Quick Friday Update; Constitutional Carry

The Portly Politico4 Comments

Yours portly is still playing catch-up from a combination of end-of-the-school-year-busyness and post-vacation-readjustment.  I know the blog has been short on substantive content lately; unfortunately, I simply lack the time and energy to put more into it at the moment.

I have a busy weekend of non-blog writing ahead (mostly stuff for the Town of Lamar), and precious  little time today to work.

Last night (Thursday, 9 May 2024) the Town’s Police Department hosted an event with SC SLED (basically, the “FBI” for South Carolina) to discuss the implications of our new constitutional carry bill.  There is a great deal of handwringing over the idea of hot-headed eighteen-year olds blowing each other way now that they can carry openly, but when I asked the SLED agent if any of the other thirty-four States with constitutional carry had experienced an uptick in these emotional bouts of lethal violence, he waffled, saying that “it varies from State to State.”  My entire impression is that this law enforcement officer didn’t really know what he was talking about.

I love the police, but like engineers, they tend to look at an issue from only one angle, usually that of safety.  Safety isn’t necessarily the enemy of liberty, but it frequently is.  Eighteen-year olds are still going to blow each other away in the heat of the moment; now we can just see the ones stupid enough to display their $500 handgun on their hips.  There’s a lot of hysteria over the new law, but not much thoughtful reflection.

Let a thousand handguns bloom.

TBT^4: Egged Off

The Portly Politico5 Comments

In a better, vanished era, eggs were cheap.  At one point, you could get eighteen eggs here in South Carolina for around $0.89-$1.19.  I’m not talking about the 1980s; this was four or five years ago.

Fortunately, it looks like chickens might soon be legal in my town, thanks in part to the efforts of yours portly, but mostly because everyone is feeling squeamish about cracking down (no pun intended) on “illegal” fowl in the city limits.  Hopefully I’ll have a full report next week.

Let a thousand eggs scramble, I say.  People need relief.  Cheap eggs and abundant fertilizer can only help.

With that, here is 4 May 2023’s “TBT^2: Egged Off“:

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Open Mic Adventures LXXIX: “Pink Princess”

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Today’s track is from my seventeenth album, Four Mages.  It is a collection of ten electronic tracks, all but one of which (“The Blind Prophet“) is color-coded. Each piece explores some facet of fantasy archetypes, weaving and casting a musical spell upon listeners.

Here are some platforms where you can listen:

I really enjoy this album, and I hope you will, too.  It’s about fourteen minutes in length, so it’s perfect listening for quick errands.

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Sunday Abroad

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Yours portly is on a family vacation, so my posts will be quite short for a few days.

That said, please check out my seventeenth album, Four Mages.  It is a collection of ten electronic tracks, all but one of which (“The Blind Prophet“) is color-coded. Each piece explores some facet of fantasy archetypes, weaving and casting a musical spell upon listeners.

Here are some platforms where you can listen:

I really enjoy this album, and I hope you will, too.  It’s about fourteen minutes in length, so it’s perfect listening for quick errands.

Here’s a full playlist (for free):

Happy Listening!

—TPP

SubscribeStar Saturday: Spring Concert 2024 Postmortem

The Portly Politico2 Comments

Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

My students’ big Spring Concert was this past Tuesday, 30 April 2024—the perfect way to finish out a super busy month.  T.S. Elliott wrote in The Wasteland that “April is the cruellest month,” and for yours portly, it’s true—it’s my busiest month of the year at work, and I always seem to come down with a gnarly sinus infection during the height of it, largely (I suspect) due to exhaustion.

But April is also the coolest month because my students get to showcase their talents at our awesome concert.  This year’s concert was overstuffed with goodness, like a really comfortable, worn couch that also produces high quality rock ‘n’ roll.

Perhaps that’s not the most elegant or eloquent metaphor.  What I mean is that the concert was long, but good.  The length was the result of structural issues:  we had to incorporate Dance, Choir, my Middle School and High School Ensembles, and various soloists.  Rather than trim the fat (and, to be clear, there wasn’t much fat to trim) and shortchange my students, I leaned into it, producing a concert that was a bit over two hours.

To be clear, my goal is always to get to one hour, maybe ninety minutes.  Seventy-five minutes is a good compromise.  But with the Choir director insisting on featuring five beautiful but laborious choral pieces, and Dance students doing their arrhythmic gesticulating, it tends to pad out the runtime.  My thought is, why should my students suffer because we’ve expanded our offerings in the performing arts?

My administration was not pleased with the length, but as I pointed out to them, it’s the same as going to a varsity baseball game on a Tuesday night, and we never complain about those.  Further, my Karen-esque boss hosts two large, lengthy beauty pageants each year, also on school nights, which easily match or exceed the length of my concert.  Quite frankly, I’m tired of compromising on this issue.  If athletics and the boss get whatever they want when it comes to length of programs, I’m going to pursue the same tactic.

But I digress.  That’s material probably best left behind the paywall, but I’m pretty ticked off at my administration right now, and frankly don’t care if they stumble upon this rant.  Regardless, the concert was awesome, and my students did extremely well.  Seriously, it was the best one yet.

To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

May 2024 Bandcamp Friday

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Today is Bandcamp Friday!  That means Bandcamp waives their share of any purchases made on my Bandcamp page today (Friday, 3 May 2024), so it’s the best possible time to buy my music if you want to support yours portly.

Yesterday I released my seventeenth Bandcamp album, Four Mages.  It is a collection of ten electronic tracks, all but one of which (“The Blind Prophet“) is color-coded. Each piece explores some facet of fantasy archetypes, weaving and casting a musical spell upon listeners.

Here are some platforms where you can listen:

Four Mages is just $5 on Bandcamp, and most of that goes to me today.

For those looking for the cheapest, easy way to listen, here’s a YouTube playlist:

Happy Listening!

—TPP

🧙‍♂️Four Mages🧙‍♂️ Out Today!

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Today is 2 May 2024, exactly twenty-six weeks to Halloween!  What better day to release my latest collection of compositions, Four Mages?

🧙‍♂️Four Mages🧙‍♂️ is a collection of ten electronic tracks, all but one of which (“The Blind Prophet“) is color-coded. Each piece explores some facet of fantasy archetypes, weaving and casting a musical spell upon listeners.

It’s $5 on Bandcamp, and is also available on all major (and minor) streaming platforms except for Spotify.

I’m quite excited for this release; I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed composing it.

Happy Listening!

—TPP

Quick Post-Concert Update

The Portly Politico2 Comments

The concert was a big success.  It was also loooooong—about two hours.  Of course, with performances from dance classes, the choir, various soloists, and my Middle and High School Ensembles, it was bound to be lengthy.  As I pointed out to some folks afterwards, it’s no different than kids who play a baseball game (but, let’s be honest, way more fun that baseball).

I’ll have a full postmortem this weekend, but now, I am heading to bed (at the time of writing, it’s about 10:15 PM the Tuesday evening after the concert).

Back to real posts soon.  Yours portly is just having to do these quick ones to get by for the time being.

Rock on,

TPP