....and the winner is....
The winner of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra's National Anthem
Poll is....
(drum roll)
Flower of Scotland
(you can click here to listen to all the contenders, including my
choice, "Scotland the Brave).
The announcement of the winner was made at the RSNO Last Night of
the Scottish Power Proms at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall on 1
July. Votes were cast from every continent apart from Antarctica.
The majority of votes were from the UK, but a significant number
responded from the USA, Canada and from remote locations such as
Mongolia, New Caledonia and Christmas Island.RSNO Chief Executive,
Simon Woods said: "I am thrilled that the RSNO has been able to use
its position as Scotland's national orchestra to propel forward the
debate on a new national anthem for Scotland."
I must say, the lyrics do a fair job of sticking it to the English -
those 'flowers' being the Scottish army that gave King Edward the
First's army a shellacking at Bannockburn.
But I still like "Scotland the Brave".
|
// posted by andante @ 8:40 PM
Oops
WaPo May, 2006 - Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a cardiac surgeon,
examines Kuja, a gorilla at the National Zoo, for signs of heart
disease. (By Graham Wells)
R.I.P. Kuja
July 1, 2006 -A 23-year-old western lowland gorilla at the National
Zoo died Saturday as a team of veterinary specialists tried to
implant a cardiac device, officials said.
"He went into heart failure and we do not yet know the cause of
that," said Dr. Suzan Murray, chief veterinarian of the Smithsonian
Institution's National Zoo.
|
// posted by andante @ 8:21 PM
Non-American Americans
Flooded and Forgotten (Salon) asks a loaded question - when was the
last time you heard of large-scale homeowner's insurance denials plus
ten-month (and counting) delays in cleanpup in California or Tornado
Alley or other areas suffering from natural disasters?
I am from a state where fault lines run everywhere -- where
earthquakes have destroyed cities that were then rebuilt, where
wildfires obliterate communities nearly every year, where mudslides
take out houses in upscale beach towns again and again. In
California, people are reimbursed by insurance companies, and then
they rebuild in the same places, over and over. La Conchita, buried
by mud in a horrific slide in 2004, will see new homes on the same
slope. Scripps Ranch and other San Diego neighborhoods erased by
wildfires in 2004 have already risen from ash. The Oakland hills,
devastated in 1991 by one of America's most costly and destructive
fires, are covered with houses again.
All over America, people rebuild homes that lie in tornado paths,
on fault lines, near levees and rivers and dams, in forested areas
prone to periodic wildfires. How can it be, these Louisianians
asked me, with fury or fervent prayer or sighs of resignation, that
our state and people are worth less to the country? "We don't feel
like Americans," I heard again and again, and I was reminded of the
plaintive cries to television reporters during Katrina's floods --
"I'm a citizen of America! Not a refugee!"
I tried to visualize my own modest neighborhood in Southern
California still filled with debris 10 months after an earthquake,
still without power or water or markets or schools or libraries.
And me, with my three daughters, in a small trailer. Nearly a year?
And no one to even tow away the cars, or cut up the fallen trees?
Nobody could realistically expect New Orleans and the Katrina-ravaged
Gulf Coast to be rebuilt to it's former glory in ten months, but how
long should it take to tow away damaged cars or cut and haul off
damaged trees?
Anyone still looking for weapons of mass destruction should look no
further than the Gulf Coast. Another hurricane - heck, even a good
stiff breeze - could turn all that debris into deadly ammunition.
|
// posted by andante @ 9:08 AM
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Essential Andante Facts
**I am a white, middle-aged, Southern Belle Don't-Wannabe. Watch me
and my hooped-skirt give new meaning to the act of "mooning"
**I don't suffer trolls wisely or at all. I have a delete button, and
I'm not afraid to use it
**According to "Belief-O-Matic", I am 100% Liberal Quaker and 98%
Neo-Pagan. What's with that?
**I believe The South Shall Rise Again. And white, middle-aged women
shall lead them.
**"For the poor shall never cease out of the land: therefore I command
thee, saying, Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy
poor, and to thy needy, in thy land." (Deuteronomy 15:11 (KJV)
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