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Here is a Sup—I mean repository of the texts of my together with some readings of them. The essays were broadcast by WXXI 91.5 Classical of Rochester, NY on Salmagundy each Saturday at 9:35am Eastern Time, from the beginning of time (1985) till May 2009 when Entropa (evil Goddess of Change-for-the-Worse-or-Possibly-the-Worst) troubled the minds of the WXXIites and they retired Simon and Salmagundy, and Rochester went into a terminal decline---for ever.
I continued on that brilliant bastion of all that's good and kultured, WCLV's syndicated Weekend Radio on many (mainly NPRish) stations traditionally on the first and third weekends of the month, though weekendage varied, till the horror crept ever onward and that too was devoured (in August 2023, a date which will live in infamy or at lease mild irritation)... and only I remain, defiant though wimpering.
Richard Howland-Bolton
There are pop-up pics and links all over the place here. In text they are indicated by a double underline like this:
mouse-overing brings the pop-up up and clicking (usually) goes to the link |
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I've been doing these damned essays on and off since 1895 ...um 1985 ....ach, some year towards the end of the last millennium, and, do you know, during all that time essaying has been essentially a solitary, poor, nasty, brutish occupation; if not always short enough for my listeners.
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I don't know if I'm becoming more jaded, or if things really are getting more stupid in the Ad world. I mean, I know that Ads have always been stupid---from cigarette packets with sexy dancing legs to gord knows what back in the backward and abysm, but now-a-days Ads, especially Television ads, seem to have gone from stupidity to raving, bloody knee-biting gaa-brrp-gaa-ity.
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Ahh!
This is the perfect time of year to reminisce about ones childhood and of course I’m no different from anyone else, indeed the other day I couldn’t stop thinking about The Woodentops .
The Woodentops, way back in the late 50s, and when I was getting on for ten-ish1, were a rather stiff upper-middle -class-ish marionette family on the BBC telly, who very obviously lived (if that’s quite the right word) up to their name by being made of wood---one could see the strings, and the structure of the joints; but mainly one could see the wood. The over-all impression they gave was of those cute little artists’ mannequinny-modelly things being animated in a rather wooden way.
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Last week I was back in London yet again but this time for only two and a half days before whizzing back to DFW---much more of this and I'm going to qualify as a member of the Jet-lag Set.
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Of late I have noticed that there seems to be an increasing level of debate about evolution, and... and an increasing level of polarisation associated with that debate and an increasing level of acrimony associated with that polarisation. Far be it from me to get involved in such controversy, especially in such a public venue as this, but I feel I must address the central, the most vital, and indeed the most alarming aspect of all this turmoil---I of course mean the evolution of the Evolutionary Sequence Cartoon!
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You know how most mornings, just before the top of the hour news NPR has those strange little lists of today’s birthdays of presumably notable personages? Well the other day I heard one of those lists and it was, of course, the usual collection of people I’d never (or almost never) heard of but for once one of the items was for someone I recognised as worthy of inclusion.
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A Mr DeLoatch of Virginia writes 'BTW speaking of classics how can you praise Prokofiev, for goodness sakes?'... Oh! but before we get to that I should mention (at the risk of causing shock, distress and disgust in the rest of you) that---Yes! It is true!! I do actually have fans!
Unfortunately my demographic tends to exclude young nubile women from my fanbase or for that matter any pop-star style ecstatic screaming from them: no, as far as I am aware, any screams or for that matter underwear hurled at the radio during any of my performances is of a quite different nature. [sigh] No my fans tend to be, like Mr DeLoatch (who so describes himself), middle aged and middle class and typically suffering from, if not full blown hydrophobia, at least Anglophilia.
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Last time I'm afraid that I was rather down on modern technology, so (in the interests of being fair, and balanced, and other boring, politically correct rubbish) let me start by extolling the wonders of Apple's iSight1 camera ---thingy that lets me talk to my parents back in England and to see them too and all for free (well free once you've shelled out a few thou. for the computers and a couple of hundred for the iSights, oh yes, and the hundred bucks-ish we pay between us every month to our ISPs--but apart from that it is all free!!---come to think of it it's really much more expensive than the old phone system, but I do get to see them---if they happen to have remembered to point the damn camera in the right direction, so actually I mainly see about half my father's face and most of my mother's hair, but it's so nice to get close like that isn't it?)
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I'm sure you'll be overjoyed to know that, in an overwhelming show of support for the writers of the Book of Ecclesiastes, this summer Hollywood will be continuing its massive campaign to prove there is nothing new under the sun. A significant part of of this proof will be the release of yet another Arthurian movie
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So much depends on your point of view... Have you considered, for example, that if Amoebas had a Bible, their book of Genesis would almost certainly tell them to go forth and divide?
Well it's in that spirit---the spirit of going forth and dividing of course--- that I'm going to approach the absolutely devastating news, or, maybe, perhaps, the bloody good news that a warehouse in east London has recently burnt to the ground.
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