Clothing.

... while spreading COVID in Tulum.

Never.

During the hostage situation, Vetter said a drone was used to lower a 24 oz. Faygo red pop in a bag to Allen. When Allen exposed himself, law enforcement could see him through the glass of the building. State Police said a trooper shot and killed Allen. MSP said Allen never grabbed the bag.

Your.

If you're feeling lucky

You best not refuse

It's your game, the rules

Are your own, win or lose ...

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Foggie.

Released.

Queen released The Game on this day in 1980.

Roger Taylor's vocal abilities are completely underrated ...

Not.

We're not laying pipe ...

What will your verse be?

Bach, Brandenburg Concertos, BWV 1046-1051

Nikolaus Harnoncourt leads Concentus Musicus Wien  ...

Certainly.

My theme is memory, that winged host that soared about me one grey morning of war-time. These memories, which are my life—for we possess nothing certainly except the past—were always with me. Like the pigeons of St. Mark’s, they were everywhere, under my feet, singly, in pairs, in little honey-voiced congregations, nodding, strutting, winking, rolling the tender feathers of their necks, perching sometimes, if I stood still, on my shoulder or pecking a broken biscuit from between my lips; until, suddenly, the noon gun boomed and in a moment, with a flutter and sweep of wings, the pavement was bare and the whole sky above dark with a tumult of fowl. Thus it was that morning.

Evelyn Waugh, from Brideshead Revisited

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

More.

Put out more flags.

Laugh.

"At night, you'll look up at the stars. It's too small, where I live, for me to show you where my star is. It's better that way. My star will be ... one of the stars, for you. So you'll like looking at all of them. They'll all be your friends. And besides, I have a present for you." He laughed again.

"Ah, little fellow, little fellow, I love hearing that laugh!"

"That'll be my present. Just that ... It'll be the same as for the water."

"What do you mean?"

"People have stars, but they aren't the same. For travelers stars are guides. For other people, they're nothing but tiny lights. And for still others, for scholars, they're problems. For my businessman, they were gold. But all those stars are silent stars. You, though, you'll have stars like nobody else."

"What do you mean?"

"When you look up at the sky at night, since I'll be living on one of them, since I'll be laughing on one of them, for you it'll be as if all the stars laughing. You'll have stars that can laugh!"

And he laughed again.

"And when you're consoled (everyone eventually is consoled), you'll be glad you've known me. You'll always be my friend. You'll feel like laughing with me. And you'll open your window sometimes just for the fun of it ... And your friends will be amazed to see you laughing while you're looking up at the sky. Then you'll tell them, 'Yes, it's the stars; they always make me laugh!' And they'll think you're crazy. It'll be a nasty trick I played on you ..."

And he laughed again.

"And it'll be as if I had given you, instead of stars, a lot of tiny bells that know how to laugh ... "

Antoine de Saint-Exupery, born on this day in 1900, from The Little Prince

Members of Manchester Collective, Rakhi Singh, violin, Ruth Gibson, Viola, and, Bartholomew LaFollette, cello, perform ...

All.

We’ll know as children again all that we are

destined to know, that the water is cold

and deep, and the sun penetrates only so far.

Jim Harrison, from "Death Again"

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Monteverdi, Vespers

Apollo's Fire performs the Deus in adjutorium, Dixit Dominus ...

Happy Birthday, Colin Hay

Colin Hay was born on this day in 1953.

"Sea of Always"...

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Released.

RUSH released Feedback on this day in 2004.

"The Seeker"... 

I love it when a cover is better than the original.

R.E.M., "Find the River"

It's sandwich time.

"Waltz Whitman"

Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer, and His Royal Highness of Histrionics pay tribute ...

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Faith.

I believe with perfect faith that at this very moment millions of human beings are standing at crossroads and intersections, in jungles and deserts, showing each other where to turn, what the right way is, which direction. They explain exactly where to go, what is the quickest way to get there, when to stop and ask again. There, over there. The second turnoff, not the first, and from there left or right, near the white house, by the oak tree.  They explain with excited voices, with a wave of the hand and a nod of the head: There, over there, not that there, the other there, as in some ancient rite. This too is a new religion.  I believe with perfect faith, that at this very moment.

Yehuda Amichai

Thank you, Veerle.

Learned.

I had learned already never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well.  Better to produce half as much, get plenty of exercise and not go crazy than to speed up so that your head is hardly normal.

Ernest Hemingway, from A Moveable Feast

Telemann, Quartet for Recorder, Violin, Viola, and Basso Continuo in G-Minor, TWV 43

Erik Bosgraaf performs the Adagio with Tomoe Badiarova, violin, "Crazy" Ivan Iliev, viola, Evan Buttar, cello, and Alessandro Pianu, clanger ...

Happy Birthday, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, born on this day in 1900

Tony Rice, "Shenandoah"

Bird.

On this night in 1976, I was watching "The Bird" on Monday Night Baseball ...

Rachmaninoff, Piano Concerto No.2, No.18

Anna Fedorova performs with Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie, led by Martin Panteleev ...

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Time.

There are some things which cannot be learned quickly, and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring. They are the very simplest things and because it takes a man's life to know them, the little that each man gets from life is very costly and the only heritage he has to leave.

Ernest Hemingway, from Death in the Afternoon

Satie, "Reverie du Pauvre"

Peter Fletcher performs ...

If.

Talk Classical looks at Erik Satie's musical indications ...

Full of subtlety, if you believe me

Realize.

Rubens, Bust of Pseudo-Seneca, 1626

Until we have begun to go without them, we fail to realize how unnecessary many things are. We've been using them not because we needed them but because we had them.

 

Lucius Annaeus Seneca, from Letters from a Stoic

Happy Birthday, Peter Paul Rubens

Rubens, Old Woman and Boy with Candles, 1612

A painting, if the light is just so, can turn into a luminescent inferno which may reveal for just a moment the soul of the artist.

Peter Paul Rubens, born on this day in 1577

Gallery of the Masters: Peter Paul Rubens

Wonder.

Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement.  Get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.  Never once in my life did I ask God for success or wisdom or power or fame. I asked for wonder, and he gave it to me.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

Older.

He was older, it might have been written, than the rocks on which he sat; older, anyway, than his stall in chapel; he had died many times, had Scott-King, had dived deep, had trafficked for strange webs with Eastern merchants. And all this had been but the sound of lyres and flutes to him.

Evelyn Waugh, from Scott-King's Modern Europe

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

More.

Put out more flags ...

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Ray Wylie Hubbard, "Count My Blessings"

Tale.

The red-headed stranger from Blue Rock, Montana

Rode into town one day;

Under his knees was a raging black stallion

And walking behind was a bay.

The red-headed stranger had eyes like thunder

Lips that were pale and tight;

His little lost love lay asleep on a hillside

And his heart was heavy as night.

Don't cross him, don't boss him, he's wild in his sorrow,

Riding and hiding his pain;

Don't fight him, don't spite him, just wait till tomorrow,

And maybe he'll ride on again.

A yellow-haired lady leaned out of her window,

Smiled as they came her way.

She drew back in fear at the sight of the stallion

But cast greedy eyes on the bay;

How could she know that the dancing bay pony

Meant more to him than life?

For this was the song that his little lost darling

Had ridden when she was his wife.

The yellow-haired lady came into the barroom,

Looked up the stranger there;

He bought her a drink, gave her some money

He just didn't seem to care.

She followed him out when he saddled the stallion,

Laughed as she grabbed for the bay;

He shot her so quick they had no time to warn her,

She didn't hear anyone say:

Don't cross him, don't boss him, he's wild in his sorrow,

Riding and hiding his pain;

Don't fight him, don't spite him, just wait till tomorrow,

And maybe he'll ride on again.

The yellow-haired lady was buried at sunset

The stranger went free, of course,

'Cause you can't hang a man for killing a woman

Whose trying to steal your horse.

