Actually, turkeys can fly

Ours flew right into the oven.

Veteran's Day

It's the soldier, not the reporter who has given us
Freedom of the Press.
It's the soldier, not the poet, who has given us
Freedom of Speech.
It's the soldier, not the campus organizer, who has given us the
Freedom to Demonstrate.
It's the soldier, not the lawyer, who has given us the
Right to a Fair Trial.
It's the soldier who salutes the flag, serves under the flag and
whose coffin is draped by the flag,
Who gives the protestor the right he abuses to burn the flag.

- Father Dennis O'Brien, USMC

 

Happy Thanksgiving

Well, if you're in the Great White North at least.

 

Aaron Tippin - Where The Stars And Stripes And The Eagle Fly

The Queen of the World and I were talking today, remembering the bicentennial celebration in 1976.  She pointed out that two years from now will be the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.  Wow.

It's still worth celebrating.

Henri Vieuxtemps - Souvenir d'Amerique, Variations Burlesques sur "Yankee Doodle"

We are all the way to the middle of the year, and hard up against Independence Day this week.  I have long thought that you can better know your own country by visiting others (at least, this has been my experience).  Sometimes a foreigner can tell you something you hadn't known about your own land.

Henri Vieuxtemps was a Belgian composer and violin player in the first part of the 19th century.  A child prodigy, he toured all over playing for the Great and the Good.  In the 1840s he came to tour America.  He left us this, what is perhaps his most famous composition, at least on these shores.  It's quite different from other versions of the song, which makes it interesting (at least to me).

Dad Joke CCCXXVIIII - special Father's Day edition

Why wasn't one Father's Day gift better than the other?

Because it was a tie.

Jo Dee Messina - Heaven Was Needing A Hero

Memorial Day is the traditional start of summer.  Beach, swimming pools, and backyard barbecue is the agenda for most.  But that's not what the day is about.  I posted this twelve years ago and it still captures the spirit of this weekend.  Christian Golczynski is around twenty five years old now.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Memorial Day isn't about barbecues for Christian Golczynski.  He was eight years old when LTC Ric Thompson handed him the flag that had draped his father's coffin.  That was five years ago.

This weekend will be the fifth Memorial Day where he won't be thinking about barbecues.  Next month will be the fifth Father's Day with an empty chair at the dinner table.

That is what Memorial Day is about.

I've posted this song a number of times over the last year or two, as it captures in music the sound of a heart breaking.  The song alternates between memories of the loved and lost, and the stumbling emptiness as the singer tries - and fails - to make sense of the loss.  It's not your typical sentimental Country music song, it's pure, 100 proof grief.

For some, that is what Memorial Day is about.

There is no official music video for this song; Messina is no longer the chart topping singer that she was in the 1990s.  But people have taken this music and found photographs that amplify the music and make it personal.  The second picture is one that I found particularly moving - nearly as much as the one of young Master Golczynski shown here.

This is what Memorial Day is about. 



Heaven Was Needing A Hero (songwriter: Jo Dee Messina)

I came by today to see you
Though I had to let you know
If I knew the last time that I held you was the last time,
I'd have held you and never let go
Oh it's kept me awake night wonderin'
Lie in the dark, just asking "why?"
I've always been told you won't be called home until it's your time

I guess Heaven was needing a hero
Somebody just like you
Brave enough to stand up for what you believe and follow it though
When I try to make it make sense in my mind
The only conclusion I come to
Is that Heaven was needing a hero like you

I remember the last time I saw you
Oh you held your head up proud
I laughed inside when I saw how you were, standing out in the crowd
You're such a part of who I am
Now that part will just be void
No matter how much I need you now
Heaven needed you more

'Cause Heaven was needing a hero
Somebody just like you
Brave enough to stand up for what you believe and follow it though
When I try to make it make sense in my mind
The only conclusion I come to
Is that Heaven was needing a hero like you

Yes, Heaven was needing a hero...that's you.

Abraham Lincoln's letter to Mrs. Bixby is justly famous:

Executive Mansion,
Washington, Nov. 21, 1864.

Dear Madam,

I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.

Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,

A. Lincoln

Christian Golczynski also laid a sacrifice on that same altar of our freedom, a sacrifice costly beyond our reckoning.  I hope that the fullness of time will ease his anguish as well.  I fear that it will not.

That is what Memorial Day is about.  Not a barbecue in sight, just pure, 100 proof grief.  This weekend as you go about your normal business of life, remember SSgt Marcus Golczynski.  And Christian.  And what that sacrifice means.  May this Republic be worthy of them.

