All Purls. No Swine.
Axios has obtained and released lengthy excerpts from the audio recordings of Joe Biden’s October 2023 testimony before Special Counsel Robert Hur. Here’s just one: https://youtu.be/ugM76taxz2E And there, you have it. A focused, direct, 20-second's worth of question followed by over four minutes of painful, incoherent, and irrelevant rambling. Eventually, as Biden winds down to his… Continue reading A Walk Down Memory Lane: And the “Empathy” Myth
Much has changed since I first posted about this on Ricochet, on May 8, 2017. Auntie Pat is no longer with us, having passed on at the age of 99 in December, 2022. Queen Elizabeth is gone too, and the country awaits “The King’s Speech” at 9 o’clock this evening, the same time at which… Continue reading V-E Day +80
It took place 50 years ago today. I was twenty years old, and in college. I don't pretend to an exhaustive understanding of the history, but I remember it as the end of the Vietnam War, and as what has become, in the popular understanding, the largely undeserved disgrace of the United States. I knew… Continue reading The Fall of Saigon
409 years ago this month, we observe the anniversary of the death of Miguel de Cervantes, on April 22, 1616. Cervantes' greatest creation, Don Quixote, a lower-class (dare I say deplorable?) fellow who was driven to fantasies of heroism due to his mid-life immersion in, and obsession with, works of knightly valor, remains the most… Continue reading A Missed Opportunity: W.H. Auden and the Lyrics of Man of La Mancha
Well, no, actually, it isn't. But the following post, which was first published quite a few years ago on Ricochet, seems germane again, given the situation in the city of my birth, which would be Birmingham, (historically--at least in part) Warwickshire, The United Kingdom. Lord. There hasn't been a "bin" (garbage) collection in Britain's second… Continue reading It’s National “Hug A Rat Catcher Day!”
Here's wishing Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, an only slightly belated, and very happy, four-hundred seventy-fifth birthday as of yesterday, April 12. He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, succeeding to his position as Earl when he was only eight years old, and he kept the side up by… Continue reading Noblesse Oblige: “My Lord, I had quite forgott the fart.”
The Pied Piper of Hamelin is one of my least favorite childhood stories, one so redolent of evil--with overtones of perversity-- that I pretty much deep-sixed it to the memory hole of my life, absent unusual circumstances which occasionally and repugnantly bring it to mind for one reason or another. If you’re not familiar with… Continue reading Reflections on “The Pied Piper of Hamelin”
The quote in the title is from As You Like It, and it contains a lot of wisdom, but that’s not really the quote of the day. So, April Fool! Today’s actual quote of the day comes from Charles Lamb, who was born in 1775, in London, to a middle-class lawyer’s clerk and his wife, in… Continue reading Quote of the Day 2025: “The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool”
She was a star in the Republican party, beginning with her speech (while she was the Mayor of Saratoga Springs, Utah) at the 2012 Republican National Convention. That year, she lost her first bid for Congress, by fewer than 1000 votes. She tried again, and was elected, two years later, and then again two years… Continue reading Grace and Love: Rest in Peace
Today (March 6, 2025) would have been Dad's 106th birthday. He departed this earth at the age of 88, on September 30, 2007, and I miss him every day. A few years ago, I came across the book mentioned in the title of this post, on my way--as so often happens--to looking up something else. … Continue reading A Book Recommendation–From Sapper to Spitfire Spy–And Some Notes on Diving For Pearls