WW II And the Cats of London

  

I'm not sure how many cats the, at that time, 19 years old Iris Davis saved from the debris of the bombed London, but the number 600 has been mentioned. Probably she saved even more when she went out looking for the poor pets, who - just as their humans - had lost their homes and all of a sudden had to fend for themselves. She used a kind of laso that made it possible for her to catch and secure the cat.

This is an image we are used to see from all kinds of wars: A hapless animal, struck down by the weapons that were meant to kill humans. Without Iris, London might also have seen an awful feline tragedy. Not that she saved all the poor homeless cats, but with her the number of victims was reduced.

I'm not sure that this is Iris, but whoever it is does what has to be done to save helpless pets. However, pets also saved humans, and several of them were awarded medals for bravery, for instance when they found and thus rescued people who e.g. were stuck in the rubble. 

As to Iris and her efforts for the cats of London, she became quite famous at the time as a cat saver, but her war fame doesn't seem to have stuck with her, as I haven't been able to find her biography. Anyway, there is an irony in her humane work as an animal saver, as pet owners had been advised to euthanize their pets before the bombings started, namely to save them from starvation. This led to what has been called a "massacre" of maybe 500,000 pets or even more. 

 

https://www.historyonthenet.com/war-animals-55-birds-dogs-horses-saved-thousands-lives-world-war-two 

 

https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205357526 

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24478532 

 

https://x.com/TheNameofWar/status/2067980781809475917 

Poem by Else Cederborg: "Balloon"

 

 

 

Stepping out
dressed like a billion
all too glittering for this world
happily enough her head is floating
you may find it on a cloud up in the sky
moving in air, far from reality, it’s gleaming

It can’t be denied it’s a lantern
a will-o’-the-wisp, that’s leading her on
feet in the world of fashion and riches, head in the sky
no wonder she is out of reach, even for herself

ALL rights reserved © EC

Poem by Else Cederborg: "Cruelty"

 

Cruelty doesn't go shoeless
no, it trips wherever it wants to go, dressed in fine shoes
its tortured victims drag themselves along

moving on sharp stones
still, some don't call it injustice 

 

All Rights Reserved © Else Cederborg

 

 

A True Heroine

 

Frances Oldham Kelsey (1914-2015) 

Wars and accidents may rob humans - and animals - of their inborn good health and looks. What started out as agility and the ability of free movements may end up in something very sad, namely disabilities of various art. That's a fact of life, and we know it, at the same time pushing it in the back of our mind, and doing whatever we can to forget about it.

It's a beautiful idea, but this boy obviously didn't get the opportunity to rise from his wheelchair in this life, so to speak. He didn't survive his illness, but died. Many other children did survive, but they were severy damaged by a drug which their mothers took against morning sickness when pregnant with them. It's a tragedy that ruined the health of British babies in the 1950ies, and so it might have done in the USA had the release of the drug - which was known as THALIDOMIDE - not been stopped by a Canadian doctor and scientist, who was living in America. Her name was Frances Oldham Kelsey (1914-2015).

Being Canadian born she was a sort of British, but most of her life she lived and worked in the USA, and even though she became a naturalized American, she moved back to Canada to be with her family when she retired.

She really was a HEROINE, and that word shouldn't have been in brackets in this newspaper article. What she did was to save America from very serious birth defects like these:

This kind of birth defects do have a severe impact on the one who suffers from them, but also on their families and society as such. Because of her research and her putting a stop to the release of Thalidomide she received The President's Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service from John F. Kennedy. 
 

 

 

https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/frances-kathleen-oldham-kelsey 

 

Wikipedia 

Power the Mae West-Way

 

Mae West (1893-1980)

I've never read this 1944-play by Mae West or seen it performed, but I've read about it and the literary ambitions of West. People of today who even remember who Mae West was, most likely don't know that she went on the stage as none less than the Russian Empress Catherine the Great in a play she herself wrote, but she did. Allegedly, the play, which ran for 191performances, was inspired by at least one psychic message from the actual - but very dead - empress.

Catherine the Great of Russia (1729-1796)

The actual Empress - also known as Catherine II - started out as a very young and naive German princess. She was chosen as the wife of an immensely childish, immature and non-impressive Grand Duke, Peter, by the then current sovereign Empress, Elizabeth, who was the daughter of the Emperor Peter the Great and his wife, The Empress Catherine I. Of course the marriage of the German princess and the Russian milksop, the Grand Duke Peter, wasn't a success. However, that led to the coup by which she established her power as the new Empress, Catherine the Great.

When I see stage performances of Mae West it's obvious to me that she, in everything she does, is a proponent of what she understands as FEMALE POWER. Of course, she would be a Catherine the Great-fan as this specific empress exercised power over men in a very spectacular manner, just as the stage-queen Mae West proposed to do: A very important stage "prop" in the West-shows were the loads of muscular and good-looking men who sort of were her "backdrop". What her message was, having this special "backdrop", is "I rule, the strongest and best-looking men bow to me". She did what countless men have done, walking around with an extremely pretty woman as the symbol of their power and potency. 

Her shows were very sexual in a special female manner which I see as some sort of "a symbolic, subdued aggression". Interesting enough, several actresses before WWII appeared in what Mae West had wanted to be, but never did: Catherine the Great-movies.

However, the most famous one of these movies was the one with Marlene Dietrich, which came at almost the same time as the one with Elizabeth Bergner, namely 1934. The Catherine-market at that time was full, so to speak, and the attempts by Mae West to make her own movie about the Empress in 1938-39 was not met with enthusiasm.

The Catherine-play by Mae West was didn't bring her any acclaim. It was called "boring" by critics, and she even had legal problems as she was sued for "plagiarism". She may have had dreams of turning her career, but this play didn't bring her what she wanted.  

Her shows with extremely muscled and good-looking, half-naked men were a success, but also something which targeted her as "immoral". Not that that seems to have bothered her, but still, she might have deserved better. Anyway, her choice of Catherine the Great looks to me as her way of signalling the use of female power: How to move from pawn to the ultimate power as a sovereign empress. In real life she had to contend with the stage power over men.  

https://www.ibdb.com/broadway-production/catherine-was-great-1318

 

 

https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/arts-and-culture/g32404699/catherine-the-great-movies-tv-series/ 

 

 

https://www.tiktok.com/@timeflowinglikeariver/video/7312795964220165419?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc 

 

 

Wikipedia 

Poem by Else Cederborg: "Scooped Out"

 

 

Scooped Out

Sometimes what is, pretends not to be

disowning itself a feeling turns painful, even torturous

maybe you survive, but your heart was scooped out

empty heart-shells abound where certain people are

blocking the sight of the ones which are still alive

All rights reserved © Else Cederborg

 

WHY Did She Have To Rape Him????? What About SEDUCING HIM INSTEAD????

In 1977 she was an American beauty-queen, and he was a Mormon missionary in England, where she met him. OK, OK, maybe a bit unusual, but still, that might work out if both were for the union. However, Joyce McKinney, as was the name of the beauty queen, couldn't wait for Kirk Anderson to make the move. With the help of a male friend she went into action, kidnapping the kind of "milksop-looking" young man at gunpoint, chaining him to a bed in Devon, England, and raping him for three days.

When he got free, he talked to the police, and she was arrested. That meant that she served three months on remand at Holloway Women's Prison in London. However, she skipped bail and fled England to return to her native country, America. And HOW did she do that? Well, she disguised herself as a deaf-mute mime, and that disguise worked so well, that she wasn't bothered by anyone. Not being held accountable for her crime - and a crime it was - she went scot-free as a non-convicted rapist.

 

Years later she sort of resurfaced in South Korea, after having had her dead dog cloned. 

 

https://eehe.org.uk/28321/mormonkidnapping/ 

 

Wikipedia