Now this is the tale of the red-headed stranger

And if he should come your way,

Stay out of the path of the raging black stallion

And don't lay a hand on the bay.

Willie Nelson

Junior Sisk, "Sweeter Than Tupelo Honey"

I heard this song on the radio in gas station in Virginia earlier this month an' I been runnin' the needle through all o' his stuff e'er since.  It don't get much better'n this, friends, so if y'ain't had the pleasure a'ready, I'd like t' in'r'duce ya t' Junior Sisk.  

I rеmember mama praying

When I told hеr I ain't staying

I thought better things were waiting down the road

But all I found were broken dreams

Things weren't always like they seem

Sometimes a boy's gotta make it on his own

Now this job and city living

Turned sour as persimmons

Pretty soon I will be back where I belong

And when I turn on to that old road

Tap the fence post to my old home

That's when I know I should have stayed there all along ...

Commendations.

On most days at our house, some of the first words spoken center on meal conversations ...

The seafarer looked at him with the suspicion of a wink. "I'm an old hand," he remarked with much simplicity. "The captain's cabin's good enough for me."

"It's a hard life, by all accounts," murmured the Rat, sunk in deep thought.

"For the crew it is," replied the seafarer gravely, again with the ghost of a wink.

"From Corsica," he went on, "I made use of a ship that was taking wine to the mainland. We made Alassio in the evening, lay to, hauled up our wine-casks, and hove them overboard, tied one to the other by a long line. Then the crew took to the boats and rowed shorewards, singing as they went, and drawing after them the long bobbing procession of casks, like a mile of porpoises. On the sands they had horses waiting, which dragged the casks up the steep street of the little town with a fine rush and clatter and scramble. When the last cask was in, we went and refreshed and rested, and sat late into the night, drinking with our friends, and next morning I took to the great olive-woods for a spell and a rest. For now I had done with islands for the time, and ports and shipping were plentiful; so I led a lazy life among the peasants, lying and watching them work, or stretched high on the hillside with the blue Mediterranean far below me. And so at length, by easy stages, and partly on foot, partly by sea, to Marseilles, and the meeting of old shipmates, and the visiting of great ocean-bound vessels, and feasting once more. Talk of shell-fish! Why, sometimes I dream of the shell-fish of Marseilles, and wake up crying!"

"That reminds me," said the polite Water Rat; "you happened to mention that you were hungry, and I ought to have spoken earlier. Of course, you will stop and take your mid-day meal with me? My hole is close by; it is some time past noon, and you are very welcome to whatever there is."

"Now I call that kind and brotherly of you," said the Sea Rat. "I was indeed hungry when I sat down, and ever since I inadvertently happened to mention shell-fish, my pangs have been extreme. But couldn't you fetch it along out here? I am none too fond of going under hatches, unless I'm obliged to; and then, while we eat, I could tell you more concerning my voyages and the pleasant life I lead—at least, it is very pleasant to me, and by your attention I judge it commends itself to you; whereas if we go indoors it is a hundred to one that I shall presently fall asleep."

"That is indeed an excellent suggestion," said the Water Rat, and hurried off home. There he got out the luncheon-basket and packed a simple meal, in which, remembering the stranger's origin and preferences, he took care to include a yard of long French bread, a sausage out of which the garlic sang, some cheese which lay down and cried, and a long-necked straw-covered flask wherein lay bottled sunshine shed and garnered on far Southern slopes. Thus laden, he returned with all speed, and blushed for pleasure at the old seaman's commendations of his taste and judgment, as together they unpacked the basket and laid out the contents on the grass by the roadside.

Kenneth Grahame, from The Wind in the Willows

Right.

Walker's Arms has the right idea ...

Smackerel.

Paradise.

Gibbs, Radcliffe Camera, University of Oxford, England, 1749

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.

Jorge Luis Borges

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Do.

Do you, sir?

Eye-Opener.

Lamb, Evelyn Waugh, 1930

Chapter Seven, in which Lady Cordelia chances upon a chump ... 

Next week the Jesuit came to tea again. It was the Easter holidays and Cordelia was there, too.

"Lady Marchmain," he said. "You should have chosen one of the younger fathers for this task. I shall be dead long before Rex is a Catholic."

"Oh dear, I thought it was going so well."

"It was, in a sense. He was exceptionally docile, said he accepted everything I told him, remembered bits of it, asked no questions. I wasn't happy about him. He seemed to have no sense of reality, but I knew he was coming under a steady Catholic influence, so I was willing to receive him. One has to take a chance sometimes--with semi-imbeciles, for instance. You never know quite how much they have understood. As long as you know there's someone to keep an eye on them, you do take the chance."

"How I wish Rex could hear this!" said Cordelia.

"But yesterday I got a regular eye-opener. The trouble with modern education is you never know how ignorant people are. With anyone over fifty you can be fairly confident what's been taught and what's been left out. But these young people have such an intelligent, knowledgeable surface, and then the crust suddenly breaks and you look down into depths of confusion you didn't know existed. Take yesterday. He seemed to be doing very well. He'd learned large bits of the catechism by heart, and the Lord's Prayer and the Hail Mary. Then I asked him as usual if there was anything troubling him, and he looked at me in a crafty way and said, 'Look, Father, I don't think you're being straight with me. I want to join your Church and I'm going to join your Church, but you're holding too much back.' I asked what he meant, and he said: 'I've had a long talk with a Catholic--a very pious, well-educated one, and I've learned a thing or two. For instance, that you have to sleep with your feet pointing East because that's the direction of heaven, and if you die in the night you can walk there. Now I'll sleep with my feet pointing any way that suits Julia, but d'you expect a grown man to believe about walking to heaven? And what about the Pope who made one of his horses a cardinal? And what about the box you keep in the church porch, and if you put in a pound note with someone's name on it, they get sent to hell. I don't say there mayn't be a good reason for all this,' he said, 'but you ought to tell me about it and not let me find out for myself.'"

"What can the poor man have meant?" said Lady Marchmain.

"You see he's a long way from the Church yet," said Father Mowbray.

"But who can he have been talking to? Did he dream it all? Cordelia, what's the matter?"

"What a chump! Oh, Mummy, what a glorious chump!"

Evelyn Waugh, from Brideshead Revisited

Thank.

Dear child,

Please to fancy, if you can, that you are reading a real letter, from a real friend whom you have seen, and whose voice you can seem to yourself to hear wishing you, as I do now with all my heart, a happy Easter.

Do you know that delicious dreamy feeling when one first wakes on a summer morning, with the twitter of birds in the air, and the fresh breeze coming in at the open window – when, lying lazily with eyes half-shut, one sees as in a dream green boughs waving, or water rippling in a golden light? It is a pleasure very near to sadness, bringing tears to one’s eyes like a beautiful picture or poem. And is not that a Mother’s gentle hand that undraws your curtains, and a Mother’s sweet voice that summons you to rise? To rise and forget, in the bright sunlight, the ugly dreams that frightened you so when all was dark – to rise and enjoy another happy day, first kneeling to thank that unseen Friend, who sends you the beautiful sun?

Are these strange words from a writer of such tales as "Alice"? And is this a strange letter to find in a book of nonsense? It may be so. Some perhaps may blame me for thus mixing together things grave and gay; others may smile and think it odd that any one should speak of solemn things at all, except in church and on Sunday: but I think – nay, I am sure – that some children will read this gently and lovingly, and in the spirit of which I have written it.

For I do not believe God means us thus to divide life into two halves – to wear a grave face on Sunday, and to think it out-of-place to even so much as mention Him on a week-day. Do you think He cares to see only kneeling figures, and to hear only tones of prayer – and that He does not also love to see the lambs leaping in the sunlight, and to hear the merry voices of the children, as they roll among the hay? Surely their innocent laughter is as sweet in His ears as the grandest anthem that ever rolled up from the ‘dim religious light’ of some solemn cathedral?

And if I have written anything to add to those stories of innocent and healthy amusement that are laid up in books for the children I love so well, it is surely something I may hope to look back upon without shame and sorrow (as how much of life must then be recalled!) when my turn comes to walk through the valley of shadows.

This Easter sun will rise on you, dear child, feeling your ‘life in every limb’, and eager to rush out into the fresh morning air – and many an Easter-day will come and go, before it finds you feeble and gray-headed, creeping wearily out to bask once more in the sunlight – but it is good, even now, to think sometimes of that great morning when the ‘Sun of Righteousness shall arise with healing in his wings’.

Surely your gladness need not be less for the thought that you will one day see a brighter dawn than this – when lovelier sights will meet your eyes than any waving trees or rippling waters – when angel-hands shall undraw your curtains, and sweeter tones than ever loving Mother breathed shall wake you to a new and glorious day – and when all the sadness, and the sin, that darkened life on this little earth, shall be forgotten like the dreams of a night that is past!

Your affectionate friend,

Lewis Carroll

Easter, 1876

More.

Put out more flags ...

Are flags too loud?

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Effusions.

The Battle of Little Bighorn began on this date, at this hour, in 1876.

Nathaniel Philbrick, from The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn

Custer did not drink; he didn’t have to. His emotional effusions unhinged his judgment in ways that went far beyond alcohol’s ability to interfere with clear thinking.

C-SPAN presents National Park Service interpreter Steve Adelson's stories of Custer and his Seventh Cavalry fight against the Sioux and Cheyenne ...

Excellent books ...

Smithsonian on the aftermath ...

As late as the 1920s, elderly Cheyennes said that two southern Cheyenne women had come upon the body of Custer. He had been shot in the head and in the side. They recognized Custer from the Battle of the Washita in 1868, and had seen him up close the following spring when he had come to make peace with Stone Forehead and smoked with the chiefs in the lodge of the Arrow Keeper. There Custer had promised never again to fight the Cheyennes, and Stone Forehead, to hold him to his promise, had emptied the ashes from the pipe onto Custer’s boots while the general, all unknowing, sat directly beneath the Sacred Arrows that pledged him to tell the truth.

It was said that these two women were relatives of Mo-nah-se-tah, a Cheyenne girl whose father Custer’s men had killed at the Washita. Many believed that Mo-nah-se-tah had been Custer’s lover for a time. No matter how brief, this would have been considered a marriage according to Indian custom. On the hill at the Little Bighorn, it was told, the two southern Cheyenne women stopped some Sioux men who were going to cut up Custer’s body. “He is a relative of ours,” they said. The Sioux men went away.

Every Cheyenne woman routinely carried a sewing awl in a leather sheath decorated with beads or porcupine quills. The awl was used daily, for sewing clothing or lodge covers, and perhaps most frequently for keeping moccasins in repair. Now the southern Cheyenne women took their awls and pushed them deep into the ears of the man they believed to be Custer. He had not listened to Stone Forehead, they said. He had broken his promise not to fight the Cheyenne anymore. Now, they said, his hearing would be improved.

Listen or your tongue will keep you deaf.

Cree Proverb

Forever.

In a letter to his wife, Abigail, John Adams laid out enthusiastic plans for future celebrations of the Independence he helped secure ...

It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.

The city fathers of New Albany, Ohio think they know better. 

Gird yourself for today's abomination ...

The City of New Albany is proud to introduce an Inclusivity Zone at the end of this year’s Independence Day Parade route. Located near accessible parking, this area is designed to be more sensory-friendly so that all families can enjoy the parade. Parade participants are required to adjust their performances when passing through this zone by lowering volume, avoiding flashing lights or sudden noises, and not throwing items from floats. 

Van Morrison, "On Hynford Street"

Also Debussy on the third program,

Early mornings, when contemplation was best ...

Elevenses.

Excellent.