Saturday: Hili dialogue (and Mietek monologue)

December 19, 2020 • 6:30 am

Good morning on a Sabbath that Ceiling Cat made for all cats (mind you, cats weren’t made for the Sabbath): December 19, 2020. There are only 6 shopping days left until Coynezaa, which begins on Christmas Day.. It’s National Oatmeal Muffin Day, the kind of muffin you eat when you’re one of those who equates food and medicine. It’s also National Hard Candy Day, Holly Day, and Saint Nicholas Day, or “The Feast of Saint Nicholas”, in Eastern Orthodox countries.

News of the Day:

A few days ago, the Congress, in a rare show of bipartisanship between the House and Senate, seemed ready to pass a pandemic relief bill. Well, that fell apart yesterday, and both House and Senate passed a two-day extension of the deadline.  If nothing’s passed by Sunday night, the government shuts down.

One would expect a physician specializing in hospice and palliative care would have something useful to say about death, but don’t expect that from Dr. B. J. Miller’s piece in the New York Times, “What is death?”  Although Miller starts off all right trying to define death as a clinical phenomenon, he soon goes off the rails:

For revelation of the mysteries of an afterlife, or of the forces that kicked off this wondrous circus in the first place, we might look to religion. What is described above is plainly observable science. Yet science doesn’t do the question justice. It won’t tell us why,or what’s behind its laws. The body houses more than we can express; you are more than your body. Becoming a blade of grass is a sweetness that doesn’t compensate for all the heartache death connotes.

No, religion can pretend to know what happens to our “souls” (which we don’t have), but can’t tell us jack squat.  Miller goes on to try to make the best of death, which for most of us is something we don’t want. It’s not that bad!

We do have fuller ways of knowing. Who doubts that imagination and intuition and love hold power and capacity beyond what language can describe? You are a person with consciousness and emotions and ties. You live on in those you’ve touched, in hearts and minds. You affect people. Just remember those who’ve died before you. There’s your immortality. There, in you, they live. Maybe this force wanes over time, but it is never nothing.

Well, as Woody Allen said, “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying.”

Our mayor, Lori Lightfoot, is in big trouble. In February, 2019, a dozen Chicago cops broke into the wrong house while executing a warrant. They cuffed and abused a naked woman (Anjanette Young, a social worker) who was completely innocent and told the cops forty times that they had the wrong address. There is video that completely corroborates Young’s claims. At first Hurhonor Lightfoot said she didn’t know about the case or the video until last week. In fact, she knew about the case for over a year, and says she “forgot.” Why didn’t she check before mouthing off? In the meantime, the city had stonewalled Young about giving her the video, finally handing it over but prohibiting its sharing. It’s now all over the news (see here, for instance). Young is going to get a big settlement, I’ll bet, but this could conceivably spell the end for Lightfoot as mayor. She’d done some good stuff, but is too authoritarian.

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 313,740, a big increase of about 2,800 from yesterday’s figure, with deaths occurred at about 2 per minute. The world death toll is 1,683,309, a huge increase of about 12,800 over yesterday’s report—about 8.9 people dying per minute.

Stuff that happened on December 19 includes:

  • 1606 – The ships Susan Constant, Godspeed, and Discovery depart England carrying settlers who founded, at Jamestown, Virginia, the first of the thirteen colonies that became the United States.
  • 1777 – American Revolutionary War: George Washington’s Continental Army goes into winter quarters at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.

It was a rough winter. Ten soldiers died per day of starvation, disease, and cold. But Washington hung in there, one of the few men who stayed the whole time, and fixed things so the men left revitalized and ready to fight come Spring. The soldiers grew to love their general, but now his name is being removed from a high school in San Francisco.

Look at this beautiful car!

  • 1924 – German serial killer Fritz Haarmann is sentenced to death for a series of murders.

Haarmann, tried for killing 27 boys and young men. He was convicted and guillotined:

  • 1956 – Irish-born physician John Bodkin Adams is arrested in connection with the suspicious deaths of more than 160 patients. Eventually he is convicted only of minor charges.

Although Adams (below) may have killed 150 patients by injecting them with drugs, he got off pretty much scot-free, sustaining only a £240 fine for  forging prescriptions, making false statements on cremation forms, and violating the Dangerous Drugs Act. He eventually practiced medicine again, and died after a fall in 1983. Oy!

  • 1972 – Apollo program: The last manned lunar flight, Apollo 17, crewed by Eugene Cernan, Ronald Evans, and Harrison Schmitt, returns to Earth.
  • 1983 – The original FIFA World Cup trophy, the Jules Rimet Trophy, is stolen from the headquarters of the Brazilian Football Confederation in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

It had been stolen before, too, but found thanks to Pickles:

On 20 March 1966, four months before the 1966 FIFA World Cup in England, the trophy was stolen during a public exhibition at Westminster Central Hall.  It was found just seven days later wrapped in newspaper at the bottom of a suburban garden hedge on Beulah Hill, Upper Norwood, South London, by a black and white mongrel dog named Pickles

Here’s Pickles, who got a silver medal for his find. His owner got £5,000 pounds, with which he bought a house:

Pickles
  • 1998 – President Bill Clinton is impeached by the United States House of Representatives, becoming the second President of the United States to be impeached.
  • 2001 – A record high barometric pressure of 1085.6 hPa (32.06 inHg) is recorded at Tosontsengel, Khövsgöl, Mongolia.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1910 – Jean Genet, French novelist, playwright, and poet (d. 1986)
  • 1915 – Édith Piaf, French singer-songwriter and actress (d. 1963)

Here’s Piaf in 1960, toward the end of her career (she died of alcoholism at 47). This is her most famous song:

  • 1924 – Cicely Tyson, American actress
  • 1940 – Phil Ochs, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1976)
  • 1944 – Richard Leakey, Kenyan paleontologist and politician
  • 1963 – Jennifer Beals, American model and actress
  • 1972 – Alyssa Milano, American actress and television personality
  • 1980 – Jake Gyllenhaal, American actor and producer

Those who took up occupancy on a cloud on December 19 include:

Here’s the only undisputed likeness of Emily (and her sisters). Wikipedia caption: “The three Brontë sisters, in an 1834 painting by their brother Branwell Brontë. From left to right: Anne, Emily and Charlotte. (Branwell used to be between Emily and Charlotte, but subsequently painted himself out.)”  Branwell wasn’t such a great artist, but hey. . .  I’ve circled the author of Wuthering Heights.  Emily died of tuberculosis at thirty. 

  • 1915 – Alois Alzheimer, German psychiatrist and neuropathologist (b. 1864)
  • 1953 – Robert Andrews Millikan, American physicist and eugenicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1868)
  • 1997 – Jimmy Rogers, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1924)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili gives a book review. Malgorzata’s explanation:

A few days ago Andrzej wrote a review of the newly published Polish translation of Richard Wrangham’s The Goodness Paradox, and Hili is commenting on the book.

Her take:

Hili: Wrangham misses the key role of cats in the domestication of humans.
A: Big cats or small cats?
Hili: Don’t pretend that you don’t know what I’m talking about.
In Polish:
Hili: Wrangham pomija kluczową rolę kotów w udomowieniu człowieka.
Ja: Małych czy wielkich?
Hili: Nie udawaj, że nie wiesz o czym mówię.

And the newly-neutered Kulka is back on the beat, demanding fusses.

Caption: Morning greeting. Kulka believes that every morning has to start with a few minutes of intensive contact.

In Polish: Codziennne poranne powitanie. Kulka uważa, że ranek musi się zacząć od kilku minut intensywnego kontaktu.

And in Wloclawek, Mietek tells Elzbieta he needs a siesta:

Mietek: Time for an afternoon nap.

In Polish: Pora na popołudniową drzemkę.

From Charles: a clowder of cats that’s also a coven:

From Su:

From Jesus of the Day. The only proper reaction is “Oy, gewalt!”

From reader Barry, who is learning that treehoppers and planthoppers are the weirdest insects going:

Tweets from Matthew. Translation of Hebrew in this one: “Hurry to make the final arrangements before Shabbat” (Sabbath). Everything has to be done before sundown on Friday:

Here’s a heartwarmer:

I assume this painting is real, and if so the caption is sheer genius:

A nasty Jewish fowl. The Hebrew caption, translated by Google, reads: “Where it is forbidden to put a duck. They bite very hard.” But that’s a goose!

Two lovely videos of the same bobcat. Sound up.

A tweet showing the tweeter, presented in a quiz by his students:

16 thoughts on “Saturday: Hili dialogue (and Mietek monologue)”

  1. People must be sleeping late, besides me. The only logical reason I can understand for the performance of the mayor in Chicago is, the police run the city. This incident happened over a year ago if I get it correctly, yet when asked for more information about it now the Mayor says I cannot discuss an ongoing investigation. That comment alone should be the end of this mayor.

  2. Here’s an excellent book about the final chapter of life:
    “How We Die: Reflections on Life’s Final Chapter” by Sherwin B Nuland

  3. “For revelation of the mysteries of an afterlife,… we might look to religion.”
    Or, we might not. We might rather look to tea leaves or maybe chicken guts. What about those star alignments?

    Come on NYT! Why on Earth did they ask this physician specializing in hospice and palliative care? Why not a Los Angeles DJ, or a Mongolian sheep barber? As for me, I’ll stick with my Magic 8-Ball.

  4. A (not) long time ago in a (mentally) distant galaxy

    “He didn’t win the Election. He lost all 6 Swing States, by a lot. They then dumped hundreds of thousands of votes in each one, and got caught. Now Republican politicians have to fight so that their great victory is not stolen. Don’t be weak fools!”

    And I’m the one who worries about living in the unreal Matrix?

    Look at Trump, very bad trip.
    Me again about ” You-Know-Who” (I have my painful reasons)

  5. A (not) long time ago in a (mentally) distant galaxy

    “He didn’t win the Election. He lost all 6 Swing States, by a lot. They then dumped hundreds of thousands of votes in each one, and got caught. Now Republican politicians have to fight so that their great victory is not stolen. Don’t be weak fools!”

    And I’m the one who worries about living in the unreal Matrix?

    Look at Trump, very bad trip.

  6. Not only Emily Bronte died of TB. Her mother and all of her siblings, except Branwell, died of it too. Her father, Patrick, outlived his wife by 40 years. He also outlived all of his children. Patrick lived to the ripe old age of 84, having buried his whole family.

    When Emily published ‘Wuthering Heights’, under the pseudonym Ellis Bell, one critic, Sydney Dobell, in The Palladium 1850, called her work “the large utterance of a baby god”.

    1. It is indeed real. The Saint Columba Altarpiece by Rogier van der Weyden. I had never spotted the crucifix before. Great gag!

  8. That newborn giant anteater is adorable. It looks like a cute critter out of a Star Wars bar scene.

  10. Seeing that this is the birthday of Phil Ochs inspired me to listen to him perform Power and the Glory. What a terrific musician, who left us way too soon. Imagine if that was our national anthem. To stand up with thousands at a ballpark, singing those words and meaning them all, would be the sign we live in a truly great country.

  11. Do those rose-patterned bed sheets come with yellow police tape to mark off the scene of a double-homicide?

    Jesus, looks like a photo from the site of the Clutter family murders.

  12. I wore that Piaf disk down to the record’s “marrow”.🥰
    Slightly cleaned up translation of “je me fous”…

Comments are closed.