I posted the following comment below this article, Highest ever childhood vaccine exemption rate in history, doctors explain. Although buried halfway down in 373 comments, it has received 10 “likes” and no thumbs down. Most of the comments are ragged attack on the vaccine regime. The article itself complains that the vaccine rate in this country has fallen from 95 to 93 percent. I too find that distressing, but for different reasons.
Author: Mark Tokarski
Just a man who likes to read, argue, and occasionally be surprised.
Avoid watching this video
Above is a press conference by Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow’s in the wake of the team’s last-second loss to the Houston Texans last Sunday.
I wanted to watch that game, as Burrows is one of the better QBs in the league and Texan Quarterback C.J. Stroud is coming off an amazing 500-yard five-touchdown game the prior week. I have NFL Sunday Ticket, so that any time there is an out-of-market game I want to see, it is a sure thing that NFLST will black it out. They did. Of course they did.
The care and management of lies
“Recent research has found that the COVID-19 virus can directly infect cardiac arteries, increasing the risk of myocardial infarction (heart attack) and stroke, and even leading to persistent long COVID symptoms. This phenomenon is particularly pronounced in individuals who already have cardiovascular diseases, as the virus tends to accumulate within atherosclerotic plaques.”
Ancient curse: May you live in interesting times
“Title Nine” is a 1972 law that forbade discrimination against women in any educational institution in the country that accepted federal funding. In practical impact, it meant every school except Hillsdale and a few others.
The changes over time were dramatic – women’s sports, while never the equal of men’s in basketball or football, nonetheless offered opportunities for women to compete, get scholarships, and have their sports funded. I have watched women’s sports, and the competition is as intense as any male counterpart. But no one with any sense imagines that women and men should directly compete.
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The only person who did not hear Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony
On May 7th, 1824, in Vienna, Austria, the musical world changed forever.
The assembled crowd in the Kärntnertor Theater heard one of the most groundbreaking and revolutionary musical performances in history.
The only person in attendance who did not hear the performance was Ludwig van Beethoven.
We stumbled on The Story of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony by Gary Arndt here. You can either listen to it or read the transcript. It is about ten minutes long.
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Blood and Swash
Dave below writes about the 1947 movie The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. I was once aware of a TV show by that name, though it never caught my interest. I was not aware of the movie. This is a nice piece, capturing the more pleasant aspects of a house haunted by a ghost. Enjoy!
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Blood and Swash
By: Dave Klausler
I like movies; unfortunately, there are fewer and fewer decent ones produced these days. Last time #1 Son visited (from the Fatherland), we watched a couple of movies together… well maybe more if you separate all the Lord of the Rings offerings (Gold, I say). You have read my take on Mr. Wales here: Whupped ‘Em Again Josey, one of the other films we viewed (Sterling, it is). He is still mild on Audio/Visual “entertainment” these days – but that is now a big plus. He’s trixie, that kid of mine – offer an accurate portrayal of the evil world (True Detective) or conversely, too far sci-fi (Anon) and you’ll be pistol-whipped posthaste.
Exit interview
Ab at Fakeologist reached out to me for an interview upon reading that I was leaving the building. What we did was great fun, a load of pop culture and jibber jabber, neither of us full of ourselves. POM has been fun over the years, but when out of ideas it is time t0 strap up laces and grab the cane and limp off.
Serse (Xerxes)
Last week we were driving to a luncheon in Aurora, part of greater Denver, and 47 miles away from our house. I put on some music, and an instrumental piece (not the piece above) was randomly selected by my phone. My wife and I were both moved by the beauty of this piece. It answers to the name Serse (English title Xerxes) from the opera of that name by George Frideric Handel. It usually runs two and a half hours.
Appreciated Accompaniment
This story, 60 pages long in MS Word, is a follow-up to Appreciated Assistance, the first Klausler tale reproduced here on the blog. I like that first piece since it was set on and around trail to a lake, Lady of the Lake, where I made my first hike into the Absaroka Beartooth Wilderness (then called Primitive Area) when I was perhaps ten years old. I wrote about that before I met Dave. Helen from the first story, who had suffered a bear attack and was dragged out on a makeshift stretcher, reappears intact in this installment.
Something weird happened as I read this piece … I was writing in my head. That has always been a trait of mine, constant writing going on between my ears. Not lately, but this piece triggered so much in my past – not as rugged and violent as Dave’s piece, but enough similarities, including my longest day walking with a full pack, 22 miles, and glissading off a high mountain pass (Dave and Helen forego that option).
I’ll get over it. Make the voices stop! Enjoy this well-written and engaging outdoor tale.
The end of the line
This blog started in 2006, my son Steve and I got it going while I lived in Bozeman, Montana. Steve dropped out not too long after that, unable to write day in and day out … unlike me. I was charged, never short of ideas, and in the early days wrote about other Montana blogs. There were quite a few of them, and then slowly they began to drop off, one by one, until today there are only two, Travis Mateer’s ZoomChron, and my own.
Piece of Mindful 