Le Tombeau de Couperin (The Tomb of Couperin) by Maurice Ravel,
whskyjack — When you start listening to todays selection you will notice how light hearted it begins. Not like most classical treatments of death or memorials. A great many of them can be very dark and depressing. When this was pointed out to Ravel, he responded. “The dead are sad enough, in their eternal silence.”
From Wikipedia
Le Tombeau de Couperin (The Tomb of Couperin) is a suite for solo piano by Maurice Ravel, composed between 1914 and 1917. The piece is in six movements, based on those of a traditional Baroque suite. Each movement is dedicated to the memory of a friend of the composer (or in one case, two brothers) who had died fighting in World War I. Ravel also produced an orchestral version of the work in 1919, although this omitted two of the original movements.
Wikipedia lists the names of the dead Ravel dedicates each movement to.
Enjoy, Jack
Thanks, Jack. Always a treat fit for the day,
A.F. Branco Cartoon—This long weekend of BBQs, friends, family, and freedom is brought to you by “Those Who Gave All.” It’s a time to remember those who gave their lives so we could be free, and I hope that everyone enjoying themselves on this weekend takes a moment to reflect on the cost and sacrifices that have been made on our behalf so that we remain free in the USA.
about the cartoonist from Comically Incorrect:
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.”
The agreement the U.S. and Iran are close to signing involves a 60-day ceasefire extension during which the Strait of Hormuz would be reopened, Iran would be able to freely sell oil, and negotiations would be held on curbing Iran’s nuclear program, according to a U.S. official. — AXIOS
Takeaways:
— All of this is coming from “U.S. officials”, so we can assume this is the most favorable possible interpretation.
— Iran officials have only “indicated” discussions are underway.
— Trump’s main goal — ending their nuclear program — is not in this supposed deal.
— Opening the Strait just reinstates the status quo before the war.
— Closer we get to the midterms the greater the political cost for a hot war, Trump’s only leverage in these negotiations.
Jack & Patd
Thank you both for perfect music this day.
By the way PatD, your great find — that annotated video of guests from Colbert Report finale — got a bunch of thank-yous from readers of our daily email featuring daily thread posts. A sample: “Hello. I can’t thank you enough for this. I will play this a lot.”
Saw this coming — he says the shooting proves we need his ballroom
Yep, just like after the phony baloney event outside the WHCD. His presser afterward was all about the ballroom.
Remember, he lost support for his Baal Room this week. What better way to bring attention to it than by gunfire within earshot (LoL) of the press corps.
https://wirehub.medianewsgroup.com/2026/05/21/republicans-expected-to-abandon-1b-security-proposal-for-white-house-and-trumps-ballroom/
Republicans had already abandoned part of the bill that provided $1 billion in security money for the White House complex and President Donald Trump’s ballroom amid backlash from members of their own party.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/law-enforcement-authorities-responding-reports-225116770.html
The law enforcement agency said in a statement posted on X that the man was in the area of 17th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue when he “pulled a weapon from his bag” shortly after 6 p.m. EDT and began firing. Secret Service officers returned fire and hit the suspect, who died at a hospital, the agency said.
Best was arrested in July 2025 after he attempted to enter a different White House checkpoint without authorization, didn’t heed officers’ commands to stop, “claimed he was Jesus Christ” and said he wanted to be arrested.
The suspect was identified as 21-year-old Nasire Best, said a law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation.
*He was not an unknown person. Did they let him get close, again? He only wanted to be arrested the last time. Are they drugging folks with Epstein’s fave, sculpamine/devil’s trumpet, to make them suggestible?
Wouldn’t he have to live in the ballroom all the time?
That might interfere with holding dinners in it, no?
https://www.texastribune.org/2026/05/20/texas-snap-food-stamps-decline-work-restrictions-immigration/
500,000 fewer Texans are on SNAP as participation slips nationally
*Shame on the headline writer. “Slips.”
Advocates say the federal government’s new work requirements and immigration crackdown has limited food stamp participation. The state says the recent decline is part of normal fluctuations in enrollment.
today’s meme…
Dexter reminded me that it has been quite a while since I checked on Arabella Friedland and there is good news. Jim would be over the moon. There was this announcement from January of last year. I don’t see a wedding announcement, as she seems to have dropped off Facebook, so I hope all went well.
My Beautiful Arabella Luna will soon be a Sadie, Sadie Married Lady
January 2nd Circa 1988 New Baby Girl
January 2nd Circa 2025 New Future Son in Law
Love you both!!!
