seriousing up and down

Hanover, Germany

A stork feeds its offspring in their nest in Laatzen near Hanover

Photograph: Julian Stratenschulte/AFP/Getty Images

I was stopped and held by the above photo this morning. It was somehow "worth it" to me even as other, probably more "important" issues came and went on my radar. Storks are important, anyone knows, because they deliver babies. But the other stories left to languish ... not so much.

Eg. Trump's tariff on solar panels has led energy companies to cancel or freeze $2.5 billion in investments; the U.S. shipped several Americans home from China after they were hit by what is apparently the same unsolved sonic mystery that hit the American embassy in Cuba a while back; some 200 Democrats will be represented in a court case opening today that alleges Donald Trump violated the "emolument" clause of the Constitution; Jamie Dimond and Warren Buffett suggest that the hunt for quarterly profits detracts from long-term growth of companies that will power the economic engine in future; what ever happened to climate change as an issue ... and a handful of others .... you can make decisions without any help.

I just haven't got what it takes to serious up.

A bird's feeding, on the other hand, grabs my attention. What, if anything, is wrong with this picture? One picture worth (that's right) 10,000 words. Imagine, there was once a time when 10,000 was conceived as a damn-near inconceivable number.

infallible answer

Inasmuch as everything
Is the answer to
The Question,
Perhaps it would be
Wise to rest your case
In smiles adorning
A simple word like
"Heffalump."

Israel kills another Palestinian rock-thrower

 Friends mourn Ezz El-Deen al-Tamimi, a Palestinian shot three times after he threw a rock.

Rack up another one for the Israelis:

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The Israeli military shot dead a Palestinian during a raid in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, saying a soldier fired back after a man pelted him with a rock.

Does anyone else feel the similarities between Israel shooting-dead Palestinians armed with rocks and knives and the difficulty some American black people feel when running up against or perhaps away from U.S. police departments?

The likely impunity with which the Israeli soldier/shooter will be cloaked -- three bullets at close range by some accounts -- was meanwhile being utilized as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sat down with European Union members and beat the drum for a withdrawal from an Iran-denuclearization deal that Europe remains committed to even after Donald Trump withdrew U.S. support.

We'll push your agenda if you cover our shoot-'em-down policies.

In other words, Netanyahu carries water for, among others, Donald Trump, based partly on the three bullets that killed a 21-year-old rock thrower. Netanyahu has proven over and over again that his distaste for Iran is unbending (his conservative backers expect/demand no less). If there is something to sweeten the anti-Iran pot, so be it. One dead Palestinian. One making-sure soldier. And impunity the likely outcome of any planned "investigation."

Who is whose lap dog in all this -- Trump or Netanyahu?

The Israeli military controls most of the territory of the West Bank, protecting 400,000 Jewish settlers who now live there among around 3 million Palestinians. U.S.-brokered peace talks collapsed in 2014.
Israeli use of force against Palestinians has drawn particular international attention in recent months after at least 120 Palestinians were killed during protests at the Israeli border with the Gaza Strip, including 60 in a single day on May 14.

Trump and Netanyahu -- is that a mid-term election ticket?

Trump dis-invites Philadelphia Eagles

WASHINGTON (AP) — A day after scrubbing a White House visit by the Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles, President Donald Trump appeared to challenge a new NFL policy that requires players to stand if they’re on the field during the national anthem or stay in the locker room.
Trump initially praised the policy after the NFL announced it last month.
Seizing an opportunity to fan a culture war he has stoked, Trump tweeted Tuesday: “Honoring America! NFL, no escaping to Locker Rooms!”

son tests "meditation"

Yesterday, talking on the phone with the elder of my two sons, I was informed that he was taking a swing at "meditation." He came to it, he said, by way of reading the bios of various successful men, each of whom included a meditation component to their panorama ... you know, the "mindfulness et al." schtick.

I felt simultaneously surprised and not surprised: Surprised because in all my years of pursuing a spiritual number, I had never run any of it on my kids outside a Sunday trek for a couple of hours of zazen in my robe and in the zendo on Sundays. Unsurprised because, what the hell, everyone (even my own kids) feels the lash of doubt and uncertainty and unsatisfactoriness ... there are no exemptions, even for my kids.

I think my flaw lay in imagining that I was somehow seminal in his choice instead of realizing that it was just life running its usual number, with or without my help.

We chatted a bit about it, I sent him a couple of things I thought might be useful ... and all the time prayed within that my participation would not screw whatever pooch he had chosen to adopt. On the one hand, I was the dad and seemed to want some sort of linked validation. On the other, life is far more interesting than I find myself.

For all that cud-munching ... how about them apples?!

the return of the Barbie Doll

Like a burlap bag filled with shards of glass, somehow women/men's clothing fashions came tinkling to the fore this morning. Playful, bigoted, just tinkling....

For the ladies:

-- The Lava Lamp Look: Has anyone else noticed the trend that seems to begin with First Lady Melania Trump ... tube-like dresses with perfectly-stuffed tits and ass ... the kind of thing almost no woman of any human proportion can fulfill? Oh yes, and a soupçon (but just a soupçon, mind you) of a belly. And the addition of the hair wig whose tresses dip down to a bosom as smooth-smooth-smooth as Lava Lamp blobs?

-- The Return of the Barbie Doll: The Lava Lamp Look may just be another reminder that the angry, anorexic, tit-less models of the fashion runways are locked in mortal combat with the new-look curves that have been so craftily shaped. No one is that skinny any more than anyone is that curvaceous. Yes, a reconfigured Barbie may have hit the toy stores, but what is left out of that equation is that she migrated to the White House.

For the men:

All the men seem to be migrating to the stick-figure fag suits. Not Donald Trump, of course -- he's a one-off. But all the other high-profile, in-the-public-eye types.... Oh, they are just so cute!



PS. As another personal preference, there is one woman who even stands a chance of displaying both taste and chutzpah in the clothes she wears... and leaves all the others, skinny or blob-like, in the dust: Christine Lagarde: I just get the sense that she likes clothes and refuses to be ruled by fashion.

"Blitz" krieg

Project Blitz: the legislative assault by Christian nationalists to reshape America

Since Donald Trump became president, rightwing groups are helping flood state legislatures with bills that promote hardline Christian conservative views....

“If you are a more liberal Christian, a Jew, or a Muslim, or a non-believer of any sort, or whatever you happen to be, you’re a second class citizen at best.”

And you thought separation of church and state was pretty much established! Ooops. Hey, if Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus and whoever all else can lay claim to exceptionalism, why not Christians?

taxpayer bailout for black lung insurance

I have no doubt that Donald Trump, a man who as candidate for president spoke warmly of the coal industry and its workers, will make sure that black-lung insurance payments will not be foisted off on tax-paying Americans but rather remain seated with the industry that lined its pockets by extracting the coal that no longer enjoys much clean-air favor. Of course, Trump has a track record of letting others pick up the bill ... why should coal miners or their sissy supporters be any different? Surely Trump wouldn't let down some of his most ardent supporters.

And if you believe any of that hogwash, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A federal fund to help U.S. coal miners disabled by black lung disease will require a multibillion-dollar taxpayer bailout if Congress does not extend or increase the tax on coal production that funds it, according to a government report on Monday.

fake-news Melania Trump

As of May 1, 2018, U.S. President Donald Trump had uttered 3001 false or dubious statements, according to Fact Checker as reported in the Washington Post.

In the 466 days since he took the oath of office, President Trump has made 3,001 false or misleading claims, according to The Fact Checker’s database that analyzes, categorizes and tracks every suspect statement uttered by the president.

That’s an average of nearly 6.5 claims a day.

When we first started this project for the president’s first 100 days, he averaged 4.9 claims a day. Slowly, the average number of claims has been creeping up.

Meanwhile, the whereabouts and what's-she-doings of the president's wife, Melania Trump, seem to offer up a cornucopia of fake-news potential.

[The] US first lady has not been seen in public since she went into hospital [May 10] for a procedure to treat a benign kidney condition. [She was released May 14]

True, she is due for an appearance later today, after skipping the G-7 meeting she begged off. So if a fake news story is to be constructed, it's important to start building a fake-news foundation before it's too late. Under what circumstances has the First Lady gone absent from the media for the better part of a month?

Possibilities:
-- She had a psychotic break right there at the White House dinner table. Abruptly she stood, pointed a finger at her spouse and hollered, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more" before stomping out the of the room. Fears immediately rose that the First Lady's wrath might well extend to a cross-country publicity tour ... a tell-all about what it's like to be a trophy wife to a guy who doesn't keep trophies.
-- The above scenario accentuated by an attempt to stab her husband with a MacDonald's plastic fork and accompanied the attack with the words, "Here's something for the Americans who want to make America great again!"

