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Rintrah: Essay upon a Cat — Patrick J. Keane
In the tradition of J. R. Ackerley"s My Dog Tulip and Christopher Smart's "My Cat Jeoffry," Patrick Keane's "Rintrah" is a gorgeously jubilant, poignant, mysterious paean to the lifelong companionship of a pet. Patrick Keane is a great friend, a brilliant raconteur, an eminent scholar, and, yes, a lover of cats. This is his second contribution to the pages of Numéro Cinq; see his essay on the "lost" Waste Land manuscript here. But first, read "Rintrah."
Rintrah
By Patrick J. Keane
In researching a book I recently wrote on Emily Dickinson, I came across a letter, written in the autumn of 1858, which has become controversial. Overwhelmed by the world of mutability in which she found herself, she seemed to equate the death-by-frost of flowers in her garden with the death of a servant's "little girl through scarlet fever." I was reminded of Virginia Woolf's Clarissa Dalloway, who imagines people saying of her, "she cared much more for her roses" than for human "victims of cruelty and injustice." But the comparison was unfair. Emily wasn't being insensitive or callous. In addressing "Democratic Death," she was really expressing the communion and equality of all living things that come to dust.
The life and death memorialized here span a near quarter-century that began with the end of my marriage and includes the pain-filled final years and death of my mother. Along with the ending of another long relationship, these losses affected me deeply and, though they are not front-and-center in what follows, they are an implicit part of my recounting of the adventures of Rintrah. Since Rintrah was "just a cat," the love, admiration, and sense of loss expressed may seem excessive. But love is not restricted to our human relationships. Emily Dickinson herself, who anguished over the loss of so many close to her, was devastated by the death in January 1866 of Carlo, her beloved dog and constant companion. Anyone who has had a similar experience with a cherished animal will understand both her love and her mourning for what can never return.
I didn't know then, and never found out afterward, where he came from. And, though I wish I could take the credit, I didn't give him his wonderful name. One of my students did. We had just begun William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell when the kitten walked into the classroom. I almost said "strode" because, from the first instant, he displayed complete self-assurance. For all his confidence, he was small, not much beyond weaning. But his front paws seemed large (I later discovered he had six claws on each); and he already possessed a kind of majesty and grace. He even seemed aware that he was beautifully colored: a white mask and underbelly, tawny coat and ears, with that same soft amber surrounding a white star-shape between his gold-green eyes.
He took the measure of the room, then proceeded to stroll among the desks. At the end of his tour, he returned to the front, looked me over, leapt effortlessly to the chair, then to the desk. A student filled a paper saucer with water and placed it near him. The kitten nosed it, then took a few diffident sips. I petted him and he permitted me, despite the affront to his dignity, to pick him up and display him, tummy exposed, to an appreciative audience. The work we had been reading prior to this mysterious visitation opens with a poem that begins, "Rintrah roars and shakes his fires in the burdened air." The kitten's boldness and color inspired one of the students to propose Rintrah for a name.
It stuck because little Rintrah would go on to prove himself worthy of it. In both senses of the word, he became his name. The poet himself would have approved. Though we hear no more of this character in the Marriage, in this introductory poem and elsewhere in Blake's elaborate mythology, Rintrah is the fiery prophet of justified wrath, and so a precursor of Blake's most celebrated creation: that famous "Tyger, Tyger, burning bright" in English literature's most sublime embodiment of terrible beauty.
During the next twenty-one years, Rintrah would—through innumerable acts of courage, agility, audacity, and intelligence—demonstrate that he deserved the heroic Blakean name so serendipitously or uncannily bestowed on him by that student. But, for the moment, he took a final sip of water, curled up on the desk, and promptly fell asleep.
Rintrah at three months
I took him home that evening. He patrolled his new surroundings, as comfortable here as he had been in the classroom. He ate some canned tuna, drank most of a bowl of water, and put the crumpled paper I provided to its proper use. At first aloof, he quickly showed signs of affection. The next day, I made up a sign to photocopy and post on every floor of the main college building: "LOST KITTEN, phone 445-1598."
Two days passed with no response. Early on the morning of the third day, when no one was likely to be around, I went to the college and took down all the signs. That afternoon, I visited a pet store and purchased litter, a litter box, a case of kitten food, and a fairly expensive fur-lined basket. That evening, Rintrah ate with gusto his first can of non-human food, shifted effortlessly from crumpled newspaper to an actual litter box, and made clear his opinion of effete luxuries by peeing copiously in the furred basket. For the next twenty-one years, Rintrah slept in my bed with me, alone or accompanied.
I never considered Rintrah my "pet." Nor was he quite my "companion," since he was both an affectionate housecat and an animal who not only could not be confined to the house, but who was fearlessly at home in nature. Once he reached the age of six months or so, he wandered the neighborhood, even venturing into the nearby woods. He never lost his way; and, though he got in some scrapes, suffered nothing worse than the occasional scratched nose, and even that was rare.
Since he weighed less than eight pounds, this essentially unscathed record never ceased to amaze me. Reluctant to intrude on his "other" life, but driven by curiosity, I occasionally followed him, surreptitiously of course, on his regular route, about a half-mile in range. I tracked him on several early evening patrols, during which Rintrah confronted and faced down several cats and dogs, in addition to two groundhogs and one raccoon. It was all attitude, chutzpah. I should add that for all his courage, he wasn't a bully, an actively aggressive role being apparently beneath his dignity. He would merely stop and stare. Faced by an Alpha-male, no matter how unimposing in size, the potential opponent would almost invariably back down and slink, or even run, away.
It would be easy enough to attribute Rintrah's behavior to street smarts, reinforcing the instinctive knowledge that the way to trigger aggression, especially in a dog, would be to back down or start to run away. But it was more than that. Not only brave, he seemed to me both valiant and measured in his responses to danger or intrusion. Over time I concluded that he was, in his world, everything most of us would like to be in ours—or, at least, I in mine.
Rintrah, moments after facing down the Great Dane, wearing his game face
Once, a neighborhood Great Dane, not much more than a puppy but already fully-grown, broke his leash and was running wild. I recognized him, and he came when I called. I took him by the collar and was leading him through the house to the phone to call his owner. At the time, I had two other cats—Norton and Aoife, of whom more in a moment—who both took off like stampeding longhorns at the sight of this beast. Rintrah, in splendid isolation, stood in the middle of the room, and, anchored there, compelled the Great Dane to circumnavigate him.
Did he know that I had the dog by the collar? It didn't seem to matter. Far from becoming combative, the Great Dane, who had been pulling, stopped. I noticed that Rintrah's tail was not even bushed up in the usual instinctual attempt, faced with a larger opponent, to appear bigger. He didn't seem to think such a vulgar display worth the effort. He simply stood his ground and stared that stare. He would not be moved. It was, after all, his house.
On one occasion, Rintrah did behave aggressively, though, again, in defense of his terrain. He had accompanied me outside, where I was awaiting the arrival of a friend with whom I was headed out for a day of boating on Oneida Lake. After a few satisfying nibbles of grass, Rintrah sat down beside me on the front steps. Across the street, a woman was walking her unleashed dog. Rintrah was unperturbed. Until the dog crossed the street, sniffed out a few promising spots on the lawn, and, satisfied with one, prepared to take a dump. It was a duty he never completed. Rintrah, who had his own duty to attend to, looked at me, then leaped off the steps right at the dog, who took off, trailing something other than a cloud of glory.
"That cat should be on a leash!" the woman screamed, as she comforted her frightened pet. Now it was my turn, and I knew I had to come up with something worthy of Rintrah. I informed her that she was the one who should have had her animal leashed, that it was her dog who had chosen to attempt to crap on our lawn, and that her dog was not only out of order but, given that he was about ten times the weight of my cat, a damned coward to boot.
When she left, without a rejoinder, I felt a twinge of remorse. I sheepishly glanced at Rintrah, whose admonishing countenance confirmed my instinct. He had done strictly what needed to be done, without the flourish of rhetorical overkill. As he went back to calmly nibbling the untainted grass, I realized that, in my effort to be worthy of him, I had gone over the mark, failing to meet his highest criterion, a dignified and measured response. I vowed to do better in the future, but Rintrah, I knew, would always be a tough act to follow.
He'd proven that a few years earlier and far from his home turf. In saying that Rintrah was brave though not aggressive, I was forgetting the site of perhaps his single most impressive performance. That wasn't in his native Syracuse, but in my mother's home in the Bronx. Fond of all animals, my mother took the love of cats to an extreme, at once maddening and endearing. An otherwise notably sane woman, she had, at various times in her later years, between 13 and 37 cats. And this while living in a four-room apartment! Having heard much about Rintrah, and seen photos, she was naturally keen to meet him. It was impossible for her to travel. Even if her legs had permitted it, she could, of course, hardly leave her menagerie in anyone's charge. So down to the Big Apple went Rintrah and, almost incidentally, his staff. That would be me.
At the time, Rintrah was about two years old, and, aside from Norton and Aoife, had no experience of other housecats, of which, at this particular juncture, my mother had (even she was unsure of the precise number) 18, 19, or 20. How would Rintrah behave in such circumstances and in unfamiliar territory? I would soon find out, and I wouldn't be alone in the discovery.
Sherpa cat-carrier in tow, I rang the bell. It took my mother a few minutes to get to the door, but less than one minute of ooh-ing and ah-ing over how pretty he was for her to insist that "little" Rintrah be "let out." I suggested that, since at least a dozen cats of assorted breeds and sizes were arrayed around the cloth carrier and its occupant, it might be better to ease into things. But my mother was sure that her cats, even the most formidable, an eighteen-pound black Burmese named Pong, would be gentle with the newcomer. I wasn't sure that was the principal concern.
Before I had it fully unzipped, Rintrah, cooped up in the airport and during his JetBlue flight, exploded out of his traveling bag. Any normal cat, finding himself in such a situation, would bolt for the nearest hiding place. (I once had a cat, released in a new apartment, not only hide behind a refrigerator, but somehow wriggle himself into its back compartment.) Rintrah, predictably, took a different tack. Once he hit the kitchen linoleum, he stopped and gazed around, taking in the bizarre scene with his usual cool poise. Surveillance complete, he began his tour of the premises proper, paying next to no attention to the cats surrounding him, some up close, others on tables, two peering down from atop a bookcase.
