By Jace, a Trail Mix Contributor
Something for the season. Everyone has a favorite selection from the Nutcracker. This is one of mine.
Enjoy the music, the dance, but most of all your day!
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35 thoughts on “Sunday Serendipity”
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jace, not just enjoying the music and dance, but also the living expressionist painting of snowdrop flowers gracefully bowing to the winter winds…..if you squint your eyes just right with a big dollop of imagination as they dance.
snowdrops or galanthus are also called “Fair maids of February and White ladies” according to wiki and in addition notes:
Early names refer to the association with the religious feast of Candlemas (February 2) the optimum flowering time in which white-robed young women proceeded in the procession associated with the Purification, an alternative name for the feast day. The French name of Violette de la Chandaleur refers to Candlemas, while an Italian name, Fiore della purificazone, refers to purification. The German name of Schneeglöckchen (Little snow bells) also invokes the symbol of bells.
seems to fit in well with the nutcracker story
and now to break that wonderful mood jace put us in….it’s Saturday Night LIVE!
Jace & Patd
This place is great on Sunday!! Thank you for the beauty musical and visual and thanks for the much needed SNL snark.
Jamie, thanks, but hated to ruin the nutcracker ambiance. however that snl bit was a nut cracker in its own way so to speak.
stumbled on fuel to feed the crazies’ fires today, a 2nd curious death re the twit…. remember the old guy in Chicago who was about to give info, now this. shades of vince foster type conspiracies and ghosts of christmas pasts to haunt the scrooge in chief.
usnews: Judge Dies Days Before Trial of Private Eye Over Trump Taxes
Court officials say a senior federal judge in Louisiana has died, days before he was to preside over the trial of a private investigator accused of trying to get Donald Trump’s tax returns illegally during the presidential campaign.
Following the musical theme: honoring the memory of the great Otis Redding 50 years after his death. The lake where his plane went down wasn’t far from my sister’s apartment in Madison, Wisconsin. Beautiful area with a sad memory.
Everybody start whistling the last few bars of Sittin’ on the Dock of Bay …
Also in the way back machine on this date, Congressman Wilbur Mills resigned as chairman of Ways & Means after the Fanne Foxe brouhaha in 1974. Back then it was seen as a joke, fodder for comics everywhere. The details made us chuckle. Imagine the coverage & reaction today.
Met Big Otis oncet…… I was at a gas station in my little military school uniform waiting on a city bus when his big tour bus pulled in for gas and a coke break……I waited by the bus door as the musicians piled off and then there was Otis…..he was a giant……don’t see how he could have been any nicer than he was……not road grumpy, or just plain grumpy, just all smiles and a little chat……he signed my little military hat.
Fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa……
Those musicians could well have been Duck Dunn, Booker T, Steve Cropper, Matt Murphy, Blue Lou, etc…..I don’t know, I was waiting on The Big O.
Great piece.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7QY8G4OJG6c
It did impress me that here in the deep-south civil rights early sixties, there was a bunch of blacks and whites together traveling around on a tour bus. It registered.
Craig,
You have a new Florida Resident. Say hello to two day old eaglet NE-18. Still waiting on the brother or sister to join the party.
the guardian: A battle for public opinion: Trump goes to war over Mueller and Russia
In recent days, the rightwing media and Trump loyalists have been scrambling to discredit the special counsel and smear his Russia inquiry as a liberal plot
Illegitimate and corrupt. Using the FBI as a political weapon and America’s secret police. “Secret surveillance, wiretapping, intimidation, harassment and threats. It’s like the old KGB that comes for you in the dark of the night, banging through your door.”
This is special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, as seen through the eyes of news anchor and analyst Gregg Jarrett this week. Anyone expecting him to be challenged live on air was destined for disappointment.
Fox News host Sean Hannity replied: “This is not hyperbole you are using here.”
It was one telling glimpse of the parallel universe that Donald Trump hopes will save him from Mueller’s sprawling investigation and potential impeachment. Far from an outlier, it was typical of how in recent days rightwing media, congressional Republicans and Trump’s base have gone to war, seeking to discredit and delegitimise the special counsel.
Even if they do not win in the court of public opinion, they hope to sow enough doubt that should Mueller produce damning evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, the reaction will be as divided as everything else in split-screen America, offering the president an escape route.
