All Purls. No Swine.
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
She was born 122 years ago today, on August 16, 1902, the daughter of a British Army officer and a classically-trained musician. She grew up in Paris and London and--when her sickly brother was bed-bound in 1919--began to tell him stories set in Georgian (eighteenth century) England. Those stories were, with the encouragement of her… Continue reading For Georgette Heyer, on the Occasion of her 122nd Birthday
A recent conversation on Ricochet brought to mind a post I wrote in the Dark Ages of social media, in this case, in 2012. Twelve years ago. And it's still there and available to the members, although it can't be viewed on the public Internet. I'm about to fix that. I wrote it just after… Continue reading Why I’ll Always Have a Soft Spot for Bill Clinton, No Matter What
April 10, 2024 was the 112th anniversary of the day that the British passenger and mail-carrying ocean liner RMS Titanic slipped her surly mooring bonds in the English port of Southampton and set sail on her maiden voyage across the Atlantic. In her honor, and on that date, I embarked on an excursion I don’t undertake much… Continue reading A Day to Remember
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 (only five days subsequently) Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. She died a few months before Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. What a lifespan. I was fourteen when she died, and… Continue reading Easter 2024: On Silk Purses, Sow’s Ears, and Horse’s Asses
A friend and I were chatting a couple of weeks ago about a shared love of authentic American music, and Iris DeMent's name came up. I've never seen her perform, but remember her from appearances on early A Prairie Home Companion days, when Garrison Keillor was genuinely entertaining and gently funny, before he became infected… Continue reading Tuneful Tuesdays: Iris DeMent, Our Town
It’s Easter 1979. Mr. Right and I are living in a tiny house we bought for the princely sum of $7,200 (all we could afford), somewhere in Pittsburgh’s low-rent district, amongst the druggies and the motorcycle gangs. Monthly mortgage payment: $71.97. Rather abrupt investment in learning necessary self-defense techniques and maneuvers on the part of… Continue reading Confessions of an Accidental IT Professional, Chapter One
I do. And here it is again... https://youtu.be/Gs069dndIYk At the time, I was twenty-three and in college. A few months later, I started my first "real" job. Where were you?