Grab a beer. Think of your own fake news preference and have at it. China, North Korea, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, trade wars .... keeping up with the "fake news" Donald Trump sees at every crossroads is impossible. It's time to take "fake news" and make "one giant leap for mankind." Out-fake-news the fake-news-maker in chief.

His wife, I'm sure you know, has already served him with divorce papers but now fears she might be thrown from some White House balcony as a form of retribution: One-upping the Fake News King is frowned upon. How about putting her in the hospital with a 'kidney' problem? Sounds good to me. Later, the no-worries kidney can prove malign and Melania can be shipped back to recuperate in native Slovenia... lots of mountains and deserted castles tucked away from Twitter and Facebook. Nice, sound-proof places in which 'kidneys' can properly heal. Sorta like this?

No, that's not Melania, but if you look closely, it kind of looks like her cousin, doesn't it? She's the one who simultaneously married three men and an aardvark because there was no law against it.

PS:

June 2018 • 3:12am

Melania Trump attended her first public engagement on Monday after more than three weeks out of the public eye.
The First Lady's appearance at the event for military families, her first public engagement since her hospitalisation for a kidney procedure last month, came after it emerged she would not accompany her husband to the G7 summit in Canada, or the Singapore meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

John Oliver on guardianship

breeding season

Scotland

A northern gannet picks up seaweed on Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth where thousands of the sea birds gather nest material as they prepare for the new breeding season, forming the largest single-island colony of gannets in the world

Photograph: Jane Barlow/PA [Guardian]

Edward Snowden revisited

It has been five years since National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden began releasing stolen classified documents to the press.

On June 5, 2013, The Guardian in Britain published the first story based on Snowden’s disclosures. It revealed that a secret court order was allowing the U.S. government to get Verizon to share the phone records of millions of Americans. Later stories, including those in The Washington Post, disclosed other snooping and how U.S. and British spy agencies had accessed information from cables carrying the world’s telephone and internet traffic.

Snowden, 34, remains holed up in Russia. Detractors continue to label him a "traitor." Supporters see him as more of a "whistleblower." And yet the further the issue gets from its 2013 starting point, the more flimsy the government accusations appear: To date, not a single skein of concrete evidence shows that Snowden was careless with the releases or that anyone was hurt in any serious sense. The word "traitor" rests on the belief that what the government says must be true because it is the government. When the government says something should be secret, the rest of the nation should agree ... just because.

“It’s been almost five years since newspapers around the world began reporting on the Snowden archive and the NSA has offered all kinds of shrill and reckless rhetoric about the ‘damage’ it has caused, but never any evidence of a single case of a life being endangered let alone harmed,” [former Guardian reporter Glenn] Greenwald said.

There are plenty of plaints on the other side of the ledger, but as the years stretch on, the unwillingness to cite even one fleshed-out concrete instance of damage takes the air out of the patriotic balloon. "We can't tell you because it is secret" is a tale that just doesn't wash as time passes by.

And to think that in the five years since Snowden launched his cannon ball, another arguably traitorous figure has lurched into the limelight.

glasses (cough-cough) make you smarter

In the joke-dotted past, there is the one about the first-grade teacher, Miss Jones, who was drilling her students in vocabulary. "Frugal," she explained, meant thrifty; a frugal person was one who saved. She then addressed the class and asked little Johnny if he would try to use the word "frugal" in a sentence.

"Once upon a time," Johnny began, "there lived a beautiful princess. Her father, the wicked king, locked her up in a high tower. One day, as the princess stood by the only window in her tower, a handsome prince came riding by and the princess called out, "Frugal me! Frugal me!" So the prince frugal-ed her and they lived happily ever after."

It was this silly that came to mind when reading the story about research that seemed to show that people who wore glasses might, in point of non-mythological fact, be as much as 30% smarter than those who didn't.

If you wear glasses I’ve got some good news: you may well be smarter than the average person. A new study published in the journal Nature Communications has found that needing to wear glasses is associated with higher levels of intelligence. But you probably knew that already....
It’s not just a pop culture trope – a University of Edinburgh study has found intelligent people are 30% more likely to have genes related to poor eyesight.

The story -- which does have other aspects -- left me wondering, 1. Since I own and use three pairs of glasses, am I 90% more likely to be smart or is my feebleness in math showing its hold over me once more? 2. Who makes this shit up and more, who pays for it?

