May 26, 2026 · 3:48 pm

THE AENEID: FOURTH AND FINAL PART

FOR THE FIRST PART CLICK HERE. FOR THE SECOND PART CLICK HERE. FOR THE THIRD PART CLICK HERE.

FOUR – A council of the gods is held on Mount Olympus as the goddesses Venus and Juno make their cases for and against Aeneas and his fellow survivors of fallen Troy. Venus argues for them since Aeneas is her son, while Juno retains her position against Aeneas because she wants to prevent the founding of Rome.

Events move back to the battlefield as Aeneas finally arrives back at the Trojan camp with an army of his Tuscan and Arcadian allies. In the following battle casualties are again high. King Turnus – Aeneas’s rival for the hand of King Latinus’s daughter Lavinia – kills the Arcadian Prince Pallas, whose father King Evander had sent him forth to fight on the Trojan side.

Elsewhere on the battlefield, Aeneas wounds Mezentius, but the man’s son Lausus leaps between his father and Aeneas. While the two younger warriors fight each other, Mezentius flees back to his camp and Aeneas kills Lausus. Continue reading →

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May 26, 2026 · 5:21 am

NEWS ROUNDUP: MAY TWENTY-SIXTH

Time for another currrent events roundup from Independent Voter Site Balladeer’s Blog.

OIL PRICES TUMBLE UPON WORD THAT END TO IRAN CONFLICT IS CLOSE.

DEMOCRATS CALLING FOR DNC CHAIRMAN TO RESIGN FOLLOWING RELEASE DETAILING WHAT A DEBACLE KAMALA HARRIS’ CAMPAIGN WAS.

BOLT CEO SLASHES ENTIRE H.R. TEAM, POINTING OUT THAT “THEY WERE CREATING PROBLEMS THAT DIDN’T EXIST“. Like so many other H.R. staffs in other companies working as Commissars for Democrat political opinions rather than doing their jobs resulted in “a culture of not getting things done and complaining a lot.”

      Among his other remarks: “there is “a sense of entitlement that had festered across the company, and people who felt empowered, felt entitled — but weren’t actually working hard.” … And this is the number one thing that I had to battle. Ultimately, most of those people just had to be let go,” Breslow stated.

      Also, in place of a full HR department, Bolt has since set up a smaller “people operations team” to handle new employee onboarding and training. “We have a team a quarter of the size, who are much more junior, who work a lot harder, who have better energy,” Breslow said at the event. “And our customers are telling us, ‘We haven’t had this type of attention in four years.‘

SENATOR MARSHA BLACKBURN REMINDS THE PUBLIC THAT PRESIDENT TRUMP IS ENDING A WAR THAT IRAN HAS BEEN WAGING AGAINST THE U.S. FOR FORTY-SEVEN YEARS.

EVEN DEMOCRAT SENATOR TAMMY DUCKWORTH COURAGEOUSLY ADDED HER VOICE TO SHAMING THE DEMOCRAT NATIONAL COMMITTEE INTO DELETING THEIR GROTESQUE POST USING MEMORIAL DAY AS A PARTISAN ANTI-TRUMP ANKLE BITE. Trump Derangement Syndrome continues. Continue reading →

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May 25, 2026 · 3:23 pm

HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY – 2026

Balladeer’s Blog hopes all of you are having a respectful Memorial Day. I always feel it’s an appropriate time to look at neglected conflicts or battles. The military members who died in those actions are sometimes overlooked in the big picture.

THE TOP FOUR FORGOTTEN MILITARY UNITS FROM AMERICAN WARS – Looking at the Oneida Indians First Allies Unit from the Revolutionary War, Doniphan’s Thousand from the Mexican War, the “Yankee Samurai” (Nissei Battalion of 2,000 Japanese-Americans) from World War 2, and the racially integrated 1st Rhode Island Regiment from the Revolutionary War. 

THE TOP FOUR FORGOTTEN CONFLICTS IN U.S. HISTORY – A look at the forgotten Revolutionary War battles after Yorktown (1781-1782), the Mexican War (1846-1848), the Nicaraguan Conflict (1926-1928), and the Philippine War (1899-1902).

