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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
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| I'm somewhat surprised as we approach the time of the year when our society gets together to lament the fact that, and very much to their surprise, our ancestors had noticed that yet again the year was waning and death was in the air, so I thought I should wail my own little lament over our hollow and partial victory over natura naturans. But however appropriate for this time of year there will be absolutely no candy, not even little packages of raisins.
| | Read More... | | If you are a regular listener to these essays, apart from plenty of sympathy and a general suggestion from those about you that the acquisition of a life might be beneficial, the only thing of value that you are almost certain to have gained over the past few ...um ...years ... ...whatever ... is the information that I am now living entirely alone, and before you get all teary-eyed for me, and start sending me money and introductions to nubile women ... ...well maybe it might be better if you wait until after you've done the last two, but anyway, no tears please because you should realize that there is one definite and totally rewarding upside to my lonely, downsized state: and that is that I can finally indulge myself fully in what J.R.R. Tolkein once called (though in different circumstances) "".
| | Read More... | | "Ay"---as Will Shakespeare (or, if you're that way inclined, Francis Bacon) has young Juliet say, under totally different circumstances, so I don't know why on earth I'm bringing it up here and now---"me!". Though come to think of it I suppose the words "Ay me!", bereft of their Shakespearian (or, if you must be that way inclined, Baconian) context do rather fit this last week's dominant humour: and that's humour in the Early Modern, for example, Jonsonian sense (as in Every Man Out of His); rather than, say a more humorous not to say downright funny one, and anyway ultimately I suppose that my situation isn't much less tragic than Juliet's in the end and it did begin with less high hopes.
| | Read More... | | Since I now seem write most of my essays in our local café; I have become, in a deeply existential way, Plano's answer to Jean-Paul Satre; but without the pipe and unfortunately, I note, without all the groupies either. (Because Simon could never be confused with Simone even in a really bad light.) And (I suspect less because of my location than my groupielessness) all of a sudden food tends to loom large in my philosophy and I suspect that the eaten food looms larger than the uneaten, especially that food eaten over the last few decades by most of the other patrons of the café. | | Read More... | | Even for me it is sometimes difficult to go that extra mile, or rather and to be more accurate, to go that extra four and three-quarter miles---and I hope it's obvious that I mean the four and three-quarter miles that I run before four o'clock every morning. (Well most mornings.)
Consider a morning last week, when I was girding up my metaphorical loins to make that final, or rather and to be more accurate, initial effort to leap out of bed and gird up my actual loins for a run, even though there was a fairly wild and (this being Texas) presumably wooly not to mention thoroughly wet and advisory-worthy storm sturming und dranging away for all it was worth outside, until a particularly loud and lightning-adjacent clap of thunder drew forth a terrified squeal11 from the next room, and by chance I suddenly remembered, at that very moment, the well-known health risks of too much exercise and so didn't leap, or gird, or run but merely turned over like the sluggard2, but without all the complaining and slumbered again.
| | Read More... | | Monica-at-the-Coffee-Haus and I were talking about the possibility that any of her young children might one day, and when they finally grow up, support her.
Well... after we stopped laughing and picked ourselves up off the floor we of course agreed on the obvious conclusion that on the offspring front it's always the case that as they get bigger things just get worse. This certainty came in part because I'd earlier mentioned that only that morning I'd had to give Elise $100 to get shoes and pants so she could go to work, and she's not even directly one of mine, merely being number two son Ead's enamorata. Not that, as an aside, I'm unpleased that one component of that apparent Aristophanaean1 aboriginal double-being has finally got a job, and it is indeed wond'rous news that Elise is finally working at the Angelika (which is the closest Dallas comes to an Art movie house) though I think that at first she will only be cleaning up after the audience between showings (American cinema audiences being notoriously profligate when it comes to their libations to the Gods of the silver screen of popcorn and the various food wrappings and dead icecreams). This welcome development was only slightly tarnished by the fact that the revelation of this inter-screeningish cleaning has shattered one of my most deeply and sincerely held misapprehensions: you see I always thought that they just left the interior of the cinema alone until the audiences completely filled it up with rubbish and then they built a new one. I thought it was good for the economy! ...or something.
| | Read More... | | One of the very few advantages of not speaking Spanish down here in Texas (or not reading Spanish, for that matter) is that whenever I see one of those dire warning signs that one finds in eating places everywhere, you know the ones that say in large letters of a frightening block-capital-red "CHOKING AHOGO"; instead of the sight bilingually terrifying me into chewing each mouthful thirty-two times before spitting it out and running away, it always makes me think, rather, of that wonderful phenomenon of... Was it in the seventies? The eighties? Anyway that phenomenon of... Disco a-Gogo, but then that starts me wondering further, what's the real connection? Is this perhaps a new, possibly fatal, dance manoeuvre devised by Fred Astaire and Ginger Heimlich? Or is it something even more sinister?
| | Read More... | | Oh! Goody! I just checked the mail (and I suppose I need to clarify that by telling you that I mean real snail-mail, you know with actual packages and funny square jeep-thingies and fear of dogs and everything) and I finally (after absolute days of waiting, remember this was snail-mail), finally got my copy of sorry everybody which, in a strange example post modernism, is actually a book based on a website based on the notion that all the people who thought that the recent-ish election had a really, really bad outcome might like to post pictures of themselves (and occasionally of their pets) holding up signs that expressed this opinion and apologized to the entire rest of the world for that outcome---Hey, what do you expect ME to order online, after all I am both a complete computer nerd AND the sort of left-wing bleeding-not-just-heart-but-nearly-every-other-major-organ-too liberal who could make Al Franken look like Rush Limbaugh at fifty paces without even starting to break a sweat.
| | Read More... | | If you remember, a couple of weeks ago I seared the airwaves with a harrowing tale of my heartbreaking love life: or rather, and more accurately, I seared the airwaves with the harrowing tale of my absolute failure to actually manage to get a love life---or, as some have maintained, to manage to get a life of any sort at all!
And now, in a nice little exercise in exacerbation, we are facing that Day when anciently the birds were fabled to select their mates; and latterly the day when humans chose and honoured theirs; and modernly the one when every first-through-third grader in the whole United States vows his or her passionate undying love for every other first-through-third grader in the class irrespective of looks, popularity, ethnicity, or indeed sex or sexual orientation: or rather, and more accurately, vows their school board's passionate undying love for every grade of political correctness!
| | Read More... | | It is a well-known scientific fact that men, and I don't mean Detrisexuals or Metrosexuals, or whatever they are nowadays, I just mean boring, regular, guy-type men, are physically and mentally, probably even genetically, incapable of shopping for clothes in any meaningful way---left to our own devices we would almost certainly still be wearing those same smelly old skins we got off that wild boar back in the early spring of the year 7,317 B.C.
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