Moving with all deliberate speed, he checked out the hallway, the bathroom, the guest room, and my mother's bedroom. In each venue, the resident cats gave him wary leeway. Then he strolled into the living room. Near the window next to the fire-escape was a cat motel I had bought my mother some years earlier. And on the top level, the literal cat-bird seat since my mother had turned the fire-escape into a pigeon-feeding platform, sat the king of the hill. Pong was one of the few actually muscular cats I've ever seen, and he was more than twice Rintrah's size.
Watching Pong bristle as he stared down in contempt at the stranger, my mother suddenly was concerned about "little" Rintrah. She needn't have worried. Pong was just going into his full warning yowl when he suddenly found himself, instead, whining in pain. Rintrah, putting all twelve of his front talons to good use, had mounted the tiered structure in two quicksilver leaps, given poor Pong three Zorro-like cuts to the snout, and driven the surprised animal from his hitherto uncontested perch.
For the three days we stayed in the apartment, Rintrah caused no further trouble, but he ascended the cat-bird seat whenever he chose. After that, including during the phone call I made to her the night before she suddenly died, my mother invariably referred, more in awe than accusation, to "that bold Rinth-rah." She could never quite get Rintrah's name right; but my mother, despite her affection and sympathy for the dethroned Pong, always admired courage and audacity, and on one now long-ago afternoon she'd seen both in that bold Rinth-rah.
Bold as he was, and despite the earlier-mentioned defilement of the fur-lined basket, Rintrah was not immune to the allure of creature comforts. A few months after his bravura performance in her apartment, when I was once again visiting my mother, I left Rintrah at home in the capable hands of my girlfriend. Beth liked, in fact admired, Rintrah. She once said that mere words could not capture him; and even those she suggested—"unique," "magnificent," "without peer"—seemed to her inadequate clichés. As an actress, she especially appreciated his bearing: the sense of "presence" he projected. And she respected his survival skills enough not to be afraid to let him out, even for extended periods, during the day and early evening.
Near the end of my week-long visit to the Bronx, I received a phone call from Beth. Her first word was "Rintrah…" I immediately conjured up the worst. "Is he lost? Was he hit by a car?" My mother also became anxious, her hands forming the silent question, "What's happened?' Beth had her own question: "May I finish my sentence?"
It turned out that Rintrah, though he returned each evening, had been staying away for longer periods than usual. That afternoon, Beth had gotten a phone call from a woman. It began:
"Do you have a white and kind of beige cat?" Like me, Beth had leapt to the worst conceivable scenario:
"Oh, my God, is he dead?"
"No, no, he's fine. He's over at our pool."
"Oh, I'm sorry. I'll come right over and get him."
"Well, actually, he's been coming over most afternoons, ever since we had the pool put in a week ago."
"I apologize. I had no idea. Has he been making a nuisance of himself?"
"No indeed. He's more than welcome, so well behaved and so good looking. We've become quite fond of him. He lolls next to the pool and we've been giving him dry food and water. I hope that's okay."
"Sure," said Beth. While she was musing on the truth of Buffon's adage that "the cat is the only animal that accepts the comfort but rejects the bondage of domesticity," she was also trying to puzzle out what if anything she was supposed to do in response to this call; and wondering why it had taken the woman a week to get around to it.
"He's always eaten the food and looked as if he'd like to interact more, but up till now he hasn't let us get too close. Finally, this afternoon, he let our daughter pet him. So we were able at last to read his collar, with his name and your phone number. "
"We just wanted to let you know that he's safe, and that he's been here most afternoons this week, relaxing at the pool and enjoying a few snacks."
"And, while I have you on the phone, we were also wondering how you pronounce his name."
Beth was tempted to say, "Rin-thrah," but didn't, one of the social burdens she bears being an inability to tell a fib, even the most inconsequential.
"It's RIN-tra," she said. "Named after Rintrah, a character in a work of William Blake…you know, the man who wrote the tiger-tiger poem."
"Uh-huh. Well, anyway, he's a wonderful cat. I'm watching him right now, and it looks like he's getting up, so he'll probably be headed back your way shortly. Nice talking to you."
"Thank you," said Beth, amused and anticipating. "Thank you very much."
A few minutes later, Rintrah showed up, announcing his presence in his own inimitable fashion: leaping up and hanging suspended from the screen door as if he were a flying squirrel. Once admitted, his weary manner, affectionate rubbing, and plaintive meow for food seemed deliberately calculated to convey the impression that he was returning from a long and particularly rough day in the woods. Beth picked him up and looked him straight in the eye.
"You," she said, "are so busted!"
Sensing from her direct gaze and tone of voice that, somehow, he'd been found out, Rintrah, for once, had the good grace to look appropriately embarrassed. At least Beth thought so, and that was what she reported to me in what had begun as a potentially ominous phone call. When I repeated the story to my mother, she laughed until she had me going. She only wished, she added, that Pong, who was sitting in her lap, could have shared in the fun we and Beth were having at the expense of bold, independent Rintrah, now exposed as a poolside pussycat.
Of course, poolside lounger was only one of Rintrah's many roles. Along with being a formidable hunter, he was an incredibly adept climber and roof-walker. A born daredevil, courageous and blessed with six toes on each of his front paws, there was no climbing challenge to which he did not seem equal. I'd taken pride in many of his accomplishments; but there were feats of which I was unaware until a major night storm hit Syracuse on Labor Day weekend, 1998. The meteorologists designated it a "wind-shear," a "microburst," a derecho. Whatever it was in name, it was as close to a tornado as Syracusans are ever likely to come. It changed the tree-scape of what I had thought of as my neighborhood—until I discovered that it was less mine than Rintrah's.
At the time I had three cats, the other two being the aforementioned Norton, an affable Russian Blue, and Aoife, an amazingly affectionate little silver tabby. Aoife loved everyone, except Beth, of whom she was jealous. Her love extended to Rintrah, on whom she had a hopeless crush. A confirmed solitary, Rintrah was having none of it, rebuffing every approach. Only when he was asleep would poor, smitten Aoife dare to get close to him, sometimes snuggling up to his back, risking a sweep of those talons.
Aoife, 12 years old, 1994
On the night of the storm, he relented, allowing both Norton and Aoife to cluster with him on the bed as the wind shook the house and threatened to shatter the sliding glass doors leading to the deck off the bedroom. I took the cats down to the basement for safety. Norton and Aoife were more than happy to stay there, but I was too curious. I went back to the first floor and peered through the bay window into the fury of the storm. I could see, strobe-lit by lightning, snapped tree limbs being swept along in a chaotic rush of green. Something jumped up to the ledge of the bay-window. It was Rintrah. He had slipped up with me when I'd re-mounted the basement stairs and was now, more curious than frightened, taking in the spectacle of the storm.
At dawn, along with a friend who had a chain saw, I walked through the neighborhood, surveying the extensive damage. Dozens of trees had been felled. One heavy bough, ripped from an oak and hurled some twelve feet across the road, lodged high and perilously in another tree, until we lassoed it and pulled it down. It took three cuts for us to manage to lift the sections one at a time. That was the most striking single example of the storm's power, but the ferocious wind had left plenty of less dramatic debris in its wake. We went street by street, helping where we could.
During all this, Rintrah was a fully-engaged spectator—following me around like a dog, but taking it all in—like Rintrah. And then the questions and comments started.
"Is that your cat? Do you know that that cat can…." And whatever adventures the particular neighbor had witnessed would follow: "…climb that telephone pole,…jump from that roof to the other,…chase squirrels almost to the ends of branches…." There was also, along with admiration of his agility and daring, praise of his good looks and "personality." Ours was not the sort of neighborhood where one knew many more people than those in the immediately adjoining houses. Still, it was a little embarrassing to be less well known than my cat, or, now, known only because of my cat. But I also took quiet pride in his renown, even if I was relegated to the penumbra of his fame.
Of course, I was, from my own observations, aware of his climbing prowess and audacity. In addition to his speed and agility climbing normal trees, I'd seen him scale the neighborhood pinnacles: two enormously tall spruces, rising up almost 100 feet apiece. Rintrah would climb three-quarters of the way up for fun, which took the primary form of tormenting crows. I observed them one particularly boisterous morning through binoculars. The crows, some of them as big as he, were clustered around him like so many black turkeys. While these otherwise intelligent birds cawed and squawked in a maddened frenzy, Rintrah sat, enjoying himself immensely, swaying on a cone-laden branch some sixty feet above the ground—imperturbable, and rubbing it in by pretending to ignore the crows while he blandly devoted himself to the ritual of licking his paws.
He loved not only to climb trees, but to walk on the roof of the house. The closer he was to the edge, some twenty feet above the ground, the better, and it was best of all when he had an audience, whether appreciative or panicked, or both. One afternoon, when my friends and I were playing poker on the back deck, Rintrah put on a roof-walking show that had six grown men either laughing nervously or urging him to "be careful," or, better yet, to "come down."
Another time, obviously performing for a group of us having summer drinks on the deck, he outdid himself, climaxing his standard tight-rope act by nonchalantly plopping down in a position in which he seemed to balance more than half his weight over the roof-edge. How he pulled off this gravity-defying illusion I have no idea, but he seemed to enjoy the result: cries of "O, my God!" and repeated pleading and cajoling, by name and especially by the women, to stop this madness at once, to take up a less precarious method of amusing himself. Amid this din, as in the case of the cacophony of the crows, Rintrah displayed his usual sang-froid, remaining serenely composed even when he appeared on the very verge of toppling into the abyss.
He actually did fall once. I was having the roof reshingled and, simultaneously, the lawn chemically treated. Rintrah had to be kept in and, naturally, was dying to get out. But I couldn't even allow him on the upstairs deck, since from there he was accustomed to climbing up the angled eave onto the roof, and from there, down a tree, and out into the wide world. When he persisted in meowing to be let out on the deck, I decided it would be safe if I put a chaise longue on the deck rail, blocking his access to the slanted angle of the roof.
I set up what appeared to be a foolproof obstacle and opened the sliding glass door to the deck. Rintrah shot out and immediately jumped up on the rail. Only momentarily perplexed by the unexpected positioning of the chaise, he took it less as an obstacle than a challenge. Before I realized what he was up to, he had gauged the distance, about eight feet, and was in mid-leap, an amber and white arc. He actually succeeded in making the jump, only to lose his footing on the steeply pitched roof. He somersaulted to the ground, about 22 feet below, hit the grass, and started to take off. Fearful that he'd been injured, and, even if he hadn't, that he'd poison himself by sampling the freshly sprayed grass, I yelled at the top of my lungs:
"Rintrah, you STOP!!
