by Matthew Cobb
PCC (E) is travelling to Poland, so I am posting Hili today. However, I am travelling too, so this is even briefer than it should be.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is stunned, Kulka is relaxed.
Hili: All this is beyond feline belief.
Kulka: We are living in times of universal oversensitivity.
Hili: To wszystko przerasta kocie wyobrażenie.
Kulka: Żyjemy w czasach powszechnej nadwrażliwości.
I arrived in London at Euston Station, where all is perpetual chaos as building work on the controversial HS2 line and terminal continues. The one unchanging thing (for the last few years anyway, is this statue of Captain Matthew Flinders, and his cat, Trim.
Feel free to chip in on whatever topic you want below, though as usual, remember to follow PCC(E)’s rules (see on the left). This is his place, after all…
So I gather that some make no distinction between the HS2 line and H2S. (I know nothing about it but suppose that this was immediately noted.)
On this day:
1876 – Alexander Graham Bell is granted a patent for an invention he calls the “telephone”.
1900 – The German liner SS Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse becomes the first ship to send wireless signals to shore.
1965 – Bloody Sunday: A group of 600 civil rights marchers is brutally attacked by state and local police in Selma, Alabama.
1989 – Iran and the United Kingdom break diplomatic relations after a fight over Salman Rushdie and his controversial novel, The Satanic Verses.
Births:
1792 – John Herschel, English mathematician and astronomer (d. 1871).
1872 – Piet Mondrian, Dutch-American painter (d. 1944).
1875 – Maurice Ravel, French pianist, composer, and conductor (d. 1937).
1936 – Georges Perec, French author and screenwriter (d. 1982).
1944 – Ranulph Fiennes, English soldier and explorer.
1944 – Townes Van Zandt, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1997). [His bandmate Gary Rossington died on Sunday.]
1945 – Arthur Lee, American singer-songwriter and musician (d. 2006).
1952 – Viv Richards, Antiguan cricketer and footballer.
1958 – Rik Mayall, English comedian, actor, and screenwriter (d. 2014).
Started pushing up the daisies:
1274 – Saint Thomas Aquinas, Italian priest and philosopher (b. 1225).
1809 – Jean-Pierre Blanchard, French inventor, best known as a pioneer in balloon flight (b. 1753).
1897 – Harriet Ann Jacobs, African American Abolitionist and author (b. 1813).
1957 – Wyndham Lewis, English painter and critic (b. 1882). [Co-founder of the Vorticist movement in art and edited its literary magazine BLAST.]
1967 – Alice B. Toklas, American writer (b. 1877).
1999 – Stanley Kubrick, American director, producer, and screenwriter (b. 1928).
Re. the wireless, Erik Larson’s Thunderstruck is a fascinating read about Marconi’s efforts in developing wireless telegraphy tied to a celebrated murder/dismemberment of a colossal shrew of a wife in London and how the attempted seaward escape of the murderer was thwarted by telegraphy, capturing the attention of the public for a week, and securing Marconi’s place in development of the technology in the process.
Unrelated to history of technology, his The Splendid and the Vile, on Winston Churchill and the first year of the Nazi assault on England is equally good.
That would be Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen, an American who moved to London, where he eventually murdered his wife. He boarded a liner to escape back to New York, but the captain recognised him from his description in the press, and told his telegraphist to send a wireless telegram to the UK authorities. The detective in charge boarded a faster vessel, got to New York first, and arrested Crippen on his arrival. Full story here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawley_Harvey_Crippen
“1945 – Arthur Lee, American singer-songwriter and musician (d. 2006).” – for those who share our host’s love of 60s rock music: Lee was the head of the band Love, which was part of the Los Angeles scene in the mid-to-late 60s, alongside the Byrds, the Doors, The Mamas & The Papas and many others, but somehow didn’t get the widespread, lasting recognition they deserved. Their album “Forever Changes” is criminally underrated and highly recommended.
My thoughts exactly. As to why they didn’t get the recognition, I don’t know. Maybe it’s because they didn’t fit comfortably into a standard pigeon-hole. Maybe it’s because they had little overlap in terms of personnel with other bands. Check out Pete Frame’s Rock Family Trees to see how related most famous rock bands are. They were also one of the few mixed-race groups. From slightly later, the Doobie Brothers (no real brothers in the band) and the Allman Brothers (some real brothers in the band) come to mind, and the mixed-race aspect didn’t seem to hurt them.
Thank you Matthew and Jez.
And the destruction of the original Euston and especially its arch was one of the grossest acts of corporate vandalism that happened in the UK.
Thank you, Matthew, for posting a Hili dialogue today! That is what I need to carry on.
Not a good year so far for guitarists. Jeff Beck, then Tom Verlaine, and now David Lindley. RIP
A good trip and happy landings to PCC.
+1
Looking forward to hearing some news when he finds the time.
Your comment reminded me of careless act of corporate shenanigans to lovely performance theatre in my city 2008, the farcical financial collapse took care of the corporation that did the deed but we were left with a hole in the ground for years after.
It might not have been so bad but there was a dire need for a theatre of its capacity and there was no replacement for years after that.
This was in reply to Bonetired, oops.
Trim was the first cat to sail around Australia: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-10/history-of-trim-matthew-flinders-adventure-cat/9231672
The green tea Oreos yesterday weren’t Japanese but Chinese, from Taiwan. Wrapper said “ORIO”.
Interesting fact: PR China’s characters are “simplified” and look quite different to those traditional ones used in Taiwan, HK, SE Asia, etc. The commie pukes wanted to make more people literate with greater ease. It worked I think, but at the cost of the aesthetics.
Doesn’t effect the taste of green tea Oreos, though. 🙂
D.A.
NYC (formerly of Tokyo, Japanese readers can get the jist of Chinese characters)
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2020/06/10/photos-of-readers-93/
Ceiling Cat, I come to your Twitter page everyday to scan through your writing. I freak out when I see only one post! I know you have a life. I suppose I wanted to leave this post to share with you that people do notice what you write and the frequency of which you post.
Yes, sometimes I even fail to realize I have a life!
Psychoanalytic psychotherapy is based on the assumption that our actions and feelings are triggered by unconscious internal motives.
And nobody accepts psychoanalytic psychotherapy anymore. Haven’t you heard that that field is dead? It’s gone down the drain along with its monstrous spawn, “repressed memory therapy.”