Wednesday: Hili dialogue

April 22, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to a Hump Day (“Gjornade dal gof” in Friulian): April 22, 2026 and, of course, that means it’s Earth Day, now celebrating its 56th birthday—but who remembers? Here is the unofficial Earth Day flag, noted by Wikipedia as created by John McConnell and including The Blue Marble photo taken by the crew of Apollo 17:

Created by Dcoetzee, public domain

There is a Google Doodle for Earth Day; click the screenshot to see where it goes:

It’s also “In God We Trust” Day, marking the day in 1864 when Congress passed an act allowing that religious phrase to appear on U.S. coins. Finally, it’s National Jelly Bean Day, and here are two fun jelly bean facts from Wikipedia:

The “jelly bean rule“ is a rule put forth by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on May 19, 1994.

It says that just because foods are low in fat, cholesterol, and sodium, they cannot claim to be “healthy” unless they contain at least 10 percent of the Daily Value (DV) of: vitamin A, vitamin C, calcium, protein, fiber, or iron. The FDA also made a policy that companies could not fortify foods with the sole intent of making that claim.

and

In United States slang during the 1910s and early 1920s, a “jellybean” or “jelly-bean” was a young man who dressed stylishly but had little else to recommend him, similar to the older terms dandy and fop. F. Scott Fitzgerald published a story, The Jelly-Bean, about such a character in 1920.

The next time conversation lags at a gathering, just ask people what the connection is between F. Scott Fitzgerald and jelly beans. You’ll be the life of the party!

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 26 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

UPDATE: Iran apparently fired on two ships in the Strait of Hormuz.

Two ships came under attack in the Strait of Hormuz as tensions flared in the waterway, after President Trump said the U.S. would extend its cease-fire with Iran and continue its blockade until Tehran presents “a unified proposal.”

An Iranian gunboat fired on a containership northeast of Oman, before a second vessel reported being fired at off the coast of Iran. The two incidents within hours of each other demonstrate that while the aerial war between the U.S. and Iran is on pause, the fight for control of the strait continues.

*Trump has extended the cease-fire with Iran indefinitely as talks have gone nowhere:

President Trump said that the U.S. will extend its cease-fire with Iran and continue the blockade of the country’s ports until its leaders present “a unified proposal.” The move came after Vice President JD Vance paused plans to travel to Pakistan on Tuesday for negotiations with Iran over ending the war, highlighting uncertainty about possible talks. Regional mediators led by Pakistan are racing to try to convince Iran to join the talks, and neither Washington nor Tehran have informed the mediators the talks will be cancelled.

Earlier on Tuesday, U.S. forces boarded an oil tanker in the Indo-Pacific region that was previously sanctioned for working with Iran, the first such move outside the Middle East in connection with the war. Trump, in an interview with CNBC, said he wants to make sure the threat from Iran is ended even if it means the war doesn’t wrap up quickly. “I have all the time in the world,” he said.

“Based on the fact that the Government of Iran is seriously fractured, not unexpectedly so and, upon the request of Field Marshal Asim Munir, and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, of Pakistan, we have been asked to hold our Attack on the Country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal. I have therefore directed our Military to continue the Blockade and, in all other respects, remain ready and able, and will therefore extend the Ceasefire until such time as their proposal is submitted, and discussions are concluded, one way or the other,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Trump didn’t set an end date for the new cease-fire extension. A previous two-week cease-fire was due to expire Wednesday evening, he said previously, and had signaled earlier this week that he was unlikely to extend it.

The question is this: who does the extension help more: Iran or America? As gas prices rise and Americans get weary of war, it hurts the U.S.  But as Iran loses its main source of income, it’s bad for them.  And Trump doesn’t have all the time in the world: he has about 2 years and six months (or six months if you count of Republican losses in the midterms).

*Imagine what would happen if two members of Hamas made their way into Israel and one photographed another smashing the door of a synagogue. They’d be heroes! But when one IDF soldier photographed another smashing the head of a Jesus statue in southern Lebanon, it gave the whole world an excuse to damn Israel (the NYT reported it in detail), even though this is totally atypical behavior for the IDF, reflecting a couple of bad actors.  And, sure enough, the two IDF soldiers were jailed:

Two Israeli soldiers have been pulled from combat duty and given 30-day jail sentences after one photographed the other swinging what appeared to be a sledgehammer at the head of a statue of Jesus in southern Lebanon, the Israeli military said on Tuesday.

Other troops who stood by but did nothing to intervene, the military said, have also been summoned and could face disciplinary action.

The military replaced the damaged statue with a gleaming new sculpture of the crucifixion of Christ and released a photo of it.

The extraordinarily swift administration of military justice by Israel was a tacit acknowledgment of the reputational damage the incident had done to the country, more than the seriousness of the crime.

The incident occurred in Debl, a Christian village in Lebanon a few miles from the Israeli border. The village is in an area that the Israeli military seized as a buffer zone before a cease-fire with Hezbollah went into effect late last week.

The photograph surfaced online Sunday, sparking widespread outrage in Israel and beyond, and demands for harsh punishment of the soldiers.

Experts said the act of vandalism reflected both ignorance and a growing hostility to Christians among some Israeli Jews, who see Christianity as a form of idolatry or Christian proselytizing as a threat.

The incident also prompted immediate and profuse apologies from Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and its foreign minister, Gideon Saar.

In a statement Tuesday, Israel’s military expressed its “deep regret” and said that its chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, had condemned the incident as “a moral failure.”

I’m no expert, but this is the first I’ve heard of a fulminating hatred of Christianity among Israeli Jews. At any rate, it shows the very high (and double) standards to which the IDF and Israel are held compared to other countries.  One or two rotten apples in the military suddenly tars the whole enterprise. But of course that is the way it has always gone.

*This is a surprise: The U.S. Department of Justice has charged the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) with financial crimes, namely defrauding donors by misusing their money. As you may remember, the SPLC was once a respectable organization uncovering and enforcing civil rights for all groups. But it then fell on hard times, with accusations of misusing funds and selectively leveling charges based on ideology,  There were mass layoffs and the leadership quit or was fired.  The latest news, however, seems to be a very hard blow (article archived here):

The Justice Department charged the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights group that has long tracked hate groups, on Tuesday with financial crimes, accusing it of defrauding donors by using their money to secretly pay informants inside extremist organizations.

At a news conference announcing the charges, Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, said that from 2014 to 2023, the group made payments totaling more than $3 million to people who were affiliated with extremist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan and the National Socialist Party of America. The law center, he added, was “doing the exact opposite of what it told its donors it was doing — not dismantling extremism, but funding it.”

The indictment, however, offers little to support the notion that the group’s payments to informants was meant to aid the extremist groups they had infiltrated.

That last paragraph, however, seems less than accurate in light of this:

Prosecutors describe how one informant, which the law center refers to as a field source, “was a member of the online leadership chat group that planned the 2017 ‘Unite the Right’ event in Charlottesville, Virginia, and attended the event at the direction of the S.P.L.C.”

That rally included torch-wielding marchers chanting antisemitic slogans, and violent clashes that culminated with one participant ramming his car into a group of counterprotesters, killing a woman and leaving at least 19 others injured.

The informant “made racist postings under the supervision of the S.P.L.C. and helped coordinate transportation to the event for several attendees,” the charging document said. Between 2015 and 2023, the informant received more than $270,000 from the group, the indictment said.

Is that not helping the organization?

The center faces charges of wire fraud, false statements to a bank, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. No individuals were charged in the indictment, though Mr. Blanche said the investigation was continuing. He accused the group of “manufacturing racism to justify its existence.”

Luana sent a tweet thread with more information, if it can be trusted:

That thread also alleges that the SPLC set up dummy corporations to funnel the money to a series of extremist organizations. I guess this all depends on whether it is considered illegal to use donor money to pay off informants, especially if the dosh somehow furthered the goals of the organizations that the SPLC was infiltrating. We shall see.

*The Free Press describes a new literary genre, “Gazology,” in which, says author Matti Friedman, the whole world is seen through the lens of the war between Israel and Hamas, and to the detriment of Israel.  Whole sections of bookstores in the West are devoted to these tomes.  Here’s one example:

It’s likely that much Western culture, journalism, and politics in the coming years will be downstream of these books and the ideology behind them. Students in disciplines from anthropology to medicine will be assigned these works and invited to see the world’s problems through the lens of “Gaza.” For this reason, the genre is important. What follows is a survey of five representative samples of the volumes in question, in an attempt to sketch the contours of this expanding body of writing and to understand what it is trying to say.

. . .The memorable cover of the genre’s most popular title, and the first one I read, shows a stylized girl with a bomb about to drop on her head. The author, Omar El Akkad, was born in Egypt and immigrated to Canada, where he reported for The Globe and Mail before moving to the United States. He’s now an American citizen living in Oregon.

In the pages of One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, El Akkad watches the war in Gaza unfold in portrayals on television and online, describing it as an era-defining evil that people will eventually claim to have opposed, like the crimes of the Nazis or the conquistadors. The war resonates for him as someone living with the displacement of his own migration from the Islamic world as a teen, with a heightened sensitivity to racism, and with the abiding discomfort of a Muslim man living in North America.

The book’s title, particularly the word this, led me to expect an account of the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, or the war itself, but the strangest aspect of One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is the author’s slim interest in any of those topics. We follow his travels in Oregon, and in Montreal. He listens to Nirvana. His backyard deck collapses in a way that feels emotionally significant, an episode that gets more space in the book than the entire ideology of Hamas—including the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews in pursuit of the supremacy of Islam—which is never mentioned at all. He writes sentences like “We are all governed by chance. We are all subjects of distance,” and “Fear obscures the necessity of its causing.” His daughter, we learn, “turns seven soon, a hundred in dragon years. She is made of dreaming.” The book won last year’s National Book Award for nonfiction.

El Akkad complains about racism from officials on the U.S.-Canada border, about the hardships of the writer’s life, and about the immoral Israeli investments of people who once gave him a Canadian book prize worth $100,000, which he doesn’t mention giving back. “I’ve sat through a wildly uncomfortable book tour interview once after I joked that I write all my novels in Arabic and then run them through Google Translate, and the interviewer believed me,” he tells us. We’re meant to sneer at this prejudice and sympathize with its victim, but why wouldn’t the interviewer believe him? And why does an author claiming to have discovered the age’s defining evil seem to be concerned primarily with himself? This was confusing at first, but as I read Gazology more deeply, I realized this approach is a characteristic of the genre: In these books, Gaza is not a subject but a stage.

The author gives no indication of ever having set foot in Gaza or in Israel, and when he talks about witnessing events, the recurring phrase is “I watch footage.” Some events are “witnessed” in this fashion—that is, via images that are subject to Hamas censorship and intimidation in Gaza, often curated by Western activists practicing journalism as agitprop, and then supercharged by the various Qatari, Chinese, and Russian information campaigns bending our online algorithms. Other events are not witnessed but ignored to the extent possible, most notably the October 7 massacre that began the war. In what turns out to be another feature of the genre, El Akkad sidesteps the butchery of that day by homing in on one false story promulgated after the attack about Israeli babies who were beheaded or put in an oven. That didn’t happen. But a reader doesn’t learn what did happen: namely, a premeditated mass murder committed by teams of terrorists going house to house through Israeli communities, burning families in their bedrooms, kidnapping toddlers and grandparents, and gunning down more than 350 young people at a music festival. To a reader of this book the motivation behind the attack remains mysterious. Though it was carried out by the Islamic Resistance Movement, known by the Arabic acronym Hamas, the words Islam or Islamic appear in the entire book a total of four times. The word genocide, on the other hand, appears more than 40 times.

There are four more examples, of course. The reason for the popularity of this genre, of course, is because Gazans and Palestinians are seen as The Colonized, people of color who have been victimized by “white adjacent” Jews.  It’s the world turned upside down

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the Princess demands her due:

Andrzej: What are you doing here?
Hili: Waiting for applause.

i

In Polish:

Ja: Co tu robisz?
Hili: Czekam na oklaski.

*******************

From CinEmma:

From FB, source unknown:

From Give Me a Sign. Even I am not enough of a curmudgeon to carry around a bunch of these pre-made signs:

From Masih; another political prisoner executed in Iran:

From Luana, who says that this book was “banished from Amazon for telling a dystopian story of France after immigration in the distant future”.  This article gives more information; the book definitely appeals to the Right, but Amazon is not supposed to censor books based on ideology. 

From Malcolm: orange cats!

One from my feed; parrots share the wealth:

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

And Matthew posts a picture of his cat Harry:

Harry.

