Musical Wanderer

T his was a mighty and adaptable little toy.  Monogram models offered this model of a jeep and 37 mm gun together in 1957, during the early years of plastic model building.  By the 1960s one could buy plastic model kits of cars, planes, ships, and tanks in hobby stores, department stores, even drug stores.  The jeep was a famous vehicle of the Second World War and the gun was an early American weapon to combat tanks.  The two together perhaps gained mutual fame from this photo taken before the US entered the war. It’s a nifty photo from the period the US was rearming before Pearl Harbor.  Readers would find it exciting that the jeep was so speedy that they were airborne, but guns this light were found to be wanting in actual war and were replaced by bigger, heavier guns.  Even the helmets the soldiers wear, leftover from the First World War, were replaced in 1942 with helmets that covered more of the soldiers' heads. I got the model about a dozen years late...

"What's wrong with us?" wondered Rick Jones. "I mean, we're all white, we have great wardrobes, we've demonstrated that we will say anything, no matter how ridiculous, on camera with an aura of assured certainty." Looking out the office window with a forlorn glance, Jones struggled to hold back a tear. "What more do I have to do?" Lance Chambers, when asked to comment on the lack of invitations from the White House to serve the President, refreshed his email feed on his laptop to see if there was an email from the White House. Seeing none, he slammed his laptop shut, started to speak, but then turned away. Particularly crushed by the lack of interest is Julie Armstrong Featherington. "Not a word from the White House. And I'd be perfect for a major post. I have great legs, I'm skinny, my pouty lips don't need even botox...I'm a natural blonde for Chrissake," she said as she stormed from the office. When contacted...

Eighty years.  Today.  The B-29 named by its pilot "Enola Gay" dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.  In seconds, thousands died. Over the ensuing days and decades, thousands more would die from the radiation the bomb produced.  Many in the world will pause and contemplate the anniversary of the first use of the atomic bomb and, with wars of varying intensity yet still killing thousands in Ukraine, Sudan, Gaza, Yemen, Congo, Cambodia, consider current events rather than the past.  The bomb and the plane which dropped the bomb, the "Enola Gay", will likely disappear from the news. Earlier this year the "Enola Gay" became the subject of news reports when moronic Republicans purged photographs of the plane from Department of Defense websites because it's name contained the word "gay" as part their efforts to eliminate all non-white, masculine, heterosexual images from American history.  Thus another chapter was added to the plane's sym...

I went to a fun concert by the Tallis Scholars at the National Gallery of Art this afternoon.  I've seen the early music supergroup perform a couple times over the years, usually with a different roster of singers each time, always under the direction of the ensemble's founder Peter Phillips.  I was fortunate to find a listing of the concert among the free events at the Gallery (a treat, as I've paid a pretty penny to see them in the past). Perhaps I should have titled this, "Palestrina, Anyone?" as the concert featured a couple pieces by Renaissance great Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina paired with settings of the same texts from the Song of Solomon by other composers, frankly a fun programming choice, followed by modern works of of great contrast.  The text of the first "Sicut lilium" is an unusually secular and sensuous text for Palestrina, whom most singers know from singing sacred pieces in churches:  " As the lily among the thorns, so is my ...

Ok, perhaps I should clarify: the local auditorium was the Coolidge Auditorium of the Library of Congress .  And the musicians of the Pacifica Quartet were playing a set of Stradivarius string instruments which are part of the Library's collection.  And the Librarian of Congress (director of the Library of Congress), Carla Hayden, introduced the concert, as it featured the Stradivarius instruments. I was interested in the program because I knew some pieces and didn't know others.  A bonus of Library of Congress concerts is the display cases outside of the auditorium which feature items related to the evening's concerts.  Tonight the cases contained pages of the original handwritten scores of the Crumb Black Angels and the Barber Adagio (the quartet and orchestral versions), which are part of the library's collection.  (I wish I'd thought to take a picture of them.  How often do you see stuff like that?)  When wondering what is in the Library's collec...

I am fascinated by the fixation on Alexandrisa Ocasio-Cortez among conservatives.  Usually conservatives fixate on figures who possesses significant power: the president, a governor, the house speaker.  A now two term member of congress does not typically have much influence on the workings of government, but she is a prominent target of the political right. They proclaim her progressive policy initiatives, none of which are likely to be adopted, are socialist.  Conservatives belittle her youth and lack of experience, though the election of Madison Cawthorn, a white, conservative Republican male congressman younger than her without a college degree and very little work experience does not seem to be very much of a problem.  She is derisively considered a media darling because she uses social media adeptly for fundraising and messaging, though Donald Trump's and other conservatives' use of the same is considered freedom of speech.  Because she can finally afford...

A few weeks ago, I watched Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s series "The Black Church."  As with everything Gates creates, he stimulated my thinking about his subject matter.  The challenges the black churches and black community faced in the past and today, their travails and triumphs in American history, and their transformations accompanying changes in society were clearly described and made vivid in his series.  What I wasn't expecting was a realization while watching it was that Trump is more of a preacher than a politician. STEVE!  What does he have to do with the Black Church?  The man is a charlatan!  He is about as religious as a cat turd in my litter box! Well, let me explain.  Gates described how many black American churchgoers in the late twentieth century and early twentieth century have drifted away from traditional denominations to non-affiliated megachurches just as other Americans have left main line churches.  Images of the exteriors and i...