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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 blame that old Prussian bugger Fahrenheit for much of what follows---if only he hadn’t had bit of a fever that day.
Oh!
Oh, sorry, you probably have no idea what I’m talking about so, before I make a frightful, absolute horlicks of this essay, let’s back up a bit: you see the other week I got attacked by some unknown and totally unmentionable and disgustingly non-Hollywoodishly-attractive oral virus. It was horrible; for not only was this virus not in the Hollywood tradition of tastefully non-disfiguring diseases, it didn’t even fit into the Bollywood model (which is really rather similar but with the addition of a lot of singing and dancing, a sword fight, a cow standing in the middle of the road for no very discernible reason and a much bigger audience).
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I was at the office the other day, and I was working away merrily (...well at any rate I was working away) with a colleague towards the end of the day, when suddenly looking up I noticed that it was the end of the day and that all our other colleagues had gone home.
And we were alone.
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Of late I have noticed that there seems to be an increasing level of debate about evolution, and... and an increasing level of polarisation associated with that debate and an increasing level of acrimony associated with that polarisation. Far be it from me to get involved in such controversy, especially in such a public venue as this, but I feel I must address the central, the most vital, and indeed the most alarming aspect of all this turmoil---I of course mean the evolution of the Evolutionary Sequence Cartoon!
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Right! Now listen up, you lot! I’m going to tell you this, and I’m going to tell you just this once “Words have gender: people (if they are lucky) have sex!!”
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[Sigh]
As I write, which as usual is over a commercial breakfast, it is raining down here in Texas; and drear and dark and (relatively-ish speaking) really cold; though, thank goodness, the weatherman’s promise of ‘rain turning to freezing rain---and a reign of terror on the roads and the destruction of Texas as y’all knowed her’ didn’t in the event materialise. And Einstein Bros contra-TexMex bagelorium and Darned-good-according-to-their-registered-trade-mark-coffee emporium is, as a consequence of weatherman-induced fear, quite quiet and no one I know is here to interfere with my essay-starting and thus make life more pleasant; and so, in the utter boredom of my solitary Plano breakfast in winter, I am left with my mind a-wandering even more than usual, and I find myself dreaming of a Spring that at the moment seems yonks away...
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Those of you unlucky enough to be hearing me for the second week in a row, especially those doubly cursed with total recall, will be aware that a mere seven days ago I threatened that after years of storing up ideas in my commonplace book I was finally New-Year’s resolved to let some of the poor neglected blighters finally see the light of the airwaves.
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I have all sorts of problems accepting the arbitrary: stuff like this New Year Thingy of recent memory fills me with disquiet---I mean the cycle of years is just that, a cycle: an orobousian, caudiphagous cycle with no break, so that any artificially induced break is horribly, horribly arbitrary. Oh you may find moments of relative significance ---equinoxes, solsticeses and the like; but they aren’t really much to go on unless, I suppose, you sink to becoming an astronomer; and then, poor sod, you’ll immediately realise that nothing matches terribly well: the annual rotation round the Sun; the mensual rotation of the Moon; the diurnal rotation of the Earth, none of them match up, so that, for example, the Winter Solstice ends up all over the place on the calendar (um... relatively speaking that is) not to mention all over the clock. Looking again at that New Year Thingy, the Theys that do such things obviously aimed carefully at the solstice and quite understandably missed it. So the upshot of all this is that I’ve been fighting with myself all week about the possibility of this New Year Thingy being perhaps newish or yeary or even both, and for once I won!
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[to the tune of the Irish Washerwoman---sort of]
Oh! O'Flaherty's dead and his brother don't know it
O'Flaherty's dead and his brother don't know it
The trouble it is they're in the same bed
And neither one knows that the other one's dead
Oh! O'Flaherty's dead and ...
and so forth.
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Prepare to shed ’em now! …
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Oh you may crow about the loss of life in the turkey population at Thanksgiving or bay about the wearing of animal skins (as I saw some people were doing on the Beeb news site the other night), but if you are at all sensitive to the sad plight of other species under the fell Hand of Man, spare a thought, during this the month of Christmas, for the Christmas-tree, and for Sudden Christmas-tree Death Syndrome or, as it’s commonly alphabetised, SCTDS.
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