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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
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| One of the most onerous duties of a parent, and one of the most constant and demanding, is the familiar one of dropped-project up-picking: you know the completion of tasks started, but willfully abandoned, by the child.
Ahh! I still remember, Oh! eighteen or more years ago, the pain, the exhaustion---and the frozen shock---after slaving away with intense concentration for an hour or so at the igloo in the back garden that then-little Raed and Ead had begged me----begged me to help them start building; when upon glancing up I noticed the little buggers watching me through the kitchen window, with hot chocolate steaming in their mugs: the horrid little deserters.
| | Read More... | | I suppose Jim-at-Work was just trying to be nice to me, and we all know what a good predictor that is when it comes to the impending doom stakes, but give him his due he was trying. And of course everyone knows my predilection for matters sub-Roman (and not---you purient-minded lot--- just in the case of those sexy sub-Roman sports bras as worn by Guinevere in that otherwise utterly unmemorable, though recentish, Arthur movie).
| | Read More... | | I've been (surprise surprise) in England for the last couple of weeks with Raed, my eldest, and his gurl Sara and, in that typically epiphanic way of mine, while I was there something hit me---well, come to think of it, it actually hit me nearly every single time I walked into a shop or other public building, often almost hit me right in the face, each time emphasising just how far the of Richard has proceeded.
It was, of course, the door.
| | Read More... | | Most of the time I'm really glad that I'm such a pessimist: I mean what other state of mind could so happily ensure that I've never ever been tempted to gamble? Though there is of course another side to this un-flipped, un-bet-upon coin and that is that, as a pessimist, I can't escape the realisation that pessimism does, indeed, have its slight disadvantages: the main one for me as a technophile being that I have a tendency to rehearse over and over again how terribly thin is the thread that modern high-tech life dangles from---it's like the story of Damocles told from the sword's POV. I mean there you are way up high and hanging by a thread dangling day after day in terror of falling, and hoping above hope that when the inevitable happens to your thread that there also happens to be some guy, and preferably a big fat one, sitting under you on the throne to break your fall and save you from getting a really nasty, painful chip knocked out of your point.
| | Read More... | | One pleasant late morning in early summer and many years ago, I was walking along Monroe Avenue, just past the Co-op, and heading towards downtown Rochester. The Sun was shining. It was warm. There were a fair sprinkling of fellow pedestrians all decked out in their appropriate-for-early-summer clothing. And there walking towards me I noticed a tallish middle-aged black man, slightly overweight, with neatly cropped hair and (and it may seem surprising, in the event that I noticed this, but I did) nicely shined black shoes. He also had a suit of some decent dark material. This too was neat and was neatly folded over his left arm. And there, still in the distance, but rapidly approaching, and with their lights aflashing and their sirens asirencalling, came two police cars to arrest him, or perhaps, since it was just outside the Co-op, to merely suggest that the suit might be better applied as a covering for more of him than just his left arm.
| | Read More... | | Many years ago, when I was even sillier than I now am, and didn't even have my current excuse of incipient senility to account for it; I had a girlfriend, name of Christianne, who had the most strikingly long, stunningly red hair: hair that one might reasonably judge to be, for all practical purposes, unique: hair that stood out in a crowd---Hell, hair that probably stood out in aerial photographs.
| | Read More... | | You know how most mornings, just before the top of the hour news NPR has those strange little lists of today’s birthdays of presumably notable personages? Well the other day I heard one of those lists and it was, of course, the usual collection of people I’d never (or almost never) heard of but for once one of the items was for someone I recognised as worthy of inclusion.
| | Read More... | | Oh sorry! Hi!
Of course Dad didn't really know Mozart, and anyway I think that the lyrics to song should in truth be 'Lloyd George knew my Father' in homage to a great British Prime Minister, or just possibly since I believe he was considered something of a ladies' man, 'Lloyd George knew my Mother'... but that's a different story altogether, and a complete waste of time although it has at least got us started on the old Mozart quarter millennium bandwagon.
| | Read More... | | A Mr DeLoatch of Virginia writes 'BTW speaking of classics how can you praise Prokofiev, for goodness sakes?'... Oh! but before we get to that I should mention (at the risk of causing shock, distress and disgust in the rest of you) that---Yes! It is true!! I do actually have fans!
Unfortunately my demographic tends to exclude young nubile women from my fanbase or for that matter any pop-star style ecstatic screaming from them: no, as far as I am aware, any screams or for that matter underwear hurled at the radio during any of my performances is of a quite different nature. [sigh] No my fans tend to be, like Mr DeLoatch (who so describes himself), middle aged and middle class and typically suffering from, if not full blown hydrophobia, at least Anglophilia.
| | Read More... | | Well, just like the next guy I enjoy a bit of praise, a modicum of flattery, a smattering of applause. So imagine my delight when an English Teacher from a district in one of our more plush, up-market suburbs begged me for a copy of one of my essays.
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