Found while going through some family archives today. I sent this to my aunt and uncle when I was 8 years old. She kept it for 60+ years, and then it cycled back to me as memorabilia when her estate was settled.
There are several interesting features, including the postal cancel "Fight infantile paralysis. Join March of Dimes." In 1955 I was in the recovery phase from paralytic polio, so that coincidence is quite striking. There was of course no ZIP code (introduced 1963), my misspelling of "resolution" at that age is probably understandable, and my admonition to the mailman that the contents of the card is "private" is of course laughable.
Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema
'The Inundation of The Biesbosch in 1421"
"Lawrence Alma-Tadema painted [the top image] in the 1800s,
after a true
story from 1421 when a flood carried off a cat and a cradle.
The cat
jumped from side to side on the cradle to keep it upright..."
A hat tip to reader Ceridwen for the name of the artist for the second image. He notes that the painting "represents an incident following the flooding of Sheffield UK after a reservoir burst in 1864."
Repostedfrom 2010 (wow) with a tip of the blogging cap to another (anonymous) reader who found a third painting of this subject matter:
Found on a commercial website, described as "after" the same artist (Millais) - whatever that means.
The historical event is in any case not a miracle - the cat is trying not to get wet, rather than trying to save the baby per se.
I hope I'm not violating too many copyright regulations by reproducing these three pages. I'll be reviewing The Blood Countess: Murder, Betrayal, and the Making of a Monster by Shelley Puhak (Bloomsbury, 2026) this coming week. My personal school-based education in history through high school and college was so focused on the United States and western Europe that information like this is stunningly new to me. More to come next week... (but I may retype some of the paragraphs above just to make them searchable)
A tip of the hat to my cousin Meridee in Oregon, who noticed this passage written by our grandfather Knute Olaus Finseth in a personal diary. Recognizing that a substantial portion of readers here cannot decipher cursive, I'll transcribe the relevant part:
"The eight(h) [of nine] in the family is Victor Milton Finseth - was a student at St Olaf College - became talented in Music Slide Trombone and piano. He never graduated. He won the top honors in Adding Machine speed & Accuracy Contest in Minneapolis' Bank Clerk Contest, and also won over the St. Paul Champion. His desire to get big money in a strange profession made him a broken financial and even mentally less able.
I have no doubt that the relevant "adding machine speed and accuracy" gene, combined with my eighth grade typing class have contributed to my being able to maintain this blog for nineteen years.
Victor is in the middle of this family portrait (1903), probably taken in a studio in Northfield or Faribault, Minnesota close to the family farm in Kenyon:
The Finseth siblings, left to right: Knute Olaus, Gurine, Caroline, Gina, Victor, Marcus, Mathilda, Anna.
The morning after he pulled negotiators from trade talks in Washington and set off a new round of American tariffs, Prime Minister Mark Carney called the U.S. proposal “a bad deal” and said Canada was “at war” with the United States...
In a muscular [and bilingual], 22-minute speech that let Canadians — and Americans — know exactly where he stands, Mr. Carney said that Canada was under attack by President Trump’s punishing tariffs.
“You’re at war when you’re attacked, and we got attacked,” Mr. Carney said.
But unlike his electrifying speech at Davos that spoke of a rupture in the world order, Mr. Carney explicitly named the United States as an aggressor and a threat to Canada and the global economy.
“We’ve recognized from the start that America has changed,” he said in an address to Canadians on Saturday. “We recognize that sometimes, its signature is written in pencil.”Among other things, Mr. Carney said that American negotiators pushed to roll back Canada’s efforts to promote Canadian and French language content in online streaming services, subsidies for industries like publishing and film production and even mandatory labeling in French, an official language in Canada, as well as English on packaging... [note that Carney's speech was bilingual, alternating between English and French]
As he did on Friday night, Mr. Carney suggested on Saturday that Canada would now double down on its strategy of disengaging from the U.S. economy, expanding trade with other countries and diversifying Canada’s economy.
“Last spring, I warned that America is trying to break us so that they can own us and I promised: ‘That will never, ever happen,’” Mr. Carney said. “We are keeping that promise. Canada is becoming stronger and less dependent on America.”
There will be lots more analysis and commentary available tomorrow, and especially Monday when the financial markets start responding...
This from the I Fucking Love Australia Facebook thread:
Twelve hours after telling his negotiators to come home, Mark Carney stood up in Ottawa and did something no one in Washington saw coming, because none of the bastards own a library card.
He quoted a sixty-year-old slogan. Seven polite little words: "We are masters in our own home." Sounds like a tea towel, right? Mate, that phrase is dynamite with a bilingual fuse. It's the battle cry Quebec used in 1962, right before it seized the fucking power stations. And the bloke who just aimed it at Washington owns the grid half of America's northern border runs on, two-thirds of America's imported crude, the uranium, and the fertiliser.
Trump thinks he's in a trade war. He's actually standing in a house where the other bloke holds every lever, and on Saturday the other bloke smiled and mentioned it. In two languages. With the pulse of a man ordering a flat white.
