All Purls. No Swine.
He was a staple of my childhood, an awful lot of which depended on audio rather than video, and which was marinated in a culture of literate, clever, often funny, but always appropriate, language. When I was three or four years old, it was exemplified by the likes of Beatrix Potter. And I was never… Continue reading Tom Lehrer, R.I.P.
Story of my life. Still, that's not really the point of today's Quote of the Day: Translated from the Italian, it's Nessun Dorma. And it's an aria from Puccini's Turandot. (I'm not engaging in the proper pronunciations of the work. You can look here for more, or less, clarification, however it suits you.) It's a… Continue reading QOTD: None Shall Sleep
But--of course--it always does. This has been a hell of a week. First there was all the fallout from Hurricane Helene, some of which has gravely affected those I love. Followed by the death of Maggie Smith. And now, that of Kris Kristofferson. https://youtu.be/mtQOY-0sViQ https://youtu.be/vHReBUA8cH4 https://youtu.be/HCgnbRWVvU8 The last is one of the very few great… Continue reading “Dreaming was as easy as believing in was never going to end”
210 years ago today, when the flag of the still relatively-young republic had only fifteen stars, on September 14, 1814, an American lawyer by the name of Francis Scott Key published a poem he'd written upon witnessing the bombardment of Baltimore's Fort McHenry by the British Royal Navy during the War of 1812. The poem… Continue reading The Defense of Fort McHenry: For the World
Arnold George Dorsey must have thought quite deeply about the answer to Shakespeare’s question, one which seems, at least in his case, to have boiled down to, “quite a lot, really.” Born eighty-eight years ago today in Madras, India (the date is sometimes given as May 2), young Mr. Dorsey riffled through several options before… Continue reading Quote of the Day: What’s in a Name?”
No doubt there's a lot of competition. But today, April 5, 2024, I offer you this one, from Encyclopedia Britannica's On This Day recap: [1818] Battle of Maipú Chile's independence movement, led by José de San Martín and Bernardo O'Higgins, won a decisive victory over Spain in the Battle of Maipú, which left 2,000 Spaniards and 1,000 Chilean patriots dead on… Continue reading Maybe the Best Opening Line, Ever
American orchestra leader Lawrence Welk was born one hundred twenty-one years ago, on March 11, 1903, the son of German immigrants from Odessa, in what is now Ukraine. Welk's Wikipedia page tells the story of the family's first winter, living in an overturned wagon buried in earth, and of young Lawrence's leaving school in the… Continue reading Ah One, Ana Two: Happy Birthday Lawrence Welk!
A friend and I were chatting a couple of weeks ago about a shared love of authentic American music, and Iris DeMent's name came up. I've never seen her perform, but remember her from appearances on early A Prairie Home Companion days, when Garrison Keillor was genuinely entertaining and gently funny, before he became infected… Continue reading Tuneful Tuesdays: Iris DeMent, Our Town
It was sixty-five years ago today, on February 3, 1959. I was four years old. Rock and roll musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson were killed when their plane, a Beechcraft Bonanza, crashed near Clear Lake, Iowa, when the pilot lost control of the plane in bad winter weather, and… Continue reading The Day the Music Died: 65 Years Ago
Thirty-six years ago this month, Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera opened in New York, and went on to become the longest-running show in Broadway history. I've never seen it. I don't hold much brief for ALW, and I've only seen two of his musicals over the past fifty-three years. The first was… Continue reading From Andrew Lloyd Webber to Angora Goats