Sunday: Hili dialogue

Well, we’re now into September, on a chilly and drizzly day that’s a harbinger of cold days to come in Chicago. It’s September 1, 2019, and National Gyro Day (i.e., more cultural appropriation). It’s also Emma M. Nutt Day, celebrating the first telephone operator (she began work in 1878); International Vulture Awareness Day;  and National Hummingbird Day. In Australia it’s National Wattle Day, celebrating a plant (the harbinger of Spring) mentioned in the famous Monty Python “Bruces” sketch, which unfortunately doesn’t seem to be online.

Here be aware of this King Vulture (Sarcoramphus papa), a denizen of Central and South America.  It is not very sexually dimorphic, so the vivid coloration and patterning may be due to either mutual sexual selection or some other factor(s):

Stuff that happened on this day include:

• 1604 – Adi Granth, now known as Guru Granth Sahib, the holy scripture of Sikhs, was first installed at Harmandir Sahib.
• 1859 – One of the largest coronal mass ejections ever recorded, later to be known as the Carrington Event, occurs.
• 1878 – Emma Nutt becomes the world’s first female telephone operator when she is recruited by Alexander Graham Bell to the Boston Telephone Dispatch Company.

Here’s Ms. Nutt (1860-1915), and a note from Wikipedia:

To be an operator, a woman had to be unmarried and between the ages of seventeen and twenty-six. She had to look prim and proper, and have arms long enough to reach the top of the tall telephone switchboard. Like many other American businesses at the turn of the century, telephone companies discriminated against people from certain ethnic groups and races. For instance, African-American and Jewish women were not allowed to become operators.

Also from Wikipedia: “This scene from “Bold Experiment – the Telephone Story”, depicts the first women operators, Emma and Stella Nutt, working alongside boy operators at the Edwin Holmes Telephone Despatch Co. Boston, Massachusetts in 1878.” As the entry above shows, boy operators were found too rowdy and garrulous, and were largely replaced by women:

• 1897 – The Tremont Street Subway in Boston opens, becoming the first underground rapid transit system in North America.
• 1914 – St. Petersburg, Russia, changes its name to Petrograd.
• 1914 – The last known passenger pigeon, a female named Martha, dies in captivity in the Cincinnati Zoo.

Here’s Martha when she was still alive (she was stuffed postmortem and given to the Smithsonian):

• 1934 – The first Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer animated cartoon, The Discontented Canary, is released to movie theatres.

Wikipedia says this is one of only four MGM cartoons in the public domain. Watch it, as there’s a CAT!

• 1939 – Adolf Hitler signs an order to begin the systematic euthanasia of mentally ill and disabled people.
• 1952 – The Old Man and the Sea, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Ernest Hemingway, is first published.
• 1958 – Iceland expands its fishing zone, putting it into conflict with the United Kingdom, beginning the Cod Wars.
• 1972 – In Reykjavík, Iceland, American Bobby Fischer beats Russian Boris Spassky to become the world chess champion.
• 1983 – Cold War: Korean Air Lines Flight 007 is shot down by a Soviet Union jet fighter when the commercial aircraft enters Soviet airspace, killing all 269 on board, including Congressman Lawrence McDonald.

Notables born on September 1 include:

• 1653 – Johann Pachelbel, German organist, composer, and educator (d. 1706).

Here’s Taco Bell’s famous Canon in D major by Jean-Francois Paillard and the Kanon Orchestre de Chambre. It’s good waking-up music for today:

Others born on this day include:

• 1854 – Engelbert Humperdinck, German playwright and composer (d. 1921)
• 1875 – Edgar Rice Burroughs, American soldier and author (d. 1950)
• 1925 – Art Pepper, American saxophonist, clarinet player, and composer (d. 1982)
• 1933 – Ann Richards, American educator and politician, 45th Governor of Texas (d. 2006)
• 1938 – Alan Dershowitz, American lawyer and author
• 1939 – Lily Tomlin, American actress, comedian, screenwriter, and producer
• 1944 – Archie Bell, American soul singer-songwriter and musician
• 1946 – Barry Gibb, Manx-English singer-songwriter and producer
• 1948 – Russ Kunkel, American drummer and producer
• 1957 – Gloria Estefan, Cuban-American singer-songwriter and actress
• 1970 – Padma Lakshmi, Indian-American actress and author

Those who left us on this day include:

• 1838 – William Clark, American soldier, explorer, and politician, 4th Governor of Missouri Territory (b. 1770)
• 1967 – Siegfried Sassoon, English captain and poet (b. 1886)
• 1977 – Ethel Waters, American singer and actress (b. 1896)
• 1981 – Albert Speer, German architect and author (b. 1905)
• 2014 – Joseph Shivers, American chemist and academic, developed spandex (b. 1920)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn: Hili is philosophizing again.

Hili: What can we tell about reality?

A: That it should be taken into consideration.

Hili: That’s not very romantic.

Hili: Co możemy powiedzieć o rzeczywistości?
Ja: Że należy ją brać pod uwagę.
Hili: To mało romantyczne.

From the Dover Public Library, which has a very interesting Facebook page:

From Mark:

Grania sent me this lovely penguin tweet on March 22 of this year:

さぁ！みんな！ 行くわよ！ pic.twitter.com/xfWN2Rs7xR

— chiro (@Chiro_chan_neko) March 17, 2019

From reader Ken. I may have posted this before, but it’s appropriate, now that Dorian is bearing down on the East Coast of the U.S., that see this view from space.

Here is #HurricaneDorian as seen from space. #Dorian2019 pic.twitter.com/etw5b941oJ

— 🎹 Pianu Reeves (@pianu_reeves) August 31, 2019

Two tweets from Heather Hastie featuring “China’s hard man.” I don’t know who this dude is, but he’s plenty weird.

I’ve never seen a grown man light a plate of BEANS on fire in my life pic.twitter.com/nsLSs5R6qA

— ⚓Fleet Week kenjac⚓ (@JackKennedy) August 25, 2019

And a quartet of tweets from Dr. Cobb. The first shows a guy about as chill as it’s possible to be with a burglar thrusting a rifle into your face. Matthew asks, “Cool or drunk or stupid?”

Me when other adults think they’re gonna make threats at staff pic.twitter.com/MFHwSWjHgH

— José Vilson is thinking about forever. (@TheJLV) August 31, 2019

This is absolute proof that not all cops are horrible people, as some would have us believe. Sound up.

Cop stops on a highway to save a tiny kitten 💛 pic.twitter.com/Xwxgg3nwiN

— The Dodo (@dodo) August 2, 2019

Matthew says that I need one of these:

My professor doesn't believe in laser pointers so he uses a fishing pole with a foam finger attached and I can't contain myself during lecture lmao pic.twitter.com/h5Es2fimtW

— Kirsten🦋 (@kirstenteigg) August 29, 2019

If and when Brexit happens, many people who were formally in Britain legally will be deported. I can’t fathom that, but here’s one of them:

Here's Anna Amato, a Bristolian who's lived in the UK since moving from Italy aged 2. By her estimate she's paid more than £500k tax after working here for 40 years.

Request for permanent residency? Denied.

"Where do I go? It is really, really scary."
https://t.co/wUlgan8LEV pic.twitter.com/HT70IMc6KN

— Andy Bruce (@BruceReuters) August 30, 2019