Mike Oldfield – The Source of Secrets

An evening pause: Actually, this is three pieces, “The Source of the Secrets,” “Secrets,” and “Far above the Clouds.”

Hat tip “t-dub” Tom Wilson.

I’d like one piece of feedback about this video. When you watch it embedded on Behind the Black, is the music interrupted by commercials? That happens when you watch on YouTube. I am curious it this happens when a song is embedded on another webpage.

Dean Martin & Rick Nelson – Rio Bravo

An evening pause: This medley of songs were performed as part of the Howard Hawks’ 1959 western Rio Bravo. The first song, “My rifle, pony, and me,” was actually adapted from the main theme by Dimitri Tiomkin from Hawks’ earlier classic, Red River (1948). When Diane and I were watching this recently, I recognized the music, but it took a while to figure out where I’d heard it before.

Both movies are examples of the kind of entertaining and rich films Hollywood used to produce, routinely.

Van Johnson – Flim Flam Floo

An evening pause: This song comes from the first full television movie, The Pied Piper of Hamelin, first aired on NBC in 1957, and then subsequently re-aired almost yearly for the next decade. If you want to watch it, it is available on the internet archive here.

I post it today because it is a perfect expression of the hopeful culture of the 1960s that made possible the Apollo 11 lunar landing that occurred fifty-three years ago today. As the song says, “The world is filled with wonderment and magic,” and then insists “You can find the beauty in all you perceive/Just believe that it’s there in view.”

I recently rediscovered this movie of my childhood, and was astonished to discover that though I hadn’t heard this song in more than fifty years, I remembered its message as if I had only watched it yesterday. Its message was what my parent’s generation believed, and tried with all their might to pass on to their children. Their belief made the Apollo 11 landing possible. Sadly, most of my baby boomer generation decided to reject this hopeful vision, thus producing the increasingly gloomy society we have today.

Let us work to recapture that wonder and hope. Only then can our children breathe free to achieve some true wonders of their own.

Thanks to Wayne Devette for clipping this song from the full movie for me.

Blacklisted Americans fight back

And clowns should not be running the schools
And the clowns must be fired, now!

Today’s blacklist column will be a surprisingly optimistic one (though I fully admit that I might be fooling myself), based on two stories that appeared in the press yesterday.

First, there was this story out of Virginia, where a new Christian private school with an initial capacity for 500 students received in less than a week more than 2,500 applications from parents.

Loudoun County has been the subject of so much controversy, that Pastor Gary knew there would be a demand locally. What he didn’t expect is to hear from parents in at least 27 states eager for their children to attend.

Cornerstone has been inundated with inquiries, and not just from parents. Teachers want out of public schools too. “By the end of the week, we had over 2,500 students pre-registered. I got over 450 emails from teachers wanting employment.” [emphasis mine]

The school, Cornerstone Christian Academy, is in Loudoun County, where the local government school board has been aggressively promoting the queer and Marxist agendas while enforcing irrational mask policies on little kids.

The enthusiastic response from both parents and teachers strongly indicates that the public has finally become conscious of the leftist and queer policies of too many local school boards, and will no longer tolerate it. It also suggests that there is not only sufficient demand for the establishment of many more private schools, both religious and secular, there will be plenty of qualified teachers available to run them.

Nor is this private religious school the only one that has opened in Loudoun County. One year ago a Christian high school, dubbed Evergreen Christian School, opened in Leesburg. Though small, with only 50 students initially, it expects to grow quickly.

This movement to private schools will likely accelerate nationwide, not just because of the intransigence of leftist-dominated government school boards and the growing demand from parents for sane alternatives. It appears that state legislatures are beginning to take action to encourage it. In Arizona for example, the governor signed into law last week a bill that expands school choice to all parents, with full subsidies from the state. According to this article,
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Victory Boyd – The Star Spangled Banner

An evening pause: Victory Boyd was supposed to perform the national anthem at the opening game of the NFL’s 2021 season. They canceled her because she has refused to get vaccinated for religious reasons. She responded with this performance made available to all. The NFL should burn in hell.

Her passion in singing the last two lines of the anthem are important. The words, “The land of the free, the home of the brave,” are meant to remind us that you can’t have the former without the latter. Right now, every time I see someone mindlessly wearing a mask I wonder if the latter still exists.

Sing it! Believe it! Make ’22 the year that freedom and courage return to America.

Hat tip Mike Nelson.

Lainey Wilson – Things A Man Oughta Know

An evening pause: Unlike yesterday’s song, this song should be the anthem for today’s generation, especially the men. The chorus:

How to know when it’s love
How to stay when it’s tough
How to know you’re messing up a good thing
And how to fix it fore it’s too late
And yea I know a boy
Who gave up and got it wrong
If you really love a woman you don’t let her go
Yeah I know few things a man oughta know

Hat tip Dan Morris.

Jeff Beck and Johnny Depp – This is a Song for Miss Hedy Lamarr

An evening pause: This could be the anthem of anyone younger than 20 after their experience during the past two years. Masks and fear-mongering and lies, lies, LIES. It breaks my heart to know that these lies have robbed a whole generation of hope and faith in the greatness that is possible in all humans. And without hope or faith in doing the impossible, not even the possible will be easy.

Note too that Hedy Lamarr proved in her life that the impossible was possible.

Hat tip Wayne Devette.

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