One Voice Children’s Choir – America the Beautiful

An evenig pause: Man, do these kids belt this out.

This was once a standard that all kids sang in school. I doubt they teach it anymore. Even when they did, they would rarely make the meaning of the lyrics very clear (Read them all, they are quite profound). Consider for example the most well know first chorus:

America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

It asks for God’s grace, demands goodness from us all, for the sake of brotherhood.. I’ll take that aspiration any day over the modern hateful, diversive Marxist ideologies of critical race theory that strives to tear people apart and instill distrust and racial bigotry.

Hat tip Dan Morris.

Jim Nabors – Impossible Dream

An evening pause: Performed in season four, 1967, of the Gomer Pyle television show, where Nabors played Gomer Pyle as a country bumpkin. When he sang this, however, he shocked not only his sergeant, he surprised the nation, since few knew he was such a polished singer.

The song is from my childhood, when Americans were all hopeful, confident, and knew their nation’s real history, based on liberty and freedom, a history that had strived consistently to achieve that for everyone.

Hat tip Tom Biggar.

Don McLean – Vincent

An evening pause: Performed live 1999.

I often empathize greatly with this song, and its closing verses:

Now I think I know
What you tried to say to me
And how you suffered for your sanity
And how you tried to set them free

They would not listen, they’re not listening still
Perhaps they never will

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers – Lonesome Polecat

An evening pause: This song, from the 1954 MGM classic musical, was one of the first evening pauses I posted back in 2010. As Diane and I recently rewatched the musical, I think it time to repost it. As I said then,

This haunting song from the movie Seven Brides for Seven Brothers is notable not only because of the beauty of the music and dancing, but because the entire number is shot as one take, no cuts. Everyone, from the actors with their axes to the crew moving the camera on its dolly and crane, had to be right on cue for everything to work.

Having spent almost twenty years in the movie business, I can promise you that this is not easy.

The 2010 evening pause uses the original voice of red-haired Matt Mattox, which was dubbed for the movie.

Lemon Pipers – Green Tambourine

An evening pause: From yesterday’s cutting edge graphics we go to the early days of television color special effects, taped in 1968. Hardly as convincing, but with a sense of light-hearted fun that is quite infectious.

I also wonder how much drugs were involved with the writing, recording, playing and televising of this song.

Hat tip Tom Biggar.

I am still in need for evening pause suggestions. If you’ve suggested before you know the routine. If you haven’t and want submit something, say so in a comment and I will forward you the guidelines. Don’t reveal your suggestion in the comment, or I won’t be able to use it.

Blender FLIP Fluids Addon

An evening pause: What you are looking at here appears to be a demo video of a software addon that provides users with all types of liquid visuals. And creating realistic flowing water is not easy, as the splashes and waves represent chaotic behavior which is very hard to model.

Hat tip Cotour, who adds, “At some point in the future there will be ‘reality’ and no one will be able to tell the difference.”

Peter, Paul and Mary – Don’t Ever Take Away My Freedom

An evening pause: A nice intro to the weekend as well as a fitting closing to my July fund-raising campaign. Strangely, there are no live performances of this song by Peter, Paul, & Mary available on the web. Could it be that they themselves became uncomfortable with its sentiments in later years, being hardcore leftists? I wonder. Consider the lyrics:

[Third verse]
Now when I’m old and thinking over the life that I’ve led
If there’s one final wish left to me
I will pray for the children yet to be born
I will pray that they will always live free

[Chorus]
Don’t ever take away their freedom
Don’t ever take it away
Let us cherish and keep that one part of our lives
And the rest we’re gonna find one of these days

These are not the sentiments of most leftists today. The last thing they want is freedom for all. What they want now are mandates, edicts, rules, regulations, and a boot smashing the face of all humans, forever, in the guise of a muzzle.

Note also that the song opens with Home on the Range, which is how PP&M originally recorded for their album, Peter, Paul, & Mommy Two.

Glen Campbell – William Tell Overture

An evening pause: “Hi-Yo, Silver! Away!”

Hat tip Mike Nelson.

Note: I am in need of new evening pause suggestions. If you wish to suggest something that you think the readers here will like, mention that you have something to suggest in a comment but don’t, I repeat, don’t say what the suggestion is. I will contact you directly to get it, also providing you the guidelines for offering more suggestions.

The Music Man – Till There Was You

An evening pause: Sung by Shirley Jones, from one of the greatest American musical films ever made, The Music Man (1962).

Diane and I have been watching a lot of those ’40s, 50s, and 60s American musicals. To today’s bitter and cynical youth, these films might seem to portray a too-perfect world filled with too much happiness and wealth. And while there is some truth to that cynical view, it is mostly wrong. The America portrayed in these films was actually quite like this. People were free, they were generally happy, and they lived a life of prosperity that no one before had ever seen. Nor are future generations likely to see such a life again during the coming dark centuries. These musicals provide a window into that time.

These musicals as well as most of the Hollywood movies prior to the 1960s are also quite unique in the history of literature and art in that they told stories not of kings or rulers or nobility, but of ordinary people. Such stories were rarely told before the coming of America. This fact also tells us much about the culture that then existed. It was ruled by those ordinary people, and thus the art and literature catered to them.

Which is why the Marxist power-driven culture that now dominates this country is desperate to ban the viewing of such art and the learning of that history. It tells a tale they cannot stomach.

Loudon Wainwright – One-man Guy

An evening pause: I first posted this as a pause back in 2012. Time to post it again, as I empathize with Wainwright even more now than then.

We all travel a path in life. Once Americans celebrated those who chose an independent and unique path. That no longer appears true, not that it would make any difference to Wainwright, or to me. For some, to chose a unique path and be true to yourself is the only option.

1776 – Hatching an Egg

A evening pause: On this day, July 2nd, the day the Founding Fathers actually signed the Declaration of Independence, I think it appropriate to once again watch this wonderful song from the 1976 movie version of the 1972 musical, 1776. As I said in earlier posts of this song on Independence Day, “not only did the musical capture the essence of the men who made independency happen, it is also a rollicking and entertaining work of art.”

And despite the hate being spewed against America and its founding principle that all humans are created free with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that truth still shines. As John Kennedy said of himself, ourselves, and these founding fathers. “We stand for freedom.”

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