String Quartet No. 12 in F major (nicknamed the American Quartet) composed by Antonín Dvořák
It was composed in the summer of 1893, while Dvořák was on vacation in Iowa. Read the back story in Wikipedia
Enjoy, Jack
User-Supported News Commentary Hosted by Craig Crawford
String Quartet No. 12 in F major (nicknamed the American Quartet) composed by Antonín Dvořák
It was composed in the summer of 1893, while Dvořák was on vacation in Iowa. Read the back story in Wikipedia
Enjoy, Jack
Thanks, Jack, I needed that.
President Donald Trump (James Austin Johnson) addresses his tariffs and their impact on the stock market during a speech.
Weekend Update anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che tackle the week’s biggest news, like Trump imposing worldwide tariffs
meanwhile, last week Horsey ‘toon is something to think about.
Boys get a steady diet of poison on the ‘manosphere’
https://images.seattletimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Algorithms-ONLINE.jpg
Looks like we’re emerging from our national coma. AP: “Crowds of people angry about the way President Donald Trump is running the country marched and rallied in scores of American cities Saturday in the biggest day of demonstrations yet by an opposition movement trying to regain its momentum after the shock of the Republican’s first weeks in office”
Ahhhh……Dvořák
One good thing about tariffs on Penguins is they can’t reciprocate, can’t even hold a calculator.
I always enjoy quartets. Not as fussy to watch as an orchestra, and more attention holding than individual performances.
Jack,
Thank you. You do make Sunday’s hopeful and this piece is beautiful.
One book that was special for a young teen is Penguins Have Square Eyes. Life at the South Pole in the late 1950’s. It should be digitized somewhere.
Give the media a little credit. Yesterday’s protests finally got some coverage. Maybe there’s hope.
Dvořák was on vacation in Iowa. Now that’s funny.
Horsey’s social media algorithms draw boys into a deeply misogynistic manosphere sounds like a description of the training program to work in senior level positions in the Trump administration.
There are some questions in the deep backwoods of the interwebs. The big one is when will krasnov declare martial law. Recently he hinted at it, something about those who disrespect him should be taken care of/out by the military. Another is his declaration that Trans people are very bad, which is a step towards the texas law of being Transgender is illegal. Once declared illegal the next step is the jail/concentration camp and eradication. With martial law it is so much easier than now.
BB
Those square eyed penguins have had a home on my shelf since first published. Great book. Amazon has a cheap Kindle version. The hard cover is out of print outrageous, but a used paperback might be available somewhere.
You can see the part of my family that is right wing, not magat they hate krasnov, but far right spending time over on FB. You can also see they are now retired and have too much time to spend on FB. How pray tell can you tell it is them? Quite easy. They post all sorts of stupid right wing stuff that was debunked the second someone first put it on the intertubes. My SIL forgot her lesson from me from over ten years ago. Do not put crap on my timelines, I will respond, in force, and publicly embarrass with lots of facts and memes. They don’t have anything recent to post since sfb produces most of the idiocy since twenty-fifteen and they do not touch his stuff.
I might have to block them again just to have a nice timeline.
the algorithm is fucking with our brains to sell advertising, the only escape is throwing your phone away, except now you need it to live in society
Your dumb trumpers ARE of weak mind, they also have been and continue to be exploited by nefarious social engineers and profiteers
do you blame a child for being corrupted?
adult Americans have about that much emotional
development
Great backstory to Dvořák compositions. Thank you, Jack. You make Sunday sublime.
Have to wonder how much DOGE has done to destroy the National Arboretum? Can they pay the water bill or just pray for rain?
anonduh – one thing about being old is I grew up with the phone on its special stand in the hallway and travel was limited by a short cord (something about not letting the kids take the phone to the coat closet and hog the phone).
Even having a cell phone in my care since nineteen-ninty-eight I still usually forget to put it in my purse when I leave the house. Although most of the world is waiting for a phone call, I am not. In this modern world where “everyone” has a cell phone with them, I feel quite safe in not joining in.
It really bothers people that I will leave my phone somewhere and forget about it, for a week or so. My friends are very used to me asking them to call me so I might track it down. Actually, I have two cell phones and a couple of tablet phones. It is quite telling that so many are upset when one of the species fails to carry a phone. It is a tool, one I am sure is secure, but not on my person, perhaps on a boat, or in a truck, or maybe in the van, or like a couple weeks ago, in a sweatshirt hanging in a back room.
isn’t it funny how “God doesn’t make mistakes” but Joel Osteen and his wife have had plastic surgery
Phone in the hallway
my kind kept it in the “parlor”
nice piece of period furniture 👍
All while my maggers believe they remain untouchable.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/opinion/trump-tariff-economics-cost.html
Good thing we smuggled some back in the luggage.