The full breakdown is live: the hidden threat in the speech nobody clocked, the energy numbers that should terrify the White House, the Doug Ford playbook that started it all, and the question Canberra's too gutless to answer.
King Carney doesn't forecast the weather anymore. He makes it.
And this from the same source slightly earlier:
At two minutes to midnight, Mark Carney looked at the most powerful man on Earth, checked his watch, and told his negotiators to get on the plane. Fuck this wanker, we're going home.
And half the world's press still thinks he stormed out. He didn't storm anywhere, mate. The bloke ran two central banks through two catastrophes, and he's just done the coldest piece of arithmetic in modern trade history: the midterms are TEN WEEKS away, Trump's approval is circling the drain, and every deal signed with that man is worth the paper, the frame, and fuck-all else. Ask CUSMA. He tariffed his own trophy deal over BOURBON SHELF PLACEMENT.
So Carney walked, matched him dollar for bloody dollar, and left the demolition to American voters. Why sign anything with a bloke whose signature depreciates faster than a secondhand jet ski?
The full evisceration is live now: the Depression-era law he dug out of the shed, the whiskey ultimatum you won't believe is real, and why an empty calendar is the most aggressive document in world politics right now.
King Carney reads the clock. And the clock says November.
I wasn't going to post this one on the blog because I thought it was too crude, but tonight I'm mad as hell.
This is a super-outstanding rant by a middle-school English teacher about the frustrations she is facing in her profession. I don't know how to transfer Facebook videos to TYWKIWDBI, so I'll just embed this screencap and add the link here and hope that readers of my blog will venture over to Facebook to listen to her for 2 minutes.
Addendum: Her school has apparently forced her to take down her TikTok post or lose her job. Fortunately the Facebook one is still alive, so view it while you can. It may be doomed.
Obviously not a check-out-a-book card, these are public service cards made available at our local community library in a suburb of Madison, Wisconsin. If you would like to obtain some of these, contact the Immigrant Legal Resource Center. The cards are available in 59 languages.
“To the people of the United States of America: you realize that you are being seen by the rest of the world as no better than Russia, no better than China? You’ve threatened Canada, threatened Greenland, invaded Venezuela, and starved Cuba. You’ve caused untold pain around the world. The Strait of Hormuz and the blocking of oil supplies has brought countries to their knees. Now your president is saying that he’s going to make the Strait of Hormuz American territory? Have you people lost touch with reality? While he sits in that chair, the American people are responsible. Go a little further and have a look at the way you are allowing him to treat your sailors: The disrespect he showed the bodies of your servicemen that came back. The way American citizens are being treated on the street. You are allowing it. The people of Iran rose up, and thousands of them were killed. You sit back and watch this man prey on the rest of the world. Disgraceful.”
Not my words, but I agree with them. Attributed to a "Martin Bella" somewhere on "social media."
From Middle English screde [and other forms], a variant of shrede (“fragment, scrap; strip of cloth; strip cut off from a larger piece; band or thread woven into fabric; element, streak”) (whence shred (noun)), from Old English sċrēad, sċrēade (“a piece cut off; paring, shred”), from Proto-Germanic *skraudō (“a piece, shred; a cut, crack”), from *skraudaną (“to cut up, shred”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ker- (“to cut off”). The English word is cognate with Old Frisian skrēd. Doublet of escrow, scroll and shred.
Used in this post as "A speech or piece of writing which contains angry and extended criticism. "
This is what AI can generate when not supervised by an intelligent human. Explanation via FoxNewsVegas:
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB/Gray News) - A student agenda distributed at Farnsley Middle School contains a map of the United States with misspelled state names, a distorted periodic table and unreadable phases of the moon, prompting questions from parents about whether artificial intelligence was used to produce the materials...
The agenda’s U.S. map renamed Kentucky as “Venecky,” Louisiana as “Lookoong,” and Alabama as “Alotome.” Illinois was listed as “Vitoiis,” Arizona as “Arizone,” and South Carolina as “Sorth Cuanto.”
On Wednesday, Farnsley administrators emailed teachers warning them of a lot of mistakes on pages 19 through 36, instructing them to have students tear those pages out. The principal also emailed parents to notify them of the “inaccurate information.”
“This is not a misprint,” Morris said. “Someone did not look at what they were handing out to the students.”
Families pay a $10 annual instructional fee for the agendas. Morris said the errors led her to question whether artificial intelligence was used to generate the content.
“We have to pay a ten-dollar instructional fee every year to get this agenda,” Morris said. “But you’re making us pay for something you used AI for? That’s kind of silly, in my opinion.”
Jefferson County Public Schools officials said they are communicating with parents about the inaccuracies.
The district did not respond to questions regarding who printed the agendas and whether they were distributed to other schools before publication.
The Seattle Space Needle has been duplicated in San Francisco, there are two Tijuanas, "Havana" is in the Yucatan Peninsula, and various rivers start and end randomly. This was noticed and may be remedied, but what other crap is being fed through the system? Please listen to this teacher's tangentially-related rant.