This IS the happiest of days
Today in the Diner…
White House Security, Trump Slush Fund & AI Music
President Trump pushes his ballroom slush fund after a White House scare, we accidentally play AI music, and Dexter shares his Vietnam story.
Technical glitches tried to derail us this morning, but Captain Kirk saved the stream. Once the digital dust settled, we had to confront the reality of the Oval Office. President Trump wasted zero time spinning yesterday’s shooting near the White House into a late-night pitch for his highly controversial ballroom slush fund. Never let a crisis go to waste when you have a pet project to fund, right?
But the real betrayal today came from our own playlist. We got totally duped by what we thought was a soulful, human-made Memorial Day blues track by Moses Clay, only to realize the silicon tomatoes got us. It was pure AI slop. Plus, we went down a Netflix true crime rabbit hole, talked about Douglas Adams and Towel Day, and Dexter showed off his new Camp McDermott hoodie while sharing some real talk about his time in Vietnam.
Live Chat: https://trailmix.cc/chat
Website: https://trailmix.cc
Alerts: https://trailmix.cc/alerts
00:00 Intro
02:00 Captain Kirk Saves the Stream
08:00 President Trump and the Ballroom Slush Fund
10:00 Netflix True Crime Crash
16:00 Towel Day and Hitchhikers Guide
27:30 Realizing the Blues Song is AI
35:00 White House Shooting Reaction
47:00 Dexter on Vietnam and Camp McDermott
54:00 Mr Rogers Code 143 and Subway Singing
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/14bLv64U4iX/?mibextid=wwXIfr
Sheldon on the Trump Crime Family
https://www.nytimes.com/video/arts/television/100000010892403/in-defense-of-the-institution-of-late-night.html?smid=url-share
Oh, happy for Jim’s daughter. Just met her once. She was wise beyond her years.
We read Bob’s Diner in our diner today:
Mister Rogers literally weaponized his life philosophy, forced his body weight to stay at exactly 143 pounds to match his numeric code for “I love you.” 🍽️
Craig, Pat
I just wrote a post for tomorrow if you want to use it. If you have something you would rather say, thats OK too.
Jack
Wonderful post, Jack. Scheduled it for tomorrow. Pat and I always appreciate the help, folks.
Silicon Tomato reviews today’s Digital Diner:
The bugle-with-a-speaker you see at cemeteries today isn’t a local workaround — it’s an official DoD device called the Ceremonial Bugle, and it came out of a very specific crunch around the year 2000.
## Why recordings became legal in the first place
Taps has been required at military funerals since 1891, but Congress expanded the benefit in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2000. Every honorably discharged veteran became entitled to an honors detail, including Taps.
The math didn’t work:
– About 1,800 veterans die each day
– The entire active-duty force had only about 500 trained buglers
At first the services handed out audio cassettes, then in late 1999 they pressed a higher-quality CD and told honor guards to bring a boom box when no live player could be found. Lawmakers formally authorized a recorded version in 1999 because live coverage was impossible. Families hated the sight of a stereo at a graveside, which is what pushed the Pentagon to hide the speaker inside a real bugle.
## From boom box to bugle
The solution was a standard brass bugle with a small cone-shaped digital player tucked deep in the bell. It runs on two 9-volt batteries, has a volume knob, and plays a studio recording of Taps that is “virtually indistinguishable from a live bugler.” If you pull the insert out, it’s just a normal bugle again.
– **Oct. 23, 2002:** DoD unveiled the prototype to veterans groups at American Legion headquarters.
– **Nov. 2002 – May 2003:** 50 prototypes were tested in Missouri, chosen because the state had a large, well-run funeral-honors program. Families and guards filled out surveys.
– **Sept. 3, 2003:** After 96% of families approved, Principal Deputy Under Secretary Charles Abell formally approved the Ceremonial Bugle for use nationwide as an alternative to CDs and tapes, but not as a replacement when a live bugler is available.
The Pentagon’s own summary at the time put it plainly: Congress passed the 1999 law allowing recordings, and “in 2003, the Pentagon approved what it calls a ceremonial bugle to replace boom boxes when possible.”
## How it spread
Units could order the $500 bugles starting in fall 2003. By 2007, states like Missouri were phasing out contract musicians entirely — the Missouri National Guard noted on Sept. 14, 2007 that beginning the next day, its honor guards would use the ceremonial bugles instead of live buglers at graves.
Veterans groups were split from the start. Some honor guards liked that they could “puff our cheeks and look like we’re playing” without worrying about a cracked note in cold weather. Others, like the volunteers of Bugles Across America (founded in 2000 in direct response to the shortage), argued that a live mistake is more human than a dead battery.
