Trooping the Colour, 2024

Nobody does it better:  the annual review of troops by His Majesty the King for his Official Birthday, to be followed by a fly-past of the Royal Air Force and the appearance of the King and the Royal Family on the balcony of Buckingham Palace.

The ceremony on Horse Guards Parade commences with the arrival of the King at precisely 11 a.m., London time (6 a.m. in New York), with the fly-past due around 1 p.m.

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Waitin' for the Weekend

Caution:  Slippery when wet.

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The Importance of Being Lazy

Your Head Trucker has been preaching and living this splendid truth all his life.  Now the rest of the world is catching on, it seems. 

Dolce far niente!

 

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Sunday Drive: Nightingale Serenade, Toselli

As performed by Andre Rieu and His Orchestra:

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Waitin' for the Weekend

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D-Day Plus 80

Eighty years ago on this date, Allied land, sea, and air forces invaded Normandy to begin the liberation of Europe from Hitler's evil empire.  Four years earlier, the Nazi blitzkrieg had overrun the free states of Europe, and only Britain was left to defy him.  But the forces of darkness would not enjoy their triumph long.  After careful preparation, the tables were turned on June 6, 1944, as the greatest assemblage of armed forces in the history of the world breached the supposedly impenetrable walls of Hitler's Fortress Europe, leading to his utter defeat the following year, and Japan's too.

After the Fall of France in June 1940, Winston Churchill. in courageous words that echo down the halls of history, steeled his countrymen for what was to come next:

What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire.

The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.”

We who were born after the war have lived our whole lives in those "broad, sunlit uplands," however hilly or rocky they may have seemed in part; in the Western world at least, we have lived in times of peace and plenty, blessed with a panoply of comforts and conveniences undreamed of by any previous generation, and available to all but the most abjectly poor.  

Antibiotics, vaccinations, and ingenious new treatments for all sorts of bodily ills and injuries have allowed us, collectively, to live longer, healthier, and consequently happier lives than any generation who came before us.  How very lucky we were, how blessed, to have lived in the second half of the twentieth century, and into the first quarter of the twenty-first.  In material terms, the human race never had it so good.

And yet, times change.  Mr. Starmer. who in all likelihood will shortly be the next prime minister of Great Britain, said just the other day, "The post-war era is over and a new age of insecurity has begun."  He might be putting it mildly.  I think all halfway intelligent people must view the current trend of things as very alarming - frightening - horrifying, even.  

But today I will say only that I am mindful of and deeply grateful for the sacrifices made by those soldiers, sailors, and airmen in 1944, who died so that my generation could grow up in peace and prosperity and freedom.  May they rest in peace and rise in glory.  

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Sunday Drive: His Eye Is on the Sparrow

The beloved gospel song, sung by the late, great B. J. Thomas.

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Waitin' for the Weekend

June is here - the beach is open!

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The Impossible Dream

Your old Head Trucker is admittedly - and happily - behind the times in many ways.  The song is one of my favorite tunes from way back, but I never heard of this fellow until now.  All I can say is, What A Voice!  Wow.

If you like that, check out this other recording he did of the song, in which he reaches even higher in the last few bars. 

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Ken Burns: "The Choice Could Not Be Clearer"

If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men, we must live through all time or die by suicide.

-- Abraham Lincoln, 1838

Forsaking his customary neutrality, renowned filmmaker Ken Burns (finally looking his age at 70) gave the commencement address at Brandeis University last week, a warning and a clarion call:

Transcript is here.

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Sunday Drive: Time Is Tight

From 1969 . . . 55 years ago . . . end of school . . . childhood's end . . . no longer a boy . . . not quite a man . . . Where would I go?  What would I do?  Who would I be?  No answers then . . . only the sound of happiness . . . a long road ahead . . . hopeward bound.

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