#weekend-edition — Public Fediverse posts

Weekend Edition Vol.093 #WeekendEdition #Newsletters
https://foofaraw.press/weekend-edition-vol-093/
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Weekend Edition Vol.092 #WeekendEdition #Newsletters
https://foofaraw.press/weekend-edition-vol-092/
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Weekend Edition Vol.091 #WeekendEdition #Newsletters
https://foofaraw.press/weekend-edition-vol-091/
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Weekend Edition Vol.090 #WeekendEdition #Newsletters
https://foofaraw.press/weekend-edition-vol-090/
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Weekend edition vol.089 #WeekendEdition #Newsletters
https://foofaraw.press/weekend-edition-vol-089/
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ABOLISH ICE #WeekendEdition #Newsletters
https://foofaraw.press/abolish-ice/
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🎉 Weekend edition vol.087 #WeekendEdition #Newsletters
https://foofaraw.press/weekend-edition-vol-087/
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Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine on legal questions surrounding the Venezuela attack – NPR

Politics

Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine on legal questions surrounding the Venezuela attack

January 3, 202610:27 AM ET, Heard on Weekend Edition Saturday

Daniel Estrin 4-Minute Listen Transcript

Kaine is among the lawmakers who have been critical of the Trump administration’s stance toward Venezuela.

DANIEL ESTRIN, HOST:

We have been following the extraordinary news out of Venezuela this morning. Overnight, U.S. forces targeted the country, capturing its president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife. Some U.S. lawmakers have been criticizing the Trump administration’s stance on Venezuela. Among them is Senator Tim Kaine. The Virginia Democrat is the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere. He’s a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee as well, and he joins us now. Good morning, Senator.

TIM KAINE: Daniel, good to be with you.

ESTRIN: You were among the lawmakers who said the Trump administration’s strikes on boats in the Caribbean were illegal. You were even discussing the possibility of those strikes constituting a war crime. So how do you see last night’s operations?

KAINE: Daniel, I think these strikes are clearly illegal. They have not been authorized by Congress, and the Constitution is clear that the U.S. doesn’t engage in military action or war without a vote of Congress, except in cases of imminent self-defense. The Constitution is absolutely clear on that. And so the boat strikes in international waters are illegal. Murdering shipwrecked sailors clinging to wreckage in those waters is illegal. And a U.S. invasion of Venezuela to depose its president and arrest him is illegal. And I have a vote scheduled in the next few days when we get back to Congress on Monday to put all senators on the record as to whether we should be at war with Venezuela without a vote of Congress.

ESTRIN: Senator, many Venezuelans do not support Maduro. Do you see anything positive from this development?

KAINE: Maduro is a disaster, and he’s been disastrous for the country. And we could say the same thing about a hundred and fifty leaders of countries around the world. But our Constitution is very, very clear that we don’t order servicemen and women into harm’s way, risking their lives, unless there is a congressional debate and vote about whether the war is in the national interest. Here, there was no real notification, no real Consultation, no real debate, and definitely not a vote. The president believes he can wage war on his own. And in the last weeks, you’ve seen him use the U.S. military to ostensibly protect Christians in Nigeria and threaten to use the U.S. military to protect Iranian protesters. He’s threatened U.S. military force or suggested he’s open to it to seize Panama, to seize Greenland. It’s time for Congress to get off the couch and exercise the oversight over this president’s desire to wage war on his own.

ESTRIN: What do you think President Trump is actually getting at with this operation?

KAINE: It’s unclear because the president started these operations in international waters, saying it was about narco-trafficking. But now both he and other administration officials have said, we want our oil back, we want our assets back and we also want to change regimes. The U.S. has tried to stand for the proposition that the sovereignty of nations should be respected. That’s why we’ve criticized Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. But we can’t, with a straight face, make the argument that we support the sovereignty of nations if we’re willing to engage in a unilateral presidentially declared war against Venezuela. And thus, he is really undercutting U.S.’ moral and – stance for an international rule of law where nations can invade each other willy-nilly, just because a president decides it’s a good idea to do so.

Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine on legal questions surrounding the Venezuela attack : NPR

One of music’s best kept secrets celebrates 100 years, quietly – NPR

Music

One of music’s best kept secrets celebrates 100 years, quietly

The story of Coolidge Auditorium, at the Library of Congress, is one of American ingenuity, cultural integrity and a century of free concerts.

October 25, 20258:18 AM ET, Heard on Weekend Edition Saturday

Tom Huizenga 6-Minute Listen Transcript

The year is 1925. The Great Gatsby is published, the jazz age is swinging, and on October 28th, a new concert hall opens at an unlikely spot — the Library of Congress, in Washington D.C. If only its cream-colored walls could talk. For 100 years, performers of all stripes have graced the Library stage, from classical music luminaries like Béla Bartók and Igor Stravinsky to Stevie Wonder, Audra McDonald and Max Roach. Today, it remains one of the capitol city’s most beautiful, best sounding and perhaps best kept secrets.

The idea for a concert hall at the Library of Congress did not stem from congress. It came from philanthropist Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge — and one bespoke piece of bipartisan legislation. “She was indefatigable and intrepid,” says Anne McLean, senior producer for concerts at the Library, “a remarkable woman, six feet tall, a brilliant pianist.” McLean is sitting with me on the stage, overlooking the empty auditorium. To mark the centennial, celebratory concerts and commissions have been heard in the hall all year. But not now. The government shutdown has forced the hall to close its doors, and unless a deal is reached before Tuesday, it’ll be closed on the anniversary itself.

Coolidge was born into a wealthy Chicago family in 1864. She studied music, traveled abroad, married a Harvard-trained orthopedic surgeon and, in 1924, came to Washington to establish a foothold in the nation’s capitol. She approached Carl Engel, the Library’s music chief, about the possibility of adding a small concert hall to the Library’s voluptuous — and voluminous — Thomas Jefferson building, designed after the Paris opera house and completed in 1897. You can’t see the hall from the outside, as it’s tucked inside the building’s Northwest Courtyard.

Eager to get started, Coolidge wrote a check for $60,000 to the Librarian of Congress, Herbert Putnam, on Nov. 12, 1924. And yet there was no legal mechanism in place for a civilian to make such a monetary gift to the U.S. government. Congress worked quickly, taking only a little over a month to pass a bill allowing such a contribution.

It took less than six months to build the hall itself — the intimate, 485-seat Coolidge Auditorium, with its warm precise acoustics. “There are a lot of secrets to it,” McLean says. “The back wall of the auditorium is slightly shaved to be concave and extremely responsive to string sound. Underneath the stage is hollow. But that hollowness is a factor, as is the cork floor, which was very unusual for its time.” McLean says the sound blossoms in the hall. Keen to spread the sound far and wide, Coolidge even had the building wired for the relatively new medium of radio. She added to her initial sum to establish a fund for the commissioning of new music. Engel dubbed her “The Fairy-God-Mother of Music.”

Coolidge was well-connected and fiercely advocated for music. In 1944, she took to the local Washington airwaves with another bold idea. “I could wish for music, the same governmental protection that is given to hygiene, education or public welfare,” she said over WTOP. “How wonderful, if we could have in the cabinet, a secretary of fine arts.”

Coolidge never got her wish, but what she had already created was arguably more important — a living, breathing concert hall that serves as a cultural beacon — preserving history and cultivating new music through commissions.

Perhaps the most famous commission became one of America’s most iconic pieces of music. Aaron Copland‘s ballet Appalachian Spring, written for dancer and choreographer Martha Graham, received its world premiere at Coolidge Auditorium on Oct. 30, 1944. “I think people knew what they were hearing,” McLean says. The ballet would win the Pulitzer prize for music the following year, along with the New York Music Critics Circle Award. It’s hard to imagine a full ballet produced on Coolidge’s modestly-sized stage.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: One of music’s best kept secrets celebrates 100 years, quietly : NPR

#100Years #AaronCopland #CoolidgeAuditorium #Culture #FreeConcerts #Ingenuity #LibraryOfCongress #MarthaGraham #Music #NationalPublicRadio #NPR #TomHuizenga #WeekendEdition

#WeekendEdition, hosted by Scott Simon, reported that Afghanistan banned chess.

Seth Meyers had this to say about that:
"The Taliban in Afghanistan banned chess and chess sets
after they discovered the woman* can go anywhere she wants."
*the Queen

Listening to #NPR #WeekendEdition talking to the creator of the website "Gulls Eating Stuff" who seems to be an ornithologist. While it was an interesting topic and very info-dense, I kept giggling because her English accent had her sounding like she was talking about "girls" and it was pushing some button in my brain.

I always enjoy listening to NPR's Scott Simon on his #WeekendEdition broadcast on Saturday. As very good as his interviews are, some of them deserve more airtime than is available on his fast moving program. Sometimes a longer version is available, as is this version of an interview with Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones:
https://www.npr.org/2010/10/25/130722581/the-rolling-stones-keith-richards-looks-back-at-life #music
Longer versions of other interviews can be found at: https://redef.com/info/about

I was delighted to hear a political version of #The12DaysOfChristmas, sung today by Scott Simon on #WeekendEdition.

Dude's normal voice sounds nothing like Harrison Ford. But his game voice for Indiana Jones is uncannily similar to the actor's.

Indiana Jones and the voice of Troy Baker

"The thing I'm imparting onto him hopefully is to hear the call of adventure and to answer it and to find the mystery and the wonder, but in the pursuit of all those things, never, ever, ever lose your heart," Baker says.

https://www.npr.org/2024/12/14/nx-s1-5215921/indiana-jones-and-the-voice-of-troy-baker

#VideoGames #IndianaJones #WeekendEdition #RyanBenk #TroyBaker #XBox

The pros and cons of Trump's planned tax cuts for the rich, and what Congress is likely to do on this issue, via NPR's Scott Simon: https://www.npr.org/2024/12/14/nx-s1-5226122/president-elect-trump-promised-to-extend-tax-cuts-but-how-will-the-government-make-up-a-4-trillion-loss-of-revenue #WeekendEdition

#npr #weekendedition #puzzlemaster #willshortz recovering from #stroke https://www.npr.org/2024/03/03/1235697837/npr-puzzlemaster-will-shortz-stroke

It has taken me MONTHS of NPR listening to activate Siri/Shazam and identify the guitar song played as bump music on Saturdays between segments. It is called “Jitterboogie” by Michael Hedges. You’re welcome. 😉 #NPR #WeekendEdition

https://music.apple.com/us/album/jitterboogie/255952491?i=255952574

This NPR #WeekendEdition interview with Kevin Powell on his newest collection Grocery Shopping with my Mother caught my breath in my throat https://www.npr.org/2022/12/10/1142074787/kevin-powell-on-his-new-poetry-collection-grocery-shopping-with-my-mother