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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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Well, as the times get all Epiphanoidal, and the various turn-of-the-year-ish thingies start to fade into the old backward and abysm 1, this must be absolutely my last legitimate chance to tell you all about my New Year's Resolutions, and specifically (among all the usual boring ones: to exercise less; and to eat more fatty foods; and to drink more strong drink; and to take up smoking and the like) specifically the one that applies to these essays. So: solemnly I resolve to stop treating these essays as a sort of personal diary, or even worse, as a blog, and to, henceforth eschewing all personal references, to make them more generally applicable and therefore more interesting to someone other than me. |
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Now! Quickly and without looking it up: when are the Twelve Days of Christmas? Come on---come on: you should know this. And you can stop all that furtive counting backwards on your fingers and ...Yeuch!... put your sock back on! Right Now!!
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Forget the fearful Turkey-Caust of Thanksgiving: ignore the ignoble ritual disfigurement of Easter Eggs at Easter: fail to notice the nauseating calumnies heaped upon witches at Halloween: completely miss the malicious bonfiring of Guys just after that on the fifth of November (even though, since that's only in England I don't suppose it should matter too much to YOU)---But DO NOT, do not ever, or for one moment forget, ignore, fail to notice or completely miss the tragic plight and sad, sad fate at this otherwise joyous time of year of. . . ---the sad fate of... ---of... CHRISTMAS TREES!!!
Onward to the Original!... |
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They're gone!! Gone!!! ... Gone and I never got to say goodbye! ...
They're gone, and never even called me (with apologies to Mrs Henry Wood and her 1861 melodrama East Lynne) "Mother!" 1 |
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The month of Christmas is probably the best time of year for us to look at our roots - as it is for the Christmas trees to look to their roots, and for all of us to maintain that vague pathetic hope that we still have some. And so it is at this time of year, when we all get so sensitive and sentimental and even downright maudlin, it seems so much easier for us to look fondly back at the last couple of millennia and ask ourselves “What went wrong?”
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"Here we come a bovver boy among the leaves so green "An' here we come wiv' aggro to kick you in the spleen. "Lot's of ale unto us, you must give or we will cuss, "An' we'll thump you and, slag you off with words that are obscene, "An' we'll shout things that a-are quite obscene." ["Put the boot in, Trevor"]
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Thanksgiving having passed such a short time ago this seems an appropriate moment to look at the other side of the coin: at You'rewelcomegiving.
You'rewelcomegiving is that nonchalant, not-quite-smug, and rather indeterminately located holiday wherein we take the time to celebrate one of the only three things that America has ever given to the culture of the world that are totally unalloyed, pure improvements (the other two being of course the Marshall Plan and Carrot Cake). Everything else---McDonalds, Hollywood, saying (but obviously not meaning) "Have a nice day", have all been unmitigated disasters and have been to the culture of the world the equivalent of bovine spongeform encephalopathy or at least of a nasty bout of foot fungus.
Read the Original...
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This very year we in England have been celebrating two immensely patriotic and significant anniversaries: the four hundredth of the Gunpowder Plot and the two hundredth of the Battle of Trafalgar. These two events (not to mention the fact that we still celebrate them, so I won't---so forget I said what I just did), these two events are absolutely vital to understanding the English, so, in spite of the fact that for many reasons it's probably not a good idea for you to understand us, possibly even being bad for your health if not ours, and that it's almost certainly disastrous to England and everything English for anyone anywhere to lessen the delightful mystery that is us, let me just foolishly blunder ahead and spill the beans. |
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It's got really bad, and I'm appalled. No one cares about words any more apart from me and (presumably) those money-grubbing swine over at the Oxford English Dictionary (and they, the dastards, expect you to pay a whopping $500 a year 1 for the privilege); or even if they do care just a bit no one seems to want to be bothered to look up new-to-them words in their $500 dollar a year dictionary--and at the OED's rip-offy gouging price who can blame them, nor even, sad to say, can they be bothered to use something free and online like Bartleby or Wikipedia. |
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Last time I'm afraid that I was rather down on modern technology, so (in the interests of being fair, and balanced, and other boring, politically correct rubbish) let me start by extolling the wonders of Apple's iSight1 camera ---thingy that lets me talk to my parents back in England and to see them too and all for free (well free once you've shelled out a few thou. for the computers and a couple of hundred for the iSights, oh yes, and the hundred bucks-ish we pay between us every month to our ISPs--but apart from that it is all free!!---come to think of it it's really much more expensive than the old phone system, but I do get to see them---if they happen to have remembered to point the damn camera in the right direction, so actually I mainly see about half my father's face and most of my mother's hair, but it's so nice to get close like that isn't it?)
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