Mozart - Requiem in D

The older I get, the grumpier I get.  Sometimes I look on our society and feel like I am getting my Jeremiah on, which is never a good look.

Memorial Day is one of the times that this reliably happens.  Look, people, this holiday is not about barbecues and beach.

Remember them, that their memory not fade.

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine.  Et lux perpetua luceat eis.  Amen.

Dad Joke CCCXXIII - A Mother's Day Dad Joke endorsed by The Queen Of The World

She says this is one of her favorites, from personal experience: Being a Mom to teenagers will make you understand how some animals eat their young.

Personally, I think that this is hilarious: Motherhood is a fairy tale in reverse.  You start out in a beautiful gown and end up cleaning everyone's messes.

Happy Mother's Day to all Moms, and to everyone who has a Mom.

Happy "Punch A Commie In The Face" Day!

Well, it is.

LOLOL

Well played, Chris.

The Queen Of The World and I are huge fans of that movie.

St Patrick's Day music

Chris Lynch has some more modern songs that I posted, but still a good list.  I love me some Dropkick Murphys. 

Oh, and when you're there you might leave him a comment congratulating him for blogging for twenty years (!).

Turlough O'Carolan - various Irish tunes

Top o' the morning to you, and happy St. Patrick's Day.  This is my traditional Paddy's Day post, mostly because I love the music here.

What is the "Classical Music" of Ireland? It's not (Italian) Opera, or (German) symphonies, or even an (English) homage to Ralph Vaughan Williams (who studied under an Irish music professor) "countryside music" in the concert hall. Instead, we find something ancient. 

We find something that easily might not have been.  Turlough O'Carolan (1670 – 25 March 1738) was the son of a blacksmith.  His father took a job for the MacDermot Roe family; Mrs. MacDermot Roe gave the young lad some basic schooling and saw in him a talent for poetry; when a few years later the 18 year old Turlough went blind after a bout of smallpox, she had him apprenticed to a harpist.  He soon was travelling the land, composing and singing.

This tradition was already ancient by the early 1700s.  it was undeniably Celtic, dating back through the Middle Ages, through the Dark Ages, through Roman times to a barbarous Gaul.  There bards travelled the lands playing for their supper on the harp.

This was O'Carolan's stock in trade.  He rapidly became the most famous singer in the Emerald Isle.  It is said that weddings and funerals were delayed until he was in the vicinity.  One of his most famous compositions - if you have spent any time at all listening to Irish music, you know this tune - was considered too "new fangled" by the other harpists of his day.  Fortunately, he didn't listen to their criticisms.



He married very late, at 50, and had many children.  But his first love was Brigid, daughter of the Schoolmaster at a school for the blind.  He always seemed to have carried a torch for her.



So why is this post in the normal slot reserved for Classical Music?  Listen to this composition of his, and you see the bridge from the archaic Celts to Baroque harpsichord.



And keep in mind how this brilliance might never have blazed, had Mrs. MacDermot Roe not seen the talent in a blind Irish boy and set him upon a path trod by many equally unexpected geniuses, all the way back to St. Patrick.  It is truly said that we never know what our own path will be until we set our foot down on it.

But his was an ancient path and he inherited much from those who trod it before him.  His "Farewell to Music" is said to be more in the traditional mold, and might have been appreciated at a feast held by Vercingetorix before the battle of Alesia.



This music is a bridge between modern and the ancient that disappears into the mists of legend.  Perhaps more importantly, it is a music that is still alive today, after a run of perhaps two and a half millennia.  

And it is a music where you still hear the yearning of a young blind man for his muse, Brigid.  That is a vitality that should not be exiled to a single day of celebration, even if it is for as illustrious a Saint as Patrick.  On this Feast Day, remember just how deep the roots of our civilization run.

(Originally posted March 16, 2014)

 

President's Day - Best and Worst Presidents

It's not a real President's birthday (Lincoln's was the 12th, Washington's is the 22nd), but everyone wants a day off, so sorry Abe and George, but we're taking it today.  But in the spirit intended for the holiday, let me offer up Borepatch's annual bestest and worstest lists for Presidents.

Top Five:

#5: Calvin Coolidge

Nothing To Report is a fine epitaph for a President, in this day of unbridled expansion of Leviathan.

#4. Thomas Jefferson.

Jefferson is perhaps the last (and first) President who exercised extra-Constitutional power in a manner that was unambiguously beneficial for the Republic (the Louisiana Purchase).  He repealed Adam's noxious Alien and Sedition Acts and pardoned those convicted under them.

