I took a morning mountain bike ride along irrigation canals, past fields of alfalfa and through orchards. The usual dogs raced along their fences barking outraged warnings, but most of the ride was peaceful. All that I could hear were bird songs, and my puffing on the uphills. Then, making a pavement transition from one canal system to the next, I passed a large old farm house festooned with bunting. From its open windows, at considerable volume, came “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” The thrill I felt in my cynical breast took me by surprise. If you go here, you’ll find a splendid rendition of that Sousa masterpiece by the Dallas Wind Symphony. The RealAudio player gives you the whole thing, not just a clip.
Happy Fourth of July.
Archives for July 4, 2005
New Picks
Please notice that all of the Doug’s Picks entries in the right-hand column are new. What did Shelby Foote have to do with jazz? Nothing that I know of. (If you’re new here, refer to “About” at the top of the right column. And…welcome aboard. Tell your friends to sign on, please.)
That Old Midlife Crisis Blues
Attention midlife crisis fans: The venerable ArtsJournal blogger Terry Teachout (He’s been doing this for two whole years) reflects in depth on the phenomenon and its ramifications in his July 4th entry. He starts with this paragraph.
Like so many middle-aged men with a taste for poetry and a preoccupation with lost possibilities, I found myself thinking the other day of the first stanza of Dante’s Divine Comedy, which can be translated in countless ways but comes most fully to the point in the most literal of renderings: In the middle of the journey of our life/I found myself in a dark wood,/for the straight way was lost. One of my fellow bloggers has lately been reflecting on the meaning of the expression “midlife crisis,†but she and her readers are so preoccupied with the more florid symptoms of that often-absurd phenomenon that they seem to have lost sight of the thing itself, the terrible moment in the middle of the journey when you wander into a dark wood and suddenly notice that you can no longer see the signposts that led you there.
See the rest of TT’s rumination at About Last Night.