The Philosopher's Cat

  On January 1, 1995 Gary Larsen retires from writing a daily cartoon strip--"The Far Side." Not exclusively a cat cartoonist, he of course wrote some cat cartoons,like the one where a dog writes on the door to the washer, "fud here" hoping the cat will jump in. This mug worthy joke is about as genial as Larsen gets--in his cartoons.

Frances Steloff was born on December 31, 1887. Ms. Steloff founded and ran the Gotham Book Mart, a historic bookstore in New York City. It was a haven for writers and readers. Anais Nin, for instance, mailed her library to Frances for safekeeping, when she had to flee Paris. In the 1960s Frances found a buyer for her bookstore. The contract let Steloff keep an apartment upstairs, where she and her cats continued to live. In her will she provided not just for her cats, but left money for strays as well. Frances Steloff is a nice figure to end the year on, since this blog is not just about cats, but books too.

Angela Burdett-Coutts died on December 30, 1906. She was one of the wealthiest women in England during the 19th century---she inherited massive fortunes from both her parents. With that much money she could do what she wanted, and that was not to marry the myriad men who pursued her. Until that is, she was in her sixties, and then she married her librarian, much younger than she. And cats--yes--she donated gold medals to the winners of the first cat shows in the world.

December 29, 1895 is the birth date of Busby Berkeley. Berkeley was a choreographer whose inventive camera angles, among other innovations, secured him a chapter in cinema history. You have seen his chorus lines and splashy dance numbers in movies from the 30s and 40s. I am still trying to figure out though, exactly how he managed the cats in "Ziegfield Girls," a 1941 movie. At a climactic point all the beautiful dancers emerge sitting from giant clamshells. They are all holding white cats. Brave, creative, choreographer Bushby Berkely. I gotta assume the cats were declawed, maybe drugged. But I don't know that. How did he choreograph those cats?

Dame Maggie Smith, the British actress whose voice was described as "prunes-and-prisms," plays a character, Professor Minerva McGonagall, who can transform into a cat, in the Harry Potter movies. Maggie Smith's birth date is December 28, 1934.

December 27, 1821 (or 26, sources vary) is the birth date of Lady Wilde. She collected and published Irish folk tales, and "The Demon Cat" recounts the story of a fish stealing cat, a cat that was huge and black, and attacked any one who came between it and the fish. Except for the size (and who knows how big "huge" is) this cat's behavior seems pretty feline, except that it dissolved when holy water was sprinkled on it. So we know it was a demon. Lady Wilde was Oscar's mom.

  Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, was born on December 26, 1194. His home base was his kingdom of Sicily and there he had a royal collection of animals, including big cats This was a royal tradition. Hatshepsut, millenia before, kept wild animals in captivity. The Roman emperors had cheetahs, defanged, and declawed, covered in gold dust, kept in their palaces. Frederick was just acting like a king.

Using the old style notation, the birthday of Isaac Newton falls on December 25, 1642. You may be surprised to find out that the inventor of the cat door also discovered gravity. And Einstein did not need to refine the cat door calculations 250 years later.

  Cleveland Amory ( September 2, 1917 to October 14, 1998)  was a self-described curmudgeon. This New York writer was already a staunch supporter of animal protection when, on Christmas Eve, in 1978, he found a stray white kitten on the city street; "Polar Bear" was what he named the cat. Amory went on to write three profitable books about their life together.

Peggy Guggenheim, art collector and patron, died on December 23, 1979. Her interest in canines is well known, but her cats have received little publicity. So it is interesting to recall the vignette of her departure from Paris, safely in advance of the German troops. She is described as driving her maid and Persian cats away from Paris, in the direction of the Megeve.

December 22, 1957, is the original air date of a particular episode of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents": "Miss Paisley's Cat." This is standard Hitchcock suspense-- an old lady confesses she might have killed a neighbor, but no one believes her, though she has a motive--the neighbor had killed her cat named 'Stanley.' She just can't remember.

Alfred Payson Terhune (born December 21, 1872) is famous (or used to be) as the author of dog books, collie dog books, wonderful collie dog books. Before the author of "Gray Dawn", "Lad, A Dog", and a pack of other books, became famous as a dog book author, Terhune published in 1916, a historian's account of certain scandalous women, and it is from his "Superwomen", that I quote this cat scene. (You need to remember first that Nelson was a famous military hero, and had philandered a bit before his triumphant return to England.) "I once had a collie pup who had never chanced to be in close quarters with a cat. I was privileged to see him when he made his first gleefully fearless attack on one, ignorant of the potential anguish tucked away behind a feline's velvety paws. Somehow--with no disrespect to the great man--I always think of that poor, about-to-be-disillusioned puppy, when I try to visualize the picture of Nelson's homecoming."

