June rambling: Pride Now

Amy Grant?

All Americans Need Pride Now

In 1776, Angry New Yorkers Tore Down a Statue of George III With a Revolutionary Fervor. A New Exhibition Lets You Do It, Too

James Madison Speech in the House of Representatives, 8 June 1789, promoting amendments to the Constitution

The Interview: Scott Pelley on the Bari Weiss Era and His Last Days at ’60 Minutes.’ Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker and Jon Wertheim are staying.

DOD Officially Drops 180 Faiths From Military’s Recognized Religion List

Higher Education Must Not Become a Research Arm of Militarized Power

‘It debases the democratic process’: Sotomayor slams Supreme Court’s Alabama ruling, and it marks brazen reversal of its previous stance

A Shocking Betrayal of Black Americans

Only 50% of the public said they now trust health recommendations from the CDC, down from 77% in spring 2025, according to a poll conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health and the de Beaumont Foundation’s Public Health Listening Lab

US Turnaround on International Vaccines Comes Too Late for Hundreds of Thousands. The State Department finally overruled RFK Jr.’s defunding of a group that vaccinates 60 percent of children globally.

The DOJ came after Daily Kos. Here’s the full story.

EFF Has Just Testified Before Congress on AI

Claustrophobia

Naomi Kritzer’s Obstetrix is a new, tense thriller in the mode of Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale and Alderman’s The Power; it’s a beautifully turned, claustrophobic horror novel about an obstetrician who’s been kidnapped by a Christian cult obsessed with fertility.

Researching Juneteenth Celebrations at The New York Public Library

Knicks celebrate NBA victory back in New York City. The team was 4-0 in the finals when he wasn’t there. I still think of that 1973 championship team.  

New College of Florida and UK & Makerfield Election: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

Fact-checking the interview with NBC News’ ‘Meet the Press’  – Digging into some of his claims about the Iran war, the Jan. 6 riots, California’s primary elections and more.

FOTUS Moved to Eliminate Chemical Safety Board Before Deadly Spill Killed 11

The Art of the Deal — The Art of BS

Everything You NEED To Know About Saturday Night Live, Season 26 (2000-2001)

The Desert’s Night Lights and The Boy and the Blue Cup and How to Steal a House? and A Planely Obvious Punishment 

MUSIC

As – Stevie Wonder

The 6th of January (Yasgur’s Farm) – Amy Grant

Fanfare for the Common Man – Emerson, Lake & Palmer

How Do We Get There from Here – Amy Grant featuring Ruby Amanfu.

Memphis Soul Stew – King Curtis

Life On Mars? – David Bowie

John Barleycorn Must Die – Traffic

Bad Time  – Grand Funk

Mr. Brightside – The Killers

Somebody To Love -Jefferson Airplane

I Knew It, I Knew You – Taylor Swift from Toy Story 5 

That’s The Way Of The World – Earth, Wind, and Fire

Favorite Songs By Favorite Artists (Series Four) #6: Yusef Lateef and #7: The Velvet Underground

Ally the Piper does NOT need your misogyny

J. Eric Smith’s Best Albums of 2026 (First Half)

Hymns by Carolyn Winfrey Gillette

The Dark Side of Paul McCartney

Feeding the cat

humidifier

Feeding the cat is usually my responsibility. The morning feeding is accompanied by bleating, as though Stormy has never, ever been fed ever in her whole life. I’ve been trying to feed her at 8:30 a.m. and 8:30 p.m. in Daylight Time (7:30 Standard Time). The transition to DST is tricky for her because she sees her humans consuming nourishment.  The evening meal is similar.

In one of those email factoids, I recently read: “In October 2022, researchers from France published results from an experiment examining the relationship cats have with their owners’ voices. In the study, cats responded more positively to a familiar human voice (swishing tails, pivoting ears, pausing grooming) than when they heard the voice of a stranger.”

Our usual dinnertime ritual involves the feline sitting on the sofa or the cushy chair near me. I say, “Should I feed the CAT?” Her ears perk up, especially when I say “cat.” I stand up and go to the kitchen. She races me there; she always wins.

Mighty hunter

One of her odder traits is that, when my wife fills the humidifier in the dining room with water – we uncharacteristically experienced a lot of static electricity in the winter and early spring – Stormy will run to the open contraption and drink the water there.

I take it to mean that Stormy would rather “hunt” for her water, even though there is sufficient clean water in a bowl next to her food.

Sometimes, she’ll eat something she ought not. We actively keep plants away from her, but sometimes she’ll run up to the attic, where she’s not allowed, and nibble on something verboten. She’ll also chew on plastic – the bags the newspaper comes in, e.g.  In either case, she’ll eventually vomit out the food. We’ve TOLD her not to do that, but she doesn’t listen.

Anyway, we love our tween cat, now a teenager.  