He'd never heard that volume and tone of voice from me, but he must have recognized something he did know about: command. When he froze, one paw suspended in mid-air, the two roofers, who had been startled by my yell, took in the scene. The one with the best view, astonished and amused, cried out to his partner:
"Hey, Jack! Did you see that? A cat that obeys!"
I raced down, and found Rintrah still frozen in place, all that vital energy enchanted to a stone. I gently picked him up in my arms. He seemed fine, a status confirmed by the vet, whose thorough examination revealed no internal injuries.
It was a record that couldn't last. One rainy July evening, he failed to return from his post-prandial stroll. No matter how loudly I clapped and called, no Rintrah. I searched the neighborhood in vain, and even got up several times during the night, hoping I'd find him at the door or hanging on the screen. When he failed to appear the next morning, I typed up a Missing Cat Reward flyer and made over two hundred photocopies, enough for every mailbox, mail-slot, and telephone pole in the area.
For three days and three nights, nothing. With Beth at Cornell Law School, Norton euthanized after an illness, and Aoife on an extended visit with my mother, the house was all the more empty. In the pre-dawn hours of the fourth day, on a hunch, I decided to make an extensive search, covering several blocks, probing the darkness with a flashlight. It was a humid, partially moonlit night. Near a somewhat rundown house about a quarter-mile from mine, I spotted a bedraggled cat about Rintrah's size. I approached, shone the light, and saw that it was not him.
As I was petting the poor thing, I was startled by a voice booming out of the darkness behind me: someone demanding to know what the hell I was doing nosing around his house. Glancing at the house (paint peeling, front steps crumbling), then, over my shoulder, at my inquisitor, I tried to explain about my lost cat, maybe he'd seen my flyer, etc. But the baseball-capped, shirtless character holding a can of beer was not really all that into rational dialogue. Less a home protector—a noble category that included Rintrah—than an irritable drunk spoiling for a fight, he continued to challenge me. I had more important matters to deal with, so I informed him—giving him my best imitation of a Rintrah stare—that if I were planning to rob a house in this neighborhood I wouldn't choose a shit-pile like his. That caught him off guard, and I took advantage of his befuddlement to end the encounter and continue my search for Rintrah.
I didn't find him that night. But the next afternoon, I received a phone call from a woman who lived about a block from me. A few minutes earlier, she told me, while she and her husband were entertaining Fourth of July guests on their back deck, she'd heard a single meow, just one, but unmistakable. They'd all tried repeatedly, she told me, to induce an encore in order to pinpoint the cat's location, but the rest was silence. She remembered seeing my flyer, which included my phone number. Fortunately, she hadn't thrown it out. I raced down the block.
When I got there, I called Rintrah's name, and was overjoyed to be greeted by a medley of excited meows. He was under the house, and the only way to reach him was to pull up several boards of the deck. I asked permission, promised to pay for any damage, and pried up three boards. When I crawled under, there he was. I was relieved to see that he looked fine, even serene. Apparently, he had survived for four days on rainwater alone. He didn't appear to be pinned down, but, clearly, he wasn't able to move. I crawled to him, gathered him up in my arms, and returned to the upper world.
"Oh! We've seen this cat in the neighborhood," exclaimed the woman who'd phoned me. "He's beautiful. By the way, do you know that he can jump from one tree to another, almost like a squirrel."
"I know, I know," I said, smiling. After heartfelt expressions of gratitude and offers (which were refused) to pay the reward I'd advertised or at least remunerate them for any damage to the deck, I returned with the prodigal hero in my arms. When I laid out his food- and water-bowls and set him down near them, the problem was obvious. He was starving, but his hindquarters weren't functioning. Off to the vet, where the problem was instantly diagnosed: a broken pelvis.
We speculated that Rintrah had been struck by a car that original rainy night. He always looked and calculated before crossing, so he'd probably slipped in the middle of the rain-slick road and taken a glancing hit. He'd then had the intelligence, strength, and willpower to crawl to safety under that deck.
They kept him overnight at the Emergency Hospital. The remainder of his healing was at home. In such cases, cats do their own mending. Following the doctor's instructions, I first kept Rintrah in a closet in a basket (not the fur-lined one, long since discarded); then in my bedroom. Gradually, his range was extended to the whole of the second floor; then to the entire house. Though a good patient, Rintrah was not a cat to be cooped up longer than was strictly necessary. He longed to be outdoors, and was thrilled when I finally permitted him out on the back deck.
But the green world was beckoning. Within a week, he had made it up to the roof, then, a day or so later, managed to clamber down the tree and reenter his natural habitat. For several days, he restricted himself to the back yard. About three weeks into the healing regimen, I looked in the back and couldn't see him. Not again, I thought. But when I called his name, he appeared atop the embankment separating my yard from that of a neighbor. I called again, and, jumping off the bank, he came bounding at fairly good speed, even with one hind leg splayed out to the side like a flying buttress. I was as happy as he was. Within a week he was running and climbing as if nothing had happened. My bold Rintrah was back.
Rintrah was back, and so was Aoife. The plan had been for my silver tabby to stay with my mother while I was in Ireland and England for two weeks the previous summer. But the hostess became so enamored of her little guest that the stay in the Bronx stretched out for months. The attachment was understandable. Not even my mother, knee-deep in felines, had ever encountered a cat as affectionate and giving as Aoife. But of course I missed her as well. And so, one day, Beth and I finally drove down to New York to retrieve the absentee. The day began with a long and pleasant lunch and ended with my mother's face melting as if it were wax at the inevitable moment of separation. The fact that she had a dozen or two other cats to tide her over did not matter.
Aoife seemed to exist to give love, and, with one exception, she received it in equal measure—rebuffed only by Rintrah, who remained impervious to her obvious adoration. Once, when she had tentatively snuggled near him, thinking he was fully asleep, he lashed out at her, tearing the milky film that forms a cat's third eye. It was the only time I was ever truly angry at him, and he knew it. Though Aoife seemed to forgive and forget, Rintrah still refused to let her get too close. But he never again struck her. And, as it happened, he would not have to endure her unrequited love much longer.
I was visiting friends in Massapequa, Long Island, when the young woman who was cat-sitting for me phoned. She was in tears. Aoife, she reported, was unresponsive, almost comatose. I told her to bring her to the Emergency Hospital, and took the first flight I could from JFK back to Syracuse.
When I arrived at the Hospital, it was near 9pm, closing time. Aoife was in a cage and had been, the vet told me, completely unresponsive for several hours. He explained the complicated medical problem. I drew close to the cage and repeated her name over and over. Finally, when I pressed my face to the cage and again called her name, she meowed weakly and crawled toward me. The doctor told me there was no hope whatever of saving her, but I couldn't bring myself to have her put to sleep then and there, and I certainly couldn't leave her alone in a cage in what would soon be a darkened building. When I said I wanted to take her home, the doctor agreed, but warned me what to expect.
He was astonishingly accurate. Everything he predicted would happen did happen. Back home, when I took Aoife out of the carrier, Rintrah seemed for once to behave gently around her. I carried her upstairs and laid her on the bed, where she promptly voided herself. After cleaning up, I nestled her on a soft towel and laid down with her. It would be a long night.
Several hours into the vigil, Aiofe suddenly struggled to her feet, gagging up blood. I wiped her mouth and carefully placed her on the floor. She began to wander in a disoriented circle. Once she was exhausted, I returned her to the towel next to me, and sat up stroking her and reading while she slept. Toward dawn, I felt a movement. She was trying to touch my face, a familiar gesture. Then she fell back to sleep. When, a few hours later, I took her to be euthanized, she just drifted from one sleep to another, but I still sobbed like a child.
Rintrah's own first crisis came not long after. He was seventeen but as active as ever. The trouble was that, though he was eating ravenously, he was rapidly losing weight. Since he never exceeded eight pounds, the weight loss was dramatic. When I took him to the vet, she saw at once, despite the fact that the blood-work results were surprisingly good, that the problem involved the thyroid and was life-threatening. Rintrah's condition was sufficiently perilous that she generously offered me her own cat's appointment at Cornell's renowned veterinarian center.
When I got him down to Beth's apartment in Ithaca two days later he was continuing to drop several ounces a day. At little more than five pounds, he appeared close to death. The team at Cornell confirmed that it was a case of hyperthyroidism, and at first tried to dissuade me from wasting money on the expensive treatment required. The cat, after all, was seventeen and emaciated. I told them about his recent blood work and insisted that they run their own tests.
I was sitting in Beth's apartment when, several hours later, the phone call came. It was from the lead vet, a beautiful young woman who could have been a runway model. They were all, she said, astonished at the positive results.
"This must be a very active animal. He may be seventeen, but he has the internal organs of a five or six-year old." Active animal, indeed! I told her that they were dealing with a "champion athlete." She laughed and said that, given their findings, if I was still willing to make the financial investment, they were prepared to go ahead with the required treatment. The treatment consisted of an injection of radioactive iodine directly into the thyroid, followed by a recuperation period of about ten days; cost: somewhere between $1,500 and $2,000. I gave them the green light.
All seemed to be going well. About four days into Rintrah's stay at Cornell, I got a phone call from his lovely vet. She wanted to know if I had a special fondness for Dusty Springfield, in particular her recording of "I Only Want to Be with You." My mind raced, ranging through a gamut of intriguing possibilities. I told her that I loved Dusty Springfield and especially that song, which was her first big hit. I'd just gotten a Dusty CD and often played, and immediately replayed, "I Only Want to Be with You."
"Well, that explains it," she said, "though it's still pretty remarkable." It turned out that they played looped music in the recuperation area, and that every time that particular song came up, Rintrah, still drowsy from the anesthesia, would perk up and look around—for me. I'm not claiming that, however smart and attached to me he may have been, Rintrah understood the lyrics of "I Only Want to Be with You," but the song did seem to play a part in his speedy recovery, hastening his return home. In fact, that homecoming was so ahead of schedule that for a week or so afterward, I had to use rubber gloves to empty his litter pan; his feces were still emitting radiation. There's nothing quite like a resilient cat, especially one—as in Rintrah's case—able to combine the production of radioactive excrement with a discerning taste in popular music.
Shortly thereafter, whether because of his medical treatment or not, Rintrah's attitude toward other animals changed radically. Though still lightning-quick and intrigued by the craft involved in hunting, he lost all desire to kill. Despite being belled, he could still catch birds. But now he would bring them to me on the deck, holding them so gently in his mouth that he rarely punctured the flesh. I would hold the traumatized bird in my hand for several minutes, stroking it until it would suddenly take off. Rintrah seemed to approve of the entire process.
