6 August—First, a clarification and update on yesterday’s disquisition: a full-time Connecticut resident notified The Monitor that SLFU is actually the initialism of the Connecticut DESPP’s Special Licensing and Firearms Unit. We’d never have guessed. And a Connecticut-Florida pistol-packing snowbird reminded us that Florida is “now one of more than 25” (specifically, it’s 29) so-called constitutional carry or permitless carry states. (Needless to say but nevertheless well worth reminding readers, Connecticut, the misnamed Constitution State, isn’t one of them.)

Ordinarily, the federal Gun Control Act of 1968 that prohibits “felons and certain other persons” from “possessing or receiving firearms and ammunition” trumps state laws. But felonious Trump trumps everything. Just ask him.

Now for a needed respite from politics. And Trump. Everybody knows the Colonel Bogey March, probably from the 1957 flick “The Bridge on the River Kwai.” Some may remember it as the tune to which was set the popular World War II ditty “Hitler has only got one ball,/Göring has two but very small,/Himmler is rather sim’lar,/But poor old Goebbels has no balls at all.”

And, of course, Colonel Bogey was the official quick march of the Women’s Army Corps, until it was disbanded in 1978, with all units being integrated with male units. (We’ll forgo comment on the ill-advised gender integration of virtually all institutions virtually all over the world.)

It’s not too well known that the Colonel Bogey March was composed in 1914 by Kenneth Alford, an English military bandmaster, who was really Frederick Ricketts. Although Humphrey Bogart was all of 14 at the time, it’s unlikely that Ricketts-Alford named the march after him, as Bogey hadn’t yet matriculated at Andover. And he didn’t last there long after he had matriculated.

It came to light only recently that Ludwig van Beethoven (who needs no introduction) was so enamored of the Colonel Bogey March that he used it as the theme of a little and little-performed theme-and-variations-for-piano opus. The Monitor’s music columnist and critic was lucky enough to be at the Bushnell when a young unknown keyboard virtuoso performed it. Naturally our columnist and critic recorded the performance on his smartphone. Here it is: