I’m not surprised that Hamas is hiding in a school. I’m just surprised that the school is Harvard.

— Elon Altman (@ElonAltman) December 19, 2023

From the London Spectator:

Hannes became a professional hunter because, as he says in his fine book Strange Tales from the African Bush, he missed “the smell of cordite… the clatter of the helicopters and the memory of the blood brotherhood that few, other than soldiers under fire, are lucky enough to know.” He’s a fourteenth generation white African and a veteran of the famous Rhodesian Light Infantry that fought valiantly in that country’s civil war. He still loves Africa and lives in the Western Cape. When he visited our beach house on the Kenya coast, I managed to persuade him to tell me a few stories, fueled with bottles of Tusker — a much-loved local lager which is named after the elephant that killed the original brewer.

After the civil war, when Rhodesia became Zimbabwe, Hannes tried being a barrister. He tired of life in a courtroom and it wasn’t for him, so he picked up his rifle and headed off back into the bush where he’d grown up and seen so much action. For the next twenty years he hunted across Africa, guiding rich tycoons tracking trophies, but he met his nemesis in the flat dry scrub of northern Tanzania, deep in the heart of buffalo country. Here they came upon a 2,000lb bull at 150 yards. His American client fired his .375 rifle prematurely, as the creature faced him head on, wounding but not killing it. The injured beast took off into a ravine thick with wait-a-bit thorn and combretum scrub.

RTWT

SCOOP: This week @Yale changed the name of a popular food item in their dining halls which has been on the menu for years. It’s called “Israeli Couscous Salad” and they removed the word “Israeli.” Why would they do that?

Here’s the before and after: pic.twitter.com/PNhz3zB17k

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) December 12, 2023

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But, then:

Campus ReformDecember 13, 2023, 8:36 am ET

Yale University has reportedly promised to return the word “Israeli” to a dining hall nutrition label after it had been quietly removed as a descriptor of a “Couscous Salad with Spinach and Tomatoes” dish.

As images of the label without the word “Israeli” circulated on social media, Campus Reform reached out to Yale University to inquire whether dining staff had swapped out the grains in the dish or relabeled the same food– considering that Israeli couscous differs in size, texture, and production method.

A Yale University spokesperson told Newsweek that the word “Israeli” had originally been removed because of student concerns regarding country or ethnicity labels on dishes in general, but that in this case the word “Israeli” will be added back to the label, considering that ‘Israeli couscous’ is an “actual ingredient.”

HT: Frank Dobbs.

The relevant portion of Lehighton.

From a Shenandoah friend:

“MY BEST HUNTING STORY

Back when I was delivering UPS parcels (they don’t call them packages) in Lehighton, every hunter around was trying to bag a huge 12 point buck, who was regularly spotted eating in the fields on the mountain behind Gnaden Huetten Hospital, which is at the end of 12th St. It was the daily talk at many of my stops.. ‘did anyone bag the big buck’. Day after day, the answer was.. Nope.

I was delivering a home near the end of 11th St next to the hospital one afternoon. You may know that the Dutchies, for the most part, do not use the front parlor door so most deliveries were made in the back of the house. As I rounded into the back yard, the lady of the house was hanging some laundry out & quickly silenced me with her finger to her mouth. She pointed to the end of the yard, where the 12 pt buck was sleeping under her hydrangea bush. She said he is there before dawn every day & leaves after dark every nite. She swore me to confidentiality. That was one very smart deer.”

This is delicious. https://t.co/8zQfPioYN1

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) December 7, 2023

St. Nicholas, bishop of Myra, d. 6 December 345 or 352

St. Nicholas was reportedly born in the city of Patara in Lycia in Asia Minor, heir to a wealthy family. He succeeded an uncle as bishop of Myra.

Nicholas left behind a legend of secret acts of benevolence and miracles (in Greek, he is spoken of as “Nikolaos o Thaumaturgos” — Nicholas the Wonder-Worker).

One of the saint’s prominent legends asserts that, in a time of famine, he foiled the crime of Fourth Century Sweeney Todd, an evil butcher who kidnapped and murdered three children, intending to market their remains as ham. St. Nicholas not only exposed the murder, but healed and resurrected the children intact.

Nicholas is also renowned for providing dowries for each of three daughters of an impoverished nobleman,who would otherwise have been unable to marry and who were about to be forced to prostitute themselves to live. In order to spare the sensibilities of the family, Nicholas is said to have secretly thrown a purse of gold coins into their window on each of three consecutive nights.

St. Nicholas’ covert acts of charity led to a custom of the giving of secret gifts concealed in shoes deliberately left out for their receipt on his feast day, and ultimately to the contemporary legend of Santa Claus leaving gifts in stockings on Christmas Eve.

St. Nicholas evolved into one of the most popular saints in the Church’s calendar, serving as patron of sailors, merchants, archers, thieves, prostitutes, pawnbrokers, children, and students, Greeks, Belgians, Frenchmen, Romanians, Bulgarians, Georgians, Albanians, Russians, Macedonians, Slovakians, Serbians, and Montenegrins, and all residents of Aberdeen, Amsterdam, Barranquilla, Campen, Corfu, Freiburg, Liverpool, Lorraine, Moscow, and New Amsterdam (New York).

His relics were stolen and removed to Bari to prevent capture by the Turks, and are alleged to exude a sweet-smelling oil down to the present day.