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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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  As you've probably noticed I have a slight (and I'd like to take this opportunity to emphasize that word---slight, really slight, really really slight) a SLIGHT tendency to get worked up about things that do not similarly exercise some people (and I'd like now to take this other opportunity to emphasize that in logic absolutely anything less than all, than everyone, than the totality; is some---for example, some Ancient Greeks didn't give a damn about how much faster than Achilles the tortoise was , nor how the cute crusted little thing could keep his small beak ahead of Achilles' big one, nor yet that Achilles was perhaps being a bit of a heel when took on a poor tiny tortoise in the first place, almost all of them indeed preferring exercise especially, since they were Ancient Greeks, in the nude----where was I ---Oh! Yes...)
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 Well, thanks for asking, because Mum is indeed feeling a lot better now about Life, the Universe, Dad and Everything. This is demonstrated in my early morning video calls to her (you do know that we video iChat every morning, between my run and my shower---which means they do tend to be very sweaty conversations, at least at my end, not that that matters). So, she now has lots and lots more interesting stuff to tell me, often at great length, which is a pity because I desperately need to have that damned shower, and get ready, and go to work. Anyway last Monday she delayed my shower even more than usual because she was all excited by something she saw on the Telly the previous night (and this is a woman who would normally prefer to read a book rather than watching, say, Dr Who; so you can just imagine how wonderful she found it). She had been watching the second Eurovision Dance Contest!
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I've got to stop reading the Beeb site---you know the enormous site that the BBC has on the web. You see I have been checking it every single day now for absolute years, just to see if that old patriotic song There'll Always be an England has remained true for a given value of "Always" including, but not limited to, today. Anyway I really must stop, not so much because I've finally accepted England's eternity, nor because I've finally decided that I don't care, but rather because the buggers at the Beeb are really messing with my mind.
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When I was young and naïve, I loved to study languages, then as I (sort of) matured I discovered how much more interesting it was to study the history of languages. Then at last with wisdom came the realisation that the study of the history of the study of the history of languages was the most interesting of all and even more fun and, as it turned out to my absolute delight, much noisier and more onomatopœic.
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From time to time on these waves of the air I have visited the appalling and twisted world of the folksong: you can best think of these visits as an antidote to Ellen Koskoff's "What In the World Is Music?", I mean Ellen's a dear and her segment's delightful, but WITWIM (as we professionals call it) has always struck me as a bit too much like enabling a dangerous addiction.
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From time to time, I've had comments about the digressive-ity and aside-iness of these essays, not to mention the fact that up to half the content, and often almost all of the meaning in them is hidden away in feetnote1 ...feetnote which aren't even available without going to the considerable effort of getting online, going to my website, finding the essay, reading the bloody thing and finally scrolling down to the putative note, an effort which is, I freely admit, sometimes just not worth the effort.
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Just for the record let me state, right off the bat, the little-known fact that we (i.e. the British) won the War of 1812 .
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It's a strange thing to me, as an Englishman over here, but it seems that deep down inside almost all Americans is a longing for somewhere else.
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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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With all the media attention being given to the lead-up to that silly Upcoming Olympic Thingie in Beijing I thought that this is an appropriate time for me to tell you a little known part of the history...
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