Wednesday: Hili dialogue

December 11, 2019 • 6:30 am

Happy Hump Day: it’s December 11, 2019, and it’s going to be a cold one in Chicago: at the moment it’s 15° F (-9°C) here, and it’s not going to get much warmer this week. I suspect that Botany Pond will freeze over in the next few days. Poor frozen ducks!

It’s National “Have a Bagel” Day. But the scare quotes around those three words puzzle me. Are we only supposed to pretend we had a bagel? Or are we supposed to have something else instead? Regardless, there are few bagels in North America worth having, with the best of them in Montreal. It’s also International Mountain Day, and Holiday Food Drive for Needy Animals Day. In Argentina, it’s National Tango Day, declared in honor of Julio de Caro (born December 11, 1899, died 1980), a composer, conductor, and musician whose activities on behalf of that genre make him the Argentinian “Mr. Tango.”

Here’s a recording of de Caro and his orchestra from 1927:

There are only 13 shopping days left until the beginning of Coynezaa.

Stuff that happened on this day includes:

  • 1931 – Statute of Westminster 1931: The British Parliament establishes legislative equality between the UK and the Dominions of the Commonwealth—Australia, Canada, Newfoundland, New Zealand, South Africa, and Ireland.
  • 1934 – Bill Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, takes his last drink and enters treatment for the final time.
  • 1936 – Abdication Crisis: Edward VIII’s abdication as King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions beyond the Seas, and Emperor of India, becomes effective.
  • 1941 – World War II: Germany and Italy declare war on the United States, following the Americans’ declaration of war on the Empire of Japan in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The United States, in turn, declares war on them.
  • 1962 – Arthur Lucas, convicted of murder, is the last person to be executed in Canada.

He and an accomplice were hanged for murder, and were informed that they were likely to be the last people executed in the country. As Lucas said, “Some consolation!”

  • 1964 – Che Guevara speaks at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City.
  • 1968 – The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus, featuring the Rolling Stones, Jethro Tull, the Who, Taj Mahal, Marianne Faithfull, and the Dirty Mac with Yoko Ono, is filmed in Wembley, London.
  • 1972 – Apollo 17 becomes the sixth and final Apollo mission to land on the Moon.
  • 2008 – Bernard Madoff is arrested and charged with securities fraud in a $50 billion Ponzi scheme.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1803 – Hector Berlioz, French composer, conductor, and critic (d. 1869)
  • 1882 – Max Born, German physicist and mathematician, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1970)
  • 1899 – Julio de Caro, Argentinian violinist, composer, and conductor (d. 1980)
  • 1908 – Amon Göth, Austrian Nazi war criminal (d. 1946)

You may remember Göth as the evil concentration-camp boss in the film Schindler’s list, played by Ralph Fiennes. And yes he really did take potshots at prisoners his office and the camp grounds, wearing a Tyrolean hat to indicate he was on the hunt. After the war he was hanged for his crimes, but Wikipedia doesn’t mention that they tried three times to hang him, but the first two times the rope was too short. If you want to see the botched hanging, go here and wait till the end. And if you don’t know how power can turn people into monsters, read this:

Göth, described by survivors as a huge and imposing man, personally murdered prisoners on a daily basis. His two dogs, Rolf, a Great Dane, and Ralf, an Alsatian mix, were trained to tear inmates to death. He shot people from the window of his office if they appeared to be moving too slowly or resting in the yard. He shot a Jewish cook to death because the soup was too hot.  He brutally mistreated his two maids, Helen Jonas-Rosenzweig and Helen Hirsch, who were in constant fear for their lives, as were all the inmates. During his time at Płaszów, Göth lived comfortably in a villa, owning cars and horses that he rode in the camp. He had a Jewish cobbler inmate make him new shoes each week.

As a survivor I can tell you that we are all traumatized people. Never would I, never, believe that any human being would be capable of such horror, of such atrocities. When we saw him from a distance, everybody was hiding, in latrines, wherever they could hide. I can’t tell you how people feared him.

— Helen Jonas-Rosenzweig
  • 1931 – Rajneesh, Indian guru, mystic, and educator (d. 1990)
  • 1938 – McCoy Tyner, American jazz musician
  • 1943 – John Kerry, American lieutenant, lawyer, and politician, 68th United States Secretary of State
  • 1996 – Hailee Steinfeld, American actress and singer

Notables who Bought the Farm on December 11 are few, and include::

  • 1964 – Sam Cooke, American singer-songwriter (b. 1931)

Cooke wrote and sang what I regard as the most soulful of all soul songs, the plaintive “A change is gonna come,” released in 1964. That was an appropriate year, for the change did come, at least through the Civil Rights Act. Here’s the original recording:

  • 1971 – Maurice McDonald, American businessman, co-founded McDonald’s (b. 1902)
  • 2008 – Bettie Page, American model (b. 1923)
  • 2012 – Ravi Shankar, Indian-American sitar player and composer (b. 1920)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the upstairs lodger, who loves Hili, gives her a snack:

Hili: Are you trying to bribe me?
Paulina: A bit.
Hili: That’s the right way to do it.
In Polish:
Hili: Czy ty próbujesz mnie przekupić?
Paulina: Troszkę.
Hili: To jest właściwy sposób, żeby to zrobić.

A meme, and a good one, from Homer Blind WonderCat. Do not trust someone who isn’t kind to animals!!!

Look at this bat from The Wildest Facts!

 

According to reader Barry, who gives a source, this is true. They’re trying to round up the pigeons (excuse the pun) and remove their hats:

Also from Barry, some wave-tossed otters. As he says, “The otters are probably used to this.” Sound up to hear the squeaks!

 

Tweets from Matthew. First, the daily morning egress at Marsh Farm, with narration by the hyperexcited farmer:

 

The chief of police of Houston, Texas, speaks truth to power, and isn’t it sad that McConnell has power? Ceiling Cat bless this cop! But, as I heard on the news last night, he’s now in big trouble, denounced by the local police union. Can you imagine?

Make sure you have the sound on for this one:

Matthew and I love murmurations, and this is a particularly good one:

Two tweets from Heather Hastie. First, a cat befuddled by cows:

https://twitter.com/AwwwwCats/status/1201137540813729793

And a cat befuddled by a squirrel. I don’t understand why the moggie doesn’t just eat it.

https://twitter.com/AwwwwCats/status/1201592291296763908

 

53 thoughts on “Wednesday: Hili dialogue”

    1. I used to live on an isolated island, where fishing was pretty much the only distraction. Seagulls getting tangled in the bait was a continuous problem. Someone decided that it would be a clever idea to number the seagulls as they were freed and released. Gulls with stenciled numbers were soon everywhere. I don’t know how high the numbers got, but it was in the hundreds.

      1. … but were any of the marked birds actually found tangled for a second time in the bait? (Or bait lines? I’m not quite sure on the fishing terminology.)
        This is actually a standard technique for estimating population sizes in the wild – capture, mark and release a number of animals – say, a thousand – then after a while go out and capture another hundred, and count the number of marked animals in your second sample. You can then estimate your total population. The second “capture” can be using a camera if your “mark” is appropriate.
        There are obvious complications if the population diffuses out to other environments , or if the “mark” makes the animals more vulnerable to predation, but it’s an effective technique.
        If the marked seagulls didn’t get caught a second time in the bait lines, that might mean that they found the process so unpleasant that they avoided the temptations of the bait bucket in the future.

        1. They were caught when people were trying to reel in their lines from the ship’s stern, in the brief moment when the baited hook was at the surface. Sometimes they were tangled, sometimes they got hooked. They were always carefully freed.
          And yes, there were lots of repeat offenders. I also have somewhere a picture of a marked gull that landed on the bridge wing many hundreds of miles from the origin.
          I find such things very interesting, although I have not engaged in systematic study of them. The population estimate method is not something I had thought of.

          I am not sure it would work in this instance because we were a big attractor of all sorts of marine life. After each meal service, the food scraps were dumped overboard, and the water would just boil with fish, and the birds would descend. The longer we remained at the anchorage, the more fish and birds we would attract.

