Assistant Village Idiot

They did a free livestream virtual concert for St Paddy's Day, because large gatherings were prohibited.  The event was sponsored by a C...

I wrote a long post to my children tonight about why I am still going to work, and so do not have the focus to both have more alcohol and be...

I have made a few recipes from a book of supposedly Chinese foods for years. We picked it up for $1 at a tent sale.  My sons grew up having ...

David Foster, under my post on Lewis writing about Kipling,  put me on to a link of Orwell writing about him as well. Remarkably good .  I d...

My son John-Adrian sends this from Nome. One difference with the Iditarod from other sporting events is that the finish might be at any tim...

Thomas Doubting from Grim's Hall sent this along three years ago and I ran across it again today.  It put me in mind of  How To Tal...

I have decided I will not comment on CS Lewis's long essay " Kipling's World. "  It is enough to know that if you are a Ki...

This may make you old rockers smile.

We say in our cynical moments “All politics is theater.” This is true, but there is a positive side to that, if we define our terms well.  ...

The Brits were taking a different approach to fending off C19. I have heard that they have backed off from the radical plan, that they haven...

I'm getting rid of the last of my old albums and 45's in preparation for moving.  My second son owns two jukeboxes, but he didn'...

A young friend among my wife's FB friends posted a  meme about blank supermarket shelves, comparing the empty shelves of socialism, whic...

Young people are by nature greater risk-takers, and older people are by nature more cautious. Yet this is not only because of the usual expl...

We had church livestreamed today. It's a new world.

Manchester, where I grew up, was NAtional.  In Westford where my grandfather's farm was, it was MYrtle, and in Goffstown, where I now ...

Most historians dismiss him as unhistorical at this point, but there are those of us who hope he turns out to be a real character.  We have ...

I found that They Asked For A Paper is in the public domain .  It contains a few essays of CS Lewis I had never read, so I was glad to find...

That thinking will mislead you. C19 has a much higher rate of contagion, which is why people are trying to bottle it up fast.  China, Italy,...

"The black spot! I thought so," [Long John Silver] observed. "Where might you have got the paper? Why, hillo! Look here, now...

Brea, buter, en griene tsiis, is goed Ingelsk en goed Frysk.  Give it a try. My only hint to to keep the "k" soft. Update:  Fu...