The Duppy Part One “Wanda is a bit of a handful,” Mrs. Beaton warned Melda when she hired her. “We try not to spoil her, but she’s at that difficult age, you understand, just coming into her teens.” Melda did not understand. In Jamaica she’d been the fourth child out of six, and she’d been
Captain Kidd, Part Three He maintained a tissue of legality in his subsequent captures. The first ship he took, after the death of Moore, was Levantine, but she bore French papers, and Kidd carefully saved them, to prove that the prize was legal within the terms of his commission. But on January 10th, 1698, he
Splat Humphty Drumphty wanted a wall. Humphty Drumphty had a great fall. All the right wing-nuts and White-Power men Couldn’t put Humphty together again.
Bert And I is a collection of stories about two crusty Maine farmer-fishermen. It was published in the 1950s by Robert Bryan and Marshall Dodge. I’ve always loved the pair and their tales, and I thought that in these dark times for our country, readers might appreciate a wry laugh or two. It’s interesting to
His Tory backers provided Kidd with a new ship. The Adventure Galley was state-of-the-17th-century art, a three-masted frigate designed for speed and maneuverability. She carried thirty-four guns: sixteen 9-pounders starboard and larboard , on a single deck, and two 4-pound chasers, mounted on swivels, afore and abaft. Her fore- and mainmasts carried square-rigged courses, topsails,
Captain Kidd Part One My name was William Kidd, as I sailed, as I sailed, And so wickedly I did, God’s laws I did forbid, As I sailed. I roamed from sound to sound, as I sailed, as I sailed, And many a ship I found, and them I sunk or burned, As I sailed.
SACRED PROFANITY My wife and I traveled to Italy in April, 2011, five years after a previous visit. We’d been studying Italian literature, and our ultimate destination was Palermo, because we’d read Giuseppe Tomaso di Lampedusa’s masterpiece Il gattopardo (which doesn’t literally mean “The Leopard,” but refers to a heraldic cat more like a lion
In Praise of Elitism I’m one of the librul elite, tra la! I Twitter not, nor do I Tweet, ha ha! I vote only for those Who speak in clear prose, And I don’t trust the Man in the Street, nah, nah! I’m a big innalekshual snob, nyah nyah! If you can’t turn a phrase,
I have been to England only twice, and both visits were brief. The first time, I went with an Army buddy while we were on leave from our base in West Germany during the Cold War. We stayed in London at a cheap B & B just off Russell Square (the word “cheap,” applied to