Transitions of the Heart

In my two previous posts about my handbell vacation I forgot to mention a nice story. I was reminded of it when I went through my notes today. One feature of these international handbell gatherings is that individual bell choirs, small ensembles, and soloists can play a piece or two for the assembled crowd. We were able to hear the Icelandic college students and the wonderful team from Hungary and many others. One of the American choirs that played, this one from New York, were at a table just behind me. They all wore something with the colors of the transgender flag – white, pink, and pastel blue. The men wore bowties and the women wore scarves. With those colors I knew something was up. The announcer said they were playing a piece titled “Transitions of the Heart” by Matthew Compton, one of the young composers of the handbell world. It was commissioned by two members of the group who each have a transgender child. The music depicted some of the joy and anguish of being transgender. Well done! I finally copied photos of the trip from my camera. Here are a couple of them. First is of part of the massed ringing floor – most of the center section and a bit of the right section. There wasn’t a place to stand to include the left section because the podium was taller than the bleachers. Those gigantic bells are for the bottom octave. They’re made of aluminum because bronze bells for those pitches are too heavy. The aluminum bells are lighter and much bigger. The things that look like downspouts are chimes and the tall ones in racks sound that same bottom octave (for a lot less money and space). There are chimes that match the pitches of the bells over the entire range. They provide a lovely contrast in sound and a lot of composers in the program wrote for both bells and chimes.

The other photo is of downtown Nashville taken from the pedestrian bridge over the river. This is where I went when I got tired of the music at the Wild Horse Saloon.

The last time I downloaded Michigan’s COVID data was three weeks ago. After a low point in June the number of new cases per day has been slowly rising, much more slowly than the delta variant rise a year ago. Since the beginning of July the weekly peaks have been 2423, 2413, 2508, 2598, and 2762. The data for this week doesn’t appear to be in yet. The number of deaths per day has remained below 20 with occasional days above that. That low level has been consistent for about 4½ months – since mid March. Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos wrote about the FBI searching the nasty guy’s Mar-a-Lago estate. They had a search warrant, which means they were able to show a judge that they expected to see evidence of a crime. While there was speculation about which crime they expected to see evidence of (that alone is quite telling for this guy) it seems they were looking for documents, some perhaps top secret, that should have been turned over to the National Archives on leaving office. Einenkel linked to more thorough posts and focused on the Fox News response (they’re freaking out) and some of the memes that have appeared. A tweet by Elad Nehori sums up the Republican and far right response:

The “they cry out in pain when they strike you” is a popular line among white nationalists and antisemitic groups. The origin is a Polish proverb: “The Jew cries out in pain as he strikes you.” It has been popular meme in TheDonald for quite some time.

Strange that the nasty guy’s ranting response to the raid seems to have been written before the raid happened. Brandi Buchman of Kos is one of those who provided more detail with context and history. Hunter of Kos discussed some of the Republican and conservative outrage over the search. Many of the suggestions are quite violent. The FBI isn’t commenting on the search and ongoing criminal investigation as is appropriate – if they did Republicans would rant about how it is improper to announce an investigation. Never mind the FBI did announce an investigation once, having to do with Hillary Clinton’s emails with the announcement coming just before the 2016 election. As part of their caterwauling Republicans demand to know the contents of the search order. Of course, the FBI shouldn’t and won’t say. However, there is one guy who could reveal the contents of the search order, including the laws suspected to have been broken – the nasty guy. So far he hasn’t. No surprise. David Neiwert of Kos reported that social media has lit up with discussions that this political persecution against their Dear Leader is bad enough the response should be the start of a civil war. In other news, Buchman reported the US Court of Appeals ruled 3-0 that the nasty guy must turn over all of his tax returns since 2015 to the House Ways and Means Committee. The ruling says the Committee has a valid reason for requesting them. Buchman wrote:

In 1974, when it become public knowledge that Nixon was not properly audited by the IRS, the Presidential Audit Program went into effect, mandating that every president has his returns scrutinized by the tax agency. That law hasn’t changed to date. Because Trump was a “unique taxpayer” with returns that were “inordinately large and complex,” the committee was rightfully concerned that the audit program might not account for all of Trump’s vast business interests and activities, Tuesday’s ruling notes.

Therefore Congress, as part of appropriately designing laws, does have a valid interest in the nasty guy’s tax returns. No surprise if the nasty guy stalls and appeals. Yesterday I wrote about a CBS story that made arms not getting to the Ukraine front sound like a scandal. Charles Jay of the Kos community reported that CBS has deleted the tweet promoting the faulty documentary and removed the doc from their website. They have also tweeted they now know it is faulty and will re-edit it to remove the misinformation. Jay said the source of much of the info in the documentary is from Jonas Ohman. Head of Blue/Yellow, a pro-Ukraine non profit. Ohman’s quote in the doc is from late April and things have changed a lot since then. Also, Ohman’s organization deals with non-lethal military aid (helmets and such) and he had no knowledge of how weapons are distributed. Which means CBS should have recognized Ohman wasn’t an appropriate source. Alas, Reps. Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene – and Russian propaganda outlets – have already jumped on the original CBS doc as representing a scam.