All Purls. No Swine.
No, you don’t snort it, smoke it, or shoot it. And–at least so far–buying a can of it doesn’t send the store cash register into a catatonic state from which it can’t recover until the attendant certifies that I am over the age of 18, or 21, or whatever its halfwit electronic brain has shut… Continue reading IKEA White
The news today is peppered with stories of Thailand’s deadliest mass killing by a single individual, one perpetrated by an ex-policeman at a children’s day-care center. Apparently, this former cop was dismissed from the force last year after allegations of drug-dealing,** for which he was facing imminent trial. According to Reuters, he had been in… Continue reading Thailand’s Shame
Loretta Lynn has died at the age of 90. Some who know me might find my love of American country music a bit odd. Mr. Right never did. He understood that it hearkened back to centuries ago, to the traditions of English, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish ballads, and to the stories those songs told, stories… Continue reading Loretta Lynn, R.I.P.
Ninety-five years ago today, on October, 4, 1927, John Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum, son of Danish immigrants, and a prominent American sculptor, set chisel and dynamite to stone and began what is his best-known work, the carvings of the 60-foot-high heads of four American Presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt… Continue reading Mount Rushmore: Check it Out While You Still Can!
Today, September 30, 2022 is the fifteenth anniversary of my father’s death. He’s been the genius behind a number of my posts, so today I thought I’d let him speak for himself. Not (as has often been the case) as a Colonial Officer in Nigeria, somewhere between 1948 and 1963, but as a son and… Continue reading Recreating Worlds That I Have Lost
With the recent devastation wrought on Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island by the remnants of last week's Hurricane Fiona, and the current emergency as Florida is inundated by Hurricane Ian, I thought I'd dust off a post from a couple of years ago about a great storm from the nineteenth century, almost exactly 171… Continue reading The Yankee Gale
Don't be 'a writer,' but instead be writing--William Faulkner All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know and then go on from there--Ernest Hemingway And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination… Continue reading Quotes of the Day: On Writing
I'm not sure I completely understand the myriad purposes of Twitter. It's useful to me, because I can link it to this blog, and send out automatic notifications when I publish a post, and because I have several dozen people who follow those announcements on Twitter, and who--one hopes, and I think this is the… Continue reading Putting the “Twit” in Twitter
Oh, Gosh. Eighty years ago today, Glenn Miller and his Orchestra made their last live radio broadcast: https://youtu.be/xQY3Qc_CM7E I'm a bit younger than many who might remember this (I was 68 this past week). But I grew up in the British West African colonies, and we were a bit behind the eight-ball when it came… Continue reading Sweet-Sounding Saturday: Eighty Years Ago Today
Disclaimer: I can’t be sure that’s true, because I’ve never owned any. But certainly, if I were to try and come up with my own undeniable truth in that regard, two of the items high on my shortlist would be flat, comfortable shoes and non-binding, full-fashioned, all-cotton underpants. But I digress; so before I head… Continue reading “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend”