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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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I began this essay sitting on a plane in England (or rather a few thousand feet above the said England) and then, would you believe, I began it all over again and completely rewrote it sitting on the runway at Newark (The Armpit of the Western World) International Airport for three hours. Luckily I did have a plane to sit in for those three hours but it really didn’t help that much.
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Phew!
Well I think I survived, but let me check all my limbs and organs and stuff.
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Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!
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Our local NPR station is soliciting for that “This I Believe” segment, and this I would enter were it not for the absence there of anyone who doesn’t seem to have strong beliefs... well that and the well-known lynch-adjacent propensities1 of the Bible Belt...
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For one reason or another, and very much like most of the people alive today, I don’t remember the sixties at all! But ...but just occasionally a memory will surface to bask in the light of consciousness for a while, or maybe they are all merely flashbacks.
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Ahh! First loves!---And no, I’m not waxing sentimental about Mandy Erlenbach , or that girl that time in Barcelona near the Sagrada Familia, nor Bettina Wirtz on student exchange from Hannover or was it Hamburg: no ... no ... you see the other day I saw an article on a news site about some teenager or other who was arrested for making explosives; and it immediately reminded me of my first love...
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Now listen up you lot! I’ve been mollycoddling you and grading you on a curve for far too long, and now it’s time to get down to some serious and scholarly work; so for the next period we are going to look at some Middle Scots Poetry, but don’t worry too much because it will be late Middle Scots Poetry, and very late Middle Scots Poetry at that. The text for today’s lesson is William Dunbar’s touching and notorious poem of courtly love ‘In Secreit Place This Hyndir Nycht’ written around the year 1500.
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Well here we are once again back at that time of year when all I can think to essay about is pollen: all I can write about is pollen; all I can speak about is pollen; all I can even think about is [Atishoo! Atishoo! --- Atishoo!] bloody pollen.
As I think I’ve told you before, I am a martyr to the sex life of trees.
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The deepest sort of evil manifests itself (almost by definition) at the oddest, most unexpected times; as when the sweet little girl’s gently spinning top turns out on closer examination to be her head rotating as she projectile-vomits both verbally and ectoplasmically; or again as when evil rears its (in this instance not necessarily rotational) head on an internet mailing list devoted to that loveliest, most dulcet and least devilish of musical instruments, the recorder.
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Nobody---not Leonardo, not Einstein, not even me---nobody is good at absolutely everything.
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