Regretfully, this slot hasn’t been updated in some time. Even more regretfully, there isn’t an idea in my head that might lead to putting something here worth reading. For the sake of something new, however, maybe just a summary of what happened recently, and what should happen in the future will suffice. In the vein of recent past events that can have an impact on this spot, I can tell you that a recent trip to the Los Angeles area was productive in that I looked at, assessed and bought a nice collection of 160 pipes, the large majority of them classic shapes, in fine condition and of highly regarded pedigree, such as Charatan, Ashton and Upshall, with other good brands sprinkled in…Castello, Viprati, Radice. Working at my usual pace, these will go up slowly, but surely, (health permitting…so far so good in that department with the occasional departure due to muscles and organs surprised by changes in activity, diet or who-knows-what. That is what happens at 81. In any case, the trip felt productive. Lugging 160 pipes to and through a car rental facility and then an airport is draining.
Looking to the future in a direction other than pipes (and yes, why would I, but such is life that pipes do not consume all the waking hours) I will be leaving my cozy little home for 3 weeks starting May 29th. The occasion is what the University of Chicago’s Graham School calls “A Fortnight in Oxford.” A fortnight is two weeks, although how often that phrase is used in contemporary UK I do not know. The Oxford in question is the one north of London, not the Oxford in Mississippi. The course being presented is called “Fifteen Centuries of British Monarchy” or something very similar to that and looks to be mainly a history lesson, 3 hrs. each weekday morning, the lecturer being the author of our textbook, “Constitutional History of the U.K.” Tell me that title doesn’t sound dry. Hopefully, the lecturer knows how to invigorate the subject. In any case, if I can stick with it instead of getting an early start at the pubs, I can look in a mirror and call myself an Oxford Scholar. No doubt nobody else will call me that, but that’s fine. An old pipe friend now lives very near Oxford with his new wife so there will be options besides contemplating arcane Parliamentary procedure. If, though, we do focus on the monarchs, that could be interesting. We have the two Richards, both of whom usurped the kingship and had it taken from them violently, Henry the VIII, about whom you all know something scandalous, Elizabeth I, and a bunch of Edwards, one of whom, it is said, had a red-hot poker shoved up his ass to assist in getting him to relinquish the throne. “Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown,” says Henry IV (Part II) according to Shakespeare. Considering the nefarious nature of so many kings, their heads should damned well have been both uneasy and often lopped off. A bunch of them never completed their terms, so to speak. This gives the lie to the immortal line by Mel Brooks, “it’s good to be king.” Not always and maybe not even often.
What prompts this trip you might ask? It’s that always vain attempt to re-capture the past. In this case, it was a summer course in Oxford that was cancelled by the pandemic and which I truly wanted to attend…a course on Shakespeare’s “King Lear”, my favorite of his many stunningly wonderful plays.
Now you know all, and with luck, I’ll be back.
Marty
I’ll leave this quote from The Portable Curmudgeon right where it is; it is so very appropriate this election year.
Then we can continue on to Principles.
”President”
When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President; I’m beginning to believe it.” Clarence Darrow
“Principles”
You can’t learn too soon that the most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.
W. Somerset Maughm
Principles have no real force except when one is well fed. Mark Twain
It is easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them. Alfred Adler
I like persons better than principles and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.
Oscar Wilde
“Progress”
What we call progress is the exchange of one nuisance for another nuisance. Havelock Ellis
All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
Samuel Butler
Progress celebrates Pyrrhic victories over nature and makes purses of human skin. Karl Kraus
Progress is the mother of problems. G.K. Chesterton
“Promiscuity”
A promiscuous person is someone who is getting more sex than you are. Victor Lownes