Nor, unless pressed, was he interested any longer in staring down dogs and raccoons, or, thankfully, in chasing groundhogs in the back yard, even though they invariably fled. Why these formidable animals had never stood up to him remains, like so much about Rintrah, a mystery. Now, equally mysteriously, he had changed, his new attitude especially notable when it came to squirrels and mice.
He had always been a terror to squirrels, not only on the ground but at times even in their own domain, the trees. I had a feeding bin for them attached to my deck rail, but when Rintrah was out there with me, few dared to jump from the shade tree to the rail. Now, they became less cautious, until, finally, they were willing to feed from the bin even when he was sprawled on the glass table no more than two feet away. He would lie, head on paw, and watch as they ate. After awhile, some squirrels were audacious enough to actually turn their backs on him and burrow headfirst into the bin, their upraised bushy tails quivering with pleasure rather than fear. Somehow, they instinctively sensed that, by choice, he no longer presented a threat.
This new live-and-let-live philosophy reached its zenith, or its reductio ad absurdum, the night I came downstairs, turned on the kitchen light, and discovered Rintrah formally dining with a mouse. While he ate the wet food, the mouse was working the adjoining bowl of dry. Feeling almost apologetic for my intrusion on this tender moment between pals, I quietly retreated. The message could hardly be clearer. Not only had Rintrah officially retired from his mousing duties; he had become a collaborator. The next day I went to the store and bought two "humane" traps, hoping Rintrah would not be offended by what, however mercifully quick, remained an instrument of violence.
That he still retained the potential for ferocity was painfully demonstrated just days after his repast with the mouse. The fiancée of the young man mowing my lawn was raking up the cuttings when she spotted Rintrah relaxing in the sun. The only sign of advancing age—for he still looked as if he was in his early prime—was his diminished hearing. Unaware of this, the young woman approached him from the rear and petted him. Startled, Rintrah lashed out, slicing so deeply into her leather glove that he cut her hand fairly severely. I cleaned and bandaged it, apologizing profusely. "Oh, it's alright," she kept saying. But she never again showed up when Rintrah's lawn was to be mowed.
Rintrah had just turned twenty-one and, though now nearly completely deaf, was as active as ever—still climbing trees vigorously and walking the very edge of the roof with the same acrobatic skill. Though his aristocratic bearing became even more pronounced with age, he was still playful and affectionate in his kittenish moods, still sleeping at night, when it was available, on the pillow next to mine. Only his hearing was impaired; otherwise he remained superbly fit. I had lost more than the metaphorical step or two over the two decades we had been together, but Rintrah still seemed largely untouched by time.
What I first noticed was that he was having some minor difficulty swallowing. Within a few days, it worsened and, palpating his throat, I discovered a small lump. It proved, as I feared, cancerous and, far worse, inoperable. He was soon unable to eat anything solid at all and the vet told me that, in a matter of days, his discomfort would turn to increasingly intense pain. My own pain in coming to a decision was only slightly lessened by the realization that, in fact, I had no choice.
When the appointed day arrived, a close friend accompanied me to the vet's. Rintrah was somewhat weakened from lack of solid food, but otherwise very much his old self, alternately playful and serious. At one point, he stared at me with such intensity and affection that I considered taking him back home. That might have been best for me, not for him. The moment was approaching, and the vet, another of Rintrah's admirers, gave us our final minutes alone. It is far too late in this history to suddenly become wary of anthropomorphizing. So I will state that everything in his demeanor suggested to me that, whether because of instinct or intelligence or his registration of growing discomfort, Rintrah was aware of what was about to happen, and was facing it with his characteristic mixture of concentration and stoic calm.
The vet returned and, after confirming that I was ready, inserted the needle. Rintrah's last movement was to stretch the paw I was holding and gently touch me with his talons. For an instant, his eyes fixed on me with their old focused energy. Then their luminous green-gold glazed over and he just slipped away, his flesh slackening into stillness. And yet, at the moment of his transition into death, I felt more than a peaceful passing. I experienced a last surge of a passionately intense life-force—that portion of untamed wildness that had always animated Rintrah. Whether that uncanny feeling was real or imagined, I was reminded of the poem in which Robinson Jeffers gives a hawk, whose broken wing he had tried in vain to heal, "the lead gift in the twilight."
What fell was relaxed,
Owl downy, soft feminine feathers; but what
Soared: the fierce rush: the night-herons by the flooded river cried fear at its rising
Before it was quite unsheathed from reality.
I phoned Beth, but aside from the friend who'd driven me to the vet's, I didn't want to share Rintrah's passing with anyone else, at least not yet. She said she'd call me later to see how I was doing. I told her I'd certainly be home. But that evening I got a call from one of my friends, wanting to go out and have a beer. I tried to beg off, but he insisted. When we got to the bar, I discovered that a dozen others were already there, gathered around a large round table. Informed of what had happened by the friend who'd accompanied me to the vet's, they had hastily organized a memorial to Rintrah. When I returned home a few hours later, Beth called, wondering where I'd been. I told her that my friends had surprised me and that we had "hoisted a few pints in tribute to Rintrah."
"You know, Pat," she said. "It might have something to do with you, too." I suppose so. But at the time it seemed to me, and seems even today when I think about it, to have been mostly about Rintrah. I was of course closest to him, but they had all felt something of the impact of his personality, and been impressed by at least a few of the many things that made this brave and beautiful little cat so remarkable. In our coming together to commemorate Rintrah's death and, even more, to honor his life and spirit, I felt less alone, just one of the mourners and celebrants at that table.
Even now, five years later, when I think of Rintrah, I feel a hollow in the heart. But in contrast to my mourning for Aoife, I've tried to resist filling that void with tears. Beth, who believes in fate or providence, always insisted that Rintrah and I were destined for each other. It may be so. Certainly, I feel gratitude for his mysterious coming to me, pride and joy in having been privileged to share with him a portion of our sojourn on earth. I think of him often, and at times vividly feel his presence. Such moments can be poignant. But there are, as Wordsworth has said, some thoughts that lie "too deep for tears." I cried for Aoife in her final agony, and even now can get moist-eyed when I think of her little space on earth cancelled, her tender, doting heart distilled to dust. But to weep for Rintrah would be somehow, it's always seemed to me, unworthy of him, a betrayal of his valiant spirit, at once gentle and stern, affectionate and fierce.
Housemate and pillow-sharer, tree-climber and ledge-dancer, little tiger fearless of crows, squirrels, dogs, and groundhogs; and, latterly, peacemaker rather than warrior-hunter….where is your spirit now? All that's left of him physically is in the small tin canister next to Aoife's on my mantel, containing the floury silt and crumbled bone to which all that once-irrepressible vitality and valor have been reduced, consumed away. The official "Certificate of Cremation"—dated Friday, January 30, 2004—assures me that he was cremated "individually." Of that, Rintrah, nothing if not unique, would surely approve.
The tin that holds his fiery dust, long since tamed by death, has affixed to it a photograph of him as a kitten. Ears pricked, eyes alert and staring directly at the camera, he is lying on his tiny back, his oversized front paws held up like a boxer's gloves. The picture was taken just days after he wandered into my classroom and into my life—a life he altered and, in some strange way, ennobled. His urn is necklaced by his green collar and the silver tag that bears his name—a name I revisit every day since it's the password to most of my accounts. That was one way, however inadequately, to daily remind myself of the affection I was proud to receive from Rintrah for two decades, and to honor his own indomitable independence, his courage and daring.
Nothing else of him remains on earth; and though there have been other companions along the way, human and animal, there will never again be that particular, cherished incarnation, that self-same excellence. The tragedy of the unique is that, by definition, it occurs once, and once only. That crematory container is a cold and comfortless memento. But in my living memory, risen from that dust, he climbs and pounces and snuggles still, forever young and lithe in his lovely coat of white and amber—my bold Rintrah, preserved in the tabernacle of the heart.
Minnaloushe, Rintrah's successor, with the author, 2008
Patrick J. Keane is Professor Emeritus of Le Moyne College. Though he has written on a wide range of topics, his areas of special interest have been 19th and 20th-century poetry in the Romantic tradition; Irish literature and history; the interactions of literature with philosophic, religious, and political thinking; the impact of Nietzsche on certain 20th century writers; and, most recently, Transatlantic studies, exploring the influence of German Idealist philosophy and British Romanticism on American writers. His books include William Butler Yeats: Contemporary Studies in Literature (1973), A Wild Civility: Interactions in the Poetry and Thought of Robert Graves (1980), Yeats's Interactions with Tradition (1987), Terrible Beauty: Yeats, Joyce, Ireland and the Myth of the Devouring Female (1988), Coleridge's Submerged Politics (1994), Emerson, Romanticism, and Intuitive Reason: The Transatlantic "Light of All Our Day" (2003), and Emily Dickinson's Approving God: Divine Design and the Problem of Suffering (2007). He is currently trying to puzzle out the pervasive presence of Wordsworth in almost everything he writes, and recording personal and literary reminiscences, one part of which is "Rintrah."
2011, Essays, NC Magazine, Nonfiction, Vol. II, No. 7, July 2011
7 Responses to "Rintrah: Essay upon a Cat — Patrick J. Keane"
Susan Olding says:
I loved this tribute to a noble cat. Funny, accurately observed, and deeply felt. Thank you.
Patrick J. Keane says:
Thank you, Susan. I'm grateful to Doug for spreading Rintrah's fame to readers like you. Pat
megscottharris says:
This is a wonderful piece of writing! I love Rintrah! Just fabulous!
Thanks, Meg. Rintrah would appreciate this comment. He was always fond of writers.
Thanks. To be honest, Kurt, despite my claim that I cried over Aoife but not Rintrah, that final page brought tears to my eyes as well.
Mary Beth Powers says:
Hi Pat: I remember Rintrah from my last year at LeMoyne (1983). I too am a lover of cats (and dogs) and have shared my home with several since I last stepped foot on the Heights. I stumbled upon your story, and am so pleased I did. It's beautiful! Best Wishes-Mary Beth (BA, English, LeMoyne College, 1983).
Hi Mary Beth,
Great to hear from you. I would have responded sooner, but I haven't checked in on the late, great Rintrah for a few months. Fortunately, a friend just did, and alerted me to your message. I'm happy you remember Rintrah and enjoyed my little tribute to him. Where are you now? Send me a regular e-mail, so I can stay in touch. Mine is pkeane@twcny.rr.com.
The Memory of Water: Poems — Jack Myers Winter Coat, Winter Count (Assiniboia Death Trip): Short Story — Mark Anthony Jarman


