Tom B

[Music over time🎻 @Peal8888]

Three Voices, One Old Song, and a Nearly Perfect Moment

In 1976, on a simple stage lit by warm golden lights, Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, and Emmylou Harris sat side by side. Dolly held a guitar, her blonde hair glowing under the lights. The three of them began to sing “Bury Me Under The Weeping Willow” — a classic folk song by The Carter Family.

There was no big orchestra. No special effects. Just three voices blending together so naturally that viewers almost forgot they were watching a performance. Dolly led the melody with her clear, pure tone that still carried the breath of the Appalachian mountains. Emmylou Harris added delicate high notes, while Linda Ronstadt brought depth and emotional weight. Together they created a harmony that made the already melancholic song feel both aching and graceful.

The song tells of longing for someone who has passed, and of the wish to rest beneath a weeping willow. In their voices, that old story was no longer just lyrics. It became a quiet whisper about connection, about the deep roots of American country music — music born from the land, from loss, and from simple love.

That moment was special because it showed Dolly Parton was not only the glittering star with big hair and sparkling outfits. Sitting there with a guitar, singing alongside two friends, she appeared as a keeper of tradition. She played with those signature long nails, yet the sound remained steady and true. There was no need for showmanship; talent simply shone on its own.

Years later the three women would record the celebrated album Trio. But this 1976 performance still holds a beauty of its own: the innocence, the mutual respect, and the love for old songs. They did not try to reinvent the piece. They simply let it live again through their voices.

Today, after Dolly Parton has left us, that footage feels even more precious. It reminds viewers of a genuine Dolly, an artist who always knew how to return to her roots. In the harmony of those three voices, one hears not only music, but also humility and reverence for those who came before.

Some performances make audiences applaud for technical skill. Others leave people silent because of pure feeling. This clip belongs to the second kind. Three women sat there, sang an old song, and accidentally left behind a nearly perfect moment — simple, clear, and still echoing.

[Old Canada Series @oldcanadaseries]

US president, Ronald Reagan, and Canadian Prime Minister, Brian Mulroney, in 1988. Later that year, Reagan said: “Our peaceful trading partners are not our enemies; they are our allies. We should beware of the demagogs who are ready to declare a trade war against our friends—weakening our economy, our national security, and the entire free world—all while cynically waving the American flag."

[Sophia Proneikos @Pergament_F]

Thinking Zone. Tuesday afternoon in my small Black Sea village, my Greek coffee is in front of me, and humanity has once again done something so exquisitely absurd that for a moment one wonders whether history is not being written by a satirist: after spending decades removing books from our homes, giving away our grandparents’ libraries because “they take up space,” leaving old editions to gather dust and, with admirable technological cheerfulness, moving memory outside our own heads, we have suddenly discovered that old books contain... knowledge.
The news is almost perfect. Companies connected with the development of artificial intelligence are buying enormous quantities of old, rare and out-of-print books because they contain something that is beginning to become scarce on the internet: text written by humans before the invasion of machine-generated content. There are already documented cases of millions of books being purchased, their bindings cut off, their pages scanned, and the physical copies subsequently destroyed. The latest investigation from yesterday traces a shipment of rare books all the way to a facility used for AI training.

The horror! Books have turned out to be useful.

This is exactly where I thought of Emperor Claudius.
Not the Claudius of the popular image, the stammering, disabled and slightly ridiculous uncle of Caligula whom the Praetorians find after the emperor’s assassination and, by virtue of one of the splendid jokes of Roman history, turn into Caesar, but the other Claudius, the scholar, the insatiable reader, the man who wrote histories of the Etruscans and Carthaginians, an autobiography and a work on the Roman alphabet, almost all of it lost.
Here is the first unpleasant fact about human civilisation: knowledge can disappear.
Then I thought of Umberto Eco, which, where books are concerned, is almost a professional reflex, because Eco understood perfectly well that a library is not a warehouse for information but a machine against oblivion, and he built an entire novel around a library in which power over books means power over what people are allowed to know.
And somewhere between Claudius and Eco stand we.
With a phone containing practically the entire world, and with an ever diminishing need to contain anything within ourselves.
Once, a person had to remember a poem, a date, a name, an argument, a route, a telephone number; then we decided that memory was a tedious administrative function and successively delegated it to the notebook, the computer, Google, the cloud, and finally artificial intelligence, until knowledge gradually ceased to be something we possess and became something to which we have access.
The difference seems insignificant only until access disappears.
And now comes the magnificent reversal: the machines to which we delegated knowledge are setting off in search of the books we no longer considered it necessary to read, because they need precisely the human knowledge we left to gather dust.
The circle is almost complete.
The human says: “Why should I know it? I’ll ask AI.”

AI replies: “Excellent. Just let me buy your grandfather’s library.”

And at this point Claudius would probably begin stammering with indignation, while Eco would ask for another bottle of wine and write six hundred pages.

I have only Greek coffee.

But I am beginning to look at my own books with a certain smugness.
It turns out they are not gathering dust.
They are waiting for humanity to remember why it wrote them.

[Tears in the Rain @CrsMarshal47875]

@TheOnlyEsta2 Lie, cheat, steal, grift, con, bullshit, finagle, corrupt, violate, degenerate, degrade, disrupt, disrespect, derange, slander, sully, spoil, stain, deteriorate, destroy, misrepresent, fuck up...etc. He IS the VERY BEST at being the VERY WORST of humanity. Our very own Caligula.

[Paul Freid @PaulFreid5]

An American hero. Retweet if you agree.

[Tom B @myshkin123]

@Irina_exh Ash tray

[Tom B @myshkin123]

@mellowjnr_ #7 for me

[Tom B @myshkin123]

@VoicesofWW2 Not pictured but there - Leahy, the man who conducted the orchestra of personalities in this photo .

[Tom B @myshkin123]

@Victorshi2020 Answer is: ‘truth would offend your boss’

[Tom B @myshkin123]

@glennbeck Full free access through Hormuz before he and bibi enabled and encouraged Iran to take control - they broke it .. trump & bibi broke it

[Tom B @myshkin123]

@10ryno @NUCLRGOLF Jack Nicklaus did ..

[Tom B @myshkin123]

@Gentleman_Ways B,C,D,

[Tom B @myshkin123]

@Simi_2210_ 20

[Tom B @myshkin123]

@jeremybuff @sentdefender “American” most of these babies are just as much a part of these 2 continents as you are - 35 countries here in America, USA merely one of them.

[Tom B @myshkin123]

@250YearsAgoLive Ubiquitous ‘America’ steals moniker from other 35 countries on the two continents

[Edison A @allen_e_o]

Few people can describe Trump for who he really is off-screen

[Tom B @myshkin123]

@Osint613 Bottom line: this reads like a leaked Iranian wishlist/draft proposal, not a confirmed agreement — and US officials are actively pushing back on parts of it.

[Tom B @myshkin123]

@CKirich @DougAMacgregor Which America ? 35 countries on 2 continents.. USA being only 1 of the 35.

[Gianl1974 @Gianl1974]

A message to all sane Republicans:

He pardoned 1,600 violent criminals.
You said nothing.

He bulldozed the East Wing.
You said nothing.

He interfered with the release of the Epstein files. You said nothing.

He took over the Kennedy Center and renamed it after himself. You said nothing.

He accepted a $400 million airplane as a personal gift. You said nothing.

He threatened Canada, Cuba, Denmark, Greenland, Venezuela, Colombia, and Brazil. You said nothing.

He tariffed just about everyone but Russia, causing inflation and instability worldwide. You said nothing.

He attacked a nation during mediated negotiations. You said nothing.

His ill-conceived war killed 175 children on day one. You said nothing.

He alienated and insulted our allies. You said nothing.

His ICE Army terrorized and murdered U.S. citizens. You said nothing.

He committed murder on the high seas. You said nothing.

He co-opted the Justice Department and directed it to prosecute his political enemies. You said nothing.

It’s time to start talking.