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-04-21T10:45:53.374Z

Savannah, Day 3

April 21, 2026 • 8:45 am

Yesterday involved a lot of walking, much of it with no destination, but I did get in 12,000 steps. Our plan was to take a two-hour walking architecture tour at 9:30, followed by a search for lunch. Unfortunately, my friend Tim got lost on our walk to the tour’s starting point, and we missed the whole tour. The plan then changed to an attempt to have lunch at the famous Mrs. Wilkes’ Dining Room, an all-you-can eat dining experience with great Southern food. But we missed that, too: we found we could change our architecture tour to 1 p.m., and so missed the first seating at Mrs. Wilkes’s.

So it was back to Ogelthorpe Square for the second tour attempt, which succeeded. In between, we grabbed a forgettable lunch at a Mexican restaurant and some excellent ice cream at a famous place.

First, the street where we’re staying again: Jones Street, which our tour guide called “The most beautiful street in Savannah”, lined as it is with oak trees and old houses:

And a portion of the long line at Mrs. Wilkes’. This is an every day occurrence as the place is famous and it doesn’t take reservations. After one seating, you have to wait until a table vacates (you sit with nine strangers) before you can get in, and we missed the first seating. In the meantime, Tim managed to get us on the 1 p.m. tour without paying extra.

After lunch, the first stop was Leopold’s Ice Cream, founded in 1919.  From Wikipedia:

In August 2004, Leopold’s moved to its present home on East Broughton Street, in Savannah’s downtown, where it is known for regularly having a line of customers waiting outside.  Stratton Leopold hired Hollywood production designer Dan Lomino to recreate his father’s soda fountain from the original store.  The ice cream is made, using the same recipes developed by his father and uncle, at a former wholesale florist building at 37th and Price Streets and brought over to the store as necessary.

Leopold’s signature flavor is tutti frutti, a favorite of Savannah’s Johnny Mercer, who worked in the shop as a ten-year old, sweeping floors,  while former U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s favorite was the butter pecan. Carter wrote the foreword to Leopold’s Ice Cream: A Century of Tasty Memories, 1919–2019 (Melanie Bowden Simón, 2020).

The outside:

The inside; I didn’t see a soda fountain (perhaps this counter is the remains), but they had a gazillion flavors of ice cream. And yes, there was a line outside.

The newest flavors were also listed outside, and I immediately decided to get the top two, neither of which I’d had before:

My double scoop of lavender and cherry blossom (I ascertained first that they used real flowers). It was terrific: high in butterfat content, dense, and with very subtle flavors. Two scoops after lunch made me walk slower on the architecture tour!

Our first stop was the house of Juliette Gordon Low (1860-1927), who married an uncaring git named William Mackay Lowe, who often cheated on her.  During her long periods of being alone, Low learned metalworking, pottery, and other skills. She in fact made this wrought-iron gate at her house:

Low had a tumultuous life, and was almost cheated out of her inheritance as her husband left his money to his mistress. But the will was successfully contested, Low got the dosh, and looked for a worthy project to occupy her. Her project was to found the American Girl Guides, which became the Girl Scouts of America. Eighteen girls were enrolled, and the organization continues today.

Below is a photo from Wikipedia labeled, “Juliette Gordon Low (center) standing with two Girl Scouts, Robertine McClendon (left) and Helen Ross (right).” They’re all in Girl Scout uniform. We were told that every summer Girl Scouts from all over America make a pigrimate to visit Low’s house in Savannah.

Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
Here’s the tallest structure in downtown Savannah, the Independent Presbyterian Church, with a steeple that’s 227 feet and 6 inches tall. Now, by law, no structure in the town can be higher than four stories. They take their historic preservation seriously here.

The bench where Forrest Gump (Tom Hanks) catches a floating white feather (symbolizing the “randomness” of fate) was located right next to the church above, but although the bench was a Hollywood prop and is no longer there, tourists still come in droves to be photographed at the bench site.  That famous scene is below:

A typical scene: Southern live oak (Quercus virginiana) covered with Spanish moss (Tillandsia usneoides), a flowering epiphyte that’s neither a moss nor Spanish.

Another epiphyte on an oak tree, Pleopeltis sp. or “resurrection fern,” The AI Google search explains the name:

The resurrection fern (Pleopeltis polypodioides) is named for its remarkable ability to survive long periods of drought by curling up its fronds, turning grey-grown, and appearing dead. When exposed to moisture—even just a little water—it rapidly uncurls and turns vibrant green within 24 hours, appearing to “resurrect”.

There is a drought in Savannah now, so you see the fern in its moribund state:

Below is the Green-Meldrim Mansion, built in 1853 and a National Historic Landmark.  The photo below the house explains its historical significance as Union General Sherman’s headquarters in Savannah (upper floor, two window to the right). While Sherman burned much of Georgia during his infamous 1864 March to the Sea that pretty much ended the Civil War, he spared Savannah because it expelled its Confederate troops and surrendered to the Union Army.

Click to enlarge:

One of the many buildings of the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), one of the world’s most famous art schools.  Their philosophy is to have art taught by those who make art, not by academics, and I’m told they have a 99% placement rate of its graduates. The school is so wealthy that it participates in Savannah’s ongoing efforts to buy and refurbish historic buildings exactly as they were: a laborious and expensive effort.

In fact it occupies many of the buildings it’s bought and refurbished: this is Poetter Hall, the National Guard Armory in the late nineteenth century. It was SCAD’s first academic building.

A monument to (and burial place) of Casimir Pulaski, a Pole who moved to America and fought for the colonial army during the American Revolutionary War, saving George Washington’s life.  He’s a much beloved Polish-American.

Below is the Mercer House (now the Mercer House Museum), completed in 1868. It’s famous for reasons set out in Wikipedia:

The house was the scene of the 1981 killing of Danny Hansford by the home’s owner Jim Williams, a story that is retold in the 1994 John Berendt book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. The house is also featured in the movie adaptation of the book, released three years later. Williams held annual Christmas parties at Mercer House, on the eve of the Savannah Cotillion Club‘s debutante ball, which were the highlight of many people’s social calendars.  Williams had an “in” box and an “out” box for his invitations, depending on whether or not the person was in Williams’s favor at the time.

The site of the killing was the room on the first floor whose window is bottome left.

Williams went through four trials for the killing, but no jury in Savannah would convict this popular man, so he esceped punishment, though he did spend some time in jail awaiting trial.

The house was build by the great-grandfather of lyricist Johnny Mercer (“Moon River,” “And the Angels Sing,” “You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby,” etc.) but nobody named Mercer ever lived in the house.

Because of the movie “Forrest Gump,” Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, and the subsequent movie, tourism in Savannah has increased by several-fold in recent years.

Another Historic District house. I can find its picture on Google Image Search, but not its name:

The Armstrong-Kessler Mansion, once owned by Jim Williams (see above): a lousy panoramic shot due to the absence of a viewpoint that didn’t endanger me. From Wikipedia:

The Armstrong Kessler Mansion (formerly known as Armstrong House) is a nationally significant example of Italian Renaissance Revival architectural style located in the Savannah Historic District. The structure was built between 1917 and 1919 for the home of Savannah magnate George Ferguson Armstrong (1868–1924). It was owned by the Armstrong family from 1919 to 1935. Afterward, the structure and grounds served as the campus of Armstrong Junior College. Threatened with demolition, the Historic Savannah Foundation purchased the Armstrong House along with five other threatened historic buildings from the college for $235,000 in 1967. Once saved, Historic Savannah Foundation sold the Mansion (and Hershel V. Jenkins Hall) at the exact purchase price to preservationist and antique dealer Jim Williams who restored it as his home. Eventually, both were sold to a major Savannah law firm as offices.

It’s HUGE and has lovely gardens that are not open to the public. Our guide got to see them, though, and showed us photos.

Finally, a Jew church in Savannah! Yes, a Gothic Revival style synagogue, the only one I know of.  Congregation Mickve Israel was founded in 1735, almost immediately after Savannah was settled. It was formed by Sephardic Jews and is now a reform temple . The building dates from 1876, and is built to look like a church as the Jews didn’t want to stick out in Christian Savannah.

A note from Wikipedia:

The Congregation was the first Jewish community to receive a letter from the President of the United States. In response to a letter sent by Levi Sheftall, the congregation’s president, congratulating George Washington on his election as the first President, Washington replied, “To the Hebrew Congregation of the City of Savannah, Georgia”:

… May the same wonder-working Deity, who long since delivering the Hebrews from their Egyptian Oppressors planted them in the promised land – whose providential agency has lately been conspicuous in establishing these United States as an independent nation – still continue to water them with the dews of heaven and to make the inhabitants of every denomination participate in the temporal and spiritual blessings of that people whose God is Jehovah.

“That people whose God is Jehovah”—as opposed to those people whose God was the REAL God!

The plaque outside (click to enlarge).

We had no food ot note yesterday save the ice cream, but in about an hour from this writing we’re off to Mrs. Wilkes’s Boarding House for a gigantic Southern meal

Tuesday: Hili dialogue

April 21, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to The Cruelest Day: Tuesday, April 21, 2026, and National Chickpea Day, honoring one of the main ingredients of hummus. a delicious dish, and good for you, too. When I was in Israel I spent a lot of time trying to find the best place for hummus, which to me was Hummus Ben Sira in Jerusalem. I don’t have my photos of the place here, but here’s what hummus looks like: superb with lots of hot pita bread and raw onions and pickles:

Beyrouthhh at English Wikipedia, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 21 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The WSJ says that Trump now has five options vis-à-vis Iran:

As the U.S. prepares for another round of peace talks with Iran in Pakistan this week, President Trump faces five broad options.

1. Stick to his guns: Trump has presented Iran with demands to freeze enrichment of uranium for at least 20 years and remove highly enriched uranium from its territory, as well as fully end its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. These are red lines for the president, senior administration officials said.

Weeks of U.S. and Israeli strikes devastated Iran’s military and the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports is ratcheting up pressure on an already weakened Iranian economy, administration officials said. But so far, the Iranian government has refused to ease its blockade of the strait and signaled it will not abandon its nuclear enrichment program.

If Trump refuses to budge on these demands, there’s a chance that Iran relents in negotiations—but also a risk Iran refuses and war breaks out again.

2. Buy some time: Both sides could walk away from the talks in Islamabad without a final deal, but at least a “memorandum of understanding” that outlines the broad parameters of what an understanding could entail in the future and an agreement to extend the 10-day cease-fire in the war again. This would buy time for more diplomacy.

3. Compromise: There are ample ways to hash out a compromise, officials and analysts said. One idea negotiators are floating: Iran agrees to a 20-year freeze on enriching uranium to higher levels, but after the first 10 years can conduct nuclear-related research or produce a modest amount of low-enriched uranium for at least another 10 years.

Other variations of compromise could include Iran agreeing to give up its stockpile of 60 percent or 20 percent enriched uranium, but keeping its stockpile of lower-enriched uranium.

It’s unclear if Trump would accept compromise proposals here. There’s no discounting the likelihood Iran secretly enriches to weapons-grade levels again in the future.

4. Restart war: Trump has warned that he isn’t inclined to extend the cease-fire again if talks in Pakistan fail. Renewing the war would open Iran to another round of devastating strikes, but it carries risks for the U.S., too.

The war is controversial at home, opening rifts within the Republican Party and driving up energy prices and inflation across the U.S. Defense officials have also raised fears of the U.S. running low on critical munitions in the Iran war that would be needed for the U.S. military in other parts of the world.

5. Walk away: Trump’s fifth option to just walk away from the whole endeavor is the most unlikely, U.S. officials and people close to the White House said, but it’s a fear that senior Arab and European officials have raised in private discussions among one another after the first round of talks failed.

Trump could claim victory and walk away from the war, leaving a status quo that amounts to a nightmare scenario for many close U.S. partners: A wounded but intact Iranian regime, with an ability to keep imposing tolls on the Strait of Hormuz and the know-how to rebuild a nuclear program.

What? No stipulations about either regime change or Iran stopping the export of terrorism? As for the above, I’m no pundit but I’m betting on #4.  The unpopularity of the war largely reflects, in my view, the unpopularity of Trump combined with public ignorance of what’s happening in Iran.

*Carl Zimmer at the NYT reports on a new Current ‘Biology paper with a stunning result.  A male kea (Nestor notabilis), the world’s only alpine parrot (From New Zealand) lost his upper beak, probably in a rat trap.  That injury would normally prove deadly, but Bruce the Kea has learned to compensate for the loss in two ways. It was known previusly that Bruce, who lives in a wildlife reserve, was already famous for using a tool to groom himself: he put a pebble between his tongue and lower beak and groomed his feathers that way. Now he has a new behavior, one he’s used to become the dominant bird in the group:

Last year, Bruce delivered a second surprise.