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Q: MVC 5 Routeconfig Routing Url.Action returns null I spend 3 hours and didnt get success. I cant figure out the right solution.
This is what I am trying and getting null. My homepage is working but the others is not working.

Url.Action("ShowDilKursuMenu","DilKursu") => getting null

I am trying getting like this from this code url action https://localhost:44313/dil-kurslari  for my parent html menu. Html child menu have like https://localhost:44313/dil-kurslari/germany or https://localhost:44313/dil-kurslari/germany/frankfurt
 #region DilKursu
        routes.MapRoute(
            name: "DilKursuUlkeEyaletSehir",
            url: "dil-kurslari/{ulke}/{eyalet}/{sehir}/{ilce}/{firma}",
            defaults: new
            {
                controller = "DilKursu",
                action = "ShowDilKursuMenu",
                ulke = UrlParameter.Optional,
                eyalet = UrlParameter.Optional,
                sehir = UrlParameter.Optional,
                ilce = UrlParameter.Optional,
                firma = UrlParameter.Optional,
            });

        routes.MapRoute(
            name: "DilKursuAll",
            url: "dil-kursu/{ulke}/{eyalet}/{sehir}/{ilce}/{firma}/{kursAdi}",
            defaults: new
            {
                controller = "DilKursu",
                action = "DilKursuDetay",
                ulke = UrlParameter.Optional,
                eyalet = UrlParameter.Optional,
                sehir = UrlParameter.Optional,
                ilce = UrlParameter.Optional,
                firma = UrlParameter.Optional,
                kursAdi = UrlParameter.Optional,
            });

        #endregion
        #region HomeIndex2
        routes.MapRoute(
            name: "HomeLang2",
            url: "",
            defaults: new { controller = "Home", action = "HomeIndex" }
        );
        #endregion

One important thing is DilKursuAll named route required all of this parameters.

A: Can you try this in your browser and see  https://localhost:44313/DilKursu/DilKursuDetay/
Rest i can see all the parameters are optional parameters

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


How to look for Vail ski rentals in Colorado. Skiing is always fun, it is always something good in which you need to try out in case you have not, when going to ski, you will need some equipment, if you are not a daily skier, you will need to rent the equipment, however, if you do get to ski daily, you can consider purchasing one, when renting, you always have to make sure that you find the best products. One of them being assessment of the rental service provider, you always should find someone who will be of help to you, meaning, if you would like the Vail ski rentals, you need to find a service provider who can provide you with the best rentals, meaning, you can eventually attain some satisfaction and also have a great time, in the long run; likewise, you will have the ability of attaining some satisfaction. Therefore, looking for the rental will need you to make use of the resources you have, one of them being the internet, that is, you will need to use the internet so that you can get to know of the various rentals available, this will make sure you can indeed make your choice of the service provider you would like, more so, you find it much better to learn about each and every rental.
Getting to study about the rentals available will make sure you find the best, this will happen by looking at everything that they get to provide, likewise, it will be the best means to making sure that you can have a great time, that is, you can have some time to make sure that you find someone or a service provider who will provide you with the best quality and also one who will ensure you will be happy.
With the internet, therefore, you will have the capability of knowing everything about the service provider, meaning that in no time, you can find someone who will be of help to you, more so, you ill find a rental within your area, that means that if you would have been within Colorado, the only reasonable option is looking for a vail ski rental within Colorado, it will get to save you some time and also money. More so, another thing you need to be focused on is the services which will be provided, getting to do so will make sure that you can find the one with unique services which will work towards making sure you will be contented, more so, you will find it much easier to making sure you can get to enjoy your skiing and also the equipment which you will have rented.


text:
Q: Lorentz distribution in emission peaks Sometimes spectral peaks are fitted using a very pathological function named the Lorentz/Cauchy distribution. The Lorentz distribution has the property of not having a defined mean nor standard deviation.
Is this methodology adequate? What does it mean to have a lorentzian? Is there a criterion based on the nature of the spectra to prefer a Lorentzian instead of a Gaussian ?
I would tend to think that with a distribution like that it is hard to define the energy of the peak as it has a big probability of having photons that arrive with very high/low energy. Also without standard deviation how you characterize the width? Does this have any more physical implications?
Edit: I think a more concise question would be: should I interpret the (lorentzian) spectrum as probability distribution of having a number of photon per unit of energy?

A: The Lorentzian line shape arises when the width of the peak is determined by homogeneous broadening. It isn't an arbitrary choice by overzealous curve fitters, that really is the expected shape of the curve. That's why it is used.
While it's true that formally the distribution has no mean or moments, this is something of a trifling objection. The distribution has a peak value and a half height width that are perfectly well defined and can be used to describe the spectral line.


The shape of the yield curve has a lot of information about where the market thinks interest rates and the economy are going.
One often-discussed measure is the difference between 10- and 2-year US Treasury rates. In normal times it is positive (10-year rates are higher than 2-year rates) but it seems to turn negative before a recession.
Critics object to it, saying that it has flashed false positives in the past. Spring, for example, has followed winter before every recession too.
Critics may have a point, because the 2-year rate is influenced by policy as the Fed raises or lowers short-term rates, but the 10-year rate is almost purely market-driven. If the difference can be distorted by central bank intervention, it may not be a good indication of what the market truly thinks, and advocates may be putting too much credence on a measure that compares apples to oranges.
Either way, while the 2-10 difference has narrowed considerably in recent months, it is still positive by about 0.15%-0.20%, so it has not flashed the "official" warning sign that many observers are waiting for to formally announce that a recession is coming.
There is another way of looking at rates that might reduce significantly the apples vs. oranges problem. Under this measure, the market is already in recession warning.
Interest rates at any maturity can be thought of as a sequence of shorter rates. For example, a 5-year rate is a sequence of a 3-year rate and a 2-year rate starting three years from now. The latter is a "forward" rate, and when calculated it reflects where the market thinks 2-year rates will be three years from now. Comparing forward rates with today's rates is a good way to measure whether the market believes that rates will be higher or lower in the future.
We looked at the U.S. Treasury rate database and calculated forward 2-year rates, three years ahead. Then we compared them with current 2- and 3-year rates at each available date to see whether the market expected rates to fall or rise.
Typically, one would expect forward rates to be higher than today's rates given the normal upward slope of the yield curve. But we found that ahead of each of the last seven recessions, 2-year forward rates fell below both 2-year and 3-year current rates.
Unlike the 2-10 difference, which is still positive, our alternative measures have just reached negative territory. It may well be that critics are right that policy rates distort 2-year rates and not 10-year rates, but our indicator compares roughly the same section of the curve today with its future expectation, so such distortion should largely cancel out.
It is important to notice that entering negative territory does not signal the immediate start of a recession. Most often, it took around 8 months for it to arrive, by when the difference between forward and current rates turned sharply positive. That exit from negative territory is what seems to take place almost at the same time as the start of a recession.
If these conditions were to repeat, it looks like the most likely time for the expansion to end would be somewhere between the end of 2019 and the first part of 2020.
One should take these conclusions with caution, because a seven-count sample is exceedingly small to make a solid statistical inference. Still, when put into context with other indications, it is hard not to see the mounting evidence that the longest economic expansion on record is coming to an end.


The NAM S&T Center (Center for Science and Technology of Non-Aligned and other Developing Countries), India, which offers training opportunities for scientists and technologists of its member countries, recently forwarded us a workshop announcement, ( International Workshop on "Drugs Development from Herbs and Marine Medicinal Materials", Hai Phong, Vietnam, 10-12 December 2018 ) NASTEC, being the focal point of NAM S&T Center, is pleased to circulate this announcement (attached) to you, inviting interested individuals to apply.
You or your nominee's application needs to be forwarded to the Acting Director, National science & Technology Commission for authorization. Any application sent directly to NAM S & T center or through any other agency except NASTEC, will be rejected by them.
In matter of selection, the decision of NAM S&T Center will be the final.
The Centre for Science and Technology of the Non-Aligned and Other Developing Countries (NAM S&T Centre) presents its compliments to the Government of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, the esteemed member of the NAM S&T Centre and invites nominations of concerned researchers and professionals for participation in an International Workshop on 'Drugs Development from Herbs and Marine Medicinal Materials' to be held at Hai Phong, Vietnam during 10-12 December 2018 in partnership with the Hai Phong University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Hai Phong, Vietnam. The main objectives of the workshop are to update and evolve strategies for the utilisation of herbal and marine natural resources in new drug developments; foster international, regional and sub-regional collaboration in implementing drug discovery from herbs and marine materials; and focus the attention of the non-aligned and other developing countries on the global trend of research and development for new drugs from natural resources.
Natural products have been the major sources of drugs and drug candidates and this remains true to date. Natural products research has evolved from fundamental organic chemistry to highly multidisciplinary, integrating methods for development in organic structure analysis, synthetic and medicinal chemistry, pharmacology, toxicology, biosynthesis, mechanistic bioorganic chemistry and genomics, etc. Recently, however, there has also been a fast-growing interest in the study of natural products of marine origins. Although still facing many challenges, marine natural products are forecasted to play a central role in new drug development programmes. Pharmaceutical industries in advanced nations have exploited the exquisite and complex structures, the potent and often highly selective ability to bind to biological targets of natural molecules for their products and business developments. But even though most of the non-aligned and other developing countries possess great biodiversity and high potential for natural products research, they have still not been able to effectively utilise their valuable resources for new drug developments.
Free local hospitality, including accommodation and meals, will be provided by the local organisers to all the participants from Sunday, 9th December 2018 (Noon) to Thursday, 13th December 2018 (Noon), i.e. for 4 nights commencing from one day before the Workshop and for an additional day after its conclusion. The foreign participants should appropriately arrange their flight schedules otherwise they will have to make their own arrangement of stay beyond these days. Transport will also be provided to the participants free of any cost for their airport transfer and local travel within Vietnam in connection with the Workshop.
Besides this, the NAM S&T Centre will provide return airfare between the international airport in your country and the nearest international airport in Vietnam by Excursion Class by Shortest Route to one official nominee of your country, if selected by the Selection Committee, provided the application is routed through our Focal Point in your country. It may kindly be noted that while the Focal Points may nominate as many applicants as they wish, the NAM S&T Centre according to its guidelines will consider only one 'official' nomination from your country for providing the international fare. But all the additional nominations received through our Focal Point or Your Excellency or directly received from your country would be considered, but such applicants, if selected, will have to arrange for their international fare and will also be required to make payment of a Processing Fee of US$400 to the NAM S&T Centre in advance to partly offset the expenditure incurred by the Centre in organising this event.
The last date for submission of the application in the prescribed Nomination Form, complete in all respects, is Friday, 2nd November 2018.
A copy of the brochure each may please be sent to the Focal Point of the NAM S&T Centre in Sri Lanka, Prof. W.L. Sumathipala, Chairman, National Science and Technology Commission (NASTEC); Prof. Sirimali Fernando, Chairperson, National Science Foundation (NSF) of Sri Lanka; and Mrs. Sandhya Wijayabandara, Vice-President, NAM S&T Centre and Secretary to the Government of Sri Lanka, Ministry of Science, Technology and Research.
The NAM S&T Centre avails itself of this opportunity to renew to the High Commission for the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka in India the assurances of its highest consideration.