December 20, 1996, is the date on which Carl Sagan died. In his most famous book to popularize science, Cosmos (1980), Sagan has recourse to a feline metaphor to explain black holes:  "Now the cosmic Cheshire cat has vanished; only its gravitational grin remains. When the gravity is sufficiently high, nothing, not even light, can get out. ..."

A column named "Believe It or Not," appeared for the first time, in the New York Globe, on December 19, 1918. Robert Ripley, the author, always swore his facts were checked for accuracy, even this item from a later date which typifies the appeal of his column, and I paraphrase: In Akola India, cats are held in such high regard that if a cat is accidentally killed, the person responsible must supply a replacement, a cat of solid gold, which statue is then ritually thrown into the sea.

Francis Thompson was born on December 18, 1859. He sent his poems to Wilfrid and Alice Meynell and these English editors took him up and got him published. Thompson may have summarized best of anyone the essence of a cat, with these words: "You look for sympathy from Nature--Yes,the sympathy of a cat, sitting by the fire and blinking at you. What, indeed, does she want with a heart or brain. She knows that she is beautiful, and she is content with this knowledge."

John Greenleaf Whittier  (December 17, 1807 to September 7, 1892) has many claims to fame including his honoring of his cat.  The sweetness of this American quaker, abolitionist, poet, is apparent in this elegy for his cat named, amusingly (when you consider feline habits), Bathsheba: To whom none ever said scat, No worthier cat Ever sat on a mat or caught a rat: Requies-cat.

December 16, 1899 is the birth date of the playwright of sophistication, Noel Coward. Regarding cats he had this advice: "You always ought to have tom cats arranged, you know it makes 'em more companionable."

  Although Arthur Machen died (December 15) in 1947, he is a transitional figure from Victorian supernatural fiction (which adjective apparently means relating to magic and ghost stuff) to the modern examples of this genre. In fact Machen is a good model for Stephen King in his ability to build the spooky from strands of the ordinary. His 1895 novel, The Three Imposters is a good example. Herein we meet a thoughtful fellow who notes that the foulness of witches has given way to a "diabalerie of old women and broomsticks and a comic cat with outstretched tail." Well you can take it from there. Machen himself was a cat keeper--he eulogized his black cat, as having 'served with distinction for 16 years the house of Machen.

  Owen Barfield died on December 14, 1997. Photographs of this obscure philosopher show a sweet man. During the century he lived, his friendships are the first thing readers would recall--he was one of the inner circle of Tolkien's Oxford buddies--a circle that included C. S. Lewis, and Charles Williams. Apparently he was influential on Lewis, as this anecdote suggests: hearing Lewis refer to philosophizing as a profession, Barfield corrected Lewis, saying "Philosophy is a 'way.'" Barfield was not a fiction writer but he did write a novel: English People, and fortunately for cat almanacists, there is a cat in the novel. A cat along with fictive Rudolph Steiner, Freud, and Jung. The cat, named Merlin, gets lost, and drama surrounds the question of whether the cat has been stolen by magicians.   Just in case you wondered what people were thinking about between the 20th century wars.

  Theophile Steinlen is renowned as a painter of cats, among other things, and though born in Lausanne, he adopted Montmartre as his home. Thus his prints give us a sense of fin de siecle cats in Paris. One of his early commissions was an advertising print for "Le Chat Noir", a bistro frequented by artists. Of course he did other subjects, and in fact used a pseudonym for some pictures which portrayed the ills of society. But he often managed to work a cat into the scene, regardless of the subject. Steinlen who died December 23, 1923, left us pictures of cats who were centered, chic, and rangy

Anna Seward, the 18th century poet, and acquaintance of Dr. Johnson, is also a precursor of the Victorian animal protection movement. Her sensitivity to cats can be seen in her poem, "The Dying Cat's Soliloquy." Herein, the cat, Selima, imagines awaiting for her a paradise with fat mice moving slowly, wingless birds hopping haplessly, and gardens planted with lots of catnip. Selima realizes though that her human mistress will not be there, since this is a heaven for cats. This may be the first such imaginative rendering of a cat heaven; certainly it is not the last. The real author of this picture (Anna, not Selima) was born on December 12, 1747.

Marie Windsor was an actress in scores of movies. Born in 1919 (December 11) she became Miss Utah during the depression era. She was one of many pretty, bosomy brunettes we have forgotten, except, she starred in 'Cat Women of the Moon'. Which is not to say this 50's movie, is not typical of the quality of her films.

December 10th is the birthday of Mary Norton, English author of the children's classic:"The Borrowers" (1952). The borrowers are a race of tiny people (far smaller than fairies) who lives among the humans but invisibly. If the Borrowers are seen, they have to move, but until then they survive on the scraps and reuse of objects, like thimbles for chairs. Typically the Borrowers live well, unless spotted by cats,who are under no illusions about the reality of these small folk.

  Natsume Soseki was a Japanese writer; he died on December 9, 1916. The quality of his novels lead to him being ranked among the greatest writers. His face was on a yen note until 2004. This regard is earned and he should have a larger English audience. Even through a translation, the imaginative effort to understand what the world looks like from a foreign viewpoint is apparent in his 1905 story, "I Am A Cat." This eponymous feline is dissuaded from clawing books and so has ...a "new sport" which is to: "hunt praying mantises. Mantis hunting is not as strenuous as rat hunting, but neither does it involve so many hazards...After seeing one, I rush it as fast as the wind. The mantis, sensing danger, will raise its head...Mantises are rather bold...[Their] wings are only there for ornamental purposes...like the study of French and German for humans...Having wings sounds wonderful but actually those of the mantis only drag the owner along the ground as it walks.

James Thurber is described as o ne of the funniest American writers. December 8th, 1894 is the day he was born. On the subject of cats Thurber said: "I am not a cat man, but a dog man, and all felines can tell this at a glance — a sharp, vindictive glance." Okay, not his best joke, but it gets him into our cat almanac.

Robert Graves was a historian, poet, and student of mythology. He combined these latter interests in his poem "Cat-Goddesses". Here are some charming lines he wrote: A perverse habit of cat-goddesses... ...is to yield themselves In verisimilar love-ecstasies To tatter-eared and slinking alley-toms No less below the common run of cats Than they above it... ...Not the least abashed By such gross-headed, rabbit-colored litters As soon they shall be happy to desert. December 7, 1985 is the day Graves died. The full text of "Cat-Goddesses" is  here

Evelyn Underhill is remembered as the writer of books discussing mysticism. She was born on December 6, 1875. Her 1911 book, "Mysticism: A Study in Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness," is still considered a standard on the subject. She was a prolific author and wrote poetry, and novels also. What is less recalled is her affection for cats. She had a preference for tomcats, and all the ones I have found mention of bore English masculine names, for example she had cats named, Richard, Phillip and David. These are all names Evelyn Underhill gave to cats.

Laura Ingalls Wilder, the author of the biographical series, Little House on the Prairie, had a daughter born on December 5, 1886. Her daughter was Rose Wilder, later Rose Wilder Lane. Lane was a writer, possibly a writer earlier than her mom became one. One thing Rose Wilder Lane wrote was travel articles, like the one in Travel World, published in 1923, where she described a friend who loved lilacs, 'like a cat loves catnip."

  Cardinal Richelieu ( September 9, 1585 to December 4, 1642)  is associated with cats. This powerful French minister during the reign of Louis XIV,  is said to have enjoyed the sight of kittens, and kept them around to combat a melancholic streak the Cardinal possessed. There are several stories. One reads that Richelieu provided for his cats in his will. Which seems to contradict the character that is also said to have disposed of his kittens when they reached the age of three months. They would be discarded and fresh kittens obtained to entertain one of the most powerful men in the world.  (Recall that in this pre-vehicular era, cats had different options, and while it sounds dreadful that someone would discard cats, it was in a different setting.   No doubt the life of a stray cat was difficult but not for the same reasons we consider today. And, cats were valuable in that they controlled vermin. Nowadays we have poorly controlled and wastefully applied pesticides to do what cats u

 Ludvig Holberg (December 3, 1684 to January 28, 1754) ) was a Scandinavian writer, an author of comedies, and an historian. He also wrote books on the law, and his comedies reflect this background. We read that he,was a deist and "critical of the notion of original sin, instead subscribing to the notion of man's free will."  One of his play is  Hexerie eller Blind Allarm , (1723) (translated as  Witchcraft or False Alert ) is a comedy which gets laughter at the thought of pacts with the devil and magical arts. Our excerpt though comes from  Jeppe paa Bjerget eller den forvandlede Bonde , (1722)  (translated as  Jeppe of the Hill) . Jeppe is a peasant who is tricked into believing he is nobility, and later, even, a poisoned thief. The characterizations of all the players in this comedy are vivid and one assumes this is to the credit of the author, not the translator. In our excerpt Jeppe is in court for reasons which are not clear to him; he winds up believing he is poiso

 "Tooth and Claw" is a short story by T. C. Boyle (born on December 2, 1948) and features a guy caring for an feral cat. It is one story in a volume by the same name, published in 2005. Boyle's sixth book of short stories came after his acclaimed novel "The Inner Circle" (2004) based on Alfred Kinsey. Boyle is an amazing talent, whose attitude to subject matter makes most writers seem to pander in comparison. This New York native has been an English professor at USC for many years. He has received multiple awards, but not enough. 

