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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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Over the years many people have disparaged the way that food portions have been getting bigger and bigger and, again over the years, such exposés as Fast Food Nation or Super Size Me have dwelt on this unfortunate fact at great length (not to mention breadth and width and poundage). But in all this weighty concern there seems to be a blind spot; there is something vital missing. With all the national and international worry about meat and potatoes and fat and refined sugar and their plate-heaving quantities, I have yet to notice the same attention being given to fruit.
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  It's been a long time since I've used a good wallow in signage to tremble the æther, but as regular listeners will know I love to photograph signs, preferably weird signs and the weirder and sigh-nearer the better. And I've been doing this for ages; from the ancient days when there still was a Soviet Embassy in Washington and outside it I surreptitiously snapped the side of a police-style car, with the rather too obvious insignia SECRET SERVICE UNIFORMED DIVISION painted on it for all to presumably not notice, right down to the almost present day when I caught a sign with an enormous SMOKE FREE BINGO as three separate words with no hyphen whilst walking in Plano and (since there was no hyphen---I'm sensitive about the lack of hyphens---it couldn't possibly mean that Bingo had no smoke) I wondered who or what was this Bingo and why would anyone want to smoke him her or it, and further, why on Earth they wouldn't pay for the privilege.
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Contemplate, if you will for a moment, the following list of illustrious persons:
Albrecht Dürer
Buzz Aldrin
Alexander the Great
Queen Victoria
Edward R. Murrow
Lewis Carroll
Michelangelo
Charlemagne
Raphael
James Baldwin
Leonardo da Vinci
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Isaac Newton
And of course me.
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Although most of the time I manage to disguise the fact rather well, these essays are supposed to be funny---or at least mildly amusing.
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With sincerest apologies to any old women who happen to be listening out there, I have got to say that, while many American individuals and even American groups can be quite manly and brave and not particularly given to hand wringing or panicking or screaming in a high-pitched, rather cracked voice, institutionally America is an... and I really am sorry to have to say this but, but,
... institutional America is an old woman.
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All I can say is “Phew!” “Duck!” “Brrrrr!” and not necessarily in that order
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Early in those few mornings that I choose not to run---and Hey! Before you tut-tut and get all “my health regimen is more grueling than you-urs!” at me, it’s my choice: to push my body up another notch of healthiness or not; to cut my risk of heart attacks and the like, or again not; after all it is still a free country, well it’s still a sort of free-ish country more-or-less to a certain extent, particularly where risk is concerned (but we’ll get to that in a mo). Well, anyway on those mornings that I choose not to run (rare events that they are---Really! Really rare!! I-I mean it!) I tend to listen to the World Service of the BBC. And so the other day, when it so happened that I chose not to---Hey it’s my life, so stop being so intrusive---I ended up listening to a programme (‘programme’ spelt with two ‘M’s and an ‘E’ of course since it was the BBC) called Politics UK which is (somewhat surprisingly for the BBC) all about politics in the United Kingdom.
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As regular listeners will know I am a rather frequent flier to the UK (and, of course, all points West) and that as a consequence of this I am well acquainted with pain; and with suffering; and with the results of the all encompassing fear of the unknown, and the unexpected, and the unpleasant, and the unfamiliar that accompanies these journeyings; and further that I’m often happy (if that’s quite the right word) to share these feelings with you---and anyway, come to think of it, I’m sure my regular listeners regularly suffer similar feelings when I do this, so they’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.
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I began this essay sitting on a plane in England (or rather a few thousand feet above the said England) and then, would you believe, I began it all over again and completely rewrote it sitting on the runway at Newark (The Armpit of the Western World) International Airport for three hours. Luckily I did have a plane to sit in for those three hours but it really didn’t help that much.
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Our local NPR station is soliciting for that “This I Believe” segment, and this I would enter were it not for the absence there of anyone who doesn’t seem to have strong beliefs... well that and the well-known lynch-adjacent propensities1 of the Bible Belt...
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