Musical Wanderer

Twenty-first century equivalent of unrestricted submarine warfare? A little over a century ago, the United States joined Britain and France in their war against Germany.  Many Americans in and out of government had sympathized with the Allies in their grinding war and were outraged by the murder of civilians in Belgium and Northern France by occupying German forces.  What finally encouraged those recalcitrant to enter the war were the revelations that Germany was encouraging Mexico to join in the war against the US and the German decision to allow unrestricted submarine warfare against ships at sea.  Contemporary laws of war codified in treaties in the late nineteenth century stipulated that civilian ships could not by sunk without warning.  Germany's adoption of unrestricted submarine warfare unleashed submarines (U-boats) to sink any ship at sea without regard to combatant status or cargo. German WWI Submarine and sinking merchant ship Fast forward to the present d...

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced new changes to the world's maps. The nations of the Caucuses will have new names that President Trump has used on several occasions during his term. Armenia will be named Albania and Azerbaijan will by named Aberbaijan. This is a follow up to the renaming of the Gulf of America earlier in President Trump's second term. The Press Secretary cautioned that any producer of maps which does not adopt the new guidelines will lose all government contracts and be investigated by FBI for any possible improprieties. Google Maps has announced it is in the process of altering its software to incorporate the changes. News organizations which do not adopt the new guidelines will lose licenses and face prosecution by DoJ. Sources from ABC and CBS say that the new guidelines will be followed effective today, thanking the White House for the clarification of the century old nations' names. Officials in Tirane, the capital of the nat...

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 ...