The human voice is essential to much music. It can portray emotion, transfer words, and in some venues, be almost purely musical, regardless of the actual words. Here’s The Flower Duet from the opera Lakmi’ with Erika Miklosa (Lakmé) Bernadett Wiedemann (Mallika). The slideshow that goes with it is by a nature photographer, and you just as well full-screen it and slap on the headphones and kick back.
Daily Archives: 6/1/2013
There’s camouflage, and there’s CAMOUFLAGE!
(Drug up from way down the blog in 2004…)
Another “What did yo do in the war, Daddy?” post.
In a previous article, I revealed that I’d actually been assigned as vehicle commander on an M113A1 armored personnel carrier, the battalion S-1 (personnel bunch) track. “Vehicle commander”! After being “tank commander” that was a step down, kind of like Mario Andretti on a riding lawnmower. But such was life. Actually, I had little to do with the damned thing. It had an assigned driver who took care of such maintenance as was needed, and the thing seldom left the motor pool, since even for major exercises, budget kept the battalion from bringing ALL its vehicles to the training site. At that time, the conversation went “Let’s see, whatta we wanna take, the battalion commander’s tank or the S-1’s Dempsey Dumpster (the tanker’s name for the M113). Do we want something that’s made to fight other tanks, or something that is assigned to haul a driver, a first lieutenant and a clerk-typist to the rear of the combat area…” You get the picture.
There was an exception, however: alerts. whether simulated (all of them except one) or real (that one…) ALL vehicles left the motor pool to the assembly area outside the base if they were physcially able to move and the alert wasn’t called off first.
And therein lies a tale. Alerts, for training purposes, were meant to see how long it took the battalion to assemble and move out with its personnel and vehicular assets. When one considered that this was “peacetime” and a majority of the officers and NCO’s lived away from the kaserne (base, home station, whatever you want to call it. this was Germany and we kept our tanks at a “kaserne”) in either government housing areas or apartments on the local economy, alerts had the capability to be reather interesting. Continue reading There’s camouflage, and there’s CAMOUFLAGE!
Today in History – June 1
1495 – Friar John Cor records the first known batch of scotch whisky.
1779 – American Revolutionary War: Benedict Arnold court-martialed for malfeasance. Today he’d be a darling of the mainstream media, the popular star of a dimmocrat congressional hearing, and a contender for both an MSNBC TV show and a cabinet post.
1812 – War of 1812: U.S. President James Madison asks the Congress to declare war on the United Kingdom. Today, a delegation of dimmocrat congressmen would immediately depart for London to begin appeasement.
1813 – James Lawrence, the mortally-wounded commander of the USS Chesapeake, cries out “Don’t give up the ship!” A dimmocrat senator holds a press conference saying that the presence of the American ship was an uncalled-for provocative act and the sailors the tools of Washington war-mongers and were tricked into the military because of poor fiscal policies of the previous administration.
1869 – Thomas Edison receives a patent for his electric voting machine. Floridians are VERY confused.
1890 – The United States Census Bureau begins using Herman Hollerith’s tabulating machine to count census returns.
1918 – World War I Western Front: Battle for Belleau Wood – Allied Forces under John J. Pershing & James Harbord engage Imperial German Forces under Wilhelm, German Crown Prince. This is an epic story of American heroism. Said General Pershing of the outcome, “The deadliest weapon in the world is a Marine and his rifle!”
1963 – Kenya gains internal self-rule (Madaraka Day). Want to know something good about Kenya? It’s NOT Zimbabwe. That’s about it…
1979 – The first black-led government of Rhodesia in 90 years takes power. This IS Zimbabwe. Inflation over six digits. People starving. Thugs keeping the President-for-Life in power. Yeah, they showed those nasty white colonialists how to run a country.
2001 – A Hamas suicide bomber kills 21 at a military target in Israel. This target is a disco in Tel Aviv. I hate disco as much as anybody, but I’m not going to blow myself up over it.
2009 – Air France Flight 447 crashes into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Brazil on a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. All 228 passengers and crew are killed.
2009 – General Motors files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. It is the fourth largest United States bankruptcy in history, is resurrected as “Government Motors”.