All Purls. No Swine.
From a few years ago, with only gentle editing, and from my home to yours. May your 2026 be one of the happiest years ever! (I have high hopes for mine.) Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come, whispering 'it will be happier'--Alfred, Lord Tennyson Crimenutely. In my search for a suitable… Continue reading Two from Tennyson for New Year’s Eve 2025
139 years ago today, on November 20, 1886 (for God's sake check the math: it's never my strong point), British publisher Ward and Lock accepted a manuscript, for the princely sum of £25, and for which the 27-year-old author gave up any subsequent rights to the narrative, from the newly qualified Scottish Doctor of Medicine,… Continue reading A Study in Memories: Sherlock Edition
I met a traveler from a Midwest Park Who said–“A vast and legless trunk of stone Stands in the city. . . . Near it, in the dark, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown Of cold contempt, and wrinkled lip, and smirk, Tell that its builder well those passions read Which yet survive,… Continue reading Obamandias
Mostly a reposting, from last year. Time marches on, but the message (if you're sane) doesn't change: My maternal Great Granny was a fearsome old bat. She was born in 1869, just four short years after the US Civil War ended and Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. She died a few months before Neil Armstrong walked… Continue reading Easter 2025: On Silk Purses, Sow’s Ears, and Horse’s Asses
Oh, to be in England, Now that April’s there, And whoever wakes in England Sees, some morning, unaware, That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf, While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough In England – now!! In general, and despite my childhood infatuation with the… Continue reading Thoughts of Abroad, From Home, in April, 2025
Somehow (I’m still not quite sure how), a long-ago conversation with a friend turned to the topic of Oscar Wilde. You know, the guy who said “I can resist anything except temptation,” and “A man’s face is his autobiography. A woman’s face is her work of fiction.” That Oscar Wilde. But the quote that my friend… Continue reading Oscar Wilde on What Suffering Teaches Us
The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away--Psalm 90:10 Yikes. For those in Rio Linda, I'm talking about an age of seventy years. The date is… Continue reading Quote of the Day: “Three Score Years and Ten”
Sigh. https://youtu.be/Kz6pV4uRSc8 Nurse Nellie and not-long-for-this-world US Marine Joe Cable. I have to confess, although I’m really not interested in tying myself too much into knots over it, that it was a bit jarring yesterday to wake up and discover that the young person who’d attempted to assassinate Donald Trump and I share a common… Continue reading How Far Away: Bethel Park SWPA
The detail is from a History Channel recap of important events on July 10 throughout history. Obviously, some are more recent than others. Some are so recent that I was an absurdly small "extra"--merely a unrecognized bystander--in their resolution. As fate and fortune would have it, I was in Chiang Rai, Thailand, the week that… Continue reading On This Day, Six Years Ago, “Mission Possible for Team Thailand”
My recent post about my stepdaughter mentioned her sense of humor and cited a letter of introduction she wrote about me to a group of ladies we didn't know, but with whom we were embarking on a trip to Italy. Among the many (excellent) qualities she related regarding her stepmother, there was this: Also, RWKJ… Continue reading The Story of Oliver