Such a weird man, at 80

“The fake images and the false boast are not separate stories.”

Sure, I LOATH his politics. But, beyond that, he’s a weird man. I saw someone complain on their Substack, “Why does the media ignore his madness?” Lately, it’s been too difficult to avoid.

Why did he explain executions to kids? Was the lesson for children “to fear difference, obey power, and treat vulnerable people as threats”?

From April 13: His Erratic Behavior and Extreme Comments Revive Mental Health Debate. As he “threatens to wipe out Iran and attacks the pope, even some former allies and advisers are questioning whether he has grown increasingly unbalanced, describing him as ‘lunatic’ and ‘clearly insane.'”

Thomas Meisenhelder complained in Common Sense that the man “isn’t mentally ill; he’s evil.” Moreover,  “repeating time and time again that [he] is crazy not only negatively affects the mentally ill but also seriously misunderstands the man and his policies.” Yeah, I get it. But isn’t it possible that he’s BOTH crazy and evil?

NOT a genius

I’ve been reading the Facebook feed, It’s a Lovely Life by Heather Delaney Reese. Here’s just a part of her June 1 feed:

“In the middle of the night, while most Americans were fast asleep, [he] was awake inside the White House. Unable to get any much-needed rest, he opened Truth Social and shared a post that had the complete opposite effect he hoped it would.
“And at exactly 12:35 this morning, [he] decided it was the perfect time to announce to the world that a cognitive screening exam, the kind doctors use to help identify signs of cognitive impairment and dementia, proved he possessed what he called ‘extreme intelligence…’
“But what he either doesn’t understand, or what nobody told him, is that these tests are not designed to measure genius. They’re not IQ tests, and they’re not difficult for those without impairments to pass. They are screening tools used by doctors to determine whether someone may be showing signs of significant cognitive decline. Healthy adults are expected to perform well on them. The goal isn’t to identify extraordinary intelligence. It’s to identify potential impairment.
This “makes [his] insistence that this was a ‘high difficulty’ test proving his ‘extreme intelligence’ far more revealing than the score itself…
“During a seven-hour posting spree on [May 30] alone, he shared more than fifty posts, including fake images of himself standing beside George Washington, multiple depictions of himself carved into Mount Rushmore, and jealousy that China has a ballroom and he doesn’t. And later, he even posted a bizarre power-fantasy image of Air Force One surrounded by a military escort…
Falsehoods galore
“The fake images and the false boast are not separate stories. They are the same story. Both are attempts to manufacture a version of himself that reality will not provide. He cannot place himself alongside anyone alive today who is of historical significance these days, so he commands others to create fake images of himself with George Washington. He cannot point to actual evidence of extraordinary intelligence, so he points to a test that was never designed to measure it. The medium changes, but the impulse remains the same. Image by image. Post by post. Claim by claim. He is constructing a version of himself that the facts cannot sustain…
“That is why we should expect more chaos, more spectacle, and more manufactured crises. We need to prepare now for more attempts to make us exhausted, divided, frightened, and distracted because they know the clock is ticking.”
Another Heather
Here’s Heather Cox Richardson on June 2: “His posts seemed designed primarily to reassure himself. By Saturday, so many of the musical acts his team had lined up to play at his Freedom 250 “Great American State Fair” from late June through the beginning of July had bailed that he posted that he was ‘thinking about bringing the Number One Attraction anywhere in the World, the man who gets much larger audiences than Elvis in his prime, and he does so without a guitar, the man who loves our Country more than anyone else, and the man who some say is the Greatest President in History…’

“A series of AI images in the style of the 1950s Dick and Jane readers show a town parade festooned with flags and patriotic bunting, little girls laughing together at an old-fashioned town fair, and little boys in a suburb playing ball. All of the images read: ‘AMERICA IS BACK!’ And in them, all of the people are white.

“He posted an image of a white family from that era standing beside a Cadillac Coupe DeVille parked on a suburban street, with the caption: ‘BILLIONS WERE SPENT TO CONVINCE YOU THIS IS EVIL.’

djt is 80 and appears to be utterly daft. Kim Wehle, opinion contributor for The Hill, says he’s “losing it and must be removed.”  

Sunday Stealing – Doing It for Ourselves

When Bad Things Happen to Good People

Welcome to Sunday Stealing. Here we will steal all types of questions from every corner of the blogosphere. Our promise to you is that we will work hard to find the most interesting and intelligent questions. Cheers to all of us thieves!

This week we aren’t stealing, we’re contributing! These are questions suggested by our “usual suspects.” They were entertaining, which isn’t a surprise because our participants are bright and fun. Thanks to everyone who took part.

DIY Meme – Doing It for Ourselves

The obvious song.

