Occupation of Independence

Whew, what a relief! Tonight is supposed to be cloudy, so I needn't get up at 425 a.m. MDT to watch the Blood Moon total lunar eclipse. Now isn't that a terrible thing to say? But admit it, how many times have you watched the media buildup to some celestial event -- be it an eclipse, a comet, or the Northern Lights -- only to be disappointed by the actual event? But like most people, I want the event to be interesting. Why then are these celestial events such let-downs? We tend to forget that throughout the superstitious and religious period of our history, celestial events were truly frightening. That made them NEWS. But thanks to our scientific knowledge [*], celestial events have devolved into mere visual entertainment. As eye candy goes, they are rather slow and unimpressive. Compare them, as visual entertainment, to action scenes and special effects in a movie. Perhaps you are dissatisfied with this grim truth. Maybe we can think of some other way to make such event

Thanks to the munificence of a long-suffering sibling and a recent birthday I am looking to buy some MP3 music tracks from Amazon. In the past I've gotten some good suggestions, so let's try it again. I am primarily interested in: Movie musical scores ("soundtracks") Solo piano or piano concertos.  Female vocalists. In the first category are composers like Jan Kaczmarek, Mario Darianelli, Patrick Doyle, and Gabriel Yared among contemporaries. Of course I love the movie composers of an earlier generation, such as Bernard Herrmann, Victor Young, Maurice Jarre, Ennio Morricone, etc. In the second category I like much, but not Valium-capsule music, or nambi-pambie nature soundtracks, e.g., waves hitting the shore, seagulls squawking, or whales mooing in the ocean. In the third category, there are divas like the bluesy EmmyLou Harris, moody Celtic lasses, Puccini heroines, or Broadway musicals. I do not listen to music dominated by electric bass guitars or any