{"id":59584,"date":"2026-06-28T06:00:31","date_gmt":"2026-06-28T13:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=59584"},"modified":"2026-06-27T11:27:33","modified_gmt":"2026-06-27T18:27:33","slug":"open-thread-june-28-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2026\/06\/28\/open-thread-june-28-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread June 28 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, the radio opera (should I be saying &#8220;the on line opera&#8221; until December? Naah.) was <em>Ariodante<\/em> by Handel, composed in the early 1700s. It&#8217;s based on two (out of 46) cantos of the epic chivalric romance <em>Orlando Furioso<\/em> (Orlando is the Italian form of Roland &#8211; yes, that Roland), which dates to the early 1500s, and was itself based on the <em>Chanson de Roland<\/em>, which dates back to the 11th sentury, and was inspired by the (presumed historical) death of Roland, who was a knight of Charlemagne, who, IIRC, became Emperor in 800, so, the 9th century. Roland is not a character in the opera, which is set in Scotland(!), has minimal chorus, but does have a dance in each of its three acts, includes a mad scene for the prima donna, and is generally melodramatic. Anyone who has ever heard &#8220;Messiah&#8221; or any excerpts from it knows that the man could write music. Heck, he could paint pictures with the notes he wrote. But I&#8217;m off to see Virgil now &#8211; will check in when home. Meanwhile, let&#8217;s jump into the pool.<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/jojofromjerz.substack.com\/p\/the-sun-confesses<br \/>\nI have shared JoJo before purely for the excellence of her writing, and now I am again. Last time it was a rant. This time it is &#8211; I&#8217;m not quite sure &#8211; maybe an allegory. But if it doesn&#8217;t make you smile at least once &#8211; take a a deep breath, leave the computer and do something else that revitalizes you.<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/abcnews.com\/video\/134102842\/<br \/>\nI hope this is visible and audible. It happened om Father&#8217;s Day.<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/joycevance.substack.com\/p\/five-questions-with-the-chickens<br \/>\nTo be frank, this is not exactly good news. What it does have is a lot of cute photos illustrating good advice for staying sane. (Today&#8217;s not-a-cartoon is from it.)<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/iFkYBSpKPRM?si=txkj-F-bpeNwe5u8\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/NUWIngTClc0?si=XxH57_7BxWimQ9LV\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-59579\" src=\"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/BnJ-Pool.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"900\" height=\"873\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/BnJ-Pool.jpg 900w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/BnJ-Pool-300x291.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/BnJ-Pool-150x146.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/BnJ-Pool-768x745.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/BnJ-Pool-24x24.jpg 24w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/BnJ-Pool-36x36.jpg 36w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/BnJ-Pool-48x48.jpg 48w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, the radio opera (should I be saying &#8220;the on line opera&#8221; until December? Naah.) was Ariodante by Handel, composed in the early 1700s. It&#8217;s based on two (out of 46) cantos of the epic chivalric romance Orlando Furioso (Orlando is the Italian form of Roland &#8211; yes, that Roland), which dates to the early <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2026\/06\/28\/open-thread-june-28-2026\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":58319,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,3,5],"tags":[7523,4355,3704,5714,7544,7033,5390,3718,4941,3731,3811,7519],"class_list":["post-59584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-open-thread","category-personal","category-politics","tag-algae","tag-animals","tag-cartoon","tag-chickens","tag-family-surprises","tag-jojo-from-jerz","tag-marsupials","tag-music","tag-opera","tag-parody","tag-personal","tag-the-reflecting-pool","category-35-id","category-3-id","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59584"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59584\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59590,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59584\/revisions\/59590"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}