I have every confidence that someone will step in here and frugal me.

cultural differences

old-fart adventures

Spent the better part of the morning and early afternoon with what can only be described as old-fart adventures -- to wit, getting a computer tech to unravel Google Chrome from this computer (I'm not a game addict) and replacing the most up-to-date version of Solitaire with an older, slower, more visible and less-ad-strewn version.

Am I exhausted? Of course, but then damn near anything wears me out these days. Somewhere I read that 20 percent of the body's energy goes into thinking, when it occurs. If true (and I am skeptical of that sort of quantification), it accounts for the drowsies that overtake me after a reading or writing session that is followed almost immediately by a feeling I have actually done some work ... when clearly, based on the five senses, I have accomplished precisely squat.

The twinkling lights dim down and with them flow the energies of consciousness. Shiiieeet!

I'd love to say I would spend the rest of the day chopping some ancient oak out on the back-40, but it's not true. Time for a nap.

So it goes.

$210 million church settlement

It wasn't so long ago -- it feels like a couple or three years -- that the Roman Catholic Church expressed its concern for the alleged victims of clergy sexual abuse with what can only be described as the Vatican Two-Step -- endless obfuscations and 'caring' press releases lobbed at men and women who were once hurt. Now the tsunami seems to be reversing itself: Victims have learned that the damage done cannot be expunged or healed -- and the time cannot be reclaimed -- so the next best thing is to hit the world's largest corporation where it hurts ... the pocketbook. Suddenly, the humble-pie fabrications are told by voices other than the church.

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis has agreed to a $210 million settlement with 450 victims of clergy sexual abuse as part of its plan for bankruptcy reorganization, making it the second-largest U.S. payout in the scandal that rocked the nation’s Roman Catholic Church.
Victims’ attorney Jeff Anderson said the settlement was reached with the victims and the archdiocese and includes accountability measures. The money, a total of $210,290,724, will go into a pot to pay survivors, with the amount for each survivor to be determined.

And from the Guardian:

Pope Francis has become the first pope to publicly denounce a “culture of abuse and cover-up” in the Catholic church, saying he was ashamed that neither he nor church leaders in Chile truly ever listened to victims of the country’s sexual abuse scandal.

if only life were that simple ... or complex

Late one day last week, the much-wrinkled, good-natured face of a woman I estimated to be in her 90's looked out from the TV screen and said simply, "Men love war. Always have. Always will."

The topic that enfolded her observation was lost to me. The simplicity and good-nature embedded itself in my mind. "Relax," her face said to me. "It's just a fact. Relax and find something useful to do."

Isn't it funny how anyone might search and dig and sweat and swear in an effort to boil things down to a single simplicity -- a universal solvent of some sort? In the searching, the reasoning is that if the single simplicity were inhaled and digested, the topic might be resolved and the search would end.

But the fact seems to be that once having shaped and attained the simplicity -- whatever it is -- the mind rushes forward and asserts, "Well, it's not quite that simple..." at which point the search for a new and improved simplicity begins. There is research and parsing and dissecting and charts and history and all sorts of efforts to round off the understanding, to explain why and how "it's not that simple."

It is that simple, on the one hand.
It's not that simple on the other.
And the beat goes on.
There is a period on the sentence that brooks no periods.

It all reminds me of the old joke in which a bird flies around a mountain top in ever-smaller circles until finally it flies up its own asshole and disappears.

Also of the old third-grade silly:

Everybody's doin' it
Doin' it
Doin' it --
Pickin' their nose and
Chewin' it
Chrewin' it
Chewin' it.

And of the words attributed to Gautama:

"It is not what others do and do not do that is my concern. It is what I do and do not do -- that is my concern."

"Men love war. Always have. Always will."

shrinks, firefighters and facial hair

Among the imponderables I am unlikely to iron out before my death is this: Is it true, as some niggling part of me insists, that firefighters and shrinks have disproportionately more facial hair by ratio than the population at large?

What would I know if I knew the answer? Nothing, perhaps, but the niggling might abate.

"Class of '57" offering in music and song

Here, as a follow-up to the "Replacing the National Anthem" blog post, is the musical version by The Statler Brothers:

as if an eruption were not enough

Officials at the Pompeii archaeological site have announced the discovery of the skeleton of a man crushed by an enormous stone while trying to flee the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.

spicy insults

An insult I have always enjoyed was this: "She's ugly and her mother dresses her funny." It has both soft edges and sharp places. Anyway, I wish I'd said that.

Closer to the bloody bone and yet a to-and-fro I always admired was posted in a men's room stall at the army base where I was once stationed. "Niger [sic]" one hand-written message began, "go back to Africai [sic]." Below it, in much better penmanship was the rejoinder, "I'm taking your mother and sister with me."

A good insult is not always easy to find. More, there is what I always took to be a fact of life: Everyone needs a certain thickness of skin when passing off this mortal coil. Someone's bound to insult you or your friends or your beliefs and the best you can do is swallow and move forward. And at the end of the day, I suspect the world would be a lesser place if all the insults were swept up and whisked away: Purity can be tiresome.

Now comes the tale of Roseanne Barr whose resurrected TV serial "Roseanne" was abruptly canceled after Barr shot her mouth off:

In a since deleted comment on Twitter, Barr compared Valerie Jarrett, a former adviser to President Barack Obama, to an ape. Barr wrote that if the Islamist political movement “muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby = vj."

Various Google sites say that Jarrett is black or African-American or whatever the non-insulting terminology is these days. So Barr stepped into a multi-faceted shit pile... black, 'terrorism,' and who knows what other associative bells she set to ringing.

[It may be worth noting here that resurrection of black comedian Bill Cosby's "The Cosby Show" seems to have no problem with re-runs even as the actor faces a raft of insulting charges of philandering.]

This is an era of great 'sensitivity.' Politicians and moguls are dropping like flies from the parapets of their grand castles. Women who were abused in the past come forward and are, at long last, believed. Victims of the Vatican are listened to. Black victims of police bullets come forward with yet another compelling tale. A presumption of guilt seems as pervasive as once a presumption of innocence was. Quit before you get fired ... and a lot of people are quitting.

But with virtue tapping at the door of insults, I find myself balking. Where is the line between driven-snow decency and a little sass on the seas of this life.

Honestly, I can't draw the lines in these sands. A little kindness goes a long way. But does a lot of kindness go too far? Please spare me the oleaginous rejoinders.

I honestly don't know, but I do know that lately I have noticed a growing enjoyment of horse radish. 

as dangerous as communism -- accountancy

A Guardian article points out the unsound practices that accountancy once was charged with ferreting out. And you thought communism was a threat to capitalism.

Just four major global firms – Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), Ernst & Young (EY) and KPMG – audit 97% of US public companies and all the UK’s top 100 corporations, verifying that their accounts present a trustworthy and fair view of their business to investors, customers and workers.... There are no serious rivals to undercut them. What’s more, since audits are a legal requirement almost everywhere, this is a state-guaranteed cartel.
[E]conomist JK Galbraith had ended his landmark history of the 1929 "Great Crash" by warning of the reluctance of “men of business” to speak up “if it means disturbance of orderly business and convenience in the present”. (In this, he thought, “at least equally with communism, lies the threat to capitalism”.) Galbraith could have been prophesying accountancy a few decades later, now led by men of business rather than watchdogs of business.[B]y shaping the world in which they operate, the accountants have ensured that they are unlikely to face their own downfall. As the world stumbles from one crisis to the next, its economy precarious and its core financial markets inadequately reformed, it won’t be the accountants who pay the price of their failure to hold capitalism to account. It will once again be the millions who lose their jobs and their livelihoods...
[T]he demise of sound accounting became a critical cause of the early 21st-century financial crisis. Auditing limited companies, made mandatory in Britain around a hundred years earlier, was intended as a check on the so-called “principal/agent problem” inherent in the corporate form of business. As Adam Smith once pointed out, “managers of other people’s money” could not be trusted to be as prudent with it as they were with their own. When late-20th-century bankers began gambling with eye-watering amounts of other people’s money, good accounting became more important than ever. But the bean counters now had more commercial priorities and – with limited liability of their own – less fear for the consequences of failure.
 

up and at 'em!

Good morning, gods and godesses!

Up and at 'em!

have meagaphone, lack subject

As it strikes me this morning, this is the era of the megaphone: Everyone, based on the leadership of U.S. president Donald Trump, has got one but nobody can find anything to say. Me too.

What's to be done when everyone has a megaphone and no one has anything left to say?

In the president's lexicon, there are endless things that seem to be "very, very" good (think third-grade book report for those who may remember books) and yet what those things are turned to dust under examination. If the president stands for nothing -- will stand up for nothing -- why should anyone else. Everything is "very, very" good unless it's bad ... in which case the blame is placed on someone other than the president. The chief purveyor of "false news" is a leader for one and all these days.