Our granny’s wooden-box-on-the-wall phone hung inside the back entryway which doubled as the laundry.
Coincidence I guess but last week I took some stuff to the Goodwill for a neighbor and that “Gossip Bench” managed to stay on the truck.
Republicans Aim to Generate Support for Selling Off America’s Public Lands
“This playbook, in my mind, is to dismantle, divest, and then privatize.”
The last time Republicans took full control of Washington, DC, back in 2017, the House of Representatives quickly approved a rules change making it easier for Congress to sell off federal public lands. Then-Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) followed up with legislation to liquidate 3.3 million acres of public land in 10 Western states that he said had “been deemed to serve no purpose for taxpayers.”
Less than two weeks after introducing the bill, Chaffetz withdrew it in response to fierce public backlash. Public land advocates who successfully rallied to defeat the bill spent the next four years pointing to it as a warning sign of how extremist some Republicans had become on the issue.
The new House rules package, adopted in early January, resurrected the very provision that led to Chaffetz’s unpopular bill, once again teeing up future transfer and sale of federal lands. Meanwhile, Republican-controlled states like Utah and Wyoming, empowered by Trump’s reelection, are advancing far-reaching anti-federal land policies.
“We’ve got 500 million acres of land that are in public hands that were put away for the benefit and the use of the American public,” Burgum said during an address to the National Congress of American Indians earlier this month. “The [Bureau of Land Management] lands, the US Forest Service lands, all the lands that are out there. Some of that land is inhospitable and un-occupiable, but underneath that it has value…whether it’s critical minerals, whether it’s energy resources, whether it’s using that for wind or solar…these land resources are huge.”
Burgum’s comments make clear that he and Trump plan to dismantle the balance between development and conservation that the Biden administration tried to bring to federal land management. In its place, they’re pushing an exploitation-first agenda that disregards the role of public land in protecting critical ecosystems for thousands of animal and plant species and jeopardizes the myriad climate, environmental and public health benefits protected landscapes provide.
*The next protest is April 19th! In the meantime, please call your members of Congress. Hands off OUR public lands! 202-224-3121
You Can Stop Asking Where the Mass Opposition Is. It’s Everywhere.
“I’m a centrist in terms of politics in general,” Linda Brown of New York told me as she waited for the line to move. “But batshit crazy is batshit crazy.”
“They have fucked everything up in how many days, in how many months?” said Jewels Nation, a musician escaping the rain under a stretch of sidewalk scaffolding. “January, February, March—in three months, they have fucked us completely.” She was “terrified” about applying for Social Security, but her fears went deeper than just retirement savings; like other attendees, she believed that the United States had already become a “fascist state.”
The message is: crowd large. A lot of politicians and administrators and business leaders, in bowing to Trump, have drawn confidence and comfort from the perceived vibe shift. Events like this puncture that delusion. They are an unavoidable illustration of outrage. Trump may have gotten a lot undone in the last three months, but the opposition never went away, and it may finally be emboldened.
On Saturday, it showed that it is everywhere.
*April 19th
As protesters gathered in hundreds of cities and towns across America on Saturday, “Hands Off” rallies also kicked off in capitals around the world—including London, Paris, Brussels, and beyond—in a display of anger and solidarity.
These protests were scheduled long before President Donald Trump announced a series of devastating tariffs on international trading partners that cratered stock markets and triggered a global trade war…
vibe
No cell phones when we were kids, Grandmom used to stand at the top of those back steps and holler for us to get out of the crick now. Water moccasins in there.
Ivy, where the phone lived at each set of my grandparents is telling of who wore the pants in the family. the wooden phone hung on the wall of the kitchen on the paternal side but on the maternal side the black upright stick phone was in the den.
The next protest is the Day before Easter, so the yt nationalists can pretend to be Christian and whine about it.
We get to jig all week, my fellow Scots fanciers.
https://nyctartanweek.org/
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y4gn3de27o
Guess we’ll have rebirth of bootlegging and moonshining too.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c17505eq5wpo
Ivy – funny you should mention that. I just went to the Class Six store, military base liquor store, and was standing in the aisle, muttering obscenities, while facing empty shelves. Another, customer turned the corner and joined in, I apologized for blocking the way and swearing (veterans swearing is normal) about people taking all the good stuff. He said a few things, I said it (shortages/tariffs) will be short lived. He said yeah, or we start making our own again. Yup. Interesting how involved in chemistry and probiotics the military can be.
