just find it ironic that the “good guys” started these atrocities, not Hitler.

        Reply

        1. I thought that the bombing of civilian populations was started by Hitler and his Italian allies during the Spanish war (e.g. in Gernika).

          Reply

          1. Guernica was a village and a couple of hundred people died there because the bombers couldn’t find the bridges and dropped their bombs in the center of town. Also, it was targeted because it was a center of the Republican resistance. In the history of warfare it would be a footnote had it not been for Picasso’s painting. No way comparable to the deliberate murder of hundreds of thousands of civilians.

        2. One could argue that the Germans started it with e.g. the London blitz (and other cities before that). Though the Allied bombing of Germany was far in excess of the Blitz.

          Given the inaccuracy of ‘precision bombing’ (which no air force was eager to admit to, for vanity reasons), area bombing was the de facto rule almost from the start. The squadrons that could actually hit precision targets were a tiny minority.

          I don’t think ‘they started it’ is a valid excuse for any side in this. Possibly more valid is that, for some years, bombing was the only feasible way to hit back at the enemy and to impede his ability to make war.

          cr

          Reply

          1. It’s good to keep in mind that Germany seemed to be unstoppable. They killed and starved 10’s of millions of Russians, and took over France, a close ally. It was believed by many that they would take over the world. That, in addition to the Japanese threat. My parents described the fear that engendered in everyone involved. My father joined the Canadian army at a time when Germany had been gobbling up country after country across Europe. Precision bombing was probably seen as inappropriate for such desperate times.

        3. I doubt the Russians were too concerned given the enormous losses they were suffering and had suffered.

          Reply

      3. There is a common argument made that the bombing offensive was wasteful and ineffective. This is very far from the truth. German armaments research and production became heavily weighted toward air defence, robbing the other military branches of resources. Even then, the aircraft produced were often shoddily constructed or destroyed on the airfields or in transit.

        The air offensive took a lot of pressure off the Russians, something which they will probably never admit.

        Reply

      4. Why is it ok to destroy a tank on the battlefield ,but not attack the factory where it was made?

        Say you had a regiment of infantrymen and you sent them into a city to destroy the tank factory. If they killed civilians indiscriminately on the way in and out, would you regard that as a “war crime”? A lot of people would say yes. So why is it so much better if the soldiers are in aircraft?

        So yes, I think it was a “war crime” but I put the words “war crime” in quotes because I believe the argument is highly nuanced and the term is rendered somewhat meaningless such a context. At the time the area bombing campaign was started, the British were fighting an existential threat and they also had no other way of fighting back.

        I wish there had been another way but the actions of the British in this context were completely understandable and I would not condemn them for it.By the time it got round to 1945, that is a different matter.

        Reply

    3. As I was reading the post a B-17 flew past the bedroom window. There is currently an exhibition of old planes going on at the Chicago Executive airport which is a couple of miles from here. They have been doing flyovers since mid week. You can get a half hour ride for the bargain price of $450, close to that of a ticket from O’Hare to Heathrow – although that’s not really the point. Apparently they are also offering P51 stick time for only $2200 for a half hour. Off to take a look this afternoon.

      Reply

  2. The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
    BY RANDALL JARRELL

    From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,
    And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
    Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
    I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
    When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

    Reply

    2. Randal Jarrell was an ailurophile and also has a poem simply called “Gunner”:

      Did they send me away from my cat and my wife
      To a doctor who poked me and counted my teeth,
      To a line on a plain, to a stove in a tent?
      Did I nod in the flies of the schools?
      And the fighters rolled into the tracer like rabbits,
      The blood froze over my splints like a scab —
      Did I snore, all still and grey in the turret,
      Till the palms rose out of the sea with my death?
      And the world ends here, in the sand of a grave,
      All my wars over? How easy it was to die!
      Has my wife a pension of so many mice?
      Did the medals go home to my cat?

      Is this a cat or a human speaking?

      Reply

  3. An interesting anecdote from 1789. Benjamin Franklin was very popular in pre-revolutionary Enlightenment salons in Paris and was well known as the “man who had tamed lightning”. One french gentleman in the town of Arras decided to put a lightning rod on his house. His neihgbors however did not approve. thinking it would attract lightning, and sued to have it taken down. The gentleman hired a group of lawyers who assigned the case to a young man from the town. He did such a good job that he won the case and the lightning rod went back up. His name was Maximilian Robespierre. Yes, that Robespierre.

    When he died 225 years ago, 21 others were guillotined with him, including his younger brother Augustin. The French Revolution, for better or for worse, died the same day.

    Reply

  5. I was chagrined that I was only vaguely aware of the Sutton Hoo helmet. It is truly remarkable. It’s part helmet, part sculpture, part mask. With eyebrows, nose, and mustache. I’m going to have to do a deep dive, and get to know more.

    Reply

    1. The Sutton Hoo helmet was just one of the treasures found in an Anglo-Saxon ship burial in 1939. The site is now owned by the National Trust, which has built a rather good visitor centre. The original helmet fragments are in the British Museum, but the visitor centre has a replica.

      Reply

  6. My dad flew the Acadian flag yesterday to commemorate The Great Upheaval, which no one knows about in Ontario. I brought him the flag years ago from New Brunswick.

    Reply

      1. The evicted ones are in Louisiana (cajuns) The acadians that didn’t get kicked out are still in the Canadian Maritimes speaking a particular kind of French. New Brunswick is Canada’s only officially bilingual province.

        Reply

    3. Yes, this one is tres chic and good science. The other ones are bizarre, because they cover the entire body and have the “crotch” flap with velcro fasteners designed to make diaper changing easier for human infants. I don’t understand this. Given the way horses urinate and defecate, it seems like a really bad idea or the horses wear diapers, too?

      Reply

  9. I was fortunate enough to ride in a B-17 several years ago, as a present for my fiftieth birthday. Our town has an airshow, and “Aluminum Overcast” of the Experimental Aircraft Association came to town. It was quite an experience. It’s hard to imagine flying hours and hours to and from a target in one, let alone having to undergo air attack and anti-aircraft fire. There were giants in those days.

    Reply

  10. Those cats aren’t ruining records and styluses, they know exactly what they’re doing. They are DJs and engaged in what’s called “scratching,” a quintessential feline and DJ activity.

    Reply

      1. DJ scratching never made sense to me either but after watching the cats, I’m beginning to understand the concept and DJs could also learn a thing or two from the cats. But I especially like the cat that bites the record and tries to drag it off the turntable. That cat had the right idea about scratching — just get rid of the annoyance. I also like the cat that gets stuck on a record and goes round and round and round. I wonder if he was able to get off while the table was turning or had to wait until it was stopped.

        Reply

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *