(0825) It’s going to be a piecemeal day today, I’m trying to make it not descend into a mess. All right, have just been through all the sshots and they are heavily US intensive but there was one I just cropped, about the UK, one only … and I’m going to run it at OoL (it’s my day). Here, think I’ll cover DAD and Steve, then drop all the Georgia Kemp material into one post. Then go get some breakfast. Later, I’ll run the YT on Kennedy and the Chagos thing. Who knows after that? Plenty of material.
ddddd
3. Steve at 1284
Apologies for the shorter signposting but it’s all over there at 1284.
Majority Leader Thune Is Already Waffling and Backing Away from Passing SAVE Act for Secure US Elections
Islamist Terrorists Running Iran Are Killing Thousands, The Courageous Protesters Need Help
British Police Open Investigation Into Peter Mandelson
Iran-US talks, real diplomacy or attack trickery
The Epstein Files Illuminate a 20-Year Architecture Behind Pandemics as a Business Model
Epstein, Western Decline, & The Moral Collapse Of The Elites
Much more.
2. DAD at 1284
a) Closing Arguments in Marine Le Pen’s trial: harsh verdict looms?Marine Le Pen’s political future hangs in the balance in the closing arguments of the trial of her parliamentary assistants.
b) They start young in France. Pau (64): Detained for theft, a seven-year-old child threatens the headmaster and an employee of his school with a knife.
c) Another reason not to buy Nike. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced Wednesday that it has opened an investigation into Nike, which is suspected of discriminating against white employees. This action comes amid a broader challenge to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies by the Trump administration.
d) As The Spectator pointed out on January 17, ”violence against British Jews is more common than at any time since their readmission in the 1650s,” by Oliver Cromwell, 366 years after they had been expelled by Edward I.
(0632) Dear reader, auspicious day in many a way. Just awoke now to some personal news, plus from midday today or to be on the safe side … elevenses … I have to be out of action up to five hours. So any blogging until our evening must me from now to about 1030 to be on the safe side. Thus far less output.
So that’s today, plus a few Fridays from now it’s reprised. Also mentioning Andy and glad he could make it through … did not like the sound of age-verifying. I’m having none on’t. Plus I have some sensitive material which I’ll have to bury and signpost, plus one of those people last night making contact from different continents had a baby while we were at it … mother and child fine.
Now, I’m thinking I’ll close this topic off of the 60s and early 70s, with material which has been dropped to me, plus it affects people I know personally. DAD and Steve will lead the usual day’s doings after this below.
The Day the Music Died (third and last for now)
Only minutes ago, the last of the newsletters dropped into the inbox. One of these was Quora and the text below is from an Italian of the era, I presume a NY Italian … it’s about Del Shannon, early 60s pop icon, possible Runaway being the first pop song my own new sentience remembers, sitting in the back of a burgundy Ford Zephyr. Here’s the Quora text (below the song itself):
“Del Shannon. Popular pre-Beatles singer, mostly remembered for the huge worldwide hit, Runaway. He had a few more hits in the States but remained extremely popular in the UK where he had a number of big hits.
From what I’ve read, he liked to do everything himself including the minutiae of organizing his own tours rather than leaving it to a road manager and others. This put a strain on him that was not necessary and he took to drink for this and a fading career.”
JH: We could also bring Buddy Holly back into this with that haphazard Winter tour:
Back to Del Shannon:
“He was prescribed a new drug to combat his depression. I remember at the time it was Prozac, the first of a new type of antidepressant. I remember it particularly well because it was prescribed to a friend of mine at the same time. It was for panic attacks and the doctor told him that it was new and one of the side effects was that it was good for these attacks as well as depression. My friend told me that it messed with his head and he felt really weird and had to come off it.
Shortly after this the news came that Del had shot himself. It was later reported that he had been prescribed the same drug just a couple of weeks earlier and that some users were complaining of suicidal thoughts. Reports of these side effects began to emerge and led to widespread controversy. Del’s widow sued the drug company and was, reportedly, granted an out-of-court settlement.”
JH: Into this, we could bring Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Morrison, so many others taken in their prime years … human wrecks. Was it the “devil’s music after all?” It was not just the “British Invasion”, though that contributed. Significant that the Beatles and Stones led this “Invasion”, this new empire from over here. Elvis the King himself went downhill and the Jester had already, by his own admission, made his pact with the one the Stones had sympathy for … and you tell me all this is fanciful?
And even weirder was I was right in the middle of it at the time, I was there, getting into all the new music until signing out once Floyd had taken all the melody away and left desolation row instead … or the pompous and depressed:
In a white room with black curtains in the station Black roof country, no gold pavements, tired starlings
Music to slash your wrists by, a mantle later assumed by Leonard Cohen, the marriage wrecker. May I suggest one more time listening to Miss American Pie, this time through two highly unlikely young, black folk, encountering it for the first time as a song, but not the riff, which they’d heard … don’t expect deep understanding, as they’re a young black couple (married, about to have children) from a quite different era to 1971, plus Don McL was singing of 1959 … this thing goes way, way back:
All right. Back to 2026 and a lady one year younger than I am (so we’re both quite young still) not long ago wrote to me, noting that there was obviously something I was still working through from back when we were together … because she was the other person in that summer romance which had no restrictions, no parental chaperoning, which in itself was interesting because my own father was quite withdrawn and not a well man (war injuries), plus her father was off in another town working during the week.
So we were in that Woodstock situation of freedom to do as we wished and yet … and yet … we were still in that early pop music state of romance, not today’s one night stand body counts. Had it been a year or two later, who knows? It all took a dark downturn for youth in the next few years, culminating with the Sex Pistols in the late 70s.
And another thing present … she was from a churchgoing family … yep, you heard that right … and Don CL sang:
Oh, and there we were all in one place A generation lost in space With no time left to start again
And then:
And as the flames climbed high into the night To light the sacrificial rite I saw Satan laughing with delight The day the music died
And then:
And in the streets, the children screamed The lovers cried and the poets dreamed But not a word was spoken The church bells all were broken
And the three men I admire most The Father, Son and the Holy Ghost They caught the last train for the coast The day the music died
Dear reader, are you getting the idea yet what was going on in those days? Don McL knew fully what was going on … he was part of it. And we two summer romancers, right on the cusp of growing up, a dangerous time … me the Reynardine, she the innocent abroad … I ended up as you see me now, a partly reformed sinner, not totally succumbing to the lifestyle and she? Well as she put it … no longer churchgoing but more “holistic” she called it in late 2025. And yet she seems to have found the right person, thank goodness.
And that’s it, dear reader … the timing of that romance carried with it highly significant western historic elements, far more so than I for one first supposed.
And now, putting it into a 2026 setting, with all the things we’ve written and read about today, with Moosh and her pics too, with what our readers write, with what we wrote last evening, with what we’re about to write this morning … in my case, only till about 10a.m. … how far has the west fallen? Is there any chance of coming out of it?
The lady who just had a baby last night, my time … married, has it together to a point, hubby and father beside her … what chance that family? Were they on their own … I’d say a great chance, given that they are trad, still of the old faith, not taking the next train to the coast, unwanted … ah, but what of the west!
Will the west allow them? Will there even be a west? I think that’s all I wanted to say on the topic …/END.