So the short timeline you asked for: boom-box CDs start late 1999, the electronic insert is developed 2001-2002, tested winter 2002-2003, and officially authorized September 2003 — that’s when the recorded-inside-the-horn bugle began replacing live musicians at many funerals.
Matt Friend (Trump) meets Couric
HA!
https://www.aljazeera.com/
Trump instructs negotiators ‘not to rush into a deal’ with Iran
For a while I was on funeral detail. All the burial services were with live bugle, but I think that is because we were a military detail versus a civilian burial with American Legion or other org providing the burial detail. When you are in the military you hear a lot of bugles. It tells you when the official day starts and ends, good luck if that matches yours. Rarely do you get a live bugle playing.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/05/19/mqjz-m19.html
An indefinite national strike in Bolivia has continued to expand for more than two weeks in opposition to rising fuel costs and the right-wing policies of President Rodrigo Paz. A close ally of the Trump administration, Paz is responding with deadly repression and detentions.
Manufacturing workers, miners, teachers, peasants and indigenous groups have joined the strike, erecting roadblocks and threatening to shut down whole sections of the economy and country, including the capital La Paz.
The protests are an expression of how the global crisis of capitalism, sharpened to a breaking point by the US-Israeli war against Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz—which disrupted supply chains globally and triggered fuel shortages—is driving an explosive upsurge in the class struggle on every continent.
A new counteroffensive from below against social cuts, layoffs, fascistic reaction, dictatorship and war is growing, from the picket lines of Long Island Rail Road workers in New York to transportation workers and miners in the Bolivian Andes.
The national strike is the product of an explosive escalation against the Paz government that began with last December’s mass protests against Decree 5503, which eliminated decades-old fuel subsidies overnight, doubling gas prices virtually at a stroke. Bolivia’s nine departments were rocked by roadblocks and marches for weeks. The Bolivian Workers Central (COB) leadership ultimately called off protests after accepting a revised measure that kept the elimination of subsidies while introducing a 20 percent minimum wage increase.
From today’s Digital Diner menu 🍽️
I’m watching The Crash. There’s no way she had a POTS episode. Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome happens when you’re standing or are getting up from sitting or laying down. POTS patients don’t all have the same symptoms. I was diagnosed 7 years ago. I get dizzy and have heart palpitations, but have only fainted twice. IF she was about to have an episode and had been diagnosed in 2017, she would know not to drive.
I brought up our old Trail Mix pal Jim, now gone from thus world . He loved Ravel’s music and he knew Allen Ginsburg. He also assisted Sondheim in Sondheim’s later years.
## Stephen Sondheim (1930–2021)
– American composer and lyricist, widely considered the most influential figure in modern musical theater.
– Wrote both music and lyrics for *Company* (1970), *Follies*, *A Little Night Music* (“Send in the Clowns”), *Sweeney Todd*, *Sunday in the Park with George*, and *Into the Woods*.
– Wrote just the lyrics for earlier classics *West Side Story* (1957) and *Gypsy* (1959).
– Mentored by Oscar Hammerstein II, he worked for over 60 years and won 8 Tony Awards, an Academy Award, a Pulitzer, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
– Died November 26, 2021, at age 91 at his home in Connecticut.
If you grew up with Broadway cast albums on the radio , you’ve definitely heard his work — he changed musicals from simple song-and-dance shows into pieces that felt more like plays, with complicated, very human lyrics.
”remain free” = corporate slaves
enough of the bullshit
“we tried warfare , economic conquest is so much more effective”
ignorance is strength
war is peace
freedom is slavery
the guy wrote it all down
this is the cycle that’s going to bump the price of a congressional house seat to $100 million and that’s the cost “to” the winner so add another hundred million the losers’ campaigns will spend
That ain’t fucking freedom
da fuck
a House seat
you’ve seen the standard to be one of those 435 venal morons
all that money isn’t being spent to defend your freedoms it’s being spent to take them
🤦♂️
and we have seen what they do with that power, they approve data centers hooray
And then dear host uses that technology to make shitty videos that that technology says is shitty
dear God
I think I heard $25 million was by spent outside special interests to defeat Massie in a HOUSE PARTY PRIMARY
money is speech, corporations are people
GTFO
make sure you vote though! 😑
every media product of AI should be annotated with a water/power cost used to produce it
Like nutritional facts, but for media
There’s a regulation for you
complete bullshit
a dull knife cuts your hand, a overly sharp one slices through it
notice that advice compels no purchasing of anything
NEW THREAD again by our trail friend Jack