More Songs for Memorial Day

Plus grim news here Gaza and a president loses what's left of his mind at West Point.

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Two quite different stories got a good deal of attention yesterday. After an incident just up the river from where we live, one wag put it this way on Twitter: “West Point grads got some rambling advice today on selecting a trophy wife from a draft dodger in a red campaign hat before he hauled ass to play golf.”

Then, producing global outrage, from Gaza: Nine siblings under age 12, all children of two doctors at Gaza’s Nasser Hospital, killed in Israeli airstrike on their home in Khan Yunis, as starvation spreads and food denied. CBS Evening News:

And a response from the region:

Continuing our songs for Memorial Day:

A little-known early Joni Mitchell song, “The Fiddle and the Drum,” performed by A Perfect Circle.

Neil Young created the best (among the very few) full albums protesting the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Living With War. Here’s a key cut, “Flags of Freedom.”

The Byrds, after Gene Clark and David Crosby flew the coop, still produced a couple of great albums, inclduing “Draft Morning,” here with an extended ending.

Perhaps The Kinks’ greatest album from 1969, Arthur, explored World War II in three songs, including one that applies to all wars, “Some Mother’s Son.”

Iris DeMent with a haunting take on the Vietnam “Wall in Washington.”

Emmylou Harris & Linda Ronstadt collaborated on the beautiful “1917,” by David Olney, as a woman takes pity on a soldier and sleeps with him.

No one in our era wrote more anti-war songs than Phil Ochs—even the little-remembered U.S. invasion of Santo Domingo earned a fine tune. But several tackled more universal war themes, such as “One More Parade.”

From Tunes to Toons

Barry Blitt, after Bergman: “We’ve seen this movie before.”

Silly, but…..

Allegedly a new one from Banksy: