As I sit at my desk writing this rant, a house fly is bumbling around my head. Though they don’t bite, house flies are a plague because they carry filth on their feet, from the rotten food leavings and animal excrement they feed on. And my apartment is infested with them, because my landlord is
The next day passed calmly. Rose arrived in the early morning. She proved to be a stout, cheerful, middle-aged woman with a slight Irish brogue, and when Melda introduced herself, she said, “Well, and isn’t it about time there were a couple of sensible women around the place to take care of Mrs. Beaton and
The Duppy Part Two Mrs. Beaton came into the kitchen. “I thought I heard you, Simon,” she said to her husband, and kissed him on the cheek. “Why are you home so early?” Mr. Beaton frowned. “For God’s sake, Emily, I told you last night that I’m going to the economic symposium in Jackson Hole.
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