Male keas fight for dominance. Those who lose fall to the bottom of the circus hierarchy, and they experience stress as a result. The alpha male ends up with the lowest stress levels.

To measure the stress among the nine male keas at the reserve, Dr. Taylor and his colleagues analyzed certain hormones in their blood. Much to their surprise, the male kea with the lowest levels was Bruce.

“We never expected him to be right at the top of the males,” said Alexander Grabham, a zoologist at the University of Canterbury and an author of the study.

The surprise prompted Dr. Grabham and his colleagues to look more closely. Reviewing videos, they discovered that Bruce had risen to the top with a new style of kea combat.

Male keas typically bite one another around the neck. Bruce can’t bite; instead, he has learned to joust. He rushes his opponents and slams his lower beak into their bodies.

Jousting proved a clever strategy. Bruce consistently won his fights, and the other males deferred to him. One perk of becoming the alpha male: Bruce got to visit the bird feeders first.

“Nobody ever tried to jump him or displace him,” Dr. Grabham said.

After enjoying a meal, Bruce permits lower-ranked males to preen his feathers and clean his bottom beak. “And when Bruce is done, he’ll give a kick or a little joust to say, ‘Right, that’s it, I’m done,’” said Dr. Grabham. “That to me is a sign of dominance.”

Here’s a video of Bruce jousting:

. . . and Bruce using a pebble to clean himself:

*The NYT Style Magzine‘s pretentiously named “How to be cultured” segment gives the opinions of actors Marcia ‘Gay Harden, Stephen Root, and Wendell Pierce about “11 unforgettabls film performances.”  (Article archived here.) How many have you seen?

  1. The supporting cast of “The Wizard of Oz.” (1939)
  2. Jimmy Stewart in “It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946_
  3. Bette Davis in “All About Eve” (1950)
  4. Paul Newman and Robert Redford in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” (1950)
  5. Faye Dunaway in “Chinatown” (1974)
  6. Al Pacino in “Dog Day Afternoon” (1975)
  7. Meryl Streep in “Sophie’s Choice” (1982)
  8. James Earl Jones in “Fences” (1987)
  9. Cynthia Erivo in “Wicked” (2024)
  10. Eva Victor in “Sorry Baby” (2025)
  11. Michael B. Jordan in “Sinners” (2025)

I’ve seen all but #9 and #10, but this list is for punters, containing as it does three movies from the last year.  And, for crying out loud, how about Marlon Brando in “A Streetcar Named Desire,” Robert DeNiro in “Raging Bull,” Jack Nicholson in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” Humphrey Bogart in “Casablanca,” or, if you want to go modern, Jessie Buckley in “Hamnet”.  Oh, and of course Peter O’Toole in “Lawrence of Arabia.”  Don’t take your lessons on “How to be cultured” from the NYT!

*I’m getting stiff in my old age, so of course I clicked on a WaPo article called, “Just 2 minutes a day of this type of exercise may help you live longer.”  The key, or so DOCTORS SAY *the same ones who told us not to drink wine, perhaps) is to up the intensity of your exercise for brief periods. (The article is archived for free here.)

A recent study in the European Heart Journal looked at people who didn’t engage in formal exercise and found that just one to two minutes a day of vigorous activity, accumulated in short bursts, was associated with a significantly lower risk of chronic disease and death.

Not a workout class. Not a training plan. Just everyday life, done with a bit more intensity.

Exercise physiologists call this vigorous physical activity, or VPA. Sometimes referred to as vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity (VILPA), it includes things most people don’t think of as exercise: climbing stairs quickly, carrying heavy groceries, walking uphill with purpose or hurrying to catch a train.

These moments are brief, but they matter. Huffing and puffing, even for short periods, can shape long-term health.

This is not the same as high-intensity interval training, or HIIT. HIIT is structured and deliberate, performed in an exercise setting. VPA is opportunistic. One builds fitness and the other reinforces it throughout the day.

Two minutes can sound almost too simple. But physiologically, it makes sense. When you push your body harder, even briefly, you activate systems that don’t get challenged during lower-intensity movement. Your heart rate climbs, your muscles recruit more fibers, your mitochondria (which are like the battery packs to your cells) proliferate and your metabolism shifts. These adaptations drive improvements in cardiovascular fitness, strength and resilience.

The good news is that you don’t need long workouts or extreme training to tap into these benefits. Even small, manageable doses of intense movement can help counter the effects of aging. That could mean burpees at the gym, if that’s your thing. But even if it’s not, short bursts of effort in everyday life still make a difference.

For Joan [a walker], we made a simple adjustment. She kept her daily walks but added short intervals. Every few minutes, she picked up the pace for 20 to 30 seconds — not a sprint, but a brisk effort that made it harder to speak in full sentences. Then she recovered and repeated.

At first, it felt uncomfortable. That’s the point. Intensity should feel like work. But within a few weeks, she noticed a difference. She felt stronger. Her energy improved. Even her regular walking pace became easier.

As I tell my patients, “Pushing yourself means getting comfortable being uncomfortable. It’s the only way to grow. Mentally, physically and physiologically.”

I already do this; I’m gonna live forever!

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is and Andrzej differ about Nature, with Andrzej touting its advantages of “love, beauty, and passion.”

Hili: Nature is cruel.
Andrzej: Yes, but it also has certain advantages.

In Polish:

Hili: Natura jest okrutna.
Ja: Tak, ale ma również pewne zalety.

*******************

From CinEmma:

From Things With Faces:

From The Language Nerds:

Masih disses the Democrats, save the renegade Senator John Fetterman (whom she calls “the Big Man with Hoodie”), for their attitude towards Iran:

From Luana, who says, “Chicago is screwed.” Indeed. This is an arrant violation of institutional neutrality in Chicago’s schools (read the article):

From Malcolm: one minute of introverted cats:

Two from my feed.  This first one is of course AI, but well done–and creepy:

A lovely murmuration:

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

From Matthew, the first post on a thread about ‘Able Seacat Simon. Below that is an audio version:

The Dickin Medal is the highest award that can be issued to animals in British military service. Bearing the words "We Also Serve" it has been awarded 75 times since its creation in 1943.Only one cat has ever received the award. This is the story of Able Seacat Simon, of HMS Amethyst. 🧵 1/25

— John Bull (@garius.bsky.social) 2024-08-06T12:36:52.079Z

Just to note that if you'd prefer an audio version of the story of Able Seacat Simon, the only feline recipient of the Dickin Medal (animal Victoria Cross) then I did one on Youtube a while back.That's here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2v5N…

— John Bull (@garius.bsky.social) 2024-08-06T13:14:11.179Z

Savannah, Day 2

April 20, 2026 • 10:00 am

Just. a quick update on yesterday’s peramublations, which included sightseeing and food.

