Friday: Hili dialogue

August 23, 2019 • 6:30 am

It’s Friday, August 23, surgery day and National Cuban Sandwich Day (more cultural appropriation). It’s also Buttered Corn Day, Daffodil Day, and International Day for Remembrance of the Slave Trade and Its Abolition, as well as European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism.

I’ll be under the knife (or the drill, or whatever they use) when you read this, having some minor surgery (as a friend said, “minor surgery” is defined as “surgery on other people”). If there’s are posts tomorrow (I’ve written a few in advance for today), you’ll know I survived. At any rate, posting over the weekend will probably be very light.  As always, I do my best.

A lot of stuff happened on August 23, including:

  • 30 BC – After the successful invasion of Egypt, Octavian executes Marcus Antonius Antyllus, eldest son of Mark Antony, and Caesarion, the last king of the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt and only child of Julius Caesar and Cleopatra.
  • AD 79 – Mount Vesuvius begins stirring, on the feast day of Vulcan, the Roman god of fire.

Here’s Vesuvius today, looming over Naples. It could erupt again, and the city has an emergency evacuation plan that assumes 2-20 days’ notice of an eruption:

This was, of course the eruption that destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum. The only eyewitness account we have comes from two letters written by Pliny the Younger.

More stuff that happened on this day:

  • 1305 – Sir William Wallace is executed for high treason at Smithfield, London.
  • 1572 – French Wars of Religion: Mob violence against thousands of Huguenots in Paris results in the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre.
  • 1831 – Nat Turner’s slave rebellion is suppressed.
  • 1927 – Italian anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti are executed after a lengthy, controversial trial.
  • 1942 – World War II: Beginning of the Battle of Stalingrad.
  • 1966 – Lunar Orbiter 1 takes the first photograph of Earth from orbit around the Moon.

Here’s that photo:

But wait! There’s more:

  • 1970 – Organized by Mexican American labor union leader César Chávez, the Salad Bowl strike, the largest farm worker strike in U.S. history, begins.
  • 1973 – A bank robbery gone wrong in Stockholm, Sweden, turns into a hostage crisis; over the next five days the hostages begin to sympathise with their captors, leading to the term “Stockholm syndrome”.

Of the two people who held hostages, one spent ten years in jail, while the other, a friend of the perp, was acquitted as he did not take part in the robbery but was brought in at the request of the robber.

  • 1990 – West and East Germany announce that they will reunite on October 3.
  • 1991 – The World Wide Web is opened to the public.
  • 2007 – The skeletal remains of Russia’s last royal family members Alexei Nikolaevich, Tsarevich of Russia, and his sister Grand Duchess Anastasia are discovered near Yekaterinburg, Russia.
  • 2011 – Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is overthrown after the National Transitional Council forces take control of Bab al-Azizia compound during the Libyan Civil War.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1769 – Georges Cuvier, French biologist and academic (d. 1832)
  • 1849 – William Ernest Henley, English poet and critic (d. 1903)
  • 1852 – Arnold Toynbee, English economist and historian (d. 1883)
  • 1905 – Ernie Bushmiller, American cartoonist (d. 1982)

Can you name the comic strip for which Bushmiller is famous? Answer is here.

  • 1912 – Gene Kelly, American actor, singer, and dancer (d. 1996)

Here’s one of Kelly’s greatest onscreen dances, a tap-and-glide performance on roller skates—and the old-fashioned metal kind with four wheels in a 2X2 arrangement. The song is “I Like Myself” from the 1955 MGM musical It’s Always Fair Weather.  This is truly a stunning performance.

  • 1931 – Barbara Eden, American actress and singer
  • 1977 – Jared Fogle, former spokesperson for chain restaurant Subway

Fogle, whom you may remember from the sandwich ads, did not come to a good end. As Wikipedia reports:

Fogle’s tenure with Subway ended after he was investigated for paying for sex with minors and receiving child pornography in 2015. On August 19, 2015, he agreed to plead guilty in federal court to possessing child pornography and traveling to pay for sex with minors. Fogle formally pleaded guilty to the charges on November 19, 2015, and was sentenced to serve 15 years, 8 months in federal prison, with a minimum of 13 years before becoming eligible for early release.

and. . . .

  • 1978 – Kobe Bryant, American basketball player and businessman

Those who “fell asleep” on August 23 include:

  • 1305 – William Wallace, Scottish rebel commander (b. 1272)
  • 1813 – Alexander Wilson (ornithologist), Scottish-American poet, ornithologist, and illustrator (b. 1766)
  • 1926 – Rudolph Valentino, Italian actor (b. 1895)
  • 1927 – Nicola Sacco, Italian anarchist convicted of murder (b. 1891)
  • 1927 – Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Italian anarchist convicted of murder (b. 1888)

Sacco and Vanzetti, whose trial was a cause celebre, were both electrocuted after numerous protests and a botched trial process. Here they are, with Vanzetti on the left:

Others who died on this day include:

  • 1960 – Oscar Hammerstein II, American director, producer, and composer (b. 1895)
  • 1982 – Stanford Moore, American biochemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1913)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is checking out the walnut crop:

Hili: There will be plenty of walnuts this year.
A: So it seems.
In Polish:
Hili: Będzie dużo orzechów.
Ja: Na to wygląda.

A meme from reader Gethyn. The cat is working!

A timely New Yorker cat cartoon first sent by Merilee (and later by several other readers). The cartoon is by Tim Hamilton and I’ve put the caption below it

“I thought I was the chosen one.”

