Ethnic backgrounds of the British Invasion groups

1. THE BEATLES. Hiberno-Celts.
Strengths: tunefulness, harmonies, fun, teamship (all-together-now attitude).
Likes: ballads, songs about the sea.
Weaknesses: fractiousness, lack of an acknowledged leader. 2. THE ROLLING STONES. Anglo-Saxons with Welsh influence (Jones and Richards).
Likes: banging drums, trad guitar.
Note Jones was the early leader despite not bringing much. The Anglo-Saxon mind is scrambled by a Celt in a position of power (Merlin, Lloyd George, Charles I).

Do Dante Alighieri and the Commedia seem unapproachable?
Where to begin?

Dante’s world was centred on two places: Jerusalem and Rome. Judaea was where the Creator of the Universe had been born as a man and Jerusalem was where he’d died, redeeming mankind once and for all. Rome was the imperial power into which God had chosen to be born, and the parent of Dante’s own culture. It had declined and fallen, but Dante evidently still thought himself a Roman, and chose Virgil as his guide in the underworld. Civis Romanus sum.

Throwbacks

A thread about the many leaders of #Haiti 🇭🇹 and their often unfortunate ends.

“For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings;
How some have been deposed; some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed…”

https://twitter.com/scjohnson90/status/1418018756782174212

1. Toussaint Louverture, “the only negro of unmixed blood ever to exhibit the qualities of a statesman”, “small, ugly, smart, and strong”, was a coachman who came to lead the Haitian revolution. He was abducted by Brunet in 1802 and taken to Fort de Joux, where he died in 1803.