We’ve rented an Air BnB equivalent in downtown Savannah, and it’s on this lovely tree-lined street:

Only half a block away is Clary’s Cafe, an eatery made famous because it’s in the novel Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, a semi-true tale of life and a murder in  Savannah in the 1980s.  I read it before I came here, and it was pretty good.

Here’s Clary’s with an old-time sign. When I went to get coffee at 8 a.m. it was empty, but when we returned at 10 a.m. there was a 25-minute wait. The cafe became a lot more popular after it was featured in the novel as well as in the eponymous film directed by Clint Eastwood. From Wikipedia:

The author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, John Berendt, described Clary’s as “a clearinghouse of information, a bourse of gossip,” where he came to know the characters who would animate his narrative.  James Gandolfini made an uncredited appearance as the cook in the two scenes filmed at the cafe.

A photograph of the cast hangs inside the restaurant, featuring Alison Eastwood (who plays Mandy), her father, Clint Eastwood (director), The Lady Chablis, John Cusack (John Kelso), Kevin Spacey (Jim Williams) and Jack Thompson (Sonny Seiler).

The unprepossessing interior, which does serve up good food.

Since one of my goals here is to eat as much Southern food as I can, I had that classic staple for breakfast: biscuits in sausage gravy. Very filling–and good.

And I decided to have dessert as well: bread pudding. (Do not food shame me! I don’t eat like this all the time!)

In the afternoon we spent walking around the Wormsloe Historic Site, From Wikipedia:

The Wormsloe State Historic Site, originally known as Wormsloe Plantation, is a state historic site near Savannah, Georgia, in the southeastern United States. The site consists of 822 acres (3.33 km2), protecting part of what was once the Wormsloe Plantation, a large estate established by one of the founders of colonial Georgia, Noble Jones. The site includes a 1.5-mile (2.4 km) dirt road lined with southern live oaks, the ruins of a small house with fortified walls built of tabby, a museum, and an area with recreations of colonial structures such as a blacksmithing forge and a house similar to those first built in the colony of Georgia (or as housing for enslaved people).

It was atmospheric even though not many of the original structures remain. Here’s part of the long and famous alley of live oaks. I love the Spanish Moss, which for some reason doesn’t seem to hang on the palm trees. Perhaps a botanical reader knows the reason.

I’m visiting with my oldest friends Tim and Betsy, whom I stay with when I go back to Cambridge, MA.  I’ve known Tim since 1967 when we lived in the same dorm at William and Mary; Betsy arrived as a transfer student two years later.

Here are the remains of Noble Jones’s house, a fortified structure built in 1745 not only as a home, but to withstand attacks by the Spanish and to monitor traffic passing through the narrows of the adjacent Skidaway River.  The walls were built of “tabby,” an early form of cement made of equal volumes of water, sand, lime, and ground oyster shells. (The shells were obtained from copious Native American middens.)

And after considerable discussion in the morning, we decided to have dinner at a place of great repute—the Driftaway Cafe, known for its seafood and excellent cooking. And yes, it lived up to its reputation.

As soon as I saw shrimp and grits on the menu, I wanted it. I asked the waiter if the portion was large, as I was famished, and she replied, “Yes, it’s very big.” And it was: a huge bowl of grits made with four types of cheese, loaded with plump fresh shrimp, and studded with bacon bits. I could barely finish it (washed down with sweet tea, of course), and I was glad I didn’t order the fried green tomatoes (another Southern dish) as an appetizer. All evening long I would groan sporadically, “Oy, am I full!”

This was by far the best shrimp and grits I’ve ever had: a Platonic dish!

Have a cigar: I’m a father (of 7 ducklings)!!

April 20, 2026 • 8:15 am

I was pretty much spot on about predicting when Vashti and Armon’s brood would hatch. I guessed Saturday or Sunday and, sure enough, some time between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. on Sunday, a brood of eight was seen in Botany Pond.  I wasn’t there, but my colleague Peggy Mason, neuroscientist and member of Team Duck, spotted them.

Sadly, one duckling was “off,” and couldn’t swim or hold its head up. It got stuck in the drain, and then in the rocks, and finally expired. Peggy removed the little carcass from the pond and we were all very sad.

The good news is that we’re left with seven healthy ducklings, whose first job was a swimming tour of the pond behind Vashti to get their bearings (they do learn the layout of Botany Pond within a day, as they’re smart as well as cute).

Vashti is a good mom, even trying to help the “off” duckling by nudging it, but she couldn’t help it.  She’s very solicitous towards the ducklings, and Armon stays nearby but doesn’t bother them.

Two members of Team Duck will be feeding them and looking out for them until my return. Everybody got fed yesterday (tiny pellets for the ducklings), though it’s not clear that the ducklings ate, as they survive on the remaining yolk in their bellies during their first day on the water. They will be fed twice a day.

And so, here are Vashti and her hard-won brood of seven; all photos by Peggy Mason. I am jealous as I was not there to see Hatch Day.

Vashti and the Magnificent Seven:

They are of course heavily imprinted on Mom and stay very close to her.

I was glad to see that they all made it onto the rocks and then from the rocks to the ground, where they huddled under Vashti to get warm as well as to get coated in her feather oil, which waterproofs them until they’re old enough to produce their own

Huddling under Mom.  I hope they all make it to fledging!  But Vashti has proven to be a good mom.

Monday: Hili dialogue

April 20, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Monday, April 20, 2026 and Big Word Day. My big word is probably the same as last year’s: “ratiocination.” It’s a word I learned from Hitchens and don’t usually remember what it means, so here we go from Merriam Webster:

Ratiocination:

1: the process of exact thinking : reasoning
2: a reasoned train of thought

By all means add your big words (and meanings) below.

Today will be a truncated Hili as I have touring to do.

It’s also Boston Marathon Day, Chinese Language Day, National Cheddar Fries Day, National Cold Brew Day (I’ve never had it), and National Pineapple Upside-down Cake Day, one of my favorites sometimes made by my mom when I was a kid.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 20 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The U.S. attacked and then seized an Iranian ship that would not surrender.

A U.S. Navy destroyer on Sunday attacked and seized an Iranian cargo ship that defied an American blockade of Iran’s ports, President Trump said, posing a fresh threat to the fragile cease-fire that is set to expire this week.

Mr. Trump announced the attack hours after a White House official said the U.S. was dispatching a high-level delegation including Vice President JD Vance to peace talks in Pakistan, even as Iranian state media said Tehran had not yet agreed to a meeting.

The guided missile destroyer USS Spruance fired on the cargo vessel in the Gulf of Oman, Mr. Trump said on Truth Social, “blowing a hole” in its engine room before Marines took possession of the vessel. The president said the ship was under U.S. sanctions because of a “history of illegal activity” and that U.S. forces were “seeing what’s on board!”

Mr. Trump did not say whether there had been any casualties. Iran’s semiofficial Mehr news agency reported that U.S. forces had fired on an Iranian merchant vessel, but said naval units from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps had forced the Americans to retreat.

The attack occurred in the Gulf of Oman, south of the Strait of Hormuz, the economically vital waterway that has become a flashpoint in negotiations. Iran imposed a blockade on the channel itself, through which roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil normally travels, and the U.S. countered by blocking traffic to Iranian ports. On Saturday, Iran attacked two Indian vessels attempting a transit, acts Mr. Trump described earlier Sunday as a “total violation of our cease-fire.”

The fate of the strait is top of mind for American negotiators who Mr. Trump said would travel to Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, this week for talks. The stakes for the negotiations, should they happen, are high: failure would risk reigniting the fighting and extending the global economic upheaval wrought by the war.

Here’s a tweet from Jay showing how it was done:

*From It’s Noon in Israel: a split in the Iranian regime:

It’s Sunday, April 19, and according to Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei, “The statements by American officials are filled with contradictions and lies”—a sign, he claims, of their “desperation and helplessness.” Israel and the U.S. must have eliminated all the adults in the Foreign Ministry, because Baghaei is effectively playing a geopolitical game of “I know you are, but what am I?”

Despite Foreign Affairs Minister Abbas Araghchi’s announcement on Friday that the Strait of Hormuz was “completely open” to commercial traffic, the IRGC Navy attacked several commercial vessels the very next day, declaring that no vessel of “any type or nationality” is permitted passage. This jarring disconnect may be a sign of something more serious than desperation: a coup d’état.

It is quite the allegation, but let’s look at the evidence. Beyond the strait’s schizophrenic travel regulations, the Foreign Ministry confirmed that new talks will occur, even though a date has not yet been set. Meanwhile, IRGC-affiliated media simultaneously announced that Iran has refused to participate in another round of negotiations with the United States due to “excessive” U.S. demands.

Furthermore, the institutions of the Iranian state seem to be picking sides. The Khatam-al Anbiya Central Headquarters—roughly the equivalent of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff—has released a statement defending the IRGC attacks in the waterway. The Supreme National Security Council joined the chorus, declaring that Iran will control the strait until the war ends.

The split runs along a well-trodden divide: On one side, the political leadership, represented by President Masoud Pezeshkian, Abbas Araghchi and Parliament Speaker Mohammad Ghalibaf; on the other, the men with the guns, led by an IRGC firmly under the control of Ahmad Vahidi.

. . . If there is a coup underway, its most immediate effect will be on the negotiations. Despite his denials, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Ghalibaf is the official on the phone with the Americans. But even if he agrees to terms, the current power struggle does not bode well for his ability to hand over regular Iranian dust, let alone the nuclear enriched powder.

I’m not a pundit, so all I can do is report this speculation.

*The NYT reports that Hamas is ready to hand over some of its weapons, but only a small allotment, and not near the total disarming demanded by the ceasefire:

Hamas is ready to relinquish thousands of automatic rifles and other weapons belonging to its police force and other internal security services in Gaza, according to two officials of the group.

Such a step would be a remarkable concession from Hamas, which until now has publicly resisted giving up any of its arms.

The officials said Hamas would be willing to turn over these weapons to the Palestinian administrative committee that has been set up to govern Gaza by the Board of Peace, the international organization led by President Trump to oversee the cease-fire.

Hamas has said previously it is willing to turn over the burden of providing public services in Gaza to the U.S.-backed committee. But the group has not disbanded its battalions of armed fighters, suggesting it wants to maintain influence in the territory despite Israeli and American opposition.

The proposal from the two officials falls well short of the full disarmament and demilitarization of Gaza — a core demand by Israel and a pillar of Mr. Trump’s peace plan for the territory. That plan would also remove Hamas from power and bar it from any role in governing.

Asked whether the committee would also be able to confiscate weapons belonging to Hamas’s military wing, the two officials did not provide a clear answer.

This is not nearly a “disarmament,” and Hamas remains firmly in command of southern Gaza. And it has expanded its influence into areas supposedly controlled by the Palestinian Authority, namely the West Bank. Remember that among all Palestinians, Hamas is far more popular than is the PA, which is one reason Israel is worried about the West Bank. If that area becomes a Hamas-run enclave, then we have another terrorist Gaza situation, but one embedded within Israeli territory.

*And another mass killing, this one especially bad because a man killed seven of his own children, and one not his own before he died in a shootout with the cops (it’s not clear whether he killed himself:

Eight children ranging in age from 1 to about 14 were killed here Sunday in a shooting that police described as a domestic disturbance. It was the deadliest mass killing in the United States in two years, data shows.

A spokesman for the Shreveport police, Chris Bordelon, told reporters Sunday that seven of the children were believed to be “descendants of the gunman” and that two other victims survived. “This is an extensive scene unlike anything most of us have ever seen,” Bordelon said.

Later Sunday, police identified the gunman as Shamar Elkins. Public records show that Elkins was a 31-year-old Shreveport resident. Elkins served in the Louisiana Army National Guard from August 2013 to August 2020, according to an Army statement. He did not deploy while with the National Guard and left the Army as a private, an entry-level rank.

Elkins’s brother-in-law, Troy Brown, who lived with him, said Elkins’s wife had recently sought a divorce. Brown said Elkins acted normally on Saturday, the last time they saw each other, but had been distraught in a recent conversation about his marriage breaking up.

