A nightly pause from the news to give the reader/viewer a bit of classic entertainment.
An evening pause: To quote from the youtube page: “A live session from the 1991/92 BBC Scotland broadcast, featuring the Cunningham brothers from Silly Wizard, Charlie MacKerron and Donald Shaw from Capercaillie, Ian MAcDonald from Ossian and various members of the Rankin Family, from Canada.”
It’s all good, but stay with it for the Irish dancing near the end.
An evening pause: In Glacier National Park in August 2011. From Mark “Indy” Kochte.
An evening pause: Read by Bosco Hogan, as Yeats.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence.
An evening pause: In honor of the 100th anniversary of the sending of the first round-the-world telegram on August 20, 1911, here is the story of the real inventor of the telegraph. And it ain’t what you think.
An evening pause: Danielle “Ate the Sandwich” Anderson.
An evening pause: As performed at Woodstock, 1969.
Go, and beat your crazy heads against the sky.
Try, and see beyond the houses in your eyes.
It’s okay to shoot the moon.
An evening pause: Fifty years ago today Soviet cosmonaut Gherman Titov became the second Russian to fly in space, and the first to stay in orbit more than one day. During his seventeen orbit flight he also was the first human to experience space sickness and to sleep in space.
The newsreel below is somewhat comical, as the Soviets were not very forthcoming with information. To provide visuals the newsreel used film footage showing a V2 rocket from World War II, as well as a very unrealistic globe with an equally unrealistic spacecraft to “demonstrate the course of an orbit around the earth.”
Nonetheless, because the newsreel is of that time, it illustrates well the fear the west had of the Soviet’s success in space. For a communist nation to be so far ahead of the U.S., which so far had only flown two suborbital flights, was a challenge to the free world that could not stand.
An evening pause: This lovely and poignant scene from the 1945 film, A Bell for Adano, showcases the superb acting of Gene Tierney and John Hodiak. He is an American commander of Italian descent put in charge of an Italian village now under U.S. rule near the end of World War II. She is a local Italian girl longing to find her sweetheart who went off to fight for Italy and is now missing.
The movie was based on a short but profound book by John Hersey. And what I remember most from that book is this speech by the Hodiak character in trying to explain to the Italians the right way for government officials to act:
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An evening pause:
And when the music plays
And when the words are
Touched with sorrow
When the music plays
I hear the sound
I had to follow
Once upon a time
Once beneath the stars
The universe was ours
Love was all we knew
And all I knew was you
I wonder if you know
I wonder if you think about it
Once upon a time
In your wildest dreams
