Edgard Varèse's Ameriques

Mark is an expert on classical music. And I'm not, in the least, and my biggest hole of knowledge is on "modern" classical music. I've been looking around for stuff to educate myself.
Mark actually doesn't talk about music all too often to me, and I'm wondering if it's a reflection of my ignorance or because he doesn't want to talk about it. (He was once studying to be a musician, but quit about two years ago. I don't know the details as to why, but maybe it's a sore subject.)
In any case, all I really know about this piece is that it's from the twenties.

Malta

...So despite my love of European history, I really don't know anything about the country of Malta, other than it was once controlled by the British and is hardcore Catholic. To fix this oversight, I sat down and read a short article on traveling to the country.

History Things I Learned:

Carthage and Rome duked it out for Malta. Obviously, the Romans won in the end.

St. Paul brought the christian faith there, like he seemingly did everywhere else in the Mediterraean.

During the Middle Ages, the island was controlled by Muslims. Again, not a surprise as other parts of the Mediterraean was controlled by Muslims, most famously southern Spain, but also southern France and parts of coastal Italy.

Napoleon, a native of next door Corsica, conquered the island and stole pretty much anything he could, which is what he did elsewhere, like in Egypt.

Lord Byron traveled there. I wonder if that trip was related to his infamous Greek trip that ended so badly. Also, he complained about the streets, which totally sounds like him, because he's such a whiner.

I could probably conclude here that Malta is basically like its sister European countries in terms of history, but this might be simplistic.

Amazing Side Notes:

They have a Popeye theme park. I don't really know what to make of that, but if I ever go there, that might be a fun place to go, though I suspect I would go just to say that once I went to a Popeye theme park.

Maltese is a blend of Italian and Arabic. Sounds like my sort of language.

Blogger in Draft

To all my readers out there who are on blogger: how do you guys feel about the new version of blogger in draft?
Although it is very fancy, I really dislike the color choices of the program.  Everything is so small and the light orange of some of the text is hard to read.  It gives me a headache just looking at it. 
I'm also not a fan because I really don't have the time to learn another thing right now. 

6 Feet Under

Found this great article about how the term six feet under came about.  Shocker: it's related to the Great Plague.  (Does everything even the least bit related to death has to come back to this plague?) 
The short and short of it is this: to prevent the plague from coming back, six feet became the standard for burial.  (Which begs the question: what were they doing before the plague in terms of how deeply people were buried?) 

Dancing in September

I love this song.  Years ago, I went on a trip with my Mom, sister, and some family friends.  They left an Earth, Wind and Fire CD, which I totally "borrowed" and listened to. 
I love to dance to this song. 

Tumblr Crush

I've sort of fallen in love with tumblr as a format.  And then I came across this video of the founder, and I fell in love with him.  He seems like both a down to earth person and very poised and smart. 
Does anyone else think this guy looks like Christopher Gorham?

Found Poem

I'm not usually too impressed with found poems, but this little one is sort of perfect.