“After the first argument about the divorce, he acted like he was losing his mind,” Brown said late Sunday after leaving a Shreveport hospital where he had visited Elkins’s wife and two of his own family members who were injured in the shooting. “He was upset about it. I would talk to him and he would tell me, ‘Bro, I don’t want to lose my wife.’”

Police said the gunman stole a car after the shootings, leading to a police chase into neighboring Bossier City that ended with his death.Louisiana State Police are investigating Elkins’s killing.

A whole family and their futures wiped out.  Another day in America.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Szaron is playing Pinker, and Hili his critics:

Hili: I dream of the return of the past.
Szaron: I can smell the present.

In Polish:

Hili: Marzę o powrocie przeszłości.
Szaron: Czuję zapach czasu teraźniejszości.

*******************

From Stacy:

From The Dodo Pet:

From Masih: the regime killed an Iranian nurse who tried to help wounded protestors, and then tortured her husband, both psychologically and physically. He tried to kill himself:

From Luana; I haven’t checked whether this “miracle drug” is really a cure for cystic fibrosis. It does appear to produce amazing results in 90% of patients–the ones with the right mutations.

From Simon on the Strait of Hormuz:

From my feed: a nice man:

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

. . . and one from Matthew. Translation:

A soft little chirp, a gentle glide,
through waves that stretch the bounds of yesterday.
One brown heartbeat, eleven tiny hearts—
how beautiful pure existence can be.

Ein leises Pieps, ein sanftes Gleiten,durch Wellen, die das Gestern weiten.Ein Herzschlag braun, elf Herzen klein –so schön kann pures Dasein sein. 🤗

— Ellen (@ellenisback.eurosky.social) 2026-04-19T18:06:23.223Z

Savannah, ducks, and turtles

April 19, 2026 • 8:30 am

Well, I got my tuches to Savannah at about noon yesterday, and it was already steaming hot.  Since our Air B&B didn’t open until 4 pm (why so late?), I had to cool my heels somewhere for a few hours, so I decided to visit the Telfair Museum (a trio of museums downtown), buy a pass, check my bags, get some food, and return for some art-gawking before making my way to the apartment (conveniently located in downtown Savannah).

I parked my luggage at the Jespson Museum, got a recommendation for lunch, and slowly ambled through the famous squares of downtown Savannah to the Little Duck Diner (!), which looks exactly like the picture at the link. It’s duck-themed and serves duck in various guises, but of course I eschewed the waterfowl dishes. Here’s how it looks from the outside:

A logo from the menu (artist unidentified).

The menu is here, and I asked the waiter for recommendations, which is how I came up with the avocado grilled cheese sandwich, with two types of cheese, bacon, avocado, and tomato.  I ordered iced tea, and was asked “plain or sweet?”. You know you’re in the South when they ask you that, and of course I got the sweet tea, which, as usual, was so sweet it was almost like liquid dessert. That’s how the “table wine of the South” is served. Lunch:

On my walk to the restaurant, I noticed a small hole-in-the-wall store that sold only cobblers and variations on banana pudding—two dessert specialities of the South—and stopped in to plug the dessert-shaped hole in my being.  Again, the place had a duck motif!

The place was The Peach Cobbler Factory, of which there are several branches After ascertaining that the Peach Cobbler was made from canned peaches (fresh fruits are out of season), I had the banana pudding instead. It was a generous portion of that Southern treat, embedded in which were two vanilla wafers (obligatory) and a huge hunk of red velvet cake. It was excellent, and filled the remaining lacuna in my stomach:

I passed this restaurant after lunch, which had a truly Southern seafood menu (click to enlarge). I must get shrimp and grits on this trip. And I would die for some boiled (green) peanuts, which are delicious and which I’ve had only in Georgia

Oy, was it hot! I ambled back to the Jepson Center (one of the trio of museums), where they featured the art of Ossabaw Island, one of the 100 or so Sea Islands near the coast of Georgia (Savannah’s on the ocean). Like most of these, Ossabaw is accessible only by ferry and guided tour.  I’m keen to visit Sapelo Island, the home of the last community of Gullah people, a group of black Southerners with their own language and distinctive culture.  (They were, of course, enslaved before and during the Civil War.) Here’s an example of the Gullah language, also called Geechee, a creole language that mixes English and African words:

The art was local, but I was most interested in two paintings by Kahlil Gibran, a Lebanese emigrant whom most of us geezers know as a mystic and author of The Prophet (1923), a collection of quasi-mystical fables that many hippies and New Agers revered as “wisdom”. It was immensely popular and has been translated into many languages, but I wouldn’t recommend reading it.

I was surprised to learn that Gibran actually regarded himself more as an artist than a writer, and two of his paintings were at the museum. The first is a self portrait, which I photographed. The details of the painting are in the second photo below:

And a portrait of Gibran’s mother. The guy was a pretty good painter!

An artist from Ossabaw island painting in the Museum and photographed from above:

I might as well put up some photos from Botany Pond, as the ducklings will have hatched when I return (I timed this trip badly, but had no idea that Vashti would be nesting now).  The eggs should hatch today or tomorrow, and apparently one was rejected from the nest, as it was found below it but some distance from the ledge.

First, turtles. I’ve now seen all five, so they survived the winter, and they love to bask on the rocks. I believe that there is one yellow-bellied slider (Trachemys scripta scripta) and two red-eared sliders (Trachemys scripta elegans; they are subspecies) in the photo below.

We call this “turtle yoga”:

Nuzzling:

The pair of wood ducks (Aix sponsa) are there nearly every day, but they really should be mating and nesting. We have no tree holes at the pond (a sine qua non for this species to breed), so I have no idea what they’re doing. They are gorgeous, though.

The male (I haven’t named either one):

And the female:

Finally, Vashti on her nest. I’m worried that when the ducklings hatch, they and Vashti will be assaulted by the undocumented drakes who visit the pond. It’s probably good that I’m gone, as I’d be beside myself with anxiety. I have two very reliable associates who are taking care of the waterfowl in my absence.

Note that the nest is lined with soft feathers that she plucked from her breast.

(Armon is still here, ineffectually trying to drive away interloper drakes.)

A close up. Vashti is immobile when on the nest, so I can get quite close to her, but do so only to ensure that she’s still there (she’s hard to see):

On to more adventures in Savannah. Stay tuned.