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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 love Macintosh computers, I bought my first one back in 1984 (and not just to prove that I’d read Eric Blair), back when portability meant that they did have a big (rather nicely designed) shoulder-and-two-strong-arms bag for the thing: so I have quite a track record, and of course just as soon as they had a Portable (as they called it) I had to get it, even though in common parlance it was notoriously called “The Luggable” and was quite likely the cause of that famous New Yorker cartoon about the airport full of struggling commuters listening to this announcement “At this time we will be pre-boarding passengers with portable computers”. And I have bought (or at least been provided with) most of the varieties of Mac portable (or as we should now say PowerBooks) since that noble and weighty beginning.
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First of all I need to get something out of the way. Last time I told you about all the trouble I was having because Apple Computer didn’t seem to be able to get the right replacement feet to stick on to the bottom of my PowerBook.
Well, no sooner had I committed myself to disk (as it were) by recording the piece than Apple (who, it seems, are by now taking a REAL interest in what goes on on my system) solved the problem with a masterstroke---a veritable stroke of genius worthy of Steve Jobs himself: they kept the ill-fitting little feet they always send out, but cleverly redesigned the instruction sheet that they always send out with them to say in effect that, well we suppose you can just use those grotty old rubbishy things that don’t really fit. ...
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[et o ces voix d'enfants ...]
Expostulate, expostulate
Bring up what you cogitate
E - X - P - O - U - N - D
E - X - P - O - U - N - D
Expound, expound
Bleeeechchchhhh!
... as the chants of the cheerleaders fade away I'd like to be able to tell you how I've just come back from yet another successful production of my hit series of the World-Wide Postulate Wrestling championships, where mighty thinkers indulge in extreme positions and pound postulates into the canvas and chase wild premises up mountains and hurl herds of lemmas over cliffs, but of course I can't, such things it seems are only possible as figments of my imagination.
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Oh you Americans can be SO---what is it?---cute, funny, downright weird sometimes?
I mean, the other day one of you (who I'll leave as unnamed, and for whom I'll use the, until recently, ungendered and as the linguists say unmarked pronoun 'he') actually tried to correct me for using the word 'data' with a singular verb.
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Last week, what with getting ready for Rowena's Christmas concert and what with taxi-ing Hereb all around Plano and what with well life in general and, of course, what with an attack from Procrastes (as you know that's the twin brother of the guy with the one-size-fits-all bed and, to be honest, the one Greek bad guy who just couldn't get his act together in time to meet Theseus and so doesn't appear in any of the myths or legends), so what with all of that it just so happened that I ended up recording my essay at the absolute last (no, no I mean REALLY the absolute last) minute, and I'm not proud of it, but there it is.
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Let-us-now-praise-famous-men-and-our-fathers-that-begat-us- The-Lord-apportioned-to-them-great-glory Day
From 23rd October 1985
Tomorrow is Let-us-now-praise-famous-men-and-our-fathers-that-begat-us-The-Lord-apportioned-to- them-great-glory Day and although it is the only commemorative day on our calendar that, for reasons of space, doesn’t actually appear on our calendar we should still celebrate it, especially here in its birth-place, so I thought that we would have a slide show on the programme this morning to do our bit.
[SOUND OF SLIDE PROJECTOR STARTS AND CONTINUES TO END]
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Simon's leave of absence from WXXI has ended so they will be carrying these essays starting 21st April
Here is one that you can be listening to till then. |
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A chap in England, named (if I heard the radio aright) Mark Lewison, has just published a biography, called Funny Peculiar, of the vulgar (in more senses than the obvious) comedian Benny Hill, who died so sadly in 1992.
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I am going to speak to you at this time, very seriously, about a dreadful disease. A disease, nay an epidemic, more vile than the black death, more subtle than whatever Hollywood has attractive young stars of weepies die from these days, and more unmentionable than what’s-it’s-name that we’re not allowed to mention on the air. I am going to speak of a disease which seems only to afflict my fellow Englishmen. I am going to speak, of course, of Ethno-deficiency. … Ethno-deficiency, you may not have thought of it much before, but think of it now. Ethno-deficiency is that condition that the English find themselves in of being bereft of national characteristics.
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BEING THE TRUE AND ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE CITY OF
HROFÆSCÆSTRA, NOVVM EBORACVM by RHB Back in the dim and distant, and just before I started writing these damned essays, the city of Rochester, NY was suffering from a severe case of sesquicentenniitis, and to celebrate (if that's the right interpretation of what they were doing) their one hundred and fiftieth year, amongst all the other innumerable murmurings of civic pride, they had a competition for a Rochester song.
In those days I was performing mainly mediæval stuff with Colleen Liggett and with others too embarrassed to be mentioned here, so the lure of the Rochester Song was great---and by a strange co-incidence I had just been working on an old song about Winchester. The rest (with a bit of translation and some damning with faint praise and a potted history of the real---by my standards real---origin myth) is history.
Or not.
Our entry was for some reason not the winning one, however by mysterious, possibly torturous and almost forgotten paths it did lead to my
essays appearing on Simon's Scintillating Sunshine Show on Wednesday mornings at 7:15. Btw the numbers in the titles show their position
in the sequence of the essays, and the date is that of the original air date on WXXI. During that first year I rewrote and expanded the history so that nine of those Wednesday mornings were subject to the horrors of Hrofæscæstrian History. And since they were spread out in time I absolutely had to repeat chunks, and this had absolutely nothing to do with the laziness of the long distance essayist.
Now read on. I dare you... |
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