An Ohio friend alerted my wife to this piece from the University of Texas Tuba/Euphonium Studio:
Nice production of an old folk/gospel tune, “Down in the River to Pray.” (Considerably different from the Allison Krauss “O, Brother Where Art Thou” version, no?)
Did they record this as a recruiting tool? Or just for the beauty of it?
Credits:
The University of Texas Tuba/Euphonium Studio
Charles Villarrubia, Associate Professor Tuba/Euphonium
Euphonium
Alex Avila
Jose Flores
Luke Gall
Eric Gonzales
Fabian Vargas
Tuba
John Flores
Clay Garrett (soloist)
Keith Packman
Danny Trumble
Ben Vasko
T.J. West
Taylor Rudd, Director of Photography
Mario Mattei, Camera Operator
Jacob Ryan Hamilton, Aerial Photography
Joshua Gall, Recording Engineer
Ani Villarrubia, Production Assistant
Mark Twain aboard a ship, on his way to Hawaii. Young Samuel Clemens apprenticed to be a Mississippi river boat pilot, and held a fascination for water-going vessels his entire life. His pilot years are documented, and analyzed, in Life on the Mississippi. This photo of Twain remains one of my favorites.
This is the traditional Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub post to remind you. Both Twain and Churchill were lovers of good whiskey, and good cigars. Surely they would have toasted themselves with a drink and a smoke.
The Nobel Prize in Literature 1953 was awarded to Winston Churchill “for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values.”
Both men were aficionados of good whiskey and good cigars. Both men suffered from depression in old age.
Both men made a living writing, early in their careers as newspaper correspondents. One waged wars of a kind the other campaigned against. Both were sustained by their hope for the human race, against overwhelming evidence that such hope was sadly misplaced.
Winston S. Churchill, Time Magazine’s Man of the Year for 1941, copyright 1941 by Time Magazine. Churchill’s career was built much on his work as First Lord of the Admiralty, a position he took in 1911. While he was the goat of the Battle of the Dardanelles (and had to resign as a result), his earlier work to switch Britain’s Navy to oil power from coal, and to use airplanes in combat, kept the British Navy as an important and modern military organization through World War II.
Both endured fantastic failures that would have killed other people, and both rebounded.
Each possessed a great facility with words, and wit, and frequently said or wrote things that people like to remember and repeat again.
Both Churchill and Twain rank near the top of the list of people to whom almost any quote will be attributed, if the quote is witty and the speaker can’t remember or doesn’t know who actually said it.
Surely they said something like any piece of wisdom, at some point in their lives, right?
Both men are worth study. And wouldn’t you really love to have had them over to dinner?
Twain, on prisons versus education:
“Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It’s like feeding a dog on his own tail. It won’t fatten the dog.” – Speech, November 23, 1900
Churchill on the evil men and nations do:
“No One Would Do Such Things”
“So now the Admiralty wireless whispers through the ether to the tall masts of ships, and captains pace their decks absorbed in thought. It is nothing. It is less than nothing. It is too foolish, too fantastic to be thought of in the twentieth century. Or is it fire and murder leaping out of the darkness at our throats, torpedoes ripping the bellies of half-awakened ships, a sunrise on a vanished naval supremacy, and an island well-guarded hitherto, at last defenceless? No, it is nothing. No one would do such things. Civilization has climbed above such perils. The interdependence of nations in trade and traffic, the sense of public law, the Hague Convention, Liberal principles, the Labour Party, high finance, Christian charity, common sense have rendered such nightmares impossible. Are you quite sure? It would be a pity to be wrong. Such a mistake could only be made once—once for all.”
—1923, recalling the possibility of war between France and Germany after the Agadir Crisis of 1911, inThe World Crisis,vol. 1, 1911-1914, pp. 48-49. (Obviously, and sadly, Churchill was wrong — twice wrong.)
Yet we continue to make those mistakes, and then to seek out the wisdom of Churchill or Twain to get out of the mess, and to tell us we won’t be in such a mess ever again.
Should you fly your flag today? Congress doesn’t list this dual birthday as an event for flying the U.S. flag. But you’re welcome to fly the flag any day. Go ahead, if you want to.
If I get one, it will be the only cigar I’ve had this year. Or this decade.
I will break out the Scotch.
At a very minimum, click on some of the links and read the works of these two great writers. Nothing else today will be so profitable.
Churchill gets attention, even in Texas:
Happy b'day, Winston Churchill—born OTD 1874.
"Be of good cheer . . . The soul of freedom is deathless; it cannot, and will not perish." pic.twitter.com/DBuCLZPAw5
Oh, there’s a little technical wizardry involved in this one, stitching it together.
But, wow!
White Pocket in the Vermilion Cliffs National Monument, Arizona. Brilliant photography and stitching by Dave Lane Astrophotography, via the U.S. Department of Interior.
A more full description from Interior’s Facebook page:
Located in a remote and unspoiled part of northern Arizona, Vermilion Cliffs National Monument is a geologic treasure. For those who can’t get a permit to places like The Wave, White Pocket is an equally stunning place to explore — day or night. Pictured here, the area’s unusual rock formation is crowned by the Milky Way with Saturn, Mars and the Rho Ophiuchus region all visible. Multi-image photo (42 images stitched together in a 6 x 7 matrix) courtesy of David Lane (Dave Lane Astrophotography).
Dave Lane’s work amazes, doesn’t it?
Tip of the old scrub brush to Kathryn Knowles.
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Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Or, until that account is unsuspended by the forces supporting Donald Trump: Follow @FillmoreWhite, the account of the Millard Fillmore White House Library
We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!
Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control.
My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it.
BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah
Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona
JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 