Culture and Coexistence into the Great Unknown
“Everyone knows the Christmas Cat, he’s angry, huge, and mean,” begins the story of inequality and injustice for the poor, with the feline ogre who punishes those who fail to perform for their overlords. Retold in a shadow puppet play from the Icelandic story of Jólakötturinn, by Layla Holzer and Spike Dennis.
Christmas legends make the freezing nights pass faster and the children – and laborers – behave. Iceland’s Jólakötturinn, or Yule Cat, warned lazy children would be eaten by a monster cat, which has roots hundreds of years back, and popularized by a poem by Johannes ur Kotlum.
Dr. James Hansen: We can fix this. The answer is a price on carbon. We must make the price of fossil fuels honest, reflecting their cost to society including the economic devastation wrought by storms like Sandy, the toll on farmland and ecosystems, as well as priceless human lives.