Coal mining jobs that were promised during the presidential campaign? It's not Trump's fault that all those coal miners are still out of work. Tax cut for the well-heeled? Everyone benefits, except those who really don't. The longest war in American history? No problem, except that it is.

Making a "better" deal with Iran? Well, there's some confusion about that, but the downside is all the fault of Democrats and Trump has yet to enunciate his better deal in the same way he and his cohorts have failed to create a new health law that will replace what predecessor Barack Obama cobbled together with a lot of effort.

Who needs effort when you've got a megaphone? I'm no better.

I've got a megaphone and I'm not afraid to use it. I really do wish there were something of substance I could megaphone-ize ... but it all seems to slip away in this era of the megaphone.

What a crass neighborhood we live in.

Ms. Geek Rwanda

Ms. Geek Rwanda

After years of women in evening gowns vying for the title of national beauty queen, glamour is giving way to geekery in Rwanda.
A group of female tech entrepreneurs decided it was time to ditch Miss Rwanda for a different kind of competition, one that judged women on brilliance rather than beauty. It was time for Ms Geek.
The first Ms Geek Rwanda was crowned in 2014, and the competition has since expanded to include other African countries under the unifying banner of Ms Geek Africa. The event, open to girls and women aged 13 to 25, encourages contestants to use technology to solve everyday problems in their communities. The finalists receive business training and the winner is awarded financial backing to help realise her idea.

filing "music compendium"

Just filing, in no especial order, a random and expandable collection of music that can melt me from time to time. I feel naked even posting it, but don't want to hunt it down if it goes down the computer maw somehow.

MUSIC COMPENDIUM

JOHN PRINE/ iris dement ----  IN SPITE OF OURSELVES -- http://youtu.be/Le4248SiLN0

banco sabadell .. Beethoven's 9th CHORUS  -- http://youtu.be/GBaHPND2QJg

MCGARRIGAL ... LOG DRIVER'S WALTZ ... Https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upsZZ2s3xv8

OPENING OSLO ... SLAVE CHORUS FROM AIDA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3Qx_oMH62U

Terere obande african chorus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1caVN7EHL4

James Taylor Sweet Baby James  -- http://youtu.be/iSkaEP2ZqbY

Kiri te Kanawa ... Mozart ... the Golden Flute ... Bei männern, welche liebe fühlen ... http://youtu.be/44TlKhHLH4I

BRAHMS WALTZ IN a FLAT ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPLfOMqLz0E#t=27

LET'S GO FLY A KITE (SAVING MR. BANKS) : https://youtu.be/viMiMku-w2Q

TENNESSEE WALTZ -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cea9oQYKv5k ... NOT PERFECT

I WOULD DO ANYTHING FOR LOVE -- https://youtu.be/1QMlNmb_31Q

HOW CAN I KEEP FROM SINGING -- PETE SEEGER -- https://youtu.be/AH72dgNSAsw

I NEVER PROMISED YOU A ROSE GARDEN ... LYNN ANDERSON... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beKFjPEU_Fw

HALLELUJAH -- LEONARD COHEN -- https://youtu.be/YrLk4vdY28Q

I AM WEARY, LET ME REST (KISS ME MOTHER) ... COX FAMILY ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyOWKhsWSpQ

La boheme - "O Soave Fanciulla"

https://youtu.be/LYB5QS8LS-4

Nozze  Figaro

https://youtu.be/CQ8ZHilxdm8

Song from 1995 "Babe" movie: https://youtu.be/83LNTbeatHE

MASTER AND COMMANDER (LAST) BOCCHERINI --

https://youtu.be/l78VNe_dhAM

BOCCHERINI COMPENDIUM -- https://youtu.be/7p94DFyBBwc

BEETHOVEN Rubenstein concerto # 5 The Emperor -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K25fZRwbeGM

DOES YOUR CHEWING GUM LOSE ITS FLAVOR -- https://youtu.be/x6bFTVi0hHs

ROY ORBISON -- PRETTY WOMAN -- https://youtu.be/_PLq0_7k1jk

BEATLES -- NORWEGIAN WOOD -- https://youtu.be/HnN4f73yvno

BEYOND THE IRON GATE --

GOOFING OFF SUITE ... PETE SEEGER ...

https://youtu.be/yiTBcD36_G4

DIMMING OF THE DAY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbzbWwINDYg