11 June 2026
C.P.E. Bach, Flute Concerto in D Minor, Wq 22
Anna Besson and Kore Orchestra perform the Un poco andante ...
Happy Birthday, John Constable
Constable, Cloud Study, 1822
Light – dews – breezes – bloom – and freshness; not one of which has yet been perfected on the canvas of any painter in the world. Painting is a science and should be pursued as an inquiry into the laws of nature. Why, then, may not a landscape be considered as a branch of natural philosophy, of which pictures are but experiments? We see nothing truly until we understand it.
John Constable, born on this day in 1776
Constable: A Country Rebel ...
10 June 2026
Wonder.
Loss is the tune of our age, hard to miss and hard to bear. Creatures, places and words disappear, day after day, year on year. But there has always been singing in the dark times -- and wonder is needed now more than ever.
Robert Macfarlane, from The Lost Spells
Stories.
Jeff Gill on the archaeoastronomy of Alligator Mound ...
On a hilltop overlooking the valley within which sit the Newark Earthworks, there perches an earthwork over 200 feet long, an effigy of sorts with a name that is a mystery in its own right, and a one-time stone mound with stories all its own now missing, but hidden in plain sight nearby.
Graupner, Overture in G major for Viola d'Amore and Bassoon, GWV 460
It's the Ensemble Der Musikalische Garten dancing through the Chaconne ...
Happy Birthday, Gustave Courbet
Courbet, Cedar Tree at Hauteville, 1868
I am not one who was born in the custody of wisdom. I am one who is fond of olden times and intense in quest of the sacred knowing of the ancients.
Gustave Courbet, born on this day in 1819
09 June 2026
Excellent.
An excellent book ...
Great states with good constitutions develop when most people think of their duties and restrain their appetites. Great states sink toward their dissolution when most people think of their privileges and indulge their appetites freely. This rule is as true for democracies as it is fro autocracies. And no matter how admirable a constitution may look upon paper, it will be ineffectual unless the written constitution, the web of custom and convention, affirms an enduring moral order of obligation and personal responsibility.
The ruin or recovery of American constitutions, and the general future of of American politics, will be determined more by choices than by circumstances. Here I have done no more than to suggest what some of those choices might be. "Not to lose ourselves in the infinite void of the conjectural world," Burke wrote near the end of his life in the First Letter of the Regicide Peace, "our business is with what is likely to be affected for the better or worse by the wisdom or weakness of our plans." To share the American political future through prudent and courageous choices is yet within the realm of possibility. "I despair neither of the public fortune or of the public mind," Burke continued. "There is much to be done undoubtedly, and much to be retrieved. We must walk in new ways, or we can never encounter our enemy in his devious march. We are not at an end of our struggle, nor near it. Let us not deceive ourselves; we are at the beginning of great troubles.
Russell Kirk, from On America: How to Understand the Legacy of 1776
Happy Birthday, Cole Porter
Cole Porter was born on this day in 1891.
The best interpreter of Porter's work takes "Night and Day" for a spin ...
Robert Greenidge, Rest in Peace
Robert Greenidge has passed.
Accompanying Jimmy Buffett on "Defying Gravity"...
08 June 2026
Happy Birthday, Robert Schumann
Völlner, Robert Schumann, 1850
To poetry belongs the golden, decisive word. Other arts have accepted nature herself as arbiter, from whom they have borrowed their forms. Music is the orphan whose father and mother no one can determine, and it may well be that precisely in this mystery lies the source of its beauty.
Robert Schumann, born on this day in 1810
Vladimir Horowitz performs Träumerei from Kinderszenen, Op. 15 ...
Happy Birthday, Frank Lloyd Wright
Wright, Wright Home and Studio, Great Room, 1889
Our forefathers were not only brave. I believe they were right. I believe that what they meant was that every man born had equal right to grow from scratch by way of his own power unhindered to the highest expression of himself possible to him. This of course not antagonistic by sympathetic to the growth of all men as brothers. Free emulation not imitation of the "bravest and the best" is to be expected of him.
Uncommon he may and will and should become as inspiration to his fellows, not a reflection upon them, not to be resented but accepted--and in this lies the only condition of the common man's survival. So only is he intrinsic to democracy.
Persistently holding quality above quantity only as he attempts to live a superior life of his own, and to whatsoever degree in whatever case he finds it; this is his virtue in a democracy such as ours was designed to be.
Only this sense of proportion affords tranquility of spirit, in itself beauty, in either character of action. Nature is never other than serene even in a thunderstorm. The assumption of the "firm countenance, lips compressed" in denial or resentment is not known to her as it is known to civilization. Such negation by human countenance may be moral (civilization is inclined to morality) but even so not nature. Again exuberance is repose but never excess.
Frank Lloyd Wright, born on this day in 1867, from A Testament
07 June 2026
06 June 2026
Jim Radford, "The Shores of Normandy"
As the years pass by
I can still recall the men I saw that day
Who died upon that blood-soaked sand
Where now sweet children play
And those of you who were unborn
Who've lived in liberty
Remember those who made it so
On the shores of Normandy ...
Noble.
Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force: You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hope and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you.Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely.But this is the year 1944! The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to victory!I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle.We will accept nothing less than full victory!Good luck! And let us all beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander, 6 June 1944
05 June 2026
Synchronizing.
Malindine, Commanders of the 22nd Independent Parachute Company Synchronizing Watches, June 5, 1944, 1944
Maximus.
The Keewanau Refport on a deep dive into Superior Maximus ...
We are about to get our clearest look ever at the deepest portion of Lake Superior.Superior Maximus remains a mystery in and of itself. Located in the central part of the lake, its deepest point is approximately 1,332 feet below the surface. Sunlight does not penetrate to that depth, and the water stays at a constant 39 degrees Fahrenheit.Recently, it produced another mystery. Siscowit lake trout that live there have been spotted that appear to be emaciated, without the fat and flesh such trout normally carry. They’re being called “zombie fish.” No one knows what’s causing the problem ...
Happy Birthday, Richard Butler
STARS
The stars are out they spark and flash
A snake is sliding through the grass underneath
The moon is shining through the trees
The starlings on the wires leave while we sleep
These are the days
We will all remember
These are the days
That we will all remember
Your footsteps in the morning snow
The frost where all the dew is frozen and the crows
Into the sea where fishes swim
We drown and where do I begin these darling days
These are the days
That we will all remember
These are the days
That we will all remember
Richard Butler, born on this day in 1956
Resolution.
On this day in 1776, Virginia delegate Richard Henry Lee introduced the formal resolution for Colonial independence to Congress.
Happy Birthday, Adam Smith
Unknown, Adam Smith, The Muir Portait, 1801
The prudent man always studies seriously and earnestly to understand whatever he professes to understand, and not merely to persuade other people that he understands it; and though his talents may not always be very brilliant, they are always perfectly genuine. He neither endeavours to impose upon you by the cunning devices of an artful impostor, nor by the arrogant airs of an assuming pedant, nor by the confident assertions of a superficial and imprudent pretender. He is not ostentatious even of the abilities which he really possesses. His conversation is simple and modest, and he is averse to all the quackish arts by which other people so frequently thrust themselves into public notice and reputation.
Adam Smith, born on this day in 1723, from The Theory of Moral Sentiments
I wonder what Mr. Smith's thoughts on the blogopolooza would've been.
02 June 2026
Head-On.
Time release capsules humble the headstrong
Your thoughts of takin' me head-on are dead wrong ...
31 May 2026
29 May 2026
Mozart, Exsultate, jubilate, K. 165
Catherine Trottmann performs smartly with the Orchestre du Palais Royal, under the jubilant direction of Jean Philippe Sarcos ...
Exult.
Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again” and the grown-up person does it again until nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony.
But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never gotten tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.
G.K. Chasterton, from "The Ethics of Elfland"
Happy Birthday, G.K. Chesterton
Happy is he who still loves something he loved in the nursery: He has not been broken in two by time; he is not two men, but one, and he has saved not only his soul but his life.
G.K. Chesterton, born on this day in 1874
Happy Birthday, Patrick Henry
Matthews after Sully, Patrick Henry, 1891
Show me that age and country where the rights and liberties of the people were placed on the sole chance of their rulers being good men without a consequent loss of liberty! I say that the loss of that dearest privilege has ever followed, with absolute certainty, every such mad attempt.
Patrick Henry, born on this day in 1736, from his speech before the Virginia Ratifying Convention on June 5, 1788
Happy Birthday, T.H. White
"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn."
T.H. White, born on this day in 1906, from The Once and Future King
Thanks, Jess.
28 May 2026
Act.
Be a boxer, not a gladiator, in the way you act on your principles. The gladiator takes up his sword only to put it down again, but the boxer is never without his fist and only has to clinch it.
Marcus Aurelius, from Meditations
Pink Floyd, "Learning to Fly"
About now, on this night in '88 ...
Conditioned grounded but determined to try
Thank you, Sherpa.
Released.
Glenn Frey released his debut solo album, No Fun Aloud, on this day in 1982,
"I Found Somebody"...
Happy Birthday, Walker Percy
The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. This morning, for example, I felt as if I had come to myself on a strange island. And what does such a cast away do? Why he pokes around the neighborhood and he doesn't miss a trick. To become aware of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.
Walker Percy, born on this day in 1916
As a guest with Eudora Welty on Firing Fine, December 12, 1972 ...
27 May 2026
Happy Birthday, John Cheever
... when you heard Benny Goodman quartets from a radio in the corner stationary store, when almost everybody wore a hat.
John Cheever, born on this day in 1912, from the preface to The Stories of John Cheever
26 May 2026
T. Graham Brown, "Memphis Women and Chicken"
Over on Union there's a good ol' gal
She can smoke a pig, she can fry some fowl
She got biscuits in her oven
Cornbread in the pan
I get by to see her every chance I can
I catch a whiff when I turn the corner
My mouth starts to water and I'm a goner ...
Duplicity.
Fundamentally, the founding fathers of U.S. intelligence were liars. The better you lied and the more you betrayed, the more likely you would be promoted. These people attracted and promoted each other. Outside of their duplicity, the only thing they had in common was a desire for absolute power. I did things that, in looking back on my life, I regret. But I was part of it and loved being in it. Dulles, Helms, Wisner. These men were “the grand masters." If you were in a room with them, you were in a room full of people that you had to believe would deservedly end up in hell. I guess I will see them there soon.
James Angleton, from a 1985 interview with Joseph Trento
25 May 2026
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