Dwarf Planet in Purple

How I experienced that moment.

The achingly sad cover of Rolling Stone that followed.

Five days later, an opening act at a nightclub near my campus played a cover of "Give Peace a Chance." (I wasn't there.)

Just thinking.

Yep, the summer heat and humidity are here, big time.

This was possibly the quietest Fourth of July weekend I've had in a long, long time. Because of the pandemic, my neighbor-friend T.V.P. did not have her usual blowout birthday-solstice-Fourth party, complete with the public fireworks display over the lake. My town did not have its municipal fireworks display this year. The boy toy and I watched the coverage of several major cities' fireworks on CNN.

Earlier in the day yesterday, I finally got to see Hamilton on Disney+ (courtesy of the boy toy's parents -- they subscribe on one device, and the subscription says "up to four devices," so they sent him the code). OMG. SO EXCELLENT. Of course I've listened to the soundtrack in bits and pieces over the years, and I've read the Ron Chernow biography on which the show is based, but somehow it all came together when I could see the action and could tell who was singing when. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Lin-Manuel Miranda is his generation's Shakespeare.

(I know some people don't like rap music, but I can take it in reasonable doses, and I don't find the speed of the lyrics any worse than listening to well-performed Gilbert and Sullivan operettas.)

On Friday I watched the YouTube video of the Lithuanian folk dance festival from 2016. The festival was *supposed* to be TODAY in Philadelphia, but because of the pandemic it has been postponed to August 2021. Smack dab in the middle of Pennsic, which of course has been postponed from this year too.

Le sigh. The whole year is being postponed. EXCEPT for the election. We MUST have the election.

And now, everyone who was born in a year beginning with 18 is dead. Since today is the day after what would have been my grandmother's 127th birthday, it seems appropriate somehow.

Today is also the fourth anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing, right around the corner, practically, from the building where I rented a room in an apartment during the summer of 1979. I have the Netflix DVD of the Mark Wahlberg movie at home, but I don't think it's going to get watched this weekend, not with the new Doctor Who episode tonight.

I have way too many browser tabs open, so let me get rid of a few here.

A new model of the origin of the Earth-Moon system:
http://nautil.us/issue/13/symmetry/when-the-earth-had-two-moons

Steampunk podcast:
http://steampunkfamily.podbean.com/

Sixth-century manuscript decoded by spectroscopy:
http://www.laserfocusworld.com/articles/print/volume-50/issue-06/newsbreaks/sixth-century-manuscript-makeup-decoded-via-spectroscopy.html

Wikipedia recently featured Wells Cathedral, one of the places I've visited in England:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wells_Cathedral

Comcast plans to turn its paying customers into free hot spots:
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/184263-comcast-turns-50000-paying-customer-homes-into-public-hotspots-millions-more-by-the-end-of-the-year

Just before the world marked the 70th anniversary of D-Day, Sir Winston Churchill's last living child died. She was quite the badass in her day:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/05/world/europe/mary-soames-daughter-of-churchill-and-chronicler-of-history-dies-at-91.html?hpw&rref=books&_r=4

Stupid password tricks:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/05/21/security_questions_one_time_passwords_two_stupid_password_tricks_i.html

What things are like for young people today:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/08/opinion/sunday/starting-out-behind.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

What the hell is wrong with America?
http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/attytood/Americawhat-the-hell-is-wrong-with-us.html

Current politics of the ISS:
http://www.nature.com/news/space-station-science-ramps-up-1.15388

Forget universal preschool -- we need a 13th grade:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/06/10/forget-universal-preschool-we-need-a-13th-grade/?hpid=z10

What ever happened to LiveJournal, anyway?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2014/06/10/whatever-happened-to-livejournal-anyway/

This week Republicans killed Elizabeth Warren's plan to ease Americans' crushing student loan debt:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/06/republicans-filibustered-elizabeth-warren-bill-student-loans

Growing partisan rancor:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/06/12/five-charts-that-show-how-conservatives-are-driving-partisan-rancor-in-dc/

This town's local friendly maker club:
http://www.voanews.com/content/couple-turns-science-into-community-affair/1932671.html

A private browser thing I might want to try:
https://www.surfeasy.com/private_browser/

Some career thing to read later:
http://www.oprah.com/omagazine/Finding-Happiness-at-Work-with-Advice-from-Marcus-Buckingham

I was going to post this yesterday, in honor of the observance of Dr. King's birthday, but I didn't get around to it.

I got the phrase "the joy of discovery" from my high school chemistry teacher, and I certainly felt it nearly 10 years ago, when my UU magazine published a never-before-transcribed MLK speech. Specifically it was a eulogy that Dr. King gave for James Reeb, a UU minister beaten to death while doing civil rights work in the Deep South.

How could a speech by this world-famous guy go unheralded for so many years? Well, Dr. King was a busy guy, so perhaps it's not surprising that a few of his papers got lost in the shuffle of life. Fortunately for all of us, someone unearthed a cassette tape of his eulogy, and it got transcribed at last.

Follow this link to an eyewitness account of the memorial service for Rev. Reeb, with links in the sidebar to a PDF of the text and an MP3 file of the sermon.

For me, it was just such a gift to find these new words so long after the speaker had been so wrongly silenced.

Another MLK link: E.J. Dionne's short piece giving thanks that MLK did not die when he was stabbed in the chest back in 1958. (Please ignore the mostly dumb-ass comments, though.)

Today I had a tasty lunch with the cz_unit. We used to do this quite often, but as it turns out, we haven't even seen each other since Darkover. We went into Chinatown to Tony Cheng's Mongolian BBQ, where everybody recognizes him (well, how many 6-foot-8 guys are there?). Thank you, CZ!

(Now I'm just crossing my fingers and hoping that people didn't notice that I took a much longer lunch than normal....)

I also enjoyed last night's discussions at the Baron and Baroness's At-Home. Reminds me that I really need to motivate myself to SEW if I'm ever going to have any other garb besides the stuff I have now. (But I'm still working on the May/June issue of the Herald's Point newsletter. Kingdom-level duties come first....)

Now for a couple of comments about the other side of the pond:

For all the studying and teaching of medieval Lithuania I do in the SCA, you might not guess that I have a bit of Anglophile in me. I took a modern British history course the semester that Margaret Thatcher became the prime minister, and the professor who taught the course was a visitor from an English university and a card-carrying member of the Labour Party. He didn't have anything nice to say about any Tory, not even Winston Churchill, which seemed rather shocking to me at the time, given the enormous respect the guy gets on this side of the Atlantic.

Anyway, I've been watching the news sites and wondering when the UK election results would start rolling in. Turns out the polls haven't even closed yet. They close at 10 p.m. BST. Wow, can you imagine what U.S. elections would be like if our polls stayed open that late? (Once the Brit polls close, you can follow the results here.)

Also from the Beeb: This little vid about our U.S.-UK "special relationship." Tell me, friends, are you amused or disturbed by a guy in a full Redcoat uniform saying that he served side-by-side with Tommies while he was an Army Ranger?