A QUIET COUNTRY RETREAT ★★★★★ | Daphne P.
- The house is at the end of a lane next door to a working farm, but as you turn in to the courtyard you are totally private, the house facing away from the lane. Apart from the odd visiting chicken or small friendly dog, you wouldn't know. On the other hand, should you need anything Anne Marie is completely available in that lovely understated French way. We also had plenty of information about the house content & layout before we arrived, which was extremely useful.
The house is big, all the rooms a good size, very clean & well cared for, decorated with an eclectic mix of interesting items, but in no way cluttered. The kitchen was well equipped, and everything worked.
PASTORAL BLISS ★★★★★ | Hale T.
- I fell in love with France all over again in an entirely new way during my stay at Cap de Boueou. The setting is breathtaking--wild flowers, birds singing, bees buzzing. The owner, as well as his neighbors, was extremely helpful with house details, and provided excellent documents with suggestions for touring the area. The house itself is perfect for a large family or a group of friends. We had ample room for the five of us and could easily have accommodated more. The rooms are very clean, spacious and beautiful…The kitchen was well stocked for cooking lovely meals at home--the farmers markets, foie gras farms, and vineyards make cooking at home/on vacation so much fun. Oh, and the sunlight is incredible--perhaps it's perfect and extra-golden in May. I want to retire here.
THANK YOU VERY MUCH! ★★★★★ | Hervé P.
TO BE CONSUMED WITHOUT MODERATION!
- Very beautiful vacation rental tastefully renovated, spotlessly clean, comfortable, ideal to enjoy nature and its products. Large interior space to share (each room has its own entrance). Ideal to stay friends after a holiday together ... and also very nice for 2! Everything was obviously prepared with care and thought to satisfy the guests. Lots of information and advice available to make the most of your stay and a quiet and attentive welcome from the neighbors. Near Marciac very nice for a coffee or a drink and to read the paper. Outdoor markets abound throughout the week for fresh produce and atmosphere.
SUPER! ★★★★★ | Helene P.
- A week of discovery Gers and Jazz in Marciac. The house is comfortable and I'll want to come back next year for Jazz in Marciac.
- We spent a wonderful two weeks at this lovely house. The countryside was spectacular and we really enjoyed the peace and quiet. The house is very comfortable and well equipped. While being secluded the house offers an easy opportunity to explore the Gers and it's many secrets. We would be delighted to stay another time.
BEAUTIFUL HOME IN A GREAT LOCATION ★★★★ | Philippe V.
- Beautiful place beautiful well equipped house, the absolute calm and wonderful neighbors .... Need I say more?
A WONDERFUL RENTAL ★★★★★ | Helene R.
- Very beautiful holiday rental where every detail is designed with taste and intelligence. The proportions are generous. The large garden, terrace and barn lends itself to a meal as well as a nap. One feels good, equally comfortable inside and out. The friendliness of the owner is matched only by that of its neighbors and make Cape Bouéou an ideal vacation spot.
HAPPINESS IS IN THE FEILD ★★★★★ | André D.
- From the charm inside, the calm on the outside, and full day trips near by to discover the houses, abbeys and gardens of Biscay. The house has been tastefully restored. The garden is vast. Roads have no cars so children can run with confidence (but easy access by motorway from Bordeaux, Toulouse and Bayonne or airports of Pau and Tarbes). Of course there are Jazz festival in Marciac for a few days per year. But to organize a family celebration or discover at other times of the year the hidden treasures of the southwest, it is very suitable.
WE HAD A GREAT TIME ★★★★★ | John M.
- Waking up in Cap de Boueou is a magical experience. The house has everything we needed. The jazz concerts in Marciac were a special treat.
- Big old farm house, tastefully renovated ... nice collection of old objects ... well equipped and comfortable house .... A large orchard for fresh air (and full of ripe plums ...). At the next farm, you can find fresh milk, eggs, vegetables .... The view of the fields and the nearby pond is beautiful ... and the Pyrenees (visible on a clear day). 10km from Marciac festival, it is a good choice for a good rest.