#3. Grover Cleveland. 

He didn't like the pomp and circumstance of the office, and he hated the payoffs so common then and now.  He continually vetoed pork spending (including for veterans of the War Between the States), so much so that he was defeated for re-election, but unusually won a second term later.  This quote is priceless (would that Latter Day Presidents rise so high), on vetoing a farm relief bill: "Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character."

#2. Ronald Reagan

He at least tried to slow down the growth of Leviathan, the first President to do so in over half a century (see entry #5, above).  He would have reduced it further, except that his opposition to the Soviet fascist state and determination to end it cost boatloads of cash.  It also caused outrage among the home grown fascists in the Media and Universities, but was wildly popular among the general population which was (and hopefully still remains) sane.

#1. George Washington

Could have been King.  Wasn't.  Q.E.D.

Bottom Five:

#5. John Adams.

There's no way to read the Alien and Sedition Acts as anything other than a blatant violation of the First Amendment.  It's a sad statement that the first violation of a Presidential Oath of Office was with President #2.

#4. Woodrow Wilson.

Not only did he revive the spirit of Adams' Sedition Acts, he caused a Presidential opponent to be imprisoned under the terms of his grotesque Sedition Act of 1918.  He was Progressivism incarnate: he lied us into war, he jailed the anti-war opposition, he instituted a draft, and he was entirely soft-headed when it came to foreign policy.  The fact that Progressives love him (and hate George W. Bush) says all you need to know about them.

#3 Lyndon Johnson.

An able legislator who was able to get bills passed without having any real idea what they would do once enacted, he is responsible for more Americans living in poverty and despair than any occupant of the White House, and that says a lot.

#2. Franklin Roosevelt.

America's Mussolini - ruling extra-Constitutionally fixing wages and prices, packing the Supreme Court, and transforming the country into a bunch of takers who would sell their votes for a trifle.  At least Mussolini met an honorable end.


#1. Abraham Lincoln.

There's no doubt that the Constitution never would have been ratified if the States hadn't thought they could leave if they needed to.  Lincoln saw to it that 10% of the military-age male population was killed or wounded preventing that in an extra-Constitutional debacle unequaled in the Republic's history.  Along the way, he suspended Habeas Corpus, instituted the first ever draft on these shores, and jailed political opponents as he saw fit.  Needless to say, Progressives adore him.

So happy President's Day.  Thankfully, the recent occupants of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue haven't gotten this bad.  Yet.

Dad Joke CCCVIII, special Valentine's Day edition

What did the guy with a broken leg say to his valentine?

"I have a crutch on you."

Ernest Tomlinson - Fantasia on Auld Lang Syne

Ernest Tomlinson was an English composer active from around 1950.  He was an anachronism in that he wrote music with melody, in great contrast to the a-tonal, arrhythmical dreck that is the wasteland of modern classical music.

He may have single-handedly saved much of this sort of music in 1984.  The BBC decided to eliminate their archive of light classical music - it was ever so unfashionable, old chap - and he got the entire archive.  50,000 works are now in the Library Of Light Orchestral Music.  Tomlinson was awarded the Member of the British Empire (MBE) in recognition of his service to music.

This piece is simply a delight.  Everyone will recognize the primary theme - Auld Lang Syne, the traditional New Years' Eve song.  But Tomlinson weaves in brief snippets of 152 other pieces.  It was a completely unexpected pleasure to discover this, and a fitting high note to say goodbye to 2023.

Ernest Tomlinson passed on in 2015.  His obituary is worth a read:

After falling out of favour in the middle of the last century, light music, once a major part of British cultural life, has enjoyed a modest renaissance in recent years. Nobody did more to encourage this revival of interest than Ernest Tomlinson, who has died aged 90. He was a prolific composer, praised by the singer and broadcaster Catherine Bott for his “exceptional technical skills allied to a rare gift for melody”. Equally, he fought to preserve the light music heritage by founding the Library of Light Orchestral Music and acting as consultant and performer for an important series of CD recordings.

He was an anachronism inn modern classical music, living an admirably traditional life.  Married 57 years, this part of his obituary stood out:

He is survived by his children, Ann, Geoffrey, Hilary and Linda, eight grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. Jean died in 2006.

Rest in peace, and thanks for the great music.

UPDATE 31 DECEMBER 2023 17:29: From the notes at Youtube, here are some of the different songs included in this piece.  What a fun, very clever musical piece.

0:33- Auld Lang Syne 
2:10 - Gounod’s Soldier Chorus from Faust
2:15 - The British Grenadiers
2:24 - Leroy Anderson’s The Rakes of Mallow
2:42 - Cesar Franck’s Symphonic Variations
2:52 - Chopin's Piano Sonata No.2, 2nd movement
3:09 - Elgar's Enigma Variations, main theme
3:37 - Beethoven's Symphony No.9, 4th movement, "Ode To Joy"
3:53 - Haydn’s St.Anthony Chorale
4:06 - Purcell's Abdelazer, "Rondeau" or Britten's The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra
4:23 - Schubert’s Trout Quintet, 4th movement
4:32 - Haydn's Symphony No.94, 2nd movement
4:50 - Bach's Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring
5:33 -Dvorak’s Humoresque no 7
5:41 -Foster’s Beautiful Dreamer
5:44 - Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique symphony 3rd movement
5:51 -A Life on The Ocean Wave
5:51 - Auld Lang Syne
5:54 - Khachaturian’s Adagio from Spartacus
6:14 - Mendelssohn’s Overture to The Hebrides
6:51 - Mozart's Piano Sonata No.16, first movement
7:09 - Handel's Entry of the Queen of Sheba
7:23 - Tchaikovsky’s Dance of the Little Swan from Swan Lake
7:27 - Bach’s Fugue in C minor from Well-Tempered Clavier
7:31 -Arthur Sullivan ... "Major General" (Pirates of Penzance)
7:32 -The Keel Row
7:44 - Bizet's Overture to Carmen
7:53 - This Old Man
8:00 - Thomas-Arne’s Rule-Britannia
8:08 - Strauss Jr’s Voice of Spring Waltz
8:53 - Tchaikovsky’s Valse no. 2 from Swan Lake
9:25 - Weber’s Invitation to the Dance
9:31 - Je veux vivre (Juliet's Waltz) from Romeo et Juliette by Charles Gounod
9:46 - Strauss. Jr’s Waltz from Die Flaudermaus
10:05 - Chopin's Grand Valse Brilliante
10:55 - Tchaikovsky - Serenade for Strings, 2nd movement
11:26 -Smetana’s Dance of the Comedian from The Bartered Bride
12:26 - Strauss. Jr’s Perpetuum Mobile Polka
12:35 - Mozart’s French Horn no. 4, 3rd movement
12:42 - Shenandoah
12:48 -Dvorak’s Slavonic Dance no 2 op.46
12:53 -Wi’a Hundred Pipers
12:59 - Offenbach's Can-Can Dance
13:02 - Schubert's Military March No.1, or Stravinsky's Circus Polka
13:13 - Offenbach's Can-Can Dance
13:22 - Rossini’s La Danza from Les Soirée Musicales
13:38 - Mysterious Pizzicato
13:44 - Bach’s A Riercar a 6 from The Musical Offering
14:24 - Rossini’s Overture to Semiramide
13:56 - Dark Eyes
14:07 -Koenig’s Post Horn Gallop
14:42 -Benjamin’s Jamaican Rumba
14:50 - Khachaturian's Sabre Dance
15:02 - Rossini's Overture to "The Barber of Seville"
15:04 - Bizet's L' Arlesienne Suite No.2, "Farandole"
15:07 - Glinka's Overture to "Ruslan and Ludmilla"
15:20 Goodnight, Ladies
15:57 - Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture
17:56 - Verdi's Le donna e mobile, from "Rigoletto"
16:41 - O, Come All ye Faithful
17:47 - La Curachacha
17:58 The Girl I left behind 
18:04 - Yankee Doodle
18:06 - Good King Winceslas
18:10 Sailor's Hornpipe
18:19 - Grieg’s Morning Mood from Peer Gynt
18:26 - Dvorak’s New World Symphony, 2nd movement

Face Vocal Band - The Parting Glass

This is an old, old traditional song of parting, popularized by The Clancy Brothers and often played at both New Year's and funerals.  This song is especially poignant to me in a year where I lost both Younger Brother Borepatch and my deeply missed Wolfgang.  May 2024 be better.

Happy New Years, everybody.

Merry Christmas

God bless us, every one. 

Happy Thanksgiving

Holidays without Wolfgang

He was a dog that takes some getting over.  We're getting ready for the holidays and his absence is sort of everywhere.  The Queen Of The World got a new tree ornament this year that sums it up:

He sure loved his Christmas stocking.  

UPDATE 22 NOVEMBER 2023 18:23:  People are asking where you can get one of these ornaments.  It's Wanderprints.  Click on "Ornaments" and it's the first item there.  You can customize it lots of different ways.