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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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Typical bloody Texas weather in February---it's been up in the 80s and really, really spring-like, and you know what they say (or at least what Tennyson said, or rather wrote ) don't you "In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of..." well you probably know what those thoughts are too, "In the Spring a young man's fancy..." and I might as well admit that my fancy turns there as well: in my case to thoughts of Georgia.
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Pancake Day has just passed, or rather (and bearing in mind that England hasn't been Catholic for centuries) let's give, it as we should, its more official name of Shrove Tuesday, but whatever we call it, it has still just passed, and since I haven't been shriven (not in a gescrifens age) I am now riven (which of course is almost a given)---Oh! Um! Sorry! You do know what the shriving that may well lead to Shrove Tuesday means, don't you??
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I believe that Shakespeare once wrote something along the lines of:
"A nose by any other name would smell,
"So Romeo would were he not Romeo called".
And, any considerations of personal hygiene or the lack thereof in sixteenth century Verona aside, he was right you know: re-naming something doesn't make a ha'porth of difference!
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To the absolute whatsit-shrivelling horror of every single red-blooded male in the whole civilised world, today we are facing that dread 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, her or its passionate undying love for every other first-through-third grader in their 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 and blind, slobbering non-exclusivity!
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As if us left-wing, science-mad intellectuals weren't getting enough of that old jollies-stuff this year from having the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Rabbie Burns , the four hundredth of Galileo Galilei 's first scoping out of the sky (not to mention ditto of the publication of Kepler's Astronomia nova ), and the eight hundredth anniversary of Cambridge University ; as of the Glorious Twelfth1 of this month, our cup is positively runnething over for all it's worth (and no doubt sloppething all over the carpet) with the two hundredth birthday of Charles Darwin and the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the publication of his Origin of Species---
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People at work try desperately, and ultimately hopelessly, to humanize their workspaces; to add some vague, tiny, pathetic, whimpering hint of personality to their drab lifeless cubicles.
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The other week I ... I can hardly bring myself to tell you about it ... but ...but ...the other week I--I, I suffered an armed home invasion.
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Since people first discovered the art of pontificating in Pubs some eight thousand years ago in Sumerian Mesopotamia (or as my Grandfather used to call it when he was there between the wars, and rather appropriately, 'Mespot'); or in ancient Egypt (where it was considered the first, and worst, of the Great Plagues) or indeed anywhere at all that has substances containing carbohydrates that can naturally, or with a bit of encouragement, undergo fermentation; together with a population that has unwanted opinions on its hands, there has never been anything like the internet.
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'Tis now the very turning of the year when all things change and the world is renewed---though, though really, come to think of it, that's more of a spring-time thing than this bleak midwinter can support when in fact all we're going to get is more of the same only probably worse, but I suppose that we can say that at least within the current social reality it is the year-turning, the page-turning time.
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