South Bend, a postindustrial Everycity, is riding the Pete Buttigieg presidential wave – Chicago Tribune
— Read on www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-perspec-south-bend-underdog-rust-belt-city-buttigieg-20190416-story.html

Jeremy was a good friend of mine at Notre Dame. Great guy, even if I disagree with this politics. Enjoy.

“…after we had watched the moon float away above the chasm between the hills like an ascending spirit out of a grave; its sheen descended, cold and pale, like the ghost of dead sunlight. There is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the dispassionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its inconceivable mystery. It is to our sunshine, which— say what you like— is all we have to live by, what the echo is to the sound: misleading and confusing whether the note be mocking or sad. It robs all forms of matter— which, after all, is our domain— of their substance, and gives a sinister reality to shadows alone.”

Lord Jim, Joseph Conrad

This Polish author was an amazing English-language author I understand he spoke with a heavy Polish accent his entire life.

In 1969, President Richard Nixon began a secret, illegal, and unconstitutional incursion into Cambodia, correctly believing that Vietnamese communists were using rural parts of the country to transport weapons from North Vietnam to South Vietnam. He ordered carpet-bombing as well as the establishment of military bases in Cambodia. The struggle between American and communist forces quickly destabilized the region, radicalizing many of the already-radical elements in the country.

The most important of the insurgents was a group of existentialist communists, the Khmer Rouge (Red Cambodians), under the leadership of Pol Pot (an assumed name and title) and his organization, The Ankor (The Organization). Pol Pot (1925-1998) was born, Saloth Sar. Though a Roman Catholic and a devout Jeffersonian coming out of high school, Sar attended university in in Paris, from 1949 to 1953, where he came under the influence of several Marxists and, especially, under the influence of the radical, former Nazi-collaborator-turned-communist, philosopher Jean Paul Sartre (1905-1980).
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2016/05/horrors-communism-roland-joffe-the-killing-fields.html

Pro­fessor and Chairman of History Mark Kalthoff received the Daugherty Award for Teaching Excel­lence for the fall semester of 2018 at con­vo­cation on Thursday.

“Mark Kalthoff exem­plifies the kind of steady, wise teaching that we prize at the college,” Dean of Faculty and Asso­ciate Pro­fessor of Edu­cation Daniel Cou­pland said in an email. “The hun­dreds of Hillsdale stu­dents who have sat in his classes over the years have been shaped by his deep under­standing of his par­ticular field and of liberal edu­cation in general.”

Dean of Women Diane Philipp said the cri­teria for the Daugherty includes ded­i­cation to one’s pro­fession and craft, sen­si­tivity to stu­dents’ learning, and a demand for excel­lence.
— Read on hillsdalecollegian.com/2019/04/kalthoff-receives-daugherty-award-at-spring-convocation/

Of the original stories that Tolkien wrote for his nascent mythology, the first real attempt at depth as well as breadth was The Fall of Gondolin, most likely begun in 1916. From there, the story took on an unwieldy and unpredictable life of its own, like many of Tolkien’s writings. Tolkien’s wife, Edith, wrote out the story sometime in 1917 after he had first written it, and Tolkien offered a version of it as a public essay in 1920 at Exeter College, Oxford. The story appeared as one of the most drawn-out of Tolkien’s Lost Tales (the first version of the larger mythology that would one day become The Silmarillion); in slightly different form in the 1926 “Sketch of the Mythology”; in yet again slightly different form in the 1930 Quenta Noldorinwa; and, finally, in 1950 and 1951, as Tolkien was trying to write the history of the ages preceding the now completed but yet unpublished The Lord of the Rings. The final 1951 version ended up, more or less, in the 1977 Silmarillion.
— Read on www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/two-tolkiens-one-better-world/

Today, guests from the Hauenstein Center join us to talk about the event Searching for Deeper Common Ground as part of the center’s Common Ground
— Read on www.wgvunews.org/post/searching-deeper-common-ground

Colorado’s controversial “red flag” bill was signed into law by Democratic Gov. Jared Polis on Friday, with more than half of the state’s counties declaring opposition to it and many sheriffs promising not to enforce it at all.
— Read on www.cnn.com/2019/04/12/us/colorado-red-flag-gun-laws/index.html

Very proud of the Park Country Sheriff for being a true hero.

Elon Musk catches a lot of grief, and to be fair, much of it is well-deserved.  But if there is one of his endeavors for which I am an unequivocal fanboy and for which he is performing an unqualified good, it’s SpaceX.  Where various NASA contractors have dumped almost $12 billion for the Space Launch System and haven’t even a single flight to show for it, Musk and Co. spent a mere $500 million of private money (no, that’s not much in terms of rocket development) and came up with the Falcon Heavy, currently the world’s most powerful launch vehicle.  Tonight, it made it’s second successful flight, launching a commercial payload into orbit, while successfully landing all three booster stages, two at Cape Canaveral and one on a barge at sea.  Bravo to Elon, bravo to everybody at SpaceX, and bravo to the private sector, which now runs rings around government sponsored space programs.  More, please.