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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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One of the downsides of writing these essays (apart from the actual stark-raving terror of actually sitting down in front of a blank computer to write the damn things) or to be more precise the other downside apart from the actual writing, is that I’ve somehow ended up on several mailing lists of people who want to solicit interviews with me.
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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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The full title of this essay is actually:
"When some guy serves a writ
"'Cause you Haka-ed a bit,
"That's a Maori"
but there wasn't quite enough room to fit it in, and a good job too because if I had I'm sure that the descendants of (should there be any), or lawyers acting on behalf of the corpses of (bound to be a whatsit-load of them) Warren and Brooks (respectively composer and lyricist) would sue the pants (and not just the American ones) off me for making absolutely nothing at all out of their hit song "That's Amore ".
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As my Father always used to say "Never allow yourself to be trapped by a woman in the Men's Department of a clothing store." Well actually he never did say that, but he should have done.
Repeatedly and forcefully.
My life would be so different if he had.
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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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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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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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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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