Please keep my Hero, Rush Limbaugh, in your prayers.

Please keep my Hero, Rush Limbaugh, in your prayers.

He needs them right now.  The story over at Fox News is pretty comprehensive.

I have been a Rush listener only since 2001, but I can’t imagine life without him on the radio.  I have been a RushBabe since they were invented.  I felt like I had been sucker-punched when I found out that he had been diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer in January.  But, as he said, he has beaten the odds this year.  He said that, when the doctors gave him the diagnosis, they said that if they did nothing, he had at most three months.  A lot was done, and he has demonstrated extraordinary courage all year.  He has been before the Golden EIB Microphone every day that he felt up to it.

So, all you RushBabe49 Followers and Readers, please send God your prayers for his well-being.  He needs every single one.

Thank you all.

View This Video. Share it Far and Wide. Today.

“Support Our American Heroes” by Rush Limbaugh

This Video by my Hero, Rush Limbaugh, celebrates our First Responders, Police and Firefighters, who have been denigrated, shot at, murdered in cold blood, by the New Thugs of American Society. This has to stop.

Please share this video with all your friends and neighbors, on all your Social Media, today. Do it Now. Support those who have always to keep Society safe from criminals. Do your part to Save America!

Thanks very much.

Washington State (Seattle) Supreme Court confirms that “all your money belongs to us”.

In a unanimous ruling, the state/Seattle Supreme Court declared Tim Eyman’s $30 car-tab initiative that passed last year to be unconstitutional.  The reason? “More than one subject”.

The judges’ ruling Thursday is a victory for a coalition of cities, King County and Garfield County’s transit agency, which had sued saying it would eviscerate funds they need to pay for transit and road maintenance.

Confirming, once again, that the various governmental units in Washington State reject the right of their citizens to the fruits of their labor.  Predictably, the usual suspects cheered.

“Justice for Seattle voters prevailed in today’s Supreme Court ruling on I-976,” Tweeted Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan. “Even before the pandemic and economic crisis, Seattle’s transportation budget was unnecessarily decimated by I-976 last year and our residents and businesses have felt the real impacts of cuts.”

Another Usual Suspect:

Sound Transit officials also say the initiative would dry up a primary funding source needed for expansion of the light rail system to Tacoma, Bellevue and Everett. It would have cost the state and local governments more than $4 billion in revenue over the next six years.

Heaven forbid that the Almighty Governments and Almightiest Sound Transit be denied THEIR money.

RushBabe49 Fights Tech Censorship of New York Post expose on Joe Biden’s son Hunter

By now, most of my readers will probably have heard about the rank censorship by tech platforms Facebook, Twitter, and Google, of the story in the New York Post about the machinations of Hunter Biden, the son of Democrat candidate for president, “Sleepy” Joe Biden.  It is well-known that Hunter Biden was given a place on the board of Ukrainian gas company, Burisma, at a ridiculous salary of $50,000 per month.  Hunter knows little about the gas industry, and less about Ukraine, so it has been widely believed that the sole reason for his placement on the board of a foreign gas company was so they could curry favor with Hunter’s dad, Vice President, Joe Biden in the Obama Administration.

Continue reading “RushBabe49 Fights Tech Censorship of New York Post expose on Joe Biden’s son Hunter” →

Is this the future of classical music performance?

The reaction of governments and their subjects to the Wuhan Coronavirus have been very depressing, in all ways.  Few performing arts groups have been holding performances with any audience, for fear of spreading the deadly (0.13% mortality-rate, similar to seasonal flu) virus.  Entire economies locked down by government edict, small businesses and their owners ruined, populations living in near-constant fear.

Some classical music groups have adapted in very interesting ways.

quartetinmasks

Here’s a string quartet, playing while wearing masks.

orchestrainmasks

How about an entire orchestra, and soloist, in masks!  The conductor is also wearing a mask.

By the way, those masks do not protect anyone from the virus, since they are not made of the correct material-they pass viruses both ways with ease. Totally virtue-signaling, and probably mandated by their local government.

brassinmasks

How about Brass in Masks?!  This it totally ridiculous, since horn players cannot wear masks while playing!  And sad, if you ask me.

A music group in Europe participated in an interesting study, carried out by a local university, of how dangerous it might be for an orchestra to play their wind instruments normally.

Funny, but they found that wind instruments played as usual carried little to no risk of spreading germs!  Now, will anyone know about this study, and use it to get all the world’s orchestras back to performing?  Highly unlikely, since governments have become very comfortable wielding absolute power over their subjects, and will probably resist lifting all the bans on performance.  So many classical musicians might lose their jobs, and the people will lose a prime source of beauty in their lives.

Is this what we are in for, in the future?  Life without live music?

 

 

THIS is Voter Suppression:

New Black Panthers at Philadelphia Polling Place to intimidate voters

THIS is Not Voter Suppression.

