We have so many insightful and powerful diaries written here at Daily Kos. Our diaries inform, inflame, impassion, and even entertain. We Kossacks have strong voices and an even stronger will to be the change we wish to see in this country.
One of the richest, and perhaps most under-appreciated, areas of thought come in the form of comments attached to these diaries.
Here at Top Comments we strive to recognize and promote the talent of this community by highlighting outstanding comments found throughout the day by the diarist, and through nominations at made at TopComments at gmail dot com by your fellow Kossacks.
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This coming week is going to be a fantastic one. As I've mentioned before, I love music, and I love early music the most. These days, "early music" is stretching later and later, but it generally means "classical" music of the Baroque and Renaissance and Medieval periods. The stretching takes you into the time of Mozart and Beethoven and even Schubert, especially if that music is played on period instruments like fortepianos or strings, woodwinds, and brass from that period.
What makes tomorrow special is that the Boston Early Music Festival opens its doors, and from then to the following Sunday I'll have my selection of two operas (including a 1688 opera making its North American premiere), over twenty concerts being put on by the festival, plus many dozen "fringe" concerts, and all sorts of ancillary events. This is the biggest such festival on the continent, and I have a blissful week every time they stage this event, which happens every two years. If you're in Boston and like music at all, there's almost certain to be something you'll want to attend.
My favorite period, as I've noted before in Top Comments, is Renaissance music, but there's plenty to love about Baroque music, too. I've always been in it for the voices playing off against each other, whether human or instrumental: harmony is what I love.
Unfortunately, this year, the festival happens to coincide with Netroots Nation. This was not the case in 2009; I was able to attend both events. This year, that's not the case, and I feel no embarrassment in telling you all that, with early music my first love, I knew I'd be missing NN11 in favor of the festival. (Hell, I even told Markos that.)
It also coincides with the Top Comments Fifth Anniversary this Tuesday. I'm telling you this so you can mark your calendars and set your reminders to stop in on Tuesday, June 14 at 10pm eastern. Our anniversary diarist will be the excellent carolita, who's been doing Top Comments even longer than I have, and writing better diaries to boot. I'm sure she'll have something splendid and thought-provoking for us all to read, five years to the day from when Carnacki started the daily comments diary, never knowing just how long it would last. I'll definitely stop in when I get back from Boston to say hello.
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It was a bit slow in the Top Comments mailbox today, with but a single submission arriving by the 9:30pm Eastern Time deadline. Just in case you happened to misplace it, the address of our mailbox for top comments submissions remains:
TopComments AT gmail DOT com
(change " AT " to "@" and " DOT " to ".")
Anyone can send great comments to our address. Be sure to include the direct link to a comment—the URL—which is available from that comment's date/time; we need that to find your choice. Please always include your Daily Kos user name in the body of your message, so we can credit you properly. If you send a writeup with the link, we are able to include that, too, though we reserve the right to edit.
From Ed Tracey:
In today's diary by Clarknt67 about the Tracy Morgan performance in Tennessee, there were a few standouts. Pager was among those who cited the fabulous words of Tina Fey about how his co-workers might react...
...and from the sublime to the ridiculous: otto likens Morgan to the melon-busting Gallagher...(or even Carrot Top)....
From sardonyx (your Saturday diarist):
In this morning's Fishgrease: Booming D*cks, the inimitable Dallasdoc puts the Weiner into perspective. Dave925 and CDH in Brooklyn both make worthy responses to Dallasdoc's comment.
A (very) late addition to tonight's TC is this comment thread from today's golden anniversary Animal Nuz by ericlewis0 for the incorrigible punsters among you. The fun was started by ontheleftcoast, after which global citizen and allergywoman ran away with it, aided by commonmass.
Please add your own comment finds below!
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A reminder: We still hope top mojo will return once we figure out how to strongarm convince Comment Search to give us exactly what we need in a form that we can use. Which is more difficult and requires more hand-editing than it should be (or used to be).