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Here is a 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.
But I do continue on that brilliant bastion of all that's good and kultured, on WCLV's syndicated Weekend Radio on many (mainly NPRish) stations traditionally on the first and third weekends of the month, though your weekendage may vary, (these are archived for a couple of months). Richard Howland-Bolton |
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My stint on the Nobel Peace Prize Committee having proven so successful, and having now found myself at a loose end, I’ve decided to join the steering committee of the international campaign to have the day after Thanksgiving renamed from the rather boring "the day after Thanksgiving" or the truly dreadful and downright evil-sounding “Black Friday”, to the much more appropriate "You'rewelcomegiving Day."
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As you probably know I’m a wild, ungovernable Mac-computer-lover ---I have a disgusting tendency to acquire anything Apple. So of course I had the first iPhone just as soon as it was available, even though that involved (I kid you not) entering Willow Bend Mall over the roof of the car park well before opening time. Then, even of courser, when the latest one came out I had no alternative but to upgrade. Such is the life of a junkie, though in mitigation, I must say this new iPhone does have lots of can't-live-withoutishnesses.
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 or about half of my life to date light switches have proven an almost insurmountable problem.
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Oh dear! I always seem to be putting out this sort of 'intellectual thing', you know, I'm always spouting about music and history and keep on reciting poetry, so that by now people are constantly asking me who is my favourite writer, and even though it's obviously my own fault I am beginning to get just a little peeved by the repetition. So to crush this bug in the bud, as it were, I will tell all of you, and hope that you will tell everyone else.
My absolute most favourite-ist writer in the whole wide world is Orrm . |
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Some thirty years ago, back in the midst of a rather hot Summer, I was quietly minding my own business traveling, innocently and obliviously, through Upstate New York; when by chance I happened, quite suddenly and peremptorily, to be married by an American woman. The precise date of this unexpected occurrence being July the fourth 1980.
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 On the 16th of May in the Year of Our Lord 2009 (a day that will live in infamy) Simon, his scintillating Sunshine Show and Salmagundy, the Show for Working People were brutally hurled onto the trash heap of history. We, his hangers-on and toadies, of course immediately joined him there. To celebrate this so-called Morning of the Long Knives, we his hangers-on and toadies, were 'encouraged', by means the like of which has not been seen since Dick Chainey1 had to give up waterboarding2, to contribute memori... I mean testimonials to him, sort of like at the end of Beowulf.
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I've been back home in England for a few weeks: of course at work they tease me by always claiming that I do it merely to work on preserving my accent, which seems a strange thing to say (especially in jest), since I don't even have an accent (speaking as I do the perfect accentless received pronunciation of English) but be that as it may or may not, I have yet again been there (and anyway even if they were right, there's no one now left in England who can even approximate to proper English---now-a-days they all mumble some sort of vile lumpenproletarian Estuarine ugliness that's totally unqueenly and even worse than Teyuxian into their mobile phones whilst driving, in spite of the Law, and usually (as far as I can tell from loads of coverage in the news) into other people .
Yup I'm the only one who can still speak it and I'm usually over here not there---so there!
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Our story opens to the sounds of macho Nihongo stuff:
[sucking sound]; Katana; Wakizashi; Bokken etc. [a deep hoarse O-o-o-o]
"Sumimasen, Kojiro san: kaisuiyoku ni ikimasen ka?1" as Miyamoto Musashi once said to Sasaki Kojiro on Ganryûjima . Oh sorry, sorry I'm sure you don't have the faintest idea what that's all about, and that's simply because you probably don’t realise this is the famous, or at least infamous Talk Like a Samurai Day---I mean I suppose you wouldn’t really since I’ve only just invented it.
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Someone (I think it may have been on the ANSAX-L list: source of so many inspirations for me), someone made the very funny comment that 'Heorot must have been a Geated community'
[Ha! Ha! Ha... Uh! ... Oh!]
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There is a frantic fascination now-a-days with translations of that great Old English poem Beowulf, from the poetical transmogrification into the Oirish of Heaneywulf by Seamus Heaney, through to more ; even more ; and to absolutely totally ; weird translations to film.
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