There’s an extreme heat watch starting tomorrow through Thursday in eastern Iowa. Heat indices of 95 to 105+ are expected.
There is a list available of cooling centers published by KCRG although that was published on June 20, 2025, so it is not current.
Heat safety tips are at this link.
We were playing cribbage and Sena noticed a lot of birds out in the back yard—as well as the woodchuck again. We both grabbed the cameras and forgot about cribbage for a while.
You have to gaze at the pictures long enough to see there’s more than one or two birds perching in various places.
That juggler guy is back.
The atmosphere for the Svengoolie TV show airing of the 1934 movie “The Black Cat” was nothing short of electric—as in electrical storm. I thought the mood of ambivalence in the film was firmly set for about the first half hour of the movie. That was how long the TV station weather alert was on screen, shrinking the viewing size of the movie somewhat to make room for a map of the counties at risk and the scrolling warnings about which east central Iowa counties were affected by the flood watch and guidance about what to do.
Anyway, the film is not related in any way to Edgar Allan Poe’s short story of the same title. The movie was directed by Edgar Ulmer and starred Bela Lugosi as the Hungarian psychiatrist and ex-WWI POW (that’s right, I said “psychiatrist”), Dr. Vitus Werdegast; Boris Karloff as the satanic and necrophiliac Hjalmar Poelzig, the former WWI commander of the Fortress Marmorisch and a famed architect who built an ultra-modern mansion on top of the grisly site where thousands of soldiers were killed. Vitus and Hjalmar play chess for the souls of the aspiring novelist Peter Alison (David Manners) and his wife Joan (Jacqueline Wells) who, unfortunately get stranded there along with Vitus after the bus carrying them crashes on the way from the train station to various hotels and Disney World.
The mood of ambivalence I thought was evident, contrasting the creepiness of Hjalmar and Vitus grimly gambling in a chess match for the lives of Joan and Peter and the comicality of the two policemen interviewing the Alisons and the two heavies about the bus accident. The lieutenant and the sergeant arguing with each other in a “My hometown’s better than yours” exchange reminds me of Abbott and Costello. I recommend you see it for yourselves on the Internet Archive; it’s about 35 minutes in.
Contrast this with the hysterical cat phobic Vitus (despite being a psychiatrist) throwing a knife at one of the many black cats prowling around the house after it ejects a hairball on the floor! Or Hjalmar thumb wrestling with Vitus until the latter chooses to pick up what looks like an emery board from an array of much larger knives and bazookas on a large table—and prepares to flay Hjalmar with it. This would only make Hjalmar look even more excruciatingly well groomed, along with the precisely trimmed haircut carefully smeared with a pound of Brylcreem.
I think “The Black Cat” is a hoot. It’s a litter box full of nuggets of melodramatic ailurophobia with here and there a hairball of ambivalence but hey, nobody’s purr-fect!
Shrilling chicken rating 4/5
Sena got some video clips of the backyard garden. The woodchuck was out there but pretty much left her stuff alone. She caught a clip of what looks like a house finch as well.
For some reason, possibly involving extraterrestrials, there was some guy juggling out there.
Well, I’ve been waiting all morning for the Big Mo Pod Show and it usually shows up long before now on Saturday morning. In spite of this, Big Mo did say on the blues show last night that the first two songs on the show would be on the pod show and I know what they are. So I’m going to go ahead and start without Big Mo and Producer Noah today.
The first one is a song by someone Big Mo mentioned last week, Monster Mike Welch, “Keep Living Til I Die.” It just happens to be related to my post yesterday on death doulas—only it’s full of raw and feisty humor in how it approaches the usual ideas about death, which can be morbid.
In the lyrics, I think there’s even a classical Greek mythology reference to the river Styx, “I pay my toll at the river…” It could be referring to the river which separates the living from the dead in Hades.
There’s nothing morbid about death in this tune. The singer doesn’t seek death, but neither does he try to run away or hide from it. He’ll just keep living till he dies.
I’m less sure what to think of the next song Big Mo would be on the pod show. It’s by Lil’ Ed & the Imperials, “Walking the Dog.” I can’t make sense of the lyrics.
That’s about as far as I can go so far without the pod show. On the other hand, there was another song on the blues show by an artist I didn’t know about until last night. “Been Here Before” is a striking song because right away I wondered if was about reincarnation. It is sort of related to the idea of what happens after we die.