 Aleister Crowley (October 12, 1875 to December 1, 1947)  became famous by the simple expedient of doing stupid things just to be talked about. His was a standard case of the weak leading those begging to be deceived. Like most people, Crowley did not guess at the dimensions of freedom. At one point the least scandal surrounding his name was that  "a young man died at Crowley's villa in Italy after killing a cat and drinking its blood. ..." Crowley visited various so-called mystical groups, and it is enough to remember one of them was authentic: Gurdjieff said of Crowley that he was "dirty." 

 Jeanne Toussaint (1887-1978) designed the panther broach and bracelet which items were among the jewelry the Duchess of Windsor accumulated.  Toussaint, a woman of  beauty and glamor,  was the director of fine jewelry for the Cartier company starting in 1933. When Paris fell to the Nazis, Cartier made a broach in the figure of a bird in a cage, and after the liberation event, their Paris windows featured that design with the cage door open. It was Toussaint, one reads, who pushed for the trend of figural jewelry and away from the Art Deco abstraction as a style. Toussaint's fondness for panthers, sparked perhaps by a trip to Africa, resulted in her nickname, "the panther." Her Parisian abode was decorated with panther skins, and she wore panther coats. The bracelet she designed for the Duke of WIndsor to give his wife, in 1952, a diamond and onyx panther, was auctioned, for the second time, at Sotheby's, on November 30, 2010, for over 7 million dollars. The bracelet,

  Louisa May Alcott (November 29, 1832 to March 6, 1888) is famous for her family and her stories about families. Here is an excerpt from  Little Women  (1868): What in the world are you going to do now, Jo?’ asked Meg one snowy afternoon, as her sister came tramping through the hall, in rubber boots, old sack, and hood, with a broom in one hand and a shovel in the other. ‘Going out for exercise,’ answered Jo with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes. ‘I should think two long walks this morning would have been enough! It’s cold and dull out, and I advise you to stay warm and dry by the fire, as I do,’ said Meg with a shiver. ‘Never take advice! Can’t keep still all day, and not being a pussycat, I don’t like to doze by the fire. I like adventures, and I’m going to find some.’” For all that her father was criticized for not providing better for his family, Louisa May Alcott's books are excellent in their depictions of strong and gentle men. She did not marry and died two days after her

Stefan Zweig (November 28, 1881 to February 22, 1942) was a Austrian writer, particularly remembered for his biographies of literary figures. He was far more famous during his lifetime than he is now. Here is a description of Zweig excerpted from the introduction to a reissue (2010) of his autobiography ( The World of Yesterday,  published first in German in 1942.) The introduction is written by André Aciman: Stefan Zweig was a cosmopolite, a prototypi­cally Pan-European emancipated Jew, who managed to shed all belief systems with the exception of pacifism. To this day he remains, paradoxically enough, Europe's most grace­fully defeated and disabused optimist. As of the early 1920s, he had picked up the menac­ing rumbles in Adolf Hitler's failed Beer Hall Putsch in Munich. By 1933 he showed suffi­cient prescience to see that life was no longer viable for Jews in the German-speaking world and soon moved to England. .....Distressed by the war in Europe, he moved to the United Sta

 Verity Lambert (November 27,  1935 to November 22, 2007) was the youngest and first female, BBC producer when her series,  Dr. Who , premiered in November of 1963. After a career as a producer for the BBC and other studios, with credits including,   Saigon: Year of the Cat  (1983), she received an OBE in 2002.

"THE CAT BY THE FIRE" is an essay in Leigh Hunt's London Journal,  (1834-1835) the entry dated November 26, 1834. This English literary critic and poet writes about Samuel Johnson's cat, and how Johnson shopped himself for the cat's food.  Johnson, according to Leigh Hunt, "was desirous of being a Christian philosopher; and accordingly he went out, and bought food for his hungry cat, because his poor negro was too proud to do it, and there was nobody else in the way whom he had a right to ask. What must anybody that saw him have thought, as he turned up Bolt Court! But doubtless he went as secretly as possible—that is to say, if he considered the thing at all. His friend Garrick could not have done as much ! He was too grand, and on the great " stage " of life. Goldsmith could; but he would hardly have thought of it. Beauclerc might; but he would have thought it necessary to excuse it with a jest or a wager, or some such thing. Sir Joshua Reynolds,

  Félix Lope de Vega (November 25, 1562 to August 27, 1635) was a contemporary of Cervantes, who called Lope de Vega "The Phoenix of Wits." Together they defined a golden age of Spanish literature. One of the playwright's later works was a "burlesque epic called The Battle of the Cats." Lope de Vega published this poem, which has a feline heroine, Zapaquilda, in 1634.   According to a modern explication, the point of the parody, La Gatomaquia, was the "chasm between the ideal and the reality of those imperialist practices" which used medieval epic descriptions to justify an aristocratic assumption of power in early modern Spain. Such is the thesis of Barbara Simerka (assistant professor of hispanic studies at Queens College, CUNY), in her 2008 book,  Discourses of Empire: Counter-Epic Literature in Early Modern Spain.

  Emma Lavinia Gifford  was born on 24 November 1840 and her place in history is assured since she was Thomas Hardy's first wife. They grew apart after their 1874 marriage but they always shared a love of literature and of cats. She considered herself better born than he was, and in her latter years could seem scatter brained in speech. She called his family peasants. But his biographer Claire Tomalin, took care to specify Emma was just eccentric, not crazy, as some of their friends had said. She was interested in women's suffrage, and wrote many letters to the press -- including letters complaining about cruelty to circus tigers. Emma Hardy died on November 27, 1912 at Max Gate, their home in Dorchester.

  Alvin Langdon Coburn was a photographer whose portraits of Yeats, D. T. Suzuki. Twain, are among his many masterpieces. He might be more famous today had he not pursued his mystical interests and found a group which stressed the value of anonymity for mystical achievement. So, although we do not know the name of his teacher, we are glad he wrote what is called an autobiography, where we learn of his delight in going to the silent pictures with family and friends to watch "Felix the Cat" cartoons. This book,  Alvin Langdon Coburn, Photographer . was published after his death, and may not represent his own wishes about details. It is mainly photographs anyway. He died on November 23, 1966, and the book was published in 1978 with editing credits.

  George Gissing, (November 22, 1857 to December 28, 1903), the English novelist, is classified by the  Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , specifically by Pierre Coustillas ... as an intellectual who rose to be the conscience of his time. An apt analyst of the female mind, Gissing was perhaps at his strongest, as he himself declared in 1895, when he described 'a class of young men distinctive of our time-well educated, fairly bred, but without money' ... His unremitting cultural commitment has endeared him to successive generations of discerning readers. However unpalatable a particular truth was, he courageously voiced it, and his lucid, if pessimistic, judgements on human affairs, as well as the sterling originality of his art, have secured his place in the history of the English novel. I include the above since perhaps others, will, like myself, find Gissing hard to place. Here is an excerpt from an early novel,  The Unclassed , (1884). The setup is a woman, who has b

  A comparative view of the social life of England and France from the Restoration of Charles the Second to the French Revolution  (1828) was a history written by Mary Berry, (March 16 1763 to November 21 1852). Berry was a friend of Thomas Macaulay, and other intellectual luminaries, of the late 18th century. This volume enhanced her fame, but she was already known for her editing of Horace Walpole's correspondence, and other books also. I am gong to briefly quote from the preface because it gives a good sense of an ahistorical past which governed the imaginations of writers until about this period. You can see her need to defend her history because if things really changed, that might cast doubt on the fundamentals of the 18th century world. (If things did NOT change the reason to write history is different or non-existent). Nowadays we are accustomed to the view that fundamental worldviews can shift in an historical time, but our view was itself an historical development. So thi

  Tipu Sultan (November 20, 1750 to  4 May 4, 1799), was the ruler of the Indian kingdom of Mysore. He was a brilliant and ruthless man. He never stopped hating the British, and used alliances with the French to contain and defeat them. Ultimately Tipu Sultan, died in battle against the English, and his astounding collection of jewels was among the loot.  One of his jewels came up for auction recently: (2010).  It is described as a "gold pendant ... set with a 38 carat emerald surrounded by nine precious stones including topaz, blue sapphire, ruby, diamond and pearl. It is one of the very few pieces of jewellery from Tipu Sultan’s fabulous treasury to have survived in its original setting." Tipu Sultan was known during his lifetime as the Tiger of Mysore; he encouraged this informal title. The story he told was that while hunting in the forest a tiger attacked him. His gun would not fire and the tiger knocked his dagger out of his hand when jumping him. Tipu Sultan managed to

Elizabeth Coles was born on July 3, 1912 in Reading, Berkshire. She  grew up and wrote novels. Her literary reputation has grown considerably since her death. The following is probably from her article in the  Oxford Dictionary of National Biography : She has been described as   "best known for not being better known"....Kingsley Amis named her "one of the best English novelists born in this century"; Antonia Fraser called her "one of the most underrated writers of the 20th century". Hilary Mantel says that she is "deft, accomplished and somewhat underrated...." [Elizabeth Coles]. .. led a highly respectable Home Counties life, married to a chocolate manufacturer,  [named Taylor]  and many of her books are, on the surface, about lives comfortably lived. ..."What she loved best, I think, were outbreaks of vulgarity, embarrassingly improper behaviour, people saying or doing exactly the wrong thing."...One of her main strengths, however, e

Margaret Atwood, born on November 18, 1939, is a Canadian novelist and poet. She has won many awards and her novels have titles we all recognise, like  The Handmaiden's Tale, (1985) and  The Cat's Eye  (1988). The latter was a Booker Prize (1989) finalist. She is a very prolific and much honored writer.  We have this excerpt from Margaret Atwood's poem "February": ... ... it's love that does us in. Over and over Again, He shoots, he scores! and famine crouches in the bedsheets, ambushing the pulsing eiderdown, and the windchill factor hits  thirty below, and the pollution pours  out of our chimneys to keep us warm. February, month of despair,  with a skewered heart in the centre. I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries with a splash of vinegar. Cat, enough of your greedy whining  and your small pink bumhole. Off my face! You're the life principle,  more or less, so get going on a little optimism around here.  Get rid of death. Celebrate increase.

  Mervyn Peake (July 9, 1911, to the night of November 16/17, 1968) was a British artist, whose novels and drawings portray an intensely imagined and unexpected world. We quote passages from the article about Peake in the  Oxford Dictionary of National Biography  to convey a sense of his achievement.  "[His illustrations for ]  The Rime of the Ancient Mariner  (1943); ... is considered to be his greatest achievement as an illustrator and he was praised for adding a new spiritual dimension to the work...[After the war] he was commissioned by  The Leader  magazine to tour western Europe with the journalist Tom Pocock. They witnessed the first war crimes trial at Bad Neuenahr in June 1945 and Peake sent back haunting drawings of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp...  Titus Groan  was published in 1946. It was the first in a projected series in which Titus, the seventy-seventh earl of Groan, rebels against his ancestral home Gormenghast Castle and its restrictive duties, and attempts to

  William Pitt Turner was a doctor and the brother of a doctor and the son of Dr. Philip Turner, all good Connecticut citizens in post revolutionary America, in 1787, to be exact. William and John were members of a local musical society, to which they contributed their collection of dance tunes. William also wrote verse describing members of this Norwich Assembly and we quote: ...the lads with merry glee, ... Have spent of shillings not a few; the fair to please, night-errants stout, they've turn'd their purses wrong-side out; And to maintain, their dancing sett, All head and ears they've run in debt; Some to the Cobler for their shoes, Some to the Merchants for their cloaths, Of jackets, stocks and cambrick ruffles, .... A Dokt-r trimmed with fur of cat. Gives orders out and does proceed, In managing to take the lead; .... A self portrait perhaps, of youth in a young nation. We found this in  Dance and its music in America, 1528-1789,  (2007) by Kate Van Winkle Keller. We

We note that, according to some art sale site,  Elisabeth Frink .... was an English artist, best known for her sculptures of men, animals and religious motifs. Born in rural Suffolk, Frink first studied art at the Guildford School of Art from 1946-49 before moving to London to attend the Chelsea School of Art from 1949-1953. Although an able painter and draughtsman, Frink favoured sculpture. Associated with the group of post-war British sculptors including Eduardo Paolozzi and Reg Butler, Frink is distinguishable for the recurrent natural themes, and the organic style manifest in many of her bronzes. The naturalistic subject matter of much of Frink’s sculpture is exaggerated by her technique of layering and distressing plaster onto a metal frame, achieving a weathered and scarred effect and integrating her sculpture within its often rural context. During the 1960s the animalistic forms which had dominated much of her early sculpture were gradually replaced by a focus on the human form.

  Percival Lowell (March 13, 1855 to November 12, 1916) wrote several books about his travels in Japan, and one of these  Occult Japan: or, The way of the gods; an esoteric study of Japanese personality and possession , was published in 1894.  One of  possession cults Lowell wrote about was the Ryobu, which we now recall has a karate aspect. He describes scenes of possession which sound like some kind of hypnosis. Accompanying the rituals around these events, which involved receiving communications from a god, were special finger and hand gestures of a complexity remarkable to the western observer. " There is quite an esoteric library on the subject, and so thoroughly defined is the system that the several finger-joints bear special names ," Lowell records.  One such gesture involved overlapping the fingers of both hands so that a grid with a gate function was formed. They only used 9 fingers in this symbolic gate though, not all ten. The reason, Lowell says, for leaving a fi

  Simon Schama is one of England's greatest historians. Schama, born on February 13, 1945,  is on the faculty of Colombia, author of classics such as  Citizens,   (a history of the French Revolution), and an art critic for   The New Yorker .  Schama has a scene in his book  The American Future: A History  (2010), which describes Dick Cheney. The setting is Cheney's speech on Veteran's Day, 2007.  ... Cheney would  [occasionally]  look up from the teleprompter, sight line briefly changed and then move impassively to the next homily, like a tank rolling over a cat. It was warm on 11 November, and the temper in the amphitheater was jocund.  Simon Schama, graduate of Cambridge, and one of America's greatest historians, was one of the guests aboard the  Spirit of Chartwell , the royal barge carrying the Queen of England,  during the Diamond Jubilee flotilla event,  June 3, 2012.