          1. You’re still allowed to dump waste overboard? That’s been banned in Europe (but not Israel – I remember being shocked seeing trash going over the side on the Tamar discovery well ; if you consider Israel to be in Europe) since about when I started going offshore (1987).

  2. The best bagels are in the NYC/NJ area. Too far outside of New York City and they aren’t bagels. I guess Montreal has good bagels also.

    2. Last time I was in NYC I could not find a good bagel in Manhattan. Maybe Brooklyn still has a Jewish bakery that makes good bagel. When I was growing up in Cleveland we had many Jewish bakeries and all had good bagels. Now there is only Davis Bakery left, and even their bagels are not as good as they once were, although most of their other baked goods are still what I grew up on.

      1. I haven’t had a bagel in the city in the while or too many bagels in general. If the lox isn’t fresh, the place isn’t good. I’ve found a few places like that too far outside of NYC. Didn’t know that Cleveland had good bagels. After asking my family on a group text for a good bagel place in Brooklyn, I got, “Where in Brooklyn?” twice and a La Bagel Delight. My guess would be most places in Brooklyn.

    3. Like PCC(E), I struggle to understand why those scare quotes are there. Do they think the message might be confused with ‘National: Have “a Bagel Day”‘? If they have to have quotes, then ‘National “Have a Bagel day” ‘ would make more sense.

      But hey-ho. We’ve got an election tomorrow. The main choices for Prime Minister are a Trump-style serial philanderer and liar; and an unreconstructed 70s Marxist-Leninist. Wish us luck.

    2. According to a tweet by Caroline a few days ago they just go in of their own volition. I guess they know where they will be safe.

    1. Sometimes the comment database takes a few minutes to display a posted comment. No need to double-enter them.

  5. The chief in Houston has my vote. And the wild west moves further east to Jersey City, New Jersey.

  6. Hadda look up “the Dirty Mac” band that performed with Yoko in Wembley, ’68. Appears it was a one-time coming together of Messrs. Lennon, Clapton, Richards, and Mitch Mitchell, drummer for the Jimi Hendrix Experience.

    Not a bad back-up band, I suppose, as these things go.

    2. I think that’s the same group who performed the “Yer Blues” song, at least in the video on YouTube (I don’t think the version on “The White Album” is them, but I could be wrong).

  7. “A Change Is Gonna Come” is a great, great, moving tune. But, for my money, Sam got down to his R&B best with “Bring It On Home to Me”:

  9. You ask me, the real pigeons in Vegas are inside the casinos, sitting at the gaming tables and slots, or trying their limited skills in the poker rooms against the pros.

  10. I followed the link to the Amoth Goeth clip on youtube ,some people in the comments have said it was not him but Ludwig Fischer.

    Whoever it was ,why were the hangmen wearing masks over their eyes ?

    1. To avoid their families being murdered by relatives/ friends/ co-religionists of the person being (very incompetently) executed.

      Also, considering how incompetent the (ehemmm) execution of the execution was, they probably wanted to avoid being recognised out of sheer embarrassment.

      I’m not sure, but it looks as if they were using wire rather than rope. Though I can’t really think why. Clearly, from the length of drop being used, they had no intention at all of breaking the neck, but were going for a death by slow strangulation. I’m somewhat surprised that there wasn’t more “dancing the air fandango” by whoever was being killed.

      You’ve got to be careful with doing “long drop” hangings. Even the best of executioners occasionally got it wrong and ripped the head off the prisoner, spraying the witnessing dignitaries with undignified amounts of blood. When (I’ve forgotten his name – Pierrepont’s predecessoor?) wrote his autobiography, he included a table of weights, collar sizes and drop lengths to use to avoid decapitation. Somehow, that offended 1930s sensibilities, and the next time the Official Secrets Act was renewed by Parliament, they added a rider making the act apply specifically to executioners.

