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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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My daughter Rowena Hrothwyn1 tells me (while living up to her well-earned cognomen of Attila-the-Honey, and all that entails in the Flagellum Dei department) tells me (and when you've been told by Attila-the-Honey, my little Flagellum Dei, you stay told) tells me that I must (absolutely must) tell you all that you're celebrating Christmas at quite the wrong time.
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I have just discovered something utterly, utterly disquieting about this current age.
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At this present time of the failure of greed-is-goody, unfettered capitalism and panicking banks; this time when you can bank on panic, and on international meetings filled with powerless wailing from the most powerful economies; it behooves us to mount up and gallop to the rescue.
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I wish the Modern Age would make up it's bloody mind and stop giving me these damned mixed signals: on the one hand it scatters families and friends (like mine) to the four corners, so we can't talk or even meet (my kids are either physically, or in extreme cases mentally, still teenagers so, no, I didn't get that the wrong way round, I do know it's perfectly possible to meet certain people without talking) so as on the one hand it takes from us with scattering, on the other hand it gives us all this technology to communicate incessantly. I mean that's a Hell of a rude and insensitive way for any time-period to act, let alone a time-period as hip and trendy as the Modern Age.
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These essays tend to be written at a date that is, as the adverts say, 'UP TO ONE WEEK OFF---OR MORE!!' than their broadcast date, so as I'm writing this I don't know whether to laugh or cry at the results of your election, so I'll forget all about it.
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  I'm sure that you are all thoroughly sick and tired of the election by now, what with the Media going mad with the bloody thing, and even politicians somehow getting involved; so I’m most definitely not going to add to their frenzy and your sick-and-tiredness by doing an essay on it.
No, so whether you can’t be a-Biden one camp and you are not able to stomach the McCurse of Cain, or you are wondering just what that other candidate did to inspire the old Slimy and Carbuncle song 'Mama Obama rolled out of bed and she ran to the police station' and, since you are (as I'm sure you are) a long time Monty Python fan, you are not going to do anything but laugh hysterically at anyone called Palin who's wearing a dress, you can rest easy that this essay is not going to be about the election.
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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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Columbus , of course, didn't discover America: he didn't intend to discover America, didn't think he had discovered America, and most decidedly wasn't even the first European to reach America. So, naturally, this Monday we celebrated (or at least observed) Columbus Day---presumably to help him get over the awful misery of his triple disappointment.
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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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