http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/06/24/tortoise.die.ap/index.htm
Very sad, but all things must pass.
Some of you might remember my posting a photo of her on her last birthday and wishing her all the best.
Cranberry, what is this obsession with animal deaths, lately? 
There are indeed those of us who are wondering this. And don’t give me, “Tortoises are people too, and deserve notice of their passing.” 
I sink zere iss zomesink deeper goink on here, ya? Vy don’t you chust lie back, relax, und dell me about it?
This 176 year old tortoise lived a long, if somewhat slow-paced life.
Not Harriet, but Harrietesque.
Who remembers Peter Greenaway’s Drowning by Numbers? Brilliant film, one of my favorites. And very a-pro-pos.
OK, enough of this. Let’s celebrate life.
Queen Elizabeth turned 80 recently and, whilst not in the Harriet league, that’s pretty impressive.
People try to put one down
(Talking 'bout one’s coronation)
Just because one wears the crown
(Talking 'bout one’s coronation)
One’s subjects find one rather cold
(Talking 'bout one’s coronation)
But one shan’t die before one’s old
(One’s coronation … one’s coronation baby)
Thank you.
BTW, Wombles, you forgot the stutter. Love the royal tone, though.
It IS kind of weird reading about the tortoise being moved from England to Australia in the mid 1800s. It is a bit hard to wrap the head around. It is like someone said, I think Carl Jung: “The world can change so much just in the life span of one really old, uh, big tortoise.”
A visual and intellectual and arithmetic feast> ., September 10, 2005
Reviewer: B. Marold (Bethlehem, PA United States) - on Amazon.com
> **Drowning By Numbers'**> , The most obvious image is in numbers and counting, heralded by the title itself. The movie opens with a young girl's skipping rope to a counting off of the names of 100 stars in the night sky. The theme permeates the movie with the appearance ofmost’ numbers between one and one hundred printed, stitched or drawn on some piece of scenery or prop.One of the allusions made to counting is created by the presence of sheep in several scenes. The reference to counting sheep as an aid to falling asleep is not hidden, but spoken plainly enough about two thirds of the way through the movie. Greenaway builds on this by having one of the principle characters, the boy, Smut, be obsessed with counting, whether it be hairs on a dog or leaves on a tree or insects in his collection. This seeming digression wraps around to the main subject of the story when we see Smut counting deaths of animals, mostly as road kill on the local country road surrounded by both wild and domestic animals. This fascination with death Smut celebrates with amateur fireworks. I would love to connect the fireworks to some other theme in the film, but that bit of mystery is beyond me at this time.
Sheep and counting and death are also folded into the obsession of the principle make character, Madgett, Smut’s father and the local coroner, who constantly creates games, mostly nonsensical games strongly reminiscent of some events in Lewis Carrol’s tales of heroine Alice underground and through the looking glass. Sheep and games come together as Smut oversees an experiment to determine if sheep can detect the time at which the tides change from going out to coming in and vise versa.
Most profound of Greenway’s films, (thats saying something!), June 7, 2004
Reviewer: EquesNiger (Budapest, Hungary) - Three women, a Hecate-like trinity with the same name and reflecting the classical three “ages” of Crone, Mother and (granted, sexually wanton) Maiden, find the men in their lives disappointing. Women, being emotional beings of primal water, seek fulfillment in that element, whereas men, being intellectual beings of primal air, spend their days quantifying things, typing memoranda or investigating plots. The three (four?) husbands are shown the error of their ways, literally being immersed in the watery primal element, and deprived of their more familiar air. The first is a philanderer, the second cold and insensitive, the third a threat to the sisterhood of the three, and the final consort one who attempts to control the trinity through blackmail, and ultimately finds himself the pawn of their sex.
OK, so we’ve got the water and we’ve got the death. I see your point, Bloomfield.
I’m not so sure I’m comfortable with the sheep, though. Is this something that might upset me if I watch it?
Yes.
I’ve a tortoise -or is it turtle-
(I’ve found the terms to be a hurdle)
But, anyway, I find it strange
Considering the tortoisely range
Of years that they can be allotted
Before they go and then are potted.
How odd, how novel, how utterly rife
That my tortoise will live beyond my life.
Who will care for him? How will he fare?
He was better on his island. I should have left him there.
Death and dying, death and dying,
They are all around us.
All the chickens that are slaughtered to make our chicken dinners
All the people as they wither in front of cable outlets.
All the sadness and forgiveness lost in it all.
It all fades away in a moment
When you hear a baby laugh, and toddle down the hall
When you see a baby glow as to sleep as it falls.
- This thread appears (for the moment) adjacent to the physics/speed of light thread. Perhaps Harriet went to the light and zooms around the universe now like Astronaut Bowman’s augmented ghost, endless cherries & lettuce available at a whim…tortoise heaven.
So it wasn’t a monolith, but a giant tortoise shell? 
djm
-Yup. Douglas Adams got it wrong. It wasn’t mice, but tortoises…
Harriet moved at the speed of dark.
Nice one.
Harriet was a tortess.