All California students study California Mission History in 4th grade and have been doing so for more than 60 years. I am no exception. Charles makes a very nice presentation. Watch for the volcanoes.
Mission-style architecture is repeated all over California, despite the volcanoes.

Unfortunately, when the missions were closed, most of the wealth that had been accumulated and held in trust for the Indians was lost. https://www.californiafrontier.net/secularization/ On March 18, 1865, President Lincoln signed an order returning the missions to the Catholic Church and the State of California, and today eighteen missions are owned and maintained by the Church as active parishes, while three are owned by the California Department of Parks and Recreation and are open to the public as state historic parks. Mission Dolores in San Francisco is the oldest building in the city. Part of Vertigo was filmed in the Mission Dolores cemetery. Its tiny burial ground was once part of a much larger cemetery, the final resting place of city founders, criminals, and thousands of Ohlone.

We must maintain superiority. Why? Because a conservative America is a moral deterrent to evil.

​Lenin murdered this 14-year-old boy, The Tsarevich Alexis.

courtesy of Robert K. Massie, author of Nicholas and Alexandra (1967)

Alexis and his sisters had a French tutor, Pierre Gilliard, until the end (1918).
Gilliard wrote a memoir, Thirteen Years at the Russian Court (1923).
I'm pleased to tutor a 13-year-old Tatar boy (2022).

https://rumble.com/v1238uc-2000-mules-trailer.html
Rumble placed a firewall around the movie so that it cannot be censored.

Our seminarian, Jacob, Bachelor of Music (BM), directed me to the last psalm, 150.

Clementine Vulgate
Latin text
1  Alleluja. Laudate Dominum in sanctis ejus; laudate eum in firmamento virtutis ejus.
2  Laudate eum in virtutibus ejus; laudate eum secundum multitudinem magnitudinis ejus.
3  Laudate eum in sono tubae; laudate eum in psalterio et cithara.
4  Laudate eum in tympano et choro; laudate eum in chordis et organo.
5  Laudate eum in cymbalis benesonantibus; laudate eum in cymbalis jubilationis.
6  Omnis spiritus laudet Dominum!
Alleluja.
​
Douay-Rheims Bible
English translation
1  Alleluia. Praise ye the Lord in his holy places: praise ye him in the firmament of his power.
2  Praise ye him for his mighty acts: praise ye him according to the multitude of his greatness.
3  Praise him with the sound of trumpet: praise him with psaltery and harp.
4  Praise him with timbrel and choir: praise him with strings and organs.
5  Praise him on high sounding cymbals: praise him on cymbals of joy:
6  let every spirit praise the Lord.
Alleluia.

​High Mass at St. Stephen - Jacob's musical arrangement of the psalm with all the instruments mentioned begins at 59 minutes and is eight minutes long. Text of the Mass (contained in my Missal)
https://www.divinumofficium.com/cgi-bin/missa/missa.pl

He does not understand the First Amendment, our guarantee that all are heard. I left Facebook and Twitter long ago. Musk agrees with me; he just bought Twitter. "How much did Stanford pay you for that speech, sir?" A fiction or nonfiction writer-investigator probes truth and often uncovers it,
numbskull.

Exploring the Elements, A Complete Guide to the Periodic Table, words by Isabel Thomas, pictures by Sara Gillingham. Phaidon Press Inc. First published 2020, reprinted in 2021, copyright 2020 Phaidon Press Limited.

Book loaned to me by Alexander. I will add some on electric vehicles at our next session. At it, we plan to do an experiment, “Egyptian Night”. Will we succeed and not ruin the dining room table or null our fingerprints?

I tire of hearing that anyone who is other than a leftist ignores science. I don't do research on medicines or vaccines, but my little brain is ready to receive information. Parler said, “Expect Twitter walkouts. … They will do everything they can to prevent Twitter from becoming a free speech platform.”

Twitter is on Market Street in San Francisco. I delivered the Academy of Art University newspaper there a few times, and then I was told to stay away. I guess they thought it was advertising, which it was.

I get my information from a variety of sources whose identities are top secret. That's exaggeration, not fiction.

On Tuesday, 4-26-22, the White House announced that Vice President Kamala Harris had tested positive for COVID-19. Harris was fully vaccinated and boosted against the virus, but she still contracted it.

All Western music is based on the 12-tone system. The Catholic Church banned the wolf interval as offensive to the ear, but it is heavily used in death metal music and is very hard to sing unless the vocalist employs a false chord technique, also known as a scream or a growl. I think the Sabaton singer does it … maybe not.

This excellent video shows the connection between geometry and music. Some students have a harder time developing numeracy than they do with literacy or musicality. I placed a metronome on my piano and found it to be unnecessary. I suppose numerical timing and beat were already firmly fixed in my body, specifically in my foot.

The narrator has a beautiful British accent, but his "sound wave" sounds like "sign wave". Also, Americans say "math", not "maths", so strange the rest of the world is.

My website educates me as much as it might be educating you. I hope you are enjoying what appears.

Joakim "Jocke" Brodén, lead singer for Sabaton at Wacken Open Air 2013, photograph author Jonas Rogowski. Sabaton is classified as heavy metal. I have posted two of their songs in the Music category.

​​Anyone who tampers with my emotions, the best part of me, is unallied with my Savior, because He is the One Who put them there and loves me for holding on to them, at every costly turn, whether emotional lacerations were caused by someone else, through my own fault, or by accident. If my emotions kill me, so be it, for they will take me out of this quagmire and into His life and embrace.

Here is a comment from one of my friends from St. Stephen –
 
“For you and me today, we are living in our section of this gigantic, turbulent river and it is confusing, we go under, we get pulled by the current so that we cannot even control our limbs, our brains are being drowned, we can’t figure out where we are going, and it’s beyond our control!
 
“Thinking about the Pope . . . the bend in the river is different, the rocks seem more formidable, but truly it is the same river that every person must endure.”
 
True friends keep you afloat.

Still, this pope, this senex et mari, writes and speaks from a secured loggia. If he came to my front door, alone, and made these accusations directly, the whole neighborhood would hear a door slam. He had a black eye once before.

He’s no father either. My own father got mad at me once in my life for defying him, but never, never did he attack my character. His name was Joe. He was a boxer in his youth and could have been arrested one night for disturbing the peace at a dancehall but was sent home instead by his brother-in-law cop. Joe was infinitely more saintly than F, abbreviation and grade for pontifex.

So, as I said, listening to music is a way for me to combat melancholy. Following is a mini lesson on levels of achievement for piano. 

“Nocturne in C sharp minor” is one of Chopin’s more accessible pieces, not the easiest, around an RCM Level 9, yet difficult to play convincingly.

The Royal Conservatory of Music (RCM)

• Elementary (Preparatory-Level 4)
• Intermediate (Level 5-8)
• Advanced (Level 9-10)
• Diplomas.

​I would say I was at Level 8, slowly sliding into Level 9, when Joe, who liked hearing me play piano, coaxed me into playing sports exclusively. He knew that a solo act was not the best thing for a 15-year-old. Here is a repost that illustrates the levels:​

Why Russian children still love the ballet

CULTURE, FEB 14, 2015, By MARIA FEDORISHINA, SPECIAL TO RBTH 

“According to a 2013 survey by children’s charitable fund, Deti Mira, 16.4 percent of Russian children aged 4-6 dream of an artistic profession, including the ballet.”
…

“In other countries, Russian classical ballet is often associated with the leading Russian theaters, the Bolshoi and the Mariinsky, where the dancers are mostly graduates of the Moscow State Academy of Choreography and the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet. It is practically impossible to prepare for entrance to such institutions because natural attributes – such as flexibility, being able to rise and jump, and a good ear for music – play such a leading role. Students are subject to an intense screening process.
 
“About 98 percent of children study ballet for themselves,” says Yulya Subbotovskaya.

https://www.rbth.com/arts/2015/02/14/why_russian_children_still_love_the_ballet_43709.html​
 
Ballet comes in second behind sport for Russian children. An American parent might send his 14-year-old son into football, and a Russian parent might have sent him into ballet school three or four years earlier.​ These boys are 16.

teacher: M Sharkov (M Yellalot)

If you have never watched any ballet and don't care to, just watch this one scene, which is probably the most famous scene in all of ballet and of all time and comes via Ukraine.
Idealized Love

A stone church is desirable. There is one in San Francisco. Cristo Rey Carmelite Monastery, 721 Parker. ​It always smells like roses, and if you visit around two-ish in the afternoon, you will hear the cloistered nuns singing, but you won't see them. My aunt visited a nun once a week for years for counsel and friendship. The nun sat behind a grille, and my aunt never saw her.

courtesy of foursquare.com and Luis G, Sept. 2, 2012
​

​Tuscan American dancers at the Italian Dinner tonight, St. Stephen the First Martyr, Sacramento, CA. We had a dinner and raffle in the parish hall for seminarians. I sat at table with Diane and Roger and supped with other friends, some new, some longtime.

About 30 parish teens waited tables, and the other children, which must have totaled 50, had a separate dining room. Twenty-seven tables with six at a table equals 162, plus chef and cook staff, a baker, organizers, three of our priests, one visiting priest, Father Akers, and one seminarian, Jacob.

Father Curtis revealed a statue of St. Joseph, which will be restored by parish artists and placed when the church expansion is finished.

One of my new friends is originally from Herzegovina, capital Mostar. He served as a marine for his home country and the USA.

There are over 150 parishes and missions in the Sacramento Diocese, which covers 20 counties, a very big chunk of Northern California, and I am told that we are the fasting-growing and most successful parish when it comes to fundraising, charitable donations, and evangelization. I am not bragging, because it has nothing to do with me. I say it to illustrate the strength of traditional Catholicism and the difference it has made in my life.

I went to daily Mass this week. Most up close to the altar were women, just like the women who bravely watched the Crucifixion up close.

On Friday, Father X was 10 minutes late, which was very unusual. Hearing confessions held him up, held him back from being closest, until vested.

​On my lips after communion, “Thou hast come to me in the Sacrament of Thy Love. Thou hast been pleased to make my poor heart Thy sanctuary.” ’62 Roman Missal, p 1816.

On the Gift of a Book to a Child
 
Child! do not throw this book about!   
   Refrain from the unholy pleasure   
Of cutting all the pictures out!
   Preserve it as your chiefest treasure.
 
Child, have you never heard it said   
   That you are heir to all the ages?
Why, then, your hands were never made
   To tear these beautiful thick pages!
 
Your little hands were made to take
   The better things and leave the worse ones:   
They also may be used to shake
   The Massive Paws of Elder Persons.
 
And when your prayers complete the day,   
   Darling, your little tiny hands
Were also made, I think, to pray   
   For men that lose their fairylands.
 
Hilaire Belloc

(Alexander, 8, chooses his own books. He loaned three illustrated titles to me: a group of short stories by Washington Irving; Walls, a book of poetry; and Exploring the Elements, a Complete Guide to the Periodic Table.)

When asked by a heckler during a campaign speech if he was a papist, Belloc (1870-1953) withdrew a rosary from his pocket and responded, “Gentlemen, I am a Catholic. As far as possible, I go to Mass every day. This is a rosary. As far as possible, I kneel down and tell these beads every day. If you reject me on account of my religion, I shall thank God that He has spared me the indignity of being your representative.”