All Purls. No Swine.
I'm not generally given to quoting, or even slightly misquoting, Friedrich Nietzsche, but I know the interplay between struggle and resiliency is true in my case. And perhaps, as we go forward in the coming months, figuring out what to do about "school" and "kids" and Covid-19, we'll puzzle our way through to something better… Continue reading School: What Doesn’t Kill You, Makes You Stronger
“I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.” — Margaret Thatcher Other than observing that, of course, this trenchant observation can be applied to a wide variety of arguments beyond the stated one (I… Continue reading Occasional Quote of the Day: The Iron Lady Speaks
My father was a remarkable man. Over the course of his long life, he met very few men whose will was stronger than his own. Here’s the story of one of them: Shortly after World War II, Dad was ordered to the ancient Northern Nigerian city of Sokoto to serve as the Assistant District Officer (that… Continue reading Occasional Quote of the Day: “O day and night but this is wondrous strange!”
There's a new bit of "free stuff" on RWKJ today--a recipe for lovely fizzy bath salts for your very own (hopefully, although I can make no guarantees on this) Covid-19-free home spa! Just click here to find it. And enjoy! (I'm currently working on bubble bath recipes, having discovered that my faithful cat Psymon, is… Continue reading Free Stuff: Fizzy Bath Salt Recipe for Your Home Spa
I just ordered the blu-ray edition of what I think may be Peter Jackson's greatest movie, They Shall Not Grow Old. I say this as a fan of the Lord of the Rings movies to the extent that I binge-watch the three of them every year between Christmas and New Year's Day. I did this… Continue reading Movie Review: They Shall Not Grow Old
Today, July 24, 2020 would have been our 39th wedding anniversary. R.I.P., Mr. Right. I miss you. What follows was originally written for ricochet.com, one of a series of themed posts on the subject of "Will." My contribution was posted on August 6, 2018. In hindsight, using Harry and Meghan's wedding as a jumping-off point… Continue reading I Will!
"The road to Hell" as they say, "is paved with good intentions." And so it is. A group of Hungarian scientists, faced with what's clearly a first-world problem--saving from extinction the fish responsible for producing the world's finest caviar--decided to tinker with the piscine gene pool, taking sperm from the American Paddlefish and using it… Continue reading From the Annals of the “What Could Possibly Go Wrong?” Department
The events recounted below are true, and took place in Sokoto, Northern Nigeria, in the Summer of 1947. The author was a young, newly arrived, civil servant in the British Colonial Service, recently separated from active duty in Italy and North Africa as a Major in the British Army. The gentleman in the photo to… Continue reading The King’s Shilling: One Colonial Officer’s Experience with West-African Slavery
I had a peripatetic childhood, and by the time I finished high school I’d attended well over a dozen schools on three different continents, with time off for good behavior during a glorious year (in about third grade) where there wasn’t a school anywhere in sight. My mother, who was largely disinterested in her parenting… Continue reading Occasional Quote of the Day: “Mollocking in the Sukebind”
Well, it's been another experience. But like most of the foregoing in my life, not as unpleasant as it might have been, although occasionally a bit bizarre. As most of you know, Mr. Right (AKA "Frank T. Zbozny") died a little over a week ago, on July 3, 2020. His death was expected. But still… Continue reading The American Way Of Death, 2020 Edition