In fact, the artist, Christone Kingfish Ingram speculates in an interview he might be open to the idea of his have been reincarnated. This is not that different from a few of Dr. H. Steven Moffic’s thoughts about the death, reincarnation, and the afterlife in some of his recent Psychiatric Times columns. A couple of examples are “Past Lives and Psychiatry” and “Past Lives, Death, Dying, and the Afterlife.”
And that’s the “old soul” side of the story about death.
I listened to the Rounding@Iowa podcast “End-of-Life Doulas” twice because I’m at that difficult age when I think about my personal death. I don’t think about it at great length, mind you, but when I think about it, I feel afraid. Early mornings tend to be the time I wonder how much time now until…?
There was the usual podcast format, Dr. Gerry Clancy interviews Mary Kay Kusner, who is certified death doula to get the overview and details about what death doulas are all about.
I listened to the podcast in the late afternoon and discussed it only briefly with Sena. I felt out of sorts for a few hours afterward. I was in a funk until later in the evening when my thoughts almost abruptly switched to something funny. It was about a topic I’m thinking of for another blog post which has a humorous angle to it. I even chuckled a little out loud. I didn’t force that line of thought—it just happened.
But I know why it happened.
I didn’t know what a doula was until I listened to the podcast. Because I’m a writer by inclination, I looked for the original definition, which is a female servant who helps women with birthing. That didn’t enlighten me much, obviously; I can’t remember the last time I was pregnant (see what I did there?). An end of life-or-death doula helps people come to terms with impending death, death when it happens, and with whatever comes up after death has happened.
The title of this post comes from the Mary Kay Kusner’s short anecdote near the end of the podcast. Early in her career as a chaplain, she met with a 4-year-old child in the oncology unit who had a terminal illness, evidently death was coming and asked her, “How will I get to heaven?” They talked about it and the next thing the child said was, “So it’s like another dimension?” which Kusner evidently validated in some way. It’s a really cute story.
Anyway, there was a thread running through the podcast which pointed to what is apparently an ongoing psychological disconnect medical professionals have about death because we’re so focused on cure. It’s disappointing, but there you go. Death doulas are around to fill the role of talking calmly and matter-of-factly about it with patients and families.
There are some nuts and bolts about the profession, some of which I get and others which I scratch my head about. There are a couple of doula organizations in Iowa City which Kusner mentions: Community Death Doulas and Death Collective Eastern Iowa. Mary Kay Kusner is certified as a death doula via online training through INELDA.
Interestingly some people do not believe that this is a profession which can be certified, at least without some practical clinical experience. There’s a web site in which the question-and-answer section is longer than the article itself about this. The author recommends specific courses.
Death doulas are not covered by health insurance, so the practitioners arrange for payment, often through a sliding scale hourly fee. Part of the reason for the training of and demand for death doulas is that hospice nurses have heavy caseloads.
This reminds me of the hospice where my younger brother died after his battle with cancer. He was in his forties. Before he entered hospice, I had to be one of his doctors on the medical psychiatry inpatient unit after he accidentally overdosed on his pain medication.
When my brother was in hospice, I sat at his bedside. Most of the time, he was delirious. I watched and listened as one of the hospice workers as he asked him whether he was entering the dying process. He used those words. My brother was just as delirious as he was when he had to be admitted to the medical-psychiatry unit. I don’t know how much he heard.
I sat at his bedside, determined to hold some kind of death watch vigil. This was interrupted, ironically, by some friends of his who visited. They stood opposite the bed so that I had to look at them instead—and to listen as they told me stories about how close they’d been to him and how much they loved him.
By the time they were finished and I turned back to my brother, he was gone. It took me a little while to figure out I had not missed anything I really needed.
So, I think death doulas could be vital in building a bridge between those who are dying and those who need to connect with them. That’s the main thing.
I modified the YouTube cribbage video “One for his nob short” to be about the same length as Canadian country singer Brett Kissel’s song about cribbage “The Crib Song.” I didn’t change any of the subtitles on the video because they fit the game play in the video.
There is no audio in the short version because you’ll need to play the YouTube video of the song “The Crib Song” along with our cribbage game video (see below). We think they still go together.
I found a Facebook entry on the web that must below to Brett, because it shows images of the computer cribbage game Cribbage Classic (which I’ve reviewed in the past, see my YouTube channel) and he says. “I’m a legend. I will play anyone at crib. Except if you’re over 70 years old. I won’t be able to beat you if you’re 70+.” I wonder why. I don’t have a Facebook account so I can’t ask him about the lyrics of The Crib Song.
