On Wednesday, January 8, 2020, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, better known as Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, shocked the Royal Family and the rest of the world by announcing their intention to “step back” from royal duties and retreat into a more private life. The couple plan to divide their time between Britain and North America, most likely Canada, as they work toward building a new life and becoming “financially independent”.
Frequent readers of this site will doubtless be familiar with my cat Ashes; my sweet-cranky Tortie has been with me 12 years, since I took her and her two kittens in from the street on Halloween 2007. Her children predeceased her, Hallows in 2012 and Samhain just last year, but despite some ongoing health issues and an unfortunate addiction to string, Ashes has held her own. As a stray, I’m not sure how old she is exactly, but at least 14, which puts her at about 73 in human terms, an age when mortality begins to assert itself, and even a simple health crisis can prove deadly.
You know Dasher and Dancer, and Prancer and Vixen, but do you recall that there are asteroids named Rudolf, Santa and Yule? Though none of these were designated for the holiday they have come to represent, they function very well as markers of its importance in the lives of those who have made Christmas a central focus of their biographies.
‘Twas the night before Solstice,
and all through the house,
what the cats had to play with
was just one worn-out mouse.
Two competitions of gargantuan proportions reached simultaneous apogees on October 22, 2019, as the World Series of Baseball kicked off in Houston, while in the nation’s capital the House Impeachment inquiry garnered the testimony of a key diplomat involved in the Ukraine “arms for dirt” scandal. While the outcome of both contests is still in doubt as of this writing, it’s beginning to look more and more like the underdogs may emerge the winners.
Roosters crow. It’s what they do. But if you’re a wealthy retired French couple with a vacation home on the sleepy isle of Oleron off France’s Atlantic coast, and you have a local neighbor who owns one, you get perturbed at losing your beauty rest. So, what to do? Why, sue, of course!
That was the case with Jean-Louis Birom and Joelle Andrieux, who accused resident cock-of-the-walk Maurice of noise pollution in a suit brought against owner Corinne Fesseau in 2017. The acrimonious two year legal wrangle ended on September 5th 2019 when a judge in Rochefort ruled in favor of Maurice’s right to sing, awarding 1000 euros in damages against the plaintiffs.