Long Lines of Voters in Georgia

This is a long line of peaceful, long-suffering voters. They are not being intimidated or suppressed by anyone, and everyone will get to cast his or her vote. The Left likes to claim that whites are trying to suppress black votes, and this is absurd. Blacks in Georgia had higher turnout than whites did! If any voters were suppressed, it was white voters!

We will not let the Left redefine “voter suppression”. Actually, there is little to no actual voter suppression these days, so don’t let your leftist friends try to convince you that there is. What was the Voting Rights Act of 1964 supposed to do? Outlaw voter suppression. And it did.

Lens-Artists Challenge #118: Communication

Today’s Photo Challenge might be a downer, compared to the other posts that I have been reading.  My apologies, but the examples of communication below are what I have been noticing around me since about February of this year.  The Wuhan Coronavirus pandemic has adversely affected pretty much everyone in the world.  Countries, especially in Africa and Asia, that were already in poverty have been reduced to even worse poverty, as the result of the widespread government shutdowns of their economies.  The United States, perhaps the world’s most successful country, coming off of three years of exploding economic growth and record-low unemployment, was knocked, in a very short time, into the depths of recession, when state governors basically shut down their economies, throwing millions of Americans out of work all at once.  What does this say about America?

Continue reading “Lens-Artists Challenge #118: Communication” →

Interesting…Very Interesting…World Health Organization comes out Against Lockdowns to “fight Coronavirus”

Interesting…Very Interesting…World Health Organization comes out Against Lockdowns to “fight Coronavirus”

I was alerted to this new (?) stance by the All-Powerful World Health Organization, warning countries NOT to lock down their economies to fight the Wuhan Coronavirus.  Funny, when I checked, the WHO first indicated that lockdowns are a bad idea, way back in May!  Yes, that’s in MAY!!

Funny, in April, the WHO was urging countries not to “lift lockdowns too soon”!!!  So, in April they are all for lockdowns, and extending those lockdowns.  In May, they urge countries not to look at lockdowns as the “magic bullet” to stop the virus.

Today, a high WHO official finally recognizes that lockdowns are more devastating than the virus itself, and should not be used.  The link above is from the US newspaper of record, USA Today.  Other publications also are carrying this very important story.

The Epoch Times

The Australian

The Washington Examiner

So, when will Government Dictators notice this and disavow the use of lockdowns and business closures to fight the virus? When will Dictators like Governors Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Jay Inslee of Washington, and Gavin Newsom of California start listening to the Authorities that They have been using to set their own policy? When will Facebook and Twitter stop censoring their users who have been fighting lockdowns for months? When? When? When?

What I learned from watching the movie The Bowmakers, by Ward Serrill

What I learned from watching the movie The Bowmakers, by Ward Serrill

This past week, I was invited by the Curtis Institute of Music, one of the world’s premier music conservatories, to watch a movie about the people who make bows used by string-instrument players.  Specifically, the movie profiled bow makers who live right in my neck of the woods (the Pacific Northwest), in and around Port Townsend, Washington.  It is wonderful!  In fact, the movie will be streaming through October 11, and you can get tickets here if you wish to watch it.  Highly recommended.

PtTownsend

It was exciting to meet the bow makers, whom I had heard of but did not know much about.  We were treated to tours of the workshops, and stories about bow makers Charles Espey, Robert Morrow, Paul Siefried, Ole Kanestrom, and Cody Kowalski in Port Townsend; and Noel Burke in Portland.  Then, it was off to Paris to visit Stephane Thomachot and his daughter Josephine, both bow makers!

I was actually very pleased to learn also about the wood that the best bows are made of, called Pernambuco.  The movie gave some history of that wood; starting from the 1500s, Portuguese explorers who discovered what is now Brazil, bringing back with them some of the logs, which have a heartwood center that became the source of an excellent red dye, in addition to wood for stringed instrument bows.  The strength of that wood allowed bow makers to make them in a new design, so that they could produce better sound from the newly-invented metal strings.

The movie also profiled chamber groups Brooklyn Rider, and the Dover Quartet, its members commenting on their bows.  Our local makers have a great reputation!

Above are pictures of a pau-brasil tree, and a log cross-section, showing the red heartwood. In the past, loggers in Brazil cut down too many trees, nearly decimating the forests, and the wood for bows, so that the tree was declared endangered. This caused much consternation within the string-instrument community, as everyone was worried that the best bow-wood might no longer be available. The movie showed that there are local organizations who are re-planting these trees, and keeping the new forests safe, so there will be wood for today’s, and tomorrow’s fine bow-makers to use. We also were introduced to a couple of youth orchestras, where the players come from peasant backgrounds, learning to play music that may take them far outside their home territory. The kids had fun, and were very good.

I myself have a beautiful pernambuco-wood bow, made by a Port Townsend-resident bow-maker, Christopher English. It is beautiful, and draws great sound from my David VanZandt violin. I consider myself very lucky to have it.

So, get your tickets now, and go online to see the movie The Bowmakers. You will love it!