Birthing Rabbits

 

Mary Toft was a peasant woman from Surrey in England. One day, after seeing a rabbit in the field and having chased it in vain, she, 5-6 weeks pregnant, started to dream of rabbits and to crave rabbits meat all the time. However, being poor, she couldn't afford such a luxury meal. Some time later she had a miscarriage and then, after a couple of weeks, everything grew weirder than weird: She "gave birth" to what resembled parts of a pig. That was just the forerunner of her "birthing" strange, animal parts, and all of this worried her mother-in-law so much that she sent for the local midwife who was a man by the name of John Howard.

This midwife must either have been a very naive man or an accomplice because seemingly he believed in the story of the "rabbit-mother", Mary Toft. He got her moved to a nearby inn and started to summon his colleagues in London to come and see his patient. Many doctors became interested in this strange occurrence of a human rabbit-Mom, but so did the King, George I, and he had her moved to London where his doctors were to see her and attend to her. His personal doctor, Nathaniel St Andre, came to see her, and he was convinced that she had in fact given birth to rabbits. However, some doctors dismissed Mary Toft as a total fraud and would have nothing to do with her, and, of course, they were right: She was indeed a fraud, and at one point she couldn't keep it up anymore.

After some time, she got depressed and maybe even suicidal. Anyway, she ended up confessing when one of the doctors said she had to undergo a very painful examination. At first, she told a very tall story of a non-existing woman who had induced her to pretend to be a "rabbit-Mom", but soon she accused her husband and her mother-in-law of making her do what she had done. Then, after some time, she confessed that she, and she alone, had cooked up the story of her birthing rabbits. 

All of this must have seemed very strange indeed to everybody, from the common Englishman to the legal authorities who were to judge her. How is one to sentence a lying rabbit-(non-)birthing woman? Well, she did get a prison-sentence in April 1727, but was released a couple of months later after becoming very ill. It seems she returned to her husband and that she maybe did have a human baby by him. She is supposed to have died in obscurity in, or around, 1763, but she and her "rabbit-kids" have not been forgotten, even today. 

Wikipedia

 

Poem By Else Cederborg: "The Man Who Hated Himself"

  

Born he was

and loved 

Everyone adored him

except one: He hated himself

 

"A knife in his heart

make it red-hot and turn it around 

let the blood run ...." he hizzed

The man in the mirror listened and smiled

 

This hatred come from nowhere

(or so it seemed)

and what's more, it ran its own course

as the blood never was his

but spilled it was

 

Copyright by Else Cederborg©All Rights Reserved

Tycho Brahe And "His" Lists of BAD DAYS

 

 

 

Tycho Brahe (1546-1601)

 

This month, January 2026, I've had the annoying experience of strings of what Scandinavians call "Tycho Brahe-Days". Not that my special days followed his old list of what he claimed to be "Bad days", but bad they were, so being a Scandinavian, I named them "Tycho Brahe Days" when I complained about them to those who put up with my whinings of bad luck, loads of mishaps of all shapes, etc.. Normally most of us don't experience strings of bad days, followed by more of the same kind of days for a lengthy time period, but that was what I did, and it gave rise to annoyance and a certain measure of superstition. I may laugh at some kinds of weird, superstitious beliefs by others, but experiencing whole strings of "bad days" makes one alert to the possibility of "luck" - good or bad - being a fact of life. If that's the case, then "being out of luck" feels like a genuine curse: The superstition turns into a real and quite substantial danger to one. 

Now, WHO was Tycho Brahe since he, many years after his death, is blamed for what happens to me in the year of 2026? Well, he was a Danish nobleman as well as a famous Danish astrologer, astronomer and alchemist. Some have called him the last as well as the greatest major astronomer before the invention of the telescope and, by the way, he himself did a lot to develop the astronomical instruments. However, his main achievement was his 1572-sighting of a new and very bright star which was to be seen where it was not expected to be. The King, Frederik II, granted him an estate where he could build what became the very first large observatories in Christian Europe. His research gave astronomy a boost, and it may be considered the first modern science which was part of the Scientific Revolution. All in all, Tycho Brahe must have had a very successful life, although he lost much of his nose in a duel with a relative in total darkness. After that he wore a prosthetic nose which is supposed to have been made of silver. However, at one point he fell out with the new Danish king, Christian IV, and had to flee to Prague. Here he built an observatory when he became the official imperial astronomer. Several hundred years later his grave was opened for an examination of his skeleton as rumor had it that he had been poisoned, but that doesn't seem to be the case. 

 

 

 

We all know the idea that the combination of Friday and the number of 13 is very bad, as it spells grave problems, but with him there are many more "bad days". 

"Tycho Brahe Days":

• January 1, 2, 4, 6, 11, 12, 29
• February 11, 17, 18
• March 1, 4, 14, 15
• April 9, 16, 17, 18, 19, 22, 29
• May 10, 17, 18
• June 6
• July 17, 21
• August 20, 21
• September 16, 18
• October 6
• November 6, 18
• December 6, 11, 18

Some claim that Tycho Brahe also identified several days as particularly lucky:

• January 26
• February 9 and 10
• June 15

The "Magical" Testicles

I have to admit that I've always suspected that what men have below the waist equals what they lack above it, namely between their ears. Or - put in another way - they have got their penis on their brain where it takes up much too much room. The physical characteristics of men may also get me to utter less flattery utterances like e.g. "they suffer from "snot" in both ends of their bodies". That's neither nice in me nor quite fair, but as we know, that's often the case with a lot of male gender comments about women, so there ....