text:
BEST OF 2014 – Podcasts, Films, Music
December 23, 2014 by Nick Bryan Leave a Comment
Right, 2014 is one week and a few Christmas crackers away from ending, so it's time for bloggers to work out their Favourite [THING] Of [YEAR] lists. I am no exception, especially as I've hardly reviewed anything for ages and kinda miss it.
So, exactly as I did last year, I've broken my enjoyment down into a series of headings. In this first effort, we'll tackle the podcasts, movies and music. One of those segments will be much, much longer than the other two.
Last year's favourite podcasts, The Bugle and House To Astonish, both experienced erratic schedules in 2014, due to John Oliver's new TV show and a presenter having a baby respectively. I think this proves conclusively the destructive nature of my love. (Although The Bugle produced some excellent episodes in the last few weeks, since afore-mentioned TV show went off air.)
Still – this clears the way for some newcomers on the scene. Firstly, yes everyone, I too listened to Serial, and quite enjoyed it. Sagged a bit in the middle for me, but I thought they provided a more convincing non-ending than I ever expected them to. I've watched true-crime-based films and documentaries before and judged Serial as another of that genre, albeit in a new medium. Seemed to stand up well.
Best newcomer for me personally, though, was Rachel And Miles X-Plain The X-Men. If a charming, funny, affectionately-poking-fun look back at the X-Men's labyrinthine comic book history appeals to you, this podcast nails the pitch. So good, I signed up for their Patreon campaign. Their weekly YouTube reviews of current X-Men books are worth watching too.
Over in the weird-comedy section, the very, very funny ManBuyCow podcast put out the latter half of their second series at the start of 2014, hopefully 2015 will see series 3. The theme tune alone is worth listening for.Lastly, and most topically, both Tea and Jeopardy (the silly-but-fun scifi/fantasy books discussion show with Emma Newman) and Daniel Ruiz Tizon (South London's master of melancholy) put out daily Advent Calendar shows during December, and both have been great in their own ways, exploring festivity and helping us all build towards Christmas
.I also attended the recording of the Daniel Ruiz Tizon Is Available Bumper Christmas Annual last night, wrapping up a good year for him as he took his show from podcast to Resonance FM, but kept on chronicling the small victories and defeats that band together to make up our lives. You might be able to hear me laughing in the background throughout the annual and saying something about Doctor Who towards the end. Looking forward to seeing what Daniel does in 2015.
Okay, this is going to be short, especially if we restrain it to viewed films released during 2014. It's basically just the two Marvel movies (Guardians of the Galaxy and Captain America: The Winter Soldier) and The Lego Movie, all of which were very good, broad adventures with a unique flavour.
If I had to put them in an order, I'd say Guardians just edges out Lego for the top spot, but if you've any interest in those films and haven't yet seen them, definitely rectify that. They all entertain and emote with balanced skill.
I also caught up on some late-2013 movies recently: Frozen and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, both of which were enjoyable, engrossing adventures. Catching Fire perhaps suffers a little from middle-of-trilogy-setting-up-for-last one syndrome, but they did inherit that issue from the book.
Frozen, meanwhile, aside from that very catchy song, is almost painfully likable and does interesting things with standard Disney tropes. Could've maybe used a few more memorable songs aside from Let It Go, but the story still held me regardless.
I've mostly tuned out of current music, but I bought a few current releases this year – new Elbow album The Taking Off And Landing Of Everything was definitely much better than their last one, including a few songs that made me feel properly sad/uplifted as only they can.
I also listened to the new Taylor Swift album 1989, mostly to see what the fuss was about, and found it a fun hour of pop. After a few stern Twitter recommendations, I went back and tried Red, her previous one, and yes, that's the country-catchy stuff. It stayed on rotation much longer.
New Weezer album Everything Will Be Alright In The End turned out to be an addictive collection of fun-but-not-stupid indie-rock, and no-one was more surprised than the band's own fanbase. If you used to like Weezer and drifted away, the new one strikes a good balance between memorable choruses and genuine emotion. I especially like the songs Cleopatra and Da Vinci, but other people have different favourites, and it's probably a good sign that there are enough high quality songs on the record for these arguments to exist.
Also played Weird Al Yankovic's Mandatory Fun for a while to great enjoyment, although like many parody albums, it got old eventually.
Lastly, as with the movies, I also discovered some 2013 music belatedly – primarily CHVRCHES album The Bones Of What You Believe and Nocturnes by Little Boots. Both smooth, driving, haunting music and great for writing to, I've found. There's a song on The Bones Of What You Believe that very much is the theme song of the fantasy novel I've just finished, to me. And I hardly ever have those kind of thoughts.
Right – probably two more posts to follow in this series, Books & Comics and Top Ten TV, same as last year. I'll attempt to get both out before 2014 dies, although one of them may slip and I can only apologise if so. Gotta see the last episodes of Doctor Who, Agents of SHIELD and Homeland before I can do TV, for starters.
Filed Under: Film Reviews, Music Reviews Tagged With: best of 2014, best of year, captain america: the winter soldier, daniel ruiz tizon, film reviews, films, guardians of the galaxy, movies, music, podcast, podcasts, taylor swift, the lego movie
X-Men: Days Of Future Past – "Open Mouth. Insert Wolverine."
June 6, 2014 by Nick Bryan Leave a Comment
This week, I went to see X-Men: Days of Future Past, a movie attempting to properly fire the X-Engine back up for their cut of that sweet Avengers money. There are millions of characters in the X-Cupboard, after all, and they were among the first entrants in the current run of super-movies.
So, hell, do a comeback, why not. But, oddly, this isn't a reboot or straight continuation of the excellent X-Men: First Class prequel. Instead, they're bringing back cast and director from the first two films and mashing everything together into an epic time travel story.
Wow. That's so comic book. I'm totally on-board. But will it be a good movie?
WARNING: Full spoilers throughout. And the ending is impressively weird, so if you've somehow avoided ruining it for this long, I'd keep going until you see it.
X-Men: Second Class?
Despite the returning of the Halle Berry/Patrick Stewart timeline dominating most of the promotion, this is far more a sequel to X-Men: First Class than older X-Movies in plot terms. However, thanks to the higher budget and return of Bryan Singer as director, the movie feels more like the old early-2000s efforts. It's a strange mish-mash, and I occasionally missed the less actiony character focus of First Class, but the driving plot keeps things moving, and I was never bored. Manages a more serious tone than the Marvelvengers movies without seeming dour.
As you may gather, there are a lot of characters in this movie. So many, to be honest, a lot of them don't get much to do. It's particularly frustrating seeing Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart up there again, but without space to shine. Anna Paquin apparently had her entire subplot cut – I suspect the director's cut DVD of this film will be a good one. But really the old cast are just there to jack up the stakes for the First Class section of the plot.
Still, we get Peter Dinklage as a villain – puts a lot into a small role – along with some impressive Sentinel effects. Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy have intense moments, as does Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique. Future-X-Men (the new characters, rather than the returning cast) get cool fight-power-demo opportunities too, even if they stop short of developing personalities. As everyone says, the Quicksilver bit is great.
What We Talk About When We Talk About Wolverine
And Wolverine, yes, he is there. Central to the film for cash-based reasons, yet so inessential that Magneto literally wraps him in metal and tosses him into a river with twenty minutes to go, where he stays for the whole final showdown. I can't bring myself to get internet-furious about this, as Hugh Jackman is very charismatic and watchable in the role still, but nor can I pretend it doesn't feel a bit perfunctory.
Still, manipulating events in service of the franchise is hardly new in these movies, and at least it doesn't derail the story itself much.
Indeed, shoving Wolverine centre-stage just because he's popular is precisely the sort of thing the comics have been doing for years, and you don't see me ditching them. Between the multi-character-cramming, the plot that demands a decent understanding of past movies and the straight-faced delivery of ridiculous codenames, this is one of the most comic-booky superhero films I've seen in a while. It manages to feel like a single movie rather than a TV episode, but still does a lot of shifting bits around the X-Men game board. Ambitious considering we're talking about a series which began over a decade ago.
(And again, I'm not complaining. Love me a good superhero comic.)
One More Days of Future Past?
The most superhero-comic thing in this film is the ending, though – and this is where I do real spoilers, so last chance to turn away.
Although it's not the whole point of the movie (which is good), a major effect of this time-screwing is to somehow erase the events of X-Men: The Last Stand from history, restoring the school and several dead characters to life.
Now, that movie was awful and pointlessly destructive, I have no problem with this, but it's always a risk making this your big ending as it skates close to being self-indulgent. Fortunately there's enough meat to the story for this to just draw a laugh.
Also, it makes the meta-narrative of the movie great fun: director Bryan Singer reaching back in time to stop the X-Men movie he didn't direct from happening. Bryan Singer is Wolverine. Excellent.
Filed Under: Film Reviews Tagged With: cinema, days of future past, film reviews, movies, x-men, x-men: days of future past, x-men: first class
Avatar – Belated Review
February 21, 2010 by Nick Bryan Leave a Comment
Finally saw Avatar a week ago. However, my brief attempts to interest 'proper' blogs in a review didn't go well, as the movie is now over two months old. So I ended up writing this piece for Dorkadore, focusing on its massive financial success (albeit with a few review-esque snippits).
However, I review things out of love, not just as a "job". So I wrote a straight review of Avatar and am posting it here for the entertainment of anyone who may care.
(Notes: Yes, some points are repeated across the two pieces. And yes, a few small spoilers are contained within.
NICK REVIEWS AVATAR AFTER EVERYONE ELSE
The James Cameron-masterminded sci-fi epic, Avatar, has been out for a couple of months now. The build-up happened, filmgoers got excited, then readied themselves for an anticlimax, and finally felt slightly disappointed when reviews came out and were positive but not spectacular.
Despite all of that, it has ended up becoming the most successful film of all time. Nearly everyone has ended up seeing it in some form, even if only because their friends were going. Which is what happened to me yesterday.
I hadn't bothered with it until now, because… well, I don't like hard sci-fi, I can't stand elves and I disliked most of Titanic intensely. But, you know, it's the most successful film of all time. I don't like to feel left out.
Fortunately, Avatar is to hard sci-fi what Emmanuelle is to hard porn. All the same parts are there, but they never get used in sufficient detail to qualify. The 'avatar' technology itself, easily the most interesting concept in the film, is skimmed over a tad, in favour of the more conventional culture clash-morality tale-love story involving the (concealed) white man among the noble savages.
Which is frustrating for those of us of the dork persuasion, but I am not convinced we're the target audience here. Cameron may have included a swathe of sci-fi trappings to differentiate his film from Pocahontas, but this is definitely a film for the movie-going masses. If he'd spent the entire time delving into the intricacies of body-swapping, the record-busting box office figures would probably not have happened.
Not to mention, the story isn't entirely the point either. Or rather, it is, but only to provide a setting for some lovely visuals. And they are gorgeous, make no mistake. Cameron's vision of the multi-coloured alien world of Pandora is amazingly realised here, and once again manages to draw in the viewer, even as they moan about plot predictability.
So, yes, even though the plot is mostly predictable, the dialogue sometimes groan-worthy and, yes, 'unobtanium' is a horrific name for a rare and valuable element, you can see why it has done well. It may not be anything ground-breaking, but it's a simple, lush modern-day fable. It was nearly three hours long, yet I was rarely bored. And if nothing else, I'd rather watch this again than Titanic any day.
Filed Under: Film Reviews Tagged With: avatar, blogging, movies, regular, reviews

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Monteroduni est une commune italienne de la province d'Isernia dans la région Molise en Italie.

Administration

Hameaux
Sant'Eusanio

Communes limitrophes
Capriati a Volturno, Colli a Volturno, Gallo Matese, Longano, Macchia d'Isernia, Montaquila, Pozzilli, Sant'Agapito

Notes et références

Commune dans la province d'Isernia

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
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Committee on Information, Computerisation and the Media
4th term of the Croatian Parliament (2 February 2000 - 22 December 2003)
About Committee
The Committee on Information, Computerisation and the Media shall establish and monitor the implementation of policy, and in procedures to enact legislation and other regulations it shall have the rights and duties of the competent working body in matters pertaining to information and the print and electronic media, and in particular the Committee shall:
- consider matters of communications, information and the media that are subject to decision by Parliament,
- monitor, encourage and participate in the enactment of legislation on the print and electronic media (the press, radio, television, the Internet),
- promote the emergence, formation and signing of the relevant international documents on information and the media,
- monitor the application of international documents on information and the media and monitors the work of media and/or information committees in other countries,
- uphold the right to information, the protection of intellectual property, and the protection of privacy in the electronic media,
- promote the right to information and communication with new technologies and means of electronic communication (Internet, electronic commerce, Internet education),
- promote technical/technological culture and international technical/technological cooperation in terms of the use of computers and computer networking (Internet),
- be involved with activities aimed at the co-ordination, promotion and advancement of economic activity based on information technologies,
- monitor existing and proposes and encourages the use of new information technologies in the work of Parliament and on the work of Parliament,
- co-operate with associations, the media, research institutions, commissions of the Government and the President of the Republic with reference to the study of communications, information and the media.
Roić, Luka
Deputy Chairperson
Kontić, Joško
Bajt, Marija
Borovčak, Sonja
Didović, Mirjana
Herman, Vilim
Kalinić, Pavle
Kosor, Jadranka
Lugarić, Marija
Njavro, Đuro
Pusić, Vesna
Tadić, Tonči
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