Farewell, my duck

September 2, 2017 • 8:30 am

Well, I just went to the pond to see if perchance Honey was there for a Final Breakfast, but she was gone. I suspect that in the evenings she finds somewhere safe to sleep, as the duck islands are pretty much covered with water and don’t look too comfortable.

So off I go, and I hope she goes off too—to wherever mallards take themselves in winter. I will miss her, but hope that she’ll come back next spring.  If she returns in the next few days, she’ll miss me, too, for I am the Purveyor of Noms; but I need to exercise tough love and let her go. She belongs not to me but to Nature.

Here’s a final picture of Honey, and a lovely thing she is too:

Honey the duck

Saturday: Hili dialogue

September 2, 2017 • 6:30 am

It’s Saturday, September 2, 1017, and tomorrow, after an overnight flight, I’ll be in Poland. It’s National Grits for Breakfast Day; it’s been too long since I’ve had the archetypal Southern breakfast of fried eggs with grits, country ham with red-eye gravy, biscuits with homemade jam, and lots of strong coffee. On the other hand, it will soon be Cherry Pie for Breakfast Day for me—every day! Oddly enough, it’s also National Blueberry Popsicle Day, but we’ll ignore that quiescently frozen confection as it’s the Worst of All Possible Popsicles.

On this day in 1666, Great Fire of London began and, after three days, destroyed 10,000 buildings as well as St Paul’s Cathedral. On September 2, 1901, President Teddy Roosevelt came up with his most famous phrase, “Speak softly and carry a big stick“, uttered at, of all places, the Minnesota State Fair. The phrase referred to his combination of diplomacy and implicit military threat.  On this day in 1939, the day after the Nazis invaded Poland, they occupied the Free City of Danzig (now Gdańsk), where I’ll be on September 12 and 13. More war-related history: on this day in 1945, the Japanese formally surrendered to the Allies aboard the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. Finally, on this day in 1998, Swissair Flight 111 crashed near Peggy’s Cove, Nova Scotia (a place I visited); the cause was apparently a fire, and all 229 passengers and crew were killed.

Notables born on this day include Billy Preston (1946), Christa McAuliffe, the astronaut/teacher killed in the 1986 Challenger explosion (she was born in 1948), Keanu Reeves (1964), and Salma Hayek (1966). Those who died on this day include Henri Rousseau (1910), Alvin C. York (1964), Ho Chi Minh (1969), J. R. R. Tolkien (1973), and Bob Denver (2005).

Here’s a little known Rousseau: “Portrait of Pierre Loti,” painted in 1891. (The source is the fantastic website The Great Cat, featuring felids in art, literature, history, film, and all endeavors.) Once again this proves my theory (which is mine) that even great artists can’t even come close to accurately depicting a cat:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is remonstrating with her staff for not letting her in immediately after a night on the tiles. (But she’s cozy on her little woven sconce with a pad.)

Hili: You’ve finally waken up!
A: You could’ve come home in the evening.
Hili: I returned at dawn but nobody opened the door.
In Polish:
Hili: Obudziłeś się nareszcie!
Ja: Mogłaś wieczorem wrócić do domu.
Hili: Wróciłam nad ranem, ale nikt nie otwierał drzwi.

Here’s an optical illusion: believe it or not, the blue bars are straight and parallel. Use a ruler if you don’t believe me.

Off to Poland

September 1, 2017 • 2:30 pm

I’ll be traveling (or rather chilling with my surrogate parents, Hili, and cherry pie) for about two weeks starting tomorrow. During that time, please try to keep emails to a minimum. As always, readers’ wildlife is welcome, as well as factual or grammatical corrections of what I write. (Yes, I’ll be trying to keep up with the website.) But please collate your items to send, trying to send no more than one email every three or four days. Grania has promised to do the Hili dialogue on Sunday morning, when I’ll be traveling, so our record of daily Hilis will remain unbroken.

As for speaking, I’m giving a talk on science versus religion (a touchy subject in that Catholic country) in Gdansk (Danzig) on Tuesday, September 12:

Time: 6 pm
Location:   Klub Atelier in Sopot (yes, a club, but I’m promised “no disco balls”). I gather Sopot is a smaller town adjacent to Gdansk.

I am Professor Ceiling Cat (Emeritus), and I approve of this message.

Honey the duck came back for a farewell

September 1, 2017 • 1:00 pm

Well, another peak on the roller coaster, but probably the last one: after a two-day absence, my beloved mallard Honey returned to the pond for her final meals. She was hungry (which worries me!), and ate a substantial breakfast and lunch, with an extra ration of tasty mealworms. We communed a bit, and then she went to sun herself on the duck island. (The photos are enlarged from iPhone snaps, so they’re not great.) I’ll be at work for a short while tomorrow to prepare for departure, but she’s usually not here early. This may, then, be our last farewell.

Her wing feathers are large now; she’ll take to the wind shortly, I think:

She doesn’t like the traffic jam with turtles and koi. I suspect this will eventually drive her away:

I fed her corn on the lily pads, where she can eat it without being bothered by the pesky goldfish:

Goodbye my sweet duck; may flights of angels sing thee to the south:

Canada offers aid to Texas hurricane victims; state turns it down, asking for prayers instead

September 1, 2017 • 10:45 am

When I saw this headline from the website The Root, I thought it was a joke. (I thought the Root might have been a “satirical news” site, but it’s a black news site.) Click screenshot to see article:

Just to be sure, I checked on the web, and found this on the CBC:

And the report from the CBC:

Quebec is offering to help Houston in the wake of Hurricane Harvey and is at the ready for when officials there say they need it, says Minister of International Relations Christine St-Pierre.

St-Pierre says she spoke with Texas Secretary of State Rolando Pablos Tuesday early afternoon, offering to send equipment and crews to help restore power and to provide blankets, beds, pillows and hygienic products.

Above all, St-Pierre said she called to voice Quebec’s concern for Texans caught up in the disaster.

“It was a conversation about how devastating the situation is and we want to express our support to the people of Texas,” she told CBC News.

Pablos declined the aid for now, instead asking for “prayers from the people of Quebec,” the minister said. “He was very touched by the fact we called him.”

I mean, Jebus. . . does Pablos think that blankets and soap are going to drop from the sky? And why on Earth would he think that prayers would help when apparently God sent the hurricane in the first place, and, if prayers worked, could have easily diverted it into the ocean. What does Pablos think God is like?

h/t: Snowy Owl

“Undercover in the Secret State”: a documentary about North Korea

September 1, 2017 • 9:45 am

This is a CNN video from 2005, but it has some rare and disturbing video taken from inside North Korea, as well as chilling stories from those who managed to escape. Even in 2005, people were risking a lot just to watch videos from outside North Korea—an act punishable by internment in prison camps, equivalent to death. This is well worth watching.

The CNN notes:

“CNN Presents” follows Korean-American journalist Jung Eun Kim as she tracks down a new breed of dissident in North Korea. These dissidents are using small digital cameras and cell phones to show the world the brutal life inside North Korea.