I’m crazy for the harpsichord, and I was looking for a harpsichord rendition of Ding-Dong Merrily on High. There’s supposed to be a harpsichord in here, somewhere.
But never mind! Go ahead–just try to sit still while this is playing! It’s the Idaho Falls Symphony Orchestra, with several high school choirs, and it’s just wonderful.
(Thanks to Susan for the nooze tip)
So you want to be a teacher!
Starting with the 2020 school year, a new California state law will make it illegal to suspend students for disobeying their teachers (https://www.kget.com/news/state-news/california-public-schools-cant-suspend-students-for-disobeying-teachers-new-law-says/?fbclid=IwAR2QG91Q1DWFdYRyuOTFBzyIP6HZvhaOC0mcqNamb-_pdH3PqBkHukqZJ7M). What an idea!
This will apply in 2020 to kids in grades 1-6. In 2021 through 2025, it will be expanded to cover students in grades 6-8.
The “reason,” as the virtue-signaling legislators call it, is because suspension for misbehavior is “disproportionately used against students of color.”
As a former teacher, I can’t imagine the chaos that will ensue. Suspension is a next-to-last resort, expulsion being the last resort, for getting disruptive students out of the classroom so that some education, at least, can go on. To discard that disciplinary measure is to give up all hope of maintaining order. And don’t tell me I’m wrong, because I’ve been there, done that.
Of course, none of these Far Left Crazy legislators will ever have to worry about trying to teach in a classroom where hooligans run wild. Nope, they’re perfectly safe from the consequences of their actions. They usually are. They make sure of that.
Government by liberals means ruin.
You have to wonder. Do Far Left Crazies actually believe the twaddle that they spout, or is it just their way of passing the time?
Some kook at leftid Salon.com sees in the Hallmark Channel, and in its perpetual flow of schmaltz, “patriarchal and authoritarian values” which are (gasp!) “white, heteronormative, sexist, provincial” and surely add up to “white supremacy” and are, at best, “fascist propaganda” (https://www.salon.com/2019/12/25/hallmark-christmas-movies-fascist-propaganda/). This writer wishes to be taken seriously as a clear-headed, fair-minded, penetrating critic. She is the author of a book whose otherwise profane title includes the phrase “Trump-Worshiping Monsters.” No bias here.
Earlier, Hallmark set a lot of decent people’s teeth on edge by including a clip of a lesbian “wedding” in one of its commercials. Faced with wide protests, they pulled the ad. That got the LGBT crowd in on the act. Cowardly Hallmark reinstated the ad and babbled about how they’re “committed to diversity and inclusion.” And now the Left has turned on them and called them Nazis anyway.
I guess if ol’ Heinrich Himmler could come back to life and go to work at Hallmark, he’d think he was back home at the Wolfsschanze. “Where is the Fuhrer? He must be here somewhere. Where’s Goering?” Get the boys together for a beer. ‘Cause everybody who’s not 100% Far Left Crazy demented… is a Nazi!
Shame on Hallmark for vainly trying to appease them. We should all know by now that that doesn’t work. You can kiss their commie boots from now to Doomsday, and the moment you stray a hair’s breadth from the party line, you’re a Hater, Biggit, White Supremacist, Homophobic Nazi.
If you can’t join ’em (and why in the world would you want to?)… beat ’em!
An out-of-place and drastically overgrown thylacine? Naah–couldn’t be!
Things like this just don’t happen today. They are preserved in history.
During 1764 through 1767, a rural region in France was terrorized by a wild animal called “the beast of Gevaudan.” Incredibly, it attacked some 200 people, with 90 fatalities. Survivors described it as an extra-large wolf; but some contemporary illustrators drew it with a long, stiff tail unlike any wolf’s. Besides, wolves hunt in packs; the Beast hunted alone.
The royal government sent special hunters to kill it, there were at one time an estimated 10,000 hunters tracking it–and finally a local man shot it dead.
The rest is very much a mystery.
What’s goin’ on here? It’s the next-to-last day of the year–and no comments, no likes, and hardly any views. The cupboard is so bare, it’s startling. You know how it is: you open it up, expecting to find stuff in there, and it’s almost empty.
If I could figure out how these fluctuations happen, I’d make a fortune. I’m sure the stock market would want to know.
Maybe if I post something really weird…
I’ve heard church bells playing this hymn, but I never knew what it was called until today, when TheWhiteRabbit requested it: A Great and Mighty Wonder, sung by the Kings College Choir.
The act that the cat does on the chair, in this video, beats the dickens out of all that poncy “floor exercise” goop that they do in the Olympics. We are also treated to some exciting balancing acts, not all of which were successful, and some sanity-defying leaps, not all of which were successful. But the cat on the chair–hey, check it out.
Striving mightily to get her story back on track, Violet Crepuscular plunges into Chapter CCCXXXIX of her epic romance, Oy, Rodney.
At his wit’s end, with his marriage to Lady Margo Cargo still hanging fire (“I am not sure exactly what that means,” Ms. Crepuscular admits), Lord Jeremy Coldsore is desperate for good advice. His boon companion, the American adventurer Willis Twombley, gives him some.
“What about that guy who they locked up for bein’ flat-out crazy, Germy?” Twombley says. “Betcha he can help.”
The man in question is Lord Devius Scrumble, Baronet, who has been locked up for his insane prediction that there will one day be horseless carriages that run on internal combustion engines. As a peer of the realm, he has been locked up at home and is allowed to receive visitors. Jeremy and Twombley go to see him.
Before they can present their problem to him, Lord Devius insists on telling them all about his new invention.
“Once every man in England has his own horseless carriage,” says the mad baronet, “they will all need parking space and there will never be quite enough space to go around. I have therefore invented The Parking Meter. Installed at regular intervals along the streets of all our towns and cities, these devices will ensure that no one just parks his horseless carriage in front of a shop and leaves it there. The Parking Meter, upon the deposition of a penny into this slot, will measure the time; and each horseless carriage that is parked in that space will not be allowed to exceed the time paid for. Thus there will always be spaces that are about to become available, and the towns will acquire a steady source of revenue.”
Lord Jeremy wonders, “What’s so daft about that? It sounds like a good idea.” But Twombley asks, “How much time does your penny buy you, ol’ hoss?”
Lord Devius draws himself up to his full height of three feet, seventeen inches, and proudly replies, “Four seconds, man! Four seconds! If you need another four seconds, you have to put another penny in. This will revolutionize England’s urban life!” He then breaks into uncontrollable laughter.
“The moral of the story,” adds Ms. Crepuscular, “is, ‘Shop fast!'”
Here’s another Christmas hymn request from Joshua, one I haven’t heard before, published in 1866–Who is He in Yonder Stall?, sung by Enfield.
It would be remiss of me not to post this at Christmastime, one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written, and written to the glory of the Lord–Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring, by J.S. Bach. The rendition by Celtic Woman is a little over-produced visually, for my taste–but the sound! If this doesn’t stir your soul, I don’t know what will.