Vachel Lindsay (November 10, 1879 to December 5, 1931) was famous during his lifetime for his poetry. He both came from the Middle West (USA) and wrote about those values. A surprising number of major American writers also come from that geographical area, but most of those artists cast their origins in a bitter light. Not so Lindsay and that may play into his current lack of critical attention. There are reasons to remember his originality in themes and techniques. You can see his instructions for reading ""A Dirge for a Righteous Kitten," published with the poem: A DIRGE FOR A RIGHTEOUS KITTEN To be intoned, all but the two italicized lines, which are to be spoken in a snappy, matter-of-fact way. Ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong.  Here lies a kitten good, who kept  A kitten's proper place.  He stole no pantry eatables,  Nor scratched the baby's face.  He let the alley-cats alone.  He had no yowling vice.  His shirt was always laundried well,  He freed the house

The passengers aboard the Mayflower sighted the land that we now call Cape Cod on November 9, 1620. The passengers included "one or two cats." We learn this from a book titled  Everything Cats Expect You to Know. (2007) The author, Elizabeth Martyn has a series of popular interest books about cats, and there is no need to expect any of them are well-researched. There is no reason to doubt her information about the Mayflower though, or her assertion that the Mayflower cats arrived after the Jesuits brought cats to what we now consider Quebec in the 1500s. 

  The extraordinary talent of the author of  The Remains of the Day  (1989), Kazuo Ishiguro, was rewarded with the Man Booker prize for this story. The questions Ishiguro asks in his novels reflect a focus on human puzzlement. [It has]...  always fascinated me that we can't be like cats or dogs or cows.  These other creatures are quite happy to just eat and sleep and reproduce and then die. Its a perfectly good life for them. We are very different, we keep stopping and saying, "Is this good enough?" and so on, and we behave in a very strange way...because we want to fulfill some idea of having done good, although nobody knows what that is.  I'm sure cats and cows don't worry about these things, but we do... Ishiguro, born on November 8, 1954, in Japan, and educated in England, phrased this major theme in his work thusly during interviews published in  Conversations with Kazuo Ishiguro  (2008) conducted by Brian W. Shaffe and Cynthia F. Wong.

Robert Brault, the American writer who was born on November 7, 1938, says of his career, that he worked as a journalist for little money and no acclaim, and now he writes for no money and some acclaim. Here are examples of his writing: "If a rabbit defined intelligence the way man does, then the most intelligent animal would be a rabbit, followed by the animal most willing to obey the commands of a rabbit." And we share this very acute observation: "Psychologists now recognize that the need in some people to have a dozen cats is really a sublimated desire to have two dozen cats."

  George Eliot (November 22 ,1819 to December 22, 1880), is the pen name of Mary Ann Evans. This Victorian intellectual translated Spinoza, ( De Deo   in 1844.) Her lover George Henry Lewes was perhaps the first to introduce Baruch Spinoza to English readers. The good fortune of these two intellectuals having found each other, and their happiness together, is a testament to the power of the intellect in addition to the other factors in relationships. And it was a brilliant person who wrote the fiction we excerpt below.   Scenes of Clerical Life , was submitted to its publisher, John Blackwood's  Edinburgh Magazine  on November 6, 1856. A vignette: The little old lady took her son's arm with placid pleasure. She could barely reach it so as to rest upon it, but he inclined a little towards her, and accommodated his heavy long-limbed steps to her feeble pace. The cat chose to sun herself too, and walked close beside them, with tail erect, rubbing her sleek sides against their legs

John Leonard (February 25, 1939 to November 5, 2008) was an American writer, a  critic, whose focus included various cultural manifestations. He became executive editor of the   Times Book Review  in 1971.   Reading for My Life: Writings, 1958-2008  (2012) is a posthumous collection, and here we read about the  novel,  A Flag for Sunrise by Robert Stone (1992). John Leonard writes-- The heresy here is Gnostic and Manichean. There is a "divine spark" and a "library in a jar". Culture and love are both secret. The demiurge is a tourist. ... In the absence of evil --to an anthropologist nothing is evil, including himself, we have history: snakes, feathers, lizards, jewels, a fanged cat, a wooden cross, a unicorn, and death without mercy. Mr. Stone kicks the brain around; we live in heresy; Satan prevails;  A Flag for Sunrise  is the best novel of ideas I've read since Dostoevsky escaped from Omsk.  John Leonard also wrote: In the cellars of the night, when the min

  Alfred Henschke (November 4, 1890 to August 14, 1928), is the real name of the German writer, Klabund. He married often and wrote a lot. One of his novels, titled  Peter The Czar , is a story about the Czar of Russia, told as if it were Norse mythology. For instance in one scene, during a visit to the peasants in a public house, Peter describes the ship which bore him to their fire and tavern. The Sokol, is both his fallow stallion, and a ship that has the "power...of a steer, her speed that of a greyhound. She has eyes at her prow like eagle's eyes. Her eyebrows are of black sable. " The Czar, stranger, magician, "sat at the chimney fire and warmed his hands. A white he-cat leaped upon the table and stared at him." The stranger takes pity on the proprietor and promises to take a locket to his dead daughter in heaven.  An English translation of Peter the Czar appeared in 1925. Klabund was also interested in the literature of the East. Better known are his work

