Ezra's Essays

Category: 2013

  • LAMENTATIONS ON “I WISH”

    I keep two identical dictating machines on my desk.  The left one is for dictations that I turn over to Mrs. Eva Baker for transcription.  The right one is for notes about future essays.  Recently I recorded some notes on the subject of lamentations which was a subject I wanted to do an essay on. …

  • “AIN’T NOTHIN’ YOU CAN DO” — GUY CLARK, SONGWRITER

    For the past three weeks, a drought has descended upon my being which renders me largely incompetent to write essays.  I trust that the drought is not a permanent condition but is a transient affair.  In the long time that I have been writing essays, droughts have appeared from time to time.  The title of…

  • OBSCENITIES NATURALLY

    As I was growing up, there was one article of faith that had to be observed by my mother and by myself.  It had to do with the St. Louis Post Dispatch.  The Post Dispatch was an afternoon paper, of which there are very few left.  When one of the older children appeared after work…

  • MIND AND BODY

    In writing this essay, I am speaking for a person born in 1918, one born in 1920, and myself, born in 1922.  So you see, there are no spring chickens among the three of us.  Not long ago, a question arose from the one born in 1920 of whether he would prefer to keep his…

  • GOING INTO DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME

    This essay should have been written a number of years ago.  It records my resentment and anger at the imposition of daylight savings time.  I hope that there are others who are as dismayed as I am about the imposition of daylight savings time. In my limited field of acquaintances, no one has expressed an…

  • THE DOCTRINE OF UP

    This essay, which I hope you will read, has its genesis in a remark made to me by a nursing aide who attends to my needs at night.  This lady, who was born in Ghana, said to me, “Would you like for me to cover you up?”  She could have said, “Would you like for…

  • MORE OF BITS AND PIECES, AND ODDS AND ENDS

    You will recall – or I hope you will recall – that these are bits that come from my notepad and that there is no connection from one subject to another.  So we continue with the spirit of bits and pieces, odds and ends.  The first thought has to do with the cicadas.  It might…

  • VLADIMIR PUTIN’S DIVORCE

    Vladimir Putin, the head man in Russia, took his wife out to attend a ballet performance.  At the intermission, he was asked by a reporter, first, how he enjoyed the ballet and, secondly, if he was going to become divorced soon.  In a display of modesty for Vladimir Putin, he announced that he was indeed…

  • BITS AND PIECES; ODDS AND ENDS

    On my desk I have a tape recorder into which I dictate notes about future essays.  It is an audible tape recorder in view of the fact that I can no longer see to write and writing is incomprehensible to me.  After I have dictated a series of comments into my notepad, I usually publish…

  • GOD AND GAYS

    In this longer-than-expected lifetime, the subject of homosexuality has rarely reared its head.  When same-sex marriages came into view, the subject of homosexuality is now more often discussed.  Recently, the discussion is about male homosexuality.  The condition of homosexuality resides also in females so I am told. The purpose of this essay is to trace…