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		April 2006 Blog Archive http://www.maharaj.org/blog/apr06.shtml My archived blog articles for April 2006 are below. You can also click the respective links for my current blog articles, my featured blog articles, and my complete blog archives.
		And the Terror of Cold Steel 11 April 2006, 02h45 EDST (GMT-4) http://www.maharaj.org/blog/apr06.shtml#b11 For the past year, I have been indulging what must be one of modern life's most improbable passions: serving as a cavalier, in the Governor General's Horse Guards, Canada's Household Cavalry regiment. Sporting red-plumed helmets, waving sword and lance, and galloping hell for leather on oft-perplexed mounts, Horse Guards cavaliers are proof that chivalry is not dead, merely senile. Founded in 1810, the regiment's battle honours tell the tale of Canadian nationhood itself: from the War of 1812; through the Fenian Raids; over Vimy Ridge; across the Gothic Line; to an ongoing presence in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Though armoured vehicles have long displaced our horses for combat, we have preserved an equestrian squadron for occasions of state. With spring upon us, the season of public ceremony will begin in earnest. Accordingly, I have created a new page at my web site, which details our upcoming engagements and videocasts our recent rides. Do drop by if the Horse Guards visit your community, or download the images from my cavalry page if we ride further afield from you. If nothing else, one never knows when one of us might inadvertently impale himself on a lance.
		The Unkindest Quip of All 09 April 2006, 02h21 EDST (GMT-4) http://www.maharaj.org/blog/apr06.shtml#b09 Recently, I reviewed famed male soprano Michael Maniaci's performance at Toronto's Tafelmusik in rather light-hearted terms. Well, one never knows who might stumble across one's blog. Michael has written to tell me that the quotation I reproduced in my blog, that he "is probably the closest thing on earth to...the castrati of long ago," was an opinion of the Globe and Mail that had been selected for the performance programme by Tafelmusik rather than by himself. "It is certainly not something I have ever boasted of on my own. ;)" he wrote with good humour. I am happy to correct the record, and to repeat my original judgement, that given the power of his voice, Michael has far more of which to boast.