Anyway, I found the lyrics for the song. OK, it clips along but I can’t verify some of the cribbage lingo in it. Maybe they’re common parlance for cribbage players in Canada. If any of you know what the following mean let me know:
Romney’s-no idea but it’s evidently something Ebs keeps getting
Loins-if all you get is “loins,” what are those? Sounds like if that’s all you get you might be lucky or good or maybe neither.
Gino-from context it sounds like something you win (“I just won a Gino”)
There’s another that I couldn’t figure out:
Piled-this is connected to “Deuce Neon” in some way (Deuce neon got him piled”); maybe a player?
There are a few I recognized. The kitty is another name for the crib (the two extra cards from the non-dealer and the dealer which are for the dealer). A flush is a hand of cards all the same suit, which can include the cut card. You can’t get a flush in the crib unless the cut card is also of the same suit.
The lyric “I’m looking for that 29” is about that very rare hand of 29 points: the nob jack (jack of the same suit as the cut card), and 3 fives in your hand, the cut card being the other 5. And a score of 19 is slang for zero points because 19 is not a possible score in cribbage.
I think the lines below are about forming sequences during pegging:
“Don’t give away your hand
I’ll rope you right into a run
Peg 8 or 9 or 10
Looking at your face”
You can find lists of cribbage lingo, but admittedly they’ll probably be mostly American usage. The American Cribbage Congress (ACC) list is pretty good and so is the Cribbage King list.
OK, sorry, I just noticed that my cribbage post “The Best Cribbage Song You Never Heard Of” has lost the video for the cribbage song “One for his nob” by British artist, Richard Thompson. I don’t know where it went (maybe abducted by extraterrestrials), but I think I found another one. It’s called “The Crib Song” and it’s by somebody named Brett Kissel. All I know about him is that he’s a Canadian country singer.
There’s only a couple of hitches relating to the short and speedy cribbage video Sena and I made in March: one is that it was timed to go with “One for his nob.” Brett Kissel’s number is longer than “One for his nob”—and the other is that I’m not a huge fan of country music. One the other hand, it does have a ton of cribbage terms in it, many of which I’ve never heard of.
So, I would have to modify our cribbage game video to fit the length of the song. I think I could manage but it would take a little time and effort. In the meantime, you can hear it here.
Calling all stations, clear the air lanes, clear all air lanes for the big broadcast!
What do you get when you cross a black cat with a rubber chicken? Something else Svengoolie has to dodge. Keep reading for the Artificial Intelligence (AI) attempts at this joke.
The upcoming Svengoolie show movie this Saturday will be “The Black Cat” which I’ve never seen before. One of the posters I see on the internet implies that it’s based on Edgar Allen Poe’s short story of the same name.
I never read the gory story until a couple of days ago and I’m hoping the film won’t be like that. It also reminded me of a novel about animal cruelty given to me as a gift when I was a kid. “Beautiful Joe” was written by Margaret Marshall Saunders and it emphasized how people can treat animals humanely. It was a true story about a dog that was rescued from a sadistic master who mutilated the animal by cutting off its tail and ears in a fit of rage.
Just for fun I tried to find out AI would come up with when I asked it about a joke which would start with “What do you get when you cross a black cat with a chicken?”
The AI answer: “Something which scratches the furniture and lays eggs.” Other answers were “Cluck-ty cat” or “Meow-ster Hen.”
And when I asked for the AI joke using “What do you get when you cross a black cat with a rubber chicken?” AI came up with:
“That’s a classic riddle! The answer is: A lucky squeak!” And the AI goes on to explain: “It plays on the idea that black cats are considered unlucky, and rubber chickens make a squeaking sound.”
See what he did there? Neither did I.
I already have an update to the cribbage kerfuffle I posted about yesterday! The American Cribbage Congress (ACC) representative clarified what to do if the non-dealer and dealer by mistake switched roles during the cut of the deck and picking the starter card. According to Dan:
“This mishap of the cutting of the starter card is addressed in the rulebook under Rule 6.1 Even though it does not specifically address the wrong person cutting the starter card, it alludes to a similar situation and says, the starter card must be returned to the pack… the dealer reshuffles the pack, and the pone cuts the starter card. No penalty is assessed. Therefore, you did the exact right thing by keeping your hands and the crib and shuffling the remaining deck and then correctly cutting. The jack that was originally cut is not in play at all.
Hope this helps.”
Dan got back to us the same day we sent the question, which was a fantastically quick response in my book!
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