Happy Independence Day, everybody. Have some links to throw at you. I’ve done a Q&A podcast with Frank Lavin. He worked for Reagan, Bush 41, and Bush 43. Was ambassador to Singapore, among many other things. Is an expert on trade, and a great advocate of trade. Also, an all-around swell guy. Recently, he wrote a book about his father: Home Front to Battlefront: An Ohio Teenager in World War II.
Toward the end of this podcast, I ask Frank something like, “Is the American spirit alive and well? Is there life in the ol’ gal yet?” He answers that he has spent much of his career abroad — and “America is still the best place in the world to have an idea. People come from all around the world with their ideas to America.”
Yup.
The Divine Miss M. — Mona Charen — and I recorded a Need to Know, here. Our guest is Yuval Levin, who — have you noticed this? — knows a lot about health care, and any number of other subjects. The podcast ends with Marilyn Horne singing “You’re a Grand Old Flag.” (Yuval can’t do that, as far as I know, but I’ve never inquired.)
Okay, a little ballet: I have a post on Whipped Cream, the Richard Strauss work (delicious), here. And a post on Onegin, here. Onegin is a ballet that uses music by Tchaikovsky, naturally — but not music from his opera Eugene Onegin, oddly.
What else? Let me share with you a song by Lee Hoiby, the late American composer, and specialist in songs. Many years ago, I heard Leontyne Price sing “Lady of the Harbor,” and it was electric: the song and the singing. Alas, there is no Price recording of this song on the Internet. (I have a pirate CD, from the composer himself.)
In time, I got to know Hoiby, and I heard him sing and play this song. Fantastic. “It’s a kick-ass song,” he told me — truthfully, if not modestly — and also a “rock-and-roll song.” (You will hear that influence.)
Anyway, here it is, sung by Julia Faulkner, with the composer at the piano. (For the piece I wrote on Lee Hoiby at the time of his passing, go here. It also leads the music section of my recent collection, Digging In.)
I am officially linked out (as opposed to LinkedIn).