QOTD 0
Mikhail Baryshnikov:
Aside:
Occasionally I see videos of Baryshnikov’s dancing. I find myself in awe of how easy he made it look.
Gene Kelly once said of Fred Astaire (I’m paraphrasing here) that Astaire made everything look easy, whereas Kelly made everything look hard. Baryshnikov was the Astaire of ballet.
Recommended Listening 0
The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes.
In the early 1970s, the BBC ran two televison series, The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes and The American Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, dramatizing tales from the early days of mystery stories. These volumes compile the stories dramatized in those series.
Some of the stories are quite good; others, not so much. But they are all interesting, especially if you are a mystery buff like me, for the light they shed on the early days of the mystery genre. The contrasts between the British and American stories are also of note.
My especial favorite is “The Absent-Minded Coterie,” from the second volume of The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes. It is timely still; indeed, it presages all those phone calls you are getting telling you that your car’s extended warranty has expired.
The tales by R. Austin Freeman, creator of fiction’s first forensic detective, and by the Baroness Orczy, best remembered as the creator of the Scarlet Pimpernel, are also quite good. The others, well, hear for yourself.
History Matters 0
Americans seem to have short memory spans.
Joe Biden is not to blame for what’s happening in Afghanistan today, regardless of what you might be hearing on your telly vision.
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney started this folly, and theirs is the responsibility and the blame.
They opened the can.
They own the worms.
Jim Wright has more.
Dis Coarse Discourse 0
Yet another indication that “social” media isn’t.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
The refrain repeats: Again politeness is child’s play.
Thus passeth another day in the NRA’s blood-soaked paradise.
A Matter of Degree 0
Words can indeed have consquences.
On Friday, Drexel University revoked the honorary Doctor of Laws degree it bestowed upon Giuliani in 2009, long before he became America’s deposed mayor.
A Question of Policy 0
David addresses the question of why Republicans emphasize “culture war” issues over policy issues.
Aside:
I would also suggest that, if Republicans clearly expressed their policy positions (such as “make the rich richer and the poor poorer” and, to put it bluntly, “let’s return to the days of de facto, if not de jure segregation”) they would lose many of their supporters–not the hard core ones, natch, but enough to reduce their power to a pittance.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
At The Atlanta Journal Constitution, Bill Torpy tells of what happened when Doordash driver’s GPS sent him to the wrong house in an affluent Atlanta neighborhood and of the politeness that ensued thereafter.
Limitations of Statues 0
F. T. Rea muses on the removal of Confederate Statues from Richmond’s Monument Avenue and what it may mean for the future. Here’s a bit:
Fast-fowarding to more recent times, with his taking-a-knee gesture, Colin Kaepernick was right. Forced reverence should be challenged.
The Climates They Are a-Changing 0
While northern California is in flames, elsewhere in the state, small towns are running dry. Here’s a bit from SFGate’s report:
And the fire department has asked sheriff’s deputies to keep an eye on the hydrants in response to a report of water theft.
“We’ve grown up in this first-world country thinking that water is a given,” said Julian Lopez, the owner at Café Beaujolais, a restaurant packed with out-of-town diners in what is the height of the tourist season. “There’s that fear in the back of all our minds there is going to be a time when we don’t have water at all. And only the people with money would be able to afford the right to it.”