 

I was a bit surprised when I learned that up through time, there has been some weird testicle robberies. I know that some hold these organs to be a special delicacy, being cherished at special festivals.

Weird as it is, one has to admit that they may have other uses, especially for those who feel in need of some kind of a "male boosting" of their own masculinity. 

 

For instance, in 1922 the very masculine vet Joseph Wozniak found himself robbed of his testicles after spending a pleasant evening at a bar with four new "friends", namely men he didn't know. They seemed like decent and nice guys, but by their actions they proved that that assumption was wrong: They abducted Wozniak and somehow stole his testicles by cutting them off. This robbery led to his suicide four years later, so the four men stole more than his testicles, namely his life. As to the use they had of these stolen testicles I think they were intended to become some kind of medicine to boost the masculinity of one or all of the four men because that was what others used testicles for, stolen or not.

 

When testicles are seen as some kind of rejuvenating "medicine" it's obvious that they have many uses by those who believe this myth. In 1914 the urologist Frank Lydston tried a very special "cure" of a declining masculinity when he stole the testicles of a dead man and had them put into his own genitals with surgery. However, being a firm believer in the magic of testicles he ended up sewing even more testicles into different parts of his body, like for instance in his heart region. Other doctors sold testicles from animals in a perpetual hunt for something that could be the answer to men's wish to stay youthful and vigorous. 

 

At one point there were several "cures" with monkey-testicles - most likely with no one being cured. However, the belief in the magic of testicles made some doctors rich. The ony "excuse" is that they themselves may have believed in the myth: The male craving of a cure turned into pure medical fantasy fiction, like in some articles in "Journal of the American Medical Association" i 1922. Also the need to believe in a sexual magic of some kind was part of the medical experiments of the Nazi doctors in the camps. Some used the testicles in attempts to "cure" homosexuality. 

 

Others used the very idea of their magic in attacks on what to them were "inferior" races, like in some blatantly racial and absolutely non-scientific articles on the "negro problem" and the "need" of castrations of colored men. Sheer nonsense, but popular with some parts of the medical world who may even have held a belief in these wild ideas.  

 

As was to be expected, the belief in the testicular magic have not been shared by many women. Some may even laugh at it as testicles to them are not a symbol of strength, but the opposite:

https://www.gq.com/story/russian-actor-drugged-has-testicles-stolen-by-attractive-blonde 

 

https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/gland-larceny-9b0cfa21fdfe 

 

https://www.themodernrogue.com/articles/2021/8/2/the-weird-role-of-testicles-throughout-medical-history 

 

https://historienet.dk/samfund/middelalderen/forbrydelser-i-middelalderen-blev-straffet-grusomt 

 

https://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/November-2018/When-Chicagos-Wealthiest-Man-Maybe-Probably-Got-a-Monkey-Testicle-Transplant/?fbclid=IwAR1ox3ObIEvlAseY25FSA-xDigqV5ZgyqUrGDMEYvguL9az9X1frps8FJAs 

 

http://theballreport.com/100-years-ago-testicle-thieves-plagued-chicago/

 

https://samjoecooley.com/2018/09/11/photo-gallery-the-museum-of-bizarre-and-extreme-science/ 

Wikipedia

 

Donald Trump And Women

 

According to Donald Trump's own sayings, this is what he has done to real women, someone of flesh and blood, so to speak. Obviously enough it's a grave insult, overstepping whatever boundaries there are for a woman's free will, her dignity as a fellow human being, and all forms of social conventions. As we know, that kind of conventions have the purpose of securing peace without any skirmishes where two different groups of people interact. Without some kind of rules, it would very often end in chaos and that's something that nobody wants because it disrupts a productive and pleasant life for both parties. Still, Donald Trump doesn't follow rules, especially when it comes to women whom he seems to think are there "for the grabbing".

Well, that's not quite as easy or acceptable as he thinks. For instance, many women and some teenagers have accused him of rape, some of them being very young indeed. 

Maybe this scenery is something that went too far, maybe not: 

It's obvious that Donald Trump has his own private system of labelling women according to their usefulness for him. First there are "trophies", like e.g. his wives, but only up to a point, namely until he divorces them. When his third wife, Melania, wanted to have a child, he made her promise that the pregnancy wouldn't ruin her looks, which are what makes her a trophy. Her trophy-value only lasts as long as she keeps her looks. I remember an interview about why he left his first wife, Ivana, and he said something about how her three pregnancies had made her "slack down there". Besides, she had become more like a business colleague than a wife which was something he obviously resented very much, maybe because she was good at what she was doing. Pretty and sexually useful, that was her role in his life, and when that wasn't what it had been he left her.

The photo of a mature Ivana (to the left) as compared to the one to the right tells a story of how age changes the looks of people naturally, but to Trump that may seem like a kind of betrayal: When he looks at her value as a trophy she is not as much of a catch as what she was when she was young, namely in the eyes of the world. When her "career" as a Trump-wife ended, she became something that might be called a "tool", and that is what happens to all women who are not trophies. These women he often makes an effort to humiliate, no matter who they are, and the humiliation will most likely go on their looks, like in the case of the young female journalist he called "Piggy", although he was the most pig-like of the pair of them. 

His favorite word for the non-trophy-category of women is "nasty". The "nastiness" comes from their not conforming to him and his needs of establishing his status as the "king of the hill". He simply hates those who challenge him by not assuring him of this assumed higher status, maybe because they themselves hold an equally high status, don't let him get away with categorizing them after looks or simply are self-assured in a manner he sees as threatening. To him, it's an awful situation when women compete with him - or maybe just with some man who doesn't have to be him. He has a very stereotype image of women, and if they "step out of line" he tries to put them back in place. Women are for looks and sexual consumption.

  

https://www.themirror.com/news/us-news/donald-trump-piggy-reporter-psychology-1516134 

 

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-calls-female-reporters-ugly-piggy/ 

 

https://www.thedailybeast.com/mary-trump-exposes-why-her-uncle-donald-keeps-attacking-female-reporters/ 

 

The Monster Drawing

Who is this, and whom is he trying to strangle? It looks like some kind of monster, but as we know the one who is a monster to someone, may be an angel to someone else. That makes it quite difficult to define anybody as a genuine and stable monster: There is no water-proof, staying definition that excludes all shades of doubt. For instance, it has been a weird experience to see someone like e.g. Adolph Hitler changing from monster-status into someone being extolled as a kind of idol. I always saw him as the king of monsters, although he himself isn't unparalleled: History speaks of many evil and cruel people, and he is just one out of many. Who knows what the artist painting this gruesome scenery - Sergey Kolesow - had in mind, was it someone specific or was he out to picture cruelty as such?

https://designyoutrust.com/2016/03/to-the-vanishing-point-the-obscure-broken-worlds-of-artist-sergey-kolesov/

https://awesomerobo.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-art-of-sergey-kolesov.html

When The Mother Becomes One's "Child"

Screen legend Rita Hayworth undoubtedly was very beautiful. She had made her name after what was reputed to have been a very troublesome childhood with a father who may/may not have abused her. She had been married to and had a daughter with one of the movie geniuses of that time: Orson Welles. They look like an ill-fitted couple and the marriage didn't last long: 1943–1947. 

Their daughter, Rebecca Welles, was the spitting image of her father, but they didn't see much of each other after the split up of the Hayworth-Welles marriage. For instance, it seems that he never knew that she had given birth to a son at the age of 21, and that he was set up for adoption right after birth. Young Rebecca may not even have seen him when he was born, but it's obvious that he too took after Orson Welles, and not Rita Hayworth as to looks:

Marc McKerrow, the illegitimate son of Rebecca Welles

Being the firstborn child of Rita Hayworth didn't bring mother and daughter close. Rebecca didn't understand that her mother, who had become a heavy drinker also suffered from Alzheimer. They were not close, but her younger half-sister, Princess Yasmin Aga Khan, who stemmed from the much publicized marriage of the screen legend and the very well-known, charismatic Islamic playboy, Prince Aly Khan became her mother's fierce champion when she found out what her problem was. 

As a young woman Yasmin looked like she might be her mother's twin, but to many people she may first and foremost have been a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad through his daughter, Fatima. 

Yasmin went into a fierce fight for Alzheimer-patients. She founded The Rita Hayworth Gala and is recognized as a strong force behind the global research in and treatment of this grave illness. When her mother died in 1987 that didn't put a stop to her enthusiasm for the cause. However, at that time she herself had become a mother, namely to a dashing son, Andrew Embiricos, who was a young man who had his own problems. 

This handsome young man apparently was a troubled soul who had engaged in the business of making porn. Most probably that was how he had contracted HIV which may be the reason for what happened when he was no more than 25 years old: He was found dead in what appears to have been a suicide. Much in his life looks rather shady, but it's not quite confirmed what happened when he died. Was the plastic bag over his head for suicide, or was it for some kind of autoeroticism? It may even have been something worse, like e.g. homicide, but it has never been found out exactly what happened. He was the only child of his mother, but it seems that they weren't close, and that she may not have known what was going on in his life. She was so very engaged in the Alzheimer cause that she had no eye for HIV or Aids: Her life was so tied up with the concern for the older generation of her family, that she seems to have forgotten the younger one. I suppose that in a way her mother became "her child", who overshadowed her son which I find sad.

 

https://nypost.com/2011/12/06/hayworth-grandson-suicide/ 

 

https://people.com/celebrity/rita-hayworths-grandson-andrew-embiricos-dead/  

 

https://www.wisemuslimwomen.org/a-to-z-of-islam/f/fatima/ 

 

https://wellesnet.com/recalling-rebecca-welles-daughter-of-rita-hayworth-and-orson-welles-10-years-after-her-death/ 

 

Wikipedia