24 thoughts on “Sunday Serendipity”

  1. jack, perfect selection – raining here all night and expected to do so all day.

    loved that wiki story about the first performance:

    The first performance of the Water Music is recorded in The Daily Courant, the first British daily newspaper. At about 8 p.m. on Wednesday, 17 July 1717, King George I and several aristocrats boarded a royal barge at Whitehall Palace, for an excursion up the Thames toward Chelsea. The rising tide propelled the barge upstream without rowing. Another barge, provided by the City of London, contained about 50 musicians who performed Handel’s music. Many other Londoners also took to the river to hear the concert. According to The Courant, “the whole River in a manner was covered” with boats and barges. On arriving at Chelsea, the king left his barge, then returned to it at about 11 p.m. for the return trip. The king was so pleased with Water Music that he ordered it to be repeated at least three times, both on the trip upstream to Chelsea and on the return, until he landed again at Whitehall.
    King George’s companions in the royal barge included Anne Vaughan, Duchess of Bolton, Harriet Pelham-Holles, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Evelyn Pierrepont, 1st Duke of Kingston-upon-Hull, Sophia von Kielmansegg, Countess of Darlington, Henrietta Godolphin, 2nd Duchess of Marlborough, and George Douglas-Hamilton, 1st Earl of Orkney.
    Handel’s orchestra is believed to have performed from about 8 p.m. until well after midnight, with only one break while the king went ashore at Chelsea.
    It was rumoured that the Water Music was composed to help King George refocus London attention from his son and heir (later George II of Great Britain), who, worried that his time to rule would be shortened by his father’s long life, threw lavish parties and dinners to compensate for it; the Water Music’s first performance on the Thames was the King’s way of reminding London that he was still there and showing he could carry out gestures even grander than his son’s.

  2. from the here-today-gone-tomorrow file

    just day before yesterday morn, picture of my old kenCLUCKYhome at Ft CHICKamauga, residence of laverne, shirley & ethel (3 very wet as mad hens today). Bu in foreground.

    Image preview

  3. from jan3 & 10 The New Yorker’s “Shouts and Murmurs”

    Constitutional Crisis No. 1
    I ask’d Dr. Franklin, upon his departure from the Constitutional Convention, whether the newly form’d United States of America was a Republick or a Monarchy.
    “A Republick, Madam,” He answer’d. “If You can keep it.”
    He chortl’d, then with alacrity remov’d from his pocket a quill, inkwell & parchment, on which He had inscrib’d “Aphorisms for My Almanack,” & jott’d down his words with a pleas’d countenance behind his bifocals.
    “Wait, what?” I queri’d. “If You can keep it?”
    “Indeed, You may not be able to preserve this Republick,” He said with an impish smile.
    “But, Dr. Franklin, whyfor?”
    Now He appear’d less jolly. “I suppose Tyrants could exploit the loopholes We put in the Constitution.”
    “Well, by the time We notic’d Them, We’d already finish’d, & it would have requir’d starting the entire thing over with a fresh scroll,” He said. “& ’twas getting really late, so We were, like—” He shrugg’d & upturn’d his palms.
    “& why did the perishing of the Republick strike You as comickal?”
    He said, “Mayhap I thought it funny in a morbid way, but not funny guffaw-guffaw.”
    He stood in contemplation. “O, shit,” He said to Himself. “Fuck Me.” He look’d at Me with alarum. “I just envision’d the whole ‘People can have as many guns as They want’ thing Madison plans to tack on coming back to bite Us upon the Buttocks.”
    “You proclaim’d ’twas a Republick ‘if You can keep it,’ ” I said. “Did You mean Me, personally? Will Women hold elect’d office?”
    He burst into laughter. Upon seeing that I did not share his mirth, He affect’d a more solemn mien.
    “O, You were serious,” He said. “ ’Twas more like a general ‘You.’ But not Women, obviously. Or, to be fair, Men who aren’t White. Or White Men who don’t own property.”
    […]
    “Which brings up another problem,” He said. “There is no polite way to say this to a Lady, but a lot of the Guys in this Country are, well . . .”
    My eyes implor’d Dr. Franklin to conclude his doubtless brilliant insight.
    “They’re Dicks,” He said. “& They will propagate yet more Dicks, & someday there shall be a profusion of Dicks, perchance nearly a majority, who, in a tragick irony, cite their purport’d reverence of the Constitution to conceal their Tyranny of Dickishness.”
    “You said ‘nearly a majority,’ ” I rejoin’d. “Surely perspicacious minds like yours would not create a Constitution that permitt’d a minority of Dicks to wield federal power over the non-Dick majority.”
    “Mm-hmm,” Dr. Franklin said, as his eyes shift’d rapidly hither & thither.
    “How does One identify these Dicks?” I ask’d.
    “Not every Dick simply wears a tricorne hat with ‘make america’ calligraph’d on it,” He explain’d. “Many cultivate full, unkempt beards, for instance, whilst others grow hair only on their chins in the unseemly manner of a goat. But one common element is that They buy their spectacles from the optician Thomas Oakley, who has pioneer’d a technique to tint the lenses dark, & to elongate the frames such that They cover a wide expanse of the face.”
    “Is every Gentleman who wears his spectacles in this fashion a Dick?”
    “A Total Dick,” He said.
    “So,” I said, “You have draft’d a Constitution full of loopholes for a Republick found’d upon inequality & teeming with Dicks who wear Oakley’s spectacles that wrap around their faces.”
    “Don’t forget the guns. O, & guess who loves guns? The Dicks.”
    “I should not think this a worthy Republick,” I said.
    “ ’Tis America, Madam.” He look’d defensive. “Love it or leave it.”
    Dr. Franklin’s eyes lit up. He wrote this phrase on his parchment & chuckl’d as He recit’d it several times.
    “Most amusing,” He murmur’d giddily. “A capital riot!” 

