Next Stop(s)

Four-Ring Circus

The Republican presidential nominating process continues today with primaries in Michigan, Mississippi, and Idaho, plus caucuses in Hawaii. Michigan and Mississippi are open primaries, which tends to favor asshat Donald Trump, while Idaho's primary is closed, which tends to favor the actual Republicans in the race. Hawaii restricts caucus participation to registered Republicans but allows same-day registration.

Because of the way the delegate selection rules work today, the results will not dramatically affect the race for the nomination. We're all just sort of marking time until the Florida and Ohio primaries next Tuesday. Meanwhile, there is one issue on which several of the candidates agree...

"Marco should drop out of the race!"

"Marco should drop out of the race!"

"Marco should drop out of the race!"

"Yeah, I'm crazy like that sometimes."

Shockingly, Senator Rubio seems disinclined to quit the race the week before the primary in his home state that could give his delegate total a significant boost.

Of course, the most important issue for me in all of this is avoiding asshat Donald Trump becoming the party's nominee. Whatever outcome is required to prevent that horror, I'd find a way to live with it.

"You could always vote for me as a write-in candidate, couldn't you?"

Sorry, old friend, but only natural-born quadrupeds are eligible...

God Bless America

So long as Americans don't lose their sense of humor, there's hope yet for the Republic.

Well-played!

It's Not the Fall, It's the Sudden Stop

From the acerbic pen of Michael Ramirez, whose editorial cartoons you should read often, as I do.

Until Next Time...

Back in the days when I needed short classical music pieces to play for my students during their daily free-writing time, I began expanding my own collection of such music beyond the piano and symphonic pieces that have always been my favorites. This included buying some anthology collections of violin and cello pieces, some of which also became favorites.

My first encounter with J.S. Bach's Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin was when one of the movements from it was included on one of those violin anthologies, played by the great Itzhak Perlman. It was the final movement of Sonata No. 3 in C Major.

I began noticing when the Bach pieces turned up on various anthologies, by some of my favorite artists, but until recently I never actually owned a recording focusing on this set of pieces.

This week's Music Recommendation is a new release which does just that, by the remarkable Samantha Gillogly.



As is often the case, I was looking for something else entirely when I happened upon this album. Serendipity.

Today's send-off is Samantha's performance of the third movement from Partita No. 3 in E Major. Enjoy...