1. Would you rather have every traffic light turn green or always get the best parking spot? (Kwizgiver) 

As a person who takes the bus a lot and doesn’t have to worry about parking as often as most, clearly the latter. And of course, I’ll always choose green anyway.

2. What’s the most difficult thing you have ever done? (Gold in the Clouds) 

Physically, it might have been crawling/hobbling down a mountain in Utah in 1994 with what turned out to be a torn meniscus.

My contribution

3. What information do you know that you are proud of/happy about, but others say, “Who cares?” (Roger) 

There are so many! It’s faded somewhat, but I could tell you a state by its telephone area code, which remains a geographic identifier to this day. I wrote about it here, and someone I knew well said, “You must have too much time on your hands.”

But the big one is knowing all of the U.S. Presidential terms by year, even those who died in office. So I know there were three Presidents in both 1841 and 1881. This is useful when examining the history of wars, recessions, land acquisitions, and similar events.

4. What mystery do you wish you knew the answer to? (Myra/Mevely)

There’s even a well-regarded book about it: When Bad Things Happen to Good People. And I think even more about the converse, about seemingly good things happening to arguably bad people.

5. What small, ordinary thing brings you disproportionate joy? (Country Dew)

Rainbows, fer sure. As I’ve noted here, we have a rainbow-creating front door, and even little rainbows cause me indescribable giddiness.

6. What time do you go to sleep/wake up?  (Annie)

Oh, geez, going to bed sometime between 10:30 pm and 2 am, depending on how much is running through my head. Up at 5 am to 7:30 am.

7. What is your favorite sleeping position? (Lisa) 

On the side. I need at least two pillows.

8. Describe your personal Utopia. (Pandora) 

No more wars, no more hunger, a clean environment and we can teleport.

9. Imagine that you have a machine that can create any new invention for you based on your description. What do you ask the machine to create, and why? (Plastic Mancunian) 

A miocroplastics/PCB vacuum cleaner that would suck up large bodies of water to separate the bad stuff from the good. You could have them at water treatment plants. The why is that too much of our water is potentially or actually dangerous to us.

Thank you for playing! Please come back next week.

#1 C&W hits for 1956

country was “folk”

These are the #1 C&W hits for 1956.

Actually, that’s a bit misleading. In 1944, Billboard published Juke Box Folk Records (JB). On May 15, 1948, it introduced Best Selling Retail Folk Records (BS). Most Played by Folk Disc Jockeys (JY) debuted on December 10, 1949. It wasn’t until October 20, 1958, that a single chart, Hot C&W Sides, was introduced.

This is why there were 92 #1 country hits in 1956. If a song was #1 on ANY of the charts, it was considered a #1 track.

Crazy Arms – Ray Price (Columbia), 20 weeks at #1. JY-20, BS-11, JB-1 (#27 pop)

Heartbreak Hotel -Elvis Presley, 17 weeks at #1.  BS-17, JB-13, JY-12 (also #1 pop)

Singing The Blues – Marty Robbins, 13 weeks at #1. BS-13, JB-13, JY-11 (#17 pop)

Don’t Be Cruel – Elvis Presley, 10 weeks at #1. JB-10, BS-5, JY 2/ (also #1 pop)

Hound Dog – Elvis Presley, 10 weeks at #1. JB-10, BS-5 (also #1 pop)

I Walk The Line – Johnny Cash (Sun), 6 weeks at #1. JB-6, JY-1 (#17 pop)

I Forgot To Remember To Forget – Elvis Presley, 5 weeks at #1. JB-5, BS-2 (did not chart pop)

Why Baby Why – Red Sovine & Webb Pierce, 4 weeks at # 1. JY-4, BS-1, JB-1 (did not chart pop)

Blue Suede Shoes – Carl Perkins (Sun), 3 weeks at #1. JB-3 (#2 pop for four weeks)

I Want You, I Need You, I Love You – Elvis Presley, 2 weeks at #1. BS-2, JB-1 (also #1 pop)

I Don’t Believe You’ve Met My Baby – The Louvin Brothers (Capitol), 2 weeks at #1. JY-2 (did not chart pop)

Other charts

There were other charts besides Billboard in the day, most notably Cash Box and Music Vendor, which became Record World. These are the songs that did NOT reach #1 on the Billboard pop charts but topped the charts of CB or MV in 1956.

Just Walking In The Rain – Johnnie Ray, orchestra and chorus conducted by Ray Conniff (Columbia), which hit #1 on MV for four weeks. #2 on Billboard pop chart for four weeks.

The aforementioned Carl Perkins’ Blue Suede Shoes, which hit #1 on MV for one week.

Canadian Sunset (Heywood) by Hugo Winterhalter & his Orchestra, piano solo by Eddie Heywood (RCA Victor), which hit #1 on MV for one week. #2 for one week on Billboard pop chart.

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