Author: Mark Tokarski

Just a man who likes to read, argue, and occasionally be surprised.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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To the manor born (A Barack Obama Primer, Part III)

As promised, I am going to look into the lineage of Barack Obama, but not very deeply, as I am not very good at this stuff, and further, do not imagine that blue bloods let it all hang out. Do we really imagine that proles like me can just turn on a computer and find their relatives and parents and trace them back generations? True, not too many will do this, but even so, we would be a nuisance, and since they control the information and hire people to manage it, I suggest that important secrets stay secret.

So first, I want to start with Barack Obama, Sr., said to be the father of the man who became president in 2008.

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Of trees and firewood

This stack of firewood is the sum total of a week’s effort.I am not done by any means, as we normally go through a couple of cords every winter. By my estimation this is over a cord, but I have one partial and another full stack to to go. Note that a cord is 4X4X8, which is what the back two stacks are, roughly. Since the work is very hard I opted to finish the job in October, giving my body a needed rest.

Last year, knowing foot surgery was on the horizon, I put up as much wood as I could in a short period of time. That wood included garage scraps and pieces of willow and aspen (which do not burn as well as pine). We decided that for the first time in our then-twelve years here we would purchase a cord of wood. The cost was going to be $300. We burned less wood, however, and did not get around to purchasing it.

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