Thomas Kyd, (November 3 1558, buried August 15, 1594), a popular Elizabethan playwright, acquaintance of Christopher Marlowe, and possible author of an early version of Hamlet, lived a life that dwarfed his stories in terms of drama. What we have here is an example by another author of some qualities of Kyd's drama, a deliberate imitation. Kyd's most popular work is  The Spanish Tragedy . The author of this analysis is Jakob Ayrer, a German scholar, in his edition of Kyd's works:  The Works of Thomas Kyd  (1901.) In the Induction to another piece of the same genre,  A Warning for Faire Women (1599), there is a satirical catalogue of the stock incidents in dramas of Kyd's semi-Senecan type: How some damn'd tyrant to obtaine a crowne,  Stabs, hangs, impoysons, smothers, cutteth throats,  And then a Chorus too comes howling in,  And tells us of the worrying of a cat.  Then ... a filthie whining ghost  Lapt in some fowle sheete, or a leather pilch,  Comes skreaming like

Henrik Schück (November 2, 1855 to October 3, 1947) wrote literary histories. This Swedish scholar taught at various universities in his career. He was a member of the Swedish Academy 1913-1947, an institution comparable to the Academie Francaise. His career was much honored, including his work as chairman of the board of the Nobel Foundation. His stint with the Nobel was from 1918 to 1929 and I cannot help but note that it was under his tenure that Sigrid Undset won the literature prize for  Kristin Lavransdatter, which is not a very good book. Schuck collected medieval stories and folklore and I assume the book titled  Mediæval Stories  (1902) which lists him as the author is such a tome. I am quoting a passage from this book: When the traitor heard this  [ Blandamer has slain his lord who was abusing a woman ]  be became both mad and amazed, for the black knight was his lord and master, as well as of a crowd of other scoundrels. He hid his rage, though he determined within hims

  Edward W. Said, (November 1, 1935 to September 25, 2003) was a famous Palestinian who taught English literature at Columbia, and came to represent a coherent and knowledgeable critique of global interconnectedness. Orientalism  (1978) is Said's best known work and in it he tries to analyze how the views of the West toward the East are subject to the biases of those in power. This falls under the rubric of post-colonial theory.  He uses the example of someone writing about a "fierce lion." His point is the feedback between readers and writers, wherein, once broached, a topic, can produce other books by others on a certain topic. Said's example is other people who would write on the subject of the origin of fierceness in lions. The situation is more complicated though, because as he points out---the expectations of readers also influence a writer's choice of topic. In an afterward to  Orientalism  written in 1994 Said tried to clear up what he maintained were &quo

  George Booth cover for  The New Yorker   October 31, 2011 . No words, just "gack," for this magazine cover, captioned: "Diner a deux," by George Booth.

We quote the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, regarding research, dating from days which include, October 30, 2011: The cameras captured photos of two snow leopards in October as they walked along a ridge in the Altai Mountains along the Russia-Mongolia border. “To get a picture is really a big deal,” said Dr. James P. Gibbs, a conservation biologist with the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) in Syracuse, N.Y. “The signs that the species is in this region are definitive but a picture is irrefutable.” The photos were taken between Oct. 26 and 30 at an altitude of about 4,000 meters at a location called Chikhachyova Ridge in the Altai Republic, a semi-autonomous region in southern Russia. Gibbs said the animals are probably part of a larger population that extends into Mongolia...... “Snow leopards leave clear signs that you see readily if you look for them,” Gibbs said. “You can find scat and places where they scratch trees with their claws. And

  On October 29, 1887, at Faneuil Hall in Boston, a statue to Leif Erickson was dedicated. This was a triumph of intellectual persuasion, and one of the leading researchers into a Norse discovery, before Columbus, of North America, delivered a speech. This was Eben Norton Horsford. (July 27,  1818 to January 1, 1893) . This chemist at Harvard, published much  evidence for Erickson reaching Long Island, though it  is based on false etymologies of indian names and not well thought of today. More mainstream is Horsford's textbook:  Chemistry, Theoretical, Practical, and Analytical: As Applied and .Relating to the Arts and Manufactures,  Volume 2 (1860). One topic is the manufacture of perfume, and that section is headed by a  poetry quotation: By nature's swift and secret working hand The garden glows, and fills the liberal air With lavish odors .—Thomson [One of the components of many perfumes is from] Civet.—The secretion of the civet cat, or  viverra civetta;  also, of the  viv