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Me at the Mike

Here is a Sup—I mean repository of the texts of my wireless essays 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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Society: Letter to America: No Bad Computers™ On:2023-04-08 02:31:48
My Dear Americans,
    [Over fading computer noises] Down Boy!… Sit!… Sit!… Stay!! Ah, Good Boy!
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Society: Letter to America: Love and Marriage... On:2023-01-24 05:37:53
My Dear Americans,
    [Sings] "Love and Marriage. Love and Marriage...
...go together like malign and disparage" Oh! I don't think I got the words of that song quite right, but I do think I got the timing just right.
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Society: Letter to America: Hair and Their On:2022-07-30 04:41:20
My Dear Americans,
    I don’t often consider fashion or indeed appearance of any sort at all, but I have now reached an age at which I must perforce comment about that of the younger generation, in fact I’ve reached the age that I needs must comment on the many, many younger generations! Otherwise what's the point of avoiding dying young and being a good-looking corpse1 , though luckily that does still leave the living fast to consider.
Anyway that and the returning to England, with the forty-two years of change whilst I was away to absorb all at once, gives me all the justification I could possibly need, especially since there is only a tiny, tiny chance that anyone who is under 30 and closer than a couple of thousand miles from me will hear me.

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Society: Letter to America: Psilly Psycho Psychic On:2022-07-05 09:14:45
My Dear Americans,
    many a long year ago and about three times as many shorter ones, long before I started doing these essays, indeed long before I came to America, I lived in London
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Society: Letter to America: Note-Feat Advisory On:2022-05-18 04:54:47
My Dear Americans,
    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 footnotes 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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Society: Spamspamspamspamspam On:2014-04-13 15:00:00
I often wonder what I would do of a morning without the vast herd of wandering spam and phishings-with-a-'P' and trojans and all that stuff from strange-mailing-lists-that-I-have-absolutely-no-idea-how-I-got-on-to to bulk out my email.

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Society: Santa's Eight Flying Whatsits: On:2013-11-12 19:35:37
A Specially Christmassy Christmas Special

We are rapidly approaching the time of year when visions of dancing sugar-plums (whatever they are) are driven from children’s heads by more serious concerns of lift, drag, acceleration, weight-to-power ratios, and the physics of Santa and the sleigh and Redolf the Rude Nosed Reindeer1 and all that company.
Sadly I must now disabuse the imaginative little tykes of one of the traditional first principles of their calculations. You see…

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Society: Sartor Non Resartus On:2013-06-08 09:13:00
I don't know if you are aware of it, but in real life (which is obviously not what I'm doing at the moment) I am a programmer for a large retail chain not unknown to most of you. As a consequence of this I am exposed daily to young women who have connections to the clothing provision trade.

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Society: Get your Kicks at Age 66 On:2013-05-27 17:31:00
The other day I had another of those damned birthday things. I'm not going to admit in public which one, but it set me thinking (even more than the 65 birthdays that preceded it) about the dark forward and abysm of time (as Shagspag probably wishes he'd said in King Lear rather than wasting the thought the wrong way round in The Tempest).
In especial it set set me thinking, by way of that dreadfully upbeat though slime-ly mawkish Browning poem Rabbi Ben Ezra : you surely know it 'Grow old along with me! / The best is yet to be, / The last of life, for which...' de dum de dum de de.
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Society: Can you hear me now? On:2012-02-09 00:00:00
One of the great, absolutely horrid, awful, disconcerting and absolutely poopy curses of modern life is communication. Well at least it can be. Sometimes. Especially over long distances. Not to mention with family.

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