BB, this time there will be no revenuers tracking down the stills.
They still make it in the pokey from their taters and bread. I’ve heard tell.
RFK lies have killed another child.
Son stocked up on his tequila.
Just finished a conversation and their minds are doing pretzel twists to protect from tariff reality. It’s pure denial but part of me hopes their preacher is telling them the truth.
Penguin protest
God only knows what toxins RFKjr. overdosed his body on, but suddenly he’s afraid of a vaccine shot.
Still trying to get the hang of the new configuration. Is there an easy way to post pictures? Also just delete a comment.
Just made a batch of my own Wendy’s chili.. https://youtu.be/8BVm3Z0AcSc?si=B5Nr0GGzmURLnS_H
Jamie, still getting the hang of things too, but I used to not be able to post any pictures at all, so this is wonderful.
For posting a photo, I save it to my photos, then from the comment box, click on the paperclip, then click to add photo. If there’s a shortcut, I don’t know it, but maybe sharper minds here do.
To delete a comment, you hit the little person-thing with a “gear” at the beginning of a new comment. That takes you to the red trash can and you click on the can.
These images came out reversed in order, the person/gear button is supposed to be first, the red can second.
https://www.texastribune.org/2025/04/06/measles-texas-outbreak-death-unvaccinated/
An 8-year-old girl with measles died Thursday morning, the second known measles-related death in an ongoing outbreak that has infected nearly 500 Texans since January. Her funeral was Sunday…
The death comes about five weeks after 6-year-old Kayley Fehr, died from measles, the first such death in the country in a decade. Fehr’s parents said that their stance on vaccination did not change after their daughter’s death.
“My intention was to come down here quietly to console the families and to be with the community in their moment of grief,” Kennedy wrote on social media. He went on to describe the resources he deployed to Texas in March after another school-aged child died from measles, claiming that the “growth rates for new cases and hospitalizations have flattened” since Kennedy sent a team from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The state reported 59 new cases in three days last week.
Hildebrand was not vaccinated and had no known underlying health conditions, said a spokesperson for University Medical Center in Lubbock, where she had been hospitalized. She died from “measles pulmonary failure,” the Texas Department of State Health Services reported Sunday.
Jamie, also you have to type something into the comment box in order for the image to post. Otherwise, you get “Input too short.”
Truth doesn’t matter as long as Hannity broadcasts every night in lies.
No flushing of TP in Mexico. Straight into the can.
It’s die and let die with these folks.
ok BiD, was done but figured ehhhhhhh, so made an herb spiral today
if you’re not there, you start with a block of three or a block of six, multiples of three because nightshades need to be rotated on three year cycles- tomatoes, potatoes peppers
The more you cultivate ground the easier it is to cultivate so just get something in an area you wanna garden in, start with flower seeds like annuals to break up the soil, or beans which improve the soil and grow pretty easy
I do fun shaped rows for the funsies instead of blocks but you get the idea
And I don’t mess with raised boxes or hardscaping- it’s expensive and limiting but yes, it does give a good results. Just not for me. I would rather spend that money on mulch.
and I wish I got my composting game correct earlier so I recommend you do but this year I’m getting my compost game correct
my number one tip is associate rain with weeding when it rains you look forward to weeding as soon as possible, in the rain if you have to
and if all of this is stuff you already know pardon me I’m just so excited and I hope you are too
Anon – Gardening is the only thing I’m looking forward to this year. I’ve only had patio gardens in TX, but my grandmother had a huge garden, so I missed it.
There’s a defunct dog kennel on the property, so an old rain gutter is now attached with cable ties to the chain link. Maybe strawberries up high? Not sure, but it’s fun to play.
There’s a compost place made from stakes and more chain link around it. Lots of air flow.
Something was snacking on my new lilac tree, so I planted garlic near it and showered the area with coffee grounds. Seems to have worked.
Happy Gardening!
Market is open in Japan & trading has been halted.
Russian TV is both thanking tRUMPsky & calling him an idiot.
on the show, I’ve seen people make hanging planters out of things like shoe organizers so something like that on the chain-link??
oh, you could espalier fruit trees to it
Thanks Ivy, your instructions to Jamie all correct. (We were out celebrating anniversary, just getting back). This new commenting system not perfect but still an improvement.
Happy Anniversary, Craig and David. Tartan Day is your day, I am reminded.
NEW THREAD