  7. I looked up Mass Formation Psychosis but couldnt get too far into it.   Did see that it was a Dr Malone on Joe Rogan and it was then I was deterred from further inturdation.

  9. and here i tho’t they were talking religious conversion at the altar .

    ducking before i get struck by righteous lightning   🙂

  11. Overview – Psychosis – NHS (www.nhs.uk)

    Psychosis is when people lose some contact with reality. This might involve seeing or hearing things that other people cannot see or hear (hallucinations) and believing things that are not actually true (delusions).
    […]
    The 2 main symptoms of psychosis are:
    hallucinations – where a person hears, sees and, in some cases, feels, smells or tastes things that do not exist outside their mind but can feel very real to the person affected by them; a common hallucination is hearing voices
    delusions – where a person has strong beliefs that are not shared by others; a common delusion is someone believing there’s a conspiracy to harm them
    The combination of hallucinations and delusional thinking can cause severe distress and a change in behaviour.
    Experiencing the symptoms of psychosis is often referred to as having a psychotic episode.

    lincoln project replays the evidence

  13. One of those groups who were actually playing their instruments and could always sound as good live as they did in the recordings.
    A little Mini-master class in live performance after the mount has been crested.

  15. About the Sly song:
    Wonder when that was…. I looked into him a bit and seems he’s living in a white camper around L.A.  at last update.

  17. Ron Johnson has already lost.  People are just sick of the shit like what he got.  Loser walking.

  18. The most talented musician I know is Sly Stone,” Bootsy Collinssaid in an interview with Mojo. “He’s more talented than anybody I ever have seen – he’s amazing. I worked with him in Detroit from 1981 to ’83, and to see him just fooling around, playing, jamming, is a whole other trip. He’s the most amazing musician.”
    Bootsy ain’t no layback hisself.

  22. Wow, the opening of “Diamonds and Rust” sounds a lot like the intro to Aerosmith’s “Dream On.”

    Prince was a genius, but he was heavily riffing on on Sly.

    Mass psychosis in the 1930s. Yep. Fascism.

  23. https://www.texastribune.org/2022/01/08/texas-gop-voting-covid-meme-trump/

    The meme, which came from the official account for the Texas GOP, used a photo of a COVID-19 test site line in New York and included the text, “If you can wait in line for hours for testing … You can vote in person.”

    “…such an approach is “driven by a perspective that other people who don’t believe what you believe are the enemy, rather than fellow Americans.”

    “..,experts on propaganda and internet misinformation said, the meme did exactly what it was intended to do. “The goal is to further divide people, but divide them by making them feel they’re part of a group,”

    “You are being rage farmed,” John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher of disinformation and cyberattacks at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, wrote in a tweet to people who were reacting angrily to the meme. He said that responding to the tweet was providing the GOP with a bigger megaphone: “Your angry quote tweet = the goal.”

    “Rage farming” is big ag these days.
    The crabgrass they’re sowing only dies out from lack of attention to the little PR stunts, while Dems go on building the new and giving folks something to support because it makes their lives better.

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