“It’s the only way he’s going to get out of this: by trying to make the investigation seem partisan,” said Max Bergmann, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress (CAP) Action Fund in Washington. “It’s the only strategy now: make sure his base is with him and Republicans in Congress won’t hold him accountable.”
[….]
Such efforts are ably supported by a rightwing media working overtime to chip away at Mueller’s reputation, even at the risk of damaging once sacred institutions. Brian Stelter, senior media correspondent of CNN, wrote this week: “The overarching message from Fox & Friends and Hannity is unmistakable: Mr President, you’re the victim of a ‘deep state’ plot to take you down. Don’t let it happen.”
He added: “It’s an alternate universe. It’s as simple as that. All the hours dedicated to attacking Mueller mean Fox viewers aren’t hearing about the newest developments in the Russia interference investigations.”
Among the examples cited by Stelter were White House press secretary Sarah Sanders’ father, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who told Monday’s Fox & Friends: “There needs to be an investigation of the investigation.” Another was Lou Dobbs on Fox Business, who said Mueller, Strzok and Comey “should be the subjects of criminal investigations and held fully accountable for crimes against a sitting president and the voters who supported him”.
Hannity, who is close to Trump and whose show enjoys the highest ratings, said in a polemical monologue: “Let’s start off with the head of the snake. Mueller’s credibility is in the gutter tonight with these new discoveries, his conflicts of interests, his clear bias, the corruption are on full display. Mueller is frankly a disgrace to the American justice system and has put the country now on the brink of becoming a banana republic.”
[…]
Matthew Miller, a partner at strategic advisory firm Vianovo and former justice department spokesman, agreed.
“The president has been trying to delegitimise the justice department going back to the summer,” he said. “In the last couple of months we’ve seen the rest of the Republican party join in and follow his lead.
“There have been two goals. First, to kick up dust so there is something else to talk about when the president is under scrutiny. Second, to delegitimise the Mueller investigation so the president can fire him or Congress can ignore his conclusions if he finds Trump broke the law.”
Mueller still has the public’s trust “but I’m not sure that matters to Republicans in Congress”, Miller said. “They’re more and more not accountable to public opinion. If you live in a gerrymandered district where your biggest concern is a primary challenger, you’re no longer concerned about what other people think.”
[…continues…]
business insider:
Attacks on special counsel Robert Mueller’s team of investigators escalated sharply last week, culminating in a partisan haranguing of the FBI director on Thursday over the perceived missteps of his predecessor.
Conservative and far-right media outlets, already skeptical of Mueller’s probe into President Donald Trump’s ties to Russia, grew louder in their calls for FBI Director Chris Wray to either clean house or for Mueller to resign. It came after news that two special counsel investigators at one point exhibited perceived political bias.
Trump again characterized the criminal justice system as “rigged” during a rally in Florida on Friday, echoing comments he made last weekend following former national security Michael Flynn’s guilty plea as part of Mueller’s probe.
“So General Flynn lies to the FBI and his life is destroyed, while Crooked Hillary Clinton, on that now famous FBI holiday ‘interrogation’ with no swearing in and no recording, lies many times,” Trump tweeted last Saturday. “And nothing happens to her? Rigged system, or just a double standard?”
Republican Rep. Bob Goodlatte, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, implored Wray during a hearing on Thursday to “repair the damage done by” former FBI Director James Comey. And he took a shot at Mueller’s investigation, questioning “the magnitude of insider bias” that exists on his team.
Former FBI agents who spoke to Business Insider this week characterized the outcry as “nonsense” aimed at discrediting an investigation that has dogged Trump and the GOP more broadly for over a year.
Frank Montoya, Jr., a former FBI special agent who served as the Director of the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive, was blunt.
“There is a lot of anger in the FBI (the entire intelligence community, for that matter) over how this president will say nary a negative word about the Russians, but will insult us every chance he gets,” he said.
[…continues…..]
I nominate Sturgeone to dedicate Saturday to sharing his musical memories.
Saturday With Sturge
Sunday Serendipity With Jace
Perfect weekend.
If I could use a typewriter I might could spin a yarn or two but it’s just hard to sustain a narrative on a phone or mini-iPad which is all I have till daughter outgrows her current laptop….lol…..I hate having to look at the keyboard and the copy….
If I could plug this in I could hack it…….
Sometimes I just stare into every little part of that thing….one of the most remarkable machines I’ve ever come across…..