Grania sent me this tweet on December 5 of last year:

Here’s a rare tweet I found. Lucky sheep!

From reader Jiten.  The six-word description is close to perfect.

From reader gravelinspector. It’s long been known that crabs make hats out of real marine sponges, and here one does it in the lab. But why? Camouflage? Protection from predation? Both? Or is it a sexually alluring feature, in which case one might expect the sponge hats to adorn mostly male crabs. These questions are above my pay grade.

From Nilou; more evidence that Trump has a comedy writer on his Twitter team (not a good one in this case):

Tweets from Matthew. Here Trump discusses the Bible, showing his abysmal ignorance of the whole book. Sound up. He can’t even name a favorite verse! OY!

Another specimen of Matthew’s favorite genre: optical illusions:

Yes, there’s a Denver mattress cinema, equivalent to the drive-in movies of my youth. But it doesn’t behave well in high winds:

 

 

40 thoughts on “Friday: Hili dialogue”

  1. Jerry, Hope the surgery goes/is going/went well and you are quickly back on your feet with a cleared mind.

    1. Good luck!…

      Luck isn’t superstitious, right? So good luck and best wishes for a quick recovery!

    5. Since there are two posts following this one, I’ll assume everything went well. Hope you’re 100% soon.

      1. “If there’s are posts tomorrow (I’ve written a few in advance for today), you’ll know I survived.”

    6. Laparoscopic surgery is basically only done in ‘minor’ to ‘intermediate’ surgery with overwhelmingly good outcomes.
      Don’t worry and relax, I’m sure everything will be OK. [I always play some Bach when operating under loco-regional. It relaxes the patient and therefore makes surgery easier, and hence safer]
      US surgery maybe expensive, but it is quite good, right up there with the British, Japanese, Dutch, German, Thai and other top performers.

  2. Can’t think about Cesar Chavez without remembering Dolores Huerta, who at 89 is still going strong and working for the poor and underpaid. She was arrested yesterday demonstrating for health care workers pay out west.

    Jerry will do just fine although we do need a note from the doctor for this absence.

  3. Daffodil day in Aug, eh? That makes a lot of sense. They’re not even blooming now in the southern hemisphere.

    1. They have just started to bloom in my garden, and yesterday (Friday) was daffodil day when they are sold to raise money for cancer research. I can’t imagine why it would be daffodil day in the Northern Hemisphere.

  4. Gene Kelly was also celebrated film director, with about a dozen efforts to his credit, including the two classic musicals he co-directed (and co-choreographed) with Stanley Donen — On the Town and Singin’ in the Rain.

    1. In the “Cats, the Musical” thread a week or two/three ago, I said I didn’t like musicals.
      And then a week or so later, ‘The Fiddler on the Roof’ came to mind. It is absolutely brilliant and I’ll have to eat that foot in my mouth.

    1. Other big news today for some. David Koch died. Will be big news here in Wichita I am sure.

      2. Well, to paraphrase Bette Davis on Joan Crawford: They say you should never say bad things about the dead, only the good. David Koch is dead. Good.

        2. The man was a totally insane libertarian and probably a sociopath, based on his efforts to destroy the social fabric. He want all the cookies. All the chocolate milk.

        3. Yep, nice one! 🙂

          How about ‘There is one good thing we can say about David Koch, now.’

          [vbeg]

          cr

    2. Tariffs of 25% on Amewrican cars? Seriously, who would want to buy an American car anyway? (Unless a Tesla, of course) 🙂

    3. Apparently tRump just tweeted that American manufacturers must not source products from China. (Though he has no power whatever to enforce that).

      I eagerly await Apple’s response… 🙂

      (And many others, of course)

      cr

  7. The rollerskate number from It’s Always Fair Weather has always amazed me for the control and virtuosity Kelly demonstrates. Also worth mentioning as a potential ankle breaker is the trashcan lid dance he does with Dan Dailey and Michael Kidd.

    1. Who knew that tap-dancing in roller-skates was a thing? What an amazing performance.

      I first saw a small part of it in the movie The Professional (Natalie Portaman’s first [?] film role), when Leon watches in a movie theater Gene Kelly come around the corner just gliding on momentum. What a great idea and a great way to represent all those positive emotions we feel when we see it.

      1. I agree that the performance is amazing.
        In a way ahead of it’s time. Athletic and breathtaking dancing is one of those things that have become much more professional and amazing over the last decades.

  11. I used to be quite an admirer of Octavian (Augustus), and thought his sending Varus, a kinda lawyer without military experience to head three legions into Germany his main mistake. (The three legions were destroyed, disappeared from the surface of the Earth, by the German tribes temporarily united under Arminius (Hermann)). The idea, of course, was to ‘Romanise’ Germany, where someone like Varus could have been handy (Historian, please correct me if I’m wrong here).
    I always considered him (Octavian/Augustus) somehow kinda worthy and chivalrous. The abominable murders of Antyllus and Caesarion (the latter really lured to his death), both lads of only 17 years old, has kinda changed that. I consider him the vile and utterly despicable power-seeker and schemer he was now.

  12. Akiyoshi Kitaoka is one of the Grand Masters of visual illusions.
    The one shown is weak in it’s effects, but strong in that little is required to fool our senses.

  15. I agree with Donald tRump. The Bible is incredible. In the literal meaning of the word.

    ‘course, DT isn’t exactly credible either…

    😎

    cr

    1. Check out Fantasyland by Kurt Andersen- he discusses this exact case i- “incredible” – as part of a broader shift in how language is used in the United States.

Comments are closed.