Do You Know What A Fox Sounds Like?

I've heard this sound in the woods before and never knew what it was.



And here's another:

Pokey Lafarge - "Central Time"

A St. Louis 30s French type dance band on David Letterman's show about a month ago. Good fun.

Orson's Rant

You must have heard by now about Orson Scot Card in the news comparing Obama to Hitler, but have you actually read his blog essay for yourself? He sounds like he's suddenly turned into Glen Beck:

 

Orson's Essay

 

I'm fairly conservative I guess, but I can't take these paranoid tea party types. They're everything that's wrong with conservatism. This essay is absolutely bizarre, and I say this as a fan of Card's books. I own several. But this is enough to make any conservative want to cut off all ties with republicans and libertarian knuckleheads. Enough already! Paranoia is not conservatism.

The Past Comes Walking Into The Present

Here's a photo I found in a news article today. It's one of several old photos that have been colorized. This is of course Mark Twain. People often think that old photos are bad photos shot with inferior cameras. Actually, camera technology has not really changed that much since 1900 or so. I've seen many photos from over a hundred years ago that have incredible quality, and this is one of them. However, once it's been properly colorized (using what are known period color schemes for the clothing, furniture etc. of the day), it becomes astounding! It's as though the past has just walked into the present. And the past doesn't seem so different after all. I feel like I could have been having a conversation with Twain yesterday.

Vatican Priest Accused of Money Smuggling-Laundering

Nunzio Scarano

Interesting article today from the Christian Science Monitor about a priest at the Vatican, Rev. Nunzio Scarano, who was caught along with two cohorts trying to smuggle 26 million dollars in cash on a plane going from Switzerland to Italy. The money was owned by a family that has a shipping company in Naples. He was apparently going to "privately" deposit the money into a Vatican bank either to help the family avoid paying taxes on it, or perhaps to launder it in the case that it might have been illegally gotten money.

What caught my attention more than anything was the fact that all three men met through their membership in the Constantine Order of St. George, a society of ecclesiastical knights who's history is sketchy at best. The article also mentions the last great Vatican banking scandal in the 1980s when the chairman of an Italian bank in which the Vatican was the primary shareholder was found hanging dead under the Blackfriars Bridge and five members of the Italian Mafia were tried for his murder, but all were acquitted for lack of evidence.

In short, I think it's great that Pope Francis is doing his best to straighten out the Vatican banking mess, but if big money and the Mafia are involved, he's going to have a very difficult undertaking ahead of him. We may start seeing dead priests hanging from bridges in the near future.

The article is here.

Remembering The Grit Newspaper

I don't know what made me think of this today, but for some reason the Grit Newspaper popped into my head. It was really geared toward kids and small town people. The stories were just fun trivia and human interest for the most part. No downer stuff at all. And it had some very fun word games that we always looked forward to playing.

The Grit was sold in the early 80s and changed considerably. It still has small town appeal but nothing the kids would care about. You can find it online now, but don't waste your time. It just isn't the same. Here's a photo of an old copy from the early 70s when I was reading it:

Derek Trucks

Derek is, oddly enough, the son of Allman Brothers drummer Butch Trucks. I say "oddly' because he's a slide guitarist who plays like the second coming of Duane Allman rather than his drummer father. Here he is at only 13 years of age playing like a man of 50:



Derek is 34 now and married to singer/songwriter Susan Tedeschi. (A more perfect match I've never seen.) They perform together most of the time these days, but Derek still plays with the Allman Brothers Band quite a bit too. Here they both are with the ABB backing them on the old Bob Dylan song, Don't Think Twice. Derek's solo starts at 3:17. He gets better every year.