Give the ball to Leroy:
1956 Underwood.
Good for those suffering from weak fingers from typing on computer keyboards. You also have time to think while composing your love letters.
wapo: In Franken’s wake, three senators call on President Trump to resign
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and two of his Democratic colleagues have suggested that President Trump should consider resigning, after a run of sexual-harassment scandals has driven out some members of Congress.
Sen. Al Franken “felt it proper for him to resign,” Sanders said in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday morning, referring to the Democrat from Minnesota. “Here you have a president who has been accused by many women of assault, who says on a tape that he assaulted women. He might want to think about doing the same.”
Sanders’s comment, which built on a tweet he sent last week, came after Democratic Sens. Jeff Merkley (Ore.) and Cory Booker (N.J.) suggested that the “#MeToo moment” should prompt another look at the women who accused Trump of sexual harassment during the 2016 presidential campaign.
“The president should resign because he certainly has a track record with more than 17 women of horrific conduct,” Merkley said last week in an interview for the weekday version of “Meet the Press.”
[…]
“I just watched Sen. Al Franken do the honorable thing and resign from his office,” Booker said. “My question is, why isn’t Donald Trump doing the same thing — who has more serious allegations against him, with more women who have come forward. The fact pattern on him is far more damning than the fact pattern on Al Franken.”
Democrats made those comments just days after a largely ceremonial effort to impeach Trump, pushed by Rep. Al Green (D-Tex.), failed in the House of Representatives. Although polling has found that a large number of voters favor an effort to remove Trump from office, most Democrats have suggested that investigations into the 2016 Trump campaign’s Russia connections run their course before any such action. In a Quinnipiac University poll released last week, 70 percent of respondents said Congress should “investigate the accusations of sexual harassment against President Trump.”
Nikki Haley says the women accusing trump deserve to be heard.
I guess Ms Haley has achieved “name recognition” now that one no longer feels the need to explain who she be….
Hillary smashed the glass but now there’s many other ladies lining up to be the first woman president. I’m all for a female president, but please…..not one of those horrid GOP ladies.
Nikki, bless her heart, is actually not “horrid”.
Being a lady or being a man is not what determines what or who a person is.
In fact, as most know already, it’s quantumously irrelevant…..
problem is those who allow themselves to remain unable to process that understanding.
And that there are so many of them and that they have a history which stretches back by writing to the sackings of Jericho and Troy.
Book of the Year:
Hands down, by Mark Twain…..JOAN OF ARC……..utilizing actual transcripts from her “trial”.
Mark and Jean D’Arc
Chucque was a schmucque……
Just watched Episode 8 of Season 2 for the Crown. It concerned negotiations to keep Ghana in the Commonwealth and out of Russia’s arms. Involved a whole lot of interesting dialogue from the Kennedys and Queen Elizabeth. It ends with the Kennedy assassination. This is a great Netflix series that should seen by history buffs. They are doing an excellent job.
Sean Hannity is getting fatter and fatter
I was in Madison, Wisconsin when Otis and co crashed into Lake Manona I was at UW
Brando, definitive moment in 20th C film.
What I always liked about that clip was that Charlie knew he was facing certain death…..,who was the greater actor…… Steiger or Brando…..,
hahahaha
I can hardly believe Troy but Jericho was a military marvel.
It’s not as if I care.
Mr Steiger. The whole film is in his face in that scene. No disrespect to Mr Brando, but Mr Steiger pulls my focus even during that iconic dialog. For me, that’s what rounds out Mr Brando’s delivery and makes the scene complete.
Western military science didn’t change much over time from Jericho to the Horns of Hattin (3000 years +/-). There were a few technical improvements, but mostly the problems was how do you feed and water men in the field. Then, Gulf Fiasco II & isis (another 800+/-) the technology changed with increasing rapidity, but the prime problem expanded to, how do you feed and water men & women in the field and on the seas.
I sometimes wonder whether Joshua’s horns might have been primitive cannons. Or maybe they just blew the rams horns & cattle horns to signal the time to set off the bombs planted at the foot of those rickety walls. Or, maybe it was just an earthquake. sigh. so unimaginative.
Love that edit button, I do.
Oh yeah. & I second Mr C’s nomination of Rod Steiger. But, gimmee Brando for A Streetcar Named Desire.
steiger was a terrific scary jud (as in okla’s “poor jud is daid”)….maybe not so great a singer tho’