FORGOTTEN U.S. NAVAL BATTLES OF WORLD WAR ONE – There were clashes between German U-Boats and the U.S. Navy ships transporting the American Expeditionary Force to Europe, the years-long underwater mining campaign, the German attack on Orleans, MA, the attack on Austria-Hungary’s naval base at Durazzo, Albania and much more.

Continue reading →

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May 25, 2026 · 2:28 pm

BALLADEER’S BLOG MAY BE BACK TO NORMAL

BALLADEER’S BLOG

Trying to see if everything is working properly at last. Basically just a test post.

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BALLADEER’S BLOG MAY BE BACK TO NORMAL

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May 24, 2026 · 5:51 pm

MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND: MEDAL OF HONOR WINNERS FROM THE BOXER “REBELLION”

TECHNICAL PROBLEMS CONTINUE BUT AT LEAST I CAN DO RERUNS FROM YEARS AGO.

Balladeer’s Blog once again takes a look at a currently neglected conflict and some of the military personnel who served in it. Here’s a look at some of the Congressional Medal of Honor recipients from the Relief Expedition during the Boxer Massacres in China (1900).

corporal titus


CALVIN P. TITUS

Branch of Service: Army

Rank: Standard Bearer/ Musician

Citation: “For gallant and daring conduct in the presence of his colonel and other officers and enlisted men of his regiment on 14 August 1900, while serving with Company E, 14th Infantry, at Peking, China. Musician Titus was first to scale the wall of the city.” He raised the American Flag from the top of that wall. (Pictured above.) NOTE: Titus previously served in the Philippine War (1899-1902) and subsequently in the Mexican Expedition (1916-1917) and Occupied Germany after World War One. 

CONTINUE READING:

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May 23, 2026 · 8:24 pm

STILL FIGHTING TECHNICAL PROBLEMS – IT’S STILL NOT LETTING ME VISIT OR LIKE OR COMMENT AT MANY OF YOUR SITES.

HOPEFULLY I CAN RETURN TO NORMAL POSTING AND VISITING VERY SOON.

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May 23, 2026 · 12:00 am

X-MEN: THE NEW TEAM IN 1975

This weekend’s light-hearted, escapist superhero post from Balladeer’s Blog looks at the first twenty stories of the “All New, All Different” X-Men beginning in 1975. I have a soft spot for superhero stories because reading them as a kid served as a gateway to two of my adult passions – mythology and opera.

new x-men 1

GIANT-SIZE X-MEN Vol 1 #1 (May 1975)

Title: Deadly Genesis

Villain: Krakoa

NOTE: This was the very FIRST appearance of the new team of X-Men who replaced the original, blander team launched in 1963. That team’s original series had been canceled and reduced to reprints (reruns).

Synopsis: The story opened with a series of vignettes featuring Professor X traveling the world rounding up a new batch of mutants detected by his invention Cerebro. Three of them had prior history in the Marvel Universe:

*** WOLVERINE (real name unknown at the time), who had fought the Hulk and the Wendigo in Canada. Wolverine willingly joined the X-Men and angrily resigned from Canada’s Department H, which had been sending him on missions up to that point. This would have repercussions down the road.

*** BANSHEE (Sean Cassidy), a sometime foe and sometime ally of the original team of X-Men. This Irishman had also fought Captain America and the Falcon.

*** SUNFIRE (Shiro Yoshida), a Japanese mutant who had fought the original X-Men as well as Sub-Mariner, Iron Man and Captain America.

The rest of the mutants Xavier rounded up were new:

*** STORM (Ororo Munroe), from Africa, where her weather-controlling powers had made her revered as a goddess by an isolated tribe.

*** NIGHTCRAWLER (Kurt Wagner), a German circus performer whose monstrous appearance made him the target of a mutant-hating mob from which Professor X saved him.

*** COLOSSUS (Piotr Rasputin), a Russian teenager working on a Collective Farm in the Soviet Union.

*** THUNDERBIRD (John Proudstar), a Native American mutant from a reservation in the American Southwest.

Once they were all assembled at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, the professor introduced them to Cyclops (Scott Summers), the leader of the original X-Men, who briefed them. He had led the original team – Iceman, Angel, Marvel Girl, Polaris and Havok (Beast was joining the Avengers at this point) to investigate a new mutant detected by Cerebro on a Pacific Ocean island called Krakoa. The original team vanished and only Cyclops escaped in their aircraft, but with no memory of what happened there.

Continue reading →

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May 22, 2026 · 11:58 am

MAY TWENTY-SECOND NEWS ROUNDUP

 Independent Voter Site Balladeer’s Blog closes out the week with another current events roundup.

DEMOCRAT OPERATIVE SENTENCED TO OVER FORTY-ONE YEARS IN PRISON FOR LEADING A TWO HUNDRED FIFTY MILLION DOLLAR FRAUD SCAM IN TIM WALZ’S MINNESOTA. More HERE. Sometimes the wheel turns slowly, but it turns.

MULTI-MILLION-DOLLAR MINNESOTA MEDICAID FRAUDSTER MUHAMMAD ABDULQADIR OMAR FLEES AUTHORITIES. 

DEMOCRAT DAs ANNOUNCE NEW PLANS TO ARREST ICE AGENTS.

AND YET ANOTHER BIDEN-RELEASED ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT SENTENCED TO FIFTY YEARS FOR MAKING CHILD PORN WITH HIS EIGHT-YEAR-OLD NIECE AND NEPHEW. The Democrat Party ideal.

AUSTIN SPREE SHOOTER IS AN ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT. “If it saves even one life” isn’t it worth it to enforce immigration laws?

BRIVAL LE POGAM APOLOGIZES ON BEHALF OF THE FRENCH FOR THE WAY “FRENCH THEORY” LED TO “THE WORST OF ALL IDEOLOGICAL MONSTROSITIES: WOKISM.”

PRESIDENT TRUMP MAKES GROCERY PRICES LOWER. 

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION IS SUCCESSFULLY CUTTING COLLEGE COSTS. Continue reading →

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May 21, 2026 · 7:35 pm

THE PESHTIGO FIRE: THE IGNORED DISASTER FROM THE SAME DAY AS THE GREAT CHICAGO FIRE

THE PESHTIGO FIRE – This piece of neglected history may be one of the most Balladeer’s Blog-ish topics in Balladeer’s Blog’s sixteen-year history. On October 8th, 1871 Peshtigo, Wisconsin burned down in a monumental conflagration that killed OVER FIVE TIMES AS MANY PEOPLE AS THE GREAT CHICAGO FIRE KILLED!

Both fires happened on the same day, but Chicago’s greater renown caused its disaster to overshadow what happened in Wisconsin to this very day.

The Peshtigo Fire is still the deadliest wildfire in known American history. The flames spread throughout the Door Peninsula and even spread to the Upper Peninsula. Roughly 1.2 million to 1.5 million acres were destroyed and estimates of the death toll go as high as 2,500 people. Continue reading →

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May 21, 2026 · 11:52 am

THE AENEID: THIRD PART

FOR THE FIRST PART CLICK HERE. FOR THE SECOND PART CLICK HERE.

THREE – Aeneas and his fleet of survivors of fallen Troy arrive at Latium in what is now west central Italy. They are made welcome by King Latinus, who offers his daughter Lavinia to Aeneas as a bride per the oracles foreseeing the arrival of strangers possessed of greatness and whose leader he should marry to Lavinia. 

King Turnus of the Rutuli people is infuriated because he had been promised Lavinia’s hand. The goddess Juno, still hoping to prevent the founding of Rome, causes Latinus’ wife Queen Amata to insist that the original plan to have Lavinia wed Turnus must be adhered to. The situation prompts Turnus to declare war on the Trojans.

Aeneas tries to avoid a conflict in his people’s new home region, but Juno causes our hero’s son Ascanius to accidentally kill a deer sacred to Latinus’ people during a hunt. This cements the impending war and Aeneas has no choice but to seek allies just as Turnus is doing.

Tiberinus, god of the Tiber River, visits Aeneas in a dream and instructs him to form an alliance with the Tuscans, who are already enemies of the Rutuli. Aeneas does so. Continue reading →

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