29 November—As expected, the California-oriented flakes among Connecticut’s majority Democrat pols have vowed to continue their crusade to restrict choice and ban internal-combustion engines. It’ll be their top priority in the 2024 session, according to the Senate Majority Leader. Because they know what’s best. All the more reason to get rid of the bastards next year.

And solicitous Democrat U.S. Senator Christopher Murphy thinks it’s the responsibility of the federal government to combat loneliness.

And, this just in, yesterday a 90-year-old driver killed and mutilated a little pug that was being walked across Route 202 in the crosswalk by Center School. Word has it that the miserable old fart wasn’t even apologetic. More on that as it develops, including the canicidal old bastard’s name. I’d like to run over him and crush his skull.

Now for needed relief, Arnold Schoenberg (Schönberg, 1874-1951) was one of the most influential composers of the last century, even though his later music is an acquired taste at best. Expressionist, twelve-tone, atonal, and all that. Forget it.

But in his earlier (formative) career Shoenberg also composed more traditional, tonal—and, dare I say, pleasant—music like his magnificent orchestral-choral Gurre-Lieder (Songs of Gurre) and Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night), a string sextet.

Schoenberg also did some marvelous orchestrations of other composers’ works. In the early twenties, for instance, for a benefit concert for the Society for Private Music Performance, he and his pupils Alban Berg and Anton Webern reduced waltzes by Johann Strauss II for chamber ensembles with which they performed. Here’s Arnold’s utterly delightful Rosen aus dem Süden (Roses From the South) for piano, harmonium, and string quartet: