Raging Grannies – Politics Plus

Open Thread August 30 2026

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:11 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Aug 302026

Yesterday, the radio opera was Johann Strauss Jr’s “Die Fledermaus” (“The Bat”) There is no (visible) bat in it, but it is filled with absurdities. It’s a comedic takeoff on the “revenge tragedy” form, but but the revenge is for making the “injured” person look silly by leaving him in the public park dead drunk and still in his bat costume from the party they both attended, so that when the rest of the city woke up, he became a laughingstock. It’s an opera I’m very familiar with, having costumed it for Adams State College when I was working for the the theatre department more than 40 years ago. You can make up your own mind how funny it is, but the Viennese to this day think it is a hoot. It is staged there every New Year. (I don’t know how they managed that during the two World Wars, and perhaps they didn’t, but if not, that was another huge grievance against the Germans.) Austria, and particularly Vienna, takes its light music seriously.) The broadcast [erformance was recorded at the Vienna State Opera, and it was in fact recorded last New Year’s Eve.

This sure sounds like good news to me. A pricey crop that doesn’t require rivers for irrigation is just what Colorado need right now.

Not news – but a whole lot of fun for those of us into medieval history. At one time I thought of joining – I only got as far as picking a name, which was Fontaine d’Artois. (There are – or used to be -a respectable number of Artesian wells in the San Luis Valley, where Alamosa is located.)

Lima

Mike

I’m always ewluctant to say “The kids are all right,” because there are always some who aren’t. But clearly these young women in Alaska are just fine, thank you.

Open Thread August 16 2026

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:00 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Aug 162026

Yesterday, the radio opera was the one which is part of what is possibly the oldest operatic pun. Let me explain. Richard Wagner managed to get on a friendly basis with the mad King Ludwig of Bavaria – the one who built Neuschwanstein Castle (which is a story in itself.) He also funded the building of Wagner’s new opera house, called the Festspielhaus – a coined word which entered the language to mean any theater built for opera and/or other large musical events. In the early 1900s, one critic started calling the New York Metropolitan Opera House “Das Faustspielhaus” – because it put on Gounod’s “Faust” so often. I think everyone knows the soul-selling-to the devil story, which isn’t pretty, although the music is. I haven’t seen or heard it since CoViD (when the Met was free-streaming and put up a production in which Faust was a nuclear physicist in the 1940s and 50s.) There’s a lot about it to like. I won’t list all the catchy arias, duets, and ensembles, it would take too long. And all the good news stories speak for themselves, so I won’t comment on them

Open Thread August 9 2026

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 5:57 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Aug 092026

Yesterday, the radio opera was Pelléas and Mélisande by Debussy = the only opera he ever finished. The plot is basically Tristan und Isolde without the love potion, and so steeped in turn-of-the-20th-century symbolism that it’s tricky to follow – a listener just needs to go with the flow. The libretto is from a play by Maurice Maeterlink – who was pissed off that his girl freind was not cast as Mélisande ay the premiere that he didn’t see it until agfter Debussy died, at which time he said, “In this affair I was entirely wrong and he was a thousand times right.” As a listener/viewer, I would say this quote from Wikipedia nails it: “The deliberate vagueness of the story is paralleled by the elusiveness of Debussy’s music.” Off to see Virgil now. Will check in upon return.

Archived from abc news because theirs only stay up for a while and I need to spread them out to avoid running short.

I am impressed. I did know that birds – particylarly columbids (which includes pigeons) and corvids (crows and ravens), but a bird knowing, first, the it needs oxygen, and second, that it could get some from the right humans, andthird, that these were the right humans -that’s quite a feat.

From GOODGOODGOOD. Just look at all the volunteers it took to make this happen.

Here’s a link to the GIF at the bottom, since it isn’t GIFing: https://martiniambassador.substack.com/p/baby-okapi-is-okie-dokie

These Grannies are from Charlotte (I assume NC.)

Open Thread May 31 2026

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:00 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

May 312026

Yesterday, the radio opera was a new one – not a premiere, but new enough to not be in Wikipedia yet. It was the El Ultimo Sueño de Frida y Diego by Pulitzer Prize winning Gabriela Lena Frank. The premise is that on the Day of the Dead, Diego Rivera is about to die. He reaches out to his late wife Frida Kahlo (who, though 20 years younger, predeceased him) to return from the land of the dead and help him transition. (You may have noticed that this premise is kind of a mirror image of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth.) Their marriage was one of those stormy ones where the couple fights a lot, at least in part because making up feels so good. It’s not my idea of a relationship, but it works for dome couples – and it makes for great opera. Other characters include Catrina, the goddess of the underworld, who is a trickster goddess; Leonardo, the souls of a Grets Garbo impersonator (a counter-tenor); and various spirits. I wouldn’t call it a comedy. but there is a lot of humor in it,both in the libretto and in the orchestration. Frank has an unusual heritage – her father was Ashkenazi Jewish and her mother was half Peruvian and half Chinese, and all of those musical traditions were in her childhood home. The opera is not terribly long – an hour and 55 minutes of music in two acts is pretty short – and it seemed to fly by – which means it’s very easy to listen to. “Viva la vida!” Off to see Virgil now- will chwck in upon return

If you thought that all the firsts for women (except, of course, US President) had been accomplished by now – Mikala would like you to hold her beer.

This is not you average pet rescue story. (It’s also not a video

Try to avoid looking around the web page on this one – stick to the story.

Carrie B found a second Raging Granny group – this one is in California, near Yosemite. The song in this video is a rough Diamond for sure,

PHP is a programming language used to build websites. We have it at all through our hosting partner, BlueHost. In order to update it, we have to go through Bluehost. During his life, TomCat was the only one who had access to our account there. I (JD) am now the only one. I have been to BlueHost and investigated updating our PHP to 8.3 or even to 8.1. I found instructions to do so - in fact, I found two conflicting sets of instructions. I went through one set of the steps and got the message that Our site could not handle 8.3, but that it had successfully updated to 8.1. I then went back here to see what it looked like. But I couldn't get in - either as an administrator or as a reader. It was just gone. I had to reach BlueHost by phone. It was determined that Politics Plus is in fact not compatible with any version of PHP newer than the one we have. BlueHost therefore uninstalled it for me, and the site came back to normal. Of course, like everyone else, I care about security. But I also am aware that TomCat elected to use different providers for several of the services that BlueHost provides, for instance backups. We are backed up daily - but not by BlueHost. However, out PHP is through Bluehost. I feel that if they are not worried about the older version, I am not going to worry about it. I believe that our security here is all or mostly through WordFence, whom I trust.