      “Short drop” hangings like this require less calculation, but the several minutes (up to 20 minutes has been reported) of slow strangulation also seemed to offend some sensibilities. The crowd liked it though – they got a good show.
      “Are you pulling my leg?” Seems a jocular phrase until you find out it’s origin. “Kick the bucket” is equally hilarious.

      I’ve always wondered exactly what was going through Billy Shakespeare’s mind when he wrote about shuffling “off this mortal coil“. When you’re knee-deep in ropes preparing an abseil in the dark, with the water levels rising, and a low crawl ahead of you, you think about “mortal coils” a lot as you’re trying to get the coils into the tackle bag.

      1. One of my old teachers said that one of the main points of state execution was that it was meant to be quick and painless ,haha .

        Don’t know how the old English habit of Hanging Drawing and Quartering figure in that .

        1. Ah, that was specifically a punishment for treason, not any old crime.
          But no, execution was only meant to be painless and quick for a fairly brief period following the Enlightenment, before civilised societies stopped executing people. Before that, execution was meant to be a painful, humiliating and very public act, to increase it’s deterrent effect. (That is, a deterrent against getting caught, not a deterrent against committing a crime.)

    2. The Man being hanged in the YouTube video is Amon Göth.

      MY EVIDENCE

      [1] The Polish State Film Archive, the Yad Vashem Holocaust Archive in Israel, Goeth’s biographer and numerous online holocaust sites identified the man being hanged as Göth

      [2] SEE IMAGE BELOW. Göth [yellow] is led away from the courthouse after being sentenced to death around a week before his execution. And 13th September 1946 we see Göth BEFORE mounting the ‘scaffold’ steps in the courtyard of Montelupich Prison, Kraków. Note the relative heights of Göth & the Polish uniformed men nearest him. Göth was 6’4″ throughout the whole war although he was much lighter at his capture than during his fat years as a Jew killer.

      [3] SEE IMAGE BELOW. Fischer [red], who isn’t 6’4″, in his uniformed Fat Years & at his trial where he seems to have retained porkiness. He was executed 6 months after Göth on March 8, 1947, in Warsaw’s Mokotów Prison.

      https://flic.kr/p/2hY6FZZ

      NOTES & OBSERVATIONS:

      NAZI FANBOYS

      You can safely ignore 90% of YT comments re WWII Nazis, ‘wonder weapons’ & especially from the Holocaust denialists/minimisers. There is a young & uninformed international army of Nazi fanboys out there who have mythologised all things Nazi & they just love to bring doubt to the table. A good example is the Wiki for this nasty monster where there ‘edit wars’ break out now & then. I blame the fetishization of Nazi uniforms & symbols & the World Of Tanks massively multiplayer online game which has more registered players than the figure for total deaths in WWII! Nearly everybody wants to command a Panzerkampfwagen Tiger Ausf. B [Königstiger] or a T34 of course.

      NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

      In 2013 they fielded a crap partial, clickbait documentary that raised the question of identity – this docu was reported on by newspapers all over the world. They didn’t bring up the height issue – something I myself put together today & it’s bleedin’ obvious too. 🙂

      EXECUTION METHODS

      In Britain & elsewhere a thick rope was employed with a huge knot at the side of the neck so as to break the neck – the breaking of the spine is cause of death. The drop was calculated based on height, weight & muscle tone of the subject + a bit of guesstimation, but it was important for the drop to be of Goldilocks length – not to be too short nor too long [pulls the skull off the spine].

      What you see in the video is a poor short-drop hanging which even the US used for executing WWII war criminals – the object is to induce unconsciousness through strangulation in around 5 to 15 seconds with death following after up to 20 minutes. For this to work a thin rope is best & a drop of 4′ or a bit more.

      The drop in the video here is too short at 3′ [4 normal steps up to the trap], the executioners do not look like normal executioners who know what to do [they look like invited in Polish Home Army & not prison personnel] & they were probably not told they needed to allow for their man being 6’4″ & underweight, finally the rope wasn’t tied off as it should be. These were probably standard gallows for that prison which worked fine on 5’6″ prisoners

      THE TIMES

      This was in Soviet controlled Poland & the prisons were run by the murderous NKVD & their Polish puppets the Urząd Bezpieczeństwa [UB] secret police – they tortured & murdered Polish soldiers of the Home Army & supporters of the Polish government in exile. The prison at the time of the execution would have been full of Poles who had the wrong leanings [the Home Army had factions] & very few left as free people.

      The masks are probably partially a useless protection against the NKVD & the UB as well as just a tradition. It also has the effect of psychologically distancing the executioners from their task.

        1. Yes, I wouldn’t have bothered commenting on the subject except for the Nazi Truther aspect & then I realised I’d have to show there was nothing particularly vengeful in the setup of the execution – just standard [if incompetent] for the time & place. The entire proceedings were in the hands of the Poles & not the NKVD/UB who would have been been infinitely crueller & dispensed with the formalities displayed in the vid.

          1. I hope i haven’t given you the impression i am a nazi fan boy?
            I admit i am interested in the history of the nazi period ,but i am also interested in the Soviet Union ,and i am not a communist .

          2. Where the f*ck did that come from? You may have noticed by now [over the years] that I am direct rather than passive-aggressive, if I thought you were a Nazi fanboy I would have said exactly that!

          4. David, It wasn’t about you, but it became about you, which ended up making it about me! I hate that shit. Leave it out please.

          5. This is going to be my last comment on the subject .
            Perhaps I was wrong draw attention to the comments on the youtube clip ,maybe I should have said that the usual mob of far right loons were leaving comments that it was not the hanging of goeth in the clip .

            I watch a lot of archive footage online and I know the type of rubbish that people post .I have seen the clip before ,but that was the first time it showed the third and final attempt .

          6. You are misinterpreting my comment [the first one with the picture] as not being just about Amon Göth, but also about me judging you. Even when I subsequently write that it isn’t about you, you still continue making it about you! It is my style to divide my long comments into sections with headers & writing “MY EVIDENCE” was a reflection of the lack of facts presented in the YT comments by denialists & NOT some sort of dig at you.

            All your seemingly paranoid, useless & unnecessary entitled [me, me, me] angst about something, that is a mirage rather than real, could instead have been an interesting discussion about the life & times of the evil Göth or the internet tribes or something – anything that isn’t about YOU & your feelz!

  11. I followed the link to the Amoth Goeth clip on youtube ,some people in the comments have said it was not him but Ludwig Fischer.

    Whoever it was ,why were the hangmen wearing masks over their eyes ?

    1. I’m not sure about Bismark – the only animal-cruelty remark of his that I can remember was “don’t scare the horses” (after a young cavalry officer had been accused of loving his horse a little too literally).

      But … isn’t that cat sitting on a wall in Oia, in the Santorini archipelago?

  14. As to why the cat doesn’t eat the playful squirrel, I’d suggest that it’s because the squirrel isn’t acting like a prey animal. Our cats go after things that scurry and dart around furtively. The rats that moved in under our feeder never attracted our cats, I think because the rats moved around pretty calmly.

    Similarly, certain members of my family cannot get the cats to play with various toys. The key seems to be to be sure to move the toys around like prey animals: Rustling sounds are excellent, followed by quick, short darting motions. Then you can zoom them across the room like a fleeing animal.

    Our squirrels are quite jumpy and dart around erratically, which attracts the attention of our cats. I’d say the real question is why is the playful squirrel in the video so calm around the cat?

    2. The household had a pet baby squirrel who ran away once he was full grown. He comes back to visit every once in a while though & he’s getting reacquainted with his old friend. o says this video from Halcyon pre-Trump 2010:

      https://youtu.be/EWFXttBlSJI

  15. On the police in Houston. Good for them – I think the “law and order” segment of the population might be *partially* convinced by having more law enforcement speak out about the inanity of an over-armed society.

  16. The picture of Hili is good. I like the colors in the eyes and tongue next to similar muted colors in the food. Nice contrast.

  17. Just realized today’s the birthday of Big Mama Thorton, who had the original recording of “Hound Dog,” before Elvis had a hit with it a few years later:

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