I spent my entire life first learning from, then teaching in, this country's educational system, which seems now to be going to hell in a handbasket.
Addendum: I found a video and took screencaps of other crap in this "agenda":
Yesterday evening I was looking for some distraction from doomscrolling the internet. While wandering around I found the above movie on Amazon Prime (free with ads). The sparse Wikipedia entry described it as a Scottish documentary portrait of an elderly man who has lived for 40 years "off the grid" in a log cabin in the Highlands. The film has received multiple audience awards at festivals and was the Best Single Documentary at the 2022 British Academy Scotland Awards.
Worth a try I thought. In a bad mood because of the obligatory introductory ads on Prime, I at first became frustrated with the film's slow progression and started to click the fast-forward a few times. But then the story started to fill out with some historical context about the earlier life of this remarkable man wandering the Yukon. Within half an hour I was totally absorbed, and by the end I deemed it to be worth recommending to others.
The film will not be for everyone. If someone is Gen Z with a vibrant social and digital life, the appeal of this man's story will be severely muted or absent. For me there was a very strong resonance since I am older than he is and have always treasured time spent in the woods (but I cringed every time I saw him carrying his firewood over irregular rocky ground without even a proper walking stick). I am pleased to offer a "spoiler" by reporting that he is very much alive and well at the end of the film (and today).
My local library system did not have a DVD of this movie, but I did find that he has written a book (The way of the hermit : my incredible 40 years living in the wilderness, by Ken Smith).
Update August 2026:
The wait time for the book from the library was minimal. I found it to be quite well-written and a pleasant, easy read. I thought it might be similar to one of my favorite books, Edwin Way Teale's A Naturalist Buys and Old Farm, but it had quite a different focus. Teale's book presents detailed descriptions of the natural world of a farm, while this book is more autobiographical with a detailed backstory about choosing a solitary lifestyle and then extensive discussion of how he went about living off the grid for decades. He cogently explains that he is not antisocial and that his lifestyle choice was based on other considerations. There are practical tips on safety and survival, fishing, hunting, and even details about the making of birch wine.
The most delightful story about the natural world is the author's multi-year friendship with a hooded crow with a broken wing. After he found it and gave it shelter during a winter blizzard he released it even though it was unable to fly.
"The odds are stacked unfathomably high against a bird that cannot fly, even one as tenacious and intelligent as a hooded crow, but I knew I was doing the right thing as I released Simon from his cage early one summer's morning. He'd rather die on his terms than die in a cage. Me, of all people, had to understand that."
He spotted the crow three years later feeding on an animal carcass though still unable to fly. Then about ten years after the bird's initial injury in the winter storm, the author was out deerstalking with friends when a hooded crow hopped out of the brush and limped forward to greet him. It was Simon, who had evaded starvation and predation for ten years while unable to fly. That story alone was worth browsing the book (pp 197-202).
[A panel from] The Oxburgh Hangings. Hanging with applied panels of embroidery, formerly at Oxburgh Hall, Norfolk.
Inscriptions: A ZYDRACH ' 'ZYGAENA' hammer headed shark from C Gesner Icones Animalium Aquatilium Zurich 1560 p 150
Mary Queen of Scots' troubled reign in Scotland ended in 1568 when
the Scottish Lords forced her to flee across the border into England. As
Elizabeth's cousin Mary had long claimed the English throne, leading
Elizabeth to see Mary as a threat and place her in the custody of the
Earl of Shrewsbury. Mary was held captive in various English country
houses for 19 years. She was finally executed in 1587.
Mary Queen of Scots (1542-1587) embroidered these panels with
Elizabeth Talbot, Countess of Shrewsbury (Bess of Hardwick) and ladies
of the household, during her imprisonment. Mary may have intended the
large central panel as a cushion for Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel
(1557-1595), an English Catholic courtier imprisoned in London by
Elizabeth I.
I was startled to learn that she was even aware of the existence of hammerhead sharks, much less that she would embroider one (reasonably accurately).
Via A London Salmagundi. (Image cropped and brightened from original). Reposted from 2012.
Addendum: A tip of the blogging cap to reader Temptoetiam, who provided a link to a JSTOR article which in turn cited the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes and provided this preview info:
I had no idea of the connection. Thank you so much.
I'll post one more bird photo, because I don't want to end the blogging day with a photo of J.D. Vance at the top of the blog column. This image was one of the winners in the British Wildlife Photography Awards for 2026, from a gallery in The Atlantic.
Nemesis. Winner, Animal Behavior. Parker: “Because the sparrowhawk had never gone to ground before on previous visits to the garden, and not knowing how long it would stay, I just wanted to get an image to record the event before then concentrating on my settings. The story I think the image portrays is evident in the eye contact between the two subjects and the vicelike grip they have on each other, however, the eye contact and grip of the juvenile starling is out of pure fear while that of its nemesis is one of dominance and relief in finally catching a much-needed meal.”
